CHARLOTTE STREET, FITZROY SQUARE.
Laurie’s removal was not accomplished with the passionate haste which
distinguished that of his brother Ben. There was no particular hurry
about it. The padrona, with the natural impatience of a woman, found a
lodging almost immediately, which he saw and approved; but Laurie took
his time, and consoled poor Mrs. Brown at Kensington Gore, and found her
a lodger in the shape of a ‘real hartis-gentleman,’ as she herself
perspicuously expressed it, having felt in her soul from the beginning
that Laurie was something of a sham. Her new tenant was a young painter
who had made a successful _debút_ at the last Academy, and was for the
moment a man whom the picture-dealers delighted to honour. He was ready
to take Laurie’s pretty fittings, his contrivances, everything he had
done for himself; but Laurie’s good sense deserted him on that point.
The money would have been convenient no doubt; but he could not part
with the rubbish of his own collecting and contriving, which represented
to him not so much money, but so many moments of amusement and pleasant
thoughts. There was not room for half of them in Charlotte Street, where
he was going; so he carried his shelves, and stands, and quaint little
cupboards, to No. 375, Fitzroy Square, and put them up in every corner
he could find, the children hanging on him as he did so in an admiring
crowd. So that he got a great deal more good of his belongings than Ben
did of the marqueterie and buhl; and his successor furnished the rooms
at Kensington Gore with conveniences of a much more expensive kind, and
was altogether more splendid, and lavish, and prodigal than Laurie,
whose tastes were very unobtrusive. His new lodging in Charlotte Street
was on the first floor; the front room,--called the drawing-room,--had
three windows in it, one of which was cut up into the wall a few feet
higher than the others, giving that direct sky-light which is necessary
to a painter; and there was a sleeping-room behind. This was all
Laurie’s domain now-a-days, and the rooms were not large. There was a
table in the corner near the fireplace, as much out of the way as
possible of the great easel and the professional part of the room, where
he ate his breakfast, and anything else he might find it necessary to
regale himself with at home, in a meek kind of humble way,--under
protest, as it were, that he could not help himself. His new landlady’s
ideas on the subject of cooking were of the most limited character. She
gave him weak tea and bacon for breakfast without any apparent
consciousness of the fact that such luxuries pall upon the taste by
constant repetition, and that a diet of _toujours perdrix_ wearies the
meekest soul. Laurie thought it most expedient, on the whole, not to
inquire into her sentiments in respect to dinner, but swallowed his
morning rasher with a grimace, and was, on the whole, ‘a comfortable
sort of gentleman,’ the woman reported;--‘not like some as thinks they
can’t give too much trouble.’ But he missed the mistress of Kensington
Gore. He missed the neat maid, and his boy, who exasperated him in the
studio, and kept all his friends in amusement; and it was a different
thing looking out from the dreary windows in Charlotte Street upon the
dreary houses opposite,--upon the milkman and the potboy wending their
rounds, and the public-house at the corner, and the awful blank of
gentility in the windows on the other side, to what it used to be when
he could glance forth upon the sunny Park from among his flowers, with,
even at this time of the year, the old ladies taking their airing, and
the nurserymaids under the leafless trees. Nurserymaids and old ladies
are not entrancing objects of contemplation except to their respective
life-guards and medical men; but still it was better than in Charlotte
Street. Miss Hadley lived opposite to him, and was by no means of his
opinion; and when she was at home watched with a little amusement for
such glimpses of her neighbour as were to be had. In the morning,--when
there was not a fog,--Laurie, to start with, barricaded his windows,
leaving only the upper part of the middle one unshuttered, and then set
himself to work before his easel with Spartan heroism. Old Miss Hadley,
who knew all his story, had her chair near her window, entering into the
little drama with zest, and kept her eye upon him. For the first day or
two he would remain in this sheltered condition until the afternoon
light began to fail, when all at once he would sally forth with an
alacrity and air of relief which much amused the watcher. But by-and-by
this power of activity began to wane. ‘My dear, he’s getting a little
tired,’ the old lady said, with a chuckle, to her sister, a week after
Laurie’s arrival. ‘I heard the bolts go about one o’clock, and the
window opened; and there he was in his velvet coat, with his palette and
all the rest of it. I am sure Mr. Welby never looked so professional;
and he has a nice brown beard coming, and I like the looks of the lad,’
said Miss Hadley, who was a soft-hearted old soul.
‘He is not such a lad,’ said Miss Jane, ‘and his beard has been come
this twelvemonth at least; but I never thought it would last very long.
I hate amateurs.’ For all that, however, she would look up and nod at
Laurie, when she came home early and the young man appeared at his
window. As the days went on old Miss Hadley found her life quite
brightened up by the new neighbour, whose proceedings she watched with
so good-humoured an interest.
‘He had Shaw the Guardsman to sit to him to-day,’ was her next report;
‘and dreadfully bored the poor boy did look to be sure. I saw the
warrior go away, and then our friend stepped out on his balcony and
yawned as if his head would have come off.’ Next time the report was of
a different character. ‘The boy is getting used to us,’ the old lady
said; ‘he has been buying some plants for his window. He stood a long
time to-day and watched the Jenkinses getting into their dog-cart. He
took off his hat, my dear, when he was going out, when he saw me come to
the window. He knows I am your sister, I suppose.’
‘I do not admire his taste watching the Jenkinses,’ said Miss Jane, with
a momentary frown of jealousy. She would have been very indignant had
any one called her a match-maker, and yet almost without knowing it
there had come into her head a little plan about Laurie and ‘the child.’
‘Bless you, he was only amusing himself,’ said the elder sister. ‘I have
no doubt it looked very funny to him,--and the fuss and the cloaks, and
the bottles sticking out of the basket. They were going to see their
married sister at Battersea, my dear. Her husband is a coal-merchant,
and I believe they are very well to do. But I am very glad, I must say,
that Mr. Renton went opposite to live, and not at the Jenkinses. So
many girls in a house when people let lodgings is not nice; a young man
may be inveigled before he knows; and Mrs. Robinson is a very
respectable sort of a person; I am very glad he has gone there.’
‘I daresay he thinks it miserable enough,’ said the governess. These
little talks occurred every evening; and though Miss Hadley did not
confide all the vicissitudes of Laurie’s life to Mrs. Severn, yet the
main incidents became generally known ‘in the Square.’ They knew that
Shaw had been sitting to him, and that he had been bored, and the
incident afforded no small amusement to a circle of admiring friends.
‘It must be Miss Hadley who has betrayed me,’ said Laurie; ‘the fellow
has such heaps of talk. I declare I know everything about his family,
from the first of his name down to his sister’s little Polly. Little
Polly it was. And if a man may not be permitted to yawn after two hours
of that----’
‘A man might be permitted to yawn in the midst of it,’ said the padrona,
‘which I am sure you didn’t. But it was droll to rush out into your
balcony, and relieve yourself as soon as he was gone.’
‘There is no air in that little hole of a place,’ said Laurie; and then
he bethought himself that the other people about him were all of them
inmates of similar holes. ‘I mean it’s very nice, you know,’ he added,
‘and close to everything,--schools, and British Museum, and everything
a man can desire. But I am very fond of as much air as I can get.’
‘I always thought this was a very airy neighbourhood,’ said little Mrs.
Suffolk, who lived in another of the streets near Fitzroy Square, ‘and
so handy for the children, in five minutes they can be in the Park.’
‘One gets never to listen to those fellows,’ said her husband; ‘if you
take an interest in them they go and make money of you. Their wives are
always ill, and their children dying, and that sort of thing. Glossop’s
got your old rooms over at Kensington, do you know, Renton? And come out
no end of a swell. I don’t know why, I am sure, unless that he has a
friend on the “Sword.”’
‘Not so bad as that,’ said Laurie. ‘Those were two very pretty pictures
of his this year.’
‘Oh, ah, pretty enough,’ said the other; ‘if that is all you want in a
picture. British taste! But I’d like to know what sort of people they
must be who like to hang these eternal simperings on their walls. I
believe there are heaps of men who don’t care twopence for art. But to
choose bad art where good is to be had, out of mere perverseness!--I
don’t believe in that. They pin their faith on the “Sword,” and the
“Sword” lies and cheats right and left, and looks after its own friends;
and the British public pays the piper. When one thinks of Glossop, that
one has known all over the world, in Laurie Renton’s pretty rooms at
Kensington Gore!’
‘And Laurie here!’ said the padrona, ‘which is great luck for us. But,
my friend, you are mistaken. There are heaps of people, as you say, who
prefer bad art to good. It is of no use pretending to deny it;--and,’
Mrs. Severn added with a little sigh, ‘we all trade upon it, I fear, if
the truth were told.’
‘No, indeed, I am sure not that,’ said the painter’s wife. ‘There stands
one who never does, I say to him a hundred times, “Reginald dear, do
think of a popular subject; do paint something for common sort of
folks!”--but he never will. They say it is only the _nouveaux riches_
that buy now-a-days,’ Mrs. Suffolk continued in injured tones, ‘or
dealers; and we know nobody who writes on the “Sword.” You do, of
course, Mr. Renton,--you have been so much in the world.’
‘I met Slasher the other day at the club,’ said Laurie, with a laugh
which he could only half restrain. ‘He is not such a bad fellow. If you
will let Suffolk bring you to my little place some time, I will show him
to you. He does not bite in private life.’
‘Oh, I don’t know that I should like to meet such a man,’ the little
woman said, with an anxious glance at her husband; and then she took
Laurie a step aside, and became confidential. ‘If you would but make
Reginald and him friends, Mr. Renton! I don’t mind speaking to you.
Nobody knows what talent Reginald has; and I am so afraid he will get
soured with never finding an opening; and he can’t afford to keep up a
club like you young men, and we have been so much out of the world. What
does it matter studying nature and studying the great masters, and
staying out of London till everybody forgets you?’ the poor young woman
continued, with tears in her eyes. She was young, and it was hard upon
her to keep from crying when she met Laurie’s sympathetic look. ‘It is
not so much the money I am thinking of,’ she said; ‘but if Reginald were
to get soured----’
‘I’ll get Slasher to meet him directly,’ said Laurie, with eager
promptitude; ‘and you may be sure everything I can do----’
‘Oh, thanks!’ said the painter’s wife. ‘It is not that he wants any
favour, Mr. Renton, but only an opening; and we have been so much out of
the world.’
‘I wonder you don’t get up a Trades-Union, and make a stand,’ said Mrs.
Thurston, who was literary. ‘How anything can keep alive that is so
badly written as the “Sword,” I don’t know. It is because you are all so
eager to see what it says about you, even though you hate it. Just like
the articles in all the papers about women! If women were not so curious
to see “what’s next,” do you think any one would take the trouble to
write all that? Don’t mind it, and you take away its power.’
‘Ah, it is so easy for you,’ cried Mrs. Suffolk;--‘you have nothing to
do but to go to your publisher; but what with the Hanging Committee
putting all their friends on the line, and those wicked papers that
never think of merit, but only of some one the writers know----’
‘That’s enough, Helen,’ said her husband, with an attempt at a smile;
‘you talk as if we minded. But what is the criticism of an ignorant
fellow, who does not know a picture when he sees it, to me,--or any
one?’ he added, with the slightest half-perceptible quiver of his lip.
‘Constable has just come back from Italy, Renton;--one of our old set;’
and so the talk ran on.
This little party was assembled as before in the great drawing-room.
There was a fire now which made it brighter and took away something of
its quaintness, and the padrona and her guests had drawn near it,
carrying the light and the circle of faces into the centre of the room.
Now and then somebody would sing, or play,--but talk was what they all
loved best, and music as an interruption of the latter was not greatly
cultivated. The padrona herself was always working at something with her
swift, dextrous fingers; and the ladies who formed her court had
generally brought her work in their pockets, to add to their comfort
while they talked. Laurie spent the next half-hour standing with Suffolk
before the fire, talking of Italy, where they had met, and of the old
set, with all that curious mingling of laughter and sadness which
accompanies such recollections. Of ‘the old set’ so many had already
dropped by the way, as the passengers dropped through the trapdoors in
Mirza’s Vision, while yet the fun of their jokes and their adventures
lasted vividly in their comrades’ minds. ‘You remember poor old
So-and-so,’ the young men said to each other, looking down with their
brown faces on the soft glow of the fire; ‘what fun he was! what scrapes
he was always getting into! There was not a painter in Rome who did not
turn out the day of his funeral!--and poor Untell, with his bad Italian.
What nights those were in the Condotti! There never was a better fellow.
Did you hear what an end his was?’ This was how the talk went
on,--without any moral in it as of the vanity of human joys; nothing but
pure fact, the laughter and the tragedy interlaced and woven together;
while the ladies round the lamp with the light on their faces, talked
too, but not with such historical calm, of the injustices of the
‘Sword,’ and of the Academy, and of the public; of the advantages of
other professions,--literature, for example,--at which its
representative shook her head; of the children’s education and their
health, and, perhaps, a little of the ills of housekeeping,--subject
sacred to feminine discussion. Women do not meet, I suppose, nor do
women die, as men do. They had no such melancholy, jovial records behind
them to go over,--their talk was of the present and the future,--a
curious distinction,--and the padrona’s society numbered always more
women than men.
Next day, perhaps, it would be at Suffolk’s house that Laurie spent his
evening, which was a house not unlike the one in which he himself
lived,--a thin, tall strip of building in which two rooms were piled
upward upon two rooms to the fourth storey. The two parlours on the
ground-floor were domestic, and there Mrs. Suffolk sat, very glad to see
her husband’s friends when they came in, but not so entirely one of the
party as when the padrona was the hostess. Her little room, though it
was as prettily furnished as humble means would allow, was not
calculated for the reception of a crowd, and after they had paid her
their _devoirs_, the men streamed up-stairs to the corresponding but
larger room above, which was the studio,--a place in which there were no
hangings to be poisoned with their tobacco, nor much furniture to impede
their movements. Perhaps the wife of one would come with him and take
off her bonnet and stay with Mrs. Suffolk, bringing her work with her,
and resuming those endless, unfailing talks about the children, and the
housekeeping, and the injustice of the world. For it must be understood
that the artist-life I am attempting to describe is not that of the
highly-placed, successful painter, against whom the Academy has no
power,--who is perhaps himself on the Hanging Committee, and has the
‘Sword’ at his feet in abject adoration;--but of the younger
brotherhood, in a chronic state of resistance to the powers that be, and
profoundly conscious of all the opposing forces that beset their path.
Little Mrs. Suffolk had care on her brow, as she sat with her sister in
art and war, in the little drawing-room down-stairs, discussing the
inexpediency of those wanderings to and fro over the earth, which
probably both had gone through and enjoyed, but which ofttimes made the
public and the picture-dealers oblivious of a young painter’s name.
Up-stairs, however, there would probably be five or six young fellows,
of a Bohemian race, bearded, and bronzed, and full of talk, who had not
yet taken the responsibilities of life on their shoulders, and laughed
at the wolf when he approached their door. Two or three of them would
collect round Suffolk’s picture, which he had been working at all day,
to give him the benefit of their counsel, in the midst of the wreath of
smoke which filled the room. Most of them were picturesque young fellows
enough,--thanks to the relaxed laws of costume and hair-dressing
prevalent among them. And to see Suffolk with the lamp, raising it in
one hand to show his work, shading it with the other that the light
might fall just where it ought to fall, tenderly gazing at the canvas on
which hung so many hopes, with the eager heads round him studying it
judicially, would have made such a picture as Rembrandt loved to paint.
‘I don’t quite like that perspective,’ said one. ‘Look here, Suffolk,
your light is coming round a corner,--the sun is there, isn’t he?--or
ought to be at that time of the day.’
‘What time of the day do you call it?’ said a second.
‘Why, afternoon, to be sure,’ cried the first critic; ‘don’t you see the
shadows fall to the left hand, and the look in that woman’s eyes? It’s
afternoon, or I’m an ass! Did you ever see a woman look like that except
in the afternoon?--sleepiest time, I tell you, of the whole day.’
‘She’s weary of watching, don’t you see?’ said his neighbour.
‘Matter-of-fact soul! But I’d get that light straight if I were you,
Suffolk. He’s wrong about the sentiment, but he’s right about the
light.’
‘Give us the chalk here,’ said Constable, who had just come back from
Italy; ‘there’s just a touch wanted about the arm, if you don’t mind.’
‘The colour’s good, my dear fellow,’ said Spyer, who was older than any
of them, and a kind of authority in his way, ‘and the sentiment is good.
I like that wistful look in her eye. She’s turned off her lover, but she
can’t help that gaze after him. Poor thing!--just like women. And I like
that saffron robe; but I think you might mend the drawing. I don’t quite
see how she’s got her shoulder. It’s not out of joint, is it? You had
better send for the surgeon before it goes down to Trafalgar Square.’
All these blasts of criticism poor Suffolk received, _tant bien que
mal_, doing his best to seem unmoved. He even suffered the chalk which
‘that beggar, Constable--a tree-painter, by Jove!--a landscape man,’ he
said afterwards, with the fervour of indignation, permitted himself to
mark the dimpled elbow of his Saxon maiden. The mists of smoke and the
laughter that came out of the room from cheery companions who were lost
in these mists, and the system of give and take, which made him
prescient of the moment when Spyer and Constable too would be at his
mercy, as he was now at theirs, made their comments quite bearable, when
one word from the ‘Sword’ would have driven the painter frantic. And to
do them justice, it was only the pictures which were in the course of
painting on which they were critical. Groups now and then would collect
before that picture of the English captive boys in the Forum, which the
Academy had hung at the roof, and which had come home accordingly
unapplauded and unsold, though later;--but I need not anticipate the
course of events. Suffolk’s visitors gathered before it, and looked at
it with their heads on one side, and pointed out its special qualities
to each other, not with the finger, as do the ignorant, but with that
peculiar caressing movement of the hand which is common to the craft.
‘What colour! by Jove, that’s a bit of Italian air brought bodily into
our fogs;--and the cross light is perfect, sir!’ Spyer said, who had
just been so hard on his friend’s drawing. If they found out faults
which the uninstructed eye was slow to see, they discovered beauties
too; and then gathered round the fire, and fell into twos and threes,
and went back to that same talk of the past and the ‘old set,’ in which
Laurie had indulged on the previous night. The ‘old set’ varied
according to the speakers; with some it was only the fellows at
Clipstone Street; but with all the moral was the same; the cheery days
and nights, the wild sallies of youthful freedom, the great hopes
dwindled into nothing, the many, many fallen by the way, not one-half of
the crowd seeming to have come safely through the struggles of the
beginning. ‘Poor So-and-so! If ever there was a man who had a real
feeling for art, it was he; and as good a fellow’--they added, puffing
forth meditative clouds; and there would be a laugh the next moment over
some remembered pranks. Laurie had formed one of many such parties ere
now. He, too, had been of the ‘old set:’ he had his stories to
contribute, his momentary sigh to breathe forth along with the fumes of
his cigar. But, perhaps, he had never in his amateur days felt so
completely belonging to the society in which he found himself.
Sometimes, perhaps, he had laughed a little, and given himself a little
shake of half-conscious superiority when he left them, and set out to
Kensington Gore as to another world; but Charlotte Street was
emphatically the same world, and the _esprit de corps_ was strong in
Laurie’s heart. ‘Anch’io pittore,’ he said to himself as he stood
indignant before Suffolk’s beautiful picture which had been hung up at
the roof. It was a beautiful picture; and one of these days the Hanging
Committee might treat himself in the same way; and if by chance
criticism should really be so effectual as everybody said, why should
not something be done for Suffolk--using the devil’s tools, as it were,
to do a good action--by means of Slasher and the ‘Sword?’
The majority of the young men went away after an hour’s talk and smoke
unlimited; but Laurie was one of those who remained and went down to
supper, along with Spyer and Constable, to the back room down-stairs,
which was the little dining-room. Mrs. Suffolk was very careful to keep
the folding-doors shut, and to make two rooms, though it certainly would
have been larger and might have been more comfortable had they been
thrown into one. It was Mrs. Spyer who was her companion that evening,
who was older than she, and commented a little sharply on this poor
little bit of pretension, as Laurie walked part of the way home with the
pair. ‘I like nice dining and drawing-rooms as well as any one,’ Mrs.
Spyer said, ‘but if I were Helen, I would be comfortable, and never
mind.’ ‘All the same she is a good little woman,’ her husband had said,
irrelevantly;--for, to be sure, nobody doubted that she was a good
little woman. They had cold beef and celery and cheese on the table, and
refreshed themselves with copious draughts of beer. I do not say it was
a very refined conclusion to the evening, but I think Laurie was better
amused and more interested than after many a fine party. He walked home
with Spyer, talking of Suffolk’s picture, and the injustice that had
been done him, _jettant feu et flamme_, as they mentioned the Academy,
yet hoping that band of tyrants could not be so foolish two years
running. ‘The thing is, to have him written up in the papers,’ Spyer
said; ‘a fellow of his talent cannot be long kept in the background; but
if the papers were to take him up, it would shorten his probation.’ ‘I
hate the papers,’ said Mrs. Spyer. ‘Why don’t we have private patrons,
as we used to have, and never mind the public? To think of a wretched
newspaper deciding a man’s fate! I would not give in to it for a day.’
‘But we must give in to it, or else be left behind in the race,’ said
her husband. And Laurie thought more and more, as he listened to all
this talk, of the influence he himself might exercise at the club and
elsewhere upon Slasher and the ‘Sword.’