LAURIE’S WORK.
The first grand question to be decided, when Laurie settled in Charlotte
Street, was what his first picture was to be. It is true that Mr. Welby,
and even the padrona, who was so much more hopeful, were all for mere
study and life-schools, and the lectures at the Academy, and anatomical
demonstrations, and other disagreeable things, which Laurie, always
amiable, gave in to, to please them, not doubting of the advantage of
the studies in question. But still his anatomy, and his notes, and
studies from the life, however careful, were only means to an end; and
there was no reason why the end itself should not be pursued at the same
time,--or at least so he thought. He had painted pictures before now as
a mere amateur, and in that capacity had even,--once,--obtained a nook
in the Academy’s exhibition; and why he should now suspend his chief
work, and, having become a professional painter, paint no longer, was
what Laurie could not perceive. He was not the man to exhibit his study
of the Norman fisherwoman or Italian peasant who might chance to be
posing at the school, as some of the Clipstone Street fellows did. His
work there, of course, would help him in his real work at home; but to
spend his entire time in preparation for work, and do nothing, seemed to
Laurie plain idiocy. ‘I painted nothing for three years on end when I
was like you,’ old Welby said. ‘You require to be a painter, sir, before
you can paint a picture; and it is hard enough work to make yourself a
painter. If I were in your place I’d never look at a canvas bigger than
that for at least a year.’
‘That’ was the study of a head which Laurie had taken down with him to
Mr. Welby’s studio. It was one of the padrona’s, and the old painter had
praised the sketch. As for Laurie, he turned it hastily with its face to
the easel, and laughed the uneasy laugh of embarrassment and offence.
‘I rather flattered myself I was a painter,’ he said, and then paused
and recovered his temper. ‘The fact is, I must keep myself up,’ he
exclaimed; ‘I must feel as if I were doing something. So long as I paint
merely scraps I feel myself demoralised. And then you forget I am not a
novice,’ Laurie said, with some pride. He had been all over Italy, and
had studied in Rome, and was very learned in many artistic matters. To
be told that he had first to make himself a painter was rather hard.
‘Of course you are a novice,’ said the R.A., ‘and quite natural too. I
don’t want to be disagreeable, my dear fellow, but an amateur is really
worse,--you may take my word for it,--than an absolute beginner. The
very traditions of amateur art are different. If you were making a fair
start I should know exactly what to tell you; but how can I tell how
much you may have to unlearn?’
This, it will be allowed, was not encouraging. Laurie went up-stairs
afterwards three steps at a time, with his blood boiling in his veins.
He gave the padrona an animated little address about old fogies in
general, and R.A.’s in particular, to her extreme amazement, as she
stood at her work. It was a crisp, sunny, wintry morning, and Mrs.
Severn was very busy. She opened her brown eyes and laughed, as Laurie,
breathless, came to an end.
‘They will be giving advice,’ she said, ‘I know; and advice, unless when
it is just what one wants, is a terrible nuisance. I see exactly what
you mean.’
‘I have no objection to advice,’ said Laurie, half angry, half laughing,
‘when it is kept within due limits; but there is such a thing as going
too far.’ And then he told her the extent of Mr. Welby’s sin, not
without a momentary thought gleaming through his mind as he spoke, that
it was the fresh, new life which the old painter objected to see coming
within the exclusive boundaries of the profession. ‘Art is like any
other trade,’ he said, as he concluded his tale; ‘the workmen are bent
on pursuing their mystery, and would like to stone away any interloper
who inclines to come in.’
Mrs. Severn said nothing for a minute or two, but went on working at her
easel with her back to him; and when one is eager and excited to start
with, there is nothing more exasperating than to have one’s warm and
one-sided statement received thus with chilling silence. It is the
surest way to fill up what is wanting of the cup of indignation. ‘You
say nothing,’ Laurie continued, with impatience, ‘and yet, of course,
you must have suffered from it yourself.’
‘You will think I am helping to bar the door of my trade,’ said the
padrona, ‘and I know I deserve that you should fly through the window or
through the ceiling in wrath; but I can’t help it. He was quite right.
You have all your amateur habits to break yourself of, and to get to
work like,--like,--one of us. Don’t be vexed. I have wanted to say it
before, and, of course, with the generosity of my kind, I say it now
when you are down.’
‘You too!’ Laurie said with a pang. He took two or three turns up and
down the painting-room before he could speak. And but for pride, which
would not permit him to show how deep was his mortification, I fear he
would have blazed and exploded out of the house; but as soon as he had
come to himself, pride, more potent than any better feeling, cleared the
cloud from his brow.
‘I thought you had a better opinion of me,’ he said, reproachfully,
standing behind the easel and casting pathetic glances at her. ‘I came
to you to be,--consoled, I suppose,--like an ass. I thought I was
already something of a painter,--at least to you,--or why should I be
encouraged to attempt anything? Why didn’t you say to me, “Go and be a
shoemaker?”--as, indeed, Welby was honest enough to do.’
‘Now, Laurie, don’t be unjust,’ said the padrona. ‘Don’t you see it is
because I expect you to do something worth while that I want you to
study hard and learn everything? What is a year’s work to you at your
age? When one gets old one would give everything for the chance of such
a preparation. What am I but an amateur myself, not half instructed as I
ought to be? And that is why I am so anxious that it should be different
with you,--at your age.’
‘I cannot see what my age has to do with it,’ said Laurie, ‘nor why you
should always want to set me down as a boy;’ and then he paused and
compunction overtook him. He went up to his adviser, in the coaxing way
which Laurie had been master of all his life. He could not take her
hand, for she had her brush in it and was working all the time; but he
took the wide sleeve of her painting-dress between his fingers and
caressed it, which came to much the same thing. ‘You are so good to me,’
he said,--‘always so kind and so good. I never thought you would be
against me too.’
Thus it will be seen that to be advised, and even ill-used and trodden
upon by a friend who is a woman, and not uncomely to look at, is on the
whole less disagreeable than to be snubbed by an ancient R.A.
The padrona laughed, but her eye melted into loving-kindness as well as
laughter. ‘You are a boy,’ she said, ‘and a very insinuating one into
the bargain. But I am not going to be coaxed out of my opinion. You
ought to go home this very minute and lock up all your canvases and take
to chalk and paper and pencils for a whole year; and then you can come
back to me and I will tell you what I think you should do.’
‘If I am not to come back for a whole year I may as well go and hang
myself at once,’ said Laurie; and so the talk fell into lighter
channels. The truth was that he spent a great deal more time than he had
any call to do in the padrona’s studio, and hindered, or did his best to
hinder, her work; and perhaps liked better to examine her sketches and
criticise them, and make suggestions thereupon, than to labour steadily,
as he ought to have been doing, at sketches of his own. But this had not
yet lasted long enough to attract anybody’s attention,--even hers or his
own; for, of course, after such a shock as his life had sustained, this
was still an unsettled moment. He had not shaken himself down yet, nor
found his standing-ground after the convulsion; and it was natural he
should seek the counsel of his friends.
But the result was, after these conversations,--the one more
discouraging than the other,--that Laurie went direct to his colourman’s
and chose himself a lovely milk-white canvas six feet by ten, and had it
sent home immediately, and went on his knees before it in silent
adoration. His imagination set to work upon it immediately, though he
was self-denying enough not to touch it for days; but undeniably that
very night there were various sketches made of a heroic character before
he went to bed. It was difficult to choose a subject,--much more
difficult than he supposed. Several great historical events which struck
his fancy had to be rejected as demanding an amount of labour which in
the meantime was impracticable. He wandered in a range of contending
fancies all night long in his sleep, with Suffolk’s Saxon maiden in the
doorway of her father’s grange, dismissing the Norman squire who had
become her lover, floating through his brain in conjunction with various
Shakspearian scenes, and some of the padrona’s baby groups, with the
padrona herself in the midst; and when he woke the dream continued.
Sometimes he thought he would abandon history and paint a Mary with that
face,--not a girl Mary in the simplicity of youth, but one with
thoughts matured, and the wider, greater heart of experience and ripe
womanhood. Foolish boy! For, to be sure, he was a boy after all.
It took Laurie a long time to decide this matter in a satisfactory way.
One day his inclinations were scriptural, and another historical; and on
the third he would have made up his mind to a modern _genre_ picture,
but for the size of his canvas, which was clearly intended for something
heroic. He settled at last,--which indeed was almost a matter of
course,--upon a very hackneyed and trite subject, being somehow driven
to it as he felt by the influence of Suffolk’s pictures, which he
admired with all a young man’s indignant warmth. The subject which he
chose was Edith seeking the body of Harold. ‘In the lost battle, borne
down by the flying.’ Nothing could well have been more inconsistent with
his state of mind, or tastes, or general inclinations. He was not given
to melancholy thoughts, neither,--though Laurie was sufficiently
fanciful,--had any analogy struck him between his own first beginning of
the fight and that end, always so linked with the beginning, of utter
loss and overthrow and darkness. It was not any chance gleam of a
forecasting, profound imagination, or passionate sense of the fatal
chances of the battle, that suggested it to him. Such an idea might have
occurred to Suffolk, but it was inconsistent with the very constitution
of Laurie’s mind. He chose his subject in pure caprice, probably
because it was the most unlike of anything he could imagine, to his own
tender, friendly, unimpassioned nature. There are moments of youthful
ease and hope in which tragedy comes most natural to the cheerful,
unforeboding soul; I cannot tell why,--perhaps, as Wordsworth says, out
of the very ‘prodigal excess’ of its personal content. Laurie was so
absorbed in his subject,--in sketching it out, and putting it on the
canvas, and bringing his figures into harmonious composition,--that his
Clipstone Street studies suffered immensely, and he even failed in the
usual frequency of his visits to ‘the Square.’ Had he gone there as
usual, he would, of course, have betrayed himself, and he was determined
that not a word should be said until he could,--with a certain
triumph,--the triumph of individual conviction and profound
consciousness of what was best for himself over all advice,--invite his
counsellors to come and look at what was about to be. So long as this
fit of fervour lasted Miss Hadley had nothing to report, except the
barricading of his windows from morning till afternoon, as long as the
light lasted,--unless, indeed, on foggy days, when the painter would
glance out at the sky from his balcony, palette in hand, a dozen times a
day, with despair in his face. The padrona thought she had gone too far,
and affronted him, and was sorry, and sent him friendly messages,
recalling the truant; but Laurie, notwithstanding the yearning of his
heart, was true to his grand object. As he stood before the big canvas,
putting in those vast, vague outlines of the future picture, it seemed
to him that he already saw it ‘on the line’ in the Academy, with the
little scene he had already imagined going on below. But by this time he
had half forgotten the fine people whose astonishment he had once amused
himself by imagining. Kensington Gore had been swept away by the
current, and looked like some haunt of his boyhood. What he thought now
was chiefly, ‘They will have changed their opinion by that time.’
‘They,’ no doubt, included old Welby, who had been so hard on the young
painter; but I fear that the special spite of this anticipation was
directed against the padrona. What did it matter after all, except,
indeed, in the strictest professional point of view, what old Welby
thought?
Edith had not got beyond the first chalk outline, when Forrester, Mr.
Welby’s man, came one morning to Charlotte Street, with a message from
his master. Forrester was understood to know nearly as much about art as
his master did, and resembled him, as old servants often do,--and I
rather think Laurie was secretly glad, now matters had progressed so
far, of this means of conveying, in an indirect way, the first news of
his rebellion to ‘the Square.’ At all events he sent for him to come
up-stairs, awaiting his appearance with a little trepidation. Forrester,
however, was not arrogant, as some critics are. He came in with the most
bland and patronising looks, ready, it was evident, to be indulgent to
everything. When he had delivered his message, he cast an amiable glance
around him. The room was lighted only by the upper light of the middle
window, all the rest being carefully closed, and even that amount of
daylight was obscured by the shadow of the great canvas which was placed
on the easel, where all the rays that were to be had out of a November
sky might be concentrated upon it. Forrester was too thoroughly
acquainted with the profession of which he was a retainer not to
understand at once the meaning of this big shadow, and Laurie in his
anxiety thought or imagined that the critic’s lips formed themselves
into an involuntary whistle of astonishment, though no sound was
audible. But the old servitor of art felt the claims of politeness.
Instead of displaying at once his curiosity about the work in hand, he
paid his tribute of applause with a grace which his master could
scarcely have emulated. ‘That’s a nice sketch, sir,’ Forrester said,
indicating one of the Clipstone Street studies. ‘I hope you ain’t
working too hard now, we see you so little in the Square. I like that
effect, Mr. Renton; master would be pleased with that effect.’
‘I am very glad you think so, Forrester,’ said artful Laurie, leading
his visitor on.
‘Master’s a little severe, Mr. Renton,’ said Forrester, ‘but you young
gentlemen take him a deal too much at his word. Bless you, he don’t mean
half he says. I know he’d be pleased. I call that a very nice drawin’,
Mr. Renton; better nor many a dealer buys for a picture. I always said,
sir, as you was one as would come on.’
‘I am much obliged to you for your good opinion, Forrester,’ said
Laurie; ‘it is very kind of you to take so much interest in me.’
‘I’ve been among painters all my days,’ said Forrester. ‘I sat to Opie,
sir, though you wouldn’t think it, when I was a lad. I don’t know as
there is a man living as understands ’em better nor I do. I knows their
ways; and if I don’t know a picture when I sees one, who should, Mr.
Renton? I’ve been about ’em since I was a lad o’ fifteen, and awful fond
o’ them, like as they was living creatures,--and a man ain’t worth much
if he don’t form no opinion of his own in five-and-forty years. Me and
master goes on the same principle. It’s the first sketch as he’s always
mad about. “Take the big picture and hang it in your big galleries,” he
says, “and give me the sketch with the first fire into it, and the
invention.” I’ve heard him a saying of that scores of times; and them’s
my sentiments to a tee. But master, he’s all for the hantique, and me, I
go in for the modern school. There’s more natur’ in it, to my way of
thinking. You’ve got something on your easel, sir, as looks important,’
Forrester continued, edging his way with curious looks towards the
central object in the room.
‘I don’t know if I should let you see it.’ said Laurie; ‘I have only
just begun to put it on the canvas; and you are an alarming critic,
Forrester,--as awful as Mr. Welby himself.’
‘No, sir; no, no,’ said Forrester, affably; ‘don’t you be frightened; I
know how to make allowances for a beginner. We must all make a
beginning, bless you, one time or other. Master ’ud grieve if he see a
big canvas like that. He’d say, “It’s just like them boys;” but I ain’t
one to set a young gentleman down. Encourage the young, and tell your
mind to the hold, that’s my motto, sir,’ the old man said, as he placed
himself in front of the easel. As for poor Laurie, the fact is that he
grew cold with fright and expectation as he watched the face of the
critic. Forrester gave vent to a prolonged Ah! accompanied by a slight
expressive shrug when he took his first look of the canvas, and for
several moments he made no further observation. To Laurie, standing
behind him in suspense, the white chalk shadows seemed to twist and
distort themselves, and put all their limbs out of joint, in pure
perversity, under this first awful critical gaze.
‘If I might make so bold, sir,’ said Forrester, mildly, ‘what is the
subject of the picture, Mr. Renton?’ which was not an encouraging
remark.
‘Of course I ought to have told you,’ cried Laurie, very red and hot.
‘It is an incident after the Battle of Hastings,--Edith looking for the
body of Harold. Edith, you know, was----’
‘I’ve seen a many Hediths,’ said Forrester. ‘I ought to know. I’m an old
stupid, sir, not to have seen what it was; but being as it’s in the
chalk, and me not having the time to study it as I could wish----. I
don’t doubt, Mr. Renton, as it’s a fine subject. It did ought to be,
seeing the many times as it’s been took.’
‘I don’t think I have seen it many times,’ said Laurie, profoundly
startled; ‘I only remember one picture, and that very bad,’ the young
man added hastily. Forrester shook his head.
‘Not in the exhibitions, I daresay, sir,’ said the critic, solemnly;
‘but there’s a many pictures, Mr. Renton, as never get as far as the
Academy. Mr. Suffolk, he did it, sir, for one; and young Mr. Warleigh,
as has give up art, and gone off a engineering; and Robinson, as has
fallen into the portrait line,’ Forrester continued, counting on his
fingers; ‘and poor Mr. Tinto, as died in Italy; and there’s the same
subject,’ the old man added, solemnly, after a pause, ‘turned with its
face again the wall in our hattic, as Mr. Severn hisself, sir, did when
he was young.’
Laurie was overwhelmed. He gazed at the ruthless destroyer of his dreams
with a certain terror. ‘Good heavens, I had no idea!’ said the young
man, growing green with sudden despair. Then, however, his pride came
to his aid. ‘It’s a dreadful list,’ he said; ‘but, you perceive, as they
never came under the public eye, and nobody was the wiser----’
‘To be sure, sir--to be sure,’ said Forrester, with pitying complacency.
‘A many failures ain’t what you may call a reason for your failing as is
a new hand. I hope it’ll be just the contrary; but if you hadn’t a begun
of it, Mr. Renton,--and being as it’s but in the chalk, it ain’t to call
begun;----couldn’t Hedith be a looking out for her lover, sir, of an
evening, as young women has a way? I don’t suppose there was no
difference in them old times. And a bit o’ nice sunset, and him a-coming
out of it with his shadow in front of him, like. I don’t say as the
subject’s as grand, but it’s a deal cheerfuller. And when you come to
think of it, Mr. Renton, to hang up all them dead corpses and a skeered
woman, say, in your dining-room, sir, when it’s cheerful as you want to
be----’
‘Thanks,’ said Laurie, with a little offence. ‘I have no doubt you are
very judicious, but I am sorry I can’t see the matter in the same light.
You will give Mr. Welby my compliments, please. I’ll be glad to dine
with him on Saturday, as he asks me. Perhaps you will be so good as to
say nothing--. But no, that’s of no consequence,’ Laurie added, hastily.
Of course he was not going to give in. Of course they must know sooner
or later what he was doing, and better sooner than later. They might
laugh, or sneer, or consider him childish if they pleased; but the
moment his picture was hung on the line in the Academy, all that would
be changed. So Laurie mounted his high horse. But he did it in a
splendid, magnanimous sort of way. He smoothed down Forrester’s wounded
feelings by a ‘tip,’ which, indeed, was more than he could afford, and
which the old man took with reluctance,--and opened the door for him
with his own hands. ‘Offended! because you tell me how popular my
subject has been? Most certainly not! Much obliged to you, on the
contrary, Forrester, and very proud of your good opinion,’ he said, with
a most gracious smile and nod, as his critic went away, which Forrester
did with a certain satisfaction mingling with his regret.
‘It’s for his good,’ the old man said to himself; ‘and there ain’t no
way of doing them young fellows good without hurting of their feelings.’
Laurie for his part went back to his painting-room, and sat down moodily
before his big canvas. It was too ridiculous to care for such a piece of
criticism. Forrester;--Mr. Welby’s servant!--to think of minding
anything that a stupid old fellow in his dotage might venture to say!
Laurie laughed what he meant for a mocking laugh, and then bit his lip
and called himself a fool. Of course the old rascal had been crammed
beforehand and taught what to say; or if not, at least it was no wonder
if the servant repeated what the master thought. It was not this
picture or that, but every picture that Welby had set his face against.
And what a piece of idiocy to show his man, his echo,--the very first
beginning,--the most chaotic indication,--such as none but an eye at
once keen and indulgent could have made out,--of the great work that was
to be! Laurie concluded proudly that nobody was to blame but himself, as
he sat down in his first quiver of mortification, half inclined to tear
his canvas across, and pitch his chalks to the other end of the room.
Then he looked at it, and found his Edith looking down upon him with her
tragic eyes,--eyes which to her creator looked tragic and full of awful
meaning, though they were but put in in chalk. Perhaps, indeed, it was
the chalk that made her divine in her despair, whitely shadowing out of
the white canvas, owing everything to the imagination,--a suggestion of
horror and frantic grief and misery. What if it was a common subject!
The more common a thing is, the more universal and all-influencing must
it be. A tender woman, made sublime by her despair, seeking on a field
of battle the body of the man she loved most,--a thing of primitive
passion such as must move all humanity. What if it were hackneyed! All
the more distinctly would it be apparent which was the touch of the real
power which could embody the scene, and which the mere painter of
costumed figures. Such were Laurie’s thoughts as he sat, discouraged
and cast down, before his picture,--poor fellow!--after Forrester’s
visit. If the man’s criticisms had so much effect upon him, what would
the master’s have had? What could he have said to the padrona had it
been she who had come to look at his picture? Then the long array of
names which Forrester had quoted came back upon him. In short, poor
Laurie had received a downright unexpected blow, and ached and smarted
under it, as was natural to a sensitive being loving applause and
approbation. He turned his back on Edith for the rest of the day,
throwing open his windows, to Miss Hadley’s astonishment, the first time
for a week, and affording her a dim vision of a figure thrown into an
arm-chair by the fire, with a novel. It was the first time since he came
to Charlotte Street that he had in broad daylight and cold blood given
himself over to such an indulgence. He was disgusted with his work and
himself. He had not the heart to go out. He could not go to the Square,
where probably by this time they were all laughing over his folly. He
read his novel doggedly all the afternoon, in sight of Miss Hadley, who
could not tell what to make of it. The light was gone and the day lost
before he roused himself, and pitched his book into the farthest corner.
His kindly spy could not tell what the perverse young fellow would do
next. Probably go and have his dinner, she said to herself; which,
indeed, Laurie did; and came home much better, beginning to be able to
laugh at Forrester, and snap his fingers at his predecessors. ‘The more
reason it should be done now,’ he said to himself, ‘if Suffolk, and
Severn, and all those fellows broke down over it.’ And he suffered a
little gleam of self-complacency to steal over his face, and went to
work all night at his sketch, to improve and perfect the composition. So
that, on the whole, Laurie, though no genius, had that nobler quality of
genius which overcomes all criticism and surmounts every discouragement.
He had been shut up long enough in silence with his conception. That
day, he made up his mind, instead of permitting himself to be
ignominiously snubbed by old Forrester, that he would face the world,
and carry the sketch which he was completing to the padrona herself.