The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy
one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he
lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an
endless series of Continental hotels and _pensions_. He was prepared
to assert, with confidence, that his mother had been a very
beautiful person, who carried an air of the most abundant affection
for him on the numerous occasions when she received her friends. Of
his father, who had, as far as possible, ignored his existence, he
remembered very little.
During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature
of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies
with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble
tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented
friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated
abruptness.
When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in
England, where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had
been terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully
in turn. He spent his holidays in London, at the house of his
grandmother--an excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him
almost simultaneously, who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear
father," and took care that he went to church regularly, and had
dancing-lessons three times a week.
His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly,
and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain
reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief
which he could remember to have experienced was when the old lady
herself died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her
blessing and a sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of
about £250 a year.
The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in
this he was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle,
Colonel Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the
terror of Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the
old lady's will, was fully aware of the position in which her death
had left him, and her desire that he should go into the Church.
At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because
he was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the
quaint Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with
his peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the
dons, who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to
read for honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for
nearly a scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to
Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts,
at the latter part of which the junior proctor and his satellites
were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being "sent down" for a
term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as much by
a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a
constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live
for next to nothing abroad.
During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of
mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true,
saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after
his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's
acquaintance, sealed by their subsequent journey together to Rome.
But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle,
with whom he at first communicated through the post on the subject
of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which his uncle had
replied:
"Don't be a d----d fool. Come back and take your degree."
This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his
next cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite
request that he would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and
an intimation that his uncle found it more convenient to make them
the channel of correspondence for the future.
At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the
delicacy of Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and
execution, were really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he
was too impatient for the end to spend the necessary time in
perfecting the means.
At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches
which his attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit
enabled him to sell. The _camaraderie_ of the Café Grecco welcomed him
with open arms; and he was to be encountered, in the season, at the
most fashionable studio tea-parties and diplomatic dances. Before
long his talent in the direction of seizing likenesses secured him a
well-paid post as caricaturist-in-chief on the staff of a Republican
journal of more wit than discretion; and it was in this capacity
that he gained his literary experience. On the eve of the
suppression of this enterprising organ the Minister of Police
thought it a favourable opportunity to express to Lightmark
privately his opinion that he was not likely to find the atmosphere
of Rome particularly salubrious during the next few months.
Whereupon our friend had shrugged his shoulders, and after
ironically thanking the official for his disinterested advice, he
had given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Grecco,
packed up palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where
his friends persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And
at London he had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and
breaking the journey at Florence, where he sketched and smoked pipes
innumerable on the Lung Arno; at Venice, where he affected
cigarettes, and indulged in a desperate flirtation with a pretty
black-eyed marchesa; at Monaco, where he gambled; and at Paris,
where he spent his winnings, and foregathered with his friends of
the Quartier Latin.
His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a
manner more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called
at his club, invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable
eloquence, and practically declined to have any more to do with the
young reprobate, which shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of
parables.
However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles
which he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and
studio; and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote
sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night.
And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed
very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall
quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham--when that bird
of passage was within reach--he sold sketches from time to time; he
obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally
read and retained his contributions.
In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable
neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the
production of a work which should make an impression at the Academy.
It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait,
treated with all the audacity and _chic_ of the modern French school,
of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the
soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a
background of masses of flowers.
And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists
who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in
their expressions of approval.
"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these
critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of
discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their
style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't
understand it----"
And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this
criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham
brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the
committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on
its way to New York.
After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less
important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of
Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to
fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated
thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could
flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two
admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.