But one day early in April, just before the Spring came, he appeared,
just as usual, in the doorway.
“Hello!” said Enid, carelessly. “We didn’t expect _you_. We haven’t any
cup for your tea. We broke our only extra one this morning.”
“The obliging Dorothy Mell will go down to my room and get one,” said
he, “also a package of chocolates on the table by the window. Eh?”
She did, and she brought up all Rosaleen’s work and left it secretly in
the back room.
Lawrence was unusually polite. He asked them all how they were getting
on, and listened with interest while they told him. They were all a
little proud of their progress. Miss Mell had three big orders ahead of
her. Enid was going to have an exhibition with three other young and
arrogantly unpopular artists. And Rosaleen was more or less regularly
employed by a magazine to do each month a page of--if you can believe
that such things exist--“childrens’ fashions.”
“You’re all doing very nicely,” he said. “I’m very much pleased. I came
up to give you my blessing before I go.”
“Before you go!” said Miss Mell. “Where are you going?”
“I’m giving up my place downstairs, and to-morrow, _to-morrow_, I’m off
to Paris! Paris the kind, Paris the friendly! Paris the beneficent
goddess of my student days! I have a nostalgia, my children.... So I
shall kiss you all good-bye and give you a little fatherly advice before
leaving....”
He swaggered over to Rosaleen’s table.
“No reason why you shouldn’t become successful,” he said. “You must
know, my children, that brains are not necessary to an artist. An artist
can be absolutely crude and ignorant, and yet be a genius. He needs only
an ardent spirit. Of course, you haven’t got that, Rosaleen, but then
you’re not an artist. But take this Enid girl. Give her a certain amount
of knowledge, as definite as that of a brick-layer; teach this woman to
draw, and she _will_ be an artist--of a sort. She doesn’t need to know
anything else. She won’t need to read, or to think....”
“Oh, so you’re beginning to see me, are you?” said Enid.
“I always did see you, my dear. You’re very nice to see. Children,
listen to my advice. If a woman wishes to make herself irresistible,
after attending to personal appearance, I recommend her to become an
artist or an actress. Nothing else will give her the same prestige--not
even a lot of money. There’s a rakishness about it--a spiciness. It
gives a piquancy even to Rosaleen.”
He laughed.
“Good Lord!” he said. “How they all love us! It’s queer.... Of all
artists, the painter is the favourite with the public. To most of them,
artist _means_ painter.... And yet, thinking it over, it’s not so hard
to understand this favouritism. The painter is apt to be more ordinary,
more normal, more human, than the poet or the musician. His art is more
obvious, more facile. It certainly requires less ‘temperament.’ The
painter is not required to be erratic and morbid. In fact, a proper
painter is expected to be more or less rollicking. I ask you to consider
for a moment the popular idea of what goes on in our studios! The public
imagines the poet sitting up all night writing in ecstasy, the musician
forever before his instrument. But the painter! Lord! They never think
of us as _working_. We’re supposed to be eternally pawning our dead
mother’s ring for money for Bohemian orgies, to be rowdy and care-free
and generous, and all that sort of thing. The painter is the only artist
that the public likes to see happy.”
“Of course it’s the easiest art to understand,” said Enid.
“Don’t talk, woman, but listen and try to learn. There’s no question
here of ‘understanding’ art. But it’s easier and pleasanter for people
to look at a painting, which takes only a minute, than it is to listen
to an opera, or to read an epic.... So I advise you all to be artists,
my children, and to enjoy yourselves.”
Then he solemnly kissed them each good-bye.
And after that, no more of Lawrence for a long time.