Naturally this visit to Switzerland cemented our intimacy, and it
was on our return home that he suggested my accompanying him on one
of his 'rubbing expeditions.'
'Henry,' he said, 'your mother has of late frequently discussed with
me the question of your future calling in life. She suggests a
Parliamentary career. I confess that I find questions about careers
exceedingly disturbing.'
'There is only one profession I should like, father,' I said, 'and
that is a painter's.' In fact, the passion for painting had come on
me very strongly of late. My dreams had from the first been of
wandering with Winnie in a paradise of colour, and these dreams had
of late been more frequent: the paradise of colour had been growing
richer and rarer.
He shook his head gravely and said, 'No, my dear; your mother would
never allow it.'
'Why not?' I said; 'is painting low too?'
'Cyril Aylwin is low, at least so your mother and aunt say, especially
your aunt. I have not perceived it myself, but then your mother's
perceptive faculties are extraordinary--quite extraordinary.'
'Did the lowness come from his being a painter, father?' I asked.
'Really, child, you are puzzling me. But I have observed you now for
some weeks, and I quite believe that you would make one of the best
rubbers who ever held a ball. I am going to Salisbury next week, and
you shall then make your _début_.'
This was in the midst of a very severe winter we had some years ago,
when all Europe was under a coating of ice.
'But, father,' I said, 'shan't we find it rather cold?'
'Well,' said my father, with a bland smile, 'I will not pretend that
Salisbury Cathedral is particularly warm in this weather, but in
winter I always rub in knee-caps and mittens. I will tell Hodder to
knit you a full set at once.'
'But, father,' I said, 'Tom Wynne tells me that rubbing is the most
painful of all occupations. He even goes so far sometimes as to say
that it was the exhaustion of rubbing for you which turned him to
drink.'
'Nothing of the kind,' said my father. 'All that Tom needed to make
him a good rubber was enthusiasm. I am strongly of opinion that
without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome,
except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this
exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the
thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry,
demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. Now Tom's
enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from the first exceedingly
feeble.'
I was on the eve of revolting, but I remembered what there was
lacerating his poor breast, and consented. And when I heard hints of
our 'working the Welsh churches' my sudden enthusiasm for the
rubber's art astonished even my father.
'My dear,' he said to my mother at dinner one day, 'what do you
think? Henry has developed quite a sudden passion for rubbing.'
I saw an expression of perplexity and mystification overspread my
mother's sagacious face.
'And in the spring,' continued my father, 'we are going into Wales
to rub.'
'Into Wales, are you?' said my mother, in a tone of that soft voice
whose meaning I knew so well.
My thoughts were continually upon Winifred, now that I was alone in
the familiar spots. I had never seen her nor heard from her since we
parted as children. She had only known me as a cripple. What would
she think of me now? Did she ever think of me? She had not answered
my childish letter, and this had caused me much sorrow and
perplexity.
We did not go into Wales after all. But the result of this
conversation took a shape that amazed me. I was sent to stay with my
Aunt Prue in London in order that I might attend one of the Schools
of Art. Yes, my mother thought it was better for me even to run the
risk of becoming bohemianised like Cyril Aylwin, than to brood over
Winnie or the scenes that were associated with our happy childhood.
In London I was an absolute stranger. We had no town house. On the
few occasions when the family had gone to London, it was to stay in
Belgrave Square with my Aunt Prue, who was an unmarried sister of my
mother's.
'Since the death of the Prince Consort, to go no further back,' she
used to say, 'a dreadful change has come over the tone of society;
the love of bohemianism, the desire to take up any kind of people, if
they are amusing, and still more if they are rich, is levelling
everything. However, I'm nobody now; I say nothing.'
What wonder that from my very childhood my aunt took a prejudice
against me, and predicted for me a career 'as deplorable as Cyril
Aylwin's,' and sympathised with my mother in her terror of the Gypsy
strain in my father's branch of the family?
Her tastes and instincts being intensely aristocratic, she suffered a
martyrdom from her ever present consciousness of this disgrace. She
had seen very much more of what is called Society than my mother had
ever an opportunity of seeing. It was not, however, aristocracy, but
Royalty that won the true worship of her soul.
Although she was immeasurably inferior to my mother in everything,
her influence over her was great, and it was always for ill. I
believe that even my mother's prejudice against Tom Wynne was largely
owing to my aunt, who disliked my relations towards Wynne simply
because he did not represent one of the great Wynne families. But the
remarkable thing was that, although my mother thus yielded to my
aunt's influence, she in her heart despised her sister's ignorance
and her narrowness of mind. She often took a humorous pleasure in
seeing my aunt's aristocratic proclivities baffled by some vexing
_contretemps_ or by some slight passed upon her by people of superior
rank, especially by those in the Royal circle.
There have been so many descriptions of art schools, from the famous
'Gandish's' down to the very moment at which I write, that I do not
intend to describe mine.
It would be very far from my taste to use a narrative like this, a
narrative made sacred by the spiritual love it records, as a means of
advertising efforts of such modest pretensions as mine when placed in
comparison with the work of the illustrious painters my friendship
with whom has been the great honour of my life. And if I allude here
to the fact of my being a painter, it is in order that I may not be
mistaken for another Aylwin. my cousin Percy, who in some unpublished
poems of his which I have seen has told how a sailor was turned into
a poet by love--love of Rhona Boswell. In the same way, these pages
are written to tell how I was made a painter by love of her whom I
first saw in Raxton churchyard, her who filled my being as Beatrice
filled the being of Dante when 'the spirit of life, which hath its
dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so
violently that the least pulses of his body shook therewith.'