THE CHILDREN
AND THE PICTURES
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. By LEWIS CARROLL. With a Proem
by Austin Dobson, and Thirteen Plates in Colour and numerous Text
Illustrations by Arthur Rackham, A.R.W.S. Square crown 8vo, price
6s. net.
[_November 15._
RIP VAN WINKLE. By WASHINGTON IRVING. With fifty-one Coloured
Plates by Arthur Rackham. A.R.W.S. In One Volume, crown 4to, price
15s. net.
_Times._--“It will be hard to rival this delightful volume.”
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 Bedford Street, W.C.
[Illustration: _Hoppner._ MARIANNE AND AMELIA.]
THE CHILDREN AND THE
PICTURES: BY PAMELA
TENNANT: PUBLISHED IN
LONDON BY MR. WILLIAM HEINE-
MANN AND IN NEW YORK BY THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY: MCMVII
[Illustration: (The Children)]
THE SKETCH ON THE TITLE-PAGE
IS BY ARTHUR RACKHAM, A.R.W.S.
ILLUSTRATIONS REPRODUCED BY
HENTSCHEL-COLOURTYPE
_Copyright 1907 by William Heinemann_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. 1
II. 15
III. 21
IV. 30
V. 38
VI. 45
VII. 52
VIII. 60
IX. 67
X. 75
XI. 79
XII. 92
XIII. 107
XIV. 115
XV. 122
XVI. 129
XVII. 139
XVIII. 143
XIX. 152
XX. 161
XXI. 171
XXII. 178
XXIII. 187
XXIV. 191
XXV. 196
XXVI. 212
XXVII. 222
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face
page_
Marianne and Amelia _Hoppner_ _Frontispiece_
Mrs. Inchbald _Romney_ 4
Robert Mayne, M.P. for Upper Gatton _Reynolds_ 10
Beppo _Reynolds_ 12
Peg Woffington _Hogarth_ 16
Children Playing at Soldiers _G. Morland_ 18
The Apple-Stealers _G. Morland_ 20
The Fortune-teller _Reynolds_ 22
Mousehold Heath _Cotman_ 56
Lewis the Actor _Gainsborough_ 76
Approach to Venice _Turner_ 80
Miss Ridge _Reynolds_ 82
Sir Joshua Reynolds _Reynolds_ 84
The Green Room at Drury Lane _Hogarth_ 88
The Leslie Boy _Raeburn_ 92
The Cottage by the Wood _Nasmyth_ 96
On the Seashore _Bonington_ 154
The Fish Market, Boulogne _Bonington_ 180
Miss Ross _Raeburn_ 198
Lady Crosbie _Reynolds_ 214
Dolorès _Reynolds_ 222
CHAPTER I
_If there were dreams to sell
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell
Some a light sigh.
That shakes from Life’s full crown
Only a rose-leaf down,
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?_
THOMAS L. BEDDOES
Natalie had been left downstairs, there was no doubt about it. She
was not in her cradle, she was not in the toy cupboard, she was not
on the shelf, she was not on the dresser; she must be downstairs on
one of the drawing-room tables, and what is more, face downwards.
This is what passed in the mind of Natalie’s mistress as she lay
warmly in her bed. She lay looking at the nightlight shadows, but
with this last thought she sat upright, and looked round her. Yes,
she must have been asleep, for the nightlight was burning brightly
and fully, as it does when it has been alight some time; not showing
that melancholy little humpbacked flame with which its vigil
commences. “I wonder what time it is,” thought Clare, “I wish I had
remembered to bring Natalie up to bed with me.”
She lay down again, and tried to go to sleep, but one feels very wide
awake indeed if one keeps thinking of one thing in particular. You
feel even if you buttoned your lids down, they would still flutter
wide.
There is a writer called George Herbert of whom you have heard, and
in one of his poems he says,
I hasted to my bed,
But when I thought to sleep out all these faults
(I sigh to speak)
I found that some had stuffed the bed with thoughts,
I would say thorns,
and rest was impossible. So it was with Clare. She kept seeing
Natalie nose downwards.
“I’ll go and fetch her,” she said, and she was out of bed in a twink.
Quietly she passed through her little room to the door, passing all
the familiar shadows. There was the big one cast by the cupboard,
that looked like a cloaked figure by the door. And there was the
black corner with the sharp shadow jutting out of it, that was really
only the chair-back, for she had moved the chair one night to make
sure. And there lay her little pile of clothes on the chair itself,
but even the sight of these did not make her remember to put on her
slippers, and passing all these things and so through the room, she
opened the door, and went out into the passage.
How light she felt! as if she’d left her body in bed and was going
downstairs in her soul. The stair-rods touched the back of her heel
strangely cold; how soft and deep the carpet was.
The floor round about the big landing window was flooded by
moonlight, and by this Clare moved, but it did not reach very far,
and soon she had to feel along the wall towards the drawing-room.
Then she saw beneath the door a thin streak of light shed on the
carpet, showing the lights had not yet been put out within.
“I wonder if they’ve been forgotten, or if Mummie’s still in there,”
thought Clare, and she turned the handle.
The room was partially lit by one of the lamps, and Clare ran in
to seize Natalie. There she lay, her furry eyelashes sweeping the
faultless contour of a china cheek.
But in the far end of the room by the shaded light, some one was
seated, writing. It was the figure of a woman. Clare ran forward
eagerly, but a strange face was turned to her, strange, yet not
wholly so, in some way it was familiar. The lady was dressed in white
material, rather like stiff muslin, her face was eager, and shrewd.
She had sharp brown eyes, and as she leaned back in her chair,
turning sideways, Clare recognised her. She was Mrs. Inchbald. And as
Clare realised this a little wave of fear swept from the nape of her
neck to her heels, as she stood looking.
“Why aren’t you in bed, child?” Mrs. Inchbald said, in measured
tones. She spoke slowly, with a controlled stammer. Clare felt as if
she were not going to like her, very much.
“Why aren’t you in bed, child?” Mrs. Inchbald repeated. “Good
Heavens, the way the children over-run this house is something
unparalleled! Collina, Beppo, Dolorès and Leslie, not to mention
Robin and Fieldmouse; but I see now, you are one of the others. Well,
they make noise enough in all conscience. Why, I repeat, are you
not in bed?”
[Illustration: _Romney._ MRS. INCHBALD.]
All this time Clare had been looking at the lady, and was now quite
sure she didn’t like her. The wave of fear she had first experienced
had receded, and she had only an overmastering inclination to be
“rude back.” She knew now she was talking to one of the pictures,
and “Why aren’t you in your frame?” was on the tip of her tongue to
utter. But she knew she mustn’t say it, so she just stood and let
her eyes grow as hard as Scotch pebbles, and she Scotch-pebbled Mrs.
Inchbald with all her might.
Evidently that lady was one of those who do not need any answer, on
the contrary who prefer conducting the talk, for she continued with a
stammering fluency,
“I suppose there are nurses in the house; to be sure, I’ve seen
them. But it’s all this modern movement among Mothers to have their
children with them, I suppose. _The Parent’s Review._ I’ve seen it
lying about on the tables. By the way, child, your Mother reads
remarkably uninteresting books. I found mine on the table once, but
only one was cut, and that partially. Why doesn’t she read Mrs.
Radclyffe?”
“I suppose people who live framed by themselves,” thought Clare,
“may grow rather prosy”; but she had discovered the value of making
comments inwardly. Even had she been about to speak, Mrs. Inchbald
would have given her small hearing.
“Goodness me! I’ve heard the poor lady herself allude to her own room
as Piccadilly when two nurses, three children, somebody with a note,
the cook and the clock-winder, all focus their energies upon it at
the same time.
“Then at dressing time it is like this:
“‘Will you hear me say my prayers to-night?’
“‘And mine?’
“‘And mine?’
“‘And mine?’
“‘Can I have a joo-joob?’
“‘Don’t you think Juno was awfully interfering?’
“‘When do we go to Peter Pan?’
“‘Well, good-night, good-night, I won’t speak again really,--but
you’ll come and kiss me, won’t you Moth’?’
“‘Is to-morrow football?’
“‘O, my lips are so sore!’
“‘And mine!’
“‘And mine!’
“‘What have you got on, Mummie?’
“‘What?’
“‘O, your _yellow_. Well, good-night, boys!’
“‘When do we go on our expedition?’
“‘Oh! it’s _soup_.’
“‘I’ve got a flea-bite.’
“‘Have you? Where?’
“‘Will somebody brush the crumbs out?’
“And so on, indefinitely. How she stands it I can’t imagine, but
there is peace at last. And then it’s the turn of the other children;
but I’ll say this for them, they make very little noise.”
“What other children?” asked Clare, with a sense of growing
excitement, “do you mean----”
“I mean the picture children of course, child. Leslie, Beppo,
Collina, and the little Spencers. You interrupt me as callously as
you do your poor Mother. My next novel shall be concerned with the
amazing difference in the up-bringing of children, then and now. But
how different it all is to Grosvenor Square!”
This caught Clare’s fancy. She loved people to criticise and draw
comparisons. “O, what?” she said. “Is it different? Of course I know
it is, but do tell me, don’t you like it? And did you like Grosvenor
Square?”
“They knew how to live there,” said Mrs. Inchbald severely:
“everything was in order, my dear. There was a butler, with all the
punctuality of a heavenly body surrounded by his satellites, the
footmen, who could be thoroughly depended on to keep up the fires....”
“Yes, even in the very warmest weather, Mother says. She doesn’t like
footmen, you know, except in palaces; she’d rather men were soldiers,
or ploughed fields. She doesn’t like to see them hand plates about,
which women do far more prettily; besides, men stamp so, and blow
down your back.”
“Perhaps the furniture,” continued Mrs. Inchbald, regardless of
interruption, “perhaps the furniture was unsuited to child-life,
holding the priceless china as it did ... the move was certainly
courageous. But O, how we were loved!”
Something in Mrs. Inchbald’s voice made Clare listen. She liked her
better now that her hard face softened so.
“Ah, that was something like belonging! it warmed us, my dear, it
warmed us; that’s what made us alive. Do you think if your Grandpapa
had never loved us in the way he did that we should be here walking
and breathing--we, but semblances of human form dwelling in pigment
and paste? It’s only love that can make alive, and he did it.
Sometimes, after all the lights were out and the folks in bed, the
door would open and he’d enter. I can see him in his dressing-gown
and slippers, the light shining on the mahogany door; his clean white
hair, and shrewd face. His hands so swift in movement, so beautifully
kept, his beard trimmed so neatly. Did you ever see him untidy, I
wonder, or harassed, or wasting time? Never--it all went so easily,
he had the long-houred day of a busy man. Time to read aloud to
others, time to look over his old French books, time to saunter out
and play golf earnestly, and time, above all, to spend, upon us. How
he loved us. We shall never have _that_ again.”
“O yes you shall,” said Clare, for she was warm-hearted really, for
all the Scotch pebble in her eyes on occasion--“O yes, you shall.
Why--we all, all like you we are all going to learn about you, Mother
says so; it is only Lady Crosbie who sometimes ... bores her, you
know.”
This came out rushingly, and Clare would have withdrawn it, but
the spoken word is like a sped arrow, there is no calling either
back. Mrs. Inchbald changed completely. Her brown eyes twinkled
comfortably, and she leaned in her eagerness, right out of her chair.
“You don’t say so? Well, I agree with her. I believe I shall get on
with your Mother, after all, though she does let you all victimise
her, and reads such dull books. But I shouldn’t have chosen the word
_bore_ exactly. I shouldn’t say Lady Crosbie ever _bored_ people
... dear me, O no, she’s vastly entertaining, my dear, to those she
thinks worth it....”
“Well, Mother says however charming she must have been in life, it is
rather tiresome, in a picture, to be looking permanently mischievous.
She says, although Lady Crosbie is flitting off into such a lovely
landscape, she’s not really going to know how to enjoy the country at
all.”
“My dear, your Mother’s talking about something she doesn’t rightly
know about, begging your pardon, if she calls that country. That’s
studio, my dear, sheer studio, and a very good studio landscape it
is. But all the same, your Mother’s opinion interests me; I notice
she keeps the light on some, and not so often on others. I wonder
what she thinks about it all.”
[Illustration: _Reynolds._ ROBERT MAYNE, M.P. FOR UPPER GATTON.]
“O well,” said Clare, “once she’s made up her mind she’s not to have
bare walls (which is what she likes best to live among), she says
she likes you all, and Miss Ridge she loves. She says she knows she
was a darling, and of course she loves Miss Ross, and so do we all,
only we long to make her happy. And we like Lewis the actor, because
he’s showing off so finely, and Bimbo longs for his sword. Robert
Mayne’s got the loveliest clothes, and such a kind face, Mother
says she feels he knows everything, before she’s spoken. She feels
sure he’s a dear, and she says his face makes her feel bound to tell
him what she’s been doing; and he’s never bored by trifles. And
often when we come into the room, just for fun, Mummie says, ‘Well,
we’ve come in again; it’s very windy and cold, but the crocuses
are showing. I had a few things to do at Woollands, but it’s so
vexing, I couldn’t find a match anywhere for the blue....’ And then
she goes on, looking at him in his picture, and makes up all sorts
of enjoyable nonsense, and says get away with us, she’s talking to
Robert Mayne; and we love it when she’s in that mood; and say ‘Go on,
go on,’ and sometimes she tells us what he says to her--but, the best
of all was when....”
“Was when ... was when....” echoed a very pleasant voice beside her,
and a hand was set on Clare’s shoulder. And, looking up, she saw
Robert Mayne standing there, M.P. for Upper Gatton. Never did she
think his face looked nicer than at that moment, or his coat so warm
and red.
“It’s only love that makes alive,” he repeated, looking at Mrs.
Inchbald. “Was I right or was I wrong, Madam? Should you and I be
talking to this little thing here to-night if they didn’t care?” His
voice was so extremely comfortable that Clare felt wonderfully happy,
just as one always feels if people are near one that understand. You
feel stroked down and peaceful, and as if you needn’t talk much,
because they know. And you think you never need feel as if your
inside were made of red serge soaked in lemon juice, which is the
feeling that another kind of person brings about. So Clare stood and
watched him talking to Mrs. Inchbald, and enjoyed it very much.
“I think I had the pleasure, Madam, of travelling in the van with
you, when we made the much-dreaded move?”
“You did, Sir, and you were mightily helpful staying as you did the
needless chatter and tittle-tattle of the occasion.”
[Illustration: _Reynolds._ BEPPO.]
“It was the morose forebodings that I felt grieved by,” said Robert
Mayne, “the faithless despair, the manufactured misery of morbid
minds. Why, what need was there to fill the children with
apprehension, to chill our own hearts with fear? You yourself,
madam,” he continued with a charming bow, “had need that day of all
your energy of character for which I have so much respect. You would
not let the weaker moods possess your heart. How I wish we might then
have shown those who were fearful, these sheltering walls, these fair
white rooms, this Home!”
“You might show some folk the loaves upon the table, and they’d swear
they were going to starve,” said Mrs. Inchbald crisply. “The children
are well housed too, for that matter; really better than before. I
don’t think yellow satin and brocade suits children--white-wash and
brown holland, say I. And this house is as near to white-wash as the
Mother can compass. Even the drawing-room curtains, I’m told, are to
have a decidedly brown-holland appearance.”
“But the children,” said Clare, “are they really in the house? O, do
let me see them, will you, Ma’am?”
“It’s time I were framed, and you were in bed, my dear, so we may as
well go together”; and the brisk old lady rose in her stiff muslin
and walked towards the door. Clare just had sight of Robert Mayne
settling himself comfortably to read in an arm-chair. Then Mrs.
Inchbald led her out into the passage, and up the stairs to her own
room. But one strong impression remained in Clare’s mind, that the
passage seemed in some way different.
“That’s not my door,” she said, as she looked before her, “and
Mother’s room is further on. I never noticed a door there before. O,
Mrs. Inchbald, is it the children’s room?”
She stood in a long low apartment, the light shed from a nightlight
falling softly on six beds. On each pillow lay a little head.
Clare stepped quietly beside them; how pretty they looked in their
sleep, Collina and Beppo and Leslie, Dolorès and Fieldmouse and Rob.
There they lay, the pillows scarce dinted. How clearly she recognised
them. And as she bent over the white bed of Dolorès, Clare saw the
tear glisten wet on the rounded cheek.