A PATRON OF ART.
Nothing could be more satisfactory in every way than the notice in the
‘Sword.’ It was not eloquent, nor too long, and Slasher was pleased. ‘By
Jove, Laurie, I was afraid you’d go in for fine writing, or for chaff,
which is as bad,’ he said, with an air of relief. And it was very clear
and distinct as to Suffolk’s merits. It made such a commotion through
the whole district round Fitzroy Square as has seldom been equalled,
except just at the opening of the Academy. The paper was lent about
almost from house to house. ‘Have you seen what the “Sword” says of
Suffolk’s picture?’ one would say to another. ‘I hear it was all through
Laurie Renton.’ It almost seemed to Laurie as if people looked at him
more respectfully in the streets. At all events, the fellows at
Clipstone Street showed a difference in their manner; and yet there were
some even there who shook their heads. ‘He would never have made much by
art,’ said Spyer, who went now and then, and drew for an hour or two, by
way of keeping himself up, ‘or I should have been sorry; the pen and
the pencil don’t agree. But it’s a good thing for Suffolk. The dealers
are beginning to look after him. It’s enough to make a man sick, by
Jove! years of work go for nothing, when a paltry half-dozen words in a
newspaper----! If I was a young fellow like the most of you, I’d do
something to put a stop to that.’
‘What can any one do put a stop to it?’ said one of the young men. ‘We
have no private patrons now-a-days. We have only got the public and the
press, to do our best with them. Laurie Renton draws very well for an
amateur; I hope he will not end in the “Sword.”’
‘Laurie Renton was born an amateur,’ said Spyer; ‘he never was anything
better, and couldn’t be. Let him take to writing. That’s what heaps of
people do after coquetting with art. He may make something of that; but
he never will paint a picture that has any chance to live.’
‘He draws very well, all the same,’ said Laurie’s defender. But on the
whole, though it gained him an amount of respect and importance among
them, his little attempt at literature did not raise Laurie’s
reputation. It looked like a defection to the painters round him. Though
it was but for once, and took up but two columns in the ‘Sword,’ he was
given up as having gone over to literature, which, in the opinion of the
Clipstone Street fellows, was a very easy and well-rewarded trade.
Suffolk himself did not quite know what to think. He lost not a moment
in going to see his critic, and thanking him for the good word he had
said for him. But yet he was a little unwilling to acknowledge that it
was Laurie’s paper which brought that picture-dealer to see him. The
very next week after, the ‘Looker-on’ had a notice of the Hydrographic,
and followed Laurie’s lead, praising the picture with still greater
effusion than he had allowed himself; and even Mrs. Suffolk, when she
saw this, was moved in her heart by a momentary feeling that Laurie had
been very measured and even cold, in his approbation. She was grateful,
and so was her husband,--but----. There was a degree of pleasure in
their satisfaction with the ‘Looker-on,’ which was wanting in their
gratitude to Laurie. Gratitude is a cumbrous thing to move about with.
And Laurie felt that even the padrona expected him, now he had begun, to
go on writing articles. One morsel of print implied to all these
innocent people an engagement on the ‘Sword’ at least, and ready entry
into literature in general. If he had gone on writing, and stood up like
a man for his friends, the society which surrounded him would have felt
that he had done his duty. But there seemed to all his comrades a
certain cowardice in contenting himself with one effort. That he should
have exerted himself on Suffolk’s account was quite comprehensible; but
to stop there, and do nothing further, and say no good word for anybody
else! It was that he did not choose to take the trouble, people
thought,--not even for the padrona;--for nobody suspected that Laurie
would have been torn by wild horses rather than have put her sacred name
into profane print. This was a refinement of sentiment which no man
could be expected to enter into. Mrs. Severn herself was perhaps a
little disappointed too. It would have been but natural that she, his
closest friend, to whom he came with all his troubles, should reap the
benefit of the pains she had taken in getting him to write; but never a
word in celebration of the padrona’s pictures came into the ‘Sword.’ ‘He
does not care for them, I suppose,’ she said to herself with a little
sigh, not taking it unkindly, but with a doubt which clouded her sunny
sky sometimes,--a secret suggestion in her mind that her pictures did
not deserve admiration. She sighed, poor soul, because she could not
make them better, not because it was not in her heart to conceive of
higher things. But then she could not afford to wait and think, and
collect her full strength, and do her very best. Sometimes she pulled at
the tether that bound her, with that impulse towards excellence which is
in every sensitive nature. But she could not stop long enough in her
ordinary work to achieve anything beyond it. She thought Laurie did not
consider her pictures worth talking about, and contented herself without
any bitterness. He was not doing what in the merest commonplace way he
might have done for her; but the padrona, who was fond of Laurie, did
for him what few painters are disposed to do for one another,--she
offered him a share in the one special piece of goods which no artist
likes to share;--she had the magnanimity to send him a note to Charlotte
Street, in the end of March, on one of those coldest of spring mornings,
to come and meet her patrons, the Riches of Richmont, at lunch.
The padrona was not given to the writing of notes, nor indeed had she
much occasion so far as Laurie was concerned, who seldom was absent from
the Square for an entire day. But he had felt, without knowing how, a
certain difference in his reception since the day on which he wrote his
paper at Mrs. Severn’s writing-table. Not that she was less kind or less
interested in him;--perhaps it was, though the young man did not think
of that, that there was always somebody there, and that the third
person, instead of keeping in the background, was brought into the
conversation, and spoiled it. Perhaps Mrs. Severn, too, thought the
interloper spoiled it. Talk is pleasant, a _quattr’ occhi_; but then the
interloper was needful. This depressed Laurie’s spirits in spite of
himself. There was not much that was exhilarating in his prospects
generally. Nothing more had come of his literary ambition after that one
paper, and his work as an artist went on by fits and starts, with no
particular aim in it to spur him on; and his friends, who were all in
the heat and fervour of their work for the exhibition, naturally felt
that a man who was not preparing for the Academy, who had no share in
their white heat of excitement as to the decision of the Hanging
Committee, was still something of an outsider. And a cloud had risen on
his intercourse with the Square. Laurie was low, and felt despondent
about affairs in general. And the chilly spring and the east winds
affected his--temper, he said. Probably it was something else besides
his temper that was affected. He had begun to say to himself that he was
a useless wretch, and not good for much, and that it was ridiculous to
hope that he could ever make any mark in the world; and would come home
from seeing his friends of nights, who were all so busy, with a certain
sensation of misery. The padrona’s pictures had been put into their
frames, though she was still working at that one for Mr. Rich, and her
studio was beginning to get freshened up and decorated in preparation
for the private view, which every painter affords to his or her friends
and patrons. Even old Welby had taken down the white canvas and the
Angelichino, and placed two of his own pictures to have the final
touches given to them and to be exhibited before they went to the
Academy. As for Suffolk, he was working with a kind of passion at the
big picture which had been so unsparingly criticised; the canvas was as
big as that one of Laurie’s, on which the chalk outlines still
lingered,--and there were but two figures in it. The maid in the low
arched doorway, in her white kirtle, was dismissing her lover with an
inexorable sweetness and sadness; the young man was resisting, and
refusing to be dismissed, his dark face glowing with love, and trouble,
and angry protest against fate. They were the representatives of two
races, hostile, yet fated to mingle; and there was in the picture,
moreover, a deeper issue,--that struggle of love and duty which it is
sometimes best for the world should not be decided on duty’s side.
Laurie would stand and look at it, and wonder why he could not have done
it as well. Sometimes a vision of the Edith of his imagination, with a
still deeper force of expression in her face, would flit across this
canvas; but he had discrimination enough to know that Suffolk, in his
place, would have painted that Edith had all the world been against him.
After all, it was his own fault, but that was no particular consolation;
and he felt himself left outside, out of their calculations, almost out
of their sympathy, at this particular crisis of fate, when everybody was
too much excited about his own luck, and his neighbour’s, to have
leisure to think of the rest of the world. The moment for sending in to
the Academy was like the eve of a great battle in Fitzroy Square and its
environs; and Laurie, who was not even a volunteer to come in the
_mêlée_, could not but find himself sometimes out of place among those
excited groups, with their one subject. He was interested in their
fate; but he was not himself putting his own to the touch--and he was a
little low in consequence, and heartily wished the crisis over, and
things going on again in their usual way. Let who would object, Laurie
said to himself, with a kind of desperate resolution, he would have
something to send next year.
It was while he was full of these melancholy thoughts that the padrona’s
little note came to him. He had been there the night before, and Miss
Hadley had been present,--even in the studio, to which, in former times,
she never dreamt of penetrating. To be sure, there was a kind of a
reason for that now in the renovation that everything was undergoing;
but still it was rather hard never to be able to say a word to one’s
friend, never to receive an expression of her opinion or of her
kindness, without Miss Hadley’s keen eyes upon one’s face. And Laurie
had grown almost angry at this perpetual intrusion. He was idling over
one of his school studies when Mrs. Severn’s note was brought to him. It
was the briefest little note,--but at least Miss Hadley had not
interfered with that.
‘Come,’ it said, ‘and lunch with us at two, and meet the Riches.
They have just sent me word they are coming to see my pictures.
They are my great patrons, and they may be of use to you. I will
tell them who you are,--a Grand Seigneur turned painter,--and they
will be immensely interested. Don’t laugh at them; they are such
good souls.
‘You were a little cross, do you know, the other day? and I cannot
have you cross. We are all so busy there is no time for talk.
‘M. S.’
This was the note, and there was not much in it. It was the padrona’s
soft heart which had made her add that last little coaxing,
half-apologetic sentence, and perhaps it was foolish of her. But then,
though it was certainly necessary that Laurie should be cured,--and that
without mercy,--of any foolish notions that might have stolen into his
foolish young head, still for one moment, once in a way, it was a
comfort to be free of Miss Hadley; and she had said nothing that his
mother might not have said. But perhaps Mrs. Severn would not have been
so sure of the perfect judiciousness of her words had she seen how
Laurie lighted up under them, and expanded into content. It was eleven
then, and his invitation was for two; but yet he decided it was best to
send a note in return. It is a species of communication which is very
attractive sometimes. Laurie jumped at it with an exhilaration for which
he did not attempt to account. It was a different thing altogether from
those other little notes conveying mamma’s messages, which he still
preserved somewhere; but not, it must be confessed, with such lively
feeling as he once did. Quite a different matter! It was his friend who
had written to him now,--only a dozen words, and yet herself was in
them,--herself, always full of kind thought, of that gracious interest
in him, wanting to help him on though he was so unsatisfactory, finding
fault with him in that soft, caressing way, which was sweeter than
praise. Laurie,--foolish fellow,--put away his work, and spent
half-an-hour of the short time that was to elapse before he should see
her in writing the following note. It could have been written in five
minutes; but there was, it cannot be denied, a certain pleasure in
lingering over it, and a certain skill was required to put a great deal
of meaning into few words. He did not think he had succeeded, after all,
when it was written. But here it is:--
‘I will never be cross any more, padrona mia. I have been thinking
you meant to cast me off. But you don’t? I will go and meet the
Riches or the Poors, or anybody else you like, and thank them for
the chance. You I never could thank,--not half or quarter enough.
So silence shall speak for me.
‘Yr---- ‘L. R.’
It is not to be supposed that Laurie wrote ‘your’ in plain letters. He
made a hieroglyphic of it. It might have been only ‘&c.;’ in short, it
was as like that as anything else. He was beguiled into the use of the
pronoun, he did not quite know how, as he hung over it with his pen in
his hand like a pencil, anxious to add just a touch somewhere, as might
have been done in the line of the lip or the droop of an eyelid, to
express what he was feeling. It was of purpose and intention that he
made it undecipherable. Perhaps she would find it out; and if not, still
at least he had expressed himself, which was always something. He was
not thinking of any result, or anything that might come of it, as Miss
Hadley did. At the present stage such an idea would have been simple
profanity. He did not think of it at all. He was her disciple, her
servant, her subject. That she should reverse the position and be his,
and subject to him, was an idea which had never entered Laurie’s mind.
It would indeed, as we have said, have appeared sheer profanity to him.
Such delicacies of feeling do not come within the range of the Miss
Hadleys of life. And so Laurie made his hieroglyphic, expressive of the
deepest devotion, and felt his heart and his face expand with a
delicious softness, and put on his hat, and himself gave the note to the
maid-servant in the Square. It was but a few steps round the corner; and
when he was out, he went a few steps farther and got himself a lily of
the valley to put in his coat. It was still early, and the flower cost
him as much as a meal; but when a young man’s heart gives a sudden jump
in his bosom, reasonably or unreasonably, it would be hard if he could
not give utterance to his satisfaction with himself and the universe in
general by so simple an expedient as a flower in his coat. And at the
same time he ordered some pots of the same lilies to be sent to the
Square, not for that day, but for to-morrow, on which Mrs. Severn was to
exhibit her pictures to her friends before sending them to the Academy.
This little matter occupied the morning until it was time to present
himself at the Square. A very fine carriage stood before No. 375 when he
reached the door, with a gorgeous coat-of-arms on the panel, and
liveries and hammer-cloth, which looked like a duke’s at least. The big
footman stared superciliously at Laurie as he went up the steps. He was
but ‘a poor hartis’ it was evident to that splendid apparition. The
patron had arrived with all the pomp which ought to attend such a
celestial visitor, and naturally the house from top to bottom bore
evidence of a certain excitement. Forrester, in his best coat, opened
the door to Laurie, his face beaming with cordiality and smiles. ‘I
can’t say as he knows much, Mr. Renton,’ said Forrester, ‘but he’s a
stunning one to buy; and I wouldn’t take no notice, sir, if I was you,
of his little ways,--nor the lady’s neither, sir,’ said the old man.
Laurie laughed and nodded in answer to this advice, without any distinct
idea what Mr. Rich’s little ways might be; and so walked into the great
drawing-room, which it was strange to see by daylight, full of the grey
spring atmosphere, out of which an east wind had taken all the colour.
The white curtains hung over the long windows; the fire burned with a
little cheerful noise; and the padrona, in her black dress, sat on a
sofa beside a rich, rustling, luxurious woman, fifteen or twenty years
older than herself. Mrs. Severn’s figure had filled out into the
gracious fulness of matronhood. She was not a sylph, like her child; but
she looked something like a sylph beside the vast form on the sofa. And
in front of her stood a little man, very plump and rosy, with a
double-eyeglass in his hand. The padrona looked a little flushed and a
little excited. Perhaps it is not in human nature to receive unmoved a
visit from a patron.
‘This is Mr. Renton,’ she said, as Laurie came in. ‘Mr. Laurence Renton,
Mrs. Rich;’ and, to Laurie’s great surprise, the large lady got up from
the sofa to shake hands with him, which was a great deal more than the
padrona did. Mrs. Rich was very large and very wealthy, and looked as if
she might be rather oppressive; but, nevertheless, she had been smiling
very benignly on the padrona, and Laurie consequently saw some good in
her face.
‘Mr. Renton, I ought to know you, for we are almost neighbours in the
country,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Don’t you know Richmont? Ah, I daresay you
have been a great deal from home, like so many young men. Mr. Rich, Mr.
Renton has not seen Richmont. It is only six months since we took
possession. Mr. Rich bought it for the situation, and gave I am ashamed
to say how much money for it; and then the house wanted everything done
to it,--new rooms built, and I can’t tell you all what. I believe your
mamma does not visit anywhere, Mr. Renton. She is a great invalid, I
hear; and of course, unless she was so kind as to signify a wish, I
could not call first. But I am sure if you are at Renton when we are
there, it will give us the greatest pleasure to see you at Richmont.’
‘Thanks,’ said Laurie, feeling rather aghast. He did not know what more
to say till a half-comic, appealing glance reached him from the
padrona’s eyes. Then he bestirred himself. ‘I have been a long time from
home,’ he said, ‘and at present my mother goes nowhere; but I don’t
know,--pardon me,--where Richmont is. I am so stupid about
localities,--I never know anything that is not close to my eye.’
‘It was called Beecham once,’ said the rich woman; ‘but we are not the
old family;--we are the new family, Mr. Renton; and Mr. Rich thinks it
only right, when he has bought it, to give it his own name. We are not
ashamed of being new people. I have just been talking to our friend here
about painting one of the rooms for us,--in panels, you know. She is so
clever. I never knew a woman so clever; but that is between you and me,’
said the patroness, patting the painter patronisingly on the arm. ‘She
does not hear a word we are saying. I never would tell her she was
anything out of the ordinary to her face.’ Such were the astounding
manners and customs of the new species of humanity to which Laurie had
been unexpectedly presented. It took him half-an-hour at least to
realise the unfamiliar being. No doubt there are patrons in England of
the type known in old days, when one monarch leaned on his painter’s
shoulder, and another picked up his painting-brush. But these are
chiefly patrons of the old masters, not of the new; and Mr. Rich and his
wife were the specimens best known in Fitzroy Square. When they went in
to luncheon the padrona looked more and more flushed, though Forrester
was present to wait, looking as solemn as any family butler, and
listening with a sore heart,--but no outward token,--to Mr. Rich’s views
about art. He had his views, too, as well as his wife, though he was not
so immediately audible. It was when he had swallowed some wine that he
found his tongue, and then Mrs. Rich was silenced by the more
influential stream.
‘Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Renton,’ he said. ‘We’d have been
very glad if your mother had come to see us. It would have done her no
harm, and it might have done Mrs. Rich a little good. We don’t pretend
to be above that sort of thing. But of course all this fuss about the
will must have been hard upon you. I’m told you’re one of the rising
young men of the time. Stick to that. You may buy houses and lands, but
you can’t buy talent. I’ll be very glad to go and see anything you may
have to show. If our friend Mrs. Severn is to be trusted,--and I’ve
always found her to be trusted, sir,--her eye is so true,--you’ve got
something that will suit me very well; and I hope we shall know each
other better before we part.’
‘I did not mean that Mr. Renton had anything to show this year,’ said
the padrona. Laurie had never seen her so embarrassed. Was it that the
people were overpowering?--or was it----? But there was no time to
cogitate possibilities in the midst of this stream of talk.
‘Mr. Renton must come and see us at Richmont?’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘He must
come with you, some day, Mrs. Severn. I have got some of her sweet
pictures hung in my morning room; and she has been so kind in her
suggestions about the furniture. It is such a thing to have an artist’s
eye; and such pretty eyes too,’ added the stout lady, in an audible
aside to Laurie, who was seated next to her. ‘Don’t you think so? To me
she is prettier than ever she was. She is like Alice’s sister. She looks
young,--and she is young,--and to think of all she has done!’
Laurie sat by her, and never said a word. He could not pay compliments
to the padrona as a mere indifferent spectator might have done,
entering into the fun of the situation. And Mrs. Severn sat at the head
of the table, with a flush of embarrassment on her cheek. But perhaps
even she was not so sensitive as Laurie; and they were patrons, and
brought her commissions,--and they were bread! These are mean
recommendations, no doubt, but they have a wonderful effect.
‘What I like is a picture I can understand,’ said Mr. Rich. ‘What I say
to a painter is;--“Tell your story. Choose what subject you like, old,
or new, or middle-aged; but, whatever your incident is, stick to it, and
tell it, without need of any description in a book.” That’s my
principle, sir. And I like a good, warm wholesome colour; none of your
cadaverous-looking things. There are plenty of sad things and nasty
things in life without putting them in pictures. Like as I prefer a good
ending in a story. I have some pretty pictures to show you, sir, when
you come to see me. Crowquill painted that last series out of the “Vicar
of Wakefield” for me. I could have got twice the price I gave for them
from a gentleman I know in Manchester; but nothing but necessity would
make me part with these pictures. When a thing’s painted for you, it has
a value it would not have had otherwise. And I have as fine a little
Millais as you ever saw. I hope to have a picture from you in my
collection before all is done.’
‘You have not a Welby, I think,’ said the padrona, who worked rather
hard at her part of the conversation. ‘You should make haste to secure
that; for he paints very little now.’
‘I don’t care very much for Welby,’ said Mr. Rich, indifferent to the
awful countenance of Forrester behind his chair. ‘He’s a deal too
classical for me. I had not a classical education myself; and I am not
ashamed to say I don’t appreciate that sort of thing. Nature is what I
like. I don’t pretend to go in for the old masters. They’re very fine, I
daresay; but give me a nice modern picture with colours, sir, like what
you see in life. I hope you are of the real school, Mr. Renton,--not to
carry it to excess, you know. The thing for modern collections,--and I
know a great many collectors of my way of thinking,--is modern life; the
sort of thing one understands. How am I to know about your Greeks and
your Romans? I like pretty English girls, and nice young fellows making
love to them. Why shouldn’t they make love to ’em, Mrs. Severn? I did it
in my day. And as for your pictures, could anything be sweeter? It’s the
next step in life. We’ve all gone through that phase,’ said Mr. Rich,
waving his hands; ‘and that’s the sort of thing we want in our
collections. I say this to you, Mr. Renton, as a young man beginning
life.’
‘Mr. Renton will prefer the pretty girls, of course,’ said the patron’s
wife, with a good-humoured laugh. And Laurie sat by, not knowing what
reply to make, while the padrona, with that flush on her face, sat at
the head of the table, and let them talk. What was the use of arguing
the question? The finest reasoning in the world does not convince people
whose minds are incapable of receiving it. And they bought the pictures
they commended, which is what better critics seldom do.
‘There must be a variety of tastes,’ Mrs. Severn said, with a meekness
that was not natural to her. ‘I am not so pleased with my tame little
groups that you are so good-natured about. There are many things I would
rather do if I could.’
Then Mr. Rich laughed, and told the story of Listen, whose dream it was
that tragedy was his forte,--not a novel story certainly, but not
inappropriate at the moment. ‘I should like to see Welby’s pictures all
the same,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘We could not come to-morrow, so I
should like to make a round to-day. I’m going to Crowquill, and Baxter,
and some more,--as long as the light holds out;--and if you can tell me
of any others----’
‘There is Suffolk,’ said Laurie, looking at the head of the table; and
then he paused surprised. The padrona was but human. To let her own live
patron go out of her hands to the studios of celebrated painters whom
everybody knew was a thing inevitable, against which she could never
dream of struggling; but to send him, in cold blood,--her own precious
property,--to Suffolk,--a new name, a rising painter,--one of the men
whom it would be a credit to patronise! Mrs. Severn had a struggle with
herself. Generosity was easy where Laurie Renton was concerned; and she
would have shared her purse with the Suffolks, with all the unthinking
open-heartedness of her kind. But send him her patron! That was a trial.
Laurie looked at her surprised. He knew her face so well that he saw the
struggle in it, though without knowing what it meant; and he was
startled by the pause she made before she answered him. A flood of
thoughts rushed through the padrona’s mind at that moment. She thought
of herself and the children, and the need she had of patronage; and
then, on the other hand, she thought of Suffolk’s wife, with an
unmanageable man, who would not paint popular subjects, with no power to
help herself, with children too,--babies always coming,--and all sorts
of troubles. It was not of the artist she thought, and his long
unrewarded labours. She was only a woman, after all; and it was the
woman who came to her mind, anxious and powerless, and overwhelmed with
anxiety. All at once the face, obscured by some cloud which Laurie could
not penetrate,--to his supreme annoyance,--cleared up with a sudden
light, which he did not understand. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I should like Mr.
Rich to see that picture. It is not quite the kind of subject he likes;
but we all think it one of the finest things; Mr. Renton will tell you
about it. It was spoken very highly of the other day in the “Sword.”’
‘Ah; then it must be fine,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Perhaps Mr. Renton will
take a seat in the carriage with us, and introduce us. I like to see
everything I can see; and we have not much time for the light. And you
will not forget, dear, that you are engaged to us for Easter week. It
will be so nice to have you; and you shall plan out your pictures for
the east room. She is going to do the fairy tales for us, Mr.
Renton,--it will be charming. If the carriage is up, Mr. Rich, I am
afraid we ought to go.’
The padrona called Laurie to her as he was about to follow them
down-stairs. ‘They have given me a beautiful commission,’ she said, with
a little excitement,--‘a year’s work! And I was so mean that I hesitated
to send them to Suffolk after that. Try and make them buy the picture,
Laurie. They will, if you are clever, and talk to them a little of
Renton, and draw them on. I trust you to do it.’ It was only for a
moment at the drawing-room door. Was it the year’s work, and the contest
with herself about Suffolk’s picture, which gave her that look of
agitation and excitement? Or was it the time of year, the eve of the
Academy, and all the crowd that would come to-morrow? Laurie could not
give himself any answer as he rushed down-stairs to guide the Riches on
their beneficent course; but his eyes shone, too, and his heart beat
loud. As if he could have had anything to do with it,--a mere boy!