THE "HOUSEHOLD ALBUM"--SKETCHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--A NEW
SPECIES?--JACK'S BARGAIN--THEORIES.
Out of motherly affection, and also because their early attempts at
drawing were very clever, Mrs. Arkwright had, years before, begun a
scrapbook, or "Household Album," as it was called, into which she pasted
such of her children's original drawings as were held good enough for
the honour; the age of the artist being taken into account.
Jack's gift in this line was not as great as that of Clement or Eleanor,
but this was not the only reason why no drawing of his appeared in the
scrapbook. Mrs. Arkwright demanded more evidence of pains and industry
than Jack was wont to bestow on his sketches or designs. He resented his
exclusion, and made many efforts to induce his mother to accept his
hasty productions; but it was not till the summer to which I alluded
that Jack took his place in the "Household Album."
It was during a long drive, in which we were exhibiting the country to
some friends, that Eleanor and I chose the place of that particular
sketching expedition. The views it furnished had the first, and almost
the only, quality demanded by young and tyro sketchers--they were very
pretty.
There was some variety, too, to justify our choice. From the sandy road,
where a heathery bank afforded the convenience of seats, we could look
down into a valley with a winding stream, whose banks rose into
hillsides which lost themselves in finely-coloured mountains of
moorland.
Farther on, a scramble on foot over walls and gates had led us into a
wooded gorge fringed with ferns, where a group of trees of particularly
graceful form roused Eleanor's admiration.
"What a lovely view!" had burst from the lips of our friends at every
quarter of a mile; for they were of that (to me) trying order of
carriage companions who talk about the scenery as you go, as a point of
politeness.
But the views _were_ beautiful--"Sketches everywhere!" we cried.
"There's nothing to make a sketch _of_ round the Vicarage," we added.
"We've done the church, with the Deadmanstone Hills behind it, and
without the Deadmanstone Hills behind it, till we are sick of the
subject."
So, the weather being fine, and even hot, we provided ourselves with
luncheon and sketching materials, and made an expedition to the point
we had selected.
We were tired by the time we reached it. This does not necessarily damp
one's sketching ardour, but it is unfavourable to accuracy of outline,
and especially so to purity of colouring. However, we did not hesitate.
Eleanor went down to her study of birch-trees in the gorge, Clement
climbed up the bank to get the most extended view of the Ewden Valley; I
contented myself with sitting by the roadside in front of the same view,
and Jack stayed with me.
He had come with us. Not that he often went out sketching, but our
descriptions of the beauty of the scenery had roused him to make another
attempt for the "Household Album." Seldom lastingly provided, for his
own part, with apparatus of any kind, Jack had a genius for purveying
all that he required in an emergency. On this occasion he had borrowed
Mrs. Arkwright's paint-box (without leave), and was by no means ill
supplied with pencils and brushes which certainly were not his own. He
had hastily stripped a couple of sheets from my block whilst I was
dressing, and with these materials he seated himself on that side of me
which enabled him to dip into my water-pot, and began to paint.
Not half-way through my outline, I was just beginning to realize the
complexities of a bird's-eye view with your middle distance in a
valley, and your foreground sloping steeply upwards to your feet, when
Jack, washing out a large, dyed sable sky-brush in my pot, with an
amount of splashing that savoured of triumph, said:
"_That's_ done!"
I paused in a vigorous mental effort to put aside my _knowledge_ of the
relative sizes of objects, and to _see_ that a top stone of my
foreground wall covered three fields, the river, and half the river's
bank beyond.
"_Done?_" I exclaimed. Jack put his brush into his mouth, in defiance of
all rules, and deliberately sucked it dry. Then he waved his sketch
before my eyes.
"The effect's rather good," I confessed, "but oh, Jack, it's out of all
proportion! That gate really looks as big as the whole valley and the
hills beyond. The top of the gate-post ought to be up in the sky."
"It would look beastly ugly if it was," replied he complacently.
"You've got a very good tint for those hills; but the foreground is mere
scrambling. Oh, Jack, do finish it a little more! You would draw so
nicely if you had any patience."
"How imperfectly you understand my character," said Jack, packing up his
traps. "I would sit on a monument and smile at grief with any one, this
very day, if the monument were in a grove, or even if I had an umbrella
to smile under. To sit unsheltered under this roasting sun, and make
myself giddy by gauging proportions with a pencil at the end of my nose,
or smudging my mistakes with melting india-rubber, is quite another
matter. I'm off to Eleanor. I've got another sheet of paper, and I think
trees are rather in my line."
"I _thought_ my block looked smaller," said I, rapidly comparing Jack's
paper and my own, with a feeling for size developed by my labours.
"Has she got a water-pot?" asked Jack.
"She is sure to have," said I pointedly. "She always takes her own
materials with her."
"How fortunate for those who do not!" said Jack. "Now, Margery dear,
don't look sulky. I knew you wouldn't grudge me a bit of paper to get
into the 'Household Album' with. Come down into the ravine. You're as
white as a blank sheet of Whatman's hot-pressed water-colour paper!"
The increasing heat was really beginning to overpower me, but I refused
to leave my sketch. Jack pinned a large white pocket-handkerchief to my
shoulders--"to keep the sun from the spine"--and departed to the ravine.
By midday my outline was in. One is no good judge of one's own work,
but I think, on the whole, that it was a success.
It is always refreshing to complete a stage of anything. I began to feel
less hot and tired, as I passed a wash of clean water over my outline,
and laying it in the sun to dry, got out my colours and brushes.
As I did so, one of the little gusts of wind which had been an
unpleasant feature of this very fine day, and which, threatening a
change of weather, made us anxious to finish our sketches at a sitting,
came down the sandy road. In an instant the damp surface of my block
looked rough enough to strike matches on. But impatience is not my
besetting sin, and I had endured these little catastrophes before. I
waited for the block to dry before I brushed off the sand. I also waited
till the little beetle, who had crept into my sky, and was impeded in
his pace by my first wash, walked slowly down through all my distances,
and quitted the block by the gate in the foreground. This was partly
because I did not want to hurt him, and partly because a white cumulus
cloud is a bad part of your sketch to kill a black beetle on.
I washed over my paper once more, and holding it on my knee to dry just
as much and no more than was desirable, I looked my subject in the face
with a view to colour.
A long time passed. I had looked and looked again; I had washed in and
washed out; I had realized the difficulty of the subject without
flinching, and had tried hard to see and represent the colouring before
me, when Clement (having exhausted his water in a similar process) came
down the hill behind me, with a surly and sunburnt face, to replenish
his bottle at a wayside water-trough.
It was then that, as he said, he found me crying.
"It's not because it's difficult and I'm very stupid," I whimpered. "I
don't mind working on and trying to make the best of a thing. And it's
not the wind or the sand, though it has got dreadfully into the paints,
particularly the Italian Pink; but what makes me hopeless, Clement, is
that I don't believe it would look well if I could paint it perfectly.
It looked lovely as we were driving home the other evening, but now----
Just look at those fields, Clem; I _know_ they're green, but really and
truly I _see_ them just the same colour as this road, and I don't think
there is the difference of a shade between them and that gate-post. What
shall I do?"
A tear fell out of my eyelashes and dropped on to my river. Clement took
the sketch from me, and dried up the tear with a bit of blotting-paper.
Then to my amazement he gave rather a favourable verdict. It comforted
me, for Clement never says anything that he does not mean.
"It's not _half_ bad, Margery! Wait till you see mine! How did you get
the tints of that hillside? You've a very truthful mind, that's one
thing, and a very true eye as well. I do admire the way you abstain from
filling up with touches that mean nothing."
"Oh, Clement!" cried I, so gratified that I began to feel ready to go on
again. "Do you really think I can make anything of it?"
"Nothing more," said Clement. "Don't put another touch. It's unfinished,
but no finishing would do any good. We've got an outlandish subject and
a bad time of day. But keep it just as it is, and three months hence, on
a cool day, you'll be pleased when you look at it."
"Perhaps if I went on a little with the foreground," I suggested; but
even as I spoke, I put my hand to my head.
"Go to Eleanor in the ravine, at once," said Clement imperatively. "I'll
bring your things. What _did_ make us such fools as to come out without
umbrellas?"
"We came out in the cool of the morning," said I, as I staggered off;
"besides, it's almost impossible to hold one and paint too."
Once in the ravine, I dropped among the long grass and ferns, and the
damp, refreshing coolness of my resting-place was delicious.
Eleanor was not faint, neither had she been crying; but she was not much
happier with her sketch than I had been with mine. The jutting group of
birch-trees was well chosen, and she had drawn them admirably. But when
she came to add the confused background of trees and undergrowth, her
very outline had begun to look less satisfactory. When it came to
colour--and the midday sun was darting and glittering through the
interstices of the trees, without supplying any effects of _chiaroscuro_
to a subject already defective in point and contrast--Eleanor was almost
in despair.
"Where's Jack?" said I, after condoling with her.
"He tried the birches for ten minutes, and then he went up the stream to
look for _algae_."
At this moment Jack appeared. He came slowly towards us, looking at
something in his hand.
"Lend me your magnifying-glass, Eleanor," said he, when he had reached
us.
Eleanor unfastened it from her chatelaine, and Jack became absorbed in
examining some water-weed in a dock-leaf.
"What is it?" said we.
"It's a new species, I believe. Look, Eleanor!" and he gave her the leaf
and the glass with an almost pathetic anxiety of countenance.
My opinion carried no weight in the matter, but Eleanor was nearly as
good a naturalist as her mother. And she was inclined to agree with
Jack.
"It's too good to be true! But I certainly don't know it. Where did you
find it?"
"No, thank you," said Jack derisively. "I mean to keep the habitat to
myself for the present. For _a very good reason_. Margery, my child, put
that sketch of mine into the pocket of your block. (The paper is much
about the size of your own!) It is going into the 'Household Album.'"
We went home earlier than we had intended. Even the perseverance of
Eleanor and Clement broke down under their ill-success. Jack was the
only well-satisfied one of the party, and, with his usual good-nature,
he tried hard to infect me with his cheerfulness.
"I think," said I, looking dolefully at my sketch, "that a good deal of
the fault must have been in my eyes. I suspect one can't see colours
properly when one is feeling sick and giddy. But the glare of the sun
was the worst. I couldn't tell red from green on my palette, so no
wonder the fields and everything else looked all the same colour. And
yet what provokes one is the feeling that an artist would have made a
sketch of it somehow. The view is really beautiful."
"And that is really beautiful," said Eleanor, pointing to the birch
group and its background. "And what a mess I have made of it! I wish I'd
stuck to pencil. And yet, as you say, an artist would have got a picture
out of it."
"I'll tell you what," said Jack, who was lying face downwards with my
picture spread before him, "I believe that any one who knew the dodges,
when he saw that everything looked one pale, yellowish, brownish tint
with the glare of the sun, would have boldly taken a weak wash of all
the drab-looking colours in his box right over everything, picked out a
few stones in his foreground wall, dodged in a few shadows and so on,
and made a clever sketch of it. And the same with Eleanor's. If he had
got his birch-trees half as good as hers, and had then seen what a
muddle the trees behind were in, I believe he would only have washed in
a little blue and grey behind the birches, 'indicated' (as our old
drawing-master at school calls it) a distant stem or two--and there
would have been another clever sketch for you!"
"Another clever falsehood, you mean," said Clement hotly, "to ruin
people's taste, and encourage idle painters in showy trickery, and make
them believe they can improve upon Nature's colouring."
"Nature's colouring varies," said Jack. "Distant trees often _are_ blue
and grey, though these, just now, are of the rankest green."
Clement replied, Jack responded, Clement retorted, and a fierce
art-discussion raged the whole way home.
We were well used to it. Indeed all conversations with us had a tendency
to become controversial. Over and above which there was truth in
Keziah's saying, "The young gentlemen argle-bargles fit to deave a
body's head; and dear knows what it's all about."
Clement finished a vehement and rather didactic confession of his
art-faith as we climbed the steep hill to the Vicarage. The keynote of
it was that one ought to draw what he sees, exactly as he sees it; and
that every subject has a beauty of its own which he ought to perceive if
his perception is not "emasculated by an acquired taste for
prettinesses."
"I shall be in the 'Household Album' this evening," said Jack, in
deliberate tones. "My next ambition is the Society of Painters in Water
Colours. The subject of my first painting is settled. Three grass fields
(haymaking over the day before yesterday). A wall in front of the first
field, a hedge in front of the second, a wall in front of the third. A
gate in the middle of the wall. A spotted pig in the middle of the
field. The sun at its meridian; the pig asleep. Motto, 'Whatever is, is
beautiful.'"
Eleanor and I (in the interests of peace) hastened to change the
subject by ridiculing Jack's complacent conviction that his sketch would
be accepted for the "Household Album."
And yet it was.
The fresh-water _alga_ Jack had been lucky enough to find was a new
species, and threw Mrs. Arkwright and Eleanor into a state of the
highest excitement. But all their entreaties failed to persuade Jack to
disclose the secret of the habitat.
"Put my sketch into the 'Household Album,' and I'll tell you all about
it," said he.
Mrs. Arkwright held out against this for half-an-hour. Then she gave
way. Jack's sketch was gummed in (it took up a whole page, being the
full size of my block), and he told us all about the water-weed.
It was described and figured in the _Phycological Quarterly_, and
received the specific name of _Arkwrightii_, and Jack's double triumph
was complete.
We were very glad for his success, but it almost increased the sense of
disappointment that our share of the expedition had been so unlucky.
"It seems such a waste," said I, "to have got to such a lovely place
with one's drawing things and plenty of time, and to come away without a
sketch worth keeping at the end, just because one doesn't know the right
way of working."
"I think there's a good deal in what Jack said about your sketch," said
Eleanor; "and I think if one looked at the way real artists have treated
similar subjects, and then went at it again and tried to do it on a
similar principle----"
"If ever we do go there again," Clement interrupted, "but I don't
suppose we shall--these holidays. And the way summer after summer slips
away is awful. I'm more and more convinced that it's a great mistake to
have so many hobbies. No life is long enough for more than one pursuit,
and it's ten to one you die in the middle of mastering that. One is sure
to die in the early stages of half-a-dozen."
Clement is very apt to develop some odd theory of this kind, and to
preach it with a severity that borders on gloom. I never know what to
say, even if I disagree with him; but Eleanor takes up the cudgels at
once.
"I don't think I agree with you," she said, giving a shove to her soft
elastic hair which did not improve the indefiniteness of the parting.
"Of course it's unsatisfactory in one way to feel one will never live to
finish things, but in another way I think it's a great comfort to feel
one can never use them up or outlive them if one lasts on to be a
hundred. And though one gets very cross and miserable with failing so
over things one works at, I don't know whether one would be so much
happier when one was at the top of the tree. I'm not sure that the
chief pleasure isn't actually in the working at things--I mean in the
drudgery of learning, rather than in the triumph of having learnt."
"There's something in that," said Clement. And it was a great deal for
Clement to say.
It does not take much to convert _me_ to Eleanor's views of anything.
But I do think experience bears out what she said about this matter.
Perhaps that accounts for my having a happy remembrance of old times
when we worked at things together, even if we failed and cried over
them.
I know that practically, now, I would willingly join the others in going
at anything, though I could not promise not to be peevish over my own
stupidity sometimes, and if I was very much tired.
I don't think there was anything untrue in my calling the times we went
sketching together happy times--in spite of what Clement says.
But he does rule such very straight lines all over life, and I sometimes
think one may rule them too straight--even for full truth.