The first grand question to be decided, when Laurie settled in Charlotte Street, was what his first picture was to be. It is true that Mr. Welby, and even the padrona, who was so much more hopeful, were all for mere study and life-schools, and the lectures at the Academy, and anatomical demonstrations, and other disagreeable things, which Laurie, always amiable, gave in to, to please them, not doubting of the advantage of the studies in question. But still his anatomy, and his notes, and studies from the life, however careful, were only means to an end; and there was no reason why the end itself should not be pursued at the same time,—or at least so he thought. He had painted pictures before now as a mere amateur, and in that capacity had even,—once,—obtained a nook in the Academy’s exhibition; and why he should now suspend his chief work, and, having become a professional painter, paint no longer, was what Laurie could not perceive. He was not the man to exhibit his study of the Norman{v.1-298} fisherwoman or Italian peasant who might chance to be posing at the school, as some of the Clipstone Street fellows did. His work there, of course, would help him in his real work at home; but to spend his entire time in preparation for work, and do nothing, seemed to Laurie plain idiocy. ‘I painted nothing for three years on end when I was like you,’ old Welby said. ‘You require to be a painter, sir, before you can paint a picture; and it is hard enough work to make yourself a painter. If I were in your place I’d never look at a canvas bigger than that for at least a year.’
‘That’ was the study of a head which Laurie had taken down with him to Mr. Welby’s studio. It was one of the padrona’s, and the old painter had praised the sketch. As for Laurie, he turned it hastily with its face to the easel, and laughed the uneasy laugh of embarrassment and offence.
‘I rather flattered myself I was a painter,’ he said, and then paused and recovered his temper. ‘The fact is, I must keep myself up,’ he exclaimed; ‘I must feel as if I were doing something. So long as I paint merely scraps I feel myself demoralised. And then you forget I am not a novice,’ Laurie said, with some pride. He had been all over Italy, and had studied in Rome, and was very learned in many artistic matters. To be told that he had first to make himself a painter was rather hard.
‘Of course you are a novice,’ said the R.A., ‘and{v.1-299} quite natural too. I don’t want to be disagreeable, my dear fellow, but an amateur is really worse,—you may take my word for it,—than an absolute beginner. The very traditions of amateur art are different. If you were making a fair start I should know exactly what to tell you; but how can I tell how much you may have to unlearn?’
This, it will be allowed, was not encouraging. Laurie went up-stairs afterwards three steps at a time, with his blood boiling in his veins. He gave the padrona an animated little address about old fogies in general, and R.A.’s in particular, to her extreme amazement, as she stood at her work. It was a crisp, sunny, wintry morning, and Mrs. Severn was very busy. She opened her brown eyes and laughed, as Laurie, breathless, came to an end.
‘They will be giving advice,’ she said, ‘I know; and advice, unless when it is just what one wants, is a terrible nuisance. I see exactly what you mean.’
‘I have no objection to advice,’ said Laurie, half angry, half laughing, ‘when it is kept within due limits; but there is such a thing as going too far.’ And then he told her the extent of Mr. Welby’s sin, not without a momentary thought gleaming through his mind as he spoke, that it was the fresh, new life which the old painter objected to see coming within the exclusive boundaries of the profession. ‘Art is like any other trade,’ he said, as he concluded his tale; ‘the workmen are bent on pursuing their mystery,{v.1-300} and would like to stone away any interloper who inclines to come in.’
Mrs. Severn said nothing for a minute or two, but went on working at her easel with her back to him; and when one is eager and excited to start with, there is nothing more exasperating than to have one’s warm and one-sided statement received thus with chilling silence. It is the surest way to fill up what is wanting of the cup of indignation. ‘You say nothing,’ Laurie continued, with impatience, ‘and yet, of course, you must have suffered from it yourself.’
‘You will think I am helping to bar the door of my trade,’ said the padrona, ‘and I know I deserve that you should fly through the window or through the ceiling in wrath; but I can’t help it. He was quite right. You have all your amateur habits to break yourself of, and to get to work like,—like,—one of us. Don’t be vexed. I have wanted to say it before, and, of course, with the generosity of my kind, I say it now when you are down.’
‘You too!’ Laurie said with a pang. He took two or three turns up and down the painting-room before he could speak. And but for pride, which would not permit him to show how deep was his mortification, I fear he would have blazed and exploded out of the house; but as soon as he had come to himself, pride, more potent than any better feeling, cleared the cloud from his brow.{v.1-301}
‘I thought you had a better opinion of me,’ he said, reproachfully, standing behind the easel and casting pathetic glances at her. ‘I came to you to be,—consoled, I suppose,—like an ass. I thought I was already something of a painter,—at least to you,—or why should I be encouraged to attempt anything? Why didn’t you say to me, “Go and be a shoemaker?”—as, indeed, Welby was honest enough to do.’
‘Now, Laurie, don’t be unjust,’ said the padrona. ‘Don’t you see it is because I expect you to do something worth while that I want you to study hard and learn everything? What is a year’s work to you at your age? When one gets old one would give everything for the chance of such a preparation. What am I but an amateur myself, not half instructed as I ought to be? And that is why I am so anxious that it should be different with you,—at your age.’
‘I cannot see what my age has to do with it,’ said Laurie, ‘nor why you should always want to set me down as a boy;’ and then he paused and compunction overtook him. He went up to his adviser, in the coaxing way which Laurie had been master of all his life. He could not take her hand, for she had her brush in it and was working all the time; but he took the wide sleeve of her painting-dress between his fingers and caressed it, which came to much the same thing. ‘You are so good to me,’ he said,—‘always{v.1-302} so kind and so good. I never thought you would be against me too.’
Thus it will be seen that to be advised, and even ill-used and trodden upon by a friend who is a woman, and not uncomely to look at, is on the whole less disagreeable than to be snubbed by an ancient R.A.
The padrona laughed, but her eye melted into loving-kindness as well as laughter. ‘You are a boy,’ she said, ‘and a very insinuating one into the bargain. But I am not going to be coaxed out of my opinion. You ought to go home this very minute and lock up all your canvases and take to chalk and paper and pencils for a whole year; and then you can come back to me and I will tell you what I think you should do.’
‘If I am not to come back for a whole year I may as well go and hang myself at once,’ said Laurie; and so the talk fell into lighter channels. The truth was that he spent a great deal more time than he had any call to do in the padrona’s studio, and hindered, or did his best to hinder, her work; and perhaps liked better to examine her sketches and criticise them, and make suggestions thereupon, than to labour steadily, as he ought to have been doing, at sketches of his own. But this had not yet lasted long enough to attract anybody’s attention,—even hers or his own; for, of course, after such a shock as his life had sustained, this was still an unsettled mo{v.1-303}ment. He had not shaken himself down yet, nor found his standing-ground after the convulsion; and it was natural he should seek the counsel of his friends.
But the result was, after these conversations,—the one more discouraging than the other,—that Laurie went direct to his colourman’s and chose himself a lovely milk-white canvas six feet by ten, and had it sent home immediately, and went on his knees before it in silent adoration. His imagination set to work upon it immediately, though he was self-denying enough not to touch it for days; but undeniably that very night there were various sketches made of a heroic character before he went to bed. It was difficult to choose a subject,—much more difficult than he supposed. Several great historical events which struck his fancy had to be rejected as demanding an amount of labour which in the meantime was impracticable. He wandered in a range of contending fancies all night long in his sleep, with Suffolk’s Saxon maiden in the doorway of her father’s grange, dismissing the Norman squire who had become her lover, floating through his brain in conjunction with various Shakspearian scenes, and some of the padrona’s baby groups, with the padrona herself in the midst; and when he woke the dream continued. Sometimes he thought he would abandon history and paint a Mary with that face,—not a girl Mary in the simplicity of youth, but one with{v.1-304} thoughts matured, and the wider, greater heart of experience and ripe womanhood. Foolish boy! For, to be sure, he was a boy after all.
It took Laurie a long time to decide this matter in a satisfactory way. One day his inclinations were scriptural, and another historical; and on the third he would have made up his mind to a modern genre picture, but for the size of his canvas, which was clearly intended for something heroic. He settled at last,—which indeed was almost a matter of course,—upon a very hackneyed and trite subject, being somehow driven to it as he felt by the influence of Suffolk’s pictures, which he admired with all a young man’s indignant warmth. The subject which he chose was Edith seeking the body of Harold. ‘In the lost battle, borne down by the flying.’ Nothing could well have been more inconsistent with his state of mind, or tastes, or general inclinations. He was not given to melancholy thoughts, neither,—though Laurie was sufficiently fanciful,—had any analogy struck him between his own first beginning of the fight and that end, always so linked with the beginning, of utter loss and overthrow and darkness. It was not any chance gleam of a forecasting, profound imagination, or passionate sense of the fatal chances of the battle, that suggested it to him. Such an idea might have occurred to Suffolk, but it was inconsistent with the very constitution of Laurie’s mind. He chose his subject in pure caprice, pro{v.1-305}bably because it was the most unlike of anything he could imagine, to his own tender, friendly, unimpassioned nature. There are moments of youthful ease and hope in which tragedy comes most natural to the cheerful, unforeboding soul; I cannot tell why,—perhaps, as Wordsworth says, out of the very ‘prodigal excess’ of its personal content. Laurie was so absorbed in his subject,—in sketching it out, and putting it on the canvas, and bringing his figures into harmonious composition,—that his Clipstone Street studies suffered immensely, and he even failed in the usual frequency of his visits to ‘the Square.’ Had he gone there as usual, he would, of course, have betrayed himself, and he was determined that not a word should be said until he could,—with a certain triumph,—the triumph of individual conviction and profound consciousness of what was best for himself over all advice,—invite his counsellors to come and look at what was about to be. So long as this fit of fervour lasted Miss Hadley had nothing to report, except the barricading of his windows from morning till afternoon, as long as the light lasted,—unless, indeed, on foggy days, when the painter would glance out at the sky from his balcony, palette in hand, a dozen times a day, with despair in his face. The padrona thought she had gone too far, and affronted him, and was sorry, and sent him friendly messages, recalling the truant; but Laurie, notwithstanding the yearning of his heart, was true to his grand object.{v.1-306} As he stood before the big canvas, putting in those vast, vague outlines of the future picture, it seemed to him that he already saw it ‘on the line’ in the Academy, with the little scene he had already imagined going on below. But by this time he had half forgotten the fine people whose astonishment he had once amused himself by imagining. Kensington Gore had been swept away by the current, and looked like some haunt of his boyhood. What he thought now was chiefly, ‘They will have changed their opinion by that time.’ ‘They,’ no doubt, included old Welby, who had been so hard on the young painter; but I fear that the special spite of this anticipation was directed against the padrona. What did it matter after all, except, indeed, in the strictest professional point of view, what old Welby thought?
Edith had not got beyond the first chalk outline, when Forrester, Mr. Welby’s man, came one morning to Charlotte Street, with a message from his master. Forrester was understood to know nearly as much about art as his master did, and resembled him, as old servants often do,—and I rather think Laurie was secretly glad, now matters had progressed so far, of this means of conveying, in an indirect way, the first news of his rebellion to ‘the Square.’ At all events he sent for him to come up-stairs, awaiting his appearance with a little trepidation. Forrester, however, was not arrogant, as some critics are. He came in with the most bland and patronising looks, ready,{v.1-307} it was evident, to be indulgent to everything. When he had delivered his message, he cast an amiable glance around him. The room was lighted only by the upper light of the middle window, all the rest being carefully closed, and even that amount of daylight was obscured by the shadow of the great canvas which was placed on the easel, where all the rays that were to be had out of a November sky might be concentrated upon it. Forrester was too thoroughly acquainted with the profession of which he was a retainer not to understand at once the meaning of this big shadow, and Laurie in his anxiety thought or imagined that the critic’s lips formed themselves into an involuntary whistle of astonishment, though no sound was audible. But the old servitor of art felt the claims of politeness. Instead of displaying at once his curiosity about the work in hand, he paid his tribute of applause with a grace which his master could scarcely have emulated. ‘That’s a nice sketch, sir,’ Forrester said, indicating one of the Clipstone Street studies. ‘I hope you ain’t working too hard now, we see you so little in the Square. I like that effect, Mr. Renton; master would be pleased with that effect.’
‘I am very glad you think so, Forrester,’ said artful Laurie, leading his visitor on.
‘Master’s a little severe, Mr. Renton,’ said Forrester, ‘but you young gentlemen take him a deal too much at his word. Bless you, he don’t mean half he{v.1-308} says. I know he’d be pleased. I call that a very nice drawin’, Mr. Renton; better nor many a dealer buys for a picture. I always said, sir, as you was one as would come on.’
‘I am much obliged to you for your good opinion, Forrester,’ said Laurie; ‘it is very kind of you to take so much interest in me.’
‘I’ve been among painters all my days,’ said Forrester. ‘I sat to Opie, sir, though you wouldn’t think it, when I was a lad. I don’t know as there is a man living as understands ’em better nor I do. I knows their ways; and if I don’t know a picture when I sees one, who should, Mr. Renton? I’ve been about ’em since I was a lad o’ fifteen, and awful fond o’ them, like as they was living creatures,—and a man ain’t worth much if he don’t form no opinion of his own in five-and-forty years. Me and master goes on the same principle. It’s the first sketch as he’s always mad about. “Take the big picture and hang it in your big galleries,” he says, “and give me the sketch with the first fire into it, and the invention.” I’ve heard him a saying of that scores of times; and them’s my sentiments to a tee. But master, he’s all for the hantique, and me, I go in for the modern school. There’s more natur’ in it, to my way of thinking. You’ve got something on your easel, sir, as looks important,’ Forrester continued, edging his way with curious looks towards the central object in the room.{v.1-309}
‘I don’t know if I should let you see it.’ said Laurie; ‘I have only just begun to put it on the canvas; and you are an alarming critic, Forrester,—as awful as Mr. Welby himself.’
‘No, sir; no, no,’ said Forrester, affably; ‘don’t you be frightened; I know how to make allowances for a beginner. We must all make a beginning, bless you, one time or other. Master ’ud grieve if he see a big canvas like that. He’d say, “It’s just like them boys;” but I ain’t one to set a young gentleman down. Encourage the young, and tell your mind to the hold, that’s my motto, sir,’ the old man said, as he placed himself in front of the easel. As for poor Laurie, the fact is that he grew cold with fright and expectation as he watched the face of the critic. Forrester gave vent to a prolonged Ah! accompanied by a slight expressive shrug when he took his first look of the canvas, and for several moments he made no further observation. To Laurie, standing behind him in suspense, the white chalk shadows seemed to twist and distort themselves, and put all their limbs out of joint, in pure perversity, under this first awful critical gaze.
‘If I might make so bold, sir,’ said Forrester, mildly, ‘what is the subject of the picture, Mr. Renton?’ which was not an encouraging remark.
‘Of course I ought to have told you,’ cried Laurie, very red and hot. ‘It is an incident after the{v.1-310} Battle of Hastings,—Edith looking for the body of Harold. Edith, you know, was——’
‘I’ve seen a many Hediths,’ said Forrester. ‘I ought to know. I’m an old stupid, sir, not to have seen what it was; but being as it’s in the chalk, and me not having the time to study it as I could wish——. I don’t doubt, Mr. Renton, as it’s a fine subject. It did ought to be, seeing the many times as it’s been took.’
‘I don’t think I have seen it many times,’ said Laurie, profoundly startled; ‘I only remember one picture, and that very bad,’ the young man added hastily. Forrester shook his head.
‘Not in the exhibitions, I daresay, sir,’ said the critic, solemnly; ‘but there’s a many pictures, Mr. Renton, as never get as far as the Academy. Mr. Suffolk, he did it, sir, for one; and young Mr. Warleigh, as has give up art, and gone off a engineering; and Robinson, as has fallen into the portrait line,’ Forrester continued, counting on his fingers; ‘and poor Mr. Tinto, as died in Italy; and there’s the same subject,’ the old man added, solemnly, after a pause, ‘turned with its face again the wall in our hattic, as Mr. Severn hisself, sir, did when he was young.’
Laurie was overwhelmed. He gazed at the ruthless destroyer of his dreams with a certain terror. ‘Good heavens, I had no idea!’ said the young man, growing green with sudden despair. Then, however,{v.1-311} his pride came to his aid. ‘It’s a dreadful list,’ he said; ‘but, you perceive, as they never came under the public eye, and nobody was the wiser——’
‘To be sure, sir—to be sure,’ said Forrester, with pitying complacency. ‘A many failures ain’t what you may call a reason for your failing as is a new hand. I hope it’ll be just the contrary; but if you hadn’t a begun of it, Mr. Renton,—and being as it’s but in the chalk, it ain’t to call begun;——couldn’t Hedith be a looking out for her lover, sir, of an evening, as young women has a way? I don’t suppose there was no difference in them old times. And a bit o’ nice sunset, and him a-coming out of it with his shadow in front of him, like. I don’t say as the subject’s as grand, but it’s a deal cheerfuller. And when you come to think of it, Mr. Renton, to hang up all them dead corpses and a skeered woman, say, in your dining-room, sir, when it’s cheerful as you want to be——’
‘Thanks,’ said Laurie, with a little offence. ‘I have no doubt you are very judicious, but I am sorry I can’t see the matter in the same light. You will give Mr. Welby my compliments, please. I’ll be glad to dine with him on Saturday, as he asks me. Perhaps you will be so good as to say nothing—. But no, that’s of no consequence,’ Laurie added, hastily. Of course he was not going to give in. Of course they must know sooner or later what he was doing, and better sooner than later. They{v.1-312} might laugh, or sneer, or consider him childish if they pleased; but the moment his picture was hung on the line in the Academy, all that would be changed. So Laurie mounted his high horse. But he did it in a splendid, magnanimous sort of way. He smoothed down Forrester’s wounded feelings by a ‘tip,’ which, indeed, was more than he could afford, and which the old man took with reluctance,—and opened the door for him with his own hands. ‘Offended! because you tell me how popular my subject has been? Most certainly not! Much obliged to you, on the contrary, Forrester, and very proud of your good opinion,’ he said, with a most gracious smile and nod, as his critic went away, which Forrester did with a certain satisfaction mingling with his regret.
‘It’s for his good,’ the old man said to himself; ‘and there ain’t no way of doing them young fellows good without hurting of their feelings.’
Laurie for his part went back to his painting-room, and sat down moodily before his big canvas. It was too ridiculous to care for such a piece of criticism. Forrester;—Mr. Welby’s servant!—to think of minding anything that a stupid old fellow in his dotage might venture to say! Laurie laughed what he meant for a mocking laugh, and then bit his lip and called himself a fool. Of course the old rascal had been crammed beforehand and taught what to say; or if not, at least it was no wonder if{v.1-313} the servant repeated what the master thought. It was not this picture or that, but every picture that Welby had set his face against. And what a piece of idiocy to show his man, his echo,—the very first beginning,—the most chaotic indication,—such as none but an eye at once keen and indulgent could have made out,—of the great work that was to be! Laurie concluded proudly that nobody was to blame but himself, as he sat down in his first quiver of mortification, half inclined to tear his canvas across, and pitch his chalks to the other end of the room. Then he looked at it, and found his Edith looking down upon him with her tragic eyes,—eyes which to her creator looked tragic and full of awful meaning, though they were but put in in chalk. Perhaps, indeed, it was the chalk that made her divine in her despair, whitely shadowing out of the white canvas, owing everything to the imagination,—a suggestion of horror and frantic grief and misery. What if it was a common subject! The more common a thing is, the more universal and all-influencing must it be. A tender woman, made sublime by her despair, seeking on a field of battle the body of the man she loved most,—a thing of primitive passion such as must move all humanity. What if it were hackneyed! All the more distinctly would it be apparent which was the touch of the real power which could embody the scene, and which the mere painter of costumed figures. Such were{v.1-314} Laurie’s thoughts as he sat, discouraged and cast down, before his picture,—poor fellow!—after Forrester’s visit. If the man’s criticisms had so much effect upon him, what would the master’s have had? What could he have said to the padrona had it been she who had come to look at his picture? Then the long array of names which Forrester had quoted came back upon him. In short, poor Laurie had received a downright unexpected blow, and ached and smarted under it, as was natural to a sensitive being loving applause and approbation. He turned his back on Edith for the rest of the day, throwing open his windows, to Miss Hadley’s astonishment, the first time for a week, and affording her a dim vision of a figure thrown into an arm-chair by the fire, with a novel. It was the first time since he came to Charlotte Street that he had in broad daylight and cold blood given himself over to such an indulgence. He was disgusted with his work and himself. He had not the heart to go out. He could not go to the Square, where probably by this time they were all laughing over his folly. He read his novel doggedly all the afternoon, in sight of Miss Hadley, who could not tell what to make of it. The light was gone and the day lost before he roused himself, and pitched his book into the farthest corner. His kindly spy could not tell what the perverse young fellow would do next. Probably go and have his dinner, she said to herself;{v.1-315} which, indeed, Laurie did; and came home much better, beginning to be able to laugh at Forrester, and snap his fingers at his predecessors. ‘The more reason it should be done now,’ he said to himself, ‘if Suffolk, and Severn, and all those fellows broke down over it.’ And he suffered a little gleam of self-complacency to steal over his face, and went to work all night at his sketch, to improve and perfect the composition. So that, on the whole, Laurie, though no genius, had that nobler quality of genius which overcomes all criticism and surmounts every discouragement. He had been shut up long enough in silence with his conception. That day, he made up his mind, instead of permitting himself to be ignominiously snubbed by old Forrester, that he would face the world, and carry the sketch which he was completing to the padrona herself.