Chapter VII

: From Breton to Briton

_St. Ives, Cornwall; London_

Going from Concarneau to St. Ives was like moving up from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. No more thatched roofs, no more floors of beaten earth, no more manure piles in front of the houses. The roofs are of slate, topping little stone houses, with quite proper floors; the front yards are clean, and the Cornish farmer is most likely a Wesleyan, but he may belong to one of the other thirteen denominations that flourish in this town of five thousand inhabitants. It is true that there is a circle of stones which archæologists say was placed before the time of the Picts; there are some customs handed down from centuries before; but most of the “ancient laws” are no earlier than Henry VIII, and the old traditions are so changed that the original makers would not recognize them, for the Englishman _will_ think for himself, even though he thinks badly.

The waves that come to St. Ives Bay are straight from America, and there is nothing to equal the beauty of the cliffs and sand except the coast of Maine. The climate is five degrees less than that of Naples and never goes over eighty degrees in summer or much below freezing in winter, so that vegetables and flowers flourish. In January are growing violets, dahlias, and fuchsias for the markets of London. South of St. Ives are five miles of flowers blowing in the breezes. The real beauty of the country is the constant storm, shower and sunlight. If it is not raining, it is shining, and there is a rainbow almost any day—a little Legion of Honor wandering around by itself.

Of the different religious denominations, there were the Christian Brethren, Temperance Wesleyans, Plain Wesleyans, Lady Huntington’s Chapel, Church of England, and the Catholic. The butcher, grocer, and carpenter were all preachers on Sunday. Perhaps the most interesting of the sects, however, were the Primitive Christians. They do not believe the altar or the pulpit is any more holy than other parts of the church, so you will see them kneeling with their faces to the back, to the sides, or any way whatever, while the minister is hard at work preaching at one end.

Right in back of my studio, which was a storehouse for pilchard nets and consequently on the sea, was the old graveyard. Here the stanch Cornishmen were buried four or five layers deep, and occasionally the tide would wash a hole in the wall, scattering the bones, and rolling skulls up and down the beach. The new graveyard was much more modern, with a careful division between the Church of England and the Dissenters, the different entrances separated, as I think my dear mother thought heaven was—one gate for the Unitarians and one for the remainder of the world. I remember a carpenter who accidently cut off his thumb. He was not nearly so worried about the pain as that he might go through all eternity thumbless; so he anxiously saved the piece and, waiting until there was a funeral, dropped it into the grave, being very careful, however, that it was on the Dissenter side of the cemetery (he being a Wesleyan preacher on Sunday). The picture of any part of his body wandering around in a Church of England heaven was something he could not bear to contemplate.

The Cornish have some peculiar uses of the English language, some of the expressions going back to the Elizabethan period. They never use an objective, but say “to I” or “for we”; then there is “on” for “in” and “coolth” and “dryth.” “Minching” means stealing or playing hooky and comes from the same source as “Miching mallecho” of Shakespeare.

Nearly the entire life of these people is spent in the fishing industry, as it is in Concarneau; only here the pilchard takes the place of the sardine. All along the shore are built little whitewashed cabins, glistening in the distance like seagulls. Here, during the fishing season, men sit all day long, watching for that unmistakable faint purple ruff on the water that indicates the run of fish. At the first sign they stand upon the cliff and wave the branch of a tree. Everyone quits work; children rush up and down the shore, waving green branches and shouting the fishing call at the top of their voices. If you look out upon the water you can see a place where the “hair of the animal” has been rubbed the wrong way. There is great rivalry as to which company gets the best schools of fish, and they row madly to beat one another, sometimes having very serious fights. The costume is very different from that of the Bretons, the men wearing tarpaulins and high boots; but the catch is just as large, sometimes taking three days to empty the large circular nets that have been drawn up like a purse.

When I went to St. Ives it was unknown as an art colony, the place where they gathered being Penzance, about ten miles away. Whistler had been there two years before, but Robinson was the sole representative of the clan upon my arrival. When I left, five years later, there was an Art Club of one hundred members. The term “Cornish school” came into being from a remark of Stanhope Forbes to Whistler’s enemy, Harry Quilter, the critic, who asked:

“Why do all you men of the Cornish school paint alike?”

(They were all painters who had studied in France and learned their trade.)

“We use the same model,” answered Forbes.

“Ah, that’s it! Who is she?”

“Nature.”

Seeing this colony form in St. Ives made me study out how such things happen. The artist finds a place that is beautiful, undiscovered, and suits his pocketbook. He goes there for two years. The third year other artists follow him; the fourth year come the retired British admirals and “vamps”; the fifth year the artist leaves; the sixth come the wealthy people who spend a lot of money on it, making it as ugly and dear as possible, but soon tire and go away. Then the artist comes back again and begins all over, picking the bones of what the Money Bags had killed.

The home of Leslie Stephen, in St. Ives, was the gathering place for all sorts of interesting persons. He married Thackeray’s daughter, knew many notables, and was the biographer of most of them. He entertained such men as E. W. Gosse, the critic and brother-in-law of Alma Tadema, the famous painter of finished Greek subjects. It always seemed to me so extraordinary to see one of his Greek slaves with manicured toenails, leaning up against a marble column upon which you could see the polish, with a truly Bostonian expression on her face!

Curious to say, I met Lowell here, and, although he immediately called me “Edward” and spoke of my mother as “Mary,” I did not remember him at Concord, and was ignorant enough not to know much about his work. One day Stephen remarked that music, like eating, should be done in the bathroom. It always sounded to him like an infernal din. He was the ultra-literary type, who wished to be rid of all things physical; he even envied Harriet Martineau, who had no sense of taste. Lowell said:

“Edward, this foolish friend of mine really has some excellent Scotch whisky. Come away with me. If you listen to him you will surely be contaminated.”

Mental corruption for a young man was much worse in his opinion than teaching him to drink Scotch whisky.

I remember walking with Lowell and my uncle when the conversation drifted to walking sticks. My uncle said he had cut his on the grave of Wordsworth. I sniffed and said it was not half so good a stick as mine and that if it had been cut on the grave of Shakespeare it would have no added value for me. Lowell turned and said:

“My boy, you are like most of the great men of the world—lacking in one quality, that of deference—and _all_ the fools.” Considering that I had heard of this poet in his youth, marching through the streets of Cambridge with the young woman to whom he was betrothed, draped in white, with wreaths upon their heads, and the people in the procession cheering, as a tribute to virginity, I could not help but think: Is it better, I wonder, for a young man to be lacking in deference or a sense of humor?

Leslie Stephen was an editor, and used to get his friends to look over some of the manuscripts submitted to him before he gave his final opinion. One day his friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, ran in, on his way to Scotland, to say good-by, and he asked him to take some poems by an unknown writer along with him and give his criticism of them. R. L. S. wrote a most enthusiastic letter, saying he was so interested that he had hunted up the author, in the hospital, and taken along his best beloved book, _The Viscount de Bragelonne_.

“If he did not like that, I did not want to know him,” he said, “but he knows it better than I do. Publish his work at once.”

This was the first the world ever heard of the Hospital Sketches of Henley, who showed his gratitude after Stevenson’s death by coming out with a statement publicly criticizing him for his debts.

Anders Zorn and his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Stockholm, came over from Spain to St. Ives. He was known principally as a watercolorist before this, but had painted portraits of some of the royal families of Europe, and was patronized by the king of Sweden. Zorn had a disposition of sweetness and light, and, although he had inherited a great charm and delicacy from the paternal side of his family, he cared nothing for society and manners, and thought like a simple peasant; therefore, like a child.

He was large, fattish, built on a small skeleton—a man who would break easily—and had the head of all the colorists—that is, a square forehead, delicate but square jaw, slight aquiline nose, and enormous pale-blue watery eyes. His drooping yellow mustache was long but not thick, and his hands were of the softest, most personal and interesting character. He was a man with a great hypnotic quality who did not talk much, but dominated without speaking. When he got into a tea fight, he would stand around a short time, listening, then saying, “Yes, I agree,” saunter over to the window to the light and, taking a ring off his finger, begin to carve. He had many of these in all states of completion, and one I recall as especially clever was of two little girls with feet twisted and hands holding the jewel.

Zorn loved beautiful women and the human body from an artistic standpoint. His wife understood him as no other being could, and his unrestrained, childlike disposition and natural manners were never misinterpreted by her. In fact, she took care of him as of a most valued property, and added much to the success of his career as an artist. She and his mother seemed to be the two great influences in his life. Every year he sent a lovely sealskin wrap to his mother back in Sweden, and the dear old woman had chests in her garret full of these coats which she evidently delighted to take out and show to her less fortunate friends.

I never knew Zorn to get angry; he was as smooth as cream, but always gave his absolute opinion when asked for it, and always expected others to do the same. Quite a contrast to a well-known American artist who wanted to turn me out of his house because I did not praise everything he showed me. I asked:

“What did you ask me here for, to give you compliments?”

“Yes,” he answered.

The first thing Zorn painted in oils he did out of the window of his little stone house on the embankment overlooking the bay and island. I helped him set his palette, and he jokingly called himself my pupil (I had told him what materials to buy), being as peevish as a child when I dared to criticize the fact he had put the moon in the due north.

“But don’t you think it looks well?” he said. This canvas was bought by the French government and now hangs in the Luxembourg.

Zorn was one of those artists who are always showing much originality in the use of their materials and combining this with a sense of humor, which often produces fine results. I went into his back yard one day, and he had a six-foot water color leaning against the house, and was throwing pails of water on it—“bringing it together.” He had a great success at the Grosvenor Gallery with a picture of boats, sails, masts, and the seashore sand, with a fat fish-wife walking toward one. (In those days he thought the only beautiful women were fat ones.) He laid this on a box hedge in the garden when a thunderstorm came up. We all rushed out and it seemed to me ruined.

“Now I can make a fine picture,” he said. He painted out the smudges from the sails and fixed the dirty sky, but in the foreground, in the sands, were large spots of raindrops. These he turned into footprints, and their naturalness has been commented upon more than once.

One of the most exquisite things he ever made, and one of the greatest works of art, considering its size and sentiment, was a little carving of poplar wood about four by six inches in size. A feather bed, in the center of which, as if she had been dropped there, was a tiny naked figure, sitting up, playing with her wedding ring—the most eerie, fairy creature, with not a touch of the salacious.

Zorn never really got over the sin of water color. He was an all around artist, but hung next to Sargent’s his portraits had all the life taken out of them. He did not seem to go beneath the skin except in his etchings, which are perfect, but had a wonderful dexterity and absolute truthfulness combined with an artistic eye that refused to see anything ugly. He once did a portrait of a woman seated on a plush sofa, which looked like the traditional boarding-house affair—thumbed wood, worn, and not pleasant in color. The picture gives you an idea of a beautiful piece of furniture. I said:

“You did not harm the sofa any, did you?”

“Mine is a copy,” he replied. He would not deny the truth, but being a gentleman, did not call names.

It would not be fair to leave St. Ives without mentioning Mr. Knill. It is true, he lived many years before my time, but he left a permanent money legacy and a personality so redolent with humor that he will never be forgotten. He was not serious, even in death, and built his tomb long before his demise—a large crypt and granite sarcophagus with his coat of arms—upon the top of a hill as a landmark for his smuggling fleet to get into harbor. Having completed this, he made his will. He directed that every five years there should be given ten pounds to the oldest widower, ten to the oldest widow, ten to the town fiddler, and ten each to ten young virgins, provided they all joined hands and danced around his tomb (led by the fiddler) to the tune of “Old Hundred.”

This celebration had developed into a pathetic thing. They selected the poor who needed the money and the dinner, which originally was to cost two pounds a plate, but had been reduced to two shillings, even the Cornish not being above a little unpardonable economy. The whole thing was very English, and just like the lichen which comes on a tree when it is old.

One of the greatest jokes Mr. Knill played upon the populace was to go to London and die in a hospital, so that his body was dissected by the medical students. I was telling this to a crowd of Londoners, saying that it was such a joke that he should have painted as his motto on his tomb:

NIL DESPERANDUM.

“Yes,” they said, “but you see his name was spelled with a ‘K.’”

London is a male, a great, gloomy being, sitting up on his island, rough, unshaven, besmeared with cinders and smut, and glowering across at the courtesan Paris as she graciously smiles back at him with every wile. For Paris is a woman.

In London nobody wants to see you. There is a “get out” sign on the side of every wall, and broken glass on the top. Even the weather frowns on you, making you feel that you are not wanted. But in Paris, the very first man you meet, from the cab driver to the waiter in the café, is very glad to see you and gives you the impression that you are his personal guest. On the north side of the Channel, the Atlantic Ocean roars like an infuriated bull, while on the south side it hurls itself against the coast like an angry woman. In fact, all the male characteristics are those of London—dignity, strength, coarseness, and brute force—but in Paris there is never a trace of these. There is only charm.

Paris never shocks you. There is much low life and there is crime, but it is treated in an artistic way. Every so often they have a wholesale raid to get rid of the undesirables. At a stated time, on a summer evening, suddenly will come marching down all the streets which lead to the tenderloin district hundreds of police, walking four abreast and making a dragnet which sweeps everything before it. Everyone who cannot tell his business, any solitary woman, is caught in its meshes and brought up before the authorities. I was sitting in the Café Américain one night, with a drink before me, when a woman in an evening gown rushed frantically up to my table, saying:

“You are my brother.”

Nothing loath, I took the cue, but asked, “What is it you want to do?”

“Oh, don’t you know what is happening?” she said. “It is the _cordon_.”

She took my arm and I escorted her to the door, she all the time protesting her eternal gratitude. If she had been seized alone by the police, that last shame would have been hers. She would have been “put on the card” and become automatically a registered prostitute.

Nothing like this happens in London. There, in the first dusk of evening, little girls hardly twelve years old walk past the Criterion Bar and the Haymarket, dressed in long skirts, smirking and smiling and proclaiming their profession to any male they happen to meet. These children are unmolested, and no one seems to object to it in the least, although their manner and language are disgusting as well as pitiable. Then again there are the old women, drunken, disorderly creatures, always ready to engage a chance loiterer in conversation and taking the opportunity to whisper vulgar remarks in his ear; their flabby bodies and flying wisps of coarse gray hair and the ages of vice in their countenances almost denying their human origin. But to all of this London is blissfully unconscious—it is merely the gross side of a male—and, as such, is ignored.

My first visit to London was when I was still a student in Paris. I was given one hundred dollars by a patron, evidently with the best intentions, to go across the Channel and paint a portrait of the last of the old-fashioned tallyho-coach drivers. I was a stranger in a strange city; I had never felt the frosted shoulder before. Every other place I had been, even in the north of California, I had been able to make myself at home almost instantly, but here in the country of my ancestors, where every man was as near to me in blood as the people of Concord, Massachusetts, I was as much an alien as if I had been of Oriental origin. I managed to locate the coachman and found him an interesting character, but I could not make any arrangements about painting him; it was impossible to do it in his house. I could not find a studio, and before I had hardly turned around I found my pile reduced to about thirty-five shillings. I decided it was about time to go back to my friends.

Choosing the longest and the cheapest trip across the Channel, I found I could just about get to St. Malo, third class, if I did not have a stateroom. I had a right to occupy one of the berths in the downstairs cabin, but, upon finding it filled with about eighty seasick butter merchants, drinking and yelling, I decided to escape the vile odors and bluff it out on deck, with my ulster to keep me warm. I have never been sick on the water before or since, but the whole situation and my worried state of mind drove me to it, and I shall never forget the pathetic picture I must have made curled up in the scuppers, trampled on by the crew, my greatcoat covering myself and a cabin boy who was making his first trip and was also in a very bad condition. There was a blinding snowstorm, and we lay to the leeward of the Isle of Guernsey, making the crossing last eight hours. Upon landing, the cabin boy recovered first and carried my grip, while I went across the gangplank on all fours and just managed to reach a hotel and telegraph my friend Frank Chadwick, who was down in Concarneau, to bail me out.

After such memories, I was rather loath to go back to the great capital of my ancestors, and have never made long visits to London. But the English are gentlemen, and, as gentlemen, have a delicate sense of humor. _Punch_ will be stupid for six months at a time, and all of a sudden will come out with some witty picture or saying that will ring around the world and be remembered for years.

London is the center of the English-speaking race, and its opinion goes for all of us; but it seemed like a foreign land to me every time I entered, and I was glad to see that I was not alone in my feeling. I never read the travels of Robert Louis Stevenson that I do not realize that when he went to England he instantly felt himself among strangers. Be that as it may, they do not treat us as they do colonials, toward whom, if they do not ignore them, the shoulder is always hunched. They, at least, do us the honor to scrap with us, which shows they consider us worthy of much consideration. In all these arguments, it is best to get in the first blow and then you are all right.

Only once do I remember feeling perfectly at home in London, and that was the first time I visited Westminster Abbey. I must have been in a prophetic mood or else the atmosphere of so many dead warriors influenced my mind, for the friend who was with me wrote to me in 1917—more than thirty years later, saying:

We went to see the historical sights of London, and you were

## particularly moved in Westminster Abbey. As we stood in the corridor

outside, you made a solemn prediction to this effect: “Twenty or thirty years from now, when Germany conquers France, as she surely will unless England has the sense to step in in time—she will then try to conquer England. This she can do, unless America comes to the rescue. When Americans face the destruction of Westminster Abbey, they _will_ come to the rescue. Then at last the war of 1775 will come to an end.”

On one occasion, while entering the city by the railway (I was feeling fine from a reinforcement of several real old Scotch whiskies), I took out a coin, a penny, and said:

“This is a wonderful country. I no sooner get here than for a couple of our copper cents (with a picture of an Indian, badly done, upon the face) I receive this large, weighty, and dignified coin of pure bronze upon which is a bas-relief of Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.”

From the other side of the compartment leaned forward a retired British major—a man you could see had evidently conquered with difficulty his childish habit of dropping his aitches. In a gentle, deprecating voice, he answered:

“My dear young sir, permit me to hope that during your stay with us here you will refrain from any desire to make a mock of our holier institutions. Do not, I pray you, carp at Our Gracious Majesty.”

He did not get down on his belly on the floor—only mentally—but I had the awful feeling that he was longing to do so. Queen Victoria (and that was long before the admirable book by Lytton Strachey) could never produce such an effect upon a sane Yankee.

Speaking of aitches, I once told Leslie Stephen that every Englishman was careless with them, even himself. He roared and insisted that only the lower classes dropped them or added them. I then asked him to say, “White witch which I met on the Isle of Wight.” Of course he stumbled. This softening of the aitch to a point where it seems to disappear is a habit peculiar to the inbred Britisher—just as the “r” is to the Bostonian and the “d” to the Spaniard.

I once discussed this with an educated and learned Englishman from the commoner class. He was only a graduate of the College of London, but knew his Latin and Greek better than any American and had been spending his time teaching the children of the vulgar rich of Pittsburgh. He insisted that the habit of dropping the aitches was prevalent in those parts of England where the Romans had permanently settled—all along inside the Wall. He cited a poem of Catullus which mocked at the fashionable dudes of Rome for the foolish habit they had taken up of dropping and adding their aitches. If this were the fashion in the mother country, it would certainly have penetrated to the Roman settlers of England.

My later attempts at an artistic invasion of London were no more successful than my first poor effort to paint a cockney coachman. In the year 1888 I sent two pictures to the Royal Academy which were duly accepted and hung. Imagine my joy when a large and formidable communication found its way to my studio in Paris, asking the price of one of my canvases and signed by the Chantry Bequest. This was a well-known fund created to buy pictures for the government to place in its permanent galleries, and everyone knew that, once the price had been asked, it amounted to the same thing as a sale. In fact, according to the British precedent—which is generally iron-bound, a request _was_ a sale. I replied, as they expected me to do (this was also according to rule), that my price was four hundred pounds. The picture, which I called “The Carpenter’s Son,” was a simple pose of one of my children in my studio. A blond boy with a light shining over his head sat dreaming, instead of sweeping out the shop, while his mother, in the back, told his father what a worthless son he had begotten. The shavings had accidentally fallen in the form of a cross, and the light seemed to be a halo. The _Scotsman_ came out with a scathing denunciation of the work (not at the idea, mind you) but because, as they said, I had been sacrilegious enough to paint Christ in the costume of a French peasant boy! Of course, the Chantry Bequest did not buy—for the first time—after asking the price.

It was very amusing to hear that when the picture was afterward exhibited in America, a woman of the old New England type was seen standing before it and weeping, saying between sobs:

“Oh, what a terrible thing! They have crucified our Saviour again!”

This was more than a Concord Unitarian could understand.

The next year I took courage and sent another canvas to the Academy—this time an inoffensive thing of an old man kissing his wife good-by—which I called “Darby and Joan.” Through some mistake, it was marked “sold” in the book which is left on a table to give the record of sales. Some of my friends seeing this, and having it confirmed by the person in charge, telegraphed me congratulations, I being away down in Cornwall. It was customary to notify the artist as soon as a sale was consummated and, as I heard nothing, I wrote to the secretary (whom we always called “Pants Exclusively,” on account of his tradesman instincts) and asked him to confirm it. He answered that one of the officials had marked the book by mistake and that the picture was not sold. I wrote and asked him to take it off the book and to advertise it as “still for sale.” No answer. All through that exhibition my picture was hung and marked “sold,” thereby preventing anyone else from buying it, and this in spite of the fact that I wrote to protest about it three times. Then I did a terrible thing! I issued a writ against the Royal Academy! British honor was sullied, British institutions had been assailed. Never before had anyone dared to invoke the law against that august and distinguished body—the Royal Academy!

[Illustration:

“THE CARPENTER’S SON”

Hitherto unpublished photograph of the painting by Edward Simmons, now hanging on the walls of the home of Miss Amelia Jones, New Bedford, Massachusetts

_Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print, Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston_ ]

My final letter ran something like this:

DEAR SIR—In my country, when dealing with gentlemen, I get an answer. In dealing with you, I do not. I appeal to the law.

I received a most pathetic letter from “Pants Exclusively” and a large, formidable parchment apology from the trustees of the Academy.

In the meantime the London papers burst out with indignant articles against the person who had dared to sue the Academy, calling him all sorts of names and saying it was a bit of “cheap American advertising.” Immediately a flock of reporters came down to Cornwall, all ready to start a beautiful fight. I produced my parchment apology, resulting in the gentle fading away of newspaper representatives and a lovely article about me in the next morning’s papers.

This carelessness of the Academy had been going on for years. I had known of several similar cases where the artist supposed his work had been sold and was afterwards told it was a mistake. One year a friend of mine, with true artistic optimism, gave a large dinner party to celebrate his good luck, and, of course, expected to settle for it with the check he was to receive. He was months paying for that dinner. At that he may have been lucky. He at least got his picture back. There were many lost and never returned, and any protest from the painter only met with indifferent silence.

The English are sentimental, though—especially where they do not understand—and, yes, I shall have to admit it, so are we of New England. Sitting in the drawing-room of a prominent British woman, I was astonished to hear her say, upon the announcement that a pianist was about to play a well-known selection of Mendelssohn: “Songs Without any Words! What a pity!” In painting they prefer canvases that have some literary significance; a story with a heart appeal frequently attracts more attention than a far greater work that is more abstract.

The year after Sargent had exhibited his “El Jaleo” in the Salon, his close friend, Ralph Curtis, was bothered to death by all the busybodies who wanted to know what the next picture would be. One day Curtis answered:

“I’ll tell you. Sargent is painting, for the Salon, a circle of naked women sitting on red velvet cushions, called ‘Daughters of Sin.’”

“But he can’t send it to the Academy afterward,” they cried.

“Oh yes, he can!” replied Curtis. “He’ll just change the title to ‘Waiting for the Omnibus,’ and they will never think to look at the painting.”

There was always a great deal of talk about Sargent’s titles. At Paris in ’89, I was dining at Stanley Reinhart’s with a number of men when some one spoke of the portrait painter’s Academy picture of that year. It was a beautiful thing of girls hanging Japanese lanterns in a garden of flowers at twilight. They said he had called it, “Carnation, lily, lily, rose.” I said at once, “Damnation, silly, silly, pose.” They thought it quite a joke, and some one wrote to Abbey about it, who answered that Luke Fildes had made that remark three weeks ago. His thought must have been almost simultaneous with mine, he in England and I in France. This shows how people may be falsely accused of plagiarism.

Of my own pictures, there was one of an old man with two children gazing out to sea, which I had named “Low Tide.” My mother called upon the English tailor who bought it, as she had never happened to see it. He was very polite and treated her with great reverence, and then proceeded to explain her son’s work to her.

“You see, the old man has just returned from sea and the little girl has laid her hand on his arm, telling him that his daughter and her mother—has passed away during his absence. It is called, ‘Mother’s Dead.’”

And this in spite of the metal plate on the frame which announced the title in large letters! Another time, a Yankee girl—dripping with sentiment about my poetry of mind and deep thinking—told me of the sad picture she had seen of mine of the poor mother who, having lost her first child, was mending its little shoe in expectation of a second. I was puzzled until she mentioned the title, “No. 2.” In my earlier days, I started numbering my pictures—as a musician’s “opus”—until one of the members of my family insisted that I give it up. I had gotten as far as 1 and 2, then stopped. It was a picture of a girl in a blue calico jacket with a darker blue skirt, mending a child’s little blue varnished boot. Just a peasant I had seen; she was about ten or twelve, but I had evidently made her look older. What an astonishing explanation for my simple harmony of blues!

Frank Millet used to say, “Put a Bible on the table or a letter bordered in black on the floor if you want to sell your picture at the Royal Academy,” and I think this is borne out by an incident that happened to a friend of mine in Cornwall. He was a bully fellow from a titled family which objected to his artistic tendencies. He came to me one fall, asking me what he should paint to send to the Academy, saying that it was very important that he should have a picture exhibited and sold, as his family had given him one last chance. I asked him to show me the canvas he had sent the year before. He fetched out a thing, remarking indifferently that it had been refused.

“Give me five minutes and some paint,” I said, “and I’ll bet you I can fix it so that it goes in and is sold.”

“What will you bet?” he asked.

“Two guineas.”

“Done.”

It was a fairly good landscape of two tall poplars reflected in a pool in the late afternoon. I put a dab of rose on the tops of the trees and on their reflections, making the effect of a sunset light. Then I got a gold panel for the frame, painting on it in most artistic Old English lettering, these touching words:

“The last sad kiss of dear departing day.”

It went to the Academy; it was sold for two hundred pounds; I got my ten. Of course, everybody _knew_ where the verses came from—either Thompson’s “Seasons” or Wordsworth, etc.—and I was perfectly willing to let the dead poets have the credit for such sentimentality.

##