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Ebook has 2138 lines and 95261 words, and 43 pages
FENWICK'S COTTAGE
This cottage, known as Robin Ghyll, is situated near the Langdale Pikes in Westmoreland. It is owned by Miss Dorothy Ward, the author's daughter. The older part of the building served as the model for Fenwick's cottage.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
EUG?NIE
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
PHOEBE'S RIVAL
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
'BE MY MESSENGER'
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
ROBIN GHYLL COTTAGE
A nearer view of Miss Ward's cottage.
FENWICK STOOD LOOKING AT THE CANVAS
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
INTRODUCTION
Fenwick's career was in the first instance suggested by some incidents in the life of the painter George Romney. Romney, as is well known, married a Kendal girl in his early youth, and left her behind him in the North, while he went to seek training and fortune in London. There he fell under other influences, and finally under the fascinations of Lady Hamilton, and it was not till years later that he returned to Westmoreland and his deserted wife to die.
The story attracted me because it was a Westmoreland story, and implied, in part at least, that setting of fell and stream, wherein, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, I am always a willing wanderer. But in the end it really gave me nothing but a bare situation into which I had breathed a wholly new meaning. For in Eug?nie de Pastourelles, who is Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'--which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in the world.
On looking through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea. The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type, intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory type and class, which delights in the capture of man. When I began to write the first scene in which Eug?nie was to appear, she was still nebulous and uncertain. Then she did appear--suddenly!--as though the mists parted. It was not the woman I had been expecting and preparing for. But I saw her quite distinctly; she imposed herself; and thenceforward I had nothing to do but to draw her.
The drawing of Eug?nie made perhaps my chief pleasure in the story, combined with that of the two landscapes--the two sharply contrasted landscapes--Westmoreland and Versailles, which form its main background. I find in a note-book that it was begun 'early in May, 1905, at Robin Ghyll. Finished on Tuesday night or rather Wednesday morning, 1 A.M., Dec. 6, 1905. Deo Gratias!' And an earlier note, written in Westmoreland itself, records some of the impressions amid which the first chapters were written. I give it just as I find it:
'The exquisiteness of the spring. The strong-limbed sycamores with their broad expanding leaves. The leaping streams, and the small waterfalls, white and foaming--the cherry blossom, the white farms, the dark yews which are the northern cypresses--and the tall upstanding firs and hollies, vigorously black against the delicate bareness of the fells, like some passionate self-assertive life....
'Elterwater, and the soft grouping of the hills. The blue lake, the woods in tints of pale green and pinkish brown, nestling into the fells, the copses white with wind flowers. Everywhere, softness and austerity side by side--the "cheerful silence of the fells," the high exhilarating air, dark tortured crags and ghylls--then a soft and laughing scene, gentle woods, blue water, lovely outlines, and flower-carpeted fields.
The book was continued at Stocks, during a quiet summer. Then with late September came fatigue and discouragement. It was imperative to find some stimulus, some complete change of scene both for the tale and its writer. Was it much browsing in Saint-Simon that suggested to me Versailles? I cannot remember. At any rate by the beginning of October we were settled in an apartment on the edge of the park and a stone's throw from the palace. Some weeks of quickened energy and more rapid work followed--and the pleasures of that chill golden autumn are reflected in the later chapters of the book. Each sunny day was more magnificent than the last. Yet there was no warmth in the magnificence. The wind was strangely bitter; it was winter before the time. And the cold splendour of the weather heightened the spell of the great, dead, regal place; so that the figures and pageants of a vanished world seemed to be still latent in the sharp bright air--a filmy multitude.
MARY A. WARD.
PART I
WESTMORELAND
'Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?'
Really, mother, I can't sit any more. I'm that stiff!--and as cold as anything.'
So said Miss Bella Morrison, as she rose from her seat with an affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours. The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room beside the artist and his subject. The mother looked up slightly, and without pausing in her knitting--'It's no wonder you're cold,' she said, sharply, 'when you wear such ridiculous dresses in this weather.'
It was now the daughter's turn to flush; she coloured and pouted. The artist, John Fenwick, returned discreetly to his canvas, and occupied himself with a fold of drapery.
'I'm sorry you're not satisfied, Miss Morrison,' said the artist, stepping back from his canvas and somewhat defiantly regarding the picture upon it. Then he turned and looked at the girl--a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime--going up to his easel again after the look to put in another touch.
As to his expression of regret, Miss Morrison tossed her head.
'Bella! don't be rude!' said her mother, severely. She rose and came to look at the picture.
Bella's colour took a still sharper accent; her chest rose and fell; she fidgeted an angry foot.
The girl turned away, and Fenwick, glancing at her in dismay, saw that she was on the point of indignant tears.
Mrs. Morrison put on her spectacles. She was a small, grey-haired woman with a face, wrinkled and drawn, from which all smiles seemed to have long departed. Even in repose, her expression suggested hidden anxieties--fears grown habitual and watchful; and when she moved or spoke, it was with a cold caution or distrust, as though in all directions she was afraid of what she might touch, of possibilities she might set loose.
She looked at the picture, and then at her daughter.
'It's not flattered,' she said, slowly. 'But I can't say it isn't like you, Bella.'
'Well, good-bye, Mr. Fenwick.' She turned to the painter. 'I'd rather not sit again, please.'
'I shouldn't think of asking you, Miss Morrison,' murmured the young man, moving aside to let her pass.
'Hullo, hullo! what's all this?' said a cheery voice at the door. 'Bella, where are you off to? Is the sitting done?'
'It's been going on two hours, papa, so I should think I'd had about enough,' said Miss Bella, making for the door.
But her father caught her by the arm.
And drawing the unwilling girl once more towards the painter, he detained her while he scrutinised the picture.
'Do I squint, papa?' said Miss Morrison, with her head haughtily turned away.
'Wait a minute, my dear.'
'Be quiet, Bella; you disturb me.'
Bella's chin mounted still higher; her foot once more beat the ground impatiently, while her father looked from the picture to her, and back again.
Then he released her with a laugh. 'You may run away, child, if you want to. Upon my word, Fenwick, you're advancing! You are: no doubt about that. Some of the execution there is astonishing. But all the same I don't see you earning your bread-and-butter at portrait-painting; and I guess you don't either.'
The speaker threw out a thin hand and patted Fenwick on the shoulder, returning immediately to a close examination of the picture.
'I told you, sir, I should only paint portraits if I were compelled!' said the young man, in a proud, muffled voice. He began to gather up his things and clean his palette.
He turned towards his wife, pushing up his spectacles to look at her. He was a tall man, a little bent at the shoulders from long years of desk-work; and those who saw him for the first time were apt to be struck by a certain eager volatility of aspect--expressed by the small head on its thin neck, by the wavering blue eyes, and smiling mouth--not perhaps common in the chief cashiers of country banks.
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