PART V.
THE GIRL WHO GOES IN FOR ART.
“To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm than all the gloss of art.”—Goldsmith.
The last girl of the girl-who-goes-in-for-art type that I have known is one Norma.
She is owner of a studio having few pictures in it, and those few indicating that she holds what was Balzac’s view of le beau (c’est le laid). It used to be a point of courtesy to term ugly persons clever; it has become a point of courtesy to term ugly pictures so. They offend this girl direfully who do not so term her ugly pictures.
Quite as typical as she is the girl who shares her studio.
Picture to yourself a curiously invertebrate-looking person of some prettiness of that distinctive type to which the name pre-Raphaelite is a little vaguely applied, a girl with lips habitually parted and her tongue much shown, this giving her a foolish look, as the same thing gave Coleridge a foolish look. Just as Coleridge had, however, a fine brain, so has this girl. Among a thousand and one affectations under which she hides her very real cleverness, a leading one is that which distinguishes her speech. She favours adjectives with the suffix some. “Lovesome” is in high vogue with her. This word found favour with Chaucer, so it may pass. “Dovesome” is less pleasing, though it is handy as a rhyme. Other two adjectives in “some” favoured by the girl who shares Norma’s studio are “oilsome” and “weepsome.” She apologises for extending an “oilsome” hand; she describes a kindly act as “weepsome.”
Altogether this girl’s use of descriptive words is very remarkable. She more rarely has recourse to the French language than her ancestresses had. The words recherché and distingué are never heard from her; but, so far from its being true that she taboos French altogether, she prefers banal to “trite,” and bourgeois to “vulgar.” This thing is the more regrettable that she pronounces French less well than her predecessors did.
The vein of censure of the girl who goes in for art is, it is only fair to say, on the whole mild. Her abomination is the cheap and the shoddy, but she rarely uses these words because, she says, they pain her mouth. For old-fashioned she uses preferably “suburban” (pronounced s’burban), or “early-Victorian,” or “rococo.” These words are not synonymous, but she uses them as synonyms. Finally, her use of the word “elementary” is interesting. A symmetrical arrangement of wall-pictures is objected to by her as “elementary.” Symmetry is a thing very abominable to her.
This girl’s name is Margaret, and she is called in her circle “the Meg.” The girl who goes in for art is rarely called by her name. This thing was so ten years ago, when some of us knew a girl whose initials were W. P., and whose nickname was Willow Pattern.
This girl was lovely and was loved. Her lover was woefully poor, but that troubled Willow Pattern not at all. He had, she said, “a rich chin.” They married, and they are to this day as happy as happy can be. Nota bene: They are still poor, the world says; for the world is so blind that it has never noticed that Willow Pattern’s husband has a rich chin.
They manage to eke out a living by picture-painting. If they would paint portraits they would be somewhat less poor, but they will not do that. A British matron tells how she once in this matter fared with Willow Pattern.
“I want you,” said the British matron, “to paint my portrait.”
Said Willow Pattern, “Sorry I can’t do that; but I will make a picture of you if you like; I shall put a swan in it, and call it ‘Woman and Swan.’ Do you mind?”
“Well, yes, rather,” admitted the British matron. “I wanted to be done as just me; but never mind, you shall have the job all the same.”
Said Willow Pattern (gasping), “I beg your pardon.”
Said the British matron, “Now get out your paints, child, and do me.”
So far there has been nothing said of Lilla. Lilla, by the irony which often rules in names, is a sallow, shady-lipped girl. Her hair is dressed in one thin plait worn round the head, and I always see her as I last saw her—sitting before a cup of cold tea, with the milk like a mackerel sky on it. She was talking to another girl. I did not hear their talk, being myself in conversation with the fourth person present, but I noticed the singular beauty of Lilla’s voice, and here and there such fragments of quaint inversion as, “Hither came,” “I like it much,” “Think you?”
Next of kin, mentally, to the girl who goes in for art is the girl who goes in for art-criticism. This girl sits much with her hands folded and reads reviews not only of books, but of pictures and concerts. There is such a girl in London of to-day who never knows how much or how little she has enjoyed a concert until after perusal of the subsequent morning’s paper. This girl is aged sixteen.
Going in for Art criticism
There is such another girl in London upon whom a perfect raid is made by persons humorous when the Academy exhibition of pictures opens. Most people, not professional artists, according to this girl, go about picture-exhibitions idiotically admiring everything. Nothing will induce her to believe that this spirit of admiration is perhaps not so much the result of idiotcy as it is the result of a clear consciousness on the parts of those feeling it that they lack all painting ability and so may fairly regard, with mingled wonder and delight, the work of persons who, to state the case for them at the lowest, do not lack all painting ability.
Sentimental nonsense that, according to the girl who goes in for art-criticism, and who points out that here the projection of a shadow is obviously wrong, there the execution is flabby; here the design is feeble; there the treatment of the lights, while striking, is technically questionable. If all that came from a girl at first hand, one would lose all hope of her, but every word of it has been read where most of us can read it, and a certain naïveté attaches to the pompous retailing of it, which naïveté is as a saving grace; howbeit there are persons who will not recognise this fact. It is said of a great painter living that he “foams at the mouth” when a certain young girl is named, because she once told him for his encouragement that a picture of his was in her deeming “beautifully felt;” and there is a pianist of note who vows that he will remember till his death that a young English girl informed him that he had “a beautiful finger.” The jargon of art on the lips of young girls apparently fails to please.
Felt badly
There is another vein of language which the girl with artistic tendencies sometimes works, and which equally misses, in some cases, the desired effect.
“What is your sister like?” asked a boy of another boy recently.
“Oh, she’s one of those girls who jabber about sunsets,” was the answer. “Want to speak to her?”
“Not me!”
The despiser of sunset
Wit is not a shining quality of this type of girl, but once in a while she contrives to be quits with the other person.
“In my days,” said a severe old person some little time ago, “a girl could only be one of three things: a teacher, a shop-girl, or a servant-maid. To-day you can be doctor, gardener, whatnot. You have only to make your choice. My opinion being that you have not the slightest talent for art, Gladys, let me know what you would like to be.”
Gladys (piqued): “Of the three things you have named, ‘whatnot’ displeases me least.”
The severe old person smiled.
Two innocents abroad, one being likewise artless
This sketch shall be brought to a close with a story of two innocents abroad, one of them having been the girl who goes in for art.
They were evidently trippers—wedding-trippers. This is precisely what happened. They were standing before a world-famed picture in a world-famed gallery. I, standing albeit at some distance from them, seemed to myself to be in fullest evidence; but perhaps I was not. There were no other persons in the room. The girl said—
“You should not say of a portrait, dear, that it looks as if you could walk round it. It sounds all right, but it’s the wrong thing to say.”
To which he, smiling—
“Who told you so?”
“Reynolds.”
To which he, no longer smiling—
“Who’s Reynolds?”
“Never heard of Sir Josh——”
“Oh, yes. I didn’t know you meant him. Of course, I’ve heard of him. What made him say that?”
“I’m not sure; but it may have been that he thought if you saw a real man you wouldn’t say, ‘He looks as if you could walk round him,’ and of course you wouldn’t.”
He, smiling anew—
“No, perhaps not.”
“Well, then”—she was now in fine pedagogical vein—“looking at a man or woman in a picture, you should feel just what you would feel looking at a real man or woman. That’s what I understand by it, dear.”
“You’re awfully clever, darling, and so was Sir Joshua, no doubt; but it’s not human nature to feel towards a man or woman in a picture just what you would feel towards a real man or woman.”
As he said this, the exponent of human nature walked round the girl by his side, then caught her in his arms and kissed her. When this demonstration was over, she said—
“It would have been horrid, wouldn’t it, dear, if anything had come between us and our marriage? You needn’t say ‘yes,’ because I know you mean it. Besides there’s somebody over there, and perhaps she’s taking notes.”
Perhaps she was; she was in a public building.
It is one characteristic by which you shall know the girl who goes in for art, that she and those with whom she by preference associates behave in public very much as they behave in private. This makes some frown, and makes some—smile.
(To be continued.)
[THE RULES OF SOCIETY.]
By LADY WILLIAM LENNOX.