I believe that those who have been Art students themselves will sympathise with my recollections, and I trust that those who were not will tolerate them. If neither of these expectations is fulfilled, this chapter can be lightly skipped. The damage done on either side will be inconsiderable.
Drawing and riding seem to me to go farther back into my consciousness than any other of the facts of life. I cannot remember a time when I had not a pony and a pencil. I adored both about equally, and if I cannot, even now, draw a horse as I should wish to do it—a fact of which I am but too well aware—it is not for want of beginning early and trying often.
My education in Art has been somewhat spasmodic. I think I was about seventeen when a dazzling invitation came for me from a very much loved aunt who was also my godmother, to stay with her in London and to work for a term at the South Kensington School of Art. There followed three months of a most useful breaking-in for a rather headstrong and unbroken colt. I do not know what the present curriculum of South Kensington may be; I know what it was then. From a lawless life of caricaturing my brethren, my governesses, my clergy, my elders and betters generally, copying in pen and ink all the hunting pictures, from John Leech to Georgina Bowers, that old and new “Punches” had to offer, and painting such landscapes in water colours as would have induced the outraged earth to open its mouth and swallow up me and all my house, had it but seen them, I passed to a rule of iron discipline.
1. Decoration, scrolls and ornament in all moods and tenses.
2. The meticulous study in outline of casts of detached portions of the human frame, noses, ears, hands, feet; and
3. The most heart-breaking and time-wasting stippling of the same.
I well remember how, on a day that I was toiling at a large and knubbly foot, a full-rigged Mamma came sailing round the class, with a daughter in tow. The other students were occupied with scrolls and apples and the like. The Mamma shed gracious sanction as she passed. Then came my turn. I was aware of a pause, a shock of disapproval, and then the words,
“A naked foot, my dear!”
There was a tug on the tow-rope and the daughter was removed.
I imagine it must have been near the end of my three months that my detested efforts were made into a bundle and sent up to high places with a scribble on the margin of one of them, “May Miss Somerville pass for the Antique? E. Miller.”