However, Hetty still came to the studio and there were frequent explosions, until at last Mendel, intent on the new independence he had won, declared that he could bear it no longer, and he arranged with Issy to take the top floor of his house and to turn that into a studio. This compromise was successful, and pleased both parties: Golda was happy to be relieved from further friction and Mendel was glad to be away, for he knew that his doings must hurt her, and that he hated. Yet he could see no way out of it. He was done for ever with the old simplicity of his untutored painting in her kitchen. Art was no longer a pure and hardly-won joy. It was a trade, like any other, and, like any other, it had its sordid aspect, and, to compensate for that, it was a career and could also be a triumph. These things he did not expect his mother to understand. He had Mitchell to talk to now, Mitchell to whom to impart the burden upon his soul, and Mitchell and he were to work together and to give to the world such art as it had never seen since the primitives.
Mitchell and he! That friendship was the source of his new confidence. Golda had been and still was much to him, but when it came to painting she knew nothing at all, and painting was the important thing. Through painting lay not only satisfied ambitions and fame and riches, but life itself, and of that what could Golda know?
It was a great thing, therefore, to be established away from home when Mitchell returned from the country. And Mitchell approved. He had suffered from being under his father’s shadow, and with Weldon and Kessler he had taken a studio near Fitzroy Square. He said:—
“A time will come when you will have to leave the East End.”
“I shall never leave them,” replied Mendel. “What I want to paint is there. They are my people, and all that I have belongs to them.”
“Rubbish. You’ll soon be getting commissions, and you can’t ask people who can afford to pay for portraits to a hole like that.”
“They will come to my studio,” said Mendel, “or I will not take their commissions.”
Though Mitchell was rather shocked by his frank conceit, he could not but admire and envy the way his impulses came rushing to the surface and were never deterred by considerations as to the impression he might be making. Mendel trusted Mitchell absolutely and hid nothing from him, neither the most scabrous of his deeds nor the most childish of his desires. He made no secret of the new manly feeling that had come to him through Hetty, the conviction that he could meet the West End on its own terms.
When he showed Mitchell the work he had done during the holidays, his friend said:—
“Gawd! The difference is absolutely startling. There’s charm in every one of them, and they’re not fakes either.”