“Well, you shall explain afterwards,” said M. Clemenceau, and Jeremy knew that he was saved because he could deal à deux with M. Clemenceau by appealing to his French heart, his sense of honour, and a number of other things, and might even, with good fortune, extract an invitation to tea, when M. Clemenceau, in his very cosy room, had a large supply of muffins and played on the flute. “Yes,” he thought to himself as they pursued up and down the class-room, sometimes ten at a time, sometimes only three or four, the intricacies of that French grammar that has to do with the pen of my aunt and the cat of my sister-in-law and “this is going to be a splendid day.”
II
Coming out of school at half-past twelve, he found to his exquisite delight that there was a letter for him. He was, of course, far from that grown-up attitude of terror and misgiving at the sight of the daily post. Not for him yet were bills and unwelcome reminiscence, broken promises and half-veiled threats. He received from his mother one letter a week, from his father perhaps three a term, and from his sister Mary an occasional confused scribbling that, like her stories, introduced so many characters one after another that the most you obtained from them was a sense of life and of people passing and of Mary’s warm and emotional heart. Once and again he had a letter from Uncle Samuel, and these were the real glories. It was natural that on this day of days there should be such a letter. The very sight of his uncle’s handwriting—a thin, spidery one that was in some mysterious way charged with beauty and colour—cockled his heart and made him warm all over. He sat in a corner of the playground where he was least likely to be disturbed and read it. It was as follows. It began abruptly, as did all Uncle Samuel’s letters:
Your mother has just taken your Aunt Amy to Drymouth on a shopping expedition. The house is so quiet you wouldn’t know it. I am painting a very nice picture of two cows in a blue field. The cows are red. If you were here I would put you into the picture as a dog asleep under a tree. Because you aren’t here, I have to take that wretched animal of yours and use him instead. He is not nearly as like a dog as you are. I had two sausages for breakfast because your Aunt Amy is going to be away for two whole days. I generally have only one sausage and now just about five o’clock this evening I shall have indigestion which will be one more thing I shall owe your Aunt Amy. The woman came in yesterday and washed the floor of the studio. It looks beastly, but I shall soon make it dirty again, and if only you were here it would get dirty quicker. There’s a rumour that your Uncle Percy is coming back to stay with us again. I am training your dog to bite the sort of trousers that your Uncle Percy wears. I have a pair very like his and I draw them across the floor very slowly and make noises to your dog like a cat. The plan is very successful but to-morrow there won’t be any trousers and I shall have to think of something else. Mrs. Sampson asked your mother whether she thought that I would like to paint a portrait of her little girl. I asked your mother how much money Mrs. Sampson would give me for doing so and your mother asked Mrs. Sampson. Mrs. Sampson said that if she liked it when it was done she’d hang it up in her drawing-room where everybody could see and that that would be such a good advertisement for me that there wouldn’t need to be any payment, so I told your mother to tell Mrs. Sampson that I was so busy sweeping a crossing just now that I was afraid I wouldn’t have time to paint her daughter. When I have done these cows, if they turn out really well, perhaps I’ll send the best of them to Mrs. Sampson and tell her that that’s the best portrait of her daughter I was capable of doing. Some people in Paris like my pictures very much and two of them have been hanging in an exhibition and people have to pay to go in and see them. I sold one of them for fifty pounds and therefore I enclose a little bit of paper which if you take it to the right person will help you buy enough sweets to make yourself sick for a whole week. Don’t tell your mother I’ve done this.
Your sister Mary is breaking out into spots. She has five on her forehead. I think it’s because she sucks her pencil so hard.
Your sister Barbara tumbled all the way down the stairs yesterday but didn’t seem to mind. She is the best of the family and shortly I intend to invite her into the studio and let her lick my paint box.
Outside my window at this moment there is an apple tree and the hills are red, the same colour as the apples. Someone is burning leaves and the smoke turns red as it gets high enough and then comes white again when it gets near the moon, which is a new one and exactly like one of your Aunt Amy’s eyelashes.
I am getting so fat that I think of living in a barrel, as a very famous man about whom I’ll tell you one day, used to do. I think I’ll have a barrel with a lid on the top of it so that when people come into the studio whom I don’t want to see, I shall just shut the lid and they won’t know I’m there. I think I’ll have the barrel painted bright blue.
Your dog thinks there’s a rat just behind my bookcase. He lies there for hours at a time purring like a kettle. There may be a rat but knowing life as well as I do there never is a rat where you most expect one. That’s one of the things your father hasn’t learnt yet. He is writing his sermon in his study. If he knew there weren’t any rats he wouldn’t write so many sermons.
I’ve been reading a very funny book by a man called France, and the funny thing is that he is also a Frenchman. Isn’t that a funny thing? You shall read it one day when you’re older and then you’ll understand your Uncle Samuel better than you do now.