“I wonder you don’t go to town,” many persons would say to him; and his reply would be in effect,
“Why should I? I don’t care for London, and I like the country. I can go to town whenever I think proper, and the dealers will buy my pictures whether I go or not. What I get for them, and the few pupils I have in the county, give me enough for all my requirements, and enable me to study quietly and leisurely.”
But there was another reason why Arthur Phillips preferred the country, and that was a reason, which you may guess, for constant visits to the vale of Berne, beyond his desire to study the foliage of the district, and the lights and shadows of the Berne Hills, and the beautiful skies above.
It is true that many of his best sketches were transcriptions of the varied bits of landscape in this district; and he said he had never thoroughly understood Cuyp, Both and Ruysdael, Salvator Rosa, Wilson and Gainsborough, until he knew Berne valley in storm and sunshine, in spring and summer. He was never tired of painting Berne trees and Berne mosses, and the dealers bought these little sketchy bits almost as readily as they would now buy similar things by Birket Foster.
Mr. Phillips was an earnest lover of art; if he had not been a painter he would have been a poet. There was poetry in all his works, the true poetry of nature; and he was as well up in the principles and beauties of poetry as he was in chiaroscuro and perspective.
Nature had given him a mind worthy of the most perfect exterior, but she had denied him many of those charms of person which mostly delight the eye and captivate the heart of woman. He was under the ordinary height, a thin figure, with long black hair, and dark eyes set deeply in a face notable for sharply cut features. The expression was that of a thinker, and his manner nervous and retiring.
Mrs. Somerton had a great objection to Mr. Phillips.
“I don’t think his continually lurking about here bodes any good to those girls,” she said to her husband, over tea, as Mr. Phillips passed by with his sketch book under his arm.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Somerton, laughing. “You don’t think either of the girls will fall in love with an undersized whipper-snapper like Mr. Phillips?”
“There’s no knowing what poor silly women will fall in love with,” said Mrs. Somerton, with a sneer.