The drawing by which, as we have said, Mrs. Allingham made her name, obtained election at the Society of Painters in Water Colours, was represented at her first appearance there in 1875, and also at the Paris Exposition in 1878, and through which she obtained the recognition of Ruskin, who thus wrote concerning it in the Notes which he was at that time in the habit of compiling each year on the Summer Exhibitions.
It happens curiously that the only drawing of which the memory remains with me as a possession out of the Old Water-Colour Exhibition of this year—Mrs. Allingham’s “Young Customers”—should not only be by an accomplished designer of woodcuts, but itself the illustration of a popular story. The drawing, with whatever temporary purpose executed, is for ever lovely—a thing which I believe Gainsborough would have given one of his own paintings for, old fashioned as red-tipped daisies are, and more precious than rubies.
Later on, in 1883, in his lectures at Oxford on Mrs. Allingham he again referred to it as “The drawing which some years ago riveted, and ever since has retained the public admiration—the two deliberate housewives in their village toyshop, bent on domestic utilities and economies, and proud in the acquisition of two flat irons for a farthing—has become, and rightly, a classic picture, which will have its place among the memorable things in the Art of our time, when many of its loudly-trumpeted magnificences are remembered no more.”
The black-and-white drawing on which it was founded, a somewhat thin and immature performance, was one of twelve illustrations made by Mrs. Allingham for Mrs. Ewing’s A Flat Iron for a Farthing,[6] where it appears as illustrating the following episode. It will be seen that Mrs. Allingham’s version of the story differs in many points from that of the authoress, which is thus told by Reginald, the only son:—
As I looked, there came down the hill a fine, large, sleek donkey, led by an old man-servant, and having on its back what is called a Spanish saddle, in which two little girls sat side by side, the whole party jogging quietly along at a foot’s pace in the sunshine. I was so overwhelmed and impressed by the loveliness of these two children, and by their quaint, queenly little ways, that time has not dimmed one line in the picture that they then made upon my mind. I can see them now as clearly as I saw them then, as I stood at the tinsmith’s door in the High Street of Oakford—let me see, how many years ago?
The child who looked the older, but was, as I afterwards discovered, the younger of the two, was also the less pretty. And yet she had a sweet little face, hair like spun gold, and blue-grey eyes with dark lashes. She wore a grey frock of some warm material, below which peeped her indoors dress of blue. The outer coat had a quaint cape like a coachman’s, which was relieved by a broad white crimped frill round her throat. Her legs were cased in knitted gaiters of white wool, and her hands in the most comical miniatures of gloves. On her fairy head she wore a large bonnet of grey beaver, with a frill inside. But it was her sister who shone on my young eyes like a fairy vision. She looked too delicate, too brilliant, too utterly lovely, for anywhere but fairyland. She ought to have been kept in tissue-paper, like the loveliest of wax dolls. Her hair was the true flaxen, the very fairest of the fair. The purity and vividness of the tints of red and white in her face I have never seen equalled. Her eyes were of speedwell blue, and looked as if they were meant to be always more or less brimming with tears. To say the truth, her face had not half the character which gave force to that of the other little damsel, but a certain helplessness about it gave it a peculiar charm. She was dressed exactly like the other, with one exception—her bonnet was of white beaver, and she became it like a queen.
At the tinsmith’s shop they stopped, and the old man-servant, after unbuckling a strap which seemed to support them in their saddle, lifted each little miss in turn to the ground. Once on the pavement the little lady of the grey beaver shook herself out, and proceeded to straighten the disarranged overcoat of her companion, and then, taking her by the hand, the two clambered up the step into the shop. The tinsmith’s shop boasted of two seats, and on to one of these she of the grey beaver with some difficulty climbed. The eyes of the other were fast filling with tears, when from her lofty perch the sister caught sight of the man-servant, who stood in the doorway, and she beckoned him with a wave of her tiny finger.
“Lift her up, if you please,” she said on his approach. And the other child was placed on the other chair.
The shopman appeared to know them, and though he smiled, he said very respectfully, “What articles can I show you this morning, ladies?”
The fairy-like creature in the white beaver, who had been fumbling in her miniature glove, now timidly laid a farthing on the counter, and then turning her back for very shyness on the shopman, raised one small shoulder, and inclining her head towards it, gave an appealing glance at her sister out of the pale-blue eyes. That little lady, thus appealed to, firmly placed another farthing on the board, and said in the tiniest but most decided of voices,
“Two flat irons, if you please.”
Hereupon the shopman produced a drawer from below the counter, and set it before them. What it contained I was not tall enough to see, but out of it he took several flat irons of triangular shape, and apparently made of pewter, or some alloy of tin. These the grey beaver examined and tried upon a corner of her cape, with inimitable gravity and importance. At last she selected two, and keeping one for herself, gave the other to her sister.
“Is it a nice one?” the little white-beavered lady inquired.
“Very nice.”
“Kite as nice as yours?” she persisted.
“Just the same,” said the other firmly. And having glanced at the counter to see that the farthings were both duly deposited, she rolled abruptly over on her seat, and scrambled off backwards, a manœuvre which the other child accomplished with more difficulty. The coats and capes were then put tidy as before, and the two went out of the shop together, hand in hand.
Then the old man-servant lifted them into the Spanish saddle, and buckled the strap, and away they went up the steep street, and over the brow of the hill, where trees and palings began to show, the beaver bonnets nodding together in consultation over the flat irons.
The commission to paint this water-colour being unfettered in every way, the artist felt herself at liberty to create a colour scheme of her own—hence the changes in the dresses, etc.; also to put an old woman (after a Devonshire cottager) in place of the shopman, and to make the shop a toyshop instead of a tinsmith’s. The little girl ironing was painted from a study of a Mr. Hennessy’s eldest little daughter; the fair little maiden from Mr. Briton Riviere’s eldest daughter.
9. THE SAND-MARTINS’ HAUNT
From the Water-colour in the possession of Miss James.
Painted 1876.
I passed an inland cliff precipitate;
From tiny caves peeped many a soot-black poll.
In each a mother-martin sat elate,
And of the news delivered her small soul:
“Gossip, how wags the world?” “Well, gossip, well.”
Interesting not only as the earliest example here of Mrs. Allingham’s landscape work, having been painted at Limpsfield, Surrey, in May 1876, and as such full of promise of better things to come, but as an instance of a preference for a complex and very difficult effect, which the artist, on obtaining greater experience, very wisely abandoned. There is little doubt that she was tempted by the glorious wealth of colouring which a low sun threw upon the warm quarry side, the pine wood, and the huge cumuli which banked them up—a magnificent but a fleeting effect, which could only be placed on record from very rapid notes. The result could be successful only in the hands of a practised adept, and it is not surprising, therefore, that in those of an artist just embarking on her career it was not entirely so. The difficulties of the task may have afforded her a useful lesson, for we have seen no further attempts on her part at their repetition.