The Three Brothers; Complete

by Mrs. Oliphant

Next day, perhaps, it would be at Suffolk’s house that Laurie spent his evening, which was a house not unlike the one in which he himself lived,—a thin, tall strip of building in which two rooms were piled upward upon two rooms to the fourth storey. The two parlours on the ground-floor were domestic, and there Mrs. Suffolk sat, very glad to see her husband’s friends when they came in, but not so entirely one of the party as when the padrona was the hostess. Her little room, though it was as prettily furnished as humble means would allow, was not calculated for the reception of a crowd, and after they had paid her their devoirs, the men streamed up-stairs to the corresponding but larger room above, which was the studio,—a place in which there were no hangings to be poisoned with their tobacco, nor much furniture to impede their movements. Perhaps the wife of one would come with him and take off her bonnet and stay with Mrs. Suffolk, bringing her work with her, and resuming those endless, unfailing talks about the children, and the housekeeping, and the injustice of the world. For it must be understood that the artist-life I am attempting to describe is not that of the highly-placed, successful painter, against whom the Academy has no power,—who is perhaps himself on the Hanging Committee, and has the ‘Sword’ at his feet in abject adoration;—but of the younger brotherhood, in a chronic state of resistance to the powers that be, and profoundly conscious of all the opposing forces that beset their path. Little Mrs. Suffolk had care on her brow, as she sat with her sister in art and war, in the little drawing-room down-stairs, discussing the inexpediency of those wanderings to and fro over the earth, which probably both had gone through and enjoyed, but which ofttimes made the public and the picture-dealers oblivious of a young painter’s name. Up-stairs, however, there would probably be five or six young fellows, of a Bohemian race, bearded, and bronzed, and full of talk, who had not yet taken the responsibilities of life on their shoulders, and laughed at the wolf when he approached their door. Two or three of them would collect round Suffolk’s picture, which he had been working at all day, to give him the benefit of their counsel, in the midst of the wreath of smoke which filled the room. Most of them were picturesque young fellows enough,—thanks to the relaxed laws of costume and hair-dressing prevalent among them. And to see Suffolk with the lamp, raising it in one hand to show his work, shading it with the other that the light might fall just where it ought to fall, tenderly gazing at the canvas on which hung so many hopes, with the eager heads round him studying it judicially, would have made such a picture as Rembrandt loved to paint.

‘I don’t quite like that perspective,’ said one. ‘Look here, Suffolk, your light is coming round a corner,—the sun is there, isn’t he?—or ought to be at that time of the day.’

‘What time of the day do you call it?’ said a second.

‘Why, afternoon, to be sure,’ cried the first critic; ‘don’t you see the shadows fall to the left hand, and the look in that woman’s eyes? It’s afternoon, or I’m an ass! Did you ever see a woman look like that except in the afternoon?—sleepiest time, I tell you, of the whole day.’

‘She’s weary of watching, don’t you see?’ said his neighbour. ‘Matter-of-fact soul! But I’d get that light straight if I were you, Suffolk. He’s wrong about the sentiment, but he’s right about the light.’

‘Give us the chalk here,’ said Constable, who had just come back from Italy; ‘there’s just a touch wanted about the arm, if you don’t mind.’

‘The colour’s good, my dear fellow,’ said Spyer, who was older than any of them, and a kind of authority in his way, ‘and the sentiment is good. I like that wistful look in her eye. She’s turned off her lover, but she can’t help that gaze after him. Poor thing!—just like women. And I like that saffron robe; but I think you might mend the drawing. I don’t quite see how she’s got her shoulder. It’s not out of joint, is it? You had better send for the surgeon before it goes down to Trafalgar Square.’

All these blasts of criticism poor Suffolk received, tant bien que mal, doing his best to seem unmoved. He even suffered the chalk which ‘that beggar, Constable—a tree-painter, by Jove!—a landscape man,’ he said afterwards, with the fervour of indignation, permitted himself to mark the dimpled elbow of his Saxon maiden. The mists of smoke and the laughter that came out of the room from cheery companions who were lost in these mists, and the system of give and take, which made him prescient of the moment when Spyer and Constable too would be at his mercy, as he was now at theirs, made their comments quite bearable, when one word from the ‘Sword’ would have driven the painter frantic. And to do them justice, it was only the pictures which were in the course of painting on which they were critical. Groups now and then would collect before that picture of the English captive boys in the Forum, which the Academy had hung at the roof, and which had come home accordingly unapplauded and unsold, though later;—but I need not anticipate the course of events. Suffolk’s visitors gathered before it, and looked at it with their heads on one side, and pointed out its special qualities to each other, not with the finger, as do the ignorant, but with that peculiar caressing movement of the hand which is common to the craft. ‘What colour! by Jove, that’s a bit of Italian air brought bodily into our fogs;—and the cross light is perfect, sir!’ Spyer said, who had just been so hard on his friend’s drawing. If they found out faults which the uninstructed eye was slow to see, they discovered beauties too; and then gathered round the fire, and fell into twos and threes, and went back to that same talk of the past and the ‘old set,’ in which Laurie had indulged on the previous night. The ‘old set’ varied according to the speakers; with some it was only the fellows at Clipstone Street; but with all the moral was the same; the cheery days and nights, the wild sallies of youthful freedom, the great hopes dwindled into nothing, the many, many fallen by the way, not one-half of the crowd seeming to have come safely through the struggles of the beginning. ‘Poor So-and-so! If ever there was a man who had a real feeling for art, it was he; and as good a fellow’—they added, puffing forth meditative clouds; and there would be a laugh the next moment over some remembered pranks. Laurie had formed one of many such parties ere now. He, too, had been of the ‘old set:’ he had his stories to contribute, his momentary sigh to breathe forth along with the fumes of his cigar. But, perhaps, he had never in his amateur days felt so completely belonging to the society in which he found himself. Sometimes, perhaps, he had laughed a little, and given himself a little shake of half-conscious superiority when he left them, and set out to Kensington Gore as to another world; but Charlotte Street was emphatically the same world, and the esprit de corps was strong in Laurie’s heart. ‘Anch’io pittore,’ he said to himself as he stood indignant before Suffolk’s beautiful picture which had been hung up at the roof. It was a beautiful picture; and one of these days the Hanging Committee might treat himself in the same way; and if by chance criticism should really be so effectual as everybody said, why should not something be done for Suffolk—using the devil’s tools, as it were, to do a good action—by means of Slasher and the ‘Sword?’

The majority of the young men went away after an hour’s talk and smoke unlimited; but Laurie was one of those who remained and went down to supper, along with Spyer and Constable, to the back room down-stairs, which was the little dining-room. Mrs. Suffolk was very careful to keep the folding-doors shut, and to make two rooms, though it certainly would have been larger and might have been more comfortable had they been thrown into one. It was Mrs. Spyer who was her companion that evening, who was older than she, and commented a little sharply on this poor little bit of pretension, as Laurie walked part of the way home with the pair. ‘I like nice dining and drawing-rooms as well as any one,’ Mrs. Spyer said, ‘but if I were Helen, I would be comfortable, and never mind.’ ‘All the same she is a good little woman,’ her husband had said, irrelevantly;—for, to be sure, nobody doubted that she was a good little woman. They had cold beef and celery and cheese on the table, and refreshed themselves with copious draughts of beer. I do not say it was a very refined conclusion to the evening, but I think Laurie was better amused and more interested than after many a fine party. He walked home with Spyer, talking of Suffolk’s picture, and the injustice that had been done him, jettant feu et flamme, as they mentioned the Academy, yet hoping that band of tyrants could not be so foolish two years running. ‘The thing is, to have him written up in the papers,’ Spyer said; ‘a fellow of his talent cannot be long kept in the background; but if the papers were to take him up, it would shorten his probation.’ ‘I hate the papers,’ said Mrs. Spyer. ‘Why don’t we have private patrons, as we used to have, and never mind the public? To think of a wretched newspaper deciding a man’s fate! I would not give in to it for a day.’

‘But we must give in to it, or else be left behind in the race,’ said her husband. And Laurie thought more and more, as he listened to all this talk, of the influence he himself might exercise at the club and elsewhere upon Slasher and the ‘Sword.’