She is owner of a studio having few pictures in it, and those few indicating that she holds what was Balzac’s view of le beau (c’est le laid). It used to be a point of courtesy to term ugly persons clever; it has become a point of courtesy to term ugly pictures so. They offend this girl direfully who do not so term her ugly pictures.
Quite as typical as she is the girl who shares her studio.
Picture to yourself a curiously invertebrate-looking person of some prettiness of that distinctive type to which the name pre-Raphaelite is a little vaguely applied, a girl with lips habitually parted and her tongue much shown, this giving her a foolish look, as the same thing gave Coleridge a foolish look. Just as Coleridge had, however, a fine brain, so has this girl. Among a thousand and one affectations under which she hides her very real cleverness, a leading one is that which distinguishes her speech. She favours adjectives with the suffix some. “Lovesome” is in high vogue with her. This word found favour with Chaucer, so it may pass. “Dovesome” is less pleasing, though it is handy as a rhyme. Other two adjectives in “some” favoured by the girl who shares Norma’s studio are “oilsome” and “weepsome.” She apologises for extending an “oilsome” hand; she describes a kindly act as “weepsome.”
Altogether this girl’s use of descriptive words is very remarkable. She more rarely has recourse to the French language than her ancestresses had. The words recherché and distingué are never heard from her; but, so far from its being true that she taboos French altogether, she prefers banal to “trite,” and bourgeois to “vulgar.” This thing is the more regrettable that she pronounces French less well than her predecessors did.
The vein of censure of the girl who goes in for art is, it is only fair to say, on the whole mild. Her abomination is the cheap and the shoddy, but she rarely uses these words because, she says, they pain her mouth. For old-fashioned she uses preferably “suburban” (pronounced s’burban), or “early-Victorian,” or “rococo.” These words are not synonymous, but she uses them as synonyms. Finally, her use of the word “elementary” is interesting. A symmetrical arrangement of wall-pictures is objected to by her as “elementary.” Symmetry is a thing very abominable to her.
This girl’s name is Margaret, and she is called in her circle “the Meg.” The girl who goes in for art is rarely called by her name. This thing was so ten years ago, when some of us knew a girl whose initials were W. P., and whose nickname was Willow Pattern.
This girl was lovely and was loved. Her lover was woefully poor, but that troubled Willow Pattern not at all. He had, she said, “a rich chin.” They married, and they are to this day as happy as happy can be. Nota bene: They are still poor, the world says; for the world is so blind that it has never noticed that Willow Pattern’s husband has a rich chin.
They manage to eke out a living by picture-painting. If they would paint portraits they would be somewhat less poor, but they will not do that. A British matron tells how she once in this matter fared with Willow Pattern.
“I want you,” said the British matron, “to paint my portrait.”
Said Willow Pattern, “Sorry I can’t do that; but I will make a picture of you if you like; I shall put a swan in it, and call it ‘Woman and Swan.’ Do you mind?”