Bushey

The Station Master’s direction was accurate. “Bushey? Turn by that ’ere pub and keep a-goin’.”

The road was a long squirm without any actual turnings.

Herkomer had built a theatre in connection with his Bushey art school; more time was now devoted to drama, they said, than to Art. For earnest Art I was advised to go to John Whiteley, Number 9, Meadows Studios.

The Meadows Studios stretched in a long row. Of unplaned lumber, linked together like stitches in a chain of crochet, they ran across a hummocky field, spattered with kingcups. Each frame building was one room and a thin corridor wide. Each had a door into the emaciated passage and a large north window.

The land around Bushey dipped and rose pastorally and was dotted with sheep, cows and spreads of bluebells. Everything was yellow-green and pearly with young spring. Larks hurried up to Heaven as if late for choir practice. The woods in the hollows cuckooed all day with cuckoos; the air melted ecstatically into the liquid of nightingale music all night.

John Whiteley was a quiet man and shy, his teaching was as honest as himself. There were sixteen students in his class, men and women. We worked from costumed models, often posed outdoors among live greenery. The students were of the Westminster type—cold, stand-offish. They lodged in the village. Being mid-term, all rooms were full, so I had to climb the hill to a row of working men’s houses to find accommodation. Many in the row were glad to let rooms.

The man and wife in my house kept the kitchen and the front bedroom for their own use, renting the front room downstairs, into which the house door opened, and the back, upstairs bedroom. The back door was their entrance. They were expecting their first baby—and were singing happy about it, so happy that they just had to do something for somebody. They showed me many kindnesses. When there was nothing else she could think of the woman would run into their tiny patch of back garden and pull half a dozen rosy, tender-skinned radishes for my tea.

The man, returning from labouring as a farm hand, would ask of me, “Can ’er go through you, Miss; it be a long round from back. ’Er’s not spry jest now. Us likes listenin’ to nightingales down to valley”—and, passing hand in hand through my room, they drifted into the dimness of the dusky fields.

Mr. Whiteley’s was a silent studio. No one talked during pose; few spoke during rests. To English girls Canadians were foreigners. A snobby trio in the studio were particularly disagreeable to me. They rented a whole cottage and were very exclusive. The bossiest of the three was “Mack”, an angular Scotch woman. The other two were blood sisters and English. They had yellow hair and black eyes and were known as “The Canaries”. After an ignored week, I came into the passage one morning to find a scrawny youth trying to make up his mind to knock on Mr. Whiteley’s door.

“This Mr. Whiteley’s studio?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see him?”

“He does not come for ‘crit’ before ten.”

The youth fidgeted.

“What’ll I do? I’m a new student.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

He threw a terrified look round the room when I opened the door, saw the work on the easels and calmed. I think he had expected a nude model. I got him an easel and board, set him in a far corner where he could not be overlooked, showed him where to get charcoal and paper. He was very grateful, like a chicken from a strange brood that an old hen has consented to mother. He stuck to me. The Canaries and Mack froze, throwing high noses and cold glances over our heads.

That night there was a tap at my door. A tall, loose-knit boy stood there. He said, “I’m from St. Ives. The students said to be sure to look you up. My name is Milford and do you mind if I bring Mother to see you? I’m going to Whiteley’s too. Mother’s come to settle me in—she’s two doors off.”

Milford had a stepfather who considered both stepsons and art unnecessary nonsense. The mother doted on Milford. “The dear boy won’t chew, such poor digestion. Keep an eye on his eating,” she pleaded, “insist that he chew and, if you would take charge of his money. He spends it all the first day, afterwards he starves!”

I said I would do my best over Milford’s chewing and cash. I felt very maternal with two boys under my wing.

Milford lived down the street; his table was pushed close to the window. I passed at mealtimes whenever possible and yelled up, “Chew, Milford, chew!” He kept his weekly allowance in a box on my mantelpiece.

“Can I run up to London this week-end?”

We would get the box down and count. Sometimes I would say, “Yes,” and sometimes, “No, Milford, you can’t.”

Milford and I sketched around the Bushey woods. Little Canary followed us. Presently we would find her easel set close to ours. Milford and I humanized those Canaries. (We never tackled Mack.) Little Canary soon ate out of my hand; she was always fluttering around me, and I gave her a hard flutter too. I made her smoke, damn, crawl through thorny hedges, wade streams. I brought her home in such tatters as made Big Canary and Mack gasp.

They were provoked at Little Canary for accepting my lead. I behaved outrageously when Mack and Big Canary were around; I wanted to shock them! I was really ashamed of myself. The boys grinned; perhaps they were ashamed of me too—they were English. Mack would say, “Where were you brought up?” and I would retort, “In a different land from you, thank Heaven!”

One Saturday morning I came to Studio late. The door banged on me and I “damned”. I felt shudders and tension in the room, then I saw two strangers—a doll-pretty girl, and an angular sourness, who knitted beside the doll while she drew.

Kicking Little Canary’s shin, I mouthed, “Who?”

“Wait till rest,” Little Canary mouthed back.

It seemed that the silk-smocked, crimp-haired girl was titled and a tremendous swell, an old pupil of Mr. Whiteley’s. The other was her chaperon. They had been abroad. This was their first appearance since I had been at Mr. Whiteley’s studio. The girl only “arted” on Saturday mornings and was always chaperoned. The chaperon had been heard to allude to Mr. Whiteley’s Studio as “that wild place!” Her lips had glued to a thread-thin line when I “damned”. She stopped knitting, took a shawl from their various luggages, draped it over the doll’s shoulder that was nearest to the wind which had rushed in with my entry.

She took the doll’s spectacles off her nose, polished them and straddled them back again, sharpened six sticks of charcoal neatly into her pocket-handkerchief, then shook the dust and sharpenings over the other students and resumed knitting. After class they were escorted to their waiting carriage by a footman bearing the girl’s work gear. The Canaries and Mack bowed as they passed.

I laughed all the way home, then I drew and rhymed a skit in which we all decided that we must bring chaperons to this “wild place”. Even the Master had to “bring his loving wife and she their children three.”

The model said, “I will not sit

In solitude alone,

My good old woman too must come

And share the model throne!”

I took my skit to class on Monday. The Canaries were very much shocked,—a student caricaturing a master!

“Suppose he saw!” they gasped.

“It would not kill him,” I grinned.

At rest I was sitting on the fence, giggling over my skit with the boys when Mr. Whiteley came by.

“Can I share the joke?”

The boy holding the sketch wriggled, “It does not belong to me, sir, it is Miss Carr’s.”

Mr. Whiteley looked enquiringly at me.

“Just some nonsense, but certainly if you wish to, Mr. Whiteley.”

He took the skit in his hand, called “Pose”; it was the last pose of the morning. Dead silence in the studio, Canaries very nervous. Noon struck, model and students filed out, Mr. Whiteley settled himself to read, to look. The Canaries hovered; they were going to be rather sorry to see me evicted from the class—in spite of my being colonial and bad form it had been livelier since I came, they said.

Chuckle, chuckle, laugh, roar! Great knee-slap roars! No one ever dreamed Mr. Whiteley could be so merry. The hovering Canaries stood open-mouthed.

“May I take this home to show my wife?”

“Certainly, Mr. Whiteley.”

“This chaperon business has always amused her.”

He did not bring my skit back next morning, instead he took from the wrapping a beautiful sketch of his own.

“Will you trade?” he held out the sketch—“My wife simply refuses to give your skit up!”

“She is most welcome to it, Mr. Whiteley, but it is not worth this.”

“We think so and, anyway, I should like you to have a sketch of mine to take back to Canada.”

There was wild jealousy. Mack happened to be home ill. Little Canary asked, “May I take Mr. Whiteley’s picture to show Mack?”

Mack said, “Huh! I doubt that Canadian is capable of appreciating either the honour or the picture!”

In the little wood behind the Meadows Studio, where the cuckoos called all day, I learned a lot. Like Mr. Talmage, Mr. Whiteley said, “Trot along to your woods; I will give you your ‘crit’ there, where you are happy and do your best work.”

That was a luscious wood, lovely in seeing, smelling and hearing. Perpetual spring seemed to be there.

I remember with affection and gratitude something special that every Master taught me. Mr. Whiteley’s pet phrase was, “The coming and going of foliage is more than just flat pattern.” Mr. Talmage had said, “Remember, there is sunshine too in the shadows,” when my colour was going black. Sombreness of Tregenna! Sunshine of Bushey! Both woods gave me so much, so much, each in its own splendid way, and each was interpreted to me by a good, sound teacher.