As our train slithered through the small prettiness of Devonshire I was angered. My parents had so lavishly praised its beauty to us when we were children. I wondered if after many years in Canada it would have seemed as small and pinched to them as it did to me seeing it for the first time—something one could fold up and put in his pocket, tiny patches of grass field hemmed about with little green hedges.
When we came to Cornwall, the land grew sterner and more jagged—stony fields, separated by low stone walls, stunted, wind-blown trees, wild but not with the volume of Canada’s wildness. Cornwall’s land had been punished into tameness, but her sea would always be boisterous, stormy. From Devonshire to Cornwall the land changed; Devon was, as it were, pernickety check, while Cornwall loosened to broader plaid.
My luggage looked sneaky and self-conscious wheeled into the Temperance Hotel. I knew Mrs. Compton’s red wine blushed in its middle. I tried to forget its presence as I entered the Hotel, a sour-faced structure down in the old town. Never having stayed alone in a hotel before, I entered timidly.
The old town of St. Ives lay low, its rocky edges worn by the violence of the sea. On the hillside above was a smarter, newer St. Ives, composed of tourist hotels, modern houses and fine studios of Artists who had inherited wealth or made names—few students could afford the heights. Most students other than snobs and the ultra-smarts lived down among the fisherfolk in the old town. Fisherfolk packed themselves like sardines in order to enlarge their incomes by renting rooms to student lodgers. Many of the old sail lofts were converted into studios.
A few students lived at the Temperance Hotel and from them I made enquiry about studios.—Did I want work or studio tea-parties?—Work? Then go to Julius Olsen’s Studio; he worked you to the last gasp!
To Julius Olsen I presented myself.
Julius Olsen’s studio had been an immense sail loft overlooking the sea. The massive, blue-eyed Swede carelessly shoved my fee into the sagging pocket of his old tweed jacket, waved a hand towards the beach and left me stranded like a jelly fish at low tide, he striding off to criticize canvases which some boy students were turning from the walls.
“I’ll show you,” said an Irish voice at my elbow.
Hilda was the only girl student in the room.
“You will want to outfit?” she asked.
“I have my kit.”
She looked at it with disapproval.
“Too light—‘Jo’ insists on weight,”—she exhibited her own equipment.
“Gracious! that easel is as heavy as a cannon and that enormous brass-bound paintbox! I can’t, I won’t lug such heaviness.”
“Jo bellows if you cross his will,” warned Hilda.
“Let him roar!”
She led me to the open front of the studio. Great doors folded back, creating an opening which was wide enough to admit three or four fishing boats abreast. A bar was fixed across the opening, we leaned on it looking at the busy fisher life buzzing on the beach below. Morning fish market was in progress. Buyers raced down from London on swift express trains, bartered for the night’s catch, raced it back to London’s markets. Not Cornwall ate St. Ives’ fish, but London. In St. Ives you could not buy so much as one herring.
Shrill-voiced fish-wives bargained, children yelled, cats yowled. Every house-roof, every street, every boat, swarmed with cats.
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits!
This was obviously the cat St. Ives of our nursery rhyme book.
The tide was far out. Looking down on it all, I was suddenly back in Mrs. Compton’s drawing room standing before Moffat Linder’s picture, “St. Ives’ Beach”. Sky, sea, mudflats were shown but he had left out the bustle and the smell.
“Now,” said Hilda, “to the sands and work!”
“Not work on those sands amid that turmoil!”
“Jo insists—white boats in sunlight—sunlight full on the canvas, too.”
“Jo will find me in a shady street-end sitting with my back to the wall so that rubbernoses can’t overlook.”
Hilda’s head nodded forebodings beyond wording. “I’d advise that you don’t let him see you work sitting,” was her parting headshake. Leaving me to my fate she went off, lugging her heavy kit.
Stump, stump, I heard Jo’s heavy footfalls on the cobbles and trembled, not scared of Jo, the man, but of Jo’s artist eye, a splendid eye for colour, space, light. Nervous as a cat, I waited.
“Sitting to work!”
“Bad foot, sir.”
“Huh! I said the sands, didn’t I? Sunshine on sea and white boats. With the first puff that thing will blow out to sea,” pointing to my easel. “Get the weighty ‘Standard’.”
“Too heavy to lug, sir. Mine is weighted. See!”
I showed him a great rock suspended in a paint-rag and hung from my easel top.
“If you please, sir, the glare of sea and white sand blind me with headache.”
Jo snorted, strode away—adoring English students never argued with their masters. He came back by-and-by, gave a grunt, made no comment and was away again! That was my first day of study under Julius Olsen. We remained antagonistic always. I believe each admired the other’s grim determination but neither would give in.
The St. Ives students were a kindly lot—ready to give, ready to take, criticism. We numbered ten or more in the studio. Three Australian boys, a Frenchman, an ultra-Englishman, and an ultra-Englishwoman, (swells rooming up on the hill), a cockney boy, the Irish girl, myself, and the nondescript old women who are found in most studios just killing time.
We met in the big studio at eight each morning to receive “crits” on the work done the afternoon before. Olsen gave us criticisms three times a week, his partner, Talmage, the other three days. What one taught the other untaught; it was baffling but broadening. After “crit” we dispersed. The master came wherever we were working to examine our work on the spot. From eight in the morning till dusk we worked outdoors, in all weathers except during hurricanes. The great studio doors were shut then and we huddled under the studio skylight and worked from a model. But St. Ives was primarily a school for land- and seascape painting.
I found living quarters next to the churchyard. My host was a maker of antiques; he specialized in battering up and defacing old ship’s figure-heads and grandfather clocks. Six grandfathers higgledy-piggledyed their ticks in my sitting room. When they all struck high-count hours simultaneously your hands flew to your ears, and your head flew out the window.
My window opened directly onto the cobblestoned street with no mediating sidewalk. Heavy shoes striking cobblestones clattered, clattered day and night.
Student heads, wrapped in student grins, thrust themselves through my window announcing, “We are about to call!” Then I rushed like a flurried hen to protect “the complete beach”. This object was an enormous mahogany and glass cabinet in which was displayed everything nautical except a mermaid—shells, coral, seaweed, fish-bones, starfish, crabs—all old and brittle as eggshell. My foot and that of every student who called on me itched to thrust through the prominent glass corporation of this rounded glass monster, to crush, to crackle.
My hosts, the Curnows, valued the thing highly. When a student warned through the window, I pushed the six straight-backed leather chairs whose leather laps were usually under the big mahogany dining-table (as if the chair feet had corns and were afraid of having them tramped on) and circled the chairs, round “the complete beach”. The room was not any too large. What with this massive furniture, a fire-place, the cat and me in it, it was over-full.
My bedroom was marvellous! You reached it through an ascending streak of black between two walls. The treads were so narrow that they taught your toes the accuracy of fingertips on a keyboard. But glory dawned when I opened my bedroom door. Two large windows overlooked the sea. In the centre of the room stood an enormous bed—mahogany, carved with dolphins galloping on their tails. Mrs. Curnow told me this treasure-antique was built in the room by Pa Curnow himself. It would have sold many times over, only it had been built in the room, and could never be moved because no door, no window, certainly not our stair, would have permitted the passage of its bulk!
There were four posts to the bed and a canopy of pink cotton. I was solemnly warned not to lay so much as a pocket-handkerchief across the foot-board for fear of scratching or otherwise defacing a dolphin. Even on the side-boards dolphins galloped. I had to taut myself, run and vault in order to avoid touching one, when at night I retired to rest on the hard, unbouncy mattress. Beside the bed there was little else in the room—a meagre washstand, a chair, a clothes closet set in the wall. The closet contained all the family’s “best”. This is a Cornish way; rental of a room does not include its cupboards.
My Curnow family were reputed the cleanest folk in St. Ives because for years they had threatened to install a bath in their house. No other family had gone that far. I bargained for a hot wash once a week. The three women, mother and two girls who would never see forty again, gravely consulted. It could be managed, they said mournfully, but Saturday was always an anxious and disturbed day for the Curnow family.
Ma tiptoed into my room after supper and, carefully shutting the door, whispered, “The cauldron, Miss, it is heated to wash your feet.”
She would not have allowed “the girls” to hear mention of such a thing as a bath. No one suspected me of such indecency as taking an “all-over”! The tin foot-bath was set as far as possible from the dolphins, who were draped in pink calico for the event. Greatest secrecy was exercised in getting the bath down the dark stair and through the kitchen without old Curnow or a visitor seeing. The girls frankly admitted they preferred men lodgers. If they must bathe they did it in the sea.
When storms came the whole St. Ives Bay attacked my room with fury and with power. The house was built partly on the sea-wall, and waves beat in thuds that trembled it. The windows, of heavy bottle-glass stoutly braced, were dimmed with mazed green lights. I was under the sea. Sea poured over my roof, my windows were translucent, pouring green, which thinned, drew back receding in a boil of foam, leaving me amazed that the house could still be grounded. Water raced up the alley between the graveyard wall and our house, curled over the cobble-street to meet the flood pouring over the low roof-top of the house on the other side of ours.
We were surrounded by water. Privies, perched on the sea-wall, jaunted gaily off into the bay. Miles inland bundles of white fluff, dry as wool, clung to the trees; it was beaten foam, carried inland by tearing wind. These storms were, of course, exceptional but there was usually breeze in St. Ives, though she had many, many bright, glistening days—sea sparkling, air clear, mudflats glowing.
Tides ruled the life of the town and of the fishermen. All night lanterns bobbed, men shouted, boats clattered over cobbles, cats prowled the moonlight, their eyes gleaming.
The Irish girl Hilda and I were warm friends. Outdoors we did not work together—she was for sea, I for land. But we hired fisher children to pose for us in the evenings, working by a coal-oil lamp in my sitting room. The boy students jeered at our “life class” but they dropped in to work with us off and on.
The atmosphere of Julius Olsen’s studio was stimulating. He inspired us to work. He was specially nice to his boy students, inviting them up to his own fine studio on the hill, showing them his great seascapes in the making, discussing an artist’s problems with them, treating them as fellow workers.
Mrs. Olsen was a billowy creature who only called on those of her husband’s students who were worth while; she did not call on me.
I never liked Jo much, but I respected his teaching and the industry which he insisted that his students practise and which he practised himself.
Christmas came, everyone went home except me. The Olsens went to Sweden on their yacht. Noel, a nice English student, came to bid me good-bye.
“I say, it’s going to be beastly lonely for you with everybody gone—studio shut. What shall you do with yourself?”
“Explore. Albert will still be here, he will pilot me, he knows Cornwall.”
“Albert! That wretched little cockney!” said the autocrat, Noel, with a lift of his nose.
“I could visit, too, if I wanted.” I tossed a letter across for Noel to read.
“Whew—horses to ride and all and you turned this down!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t like the outfit, connections by marriage, snobs, titled too!”
“What matter? Put likes and dislikes in your pocket, silly; take all the good times you can get.”
“Take and hate the giver?”
Noel shrugged, “I was going to ask Mother to invite you to visit us in the summer holidays. How about it, Miss Snifty?”
“Try.”
“Tell me, what are you doing at this present moment?” asked Noel. “Hat, felt slipper, snipping, sewing—it’s beyond my figuring entirely!”
“Felt from under hat ribbon provides patch for toe of slipper. See, Mr. Dull-Head?” I fitted the patch.
Noel’s roaring laugh—“Canadian thrift!” He vaulted through the window shouting, “I’ll ask Mother about the summer visit.”
Cornish people love a wrench of misery with every joy. The Curnows wept all through Christmas. I came upon Pa, Ma, and both girls, stirring the plum pudding, eight eyes sploshing tears down into the mixing bowl.
“Anything wrong?”
“Always something wrong for we,” wailed Ma.
It seemed some relative preferred to Christmas elsewhere than with the Curnows. Their grief seemed so disproportionate to the cause that I laughed. Eight mournful looks turned upon me.
“You be awfu’ merry, Miss. Thousands of miles betwixt you and yours, yet you larf!” There was reproach in the voice.
Under the guidance of Albert I saw Polperro, Mousehole, St. Earch, St. Michael’s Mount and more places. Little cockney Albert enjoyed having company. He was not quite one of us—no one bothered about him.
For one week Albert and I holidayed, then I fell on work with doubled fury. I knew I was a fool, grinding, grinding, but I had so much to learn, so little time.
They all came trooping back to the studio. Olsen outstayed himself by a matter of six weeks. Talmage took charge. High on the hill I had discovered Tregenna Wood—haunting, ivy-draped, solemn Tregenna. Talmage saw what I had been doing up there during the holidays, away from the glare and racket of St. Ives. He was a calm, gentle man, one who understood.
“Trot up to your woods; that’s where you love to be. I will come there and give you your lesson.”
I gave a delighted squeal. “Oh, but, Mr. Talmage, wouldn’t it be too far for you to come for my lesson alone. None of the other students work there.”
“Trot along; one works best where one is happy.”
Tregenna Wood was solemn, if not vast. A shallow ravine scooped through its centre. Ivy crept up the tree-trunks to hang down in curtains. No students worked here, few people passed this way. A huge white sow frequented Tregenna, a porky ghost, rustling through the bushes. She aimed always to pass at lunch hour so that she might share my lunch. If I had any form of pigmeat (Mrs. Curnow often gave me fat pork sandwiches), then, out of delicacy, I did not offer anything but the breadcrust.
The students teased me about my “lady friend in Tregenna” but I loved my sow. I wrote a poem and made a skit about the students and her. It was more complimentary to the sow than to the students.
I said to Talmage, “I don’t care if Jo never comes back; I learn much more from you than from him.”
“Jo is the better artist,” replied Talmage. “Jo is a genius. What I have got has been got through grind. Probably that helps me to understand my students’ problems better.”
He praised my woods studies highly, so did the students.
Jo came home.
“Jo’s home! ‘Crits’ in the studio at eight tomorrow!” A student’s head thrust the news through my window.
I had a vast accumulation to show Jo. I knew the work was good—happy, honest stuff. I swung into the studio with confidence. Jo was pacing the floor. The Frenchman sat crying before his easel. Jo gave me a curt nod, “Fetch your stuff.”
I turned my canvases face out, waited—silence, except for Jo’s snorts through a dead pipe.
“Maudlin! Rubbish!” he bellowed, pointing his dead pipe at my canvases. “Whiten down those low-toned daubs, obliterate ’em. Go out there,” (he pointed to the glaring sands) “out to bright sunlight—PAINT!”
Kicking the unlucky canvases into a corner, I bolted. No one was going to see me as I had seen Frenchie.
On a desolate road far beyond the town I came to my unhappy self. On either side [of] the way were fields of frosted cabbages. I crept among them to sit down on a boulder, rocking myself back and forth, crying, crying till I was very hideous and very hungry.
I got up. I’d see how the others came out. I dragged myself back to town.
Burgess, one of the Australians, studied under Jo, but he had a studio of his own. Burgess and I had a pact. He had chased away a fisherman who had religious mania and tormented any student he could find working in a quiet corner, as to their views on purgatory. In return I went to Burgess’ studio when the Frenchman had declared his intention of giving him a “crit”, because, unless Burgess had company, the Frenchman would kiss him, not only on one but on both cheeks.
It took three knocks to rouse a dreary, “Come in.” When I pushed open the door Burgess was seated on a three-legged stool before a dead grate, his red hair wild, his hands shaky. He kicked forward another stool.
“Poor Mother, she will be so disappointed. Do you suppose Grant’s will take back that gold leaf frame?”
“The one for your Academy picture?”
“Academy! I’m returning to Australia right away. You may have the pile of canvas stretchers.”
“Thanks, but I’m thinking of leaving for Canada myself immediately.”
Shamed grins spread over our faces.
“Let’s call on the rest, see what Jo did to them.”
We met Ashton; he was whistling.
“Get a good ‘crit’, Ashton?”
“You bet.”
“Liar,” muttered Burgess. “Hello! There’s Maude, . . . morning, Miss Horne, taken your ‘crit’?”
“Criticism first morning after Jo’s vacation! Not I. Jo always returns in a rage. This time it is two rages—his usual and a toothache. You pair of young fools!” she grinned at our grief-wracked faces. “Poor children, I s’pose you knew no better.” Maude put on airs.
“I’m hungry as a hunter, Burgess. I’ll run home for a bit, then the sun will be just right for painting those cottages in the Diji. Oh, about those canvas stretchers?”
“Needing them myself!”
We exchanged grins. Burgess had forgotten Australia. I had forgotten Canada. With noses and hopes high we were off again to work.
When long vacation came I went back to London.
A sneezing creature sitting next me in the train gave me ’flu. When that was through with me, I crawled to Westminster. ’Flu had sapped the energy I had forced so long. Mildred found me huddled on a bench in the Architectural Museum, among the tombs—idle.
“Why, Motor!”
“After ’flu, Mildred.”
“If we were not just starting for Switzerland I’d take you home right now.”
Mrs. Radcliffe groaned, “You’d best take a strong tonic, Klee Wyck. Why you should fall to pieces the moment you come to London I can’t imagine. London suits me all right.”
Always kind, Fred said, “Try Bushey, Herts, Klee Wyck—Herkomer’s Art School, a big art colony. Bushey is an easy run up to London for exhibitions and galleries. You just don’t thrive as Mother does in London.”
To Bushey I went.
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