Part 1 (1/2)

Miss Bretherton.

by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

PREFATORY NOTE

It ought to be stated that the account of the play _Elvira_, given in Chapter VII. of the present story, is based upon an existing play, the work of a little known writer of the Romantic time, whose short, brilliant life came to a tragical end in 1836.

M. A. W.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

So many criticisms, not of a literary but of a personal kind, have been made on this little book since its appearance, that I may perhaps be allowed a few words of answer to them in the shape of a short preface to this new edition. It has been supposed that because the book describes a London world, which is a central and conspicuous world with interests and activities of a public and prominent kind, therefore all the characters in it are drawn from real persons who may be identified if the seeker is only clever enough. This charge of portraiture is constantly brought against the novelist, and it is always a difficult one to meet; but one may begin by pointing out that, in general, it implies a radical misconception of the story-teller's methods of procedure. An idea, a situation, is suggested to him by real life, he takes traits and peculiarities from this or that person whom he has known or seen, but this is all. When he comes to write--unless, of course, it is a case of malice and bad faith--the mere necessities of an imaginative effort oblige him to cut himself adrift from reality. His characters become to him the creatures of a dream, as vivid often as his waking life, but still a dream. And the only portraits he is drawing are portraits of phantoms, of which the germs were present in reality, but to which he himself has given voice, garb, and action.

So the present little sketch was suggested by real life; the first hint for it was taken from one of the lines of criticism--not that of the author--adopted towards the earliest performances of an actress who, coming among us as a stranger a year and a half ago, has won the respect and admiration of us all. The share in dramatic success which, in this country at any rate, belongs to physical gift and personal charm; the effect of the public sensitiveness to both, upon the artist and upon art; the difference between French and English dramatic ideals; these were the various thoughts suggested by the dramatic interests of the time. They were not new, they had been brought into prominence on more than one occasion during the last few years, and, in a general sense, they are common to the whole history of dramatic art. In dealing with them the problem of the story-teller was twofold--on the one hand, to describe the public in its two divisions of those who know or think they know, and those whose only wish is to feel and to enjoy; and on the other hand, to draw such an artist as should embody at once all the weakness and all the strength involved in the general situation. To do this, it was necessary to exaggerate and emphasise all the criticisms that had ever been brought against beauty in high dramatic place, while, at the same time, charm and loveliness were inseparable from the main conception. And further, it was sought to show that, although the English susceptibility to physical charm--susceptibility greater here, in matters of art, than it is in France--may have, and often does have, a hindering effect upon the artist, still, there are other influences in a great society which are constantly tending to neutralise this effect; in other words, that even in England an actress may win her way by youth and beauty, and still achieve by labour and desert another and a greater fame.

These were the ideas on which this little sketch was based, and in working them out the writer has not been conscious of any portraiture of individuals. Whatever attractiveness she may have succeeded in giving to her heroine is no doubt the shadow, so to speak, of a real influence so strong that no one writing of the English stage at the present moment can easily escape it; but otherwise everything is fanciful, the outcome, and indeed, too much the outcome, of certain critical ideas. And in the details of the story there has been no chronicling of persons; all the minor and subsidiary figures are imaginary, devised so as to ill.u.s.trate to the best of the writer's ability the various influences which are continually brought to bear upon the artist in the London of to-day.

There are traits and reminiscences of actual experience in the book,--what story was ever without them? But no living person has been drawn, and no living person has any just reason to think himself or herself aggrieved by any sentence which it contains.

CHAPTER I

It was the day of the private view at the Royal Academy. The great courtyard of Burlington House was full of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests was pressing up the red-carpeted stairs, over which presided some of the most imposing individuals known to the eyes of Londoners, second only to Her Majesty's beefeaters in glory of scarlet apparel. Inside, however, as it was not yet luncheon-time, the rooms were but moderately filled. It was possible to see the pictures, to appreciate the spring dresses, and to single out a friend even across the Long Gallery. The usual people were there: Academicians of the old school and Academicians of the new; R.A.'s coming from Kensington and the 'regions of culture,' and R.A.'s coming from more northerly and provincial neighbourhoods where art lives a little desolately and barely, in want of the graces and adornings with which 'culture' professes to provide her.

There were politicians still capable--as it was only the first week of May--of throwing some zest into their amus.e.m.e.nts. There were art-critics who, accustomed as they were by profession to take their art in large and rapid draughts, had yet been unable to content themselves with the one meagre day allowed by the Academy for the examination of some 800 works, and were now eking out their notes of the day before by a few supplementary jottings taken in the intervals of conversation with their lady friends. There were the great dealers betraying in look and gait their profound, yet modest, consciousness that upon them rested the foundations of the artistic order, and that if, in a superficial conception of things, the star of an Academician differs from that of the man who buys his pictures in glory, the truly philosophic mind a.s.sesses matters differently. And, most important of all, there were the women, old and young, some in the full freshness of spring cottons, as if the east wind outside were not mocking the efforts of the May sun, and others still wrapped in furs, which showed a juster sense of the caprices of the English climate. Among them one might distinguish the usual shades and species: the familiar country cousin, gathering material for the over-awing of such of her neighbours as were unable to dip themselves every year in the stream of London; the women folk of the artist world, presenting greater varieties of type than the women of any other cla.s.s can boast; and lastly, a sprinkling of the women of what calls itself 'London Society,' as well dressed, as well mannered, and as well provided with acquaintance as is the custom of their kind.

In one of the farther rooms, more scantily peopled as yet than the rest, a tall thin man was strolling listlessly from picture to picture, making every now and then hasty references to his catalogue, but in general eyeing all he saw with the look of one in whom familiarity with the sight before him had bred weariness, if not contempt. He was a handsome man, with a broad brow and a pleasant gentleness of expression. The eyes were fine and thoughtful, and there was a combination of intellectual force with great delicacy of line in the contour of the head and face which was particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long--not of that p.r.o.nounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable dress and general London air.

Mr. Eustace Kendal--to give the person we have been describing his name--was not apparently in a good temper with his surroundings. He was standing with a dissatisfied expression before a Venetian scene drawn by a brilliant member of a group of English artists settled on foreign soil and trained in foreign methods.

'Not so good as last year,' he was remarking to himself. 'Vulgar drawing, vulgar composition, hasty work everywhere. It is success spoils all these men--success and the amount of money there is going. The man who painted this didn't get any pleasure out of it. But it's the same all round. It is money and luxury and the struggle to live which are driving us all on and killing the artist's natural joy in his work. And presently, as that odd little Frenchman said to me last year, we shall have dropped irretrievably into the ”lowest depth of mediocrity.”'

'Kendal!' said an eager voice close to his ear, while a hand was laid on his arm, 'do you know that girl?'

Kendal turned in astonishment and saw a short oldish man, in whom he recognised a famous artist, standing by, his keen mobile face wearing an expression of strong interest and inquiry.

'What girl?' he asked, with a smile, shaking his questioner by the hand.

'That girl in black, standing by Orchardson's picture. Why, you must know her by sight! It's Miss Bretherton, the actress. Did you ever see such beauty? I must get somebody to introduce me to her. There's nothing worth looking at since she came in. But, by ill luck, n.o.body here seems to know her.'

Eustace Kendal, to whom the warm artist's temperament of his friend was well known, turned with some amus.e.m.e.nt towards the picture named, and noticed that flutter in the room which shows that something or some one of interest is present. People trying to look unconcerned, and catalogue in hand, were edging towards the spot where the lady in black stood, glancing alternately at her and at the pictures, in the manner of those equally determined to satisfy their curiosity and their sense of politeness. The lady in question, meanwhile, conscious that she was being looked at, but not apparently disturbed by it, was talking to another lady, the only person with her, a tall, gaunt woman, also dressed in black and gifted abundantly with the forbidding aspect which beauty requires in its duenna.

Kendal could see nothing more at first than a tall, slender figure, a beautiful head, and a delicate white profile, in flas.h.i.+ng contrast with its black surroundings, and with lines of golden brown hair. But in profile and figure there was an extraordinary distinction and grace which reconciled him to his friend's eagerness and made him wish for the beauty's next movement. Presently she turned and caught the gaze of the two men full upon her. Her eyes dropped a little, but there was nothing ill-bred or excessive in her self-consciousness. She took her companion's arm with a quiet movement, and drew her towards one of the striking pictures of the year, some little way off. The two men also turned and walked away.

'I never saw such beauty as that before,' said the artist, with emphasis.

'I must find some one who knows her, and get the chance of seeing that face light up, else I shall go home--one may as well. These daubs are not worth the trouble of considering now!'

'See what it is to be an ”ideal painter,”' said Kendal, laughing. 'At home one paints river G.o.ddesses, and tree-nymphs, and such like remote creatures, and abroad one falls a victim to the first well-dressed, healthy-looking girl--chaperone, bonnet, and all.'

'Show me another like her,' said his friend warmly. 'I tell you they're not to be met with like that every day. _Je me connais en beaute_, my dear fellow, and I never saw such perfection, both of line and colour, as that. It is extraordinary; it excites one as an artist. Look, is that Wallace now going up to her?'