Fenwick\'s Career by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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FENWICK'S CAREER

by

MRS HUMPHRY WARD

1910

TO

MY DEAR SISTER

J.F.H.

MAY, 1906

[Illustration: _Robin Ghyll Cottage_]

A PREFATORY WORD

The story told in the present book owes something to the past, in its
picturing of the present, as its predecessors have done; though in
much less degree. The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field,
so long as he sacredly respects what other artists have already made
their own by the transmuting processes of the mind. To draw on the
conceptions or the phrases that have once passed through the warm
minting of another's brain, is, for us moderns, at any rate, the
literary crime of crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is
recorded of the real life of men, as well as all that his own eyes can
see, is offered for the enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and
simple principle; yet it has been often denied. To insist upon it is,
in my belief, to uphold the true flag of Imagination, and to defend
the wide borders of Romance.

In addition to this word of notice, which my readers will perhaps
accept from me once for all, this small preface must also contain
a word of thanks to my friend Mr. Sterner, whose beautiful art has
contributed to this story, as to several of its forerunners. I have
to thank him, indeed, not only as an artist, but as a critic. In the
interpreting of Fenwick, he has given me valuable aid; has corrected
mistakes, and illumined his own painter's craft for me, as none but
a painter can. But his poetic intelligence as an artist is what makes
him so rare a colleague. In the first lovely drawing of the husband
and wife sitting by the Westmoreland stream, Phoebe's face and look
will be felt, I think, by any sympathetic reader, as a light on the
course of the story; reappearing, now in storm, as in the picture of
her despair, before the portrait of her supposed rival; and now in
tremulous afterglow, as in the scene with which the drawings close. To
be so understood and so bodied forth is great good-fortune; and I beg
to be allowed this word of gratitude.

The lines quoted on page 166 are taken, as any lover of modern poetry
will recognise, from the 'Elegy on the Death of a Lady,' by Mr. Robert
Bridges, first printed in 1873.

MARY A. WARD.

CONTENTS

PART I. WESTMORELAND

PART II. LONDON

PART III. AFTER TWELVE YEARS

NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

FENWICK'S COTTAGE

This cottage, known as Robin Ghyll, is situated near the Langdale
Pikes in Westmoreland. It is owned by Miss Dorothy Ward, the author's
daughter. The older part of the building served as the model for
Fenwick's cottage.

HUSBAND AND WIFE

From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

EUGENIE

From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

PHOEBE'S RIVAL

From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

'BE MY MESSENGER'

From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

ROBIN GHYLL COTTAGE

A nearer view of Miss Ward's cottage. (See frontispiece.)

FENWICK STOOD LOOKING AT THE CANVAS

From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

All of the illustrations in this volume are photogravures, and except
where otherwise stated, are from photographs taken especially for this
edition.

INTRODUCTION

Fenwick's career was in the first instance suggested by some incidents
in the life of the painter George Romney. Romney, as is well known,
married a Kendal girl in his early youth, and left her behind him in
the North, while he went to seek training and fortune in London. There
he fell under other influences, and finally under the fascinations
of Lady Hamilton, and it was not till years later that he returned to
Westmoreland and his deserted wife to die.

The story attracted me because it was a Westmoreland story, and
implied, in part at least, that setting of fell and stream, wherein,
whether in the flesh or in the spirit, I am always a willing wanderer.
But in the end it really gave me nothing but a bare situation
into which I had breathed a wholly new meaning. For in Eugenie de
Pastourelles, who is Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody,
not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those
more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have
exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick
indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes
to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel
Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'--which yet, for all its
purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in
the world.

On looking through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea.
The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type,
intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory
type and class, which delights in the capture of man. When I began to
write the first scene in which Eugenie was to appear, she was still
nebulous and uncertain. Then she did appear--suddenly!--as though the
mists parted. It was not the woman I had been expecting and preparing
for. But I saw her quite distinctly; she imposed herself; and
thenceforward I had nothing to do but to draw her.

The drawing of Eugenie made perhaps my chief pleasure in the story,
combined with that of the two landscapes--the two sharply contrasted
landscapes--Westmoreland and Versailles, which form its main
background. I find in a note-book that it was begun 'early in May,
1905, at Robin Ghyll. Finished (at Stocks) on Tuesday night or rather
Wednesday morning, 1 A.M., Dec. 6, 1905. Deo Gratias!' And an earlier
note, written in Westmoreland itself, records some of the impressions
amid which the first chapters were written. I give it just as I find
it:

'The exquisiteness of the spring. The strong-limbed sycamores with
their broad expanding leaves. The leaping streams, and the small
waterfalls, white and foaming--the cherry blossom, the white
farms, the dark yews which are the northern cypresses--and the tall
upstanding firs and hollies, vigorously black against the delicate
bareness of the fells, like some passionate self-assertive life....

'The "old" statesman B----. His talk of the gentle democratic poet
who used to live in the cottage before us. "He wad never taeak wi the
betther class o' foak--but he'd coom mony a time, an hae a crack wi my
missus an me."

'The swearing ploughman that I watched this morning--driving his
plough through old pastures and swearing at the horse--"Dang ye!
Darned old hoss! Pull up, will ye--_pull_ up, dang ye!"

'Elterwater, and the soft grouping of the hills. The blue lake, the
woods in tints of pale green and pinkish brown, nestling into the
fells, the copses white with wind flowers. Everywhere, softness and
austerity side by side--the "cheerful silence of the fells," the high
exhilarating air, dark tortured crags and ghylls--then a soft and
laughing scene, gentle woods, blue water, lovely outlines, and
flower-carpeted fields.

'The exquisite _colour_ of Westmoreland in May! The red of the autumn
still on the hills,--while the bluebells are rushing over the copses.'

The little cottage of Robin Ghyll, where the first chapters were
written, stands, sheltered by its sycamore, high on the fell-side,
above the road that leads to the foot of the Langdale Pikes. But--in
the dream-days when the Fenwicks lived there!--it was the _old_
cottage, as it was up to ten or fifteen years ago;--a deep-walled,
low-ceiled labourer's cottage of the sixteenth century, and before any
of the refinements and extensions of to-day were added.

The book was continued at Stocks, during a quiet summer. Then with
late September came fatigue and discouragement. It was imperative to
find some stimulus, some complete change of scene both for the tale
and its writer. Was it much browsing in Saint-Simon that suggested
to me Versailles? I cannot remember. At any rate by the beginning of
October we were settled in an apartment on the edge of the park and a
stone's throw from the palace. Some weeks of quickened energy and more
rapid work followed--and the pleasures of that chill golden autumn are
reflected in the later chapters of the book. Each sunny day was
more magnificent than the last. Yet there was no warmth in the
magnificence. The wind was strangely bitter; it was winter before the
time. And the cold splendour of the weather heightened the spell of
the great, dead, regal place; so that the figures and pageants of a
vanished world seemed to be still latent in the sharp bright air--a
filmy multitude.

This brilliance of an incomparable _decor_ followed me back to
Hertfordshire, and remained with me through winter days. But when the
last pages came, in December, I turned back in spirit to the softer,
kinder beauty amid which the little story had taken its rise, and I
placed the sad second spring of the two marred lives under the dear
shelter of the fells.

MARY A. WARD.

PART I

WESTMORELAND

'Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?'

CHAPTER I

Really, mother, I can't sit any more. I'm that stiff!--and as cold as
anything.'

So said Miss Bella Morrison, as she rose from her seat with an
affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and
not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours.
The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on
his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a
flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she
wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter
himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person
in the room beside the artist and his subject. The mother looked up
slightly, and without pausing in her knitting--'It's no wonder you're
cold,' she said, sharply, 'when you wear such ridiculous dresses in
this weather.'

It was now the daughter's turn to flush; she coloured and pouted. The
artist, John Fenwick, returned discreetly to his canvas, and occupied
himself with a fold of drapery.

'I put it on, because I thought Mr. Fenwick wanted something pretty to
paint. And as he clearly don't see anything in _me_!'--she looked over
her shoulder at the picture, with a shrug of mock humility concealing
a very evident annoyance--'I thought anyway he might like my best
frock.'

'I'm sorry you're not satisfied, Miss Morrison,' said the artist,
stepping back from his canvas and somewhat defiantly regarding the
picture upon it. Then he turned and looked at the girl--a coarsely
pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of
which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom
not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in
springtime--going up to his easel again after the look to put in
another touch.

As to his expression of regret, Miss Morrison tossed her head.

'It doesn't matter to me!' she declared. 'It was father's fad, and
so I sat. He promised me, if I didn't like it, he'd put it in his
own den, where _my_ friends couldn't see it. So I really don't care a
straw!'

'Bella! don't be rude!' said her mother, severely. She rose and came
to look at the picture.

Bella's colour took a still sharper accent; her chest rose and fell;
she fidgeted an angry foot.

'I told Mr. Fenwick hundreds of times,' she protested, 'that he was
making my upper lip miles too long--and that I _hadn't_ got a nasty
staring look like that--nor a mouth like that--nor--nor anything.
It's--it's too bad!'

The girl turned away, and Fenwick, glancing at her in dismay, saw that
she was on the point of indignant tears.

Mrs. Morrison put on her spectacles. She was a small, grey-haired
woman with a face, wrinkled and drawn, from which all smiles seemed
to have long departed. Even in repose, her expression suggested hidden
anxieties--fears grown habitual and watchful; and when she moved
or spoke, it was with a cold caution or distrust, as though in all
directions she was afraid of what she might touch, of possibilities
she might set loose.

She looked at the picture, and then at her daughter.

'It's not flattered,' she said, slowly. 'But I can't say it isn't
like you, Bella.'

'Oh, I knew _you'd_ say something like that, mother!' said the
daughter, scornfully. She stooped and threw a shawl round her
shoulders; gathered up some working materials and a book with which
she had been toying during the sitting; and then straightened herself
with an air at once tragic and absurd.

'Well, good-bye, Mr. Fenwick.' She turned to the painter. 'I'd rather
not sit again, please.'

'I shouldn't think of asking you, Miss Morrison,' murmured the young
man, moving aside to let her pass.

'Hullo, hullo! what's all this?' said a cheery voice at the door.
'Bella, where are you off to? Is the sitting done?'

'It's been going on two hours, papa, so I should think I'd had about
enough,' said Miss Bella, making for the door.

But her father caught her by the arm.

'I say, we _are_ smart!--aren't we, mamma? Well, now then--let me
have a look.'

And drawing the unwilling girl once more towards the painter, he
detained her while he scrutinised the picture.

'Do I squint, papa?' said Miss Morrison, with her head haughtily
turned away.

'Wait a minute, my dear.'

'_Have_ I got the colour of a barmaid, and a waist like Fanny's?'
Fanny was the Morrison's housemaid, and was not slim.

'Be quiet, Bella; you disturb me.'

Bella's chin mounted still higher; her foot once more beat the ground
impatiently, while her father looked from the picture to her, and back
again.

Then he released her with a laugh. 'You may run away, child, if you
want to. Upon my word, Fenwick, you're advancing! You are: no doubt
about that. Some of the execution there is astonishing. But all
the same I don't see you earning your bread-and-butter at
portrait-painting; and I guess you don't either.'

The speaker threw out a thin hand and patted Fenwick on the shoulder,
returning immediately to a close examination of the picture.

'I told you, sir, I should only paint portraits if I were compelled!'
said the young man, in a proud, muffled voice. He began to gather up
his things and clean his palette.

'But of course you'll be compelled--unless you wish to die "clemmed,"
as we say in Lancashire,' returned the other, briskly. 'What do _you_
say, mamma?'

He turned towards his wife, pushing up his spectacles to look at her.
He was a tall man, a little bent at the shoulders from long years of
desk-work; and those who saw him for the first time were apt to be
struck by a certain eager volatility of aspect--expressed by the
small head on its thin neck, by the wavering blue eyes, and smiling
mouth--not perhaps common in the chief cashiers of country banks.

As his wife met his appeal to her, the slight habitual furrow on her
own brow deepened. She saw that her husband held a newspaper crushed
in his right hand, and that his whole air was excited and restless. A
miserable, familiar pang passed through her. As the chief and
trusted official of an old-established bank in one of the smaller
cotton-towns, Mr. Morrison had a large command of money. His wife had
suspected him for years of using bank funds for the purposes of his
own speculations. She had never dared to say a word to him on the
subject, but she lived in terror--being a Calvinist by nature and
training--of ruin here, and Hell hereafter.

Of late, some instinct told her that he had been forcing the pace; and
as she turned to him, she felt certain that he had just received some
news which had given him great pleasure, and she felt certain also
that it was news of which he ought rather to have been ashamed.

She drew herself together in a dumb recoil. Her hands trembled as she
put down her knitting.

'I'd be sorry if a son of mine did nothing but paint portraits.'

John Fenwick looked up, startled.

'Why?' laughed her husband.

'Because it often seems to me,' she said, in a thin, measured
voice, 'that a Christian might find a better use for his time than
ministering to the vanity of silly girls, and wasting hours and hours
on making a likeness of this poor body, that's of no real matter to
anybody.'

'You'd make short work of art and artists, my dear!' said Morrison,
throwing up his hands. 'You forget, perhaps, that St. Luke was a
painter?'

'And where do you get that from, Mr. Morrison, I'd like to ask?' said
his wife, slowly; 'it's not in the Bible--though I believe you think
it is. Well, good-night to you, Mr. Fenwick. I'm sorry you haven't
enjoyed yourself, and I'm not going to deny that Bella was very rude
and trying. Good-night.'

And with a frigid touch of the hand, Mrs. Morrison departed. She
looked again at her husband as she closed the door--a sombre,
shrinking look.

Morrison avoided it. He was pacing up and down in high spirits. When
he and Fenwick were left alone, he went up to the painter and laid an
arm across his shoulders.

'Well!--how's the money holding out?'

'I've got scarcely any left,' said the painter, instinctively moving
away. It might have been seen that he felt himself dependent, and
hated to feel it.

'Any more commissions?'

'I've painted a child up in Grasmere, and a farmer's wife just
married. And Satterthwaite, the butcher, says he'll give me a
commission soon. And there's a clergyman, up Easedale way, wants me to
paint his son.'

'Well; and what do you get for these things?'

'Three pounds--sometimes five,' said the young man, reluctantly.

'A little more than a photograph.'

'Yes. They say if I won't be reasonable there's plenty as'll take
their pictures, and they can't throw away money.'

'H'm! Well, at this rate, Fenwick, you're not exactly galloping into a
fortune. And your father?'

Fenwick made a bitter gesture, as much as to say, 'What's the good of
discussing _that_?'

'H'm!--Well, now, Fenwick, what are your plans? Can you live on what
you make?'

'No,' said the other, abruptly. 'I'm getting into debt.'

'That's bad. But what's your own idea? You must have some notion of a
way out.'

'If I could get to London,' said the other, in a low, dragging voice,
'I'd soon find a way out.'

'And what prevents you?'

'Well, it's simple enough. You don't really, sir, need to ask. I've no
money--and I've a wife and child.'

Fenwick's tone was marked by an evident ill-humour. He had thrown
back his handsome head, and his eyes sparkled. It was plain that Mr.
Morrison's catechising manner had jarred upon a pride that was all on
edge--wounded by poverty and ill-success.

'Yes--that was an imprudent match of yours, my young man!
However--however--'

Mr. Morrison walked up and down ruminating. His long, thin hands were
clasped before him. His head hung in meditation. And every now and
then he looked towards the newspaper he had thrown down. At last he
again approached the artist.

'Upon my word, Fenwick, I've a mind to do something for you--I have
indeed. I believe you'd justify it--I do! And I've always had a soft
heart for artists. You look at the things in this room'--he waved
his hand towards the walls, which were covered with water-colour
drawings--'I've known most of the men who painted them, and
I've assisted a very great many of them. Those pictures--most of
them--represent loans, sir!--loans at times of difficulty, which I
was _proud_ to make'--Mr. Morrison struck his hand on the table--'yes,
proud--because I believed in the genius of the men to whom I made
them. I said, "I'll take a picture"--and they had the money--and the
money saved their furniture--and their homes--and their wives and
children. Well, I'm glad and proud to have done it, Fenwick!--you mark
my words.'

He paused, his eyes on the artist, his attitude grasping, as it were,
at the other's approval--hungry for it. Fenwick said nothing. He stood
in the shadow of a curtain, and the sarcasm his lip could not restrain
escaped the notice of his companion. 'And so, you see, I'm only
following out an old custom when I say, I believe in you, Fenwick!--I
believe in your abilities--I'm sorry for your necessities--and I'll
come to your assistance. Now, how much would take you to London and
keep you there for six months, till you've made a few friends and done
some work?'

'A hundred pounds,' said the painter, breathing hard.

'A hundred pounds. And what about the wife?'

'Her father very likely would give her shelter, and the child. And of
course I should leave her provided.'

'Well, and what about my security? How, John, in plain words, do you
propose to repay me?'

Mr. Morrison spoke with extreme mildness. His blue eyes, whereof the
whites were visible all round the pupils, shone benevolently on the
artist--his mouth was all sensibility. Whereas, for a moment, there
had been something of the hawk in his attitude and expression, he
was now the dove--painfully obliged to pay a passing attention to
business.

Fenwick hesitated.

'You mentioned six guineas, I think, for this portrait?' He nodded
towards the canvas, on which he had been at work.

'I did. It is unfortunate, of course, that Bella dislikes it so. I
shan't be able to hang it. Never mind. A bargain's a bargain.'

The young man drew himself up proudly.

'It is so, Mr. Morrison. And you wished me to paint your portrait,
I think, and Mrs. Morrison's.' The elder man made a sign of assent.
'Well, I could run up to your place--to Bartonbury--and paint those in
the winter, when I come to see my wife. As to the rest--I'll repay you
within the year--unless--well, unless I go utterly to grief, which of
course I may.'

'Wait here a moment. I'll fetch you the money. Better not promise to
repay me in cash. It'll be a millstone round your neck. I'll take it
in pictures.'

'Very well; then I'll either paint you an original finished
picture--historical or romantic subject--medium size, by the end of
the year, or make you copies--you said you wanted two or three--one
large or two small, from anything you like in the National Gallery.'

Morrison laughed good-temperedly. He touched a copy of _The Art
Journal_ lying on the table.

'There's an article here about that German painter--Lenbach--whom
they crack up so nowadays. When he was a young man, Baron Schack, it
appears, paid him one hundred pounds a year, _for all his time_, as
a copyist in Italy and Spain.' He spoke very delicately, mincing his
words a little.

Fenwick's colour rose suddenly. Morrison was not looking at him, or he
would have seen a pair of angry eyes.

'Prices have gone up,' said the painter, dryly. 'And I guess living
in London's dearer now than living in Italy was when Lenbach (which he
pronounced Lenback) was young!'

'Oh! so you know all about Lenbach?'

'You lent me the article. However'--Fenwick rose--'is that our
bargain?'

The note in the voice was trenchant, even aggressive. Nothing of the
suppliant, in tone or attitude. Morrison surveyed him, amused.

'If you like to call it so,' he said, lifting his delicate eyebrows a
moment. 'Well, I'll take the risk.'

He left the room. Fenwick thrust his hands into his pockets, with a
muttered exclamation, and walked to the window. He looked out upon a
Westmoreland valley in the first flush of spring; but he saw nothing.
His blood beat in heart and brain with a suffocating rapidity. So his
chance was come! What would Phoebe say?

As he stood by the large window, face and form in strong relief
against the crude green without, the energy of the May landscape was,
as it were, repeated and expressed in the man beholding it. He was
tall, a little round-shouldered, with a large, broad-browed head,
covered with brown, straggling hair; eyes, glancing and darkish, full
of force, of excitement even, curiously veiled, often, by suspicion;
nose, a little crooked owing to an injury at football; and mouth, not
coarse, but large and freely cut, and falling readily into lines of
sarcasm.

The general look was one of great acuteness, rather antagonistic, as
a rule, than sympathetic; and the hands, which were large and yet
slender, were those of a craftsman finely endowed with all the
instincts of touch.

Suddenly the young man turned on his heel and looked at the
water-colours on the wall.

'The old hypocrite!' he thought; 'they're worth hundreds--and I'll be
bound he got them for nothing. He'll try to get mine for nothing; but
he'll find I'm his match!'

For among these pictures were a number of drawings by men long since
well known, and of steady repute among the dealers or in the auctions,
especially of Birmingham and the northern towns. Morrison had been for
years a bank-clerk in Birmingham before his appointment to the post
he now held. A group of Midland artists, whose work had become famous,
and costly in proportion, had evidently been his friends at one
time--or perhaps merely his debtors. They were at any rate well
represented on the wall of this small Westmoreland house in which he
spent his holidays.

Presently Mr. Morrison was heard returning. He placed an envelope in
Fenwick's hand, and then, pointing him to a chair at the table, he
dictated a form of IOU, specifying that the debt was to be returned
within a year, either in money or in the pictures agreed upon.

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