Growing Pains (6 page)

A moment’s quiver of homesickness for Canada strangled the Art longing in me. To ease it I began to hum, humming turned into singing, singing into that special favourite of mine, “Consider the Lilies.” Whenever I let that song sing itself in me,
it jumped me back to our wild-lily field at home. I could see the lilies, smell, touch, love them. I could see the old meandering snake fence round the field’s edge, the pine trees overtop, the red substantial cow, knee-deep and chewing among the lilies.

Still singing, I looked up—there over the top of my drawing-board were Nellie McCormick’s clear blue eyes staring straight into mine. I knew that Nellie was seeing our lily field too. I knew the clearness of her eyes was visioning the reflection from my own. Perhaps she did not see the actual lilies—I do not know, but she was feeling their loveliness, their glow, their stillness.

I finished the song. Except for the scrape of my charcoal against the paper there was silence in the room.

“Sing it again.”

Again I sang the lily song. Then a long quiet brooded over the big, empty room—only the charcoal’s scrape and a sigh that was half sob from Nellie. “You rest me,” she said, and was gone.

It was not me, it was the lilies that rested Nellie. I knew our wild lilies. They rested me too, often.

When no one was about Nellie would say to me, “Sing it,” and Nellie and I together went into the lovely home lily field.

ADDA WAS OF PURITAN
stock. I was Early Victorian. We were a couple of prim prudes by education. Neither her family nor mine had ever produced an artist or even known one—tales of artists’ life in Paris were not among the type of literature that was read by our people. If they had ever heard of studying Art from the nude, I am sure they only connected it with loose life in wicked Paris, not with Art. The modesty of our families was so great it almost amounted to wearing a bathing suit when you took a bath in a dark room. Their idea of beauty was the clothes that draped you, not the live body underneath. So because of our upbringing Adda and I supposed our art should be draped. Neither of our families nor we ourselves dreamed that Art schools in new clean countries like Canada and the United States would have any other kind. It was a shock to us to see that close walled corner in the school with the notice “Life Class—Keep Out.” Mrs. Piddington nosed curiously and asked me questions; balked by the “keep out” notice on the Life Class door, satisfied that my ignorance and indifference were not put on, she gave up bothering.

One morning a student of the Life Class, a woman of mature years and of great ability, offered to give me a criticism. Everyone acknowledged that “a crit” from a life-class student was worth while. They did know how to draw. The woman gave my work keen attention.

“You should now go into the Life Class, your work is ready,” she said.

“I will never draw from the nude.”

“Oh? Then you will never be a true artist, never acquire the subtlety in your work which only drawing from the nude teaches both hand and eye, tenderness of flowing line, spiritual quality, life gleaming through living flesh.”

“Why should Art show best through live bareness? Aren’t statues naked enough?”

“Child, you’ve got things wrong, surface vision is not Art. Beauty lies deep, deep; it has power to draw, to absorb, make you part of itself. It is so lovely it actually makes you ache all the time that it is raising you right up out of yourself, to make you part of itself.” Her eyes strayed across the room to the Venus, beautiful but cold standing there on her pedestal. “One misses warmth of blood, flutter of breath in that.”

A girl model slipped through the outer door and darted behind the curtain that hung before the entrance to the Life Class. Priggishly stubborn, I persisted, “
I
shall go on studying from the cast. Look how the creature scuttles behind the curtain hiding herself while she turns the door knob.”

The woman’s voice softened. “Poor little shrinking thing ashamed of her lovely body, never trained to have a model’s pride.”

“Is there anything to learn in being a model? Could a model be proud of being a model?”

“Indeed, there is much to learn and professional models are very proud of their job; most of them too are deeply interested in Art. San Francisco is too new yet, there are not enough professional artists for nude models to earn a livelihood at posing. The school picks up any unfortunate who, at his wit’s end to make an honest living, takes what he can get.”

“Modelling an honest living!”

“Assuredly, that little girl supports her aged parents, hiding from everyone how she does it, burning with shame, in constant agony that someone will find out. A trained model would exult in her profession, be proud of her lovely body, of the poses she has taught it to hold by long hours of patient practice, proud that artists should rejoice in her beauty and reproduce it on their canvas, proud of the delight and tenderness that flow through the artist’s hand as he directs the paint or the charcoal, proud that it was her lovely life that provoked his inspiration, made her come alive on the canvas, will keep her there even after her flesh-self has gone. Child, don’t let false ideas cramp your Art. Statues are beautiful but they do not throb with life.”

Her talk showed me the difference between the words nude and naked. So convinced was I of the rightness of nude and the wrongness of naked in Art that I said nothing to Adda. Momma was always hovering in Adda’s background. Momma’s eye was a microscope under which her every action was placed. Had it not been for Momma I could have made Adda understand. Momma never would. I did not discuss naked and nude with Adda.

MISS BEANER THE
little hunchback did not feel herself insignificant. She did not come up to any of our shoulders as she stood at her easel.

She always picked the biggest images to draw from, preferably Venus. There she stood, her square little chin thrust out, her large feet firmly planted, claw-fingers clutching her charcoal, long arms swinging, and such pitifully poor results! She stood so close under the great images she drew that they were violently foreshortened and became twice as difficult to draw. With her pathetic eyes rolled upwards devouringly and her misshapen body Beany looked foreshortened herself as if a heavy weight had crushed her head down into her hips forcing what was between into a cruel humped ridge.

Beany’s art efforts were entirely ineffectual. The drawing-master obviously disliked going near the deformed creature. Noted always for his terse criticism, all Beany ever got from him was, “Turn over and begin again.” Beany turned and turned, her eyes filled with tears. She never got beyond beginnings.

As soon as the master left the room one or another student would go to Beany and say, “He gave everyone a rotten lesson
today.” That made Beany feel better. Then the student would find something encouraging to say about the poor lines and smudges on her paper and Beany’s long spidery arms would flurry around the helper’s neck, her head burrow into their waist-line. Beany hugged with a horrible tightness when grateful.

Coming from school one day I found a kitten trapped behind the heavy street door at the foot of the outer stair. It was ravenous for food and for petting. It begged so hard to be hugged that I thought of Beany. Maybe the kitten would satisfy her hug-longing. I took it home that night and offered it to Beany next day. She was delighted. As it was a half-holiday, I said I would take it to her house that afternoon.

Beany lived in one of the older and shabbier parts of San Francisco. The front door of the house opened right into the parlour, a drab room full of vases filled with artificial flowers. There was, too, a stuffed canary under glass and some sea shells. The room was a sepulchre. The mantelpiece was draped with the stars and stripes. On the stone hearth (fireless because it was summer) sat a plate of fish cleaned and ready to cook. The kitten made a dart towards the fish. Beany raised them to the mantelpiece, remarking as she fanned her hot face with a small brass fire shovel, “Our parlour hearth is the coolest place in the house.” She was delighted with her kitten and hugged and hugged, first the kitten, then me. Poor Beany, she had so little and could have done with so much. I felt furious all over again with the drawing-master’s cruel “crits,” his not bothering to hide how he loathed her person and despised her work.

THE FRENCHMAN WHO
taught us painting was different from the drawing-master. His “crits” were severe, but his heart was soft—too soft almost. He championed any poor, weak thing. One day he
found the little halfwit Jew-boy with his head down on a table of still-life stuff crying into the heap of carrots, onions and beets.

“What is it, Benny?” The master’s hand on the boy’s head covered it like a hat.

Benny lifted a wet, swollen cheek.

“Dis mornin’ I woked an’ de look-glass tell, ‘You got de toot’-ache, Benny.’ Boys dey say, ‘Why you so fat one side, Benny?’ I say, ‘De look-glass say I got toot’-ache.’ Boys make tease of me!”

A group of grinning students were peeping from behind the screen.

“Make off there! None of that!” roared the Professor.

After that he always kept an eye on Benny. That was the spirit of the old Art School. It seemed that here there was always a champion for the Beanys and the Bennys.

I WAS TOO BUSY
at the Art School to pay much heed to Lyndhurst and Piddington affairs. Mrs. Piddington was watching me closely. Because she was English she called me “my dear” which did not in the least mean that I was dear to her nor she to me. I kept out of Frank’s way. Mrs. Piddington had a good many friends (those people in the Lyndhurst hotel whom she thought worth while). Among them was a widow with two daughters about my own age. I had nothing in common with these girls.

Mrs. Piddington said, “Marie is having a birthday party. She is not asking you because she says she knows no friends of hers who would get on with you.”

“Thank goodness she is not asking me. I hate her stuck-up companions.”

“It is a pity you are not more friendly. You are very much alone.”

“I have lots of friends, thank you, and I have my work.”

“That Art School outfit!” sniffed Mrs. Piddington.

One day Mrs. Piddington said, “How did you get through the square today? I went out just after you and found it impossible because of the dense throng attending that large funeral in the Anglican church.”

“I managed. I found a quiet, lovely little street, so quaint, not one soul in it. The house doors opened so quaintly right onto the pavement. All the windows had close green shutters, nearly every shutter had a lady peeping through. There was a red lantern hanging over each door. It was all romantic, like old songs and old books! I wonder if the ladies flutter little lace handkerchiefs and throw red roses to gentlemen playing mandolins under their windows at night?”

“Stop it! Little donkey!” shouted Mrs. Piddington. “Don’t tell me you went through Grant Street?”

“Yes, that was the name.”

“You went into Grant Street? Haven’t you seen the headlines in the newspaper for the last week? Grant Street a scandal in the heart of San Francisco’s shopping area!”

“I have not time to read the paper. Why is Grant Street a scandal?”

“It is a red light district.”

“What is a red light district?”

“A place of prostitutes.”

“What are prostitutes?”

Mrs. Piddington gave an impatient tongue-click.

“If I ever hear of your going into Grant or any other such place again, home I send you packing! Straight to school, straight home again! Main thoroughfares, no short cuts, d’you hear?”

Frank came into the room. There was an evil grin on his face. He had heard her snapping tones, saw our red faces.

“In hot water, eh kid?”

I hurried from the room.

We had just come up from dinner. Mrs. Piddington was commenting on the family who sat opposite to us at table.

“The man seems very decent to that child.”

“Why shouldn’t he be decent to his own son?” I asked.

“The child is not his.”

“Was the woman married twice? The child calls him father.”

“No, she was not married twice, the boy is not the man’s son.”

“He
must
be!”

She noted my frown of puzzle.

Frank was out. “Sit there, little fool, your sister has no right to send you out into the world as green as a cabbage!” She drew a chair close to mine, facing me. “Now, it is time you learned that it takes more than a wedding ring to produce children. Listen!”

Half an hour later I crept up to my own room at the top of the house afraid of every shadowed corner, afraid of my own tread smugged into the carpet’s soft pile. Horrors hid in corners, terrors were behind doors. I had thought the Lyndhurst provided safety as well as board and lodging. Boarding houses I had supposed were temporary homes in which one was all right. No matter if San Francisco was wicked, I thought the great heavy door of the Lyndhurst and my board money could shut it all out. Mrs. Piddington told me that evil lurked everywhere. She said even under the sidewalks in certain districts of San Francisco were dens that had trap doors that dropped girls into terrible places when they were just walking along the street. The girls were never heard of again. They were taken into what was called “white slavery,” hidden away in those dreadful underground dens, never found, never heard of.

Mrs. Piddington spared me nothing. Opium dens in Chinatown, drug addicts, kidnappings, murder, prostitution she poured into my burning, frightened ears, determined to terrify the greenness out of me.

I was glad when the carpet of the hallways and stairs came to an end, glad when I heard my own heels tap, tap on the bare top-stair treads and landing. I looked around my room fearfully before I closed and locked my door. Then I went over to the window. I wanted to see if San Francisco looked any different now that I knew what she was really like. No, she did not! My hand was on old Dick’s cage as I looked over the chimneys and roofs. Old Dick nibbled at my finger. It gave me such a curious feeling of protection and reality.