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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
In "The Ways of Life: Two Stories," Mrs. Oliphant presents a masterful examination of human morality and social dynamics through her signature blend of realism and psychological insight. This collection showcases her adept ability to weave complex narratives that explore the intricacies of personal choice and societal expectations. Each story features richly developed characters who navigate the challenges of love, duty, and self-discovery, with prose that evokes both empathy and critical reflection on the constraints of their respective environments. Oliphant's work is often contextualized within the Victorian literary landscape, where she deftly balances emotional depth with keen observations on contemporary social issues. Mrs. Oliphant, a pioneering female writer of the 19th century, was known for her prolific contributions to the literary canon. Growing up in a rapidly changing society, she experienced firsthand the limitations placed on women, as well as the transformative societal shifts of her time. Her extensive experience as a writer, which spanned novels, biographies, and essays, provided her with a profound understanding of human psychology, equipping her to craft narratives that resonate with deep emotional authenticity and ethical complexity. Readers interested in the intersection of personal agency and societal norms will find "The Ways of Life" an invaluable addition to their literary repertoire. This collection not only reflects Oliphant's keen insights but also serves as a poignant reminder of the timeless struggles that define the human experience. Engaging and thought-provoking, these stories invite readers to reflect on their own values and the societal frameworks that shape their lives.
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The Ways of Life: Two Stories
Table of Contents
MR. SANDFORD.
CHAPTER I.
He was a man approaching sixty, but in perfect health, and with no painful physical reminders that he had already accomplished the greater part of life’s journey. He was a successful man, who had attained at a comparatively early age the heights of his profession, and gained a name for himself. No painter in England was better or more favourably known. He had never been emphatically the fashion, or made one of those great “hits” which are far from being invariably any test of genius; but his pictures had always been looked for with pleasure, and attracted a large and very even share of popular approbation. From year to year, for what was really a very long time, though in his good health and cheerful occupation the progress of time had never forced itself upon him unduly, he had gone on doing very well, getting both praise and pudding—good prices, constant commissions, and a great deal of agreeable applause. A course of gentle uninterrupted success of this description has a curiously tranquillising effect upon the mind. It did not seem to Mr. Sandford, or his wife, or any of his belongings, that it could ever fail. His income was more like an official income, coming in at slightly irregular intervals, and with variations of amount, but wonderfully equal at the year’s end, than the precarious revenues of an artist. And this fact lulled him into security in respect to his pecuniary means. He had a very pleasant, ample, agreeable life—a pretty and comfortable house, full of desirable things; a pleasant, gay, not very profitable, but pleasant family; and the agreeable atmosphere of applause and public interest which gave a touch of perfection to all the other good things. He had the consciousness of being pointed out in every assembly as somebody worth looking at: “That’s Sandford, you know, the painter.” He did not dislike it himself, and Mrs. Sandford liked it very much. Altogether it would have been difficult to find a more pleasant and delightful career.
His wife had been the truest companion and helpmeet of all his early life. She had made their small means do in the beginning when money was not plentiful. She had managed to do him credit in all the many appearances in society which a rising painter finds to his advantage, while still spending very little on herself or her dress. She had kept all going, and saved him from a thousand anxieties and cares. She had sat to him when models proved expensive so often that it was a common joke to say that some reflection of Mrs. Sandford’s face was in all his pictures, from Joan of Arc to Queen Elizabeth. Now that the children were grown up, perhaps the parents were a little less together than of old. She had her daughters to look after, who were asked out a great deal, and very anxious to be fashionable and to keep up with their fine friends. The two grown-up girls were both pretty, animated, and pleasant creatures, full of the chatter of society, yet likewise full of better things. There were also two grown-up sons: one a young barrister, briefless, and fond of society too; the other one of those agreeable do-nothings who are more prevalent nowadays than ever before, a very clever fellow, who had just not succeeded as he ought at the University or elsewhere, but had plenty of brains for anything, and only wanted the opportunity to distinguish himself. They were all full of faculty, both boys and girls, but all took a good deal out of the family stores without bringing anything in. Ever since these children grew up the family life had been on a very easy, ample scale. There was never any appearance of want of money, nor was the question ever discussed with the young ones, who had really no way of knowing that there was anything precarious in that well-established family income which provided them with everything they could desire. Sometimes, indeed, Mrs. Sandford would shake her head and declare that she “could not afford” some particular luxury. “Oh, nonsense, mamma!” the girls would say, while Harry would add, “That’s mother’s rôle, we all know. If she did not say so she would not be acting up to her part.” They took it in this way, with the same, or perhaps even a greater composure than if Mr. Sandford’s revenues had been drawn from the three per cents.
It was only after this position had been attained that any anxieties arose. At first it had seemed quite certain that Jack would speedily distinguish himself at the bar, and become Lord Chancellor in course of time; and that something would turn up for Harry—most likely a Government appointment, which so well known a man as his father had a right to expect. And Mrs. Sandford, with a sigh, had looked forward with certainty to the early marriage of her girls. But some years had now passed since Ada, who was the youngest, had been introduced, and as yet nothing of that kind had happened. Harry was pleasantly about the world, a great help in accompanying his sisters when Mrs. Sandford did not want to go out, but no appointment had fallen in his way; and the briefs which Jack had procured were very few and very trifling. Things went on quite pleasantly all the same. The young people enjoyed themselves very much—they were asked everywhere. Lizzie, who had a beautiful voice, was an acquisition wherever she went, and helped her sister and her brothers, who could all make themselves agreeable. The life of the household flowed on in the pleasantest way imaginable; everything was bright, delightful, easy. Mrs. Sandford was so good a manager that all domestic arrangements went as on velvet. She was never put out if two or three people appeared unexpectedly to lunch. An impromptu dinner party even, though it might disturb cook, never disturbed mamma. There was no extravagance, but everything delightfully liberal and full. The first vague uneasiness that crept into the atmosphere was about the boys. It was Mrs. Sandford herself who began this. “Did you speak to Lord Okeham about Harry?” she said to her husband one day, when she had been particularly elated by the appearance of that nobleman at her tea-table. He had come to look at a picture, and he was very willing afterwards, it appeared, to come into the drawing-room to tea.
“How could I? I scarcely know him. It is difficult enough to ask a friend—but a man I have only seen twice——”
“Your money or your life,” said Harry, with a laugh. He was himself quite tranquil about his appointment, never doubting that some day it would turn up.
“It is easier to ask a stranger than a friend,” said Mrs. Sandford. “It is like trading on friendship with a man you know; but this man’s nothing but a patron, or an admirer. I should have asked him like—I mean at once.”
“Mother was going to say like a shot—she is getting dreadfully slangy, worse than any of us. Let’s hope old Okeham will come back; there’s not much time lost,” said the cheerful youth.
“When your father was your age he was making a good deal of money. We were beginning to see our way,” said Mrs. Sandford, shaking her head.
“What an awfully imprudent pair you must have been to marry so early!” cried Jack.
“I wonder what you would say to us if we suggested anything of the kind?” said Miss Ada, who had made herself very agreeable to Lord Okeham.
“A poor painter!” said Lizzie, with a tone in her voice which her mother understood—for, indeed Mrs. Sandford did not at all encourage the attentions of poor painters, having still that early certainty of great matches in her mind.
The young people were quite fond of their parents, very proud of their father, dutiful as far as was consistent with the traditions of their generation: but naturally they were of opinion that fathers and mothers were slightly antiquated, and did not possess the last lights.
“The young ones are too many for you, Mary,” said Mr. Sandford; but he added, “It’s true what your mother says; you oughtn’t to be about so much as you are, doing nothing. You ought to grind as long as you’re young——”
“At what, sir?” said Harry, with mock reverence. Mr. Sandford did not reply, for indeed he could not. Instead of giving an answer he went back to the studio, which indeed he had begun to find a pleasant refuge in the midst of all the flow of youthful talk and laughter, which was not of the kind he had been used to in his youth. Young artists, those poor painters whom Mrs. Sandford held at arms’ length, are not perhaps much more sensible than other young men, but they have at least a subject on which any amount of talk is possible, and which their elders can understand. Mr. Sandford was proud of his children, and loved them dearly. Their education, he believed, was much better than his own, and they knew a great deal more on general subjects than he did. But their jargon was not his jargon, and though it seemed very clever and knowing, and even amusing for a while, it soon palled upon him. He went back to his studio and to the picture he was painting, for the daylight was still good. It was the largest of his Academy pictures, and nearly finished. It occurred to him as he stood looking at it critically from a distance, with his head on one side and his hand shading now one part now another, that Lord Okeham, though very complimentary, had not said anything about a desire to possess in his small collection a specimen of such a well-known master as ——. He remembered, now, that it was with this desire that his lordship had been supposed to be coming. Daniells, the picture dealer, had said as much. “He wants to come and see what you’ve got on the stocks. Tell you w’at, old man, ’e’s as rich as Cressus. Lay it on thick, ’e won’t mind—give you two thou’ as easy as five ’undred.” This was what, with his usual elegant familiarity, Mr. Daniells had said. It occurred to Mr. Sandford, with a curious little pang of surprise, that Lord Okeham had not said a word on the subject. He had admired everything, he had lingered upon some of the smaller sketches, making little remarks in the way of criticism now and then which the painter recognised as very judicious, but he had not said a word about enriching his collection with a specimen, &c. The surprise with which Mr. Sandford noticed this had a sort of sting in it—a prick like the barb of a fish-hook, like the thorn upon a rose. He did not at the moment exactly perceive why he should have felt it so. After a little while, indeed, he began to smile at the idea that it was from Okeham that this sting came. What did one man’s favour, even though that man was a cabinet minister, matter to him? It was not that, it was the discussion that followed which had left him with a prick of disquiet, a tingling spot in his mind. He must, he felt, speak to some one about Harry—not Lord Okeham, whom he did not know, who had evidently changed his mind about that specimen of so well-known, &c. He would not dream of saying anything to him, a man not sympathetic, a stranger whom, though he might offer him a cup of tea, he did not really know; but it was very clear that Harry ought to have something to do.
So ought Jack. Jack had a profession, but that did not seem to advance him much. Mr. Sandford had early determined that his sons should not be artists like himself—that they should have no precarious career, dependent on the favour of picture dealers and patrons, notwithstanding that he himself had done very well in that way. He had always resolved from the beginning to give them every advantage. Mr. Sandford recalled to mind that a few years ago he had been very strenuous on this point, talking of the duty of giving his children the very best education, which was the best thing any father could do for his children. He had been very confident indeed on that subject; now he paused and rubbed his chin meditatively with his mahl-stick. Was it possible that he was not quite so sure now? He shook himself free from this troublesome coil of thought, and made up his mind that he must make an effort about Harry. Then he put down his brushes and went out for his afternoon walk.
In earlier days Mrs. Sandford would have come into the studio; she would have talked Lord Okeham over. She would have said, “Oh, he did not like that forest bit, didn’t he? Upon my word! I suppose my lord thinks he is a judge!”
“What he said was reasonable enough. He does know something about it. I told you myself I was not satisfied with the balance of colour. The shadow’s too dark. The middle distance——”
“Oh, Edward, don’t talk nonsense: that’s just like you—you’re so ridiculously modest. If the cook were to come in one morning and tell you she thought your composition bad, you would say she approached the picture without any bias, and probably what she said was quite true. Come out for a walk.”
This, be it clearly understood, was an imaginary conversation. It did not take place for the excellent reason that Mrs. Sandford was in the drawing-room, smiling at the witticisms of her young ones, and saying at intervals, “Come, come, Lizzie!” and “Don’t be so satirical, Jack.” They were not nearly such good company as her husband, nor did they want her half so much, but she thought they did, and that it was her duty to be there. So Mr. Sandford, who did not think of it at all as a grievance, but only as a natural necessity, had nothing but an imaginary talk which did not relieve him much, and went out for his walk by himself.
It would be foolish to date absolutely from that day a slight change that began to work in him—but it did come on about this time: and that was an anxiety that the boys should get on and begin their life’s work in earnest which had not affected him before. He had been too busy to think much except about his work so long as the young ones were well; and the period at which the young ones become men and women is not always easy for a father to discern so long as they are all under his roof as in their childish days. He, too, had let things flow along in the well-being of the time without pausing to inquire how long it was to last, or what was to come of it. A man of sixty who is in perfectly good health does not feel himself to be old, nor think it necessary to consider the approaching end of his career. Something, however, aroused him now about these boys. He got a little irritable when he saw Harry about, playing tennis with the girls, sometimes spending the whole day in flannels. “Why can’t he do something?” he said to his wife.
“Dear Edward,” said Mrs. Sandford, “what can the poor boy do? He is only too anxious to do something. He is always talking to me about it. If only Lord Okeham or some one would get a post for him. Is there no one you can speak to about poor Harry?”
This was turning the tables upon Harry’s father, who, to tell the truth, was very slow to ask favours, and did not like it all. He did speak, however—not to Lord Okeham, but to an inferior potentate, and was told that all the lists were full, although everybody would be delighted, of course, to serve him if possible; and nothing came of that. Then there was Jack. The young man came into dinner one day in the highest spirits. He had got a brief—a real brief—a curiosity which he regarded with a jocular admiration. “I shall be a rich man in no time,” he said.
“How much is your fee?” asked one of the girls. “You must take us somewhere with it Jack.”
“It is two guineas,” Jack said, and then there was a general burst of laughter—that laughter young and fresh which is sweet to the ears of fathers and mothers.
“That’s majestic,” Harry said; “lend us something, old fellow, for luck,” and they all laughed again. They thought it a capital joke that Jack should earn two guineas in six months. It did not hurt him or any of them; he had everything he wanted as if he had been earning hundreds. But Mr. Sandford did not laugh. This time it vexed and disturbed him to hear all the cheerful banter and talk about Jack’s two guineas.
“It is all very well to laugh,” he said to his wife afterwards, “but how is he ever to live upon that?”
“Dear Edward, it’s not like you to take their fun in earnest,” said the mother. “The poor boy has such spirits—and then it’s always a beginning.”
“I am afraid his spirits are too good. If he would only take life a little more seriously——”
“Why should he?” said Mrs. Sandford, taking high ground; “it is his happiest time. If he wanted to marry and set up for himself it might be different. But they have no cares—as yet. We ought to be thankful they are all so happy at home. Few young men love their home like our boys. We ought to be very thankful,” she repeated with a devout look upon her upturned face. It took the words out of his mouth. He could not say any more.
But he kept on thinking. The time was passing away with great rapidity—far more quickly than it had ever done. Sunday trod on the heels of Sunday, and the months jostled each other as they flew along. Presently it was Jack’s birthday, and there was a dance and a great deal of affectionate pleasure; but when Mr. Sandford remembered how old the boy was, it gave him a shock which none of the others felt. At that age he himself had been Jack’s father, he had laid the foundation of his reputation, and was a rising man. If they did not live at home and had not everything provided for them, what would become of these boys? It gave him a sort of panic to think of it. In the very midst of the dance, when he was himself standing in the midst of a little knot of respectable fathers watching the young ones enjoying themselves, this thought overtook him and made him shiver.
“Getting on, I hear, very well at the bar,” one of the gentlemen said.
“He is not making very much money as yet,” replied Mr. Sandford.
“Oh, nobody does that—at first, at least; but so long as he has you to fall back upon,” this good-natured friend said, with a nod of his head.
Mr. Sandford could not make any reply. He kept saying to himself, “Two guineas—two guineas—he could not live very long on that.” And Harry had not even two guineas. It fretted him to have this thought come back at all manner of unlikely times. He did not seem able to shake it off. And Mrs. Sandford was always on the defensive, seeing it in his eyes, and making responses to it, speaking at it, always returning to the subject. She dwelt upon the goodness of the boys, and their love of their home, and how good it was for the girls to have them, and how nobody made their mark all at once, “except people that have genius like you,” she said with that wifely admiration and faith which is so sweet to a man. What more could he say?
CHAPTER II.
About the same time, or a little later, another shadow rose up upon Mr. Sandford’s life. It was like the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, like a mere film upon the blue sky at first. Perhaps the very first appearance of it—the faintest shadow of a shade upon the blue—arose on that day when Lord Okeham visited the studio and went away without giving any commission. Not that great personages had not come before with the same result; but that this time there had been supposed to be a distinct purpose in his visit beyond that of taking a cup of tea with the artist’s wife and daughters—and this purpose had not been carried out. It was not the cloud, but it was a sort of avant-coureur of the cloud, like the chill little momentary breath which sometimes heralds a storm. No storm followed, but the shadow grew. The next thing that made it really shape itself as a little more than a film was the fact of his Academy picture, the principal one of the year, coming back—without any explanation at all; not purchased, nor even with any application from the print-sellers about an engraving; simply coming back as it had gone into the exhibition. No doubt in the course of a long career such a thing as this, too, had happened before. But there was generally something to account for it, and the picture thus returned seldom dwelt long in the painter’s hands. This time, however, it subsided quite quietly into its place, lighting up the studio with a great deal of colour and interest—“a pleasure to see,” Mrs. Sandford said, who had often declared that the worst thing of being a painter’s wife was that she never liked to see the pictures go away. This might be very true, and it is quite possible that it was a pleasure to behold, standing on its easel against a wall which generally was enlivened only with the earliest of sketches, and against which a lay figure grinned and sprawled.
But the prospect was not quite agreeable to the painter. However cheerfully he went into his studio in the morning, he always grew grave when he came in front of that brilliant canvas. It was the “Black Prince at Limoges,” a picture full of life and action, with all the aid of mediæval costume and picturesque groups—such a picture as commanded everybody’s interest in Mr. Sandford’s younger days. He would go and stand before it for an hour at a time, trying to find some fault in the composition, or in the flesh tints, or the arrangements of the draperies. It took away his thoughts from the subject he was then engaged in working out. Sometimes he would put up his hand to separate one portion from another, sometimes divide it with a screen of paper, sometimes even alter an outline with chalk, or mellow a spot of colour with his brush. There was very little fault to be found with the picture. It carried out all the rules of composition to which the painter had been bred. The group of women which formed the central light was full of beauty; the sick warrior to whom they appealed was a marvel of strength and ferocity, made all the keener by the pallor of his illness. There was nothing to be said against the picture; except, perhaps, that, had not this been Mr. Sandford’s profession, there was no occasion for its existence at all.
When the mind has once been filled with a new idea it is astounding how many events occur to heighten it. Other distinguished visitors came to the studio, like Lord Okeham, and went away again, having left a great deal of praise and a little criticism, but nothing else, behind them. These were not, perhaps, of importance enough to have produced much effect at an ordinary moment, but they added to the general discouragement. Mr. Sandford smiled within himself at the mistakes the amateurs made, and the small amount of real knowledge which they showed; but when they were gone the smile became something like that which is generally and vulgarly described as being on the wrong side of the mouth. It was all very well to smile at the amateurs—but it was in the long run their taste, and not that of the heaven-born artist, which carried the day; and when a man takes away in his pocket the sum which ought to supply your balance at your banker’s, the sight of his back as he goes out at the door is not pleasant. Mr. Sandford had not come to that pitch yet; but he laughed no longer, and felt a certain ruefulness in his own look when one after another departed without a word of a commission. There were other things, too, not really of the slightest importance, which deepened the impression—the chatter of Jack’s friends, for instance, some of whom were young journalists, and talked the familiar jargon of critics. He came into the drawing-room one day during one of his wife’s teas, and found two or three young men, sprawling about with legs stretched out over the limited space, who were pulling to pieces a recent exhibition of the works of a Royal Academician. “You would think you had got among half a dozen different sorts of people dressed for private theatricals,” said one of the youths. “Old models got up as Shakespearian kings, and that sort of thing. You know, Mrs. Sandford; conventional groups trying to look as if they were historical.”
“I remember Mr. White’s pictures very well,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I used to think them beautiful. We all rushed to see what he had in the exhibition, upon the private view day, when I did not know so much about it as I do now.”
“Ah, yes; before you knew so much about it,” said the art authority. “You would think very differently to-day.”
“The whole school is like that,” said another. “Historical painting is gone out like historical novel-writing. The public is tired of costume. Life is too short for that sort of thing. We want a far more profound knowledge of the human figure and beauty in the abstract——”
“Stuff!” said Harry; “the British public doesn’t want your nudities, whatever you may think.”
“The British public likes babies, and sick girls getting well, and beautiful young gentlemen saying eternal adieux to lovely young ladies,” said one of the girls.
“To be sure, that sort of thing always goes on; but everybody must feel that in cultured circles there is a far greater sense of the beauty of colour for itself and art for art than in those ridiculous old days when the subject was everything——”
“You confuse me with your new lights,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I always did think there was a great deal in a good subject.”
“My dear Mrs. Sandford!” cried one of the young men, laughing; while another added, with the solemnity of his kind—
“People really did think so at one time. It was a genuine belief so long as it lasted. I am not one of those who laugh at faith so naïf. Whatever is true even for a time has a right to be respected,” said this profound young man.
Mr. Sandford came in at this point, having paused a little to enjoy the fun, as he said to himself. It was wonderful to hear how they chattered—these babes. “I am glad to hear that you are all so tolerant of the old fogeys,” he said, with a laugh as he showed himself. And one at least of the young men had the good taste to jump up as if he were ashamed of himself, and to take his legs out of the way.
“I suppose that’s the new creed that those fellows were giving forth,” he said to Jack, when the other young men were gone.
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, with an embarrassed laugh. “We all of us say our say.”
“But that is the say of most of you, I suppose,” said his father.
“Well, sir, I suppose every generation has its own standard. ‘The old order changeth,’ don’t you know—in art as well as in other things.”
“I see; and you think we know precious little about it,” said Mr. Sandford, with a joyless smile which curled his lip without obeying any mirthful impulse. He felt angry and unreasonably annoyed at the silly boys who knew so little. “But they know how to put that rubbish into words, and they get it published, and it affects the general opinion,” he said to himself, with perhaps a feeling, not unnatural in the circumstances, that he would like to drown those kittens with their miauling about things they knew nothing about. Angry moods, however, did not last long in Mr. Sandford’s mind. He went back to his studio and looked at the “Black Prince” in the light of these criticisms. And he found that some of the old courtiers in attendance on the sick warrior did look unfeignedly like old models, which indeed they were, and that there was more composition than life in the attitudes of the women. “I always thought that arm should come like this,” he said to himself, taking up his chalk.
One day about this time he had a visit from Daniells, the picture dealer, leading a millionaire—a newly-fledged one—who was making a gallery and buying right and left. Daniells, though he was very dubious about his h’s, was a good fellow, and always ready to stand by a friend. He was taking his millionaire a round of the studios, and especially to those in which there was something which had not “come off,” according to his phraseology. The millionaire was exceptionally ignorant and outspoken, expressing his own opinion freely. “What sort of a thing have we got here?” he said, walking up to the “Black Prince;” “uncommon nice lot of girls, certainly; but what are they all doing round the fellow out of the hospital? I say, is it something catching?” he cried, giving Mr. Sandford a dig with his elbow. Daniells laughed at this long and loudly, but it was the utmost the painter could do to conjure up a simple smile. He explained as well as he could that they were begging for life, and that the town was being sacked, a terrible event of which his visitor might have heard.
“Sacked,” said the millionaire; “you mean that they’re factory hands and have got the sack, or that they have been just told they’ve got to work short time. I understand that; and it shows how human nature’s just the same in all ages. But I can tell you that in Lancashire it’s a nice rowing he’d have got instead of all these sweet looks. They would not have let him off like that, don’t you think it. Wherever you get your women from, ours ain’t of that kind.”
Sandford tried to explain what kind of a sack it was, but he did not succeed, for the rich man was much pleased with his own view.
“It’s a fine picture,” said Daniells; “Mr. Sandford, he’s one of the very best of our modern masters, sir. He has got a great name, and beautiful his pictures look in a gallery with the others to set ’em off. Hung on the line in the Academy, and collected crowds. I shouldn’t ’a been surprised if they’d ’ad to put a rail round it like they did to Mr. Frith’s.”
He gave a wink at Mr. Sandford as he spoke, which made our poor painter sick.
“I’ve got one of Frith’s,” said the millionaire.
“You’ll ’ave got one of every modern artist worth counting when you’ve got Mr. Sandford’s,” said Daniells, with a pat upon the shoulder to his wealthy client. That gentleman turned round, putting his hands into his pockets.
“I’ve seen some pictures as I liked better,” he said.
“Yes, I know. You’ve seen that one o’ Millais’, a regular stunner; but, God bless you, that’s but one figger, and twice the money. Look at the work in that,” cried the dealer, turning his man round again, who gave the picture another condescending inspection from one corner to the other.
