I live in an attic. I am in the
immediate neighbourhood of a great tavern and a famous
place of amusement. The thoroughfare on which
I can look whilst I sit at my window is noisy with
perpetual traffic. In the midst of London I am
more of a hermit than is that pretentious humbug who
waves his flag at passing steamers from his rock in
the AEgean. I am not a hermit from any choice
of mine, or from any dislike of men and women.
I am not a hermit because of any dislike which men
and women may entertain for me. In my time I
have been popular, and have had many friends.
If I could find it in my heart at this moment to face
some one of those friends, the necessity for a continued
hermitage might pass. If I could find it in my
heart to write to one of them I might close this lonely
vigil to-morrow. Let me confess the truth.
I am ashamed of myself, and I can appeal to nobody
for assistance. I have gamed away the whole of
my substance, and I am a broken man. It would
be possible to do something better for myself if I
could venture into the streets. But my sole possessions
in the way of outer clothing are one pair of too-ancient
trousers, one pair of tattered slippers, one fez, and
one poor old dressing-gown.
My estimable Uncle round the corner
has the rest. Perhaps I am less a hermit than
a prisoner-a prisoner over whom that sternest
of janitors, Poverty, holds the key.
I am a little proud of my English,
and I do not think you can have yet discovered from
my style of expression that I am not a native of this
country. Permit me to describe myself.
I am an Italian and a gentleman, and
my age is thirty. My main fault is, that I am
able to do much in too many directions. I play
admirably upon several instruments, and my little
original compositions are admitted to show great undeveloped
talent. My verses in four languages are also
admitted to show great undeveloped talent. As
a painter or a sculptor I might have made fame certain.
I am merry and generous, and slow to offence, an unmeasured
braggart, careless about money matters, without dignity,
but the soul of honour. I am also your obedient
servant. Permit me so to subscribe myself-Your
obedient servant, Giovanni Calvotti.
My attic is uncarpeted, and its general
aspect is sordid. It contains a bed, a table,
a chair, a chest of drawers, a grand piano, a violin,
a violoncello, my pipes, my tobacco, my writing materials,
and-me. Stay! Hidden for the
moment from my glance beneath the grand piano are the
tools by which I live: my easel, my porte-couleur,
my palette, canvas, and brushes. My estimable
uncle round the corner is not a judge of art.
It is my weakness that I cannot paint bad pictures.
I linger sometimes for a whole day hungry-sometimes
even without tobacco-touching and again
touching the ripened beauties of my canvas child, before
I can dare to leave it. I am a hungry amateur,
but that is no reason why I should be false to the
principles of art. Like my playing upon four
instruments, and like my verses in four languages,
my painting is admitted to show great talent-as
yet only partially developed. Upon each of my
works my estimable uncle advances me the sum of twelve
shillings and sixpence. I paint one picture per
week. In consideration of the restricted character
of my wardrobe, my landlady is so obliging as to send
my works to the only dealer with whom I can at present
do business. I had never known until this morning
who it was that acted as my ambassador. I have
told you already that I am of a merry temperament.
I snap my fingers at evil fortune. I despise the
goddess Circumstance. Seeking to do me an evil
turn this morning she has benefited me, and I am contented
in spite of her. Good gracious! Is a man
to lose everything because his stomach is empty?
The goddess Circumstance shall not keep my heart empty,
let her keep my shelves as bare as she will. My
Lady of Circumstance, Giovanni Calvotti proffers to
you a polite but irrevocable defiance!
This morning my canvas child was a
landscape. This afternoon it was an inglorious
smudge. It is now on its way back to the landscape
condition, and will have revived all its glories by
to-morrow. It was noon when I rang my bell.
‘Madame,’ I said to my
landlady, in my cheerful Italian manner, ’will
you again extend to me your courtesy?’
My landlady is not an educated woman,
but she is a good creature, and has a delicate and
refined susceptibility. She recognises in me
a gentleman. She reveres in my person a genius
to which I make no pretension. I am not a man
of genius. A man of genius does one thing supremely
well. Some men of exceptional talent do many things
admirably, but nothing supremely well. I am a
man of exceptional talent. Pardon the modest
candour which is compelled to assume the garb of egotism.
My landlady looked at my canvas child,
and then at me, and laughed.
‘To Mr. Aaron’s, sir?’
Asking this, she put her hands upon the edges of the
framework of the canvas.
‘Yes, madame,’ I
answered, for we have always the same formula on Fridays
at noon. ‘To my estimable uncle round the
corner.’
‘Anything more than usual?’ my landlady
asked me.
‘No, madame,’
I answered. ’A loaf, a pound of coffee,
half a pound of bird’s-eye tobacco, the ticket
from my estimable uncle, a receipt for the week’s
rent, and the change.’
My landlady laughed again and said,
‘Very good, sir.’ Then she went downstairs
with the picture, and I felt unhappy when my canvas
child was gone, and was fain (an idiom employed by
your best writers) to solace myself with my violin.
So far there was nothing to mark this Friday morning
from any other Friday morning for the last nine weeks.
It is now nine weeks that I have been a hermit.
I was very hungry, and was glad to think of the coffee
and the loaf. I should have told you that my habits
are very abstemious, and that I am admirably healthy
on a low diet. My native cheerfulness, my piano,
my violin, my violoncello, my canvas children, and
my pipes, all nourish me like meat and wine. I
played upon my violin a little impromptu good-bye
to my landscape-a melodious farewell to
a sweet creation. The time seemed long before
my landlady returned, and when I put back my violin
in its case, I heard a sound of crying on the stairs.
I opened the door and looked out, and there was a
little English angel, whom I had never before seen,
sitting upon the topmost step, close to my attic door,
crying as if her heart had broken.
‘What is the matter, my poor
little maid?’ I asked very tenderly, for I know
that young girls are easily frightened by strangers.
She looked up with eyes like the skies
I was born under. The pretty pale cheeks were
all wet, and the pretty red lips were trembling, and
those beautiful blue heavens were raining as no blue
skies ought to rain.
‘Ah, come, my child,’
I said to her; ’how can I help you if you do
not tell me what is the matter?’
‘Oh, signor,’ she
said, with many sobs and tears, ’I have spoiled
your beautiful picture.’
She held it up-my canvas
child-all besmeared with mud. I could
not resist one exclamation of sorrow. The news
was too sudden for my self-possession to remain.
But when I saw that the little English angel began
to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one
moment to be able to get out of my own body, that
I might chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical.
I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this
room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the
picture with cold water, made her tell me how the
accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian
Italian way, ’If she should go away without having
quite familiarised herself with this unhappy incident,
she will always be afraid of me.’ Therefore
I lured her on.
‘Mrs. Hopkins asked me to take
the picture to Mr. Aaron’s,’ she began,
still sobbing. ’I was just passing the corner
when a gentleman leaped out of a cab. The cab
was moving at the time, and I did not expect to see
anybody jump from it. The gentleman missed his
footing and stumbled against me. I fell down
and the picture fell face downwards on the pavement,
and a man who was passing by trod upon it.’
Now, I invite you to observe that
these sentences are in no way remarkable. Yet
I felt compelled to say-
‘Most admirably and succinctly put!’
For the little girl was very pleasing,
and she looked very pretty and innocent and distressed.
And if you had employed a professional orator to make
the statement, he would have been a thousand miles
behind her in grace and straightforwardness, and in
everything that makes human speech beautiful and admirable.
When I had removed the mud from my canvas child I
found that its countenance was badly scratched.
So I busied myself in putting up my easel and in setting
my palette.
‘Oh, signor,’ said the poor child,
‘I am so sorry.’
Then she cried again.
‘Mademoiselle,’ I replied,
with charming gaiety, ’it is not your fault
at all. It is the doing of another lady, an old
enemy of mine. The other lady has been trying
to spite me, mademoiselle, for several years.
She is powerful; she has hosts of servants. She
plunges me into all manner of terrible scrapes, and
for all this I laugh at her and snap my fingers-So.’
By the time I had said ‘So’
and snapped my fingers she had done crying, and being
very intelligent she understood my parable, and when
I laughed she smiled. I will tell you exactly
what her smile was like. I was painting:
in the Welsh hills three years ago, with plenty of
money in my pocket, and a very great enthusiasm for
art in my soul. I strayed out from the hotel
I was staying in one beautiful moonlight night.
I had rambled far, when it began to rain and grew
very dark with clouds. I sat under a rock upon
a big stone by the side of a little lake, and lit my
pipe and waited for the rain to cease. And while
it was still raining a little, the clouds divided
for one second, and the moonlight swam down the lake
from one end to the other. That was her smile;
and when I saw it I seemed to see the lake again,
and to hear the rain and the rustling of the trees,
and smell the scent of the dead leaves. The moonlight
stayed on her face only a second. She grew grave
and sad again, and came timidly to me where I was
at work. ’Will it be much trouble to you
to mend it?’ she asked. ‘Will it take
long?’
‘Not long, mademoiselle,’
I answered; ‘I shall finish it to-day.’
I am gifted by nature with a delicate
organisation. It is not possible for a man to
be a gentleman without something of the quality I desire
to indicate. I observe intuitively. I saw
that my distressed companion desired to say something,
and I saw also that what she desired to say would
be embarrassing to me. It was also plain to my
refined observation that she would be happier if she
could only go gracefully. I relieved her of this
trouble-
’We will challenge Madame Fortune
again in the morning, mademoiselle. You and I
will beat her this time. We will co-operate again.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ’do
let me take it in the morning. I will be
careful.’
‘And now,’ I said, ’you
will think me an ogre, and will fancy that I am going
to imprison you unless I let you go.’
I opened the door, but she lingered,
struggling with that embarrassment which feared to
embarrass me. For she is a lady just as certainly
as I am a gentleman, and fine natures understand each
other. I could see her make up her mind, and
I resolved therefore not to be embarrassed.
‘But, signor,’ she
said, with more firmness than I had expected, ’the
tobacco and the coffee and the loaf?’
‘Mademoiselle,’ I said,
’the coffee and the tobacco and the loaf loom
dimly from the future. They will come in good
time.’
But, oh, the little girl was brave
and tender-hearted and honourable. She was a
little Englishwoman, with beliefs in duty. And
yet she would sooner have faced ten lions than me,
with my Italian courtesy and my uncomplaining good
temper.
‘Mrs. Hopkins,’ she said,
‘will lend me a-a shilling, and I-’
From that moment I respected her.
‘Mademoiselle,’ I answered,
’you are a lady, I am a gentleman. We have
both the misfortune to be poor. We have both the
admirable good fortune to be proud and honourable.
You are brave and good, and your instincts are delicate.
You will permit me to ask you not to humiliate yourself.’
‘But, signor,’ she
urged, ‘it is very hard for you to go-’
‘My good-hearted, dutiful little
English lady,’ I took the liberty to say, for
I was very much in earnest,’ it is not at all
hard for me to go without the coffee and the tobacco
and the loaf. Above all, I do not lose my self-respect
or touch my pride when I go without the coffee and
the tobacco and the loaf. And now, mademoiselle,
since it is our scheme to rout my lady enemy in the
morning, we will despoil her of her triumph now by
not caring for her or it, and by snapping our fingers
at her-So.’
Whilst we had talked I had closed
the door, and now I crossed over to my picture and
began to work again. She still lingered, watching
me whilst I painted.
‘Are you fond of pictures?’
I asked her, to divert her thoughts.
‘I have not seen many, but I
am very fond of some of them.’
‘Would you like to look at those?’
I said, pointing with my brush to a portfolio on the
piano.
She opened the portfolio and looked
through my sketches. I saw with pleasure that
she did not race over them, but that she stopped and
looked long at some. I could see from where I
stood that they were the best, and I said, ‘The
young lady has taste and discernment.’
Suddenly she clapped her two hands together, and said-
‘Oh!’
Then she came to me with a sketch
in her hands, and her face was beautiful.
‘Did you paint this, signor?’
‘Yes, mademoiselle, I painted that. Why
do you ask?’
‘Poor old place!’ she
said very softly, without knowing that she said it
at all.
It was a picturesque old house in
Surrey. The house stood in a hollow, and the
road wound up past it on to a long rolling wold. (That
is the beautiful word your poet Tennyson uses.
The country-people, the peasantry, use it also.) She
had cried so much that her eyes were ready for tears
again at almost anything. When she looked at me
they were brim-full, but they did not run over.
‘We lived here with papa,’ she said, ‘till
he died.’
Then two big tears brimmed over and
ran down. I committed an indiscretion: I
was sorry for her, and I kissed her. She drew
away with much dignity and said-
‘I have stayed too long. Good morning,
signor.’
I blushed. She was so much a
child, and I feel myself so old, that I had not thought
it any indiscretion. And now I remember that I
have been writing of her as a child. She is quite
a grown girl-a young lady. She is
perhaps more than seventeen years of age. I was
a brute beast-an insensate-to
frighten her. Before I could say anything she
was gone.
I abused myself in my vehement Continental
way, and then I began to work. The picture was
but little hurt, and before daylight was over it was
almost repaired. But I had heard the clock strike
seven, and my estimable uncle round the corner retires
at that hour into the country, and will have no business
again until nine o’clock in the morning.
So, to prevent myself from thinking too much of the
coffee and the tobacco and the loaf, I sat down to
my piano and played. One would have thought that
my sitting down to play was a signal, for I had scarcely
begun when my landlady tapped at my door and brought
a note. She looked shyly at the picture, and
hoped it had not suffered much. I told her gaily
that it was all the better for the accident, as in
reality it was. Then I read my note.
’Miss Grammont presents her compliments
to Signor Calvotti, and requests that he will
oblige her by his company at tea this evening.
Miss Grammont begs that Signor Calvotti will forgive
this intrusion, and will forget that no formal introduction
has taken place between them.’
I read this over twice, and then asked the landlady-
‘Who is Miss Grammont?’
’She’s the sister of the
young lady who had the accident with your picture,
sir,’ said the landlady. ’She’s
a middle-aged lady, sir, and very badly lame.
But she’s got an angel temper, and ways that
sweet as I never saw anybody like her. I do hope
you’ll go, sir. She’s on the floor
below.’
’Present my most distinguished
compliments, madame, and say that I will
do myself the honour to be there. At what hour?’
‘Tea’s getting ready now, sir,’
said the landlady.
When she had gone, I washed myself
and put on a clean shirt, and went downstairs.
At a door at the foot of the stains stood the young
lady who had by misfortune brought about this adventure.
She led me into the room and to a lady who sat upon
a sofa. The room was absolutely bare of ornament,
and I knew that they were very poor. But it was
not possible to think for a moment that Miss Grammont
was anything but a lady. She was old-fashioned
and precise in her attire, and she is perhaps forty
years of age, but her face is as beautiful as a seraph’s.
She is calm and sweet and quiet. She is like
a Venetian night-sweet and venerable, and
moving to touches of soft music. I took tea with
them both-a simple meal. We talked
of art and of Italy. I brought down my sketches
and my violin at their request. I played to them-all
manner of things-and they did me the honour
to be delighted.
I am now in my own room again, and
have expended my last candle whilst I have given myself
the charming task to set down this day’s adventures.
My candle is so nearly burned out that it will not
last another minute. I foresee that I shall go
to bed in the-