Confessions of a Young Man | Page 5

have always remained powerless to do
anything unless moved by a powerful desire.
The natural end to such schooldays as mine was expulsion. I was
expelled when I was sixteen, for idleness and general worthlessness. I
returned to a wild country home, where I found my father engaged in
training racehorses. For a nature of such intense vitality as mine, an
ambition, an aspiration of some sort was necessary; and I now, as I
have often done since, accepted the first ideal to hand. In this instance it
was the stable. I was given a hunter, I rode to hounds every week, I
rode gallops every morning, I read the racing calendar, stud-book, latest
betting, and looked forward with enthusiasm to the day when I should
be known as a successful steeplechase rider. To ride the winner of the
Liverpool seemed to me a final achievement and glory; and had not
accident intervened, it is very possible that I might have succeeded in
carrying off, if not the meditated honour, something scarcely inferior,

such as--alas! I cannot now recall the name of a race of the necessary
value and importance. About this time my father was elected Member
of Parliament; our home was broken up, and we went to London. But
an ideal set up on its pedestal is not easily displaced, and I persevered
in my love, despite the poor promises London life held out for its
ultimate attainment; and surreptitiously I continued to nourish it with
small bets made in a small tobacconist's. Well do I remember that shop,
the oily-faced, sandy-whiskered proprietor, his betting-book, the cheap
cigars along the counter, the one-eyed nondescript who leaned his
evening away against the counter, and was supposed to know some one
who knew Lord ----'s footman, and the great man often spoken of, but
rarely seen--he who made "a two-'undred pound book on the Derby";
and the constant coming and going of the cabmen--"Half an ounce of
shag, sir." I was then at a military tutor's in the Euston Road; for, in
answer to my father's question as to what occupation I intended to
pursue, I had consented to enter the army. In my heart I knew that when
it came to the point I should refuse--the idea of military discipline was
very repugnant, and the possibility of an anonymous death on a
battle-field could not be accepted by so self-conscious a youth, by one
so full of his own personality. I said Yes to my father, because the
moral courage to say No was lacking, and I put my trust in the future,
as well I might, for a fair prospect of idleness lay before me, and the
chance of my passing any examination was, indeed, remote.
In London I made the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked
incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger
than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a
welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His
pictures--Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of
artistic perception, save a certain sentiment for the grand and
noble--filled me with wonderment and awe. "How jolly it would be to
be a painter," I once said, quite involuntarily. "Why, would you like to
be a painter?" he asked abruptly. I laughed, not suspecting that I had
the slightest gift, as indeed was the case, but the idea remained in my
mind, and soon after I began to make sketches in the streets and
theatres. My attempts were not very successful, but they encouraged
me to tell my father that I would go to the military tutor no more, and

he allowed me to enter the Kensington Museum as an Art student.
There, of course, I learned nothing, and, from the point of view of art
merely, I had much better have continued my sketches in the streets;
but the museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that
applied marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in
the galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting
and steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then,
looked to a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of
thought than I. And then the sweet, white peace of antiquity! The great,
calm gaze that is not sadness nor joy, but something that we know not
of--which is lost to the world for ever.
"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France--France is the
only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of
echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that,
without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang
in my ears