In Bohemia with Du Maurier | Page 4

generally gave me the correct tip, so valuable to the stranger. He lost no time in teaching me some of those full-flavoured Flemish idioms which from the first enabled me to emphasise my meaning when I wished to express it in unmistakable language.
He himself was a remarkable linguist, speaking English, French, and German fluently, in addition to his native language, Dutch; so he soon chummed with du Maurier and me in several languages, and became one of our set. He was always ready to follow us in our digressions from the conventional course, and we felt that many of our best international jokes would have been lost had it not been for his comprehension and appreciation. His father, too, was a kind friend to us, inviting us to his house to hear Music and talk Art, to ply knives and forks, and to empty glasses of various dimensions. That gentleman's corpulence had reached a degree which clearly showed that he must have "lost sight of his knees" some years back, but he was none the less strong and active. There were two daughters, one pathetically blind, the other sympathetically musical.
How our friend came by the name of Peggy none of us know, but he figures as such in many of du Maurier's drawings.
"If Peggy," he says, in a letter from Malines, "doesn't come on Sunday, may the vengeance of the gods overtake him! Tell him so. I'll meet him at the train." And then he sketches the meeting and greeting of the two, and the railway guard starting his train with the old-fashioned horn-signal on the G.E.C. then in use.
My friend Jean soon started on his career as a regular exhibitor in Belgium and Holland, besides which he developed a remarkable taste and talent for teaching.
[Illustration: PEGGY AND DU MAURIER AT THE RAILWAY STATION IN MALINES.]
"What would you advise about Pen's studies?" said Robert Browning one afternoon as we sat in my little studio, talking about his son's talents and prospects. (This was a few years after my final return to England.) "Send him to Antwerp," I said, "to Heyermans; he is the best man I know of to start him."
Pen went, and soon made surprising progress, painting a picture after little more than a twelve-month that at once found an eager purchaser. The poet took great pride in his son's success, and lost no opportunity of speaking in the most grateful and appreciative terms of the teacher. Millais and Tadema endorsed his praise, and Heyermans' reputation was established. A few years ago he migrated to London, where he continues his work, pluckily upholding the traditions of the Past, whilst readily encouraging the wholesome aspirations of a rising generation.
Another man destined to find a permanent home in England was Alma Tadema. He was not much in the Painting Class in my time, but had previously been hard at work there. I mostly saw him in the room adjoining it, and he always seemed to me exclusively interested in the study of costume and history. The incident that led to his leaving the academy rather abruptly is characteristic. An uncle of his having given him a commission for a picture, Tadema applied to de Keyser for authorisation to make the necessary break in his studies. The Director accorded him three weeks, but, as Tadema put it when lately recalling the circumstance, "I couldn't paint a picture in three weeks then, and I cannot now."
I little thought that from his studies of costume and history, the comrade of my Antwerp days would evolve a long and uninterrupted series of masterpieces, resuscitating the Past and presenting it with the erudition of the Student and the genius of the Artist. Nor did anything foreshadow that my genial Dutch friend, to whom the English language was a dead letter, was destined in a not too distant Future to become a shining light of England's Royal Academy.
Du Maurier was soon installed in the Painting Class, and made a vigorous start. Of the things he painted, I particularly recollect a life-size, three-quarter group of an old woman and a boy--a pen-and-ink drawing of which is in my father's album--that showed talent enough and to spare, but his artistic aspirations were soon to meet with a serious check. His eyesight suddenly gave him trouble, and before long put a stop to his studies at atelier or academy. He was not to become a painter, as he had fondly hoped, but as we now know, he was to work out his destiny in another direction. With the simplest of means he was to delineate character, and everyday drops of ink, when filtered through his pen, were to emerge in quaint or graceful shapes, wit, satire, and sentiment taking their turns to prompt and guide that pen.
[Illustration: _From du Maurier's