VA TURNING-POINTATfirst Mendel hardly noticed the passing of Sara. He waited anxiously for her to come, but when she never appeared he went on working, only gradually to discover that the first glorious impulse had faded away. However, the habit of regular work was strong with him, and he could go on like a carpenter or a mason or any other good journeyman. But there was no one to buy what he produced, and his father began to talk gloomily and ominously of the workshop.“Never!” said Mendel. “If I am not a great artist by the time I am twenty-three I will come and work. If I have done nothing by the time I am twenty-three I shall know that I am no good.”“I can see no reason,” said Jacob, “why you should not work like any other man and paint in your spare time. Issy is a good dancer in his spare time, and Harry is good at the boxing. Why should you not paint in your spare time and work like an honest man?”Mendel turned on his father and rent him.“You do not know what work is. You work with your hands. Yes. But do you ever work till your head swims, and your eyes ache because they can see more inside than they can outside? If I cannot paint I shall die. I shall be like a bird that cannot sing, like a woman that has no child, like a man that has no strength. I tell you I shall die if I cannot paint.”“Yes, he will die,” said Golda. “He will surely die.”“He will die of starvation if he goes on painting,” replied Jacob.“And if you had not been able to sleep you would have died of starvation for all that work ever did for you,” cried Golda, convinced that Mendel was speaking the truth.Shortly before this crisis Mendel had discovered a further aspect of the Christian world. A good young man from an Oxford settlement had heard of him and had sought him out. This young man’s name was Edward Tufnell. He was the son of a rich Northern manufacturer, and he believed that the cultured classes owed something to the masses. He believed there must be mute, inglorious Miltons in the slums, and that they only needed fertilization. When, therefore, he heard of the poor boy who sat in his mother’s kitchen painting oranges and fish and onions, he was excited to bring the prodigy within reach of culture. He made him attend lectures on poetry and French classes. These duties gave Mendel a good excuse for escaping from home in the evenings, and he attended the classes, but hardly understood a word of what was said. He liked and admired Edward Tufnell, who was very nearly what he imagined a gentleman to be—generous and kind, and quick to appreciate the human quality of any fellow-creature, no matter what his outward aspect might be. Edward Tufnell treated Golda exactly as he would have treated an elderly duchess.To Edward Tufnell, therefore, Mendel bore his difficulty, and Edward took infinite pains and at last, through his interest with the Bishop of Stepney, procured him a situation in a stained-glass factory, where he was set to trace cartoons of the Virgin Mary and S. John the Baptist and other figures of whom he had never heard. But,though he had never heard of them, yet he understood that they were figures worthy of respect, and it shocked him to hear the workmen say: “Billy, chuck us down another Mary,” or “Jack, heave up that there J. C. . . .” He was acutely miserable. To draw without impulse or delight was torture to him, and he could not put pencil to paper without a thrill of eagerness and desire, which was immediately baffled when his pencil had to follow out the conventional lines of the stained-glass windows. And the draughtsmen with whom he worked were empty, foul-mouthed men, who seemed to strive to give the impression that they lived only for the mean pleasures of the flesh. They knew nothing, nothing at all, and he hated them.He was paid five shillings a week, and was told that if he behaved himself, by the time he was twenty or twenty-one he would be making thirty shillings a week. Jacob was very pleased with this prospect, and told his unhappy son that he would soon settle down to it, and he even began to upbraid him for not painting in the evenings. Mendel could not touch his brushes. He tried hard to think of himself as an ordinary working boy, and he endeavoured to pursue the pleasures of his kind. He went with Harry to boxing matches and joined him in the raffish pleasures of the streets, which, however, left him weary and disgusted. He had known something truer and finer, and he could not help a little despising Harry, who pursued girls as game, and directly they were kindled and moved towards him he lost interest in them, and, indeed, was rather horrified by them.Strange in contrast was Mendel’s relation with Edward Tufnell, who was entirely innocent and could see nothing in his protégé but a touching sensitiveness to beauty. The urchin with his complete and unoffended knowledge of the lifeof the gutter was hidden from him. Edward found, and was rejoiced to find, that the boy was sensitive to intellectual beauty and to ideas. He gave him poetry to read—Keats and the odes of Milton—and was very happy to explain to him the outlines of Christianity and the difference that the coming of Christ had made to the world. He did not aim at making a convert, but only at feeding the boy’s appetite for tenderness and kindness and all fair things. Mendel was striving most loyally to be resigned to his horrible fate, and the teachings of Christ seemed to fortify his endeavour. When, therefore, he asked if he might read the New Testament, Edward lent it to him without misgiving.The result was disastrous. Mendel pored over the book and it seemed to let light into his darkness. He read of the conversion of S. Paul and his own illumination was apparently no less complete. The notion of holding out the other cheek appealed to him, for he felt that the whole world was his enemy. It had insulted him with five shillings a week, and if he were meek it would presently add another five. . . . And then what a prospect it opened up of a world where people loved each other and treated each other kindly and lived without the rasping anger and suspicion and jealousy that filled his home.He went to the National Gallery and began to understand the Italians. He would become a Christian and paint Madonnas, mothers suckling their children, with kindly saints like Edward Tufnell looking on. Yet the new spirituality jarred with his life at home and was not strong enough to combat it. That life contained a quality as essential to him as air. It stank in his nostrils, but it was the food of his spirit and he could not, though his new enthusiasm bade him do it, sentimentalize his relation with his mother. Her relation with his father forbade it, and his fathercast a shadow over the greater life illuminated by the figure of Christ. Yet because of the pictures he could not abandon the struggle, and he tried to find support by proselytizing Harry. That roisterer had begun to find his life very unsatisfying, and he gulped down the new idea simply because it was new. He got drunk on it, refused to go to the synagogue, and performed a number of acts that he thought Christian, as wasting his money on useless and hideous presents for his mother and sisters. Also he took a delight in talking of the Messiah, and ascribed all the misfortunes of the family to its adherence to an exploded faith.Jacob was furious. This soft Christian nonsense was revolting to him.“Say another word,” he shouted, “say another word and I turn you out of the house. Jeshua! I will tell you. In America it has been proved, absolutely proved in a court of law, that this Jeshua was nothing better than a pimp. It was proved by a very learned Rabbi before a Christian judge, and when the judge saw that it was proved he broke down and wept like a woman.”“I’ve only your word for it,” said Harry, already rather dashed.“I tell you I’ve seen it in print. If you like I will send for the book to America.”Harry held his peace. That settled it for him, and even Mendel was shaken by the storm his Christian inclinations had let loose.“The Christians are liars,” said Jacob. “Every one of them is a liar, and they eat filth.”There was a passion of belief in his father which Mendel could not but honour, and that other faith, so far as he knew, was held but mildly. It was charming in its results, but its spirit was unsatisfying to him who had been bred on stronger fare. All the same, his attitude towards his father’s authority was changed. His simpleacceptance was shaken, and he was in revolt against the repression of his dearest desires enjoined by it. His tongue was loosed and he began to talk enthusiastically to Edward Tufnell about his ambitions.“I beat them all at the school,” he used to say, “and I would never let anybody beat me. I can see more clearly than anybody. I can see colour where they can see none, and shadows where they can see none. And when I have painted them, then they can see them.”He was entirely unconscious in his egoism, and Edward was so generous a creature that he was not shocked or offended by it. He was a Quaker and as simple in his faith as a peasant, and he was young enough to know how difficult it was for the boy to expose his thoughts. After he had listened to his outpourings he would lead the boy on to talk of his experiences at the stained-glass factory. Mendel had a wonderful gift of vivid narration. Everything was so real to him, he had no reason to respect anything in the outside world unless it compelled the homage of his instinct, and in his broken Cockney English he could give the most dramatic descriptions of everything he saw and did. When he was engaged upon such tales, helping them out with wonderful mimicry, he had no shyness and laid bare his feelings as though they were also a part of the external scene.Edward knew nothing at all about painting, but he could respond to quality in a human being, and he recognized that here was no ordinary boy. His first impulse was to rescue him from his surroundings, support him, send him to school. But what a Hell that would be for the sensitive foreigner brought face to face with the ruthless force of an ancient tradition! Edward himself had suffered enough from being such an oddity as a Quaker, but to send this Jew, who had learned nothing and had none but his naturalmanners, to a Public School would be an act of cruelty. Besides, the boy would not hear of being parted from his mother, whom he was never tired of praising. He told Edward quite solemnly that his mother had said things far more beautiful than anything in Keats or Milton and that no book could ever have held anything more moving than her descriptions of the life at home in Austria, with the Jews in their gaberdines with their long curls hanging by their ears, and the foolish peasants in their bright clothes, and the splendid officers who clapped children into prison if they splashed their great shining boots with mud. . . . As he listened Edward felt more and more convinced that it was his duty not to allow this rich nature to be swallowed up in the grey squalor of the slums. He had begun his philanthropic work believing that Oxford had much to give to the poor, and he had come in time to realize that the world of which Oxford was the romantic symbol stood sorely in need of much that the poor had to give. Mendel confirmed and strengthened an impression which had for some time been disturbing Edward’s peace of mind. He felt that if he could help the boy he would be translating his perception into action.He discussed the matter with his friends, who smiled at his solemnity. “Dear old Edward” was always a joke to them, so seriously did he take the problems with which he was faced. They said that, of course, if the boy was a genius he would find his way out and would be all the greater for the struggle. Edward protested that young talent was easily snuffed out, but again they laughed and said that if it were so then it was no great loss. Edward then said that the boy had a fine nature which might easily be crippled by evil circumstances. That they refused to believe either, and Edward made no progress until he told his tale to a rich young Jew who had latelycome to the settlement. This young man, Maurice Birnbaum, was at once fired. His father was a member of a committee for aiding young Jews of talent. With Edward he swooped down on the Kühlers in his motor-car, and Golda showed him all her son’s work, from the watch he drew at the age of three to a study of Sara’s breasts. Birnbaum knew no Yiddish, and Golda scorned a Jew who could not speak the language of his race. He was also extremely gauche and talked to her rather in the manner of a parliamentary candidate canvassing for votes. He patronized her and told her that her son had talent, but that she must not expect Fortune to wait on him immediately. “A Christian Jew!” said Golda scornfully when he had gone. “He stinks of money and shell-fish. If you are going to eat pork, eat till the grease runs down your chin.” And she had a sudden horror that Mendel might grow like that, all flesh and withered, uneasy spirit. She felt inclined to destroy all the pictures, and when Mendel came in she told him of her visitor and of her alarm, and he reassured her, saying: “What I am I will always be, for without you I am nothing. . . .” It was only from Mendel that Golda had such sayings. No one else ever acknowledged in words her quality or her power for sweetness in their lives, and she was terrified at the thought of his going. The big motor-car would come and take him and all his pictures away, she imagined, and he would be swept up into glittering circles of which alone he was worthy, though they were quite unworthy of him. And some rich woman would be enraptured with him, and she would take him to her arms and her bed, and he would be lost for ever. Mendel told her it meant nothing, that such people forgot those who were poor and never really helped them, because they could never know what it was like to need help: but he had a premonition that he had done with the stained-glass factory. Hetook up his brushes again and cleaned them, and chattered gaily of the things he would do when the motor-car fetched him and he was asked to paint the portraits of lords and millionaires.Edward inquired further of Birnbaum, and he brought Mendel a paper to fill up, stating his age, circumstances, parentage, etc., etc. He was to send this, with a letter, to Sir Julius Fleischmann, who was a famous financier and connoisseur. Edward drafted a letter, but Mendel found it servile, and wrote as follows:—DEARSIR,—I send you my paper filled up. My father is a poor man and I wish to be a painter. I have won prizes at a school, but I cannot make my living by my art. I am not asking for charity. I am only asking that my work shall be judged. If it is good painting, then let me paint. Give me my opportunity, please. If it is bad painting, then it is no great matter, and I will go on until I can paint well, and then I will show you my work again. If money is given me I will pay every penny of it back when I am as successful as I shall be. I am sending three drawings and two paintings.Yours faithfully,MENDELKÜHLER.This letter was sent enclosed in a parcel made up with trembling hands. He knew that the great moment had come, that at last he had attained the desired contact with the outside world. He was wildly elated, and had fantastic and absurd visions of Sir Julius himself driving down at once in his motor-car, knocking at the door and saying: “Does Mr. Mendel Kühler live here?” Then he would enter and embrace him and cry: “You are a great artist.” And he would turn to Golda and say: “You are the mother of a great artist. You shall no longer live in poverty.” And he would sit down and write a cheque for a hundred pounds. The story swelled and swelled like a balloon. It rose and soared aloft with Mendelclinging desperately to it. But every now and then it came swooping down to earth again, and then Mendel would imagine his drawings and pictures being sent back without a word. Elated or despondent, he passed through life in a dream, and was hardly conscious of his surroundings either at the factory or at home.This went on for weeks, during which he composed letters of savage insult to Sir Julius, to Birnbaum, and even to Edward Tufnell, telling them that he needed no help, that he was a Jewish artist and would stay among the Jews, the real Jews, those who kept themselves to themselves and to the faith of their fathers, and had no truck with the light and frivolous world outside. But he tore all these letters up, for he knew that the answer he desired would come.At last one morning there was a note for him. The secretary of the committee wrote asking him to take more specimens of his work to Mr. Edgar Froitzheim, the famous artist, at his studio in Hampstead. Mendel had never heard of Froitzheim, but it seemed to him an enormous step towards fame to be going to see a real artist in a real studio. He felt happier, too, at having this intermediary appointed, for he knew that artists always knew each other by instinct and helped each other for the sake of the work they loved.Golda made him put on his best clothes, and washed him and brushed his hair. He packed up half a dozen drawings and his picture of the apples, which had been too precious to trust to the post or to Sir Julius, and he set out for Hampstead. To cool his excitement he walked across the Heath, remembering vividly the day when he had first seen it, and again it seemed to him a place of freedom and surpassing loveliness, the sweet, comfortable quality of the grass only accentuated by the bare patches of ground, which were here and there of an amazing colour, purple and brown. A rain-cloudcame up on the gusty wind and shed its slanting shower, and its shadow fell on the rounding slopes. He became aware of the form of the Heath beneath its verdure and colour. Between himself and the scene he felt an intimacy, as though he had known it always and would always know it. It amused him and filled him with a pleasant glee, which, when it passed, left him shy for the encounter with the famous Froitzheim, the arbiter of his immediate fortunes.
ATfirst Mendel hardly noticed the passing of Sara. He waited anxiously for her to come, but when she never appeared he went on working, only gradually to discover that the first glorious impulse had faded away. However, the habit of regular work was strong with him, and he could go on like a carpenter or a mason or any other good journeyman. But there was no one to buy what he produced, and his father began to talk gloomily and ominously of the workshop.
“Never!” said Mendel. “If I am not a great artist by the time I am twenty-three I will come and work. If I have done nothing by the time I am twenty-three I shall know that I am no good.”
“I can see no reason,” said Jacob, “why you should not work like any other man and paint in your spare time. Issy is a good dancer in his spare time, and Harry is good at the boxing. Why should you not paint in your spare time and work like an honest man?”
Mendel turned on his father and rent him.
“You do not know what work is. You work with your hands. Yes. But do you ever work till your head swims, and your eyes ache because they can see more inside than they can outside? If I cannot paint I shall die. I shall be like a bird that cannot sing, like a woman that has no child, like a man that has no strength. I tell you I shall die if I cannot paint.”
“Yes, he will die,” said Golda. “He will surely die.”
“He will die of starvation if he goes on painting,” replied Jacob.
“And if you had not been able to sleep you would have died of starvation for all that work ever did for you,” cried Golda, convinced that Mendel was speaking the truth.
Shortly before this crisis Mendel had discovered a further aspect of the Christian world. A good young man from an Oxford settlement had heard of him and had sought him out. This young man’s name was Edward Tufnell. He was the son of a rich Northern manufacturer, and he believed that the cultured classes owed something to the masses. He believed there must be mute, inglorious Miltons in the slums, and that they only needed fertilization. When, therefore, he heard of the poor boy who sat in his mother’s kitchen painting oranges and fish and onions, he was excited to bring the prodigy within reach of culture. He made him attend lectures on poetry and French classes. These duties gave Mendel a good excuse for escaping from home in the evenings, and he attended the classes, but hardly understood a word of what was said. He liked and admired Edward Tufnell, who was very nearly what he imagined a gentleman to be—generous and kind, and quick to appreciate the human quality of any fellow-creature, no matter what his outward aspect might be. Edward Tufnell treated Golda exactly as he would have treated an elderly duchess.
To Edward Tufnell, therefore, Mendel bore his difficulty, and Edward took infinite pains and at last, through his interest with the Bishop of Stepney, procured him a situation in a stained-glass factory, where he was set to trace cartoons of the Virgin Mary and S. John the Baptist and other figures of whom he had never heard. But,though he had never heard of them, yet he understood that they were figures worthy of respect, and it shocked him to hear the workmen say: “Billy, chuck us down another Mary,” or “Jack, heave up that there J. C. . . .” He was acutely miserable. To draw without impulse or delight was torture to him, and he could not put pencil to paper without a thrill of eagerness and desire, which was immediately baffled when his pencil had to follow out the conventional lines of the stained-glass windows. And the draughtsmen with whom he worked were empty, foul-mouthed men, who seemed to strive to give the impression that they lived only for the mean pleasures of the flesh. They knew nothing, nothing at all, and he hated them.
He was paid five shillings a week, and was told that if he behaved himself, by the time he was twenty or twenty-one he would be making thirty shillings a week. Jacob was very pleased with this prospect, and told his unhappy son that he would soon settle down to it, and he even began to upbraid him for not painting in the evenings. Mendel could not touch his brushes. He tried hard to think of himself as an ordinary working boy, and he endeavoured to pursue the pleasures of his kind. He went with Harry to boxing matches and joined him in the raffish pleasures of the streets, which, however, left him weary and disgusted. He had known something truer and finer, and he could not help a little despising Harry, who pursued girls as game, and directly they were kindled and moved towards him he lost interest in them, and, indeed, was rather horrified by them.
Strange in contrast was Mendel’s relation with Edward Tufnell, who was entirely innocent and could see nothing in his protégé but a touching sensitiveness to beauty. The urchin with his complete and unoffended knowledge of the lifeof the gutter was hidden from him. Edward found, and was rejoiced to find, that the boy was sensitive to intellectual beauty and to ideas. He gave him poetry to read—Keats and the odes of Milton—and was very happy to explain to him the outlines of Christianity and the difference that the coming of Christ had made to the world. He did not aim at making a convert, but only at feeding the boy’s appetite for tenderness and kindness and all fair things. Mendel was striving most loyally to be resigned to his horrible fate, and the teachings of Christ seemed to fortify his endeavour. When, therefore, he asked if he might read the New Testament, Edward lent it to him without misgiving.
The result was disastrous. Mendel pored over the book and it seemed to let light into his darkness. He read of the conversion of S. Paul and his own illumination was apparently no less complete. The notion of holding out the other cheek appealed to him, for he felt that the whole world was his enemy. It had insulted him with five shillings a week, and if he were meek it would presently add another five. . . . And then what a prospect it opened up of a world where people loved each other and treated each other kindly and lived without the rasping anger and suspicion and jealousy that filled his home.
He went to the National Gallery and began to understand the Italians. He would become a Christian and paint Madonnas, mothers suckling their children, with kindly saints like Edward Tufnell looking on. Yet the new spirituality jarred with his life at home and was not strong enough to combat it. That life contained a quality as essential to him as air. It stank in his nostrils, but it was the food of his spirit and he could not, though his new enthusiasm bade him do it, sentimentalize his relation with his mother. Her relation with his father forbade it, and his fathercast a shadow over the greater life illuminated by the figure of Christ. Yet because of the pictures he could not abandon the struggle, and he tried to find support by proselytizing Harry. That roisterer had begun to find his life very unsatisfying, and he gulped down the new idea simply because it was new. He got drunk on it, refused to go to the synagogue, and performed a number of acts that he thought Christian, as wasting his money on useless and hideous presents for his mother and sisters. Also he took a delight in talking of the Messiah, and ascribed all the misfortunes of the family to its adherence to an exploded faith.
Jacob was furious. This soft Christian nonsense was revolting to him.
“Say another word,” he shouted, “say another word and I turn you out of the house. Jeshua! I will tell you. In America it has been proved, absolutely proved in a court of law, that this Jeshua was nothing better than a pimp. It was proved by a very learned Rabbi before a Christian judge, and when the judge saw that it was proved he broke down and wept like a woman.”
“I’ve only your word for it,” said Harry, already rather dashed.
“I tell you I’ve seen it in print. If you like I will send for the book to America.”
Harry held his peace. That settled it for him, and even Mendel was shaken by the storm his Christian inclinations had let loose.
“The Christians are liars,” said Jacob. “Every one of them is a liar, and they eat filth.”
There was a passion of belief in his father which Mendel could not but honour, and that other faith, so far as he knew, was held but mildly. It was charming in its results, but its spirit was unsatisfying to him who had been bred on stronger fare. All the same, his attitude towards his father’s authority was changed. His simpleacceptance was shaken, and he was in revolt against the repression of his dearest desires enjoined by it. His tongue was loosed and he began to talk enthusiastically to Edward Tufnell about his ambitions.
“I beat them all at the school,” he used to say, “and I would never let anybody beat me. I can see more clearly than anybody. I can see colour where they can see none, and shadows where they can see none. And when I have painted them, then they can see them.”
He was entirely unconscious in his egoism, and Edward was so generous a creature that he was not shocked or offended by it. He was a Quaker and as simple in his faith as a peasant, and he was young enough to know how difficult it was for the boy to expose his thoughts. After he had listened to his outpourings he would lead the boy on to talk of his experiences at the stained-glass factory. Mendel had a wonderful gift of vivid narration. Everything was so real to him, he had no reason to respect anything in the outside world unless it compelled the homage of his instinct, and in his broken Cockney English he could give the most dramatic descriptions of everything he saw and did. When he was engaged upon such tales, helping them out with wonderful mimicry, he had no shyness and laid bare his feelings as though they were also a part of the external scene.
Edward knew nothing at all about painting, but he could respond to quality in a human being, and he recognized that here was no ordinary boy. His first impulse was to rescue him from his surroundings, support him, send him to school. But what a Hell that would be for the sensitive foreigner brought face to face with the ruthless force of an ancient tradition! Edward himself had suffered enough from being such an oddity as a Quaker, but to send this Jew, who had learned nothing and had none but his naturalmanners, to a Public School would be an act of cruelty. Besides, the boy would not hear of being parted from his mother, whom he was never tired of praising. He told Edward quite solemnly that his mother had said things far more beautiful than anything in Keats or Milton and that no book could ever have held anything more moving than her descriptions of the life at home in Austria, with the Jews in their gaberdines with their long curls hanging by their ears, and the foolish peasants in their bright clothes, and the splendid officers who clapped children into prison if they splashed their great shining boots with mud. . . . As he listened Edward felt more and more convinced that it was his duty not to allow this rich nature to be swallowed up in the grey squalor of the slums. He had begun his philanthropic work believing that Oxford had much to give to the poor, and he had come in time to realize that the world of which Oxford was the romantic symbol stood sorely in need of much that the poor had to give. Mendel confirmed and strengthened an impression which had for some time been disturbing Edward’s peace of mind. He felt that if he could help the boy he would be translating his perception into action.
He discussed the matter with his friends, who smiled at his solemnity. “Dear old Edward” was always a joke to them, so seriously did he take the problems with which he was faced. They said that, of course, if the boy was a genius he would find his way out and would be all the greater for the struggle. Edward protested that young talent was easily snuffed out, but again they laughed and said that if it were so then it was no great loss. Edward then said that the boy had a fine nature which might easily be crippled by evil circumstances. That they refused to believe either, and Edward made no progress until he told his tale to a rich young Jew who had latelycome to the settlement. This young man, Maurice Birnbaum, was at once fired. His father was a member of a committee for aiding young Jews of talent. With Edward he swooped down on the Kühlers in his motor-car, and Golda showed him all her son’s work, from the watch he drew at the age of three to a study of Sara’s breasts. Birnbaum knew no Yiddish, and Golda scorned a Jew who could not speak the language of his race. He was also extremely gauche and talked to her rather in the manner of a parliamentary candidate canvassing for votes. He patronized her and told her that her son had talent, but that she must not expect Fortune to wait on him immediately. “A Christian Jew!” said Golda scornfully when he had gone. “He stinks of money and shell-fish. If you are going to eat pork, eat till the grease runs down your chin.” And she had a sudden horror that Mendel might grow like that, all flesh and withered, uneasy spirit. She felt inclined to destroy all the pictures, and when Mendel came in she told him of her visitor and of her alarm, and he reassured her, saying: “What I am I will always be, for without you I am nothing. . . .” It was only from Mendel that Golda had such sayings. No one else ever acknowledged in words her quality or her power for sweetness in their lives, and she was terrified at the thought of his going. The big motor-car would come and take him and all his pictures away, she imagined, and he would be swept up into glittering circles of which alone he was worthy, though they were quite unworthy of him. And some rich woman would be enraptured with him, and she would take him to her arms and her bed, and he would be lost for ever. Mendel told her it meant nothing, that such people forgot those who were poor and never really helped them, because they could never know what it was like to need help: but he had a premonition that he had done with the stained-glass factory. Hetook up his brushes again and cleaned them, and chattered gaily of the things he would do when the motor-car fetched him and he was asked to paint the portraits of lords and millionaires.
Edward inquired further of Birnbaum, and he brought Mendel a paper to fill up, stating his age, circumstances, parentage, etc., etc. He was to send this, with a letter, to Sir Julius Fleischmann, who was a famous financier and connoisseur. Edward drafted a letter, but Mendel found it servile, and wrote as follows:—
DEARSIR,—I send you my paper filled up. My father is a poor man and I wish to be a painter. I have won prizes at a school, but I cannot make my living by my art. I am not asking for charity. I am only asking that my work shall be judged. If it is good painting, then let me paint. Give me my opportunity, please. If it is bad painting, then it is no great matter, and I will go on until I can paint well, and then I will show you my work again. If money is given me I will pay every penny of it back when I am as successful as I shall be. I am sending three drawings and two paintings.Yours faithfully,MENDELKÜHLER.
DEARSIR,—
I send you my paper filled up. My father is a poor man and I wish to be a painter. I have won prizes at a school, but I cannot make my living by my art. I am not asking for charity. I am only asking that my work shall be judged. If it is good painting, then let me paint. Give me my opportunity, please. If it is bad painting, then it is no great matter, and I will go on until I can paint well, and then I will show you my work again. If money is given me I will pay every penny of it back when I am as successful as I shall be. I am sending three drawings and two paintings.
Yours faithfully,
MENDELKÜHLER.
This letter was sent enclosed in a parcel made up with trembling hands. He knew that the great moment had come, that at last he had attained the desired contact with the outside world. He was wildly elated, and had fantastic and absurd visions of Sir Julius himself driving down at once in his motor-car, knocking at the door and saying: “Does Mr. Mendel Kühler live here?” Then he would enter and embrace him and cry: “You are a great artist.” And he would turn to Golda and say: “You are the mother of a great artist. You shall no longer live in poverty.” And he would sit down and write a cheque for a hundred pounds. The story swelled and swelled like a balloon. It rose and soared aloft with Mendelclinging desperately to it. But every now and then it came swooping down to earth again, and then Mendel would imagine his drawings and pictures being sent back without a word. Elated or despondent, he passed through life in a dream, and was hardly conscious of his surroundings either at the factory or at home.
This went on for weeks, during which he composed letters of savage insult to Sir Julius, to Birnbaum, and even to Edward Tufnell, telling them that he needed no help, that he was a Jewish artist and would stay among the Jews, the real Jews, those who kept themselves to themselves and to the faith of their fathers, and had no truck with the light and frivolous world outside. But he tore all these letters up, for he knew that the answer he desired would come.
At last one morning there was a note for him. The secretary of the committee wrote asking him to take more specimens of his work to Mr. Edgar Froitzheim, the famous artist, at his studio in Hampstead. Mendel had never heard of Froitzheim, but it seemed to him an enormous step towards fame to be going to see a real artist in a real studio. He felt happier, too, at having this intermediary appointed, for he knew that artists always knew each other by instinct and helped each other for the sake of the work they loved.
Golda made him put on his best clothes, and washed him and brushed his hair. He packed up half a dozen drawings and his picture of the apples, which had been too precious to trust to the post or to Sir Julius, and he set out for Hampstead. To cool his excitement he walked across the Heath, remembering vividly the day when he had first seen it, and again it seemed to him a place of freedom and surpassing loveliness, the sweet, comfortable quality of the grass only accentuated by the bare patches of ground, which were here and there of an amazing colour, purple and brown. A rain-cloudcame up on the gusty wind and shed its slanting shower, and its shadow fell on the rounding slopes. He became aware of the form of the Heath beneath its verdure and colour. Between himself and the scene he felt an intimacy, as though he had known it always and would always know it. It amused him and filled him with a pleasant glee, which, when it passed, left him shy for the encounter with the famous Froitzheim, the arbiter of his immediate fortunes.