Читать книгу The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson - Hilda Orchardson Gray - Страница 4

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Looking back on my long visits as a girl to 13 Portland Place I can still feel most vividly the vitality of “Orchardson’s” personality.

Sitting in the atmosphere of an ordinary breakfast table, his entrance made one’s faculties all alert. At once commonplace remarks or acts were taken up, they were whimsically tossed about, assuming different laughable shapes and meanings. Explanations and self-defence only gave him a wider scope. The play would almost invariably end in some delicate and subtly worded epigram, full of wisdom and kindly tolerance.

At times the talk would start by his making some paradoxical statement which one was forced to challenge. Again he had the fun of tossing it about, looking at it from a score of different angles, always summing up with some whimsical little bit of wisdom—another epigram.

I was a Slade student at that time and had to meet much friendly banter on “modern methods,” but that would end with the remark: “If you are hungry you will get on; hunger is what matters.”

I remember, too, the thrill when he took us for a little walk. From being an ordinary girl I was changed to a princess. He joined us—so elegant, so jaunty—with light spats, his topper, as always, slightly on one side. It was not an ordinary “walk”—he handed us down Portland Place, he steered us like a highly finished dancer among the crowds in Oxford Street, avoiding for us any possible jar or confusion. He talked of things we liked, and brought us back thinking very highly of ourselves!

His movements, like his talk, had an exquisite deference, delicacy and precision. With all his charm there was nothing of the fop about him, he was quite un-self-conscious. His speech, his movements, his dress were the natural expression of himself.