Читать книгу The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson - Hilda Orchardson Gray - Страница 8

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My father was born in Edinburgh in 1831; most of his friends thought 1835, but he neither knew nor cared; and when his children asked for a day to celebrate, he said that three friends claimed his birthday to be the same as theirs, so he would choose his favourite friend’s day, Pettie’s, March 27th. Years after he explained that his memory never retained anything unimportant nor forgot anything important. I dared to correct him by asking “Wouldn’t it be more correct to say you have an absent-minded memory?” He marched up and down the studio with his head in the clouds, then suddenly stood still and laughed a little. “Yes,” he said, “not merely more correct, but absolutely correct, I think.”

About 1836.

See a first picture; a little fellow standing at his father’s knee—he has no mother—asking questions. A delicately beautiful child, yet not delicate; tall and slender with fair waving hair, big blue eyes, dazzling complexion of pink and white; a shy retiring spirit with a most robust strength of will. Very serious just now. “Father, I saw pictures in a shop-window to-day; how are they made?” His father explains a little, is eagerly interrupted: “Could I make pictures?” “Yes.”

Pencil, paper, ardent heart, eager hand, observant eye—behold! a picture of promise.

Another picture—school-time:

1837-1845.

A dreamer of dreams, far away in the clouds, star-gazing. A crowd of other boys sporting and fighting together—fighting seems to have been the chief amusement—“Hi, Bill,” shouts one, “come and fecht.”

“ ‘Bill’ Orchardson does not hear.” Says another boy: “Huh, leave him alane, he’s seein’ visions.”

The cry is taken up: “Huh, he’s seein’ visions!” Which wakes young Bill from his reverie and he proceeds to fight with great energy and resource.

In school hours young Orchardson has an easy time; he has only to read his lessons to know them; and also to have opinions of his own about them which, however, he is usually too shy to express. The class sits on forms on three sides of a square. “Bill” Orchardson is entitled to sit at the head of the class and rises there every day; yet every morning he is found snugly hiding in the corner where the forms join, with two boys sitting well forward to cover his movements. He is very busy with relays of copy-books that come in turn from all the boys, and each gets a drawing, the favourite being a coach and four.

At last the “dominie,” douce man, with apparently more of kindness than of discipline in him, discovers Orchardson’s absence from his rightful place, and on reflection remembers it is by no means the first time.

“William Orchardson, stand up!”

The boy shyly emerges from behind his two friends and stands with downcast eyes, and copy-book hidden behind him. The dominie continues:

“You were at the head of your class yesterday and the day before, indeed every day; how is it you are always back in the corner? And what is that you are hiding behind you? Bring that copy-book to me.”

Orchardson advances, shy, shamed, but fearless, and hands in the book. The dominie looks through the book—coaches, ships, castles, horses, dogs—there are more drawings than lessons; he enquires if there are any more drawings; many are produced; he looks up at the painfully blushing, handsome face beside him.

“You draw much, Bill?” he asks kindly.

“Yes, sir,” Bill stammers, blushing more than ever.

The dominie looks slowly over the drawings again; then very gently he says:

“Orchardson, you may go back to your corner.”

The favourite scholar evidently as well as the cleverest.

That quiet “Go back to your corner” is, I think, the first recognition of Orchardson’s genius.

The name Orchardson is a corruption of Urquhartson of the Clan Urquhart of Glen Urquhart, a valley in Inverness-shire leading down into Loch Ness. An ancestor visited England where the tongue-tied Sassanach was unable to pronounce the guttural Urquhartson and called it Urkurtson, thence Urchartson and finally Orchardson, Orchadson, Orchison, Orchartson. I have seen various spellings in the highlands. Our Orchardson went to Forfarshire and my grandfather came thence to Edinburgh, where he joined the merchant-tailoring firm of Meyer and Quiller, first as employee and then as partner and son-in-law.

Photo T. & R. Annan

WISHART’S LAST COMMUNION, 1853

By kind permission of F. C. Buist, Esq.

The firm specialised in tartans, and my grandfather became an authority on the subject which indirectly had to do with what my father described as “the happiest day of my boyhood,” the day it was settled that he should go to an art school. John Sobieski Stuart (“The Chevalier Stuart”) published in 1843 an illustrated book entitled Costumes of the Clans. Young Orchardson having, it is said, copied one of the drawings showed it to the Chevalier, who admired it so much that he endorsed the boy’s application for admission to the Trustees Academy.

In 1707 the Act of Union set apart certain moneys for fostering Scottish manufactures, etc. In course of time such help became unnecessary and part of the money was used for the upkeep of a school of design, called the Trustees Academy, which finally became an art school.

About 1846.

On his first day at this school Orchardson wandered round in his dreamy way, and finally put up his easel in the life school. The curator found him there and ordered him to the antique room, the place for beginners. The “beginner” bowed politely, went on with his work, and was in the same place when the curator came back.

“Mr Orchardson, I told you to go to the antique.”

Mr Orchardson explained, blushing, shy, courteous, but determined, that he had decided not to draw in the antique, but to paint in the life. Such obstinacy and disobedience accompanied by such a courteous manner so astonished the curator that he said nothing and went round to look at the refractory student’s work. A look at the drawing, a glance at the embarrassed but determined boy, then a long critical gaze; finally he walked off without a word, and thereafter young Orchardson was left in peace to work as he pleased. When my Father told me the incident he was still embarrassed and ashamed of his misbehaviour, and ended: “What else could I do? I knew what I wanted to do then as now, and I had to do it.”

In 1850 Robert Scott Lauder was appointed curator, an event which proved of very great importance in the art world. Not only Orchardson but Chalmers, Herdman, Pettie, MacWhirter, M’Taggart, Peter Graham, Tom Graham and Hugh Cameron all came under his extraordinary influence; an influence so strong that the work of his pupils became “The Scottish School,” recognizable as such by the veriest amateur.

On my Father being asked for a description of Lauder’s teaching, he replied that he practised “the wise neglect” of Fuseli. “Lauder, in fact, was a good master because he never ‘taught,’ because he never interfered. When he arrived we waited nervously for his criticisms as he came round behind the double row of easels. At last he reached mine, and I stood aside while he leant over the back of the seat looking at my work. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘yes,’ and then began to talk about the weather and other matters.”

It is difficult to understand how so “douce” a man as Lauder could have had so great an influence, especially if he did not actively criticize. I think perhaps it was the wonder student who escaped criticism. “Only a boy-student’s practice work, but how wonderfully perfect! Just an arm and hand—or hand and wrist or so—or a shoulder in perspective, but each a thing of beauty and a work of one who seemed even then to have had little left to learn of the mere technique of his craft!”^[1]

This is a criticism written in 1907, but his fellow-students have often told me of the wonder, almost awe, with which they regarded the precision and delicacy of his boy-work.

About the age of fifteen or sixteen he went for a holiday in Arbroath staying with aunts, I think, where he made the acquaintance of an old sea captain, a great sea fisher and owner of a small schooner.

At five o’clock in the morning this quaint pair, old sea dog and embryo artist, would meet on the pier, the former Captain, the latter Crew, and with cunning skill would work the schooner out of the crowded harbour to the open sea. The Captain kept one elbow on the tiller, one eye on the sails, what was left of him helped the Crew to bait the lines with mussels. The new hand soon became an expert—quick at learning seamanship as at everything else. They caught mackerel chiefly, but occasionally had exciting hauls of other and bigger fish; my Father remembered one in particular, a mystery fish that they towed for miles before they could get in near enough to gaff, and when at last it got close enough, its own weight tore through the gaff, broke the line, and it disappeared. It was washed ashore next day, and proved to be a turbot six feet across, and with a great gash almost cutting it in half.

At ten o’clock at night the fishers returned, steering by the rose window in Arbroath Abbey (like the professional fishers), and were met on the pier by a crowd of people, come for the distribution of the day’s takings. Then the old sailor rolled off to his cottage and my Father ran home; when he awoke in the morning to hear the clock striking five and fishing time, he generally found himself lying half-dressed, fallen across the bed.

It must have been sometime after his return from one of these visits that he wrote the following letter to I know not whom: