From These Beginnings: Self-Portrait of an Artist

I

No doubt my first years count —but I cannot account for them. Yet as I remember climbing over trestles where barrels had been kept in a wine and spirit shop, it is evident that my father was a wine merchant. In considerable contrast to Ruskin’s father, who was also a wine merchant, he seems to have sold out and cleared out at an early stage, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. My brother Harry would be about four, I three, my sister Jane two. We were divided up: Harry going to my aunt Rose’s father, a doctor; I to her husband, Edward Lavery, a farmer; and Jane to an uncle Richard, a publican in Belfast. I am told that my mother died of grief when my father was drowned on his way to America.

When I was ten my aunt suddenly told me that she was going to send me across the sea to a very rich cousin of hers who had a big house with solid golden balls hanging over the front door. For days I dreamed of a fairy palace, and soon the day came when I found myself sitting in the cabin of the BelfastArdrossan passenger and cattle steamer. I had never seen the sea before, nor the waves rolling up a beach. We arrived at the other side in early morning and proceeded to walk the mile or so towards our destination, which was at a place called Saltcoats. We passed two girls disporting themselves in the water, both of whom I painted forty years later. I was told that they were ladies of title from the big house close by, Montgomery Castle. It did not fulfill my idea of a castle. I was still dreaming of the Palace with the Three Golden Balls.

We came to our destination. Looking up I did behold the golden balls. But the castle was a house upon the portal of which these words were written — UNION LOAN OFFICE. A pawnshop.

My uncle had a remarkable clientele of sailors, Negroes, and miners who came to pawn a strange assortment including picks and shovels, guitars, banjos, concertinas, queer-looking knives and pistols, a large Holy Bible, and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, highly illustrated, which I was told not to look at.

Traveling theatres came to the town, performing in large tents, admission from threepence to a shilling, where such plays were given as Leah, or the Jewish Maiden’s Wrong and Ingomar, the Son of the Wilderness, over which I shed tears. Known as the ‘wee pawn man,’ I used to hang about and get into the good graces of the artists by giving them an old sword or dirk from the pawnshop. The lady who played Leah held me in bondage until one day I saw her behind the scenes drinking porter out of a broken jug, the liquor escaping down the side. And on hearing her remark to some men, ‘There’s that bloody boy again,’ I was cured and transferred my attentions to Mary Ann, who was the queen of ‘Paddy’s Castle,’ a house in a back street where the sailors used to go with girls.

Mary Ann was a dazzling blonde of about sixteen with an impediment in her speech —using Gaelic and hardly any English. She was mauled about by drunken sailors, and had great attraction for me, now getting on to thirteen. Owing to her reputation I dared not be seen speaking to her. But one evening when there was a crowd, she among them, trying to get into the theatre, I plucked up my courage and sidled close to her, whispering, ‘See you when we come out.’ She winked and said nothing. That was the beginning of my first attempt at love-making. Alas, it was about Easter time, and I had to go to Confession. There was no escape. It was not so bad as I had expected, but for a long time I was not allowed out alone after dark. Although I knew that the Confessional was secret, I could not help thinking that Father Halloran had been talking to my uncle. Anyhow I never saw Mary Ann again.

Besides bringing me these experiences, the pawnshop enabled me to help my brother Harry, who suddenly turned up. He had been sent by Aunt Rose’s father to a training ship at Plymouth. Dressed in his naval rig, he was now on leave, but determined to desert. I fixed him up with a suit of clothes from the pawnshop. Having made a neat bundle of his discarded uniform with a heavy stone inside, we walked into the mining district to a disused shaft, down which we threw it. We were terribly frightened and for a long time afterwards did not know what might happen. Getting well away from the pit shaft, we parted, Harry going off into the wilderness with the few shillings remaining from his leave money, intending to hide underground as a pit boy. Almost a year later a letter came from him in a disguised hand to let me know he was driving ponies in a pit at Longriggend, a name I have never forgotten. When he thought it was safe he came back to Glasgow and took a job as a clerk in the Glasgow Corporation, where he remained twenty years, got married, brought up and educated two sons and a daughter. Then one morning, without saying anything, he walked out and was next heard of years later in Australia, where he eventually died, leaving his will in favor of the wife and family he had deserted.

II

It may have been this meeting with my spirited brother or merely the exuberant inexperience of youth that made me suddenly decide to make a change. I cannot remember where I got the money, — I must have robbed the till, — but one morning I took train for Glasgow. In a low part of the town I found lodgings where there was a boy a trifle older than myself in sailor rig, whose company I had for some time. He went about the country with others similarly attired carrying packs. They were known in town as ‘Dry Land Sailors’ because they sold their wares, consisting of gaudy junk supposed to have been brought home by them from their last voyage, though as a matter of fact they were merely peddling the shoddy trash they had picked up in Glasgow. At times I was a little in doubt as to the wisdom of keeping company with them and their girl friends. Their language was new to me, not to mention their freedom with each other. However, soon my money ran out and I was forced to take French leave of the lodging — though I left an empty bag to ease my conscience.

When I began to feel hungry I thought of going to a pawnshop, but had a peculiar aversion to being seen in such a place. I went round looking for one in some obscure corner, but when I found it my courage failed me. Seeing another boy idling about, I showed him a large cameo pin that I was wearing and told him that if he could get half a crown on it I would give him sixpence, explaining that I did not like going in myself because the man knew me. He took it and disappeared up the stairs. I waited, but he did not return. I crept up into the lobby and peeped into the half-dozen boxes, only to find, in the language of the locality, that I had been bilked. It cured my diffidence.

For a whole week I was without board and lodging. It was summer, and I slept on benches in Glasgow Green, wandering the streets and back yards in the darkness, picking up food that had been thrown away, and washing it in the fountains when the daylight came. Actually I think it must have been longer than a week, for they say that I was a skeleton when found wandering one night in the Saltmarket and brought back to Saltcoats.

Just then there happened to be an outbreak of smallpox, which I naturally caught. I was immediately segregated and placed in an attic with an Irish ‘Sairey Gamp,’ whose treatment, I expect, was homely. When the crisis was over and I could see again — I had been blind for a week — she tied my hands so effectively to prevent my scratching that I escaped without a mark. She explained that the only safe disinfectant was whiskey baths for a couple of weeks after I was supposed to be better. This suited her. She had an orgy until she overstepped the mark and was dismissed.

The whiskey baths did not do me much good, for I had to be sent to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and soon found myself standing naked in the amphitheatre surrounded by a dozen medical students, with two doctors explaining that I was an interesting case of hernia, varicocele, and some other diseases that I cannot recall the names of. After much incomprehensible talk I was put in a ward for observation, where I remained about a week, having constant visits from doctors and students until it was decided that I should be operated upon. The other inmates of the ward frightened me by telling me that I was to be taken to the dissecting room and cut up. A nurse took pity on me, and after much persuasion secretly got me my clothes, and I slipped out with the visitors on visiting day. I do not know what happened to the nurse, but she was so popular with the other patients that I felt sure none of them would give her away.

Once again I was back at Saltcoats, and then over the water to my aunt. Strange as it must seem, there was then talk of making a priest of me. The idea came from my uncle, but my aunt luckily did not see me as the perfect candidate for holy orders, so I found myself back in the fields herding the cows.

III

Every genuine artist creates the circumstances necessary for his fulfillment, and unconsciously does the right thing at the right time. Hence, in spite of the good food, and the security, and the experience of what I had been through when I ran away before, I was determined to get away again. A certain boy I had known in Glasgow had told me that it was always possible to get something of a job in the Mineral Department of the Glasgow and South Western Railway. I made much of this to my uncle and aunt, and was so successful that without further inquiry they let me go off with five pounds in my pocket. On the way I spent most of it in entertaining a cousin to the theatre at Belfast and having our photographs taken, so I arrived in Glasgow with the proverbial half-crown and my belongings in a carpetbag.

Pat McLoughlin, the friend in question, found me sitting in his lodgings when he came from work. I told him what had happened and he behaved nobly, going out and bringing back a couple of kippers and a steaming loaf from the baker’s. I can remember with what gusto I devoured my share of the food and the excitement of my first music hall afterwards, where we looked down from the gallery at the beer-laden tables and hilarious company listening to the great MacDermott sing, —

followed by other artists with ‘Champagne Charlie,’ ‘After the opera is over, After the opera is done, We gems of the very first water, With the ladies we’ll tootle-turn-turn,’ and suchlike ditties, McLoughlin joining in the choruses with the rest of the house. I felt on the high road to fame and fortune, for it was the happiest evening up to that time that I could remember.

The next day I did manage to get a job with the Mineral Department of the Glasgow and South Western Railway, which was in a back siding with hundreds of coal trucks being shunted backwards and forwards outside the window. My job was to take their numbers and weight of contents and enter the details and make out the total for the day. I am still pretty helpless with figures, and I used to sweat blood trying to add up the long columns. In the little office or box where this was done there Was a clerk in charge who allowed me considerable freedom after the first day and did not bother to correct my columns, though he could do in a minute what had taken me hours.

Soon this work drove me distracted and I decided to give it up. Then, realizing that in this case I should immediately relinquish my wages of 7/6 a week, — which, with an occasional sovereign from my uncle, was all I had, — I decided to carry on until my month’s wages were due. I knew that with the best will in the world I could not make the monthly returns, so I looked up the ledger for the returns of the other months and struck an average, which was accepted. I then took my wages and disappeared into the blue, with a sense of shame and remorse for what would be sure to happen when the report reached the auditors — for my friend and chief would certainly be dismissed.

Pat came again to my aid. I was anxious to get out of Glasgow at once, and owing to him I got a job in another pawnbroking business in Hamilton, which is a garrison town a few miles out. I arrived on Saturday. Unfortunately on Sunday afternoon a ‘Scots Grey’ from Belfast invited me into the barracks, He had two girls with him. They were both domestics from Mount Vernon, and in the evening I was weak enough to promise to see them home, some eight miles away. It was a clear frosty night as I walked back, but I became very tired and, brushing the snow off a lowwall, sat down. About four in the morning I was awakened by a pitman going to work. I had been frozen asleep for about five hours, but, managing to crawl on for another mile to the pitman’s house, I lay down on the floor in front of the fire. On arriving at the pawn office I discovered that the rush was over, since Monday morning in a pawnshop is the busiest in the week, and consequently I was dismissed by the infuriated pawnbroker.

There was no alternative but to go back to Glasgow, and I made for a low quarter of the town called the ‘Gallagate,’ or the Road to the Gallows. This place consisted of dilapidated mansions that once had housed the aristocracy but were now inhabited by the poor. They were turned into the meanest lodging houses, where a cracked sign indicated that single beds could be had for sixpence a night and double ones for fourpence.

It was to one of these mansions that I found myself forced one cold and wet evening towards midnight. The halfopen door, hanging at a slant from a broken hinge, led to a broad staircase lit by a gas lamp in the street. The interior was strewn with rubbish and dirt from which there rose a strong smell of disinfectant. As I reached the top of the stairs an argument was in progress between the lodging-house keeper and a drunk, who after a display of foul language was finally ejected by being thrown down the stairs — taking me with him. When I reached the top of the stairs again in the semidarkness a harsh voice called out, ‘And what the hell do you want?’ Taking care to show him by my demeanor that I was at least sober, and rattling the few coppers in my pocket, I resolutely said, ‘I want a bed’ — hoping that he would not turn me out when he found I wanted only half a bed. My finances could not run to a whole bed to myself, for I had the next day’s meal to think of and was already very hungry.

I entered what at one time must have been a magnificent room, for even now the gold of the elaborate cornice glittered in a shoddy way. There was a great open fireplace dismantled down even to the grate, and on the hearth was a blazing coal fire surrounded by small tin cans of a more or less uniform size, their owners squatting on the floor or on anything they could find. The furniture consisted of empty boxes. When I had time to observe the inmates I saw there were all the usual navvy types, ranging from sixteen to sixty, mostly smoking and talking. The only light came from the fire, and in distant corners I could discern shadowy forms sprawling on the floor seeking rest, while an extra-loud snore would occasionally eclipse the conversation round the fire.

The squalor was sickening, and I was wondering whether I should be able to stand it when I was brought to my senses by the keeper with ‘Weel, ma lad, where’s yer money?’ ‘Could I have the share of a bed?’ I asked. For a moment I thought he was going to turn me out into the street; but after relieving himself of some unprintable oaths he thought better of it, saying briefly, ‘Oot wi’ yer fourpence.’ With the aid of a bit of candle guttering down the side of a bottle he preceded me into a still more grimy room. Packed together on the floor and on mattresses raised from it were ten or twelve human forms, each with some kind of covering and a sort of bolster, under which the sleeper had clearly put his valuables. Taking me to a most unsavory-looking object stretched on its back on a mattress in a gloomy corner, my host said, ‘There ye are, ma wee man; ye’ll be as snug as a bug in a rug.’ I winced at this pleasantry a little, as I could see that he was speaking from long experience. His parting salute was ‘Put yer trousers under yer head.’

In the semidarkness of the night the full horror of the place was less evident than in the morning light. Most of the laborers had gone to work, leaving behind only the lowest of the low, smelling to heaven. My bedfellow was still there. In the window there was a sink called a ‘ jaw-box,’ with running waiter but no soap or towel. I washed as best I could and dried myself with the back of my waistcoat.

When I went out into the street I met a friend. He was three or four years older and had been my ideal of everything I thought wonderful. He could draw in a way that thrilled me, and was an athlete and a boxer. On one occasion I remember holding his jacket and keeping an eye out for the police while he gave a lesson to a drunk who had bumped against him in the street. While we had breakfast I told him where I had spent the night. He told me he had enlisted the day before in the Sixtieth Rifles. Although I had a genuine horror of service in any shape or form, my admiration for him was such that I hurried off to take the Queen’s shilling.

Fortunately I was disqualified. My uncle heard of my condition from Pat McLoughlin and demanded that I should go back to school at Saltcoats.

IV

Up till then I had never seen anything in the way of painting except gaudy lithographs of the Battle of the Boyne, oleographs of the Stations of the Cross, and others of a religious nature. One day I won in a church lottery an oil painting magnificently framed in gold, said to be a wonderful likeness of the late Cardinal Bono. Unfortunately my uncle would not let me take it out of the convent to which it belonged, on the grounds that it had been blessed by the Pope. However, in lieu of this, he gave me a golden sovereign, saying that he was sure that when I became an artist I should be able to paint a cardinal for myself.

Then one day there appeared in the Glasgow Herald ‘SITUATIONS VACANT: A smart lad with a knowledge of drawing wanted. Apply with specimens of work to J. S. McNair, Artist and Photographer, 11, West Hill Street.’ I dashed for the first train to Glasgow and was taken on as an apprentice at £10, £15, and £20 per annum for three years. I had read of the old masters’ taking pupils, and it was with feelings that Raphael might have envied that I got back to Saltcoats with the news. My uncle forgave everything, rigging me out in new clothes and saying that one day I might be a great artist with people in carriages coming to my door.

So off I went to Glasgow again — a different person this time. My age was about seventeen. I soon conceived a great admiration for McNair — for not only was he a good artist on canvas, but a better one on flesh. One day two visitors who did not look at all like sitters called and asked for him. I was about to tell them that he was not at home when they said they had come to be painted. There was a distinct smell of stale alcohol about them, and I observed that each had a black eye, not to mention some disfiguring gashes. It struck me as strange that they should choose the morning after the night before as the most propitious time to have their portraits done. I soon learned, however, that they wanted their actual faces painted. This was immediately carried out with great skill by McNair, who was able to remove all traces of nocturnal excess by means of oil paint. In an hour’s time a Romeo and an Orlando left the house.

This time I chose a more respectable lodging place than the Road to the Gallows. My landlord and lady were a road mender and his wife. He was a quiet little man who was always tired when he came home from work; and I remember how his front teeth were gone, causing his pink chin to project, while his pipe, which never remained alight, hung loosely from his gums — a depressing spectacle. My landlady was one of those wives who cause the puzzled onlooker to ask the question, ‘How did he ever come to marry her?’ Her aggressive and truculent air; her large nose, which hooked at a dangerous angle; her formidable jowl, which supported some very large hairs; the cast in one eye, which always remained stationary no matter how much the other revolved, were intimidating. If she caught me drawing on Sunday she did not fail to assure me that no good could come of it. However, as she went to church from eleven till two and from three till six, I could still get in six hours’ work.

V

I was obsessed with the mystery of art that had suddenly come to me. Nothing else mattered. At bottom I cared only for my work. The reader may think that I say this with satisfaction. It is with neither satisfaction nor complacency that I think of Jane — my sister. When I could afford two rooms and a kitchen to myself, Jane, who was now sixteen, came to keep house for me. She was very proud of the position and washed and scrubbed all day and every day until the place shone like a new pin. As I was at the School of Art night and morning, we saw little of each other except on Sunday, when we went to early Mass that I might have a long day for painting.

My sister felt lonely at times, but I scarcely gave her a thought. One day I noticed that she had been weeping. She said it was nothing, but I began to be uneasy and to pay more attention to her. I saw she had quite changed from the bright laughing girl who had arrived, to a listless creature insisting there was nothing wrong and assuming a hollow gayety. This went on for some weeks until the obvious truth could no longer be hidden. The shock was terrible. Looking back on all that happened, I cannot understand how I could have been so cruel. I try to make excuses on the grounds of my youth and my allconquering ambition to be a painter, but I can never forgive myself for the tragedy that followed. We had very little money to live on, but as everything seemed to be running smoothly I never troubled to ask her if I gave her enough each week for household expenses, and her pride would not allow her to ask for more. Instead she had been pawning the few bits of jewelry she owned, and had thus become friendly with the pawnbroker’s assistant, who, without my knowledge, had been visiting her in my absence. When he discovered what had happened he disappeared.

When I found that he had gone to America I at once set about sending her after him —not knowing where she would find him, nor realizing what it meant in her delicate state of health or what a steerage passage really was! One idea absolutely absorbed me, and one only — to get her away before anyone would know of the disgrace and I should be involved.

It was raining when we reached the docks, and I can still see that horrible den steaming with its stench of humans, tar, and bilge water deep down in the fo’castle of the very small Anchor Liner as she lay close to the Broomielaw Bridge in Glasgow; nor shall I forget the mass of men, women, and children huddled together in the semidarkness, intensified when the only source of daylight was obscured by the emigrants struggling down the ladder with their soaked bedding and belongings. Only bare wooden boards were provided for sleeping accommodation. I left her there and returned to the empty house. Feelings of remorse come to me when I remember her frightened look of anguish with no word of complaint when we said goodbye.

She found him. Though he had run away to America to escape it, he married her and the child was born. In a few months they returned to Glasgow. I was shocked at her appearance, now strange and wild-eyed. I went to see them from time to time, but I could not like him, though he had made good. He was educated and talked advanced socialism, with which neither my sister nor I had any sympathy. Another baby came. She was unhappy and careworn. He was hard and coarse in appearance. I stopped seeing them, blaming her for the mess. She knew that I was ashamed of the connection and appealed to me for help to escape from him. One evening I found her waiting for me outside the studio door, afraid to knock. I refused to help her.

Two days later her husband came to tell me that she had thrown herself over Stockwell Bridge into the Clyde, and that I was wanted at the police station to identify the body. She looked young and beautiful, with the strange serenity of death.

I doubt if there are a more heartless crew than poets, painters, and composers. We are encouraged in it by our lay brethren — I often wonder why. Robert Louis Stevenson said that we are merely on a par with the daughters of joy who are paid for doing what they enjoy most. Art is so sacred, the love of it covers a multitude of sins — and so we excuse ourselves.

(To be continued)