“Do you think he minds.” “Course he minds. He wanted a son. And between you and me her ladyship don’t think all that much of this painting. Well, if it hadn’t been for the painting he’d never have met her, would he? And who’s to say that mightn’t have been for the bes;.?”
So I learned.
At the time I discovered the secret a year had passed since my mother had died. That was a great blow to our household. She had been very beautiful and both my father and I had been content to sit and look at her. She had worn blues which matched her eyes and her tea gowns were draperies most becomingly trimmed with lace and ribbons. Because she had been a semi-invalid since my birth, I felt a certain responsibility for that; but I consoled myself that she enjoyed lying on her sofa and receiving people, like a queen at her coucher. She had what she called her ‘good days’; then she would play the piano or arrange flowers and sometimes entertain people from the neighbourhood mostly.
There were the Farringdons who lived in the Manor and owned most of the land round about, the vicar and the doctor with their families. Everyone was honoured by an invitation from Lady Kitty, even Lady Farringdors, for social status was a great concern others and although the Farringdons were rich, Sir Frederick was only a second-generation baronet and Lady Farringdon was somewhat impressed by the daughter of an Earl.
My mother made no attempt to manage the household. That was all achieved by Evie, without whom our lives would have been a great deal less comfortable. Evie had been only seventeen when she came to us.
That was at the time when I was about a year old and my mother had by that time slipped gracefully into invalidism. Evie was a distant cousin of my mother’s one of that army of poor relations which so often exists on the fringe of wealthy families. Some distant female member of that family had married beneath her, which meant against the family’s wishes, and so took a leap into obscurity. Evie was a bud from one of those branches, but she had for some reason kept in touch and, during family emergencies, had been called upon for help.
She and my mother had been fond of each other and when the beautiful Lady Kitty found that she would spend a certain time of her life reclining on sofas it occurred to her that Evie was just the person needed to come and take charge.
So Evie came and never regretted it. Nor did we. We depended on Evie.
She managed the household and the servants, was a companion and lady’s maid to my mother, an efficient housekeeper, a mother to me and all this while she made sure that my father was able to work without distraction.
So we had Evie. She arranged little parties for my mother and made sure that everything went smoothly when visitors called at the house about commissions for my father’s work. When he had to go away which he did fairly frequently he could go, knowing that we were well looked after.
My mother loved to hear of my father’s adventures when he returned home. She liked to think of him as a famous painter in great demand, although she was not really interested in what he was doing. I had seen her eyes glaze over when he was talking enthusiastically but knew what he was talking about, for I had the Collison blood in my veins and I was never happier than when I had a fine sable brush in my hands and was making those faint sure strokes on a piece of ivory or vellum.
I was Katherine too, but called Kate to distinguish me from Kitty. I did not look in the least like my mother or father. I was considerably darker than either of them.
“A throw-back to the sixteenth century,” said my father, who was naturally an authority on faces.
“Some long-ago Collison must have looked exactly like you, Kate. Those high cheekbones and that touch of red in your hair. Your eyes are tawny too. That colour would be very difficult to capture. You’d have to mix paints very carefully to get it. I never like that for delicate work … The result can be messy.”
I often laughed at the way his work always seemed to creep into his conversation.
I must have been about six years old when I made a vow. It was after I had heard the servants talking about my being a girl and a disappointment to my father.
I went into the studio and standing in the glare of the light which came through the high window, I said: “I am going to be a great painter. My miniatures are going to be the best that have ever been known.”
And being a very serious child and having a passionate devotion to my father as well as an inborn knowledge that this was what I had been born for, I set about carrying out my intention. At first my father had been amused, but he had shown me how to stretch vellum over a stiff white card and press it between sheets of paper, leaving it under a weight to be pressed.
“The skin is greasy,” he told me, ‘so we have to do a little pouncing.
Do you know what pouncing is? “
I soon did, and learned how to rub the surface with a mixture of French chalk and powdered pumice.
Then he taught me how to use oil, tempera and gouache. | “But water-colours are the most satisfactory for the smallest work,” he said.
When I had my first brush I was delighted; and I was filled with joy when I saw my father’s face after I had painted my first miniature.
He had put his arms round me and held me close to him so that I should not see the tears in his eyes. My father was a very emotional man.
He cried: “You’ve got it, Kate. You’re one of us.”
My mother was shown my first effort.
“It’s very good,” she said.
“Oh, Kate, are you going to be a genius too? And here am I… so surely not one!”
“You don’t have to be,” I told her.
“You just have to be beautiful.”
It was a happy home. My father and I grew closer through our work, and I spent hours in the studio. I had a governess until I was seventeen.
My father did not want me to go away to school because that would interrupt the time I spent in the studio.
“To be a great painter, you work every day,” he said.
“You do not wait until you feel in the mood. You do not wait until you feel ready to entertain inspiration. You are there waiting when she deigns to call.”
I understood completely. How could I have borne to be away from the studio? My resolve to be as great-no greater-than any of my ancestors had stayed with me. I knew that I was good.
My father often went abroad and would sometimes be away for a month or two at a time. He had even visited several of the European courts and painted miniatures for royalty.
“I should like to take you with me, Kate,” he often said.
“You’re as capable as I am. But I don’t know what they would think of a woman.
They wouldn’t believe the work was good . it it had been done by a member of the female sex. “
“But surely they could see for themselves.”
“People don’t always see what their eyes tell them is there. They see what they have made up their minds to see, and I’m afraid they might make up their minds that something done by a woman could not possibly be as good as that done by a man.”
“That’s nonsense and it makes me angry,” I cried.
“They must be fools.”
“Many people are,” sighed my father.
We painted miniatures for jewellers to sell all over the country. I had done many of those. They were signed with the initials KC.
Everyone said, “That’s a Collison.” They didn’t know, of course, that it was the work of Kate not Kendal Collison.
When I was a child it had sometimes seemed that my mother and father inhabited different worlds. There was my father, the absentminded artist whose work was his life, and my mother the beautiful and interestingly delicate hostess, who liked to have people around her.