The songs she sang were, in one way or another, cries for love. Songs in French, from the pen of Guy d’Hardelot, or in English, by Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Strongly emotional songs. Had Aunt known it, songs orgasmic in their slow, swelling climaxes.
But beyond any doubt Aunt’s finest effort, her unfailing war-horse, was “Vale”, by Kennedy Russell. Although Francis could see plainly on the music that its name was “Vale”, Aunt and all cultivated persons pronounced it “Wally”, because it was Latin and meant “Farewell”. In two brief verses by de Burgh d’Arcy (obviously an aristocrat of some kind) it caught the very soul of Aunt, and most other hearers. It was about a man who was dying. He begged somebody (wife? lover?—oh, surely not a lover, not when one was dying) to stay at his side during the creeping, silent hours.
(Obviously a wife, who had done her wifely duty.) The conclusion was dramatically splendid:
For a dying person, Aunt made a remarkable amount of noise at Hold up THE CROSS and then faded almost into silence at and pray for me! as if the singer were actually pegging out. This was done by what Maestro Carboni called “spinning the tone”, a very good Italian trick, and not easy to acquire.
Aunt sang this song often. It was always in demand when St. Bonaventura’s had one of its concerts to raise money, and Father Devlin had said, in language that might have been more happily phrased, that when Miss McRory sang “Wally” we all got as near to dying as we’d get before our time actually came.
Aunt’s music had a lighter side, not for parties, but for those quiet evenings when it was just herself and the Senator and Marie-Louise, and Dr. J.A., who often dropped in after his evening rounds, tired out and wanting relaxation.
“Sing ‘Damn Stupid’, Mary-Ben,” he would say, as he stretched his legs toward the fire.
“Oh, Joe, you do love to make fun of me,”Aunt would say, and then sing the ballad from Merrie England:
Which went on to declare that the sweetest flower loved by Cupid was the Lovely English Rose. She, the wholly Highland Scots old maid, and he, the wholly Irish old bachelor, found a distilment of their own stifled, unacknowledged romance in this very English song by Edward German Jones, born on the Welsh Border. Music, as Aunt often told Francis, knows no frontiers.
Francis heard it all. Sometimes he sat in the drawing-room, already in his pyjamas, but wrapped in rugs, because he had begged to hear Aunt sing, and what singer can refuse such a tribute, so obviously sincere? Sometimes, when there were guests and he was supposed to be in bed, he sat on the stairs, in his pyjamas and without any rugs. To the pictures he responded with mind and heart, eager not only to understand what they had to say, but to know how they were made; to the music he listened with his heart alone.
He was finding out one or two things about pictures. He had the run of Aunt’s collection of prints, and a number of books she possessed, with names like Gems From the World’s Great Galleries. He was probably the only boy within a five-hundred-mile radius who knew what the Pitti was, or what putti were. But better than that, he was getting some notion of how pictures were put together.
His teacher was an unlikely one. Among Aunt’s books was one which she had bought long ago, glanced at, and decided that it had nothing to say to her. It was called How to Draw in Pen and Ink, and the author was Harry Furniss. Indeed, he was still alive, and would be alive for a further five years after Francis first met with his book. Furniss was a remarkable caricaturist, but, as he explained in his genial prose, to draw caricatures it is first necessary to be able to draw people, and if you want to draw people you had better try your hand at drawing anything and everything. You cannot make Mr. Gladstone look like an old eagle if you cannot draw a serious Mr. Gladstone and a serious old eagle. You must develop an eye; you must see everything in terms of line and form. Andrea del Sarto was no Raphael, but he could correct Raphael’s drawing; you could aim at drawing like del Sarto even if you hadn’t a hope of being anything better than a Harry Furniss—which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to be, either.
Francis had access to unlimited paper and pencils; he had but to ask Aunt and plentiful supplies appeared. He did not tell Aunt about Harry Furniss, whom she had rejected as unworthy, and doubtless coarse in his methods. But a man who had been able, as a youth, to attend a London fire, make pages of rapid sketches, and then work them up into a full-page engraving for the London Illustrated News was just the man to catch Francis’s imagination. A man who could make such vivid caricatures of people whom Francis had never heard of, but whose essence he felt in Furniss’s drawings, was just the man to dispel the impression given by Aunt that it all had to be done by geniuses, usually foreigners, in studios, under the spooky guidance of the Holy Mother and perhaps even of A Certain Person. This was a gust of fresh air in art. This made art a possibility—remote, but still a possibility—for somebody like himself.
Always have paper in your pocket, said Harry Furniss. Never be without a notebook. Never miss a significant figure in the streets or at the theatre or in Parliament. Catch every turn of the head, every gleam in the eye. You can’t draw pretty girls if you can’t draw gutter crones. If you can’t keep files of your notes, don’t; but once having disciplined your hand and eye to capture every detail and nuance, perhaps you don’t need files, for these things are filed in your brain and your hand.
Just the sort of sea-breeze to blow away the odour of sanctity. Francis was conscious of his notebook, which marked him as an artist. But where many a boy would have made a parade of what he was doing, and attracted attention from adults who wanted to see what he was up to, he mastered the trick of sitting quietly, making his rapid sketches without signalling.
A few weeks after Christmas he was able to go outside for limited airings, but he was not anxious to attract attention from Nosy Parkers who would want to know why he was in the streets when all decent boys were either in school, or at home with infantile paralysis, or simply with swollen glands. Not to be easily noticed is an acquirement, as is always being noticed; Francis studied the art of invisibility, and made sketches wherever he was.
He was perched on a bale of straw in the stable one February day, making sketches of the horses as they ate, when Zadok Hoyle said to him: “Frank, it’s a fine day and I have to go over to The Portage this afternoon; why don’t you ask your Aunt if you can come with me?” Aunt demurred a little, but finally said yes, he might go, but he must be well bundled up.
Bundled up he was, almost to the point of immobility, as he sat beside Zadok on the driver’s seat. The wagon was not one of his grandfather’s, but an odd cart with a low, boxed-in back; its purpose could not be immediately guessed. They drove perhaps four miles in the sharp air to a hamlet on a river-bank, which had a name of its own but from long custom was always called The Portage. Zadok pointed far beyond the river with his whip. “See that, Frankie? That’s Quebec. And some funny things happen on this river.”
They stopped on the river-bank at a shed, from which a fat, dark-jowled man appeared, nodded to Zadok, returned to the shed, and shortly returned carrying a box; between them he and Zadok loaded six such boxes into the back of the cart. Not a word was said, and they drove off.
“That was the happy call,” said Zadok. “Now we make the sad call.” Happy? What was happy about it? Not a word said and the fat man had what Francis thought was a bad eye, and he wished he could have made a rapid sketch of it. And now—the sad call?