Gillespie and I (8 page)

In an effort to cheer her up, I said: ‘It must be hard being the eldest, looking after your sister all the time.'

No doubt, I was also attempting to endear myself to the child, having, thus far, struggled to befriend her, but Sibyl was unimpressed. She flicked her eyes at me, askance—another strange look that seemed, somehow, too mature for her years.

‘Rose is always getting lost,' she lisped, and then she turned and skipped away, in the direction of the Doulton Fountain.

When I think of that moment now, I shiver.

By the time that Ned rejoined his mother and sister at the entrance, Horatio Hamilton of the Fine Art Committee had endured enough of the two women and, having made his excuses, he had disappeared into some private office within the main building, not to be seen again, that day. Nobody could be sure of exactly what had passed between Elspeth, Mabel, and the gallery owner, but according to them, despite their most charming and persuasive efforts, he had assured them that he was unable to help Ned with the relocation of his picture. It seemed that the Committee had drawn up careful plans, several weeks previously; paintings could not just be moved about the place at the whim of artists and their relatives. Thus,
By the Pond
remained where it was, for the duration of the Exhibition, with the result that Ned's public profile was not what it might have been.

Perhaps a picture is beginning to emerge: a picture of an artist, a man of indisputable talent, but a man hampered by circumstance and responsibility. Poor Ned! Is it any wonder that he was struggling to make his name? It would not have surprised me in the least to learn that he envied his peers, especially those without domestic entanglements. Moreover, he was forced to contend with the inequities of an artistic establishment that was (then, as now) notoriously prone to snobbism, and nowhere more cliquish than Scotland, wherein most established artists were possessed of wealth, an Edinburgh heritage, and a first-rate education. Even the avant-garde of the ‘new school'—that loose alliance of painters who became known, eventually, as ‘The Glasgow Boys'—were, in the main, sons of the manse, of merchants, or of shipping magnates, who, with financial support from their families and patrons, were not obliged to sell pictures in order to live. Some of these men were so established, by then, that not only had their work been included in the Exhibition, but they had also been asked to paint various decorative frescos in the Exhibition buildings. Ned Gillespie, on the other hand, was not part of this charmed inner circle, and had not been asked to contribute so much as a scribble.

Strictly speaking, the Gillespies were respectable enough, but despite Elspeth's valiant attempts to sound well bred, there was neither wealth nor
noblesse
on her side. And yet, here Ned was, striving to create works of art, despite his unfavourable circumstances and background. I was prompted to wonder how many others there were, like him: gifted young men, whose talents were left to rot for want of money and opportunity. I also could not help but reflect on others of my acquaintance who, despite wealth and every advantage, had accomplished nothing meaningful. Ned, at least, was creating something of worth with his talent. My heart went out to him and, that evening, as I sat alone in my rooms, I found myself reflecting on the terrible unfairness of the world.

4

Having given the matter some thought, I decided to see what could be done to help this Ned Gillespie, this talented young man. It was the least I could do, and would involve little or no hardship on my part. Clearly, a number of factors stood between him and real success. From our conversation in the park, I had deduced that, for financial reasons, he was forced to churn out ‘popular' pictures, instead of indulging his own, more interesting, creativity. I also suspected that he was rather at the mercy of his charming, but unruly, family, who must surely have been a great distraction from his craft, especially since his studio was in the attic of his home. Lastly, it was obvious that he lacked a circle of influence: the friends in high places that tend to make life easier for many artists. Poor Ned had no such advantage, and I had an inkling that he was neither mercenary nor calculating enough to cultivate influential or moneyed acquaintances.

Before retiring that evening, I composed a letter to my stepfather, Ramsay Dalrymple, who resided just north of Helensburgh, a town not far from Glasgow. My feeling was that I ought, at least, to bring Ned to his attention. As far as I was aware, Ramsay was not particularly interested in Fine Art, but he was a wealthy man, and there was always the chance that he might be persuaded to buy a painting or two. Moreover, I felt that he was bound to be acquainted with some of the West of Scotland's ‘Establishment' figures, perhaps even from within the art world itself, connections the like of which might prove useful to a young painter.

In my letter, I proposed to visit him on Wednesday, provided that this met with his approval. No reply was forthcoming, but this was no surprise, as I was well aware that Ramsay disliked letter writing. Indeed, since he had moved away from London, after separating from my mother—and although I had written to him, several times, every year—he had sent me only a handful of brief notes in reply. These days, he rarely left his estate, and I myself had been so busy in the previous few weeks (what with the Exhibition, and my new friends, and so on), that I had yet to inform him of my arrival in Glasgow. Notwithstanding his dislike of correspondence, had he not wished me to call upon him at home, I presumed that he would have conveyed as much to me, if only by telegraph. Therefore, on Wednesday morning, having heard nothing to the contrary, I took the train to Helensburgh.

Perhaps I should explain that Ramsay was my mother's second husband. My real father, a captain in the Fusiliers, was killed at the Battle of Alma, in 1854, the year after I was born. A year later, my mother remarried and—perhaps because I was so young at the time—I had always thought of Ramsay as my ‘papa', even though he was often a rather distant figure.

But that is by the bye. As I was explaining, on Wednesday, I set out to visit my father—that is to say, my stepfather (perhaps, for the sake of clarity, I should refer to him thus, from now on). The day was wet, and cold for late May. Unfortunately, I must have been sickening for something, because I began to feel light-headed at the railway station, and became so queasy on the train that I thought that I might even have to disembark a few stops early. I managed to control myself until we arrived at Helensburgh, where I made haste to the sea-front, and breathed in fresh air for ten minutes or so. Then I hired a man with a pony trap for the afternoon. I did fear for my stomach on the ride to the estate, but the road was excellent and, thankfully, I was not bounced around too much.

My stepfather's house—which I saw, that day, for the first time—can be described only as a fortress: a castellated mansion, grim and grey, which overlooked the Gare Loch (grimmer, greyer). Upon arrival, I was shown into a drawing room to wait. The room was cavernous and chilly. In one corner stood a familiar display cabinet: I did not even need to glance inside to know that it was full of my stepfather's kaleidoscope collection. Nearby, on a dusty plinth, lay what might have been a gyroscope. A sewing machine sat on a table and, propped against an open crate, was a strange-looking contraption: a low, wooden box, on wheels, with a long broom-like handle. Clearly, my stepfather's obsessions had not changed. He had always been fanatical about the acquisition of new gadgets, perhaps because he was suspicious of the modern world and its exigencies, and, therefore, terrified of being left behind. As a child, I can remember him scanning the news papers and periodicals for any reference to recent inventions, and he bought all the newfangled devices as soon as they became available. Alas, when these purchases arrived, he often found that he had no idea how to operate them, and his horror of appearing ill-informed made him far too proud to request further instruction from the manufacturer, with the result that the rooms of our house in Eaton Square were always littered with the carcases of useless contraptions that nobody could work. Indeed, Ramsay would not permit us or the servants even to touch the machines until he had used them himself, and if he was unable to work them, then he insisted that nobody could.

There were no fires in any of the grates and, since movement seemed to quell my nausea, I began to walk around the room to keep warm. After about ten minutes, the door flew open, and my stepfather strode in, rubbing his hands together in an athletic fashion. He looked me up and down, with a tight grin on his face.

‘Aye, lassie! You've hardly changed—I'd know that beak anywhere!'

For some reason, I cannot remember what exactly was said in the next few minutes. Perhaps I was shocked to see how much he had aged since I had last seen him, over ten years previously, at a family funeral—although, in truth, I should not have been surprised: after all, by then, he was almost seventy years old. Physically, he seemed robust enough, but his hair and whiskers had turned silvery white, and his skin was as pale as tallow. He had always possessed a ghostly complexion—but, in my memory, his hair and beard were black, and only lightly flecked with grey.

Eager to engage him in conversation and, noticing that his gaze kept straying to the contraption beside the crate, I asked: ‘Is this a recent acquisition, sir? What is it?'

‘A carpet sweeper,' he replied, then asked, idly: ‘Any idea how it works?' When I informed him that I had not the slightest notion how to operate such a thing, he frowned, and prodded the box with his foot. ‘Ach, I think it's broke, in any case,' he said. ‘These rods won't turn. Had it shipped all the way from America, too, at great expense—typical!'

While our tea was being made, we undertook a tour of the mansion, at my request. It seemed that my stepfather was greatly exercised by the notion of burglars, for the premises were fastened up with more padlocks than a bridewell. I noticed a watchman patrolling the grounds, with dogs; all the windows appeared to be nailed shut; the outer doors were secured with iron bars at top and bottom; and every internal door could be bolted from the adjacent hall or corridor; thus, in the unlikely event that an intruder did gain access to one of the rooms, he would find ingress to the rest of the house thwarted, unless he was possessed of several rods of dynamite.

Despite this, and Ramsay's wealth, there did not seem to be much that was worth stealing. Most of the rooms were unfurnished and simply functioned as store places for his various gadgets. On the one hand, my stepfather appeared to be frustrated by his malfunctioning machines, but he also seemed to gloat at their failure, as though this confirmed that the modern world, for all its baffling contrivances and precocity, was not so clever after all. In the morning room, he encouraged me to admire a mechanical graphophone: a talking machine, which had apparently never uttered so much as a syllable. Next to the scullery, he showed me a refrigerator; this object not only never got cold, but also (according to the cook) intermittently leaked poisonous gases. Outside, on the carriage drive, we paused to gaze into a shrubbery, at a half-concealed, steam-powered lawnmower. Sadly, the machine was out of puff, and crumbling with rust, since the gardener had refused to use it. We arrived, eventually, at the study, the tiny room in which my stepfather seemed to spend most of his time. He sat down and, picking up a pile of murky glass negatives, he began to shuffle through them. I was about to bring up the subject of Ned when he enquired, abruptly, whether I knew how to operate a camera (or, as he called it, a ‘photographic apparatus'), and when I replied that I did not, he raised an eyebrow. ‘But you are young,' he cried. ‘As a female, you can be excused an ignorance of photographics—but you don't know the first thing, either, about these new carpet sweepers? Dearie me.'

I smiled at him, graciously, and said, ‘I know that they are very useful, sir. And—come to think of it—I do know a person who
has
a carpet sweeper in his home: the artist Ned Gillespie.' I will admit that this last was not entirely true: as far as I was aware, the Gillespies owned nothing more sophisticated than a broom, but I was keen to get my stepfather off the subject of his contraptions. I went on, quickly: ‘Do you know his work?'

Ignoring my question, Ramsay waggled his hands at me. ‘Your friend's machine—where is it manufactured?'

‘I think you misunderstand me, sir. He's an artist, not an inventor.'

‘Yes, but you said he had a carpet sweeper, did you not? What I really want to know is—can his machine wash the carpet as well as sweep it?'

‘I'm fairly confident that it doesn't wash the carpet, sir. But what I wanted to say was that Mr Gillespie—'

‘Ah-hah!' said my stepfather. ‘In that case, tell me this, young lady, do you know of any device that washes as well as sweeps? Does such a machine exist?'

This was an exhausting conversation, hostile and full of dead ends. I had forgotten that such was the only type of discussion in which my stepfather engaged; his interlocutors were always his adversaries; indeed he did not feel that he was engaged in a real dialogue unless one participant ended by triumphing over the other. I will admit to feeling frustrated. We had not seen each other for many years; it seemed hard to believe that we were embroiled in such a pointless, combative exchange about nothing more meaningful than gadgets.

‘No, sir,' I said, shortly. ‘I know of no such device.'

His lip curled, and he gazed at me, askance: if I were a representative of the modern world, then it would appear that I was distinctly below par in his estimation. Immediately, I was filled with regret and anxiety: I had let him down! As a child, I had learned all about kaleidoscopes, in the hope of pleasing him. If only I was better informed, now, about carpet sweepers.

At that moment, our tea arrived. Ramsay sat bolt upright and became, of a sudden, quietly vigilant. I soon saw the reason. The room was so small, and his aged housekeeper had such terrible tremors, that the action of laying out the tea was quite perilous, especially whenever scalding liquids were involved. The old woman shook; the china rattled; the milk and water splashed, and my stepfather seemed ready to leap forward to her assistance at any moment. Once she had gone, I brought up the subject of Ned once more. ‘You may have seen his painting at the Exhibition,' I told my stepfather. ‘You've been to the Exhibition, I dare say?'