“Oh, yes,” said Lurnstein, “I had ideals at one time all right—we all do, you know.”
He was leaning back from the small table, on which the tea was set, eyeing my half finished portrait. I had had a long sitting and his beautiful china tea in his thin blue and white china came as a great relief.
He looked extremely handsome, I thought, in the golden afternoon light, in his picturesque studio overall; Jewish, of course, but with a distinguished air that made one overlook his stumpy hands and other signs of ill-breeding.
“Perhaps you’d like to hear something of my life,” he said, “it has not been without interest.”
He lit another cigarette, pushed the box, a beautiful piece of Moorish inlaid work, to within my easy reach, and then drawing a deep breath of smoke, began:
“I started life about as low as any new peer. My father was a Jew and we lived in the Jewish quarter off the Commercial Road. When he was sober he was very kind to me and my brothers. My mother never had any great significance for me, but I realize now that she must have been a very hard worked and hard treated woman as upon her fell the sole burden of supporting her husband and large family.
“From the time when my first memories start I have always been interested in drawing, and I used to use every scrap of paper and every stump of pencil I could find, but lines never satisfied me—I wanted colours and tones. And these I could not afford. Coloured chalks used to be my chief delight and I used to take them from the desk of the Rabbi who managed the local synagogue and to whom I used to go once a week for religious instruction. For my father, though quite indifferent himself, was always most particular that I should attend. The Rabbi used the chalks, I remember, to draw maps of the divisions of the tribes with.
“Well one day he caught me taking his chalks, but instead of beating me, as the red-haired master at the board school would have done, he asked me all about my drawing and finally persuaded me to let him take some of my work away to show to his rich friends. For he was the son of a very rich man himself and had been to the ’Varsity but had sacrificed it all to help his fellow countrymen in the slums. I tell you that there are just as fine acts of self-sacrifice done by the rabbis in the Yiddish quarter as by any of your parsons at Kennington, only they don’t brag about it.
“Well, he showed my work to his friends in the West, with the result that a few days later a man with a top hat and spats came to the door and asked to see me and my work. He gave half-crowns to all my brothers but he didn’t give me half a crown, and I remember, I was very offended until I heard that I was to be taken away and taught painting.
“That was the beginning of my ‘career.’ Those Jews ran me for the next five years, and I painted just as I was told to at the Academy school, to which I was sent. And everyone was very kind to me and I was introduced to lots of rich men, not only the moneyed Jews but men of your class who spend lots of money on being bored and are called ‘in society’ by lower middle class novelists. I began to acquire social polish and was being shaped into a pretty little gentleman; but all the time particularly when I could feel the grain of the canvas under my brush, I was dissatisfied.
“When I was nineteen they gave me a studio, nothing like this, of course, but a decent enough shed with a good north light—and set me up as a Society portrait painter. Well I painted and flattered the ugly old women, that came to me, for a time; but after a little I found I could stand it no longe............