Виктория Холт: The Demon Lover

It was a hot June day when I discovered my father’s secret which was to change the whole course of my life, as well as his. I shall never forget the horror that gripped me. The sun was brilliant, merciless, it seemed. It had been the hottest June for years. I sat there watching him. He seemed to have grown ten years older in the space of a few minutes, and as he turned his eyes to me I saw the despair in them, the sudden releasing of pretence. He knew that he could no longer hide this tragedy from me.

It was inevitable that I should be the one to discover it. I had always been closer to him than anyone else even my mother when she had been alive. I understood him in all his moods. I knew the exultation of the creative artist, the striving, the frustrations. The man I knew in this studio was different from the gentle, rather uncomplicated human being he became outside it. Of course it was the studio which claimed the greater part of him. It was his life. He had been brought up to it. From the age of five, in this very house -which had been the home of the Collisons for a hundred years he had come to the studio to watch his own father work. There was a story in the family that when he was four years old they had thought he was lost and his nurse had found him here painting on a piece of vellum with one of his father’s finest sable brushes.

Collison was a name in the art world. It was always associated with the painting of miniatures, and there could not be a collection of any note in Europe which did not contain at least one Collison.

The painting of miniatures was a tradition in our family. My father had said that it was a talent which was passed down through the generations and to become a great painter one must begin in one’s cradle. So it had been with the Collisons. They had been painting miniatures since the seventeenth century. Our ancestor had been a pupil of Isaac Oliver, who in his turn had been a pupil of none other than the famous Elizabethan miniaturist Nicolas Hilliard.

Until this generation there had always been a son to follow his father and carry on not only the tradition but the name. My father had failed in this; and all he had been able to produce was a daughter-myself.

It must have been a great disappointment to him, although he never mentioned it. He was a very gentle man outside the studio, as I have said, and was always conscious of other people’s feelings; he was rather slow of speech because he weighed his words before uttering them and considered the effect they would have on others. It was different when he worked. Then he was completely possessed; he forgot meal times, appointments, commitments of any sort. Sometimes I thought he worked feverishly because he believed he was going to be the last of the Collisons. Now he was beginning to realize that this might not be so, for I too had discovered the fascination of the brush, the vellum and the ivory. I was teaching myself to carry on the family tradition. I was going to show my father that a daughter was not to be despised and could do as well as any son. That was one of the reasons why I gave myself up to the joy of painting. The other far more important was because, irrespective of my sex, I had inherited the desire to produce that intricate limning. I had the urge and I ventured to think the talent to compete with any of my ancestors.

My father, at this time, was in his late forties. He looked younger because of his very clear blue eyes and untidy hair. He was tall I had heard him called lanky and very thin, which made him seem a trifle ungainly. It surprised people, I think, that from this rather clumsy man could come those delicate miniatures.

His name was Kendal. There had been Kendals in the family for generations. Years ago a girl from the Lake District had married into the family and the name came from her birthplace. It was a tradition that all the men should have names beginning with K and the letters KC. etched in a corner so small that they were barely perceptible were the hallmark of those famous miniatures. It had caused a certain amount of confusion as to which Collison had executed the painting, and it had often been necessary to work out the date from the period and the subject.

My father had remained unmarried until he was thirty. He was the sort of man who was inclined to thrust aside anything that might distract him from his work. Thus, with marriage, too, although he was well aware of his duty rather like that of a monarch to produce the heir to carry on the family tradition.

It was only when he went to the seat of the Earl of Langston in Gloucestershire that the desire to marry became something other than a duty to the family. He had been engaged by the Earl to paint miniatures of the Countess and her two daughters, Lady Jane and Lady Katherine known as Lady Kitty. He always said that the miniature of Lady Kitty was the best work he had ever done.

“There was love in it,” he commented. He was very sentimental.

Well, the outcome was romantic but of course the Earl had other ideas for his daughter. He had no appreciation of art; he merely wanted a Collison miniature because he had heard that “This Collison is a good man’.

“A Philistine,” my father had called him. He thought artists were servants to be patronized by men of wealth. Moreover, he had hopes of a duke for his daughter.

But it turned out that Lady Kitty was a girl who liked to have her own way and she had fallen as deeply in love with the artist as he had with her. So they eloped and Lady Kitty was informed by her irate father that the gates of Langston Castle were closed to her forever more. Since she had had the folly to become Kitty Collison, she would have no further connection with The family of Langston.

Lady Kitty thereupon snapped her fingers and prepared for what, to her, must have been the humble life at Collison House.

A year after the marriage I made my dramatic entrance into the world, causing a great deal of trouble and costing Lady Kitty her never very robust health. When she became a semi-invalid and unable to bear more children, the disastrous truth had to be faced: the only one was a girl and it seemed as though that was the end of the Collison line.

Not that I was ever allowed to feel that I was a disappointment. I discovered it for myself when I learned of the family traditions and became familiar with the big studio and its enormous windows placed so as to catch the strong and searching north light.

I learned a great deal from servants’ gossip, for I was an avid listener and I quickly realized that I could learn more of what I wanted to know through them than I ever could by asking my parents.

“The Langstons always had a job getting sons. My niece is up there in service with some cousins of theirs. She says it’s a grand place.

Fifty servants . no less . and that just for the country. Her ladyship wasn’t meant for this sort of life. “

“Do you think she has regrets?”

“Oh, I reckon. Must do. All them balls and titles and things … Why, she could have married a duke.”

“Yet, he’s a true gentleman … I will say that for him.”

“Oh yes, I’ll grant you that. But he’s just a sort of tradesman … selling things. Oh, I know they’re pictures and that’s somehow supposed to be different… but they’re still things … and he’s selling them. It never works … stepping outside. Class and all that. And there’s no son, is there? All they’ve got is that Miss Kate.”

“She’s got her wits about her, no mistake. A bit of a madam, that one.”

“Don’t really take after either of them.”

“Do you know what I reckon? He ought to have married a strong young woman … his own class … A lady, of course … squire’s daughter or something … He went too high, he did. Then she could have had a baby every year till she got this son what could learn all about painting. That’s how it ought to have been. It’s what you get for marrying out of your class.”