W. Somerset Maugham - Christmas Holiday (W. Somerset Maugham) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

“I don’t think it would be wise to put one’s foot down too decidedly,” said Venetia. “Opposition might only make him obstinate.”

“The situation’s delicate. I don’t deny that for a moment.”

What made it more awkward was that Charley had brought back several canvases from Tours and when he had shown them they had expressed themselves in terms which it was difficult now to withdraw. They had praised as fond parents rather than as connoisseurs.

“You might take Charley up to the box-room one morning and let him have a look at your father’s pictures. Don’t make a point of it, you know, but let it seem accidental; and then when I get an opportunity I’ll have a talk with him.”

The opportunity came. Leslie was in the sitting-room they had arranged for the children so that they might have a place of their own. The reproductions of Gauguin and Van Gogh that had been in their nursery adorned the walls. Charley was painting a bunch of mixed flowers in a green vase.

“I think we’d better have those pictures you brought back from France framed and put up instead of these reproductions. Let’s have another look at them.”

There was one of three apples on a blue-and-white plate.

“I think it’s damned good,” said Leslie. “I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of three apples on a blue-and-white plate and it’s well up to the average.” He chuckled. “Poor old Cézanne, I wonder what he’d say if he knew how many thousands of times people had painted that picture of his.”

There was another still life which represented a bottle of red wine, a packet of French tobacco in a blue wrapper, a pair of white gloves, a folded newspaper and a violin. These objects were resting on a table covered with a cloth in green and white squares.

“Very good. Very promising.”

“D’you really think so, Daddy?”

“I do indeed. It’s not very original, you know, it’s the sort of picture that every dealer has a dozen of in his store-room, but you’ve never had a lesson in your life and it’s a very creditable piece of work. You’ve evidently inherited some of your grandfather’s talent. You have seen his pictures, haven’t you?”

“I hadn’t for years. Mummy wanted to find something in the box-room and she showed them to me. They’re awful.”

“I suppose they are. But they weren’t thought so in his own day. They were highly praised and they were bought. Remember that a lot of stuff that we admire now will be thought just as awful in fifty years’ time. That’s the worst of art; there’s no room for the second-rate.”

“One can’t tell what one’ll be till one tries.”

“Of course not, and if you want to take up painting professionally your mother and I are the last people who’d stand in your way. You know how much art means to us.”

“There’s nothing I want to do in the world more than paint.”

“With the share of the Mason Estate that’ll come to you eventually you’ll always have enough to live on in a modest way, and there’ve been several amateurs who’ve made quite a nice little reputation for themselves.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to be an amateur.”

“It’s not so easy to be anything else with a thousand to fifteen hundred a year behind you. I don’t mind telling you it’ll be a bit of a disappointment to me. I was keeping this job as secretary to the Estate warm for you, but I dare say some of the cousins will jump at it. I should have thought myself it was better to be a competent business man than a mediocre painter, but that’s neither here nor there. The great thing is that you should be happy and we can only hope that you’ll turn out a better artist than your grandfather.”

There was a pause. Leslie looked at his son with kindly eyes.

“There’s only one thing I’m going to ask you to do. My grandfather started life as a gardener and his wife was a cook. I only just remember him, but I have a notion that he was a pretty rough diamond. They say it takes three generations to make a gentleman, and at all events I don’t eat peas with a knife. You’re a member of the fourth. You may think it’s just snobbishness on my part, but I don’t much like the idea of you sinking in the social scale. I’d like you to go to Cambridge and take your degree, and after that if you want to go to Paris and study painting you shall go with my blessing.”

That seemed a very generous offer to Charley and he accepted it with gratitude. He enjoyed himself very much at Cambridge. He did not find much opportunity to paint, but he got into a set interested in the drama and in his first year wrote a couple of one-act plays. They were acted at the A.D.C. and the Leslie Masons went to Cambridge to see them. Then he made the acquaintance of a don who was a distinguished musician. Charley played the piano better than most undergraduates, and he and the don played duets together. He studied harmony and counterpoint. After consideration he decided that he would rather be a musician than a painter. His father with great good-humour consented to this, but when Charley had taken his degree, he carried him off to Norway for a fortnight’s fishing. Two or three days before they were due to return Venetia Mason received a telegram from Leslie containing the one word Eureka. Notwithstanding their culture neither of them knew what it meant, but its significance was perfectly clear to the recipient and that is the primary use of language. She gave a sigh of relief. In September Charley went for four months into the firm of accountants employed by the Mason Estate to learn something of book-keeping and at the New Year joined his father in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was to reward the application he had shown during his first year in business that his father was now sending him, with twenty-five pounds in his pocket, to have a lark in Paris. And a great lark Charley was determined to have.

They were nearly there. The attendants were collecting the luggage and piling it up inside the door so that it could be conveniently handed down to the porters. Women put a last dab of lipstick on their mouths and were helped into their furs. Men struggled into their greatcoats and put on their hats. The propinquity in which these persons had sat for a few hours, the pleasant warmth of the Pullman, had made a corporate unity of them, separated as occupants of a coach with its own number from the occupants of other coaches; but now they fell asunder, and each one, or each group of two or three, regained the discreet individuality which for a while had been merged in that of all the others. In the smoke-laden air, rank with stale tobacco, strong scent, the odour of human bodies and the frowst of steam-heating, they acquired on a sudden an air of mystery. Strangers once more, they looked at one another with preoccupied, unseeing eyes. Each one felt in himself a vague hostility to his neighbour. Some were already queuing up in the passage so that they might get out quickly. The heat of the Pullman had coated the windows with vapour and Charley wiped them a bit clean with his hand to look out. He could see nothing.

The train ran into the station. Charley gave his bag to a porter and with long steps walked up the platform; he was expecting his friend Simon Fenimore to meet him. He was disappointed not to see him at once; but there was a great mob at the barrier and he supposed that he was waiting there. He scanned eagerly the eager faces; he passed through; persons struggled through the crowd to seize a new arrival’s hand; women kissed one another; he could not see his friend. He was so convinced he must be there that he lingered for a little, but he was intimidated by his porter’s obvious impatience and presently followed him out to the courtyard. He felt vaguely let down. The porter got him a taxi and Charley gave the driver the name of the hotel where Simon had taken a room for him. When the Leslie Masons went to Paris they always stayed at an hotel in the Rue St. Honoré. It was exclusively patronised by English and Americans, but after twenty years they still cherished the delusion that it was a discovery of their own, essentially French, and when they saw American luggage on a landing or went up in the lift with persons who could be nothing but English, they never ceased to be surprised.