Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4064066244408

Table of Contents

       NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

       INTRODUCTION

       PART I

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       PART II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

       PART III

       CHAPTER IX

       CHAPTER X

       CHAPTER XI

       CHAPTER XII

       CHAPTER XIII

       CHAPTER XIV

       EPILOGUE

      PART I. WESTMORELAND

      PART II. LONDON

      PART III. AFTER TWELVE YEARS

      NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

      FENWICK'S COTTAGE

      This cottage, known as Robin Ghyll, is situated near the Langdale

       Pikes in Westmoreland. It is owned by Miss Dorothy Ward, the author's

       daughter. The older part of the building served as the model for

       Fenwick's cottage.

      HUSBAND AND WIFE

      From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

      EUGÉNIE

      From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

      PHOEBE'S RIVAL

      From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

      'BE MY MESSENGER'

      From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

      ROBIN GHYLL COTTAGE

      A nearer view of Miss Ward's cottage. (See frontispiece.)

      FENWICK STOOD LOOKING AT THE CANVAS

      From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.

      All of the illustrations in this volume are photogravures, and except where otherwise stated, are from photographs taken especially for this edition.

INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      Fenwick's career was in the first instance suggested by some incidents in the life of the painter George Romney. Romney, as is well known, married a Kendal girl in his early youth, and left her behind him in the North, while he went to seek training and fortune in London. There he fell under other influences, and finally under the fascinations of Lady Hamilton, and it was not till years later that he returned to Westmoreland and his deserted wife to die.

      The story attracted me because it was a Westmoreland story, and implied, in part at least, that setting of fell and stream, wherein, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, I am always a willing wanderer. But in the end it really gave me nothing but a bare situation into which I had breathed a wholly new meaning. For in Eugénie de Pastourelles, who is Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'—which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in the world.

      On looking through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea. The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type, intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory type and class, which delights in the capture of man. When I began to write the first scene in which Eugénie was to appear, she was still nebulous and uncertain. Then she did appear—suddenly!—as though the mists parted. It was not the woman I had been expecting and preparing for. But I saw her quite distinctly; she imposed herself; and thenceforward I had nothing to do but to draw her.

      The drawing of Eugénie made perhaps my chief pleasure in the story, combined with that of the two landscapes—the two sharply contrasted landscapes—Westmoreland and Versailles, which form its main background. I find in a note-book that it was begun 'early in May, 1905, at Robin Ghyll. Finished (at Stocks) on Tuesday night or rather Wednesday morning, 1 A.m., Dec. 6, 1905. Deo Gratias!' And an earlier note, written in Westmoreland itself, records some of the impressions amid which the first chapters were written. I give it just as I find it:

      'The exquisiteness of the spring. The strong-limbed sycamores with their broad expanding leaves. The leaping streams, and the small waterfalls, white and foaming—the cherry blossom, the white farms, the dark yews which are the northern cypresses—and the tall upstanding firs and hollies, vigorously black against the delicate bareness of the fells, like some passionate self-assertive life. …

      'The "old" statesman B——. His talk of the gentle democratic poet who used to live in the cottage before us. "He wad never täak wi the betther