ii6 IDLEHURST: 



pen-and-ink caricatures which she calls " etchings ;" 

 Margaret dabbles in water-colour ; I possess grounds 

 and points, and a few proofs of ghastly first states. 

 Only Mrs. Lydia has no gift in this kind. She would 

 hang her rooms with grocers' almanacs just as soon 

 as with Gainsboroughs, and could hardly distinguish 

 horizontals from perpendiculars. I sometimes ques- 

 tion whether there be some essence of lying in all 

 plastic art, that we see so many wholly good and 

 pure souls untouched by its appeal something of 

 the sort which banished jutTirjove from the Polity. 

 Howsoever it be, Mrs. Lydia listens behind the tea- 

 things to our debate, amusedly above us ; sometimes 

 throwing into the discussion the clear dictum of the 

 unprejudiced mind. Margaret, who was taught at 

 school to mix " shadow colour," cannot see the blues 

 and purples which Helen Cottingham tries to show 

 her in the sunlit garden. I arbitrate (supporting 

 myself against the weight of Slade Schools and 

 Newlyn studios by memories of William Hunt and 

 David Cox) to the effect that the colours are there, 

 but that when once the eye has learned to see them, 

 it is, save in the case of the great, sure to see too 

 much, and to read into nature those dread anilines 

 which invade the proprieties of the Academy itself. 

 Miss Cottingham thinks we don't see half yet. 



