A Proper Education for Girls Read Free Page A

there's no drawing involved,” insisted Aunt Statham. “It's all simply chemical reactions and so forth. You've said so yourself many times.”
    “I suppose I have,” said Alice. She was not really listening. She held up the painting of Lilian, turning it this way and that in the feeble lamplight. Aunt Lambert was right. It was not very good, but Aunt Statham had managed to capture Lilian's half-amused smile, and had given her a knowing look, though this might have been the result of the canvas stretching beneath the weight of the cat. Alice found it unsettling.
    “Photography's not quite that straightforward, Aunt,” she said absently. “There's the light. And the exposure time. It's very easy to get it wrong, you know.”
    “But the camera simply copies what is directly before you,” insisted Aunt Statham. “It's not art, is it? Art involves skill and time,patience and insight. Passion, even.
You
simply point your camera box at the subject and your chemicals do the work. Where's the skill in that? A camera may capture the image in all its detail, but it can't capture the spirit of the subject.”
    “The camera will render painting obsolete, Mrs. Statham,” declared Aunt Lambert briskly as she dealt the cards for whist. “Particularly portraits. But then, we're all obsolete in the end. Are you in, dear? You can pair up with Mrs. Pendleton. Or Mrs. Rushton-Bell.”
    “Obsolete? Surely not!” cried Aunt Statham. “Why, a photograph simply shows us as we are—tired, gap toothed, old, and dull. There is no flamboyance in photographs. No mystery. No fervor or feeling. Oh no, we will always need portraits and painting. How else will we hide the drab reality of our appearance from posterity?” Aunt Statham unrolled a canvas that had already been removed from its frame and gazed fondly at its subject—a ferocious-looking young man with the high neckerchief and extravagant sideburns of fifty years earlier. “Ah, the young Mr. Reynolds,” she sighed. “Such
passion.”
She began a dreamy recitation of all the artists she had once known—including he whose portrait she was now holding. There were many of them, it seemed, and all had marveled at her beauty and vitality, this last being a quality they felt unable to capture with anything other than the most vivid of media. Oils it had been, every time. “Certainly a mere photograph would have been useless,” she added, eyeing Aunt Lambert. “And will the photographers of today be as charming as the artists they supplant?”
    “We'll soon find out,” said Alice. “Mr. Blake will be with us by next week.”
    But Aunt Statham had not been looking for an answer to her question. She was lost in a whirling past that no one but she remembered. Ah, how the young men had danced and leaped around her! Alice found herself wondering how Mr. Blake could possibly hope to match the enthusiasm of these bohemian admirers.
    “Ah well.” Aunt Statham sighed. “They were all penniless, of course. And then I met my husband. He was not artistically inclinedin any way. A clergyman. Like Lilian's husband, but not quite so meanly proportioned. Still, he was a dull fellow compared to the other young men of my acquaintance. Dull but reliable. But that was all a long time ago now. Perhaps this photographer fellow will make a nice husband for you, my dear?”
    “Alice doesn't need a husband,” snapped Aunt Lambert. “And Lilian didn't need one either. That was her father's idea. He should have left her alone. And sending her off to India too, as if being the wife of that dreadful fellow was not punishment enough.”
    “But she managed to leave this place,” said Alice, “which is what she wanted.”
    “He'll never forgive her, you know,” said Old Mrs. Talbot. “Edwin can be so stubborn.” She sighed. “But then, obedience in a daughter is more than a virtue; it's a necessity. Edwin was harsh, but, well, can one blame him?”
    “Of course one can,” retorted Aunt Lambert.