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‘school’ where she produced greyish still lifes under the guidance of a master whose technique was
founded on dirty brushes; for the rest, she messed about miserably at home with teapots and fryingpans.
The state of her studio was more than depressing to Elizabeth; it was evil, Satanic. It was a
cold, dusty pigsty, with piles of books and papers littered all over the floor, generations of saucepans
slumbering in their grease on the rusty gas-stove, the bed never made till afternoon, and everywhere–
in every possible place where they could be stepped on or knocked over–tins of paint-fouled
turpentine and pots half full of cold black tea. You would lift a cushion from a chair and find a plate
holding the remains of a poached egg underneath it. As soon as Elizabeth entered the door she would
burst out:
‘Oh, mother, mother dearest, how can you? Look at the state of this room! It is so terrible to live
like this!’
‘The room, dearest? What’s the matter? Is it untidy?’
‘Untidy! Mother, need you leave that plate of porridge in the middle of your bed? And those
saucepans! It does look so dreadful. Suppose anyone came in!’
The rapt, other-worldly look which Mrs Lackersteen assumed when anything like work presented
itself, would come into her eyes.
‘None of my friends would mind, dear. We are such Bohemians, we artists. You don’t understand
how utterly wrapped up we all are in our painting. You haven’t the artistic temperament, you see,
dear.’
‘I must try and clean some of those saucepans. I just can’t bear to think of you living like this. What
have you done with the scrubbing-brush?’
‘The scrubbing-brush? Now let me think, I know I saw it somewhere. Ah yes! I used it yesterday to
clean my palette. But it’ll be all right if you give it a good wash in turpentine.’
Mrs Lackersteen would sit down and continue smudging a sheet of sketching paper with a Conté
crayon while Elizabeth worked.
‘How wonderful you are, dear. So practical! I can’t think whom you inherit it from. Now with me,
Art is simply everything. I seem to feel it like a great Sea surging up inside me. It swamps everything
mean and petty out of existence. Yesterday I ate my lunch off Nash’s Magazine to save wasting time
washing plates. Such a good idea! When you want a clean plate you just tear off a sheet,’ etc. etc. etc.
Elizabeth had no friends in Paris. Her mother’s friends were women of the same stamp as herself,
or elderly ineffectual bachelors living on small incomes and practising contemptible half-arts such as
wood-engraving or painting on porcelain. For the rest, Elizabeth saw only foreigners, and she
disliked all foreigners en bloc; or at least all foreign men, with their cheap-looking clothes and their
revolting table manners. She had one great solace at this time. It was to go to the American library in
the Rue de l’Elysée and look at the illustrated papers. Sometimes on a Sunday or her free afternoon
she would sit there for hours at the big shiny table, dreaming, over the Sketch, the Tatler, the Graphic,
the Sporting and Dramatic.
Ah, what joys were pictured there! ‘Hounds meeting on the lawn of Charlton Hall, the lovely
Warwickshire seat of Lord Burrowdean.’ ‘The Hon. Mrs Tyke-Bowlby in the Park with her splendid
Alsatian, Kublai Khan, which took second prize at Cruft’s this summer.’ ‘Sunbathing at Cannes. Left