because he did not represent one of the great Wynne families. But the
remarkable thing was that, although my mother thus yielded to my
aunt's influence, she in her heart despised her sister's ignorance
and her narrowness of mind. She often took a humorous pleasure in
seeing my aunt's aristocratic proclivities baffled by some vexing
_contretemps_ or by some slight passed upon her by people of superior
rank, especially by those in the Royal circle.

There have been so many descriptions of art schools, from the famous
'Gandish's' down to the very moment at which I write, that I do not
intend to describe mine.

It would be very far from my taste to use a narrative like this, a
narrative made sacred by the spiritual love it records, as a means of
advertising efforts of such modest pretensions as mine when placed in
comparison with the work of the illustrious painters my friendship
with whom has been the great honour of my life. And if I allude here
to the fact of my being a painter, it is in order that I may not be
mistaken for another Aylwin. my cousin Percy, who in some unpublished
poems of his which I have seen has told how a sailor was turned into
a poet by love--love of Rhona Boswell. In the same way, these pages
are written to tell how I was made a painter by love of her whom I
first saw in Raxton churchyard, her who filled my being as Beatrice
filled the being of Dante when 'the spirit of life, which hath its
dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so
violently that the least pulses of his body shook therewith.'



III