So we had Evie. She arranged little parties for my mother and made sure that everything went smoothly when visitors called at the house about commissions for my father’s work. When he had to go away which he did fairly frequently he could go, knowing that we were well looked after.
My mother loved to hear of my father’s adventures when he returned home. She liked to think of him as a famous painter in great demand, although she was not really interested in what he was doing. I had seen her eyes glaze over when he was talking enthusiastically but
knew what he was talking about, for I had the Collison blood in my veins and I was never happier than when I had a fine sable brush in my hands and was making those faint sure strokes on a piece of ivory or vellum.p>
I was Katherine too, but called Kate to distinguish me from Kitty. I did not look in the least like my mother or father. I was considerably darker than either of them.
“A throw-back to the sixteenth century,” said my father, who was naturally an authority on faces.
“Some long-ago Collison must have looked exactly like you, Kate. Those high cheekbones and that touch of red in your hair. Your eyes are tawny too. That colour would be very difficult to capture. You’d have to mix paints very carefully to get it. I never like that for delicate work … The result can be messy.”
I often laughed at the way his work always seemed to creep into his conversation.
I must have been about six years old when I made a vow. It was after I had heard the servants talking about my being a girl and a disappointment to my father.
I went into the studio and standing in the glare of the light which came through the high window, I said: “I am going to be a great painter. My miniatures are going to be the best that have ever been known.”
And being a very serious child and having a passionate devotion to my father as well as an inborn knowledge that this was what I had been born for, I set about carrying out my intention. At first my father had been amused, but he had shown me how to stretch vellum over a stiff white card and press it between sheets of paper, leaving it under a weight to be pressed.
“The skin is greasy,” he told me, ‘so we have to do a little pouncing.
Do you know what pouncing is? “
I soon did, and learned how to rub the surface with a mixture of French chalk and powdered pumice.
Then he taught me how to use oil, tempera and gouache. | “But water-colours are the most satisfactory for the smallest work,” he said.
When I had my first brush I was delighted; and I was filled with joy when I saw my father’s face after I had painted my first miniature.
He had put his arms round me and held me close to him so that I should not see the tears in his eyes. My father was a very emotional man.
He cried: “You’ve got it, Kate. You’re one of us.”
My mother was shown my first effort.
“It’s very good,” she said.
“Oh, Kate, are you going to be a genius too? And here am I… so surely not one!”
“You don’t have to be,” I told her.
“You just have to be beautiful.”
It was a happy home. My father and I grew closer through our work, and I spent hours in the studio. I had a governess until I was seventeen.
My father did not want me to go away to school because that would interrupt the time I spent in the studio.
“To be a great painter, you work every day,” he said.
“You do not wait until you feel in the mood. You do not wait until you feel ready to entertain inspiration. You are there waiting when she deigns to call.”
I understood completely. How could I have borne to be away from the studio? My resolve to be as great-no greater-than any of my ancestors had stayed with me. I knew that I was good.
My father often went abroad and would sometimes be away for a month or two at a time. He had even visited several of the European courts and painted miniatures for royalty.
“I should like to take you with me, Kate,” he often said.
“You’re as capable as I am. But I don’t know what they would think of a woman.
They wouldn’t believe the work was good . it it had been done by a member of the female sex. “
“But surely they could see for themselves.”
“People don’t always see what their eyes tell them is there. They see what they have made up their minds to see, and I’m afraid they might make up their minds that something done by a woman could not possibly be as good as that done by a man.”
“That’s nonsense and it makes me angry,” I cried.
“They must be fools.”
“Many people are,” sighed my father.
We painted miniatures for jewellers to sell all over the country. I had done many of those. They were signed with the initials KC.
Everyone said, “That’s a Collison.” They didn’t know, of course, that it was the work of Kate not Kendal Collison.
When I was a child it had sometimes seemed that my mother and father inhabited different worlds. There was my father, the absentminded artist whose work was his life, and my mother the beautiful and interestingly delicate hostess, who liked to have people around her.
One of her greatest pleasures was holding court while admirers revolved about her, so delighted to be entertained by the daughter of an Earl even though she was merely the wife of an artist.
When tea was dispensed I would often be there to help her entertain her guests. In the evenings she sometimes gave small dinner-parties and played whist afterwards, or there was music. She herself played the piano exquisitely for her guests.
Sometimes she would be talkative and tell me about her early life in Langston Castle. Did she mind leaving it for what must be a very small house compared with the castle? I asked her once.
“No, Kate,” she answered.
“Here I am the Queen. There I was just one of the princesses-of no real importance. I was just there to make the right marriage … which would be one my family wanted and which I most likely did not.”
“You must be very happy,” I said, ‘for you have the best husband anyone could have. “
She looked at me quizzically and said: “You are very fond of your father, aren’t you?”
“I love you both,” I told her truthfully.
I went to kiss her and she said: “Don’t ruffle my hair, darling.” Then she took my hand and pressed it.
“I’m glad you love him so much. He is more deserving than I am.”
She puzzled me. But she was always kind and tender and really pleased that I spent so much time with my father. Oh yes, it had been an extremely happy home until that day when Evie, taking my mother’s morning chocolate to her bedroom, found her dead.
She had had a cold which had developed into something worse. All my life I had heard that we had to take care of my mother’s health. She had rarely gone out and when she did it would be in the carriage only as far as Farringdon Hall. Then she would be helped out of the carriage and almost carried in by the Farringdon footman.
But because she had always been delicate and Death was supposed to be hovering, because it had been like that for so many years that it had almost become like a member of the family . we had thought it would continue to hover. Instead of which it had swooped down and carried her away.
We missed her very much and it was then that I realized how much painting meant to both my father and myself, for although we were desolate in our grief, when we were in the studio we could forget for a while, for at such times there was nothing for either of us but our painting.
Evie was very sad. My mother had been in her special care for so long. She was at that time thirty-three years of age and she had given up seventeen of those years to us.
Two years earlier Evie had become engaged to be married. The news had sent us into a flutter of dismay. We wavered between our pleasure in Evie’s happiness and our consternation in contemplating what life would be like without her.
There had been no imminent danger as Evie’s fiance was Tames Callum, the curate at our vicarage. He was the same age as Evie and they were to be married as soon as he acquired a living of his own.
My mother used to say: “Pray God he never will. ” And then quickly:
“What a selfish creature I am, Kate. I hope you won’t grow up to be like me. Never fear. You won’t, you’re one of the sturdy ones. But really what should we … what should do without Evie.”
She did not have to face that problem. When she died the curate was still without a living, so her prayers were answered in a way.
Evie tried to console me.
“You’re growing up now, Kate,” she said.
“You’d soon find someone else.”
“There’d be no one like you, Evie. You’re irreplaceable.”
She smiled at me and was torn between her fears for us and her longing to be married.
I knew in my heart that one day Evie would have to leave us. Change was in the air—and I did not want change.
The months passed and still James Callum did not find a living. Evie declared that she had little to do since my mother’s death and spent hours preserving fruit and making herbal concoctions as though she were stocking up the household for the time when she was no longer with us.
We settled down into our daily routine. My father refused to consider Evie’s possible departure. He was the sort of man who lived from day to day and reminded me of someone crossing a tightrope who gets along because he never looks down at possible disasters in the valley below.
He goes on and on, unaware of them, and for this reason travels safely across.
But there can come a time when some impassable object forces a halt and as he is unable to go on he must pause and consider where he is.
We worked constantly together in perfect harmony in the studio on those days when the light was right. We depended on that for we did a great deal of restoration of old manuscripts. I now regarded myself as a fully fledged painter. I had even accompanied my father to one or two houses where restoration work was needed. He always explained my presence: “My daughter helps me in my work.” I know they imagined that I prepared the tools of the trade, washed his brushes and looked after his creature comforts. That rankled. I was proud of my work and more and more he was allowing me to take over.
We were in the studio one day when I saw that he was holding a magnifying glass in one hand and his brush in the. other.
I was astonished because he had always said: “It is never good to use a magnifying glass. If you train your eyes they will do the work for you. A limner has special eyes. He would not be a limner if he had not.”
He saw that I was regarding him with surprise and putting down the glass, said: “A very delicate piece of work. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t miscalculated.”
It was some weeks later. We had had a manuscript sent to us from a religious order in the north of England. Some of the fine drawings on the pages had become faint and slightly damaged, and one of the branches of our work was to restore such manuscripts. If they were very valuable, which a number of them were, dating from as far back as the eleventh century, my father would have to go to the monastery to do the work on the spot, but there were occasions when the less valuable ones could be brought to us. I had done a great deal of work on these recently, which was my father’s way of telling me that I was now a painter of skill. If my work was not sood enough it was easy to discard a piece of vellum or ivory, but only a sure hand could be allowed to touch these priceless manuscripts.
On that June day my father had the manuscript before him and was trying to get the necessary shade of red. It was never easy, for this had to match the red pigment called minium which had been used long ago and was in fact the very word from which the name miniature had been derived.
I watched him, his brush hovering over the small palette. Then he put it down with a helplessness which astonished me.
I went over to him and said: “Is anything wrong?”
He did not answer me but leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.
That was a frightening moment with the blazing sun outside and the strong light falling on the ancient manuscript and the sudden knowledge that something terrible was about to happen.
I bent over him and laid my hand on his shoulder.
“What is it, Father?” I asked.
He dropped his hands and looked at me with those blue eyes which were full of tragedy.
“It’s no use, Kate,” he said.
“I’ve got to tell someone. I’m going blind.”
I stared at him. It couldn’t be true. His precious eyes . they were the gateway to his art, to his contentment. How could he exist without his work for which above all he needed his eyes? It was the whole meaning of existence to him.
“No,” I whispered.
“That… can’t be.”
“It is so,” he said.
“But…” I stammered.
“You are all right. You can see.”
He shook his head.
“Not as I once could. Not as I used to. It’s going to get worse. Not suddenly … gradually. I know.
I’ve been to a specialist. It was when I was on my last trip went to London. He told me. “
“How long ago?”
“Three weeks.”
“And you kept it to yourself for so long?”
“I tried not to believe it. At first I thought… Well, I didi know what to think. I just could not see as clearly … n clearly enough . Have you noticed I’ve been leaving liti things to you?”
“I thought you did that to encourage me … to give r confidence.”
“Dear Kate, you don’t need confidence. You have all y< need. You’re an artist. You’re as good as your ancestors.”
“Tell me about the doctor … what he said. Tell n everything.”
“I’ve got what they call a cataract in each eye. The doct says it’s small white spots on the lens-capsule in the centre the pupils. They are slight at the moment, but they will grc bigger. It might be some time before I lose the sight ofn eyes … but it could be rapid.”
“There must be something they could do?”
“Yes, an operation. But it is a risk, and my eyes wou never be good enough for my sort of work, even if it we successful. You know what sight we need … how we seem develop extra power. You know, Kate.