DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62037#0035
i2 JOHN RAPHAEL SMITH
couple, struggled into a feeble life, and left it again within
the month. There was only the attic for them all in these
years, the young father trudging from print-shop to print-
shop to obtain employment, with poor fare and poor
results for his toil. But the boy grew to be a man
through it all; if he was somewhat maimed, and somewhat
thwarted in his highest, he was nevertheless of good
spirits and courage, with a wife who wanted nothing but
his happiness, and with a gradually increasing outlook on
that very Art-world which he had quitted so abruptly, and
discarded so completely, in the old Derby days. Between
February 1770 and November 1772 Smith’s output in
plates was about a dozen—all mezzotints. Perhaps the
best of these was “ Signora Felice ” and “ Count Wallen-
stein ” ; the most ambitious, “Bagnigge Wells.” But
there was nothing to indicate greatness. All his spare
time was spent with chalks, with paints, with crayons.
Now that no voice cried out to him to paint, he painted
ever. Yet no voice praised. It was Art for the love
of Art, with starvation, or the weak breath of it,
panting behind him ; he laughed at his pursuer, and,
aughing, won on him step by step. Still, at twenty, he
was to become for the third time a father. At twenty,
grown into a strong man, loving pleasure and the society
of his fellow-men, wine and song, and all things of which
his youth had been empty, he found he was serving a poor
mistress, that there were other rewards than those to be
had in her service, that he was kissing the hem of her
garment, without the hope of reaching her lips. Perhaps
intuition taught him all this, perhaps it was his wife’s
situation, or the counsel of the good friends the young
couple had made in their poverty and bravery.
“ You vill go back to your trade ; you vill sell things
to the ladies, and I vill help you,” said old Angelo, whose
new-born Harry, smiling from his cradle on the old
fencing-master, softened his heart to that other baby in
its bare attic, in the arms of its large-eyed, hungry young
mother. “You are von ’andsome man, Mr. Smid, and
they vill come to you.”
couple, struggled into a feeble life, and left it again within
the month. There was only the attic for them all in these
years, the young father trudging from print-shop to print-
shop to obtain employment, with poor fare and poor
results for his toil. But the boy grew to be a man
through it all; if he was somewhat maimed, and somewhat
thwarted in his highest, he was nevertheless of good
spirits and courage, with a wife who wanted nothing but
his happiness, and with a gradually increasing outlook on
that very Art-world which he had quitted so abruptly, and
discarded so completely, in the old Derby days. Between
February 1770 and November 1772 Smith’s output in
plates was about a dozen—all mezzotints. Perhaps the
best of these was “ Signora Felice ” and “ Count Wallen-
stein ” ; the most ambitious, “Bagnigge Wells.” But
there was nothing to indicate greatness. All his spare
time was spent with chalks, with paints, with crayons.
Now that no voice cried out to him to paint, he painted
ever. Yet no voice praised. It was Art for the love
of Art, with starvation, or the weak breath of it,
panting behind him ; he laughed at his pursuer, and,
aughing, won on him step by step. Still, at twenty, he
was to become for the third time a father. At twenty,
grown into a strong man, loving pleasure and the society
of his fellow-men, wine and song, and all things of which
his youth had been empty, he found he was serving a poor
mistress, that there were other rewards than those to be
had in her service, that he was kissing the hem of her
garment, without the hope of reaching her lips. Perhaps
intuition taught him all this, perhaps it was his wife’s
situation, or the counsel of the good friends the young
couple had made in their poverty and bravery.
“ You vill go back to your trade ; you vill sell things
to the ladies, and I vill help you,” said old Angelo, whose
new-born Harry, smiling from his cradle on the old
fencing-master, softened his heart to that other baby in
its bare attic, in the arms of its large-eyed, hungry young
mother. “You are von ’andsome man, Mr. Smid, and
they vill come to you.”