Memoir extracts for October 1918 to July 1919
Memoir • [unknown date]:
One English master, who evidently liked painting, instituted an outdoor sketching club. Unfortunately these Saturday afternoons, so precious during term time, turned out to be a rag. I painted a watercolour of a bridge at Bingley and I still have a photograph I took of the English master seated on his camp stool attempting to draw while his high- spirited pupils emptied his painting water over him and performed other jocularities.
Memoir • [unknown date]:
Mr Pearson set up a still life for Richard to paint.
I must admit I was not particularly thrilled at the sight of a pan and some onions which I was to tackle but Mr. Pearson made a start for me, echoing the words I had heard at my first lesson nearly two years before “Put the paint on and leave it.” He painted one of the onions and then left me to it. When he came back he was astonished to see the remainder of the two onions painted in such a way that no one would have thought two hands had been involved in the execution.
This was my second and last lesson. It gave me the impetus I required and I begged Father to buy me another canvas or two. He had evidently had a conversation with Mr. Pearson, who told him the one thing I had to learn was to clean my brushes properly.
Memoir • 14th Dec 1918:
The General Election
After the war came the great general election. Mother took me to all the meetings for we knew some of the candidates personally. . . They all failed to get in but the meeting held after the results were published was one of the most cheerful and humorous political meetings I have ever attended.
. . . the climax was reached when some of our new friends came for an evening and played charades. During one of the scenes acted, a defeated candidate delivered an electioneering speech in which a plan for vote catching was put forward. This involved a pipeline to all working class homes which distributed water for one hour in the morning, was then cut off and gas followed it for two or three hours so that housewives could get their cooking and washing done; then beer was turned on for the remainder of the day. That was the last gathering at our house that I remember before Mother’s health broke down.
Memoir • [unknown date]:
First commissions:
[When my father] was lecturing or demonstrating some point about anthrax, he asked me to prepare some watercolour drawings on which he would superimpose the pimples and eruptions. These were my first commissions and though they could not be considered works of art, I was very proud to have taken a hand in something so useful.
Memoir • [unknown date]:
The glimpse of the sea at Whitby and then from the train running along the cliffs to Sandsend was the climax of the feeling that the chains of the war and school had been thrown off.