III
After our stay at Thorpe Arch, Evelyn Cochran asked me to come to see them in London. I did, feeling shy, and was thrilled by hearing so much theatrical gossip. Also, for the first time, I began to appreciate that there might be something in pictures. Charles Cochran had a great love of painting. When I first saw his Degas picture of ballet girls it stirred something in me that I had not known existed. The habit of marching girls to picture galleries willy-nilly, at too young an age, is much to be deprecated. It does not produce the wanted result, unless they are naturally artistic. Moreover, to the untutored eye or the unartistic one, the resemblance of great masters to one another is most depressing. They have a sort of shiny mustard gloom. Art was forced on me, first by being made to learn to draw and paint when I didna€?t enjoy it, and then by having a kind of moral obligation to appreciate art laid on me.
An American friend of ours, herself a great devotee of pictures, music, and all kinds of culture, used to come over to London on periodical visitsa€“she was a niece of my godmother, Mrs Sullivan, and also of Pierpont Morgan. May was a dear person with a terrible afflictiona€“she had a most unsightly goitre. In the days when she had been a young girla€“she must have been a woman of about forty when I first knew hera€“there was no remedy for goitre: surgery was supposed to be too dangerous. One day when May arrived in London, she told my mother that she was going to a clinic in Switzerland to be operated on.
She had already made arrangements. A famous surgeon, who made this his speciality, had said to her, a€?Mademoiselle, I would not advise this operation to any man: it must be done with a local anaesthetic only, because during the course of it the subject has to talk the whole time. Mena€?s nerves are not strong eough to endure this, but women can achieve the fortitude necessary. It is an operation that will take some timea€“perhaps an hour or morea€“and during that time you will have to talk. Have you the fortitude?a€?
May says she looked at him, thought a minute or two, and then said firmly, yes, she had the fortitude.
a€?I think you are right to try, May,a€my mother said. a€?It will be a great ordeal for you, but if it succeeds it will make such a difference to your life that it will be worth anything you suffer.a€?
In due course word came from May in Switzerland: the operation had been successful. She had now left the clinic and was in Italy, in a pension at Fiesole, near Florence. She was to remain there for about a month, and after go back to Switzerland to have a further examination. She asked whether my mother would allow me to go out and stay with her there, and see Florence and its art and architecture. Mother agreed, and arrangements were made for me to go. I was very excited, of course; I must have been about sixteen.
A mother and daughter were found who were travelling out by the train that I was taking. I was delivered over to them, introduced by Cooka€?s agent at Victoria, and started off. I was lucky in one thing: both mother and daughter felt ill in trains if they were not facing the engine. As I did not care, I had the whole of the other side of the carriage on which to lie down flat. None of us had appreciated the fact of the houra€?s difference in time, so when the moment came in the early hours of the morning for me to change at the frontier I was still asleep. I was bundled out by the conductor on to the platform, and mother and daughter shouted farewell. Assembling my belongings, I went to the other train, and immediately journeyed on through the mountains into Italy.
Stengel, Maya€?s maid, met me in Florence, and we went up together in the tram to Fiesole. It was inexpressibly beautiful on that day. All the early almond and peach blossom was out, delicate white and pink on the bare branches of the trees. May was in a villa there, and came out to meet me with a beaming face. I have never seen such a happy looking woman. It was strange to see her without that terrible bag of flesh jutting out under her chin. She had had to have a great deal of courage, as the doctor had warned her. For an hour and twenty minutes, she told me, she had lain there in a chair, her feet held up in a wrench above her head, while the surgeons carved at her throat and she talked to them, answering questions, speaking, grimacing if told. Afterwards the doctor had congratulated her: he told her she was one of the bravest women he had ever known.
a€?But I must tell you, Monsieur le docteur,a€she said, a€?just before the end I was feeling I had to scream, have hysterics, cry out and say I could not bear any more.a€?
a€?Ah,a€said Doctor Roux, a€?but you did not do so. You are a brave woman. I tell you.a€?
So May was unbelievably happy, and she did everything she could to make my stay in Italy agreeable. I went sightseeing into Florence every day. Sometimes Stengel went with me, but more often a young Italian woman engaged by May came up to Fiesole and escorted me into the town. Young girls had to be even more carefully chaperoned in Italy than in France, and indeed I suffered all the discomforts of being pinched in trams by ardent young mena€“most painful. It was then that I had been subjected to so large a dose of picture galleries and museums. Greedy as ever, what I looked forward to was the delicious meal in a patisserie before catching the tram back to Fiesole.
On several occasions in the later days May came in also, to accompany me on my artistic pilgrimage, and I remember well on the last day, when I was to return to England, she was adamant that I should see a wonderful St. Catherine of Siena, which had just been cleaned. I dona€?t know if it was in the Uffizi or what gallery now, but May and I galloped through every room looking in vain for it. I couldna€?t have cared less about St. Catherine. I was fed up with St. Catherines, revolted by those innumerable St. Sebastians struck all over with arrowsa€“heartily tired of saints one and all, and their emblems and their unpleasant methods of death. I was fed up, too, with self-satisfied Madonnas, particularly with those of Raphael. I really am ashamed, writing now, to think what a savage I was in this respect, but there it is: Old Masters are an acquired taste. As we raced about looking for St. Catherine, my anxiety was mounting. Would we have time to go to the patisserie and have a final delicious meal of chocolate and whipped cream, and sumptuous gateauxI kept saying: a€?I dona€?t mind, May, really I dona€?t mind. Dona€?t bother any more. Ia€?ve seen so many pictures of St. Catherine.a€?
a€?Ah, but this one, Agatha dear, ita€?s so wonderfula€“youa€?ll realise when you see it how sad it would be if youa€?d missed it.a€?
I knew I shouldna€?t realise, but I was ashamed to tell May so! However, fate was on my sidea€“it transpired that this particular picture of St. Catherine would be absent from the gallery for some weeks longer. There was just time to stuff me with chocolate and cakes before catching our traina€“May expatiating at length upon all the glorious pictures, and I agreeing with her fervently as I pushed in mouthfuls of cream and coffee icing. I ought to have looked like a pig by now, with bulging flesh and tiny eyes; instead of which I had a most ethereal appearance, fragile and thin, with large dreamy eyes. Seeing me, you would have prophesied an early death in a state of spiritual ecstasy, like children in Victorian story-books. At any rate I did have the grace to feel ashamed at not appreciating Maya€?s artistic education. I had enjoyed Fiesolea€“but mostly the almond blossoma€“and I had got a lot of fun out of Doodoo, a tiny Pomeranian dog which accompanied May and Stengel everywhere. Doodoo was small and very clever. May often brought him to visit England. On those occasions he got inside a large muff of hers and always remained unsuspected by Customs officers.
May came to London on her way back to New York, and displayed her elegant new neck. Mother and Grannie both wept and kissed her repeatedly, and May wept too, because it was like an impossible dream come true. Only after she had left for New York did mother say to Grannie, a€?How sad, though, how terribly sad, to think that she could have had this operation fifteen years ago. She must have been very badly advised by consultants in New York.a€?
a€?And now, I suppose, ita€?s too late,a€said my grandmother thoughtfully. a€?She will never marry now.a€?
But there, I am glad to say, Grannie was wrong.
I think May had been terribly sad that marriage was not to be for her, and I dona€?t think for one moment she expected it so late in life. But some years later she came over to England bringing with her a clergyman who was the rector at one of the most important Episcopalian churches in New York, a man of great sincerity and personality. He had been told that he had only a year to live, but May, who had always been one of his most zealous parishioners, had insisted on getting together a subscription from the congregation and bringing him to London to consult doctors there. She said to Grannie: a€?You know, I am convinced that he will recover. Hea€?s needed, badly needed. He does wonderful work in New York. Hea€?s converted gamblers and gangsters, hea€?s gone into the most terrible brothels and places, hea€?s had no fear of public opinion or of being beaten up, and a lot of extraordinary characters have been converted by him.a€May brought him out to luncheon at Ealing. Afterwards, at her next visit, when she came to say goodbye, Grannie said to her, a€?May, that mana€?s in love with you.a€?
a€?Why, Aunty,a€exclaimed May, a€?how can you say such a terrible thingHe never thinks of marriage. He is a convinced celibate.a€?
a€?He may have been once,a€said Grannie, a€?but I dona€?t think he is now. And whata€?s all this about celibacyHea€?s not a Roman. Hea€?s got his eye on you, May.a€?
May looked highly shocked.
However, a year later, she wrote and told us that Andrew was restored to health and that they were getting married. It was a very happy marriage. No one could have been kinder, gentler and more understanding than Andrew was to May. a€?She does so need to be happy,a€he said once to Grannie. a€?She has been shut off from happiness for most of her life, and she has become so afraid of it that it has turned her almost into a Puritan.a€Andrew was always to be something of an invalid, but it did not stop his work. Dear May, I am so glad that happiness came to her as it did.