Maude with an 'E' - Chapter 5

More Than a Name

y this point, Henriette began to review her notes and realised she’d not gathered much at all about Maude’s personal love story and thoughts on working as a painter... even while married, and raising children. But how could she raise the subject tastefully?

She resigned herself to the fact that perhaps doing so in a tasteful manner was impossible, and so she eventually simply blurted, "You had mentioned earlier, Miss Goodman, that many thought married life was suited to your career as an artist. It’s also actually been said that the success of your career started with your marriage, but do you feel that belittles the toil and effort brought to bare, before that point?"

Maude stared almost blankly, taking in the question, though the look on her face showed more a sense of being taken aback than of someone pensively thinking how to respond.

Henriette continued, so as to fill the

silence and perhaps further encourage an answer from Maude... "It said in the Pearson’s article that before your marriage, you’d gotten along quite well as artist with many people thinking that your painted initials “M. Goodman” stood for a “Mr” M. Goodman… in that article too too it noted that marriage ‘must surely’ have favoured and stimulated your art.”

As graceful as ever, Maude slowly brought forth the following reply, which was less like a reply and more like an invitation, “Let me show you this painting over here.” She led Henriette to a work hanging on the wall, entitled "News".

She explained, “This was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1883 – that’s the year after my marriage to Arthur. It was one of six that I exhibited at the RA that year - indeed, it was one of my most creative years.”

“I didn’t often read the newspaper to be honest… real news one usually hears about and doesn't need to read about - this approach often saved me much heartache that would follow after reading a less than positive review of my creative efforts. I’d often happily listen to friends or relatives relay news of positive reviews to me… but not long after we’d been married, one day I allowed myself an indulgence and found myself excitedly looking through the paper… can you guess what for? I was looking for news of our wedding announcement. I remember looking up once I’d found it, to read it aloud to my husband and caught my own reflection in one of the large mirrors – perhaps you noticed them when you came in earlier… and it struck me as an idea for a painting. To tell you the truth I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other such painting, depicting a woman reading the newspaper. Have you?”

“You’re correct, Miss Goodman, no, I don’t think I have.”

“It’s a dangerous thing, to be a woman and be well read.” Maude declared with a glint in her eye. She knew instinctively that it could perturb the reporter but believed that Henriette would know it was said in jest.

“And you’d mentioned the Pearson’s article… ah well… I had actually successfully been exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy since 1974, only marrying in 1882… so that’s what? Only 8 years of success prior to my married state? How would they account for that? It is funny the ideas some people get in their heads… I do hope you’re not one of these writers that will put my story in a strange light?”

Henriette pursed her lips and shook her head, still looking down as she annotated some of the things Maude had just said.

Content with having established an understanding that she wouldn't like to be misrepresented, Maude continued, “Having said that, I wouldn’t by any means wish to downgrade the splendid partnership that came about through my marriage to Arthur.”

“I’m pleased for you,” Henriette said absentmindedly, as she still wanted to explore the topic of some of the assertions that had been made in other periodicals, “This other article also says, ‘Only a wife and mother could have so brilliantly realised the artistic possibilities of the nursery and the home.’”

“Well, to that I say, look at Mrs. Beeton. She somehow got away with giving advice on childbirth and household management and yet what kind of a person has she in fact turned out to be?” Maude monitored her tone, to speak more softly as if telling a secret, "Truth be told, she was a childless and household-less woman. I suppose a success like that is all the more to be praised in some people’s view. But they do say, with anything in the way of the arts… it is always best to create around what you know. I worked hard to become an artist and would have loved to do landscape paintings, and then, happily found myself as a wife and mother… surely it’s only natural that I would then derive inspiration from my immediate surroundings, and satisfaction from rendering them into some of kind of art form that may continue to exist long after any of us are still here to speak of them? To think of my baby girl or boy as somewhat immortalised, with just a flick of the wrist and a few dabs of the brush and oils combined in varying colour combinations. Any mother would do it too, if she could, surely?" She intentionally didn’t frame the question towards Henriette this time, not even hypothetically, and added, "Perhaps it could be considered a sin to not do so, if one has the talent and inclination. And... as my contemporary Mrs. Norman (Henriette Rae) has been known to put it, ‘the mission of the artist should be to bring light, joy, and colour to the world.' If I am to be honest, those three things are just what my children have brought to me, and I can’t imagine them not exerting some kind of influence in my choice of subject.”

She went on further, “You mentioned earlier, whether little girls of today could perhaps find inspiration in art, the way I did when I was 4. It’s just occurring to me now actually, that I took my daughter, Sybil, up to the Manchester Treasures Exhibition, when she also happened to be 4 years old. It was the Jubilee that year, you might recall. And I had one or two paintings on show there. You know, I really never connected those two things in my mind, until our conversation today. It almost seems poetic somehow.”

“And how does your daughter feel about your art, or art in general, may I ask? Do you think what exposure she has had so far, has influenced her much in that direction?”

“Yes, in fact she often proclaims she’d like to become an artist like me. And for now she just loves posing for my pictures. She sits to me for all the children. She regards it as her prerogative and insists on doing so. If by any chance I suggest getting another model she raises her voice in protestation and cries as if her little heart would break. She’s been the inspiration behind quite a few of the pictures, as has been my son. He was a delightfully boyey boy. It was he who furnished the subject for the comparison pictures, “In Disgrace” and “I will be good now, Mother”. For one of those innocent misdemeanors which bring a thrill of joy to every mother’s heart that all women will understand, I put him in the corner one day. As he stood there, with his fluffy golden head contrasting against the dark wainscotting of the room, he suggested the first idea. The next moment, as he turned around with "I will be good now, Mother" falling from his baby lips, I couldn't help but take a mental note. What else could I do but paint him?”

Henriette did believe that Maude had perhaps done for children what Marcus Stone and S.E. Waller had done for their painted men and women, bringing the element of fairyland to that of a more prosaic life, using their paint brushes to weld the two elements together. And yet she had felt another pang of humiliation, as if Maude had pointed the phrase “all women will understand”, directly at her. And yet she hadn’t.

“Even so, my pictures never do come out as I really want them.” Maude had perceived the renewed tension and was meekly attempting to redirect the subject under discussion, towards something more generic and hopefully more agreeable to her listener. “They are always different from what they look like when I see them with the eye of imagination. The only thing that ever makes me leave off working at them is the necessity of sending in to the Academy at a certain time. Were it not for that I do not believe I should ever regard a picture finished any more than I did my student days at South Kensington, when Sir Edward Poynter, though he may have forgotten the circumstance, helped me so much with his kindly criticism.”

Changing the subject matter completely, she carried on, “You know, we may be turning our house here in to something of a picture house, during the week of the coronation… a certain periodical has asked permission to list us in their listed map of the area. I’m ever so honoured that it be possible for me to work from home and have reporters and admirers of my work coming here. I’m also considering possibly opening the house as a centre for musical recitals, as my daughter has also expressed an interest in music since we went to see the opera The Mikado. Although she voiced a desire to follow me in the arts way, at one point, but I do believe it’s the woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”

Maude was content that the lady reporter had not yet inquired as to the decision to continue painting by her maiden name, Goodman, even after she had married Arthur Scanes. It had been a last ditched attempt of Maude’s to appease her embittered father, and was a topic she preferred to not enter upon with the lady reporter. The occasion of Maude's marriage, while a happy one for many, had not been so for her father, and he had not deigned to be present for it. Maude's husband was a Christian, and for a Jew to marry out, was to turn her back on her spiritual heritage. So it was, that her father had felt it only proper to treat her thus.

Not only had it taken Maude years to win back her father’s approval in the first instance, but in the second, she fairly assumed it was a lost cause. She had hoped that by resuming to paint in her maiden name, it might serve to communicate some message of continued loyalty to her then estranged father, in ways that sending letter after letter through the conventional post would not have served. That is, if he were to have been willing to open a letter from her, which he was not, for a long time following her marriage.

The subject of Maude’s own daughter not pursuing a career that Maude might have preferred her to, caused her thoughts to return again to the occasion of revisiting Manchester for the Jubilee, with her own little one in tow. She remembered the triumphant feeling rushing through her body then. As Maude’s father had never travelled down to London to see any of her paintings exhibited there each year, she eagerly anticipated the prospect of him having the chance to experience that at the Royal Jubilee exhibition being held on his doorstep in Manchester. He truly had no excuses, not to visit the exhibits there.

Graciously, he had, and he did feel excitement as they sought out the paintings in question. On beholding them, deep down, he did truly repent of the opposition he had earlier put up against his aspirational daughter. However he couldn’t help but feel pain from wounds deeper still. And couldn’t find it within himself to say one thing or the other, about the entire event. By this time, the family had gotten used to his being more or less silent on the topic of Maude’s art and he was more or less incapable of changing this steely representation that he had built up for himself over the years.

And yet secretly, he had held on to the exhibition catalogue, and every so often at night or during quiet times of the day, his fatherly pride compelled him to return to it and quietly leaf through the catalogue, allowing his eyes to land yet again on his daughter's name therein. Inwardly he would repent, each time, of the bristling feeling that had managed to suppress his excitement that day, and of the bitterness that had prevented an outward display of emotion… one resulting from his swelling heart telling him to proudly announce to unacquainted passers-by, that his very own daughter had painted the beautiful art hung there before them.

He remembered stepping closer to examine his daughter's signature at the bottom of one of the paintings. He thought of Maude's mother long-gone, and how proud she would have been to see her daughter rise to the success she had. He thought of his own parents back in Prussia, and how proud they would be to see their name indelibly written and framed in glistening gold, among an exhibition of "Treasures". So much was wrapped up in this name. And yet for all the pride he felt, he couldn't divorce it from the pain inherent in that Maude's own children would not be able to know what this pride he felt, was about. He simply couldn't put words to this mixture of emotions. This signature was more than an identifying mark, and so much more than a name, to him.