Besides, three or four years’ training in Italy were needed—a different production altogether.
So Barty gave up this idea and made up his mind to be an artist. He got permission to work in the British Museum, and drew the “Discobolus,” and sent his drawing to the Royal Academy, in the hope of being admitted there as a student. He was not.
Then an immense overwhelming homesickness for Paris came over him, and he felt he must go and study art there, and succeed or perish.
My father talked to him like a father, my mother like a mother; we all hung about him and entreated. He was as obdurate as Tennyson’s sailor-boy whom the mermaiden forewarned so fiercely!
He was even offered a handsome appointment in the London house of Vougeot-Conti & Co.
But his mind was made up, and to my sorrow, an
