“Oh, yes,” said Lurnstein, “I had ideals at one time all right—we all do, you know.”
He was leaning back from the small table, on which the tea was set, eyeing my half finished portrait. I had had a long sitting and his beautiful china tea in his thin blue and white china came as a great relief.
He looked extremely handsome, I thought, in the golden afternoon light, in his picturesque¹ studio overall; Jewish, of course, but with a distinguished² air that made one overlook his stumpy hands and other signs of ill-breeding.
“Perhaps you’d like to hear something of my life,” he said, “it has not been without interest.”
He lit another cigarette, pushed the box, a beautiful piece of Moorish⁴ inlaid work, to within my easy reach, and then drawing a deep breath of smoke, began:
“I started life about as low as any new peer. My father was a Jew and we lived in the Jewish quarter off the Commercial Road. When he was sober he was very kind to me and my brothers. My mother never had any great significance for me, but I realize now that she must have been a very hard worked and hard treated woman as upon her fell the sole burden of supporting her husband and large family.
“From the time when my first memories start I have always been interested in drawing, and I used to use every scrap⁵ of paper and every stump³ of pencil I could find, but lines never satisfied me—I wanted colours and tones. And these I could not afford. Coloured chalks used to be my chief delight and I used to take them from the desk of the Rabbi who managed the local synagogue and to whom I used to go once a week for religious instruction. For my father, though quite indifferent himself, was always most particular that I should attend. The Rabbi used the chalks, I remember, to draw maps of the divisions of the tribes with.
“Well one day he caught me taking his chalks, but instead of beating me, as the red-haired master at the board school would have done, he asked me all about my drawing and finally persuaded me to let him take some of my work away to show to his rich friends. For he was the son of a very rich man himself and had been to the ’Varsity but had sacrificed it all to help his fellow countrymen in the slums. I tell you that there are just as fine acts of self-sacrifice done by the rabbis in the Yiddish quarter as by any of your parsons at Kennington, only they don’t

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