The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart Read Free Book Online

1913, my father told me we were heading north to spend the summer on the other side of the lake, and, for the first time in our lives, he and I stepped on board the ferry that travelled, weather permitting, back and forth across the forty-mile distance from shore to shore. He had bought, sight unseen, a small lakeside summer property in the Canadian town of Davenport. The air, he had been assured by the realtor, was much purer there, the water cleaner and more suitable for bathing. Moreover, the summer social life, the parties held by wealthy Americans in large lakeside summer homes, would be, my father believed, my ticket of entry into that world. I had completed my first year of classes at the Rochester Art Institute and was making some casual friendships among the painters, musicians, and actors who were part of the limited cultural élite of my city. Rather than Canada, I would have preferred New York, or Chicago, or a trip to Europe. Or, failing that, I would have preferred to remain in Rochester. Still, Iboarded the boat with as much good nature as I could summon and, once we had cast off, walked moodily around on deck in a manner I thought suitable for a person of artistic temperament.
    Ten years later, Rockwell Kent and I would discuss the glamour of a north shore, how everything opens and clears there, sky, various winds, water; how light lingers long after it should in summer, as if trying to announce something vital that has been overlooked or refused. But none of this came to my eighteen-year-old mind as I attempted a watercolour of the pastoral, lush Ontario shoreline. What intrigued me instead was how a landscape could look both manicured and uninhabited at the same time. There was something in me then, some love of both solitude and order, that responded immediately to what I was seeing. But as we drew closer to Davenport, my elation began to diminish. Stilted and small, the town seemed to be lacking in potential. Lining the shore were huge, white American summer homes, perfect examples of the kind of immodest display of wealth that I, an art student with socialist leanings, felt ought to be disapproved of. I decided right away that I would have nothing to do with the mannered society that would undoubtedly fill the drawing rooms and croquet lawns of such places. I would stand alone, endure the summer.
    There was something else. Until that moment, turning north had involved lake and sky and emptiness for me, but now I was under the impression that everything was askew — the shore, the sun, the hills all appeared to be facing the wrong direction, and my mind kept wanting the trees that climbed the slopes behind the town to be submerged, the breakers to roll away from the beach. In later years, as I have intimated, it wouldbe the north shore of any body of water that attracted me, but, at eighteen, I was still innocent of the kind of obsession that attraction demanded. I spent my first few days in Davenport sulking on the porch of our summer house, staring out over the lake towards my abandoned city, and resenting my father’s repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get me involved in badminton parties and other such nonsense. Sometimes I walked on the beach, but the sand filled my shoes and socks, and I was too self-conscious to remove them, so I plodded back to the house and closeted myself in my room, which, compared to the golden light on the vast expanse of water, seemed dark and small. I tired of such behaviour eventually — I was eighteen after all — and when my father finally left me alone to pursue his absurd badminton parties, I walked out the back door and began to explore the town.
    How to describe the colonial world that flourished in the streets leading away from manicured American lawns? Union Jacks heaved in the wind from the lake, Queen and King streets intersected in the centre of town, Victoria Hall and Albert Street celebrating the intersection. The British Hotel looked imposing and