GLASSES


CHAPTER I


Yes indeed, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of the thread
and let it lead me back to the first impression. The little story is all
there, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as I call it,
is a row of coloured beads on a string. None of the beads are missing--at
least I think they're not: that's exactly what I shall amuse myself with
finding out.

I had been all summer working hard in town and then had gone down to
Folkestone for a blow. Art was long, I felt, and my holiday short; my
mother was settled at Folkestone, and I paid her a visit when I could. I
remember how on this occasion, after weeks in my stuffy studio with my
nose on my palette, I sniffed up the clean salt air and cooled my eyes
with the purple sea. The place was full of lodgings, and the lodgings
were at that season full of people, people who had nothing to do but to
stare at one another on the great flat down. There were thousands of
little chairs and almost as many little Jews; and there was music in an
open rotunda, over which the little Jews wagged their big noses. We all
strolled to and fro and took pennyworths of rest; the long, level cliff-
top, edged in places with its iron rail, might have been the deck of a
huge crowded ship. There were old folks in Bath chairs, and there was
one dear chair, creeping to its last full stop, by the side of which I
always walked. There was in fine weather the coast of France to look at,
and there were the usual things to say about it; there was also in every
state of the atmosphere our friend Mrs. Meldrum, a subject of remark not