Lawrence

“ Lawrence to bring you to New York for a week. I suppose it wouldn't do for me to call on you in the light of day; but I might hang round your hotel and see you going in and out. Does he love me as much as ever, Mr. Lawrence? Poor man, tell him to take it easy; I shall never trouble him again. Are you ever lonely in the midst of your grandeur? Do you ever feel that, after all, these people are not of your blood and bone? ”

“ If the city of Rome wondered long ago at the virtue of Lawrence when she beheld him leading a life of chastity in the bloom of youth, giving all his treasures to the poor, fighting so zealously for the glory of God, and restoring the blind to sight by the mere sign of the cross, much more do I wonder at Lawrence lying bound on the glowing coals, and suffering the most atrocious torments. ”

“ Lawrence has a right to be Lawrence; he is his own peculiar invention. But at second and third hand he is occasionally comic, as when some ambitious, conventional, sporting, self-indulgent lion tries on his unicorn skin. But more often it goes beyond the comic stage: strong silent little men are even more insufferable than strong silent big ones. ”

“ Lawrence, in the grimmest and coldest manner imaginable, presented her with a check for a thousand dollars, and with profuse thanks she hurried out to expend it in finery.
She was very happy now in the coming fulfillment of her cherished desire, and no coldness, not even the lowering shadow on Lance's face when he came and went, had power to alter her imperious will.
To win him she had steeped her hands in human blood and risked the dangers of the scaffold. ”

“ Long practice has made Lawrence able to talk for twenty minutes at a time to whoever accosts him without betraying that he hasn’t a notion who the person is. Yet he can remember names and details of taste and character, and words and opinions and places vividly and at great length. He does his best to see people; but is constantly getting into trouble for not recognizing and saluting officers when they are out of uniform; for nobody is willing to believe his excuses. ”

“ Where men are concerned the strength of Lawrence lay in the masterful character of the sitters themselves, rather than in any force of hand or brain. Had he been called upon to paint common-place types, his reputation would hardly have been what it is to-day, but his sitters were the pick of the generation, men who played no small part in deciding the fate of Europe at one of the most critical periods of history. ”

“ Lawrence’s chief curse is that he cannot stop thinking, and by thinking I mean a working of the mind that is not mere calculation from any given set of facts, but a much more intense and difficult process which makes its own facts and tests them as it goes and destroys them when it is over. In all my acquaintance I know no more than three people who really think, and these three include Lawrence. He seems to be perpetually stretching his mind in every direction and finding little or nothing ”

“ Lawrence, the frowning mountains, the far purple hills, the primeval forests through which the wind rushed with the sound of the sea, the fishing craft dancing on the tide like cockle boats, the grizzled fur traders bronzed as the crinkled oak forests where they passed their lives, the tawny, naked savages agape at these white-skinned women come from afar, the hearts of the {74} housed-up nuns swelled with emotions strange and sweet,—the emotions of a new life in a new world. ”

“ Why then, we may ask ourselves, was Lawrence a favourite artist from the days when as a little boy he made crayon drawings of visitors to his father’s inn, down to the time when he was sent on a tour of the chief European capitals to paint Kings, Kaiser, and Pope? Why, while artists remained critical and were even grudging in the measure of justice they meted out to him did all the wealthy patrons of art prefer his studio to that of his contemporaries, face the heavy and constantly increasing charges without protest, and rejoice in the possession of the canvas that his brush had covered? ”

“ Poor Lawrence drives our soliloquist mad with his deliberate table manners, with his deliberate method of speech, with his care about his own goblet and spoon. And all the time Lawrence believes that his enemy loves him! ”

“ Lawrence must be acquitted of any intentions dishonourable or unkind. If his character was of no great depth, he was always kind-hearted and generous to his family, his friends, and his servants. Though solicitous for his own advancement in the world, he never disparaged his rivals, young or old, whether Hoppner or Owen, and to young students he was ever ready with advice and commissions, and he allowed them to study his fine collection of drawings. ”

“ Sir John Lawrence has said of him that he was, of all others, the man he most delighted to meet in England—he was so manly, yet gentle, and withal so great. While admired and beloved by men of such calibre, he was equally a favourite with women and children. ”

“ The Beni Sakhr hospitality was even richer than that of the Howeitat. Lawrence, Ali and the rest ate ravenously, for good manners, at mutton and rice which was soused in so much liquid butter that they splashed their clothes and greased their faces in their first polite haste. The pace was slackening somewhat, though the meal was far from its end, when Abd el Kader grunted, rose to his feet, wiped his hands on a handkerchief and sat back on the carpets by the tent wall. Lawrence and the rest did not know whether to rise too, for the custom was for all to rise together. ”

“ But at every period of his life and in every aspect of his work with which we are acquainted, Thomas Lawrence is interesting—perhaps it is permissible to say he is even lovable. One gets the impression of a strong man who has equipped himself for life’s race in despite of disadvantages that would have crushed and quelled the spirit of a weakling, a man who makes for the most difficult goal, and reaches it in triumph. ”

“ As the bullet went through his heart, young Pangus sprung some feet in the air, and fell lifeless in the stream below.
"O, the ever wakeful Providence of our Heavenly Father," whispered Mrs. Lawrence.
"The beautiful swell of land, directly in front of us, and clothed with verdure to its summit, is Starkes-hill," said Mr. Lawrence; "that on our right, just back of the village, is Kearsarge mountain."
"And those beyond, piled one upon another, in seemingly endless succession—far—far as the eye can reach," cried Mrs. Lawrence, "are the celebrated white mountains of New-Hampshire. O, how sublime! ”

“ Lawrence, "lying so securely amid its guardian mountains, with its long, straight street,—and its church and academy spires, pointing to heaven, speaking of spiritual and intellectual improvement. O, this scene is perfect in beauty!—and in grandeur! There the sublime and beautiful are most happily associated. The overpowering awe that steals upon one, while viewing those mighty efforts of creative power, which fills the soul with sensations altogether too big for utterance,—is modified, when the eye falls, and rests on the peaceful village, which speaks of human society, comfort and happiness. ”

“ Of that school John Lawrence proved the most ardent and the most renowned. Intermitting his work at Delhi, he became land revenue settlement officer in the district of Etawah, and there began, by buying out or getting rid of the talukdars, to realize the ideal which he did much to create throughout the rest of his career—a country “thickly cultivated by a fat contented yeomanry, each man riding his own horse, sitting under his own fig-tree, and enjoying his rude family comforts.” ”

“ They were his, every one of them. All he had to do was to buy clothes, to take an apartment at the St. Albans, to dine for a week at the Waldorf! He laughed aloud, and a shivering, frosty-nosed citizen turned and stared after him suspiciously as he hurried down the street.
Lawrence did not see this; nor, seeing, would he have cared. He flew through the snowy streets, and on the doorstep of his lodging house was smitten with a sudden fear for the safety of his treasure. Racing up the two flights of stairs, he darted into his room and tore up the mattress. ”

“ She took them frankly and Lawrence kissed them both, with a curiously gentle and reverent manner, an exhibition of a George Lawrence unknown to other people.
"Well, my dear!" he said, and looked long at the unlined, if mature, determined, clever face before him—that of a woman of forty years, of strong character and of aristocratic breeding.
"Yes," he continued.
"Yes 'what,' George?" asked Lady Brandon.
"Yes. You are positively as young and as beautiful as ever," he replied—but with no air of gallantry and compliment, and rather as a sober statement of ascertained fact. ”

“ When Sir Thomas Lawrence paints a handsome peeress, he does not contemplate her through a powerful microscope, and transfer to the canvas the pores of the skin, the blood-vessels of the eye, and all the other beauties which Gulliver discovered in the Brobdignaggian maids of honour. ”

“ At that moment, had she met Lawrence, she would have passed him with a fiercer coldness than ever, but if she had seen the girl, she would have been ready to fly at her.
The village tongues were even harder on Lawrence than they had been on her. The sight of a person bending toward the earth with the weight of his just deserts upon his shoulders is generally gratifying and amusing even to his friends. Then there was more open rudeness among the young men who were Lawrence's mates, They jeered him everywhere. ”

“ This brought Lawrence back to himself. He knew that Edestone meant every word he said and, jumping to his feet, he threw his arms around his friend’s neck.
“Bo!” he exclaimed, half-laughing, half-sobbing, “you are a king among men!” ”

“ Lawrence ever knew at any time, more lawless, more beyond the reach of any law. These lands out here are wild; yes, and they breed wild men. They have been the home of others besides myself, lawless, restless under any restraint. ”

“ Lawrence cried. "It's flattering to the vanity of a novelist to have a millionaire for one of his puppets."
The Countess came sweeping back again with one tiny phial in her hand. Lawrence did not need to look to see that it was the right one. Unknown to the Countess, he had had it in his possession before.
"There!" she cried. "And now to keep your part of the compact. If you have got round Maitrank you are a genius. Where are the men?"
"Gone!" said Lawrence. "I waved my hand and they have departed. Nobody but us three has any knowledge of the truth." ”

“ Circumstances and his own lifelong efforts have made him more free of human ties than other men. He can therefore dispose of himself in any market at any given time. Others cannot; they have careers, ambitions, families, wants, hopes, fears, traditions, duties—all binding them to that organized human society in which Lawrence seems to play only an accidental and perfunctory part. It is this extraordinary detachment, this final insulation of himself, which makes him the object of so much curiosity, suspicion, exasperation, admiration, love, hatred, jealousy, legends, lies. ”

“ A habit of mind caught from the desert: though perhaps latent in his blood, of which the Spanish strain—and Spanish is half-Arab—shows in the severity of his jaw and the cruel flash of his rare and quickly appeased anger. And yet with all his love of failure Lawrence has been queerly dogged with success. As Miss Gertrude Bell said of him once, ‘Everything that he touches flowers.’ His forlorn hopes all come off, he casts his bread magnificently upon the waters and is peevish to find it again (much swollen) after many days. The more deeply he abases himself the higher he finds himself exalted. ”

“ The moon dipped lower over the trees while Lawrence took one of his sharp turns of self-analysis. Most men live in a haze, but Lawrence was naturally a clear thinker, and he had neither a warm heart nor a sentimental temperament to blind him. Cleve was safe: but with his Rabelaisian candour and cultivated want of scruple Lawrence reflected that Cleve had been anything but safe at Bingley. Whence the change? From Isabel Stafford! Lawrence shrugged his shoulders: he was accustomed to examine himself in a dry light of curiosity, and no vice or weakness shocked him, but here was pure folly. ”

“ A small knowledge which is in harmony with itself will seem uncanny to those with a much greater store of facts that do not hold together. Still, Lawrence’s knowledge must be pretty extensive. In six years he read every book in the library of the Oxford Union—the best part of 50,000 volumes, probably. ”

“ Lawrence did nothing of the sort, though he had popularity and power enough perhaps to make himself Emperor even without an official change of faith. But it would have been foolish to expect a man who has qualities that shine in difficult weather to subdue them in calm weather. He came away and left the Arabs to employ the freedom that he had given them, a freedom unencumbered by his rule which, however just and wise, would always have been an alien rule. He would have contradicted himself had he suffered all those pains to free the Arabs and then enslaved them under himself. ”

“ That impression Mr Lawrence always gives; he sees the world through a magnifying-glass, and perhaps more so in Sons and Lovers than in The White Peacock. In that book he gives us unabashed autobiography—the story of his early youth, of his relation to his mother, a creature of fitful, delicate charm. Mrs Morel is very Northern; she has, with the harshness of her latitude, its fine courage and its ambition; Paul Morel, the hero, is Mr Lawrence himself, the little blue flower on the clinker heap. ”

“ Lawrence was a religious man in every sense of the word, dedicating his time and wealth to the service of God, and the good of his fellow-men: hence he was "not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." ”