AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
53
Retracing our steps once more, at the age of nine my finger was split open by a stroke of the cane I received, and
for several weeks I enjoyed the privilege of excuse from all lessons and wandered about the school with my arm in a
sling to the evident envy of my schoolfellows. During this enforced idleness I came upon the works of Shakespeare,
and Macbeth in particular, and was completely enthralled. In 1910 I walked three miles from home to the Lyceum
theatre, where I saw Henry Irving and Ellen Terry play in Macbeth, and found myself almost word-perfect. To this
day the magic and mastery of language that could produce the line
`Unto the last syllable of recorded time' still holds me in its grip.
A year or more after joining the Settlement, I was attracted to visit Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, and there
became a member of the Art Student Club of which Alfred Parsons, A.R.A. was President. Here I came under the
influence of Mr. and Mrs. Hancock Nunn, a Cambridge man and his wife who devoted their lives to the betterment
of folk like myself. I must have responded to their kindness and was many times invited to spend a day at their
lovely home in Rosslyn Grove, Hampstead. It was like being initiated into another world to sit down to a snowy
white linen table cloth, candlelight, and to be served by maids in caps and aprons. Again, music had a place as well
as art, and I enjoyed singing such songs as `Where the bee sucks', and discovering much hitherto unrealized beauty.
I should think that I owed more to these kind friends than to any other up to the age of nineteen and twenty. I should
imagine I was what some would call `an interesting kid'.
Upon returning home one day from being out with some fellow artists sketching, my father handed me a letter
saying `I think you are the only one who can answer this'.
Rosslyn Grove, Hampstead. N. W.
March 3rd, 1900.
Dear Mr. Welch,
I am writing to you instead of speaking directly to your son in order to save him from disappointment if
you think my proposal quite unpracticable.
We have at Toynbee Hall a Travelling Club whose members by travelling some 40 or 50 together obtain
very much reduced charges at hotels and fares by rail. This Easter the Club, consisting of men and women
students of Toynbee Hall, is going to Venice and a few of the surrounding cities of Italy, passing through
Belgium, Germany and Switzerland.
The Treasurer of the Club invites on behalf of his fellow members one member of our Club to accompany
them as their guest.
After very carefully sounding several members of the Club and after much consideration, Mrs Nunn and I
think that your son would be the most suitable member to accept the invitation. We suppose that he would be
unable on his own account to afford the twelve guineas such an expedition would cost him, we gather that he
is much less bound with regard to his holidays than almost any other member, and we feel sure from what we
have known of him, that he would bring to such an expedition as much study as he possibly could give, so as
to reap the fullest benefit from the new world of things into which he would be introduced. At the same time,
he has shown so very much interest in Art and has made such rapid progress in his painting, that we feel he
has earned the right to be considered first on such an opportunity as this.
Of course, a young fellow might jump at an offer like this without considering whether it would not
unsettle him for his own work, and he might even risk his present situation for the sake of it. I want you to
think this over with Mrs. Welch and let me know as soon as you can because if he is not to accept someone
else may. If you think there is no harm in his going tell him by all means but if you think it wiser for him not
to go, say nothing about it.
I am sorry Mrs. Nunn and I are not going with the party. It would have been an additional pleasure to
have gone with your son. But several friends of ours will be going, and, as far as the expedition itself is
concerned, I feel sure he will get nothing but the best influences from start to finish. Away about 18 days
from April 11th.
With kind regards in which Mrs. Nunn joins me,