Page 271 - of-human-bondage-

Why do you not go to Paris and study art? I always thought
you had talent.
The suggestion fell in with the possibility that Philip for
some time had been vaguely turning over in his mind. It
startled him at first, but he could not help thinking of it, and
in the constant rumination over it he found his only escape
from the wretchedness of his present state. They all thought
he had talent; at Heidelberg they had admired his water co-
lours, Miss Wilkinson had told him over and over again that
they were chasing; even strangers like the Watsons had been
struck by his sketches. La Vie de Boheme had made a deep
impression on him. He had brought it to London and when
he was most depressed he had only to read a few pages to be
transported into those chasing attics where Rodolphe and
the rest of them danced and loved and sang. He began to
think of Paris as before he had thought of London, but he
had no fear of a second disillusion; he yearned for romance
and beauty and love, and Paris seemed to offer them all. He
had a passion for pictures, and why should he not be able to
paint as well as anybody else? He wrote to Miss Wilkinson
and asked her how much she thought he could live on in
Paris. She told him that he could manage easily on eighty
pounds a year, and she enthusiastically approved of his proj-
ect. She told him he was too good to be wasted in an office.
Who would be a clerk when he might be a great artist, she
asked dramatically, and she besought Philip to believe in
himself: that was the great thing. But Philip had a cautious
nature. It was all very well for Hayward to talk of taking
risks, he had three hundred a year in gilt-edged securities;

0 Of Human Bondage