MY FATHER
AMONG all the men I have known intimately, my father stands out as a positive, straightforward, and inflexible nature. I owe him not only my life but the manner of my life, for it was he who inclined the tree by studying the bent of the twig. Against opposition, mostly silent I imagine, for he was self-willed and determined, he not only encouraged but guided me in the direction of my tastes, placing me, at an early age, under the care of the painter, George W. Holmes, where I met Henry Thouron.
My father's love of Art was innate, but whence derived is not evident, unless two or three drawings in pencil by his cousin, Alexander Hall Hall, are evidence of artistic talent in his mother's family. From what I have heard I am led to believe that this particular Hall Hall was a dilettante who passed most of his life in Rome, content to admire Art, without seriously pursuing it. With this exception, there is no trace of either talent or taste for Art in the Hamiltons or Hall Halls, who lived in the north of Ireland prior to the trouble of '98, and afterwards in Canada and in Pennsylvania. What pictures there may have been in Tully Hall, Betty Hall's house, near Ballymena, were probably disposed of to help defray the expenses of the family's migration to America. I may have derived from my French ancestry, the Delaplaines, through my mother, some of that love for Art which survives in the old Latin civilizations.
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