No such thing, however, happened. At the yearly exhibition of the Chelsea Group he was represented by a large picture of a train entering a tube station as it would be seen through the eyes of the driver. At the Florence Galleries he exhibited a picture called “Charing Cross Road,” in which a small boy stood watching the glowing furnaces of Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell, and to the New Movement Society he contributed “Liftman at Piccadilly Circus.” The announcement that he was at work on “Surrey and Middlesex at the Oval” gave promise of better things, but his followers were again disappointed. In a far corner of the canvas was a patch of green and one white figure, the remainder was occupied by the telegraph and the gasometers. It was generally agreed that Eric Walker had not fulfilled his promise. “Interesting though this work may be,” wrote Gerald Garstin, “it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called beautiful, and without beauty where is art?” Once again Mayfair echoed the pronouncement of its trusted critic. “It’s not beautiful all that harping on machinery and ugliness. I am sure he can’t have a nice mind. Why doesn’t he look on the pleasant side of things?” To Eric Walker this change of front came abruptly and incomprehensibly. “Beauty,” he said. “Beauty, what do they mean? Aren’t my pictures beautiful?” To him there was nothing in the world lovelier than the angles that sunshine cut in smoke, than the glow of a furnace on damp flesh, than the smooth, hard rhythm of a piston. “Beauty,” he said, “that’s the one thing I have really striven for, to get the full value of these things I have enjoyed, to interpret the magic of these sounds and colours, to make others realise the perfect form, poise, balance of a machine. What do they mean?” In the end he took his troubles to Mrs Abbot, a kindly, sentimental woman, who had always rather mothered the young artist. To her he poured out all his troubles, telling her how they misinterpreted his work, calling it ugly. “But, my dear boy, it is ugly!” “Ugly! Oh, but, Mrs Abbot. Why, come here. Look out there. Do you see the great chimney-stack of the Gas Works? Do you see how the red glare shines out against the black roofs; what could be lovelier?” And he leapt up, seizing her hand, dragging her to the window. Gradually Mrs Abbot pacified him. “My dear boy,” she said, “I dare say you may like that sort of thing, but you’ll find that it’s not what we think nice, and it’s what other people think nice that matters. Those chimneys of yours are all very well, and I know you’re fond of them, but the things we call beautiful are not a bit like that.” “No?” “No, of course not,” she went on, “the things we like--well, trees, fields, love--oh, you know, the joy, the beauty of life. Those are the things you ought to be painting.”