Philip Carey’s departure for Paris to study art is a decisive break with the respectable career and religious expectations imposed on him, and the beginning of an artistic experiment that will reshape his sense of taste and ambition. When his guardian refuses to finance the move, Mrs. Carey gives him nearly one hundred pounds from her savings; he leaves with that money and arrives in Paris eager to enter the world of painting.

Causes and Resistance

Philip had taken an accountancy position because it seemed the only way to get to London, but he hated both the work and the city and would not return to the office. He wanted to study painting in Paris instead. The Vicar of Blackstable opposed the plan on principle, arguing that Philip should persist with what he had begun. The Careys also objected to painting as an insecure and disreputable occupation, and the Vicar specifically refused to let Philip live in Paris, describing the city as a source of temptation.

The dispute was also about who had the right to decide Philip’s future. His inheritance would not be available for another year, and the Vicar offered him an allowance only if he stayed at the office. Philip understood that he needed to leave accountancy while he could still recover half the money paid for his articles. He challenged the Vicar’s authority over his own money and choices, insisting that he was not a child and could not be forced back to London. The Vicar would not yield, leaving Philip to find another means of support.

Mrs. Carey’s Gift and the Farewell

Mrs. Carey supplied the crucial help. After hearing that Philip might sell his father’s jewellery, she went to the bank and returned with an envelope containing eleven five-pound notes and a small sack of sovereigns. The money was her own savings and came to very nearly one hundred pounds. She said she could not bear to see him sell the jewellery. Philip was moved and initially protested that he could not accept so generous a gift, but the money enabled his departure.

A few days later, Mrs. Carey accompanied him to the station. She tried to hold back her tears and asked him to kiss her once more before the train left. As he travelled, she remained on the platform waving her handkerchief and silently wished that God would guard him, keep him from temptation, and grant him happiness and good fortune. Philip, by contrast, turned almost at once toward the future. Their parting makes the departure both an act of independence and a separation from the person who had made that independence possible.

Arrival in the Latin Quarter

Philip’s journey carried him into a life he had imagined from afar. He had already written to Mrs. Otter, the masseuse to whom Hayward had given him an introduction, and had an invitation to tea for the next day. In Paris he travelled through the Latin Quarter to the Hotel des Deux Ecoles, in a shabby street off the Boulevard du Montparnasse, choosing it for its convenience to Amitrano’s School. His small, old-fashioned room struck him as quaint and charming despite its worn furnishings and darkened interior.

Too excited to sleep, he went out into the city. The bright square near the station, with its arc lamps and trams, delighted him. At the Café de Versailles he watched families, animated groups of men, apparent painters, and Americans arguing about art. The unfamiliar crowd seemed to embody the freedom and artistic life he had sought. His arrival therefore begins not with proof of talent or professional success, but with the exhilaration of entry into a new social and cultural world.

Learning a New Artistic Language

In the Latin Quarter Philip encountered an art world where judgments about painters were changing. Impressionism had recently prevailed over older schools, and discussion set artists such as Carolus-Duran and Bouguereau against Manet, Monet, and Degas. Admiration for the modern painters signalled discernment among the students; Raphael, once held in the highest esteem, could be treated with mockery. At a dinner where Lawson was present, the debate made clear that artistic standing depended not only on making pictures but also on learning the language and rivalries through which pictures were judged.

Philip’s own taste changed through exposure. He moved from astonishment at the Impressionists to enthusiastic admiration for Manet, Monet, and Degas, and put photographs of Ingres’s Odalisque and Manet’s Olympia above his washing-stand. He also responded strongly to Rembrandt’s Disciples at Emmaus and to Velasquez. His Parisian self-fashioning extended to clothes and habits: he exchanged the neat attire he had brought from England for a broad-brimmed hat, flowing cravat, and cape, and learned to drink absinthe without distaste. The shift shows how quickly he adopted the styles and opinions of the community he had entered.

Promise, Judgment, and Retrospect

Paris offered instruction as well as excitement, but its artistic institutions could be severe. When Fanny Price asked Foinet to assess a drawing, he told her it was badly drawn and advised her to tear it up; she felt humiliated, particularly because the criticism was delivered before Mrs. Otter. Her reaction reveals the unequal force of the teacher’s authority in the studio: paying for instruction did not guarantee encouragement or recognition. Fanny’s experience foreshadows the possibility that artistic aspiration could meet blunt institutional judgment rather than affirmation.

Philip eventually received his own assessment from Foinet. The teacher acknowledged manual dexterity and the possibility that hard work might make Philip a careful, competent painter, but saw no talent in the work shown to him and predicted that he would remain mediocre. The departure thus stands at the threshold of a vocation whose attractions are real but whose outcome is uncertain. Later, Philip was moved by photographs of El Greco’s paintings that Athelny showed him. Their elongated figures and troubling mixture of unreality and emotional force affected him in a way he could not yet explain. This later response underscores how his artistic life continued to be a search for meaning and perception, not simply a decision made at a railway station.

Significance

The departure brings together independence, family obligation, and artistic ambition. Philip rejects a career he had accepted for practical reasons, while his guardian’s refusal forces the question of whether freedom can be exercised without financial support. Mrs. Carey’s savings make the choice possible, and her farewell gives its cost a personal dimension. In Paris, Philip first experiences art as a world of lively debate, changing standards, and self-invention; subsequent criticism tests the confidence with which he entered it. The episode begins a formative passage from imagined artistic freedom toward the harder question of whether he possesses the ability to make that freedom into a profession.