 | Mosses from an old manse |  |
DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE.
One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of Boston,
a young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne,
stood contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose
to convert into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he discussed
within his own mind what sort of shape or similitude it
were well to bestow upon this excellent piece of timber, there
came into Drowne's workshop a certain Captain Hunnewell, owner
and commander of the good brig called the Cynosure, which had
just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.
“Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!” cried the jolly captain,
tapping the log with his rattan. “I bespeak this very piece
of oak for the figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown herself
the sweetest craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate
her prow with the handsomest image that the skill of man can cut
out of timber. And, Drowne, you are the fellow to execute it.”
“You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell,”
said the carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in
his art. “But, for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do
my best. And which of these designs do you prefer? Here”—
pointing to a staring, half length figure, in a white wig and scarlet
coat—“here is an excellent model, the likeness of our gracious
king. Here is the valiant Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer
a female figure, what say you to Britannia with the trident?”
“All very fine, Drowne; all very fine,” answered the mariner.
she shall have such a figure-head as old Neptune never
saw in his life. And what is more, as there is a secret in the
matter, you must pledge your credit not to betray it.”
“Certainly,” said Drowne, marvelling, however, what possible
mystery there could be in reference to an affair so open, of necessity,
to the inspection of all the world, as the figure-head of a vessel.
“You may depend, captain, on my being as secret as the
nature of the case will permit.”
Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the button, and communicated
his wishes in so low a tone, that it would be unmannerly
to repeat what was evidently intended for the carver's private
ear. We shall, therefore, take the opportunity to give the
reader a few desirable particulars about Drowne himself.
He was the first American who is known to have attempted,—
in a very humble line, it is true,—that art in which we can now
reckon so many names already distinguished, or rising to distinction.
From his earliest boyhood, he had exhibited a knack—for
it would be too proud a word to call it genius—a knack, therefore,
for the imitation of the human figure, in whatever material came
most readily to hand. The snows of a New England winter had
often supplied him with a species of marble as dazzlingly white,
at least, as the Parian or the Carrara, and if less durable, yet
sufficiently so to correspond with any claims to permanent existence
possessed by the boy's frozen statues. Yet they won admiration
from maturer judges than his schoolfellows, and were,
indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute of the native warmth
that might have made the snow melt beneath his hand. As he
advanced in life, the young man adopted pine and oak as eligible
materials for the display of his skill, which now began to bring
him a return of solid silver, as well as the empty praise that
had been an apt reward enough for his productions of evanescent
snow. He became noted for carving ornamental pump-heads,
grotesque than fanciful, for mantel-pieces. No apothecary would
have deemed himself in the way of obtaining custom, without
setting up a gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen or Hippocrates,
from the skilful hand of Drowne. But the great scope of his
business lay in the manufacture of figure-heads for vessels.
Whether it were the monarch himself, or some famous British
admiral or general, or the governor of the province, or perchance
the favorite daughter of the ship-owner, there the image stood
above the prow, decked out in gorgeous colors, magnificently
gilded, and staring the whole world out of countenance, as if from
an innate consciousness of its own superiority. These specimens
of native sculpture had crossed the sea in all directions, and
been not ignobly noticed among the crowded shipping of the
Thames, and wherever else the hardy mariners of New England
had pushed their adventures. It must be confessed, that a
family likeness pervaded these respectable progeny of Drowne's
skill—that the benign countenance of the king resembled those of
his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the merchant's daughter,
bore a remarkable similitude to Britannia, Victory, and other
ladies of the allegoric sisterhood; and, finally, that they all had
a kind of wooden aspect, which proved an intimate relationship
with the unshaped blocks of timber in the carver's workshop.
But, at least, there was no inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a deficiency
of any attribute to render them really works of art, except
that deep quality, be it of soul or intellect, which bestows
life upon the lifeless, and warmth upon the cold, and which, had
it been present, would have made Drowne's wooden image instinct
with spirit.
The captain of the Cynosure had now finished his instructions.
“And Drowne,” said he, impressively, “you must lay aside
all other business, and set about this forthwith. And as to the
point yourself.”
“Very well, captain,” answered the carver, who looked grave
and somewhat perplexed, yet had a sort of smile upon his visage.
“Depend upon it, I'll do my utmost to satisfy you.”
From that moment, the men of taste about Long Wharf and
the Town Dock, who were wont to show their love for the arts,
by frequent visits to Drowne's workshop, and admiration of his
wooden images, began to be sensible of a mystery in the carver's
conduct. Often he was absent in the day-time. Sometimes, as
might be judged by gleams of light from the shop windows, he
was at work until a late hour of the evening; although neither
knock nor voice, on such occasions, could gain admittance for a
visitor, or elicit any word of response. Nothing remarkable,
however, was observed in the shop at those hours when it was
thrown open. A fine piece of timber, indeed, which Drowne
was known to have reserved for some work of especial dignity,
was seen to be gradually assuming shape. What shape it was
destined ultimately to take, was a problem to his friends, and a
point on which the carver himself preserved a rigid silence. But
day after day, though Drowne was seldom noticed in the act of
working upon it, this rude from began to be developed, until it
became evident to all observers, that a female figure was growing
into mimic life. At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of
wooden chips, and a nearer approximation to something beautiful.
It seemed as if the hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself
from the unimaginative world within the heart of her native tree,
and that it was only necessary to remove the strange shapelessness
that had encrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveliness
of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the attitude, the costume,
and especially the face of the image, still remained, there was
already an effect that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness
mystery of this new project.
Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man, and a resident
of Boston, came one day to visit Drowne; for he had recognized
so much of moderate ability in the carver, as to induce him, in
the dearth of any professional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance.
On entering the shop, the artist glanced at the
inflexible image of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that
stood around; on the best of which might have been bestowed
the questionable praise, that it looked as if a living man had here
been changed to wood, and that not only the physical, but the
intellectual and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation.
But in not a single instance did it seem as if the wood
were imbibing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide
distinction is here, and how far would the slightest portion of
the latter merit have outvalued the utmost degree of the former!
“My friend Drowne,” said Copley, smiling to himself, but
alluding to the mechanical and wooden cleverness that so invariably
distinguished the images, “you are really a remarkable
person! I have seldom met with a man, in your line of business,
that could do so much, for one other touch might make
this figure of General Wolfe, for instance, a breathing and
intelligent human creature.”
“You would have me think that you are praising me highly,
Mr. Copley,” answered Drowne, turning his back upon Wolfe's
image in apparent disgust. “But there has come a light into
my mind. I know, what you know as well, that the one touch,
which you speak of as deficient, is the only one that would be
truly valuable, and that, without it, these works of mine are no
better than worthless abortions. There is the same difference
between them and the works of an inspired artist, as between
a sign-post daub and one of your best pictures.”
“This is strange!” cried Copley, looking him in the face,
though, hitherto, it had not given him greatly the advantage
over his own family of wooden images. “What has
come over you? How is it that, possessing the idea which
you have now uttered, you should produce only such works as
these?”
The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley turned again
to the images, conceiving that the sense of deficiency, so rare in
a merely mechanical character, must surely imply a genius,
the tokens of which had been overlooked. But no; there was
not a trace of it. He was about to withdraw, when his eyes
chanced to fall upon a half-developed figure which lay in a
corner of the workshop, surrounded by scattered chips of oak.
It arrested him at once.
“What is here? Who has done this?” he broke out, after
contemplating it in speechless astonishment for an instant.
“Here is the divine, the life-giving touch! What inspired
hand is beckoning this wood to arise and live? Whose work
is this?”
“No man's work,” replied Drowne. “The figure lies within
that block of oak, and it is my business to find it.”
“Drowne,” said the true artist, grasping the carver fervently by
the hand, “you are a man of genius!”
As Copley departed, happening to glance backward from the
threshold, he beheld Drowne bending over the half created
shape, and stretching forth his arms as if he would have embraced
and drawn it to his heart; while, had such a miracle
been possible, his countenance expressed passion enough to communicate
warmth and sensibility to the lifeless oak.
“Strange enough!” said the artist to himself. “Who would
have looked for a modern Pygmalion in the person of a Yankee
mechanic!”
As yet, the image was but vague in its outward presentment;
rather felt, or was led to imagine, than really saw what
was intended by it. Day by day, however, the work assumed
greater precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline into
distincter grace and beauty. The general design was now obvious
to the common eye. It was a female figure, in what appeared
to be a foreign dress; the gown being laced over the
bosom, and opening in front, so as to disclose a skirt or petticoat,
the folds and inequalities of which were admirably represented
in the oaken substance. She wore a hat of singular gracefulness,
and abundantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in
the rude soil of New England, but which, with all their fanciful
luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed impossible for the
most fertile imagination to have attained without copying from
real prototypes. There were several little appendages to this
dress, such as a fan, a pair of ear-rings, a chain about the neck
a watch in the bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which
would have been deemed beneath the dignity of sculpture. They
were put on, however, with as much taste as a lovely woman
might have shown in her attire, and could therefore have shocked
none but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules.
The face was still imperfect; but, gradually, by a magic
touch, intelligence and sensibility brightened through the features,
with all the effect of light gleaming forth from within the solid
oak. The face became alive. It was a beautiful, though not
precisely regular, and somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain
piquancy about the eyes and mouth which, of all expressions,
would have seemed the most impossible to throw over a
wooden countenance. And now, so far as carving went, this
wonderful production was complete.
“Drowne,” said Copley, who had hardly missed a single day
in his visits to the carver's workshop, “if this work were in
marble, it would make you famous at once; nay, I would almost
antique statue, yet as real as any lovely woman whom one meets
at a fireside or in the street. But I trust you do not mean to
desecrate this exquisite creature with paint, like those staring
kings and admirals yonder?”
“Not paint her?” exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood
by; “not paint the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what
sort of a figure should I cut in a foreign port, with such an unpainted
oaken stick as this over my prow? She must, and she
shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost flower in her hat
down to the silver spangles on her slippers.”
“Mr. Copley,” said Drowne, quietly, “I know nothing of
marble statuary, and nothing of the sculptor's rules of art. But
of this wooden image—this work of my hands—this creature of
my heart”—and here his voice faltered and choked, in a very
singular manner—“of this—of her—I may say that I know
something. A well-spring of inward wisdom gushed within me,
as I wrought upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, and
faith. Let others do what they may with marble, and adopt
what rules they choose. If I can produce my desired effect by
painted wood, those rules are not for me, and I have a right to
disregard them.”
“The very spirit of genius!” muttered Copley to himself.
“How otherwise should this carver feel himself entitled to transcend
all rules, and make me ashamed of quoting them!”
He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw that expression
of human love which, in a spiritual sense, as the artist could not
help imagining, was the secret of the life that had been breathed
into this block of wood.
The carver, still in the same secresy that marked all his operations
upon this mysterious image, proceeded to paint the habiliments
in their proper colors, and the countenance with nature's
red and white. When all was finished, he threw open his workshop,
Most persons, at their first entrance, felt impelled to remove their
hats, and pay such reverence as was due to the richly dressed
and beautiful young lady, who seemed to stand in a corner of the
room, with oaken chips and shavings scattered at her feet. Then
came a sensation of fear; as if, not being actually human, yet
so like humanity, she must therefore be something preternatural.
There was, in truth, an indefinable air and expression that might
reasonably induce the query—who and from what sphere this
daughter of the oak should be. The strange rich flowers of Eden
on her head; the complexion, so much deeper and more brilliant
than those of our native beauties; the foreign, as it seemed, and
fantastic garb, yet not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the
street; the delicately wrought embroidery of the skirt; the broad
gold chain about her neck; the curious ring upon her finger;
the fan, so exquisitely sculptured in open work, and painted to
resemble pearl and ebony;—where could Drowne, in his sober
walk of life, have beheld the vision here so matchlessly embodied!
And then her face! In the dark eyes, and around the voluptuous
mouth, there played a look made up of pride, coquetry, and a
gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed Copley with the idea that
the image was secretly enjoying the perplexing admiration of
himself and other beholders.
“And will you,” said he to the carver, “permit this master-piece
to become the figure-head of a vessel? Give the honest
captain yonder figure of Britannia—it will answer his purpose
far better,—and send this fairy queen to England, where, for
aught I know, it may bring you a thousand pounds.”
“I have not wrought it for money,” said Drowne.
“What sort of a fellow is this!” thought Copley. “A Yankee,
and throw away the chance of making his fortune! He has
gone mad; and thence has come this gleam of genius.”
There was still further proof of Drowne's lunacy, if credit were
oaken lady, and gazing with a lover's passionate ardor into the
face that his own hands had created. The bigots of the day
hinted that it would be no matter of surprise if an evil spirit
were allowed to enter this beautiful form, and seduce the carver
to destruction.
The fame of the image spread far and wide. The inhabitants
visited it so universally, that, after a few days of exhibition, there
was hardly an old man or a child who had not become minutely
familiar with its aspect. Had the story of Drowne's wooden
image ended here, its celebrity might have been prolonged for
many years, by the reminiscences of those who looked upon it in
their childhood, and saw nothing else so beautiful in after life.
But the town was now astounded by an event, the narrative of
which has formed itself into one of the most singular legends that
are yet to be met with in the traditionary chimney-corners of the
New England metropolis, where old men and women sit dreaming
of the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the present
and the future.
One fine morning, just before the departure of the Cynosure
on her second voyage to Fayal, the commander of that gallant
vessel was seen to issue from his residence in Hanover street.
He was stylishly dressed in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold lace
at the seams and button-holes, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat,
a triangular hat, with a loop and broad binding of gold, and wore
a silver-hilted hanger at his side. But the good captain might
have been arrayed in the robes of a prince or the rags of a beggar,
without in either case attracting notice, while obscured by
such a companion as now leaned on his arm. The people in the
street started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped aside from their
path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in astonishment.
“Do you see it?—do you see it?” cried one, with tremulous
eagerness. “It is the very same!”
“The same?” answered another, who had arrived in town only
the night before. “Who do you mean? I see only a sea-captain
in his shore-going clothes, and a young lady in a foreign habit,
with a bunch of beautiful flowers in her hat. On my word, she
is as fair and bright a damsel as my eyes have looked on this
many a day!”
“Yes; the same!—the very same!” repeated the other.
“Drowne's wooden image has come to life!”
Here was a miracle indeed! Yet, illuminated by the sunshine,
or darkened by the alternate shade of the houses, and with its
garments fluttering lightly in the morning breeze, there passed
the image along the street. It was exactly and minutely the
shape, the garb, and the face, which the townspeople had so recently
thronged to see and admire. Not a rich flower upon her
head, not a single leaf, but had had its prototype in Drowne's
wooden workmanship, although now their fragile grace had become
flexible, and was shaken by every footstep that the wearer
made. The broad gold chain upon the neck was identical with
the one represented on the image, and glistened with the motion
imparted by the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated.
A real diamond sparkled on her finger. In her right hand she
bore a pearl and ebony fan, which she flourished with a fantastic
and bewitching coquetry, that was likewise expressed in all her
movements, as well as in the style of her beauty and the attire
that so well harmonized with it. The face, with its brilliant
depth of complexion, had the same piquancy of mirthful mischief
that was fixed upon the countenance of the image, but which was
here varied and continually shifting, yet always essentially the
same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the
whole, there was something so airy and yet so real in the figure,
and withal so perfectly did it represent Drowne's image, that
people knew not whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized
into a spirit, or warmed and softened into an actual woman.
“One thing is certain,” muttered a Puritan of the old stamp.
“Drowne has sold himself to the devil; and doubtless this gay
Captain Hunnewell is a party to the bargain.”
“And I,” said a young man who overheard him, “would
almost consent to be the third victim, for the liberty of saluting
those lovely lips.”
“And so would I,” said Copley, the painter, “for the privilege
of taking her picture.”
The image, or the apparition, whichever it might be, still escorted
by the bold captain, proceeded from Hanover street through
some of the cross-lanes that make this portion of the town so
intricate, to Ann street, thence into Dock-square, and so downward
to Drowne's shop, which stood just on the water's edge.
The crowd still followed, gathering volume as it rolled along.
Never had a modern miracle occurred in such broad daylight,
nor in the presence of such a multitude of witnesses. The airy
image, as if conscious that she was the object of the murmurs
and disturbance that swelled behind her, appeared slightly vexed
and flustered, yet still in a manner consistent with the light vivacity
and sportive mischief that were written in her countenance.
She was observed to flutter her fan with such vehement rapidity,
that the elaborate delicacy of its workmanship gave way, and it
remained broken in her hand.
Arriving at Drowne's door, while the captain threw it open,
the marvellous apparition paused an instant on the threshold,
assuming the very attitude of the image, and casting over the
crowd that glance of sunny coquetry which all remembered on
the face of the oaken lady. She and her cavalier then disappeared.
“Ah!” murmured the crowd, drawing a deep breath, as with
one vast pair of lungs.
“The world looks darker, now that she has vanished,” said
some of the young men.
But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as witch-times,
shook their heads, and hinted that our forefathers would
have thought it a pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with
fire.
“If she be other than a bubble of the elements,” exclaimed
Copley, “I must look upon her face again!”
He accordingly entered the shop; and there, in her usual
corner, stood the image, gazing at him, as it might seem, with the
very same expression of mirthful mischief that had been the farewell
look of the apparition when, but a moment before, she turned
her face towards the crowd. The carver stood beside his creation,
mending the beautiful fan, which by some accident was broken
in her hand. But there was no longer any motion in the life-like
image, nor any real woman in the workshop, nor even the witch-craft
of a sunny shadow, that might have deluded people's eyes
as it flitted along the street. Captain Hunnewell, too, had vanished.
His hoarse, sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on the other
side of a door that opened upon the water.
“Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady,” said the gallant
captain. “Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, and set us on board
in the turning of a minute-glass.”
And then was heard the stroke of oars.
“Drowne,” said Copley, with a smile of intelligence, “you
have been a truly fortunate man. What painter or statuary ever
had such a subject! No wonder that she inspired a genius into
you, and first created the artist who afterwards created her
image.”
Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore the traces of tears,
but from which the light of imagination and sensibility, so recently
illuminating it, had departed. He was again the mechanical
carver that he had been known to be all his lifetime.
“I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Copley,” said he,
putting his hand to his brow. “This image! Can it have been
now that I am broad awake, I must set about finishing yonder
figure of Admiral Vernon.”
And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid countenance
of one of his wooden progeny, and completed it in his own mechanical
style, from which he was never known afterwards to
deviate. He followed his business industriously for many years,
acquired a competence, and, in the latter part of his life, attained
to a dignified station in the church, being remembered in records
and traditions as Deacon Drowne, the carver. One of his productions,
an Indian chief, gilded all over, stood during the better
part of a century on the cupola of the Province House, bedazzling
the eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel of the sun.
Another work of the good deacon's hand—a reduced likeness of
friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a telescope and quadrant—
may be seen, to this day, at the corner of Broad and State streets,
serving in the useful capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical
instrument maker. We know not how to account for the inferiority
of this quaint old figure, as compared with the recorded
excellence of the Oaken Lady, unless on the supposition, that in
every human spirit there is imagination, sensibility, creative
power, genius, which, according to circumstances, may either be
developed in this world, or shrouded in a mask of dulness until
another state of being. To our friend Drowne, there came a
brief season of excitement, kindled by love. It rendered him a
genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappointment,
left him again the mechanical carver in wood, without the power
even of appreciating the work that his own hands had wrought.
Yet who can doubt, that the very highest state to which a human
spirit can attain, in its loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most
natural state, and that Drowne was more consistent with himself
when he wrought the admirable figure of the mysterious lady,
than when he perpetrated a whole progeny of blockheads?
There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, that a young
Portuguese lady of rank, on some occasion of political or domestic
disquietude, had fled from her home in Fayal, and put herself
under the protection of Captain Hunnewell, on board of whose
vessel, and at whose residence, she was sheltered until a change
of affairs. This fair stranger must have been the original of
Drowne's Wooden Image.
| Mosses from an old manse | |