LIGHT VERVAIN.
“And thou light vervain, too — thou next come after,
Provoking souls to mirth and easy laughter.”
— Old Somebody.
Rome May 30, 1832.
Dined with F — , the artist, at a trattoria. F — is
a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in
his art, but never caring to show the least touch of
these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have
given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so
that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for
his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be
always talking of himself. He is very generally set
down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however,
springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather
from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest
and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism
to which I have very little objection — particularly
with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome,
by a long day's study of works of art.
I had passed the morning at the Barberini palace
with a party of picture-hunters, and I made some
remark as to the variety of impressions made upon
the minds of different people by the same picture.
Apropos of this remark, F — told me a little anecdote,
which I must try to put down by way of a new shoal
in the chart of human nature.
“It is very much the same with everything else,”
said F — ; “no two people see with the same eyes,
physically or morally; and faith, we might save ourselves
a great deal of care and bother if we did but
keep it in mind.”
“As how?” I asked, for I saw that this vague
remark was premonitory of an illustration.
“I think I introduced young Skyring to you at a
party somewhere?”
“A youth with a gay waistcoat and nothing to say?
Yes.”
“Well — your observation just now reminded me of
the different estimate put by that gentleman and
myself upon something, and if I could give you any
idea of my month's work in his behalf, you would
agree with me that I might have spared myself some
trouble — keeping in mind, as I said before, the difference
in optics.
“I was copying a bit of foreshortening from a picture
in the Vatican, one day, when this youth passed
without observing me. I did not immediately recollect
him. He was dressed like a figure in a tailor's
widow, and with Mrs. Stark in his hand was hunting
up the pictures marked with four notes of admiration,
and I, with a smile at the waxy dandyism of the man,
turned to my work and forgot him. Presently his
face recurred to me, or rather his sister's face, which
some family likeness had insensibly recalled, and
getting another look, I recognised in him an old,
though not very intimate playmate of my boyish days.
It immediately occurred to me that I could serve him
a very good turn by giving him the entrée to society
here, and quite as immediately, it occurred to me to
doubt whether it was worth my while.”
“And what changed your mind,” I asked, “for of
course you came to the conclusion that it was not?”
“Oh, for his sake alone I should have left him as
he was, a hermit in his varnished boots — for he had
not an acquaintance in the city — but Kate Skyring
had given me roses when roses were to me, each a
world; and for her sake, though I was a rejected
lover. I thought better of my demurrer. Then I had
a little pique to gratify — for the Skyrings had rather
given me the de haut en bas in declining the honor of
my alliance (lucky for me, since it brought me here
and made me what I am), and I was not indisposed to
show that the power to serve, to say the least, was now
on my side.”
“Two sufficient, as well as dramatic reasons for
being civil to a man.”
“Only arrived at, however, by a night's deliberation,
for it cost me some trouble of thought and memory to
get back into my chrysalis and imagine myself at all
subject to people so much below my present vogue —
whatever that is worth! Of course I don't think of
Kate in this comparison, for a woman one has once
loved is below nothing. We'll drink her health, God
bless her!”
(A bottle of Lagrima.)
“I left my card on Mr. Skyring the next morning,
with a note enclosing three or four invitations which I
had been at some trouble to procure, and a hope from
myself of the honor of his company to a quiet dinner.
He took it as a statue would take a shower-bath, wrote
me a note in the third person in reply to mine in the
first, and came in ball-dress and sulphur gloves at precisely
the canonical fifteen minutes past the hour.
Good old Thorwalsden dined with me, and an English
viscount for whom I was painting a picture, and
between my talking Italian to the venerable sculptor,
and Skyring's belording and belordshipping the good-natured
nobleman, the dinner went trippingly off — the
Little Pedlington of our mutual nativity furnishing
less than its share to the conversation.
“We drove, all together, to the Palazzo Rossi, for
its was the night of the Marchesa's soirée. As sponsor,
I looked with some satisfaction at Skyring in the
ante-room, his toggery being quite unexceptionable,
and his maintien very uppish and assured. I presented
him to our fair hostess, who surveyed him as he
approached with a satisfactory look of approval, and
no one else chancing to be near, I left him to improve
what was rather a rare opportunity — a tête-à-tête with
the prettiest woman in Rome. Five minutes after I
returned to reconnoitre, and there he stood, stroking
down his velvet waistcoat and looking from the carpet
to the ceiling, while the marchioness was quite red
with embarrassment and vexation. He had not opened
his lips! She had tried him in French and Italian
(the dunce had told me that he spoke French too),
and finally she had ventured upon English, which she
knew very little of, and still he neither spoke nor ran
away!
“`Perhaps Monsieur would like to dance,' said the
marchioness, gliding away from him with a look of
inexpressible relief, and trusting to me to find him a
partner.
“I had no difficulty in finding him a partner, for
(that far) his waistcoat `put him on velvet' — but I
could not trust him alone again; so, having presented
him to a very pretty woman and got them vis-à-vis in
the quadrille, I stood by to supply the shortcomings.
And little of a sinecure it was! The man had nothing
to say; nor, confound him, had he any embarrassment
on the subject. He looked at his varnished pumps,
and coaxed his coat to his waist, and set back his neck
like a goose bolting a grasshopper, and took as much
interest in the conversation as a footman behind your
chair — deaf and dumb apparently, but perfectly at his
ease. He evidently had no idea that there was any
distinction between men except in dress, and was persuaded
that he was entirely successful as far as he had
gone: and as to my efforts in his behalf, he clearly
took them as gratuitous on my part — probably thinking,
from the difference in our exteriors, that I paid myself
in the glory of introducing him.
“Well — I had begun so liberally that I could scarce
refuse to find my friend another partner, and after that
another and another — I, to avoid the odium of inflicting
a bore on my fair acquaintances, feeling compelled
to continue my service as chorus in the pantomime —
and, you will scarce believe me when I tell you that I
submitted to this bore nightly for a month! I could
not get rid of him. He would not be let go. Without
offending him mortally, and so undoing all my
sentimental outlay for Kate Skyring and her short-sighted
papa, I had nothing for it but to go on till he
should go off — ridden to death with him in every conceivable
variety of bore.”
“And is he gone?”
“Gone. And now, what thanks do you suppose I
got for all this?”
“A present of a pencil-case?”
“No, indeed! but a lesson in human nature that
will stick by me much longer. He called at my studio
yesterday morning to say good-by. Through all my
sense of his boredom and relief at the prospect of
being rid of him, I felt embarrassed when he came in,
thinking how difficult it would be for him to express
properly his sense of the obligation he was under to
me. After half an hour's monologue (by myself) on
pictures, &c., he started up and said he must go.
`And by-the-by,' said he, coloring a little, `there is
one thing I want to say to you, Mr. F — ! Hang it,
it has stuck in my throat ever since I met you!
You've been very polite and I'm obliged to you, of
course — but I don't like your devilish patronizing
manner! Good-by, Mr. F — !”'
The foregoing is a leaf from a private diary which I
kept at Rome. In making a daily entry of such
passing stuff as interests us, we sometimes, amid much
that should be ticketed for oblivion, record that which
has a bearing, important or amusing, on the future;
and a late renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. F — ,
followed by a knowledge of some fortunate changes
in his wordly condition, has given that interest to this
otherwise unimportant scrap of diary which will be
made apparent presently to the reader. A vague
recollection that I had something in an old book
which referred to him, induced me to look it up, and
I was surprised to find that I had noted down, in this
trifling anecdote, what turned out to be the mainspring
of his destiny.
F — returned to his native country after five years
study of the great masters of Italy. His first pictures
painted at Rome procured for him, as is stated in the
diary I have quoted, a high reputation. He carried
with him a style of his own which was merely stimulated
and heightened by his first year's walk through
the galleries of Florence, and the originality and boldness
of his manner of coloring seemed to promise a
sustained novelty in the art. Gradually, however, the
awe of the great masters seemed to overshadow his
confidence in himself, and as he travelled and deepened
his knowledge of painting, he threw aside feature
after feature of his own peculiar style, till at last he
fell into the track of the great army of imitators, who
follow the immortals of the Vatican as doomed ships
follow the Flying Dutchman.
Arrived at home, and depending solely on his art
for a subsistence, F — commenced the profession to
which he had served so long an apprenticeship. But
his pictures sadly disappointed his friends. After the
first specimens of his acquired style in the annual exhibitions,
the calls at his rooms became fewer and
farther between, and his best works were returned
from the galleries unsold. Too proud to humor the
popular taste by returning to what he considered an
inferior stage of his art, he stood still with his reputation
ebbing from him, and as his means, of course,
depended on the tide of public favor, he was soon involved
in troubles before which his once-brilliant hopes
rapidly faded.
At this juncture he received the following letter: —
“You will be surprised on glancing at the signature
to this letter. You will be still more surprised when
you are reminded that it is a reply to an unanswered
one of your own — written years ago. That letter lies
by me, expressed with all the diffidence of boyish
feeling. And it seems as if its diffidence would encourage
me in what I wish to say. Yet I write far
more tremblingly than you could have done.
“Let me try to prepare the way by some explanation
of the past.
“You were my first lover. I was not forbidden, at
fourteen, to express the pleasure I felt at your admiration,
and you can not have forgotten the ardor and
simplicity with which I returned it. I remember
giving you roses better than I remember anything so
long ago. Now — writing to you with the same feeling
warm at my heart — it seems to me as if it needed
but a rose, could I give it you in the same garden, to
make us lovers again. Yet I know you must be
changed. I scarce know whether I should go on with
this letter.
“But I owe you reparation. I owe you an answer
to this which lies before me: and if I err in answering
it as my heart burns to do, you will at least be
made happier by knowing that when treated with
neglect and repulsion, you were still beloved.
“I think it was not long before the receipt of this
letter that my father first spoke to me of our attachment.
Till then I had only thought of loving you.
That you were graceful and manly, that your voice
was sweet, and that your smile made me happy, was
all I could have told of you without reflection. I had
never reasoned upon your qualities of mind, though I
had taken an unconscious pride in your superiority to
your companions, and least of all had I asked myself
whether those abilities for making your way in the
world which my father denied you, were among your
boyish energies. With a silent conviction that you
had no equal among your companions, in anything, I
listened to my father's disparagement of you, bewildered
and overawed, the very novelty and unexpectedness
of the light in which he spoke of you, sealing
my lips completely. Perhaps resistance to his will
would have been of no avail, but had I been better
prepared to reason upon what he urged, I might have
expressed to you the unwillingness of my acquiescence.
I was prevented from seeing you till your
letter came, and then all intercourse with you was
formally forbidden. My father said he would himself
reply to your proposal. But it was addressed to me,
and I have only recovered possession of it by his death.
“Though it may seem like reproaching you for
yielding me without an effort, I must say, to complete
the history of my own feelings, that I nursed a vague
hope of hearing from you until your departure for
Italy, and that this hope was extinguished not without
bitter tears. The partial resentment that mingled with
this unhappiness aided me doubtless in making up my
mind to forget you, and for a while, for years I may
say, I was possessed by other excitements and feelings.
It is strange, however, that, though scarce
remembering you when waking, I still saw you perpetually
in my dreams.
“And, so far, this is a cold and easy recital. How
shall I describe to you the next change, the re-awakening
of this smothered and slumbering affection! How
shall I evade your contempt when I tell you that it
awoke with your renown! But my first feeling was
not one of love. When your name began to come to
us in the letters of travellers and in the rumor of literary
circles, I felt as if something that belonged to
me was praised and honored; a pride, an exulting and
gratified pride, that feeling seemed to be, as if the
heart of my childhood had been staked on your aspirations,
and was borne up with you, a part and a partaker
of your fame. With all my soul I drank in the
news of your successes in the art; I wrote to those
who came home from Italy; I questioned those likely
to have heard of you, as critics and connoisseurs; I
devoted all my reading to the literature of the arts,
and the history of painters, for my life was poured
into yours irresistibly, by a power I could not, and
cannot now, control. My own imagination turned
painter, indeed, for I lived on revery, calling up, with
endless variations, pictures of yourself amid the works
of your pencil, visited and honored as I knew you
were, yet unchanged in the graceful and boyish beauty
I remembered. I was proud of having loved you, of
having been the object of the earliest and purest preference
of a creature of genius; and through this
pride, supplanting and overflowing it, crept and
strengthened a warmer feeling, the love I have the
hardihood to avow. Oh! what will you think of this
boldness! Yet to conceal my love were now a severer
task than to wait the hazard of your contempt.
“One explanation — a palliative, perhaps you will
allow it to be, if you are generous — remains to be
given. The immediate impulse of this letter was information
from my brother, long withheld, of your
kindness to him in Rome. From some perverseness
which I hardly understand, he has never before hinted
in my presence that he had seen you in Italy, and it
was only by needing it as an illustration of some feeling
which seemed to have piqued him, and which he
was expressing to a friend, that he gave the particulars
of your month of devotion to him. Knowing the difference
between your characters, and the entire want
of sympathy between your pursuits and my brother's,
to what motive could I attribute your unusual and
self-sacrificing kindness?
“Did I err — was I presumptuous, in believing that
it was from a forgiving and tender memory of myself?
“You are prepared now, if you can be, for what I
would say. We are left alone, my brother and I, orphan
heirs to the large fortune of my father. I have
no one to control my wishes, no one's permission to
ask for any disposition of my hand and fortune. Will
you have them? In this question is answered the
sweet, and long-treasured, though long-neglected letter
lying beside me. “Katherine Skyring.”
Mrs. F — , as will be seen from the style of her letter,
is a woman of decision and cleverness, and of such
a helpmeet, in the way of his profession as well as in
the tenderer relations of life, F — was sorely in need.
By her common-sense counsels and persuasion, he
has gone back with his knowledge of the art to the
first lights of his own powerful genius, and with
means to command leisure and experiment, he is,
without submitting the process to the world, perfecting
a manner which will more than redeem his early
promise.
As his career, though not very uncommon or dramatic,
hinged for its more fortunate events on an act
of high-spirited politeness, I have thought, that in
this age of departed chivalry, the story was worth
preserving for its lesson.
