 | CHAPTER VI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold |  |
6. CHAPTER VI.
The reader is not aware, perhaps, that he was let into a
secret, in the last chapter, by the description there given
of Blivins' studio, and of his and his friend Fane's artistic
morning with the fair model, Giulietta. There will hardly
be a fair understanding of the footing of these two gentlemen
in Florence, without a pause in our story while we
explain—though, how real life, which does not pause for
such explanations, manages to get understood at all, is a
doubtfulness which you have only to write a true tale to
grow charitable upon.
Of course we should prefer to proceed, as we were about
to do, and finish the story of that day by a description of
to dine with the Fitz-Firkins, the wealthy American family
resident at Florence, and Paul going to a Court ball at the
Pitti—but, as they both followed the custom of the country
and took the afternoon nap (which goes by the pretty
name of “la siesta”), we have an interval of time, for which,
without violation of probability, our story may leave them
by themselves.
And now, then, to explain why this studio, and the daily
labors upon its two very different easels, in a half-ruined and
forgotten old plazzo of the City of Art, formed a part of the
daily life of our two friends, which they kept secret from
their respective acquaintances.
On Fane's first arrival at Paris, with a warm letter of
introduction from his friend Mrs. Cleverly, to the wife of
the American Minister, who chanced to be a special intimate
of her own, he had been very kindly received; and,
with but time enough to confirm the favorable programme
of his mind and manners given in the letter, had been
taken under the especial wing of his distinguished lady-consignee,
by his appointment as attaché to the Legation. By
this nominal honor, with neither emoluments nor duties,
Paul was put at his ease in the court society of the gay
capital; but it involved the necessity, also, that, in accordance
with the usual proprieties of the position, he should
studies for the main ambition of his life—as an artist—
were again, therefore, as at home, put under a chance seal
of privacy.
For the secondary object of his visit to Europe—the
strong though unconfessed desire to look close upon the
world's finer or prouder clay, and know wherein it differed
from himself and those he loved—Paul's horoscope seemed
most favorably cast. It was with a secret satisfaction
which he scarce dared acknowledge to himself, that he accepted
the advantage thus held out to him, and with the
magic “open sesame” of a diplomatic title on his card,
entered upon the dazzling labyrinths of Parisian life, with
its world-pick society of the high-born and brilliant.
Fortunately for the effect of this giddy intoxication upon
his impressible and plastic mind, the correspondence with
his mother called him faithfully to account, day by day,
before conscience and her calm, sweet eyes; and, in his
genius and what it found to appreciate and select in the
glitter around him, there was still another pure spirit, unseen
but ever silently separative and rejective; and of these
influences (the latter more particularly), we may, perhaps,
better trust one of his own letters to explain the value.
He thus wrote from Paris:—
That little twitch at the lock of hair over my left temple tells
me that you are here, just as certainly as when you crept behind
me at my easel at home, and by that bell-pull to my abstracted
brain, informed me that I was to come out of my picture and attend
to you. Spirits can cross oceans and pull hair—I here record
my well-founded belief—and you are here, up three flights of
stairs, in my private and unapproachable Parisian den waiting to
have a talk with your boy. Kiss, dear mother, and begin.
By your last letter you were still doubting my “continued identity
under the addition of a court sword,” and, to tell the truth, I
am still wondering, occasionally, when I come suddenly upon
myself in a mirror at a ball, whether that pendant superfluity and
gold collar are me! I have swallowed, with some difficulty, gulp
by gulp, the daily dishonesty of laying aside the maul-stick of the
artist (which I am) and going out into the world decked with the
weapons of a cavalier (which I am not). So silly to wear a sword
to a party at all, but particularly without the slightest idea of how
to use it if it were drawn! But we soon agree with the world if
we find it admiring us, even for an absurdity, and so I follow my
sword about, most of the time; letting it make way for me if it
will, and asking no questions. Small-clothes and silk stockings,
too! But I will spare you the lesser particulars.
My pencil achieves little at present, I am free to own, and,
between “late hours” and early engagements, my good-boy quotidian
of application is shortened at both ends; but I think you
mistake, dearest mother, in fancying the time altogether lost
which is given to the “gay and giddy world,” even by the artist.
Fashion, though it has a bad name, is the customer of genius, and
Take away but the wickedness that walks unseen in these
lighted rooms, and they would be fit places to entertain angels.
And it is not merely that there are pictures and statuary which
wealth alone could buy, but the beauty of woman (though you
need not tell this to Mary), seems to me artistically elevated by the
wondrous art often shown in its embellishment—made more sacred,
I may even say, by the costliness that seems so to enshrine and
fence it in. A jewel of great price has great splendor, and a rare
flower is the more curious and far-sought work of God—and such
gem or flower, well worn by the proud and high-born beauty, has
the effect (on my new eyes, at least) of a choice seal or more precious
cipher placed on the wearer to mark Nature's best.
Then these people who “fritter away life,” “turn day into
night,” indulge in “wasteful extravagance,” and are, in fact, the
very Pharaohs and Pharisees whom good Dr. Evenden preaches
into the Red Sea, and a still warmer place with such heavenly-minded
perseverance—why, dear mother, they do not look so bad
when you come close to them! Of course the palaces and grand
houses where all the “pomp and vainglory” is to be found, are the
Doctor's “Sodom and Gomorrah”—but, to my surprise, the manners
are simpler in such places than in the Doctor's own congregation;
and the voices are more meditative and gentle; and the
postures, walk and conversation (if my artistic sense of propriety
as well as taste, is to be trusted at all), are, in their well-studied
humility and well-bred unassumingness and simplicity, more suitable
for any reasonable “Zion.” “Satan in disguise,” very possibly—but
may I not admire, with suitable precaution (or, till there
is some smell of brimstone in the air), what I thus find purest in
taste and seeming?
One thing I should insist on your recognising and approving, if
you were here, my calm-eyed and quiet-mannered mamma!—the
character given to the general look and presence of these high-bred
Europeans by their air of unconscious repose. It may be
from the contrast with the more abrupt and nervous constitution
of our people at home, but it seems to me a very marked as well
as admirable peculiarity of court manners. It affects beauty so
much! The pose of the head, the turn of the arm, the movement
of the person—all governed by nerves that are never taken by
surprise, and always deliberately dignified. Then the expression
of the features is so artistically improved by it! One look is
shaded into another—a smile heralded like a sunrise, by a dawn;
a change from gayety to sadness made tenderer by a twilight.
Such self-possessed and imperturbable tranquillity of look, manner
and movement, I may add, impresses you like a language of
peace of mind (deceivingly, as it may interpret the fashionable
consciences beneath), and gives a kind of moral superiority to the
atmosphere, which is sometimes painfully wanting to the starting,
hesitating, uncertain manners of our most exemplary “brethren
and sisters.” Please, let me think so, at least, dear mother, and
profit by the lesson I draw from it. The “cælum-que tueri”—the
face of man made to look upward—implies that the human countenance
may have a more or less edifying look—does it not?
I have all sorts of acquaintances here, but, as yet, no intimates.
After the excitement of an evening in society, the mute presence
of genius in these hushed and lofty galleries of Art has a wonderful
enchantment. Fortunately the world is too busy or too polite
to inquire how one disposes of his spare time, and I safely give to
my pencil, or to studies of great pictures, as exclusive and long a
morning as I please. It might be different if I had intimacies;
time, having enough to do to be general only—wholly engrossed,
that is to say, with being civil enough to pass muster while I
observe merely. There is so much that is new and beautiful on
every side, that Curiosity and Appreciation (those two quiet ministering
spirits) give one his fill of pleasure. With admirable
works of Art and admirable people, therefore, I maintain, at present,
pretty much the same relation—receiving great pleasure from
what is charming in each, but endeavoring to impress, in turn,
neither picture nor gentleman, neither statue nor lady.
My own path in Art is becoming again visible to me, though its
faint and far line was entirely lost, at first, in the flood of predominant
genius gathered in these splendid galleries. Whether I shall
ever have the skill to express the ideal which is daily shaping itself
to my inner eyes, I do not know—but, from every masterpiece, as
I study it more intently, the something I should have done differently
separates and stands apart like a phantom, and, to grasp
and realize that I feel to be my problem of success. Of course,
what I cannot make visible with my pencil, I am still less able to
define in words, so I cannot tell you what this style of mine is to
be. But I may say that, while it is less animal than what I find to
be the most successful ideals, it is not so by any lessening of proportions
or development. It is merely that it is made more spiritual
by a consciousness intellectual only. The body, with all its
perfected beauty, is forgotten in the soul. Mary Evenden represents
it. She looks as if walking the world with only the spirit-memory
of the Heaven she came from—wholly unconscious of the
form that she animates and bears about—yet how full and absolute
is her beauty as a woman!
Well, dear mother, I have passed the evening with you, and the
tardy visitant, is now at my door. Let it bring you my good-night
kiss—though, instead of undressing for dream-land, as with that
good-night kiss at home, I must dress presently for a ball. May
God preserve me to my mother, and my mother to me! Dear,
precious, blessed mother, ever loving and beloved, good-night!
It was three months after the date of this letter that
Fane found himself in Florence—his six months in Paris
having given him all the knowledge of the gay capital of
which he felt he could make conscientious use at that stage
of his artistic progress, and his errand to Italy being the
need he felt of the apprenticeship to its higher schools,
combined with its better facilities for practical study. By
the advice of his kind friend, the Minister, however, he had
retained his appointment as attaché—the diplomatic passport
giving him the same privileges at other courts as at
Paris—and, on his arrival, he had duly gone through the
form of a presentation to the hospitable sovereign of Tuscany,
and, with his court position, and the letters he had
brought, was very readily at his ease as a supposed traveller
for pleasure.
But Florence is a small capital, and the arrangement of
means for a very devoted yet still necessarily secret pursuit
of his professional studies, seemed to offer, at first, formidable
embarrassments to Paul. He had occupied himself
the Galleries, his mind very much troubled with plans for
which his small resources seemed quite unequal, when he
chanced, one evening, to stroll into the café of the Piazza
Trinita. As usual, this favorite resort of artists and idlers
was thronged with guests—the wandering musicians, flower-girls,
cigar-venders, and begging monks, all in lively circulation
among the crowd—and Paul seated himself at one
of the marble tables, dispirited and lonely. He called for
his coffee, and sat stirring away at his sugar very thoughtfully,
when, carelessly looking up, he encountered a pair of
eyes fastened upon him, the owner sitting on the other side
of the café, in a petrified stare, head and arms thrown back,
mouth wide open, and the power of motion, apparently, suspended
for the moment by an asphyxia of speechless astonishment.
Paul leaned suddenly forward, and as he shaded his
eyes with his hand, the just visible parting of his lips with
the inaudible question “Bosh!” expressed his own incredulous
amazement at what he saw.
At the same instant there was a yell which all but
scalped every musical Italian within half a mile.
“Yahoo! Jehosophat! Don't hold me! Paul Fane,
by all that's navigable!”
And crouching into a figure 4, like a hard-pushed bear
clearing the chasm of a water-course, Blivins started on
supper on his own round table, and then with a touch-and-go
wipe of his foot over the top of the next one, carrying
away the coffee and maraschino of a couple of thunder-struck
French artists.
The mutual miscellany of limbs and exclamations that
the friends went into—(for Paul's own recognition of
Bosh was a rebound from loneliness and depression, and
he had embraced and re-embraced his old room-mate
before he thought of the probable impression on those
around)—was a spectacle gazed on with apprehensive
amazement. They were scarce beginning to sit on two
seats, and hear each other speak, however, when the waiters
came rushing in with ropes and shutters—the landlord
not doubting in the least that Bosh was an escaped madman,
and sending instantly for something to tie him to,
and prevent further mischief.
The waiters hesitated about taking hold of such a looking
customer as Bosh, and, with the time thus gained, Paul
settled his disturbed clothes and put on his habitual look
of propriety; and, with an apology to the two gentlemen
who had been walked over, and an explanation to the
landlord that his friend was from the Rocky Mountains
and had the precipitate manners of the steep side of the
American Continent, he paid the breakages, etc., and
walked Bosh off—the track made for them by the distrustful
wider than the respect for Bosh's personal presence usually
commanded.
It was a happy evening to the two friends. Besides the
pleasure of renewing their old intimacy, each happened to
supply exactly the most pressing want of the other—Paul's
counsel and tutorship in Art being very necessary to
Blivins and Blivins's nominal tenantship of a studio, and
confidential agency in the procuring of all the belongings
of an artist, being the very screen for retired application
which Paul was puzzled to contrive.
And, before the sunset of another day, they were domiciled
together, their lodgings in a small street running
westward from the Piazza Trinita, and their common studio
where we have already described it, in a wing of one of
the lofty and half-ruined palaces on the unfrequented side
of the city. It was an accident favorable to Paul's wishes,
also, that Blivins, from some glimmer which his dignity
had received of the probable misappreciation of his pictures
by his brother artists in Florence, had, after the first
week, jealously kept his sanctum to himself. No visitor
knew the way to it.
And here, in what was nominally Blivins's studio, the
two friends gave their mornings uninterruptedly to Art—
the manner of disposal of the remaining portions of their
time being what the deferred next chapter will now hasten
to portray.
| CHAPTER VI. Paul Fane, or, Parts of a life else untold | |