 | A passionate pilgrim |  |
The Madonna of the Future.
WE had been talking about the masters who had
achieved but a single masterpiece, — the artists
and poets who but once in their lives had known
the divine afflatus, and touched the high level of the
best. Our host had been showing us a charming little
cabinet picture by a painter whose name we had never
heard, and who, after this one spasmodic bid for fame,
had apparently relapsed into fatal mediocrity. There
was some discussion as to the frequency of this phenomenon;
during which, I observed, H— sat silent,
finishing his cigar with a meditative air, and looking
at the picture, which was being handed round the table.
“I don't know how common a case it is,” he said at
last, “but I 've seen it. I 've known a poor fellow who
painted his one masterpiece, and” — he added with a
smile — “he did n't even paint that. He made his bid
for fame, and missed it.” We all knew H— for a
clever man who had seen much of men and manners,
questioned him further, and while I was engrossed
with the raptures of my neighbor over the little
picture, he was induced to tell his tale. If I were to
doubt whether it would bear repeating, I should only
have to remember how that charming woman, our
hostess, who had left the table, ventured back in rustling
rose-color, to pronounce our lingering a want of
gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, had sunk
into her chair in spite of our cigars, and heard the story
out so graciously, that when the catastrophe was
reached she glanced across at me, and showed me a
tender tear in each of her beautiful eyes.
It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things!
(H— began.) I had arrived late in the evening at
Florence, and while I finished my bottle of wine at
supper, had fancied that, tired traveller though I was,
I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going
vulgarly to bed. A narrow passage wandered darkly
away out of the little square before my hotel, and
looked as if it bored into the heart of Florence. I
followed it, and at the end of ten minutes emerged
upon a great piazza, filled only with the mild autumn
moonlight. Opposite rose the Palazzo Vecchio, like
some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower
springing from its embattled verge like a mountain-pine
shadow, gleamed certain dim sculptures which I
wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the
left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus,
shining through the dusky air like some embodied
Defiance. In a moment I recognized him as Michael
Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from
his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed
beneath the high, light loggia, which opposes
the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead
masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and
graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out
with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the
slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you
may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in
memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of
these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some
irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked
by my voice, a man rose from the steps of the loggia,
where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed
me in good English, — a small, slim personage, clad in a
sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass
of auburn hair, which gleamed in the moonlight, escaping
from a little mediæval berretta. In a tone of the
most insinuating deference, he asked me for my “impressions.”
He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly
unreal. Hovering there in this consecrated neighborhood,
hospitality, — if the genius of æsthetic hospitality were
not commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a
calico pocket-handkerchief, and openly resentful of the
divided franc. This fantasy was made none the less
plausible by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted
my embarrassed silence.
“I 've known Florence long, sir, but I 've never
known her so lovely as to-night. It 's as if the ghosts
of her past were abroad in the empty streets. The
present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a
dream made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling
up in couples to pass judgment on the last performance
of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should come
in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what
they say. The plainest burgher of them, in his cap
and gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the
prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and
his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places
bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the
evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying
each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom,
holding it up to the great models and to the dim
idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness
and dimness. The days of illumination are gone!
But do you know I fancy — I fancy,” — and he grew
suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervor, —
an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, the
Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of
John of Bologna and of Baccio Bandinelli seem to
realize the artist's dream. I feel as if the moonlit air
were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as
if, standing here in religious contemplation, we might
— we might witness a revelation!” Perceiving at this
moment, I suppose, my halting comprehension reflected
in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist paused
and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, “You
think me a moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It 's not
my habit to hang about the piazza and pounce upon
innocent tourists. But to-night, I confess, I 'm under
the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you, too,
were an artist!”
“I 'm not an artist, I 'm sorry to say, as you must
understand the term. But pray make no apologies.
I am also under the charm; your eloquent reflections
have only deepened it.”
“If you 're not an artist, you 're worthy to be one!”
he rejoined, with a bow. “A young man who arrives
at Florence late in the evening, and, instead of going
prosaically to bed, or hanging over the travellers' book
at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay
his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my
own heart!”
The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was
an American! He must have been, to take the picturesque
so prodigiously to heart. “None the less so,
I trust,” I answered, “if the young man is a sordid
New-Yorker.”
“New-Yorkers,” he solemnly proclaimed, “have been
munificent patrons of art!”
For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight
revery mere Yankee enterprise, and was he simply a
desperate brother of the brush who had posted himself
here to extort an “order” from a sauntering tourist?
But I was not called to defend myself. A great brazen
note broke suddenly from the far-off summit of the
bell-tower above us and sounded the first stroke of
midnight. My companion started, apologized for detaining
me, and prepared to retire. But he seemed to
offer so lively a promise of further entertainment, that
I was indisposed to part with him, and suggested that
we should stroll homeward together. He cordially assented,
so we turned out of the Piazza, passed down
before the statued arcade of the Uffizi, and came out
upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember,
but we roamed slowly about for an hour,
my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched
æsthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination,
and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed
with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake
of Art!” he cried. “We are condemned to be superficial!
We are excluded from the magic circle. The
soil of American perception is a poor little barren,
artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imperfection.
An American, to excel, has just ten times as
much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper
sense. We have neither taste, nor tact, nor force.
How should we have them? Our crude and garish
climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the
constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance,
are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires
the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness
in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual
exile.”
“You seem fairly at home in exile,” I answered,
“and Florence seems to me a very pretty Siberia. But
do you know my own thought? Nothing is so idle as
to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportanity,
of inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy
part is to do something fine! There 's no law in
our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create,
achieve! No matter if you 've to study fifty times as
much as one of these! What else are you an artist
for? Be you our Moses,” I added, laughing, and laying
my hand on his shoulder, “and lead us out of the
house of bondage!”
“Golden words, — golden words, young man!” he
cried, with a tender smile. “`Invent, create, achieve!'
Yes, that 's our business: I know it well. Don't take
me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren complainers,
— querulous cynics who have neither talent
nor faith! I 'm at work!” — and he glanced about
him and lowered his voice as if this were a quite
peculiar secret, — “I 'm at work night and day. I 've
undertaken a creation! I 'm no Moses; I 'm only a
poor, patient artist; but it would be a fine thing if I
were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flow
in our thirsty land! Don't think me a monster of
conceit,” he went on, as he saw me smile at the avidity
with which he adopted my fantasy; “I confess that
I 'm in one of those moods when great things seem
possible! This is one of my nervous nights, — I dream
waking! When the south-wind blows over Florence
at midnight, it seems to coax the soul from all the fair
things locked away in her churches and galleries; it
comes into my own little studio with the moonlight,
and sets my heart beating too deeply for rest. You
see I am always adding a thought to my conception!
This evening I felt that I could n't sleep unless I had
communed with the genius of Michael!”
He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition,
and he expatiated con amore on the charms of
Florence. I gathered that he was an old resident, and
owe her everything,” he declared. “It 's only since
I came here that I have really lived, intellectually.
One by one, all profane desires, all mere worldly aims,
have dropped away from me, and left me nothing but
my pencil, my little note-book” (and he tapped his
breast-pocket), “and the worship of the pure masters,
— those who were pure because they were innocent,
and those who were pure because they were strong!”
“And have you been very productive all this
time?” I asked, with amenity.
He was silent awhile before replying. “Not in
the vulgar sense!” he said, at last. “I have chosen
never to manifest myself by imperfection. The good
in every performance I have reabsorbed into the generative
force of new creations; the bad — there 's always
plenty of that — I have religiously destroyed.
I may say, with some satisfaction, that I have not
added a mite to the rubbish of the world. As a proof
of my conscientiousness,” — and he stopped short, and
eyed me with extraordinary candor, as if the proof
were to be overwhelming, — “I 've never sold a picture!
`At least no merchant traffics in my heart!'
Do you remember the line in Browning? My little
studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish,
mercenary work. It 's a temple of labor, but of leisure!
Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course
pause. She can wait!”
This had brought us to my hotel door, somewhat to
my relief, I confess, for I had begun to feel unequal
to the society of a genius of this heroic strain. I left
him, however, not without expressing a friendly hope
that we should meet again. The next morning my
curiosity had not abated; I was anxious to see him by
common daylight. I counted upon meeting him in one
of the many æsthetic haunts of Florence, and I was
gratified without delay. I found him in the course
of the morning in the Tribune of the Uffizi, — that
little treasure-chamber of perfect works. He had
turned his back on the Venus de' Medici, and with his
arms resting on the railing which protects the pictures,
and his head buried in his hands, he was lost in the
contemplation of that superb triptych of Andrea Mantegna,
— a work which has neither the material splendor
nor the commanding force of some of its neighbors,
but which, glowing there with the loveliness of patient
labor, suits possibly a more constant need of the soul.
I looked at the picture for some time over his shoulder;
at last, with a heavy sigh, he turned away and
our eyes met. As he recognized me a deep blush rose
to his face; he fancied, perhaps, that he had made a
fool of himself overnight. But I offered him my hand
with a frankness which assured him I was not a
he was much altered. His midnight mood was
over, and he looked as haggard as an actor by daylight.
He was far older than I had supposed, and he had less
bravery of costume and gesture. He seemed the quite
poor, patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and the
fact that he had never sold a picture was more obvious
than glorious. His velvet coat was threadbare, and his
short slouched hat, of an antique pattern, revealed a
rustiness which marked it an “original,” and not one
of the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his
craft affect. His eye was mild and heavy, and his expression
singularly gentle and acquiescent; the more
so for a certain pallid leanness of visage which I hardly
knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius
or to a meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared
his brow and brought back his eloquence.
“And this is your first visit to these enchanted
halls?” he cried. “Happy, thrice happy youth!”
And taking me by the arm, he prepared to lead me
to each of the pre-eminent works in turn and show me
the cream of the gallery. But before we left the Mantegna,
he pressed my arm and gave it a loving look.
“He was not in a hurry,” he murmured. “He knew
nothing of `raw Haste, half-sister to Delay'!” How
sound a critic my friend was I am unable to say, but
he was an extremely amusing one; overflowing with
and gossip and anecdote. He was a shade too sentimental
for my own sympathies, and I fancied he was
rather too fond of superfine discriminations and of discovering
subtle intentions in the shallow felicities of
chance. At moments, too, he plunged into the sea of
metaphysics and floundered awhile in waters too deep
for intellectual security. But his abounding knowledge
and happy judgment told a touching story of long
attentive hours in this worshipful company; there was
a reproach to my wasteful saunterings in so devoted a
culture of opportunity. “There are two moods,” I
remember his saying, “in which we may walk through
galleries, — the critical and the ideal. They seize us
at their pleasure, and we can never tell which is to
take its turn. The critical mood, oddly, is the genial
one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishes the
pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar clevernesses, its
conscious graces. It has a kindly greeting for anything
which looks as if, according to his light, the
painter had enjoyed doing it, — for the little Dutch
cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy
mantles of late-coming Madonnas, for the little blue-hilled
pastoral, sceptical Italian landscapes. Then
there are the days of fierce, fastidious longing, —
solemn church-feasts of the intellect, — when all vulgar
effort and all petty success is a weariness, and
disgusts. In these hours we are relentless aristocrats
of taste. We 'll not take Michael for granted, we 'll
not swallow Raphael whole!”
The gallery of the Uffizi is not only rich in its
possessions, but peculiarly fortunate in that fine architectural
accident, as one may call it, which unites
it — with the breadth of river and city between them
— to those princely chambers of the Pitti Palace. The
Louvre and the Vatican hardly give you such a sense
of sustained enclosure as those long passages projected
over street and stream to establish a sort of inviolate
transition between the two palaces of art. We passed
along the gallery in which those precious drawings
by eminent hands hang chaste and gray above the
swirl and murmur of the yellow Arno, and reached
the ducal saloons of the Pitti. Ducal as they are, it
must be confessed that they are imperfect as showrooms,
and that, with their deep-set windows and their
massive mouldings, it is rather a broken light that
reaches the pictured walls. But here the masterpieces
hang thick, and you seem to see them in a luminous
atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, with
their superb dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid
shadow, and the sombre opposite glow of mellow canvas
and dusky gilding, make, themselves, almost as
fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they imperfectly
Raphael and Titian; but I saw my friend was impatient,
and I suffered him at last to lead me directly to
the goal of our journey, — the most tenderly fair of
Raphael's Virgins, the Madonna in the Chair. Of all
the fine pictures of the world, it seemed to me this is
the one with which criticism has least to do. None betrays
less effort, less of the mechanism of effect and of
the irrepressible discord between conception and result,
which shows dimly in so many consummate works.
Graceful, human, near to our sympathies as it is, it
has nothing of manner, of method, nothing, almost, of
style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct
with harmony as if it were an immediate exhalation
of genius. The figure melts away the spectator's mind
into a sort of passionate tenderness which he knows
not whether he has given to heavenly purity or to
earthly charm. He is intoxicated with the fragrance
of the tenderest blossom of maternity that ever bloomed
on earth.
“That 's what I call a fine picture,” said my companion,
after we had gazed awhile in silence. “I
have a right to say so, for I 've copied it so often and
so carefully that I could repeat it now with my eyes
shut. Other works are of Raphael: this is Raphael
himself. Others you can praise, you can qualify, you
can measure, explain, account for: this you can only
walked among men, while this divine mood was upon
him; but after it, surely, he could do nothing but die;
this world had nothing more to teach him. Think
of it awhile, my friend, and you 'll admit that I 'm
not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image,
not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, as a
restless fever-fit, not as a poet in a five minutes'
frenzy, time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal
stanza, but for days together, while the slow
labor of the brush went on, while the foul vapors of
life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension,
fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a
master, certainly! But ah, what a seer!”
“Don't you imagine,” I answered, “that he had a
model, and that some pretty young woman —”
“As pretty a young woman as you please! It
does n't diminish the miracle! He took his hint, of
course, and the young woman, possibly, sat smiling
before his canvas. But, meanwhile, the painter's idea
had taken wings. No lovely human outline could
charm it to vulgar fact. He saw the fair form made
perfect; he rose to the vision without tremor, without
effort of wing; he communed with it face to
face, and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the
purity which completes it as the perfume completes
the rose. That 's what they call idealism; the word 's
creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once
and muse, I call you to witness that I too am an
idealist!”
“An idealist, then,” I said, half jocosely, wishing to
provoke him to further utterance, “is a gentleman who
says to Nature in the person of a beautiful girl, `Go
to, you 're all wrong! Your fine is coarse, your bright
is dim, your grace is gaucherie. This is the way you
should have done it!' Is n't the chance against
him?”
He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving
the genial flavor of my sarcasm, he smiled gravely.
“Look at that picture,” he said, “and cease your irreverent
mockery! Idealism is that! There 's no
explaining it; one must feel the flame! It says
nothing to Nature, or to any beautiful girl, that
they 'll not both forgive! It says to the fair woman,
`Accept me as your artist-friend, lend me your
beautiful face, trust me, help me, and your eyes shall
be half my masterpiece!' No one so loves and respects
the rich realities of nature as the artist whose imagination
caresses and flatters them. He knows what a
fact may hold (whether Raphael knew, you may judge
by his portrait behind us there, of Tommaso Inghirami);
but his fancy hovers above it, as Ariel above
the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, but
the days of illumination are gone; visions are rare;
we have to look long to see them. But in meditation
we may still woo the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect
it. The result — the result” (here his voice faltered
suddenly, and he fixed his eyes for a moment on
the picture; when they met my own again they were
full of tears) — “the result may be less than this; but
still it may be good, it may be great!” he cried with
vehemence. “It may hang somewhere, in after years,
in goodly company, and keep the artist's memory
warm. Think of being known to mankind after some
such fashion as this! of hanging here through the slow
centuries in the gaze of an altered world, living on and
on in the cunning of an eye and hand that are part of
the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations;
making beauty a force and purity an example!”
“Heaven forbid!” I said, smiling, “that I should
take the wind out of your sails; but does n't it occur
to you that beside being strong in his genius,
Raphael was happy in a certain good faith of which
we have lost the trick? There are people, I know,
who deny that his spotless Madonnas are anything
more than pretty blondes of that period, enhanced by
the Raphaelesque touch, which they declare is a profane
touch. Be that as it may, people's religious and
æsthetic needs went hand in hand, and there was, as I
adorable, which must have given firmness to the artist's
hand. I 'm afraid there is no demand now.”
My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered,
as it were, in this chilling blast of scepticism.
Then shaking his head with sublime confidence:
“There is always a demand!” he cried; “that ineffable
type is one of the eternal needs of man's
heart; but pious souls long for it in silence, almost
in shame. Let it appear, and this faith grows brave.
How should it appear in this corrupt generation? It
can't be made to order. It could, indeed, when the
order came, trumpet-toned, from the lips of the Church
herself, and was addressed to genius panting with inspiration.
But it can spring now only from the soil of
passionate labor and culture. Do you really fancy
that while, from time to time, a man of complete artistic
vision is born into the world, that image can perish?
The man who paints it has painted everything.
The subject admits of every perfection, — form, color,
expression, composition. It can be as simple as you
please, and yet as rich, as broad and pure, and yet as
full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh
in the little naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity;
of the chance for drapery in the chaste and ample garment
of the mother! Think of the great story you
compress into that simple theme! Think, above all,
the mingled burden of joy and trouble, the tenderness
turned to worship, and the worship turned to far-seeing
pity! Then look at it all in perfect line and lovely
color, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!”
“Anch' io son pittore!” I cried. “Unless I 'm mistaken,
you 've a masterpiece on the stocks. If you put
all that in, you 'll do more than Raphael himself did.
Let me know when your picture is finished, and
wherever in the wide world I may be, I 'll post back
to Florence and make my bow to — the Madonna of
the future!”
He blushed vividly and gave a heavy sigh, half of
protest, half of resignation. “I don't often mention
my picture, in so many words. I detest this modern
custom of premature publicity. A great work needs
silence, privacy, mystery even. And then, do you
know, people are so cruel, so frivolous, so unable to
imagine a man's wishing to paint a Madonna at this
time of day, that I 've been laughed at, — laughed at,
sir!” And his blush deepened to crimson. “I don't
know what has prompted me to be so frank and trustful
with you. You look as if you would n't laugh at
me. My dear young man,” — and he laid his hand on
my arm, — “I 'm worthy of respect. Whatever my
talents may be, I 'm honest. There 's nothing grotesque
in a pure ambition, or in a life devoted to it!”
There was something so sternly sincere in his look
and tone, that further questions seemed impertinent.
I had repeated opportunity to ask them, however; for
after this we spent much time together. Daily, for a
fortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights.
He knew the city so well, he had strolled and lounged
so often through its streets and churches and galleries,
he was so deeply versed in its greater and lesser memories,
so imbued with the local genius, that he was an
altogether ideal valet de place, and I was glad enough
to leave my Murray at home, and gather facts and
opinions alike from his gossiping commentary. He
talked of Florence like a lover, and admitted that it
was a very old affair; he had lost his heart to her at
first sight. “It 's the fashion to talk of all cities as
feminine,” he said, “but, as a rule, it 's a monstrous
mistake. Is Florence of the same sex as New York,
as Chicago? She 's the sole true woman of them all;
one feels towards her as a lad in his teens feels to
some beautiful older woman with a `history.' It 's a
sort of aspiring gallantry she creates.” This disinterested
passion seemed to stand my friend in stead of
the common social ties; he led a lonely life, apparently,
and cared for nothing but his work. I was duly
flattered by his having taken my frivolous self into his
favor, and by his generous sacrifice of precious hours,
as they must have been, to my society. We spent
which Florence is so rich, returning ever and anon
with restless sympathies to wonder whether these tender
blossoms of art had not a vital fragrance and savor
more precious than the full-fruited knowledge of the
later works. We lingered often in the sepulchral
chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo's
dim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful
Genius of Doubt and brooding behind his eternal
mask upon the mysteries of life. We stood more
than once in the little convent chambers where Fra
Angelico wrought as if an angel indeed had held his
hand, and gathered that sense of scattered dews and
early bird-notes which makes an hour among his
relics seem like a morning stroll in some monkish
garden. We did all this and much more, — wandered
into dark chapels, damp courts, and dusty palace-rooms,
in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking
treasures of carving.
I was more and more impressed with my companion's
prodigious singleness of purpose. Everything was
a pretext for some wildly idealistic rhapsody or revery.
Nothing could be seen or said that did not end
sooner or later in a glowing discourse on the true,
the beautiful, and the good. If my friend was not a
genius, he was certainly a monomaniac; and I found
as great a fascination in watching the odd lights and
from another planet. He seemed, indeed, to know
very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether
in his own little province of art. A creature more
unsullied by the world it is impossible to conceive,
and I often thought it a flaw in his artistic character
that he had n't a harmless vice or two. It amused me
vastly at times to think that he was of our shrewd
Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better
token of his American origin than this high æsthetic
fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign of
conversion; those born to European opportunity manage
better to reconcile enthusiasm with comfort. He
had, moreover, all our native mistrust for intellectual
discretion and our native relish for sonorous superlatives.
As a critic he was vastly more generous than
just, and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,”
“transcendent,” and “incomparable.” The small
change of admiration seemed to him no coin for a gentleman
to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually,
he was, personally, altogether a mystery. His
professions, somehow, were all half-professions, and
his allusions to his work and circumstances left something
dimly ambiguous in the background. He was
modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic
matters. He was evidently poor; yet he must have
had some slender independence, since he could afford
ideal beauty had never brought him a penny. His
poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither inviting
me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts.
We met either in some public place or at my hotel,
where I entertained him as freely as I might without
appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed
always hungry, which was his nearest approach to a
“redeeming vice.” I made a point of asking no impertinent
questions, but, each time we met, I ventured
to make some respectful allusion to the magnum opus,
to inquire, as it were, as to its health and progress.
“We 're getting on, with the Lord's help,” he would
say with a grave smile. “We 're doing well. You see
I have the grand advantage that I lose no time.
These hours I spend with you are pure profit.
They 're suggestive! Just as the truly religious soul
is always at worship, the genuine artist is always in
labor. He takes his property wherever he finds it,
and learns some precious secret from every object
that stands up in the light. If you but knew the
rapture of observation! I gather with every glance
some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get
home, I pour out my treasures into the lap of my
Madonna. O, I 'm not idle! Nulla dies sine lines.”
I was introduced in Florence to an American lady
whose drawing-room had long formed an attractive
on a fourth floor, and she was not rich; but she
offered her visitors very good tea, little cakes at
option, and conversation not quite to match. Her
conversation had mainly an æsthetic flavor, for Mrs.
Coventry was famously “artistic.” Her apartment was
a sort of Pitti Palace au petit pied. She possessed
“early masters” by the dozen, — a cluster of Peruginos
in her dining-room, a Giotto in her boudoir, an Andrea
del Sarto over her parlor chimney-piece. Backed
by these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics,
majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs
showing angular saints on gilded panels, our hostess
enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the
arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature
copy of the Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her
ear quietly one evening I asked her whether she
knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald.
“Know him!” she exclaimed; “know poor Theobald!
All Florence knows him, his flame-colored locks, his
black velvet coat, his interminable harangues on the
beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye
has never seen, and that mortal patience has quite
given up expecting.”
“Really,” I cried, “you don't believe in his Madonna?”
“My dear ingenuous youth,” rejoined my shrewd
believed in him once; he came down upon Florence and
took the town by storm. Another Raphael, at the
very least, had been born among men, and poor, dear
America was to have the credit of him. Had n't he the
very hair of Raphael flowing down on his shoulders?
The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him
whole, however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed
his genius on the house-tops. The women were all
dying to sit to him for their portraits and be made immortal,
like Leonardo's Joconde. We decided that his
manner was a good deal like Leonardo's, — mysterious
and inscrutable and fascinating. Mysterious it certainly
was; mystery was the beginning and the end of it.
The months passed by, and the miracle hung fire; our
master never produced his masterpiece. He passed
hours in the galleries and churches, posturing, musing,
and gazing; he talked more than ever about the beautiful,
but he never put brush to canvas. We had all
subscribed, as it were, to the great performance; but
as it never came off, people began to ask for their
money again. I was one of the last of the faithful; I
carried devotion so far as to sit to him for my head.
If you could have seen the horrible creature he made
of me, you would admit that even a woman with no
more vanity than will tie her bonnet straight must
have cooled off then. The man did n't know the very
was his sentiment; but is it a consolation, when one has
been painted a fright, to know it has been done with
peculiar gusto? One by one, I confess, we fell away
from the faith, and Mr. Theobald did n't lift his little
finger to preserve us. At the first hint that we were
tired of waiting and that we should like the show to
begin, he was off in a huff. `Great work requires time,
contemplation, privacy, mystery! O ye of little faith!'
We answered that we did n't insist on a great work; that
the five-act tragedy might come at his convenience;
that we merely asked for something to keep us from
yawning, some inexpensive little lever de rideau. Hereupon
the poor man took his stand as a genius misconceived
and persecuted, an âme méconnue, and washed
his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does
me the honor to consider me the head and front of the
conspiracy formed to nip his glory in the bud, — a bud
that has taken twenty years to blossom. Ask him if
he knows me, and he 'd tell you I 'm a horribly ugly
old woman who has vowed his destruction because he
would n't paint her portrait as a pendant to Titian's
Flora. I fancy that since then he has had none but
chance followers, innocent strangers like yourself, who
have taken him at his word. The mountain 's still in
labor; I 've not heard that the mouse has been born.
I pass him once in a while in the galleries, and he fixes
as if I were a bad copy of a Sassoferrato! It is
a long time ago now that I heard that he was making
studies for a Madonna who was to be a résumé of all
the other Madonnas of the Italian school, — like that
antique Venus who borrowed a nose from one great
image and an ankle from another. It 's certainly a
masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but when
I think of my unhappy portrait I tremble for the
whole. He has communicated this striking idea under
the pledge of solemn secrecy to fifty chosen
spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button-hole
for five minutes. I suppose he wants to get
an order for it, and he 's not to blame; for Heaven
knows how he lives. I see by your blush,” my hostess
frankly continued, “that you have been honored
with his confidence. You need n't be ashamed, my
dear young man; a man of your age is none the
worse for a certain generous credulity. Only allow
me to give you a word of advice: keep your credulity
out of your pockets! Don't pay for the picture
till it 's delivered. You 've not been treated to a
peep at it, I imagine. No more have your fifty predecessors
in the faith. There are people who doubt
whether there is any picture to be seen. I fancy, myself,
that if one were to get into his studio, one would
find something very like the picture in that tale of
daubs, a jumble of dead paint!”
I listened to this pungent recital in silent wonder.
It had a painfully plausible sound, and was
not inconsistent with certain shy suspicions of my
own. My hostess was a clever woman, and presumably
a generous one. I determined to let my judgment
wait upon events. Possibly she was right;
but if she was wrong, she was cruelly wrong! Her
version of my friend's eccentricities made me impatient
to see him again and examine him in the
light of public opinion. On our next meeting, I
immediately asked him if he knew Mrs. Coventry.
He laid his hand on my arm and gave me a sad
smile. “Has she taxed your gallantry at last?” he
asked. “She 's a foolish woman. She 's frivolous
and heartless, and she pretends to be serious and
kind. She prattles about Giotto's second manner
and Vittoria Colonna's liaison with `Michael,' — one
would think that Michael lived across the way and
was expected in to take a hand at whist, — but she
knows as little about art, and about the conditions
of production, as I know about Buddhism. She
profanes sacred words,” he added more vehemently,
after a pause. “She cares for you only as some
one to hand teacups in that horrible mendacious
little parlor of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos!
and let her hand it round among her guests, she tells
them in plain English you 're an impostor!”
This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry's accuracy
was made in the course of a late afternoon
walk to the quiet old church of San Miniato, on
one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city,
from whose gate you are guided to it by a stony
and cypress-bordered walk, which seems a most fitting
avenue to a shrine. No spot is more propitious
to lingering repose[1] than the broad terrace in
front of the church, where, lounging against the parapet,
you may glance in slow alternation from the
black and yellow marbles of the church façade,
seamed and cracked with time and wind-sown with
a tender flora of its own, down to the full domes
and slender towers of Florence and over to the blue
sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into
whose hollow the little treasure-city has been dropped.
I had proposed, as a diversion from the painful memories
evoked by Mrs. Coventry's name, that Theobald
should go with me the next evening to the
opera, where some rarely played work was to be
given. He declined, as I had half expected, for I
had observed that he regularly kept his evenings in
reserve, and never alluded to his manner of passing
smiling, “of that charming speech of the Florentine
painter in Alfred de Musset's Lorenzaccio: `I do
no harm to any one. I pass my days in my studio.
On Sunday, I go to the Annunziata or to Santa Maria;
the monks think I have a voice; they dress me in a white
gown and a red cap, and I take a share in the choruses,
sometimes I do a little solo: these are the only times I go
into public. In the evening, I visit my sweetheart; when
the night is fine, we pass it on her balcony.' I don't
know whether you have a sweetheart, or whether she
has a balcony. But if you 're so happy, it 's certainly
better than trying to find a charm in a third-rate
prima donna.”
He made no immediate response, but at last he
turned to me solemnly. “Can you look upon a beautiful
woman with reverent eyes?”
“Really,” I said, “I don't pretend to be sheepish,
but I should be sorry to think I was impudent.” And
I asked him what in the world he meant. When at
last I had assured him that I could undertake to temper
admiration with respect, he informed me, with an
air of religious mystery, that it was in his power to
introduce me to the most beautiful woman in Italy.
“A beauty with a soul!”
“Upon my word,” I cried, “you 're extremely fortunate.
I shall rejoice to witness the conjunction.”
“This woman's beauty,” he answered, “is a lesson, a
morality, a poem! It 's my daily study.”
Of course, after this, I lost no time in reminding
him of what, before we parted, had taken the shape of
a promise. “I feel somehow,” he had said, “as if it
were a sort of violation of that privacy in which I have
always contemplated her beauty. This is friendship,
my friend. No hint of her existence has ever fallen
from my lips. But with too great a familiarity we are
apt to lose a sense of the real value of things, and you
perhaps will throw some new light upon it and offer a
fresher interpretation.” We went accordingly by appointment
to a certain ancient house in the heart of
Florence, — the precinct of the Mercato Vecchio, —
and climbed a dark, steep staircase to the very summit
of the edifice. Theobald's beauty seemed as jealously
exalted above the line of common vision as the Belle
aux Cheveux d'Or in her tower-top. He passed without
knocking into the dark vestibule of a small apartment,
and, flinging open an inner door, ushered me
into a small saloon. The room seemed mean and
sombre, though I caught a glimpse of white curtains
swaying gently at an open window. At a table, near
a lamp, sat a woman dressed in black, working at a
piece of embroidery. As Theobald entered, she looked
up calmly, with a smile; but seeing me, she made a
movement of surprise, and rose with a kind of stately
kissed it, with an indescribable air of immemorial
usage. As he bent his head, she looked at me askance,
and I thought she blushed.
“Behold the Serafina!” said Theobald, frankly, waving
me forward. “This is a friend, and a lover of the
arts,” he added, introducing me. I received a smile, a
courtesy, and a request to be seated.
The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of
a generous Italian type and of a great simplicity of
demeanor. Seated again at her lamp, with her embroidery,
she seemed to have nothing whatever to say.
Theobald, bending towards her in a sort of Platonic
ecstasy, asked her a dozen paternally tender questions
as to her health, her state of mind, her occupations,
and the progress of her embroidery, which he examined
minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some
portion of an ecclesiastical vestment, — yellow satin
wrought with an elaborate design of silver and gold.
She made answer in a full, rich voice, but with a
brevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to native
reserve or to the profane constraint of my presence.
She had been that morning to confession; she
had also been to market, and had bought a chicken
for dinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to
complain of, except that the people for whom she was
making her vestment, and who furnished her materials,
the garment, as one might say, of the Lord. From
time to time, as she took her slow stitches, she raised
her eyes and covered me with a glance which seemed
at first to denote a placid curiosity, but in which, as
I saw it repeated, I thought I perceived the dim
glimmer of an attempt to establish an understanding
with me at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile,
as mindful as possible of Theobald's injunction
of reverence, I considered the lady's personal claims
to the fine compliment he had paid her.
That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived,
after recovering from the surprise of finding her without
the freshness of youth. Her beauty was of a sort
which, in losing youth, loses little of its essential
charm, expressed for the most part as it was in form
and structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in
“composition.” She was broad and ample, low-browed
and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair
hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to
drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal
as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her
head was admirably free and noble, and the more
effective that their freedom was at moments discreetly
corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonized
admirably with the level gaze of her dark
and quiet eye. A strong, serene physical nature and
troubles seemed this lady's comfortable portion. She
was dressed in plain dull black, save for a sort of dark
blue kerchief which was folded across her bosom and
exposed a glimpse of her massive throat. Over this
kerchief was suspended a little silver cross. I admired
her greatly, and yet with a large reserve. A certain
mild intellectual apathy belonged properly to her type
of beauty, and had always seemed to round and enrich
it; but this bourgeoise Egeria, if I viewed her right,
betrayed a rather vulgar stagnation of mind. There
might have been once a dim, spiritual light in her
face; but it had long since begun to wane. And
furthermore, in plain prose, she was growing stout.
My disappointment amounted very nearly to complete
disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my
covert inspection, declaring that the lamp was very
dim and that she would ruin her eyes without more
light, rose and fetched a couple of candles from the
mantel-piece, which he placed lighted on the table.
In this brighter illumination I perceived that our hostess
was decidedly an elderly woman. She was neither
haggard nor worn nor gray; she was simply coarse.
The “soul” which Theobald had promised seemed
scarcely worth making such a point of; it was no
deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of
lip and brow. I would have been ready even to declare
more than the trick of a person constantly working
at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was
a trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the
mellow quietude of her wits, this stately needlewoman
dropped a hint that she took the situation rather less
au sérieux than her friend. When he rose to light
the candles, she looked across at me with a quick,
intelligent smile and tapped her forehead with her
forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling of compassionate
loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank
face, she gave a little shrug and resumed her work.
What was the relation of this singular couple?
Was he the most ardent of friends or the most reverent
of lovers? Did she regard him as an eccentric
youth whose benevolent admiration of her beauty
she was not ill-pleased to humor at this small cost
of having him climb into her little parlor and gossip
of summer nights? With her decent and sombre
dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly
needlework, she looked like some pious lay-member of
a sisterhood, living by special permission outside her
convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloft by
her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might
have before him the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted
and untarnished by the struggle for existence? Her
shapely hands, I observed, were very fair and white;
toil.”
“And the pictures, how do they come on?” she
asked of Theobald, after a long pause.
“Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy
and encouragement give me new faith and
ardor.”
Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment
rather inscrutably, and then tapping her forehead
with the gesture she had used a minute before, “He
has a magnificent genius!” she said, with perfect
gravity.
“I 'm inclined to think so,” I answered, with a
smile.
“Eh, why do you smile?” she cried. “If you
doubt it, you must see the bambino!” And she took
the lamp and conducted me to the other side of the
room, where on the wall, in a plain black frame,
hung a large drawing in red chalk. Beneath it was
festooned a little bowl for holy-water. The drawing
represented a very young child, entirely naked, half
nestling back against his mother's gown, but with
his two little arms outstretched, as if in the act of
benediction. It was executed with singular freedom
and power, and yet seemed vivid with the sacred
bloom of infancy. A sort of dimpled elegance and
grace, mingled with its boldness, recalled the touch
hostess. “It 's the blessed little boy whom I lost.
It 's his very image, and the Signor Teobaldo gave
it me as a gift. He has given me many things
beside!”
I looked at the picture for some time and admired
it vastly. Turning back to Theobald, I assured him
that if it were hung among the drawings in the Uffizi
and labelled with a glorious name, it would hold its
own. My praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure;
he pressed my hands, and his eyes filled with
tears. It moved him apparently with the desire to
expatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose
and made his adieux to our companion, kissing her
hand with the same mild ardor as before. It occurred
to me that the offer of a similar piece of gallantry
on my own part might help me to know what
manner of woman she was. When she perceived
my intention, she withdrew her hand, dropped her
eyes solemnly, and made me a severe courtesy. Theobald
took my arm and led me rapidly into the
street.
“And what do you think of the divine Serafina?”
he cried with fervor.
“It 's certainly good solid beauty!” I answered.
He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed
hurried along by the current of remembrance. “You
seen them as I first saw them, — the mother with
her head draped in a shawl, a divine trouble in her
face, and the bambino pressed to her bosom. You
would have said, I think, that Raphael had found
his match in common chance. I was coming in, one
summer night, from a long walk in the country, when
I met this apparition at the city gate. The woman
held out her hand. I hardly knew whether to say,
`What do you want?' or to fall down and worship.
She asked for a little money. I saw that she was
beautiful and pale. She might have stepped out of
the stable of Bethlehem! I gave her money and
helped her on her way into the town. I had guessed
her story. She, too, was a maiden mother, and she
had been turned out into the world in her shame.
I felt in all my pulses that here was my subject
mavellously realized. I felt like one of the old convent
artists who had had a vision. I rescued the
poor creatures, cherished them, watched them as I
would have done some precious work of art, some
lovely fragment of fresco discovered in a mouldering
cloister. In a month — as if to deepen and consecrate
the pathos of it all — the poor little child died.
When she felt that he was going, she held him up
to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You
saw a feverish haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to
After that, I doubly valued the mother. She is the
simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that ever
bloomed in this brave old land of Italy. She lives
in the memory of her child, in her gratitude for the
scanty kindness I have been able to show her, and
in her simple religion! She 's not even conscious of
her beauty; my admiration has never made her vain.
Heaven knows I 've made no secret of it. You must
have observed the singular transparency of her expression,
the lovely modesty of her glance. And was
there ever such a truly virginal brow, such a natural
classic elegance in the wave of the hair and the arch
of the forehead? I 've studied her; I may say I
know her. I 've absorbed her little by little; my
mind is stamped and imbued, and I have determined
now to clinch the impression; I shall at last invite
her to sit for me!”
“`At last, — at last'?” I repeated, in much amazement.
“Do you mean that she has never done so
yet?”
“I 've not really had — a — a sitting,” said Theobald,
speaking very slowly. “I 've taken notes, you
know; I 've got my grand fundamental impression.
That 's the great thing! But I 've not actually had
her as a model, posed and draped and lighted, before
my easel.”
What had become for the moment of my perception
and my tact I am at a loss to say; in their absence,
I was unable to repress headlong exclamation. I was
destined to regret it. We had stopped at a turning,
beneath a lamp. “My poor friend,” I exclaimed, laying
my hand on his shoulder, “you 've dawdled!
She 's an old, old woman — for a Madonna!”
It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never
forget the long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain with
which he answered me. “Dawdled — old, old!” he
stammered. “Are you joking?”
“Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take
the woman for twenty?”
He drew a long breath and leaned against a house,
looking at me with questioning, protesting, reproachful
eyes. At last, starting forward, and grasping my arm:
“Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly
old? Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?”
Then at last I understood the immensity of his
illusion; how, one by one, the noiseless years had
ebbed away, and left him brooding in charmed inaction,
forever preparing for a work forever deferred.
It seemed to me almost a kindness now to tell him
the plain truth. “I should be sorry to say you 're
blind,” I answered, “but I think you 're deceived.
You 've lost time in effortless contemplation. Your
friend was once young and fresh and virginal; but, I
beaux restes? By all means make her sit for you!” I
broke down; his face was too horribly reproachful.
He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief
mechanically over his forehead. “De beaux
restes? I thank you for sparing me the plain English.
I must make up my Madonna out of de beaux restes!
What a masterpiece she 'll be! Old — old! Old —
old!” he murmured.
“Never mind her age,” I cried, revolted at what I
had done, “never mind my impression of her! You
have your memory, your notes, your genius. Finish
your picture in a month. I proclaim it beforehand a
masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for it any sum you
may choose to ask.”
He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me.
“Old — old!” he kept stupidly repeating. “If she is
old, what am I? If her beauty has faded, where —
where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have
I worshipped too long, — have I loved too well?”
The charm, in truth, was broken. That the chord of
illusion should have snapped at my light, accidental
touch showed how it had been weakened by excessive
tension. The poor fellow's sense of wasted time, of
vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his soul
in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head
and burst into tears.
I led him homeward with all possible tenderness,
but I attempted neither to check his grief, to restore
his equanimity, nor to unsay the hard truth. When
we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come in.
“We 'll drink a glass of wine,” I said, smiling, “to the
completion of the Madonna.”
With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for
a moment with a formidably sombre frown, and then
giving me his hand, “I 'll finish it,” he cried, “in a
month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it
here!” And he tapped his forehead. “Of course
she 's old! She can afford to have it said of her, — a
woman who has made twenty years pass like a twelvemonth!
Old — old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!”
I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he
waved me back and walked away with an air of resolution,
whistling and swinging his cane. I waited a
moment, and then followed him at a distance, and saw
him proceed to cross the Santa Trinità Bridge. When
he reached the middle, he suddenly paused, as if his
strength had deserted him, and leaned upon the parapet
gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep
him in sight; I confess that I passed ten very nervous
minutes. He recovered himself at last, and went his
way, slowly and with hanging head.
That I should have really startled poor Theobald into
a bolder use of his long-garnered stores of knowledge
seemed at first reason enough for his continued
silence, and absence; but as day followed day without
his either calling or sending me a line, and without my
meeting him in his customary haunts, in the galleries,
in the chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between the
Arno-side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which,
along the drive of the Cascine, throws the fair occupants
of barouche and phaeton into such becoming
relief, — as for more than a week I got neither tidings
nor sight of him, I began to fear that I had fatally
offended him, and that, instead of giving wholesome
impetus to his talent, I had brutally paralyzed it. I
had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My
stay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was
important that, before resuming my journey, I should
assure myself of the truth. Theobald, to the last, had
kept his lodging a mystery, and I was altogether at
a loss where to look for him. The simplest course
was to make inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato
Vecchio, and I confess that unsatisfied curiosity as to
the lady herself counselled it as well. Perhaps I had
done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh
and fair as he conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious
to behold once more the ripe enchantress who
had made twenty years pass as a twelvemonth. I repaired
accordingly, one moning, to her abode, climbed
stood ajar, and as I hesitated whether to enter, a little
serving-maid came clattering out with an empty kettle,
as if she had just performed some savory errand. The
inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule
and entered the room in which I had formerly
been received. It had not its evening aspect. The
table, or one end of it, was spread for a late breakfast,
and before it sat a gentleman, — an individual, at least,
of the male sex, — dealing justice upon a beefsteak
and onions, and a bottle of wine. At his elbow, in
friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the house.
Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress.
With one hand she held in her lap a plate of
smoking maccaroni; with the other she had lifted high
in air one of the pendulous filaments of this succulent
compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently
down her throat. On the uncovered end of the table,
facing her companion, were ranged half a dozen small
statuettes, of some snuff-colored substance resembling
terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardor, was
apparently descanting on their merits.
Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped
her maccaroni — into her mouth, and rose hastily with
a harsh exclamation and a flushed face. I immediately
perceived that the Signora Serafina's secret was
even better worth knowing than I had supposed, and
I summoned my best Italian, I smiled and bowed
and apologized for my intrusion; and in a moment,
whether or no I had dispelled the lady's irritation, I
had, at least, stimulated her prudence. I was welcome,
she said; I must take a seat. This was another
friend of hers, — also an artist, she declared with a
smile which was almost amiable. Her companion
wiped his mustache and bowed with great civility.
I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation.
He was presumably the author of the statuettes on
the table, and he knew a money-spending forestiere
when he saw one. He was a small, wiry man, with
a clever, impudent, tossed-up nose, a sharp little black
eye, and waxed ends to his mustache. On the side
of his head he wore jauntily a little crimson velvet
smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased
in brilliant slippers. On Serafina's remarking
with dignity that I was the friend of Mr. Theobald,
he broke out into that fantastic French of which
Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with
fervor that Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius.
“I 'm sure I don't know,” I answered with a shrug.
“If you 're in a position to affirm it, you have the
advantage of me. I 've seen nothing from his hand
but the bambino yonder, which certainly is fine.”
He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a
knowing laugh, that the sketch had not been made on
some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately
Serafina hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was
the soul of honor, and that he would never lend himself
to a deceit. “I 'm not a judge of genius,” she said,
“and I know nothing of pictures. I 'm but a poor
simple widow; but I know that the Signor Teobaldo
has the heart of an angel and the virtue of a saint.
He 's my benefactor,” she added sententiously. The
after-glow of the somewhat sinister flush with which
she had greeted me still lingered in her cheek, and
perhaps did not favor her beauty; I could not but
fancy it a wise custom of Theobald's to visit her only
by candlelight. She was coarse, and her poor adorer
was a poet.
“I have the greatest esteem for him,” I said; “it is
for this reason that I have been uneasy at not seeing
him for ten days. Have you seen him? Is he perhaps
ill?”
“Ill! Heaven forbid!” cried Serafina, with genuine
vehemence.
Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached
her with not having been to see him. She
hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit
and bridled. “He comes to see me — without reproach!
But it would not be the same for me to go
of holy life.”
“He has the greatest admiration for you,” I said.
“He would have been honored by your visit.”
She looked at me a moment sharply. “More admiration
than you. Admit that!” Of course I protested
with all the eloquence at my command, and
my mysterious hostess then confessed that she had
taken no fancy to me on my former visit, and that,
Theobald not having returned, she believed I had poisoned
his mind against her. “It would be no kindness
to the poor gentleman, I can tell you that,” she
said. “He has come to see me every evening for
years. It 's a long friendship! No one knows him as
well as I.”
“I don't pretend to know him, or to understand
him,” I said. “He 's a mystery! Nevertheless, he
seems to me a little —” And I touched my forehead
and waved my hand in the air.
Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if
for inspiration. He contented himself with shrugging
his shoulders, as he filled his glass again. The padrona
hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smile than
would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a
brow. “It 's for that that I love him!” she said.
“The world has so little kindness for such persons. It
laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them.
that he finds a little Paradise up here in my poor
apartment. If he thinks so, how can I help it? He
has a strange belief — really, I ought to be ashamed to
tell you — that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven
forgive me! I let him think what he pleases, so long
as it makes him happy. He was very kind to me
once, and I am not one that forgets a favor. So I
receive him every evening civilly, and ask after his
health, and let him look at me on this side and that!
For that matter, I may say it without vanity, I was
worth looking at once! And he 's not always amusing,
poor man! He sits sometimes for an hour without
speaking a word, or else he talks away, without stopping,
on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty
fine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg
you to understand that he has never said a word to me
that I might n't decently listen to. He may be a little
cracked, but he 's one of the saints.”
“Eh!” cried the man, “the saints were all a little
cracked!”
Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but
she told enough of it to make poor Theobald's own
statement seem intensely pathetic in its exalted simplicity.
“It 's a strange fortune, certainly,” she went
on, “to have such a friend as this dear man, — a friend
who 's less than a lover and more than a friend.” I
smile, twisted the end of his mustache, and disposed
of a copious mouthful. Was he less than a
lover? “But what will you have?” Serafina pursued.
“In this hard world one must n't ask too many questions;
one must take what comes and keep what one
gets. I 've kept my good friend for twenty years, and
I do hope that, at this time of day, Signore, you 've not
come to turn him against me!”
I assured her that I had no such design, and that I
should vastly regret disturbing Mr. Theobald's habits
or convictions. On the contrary, I was alarmed about
him, and I should immediately go in search of him.
She gave me his address and a florid account of her
sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been
to him, for various reasons; chiefly because she was
afraid of displeasing him, as he had always made such
a mystery of his home. “You might have sent this
gentleman!” I ventured to suggest.
“Ah,” cried the gentleman, “he admires the Signora
Serafina, but he would n't admire me.” And then,
confidentially, with his finger on his nose, “He 's a
purist!”
I was about to withdraw, on the promise that I
would inform the Signora Serafina of my friend's condition,
when her companion, who had risen from table
and girded his loins apparently for the onset, grasped
statuettes. “I perceive by your conversation, signore,
that you are a patron of the arts. Allow me to request
your honorable attention for these modest products
of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, fresh from
my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public.
I have brought them here to receive the verdict of
this dear lady, who is a good critic, for all she may
pretend to the contrary. I am the inventor of this
peculiar style of statuette, — of subject, manner, material,
everything. Touch them, I pray you; handle
them; you need n't fear. Delicate as they look, it is
impossible they should break! My various creations
have met with great success. They are especially
admired by Americans. I have sent them all over
Europe, — to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have
observed some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard,
in a shop of which they constitute the specialty.
There is always a crowd about the window. They
form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf
of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty
woman. You could n't make a prettier present to a
person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless
joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but,
between ourselves, is n't classic art sometimes rather
a bore? Caricature, burlesque, la charge, as the French
say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and
it into statuary. For this purpose I have invented a
peculiar plastic compound which you will permit me
not to divulge. That 's my secret, signore! It 's as
light, you perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster!
I frankly confess that I really pride myself as
much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity as
upon the other element of novelty in my creations, —
my types. What do you say to my types, signore?
The idea is bold; does it strike you as happy? Cats
and monkeys, — monkeys and cats, — all human life
is there! Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with
the eye of the satirist! To combine sculpture and
satire, signore, has been my unprecedented ambition.
I flatter myself that I have not egregiously failed.”
As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered
himself of his persuasive allocution, he took
up his little groups successively from the table, held
them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with
his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly with his
head on one side. They consisted each of a cat
and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously
sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a
certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly
the different phases of what, in delicate terms, may
be called gallantry and coquetry; but they were
strikingly clever and expressive, and were at once
and women. I confess, however, that they failed to
amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy
them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and
vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I
looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing
them between finger and thumb, and caressing them
with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself little
more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered
an admiring grin, however, and he blew another
blast. “My figures are studied from life! I
have a little menagerie of monkeys whose frolics
I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has
only to look out of one's back window! Since I
have begun to examine these expressive little brutes,
I have made many profound observations. Speaking,
signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my
little designs are not without a philosophy of their
own. Truly, I don't know whether the cats and
monkeys imitate us, or whether it 's we who imitate
them.” I congratulated him on his philosophy, and
he resumed: “You will do me the honor to admit
that I have handled my subjects with delicacy. Eh,
it was needed, signore! I have been free, but not
too free — eh? Just a hint, you know! You may see
as much or as little as you please. These little
groups, however, are no measure of my invention.
think that you will admit that my combinations are
really infinite. I likewise execute figures to command.
You have perhaps some little motive, — the
fruit of your philosophy of life, signore, — which
you would like to have interpreted. I can promise
to work it up to your satisfaction; it shall be as
malicious as you please! Allow me to present you
with my card, and to remind you that my prices
are moderate. Only sixty francs for a little group like
that. My statuettes are as durable as bronze, — œre
perennius, signore, — and, between ourselves, I think
they are more amusing!”
As I pocketed his card, I glanced at Madonna
Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts.
She had picked up one of the little couples
and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom.
What I had just seen and heard had so deepened
my compassionate interest in my deluded friend, that
I took a summary leave, and made my way directly to
the house designated by this remarkable woman. It
was in an obscure corner of the opposite side of the
town, and presented a sombre and squalid appearance.
An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring for
Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and
an expression of relief at the poor gentleman having a
friend. His lodging seemed to consist of a single room
knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent;
so that it gave me a certain shock to find him
sitting there helpless and dumb. He was seated near
the single window, facing an easel which supported a
large canvas. On my entering, he looked up at me
blankly, without changing his position, which was that
of absolute lassitude and dejection, his arms loosely
folded, his legs stretched before him, his head hanging
on his breast. Advancing into the room, I perceived
that his face vividly corresponded with his attitude.
He was pale, haggard, and unshaven, and his dull and
sunken eye gazed at me without a spark of recognition.
I had been afraid that he would greet me with fierce
reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had
turned his peace to bitterness, and I was relieved to
find that my appearance awakened no visible resentment.
“Don't you know me?” I asked, as I put out
my hand. “Have you already forgotten me?”
He made no response, kept his position stupidly,
and left me staring about the room. It spoke most
plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid, naked, it contained,
beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest
provision for personal comfort. It was bedroom at
once and studio, — a grim ghost of a studio. A few
dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four old
canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking color-box
its appurtenances. The place savored horribly of poverty.
Its only wealth was the picture on the easel,
presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this
was from the door, I was unable to see its face; but
at last, sickened by the vacant misery of the spot, I
passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can
hardly say that I was surprised at what I found, — a
canvas that was a mere dead blank, cracked and discolored
by time. This was his immortal work! Though
not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I
think that for five minutes I could not have trusted
myself to speak. At last, my silent nearness affected
him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked
at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some
kind, ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing
advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the
effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between
us. “You were right,” he said with a pitiful smile,
“I 'm a dawdler! I 'm a failure! I shall do nothing
more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though
the truth is bitter, I bear you no grudge. Amen! I 've
been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth,
with the past, with my weakness and poverty and
nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I 've
neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!” he
went on, as I relieved my emotion in the urgent
“That was to have contained my masterpiece! Is n't
it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all
here.” And he tapped his forehead with that mystic
confidence which had marked the gesture before.
“If I could only transpose them into some brain
that had the hand, the will! Since I 've been sitting
here taking stock of my intellects, I 've come
to believe that I have the material for a hundred
masterpieces. But my hand is paralyzed now, and
they 'll never be painted. I never began! I waited
and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my
life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was
growing, it was dying. I 've taken it all too hard!
Michael Angelo did n't when he went at the Lorenzo!
He did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal.
That 's mine!” And he pointed with a gesture
I shall never forget at the empty canvas. “I suppose
we 're a genus by ourselves in the providential
scheme, — we talents that can't act, that can't do nor
dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and promises,
in study, in visions! But our visions, let me tell you,”
he cried, with a toss of his head, “have a way of
being brilliant, and a man has n't lived in vain who
has seen the things I have! Of course you 'll not
believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth
is all I have to show for them; but to convince
the hand of Raphael. I have his brain. A pity,
you 'll say, I have n't his modesty! Ah, let me babble
now; it 's all I have left! I 'm the half of a
genius! Where in the wide world is my other half?
Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready
fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan
who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of
touch! But it 's not for me to sneer at him; he
at least does something. He 's not a dawdler! Well
for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless,
if I could have shut my eyes and dealt my
stroke!”
What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for
him, seemed hard to determine; I chiefly felt that
I must break the spell of his present inaction, and
remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the
little room it seemed such cruel irony to call a studio.
I cannot say I persuaded him to come out
with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and
when we began to walk in the open air I was able
to measure his pitifully weakened condition. Nevertheless,
he seemed in a certain way to revive, and
murmured at last that he would like to go to the
Pitti Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy
stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on
whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic
strength and lustre. The eyes and lips of the great
portraits seemed to smile in ineffable scorn of the
dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing
with their triumphant authors; the celestial candor,
even, of the Madonna in the Chair, as we paused
in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the
sinister irony of the women of Leonardo. Perfect
silence indeed marked our whole progress, — the
silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my
pulses, as Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one
heavy foot after the other, that he was looking his
last. When we came out, he was so exhausted
that, instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I
called a carriage and drove him straight to his own
poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary
lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes
closed, as pale as death, his faint breathing interrupted
at intervals by a sudden gasp, like a smothered
sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of
the old woman who had admitted me before, and
who emerged from a dark back court, I contrived to
lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him on
his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge,
while I prepared in all haste to seek a physician.
But she followed me out of the room with a pitiful
clasping of her hands.
“Poor, dear, blessed gentleman,” she murmured;
“is he dying?”
“Possibly. How long has he been thus?”
“Since a night he passed ten days ago. I came
up in the morning to make his poor bed, and found
him sitting up in his clothes before that great canvas
he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he
says his prayers to it! He had not been to bed,
nor since then properly! What has happened to
him? Has he found out about the Serafina?” she
whispered with a glittering eye and a toothless grin.
“Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful,”
I said, “and watch him well till I come back.”
My return was delayed, through the absence of the
English physician on a round of visits, and my vainly
pursuing him from house to house before I overtook
him. I brought him to Theobald's bedside none too
soon. A violent fever had seized our patient, and
the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours
later I knew that he had brain-fever. From this
moment I was with him constantly, but I am far
from wishing to describe his illness. Excessively
painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned
out in delirium. A certain night that I passed at
his pillow, listening to his wild snatches of regret, of
aspiration, of rapture and awe at the phantasmal pictures
with which his brain seemed to swarm, recurs
masterpiece of tragedy. Before a week was over we
had buried him in the little Protestant cemetery on
the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I
had caused to be informed of his illness, had come
in person, I was told, to inquire about its progress;
but she was absent from his funeral, which was
attended by but a scanty concourse of mourners.
Half a dozen old Florentine sojourners, in spite of
the prolonged estrangement which had preceded his
death, had felt the kindly impulse to honor his grave.
Among them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I
found, on my departure, waiting at her carriage door
at the gate of the cemetery.
“Well,” she said, relieving at last with a significant
smile the solemnity of our immediate greeting,
“and the great Madonna? Have you seen her, after
all?”
“I 've seen her,” I said; “she 's mine, — by bequest.
But I shall never show her to you.”
“And why not, pray?”
“My dear Mrs. Coventry, you 'd not understand
her!”
“Upon my word, you 're polite.”
“Excuse me; I 'm sad and vexed and bitter.”
And with reprehensible rudeness, I marched away.
I was excessively impatient to leave Florence; my
I had packed my trunk to start for Rome that night,
and meanwhile, to beguile my unrest, I aimlessly
paced the streets. Chance led me at last to the
church of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's
phrase about Michael Angelo, — “He did his
best at a venture,” — I went in and turned my steps
to the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the
sadness of its immortal treasures, I fancied, while I
stood there, that the scene demanded no ampler commentary.
As I passed through the church again to
depart, a woman, turning away from one of the side-altars,
met me face to face. The black shawl depending
from her head draped picturesquely the handsome
visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped as she recognized
me, and I saw that she wished to speak.
Her eye was bright and her ample bosom heaved in
a way that seemed to portend a certain sharpness of
reproach. But the expression of my own face, apparently,
drew the sting from her resentment, and she
addressed me in a tone in which bitterness was tempered
by a sort of dogged resignation. “I know it
was you, now, that separated us,” she said. “It was
a pity he ever brought you to see me! Of course,
you could n't think of me as he did. Well, the Lord
gave him, the Lord has taken him. I 've just paid for
a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you
his head that I was made to live on holy thoughts
and fine phrases? It was his own fancy, and it
pleased him to think so. Did he suffer much?” she
added more softly, after a pause.
“His sufferings were great, but they were short.”
“And did he speak of me?” She had hesitated and
dropped her eyes; she raised them with her question,
and revealed in their sombre stillness a gleam of feminine
confidence which, for the moment, revived and
illumined her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever
name he had given his passion, it was still her fine
eyes that had charmed him.
“Be contented, madam,” I answered, gravely.
She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then
exhaling a full, rich sigh, as she gathered her shawl
together: “He was a magnificent genius!”
I bowed, and we separated.
Passing through a narrow side-street on my way
back to my hotel, I perceived above a doorway a sign
which it seemed to me I had read before. I suddenly
remembered that it was identical with the superscription
of a card that I had carried for an hour in my
waistcoat-pocket. On the threshold stood the ingenious
artist whose claims to public favor were thus distinctly
signalized, smoking a pipe in the evening air,
and giving the finishing polish with a bit of rag to
expressive curl of a couple of tails. He recognized
me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious
bow, and motioned me to enter his studio. I
returned his bow and passed on, vexed with the apparition.
For a week afterwards, whenever I was
seized among the ruins of triumphant Rome with
some peculiarly poignant memory of Theobald's transcendent
illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed
to hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, “Cats and
monkeys, monkeys and cats; all human life is
there!”
| A passionate pilgrim | |