I've
undertaken
a creation!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
This we may see by reading the novels written before
his time. We shall then realize better how new a note his was;
and then in the works of men ten or fifteen years younger we can
see clearly how much there is in their manner directly suggested by
him.
When he began, as a very young man, his first work clearly showed
his bent. His boyhood had been a preparation for detachment and
expression, but it had only emphasized tendencies existing in him
from the first. He was born in 1843, in New York city. Even in his
earliest years he showed an extraordinary love for refinement and
intellectual delicacy. He tells us himself that he used to sit on the
hearth-rug and study Punch, when the other boys were playing their
games. He wanted to know intimately the life which the pictures
of John Leech and the other illustrators suggested to him. They
interested him because it was with character they dealt, and because
their characteristics were intimacy, light irony, and fineness of detail.
When he was only eleven he was able to carry out his hope; and he
spent the next six years — among the most impressionable of a boy's
life - in Italy and England, making still stronger his taste for culture,
for art, for charming tradition of every kind, social and artistic. For
six years more his home was in Newport, and in his own family he
heard always brilliant conversation. His father, Henry James, was
an impassioned and eloquent writer on ethics and religion. William
James, the psychologist, was a brother; and the rest of the family
were all original and expressive talkers. During these years Henry
used often to lock himself in his room all day, taking his meals
there and refusing to be disturbed. At the end of several days he
would show the family a story,- a very bad one at first. When
he was about twenty they began to understand that he had talent.
His unremitting work was giving him the power of expressing more
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HENRY JAMES
as a career.
adequately the things he saw. In 1862 he entered the Harvard Law
School, but studied little law, going instead to listen to lectures of
James Russell Lowell and devoting himself to the study of books.
His first successes in the magazines decided him to trust to literature
In 1869 he went abroad again, and since then has lived
there practically all the time, with Paris at first and then London as
his home, and Italy as his chief visiting-place. There is little to tell
of his life. It is a quiet study of people in society, of books, of art
and places; and the most important results of it are given in an
account of his work. His first novel showed only promise, not very
much skill. This was Watch and Ward, published in 1871. But
after some shorter studies he produced in 1875 (Roderick Hudson,' a
novel hardly inferior to his best later work. It combines forcible
character study with more sentiment than he ever allows himself in
his later books, and with the delicate play of intellectual acuteness
which we associate above all else with Mr. James's work. This book
made prominent at once the two motives which have been dominant
ever since. The first is the contrast between Americans and Euro-
peans. The second is the contrast between the artistic nature on the
one hand, and on the other the absolutely prosaic, inartistic, merely
human type of man. The earlier novels have more simplicity, more
rapid movement, more fun than the later ones. Another point of
Mr. James's art comes out clearly in this first long novel; namely, the
principle that the story should stop with abruptness and incomplete-
ness, like the tale of any man's life broken off without warning on a
certain day. Perhaps the fact that Mr. James has carried on the
story of the heroine of this novel in another, - the only instance of
that practice in his works, — shows an exceptional interest in her; and
he has certainly left no other creation so poetic as Christina Light.
After several more short stories, “The American appeared in 1877.
Besides retaining much of his early charm, this story gives us the
most careful picture of a genuine American which Mr. James has
drawn. Most of his books have Americans in them; but they are
Americans floating in European circles, who have become denational-
ized, or else the crude class set in contrast against the background
of foreign culture. Christopher Newman, however, is a man through
and through, with the native qualities in their most typical form.
Another American character, not less famous, Daisy Miller, is the
heroine of the story of the same name which appeared two years
later. The burlesque element is more marked there. The emphasis
is laid on crudities which are noticeable mainly because they are dif-
ferent from certain things in Europe. Still there is in the story also
something of the same depth of understanding that appears in the
analysis of Christopher Newman; and there is in the character of the
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HENRY JAMES
8073
heroine a power of pathos which Mr. James has not often shown. It
is clearly the most popular of his shorter stories. It was dramatized
four years later, but without success. In the mean time, in 1881,
appeared Washington Square,' a gentle and pleasing study, the scene
of which is laid in New York's old aristocratic neighborhood; and
“The Portrait of a Lady,' one of the most popular of the longer
novels, and containing some of the author's best drawn characters.
Until 1886 less important works appeared; and then came two
long novels, the much discussed Bostonians) and the less read but
more liked Princess Casamassima. ' (The Bostonians) was simple in
construction, with little plot, giving simply a long, careful picture of
three American types. It shows no liking for any one of the char-
acters depicted, but extreme subtlety, and probably as much accuracy
as could be obtained without sympathy. The Princess Casamassima'
is one of the great triumphs of Mr. James's art; and taken with
(Roderick Hudson, to which it is a sort of sequel, it probably gives
a more adequate idea of his art than any other work. In the earlier
story of Christina Light the artistic element and charm are at the
highest; in the later one, the grayer atmosphere is charged with a
power of substantial analysis and construction that he has never sur-
passed. It was in a review of this novel that Mr. Howells first
uttered his earnest appreciation of Mr. James's greatness, his ori-
ginality, and his influence on younger writers. "The Tragic Muse,'
which was published in 1890, is the most complicated of his stories,
the most difficult in structure, and in spite of its great length it is
successful to the end. One of his friends said on reading it, “I will
say it is your best novel if you promise never to do it again ;)
meaning that one step further in the direction of elaboration would
be fatal. The characters in this story are English, and Mr. James
makes them with hardly an exception more charming than he does
his Americans. The warning of his friend has been justified by Mr.
James's own books in the last half-dozen years. His strength has
been given mainly to an attempt to become more dramatic. Several
short comedies were written - and not acted. (The American was
presented without success; and other unsuccessful efforts in connec-
tion with the stage were made, which showed Mr. James's perception
of the fact that the drama must be quicker, more striking, than his
natural method. Toward that end he is working constantly. His
novel “The Other House,' published in 1896, is so condensed in treat-
ment as well as dramatic in plot that it might be put upon the stage
with little change. Few of his admirers ever expected to see a mur-
der in one of Mr. James's books; and yet this last novel, with a plot
that might well be called sensational, is one of his most finished
pieces of art.
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HENRY JAMES
(
To one who believes that the group of long novels is the best
work that Mr. James has done, several reasons present themselves.
He writes a great deal, and many of his themes in the shorter stories
are simply episodes. The ideas over which he has thought longest,
which are large and deeply understood, are in the main saved for the
sustained novels. These seldom indulge in the episode: their march
is continuous, their effect cumulative. Every page is an integral part
of the whole. Of the stories, many of which have simple pictur-
esque motives, this is less true. Their workmanship is less severe.
Another reason for the superiority of the great romances is that
Mr. James's method of accumulation - of fine distinctions, delicate
shades, and few sharp strokes —is in itself less appropriate to the
short story.
Although it is in fiction that he is mainly known, as the subtlest
of American novelists, and the inventor to a large extent of the pres-
ent artistic society novel, yet he is also one of our first essayists.
Early in his literary career he published “Transatlantic Sketches';
and since then have appeared Portraits of Places,' French Poets
and Novelists,' the Biography of Hawthorne, Partial Portraits,
(A Little Tour in France,' and other volumes of essays. There are
few more stimulating guides to thought, few more sincere and just
appreciations, than can be found among his essays; for Mr. James is a
man whose education in life has come largely through books. He is
especially happy in his descriptions of the French masters who have
influenced him. -Turgénieff, Mérimée, De Maupassant, and others, -as
well as some Englishmen with whom he is in sympathy, notably Du
Maurier. A very subtle artist writing about the work of other artists,
he has made such interesting essays that some careful readers put
him even higher as a critic than as a novelist. In both kinds of work
he has taught the same lesson,- the love of the artistic, perfect
finish, — which has been carried by him at least as far as by any
other American prose writer.
The volume called from one of its components (A Passionate Pil-
grim, published in 1875, contains six of Mr. James's earlier sketches.
Among these, The Madonna of the Future, perhaps better than any
other, illustrates at once his artistic delicacy of touch, his sympa-
thetic insight into character, and lastly the powerful impression made
upon his imagination by the art treasures of Italy. This masterpiece
in miniature it is happily possible to present here entire.
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HENRY JAMES
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THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE
From "A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. ? Copyright 1875, by James R.
Osgood & Co. Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , pub-
lishers, Boston.
W*
E 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 didn'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, and had a great stock of reminiscences.
Some one
immediately 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 charm-
ing 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
traveler 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
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HENRY JAMES
a man
Vecchio like some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower
springing from its embattled verge like a mountain pine from
the edge of a cliff. At its base in its projected shadow gleamed
certain dim sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of
the images on the left of the palace door was a magnificent colos-
sus, shining through the dusky air like some embodied Defiance.
In a moment I recognized him as Michael Angelo's David.
turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slen-
der 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 Greek mythology,
but in the memoirs of Bevenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of
these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irre-
pressible commonplace of praise; for as if provoked by my voice,
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 "impres-
sions. ” He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hover-
ing there in this consecrated neighborhood, he might have passed
for the genius of æsthetic hospitality,- if the genius of asthetic
hospitality were not commonly some shabby little custode, flour-
ishing 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
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HENRY JAMES
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C
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 — "I fancy the light of that time rests
upon us here for 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 contempla-
tion, 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 travelers' 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 Ameri-
can! He must have been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously
to heart. «None the less so, I trust," I answered, "if the young
is a sordid New-Yorker. "
New-Yorkers,” he solemnly proclaimed, have been munifi-
cent 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 my-
self. A great brazen note broke suddenly from the far-off sum-
mit of the bell-tower above us, and sounded the first stroke of
(
man
((
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HENRY JAMES
C
midnight. My companion started, apologized for detaining me,
and prepared to retire. But he seemed to offer so lively a prom-
ise 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 fas-
cination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed
with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his American
origin. We are the disinherited 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 con-
stant 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 Flor-
ence 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 opportunity, 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 busi-
ness: 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
>
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HENRY JAMES
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1
>
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 beat-
ing too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought
to my conception! This evening I felt that I couldn'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 that he had taken the lovely
city into his heart. "I 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 my-
self 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 we must hurry. If we work for her, we must often
pause. She can wait ! »
(
(
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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 with-
out 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 contempla-
tion 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 loveli-
ness 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 over-night. But I offered
him my hand with a frankness which assured him I was not a
scoffer.
I knew him by his ardent chevelure; otherwise he was much
altered. His midnight mood was over, and he looked as hag-
gard as an actor by daylight. He was far older than I had
supposed, and he had less bravery of costume and gesture. He
seemed quite the 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 repro-
ductions 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
(
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80$i
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 amus-
ing one,- overflowing with opinions, theories, and sympathies,
with disquisition 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 oppor-
tunity. “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 trivi.
alities 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, skeptical
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 everything but
the best — the best of the best — 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 inclosure 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
XIV—506
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HENRY JAMES
that they are imperfect as show-rooms, and that with their deep-
set windows and their massive moldings 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, them-
selves, almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they
imperfectly reveal. We lingered briefly before many a 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 irrepress-
ible 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 pas-
sionate 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 love and
admire. I don't know in what seeming he 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,
## p. 8083 (#283) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8083
»
((
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 doesn'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 com-
muned 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 vastly
abused, but the thing is good. It's my own 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! Isn'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 musi feel the flame!
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 re-
spects 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 about it
as Ariel above the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael,
but an artist may still be an artist. As I said last night, 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
It says
## p. 8084 (#284) ###########################################
8084
HENRY JAMES
“It may
tears “the result may be less than this; but still it may be
good, it may be great! ” he cried with vehemence.
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 doesn'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 ästhetic needs went hand in hand; and
there was, as I may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, vis-
ible and 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 skepticism. 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, com-
position. 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 gar-
ment of the mother! Think of the great story you compress into
that simple theme! Think, above all, of the mother's face and
its ineffable suggestiveness; of the mingled burden of joy and
## p. 8085 (#285) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8085
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 wouldn'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 oppor-
tunity 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
'
* "I am a painter also,) — Correggio's famous remark on inspecting a col-
lection of paintings.
((
(
## p. 8086 (#286) ###########################################
8086
HENRY JAMES
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 flat-
tered 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 many of these hours among
those early paintings in 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 scat-
tered 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 prodi-
gious 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 shades of his character
as if he had been a creature 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 hadn't a harm-
less 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 asthetic
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 mis-
trust for intellectual discretion and our native relish for sonorous
superlatives. As a critic he was vastly more generous than just;
## p. 8087 (#287) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8087
(
and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,” “tran-
«
scendent,” 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 allus-
ions to his work and circumstances left something dimly ambigu-
ous 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
to make so merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty
had never brought him a penny. His poverty, I suppose, was
his motive for neither inviting me to his lodging nor mention-
ing 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 ad-
vantage 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!
his time. We shall then realize better how new a note his was;
and then in the works of men ten or fifteen years younger we can
see clearly how much there is in their manner directly suggested by
him.
When he began, as a very young man, his first work clearly showed
his bent. His boyhood had been a preparation for detachment and
expression, but it had only emphasized tendencies existing in him
from the first. He was born in 1843, in New York city. Even in his
earliest years he showed an extraordinary love for refinement and
intellectual delicacy. He tells us himself that he used to sit on the
hearth-rug and study Punch, when the other boys were playing their
games. He wanted to know intimately the life which the pictures
of John Leech and the other illustrators suggested to him. They
interested him because it was with character they dealt, and because
their characteristics were intimacy, light irony, and fineness of detail.
When he was only eleven he was able to carry out his hope; and he
spent the next six years — among the most impressionable of a boy's
life - in Italy and England, making still stronger his taste for culture,
for art, for charming tradition of every kind, social and artistic. For
six years more his home was in Newport, and in his own family he
heard always brilliant conversation. His father, Henry James, was
an impassioned and eloquent writer on ethics and religion. William
James, the psychologist, was a brother; and the rest of the family
were all original and expressive talkers. During these years Henry
used often to lock himself in his room all day, taking his meals
there and refusing to be disturbed. At the end of several days he
would show the family a story,- a very bad one at first. When
he was about twenty they began to understand that he had talent.
His unremitting work was giving him the power of expressing more
## p. 8072 (#272) ###########################################
8072
HENRY JAMES
as a career.
adequately the things he saw. In 1862 he entered the Harvard Law
School, but studied little law, going instead to listen to lectures of
James Russell Lowell and devoting himself to the study of books.
His first successes in the magazines decided him to trust to literature
In 1869 he went abroad again, and since then has lived
there practically all the time, with Paris at first and then London as
his home, and Italy as his chief visiting-place. There is little to tell
of his life. It is a quiet study of people in society, of books, of art
and places; and the most important results of it are given in an
account of his work. His first novel showed only promise, not very
much skill. This was Watch and Ward, published in 1871. But
after some shorter studies he produced in 1875 (Roderick Hudson,' a
novel hardly inferior to his best later work. It combines forcible
character study with more sentiment than he ever allows himself in
his later books, and with the delicate play of intellectual acuteness
which we associate above all else with Mr. James's work. This book
made prominent at once the two motives which have been dominant
ever since. The first is the contrast between Americans and Euro-
peans. The second is the contrast between the artistic nature on the
one hand, and on the other the absolutely prosaic, inartistic, merely
human type of man. The earlier novels have more simplicity, more
rapid movement, more fun than the later ones. Another point of
Mr. James's art comes out clearly in this first long novel; namely, the
principle that the story should stop with abruptness and incomplete-
ness, like the tale of any man's life broken off without warning on a
certain day. Perhaps the fact that Mr. James has carried on the
story of the heroine of this novel in another, - the only instance of
that practice in his works, — shows an exceptional interest in her; and
he has certainly left no other creation so poetic as Christina Light.
After several more short stories, “The American appeared in 1877.
Besides retaining much of his early charm, this story gives us the
most careful picture of a genuine American which Mr. James has
drawn. Most of his books have Americans in them; but they are
Americans floating in European circles, who have become denational-
ized, or else the crude class set in contrast against the background
of foreign culture. Christopher Newman, however, is a man through
and through, with the native qualities in their most typical form.
Another American character, not less famous, Daisy Miller, is the
heroine of the story of the same name which appeared two years
later. The burlesque element is more marked there. The emphasis
is laid on crudities which are noticeable mainly because they are dif-
ferent from certain things in Europe. Still there is in the story also
something of the same depth of understanding that appears in the
analysis of Christopher Newman; and there is in the character of the
## p. 8073 (#273) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8073
heroine a power of pathos which Mr. James has not often shown. It
is clearly the most popular of his shorter stories. It was dramatized
four years later, but without success. In the mean time, in 1881,
appeared Washington Square,' a gentle and pleasing study, the scene
of which is laid in New York's old aristocratic neighborhood; and
“The Portrait of a Lady,' one of the most popular of the longer
novels, and containing some of the author's best drawn characters.
Until 1886 less important works appeared; and then came two
long novels, the much discussed Bostonians) and the less read but
more liked Princess Casamassima. ' (The Bostonians) was simple in
construction, with little plot, giving simply a long, careful picture of
three American types. It shows no liking for any one of the char-
acters depicted, but extreme subtlety, and probably as much accuracy
as could be obtained without sympathy. The Princess Casamassima'
is one of the great triumphs of Mr. James's art; and taken with
(Roderick Hudson, to which it is a sort of sequel, it probably gives
a more adequate idea of his art than any other work. In the earlier
story of Christina Light the artistic element and charm are at the
highest; in the later one, the grayer atmosphere is charged with a
power of substantial analysis and construction that he has never sur-
passed. It was in a review of this novel that Mr. Howells first
uttered his earnest appreciation of Mr. James's greatness, his ori-
ginality, and his influence on younger writers. "The Tragic Muse,'
which was published in 1890, is the most complicated of his stories,
the most difficult in structure, and in spite of its great length it is
successful to the end. One of his friends said on reading it, “I will
say it is your best novel if you promise never to do it again ;)
meaning that one step further in the direction of elaboration would
be fatal. The characters in this story are English, and Mr. James
makes them with hardly an exception more charming than he does
his Americans. The warning of his friend has been justified by Mr.
James's own books in the last half-dozen years. His strength has
been given mainly to an attempt to become more dramatic. Several
short comedies were written - and not acted. (The American was
presented without success; and other unsuccessful efforts in connec-
tion with the stage were made, which showed Mr. James's perception
of the fact that the drama must be quicker, more striking, than his
natural method. Toward that end he is working constantly. His
novel “The Other House,' published in 1896, is so condensed in treat-
ment as well as dramatic in plot that it might be put upon the stage
with little change. Few of his admirers ever expected to see a mur-
der in one of Mr. James's books; and yet this last novel, with a plot
that might well be called sensational, is one of his most finished
pieces of art.
## p. 8074 (#274) ###########################################
8074
HENRY JAMES
(
To one who believes that the group of long novels is the best
work that Mr. James has done, several reasons present themselves.
He writes a great deal, and many of his themes in the shorter stories
are simply episodes. The ideas over which he has thought longest,
which are large and deeply understood, are in the main saved for the
sustained novels. These seldom indulge in the episode: their march
is continuous, their effect cumulative. Every page is an integral part
of the whole. Of the stories, many of which have simple pictur-
esque motives, this is less true. Their workmanship is less severe.
Another reason for the superiority of the great romances is that
Mr. James's method of accumulation - of fine distinctions, delicate
shades, and few sharp strokes —is in itself less appropriate to the
short story.
Although it is in fiction that he is mainly known, as the subtlest
of American novelists, and the inventor to a large extent of the pres-
ent artistic society novel, yet he is also one of our first essayists.
Early in his literary career he published “Transatlantic Sketches';
and since then have appeared Portraits of Places,' French Poets
and Novelists,' the Biography of Hawthorne, Partial Portraits,
(A Little Tour in France,' and other volumes of essays. There are
few more stimulating guides to thought, few more sincere and just
appreciations, than can be found among his essays; for Mr. James is a
man whose education in life has come largely through books. He is
especially happy in his descriptions of the French masters who have
influenced him. -Turgénieff, Mérimée, De Maupassant, and others, -as
well as some Englishmen with whom he is in sympathy, notably Du
Maurier. A very subtle artist writing about the work of other artists,
he has made such interesting essays that some careful readers put
him even higher as a critic than as a novelist. In both kinds of work
he has taught the same lesson,- the love of the artistic, perfect
finish, — which has been carried by him at least as far as by any
other American prose writer.
The volume called from one of its components (A Passionate Pil-
grim, published in 1875, contains six of Mr. James's earlier sketches.
Among these, The Madonna of the Future, perhaps better than any
other, illustrates at once his artistic delicacy of touch, his sympa-
thetic insight into character, and lastly the powerful impression made
upon his imagination by the art treasures of Italy. This masterpiece
in miniature it is happily possible to present here entire.
## p. 8075 (#275) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8075
THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE
From "A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. ? Copyright 1875, by James R.
Osgood & Co. Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , pub-
lishers, Boston.
W*
E 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 didn'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, and had a great stock of reminiscences.
Some one
immediately 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 charm-
ing 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
traveler 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
## p. 8076 (#276) ###########################################
8076
HENRY JAMES
a man
Vecchio like some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower
springing from its embattled verge like a mountain pine from
the edge of a cliff. At its base in its projected shadow gleamed
certain dim sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of
the images on the left of the palace door was a magnificent colos-
sus, shining through the dusky air like some embodied Defiance.
In a moment I recognized him as Michael Angelo's David.
turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slen-
der 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 Greek mythology,
but in the memoirs of Bevenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of
these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irre-
pressible commonplace of praise; for as if provoked by my voice,
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 "impres-
sions. ” He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hover-
ing there in this consecrated neighborhood, he might have passed
for the genius of æsthetic hospitality,- if the genius of asthetic
hospitality were not commonly some shabby little custode, flour-
ishing 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
## p. 8077 (#277) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8077
C
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 — "I fancy the light of that time rests
upon us here for 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 contempla-
tion, 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 travelers' 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 Ameri-
can! He must have been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously
to heart. «None the less so, I trust," I answered, "if the young
is a sordid New-Yorker. "
New-Yorkers,” he solemnly proclaimed, have been munifi-
cent 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 my-
self. A great brazen note broke suddenly from the far-off sum-
mit of the bell-tower above us, and sounded the first stroke of
(
man
((
## p. 8078 (#278) ###########################################
8078
HENRY JAMES
C
midnight. My companion started, apologized for detaining me,
and prepared to retire. But he seemed to offer so lively a prom-
ise 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 fas-
cination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed
with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his American
origin. We are the disinherited 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 con-
stant 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 Flor-
ence 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 opportunity, 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 busi-
ness: 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
>
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>
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 beat-
ing too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought
to my conception! This evening I felt that I couldn'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 that he had taken the lovely
city into his heart. "I 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 my-
self 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 we must hurry. If we work for her, we must often
pause. She can wait ! »
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HENRY JAMES
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 with-
out 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 contempla-
tion 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 loveli-
ness 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 over-night. But I offered
him my hand with a frankness which assured him I was not a
scoffer.
I knew him by his ardent chevelure; otherwise he was much
altered. His midnight mood was over, and he looked as hag-
gard as an actor by daylight. He was far older than I had
supposed, and he had less bravery of costume and gesture. He
seemed quite the 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 repro-
ductions 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
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HENRY JAMES
80$i
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 amus-
ing one,- overflowing with opinions, theories, and sympathies,
with disquisition 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 oppor-
tunity. “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 trivi.
alities 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, skeptical
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 everything but
the best — the best of the best — 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 inclosure 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
XIV—506
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## p. 8082 (#282) ###########################################
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HENRY JAMES
that they are imperfect as show-rooms, and that with their deep-
set windows and their massive moldings 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, them-
selves, almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they
imperfectly reveal. We lingered briefly before many a 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 irrepress-
ible 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 pas-
sionate 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 love and
admire. I don't know in what seeming he 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,
## p. 8083 (#283) ###########################################
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((
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 doesn'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 com-
muned 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 vastly
abused, but the thing is good. It's my own 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! Isn'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 musi feel the flame!
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 re-
spects 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 about it
as Ariel above the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael,
but an artist may still be an artist. As I said last night, 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
It says
## p. 8084 (#284) ###########################################
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HENRY JAMES
“It may
tears “the result may be less than this; but still it may be
good, it may be great! ” he cried with vehemence.
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 doesn'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 ästhetic needs went hand in hand; and
there was, as I may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, vis-
ible and 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 skepticism. 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, com-
position. 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 gar-
ment of the mother! Think of the great story you compress into
that simple theme! Think, above all, of the mother's face and
its ineffable suggestiveness; of the mingled burden of joy and
## p. 8085 (#285) ###########################################
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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 wouldn'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 oppor-
tunity 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
'
* "I am a painter also,) — Correggio's famous remark on inspecting a col-
lection of paintings.
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## p. 8086 (#286) ###########################################
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HENRY JAMES
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 flat-
tered 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 many of these hours among
those early paintings in 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 scat-
tered 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 prodi-
gious 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 shades of his character
as if he had been a creature 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 hadn't a harm-
less 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 asthetic
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 mis-
trust for intellectual discretion and our native relish for sonorous
superlatives. As a critic he was vastly more generous than just;
## p. 8087 (#287) ###########################################
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(
and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,” “tran-
«
scendent,” 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 allus-
ions to his work and circumstances left something dimly ambigu-
ous 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
to make so merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty
had never brought him a penny. His poverty, I suppose, was
his motive for neither inviting me to his lodging nor mention-
ing 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 ad-
vantage 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!
