Think of the great story you
compress
into
that simple theme!
that simple theme!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
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
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HENRY JAMES
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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
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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,
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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
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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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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;
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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! 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. Oh, I'm not
idle! Nulla dies sine linca. »
I was introduced in Florence to an American lady whose
drawing-room had long formed an attractive place of reunion
for the foreign residents. She lived 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 con-
versation 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
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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 remark-
able man Mr. Theobald.
«Know him! ” she exclaimed; “know poor Theobald! A11
Florence knows him, — his flame-colored locks, his black-velvet
coat, his interminable harangues on the beautiful, and his won-
drous 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 friend, "has
he made a convert of you? Well, we all 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. Hadn't
he the very hair of Raphael Aowing down on his shoulders ?
The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole, how-
ever; 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,— mys-
terious 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 didn't know the very alphabet of drawing! His strong
point, he intimated, 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 didn't lift his little finger to preserve
At the first hint that we were tired of waiting and that we
us.
## p. 8089 (#289) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8089
should like the show to begin, he was off in a huff. Great work
requires time, contemplation, privacy, mystery! Oye of little
faith! We answered that we didn'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 inécon-
nue, 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
Ask him if he knows me, and
he'll tell you I'm a horribly ugly old woman who has vowed his
destruction because he wouldn'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 his great dark eyes on me with a sub-
limity of indifference, 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
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 buttonhole 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 needn'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 Balzac's, a mere mass of
incoherent scratches and daubs, a jumble of dead paint! ”
nose
(
## p. 8090 (#290) ###########################################
8090
HENRY JAMES
((
)
(
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 men-
dacious little parlor of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos! If
you can't dash off a new picture every three days, 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 over-
look 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* 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 fora 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. Coven-
try's name, that Theobald should go with me the next evening
to the opera, where some rarely played work was to be given.
* 1869.
## p. 8091 (#291) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8091
)
He declined, as I had half expected; for I had observed that he
ilarly kept his evenings in reserve, and never alluded to his
manner of passing them. « You have reminded me before,” I
said 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 Annun-
ziata, 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
(
## p. 8092 (#292) ###########################################
8092
HENRY JAMES
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 grace. Theobald stepped forward, took her hand and
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 gener-
ous 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 ques-
tions 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 ecclesiasti-
cal 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, should
be willing to put such rotten silver thread into 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 glim-
mer 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.
## p. 8093 (#293) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8093
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 car-
riage of her head was admirably free and noble, and the more
effective that their freedom was at monients discreetly corrected
by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonized admirably with
the level gaze of her dark and quiet eye. A strong, serene phys-
ical nature, and the placid temper which comes of no nerves and
no troubles, seemed this lady's comfortable portion.
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
>
-
## p. 8079 (#279) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8079
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 ! »
(
(
## p. 8080 (#280) ###########################################
8080
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
(
## p. 8081 (#281) ###########################################
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
-
-
»
## p. 8082 (#282) ###########################################
8082
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! 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. Oh, I'm not
idle! Nulla dies sine linca. »
I was introduced in Florence to an American lady whose
drawing-room had long formed an attractive place of reunion
for the foreign residents. She lived 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 con-
versation 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
## p. 8088 (#288) ###########################################
8088
HENRY JAMES
>
(
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 remark-
able man Mr. Theobald.
«Know him! ” she exclaimed; “know poor Theobald! A11
Florence knows him, — his flame-colored locks, his black-velvet
coat, his interminable harangues on the beautiful, and his won-
drous 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 friend, "has
he made a convert of you? Well, we all 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. Hadn't
he the very hair of Raphael Aowing down on his shoulders ?
The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole, how-
ever; 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,— mys-
terious 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 didn't know the very alphabet of drawing! His strong
point, he intimated, 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 didn't lift his little finger to preserve
At the first hint that we were tired of waiting and that we
us.
## p. 8089 (#289) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8089
should like the show to begin, he was off in a huff. Great work
requires time, contemplation, privacy, mystery! Oye of little
faith! We answered that we didn'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 inécon-
nue, 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
Ask him if he knows me, and
he'll tell you I'm a horribly ugly old woman who has vowed his
destruction because he wouldn'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 his great dark eyes on me with a sub-
limity of indifference, 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
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 buttonhole 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 needn'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 Balzac's, a mere mass of
incoherent scratches and daubs, a jumble of dead paint! ”
nose
(
## p. 8090 (#290) ###########################################
8090
HENRY JAMES
((
)
(
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 men-
dacious little parlor of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos! If
you can't dash off a new picture every three days, 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 over-
look 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* 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 fora 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. Coven-
try's name, that Theobald should go with me the next evening
to the opera, where some rarely played work was to be given.
* 1869.
## p. 8091 (#291) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8091
)
He declined, as I had half expected; for I had observed that he
ilarly kept his evenings in reserve, and never alluded to his
manner of passing them. « You have reminded me before,” I
said 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 Annun-
ziata, 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
(
## p. 8092 (#292) ###########################################
8092
HENRY JAMES
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 grace. Theobald stepped forward, took her hand and
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 gener-
ous 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 ques-
tions 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 ecclesiasti-
cal 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, should
be willing to put such rotten silver thread into 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 glim-
mer 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.
## p. 8093 (#293) ###########################################
HENRY JAMES
8093
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 car-
riage of her head was admirably free and noble, and the more
effective that their freedom was at monients discreetly corrected
by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonized admirably with
the level gaze of her dark and quiet eye. A strong, serene phys-
ical nature, and the placid temper which comes of no nerves and
no troubles, seemed this lady's comfortable portion.
