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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2460-h.zip b/2460-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8d64323 --- /dev/null +++ b/2460-h.zip diff --git a/2460-h/2460-h.htm b/2460-h/2460-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fd2164 --- /dev/null +++ b/2460-h/2460-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1770 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Madonna of the Future</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Madonna of the Future, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Madonna of the Future, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Madonna of the Future + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2460] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1887 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, proofed by Jennifer Austin.</p> +<h1>THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE<br /> +by Henry James</h1> +<p>We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a single +masterpiece—the artists and poets who but once in their lives +had known the divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection. +Our host had been showing us a charming little cabinet picture by a +painter whose name we had never heard, and who, after this single spasmodic +bid for fame, had apparently relapsed into obscurity and 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 have seen it. I have 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 neighbour over the little picture, he was induced +to tell his tale. If I were to doubt whether it would bear repeating, +I should only have to remember how that charming woman, our hostess, +who had left the table, ventured back in rustling rose-colour to pronounce +our lingering a want of gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, +sank 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 tear in each of her beautiful eyes.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things! (H--- +began). I had arrived late in the evening at Florence, and while +I finished my bottle of wine at supper, had fancied that, tired traveller +though I was, I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going +vulgarly to bed. A narrow passage wandered darkly away out of +the little square before my hotel, and looked as if it bored into the +heart of Florence. I followed it, and at the end of ten minutes +emerged upon a great piazza, filled only with the mild autumn moonlight. +Opposite rose the Palazzo Vecchio, like some huge civic fortress, with +the great bell-tower springing from its embattled verge as 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 +colossus, shining through the dusky air like a sentinel who has taken +the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo’s +<i>David</i>. I turned with a certain relief from his sinister +strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light +loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the +dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; +gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm +the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, +and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs +of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows +to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace of praise, +for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose from the steps of the loggia, +where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed me in good English—a +small, slim personage, clad in a sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), +and with a mass of auburn hair, which gleamed in the moonlight, escaping +from a little mediæval birretta. In a tone of the most insinuating +deference he asked me for my “impressions.” He seemed +picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hovering there in this +consecrated neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius of æsthetic +hospitality—if the genius of æsthetic hospitality were not +commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a calico pocket-handkerchief +and openly resentful of the divided franc. This analogy was made +none the less complete by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted +my embarrassed silence.</p> +<p>“I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her +so lovely as tonight. It’s as if the ghosts of her past +were abroad in the empty streets. The present is sleeping; the +past hovers about us like a dream made visible. Fancy the old +Florentines strolling up in couples to pass judgment on the last performance +of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should come in for a precious lesson +if we might overhear what they say. The plainest burgher of them, +in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the prime +of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal +blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. +We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying +each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it +up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming +greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! +But do you know I fancy—I fancy”—and he grew suddenly +almost familiar in this visionary fervour—“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 realise 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 attention, 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 bang about the piazza and pounce upon innocent +tourists. But tonight, I confess, I am under the charm. +And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!”</p> +<p>“I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand +the term. But pray make no apologies. I am also under the +charm; your eloquent remarks have only deepened it.”</p> +<p>“If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!” +he rejoined, with an expressive smile. “A young man who +arrives at Florence late in the evening, and, instead of going prosaically +to bed, or hanging over the traveller’s 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!”</p> +<p>The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! +He must have been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. +“None the less so, I trust,” I answered, “if the young +man is a sordid New Yorker.”</p> +<p>“New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!” he +answered, urbanely.</p> +<p>For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere +Yankee enterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush +who had posted himself here to extort an “order” from a +sauntering tourist? But I was not called to defend myself. +A great brazen note broke suddenly from the far-off summit of the bell-tower +above us, and sounded the first stroke of midnight. My companion +started, apologised for detaining me, and prepared to retire. +But he seemed to offer so lively a promise of further entertainment +that I was indisposed to part with him, and suggested that we should +stroll homeward together. He cordially assented; so we turned +out of the Piazza, passed down before the statued arcade of the Uffizi, +and came out upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember, +but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches +a sort of moon-touched æsthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled +fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with +a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his American origin.</p> +<p>“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 +power. How should we have them? Our crude and garish climate, +our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about +us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that nourishes and prompts +and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying +so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual exile.”</p> +<p>“You seem fairly at home in exile,” I answered, “and +Florence seems to me a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my +own thought? Nothing is so idle as to talk about our want of a +nutritive soil, of opportunity, of inspiration, and all the rest of +it. The worthy part is to do something fine! There is no +law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create, +achieve! No matter if you have 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!”</p> +<p>“Golden words—golden words, young man!” he cried, +with a tender smile. “‘Invent, create, achieve!’ +Yes, that’s our business; I know it well. Don’t take +me, in Heaven’s name, for one of your barren complainers—impotent +cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am 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 have undertaken +a <i>creation</i>! I am no Moses; I am 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 illustration; “I confess that I am in +one of those moods when great things seem possible! This is one +of my nervous nights—I dream waking! When the south wind +blows over Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul from all the +fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes into +my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating too +deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my conception! +This evening I felt that I couldn’t sleep unless I had communed +with the genius of Buonarotti!”</p> +<p>He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition, and he expatiated +<i>con amore</i> 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!”</p> +<p>“And have you been very productive all this time?” I +asked sympathetically.</p> +<p>He was silent a while before replying. “Not in the vulgar +sense!” he said at last. “I have chosen never to manifest +myself by imperfection. The good in every performance I have re-absorbed +into the generative force of new creations; the bad—there is 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 candour, as if the +proof were to be overwhelming—“I have never sold a picture! +‘At least no merchant traffics in my heart!’ Do you +remember that divine line in Browning? My little studio has never +been profaned by superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It’s +a temple of labour, 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> +<p>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 pictorial haunts of Florence, +and I was gratified without delay. I found him in the course of +the morning in the Tribune of the Uffizi—that little treasure-chamber +of world-famous things. He had turned his back on the Venus de’ +Medici, and with his arms resting on the rail-mug which protects the +pictures, and his head buried in his hands, he was lost in the contemplation +of that superb triptych of Andrea Mantegna—a work which has neither +the material splendour nor the commanding force of some of its neighbours, +but which, glowing there with the loveliness of patient labour, 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 recognised me a deep blush rose to +his face; he fancied, perhaps, that he had made a fool of himself overnight. +But I offered him my hand with a friendliness which assured him I was +not a scoffer. I knew him by his ardent <i>chevelure</i>; otherwise +he was much altered. His midnight mood was over, and he looked +as haggard as an actor by daylight. He was far older than I had +supposed, and he had less bravery of costume and gesture. He seemed +the quiet, poor, patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and the fact +that he had never sold a picture was more obvious than glorious. +His velvet coat was threadbare, and his short slouched hat, of an antique +pattern, revealed a rustiness which marked it an “original,” +and not one of the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his craft +affect. His eye was mild and heavy, and his expression singularly +gentle and acquiescent; the more so for a certain pallid leanness of +visage, which I hardly knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of +genius or to a meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared +his brow and brought back his eloquence.</p> +<p>“And this is your first visit to these enchanted halls?” +he cried. “Happy, thrice happy youth!” And taking +me by the arm, he prepared to lead me to each of the pre-eminent works +in turn and show me the cream of the gallery. But before we left +the Mantegna he pressed my arm and gave it a loving look. “<i>He</i> +was not in a hurry,” he murmured. “He knew nothing +of ‘raw Haste, half-sister to Delay!’” How sound +a critic my friend was I am unable to say, but he was an extremely amusing +one; overflowing with 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 shallow places. At moments, +too, he plunged into the sea of metaphysics, and floundered a while +in waters too deep for intellectual security. But his abounding +knowledge and happy judgment told a touching story of long attentive +hours in this worshipful company; there was a reproach to my wasteful +saunterings in so devoted a culture of opportunity. “There +are two moods,” I remember his saying, “in which we may +walk through galleries—the critical and the ideal. They +seize us at their pleasure, and we can never tell which is to take its +turn. The critical mood, oddly, is the genial one, the friendly, +the condescending. It relishes the pretty trivialities of art, +its vulgar cleverness, its conscious graces. It has a kindly greeting +for anything which looks as if, according to his light, the painter +had enjoyed doing it—for the little Dutch cabbages and kettles, +for the taper fingers and breezy mantles of late-coming Madonnas, for +the little blue-hilled, pastoral, sceptical Italian landscapes. +Then there are the days of fierce, fastidious longing—solemn church +feasts of the intellect—when all vulgar effort and all petty success +is a weariness, and everything but the best—the best of the best—disgusts. +In these hours we are relentless aristocrats of taste. We will +not take Michael Angelo for granted, we will not swallow Raphael whole!”</p> +<p>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 that they are imperfect as show-rooms, and +that, with their deep-set windows and their massive mouldings, it is +rather a broken light that reaches the pictured walls. But here +the masterpieces hang thick, and you seem to see them in a luminous +atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, with their superb +dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid shadow, and the sombre opposite +glow of mellow canvas and dusky gilding, make, themselves, almost as +fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they imperfectly 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 +success and of the irrepressible discord between conception and result, +which shows dimly in so many consummate works. Graceful, human, +near to our sympathies as it is, it has nothing of manner, of method, +nothing, almost, of style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct +with harmony as if it were an immediate exhalation of genius. +The figure melts away the spectator’s mind into a sort of passionate +tenderness which he knows not whether he has given to heavenly purity +or to earthly charm. He is intoxicated with the fragrance of the +tenderest blossom of maternity that ever bloomed on earth.</p> +<p>“That’s what I call a fine picture,” said my companion, +after we had gazed a while in silence. “I have a right to +say so, for I have copied it so often and so carefully that I could +repeat it now with my eyes shut. Other works are of Raphael: this +<i>is</i> 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 a while, +my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think of his +seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy +dream, or 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 labour of the brush went on, while +the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, +fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! +But ah! what a seer!”</p> +<p>“Don’t you imagine,” I answered, “that he +had a model, and that some pretty young woman—”</p> +<p>“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 communed +with it face to face, and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the +purity which completes it as the fragrance 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!”</p> +<p>“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 are all +wrong! Your fine is coarse, your bright is dim, your grace is +<i>gaucherie</i>. This is the way you should have done it!’ +Is not the chance against him?”</p> +<p>He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour +of my sarcasm, he smiled gravely. “Look at that picture,” +he said, “and cease your irreverent mockery! Idealism is +<i>that</i>! There’s no explaining it; one must feel the +flame! It says nothing to Nature, or to any beautiful girl, that +they will not both forgive! It says to the fair woman, ‘Accept +me as your artist friend, lend me your beautiful face, trust me, help +me, and your eyes shall be half my masterpiece!’ No one +so loves and respects the rich realities of nature as the artist whose +imagination caresses and flatters them. He knows what a fact may +hold (whether Raphael knew, you may judge by his portrait, behind us +there, of Tommaso Inghirami); bad his fancy hovers above it, as Ariel +hovered above the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, +bad 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 cultivate the ideal; +round it, smooth it, perfect it. The result—the result,” +(here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed his eyes for a moment +on the picture; when they met my own again they were full of tears)—“the +result may be less than this; but still it may be good, it may be <i>great</i>!” +he cried with vehemence. “It may hang somewhere, in after +years, in goodly company, and keep the artist’s memory warm. +Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion as this! of +hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an altered world; +living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand that are part of +the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations; making +beauty a force and purity an example!”</p> +<p>“Heaven forbid,” I said, smiling, “that I should +take the wind out of your sails! But doesn’t it occur to +you that, besides being strong in his genius, Raphael was happy in a +certain good faith of which we have lost the trick? There are +people, I know, who deny that his spotless Madonnas are anything more +than pretty blondes of that period enhanced by the Raphaelesque touch, +which they declare is a profane touch. Be that as it may, people’s +religious and æsthetic needs went arm in arm, and there was, as +I may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, visible and adorable, which +must have given firmness to the artist’s hand. I am afraid +there is no demand now.”</p> +<p>My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered, as it were, in +this chilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with +sublime confidence—“There is always a demand!” he +cried; “that ineffable type is one of the eternal needs of man’s +heart; but pious souls long for it in silence, almost in shame. +Let it appear, and their faith grows brave. How <i>should</i> +it appear in this corrupt generation? It cannot 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 labour 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, colour, expression, composition. +It can be as simple as you please, and yet as rich; as broad and pure, +and yet as full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh +in the little naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity; of the chance +for drapery in the chaste and ample garment of the mother! think of +the great story you compress into that simple theme! Think, above +all, of the mother’s face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of +the mingled burden of joy and trouble, the tenderness turned to worship, +and the worship turned to far-seeing pity! Then look at it all +in perfect line and lovely colour, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!”</p> +<p>“Anch’ io son pittore!” I cried. “Unless +I am mistaken, you have a masterpiece on the stocks. If you put +all that in, you will do more than Raphael himself did. Let me +know when your picture is finished, and wherever in the wide world I +may be, I will post back to Florence and pay my respects to—the +<i>Madonna of the future</i>!”</p> +<p>He blushed vividly and gave a heavy sigh, half of protest, half of +resignation. “I don’t often mention my picture by +name. 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 have +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 am worthy of respect. Whatever my talents +may be, I am honest. There is nothing grotesque in a pure ambition, +or in a life devoted to it.”</p> +<p>There was something so sternly sincere in his look and tone that +further questions seemed impertinent. I had repeated opportunity +to ask them, however, for after this we spent much time together. +Daily for a fortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights. +He knew the city so well, he had strolled and lounged so often through +its streets and churches and galleries, he was so deeply versed in its +greater and lesser memories, so imbued with the local genius, that he +was an altogether ideal <i>valet de place</i>, 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 is the sole perfect lady of them all; one feels +towards her as a lad in his teens feels to some beautiful older woman +with a ‘history.’ She fills you with a sort of aspiring +gallantry.” This disinterested passion seemed to stand my +friend in stead of the common social ties; he led a lonely life, and +cared for nothing but his work. I was duly flattered by his having +taken my frivolous self into his favour, and by his generous sacrifice +of precious hours 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 savour more precious than +the full-fruited knowledge of the later works. We lingered often +in the sepulchral chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo’s +dim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful Genius of Doubt and +brooding behind his eternal mask upon the mysteries of life. We +stood more than once in the little convent chambers where Fra Angelico +wrought as if an angel indeed had held his hand, and gathered that sense +of scattered dews and early bird-notes which makes an hour among his +relics seem like a morning stroll in some monkish garden. We did +all this and much more—wandered into dark chapels, damp courts, +and dusty palace-rooms, in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking +treasures of carving.</p> +<p>I was more and more impressed with my companion’s remarkable +singleness of purpose. Everything was a pretext for some wildly +idealistic rhapsody or reverie. Nothing could be seen or said +that did not lead him sooner or later to 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 had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me +greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but, +after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than +this high æsthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion +was a sign of conversion; those born to European opportunity manage +better to reconcile enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, +all our native mistrust for intellectual discretion, and our native +relish for sonorous superlatives. As a critic he was very much +more generous than just, and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,” +“transcendent,” and “incomparable.” The +small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for a gentleman to +handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was personally altogether +a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half-professions, +and his allusions to his work and circumstances left something dimly +ambiguous in the background. He was modest and proud, and never +spoke of his domestic matters. He was evidently poor; yet he must +have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make so +merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty had never brought +him a penny. His poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither +inviting me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts. We +met either in some public place or at my hotel, where I entertained +him as freely as I might without appearing to be prompted by charity. +He seemed always hungry, and this was his nearest approach to human +grossness. I made a point of asking no impertinent questions, +but, each time we met, I ventured to make some respectful allusion to +the <i>magnum opus</i>, to inquire, as it were, as to its health and +progress. “We are getting on, with the Lord’s help,” +he would say, with a grave smile. “We are doing well. +You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time. These +hours I spend with you are pure profit. They are <i>suggestive</i>! +Just as the truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine artist +is always in labour. 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 colour, or relief! +When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the lap of toy Madonna. +Oh, I am not idle! <i>Nulla dies sine linea</i>.”</p> +<p>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 conversation had mainly an æsthetic +flavour, for Mrs. Coventry was famously “artistic.” +Her apartment was a sort of Pitti Palace <i>au petit pied</i>. +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 drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded by these +treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and +little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded backgrounds, +our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the arts. +She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the Madonna della +Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her whether +she knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald.</p> +<p>“Know him!” she exclaimed; “know poor Theobald! +All Florence knows him, his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, +his interminable harangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna +that mortal eye has never seen, and that mortal patience has quite given +up expecting.”</p> +<p>“Really,” I cried, “you don’t believe in +his Madonna?”</p> +<p>“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 the +poor dear United States were to have the credit of him. Hadn’t +he the very hair of Raphael flowing down on his shoulders? The +hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole, however; +we hung upon his lips and proclaimed his genius on the house-tops. +The women were all dying to sit to him for their portraits and be made +immortal, like Leonardo’s Joconde. We decided that his manner +was a good deal like Leonardo’s—mysterious, and inscrutable, +and fascinating. Mysterious it certainly was; mystery was the +beginning and the end of it. The months passed by, and the miracle +hung fire; our master never produced his masterpiece. He passed +hours in the galleries and churches, posturing, musing, and gazing; +he talked more than ever about the beautiful, but he never put brush +to canvas. We had all subscribed, as it were, to the great performance; +but as it never came off people began to ask for their money again. +I was one of the last of the faithful; I carried devotion so far as +to sit to him for my head. If you could have seen the horrible +creature he made of me, you would admit that even a woman with no more +vanity than will tie her bonnet straight must have cooled off then. +The man 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 us. +At the first hint that we were tired of waiting, and that we should +like the show to begin, he was off in a huff. ‘Great work +requires time, contemplation, privacy, mystery! O ye of little +faith!’ We answered that we 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 <i>lever de rideau</i>. Hereupon the poor man took his +stand as a genius misconceived and persecuted, an <i>âme méconnue</i>, +and washed his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does +me the honour to consider me the head and front of the conspiracy formed +to nip his glory in the bud—a bud that has taken twenty years +to blossom. Ask him if he knows me, and he will tell you I am +a horribly ugly old woman, who has vowed his destruction because he +won’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 +is still in labour; I have 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 sublimity 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 <i>résumé</i> +of all the other Madonnas of the Italian school—like that antique +Venus who borrowed a nose from one great image and an ankle from another. +It’s certainly a masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but +when I think of my unhappy portrait I tremble for the whole. He +has communicated this striking idea under the pledge of solemn secrecy +to fifty chosen spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button-hole +for five minutes. I suppose he wants to get an order for it, and +he is not to blame; for Heaven knows how he lives. I see by your +blush,” my hostess frankly continued, “that you have been +honoured 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 have 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!”</p> +<p>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 not only a clever woman, +but 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 <i>your</i> 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 band teacups in that horrible mendacious little +parlour 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 that you are an impostor!”</p> +<p>This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry’s accuracy was made +in the course of a late afternoon walk to the quiet old church of San +Miniato, on one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city, from +whose gates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered walk, +which seems a very 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 flora of its +own, down to the full domes and slender towers of Florence and over +to the blue sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into whose hollow +the little treasure city has been dropped. I had proposed, as +a diversion from the painful memories evoked by Mrs. Coventry’s +name, that Theobald should go with me the next evening to the opera, +where some rarely-played work was to be given. He declined, as +I half expected, for I observed that he regularly 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 anyone. I pass my days in my studio, On +Sunday I go to the Annunziata or to Santa Mario; 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 are so happy, it’s certainly better than trying to +find a charm in a third-rate prima donna.”</p> +<p>He made no immediate response, but at last he turned to me solemnly. +“Can you look upon a beautiful woman with reverent eyes?”</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>“Upon my word,” I cried, “you are extremely fortunate, +and that is a most attractive description.”</p> +<p>“This woman’s beauty,” he went on, “is a +lesson, a morality, a poem! It’s my daily study.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 loftily exalted above the line of +common vision as his artistic ideal was lifted above the usual practice +of men. 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.</p> +<p>“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 curtsey, and a +request to be seated.</p> +<p>The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of a generous Italian +type and of a great simplicity of demeanour. Seated again at her +lamp, with her embroidery, she seemed to have nothing whatever to say. +Theobald, bending towards her in a sort of Platonic ecstasy, asked her +a dozen paternally tender questions as to her health, her state of mind, +her occupations, and the progress of her embroidery, which he examined +minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some portion of an +ecclesiastical vestment—yellow satin wrought with an elaborate +design of silver and gold. She made answer in a full rich voice, +but with a brevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to native +reserve or to the profane constraint of my presence. She had been +that morning to confession; she had also been to market, and had bought +a chicken for dinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to +complain of except that the people for whom she was making her vestment, +and who furnished her materials, 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 glimmer of an attempt to establish an understanding with me +at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile, as mindful as possible +of Theobald’s injunction of reverence, I considered the lady’s +personal claims to the fine compliment he had paid her.</p> +<p>That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived, after recovering +from the surprise of finding her without the freshness of youth. +Her beauty was of a sort which, in losing youth, loses little of its +essential charm, expressed for the most part as it was in form and structure, +and, as Theobald would have said, in “composition.” +She was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. +Her thick brown hair hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to +drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal as the veil of a +nun. The poise and carriage of her head were admirably free and +noble, and they were the more effective that their freedom was at moments +discreetly corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonised +admirably with the level gaze of her dark and quiet eye. A strong, +serene, physical nature, and the placid temper which comes of no nerves +and no troubles, seemed this lady’s comfortable portion. +She was dressed in plain dull black, save for a sort of dark blue kerchief +which was folded across her bosom and exposed a glimpse of her massive +throat. Over this kerchief was suspended a little silver cross. +I admired her greatly, and yet with a large reserve. A certain +mild intellectual apathy belonged properly to her type of beauty, and +had always seemed to round and enrich it; but this <i>bourgeoise</i> +Egeria, if I viewed her right, betrayed a rather vulgar stagnation of +mind. There might have been once a dim spiritual light in her +face; but it had long since begun to wane. And furthermore, in +plain prose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted +very nearly to complete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate +my covert inspection, declaring that the lamp was very dim, and that +she would ruin her eyes without more light, rose and fetched a couple +of candles from the mantelpiece, which he placed lighted on the table. +In this brighter illumination I perceived that our hostess was decidedly +an elderly woman. She was neither haggard, nor worn, nor gray; +she was simply coarse. The “soul” which Theobald had +promised seemed scarcely worth making such a point of; it was no deeper +mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of lip and brow. I should +have been ready even to declare that that sanctified bend of the head +was nothing more than the trick of a person constantly working at embroidery. +It occurred to me even that it was a trick of a less innocent sort; +for, in spite of the mellow quietude of her wits, this stately needlewoman +dropped a hint that she took the situation rather less seriously than +her friend. When he rose to light the candles she looked across +at me with a quick, intelligent smile, and tapped her forehead with +her forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling of compassionate loyalty +to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank face, she gave a little shrug +and resumed her work.</p> +<p>What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most +ardent of friends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard +him as an eccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty +she was not ill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb +into her little parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her +decent and sombre dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of +priestly needlework, she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, +living by special permission outside her convent walls. Or was +she maintained here aloft by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that +he might have before him the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and +untarnished by the struggle for existence? Her shapely hands, +I observed, wore very fair and white; they lacked the traces of what +is called honest toil.</p> +<p>“And the pictures, how do they come on?” she asked of +Theobald, after a long pause.</p> +<p>“Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy +and encouragement give me new faith and ardour.”</p> +<p>Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment rather inscrutably, +and then tapping her forehead with the gesture she had used a minute +before, “He has a magnificent genius!” she said, with perfect +gravity.</p> +<p>“I am inclined to think so,” I answered, with a smile.</p> +<p>“Eh, why do you smile?” she cried. “If you +doubt it, you must see the <i>bambino</i>!” And she took +the lamp and conducted me to the other side of the room, where on the +wall, in a plain black frame, hung a large drawing in red chalk. +Beneath it was fastened a little howl for holy water. The drawing +represented a very young child, entirely naked, half nestling back against +his mother’s gown, but with his two little arms outstretched, +as if in the act of benediction. It was executed with singular +freedom and power, and yet seemed vivid with the sacred bloom of infancy. +A sort of dimpled elegance and grace, mingled with its boldness, recalled +the touch of Correggio. “That’s what he can do!” +said my hostess. “It’s the blessed little boy whom +I lost. It’s his very image, and the Signor Teobaldo gave +it me as a gift. He has given me many things besides!”</p> +<p>I looked at the picture for some time and admired it immensely. +Turning back to Theobald I assured him that if it were hung among the +drawings in the Uffizi and labelled with a glorious name it would hold +its own. My praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure; he pressed +my hands, and his eyes filled with tears. It moved him apparently +with the desire to expatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose +and made his adieux to our companion, kissing her band with the same +mild ardour as before. It occurred to me that the offer of a similar +piece of gallantry on my own part might help me to know what manner +of woman she was. When she perceived my intention she withdrew +her hand, dropped her eyes solemnly, and made me a severe curtsey. +Theobald took my arm and led me rapidly into the street.</p> +<p>“And what do you think of the divine Serafina?” he cried +with fervour.</p> +<p>“It is certainly an excellent style of good looks!” I +answered.</p> +<p>He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed hurried along by the +current of remembrance. “You should have seen the mother +and the child together, seen them as I first saw them—the mother +with her head draped in a shawl, a divine trouble in her face, and the +bambino pressed to her bosom. You would have said, I think, that +Raphael had found his match in common chance. I was coming in, +one summer night, from a long walk in the country, when I met this apparition +at the city gate. The woman held out her hand. I hardly +knew whether to say, ‘What do you want?’ or to fall down +and worship. She asked for a little money. I saw that she +was beautiful and pale; she might have stepped out of the stable of +Bethlehem! I gave her money and helped her on her way into the +town. I had guessed her story. She, too, was a maiden mother, +and she had been turned out into the world in her shame. I felt +in all my pulses that here was my subject marvellously realised. +I felt like one of the old monkish artists who had had a vision. +I rescued the poor creatures, cherished them, watched them as I would +have done some precious work of art, some lovely fragment of fresco +discovered in a mouldering cloister. In a month—as if to +deepen and sanctify the sadness and sweetness of it all—the poor +little child died. When she felt that he was going she held him +up to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You saw a feverish +haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to spare the poor little mortal the +pain of his position. After that I doubly valued the mother. +She is the simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that ever bloomed +in this brave old land of Italy. She lives in the memory of her +child, in her gratitude for the scanty kindness I have been able to +show her, and in her simple religion! She is not even conscious +of her beauty; my admiration has never made her vain. Heaven knows +that I have made no secret of it. You must have observed the singular +transparency of her expression, the lovely modesty of her glance. +And was there ever such a truly virginal brow, such a natural classic +elegance in the wave of the hair and the arch of the forehead? +I have studied her; I may say I know her. I have absorbed her +little by little; my mind is stamped and imbued, and I have determined +now to clinch the impression; I shall at last invite her to sit for +me!”</p> +<p>“‘At last—at last’?” I repeated, in +much amazement. “Do you mean that she has never done so +yet?”</p> +<p>“I have not really had—a—a sitting,” said +Theobald, speaking very slowly. “I have taken notes, you +know; I have got my grand fundamental impression. That’s +the great thing! But I have not actually had her as a model, posed +and draped and lighted, before my easel.”</p> +<p>What had become for the moment of my perception and my tact I am +at a loss to say; in their absence I was unable to repress a headlong +exclamation. I was destined to regret it. We had stopped +at a turning, beneath a lamp. “My poor friend,” I +exclaimed, laying my hand on his shoulder, “you have <i>dawdled</i>! +She’s an old, old woman—for a Madonna!”</p> +<p>It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the +long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me.</p> +<p>“Dawdled?—old, old?” he stammered. “Are +you joking?”</p> +<p>“Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don’t take her for +a woman of twenty?”</p> +<p>He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me with +questioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting forward, +and grasping my arm—“Answer me solemnly: does she seem to +you truly old? Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?”</p> +<p>Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one +by one, the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in +charmed inaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. +It seemed to me almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. +“I should be sorry to say you are blind,” I answered, “but +I think you are deceived. You have lost time in effortless contemplation. +Your friend was once young and fresh and virginal; but, I protest, that +was some years ago. Still, she has <i>de beaux restes</i>. +By all means make her sit for you!” I broke down; his face was +too horribly reproachful.</p> +<p>He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically +over his forehead. “<i>De beaux restes</i>? I thank +you for sparing me the plain English. I must make up my Madonna +out of <i>de beaux restes</i>! What a masterpiece she will be! +Old—old! Old—old!” he murmured.</p> +<p>“Never mind her age,” I cried, revolted at what I had +done, “never mind my impression of her! You have your memory, +your notes, your genius. Finish your picture in a month. +I pronounce it beforehand a masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for +it any sum you may choose to ask.”</p> +<p>He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. “Old—old!” +he kept stupidly repeating. “If she is old, what am I? +If her beauty has faded, where—where is my strength? Has +life been a dream? Have I worshipped too long—have I loved +too well?” The charm, in truth, was broken. That the +chord of illusion should have snapped at my light accidental touch showed +how it had been weakened by excessive tension. The poor fellow’s +sense of wasted time, of vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon +his soul in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head and +burst into tears.</p> +<p>I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted +neither to check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay +the hard truth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him +to come so.</p> +<p>“We will drink a glass of wine,” I said, smiling, “to +the completion of the Madonna.”</p> +<p>With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with +a formidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, “I will +finish it,” he cried, “in a month! No, in a fortnight! +After all, I have it <i>here</i>!” And he tapped his forehead. +“Of course she’s old! She can afford to have it said +of her—a woman who has made twenty years pass like a twelvemonth! +Old—old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!”</p> +<p>I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he waved me back +and walked away with an air of resolution, whistling and swinging his +cane. I waited a moment, and then followed him at a distance, +and saw him proceed to cross the Santa Trinità Bridge. +When he reached the middle he suddenly paused, as if his strength had +deserted him, and leaned upon the parapet gazing over into the river. +I was careful to keep him in sight; I confess that I passed ten very +nervous minutes. He recovered himself at last, and went his way, +slowly and with hanging head.</p> +<p>That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his +long-garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort +and hazard of production, seemed at first reason enough for his continued +silence and absence; but as day followed day without his either calling +or sending me a line, and without my meeting him in his customary haunts, +in the galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between +the Arno side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which, along the +drive of the Cascine, throws the fair occupants of barouche and phaeton +into such becoming relief—as for more than a week I got neither +tidings nor sight of him, I began to fear that I had fatally offended +him, and that, instead of giving a wholesome impetus to his talent, +I had brutally paralysed it. I had a wretched suspicion that I +had made him ill. My stay at Florence was drawing to a close, +and it was important that, before resuming my journey, I should assure +myself of the truth. Theobald, to the last, had kept his lodging +a mystery, and I was altogether at a loss where to look for him. +The simplest course was to make inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato +Vecchio, and I confess that unsatisfied curiosity as to the lady herself +counselled it as well. Perhaps I had done her injustice, and she +was as immortally fresh and fair as be conceived her. I was, at +any rate, anxious to behold once more the ripe enchantress who had made +twenty years pass as a twelvemonth. I repaired accordingly, one +morning, to her abode, climbed the interminable staircase, and reached +her door. It stood ajar, and as I hesitated whether to enter, +a little serving-maid came clattering out with an empty kettle, as if +she had just performed some savoury errand. The inner door, too, +was open; so I crossed the little vestibule and entered the room in +which I had formerly been received. It had not its evening aspect. +The table, or one end of it, was spread for a late breakfast, and before +it sat a gentleman—an individual, at least, of the male sex—doing +execution upon a beefsteak and onions, and a bottle of wine. At +his elbow, in friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the house. +Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress. With +one hand she held in her lap a plate of smoking maccaroni; with the +other she had lifted high in air one of the pendulous filaments of this +succulent compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently down her +throat. On the uncovered end of the table, facing her companion, +were ranged half a dozen small statuettes, of some snuff-coloured substance +resembling terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardour, +was apparently descanting on their merits.</p> +<p>Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped liner maccaroni—into +her mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a flushed face. +I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina’s secret was +even better worth knowing than I had supposed, and that the way to learn +it was to take it for granted. I summoned my best Italian, I smiled +and bowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a moment, whether +or no I had dispelled the lady’s irritation, I had at least stimulated +her prudence. I was welcome, she said; I must take a seat. +This was another friend of hers—also an artist, she declared with +a smile which was almost amiable. Her companion wiped his moustache +and bowed with great civility. I saw at a glance that he was equal +to the situation. He was presumably the author of the statuettes +on the table, and he knew a money-spending <i>forestiére</i> +when he saw one. He was a small wiry man, with a clever, impudent, +tossed-up nose, a sharp little black eye, and waxed ends to his moustache. +On the side of his head he wore jauntily a little crimson velvet smoking-cap, +and I observed that his feet were encased in brilliant slippers. +On Serafina’s remarking with dignity that I was the friend of +Mr. Theobald, he broke out into that fantastic French of which certain +Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with fervour that Mr. +Theobald was a magnificent genius.</p> +<p>“I am sure I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug. +“If you are in a position to affirm it, you have the advantage +of me. I have seen nothing from his hand but the bambino yonder, +which certainly is fine.”</p> +<p>He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a pure Corregio. +It was only a pity, he added with a knowing laugh, that the sketch had +not been made on some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately +Serafina hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was the soul of honour, +and that he would never lend himself to a deceit. “I am +not a judge of genius,” she said, “and I know nothing of +pictures. I am but a poor simple widow; but I know that the Signor +Teobaldo has the heart of an angel and the virtue of a saint. +He is my benefactor,” she added sententiously. The after-glow +of the somewhat sinister flush with which she had greeted me still lingered +in her cheek, and perhaps did not favour her beauty; I could not but +fancy it a wise custom of Theobald’s to visit her only by candle-light. +She was coarse, and her pour adorer was a poet.</p> +<p>“I have the greatest esteem for him,” I said; “it +is for this reason that I have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten +days. Have you seen him? Is he perhaps ill?”</p> +<p>“Ill! Heaven forbid!” cried Serafina, with genuine +vehemence.</p> +<p>Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with +not having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered +the least bit and bridled. “He comes to see me—without +reproach! But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, +indeed, you may almost call him a man of holy life.”</p> +<p>“He has the greatest admiration for you,” I said. +“He would have been honoured by your visit.”</p> +<p>She looked at me a moment sharply. “More admiration than +you. Admit that!” Of course I protested with all the +eloquence at my command, and my mysterious hostess then confessed that +she had taken no fancy to me on my former visit, and that, Theobald +not having returned, she believed I had poisoned his mind against her. +“It would be no kindness to the poor gentleman, I can tell you +that,” she said. “He has come to see me every evening +for years. It’s a long friendship! No one knows him +as well as I.”</p> +<p>“I don’t pretend to know him or to understand him,” +I said. “He’s a mystery! Nevertheless, he seems +to me a little—” And I touched my forehead and waved +my hand in the air.</p> +<p>Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. +He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he filled his glass +again. The <i>padrona</i> hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating +smile than would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. +“It’s for that that I love him!” she said. “The +world has so little kindness for such persons. It laughs at them, +and despises them, and cheats them. He is too good for this wicked +life! It’s his fancy that he finds a little Paradise up +here in my poor apartment. If he thinks so, how can I help it? +He has a strange belief—really, I ought to be ashamed to tell +you—that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven forgive me! +I let him think what he pleases, so long as it makes him happy. +He was very kind to me once, and I am not one that forgets a favour. +So I receive him every evening civilly, and ask after his health, and +let him look at me on this side and that! For that matter, I may +say it without vanity, I was worth looking at once! And he’s +not always amusing, poor man! He sits sometimes for an hour without +speaking a word, or else he talks away, without stopping, on art and +nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty fine things that are all so much +Latin to me. I beg you to understand that he has never said a +word to me that I mightn’t decently listen to. He may be +a little cracked, but he’s one of the blessed saints.”</p> +<p>“Eh!” cried the man, “the blessed saints were all +a little cracked!”</p> +<p>Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but she told +enough of it to make poor Theobald’s own statement seem intensely +pathetic in its exalted simplicity. “It’s a strange +fortune, certainly,” she went on, “to have such a friend +as this dear man—a friend who is less than a lover and more than +a friend.” I glanced at her companion, who preserved an +impenetrable smile, twisted the end of his moustache, and disposed of +a copious mouthful. Was <i>he</i> less than a lover? “But +what will you have?” Serafina pursued. “In this hard +world one must not ask too many questions; one must take what comes +and keep what one gets. I have kept my good friend for twenty +years, and I do hope that, at this time of day, signore, you have not +come to turn him against me!”</p> +<p>I assured her that I had no such design, and that I should vastly +regret disturbing Mr. Theobald’s habits or convictions. +On the contrary, I was alarmed about him, and I should immediately go +in search of him. She gave me his address, and a florid account +of her sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been to him +for various reasons; chiefly because she was afraid of displeasing him, +as he had always made such a mystery of his home. “You might +have sent this gentleman!” I ventured to suggest.</p> +<p>“Ah,” cried the gentleman, “he admires the Signora +Serafina, but he wouldn’t admire me.” And then, confidentially, +with his finger on his nose, “He’s a purist!”</p> +<p>I was about to withdraw, after having promised that I would inform +the Signora Serafina of my friend’s condition, when her companion, +who had risen from table and girded his loins apparently for the onset, +grasped me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of statuettes. +“I perceive by your conversation, signore, that you are a patron +of the arts. Allow me to request your honourable attention for +these modest products of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, +fresh from my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public. +I have brought them here to receive the verdict of this dear lady, who +is a good critic, for all she may pretend to the contrary. I am +the inventor of this peculiar style of statuette—of subject, manner, +material, everything. Touch them, I pray you; handle them freely—you +needn’t fear. Delicate as they look, it is impossible they +should break! My various creations have met with great success. +They are especially admired by Americans. I have sent them all +over Europe—to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed +some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which +they constitute the specialty. There is always a crowd about the +window. They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf +of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You +couldn’t make a prettier present to a person with whom you wished +to exchange a harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of +course; but, between ourselves, isn’t classic art sometimes rather +a bore? Caricature, burlesque, <i>la charge</i>, as the French +say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. +Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce it into statuary. +For this purpose I have invented a peculiar plastic compound which you +will permit me not to divulge. That’s my secret, signore! +It’s as light, you perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! +I frankly confess that I really pride myself as much on this little +stroke of chemical ingenuity as upon the other element of novelty in +my creations—my types. What do you say to my types, signore? +The idea is bold; does it strike you as happy? Cats and monkeys—monkeys +and cats—all human life is there! Human life, of course, +I mean, viewed with the eye of the satirist! To combine sculpture +and satire, signore, has been my unprecedented ambition. I flatter +myself that I have not egregiously failed.”</p> +<p>As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of +his persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively +from the table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with +his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. +They consisted each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in +some preposterously sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a +certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly the different phases +of what, in delicate terms, may be called gallantry and coquetry; but +they were strikingly clever and expressive, and were at once very perfect +cats and monkeys and very natural men and women. I confess, however, +that they failed to amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to +enjoy them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and vulgar. +Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I looked askance at +the complacent little artist, brandishing them between finger and thumb +and caressing them with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself little +more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered an admiring +grin, however, and he blew another blast. “My figures are +studied from life! I have a little menagerie of monkeys whose +frolics I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has only +to look out of one’s back window! Since I have begun to +examine these expressive little brutes, I have made many profound observations. +Speaking, signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my little +designs are not without a philosophy of their own. Truly, I don’t +know whether the cats and monkeys imitate us, or whether it’s +we who imitate them.” I congratulated him on his philosophy, +and he resumed: “You will do use the honour to admit that I have +handled my subjects with delicacy. Eh, it was needed, signore! +I have been free, but not too free—eh? Just a hint, you +know! You may see as much or as little as you please. These +little groups, however, are no measure of my invention. If you +will favour me with a call at my studio, I think that you will admit +that my combinations are really infinite. I likewise execute figures +to command. You have perhaps some little motive—the fruit +of your philosophy of life, signore—which you would like to have +interpreted. I can promise to work it up to your satisfaction; +it shall be as malicious as you please! Allow me to present you +with my card, and to remind you that my prices are moderate. Only +sixty francs for a little group like that. My statuettes are as +durable as bronze—<i>ære perennius</i>, signore—and, +between ourselves, I think they are more amusing!”</p> +<p>As I pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether +she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little +couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom.</p> +<p>What I had just seen and heard had so deepened my compassionate interest +in my deluded friend that I took a summary leave, making my way directly +to the house designated by this remarkable woman. It was in an +obscure corner of the opposite side of the town, and presented a sombre +and squalid appearance. An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring +for Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and an expression +of relief at the poor gentleman having a friend. His lodging seemed +to consist of a single room at the top of the house. On getting +no answer to my knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent, +so that it gave me a certain shock to find him sitting there helpless +and dumb. He was seated near the single window, facing an easel +which supported a large canvas. On my entering he looked up at +me blankly, without changing his position, which was that of absolute +lassitude and dejection, his arms loosely folded, his legs stretched +before him, his head hanging on his breast. Advancing into the +room I perceived that his face vividly corresponded with his attitude. +He was pale, haggard, and unshaven, and his dull and sunken eye gazed +at me without a spark of recognition. I had been afraid that he +would greet me with fierce reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron +who had turned his contentment to bitterness, and I was relieved to +find that my appearance awakened no visible resentment. “Don’t +you know me?” I asked, as I put out my hand. “Have +you already forgotten me?”</p> +<p>He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staring +about the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, +sordid, naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest +provision for personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and studio—a +grim ghost of a studio. A few dusty casts and prints on the walls, +three or four old canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking colour-box, +formed, with the easel at the window, the sum of its appurtenances. +The place savoured horribly of poverty. Its only wealth was the +picture on the easel, presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as +this was from the door, I was unable to see its face; but at last, sickened +by the vacant misery of the spot, I passed behind Theobald, eagerly +and tenderly. I can hardly say that I was surprised at what I +found—a canvas that was a mere dead blank, cracked and discoloured +by time. This was his immortal work! Though not surprised, +I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that for five minutes +I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my silent nearness +affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked at me +with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind ineffective nothings +about his being ill and needing advice and care, but he seemed absorbed +in the effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between us. +“You were right,” he said, with a pitiful smile, “I +am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in +this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, +I bear you no grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for +a week, face to face with the truth, with the past, with my weakness +and poverty and nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I +believe I have neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!” +he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgent request that he would +come home with me and dine. “That was to have contained +my masterpiece! Isn’t it a promising foundation? The +elements of it are all <i>here</i>.” And he tapped his forehead +with that mystic confidence which had marked the gesture before. +“If I could only transpose them into some brain that has the hand, +the will! Since I have been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, +I have come to believe that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. +But my hand is paralysed now, and they will never be painted. +I never began! I waited and waited to be worthier to begin, and +wasted my life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was +growing it was dying. I have taken it all too hard! Michael +Angelo didn’t, when he went at the Lorenzo! He did his best +at a venture, and his venture is immortal. <i>That’s</i> +mine!” And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget +at the empty canvas. “I suppose we are a genus by ourselves +in the providential scheme—we talents that can’t act, that +can’t do nor dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and +promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let me tell you,” +he cried, with a toss of his head, “have a way of being brilliant, +and a man has not lived in vain who has seen the things I have seen! +Of course you will not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth +is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and +astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain +I already have. A pity, you will say, that I haven’t his +modesty! Ah, let me boast and babble now; it’s all I have +left! I am the half of a genius! Where in the wide world +is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, +ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan, who turns +out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But it’s not +for me to sneer at him; he at least does something. He’s +not a dawdler! Well for me if I had been vulgar and clever and +reckless, if I could have shut my eyes and taken my leap.”</p> +<p>What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to +determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present +inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little room +it was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded +him to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when +we began to walk in the open air I was able to appreciate his pitifully +weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to +revive, and murmured at last that he should like to go to the Pitti +Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those +gorgeous halls, every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own +sympathetic vision, to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength +and lustre. The eyes and lips of the great portraits appeared +to smile in ineffable scorn of the dejected pretender who had dreamed +of competing with their triumphant authors; the celestial candour, even, +of the Madonna of the Chair, as we paused in perfect silence before +her, was tinged with the sinister irony of the women of Leonardo. +Perfect silence, indeed, marked our whole progress—the silence +of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my pulses, as Theobald, leaning +on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after the other, that he was looking +his last. When we came out he was so exhausted that instead of +taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a carriage and drove him straight +to his own poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary lethargy; +he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes closed, as pale as death, +his faint breathing interrupted at intervals by a sudden gasp, like +a smothered sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of the +old woman who had admitted me before, and who emerged from a dark back +court, I contrived to lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him +on his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge, while I prepared +in all haste to seek a physician. But she followed me out of the +room with a pitiful clasping of her hands.</p> +<p>“Poor, dear, blessed gentleman,” she murmured; “is +he dying?”</p> +<p>“Possibly. How long has he been thus?”</p> +<p>“Since a certain night he passed ten days ago. I came +up in the morning to make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in +his clothes before that great canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, +strange man, he says his prayers to it! He had not been to bed, +nor since then, properly! What has happened to him? Has +he found out about the Serafina?” she whispered, with a glittering +eye and a toothless grin.</p> +<p>“Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful,” +I said, “and watch him well till I come back.” My +return was delayed, through the absence of the English physician, who +was away on a round of visits, and whom I vainly pursued from house +to house before I overtook him. I brought him to Theobald’s +bedside none too soon. A violent fever had seized our patient, +and the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours later I knew +that he had brain fever. From this moment I was with him constantly; +but I am far from wishing to describe his illness. Excessively +painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned out in delirium. +One night in particular that I passed at his pillow, listening to his +wild snatches of regret, of aspiration, of rapture and awe at the phantasmal +pictures with which his brain seemed to swarm, comes back to my memory +now like some stray page from a lost masterpiece of tragedy. Before +a week was over we had buried him in the little Protestant cemetery +on the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I had caused +to be informed of his illness, had come in person, I was told, to inquire +about its progress; but she was absent from his funeral, which was attended +by but a scanty concourse of mourners. Half a dozen old Florentine +sojourners, in spite of the prolonged estrangement which had preceded +his death, had felt the kindly impulse to honour his grave. Among +them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I found, on my departure, waiting +in her carriage at the gate of the cemetery.</p> +<p>“Well,” she said, relieving at last with a significant +smile the solemnity of our immediate greeting, “and the great +Madonna? Have you seen her, after all?”</p> +<p>“I have seen her,” I said; “she is mine—by +bequest. But I shall never show her to you.”</p> +<p>“And why not, pray?”</p> +<p>“My dear Mrs. Coventry, you would not understand her!”</p> +<p>“Upon my word, you are polite.”</p> +<p>“Excuse me; I am sad and vexed and bitter.” And +with reprehensible rudeness I marched away. I was excessively +impatient to leave Florence; my friend’s dark spirit seemed diffused +through all things. I had packed my trunk to start for Rome that +night, and meanwhile, to beguile my unrest, I aimlessly paced the streets. +Chance led me at last to the church of San Lorenzo. Remembering +poor Theobald’s phrase about Michael Angelo—“He did +his best at a venture”—I went in and turned my steps to +the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the sadness of its +immortal treasures, I fancied, while I stood there, that they needed +no ampler commentary than these simple words. As I passed through +the church again to leave it, a woman, turning away from one of the +side altars, met me face to face. The black shawl depending from +her head draped picturesquely the handsome visage of Madonna Serafina. +She stopped as she recognised me, and I saw that she wished to speak. +Her eye was bright, and her ample bosom heaved in a way that seemed +to portend a certain sharpness of reproach. But the expression +of my own face, apparently, drew the sting from her resentment, and +she addressed me in a tone in which bitterness was tempered by a sort +of dogged resignation. “I know it was you, now, that separated +us,” she said. “It was a pity he ever brought you +to see me! Of course, you couldn’t think of me as he did. +Well, the Lord gave him, the Lord has taken him. I have just paid +for a nine days’ mass for his soul. And I can tell you this, +signore—I never deceived him. Who put it into his head that +I was made to live on holy thoughts and fine phrases? It was his +own fancy, and it pleased him to think so.—Did he suffer much?” +she added more softly, after a pause.</p> +<p>“His sufferings were great, but they were short.”</p> +<p>“And did he speak of me?” She had hesitated and +dropped her eyes; she raised them with her question, and revealed in +their sombre stillness a gleam of feminine confidence which, for the +moment, revived and illumined her beauty. Poor Theobald! +Whatever name he had given his passion, it was still her fine eyes that +had charmed him.</p> +<p>“Be contented, madam,” I answered, gravely.</p> +<p>She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then exhaling a +full rich sigh, as she gathered her shawl together—“He was +a magnificent genius!”</p> +<p>I bowed, and we separated.</p> +<p>Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, +I perceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read +before. I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the superscription +of a card that I had carried for an hour in my waistcoat pocket. +On the threshold stood the ingenious artist whose claims to public favour +were thus distinctly signalised, smoking a pipe in the evening air, +and giving the finishing polish with a bit of rag to one of his inimitable +“combinations.” I caught the expressive curl of a +couple of tails. He recognised me, removed his little red cap +with a most obsequious bow, and motioned me to enter his studio. +I returned his salute and passed on, vexed with the apparition. +For a week afterwards, whenever I was seized among the ruins of triumphant +Rome with some peculiarly poignant memory of Theobald’s transcendent +illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed to hear a fantastic, impertinent +murmur, “Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats; all human life there!”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2460-h.htm or 2460-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/2460 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Madonna of the Future + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2460] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1887 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, proofed by Jennifer Austin. + + + + + +THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE +by Henry James + + +We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a single +masterpiece--the artists and poets who but once in their lives had known +the divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection. Our host +had been showing us a charming little cabinet picture by a painter whose +name we had never heard, and who, after this single spasmodic bid for +fame, had apparently relapsed into obscurity and 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 have seen it. I +have 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 neighbour over the little picture, he was induced to tell +his tale. If I were to doubt whether it would bear repeating, I should +only have to remember how that charming woman, our hostess, who had left +the table, ventured back in rustling rose-colour to pronounce our +lingering a want of gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, sank +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 tear in each of her beautiful eyes. + +* * * * * + +It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things! (H--- began). I +had arrived late in the evening at Florence, and while I finished my +bottle of wine at supper, had fancied that, tired traveller though I was, +I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going vulgarly to bed. A +narrow passage wandered darkly away out of the little square before my +hotel, and looked as if it bored into the heart of Florence. I followed +it, and at the end of ten minutes emerged upon a great piazza, filled +only with the mild autumn moonlight. Opposite rose the Palazzo Vecchio, +like some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower springing from +its embattled verge as 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 colossus, shining through the dusky air like a +sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as +Michael Angelo's _David_. I turned with a certain relief from his +sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the +high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches +to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and +graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light +nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is +Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in +the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine +fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace +of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose from the steps of +the loggia, where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed me in +good English--a small, slim personage, clad in a sort of black velvet +tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass of auburn hair, which gleamed in +the moonlight, escaping from a little mediaeval birretta. In a tone of +the most insinuating deference he asked me for my "impressions." He +seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hovering there in this +consecrated neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius of +aesthetic hospitality--if the genius of aesthetic hospitality were not +commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a calico +pocket-handkerchief and openly resentful of the divided franc. This +analogy was made none the less complete by the brilliant tirade with +which he greeted my embarrassed silence. + +"I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her so lovely as +tonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty +streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream +made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass +judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should +come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. The +plainest burgher of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter! +That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his +broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes +clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, +carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, +holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing +but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are +gone! But do you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew suddenly almost +familiar in this visionary fervour--"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 realise 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 attention, 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 bang about the +piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But tonight, I confess, I am +under the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!" + +"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the term. +But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your eloquent +remarks have only deepened it." + +"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, with an +expressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late in the +evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over the +traveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay +his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!" + +The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He must have +been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. "None the less +so, I trust," I answered, "if the young man is a sordid New Yorker." + +"New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!" he answered, urbanely. + +For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere Yankee +enterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush who had +posted himself here to extort an "order" from a sauntering tourist? But +I was not called to defend myself. A great brazen note broke suddenly +from the far-off summit of the bell-tower above us, and sounded the first +stroke of midnight. My companion started, apologised for detaining me, +and prepared to retire. But he seemed to offer so lively a promise of +further entertainment that I was indisposed to part with him, and +suggested that we should stroll homeward together. He cordially +assented; so we turned out of the Piazza, passed down before the statued +arcade of the Uffizi, and came out upon the Arno. What course we took I +hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion +delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I +listened in puzzled fascination, 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 power. How should we have them? Our crude and +garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant +pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that +nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of +bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual +exile." + +"You seem fairly at home in exile," I answered, "and Florence seems to me +a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? Nothing is so +idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, of +inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do something +fine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, +create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much as +one of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses," I +added, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out of +the house of bondage!" + +"Golden words--golden words, young man!" he cried, with a tender smile. +"'Invent, create, achieve!' Yes, that's our business; I know it well. +Don't take me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren +complainers--impotent cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am 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 have undertaken a +_creation_! I am no Moses; I am 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 illustration; +"I confess that I am in one of those moods when great things seem +possible! This is one of my nervous nights--I dream waking! When the +south wind blows over Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul from +all the fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes +into my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating +too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my +conception! This evening I felt that I couldn't sleep unless I had +communed with the genius of Buonarotti!" + +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 +sympathetically. + +He was silent a while before replying. "Not in the vulgar sense!" he +said at last. "I have chosen never to manifest myself by imperfection. +The good in every performance I have re-absorbed into the generative +force of new creations; the bad--there is 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 +candour, as if the proof were to be overwhelming--"I have never sold a +picture! 'At least no merchant traffics in my heart!' Do you remember +that divine line in Browning? My little studio has never been profaned +by superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It's a temple of labour, 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!" + +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 pictorial haunts of Florence, and I was gratified without +delay. I found him in the course of the morning in the Tribune of the +Uffizi--that little treasure-chamber of world-famous things. He had +turned his back on the Venus de' Medici, and with his arms resting on the +rail-mug which protects the pictures, and his head buried in his hands, +he was lost in the contemplation of that superb triptych of Andrea +Mantegna--a work which has neither the material splendour nor the +commanding force of some of its neighbours, but which, glowing there with +the loveliness of patient labour, 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 +recognised me a deep blush rose to his face; he fancied, perhaps, that he +had made a fool of himself overnight. But I offered him my hand with a +friendliness 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 haggard as an actor by daylight. He was far older +than I had supposed, and he had less bravery of costume and gesture. He +seemed the quiet, poor, patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and the +fact that he had never sold a picture was more obvious than glorious. His +velvet coat was threadbare, and his short slouched hat, of an antique +pattern, revealed a rustiness which marked it an "original," and not one +of the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his craft affect. His +eye was mild and heavy, and his expression singularly gentle and +acquiescent; the more so for a certain pallid leanness of visage, which I +hardly knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius or to a +meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared his brow and brought +back his eloquence. + +"And this is your first visit to these enchanted halls?" he cried. +"Happy, thrice happy youth!" And taking me by the arm, he prepared to +lead me to each of the pre-eminent works in turn and show me the cream of +the gallery. But before we left the Mantegna he pressed my arm and gave +it a loving look. "_He_ was not in a hurry," he murmured. "He knew +nothing of 'raw Haste, half-sister to Delay!'" How sound a critic my +friend was I am unable to say, but he was an extremely amusing one; +overflowing with 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 shallow places. +At moments, too, he plunged into the sea of metaphysics, and floundered a +while in waters too deep for intellectual security. But his abounding +knowledge and happy judgment told a touching story of long attentive +hours in this worshipful company; there was a reproach to my wasteful +saunterings in so devoted a culture of opportunity. "There are two +moods," I remember his saying, "in which we may walk through +galleries--the critical and the ideal. They seize us at their pleasure, +and we can never tell which is to take its turn. The critical mood, +oddly, is the genial one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishes +the pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar cleverness, its conscious +graces. It has a kindly greeting for anything which looks as if, +according to his light, the painter had enjoyed doing it--for the little +Dutch cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy mantles of +late-coming Madonnas, for the little blue-hilled, pastoral, sceptical +Italian landscapes. Then there are the days of fierce, fastidious +longing--solemn church feasts of the intellect--when all vulgar effort +and all petty success is a weariness, and everything but the best--the +best of the best--disgusts. In these hours we are relentless aristocrats +of taste. We will not take Michael Angelo for granted, we will 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 that they +are imperfect as show-rooms, and that, with their deep-set windows and +their massive mouldings, it is rather a broken light that reaches the +pictured walls. But here the masterpieces hang thick, and you seem to +see them in a luminous atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, +with their superb dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid shadow, and +the sombre opposite glow of mellow canvas and dusky gilding, make, +themselves, almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they +imperfectly 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 success and of +the irrepressible discord between conception and result, which shows +dimly in so many consummate works. Graceful, human, near to our +sympathies as it is, it has nothing of manner, of method, nothing, +almost, of style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct with +harmony as if it were an immediate exhalation of genius. The figure +melts away the spectator's mind into a sort of passionate tenderness +which he knows not whether he has given to heavenly purity or to earthly +charm. He is intoxicated with the fragrance of the tenderest blossom of +maternity that ever bloomed on earth. + +"That's what I call a fine picture," said my companion, after we had +gazed a while in silence. "I have a right to say so, for I have 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 a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think +of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a +happy dream, or 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 labour of the brush went on, while the +foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, +radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah! +what a seer!" + +"Don't you imagine," I answered, "that he had a model, and that some +pretty young woman--" + +"As pretty a young woman as you please! It 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 communed with it face to face, and resolved into finer and +lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance 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 are all wrong! Your fine is coarse, your +bright is dim, your grace is _gaucherie_. This is the way you should +have done it!' Is not the chance against him?" + +He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour of my +sarcasm, he smiled gravely. "Look at that picture," he said, "and cease +your irreverent mockery! Idealism is _that_! There's no explaining it; +one must feel the flame! It says nothing to Nature, or to any beautiful +girl, that they will not both forgive! It says to the fair woman, +'Accept me as your artist friend, lend me your beautiful face, trust me, +help me, and your eyes shall be half my masterpiece!' No one so loves +and respects the rich realities of nature as the artist whose imagination +caresses and flatters them. He knows what a fact may hold (whether +Raphael knew, you may judge by his portrait, behind us there, of Tommaso +Inghirami); bad his fancy hovers above it, as Ariel hovered above the +sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, bad 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 cultivate the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect it. The +result--the result," (here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed his +eyes for a moment on the picture; when they met my own again they were +full of tears)--"the result may be less than this; but still it may be +good, it may be _great_!" he cried with vehemence. "It may hang +somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's +memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion as +this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an +altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand that +are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations; +making beauty a force and purity an example!" + +"Heaven forbid," I said, smiling, "that I should take the wind out of +your sails! But doesn't it occur to you that, besides 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 aesthetic needs went arm in arm, and +there was, as I may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, visible and +adorable, which must have given firmness to the artist's hand. I am +afraid there is no demand now." + +My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered, as it were, in this +chilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with sublime +confidence--"There is always a demand!" he cried; "that ineffable type is +one of the eternal needs of man's heart; but pious souls long for it in +silence, almost in shame. Let it appear, and their faith grows brave. +How _should_ it appear in this corrupt generation? It cannot 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 +labour 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, colour, expression, composition. It +can be as simple as you please, and yet as rich; as broad and pure, and +yet as full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh in the +little naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity; of the chance for +drapery in the chaste and ample garment of the mother! think of the great +story you compress into that simple theme! Think, above all, of the +mother's face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of the mingled burden of +joy and trouble, the tenderness turned to worship, and the worship turned +to far-seeing pity! Then look at it all in perfect line and lovely +colour, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!" + +"Anch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have a +masterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more than +Raphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, and +wherever in the wide world I may be, I will post back to Florence and pay +my respects 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 by name. 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 have 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 am worthy of respect. +Whatever my talents may be, I am honest. There is nothing grotesque in a +pure ambition, or in a life devoted to it." + +There was something so sternly sincere in his look and tone that further +questions seemed impertinent. I had repeated opportunity to ask them, +however, for after this we spent much time together. Daily for a +fortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights. He knew the city so +well, he had strolled and lounged so often through its streets and +churches and galleries, he was so deeply versed in its greater and lesser +memories, so imbued with the local genius, that he was an altogether +ideal _valet de place_, and I was glad enough to leave my Murray at home, +and gather facts and opinions alike from his gossiping commentary. He +talked of Florence like a lover, and admitted that it was a very old +affair; he had lost his heart to her at first sight. "It's the fashion +to talk of all cities as feminine," he said, "but, as a rule, it's a +monstrous mistake. Is Florence of the same sex as New York, as Chicago? +She is the sole perfect lady of them all; one feels towards her as a lad +in his teens feels to some beautiful older woman with a 'history.' She +fills you with a sort of aspiring gallantry." This disinterested passion +seemed to stand my friend in stead of the common social ties; he led a +lonely life, and cared for nothing but his work. I was duly flattered by +his having taken my frivolous self into his favour, and by his generous +sacrifice of precious hours 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 savour more precious than +the full-fruited knowledge of the later works. We lingered often in the +sepulchral chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo's +dim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful Genius of Doubt and +brooding behind his eternal mask upon the mysteries of life. We stood +more than once in the little convent chambers where Fra Angelico wrought +as if an angel indeed had held his hand, and gathered that sense of +scattered dews and early bird-notes which makes an hour among his relics +seem like a morning stroll in some monkish garden. We did all this and +much more--wandered into dark chapels, damp courts, and dusty +palace-rooms, in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking treasures +of carving. + +I was more and more impressed with my companion's remarkable singleness +of purpose. Everything was a pretext for some wildly idealistic rhapsody +or reverie. Nothing could be seen or said that did not lead him sooner +or later to 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 had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me +greatly 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 aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign of +conversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to reconcile +enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native mistrust for +intellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives. +As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildest +terms of approbation were "stupendous," "transcendent," and +"incomparable." The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for +a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was +personally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half- +professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left +something dimly ambiguous in the background. He was modest and proud, +and never spoke of his domestic matters. He was evidently poor; yet he +must have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make so +merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty had never brought +him a penny. His poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither +inviting me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts. We met either +in some public place or at my hotel, where I entertained him as freely as +I might without appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed always +hungry, and this was his nearest approach to human grossness. 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 are getting on, +with the Lord's help," he would say, with a grave smile. "We are doing +well. You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time. These +hours I spend with you are pure profit. They are _suggestive_! Just as +the truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine artist is +always in labour. 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 colour, or relief! When I get home, I pour out my +treasures into the lap of toy Madonna. Oh, I am not idle! _Nulla dies +sine linea_." + +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 conversation had mainly an aesthetic flavour, 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 drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded by +these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, +and little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded +backgrounds, our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess +of the arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the +Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her +whether she knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald. + +"Know him!" she exclaimed; "know poor Theobald! All Florence knows him, +his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, his interminable +harangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye has +never seen, and that mortal patience has quite given up expecting." + +"Really," I cried, "you don't believe in his Madonna?" + +"My dear ingenuous youth," rejoined my shrewd 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 the poor dear United States were to have the +credit of him. Hadn't he the very hair of Raphael flowing down on his +shoulders? The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole, +however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed his genius on the house- +tops. The women were all dying to sit to him for their portraits and be +made immortal, like Leonardo's Joconde. We decided that his manner was a +good deal like Leonardo's--mysterious, and inscrutable, and fascinating. +Mysterious it certainly was; mystery was the beginning and the end of it. +The months passed by, and the miracle hung fire; our master never +produced his masterpiece. He passed hours in the galleries and churches, +posturing, musing, and gazing; he talked more than ever about the +beautiful, but he never put brush to canvas. We had all subscribed, as +it were, to the great performance; but as it never came off people began +to ask for their money again. I was one of the last of the faithful; I +carried devotion so far as to sit to him for my head. If you could have +seen the horrible creature he made of me, you would admit that even a +woman with no more vanity than will tie her bonnet straight must have +cooled off then. The man 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 us. At the first +hint that we were tired of waiting, and that we should like the show to +begin, he was off in a huff. 'Great work requires time, contemplation, +privacy, mystery! O ye of little faith!' We answered that we 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 _ame meconnue_, and +washed his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does me the +honour to consider me the head and front of the conspiracy formed to nip +his glory in the bud--a bud that has taken twenty years to blossom. Ask +him if he knows me, and he will tell you I am a horribly ugly old woman, +who has vowed his destruction because he won'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 is still in labour; I have 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 sublimity 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 _resume_ +of all the other Madonnas of the Italian school--like that antique Venus +who borrowed a nose from one great image and an ankle from another. It's +certainly a masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but when I think of my +unhappy portrait I tremble for the whole. He has communicated this +striking idea under the pledge of solemn secrecy to fifty chosen spirits, +to every one he has ever been able to button-hole for five minutes. I +suppose he wants to get an order for it, and he is not to blame; for +Heaven knows how he lives. I see by your blush," my hostess frankly +continued, "that you have been honoured 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 have 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!" + +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 not only a clever woman, but 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 band teacups in that horrible mendacious little parlour 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 that you are an impostor!" + +This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry's accuracy was made in the +course of a late afternoon walk to the quiet old church of San Miniato, +on one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city, from whose +gates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered walk, which +seems a very 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 facade, seamed and cracked with +time and wind-sown with a tender flora of its own, down to the full domes +and slender towers of Florence and over to the blue sweep of the wide- +mouthed cup of mountains into whose hollow the little treasure city has +been dropped. I had proposed, as a diversion from the painful memories +evoked by Mrs. Coventry's name, that Theobald should go with me the next +evening to the opera, where some rarely-played work was to be given. He +declined, as I half expected, for I observed that he regularly 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 anyone. I pass my days in my studio, On Sunday I go to the +Annunziata or to Santa Mario; 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 are 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 are extremely fortunate, and that is a most +attractive description." + +"This woman's beauty," he went on, "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 loftily exalted above the line of common vision as his +artistic ideal was lifted above the usual practice of men. 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 curtsey, and a request to be seated. + +The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of a generous Italian type +and of a great simplicity of demeanour. Seated again at her lamp, with +her embroidery, she seemed to have nothing whatever to say. Theobald, +bending towards her in a sort of Platonic ecstasy, asked her a dozen +paternally tender questions as to her health, her state of mind, her +occupations, and the progress of her embroidery, which he examined +minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some portion of an +ecclesiastical vestment--yellow satin wrought with an elaborate design of +silver and gold. She made answer in a full rich voice, but with a +brevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to native reserve or to +the profane constraint of my presence. She had been that morning to +confession; she had also been to market, and had bought a chicken for +dinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to complain of except that +the people for whom she was making her vestment, and who furnished her +materials, 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 glimmer of an attempt to +establish an understanding with me at the expense of our companion. +Meanwhile, as mindful as possible of Theobald's injunction of reverence, +I considered the lady's personal claims to the fine compliment he had +paid her. + +That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived, after recovering from +the surprise of finding her without the freshness of youth. Her beauty +was of a sort which, in losing youth, loses little of its essential +charm, expressed for the most part as it was in form and structure, and, +as Theobald would have said, in "composition." She was broad and ample, +low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair hung low +beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to drape her head with a covering as +chaste and formal as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her +head were admirably free and noble, and they were the more effective that +their freedom was at moments discreetly corrected by a little +sanctimonious droop, which harmonised admirably with the level gaze of +her dark and quiet eye. A strong, serene, physical nature, and the +placid temper which comes of no nerves and no troubles, seemed this +lady's comfortable portion. She was dressed in plain dull black, save +for a sort of dark blue kerchief which was folded across her bosom and +exposed a glimpse of her massive throat. Over this kerchief was +suspended a little silver cross. I admired her greatly, and yet with a +large reserve. A certain mild intellectual apathy belonged properly to +her type of beauty, and had always seemed to round and enrich it; but +this _bourgeoise_ Egeria, if I viewed her right, betrayed a rather vulgar +stagnation of mind. There might have been once a dim spiritual light in +her face; but it had long since begun to wane. And furthermore, in plain +prose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted very nearly to +complete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my covert +inspection, declaring that the lamp was very dim, and that she would ruin +her eyes without more light, rose and fetched a couple of candles from +the mantelpiece, which he placed lighted on the table. In this brighter +illumination I perceived that our hostess was decidedly an elderly woman. +She was neither haggard, nor worn, nor gray; she was simply coarse. The +"soul" which Theobald had promised seemed scarcely worth making such a +point of; it was no deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of +lip and brow. I should have been ready even to declare that that +sanctified bend of the head was nothing more than the trick of a person +constantly working at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was a +trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude of +her wits, this stately needlewoman dropped a hint that she took the +situation rather less seriously than her friend. When he rose to light +the candles she looked across at me with a quick, intelligent smile, and +tapped her forehead with her forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling +of compassionate loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank face, she +gave a little shrug and resumed her work. + +What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most ardent of +friends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard him as an +eccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty she was not +ill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb into her +little parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her decent and sombre +dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly needlework, +she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, living by special +permission outside her convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloft +by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might have before him +the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and untarnished by the struggle +for existence? Her shapely hands, I observed, wore very fair and white; +they lacked the traces of what is called honest toil. + +"And the pictures, how do they come on?" she asked of Theobald, after a +long pause. + +"Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy and encouragement +give me new faith and ardour." + +Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment rather inscrutably, and +then tapping her forehead with the gesture she had used a minute before, +"He has a magnificent genius!" she said, with perfect gravity. + +"I am inclined to think so," I answered, with a smile. + +"Eh, why do you smile?" she cried. "If you doubt it, you must see the +_bambino_!" And she took the lamp and conducted me to the other side of +the room, where on the wall, in a plain black frame, hung a large drawing +in red chalk. Beneath it was fastened a little howl for holy water. The +drawing represented a very young child, entirely naked, half nestling +back against his mother's gown, but with his two little arms +outstretched, as if in the act of benediction. It was executed with +singular freedom and power, and yet seemed vivid with the sacred bloom of +infancy. A sort of dimpled elegance and grace, mingled with its +boldness, recalled the touch of Correggio. "That's what he can do!" said +my hostess. "It's the blessed little boy whom I lost. It's his very +image, and the Signor Teobaldo gave it me as a gift. He has given me +many things besides!" + +I looked at the picture for some time and admired it immensely. Turning +back to Theobald I assured him that if it were hung among the drawings in +the Uffizi and labelled with a glorious name it would hold its own. My +praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure; he pressed my hands, and his +eyes filled with tears. It moved him apparently with the desire to +expatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose and made his adieux +to our companion, kissing her band with the same mild ardour as before. +It occurred to me that the offer of a similar piece of gallantry on my +own part might help me to know what manner of woman she was. When she +perceived my intention she withdrew her hand, dropped her eyes solemnly, +and made me a severe curtsey. Theobald took my arm and led me rapidly +into the street. + +"And what do you think of the divine Serafina?" he cried with fervour. + +"It is certainly an excellent style of good looks!" I answered. + +He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed hurried along by the +current of remembrance. "You should have seen the mother and the child +together, seen them as I first saw them--the mother with her head draped +in a shawl, a divine trouble in her face, and the bambino pressed to her +bosom. You would have said, I think, that Raphael had found his match in +common chance. I was coming in, one summer night, from a long walk in +the country, when I met this apparition at the city gate. The woman held +out her hand. I hardly knew whether to say, 'What do you want?' or to +fall down and worship. She asked for a little money. I saw that she was +beautiful and pale; she might have stepped out of the stable of +Bethlehem! I gave her money and helped her on her way into the town. I +had guessed her story. She, too, was a maiden mother, and she had been +turned out into the world in her shame. I felt in all my pulses that +here was my subject marvellously realised. I felt like one of the old +monkish artists who had had a vision. I rescued the poor creatures, +cherished them, watched them as I would have done some precious work of +art, some lovely fragment of fresco discovered in a mouldering cloister. +In a month--as if to deepen and sanctify the sadness and sweetness of it +all--the poor little child died. When she felt that he was going she +held him up to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You saw a +feverish haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to spare the poor little mortal +the pain of his position. After that I doubly valued the mother. She is +the simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that ever bloomed in this +brave old land of Italy. She lives in the memory of her child, in her +gratitude for the scanty kindness I have been able to show her, and in +her simple religion! She is not even conscious of her beauty; my +admiration has never made her vain. Heaven knows that I have made no +secret of it. You must have observed the singular transparency of her +expression, the lovely modesty of her glance. And was there ever such a +truly virginal brow, such a natural classic elegance in the wave of the +hair and the arch of the forehead? I have studied her; I may say I know +her. I have absorbed her little by little; my mind is stamped and +imbued, and I have determined now to clinch the impression; I shall at +last invite her to sit for me!" + +"'At last--at last'?" I repeated, in much amazement. "Do you mean that +she has never done so yet?" + +"I have not really had--a--a sitting," said Theobald, speaking very +slowly. "I have taken notes, you know; I have got my grand fundamental +impression. That's the great thing! But I have not actually had her as +a model, posed and draped and lighted, before my easel." + +What had become for the moment of my perception and my tact I am at a +loss to say; in their absence I was unable to repress a headlong +exclamation. I was destined to regret it. We had stopped at a turning, +beneath a lamp. "My poor friend," I exclaimed, laying my hand on his +shoulder, "you have _dawdled_! She's an old, old woman--for a Madonna!" + +It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the long, +slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me. + +"Dawdled?--old, old?" he stammered. "Are you joking?" + +"Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take her for a woman of +twenty?" + +He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me with +questioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting forward, +and grasping my arm--"Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly old? +Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?" + +Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one by one, +the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in charmed +inaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. It seemed to +me almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. "I should be sorry +to say you are blind," I answered, "but I think you are deceived. You +have lost time in effortless contemplation. Your friend was once young +and fresh and virginal; but, I protest, that was some years ago. Still, +she has _de beaux restes_. By all means make her sit for you!" I broke +down; his face was too horribly reproachful. + +He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically over +his forehead. "_De beaux restes_? I thank you for sparing me the plain +English. I must make up my Madonna out of _de beaux restes_! What a +masterpiece she will be! Old--old! Old--old!" he murmured. + +"Never mind her age," I cried, revolted at what I had done, "never mind +my impression of her! You have your memory, your notes, your genius. +Finish your picture in a month. I pronounce it beforehand a masterpiece, +and I hereby offer you for it any sum you may choose to ask." + +He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. "Old--old!" he kept +stupidly repeating. "If she is old, what am I? If her beauty has faded, +where--where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have I worshipped +too long--have I loved too well?" The charm, in truth, was broken. That +the chord of illusion should have snapped at my light accidental touch +showed how it had been weakened by excessive tension. The poor fellow's +sense of wasted time, of vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his +soul in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head and burst into +tears. + +I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted neither +to check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay the hard +truth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come so. + +"We will drink a glass of wine," I said, smiling, "to the completion of +the Madonna." + +With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with a +formidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, "I will finish it," +he cried, "in a month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it +_here_!" And he tapped his forehead. "Of course she's old! She can +afford to have it said of her--a woman who has made twenty years pass +like a twelvemonth! Old--old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!" + +I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he waved me back and +walked away with an air of resolution, whistling and swinging his cane. I +waited a moment, and then followed him at a distance, and saw him proceed +to cross the Santa Trinita Bridge. When he reached the middle he +suddenly paused, as if his strength had deserted him, and leaned upon the +parapet gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep him in sight; +I confess that I passed ten very nervous minutes. He recovered himself +at last, and went his way, slowly and with hanging head. + +That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his long- +garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort and hazard +of production, seemed at first reason enough for his continued silence +and absence; but as day followed day without his either calling or +sending me a line, and without my meeting him in his customary haunts, in +the galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between the +Arno side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which, along the drive of +the Cascine, throws the fair occupants of barouche and phaeton into such +becoming relief--as for more than a week I got neither tidings nor sight +of him, I began to fear that I had fatally offended him, and that, +instead of giving a wholesome impetus to his talent, I had brutally +paralysed it. I had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My +stay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was important that, +before resuming my journey, I should assure myself of the truth. +Theobald, to the last, had kept his lodging a mystery, and I was +altogether at a loss where to look for him. The simplest course was to +make inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato Vecchio, and I confess that +unsatisfied curiosity as to the lady herself counselled it as well. +Perhaps I had done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh and +fair as be conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious to behold once +more the ripe enchantress who had made twenty years pass as a +twelvemonth. I repaired accordingly, one morning, to her abode, climbed +the interminable staircase, and reached her door. It stood ajar, and as +I hesitated whether to enter, a little serving-maid came clattering out +with an empty kettle, as if she had just performed some savoury errand. +The inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule and +entered the room in which I had formerly been received. It had not its +evening aspect. The table, or one end of it, was spread for a late +breakfast, and before it sat a gentleman--an individual, at least, of the +male sex--doing execution upon a beefsteak and onions, and a bottle of +wine. At his elbow, in friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the +house. Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress. With +one hand she held in her lap a plate of smoking maccaroni; with the other +she had lifted high in air one of the pendulous filaments of this +succulent compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently down her +throat. On the uncovered end of the table, facing her companion, were +ranged half a dozen small statuettes, of some snuff-coloured substance +resembling terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardour, was +apparently descanting on their merits. + +Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped liner maccaroni--into +her mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a flushed face. +I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina's secret was even +better worth knowing than I had supposed, and that the way to learn it +was to take it for granted. I summoned my best Italian, I smiled and +bowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a moment, whether or no I +had dispelled the lady's irritation, I had at least stimulated her +prudence. I was welcome, she said; I must take a seat. This was another +friend of hers--also an artist, she declared with a smile which was +almost amiable. Her companion wiped his moustache and bowed with great +civility. I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation. He was +presumably the author of the statuettes on the table, and he knew a money- +spending _forestiere_ when he saw one. He was a small wiry man, with a +clever, impudent, tossed-up nose, a sharp little black eye, and waxed +ends to his moustache. On the side of his head he wore jauntily a little +crimson velvet smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased in +brilliant slippers. On Serafina's remarking with dignity that I was the +friend of Mr. Theobald, he broke out into that fantastic French of which +certain Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with fervour +that Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius. + +"I am sure I don't know," I answered with a shrug. "If you are in a +position to affirm it, you have the advantage of me. I have seen nothing +from his hand but the bambino yonder, which certainly is fine." + +He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a pure Corregio. It was +only a pity, he added with a knowing laugh, that the sketch had not been +made on some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately Serafina +hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was the soul of honour, and that he +would never lend himself to a deceit. "I am not a judge of genius," she +said, "and I know nothing of pictures. I am but a poor simple widow; but +I know that the Signor Teobaldo has the heart of an angel and the virtue +of a saint. He is my benefactor," she added sententiously. The after- +glow of the somewhat sinister flush with which she had greeted me still +lingered in her cheek, and perhaps did not favour her beauty; I could not +but fancy it a wise custom of Theobald's to visit her only by +candle-light. She was coarse, and her pour adorer was a poet. + +"I have the greatest esteem for him," I said; "it is for this reason that +I have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten days. Have you seen him? Is +he perhaps ill?" + +"Ill! Heaven forbid!" cried Serafina, with genuine vehemence. + +Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not +having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the +least bit and bridled. "He comes to see me--without reproach! But it +would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you may almost +call him a man of holy life." + +"He has the greatest admiration for you," I said. "He would have been +honoured by your visit." + +She looked at me a moment sharply. "More admiration than you. Admit +that!" Of course I protested with all the eloquence at my command, and +my mysterious hostess then confessed that she had taken no fancy to me on +my former visit, and that, Theobald not having returned, she believed I +had poisoned his mind against her. "It would be no kindness to the poor +gentleman, I can tell you that," she said. "He has come to see me every +evening for years. It's a long friendship! No one knows him as well as +I." + +"I don't pretend to know him or to understand him," I said. "He's a +mystery! Nevertheless, he seems to me a little--" And I touched my +forehead and waved my hand in the air. + +Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. He +contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he filled his glass +again. The _padrona_ hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smile +than would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. "It's for +that that I love him!" she said. "The world has so little kindness for +such persons. It laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them. He +is too good for this wicked life! It's his fancy that he finds a little +Paradise up here in my poor apartment. If he thinks so, how can I help +it? He has a strange belief--really, I ought to be ashamed to tell +you--that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven forgive me! I let him +think what he pleases, so long as it makes him happy. He was very kind +to me once, and I am not one that forgets a favour. So I receive him +every evening civilly, and ask after his health, and let him look at me +on this side and that! For that matter, I may say it without vanity, I +was worth looking at once! And he's not always amusing, poor man! He +sits sometimes for an hour without speaking a word, or else he talks +away, without stopping, on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty +fine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg you to understand +that he has never said a word to me that I mightn't decently listen to. +He may be a little cracked, but he's one of the blessed saints." + +"Eh!" cried the man, "the blessed saints were all a little cracked!" + +Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but she told enough +of it to make poor Theobald's own statement seem intensely pathetic in +its exalted simplicity. "It's a strange fortune, certainly," she went +on, "to have such a friend as this dear man--a friend who is less than a +lover and more than a friend." I glanced at her companion, who preserved +an impenetrable smile, twisted the end of his moustache, and disposed of +a copious mouthful. Was _he_ less than a lover? "But what will you +have?" Serafina pursued. "In this hard world one must not ask too many +questions; one must take what comes and keep what one gets. I have kept +my good friend for twenty years, and I do hope that, at this time of day, +signore, you have not come to turn him against me!" + +I assured her that I had no such design, and that I should vastly regret +disturbing Mr. Theobald's habits or convictions. On the contrary, I was +alarmed about him, and I should immediately go in search of him. She +gave me his address, and a florid account of her sufferings at his non- +appearance. She had not been to him for various reasons; chiefly because +she was afraid of displeasing him, as he had always made such a mystery +of his home. "You might have sent this gentleman!" I ventured to +suggest. + +"Ah," cried the gentleman, "he admires the Signora Serafina, but he +wouldn't admire me." And then, confidentially, with his finger on his +nose, "He's a purist!" + +I was about to withdraw, after having promised that I would inform the +Signora Serafina of my friend's condition, when her companion, who had +risen from table and girded his loins apparently for the onset, grasped +me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of statuettes. "I +perceive by your conversation, signore, that you are a patron of the +arts. Allow me to request your honourable attention for these modest +products of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, fresh from my atelier, +and have never been exhibited in public. I have brought them here to +receive the verdict of this dear lady, who is a good critic, for all she +may pretend to the contrary. I am the inventor of this peculiar style of +statuette--of subject, manner, material, everything. Touch them, I pray +you; handle them freely--you needn't fear. Delicate as they look, it is +impossible they should break! My various creations have met with great +success. They are especially admired by Americans. I have sent them all +over Europe--to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some little +specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they constitute +the specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. They form a +very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, for +the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make a prettier present to a +person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is not +classic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn't classic +art sometimes rather a bore? Caricature, burlesque, _la charge_, as the +French say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. +Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce it into statuary. For this +purpose I have invented a peculiar plastic compound which you will permit +me not to divulge. That's my secret, signore! It's as light, you +perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! I frankly confess that +I really pride myself as much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity +as upon the other element of novelty in my creations--my types. What do +you say to my types, signore? The idea is bold; does it strike you as +happy? Cats and monkeys--monkeys and cats--all human life is there! +Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with the eye of the satirist! To +combine sculpture and satire, signore, has been my unprecedented +ambition. I flatter myself that I have not egregiously failed." + +As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of his +persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from the +table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his knuckles, +and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. They consisted +each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously +sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a certain sameness of motive, +and illustrated chiefly the different phases of what, in delicate terms, +may be called gallantry and coquetry; but they were strikingly clever and +expressive, and were at once very perfect cats and monkeys and very +natural men and women. I confess, however, that they failed to amuse me. +I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy them, for they seemed to me +peculiarly cynical and vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. +As I looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing them +between finger and thumb and caressing them with an amorous eye, he +seemed to me himself little more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I +mustered an admiring grin, however, and he blew another blast. "My +figures are studied from life! I have a little menagerie of monkeys +whose frolics I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has only +to look out of one's back window! Since I have begun to examine these +expressive little brutes, I have made many profound observations. +Speaking, signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my little +designs are not without a philosophy of their own. Truly, I don't know +whether the cats and monkeys imitate us, or whether it's we who imitate +them." I congratulated him on his philosophy, and he resumed: "You will +do use the honour to admit that I have handled my subjects with delicacy. +Eh, it was needed, signore! I have been free, but not too free--eh? Just +a hint, you know! You may see as much or as little as you please. These +little groups, however, are no measure of my invention. If you will +favour me with a call at my studio, I think that you will admit that my +combinations are really infinite. I likewise execute figures to command. +You have perhaps some little motive--the fruit of your philosophy of +life, signore--which you would like to have interpreted. I can promise +to work it up to your satisfaction; it shall be as malicious as you +please! Allow me to present you with my card, and to remind you that my +prices are moderate. Only sixty francs for a little group like that. My +statuettes are as durable as bronze--_aere perennius_, signore--and, +between ourselves, I think they are more amusing!" + +As I pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether +she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little +couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. + +What I had just seen and heard had so deepened my compassionate interest +in my deluded friend that I took a summary leave, making my way directly +to the house designated by this remarkable woman. It was in an obscure +corner of the opposite side of the town, and presented a sombre and +squalid appearance. An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring for +Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and an expression of +relief at the poor gentleman having a friend. His lodging seemed to +consist of a single room at the top of the house. On getting no answer +to my knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent, so that it +gave me a certain shock to find him sitting there helpless and dumb. He +was seated near the single window, facing an easel which supported a +large canvas. On my entering he looked up at me blankly, without +changing his position, which was that of absolute lassitude and +dejection, his arms loosely folded, his legs stretched before him, his +head hanging on his breast. Advancing into the room I perceived that his +face vividly corresponded with his attitude. He was pale, haggard, and +unshaven, and his dull and sunken eye gazed at me without a spark of +recognition. I had been afraid that he would greet me with fierce +reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had turned his +contentment to bitterness, and I was relieved to find that my appearance +awakened no visible resentment. "Don't you know me?" I asked, as I put +out my hand. "Have you already forgotten me?" + +He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staring +about the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid, +naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest provision +for personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and studio--a grim ghost of +a studio. A few dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four old +canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking colour-box, formed, with +the easel at the window, the sum of its appurtenances. The place +savoured horribly of poverty. Its only wealth was the picture on the +easel, presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this was from the door, +I was unable to see its face; but at last, sickened by the vacant misery +of the spot, I passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can +hardly say that I was surprised at what I found--a canvas that was a mere +dead blank, cracked and discoloured by time. This was his immortal work! +Though not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that +for five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my +silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and +looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind +ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but +he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last +passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful smile, "I +am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. +You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you no +grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face to face with +the truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty and nullity. I +shall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither eaten nor slept. +Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgent +request that he would come home with me and dine. "That was to have +contained my masterpiece! Isn't it a promising foundation? The elements +of it are all _here_." And he tapped his forehead with that mystic +confidence which had marked the gesture before. "If I could only +transpose them into some brain that has the hand, the will! Since I have +been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I have come to believe +that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is +paralysed now, and they will never be painted. I never began! I waited +and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation. +While I fancied my creation was growing it was dying. I have taken it +all too hard! Michael Angelo didn't, when he went at the Lorenzo! He +did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. _That's_ mine!" +And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas. +"I suppose we are a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme--we +talents that can't act, that can't do nor dare! We take it out in talk, +in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let me +tell you," he cried, with a toss of his head, "have a way of being +brilliant, and a man has not lived in vain who has seen the things I have +seen! Of course you will not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten +cloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and +astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain I already +have. A pity, you will say, that I haven't his modesty! Ah, let me +boast and babble now; it's all I have left! I am the half of a genius! +Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar +soul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial +artisan, who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But +it's not for me to sneer at him; he at least does something. He's not a +dawdler! Well for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless, if I +could have shut my eyes and taken my leap." + +What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to +determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present +inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little room +it was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded him +to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when we +began to walk in the open air I was able to appreciate his pitifully +weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to revive, +and murmured at last that he should like to go to the Pitti Gallery. I +shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls, +every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision, +to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyes +and lips of the great portraits appeared to smile in ineffable scorn of +the dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphant +authors; the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna of the Chair, as we +paused in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the sinister irony +of the women of Leonardo. Perfect silence, indeed, marked our whole +progress--the silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my pulses, as +Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after the other, that +he was looking his last. When we came out he was so exhausted that +instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a carriage and drove +him straight to his own poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary +lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes closed, as pale as +death, his faint breathing interrupted at intervals by a sudden gasp, +like a smothered sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of the +old woman who had admitted me before, and who emerged from a dark back +court, I contrived to lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him on +his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge, while I prepared in all +haste to seek a physician. But she followed me out of the room with a +pitiful clasping of her hands. + +"Poor, dear, blessed gentleman," she murmured; "is he dying?" + +"Possibly. How long has he been thus?" + +"Since a certain night he passed ten days ago. I came up in the morning +to make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in his clothes before that +great canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he says his +prayers to it! He had not been to bed, nor since then, properly! What +has happened to him? Has he found out about the Serafina?" she +whispered, with a glittering eye and a toothless grin. + +"Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful," I said, "and watch +him well till I come back." My return was delayed, through the absence +of the English physician, who was away on a round of visits, and whom I +vainly pursued from house to house before I overtook him. I brought him +to Theobald's bedside none too soon. A violent fever had seized our +patient, and the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours later I +knew that he had brain fever. From this moment I was with him +constantly; but I am far from wishing to describe his illness. +Excessively painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned out in +delirium. One night in particular that I passed at his pillow, listening +to his wild snatches of regret, of aspiration, of rapture and awe at the +phantasmal pictures with which his brain seemed to swarm, comes back to +my memory now like some stray page from a lost masterpiece of tragedy. +Before a week was over we had buried him in the little Protestant +cemetery on the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I had caused +to be informed of his illness, had come in person, I was told, to inquire +about its progress; but she was absent from his funeral, which was +attended by but a scanty concourse of mourners. Half a dozen old +Florentine sojourners, in spite of the prolonged estrangement which had +preceded his death, had felt the kindly impulse to honour his grave. +Among them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I found, on my departure, +waiting in her carriage at the gate of the cemetery. + +"Well," she said, relieving at last with a significant smile the +solemnity of our immediate greeting, "and the great Madonna? Have you +seen her, after all?" + +"I have seen her," I said; "she is mine--by bequest. But I shall never +show her to you." + +"And why not, pray?" + +"My dear Mrs. Coventry, you would not understand her!" + +"Upon my word, you are polite." + +"Excuse me; I am sad and vexed and bitter." And with reprehensible +rudeness I marched away. I was excessively impatient to leave Florence; +my friend's dark spirit seemed diffused through all things. I had packed +my trunk to start for Rome that night, and meanwhile, to beguile my +unrest, I aimlessly paced the streets. Chance led me at last to the +church of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's phrase about Michael +Angelo--"He did his best at a venture"--I went in and turned my steps to +the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the sadness of its immortal +treasures, I fancied, while I stood there, that they needed no ampler +commentary than these simple words. As I passed through the church again +to leave it, a woman, turning away from one of the side altars, met me +face to face. The black shawl depending from her head draped +picturesquely the handsome visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped as +she recognised me, and I saw that she wished to speak. Her eye was +bright, and her ample bosom heaved in a way that seemed to portend a +certain sharpness of reproach. But the expression of my own face, +apparently, drew the sting from her resentment, and she addressed me in a +tone in which bitterness was tempered by a sort of dogged resignation. "I +know it was you, now, that separated us," she said. "It was a pity he +ever brought you to see me! Of course, you couldn't think of me as he +did. Well, the Lord gave him, the Lord has taken him. I have just paid +for a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you this, signore--I +never deceived him. Who put it into his head that I was made to live on +holy thoughts and fine phrases? It was his own fancy, and it pleased him +to think so.--Did he suffer much?" she added more softly, after a pause. + +"His sufferings were great, but they were short." + +"And did he speak of me?" She had hesitated and dropped her eyes; she +raised them with her question, and revealed in their sombre stillness a +gleam of feminine confidence which, for the moment, revived and illumined +her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever name he had given his passion, it +was still her fine eyes that had charmed him. + +"Be contented, madam," I answered, gravely. + +She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then exhaling a full rich +sigh, as she gathered her shawl together--"He was a magnificent genius!" + +I bowed, and we separated. + +Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, I +perceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read before. +I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the superscription of a +card that I had carried for an hour in my waistcoat pocket. On the +threshold stood the ingenious artist whose claims to public favour were +thus distinctly signalised, smoking a pipe in the evening air, and giving +the finishing polish with a bit of rag to one of his inimitable +"combinations." I caught the expressive curl of a couple of tails. He +recognised me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious bow, and +motioned me to enter his studio. I returned his salute and passed on, +vexed with the apparition. For a week afterwards, whenever I was seized +among the ruins of triumphant Rome with some peculiarly poignant memory +of Theobald's transcendent illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed to +hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, "Cats and monkeys, monkeys and +cats; all human life there!" + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 2460.txt or 2460.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/2460 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Proofing was by Jennifer +Austin. + + + + + +THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE + +by Henry James + + + + +We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a single +masterpiece--the artists and poets who but once in their lives had +known the divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection. +Our host had been showing us a charming little cabinet picture by a +painter whose name we had never heard, and who, after this single +spasmodic bid for fame, had apparently relapsed into obscurity and +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 have seen it. I have 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 neighbour over the little picture, he was induced to tell his +tale. If I were to doubt whether it would bear repeating, I should +only have to remember how that charming woman, our hostess, who had +left the table, ventured back in rustling rose-colour to pronounce +our lingering a want of gallantry, and, finding us a listening +circle, sank 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 tear in each of her beautiful +eyes. + + +It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things! (H- began). +I had arrived late in the evening at Florence, and while I finished +my bottle of wine at supper, had fancied that, tired traveller though +I was, I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going vulgarly +to bed. A narrow passage wandered darkly away out of the little +square before my hotel, and looked as if it bored into the heart of +Florence. I followed it, and at the end of ten minutes emerged upon +a great piazza, filled only with the mild autumn moonlight. Opposite +rose the Palazzo Vecchio, like some huge civic fortress, with the +great bell-tower springing from its embattled verge as 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 +colossus, shining through the dusky air like a sentinel who has taken +the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. +I turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a +slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, +which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead +masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; +gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous +arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, +and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the +memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine +fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible +commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose +from the steps of the loggia, where he had been sitting in the +shadow, and addressed me in good English--a small, slim personage, +clad in a sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass +of auburn hair, which gleamed in the moonlight, escaping from a +little mediaeval birretta. In a tone of the most insinuating +deference he asked me for my "impressions." He seemed picturesque, +fantastic, slightly unreal. Hovering there in this consecrated +neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius of aesthetic +hospitality--if the genius of aesthetic hospitality were not commonly +some shabby little custode, flourishing a calico pocket-handkerchief +and openly resentful of the divided franc. This analogy was made +none the less complete by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted +my embarrassed silence. + +"I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her so +lovely as tonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in +the empty streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us +like a dream made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in +couples to pass judgment on the last performance of Michael, of +Benvenuto! We should come in for a precious lesson if we might +overhear what they say. The plainest burgher of them, in his cap and +gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. +The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the +darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the +evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor +little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the +great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming +greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do +you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew suddenly almost familiar in +this visionary fervour--"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 realise 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 attention, 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 +bang about the piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But +tonight, I confess, I am under the charm. And then, somehow, I +fancied you too were an artist!" + +"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the +term. But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your +eloquent remarks have only deepened it." + +"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, +with an expressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late +in the evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging +over the traveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of +time to pay his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own +heart!" + +The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He must +have been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. "None +the less so, I trust," I answered, "if the young man is a sordid New +Yorker." + +"New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!" he answered, +urbanely. + +For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere Yankee +enterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush who +had posted himself here to extort an "order" from a sauntering +tourist? But I was not called to defend myself. A great brazen note +broke suddenly from the far-off summit of the bell-tower above us, +and sounded the first stroke of midnight. My companion started, +apologised for detaining me, and prepared to retire. But he seemed +to offer so lively a promise of further entertainment that I was +indisposed to part with him, and suggested that we should stroll +homeward together. He cordially assented; so we turned out of the +Piazza, passed down before the statued arcade of the Uffizi, and came +out upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember, but we +roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches +a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled +fascination, 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 power. How should we have them? +Our crude and garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, +the constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void +of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad +heart is void of bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must +live in perpetual exile." + +"You seem fairly at home in exile," I answered, "and Florence seems +to me a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? +Nothing is so idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of +opportunity, of inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part +is to do something fine! There is no law in our glorious +Constitution against that. Invent, create, achieve! No matter if +you have to study fifty times as much as one of these! What else are +you an artist for? Be you our Moses," I added, laughing, and laying +my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out of the house of bondage!" + +"Golden words--golden words, young man!" he cried, with a tender +smile. "'Invent, create, achieve!' Yes, that's our business; I know +it well. Don't take me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren +complainers--impotent cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am +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 have +undertaken a CREATION! I am no Moses; I am 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 illustration; "I confess that I am in one of +those moods when great things seem possible! This is one of my +nervous nights--I dream waking! When the south wind blows over +Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul from all the fair +things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes into my +own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating too +deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my +conception! This evening I felt that I couldn't sleep unless I had +communed with the genius of Buonarotti!" + +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 +sympathetically. + +He was silent a while before replying. "Not in the vulgar sense!" he +said at last. "I have chosen never to manifest myself by +imperfection. The good in every performance I have re-absorbed into +the generative force of new creations; the bad--there is 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 candour, as if the proof were to be +overwhelming--"I have never sold a picture! 'At least no merchant +traffics in my heart!' Do you remember that divine line in Browning? +My little studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish, +mercenary work. It's a temple of labour, 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!" + +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 pictorial +haunts of Florence, and I was gratified without delay. I found him +in the course of the morning in the Tribune of the Uffizi--that +little treasure-chamber of world-famous things. He had turned his +back on the Venus de' Medici, and with his arms resting on the rail- +mug which protects the pictures, and his head buried in his hands, he +was lost in the contemplation of that superb triptych of Andrea +Mantegna--a work which has neither the material splendour nor the +commanding force of some of its neighbours, but which, glowing there +with the loveliness of patient labour, 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 recognised me a deep blush rose to his face; he fancied, +perhaps, that he had made a fool of himself overnight. But I offered +him my hand with a friendliness 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 haggard as an +actor by daylight. He was far older than I had supposed, and he had +less bravery of costume and gesture. He seemed the quiet, poor, +patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and the fact that he had +never sold a picture was more obvious than glorious. His velvet coat +was threadbare, and his short slouched hat, of an antique pattern, +revealed a rustiness which marked it an "original," and not one of +the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his craft affect. +His eye was mild and heavy, and his expression singularly gentle and +acquiescent; the more so for a certain pallid leanness of visage, +which I hardly knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius +or to a meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared his brow +and brought back his eloquence. + +"And this is your first visit to these enchanted halls?" he cried. +"Happy, thrice happy youth!" And taking me by the arm, he prepared to +lead me to each of the pre-eminent works in turn and show me the +cream of the gallery. But before we left the Mantegna he pressed my +arm and gave it a loving look. "HE was not in a hurry," he murmured. +"He knew nothing of "raw Haste, half-sister to Delay!" How sound a +critic my friend was I am unable to say, but he was an extremely +amusing one; overflowing with 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 shallow places. At moments, too, he plunged into the +sea of metaphysics, and floundered a while in waters too deep for +intellectual security. But his abounding knowledge and happy +judgment told a touching story of long attentive hours in this +worshipful company; there was a reproach to my wasteful saunterings +in so devoted a culture of opportunity. "There are two moods," I +remember his saying, "in which we may walk through galleries--the +critical and the ideal. They seize us at their pleasure, and we can +never tell which is to take its turn. The critical mood, oddly, is +the genial one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishes the +pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar cleverness, its conscious +graces. It has a kindly greeting for anything which looks as if, +according to his light, the painter had enjoyed doing it--for the +little Dutch cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy +mantles of late-coming Madonnas, for the little blue-hilled, +pastoral, sceptical Italian landscapes. Then there are the days of +fierce, fastidious longing--solemn church feasts of the intellect-- +when all vulgar effort and all petty success is a weariness, and +everything but the best--the best of the best--disgusts. In these +hours we are relentless aristocrats of taste. We will not take +Michael Angelo for granted, we will 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 that they are imperfect as show-rooms, and that, +with their deep-set windows and their massive mouldings, it is rather +a broken light that reaches the pictured walls. But here the +masterpieces hang thick, and you seem to see them in a luminous +atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, with their superb +dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid shadow, and the sombre +opposite glow of mellow canvas and dusky gilding, make, themselves, +almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they imperfectly +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 success and of the irrepressible discord between +conception and result, which shows dimly in so many consummate works. +Graceful, human, near to our sympathies as it is, it has nothing of +manner, of method, nothing, almost, of style; it blooms there in +rounded softness, as instinct with harmony as if it were an immediate +exhalation of genius. The figure melts away the spectator's mind +into a sort of passionate tenderness which he knows not whether he +has given to heavenly purity or to earthly charm. He is intoxicated +with the fragrance of the tenderest blossom of maternity that ever +bloomed on earth. + +"That's what I call a fine picture," said my companion, after we had +gazed a while in silence. "I have a right to say so, for I have +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 a while, my friend, and you +will admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless +image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or 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 labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of +life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, +distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah! what +a seer!" + +"Don't you imagine," I answered, "that he had a model, and that some +pretty young woman--" + +"As pretty a young woman as you please! It 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 communed with it face to +face, and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the purity which +completes it as the fragrance 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 are all wrong! Your fine is coarse, +your bright is dim, your grace is gaucherie. This is the way you +should have done it!' Is not the chance against him?" + +He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour of +my sarcasm, he smiled gravely. "Look at that picture," he said, "and +cease your irreverent mockery! Idealism is THAT! There's no +explaining it; one must feel the flame! It says nothing to Nature, +or to any beautiful girl, that they will not both forgive! It says +to the fair woman, 'Accept me as your artist friend, lend me your +beautiful face, trust me, help me, and your eyes shall be half my +masterpiece!' No one so loves and respects the rich realities of +nature as the artist whose imagination caresses and flatters them. +He knows what a fact may hold (whether Raphael knew, you may judge by +his portrait, behind us there, of Tommaso Inghirami); bad his fancy +hovers above it, as Anal hovered above the sleeping prince. There is +only one Raphael, bad 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 +cultivate the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect it. The result-- +the result," (here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed his eyes +for a moment on the picture; when they met my own again they were +full of tears)--"the result may be less than this; but still it may +be good, it may be GREAT!" he cried with vehemence. "It may hang +somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's +memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion +as this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an +altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand +that are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote +generations; making beauty a force and purity an example!" + +"Heaven forbid," I said, smiling, "that I should take the wind out of +your sails! But doesn't it occur to you that, besides 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 aesthetic +needs went arm in arm, and there was, as I may say, a demand for the +Blessed Virgin, visible and adorable, which must have given firmness +to the artist's hand. I am afraid there is no demand now." + +My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered, as it were, in +this chilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with +sublime confidence--"There is always a demand!" he cried; "that +ineffable type is one of the eternal needs of man's heart; but pious +souls long for it in silence, almost in shame. Let it appear, and +their faith grows brave. How SHOULD it appear in this corrupt +generation? It cannot 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 labour 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, colour, expression, composition. It can be +as simple as you please, and yet as rich; as broad and pure, and yet +as full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh in the +little naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity; of the chance for +drapery in the chaste and ample garment of the mother! think of the +great story you compress into that simple theme! Think, above all, +of the mother's face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of the mingled +burden of joy and trouble, the tenderness turned to worship, and the +worship turned to far-seeing pity! Then look at it all in perfect +line and lovely colour, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!" + +"Anch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have a +masterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more +than Raphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, +and wherever in the wide world I may be, I will post back to Florence +and pay my respects 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 by name. I detest +this modem 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 have 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 am worthy of respect. Whatever my talents may be, I am +honest. There is nothing grotesque in a pure ambition, or in a life +devoted to it." + +There was something so sternly sincere in his look and tone that +further questions seemed impertinent. I had repeated opportunity to +ask them, however, for after this we spent much time together. Daily +for a fortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights. He knew +the city so well, he had strolled and lounged so often through its +streets and churches and galleries, he was so deeply versed in its +greater and lesser memories, so imbued with the local genius, that he +was an altogether ideal valet de place, and I was glad enough to +leave my Murray at home, and gather facts and opinions alike from his +gossiping commentary. He talked of Florence like a lover, and +admitted that it was a very old affair; he had lost his heart to her +at first sight. "It's the fashion to talk of all cities as +feminine," he said, "but, as a rule, it's a monstrous mistake. Is +Florence of the same sex as New York, as Chicago? She is the sole +perfect lady of them all; one feels towards her as a lad in his teens +feels to some beautiful older woman with a 'history.' She fills you +with a sort of aspiring gallantry." This disinterested passion +seemed to stand my friend in stead of the common social ties; he led +a lonely life, and cared for nothing but his work. I was duly +flattered by his having taken my frivolous self into his favour, and +by his generous sacrifice of precious hours 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 +savour more precious than the full-fruited knowledge of the later +works. We lingered often in the sepulchral chapel of San Lorenzo, +and watched Michael Angelo's dim-visaged warrior sitting there like +some awful Genius of Doubt and brooding behind his eternal mask upon +the mysteries of life. We stood more than once in the little convent +chambers where Fra Angelico wrought as if an angel indeed had held +his hand, and gathered that sense of scattered dews and early bird- +notes which makes an hour among his relics seem like a morning stroll +in some monkish garden. We did all this and much more--wandered into +dark chapels, damp courts, and dusty palace-rooms, in quest of +lingering hints of fresco and lurking treasures of carving. + +I was more and more impressed with my companion's remarkable +singleness of purpose. Everything was a pretext for some wildly +idealistic rhapsody or reverie. Nothing could be seen or said that +did not lead him sooner or later to 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 had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me +greatly 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 aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign +of conversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to +reconcile enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native +mistrust for intellectual discretion, and our native relish for +sonorous superlatives. As a critic he was very much more generous +than just, and his mildest terms of approbation were "stupendous," +"transcendent," and "incomparable." The small change of admiration +seemed to him no coin for a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he +was intellectually, he was personally altogether a mystery. His +professions, somehow, were all half-professions, and his allusions to +his work and circumstances left something dimly ambiguous in the +background. He was modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic +matters. He was evidently poor; yet he must have had some slender +independence, since he could afford to make so merry over the fact +that his culture of ideal beauty had never brought him a penny. His +poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither inviting me to his +lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts. We met either in some public +place or at my hotel, where I entertained him as freely as I might +without appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed always +hungry, and this was his nearest approach to human grossness. 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 are getting +on, with the Lord's help," he would say, with a grave smile. "We are +doing well. You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time. +These hours I spend with you are pure profit. They are SUGGESTIVE! +Just as the truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine +artist is always in labour. 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 colour, or relief! When I +get home, I pour out my treasures into the lap of toy Madonna. Oh, I +am not idle! Nulla dies sine linea." + +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 conversation had mainly an +aesthetic flavour, 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 drawing- +room chimney-piece. Surrounded by these treasures, and by +innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten +diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded backgrounds, our +hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the arts. +She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the Madonna +della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her +whether she knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald. + +"Know him!" she exclaimed; "know poor Theobald! All Florence knows +him, his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, his +interminable harangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna +that mortal eye has never seen, and that mortal patience has quite +given up expecting." + +"Really," I cried, "you don't believe in his Madonna?" + +"My dear ingenuous youth," rejoined my shrewd 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 the poor dear United States were +to have the credit of him. Hadn't he the very hair of Raphael +flowing down on his shoulders? The hair, alas, but not the head! We +swallowed him whole, however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed +his genius on the house-tops. The women were all dying to sit to him +for their portraits and be made immortal, like Leonardo's Joconde. +We decided that his manner was a good deal like Leonardo's-- +mysterious, and inscrutable, and fascinating. Mysterious it +certainly was; mystery was the beginning and the end of it. The +months passed by, and the miracle hung fire; our master never +produced his masterpiece. He passed hours in the galleries and +churches, posturing, musing, and gazing; he talked more than ever +about the beautiful, but he never put brush to canvas. We had all +subscribed, as it were, to the great performance; but as it never +came off people began to ask for their money again. I was one of the +last of the faithful; I carried devotion so far as to sit to him for +my head. If you could have seen the horrible creature he made of me, +you would admit that even a woman with no more vanity than will tie +her bonnet straight must have cooled off then. The man 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 us. At the first hint that we were +tired of waiting, and that we should like the show to begin, he was +off in a huff. 'Great work requires time, contemplation, privacy, +mystery! O ye of little faith!' We answered that we 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 ame +meconnue, and washed his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe +he does me the honour to consider me the head and front of the +conspiracy formed to nip his glory in the bud--a bud that has taken +twenty years to blossom. Ask him if he knows me, and he will tell +you I am a horribly ugly old woman, who has vowed his destruction +because he won'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 is still in labour; I have 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 sublimity 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 resume +of all the other Madonnas of the Italian school--like that antique +Venus who borrowed a nose from one great image and an ankle from +another. It's certainly a masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but +when I think of my unhappy portrait I tremble for the whole. He has +communicated this striking idea under the pledge of solemn secrecy to +fifty chosen spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button- +hole for five minutes. I suppose he wants to get an order for it, +and he is not to blame; for Heaven knows how he lives. I see by your +blush," my hostess frankly continued, "that you have been honoured +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 +have 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!" + +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 not only a clever woman, but +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 +band teacups in that horrible mendacious little parlour 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 that you are an impostor!" + +This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry's accuracy was made in the +course of a late afternoon walk to the quiet old church of San +Miniato, on one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city, +from whose gates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered +walk, which seems a very 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 facade, +seamed and cracked with time and wind-sown with a tender flora of its +own, down to the full domes and slender towers of Florence and over +to the blue sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into whose +hollow the little treasure city has been dropped. I had proposed, as +a diversion from the painful memories evoked by Mrs. Coventry's name, +that Theobald should go with me the next evening to the opera, where +some rarely-played work was to be given. He declined, as I half +expected, for I observed that he regularly 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 anyone. I pass my days in my studio, On Sunday I go to the +Annunziata or to Santa Mario; 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 are 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 are extremely fortunate, and that is a +most attractive description." + +"This woman's beauty," he went on, "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 loftily exalted above the line of common vision as +his artistic ideal was lifted above the usual practice of men. 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 curtsey, and a request to be seated. + +The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of a generous Italian +type and of a great simplicity of demeanour. Seated again at her +lamp, with her embroidery, she seemed to have nothing whatever to +say. Theobald, bending towards her in a sort of Platonic ecstasy, +asked her a dozen paternally tender questions as to her health, her +state of mind, her occupations, and the progress of her embroidery, +which he examined minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some +portion of an ecclesiastical vestment--yellow satin wrought with an +elaborate design of silver and gold. She made answer in a full rich +voice, but with a brevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to +native reserve or to the profane constraint of my presence. She had +been that morning to confession; she had also been to market, and had +bought a chicken for dinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to +complain of except that the people for whom she was making her +vestment, and who furnished her materials, 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 glimmer of an attempt to establish an understanding +with me at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile, as mindful as +possible of Theobald's injunction of reverence, I considered the +lady's personal claims to the fine compliment he had paid her. + +That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived, after recovering +from the surprise of finding her without the freshness of youth. Her +beauty was of a sort which, in losing youth, loses little of its +essential charm, expressed for the most part as it was in form and +structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in "composition." She +was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her +thick brown hair hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to +drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal as the veil of a +nun. The poise and carriage of her head were admirably free and +noble, and they were the more effective that their freedom was at +moments discreetly corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which +harmonised admirably with the level gaze of her dark and quiet eye. +A strong, serene, physical nature, and the placid temper which comes +of no nerves and no troubles, seemed this lady's comfortable portion. +She was dressed in plain dull black, save for a sort of dark blue +kerchief which was folded across her bosom and exposed a glimpse of +her massive throat. Over this kerchief was suspended a little silver +cross. I admired her greatly, and yet with a large reserve. A +certain mild intellectual apathy belonged properly to her type of +beauty, and had always seemed to round and enrich it; but this +bourgeoise Egeria, if I viewed her right, betrayed a rather vulgar +stagnation of mind. There might have been once a dim spiritual light +in her face; but it had long since begun to wane. And furthermore, +in plain prose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted +very nearly to complete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to +facilitate my covert inspection, declaring that the lamp was very +dim, and that she would ruin her eyes without more light, rose and +fetched a couple of candles from the mantelpiece, which he placed +lighted on the table. In this brighter illumination I perceived that +our hostess was decidedly an elderly woman. She was neither haggard, +nor worn, nor gray; she was simply coarse. The "soul" which Theobald +had promised seemed scarcely worth making such a point of; it was no +deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of lip and brow. I +should have been ready even to declare that that sanctified bend of +the head was nothing more than the trick of a person constantly +working at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was a trick of +a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude of her +wits, this stately needlewoman dropped a hint that she took the +situation rather less seriously than her friend. When he rose to +light the candles she looked across at me with a quick, intelligent +smile, and tapped her forehead with her forefinger; then, as from a +sudden feeling of compassionate loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved +a blank face, she gave a little shrug and resumed her work. + +What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most +ardent of friends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard him +as an eccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty she +was not ill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb +into her little parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her decent +and sombre dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly +needlework, she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, +living by special permission outside her convent walls. Or was she +maintained here aloft by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that +he might have before him the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and +untarnished by the struggle for existence? Her shapely hands, I +observed, wore very fair and white; they lacked the traces of what is +called honest toil. + +"And the pictures, how do they come on?" she asked of Theobald, after +a long pause. + +"Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy and +encouragement give me new faith and ardour." + +Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment rather inscrutably, +and then tapping her forehead with the gesture she had used a minute +before, "He has a magnificent genius!" she said, with perfect +gravity. + +"I am inclined to think so," I answered, with a smile. + +"Eh, why do you smile?" she cried. "If you doubt it, you must see +the bambino!" And she took the lamp and conducted me to the other +side of the room, where on the wall, in a plain black frame, hung a +large drawing in red chalk. Beneath it was fastened a little howl +for holy water. The drawing represented a very young child, entirely +naked, half nestling back against his mother's gown, but with his two +little arms outstretched, as if in the act of benediction. It was +executed with singular freedom and power, and yet seemed vivid with +the sacred bloom of infancy. A sort of dimpled elegance and grace, +mingled with its boldness, recalled the touch of Correggio. "That's +what he can do!" said my hostess. "It's the blessed little boy whom +I lost. It's his very image, and the Signor Teobaldo gave it me as a +gift. He has given me many things besides!" + +I looked at the picture for some time and admired it immensely. +Turning back to Theobald I assured him that if it were hung among the +drawings in the Uffizi and labelled with a glorious name it would +hold its own. My praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure; he +pressed my hands, and his eyes filled with tears. It moved him +apparently with the desire to expatiate on the history of the +drawing, for he rose and made his adieux to our companion, kissing +her band with the same mild ardour as before. It occurred to me that +the offer of a similar piece of gallantry on my own part might help +me to know what manner of woman she was. When she perceived my +intention she withdrew her hand, dropped her eyes solemnly, and made +me a severe curtsey. Theobald took my arm and led me rapidly into +the street. + +"And what do you think of the divine Serafina?" he cried with +fervour. + +"It is certainly an excellent style of good looks!" I answered. + +He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed hurried along by the +current of remembrance. "You should have seen the mother and the +child together, seen them as I first saw them--the mother with her +head draped in a shawl, a divine trouble in her face, and the bambino +pressed to her bosom. You would have said, I think, that Raphael had +found his match in common chance. I was coming in, one summer night, +from a long walk in the country, when I met this apparition at the +city gate. The woman held out her hand. I hardly knew whether to +say, 'What do you want?' or to fall down and worship. She asked for +a little money. I saw that she was beautiful and pale; she might +have stepped out of the stable of Bethlehem! I gave her money and +helped her on her way into the town. I had guessed her story. She, +too, was a maiden mother, and she had been turned out into the world +in her shame. I felt in all my pulses that here was my subject +marvellously realised. I felt like one of the old monkish artists +who had had a vision. I rescued the poor creatures, cherished them, +watched them as I would have done some precious work of art, some +lovely fragment of fresco discovered in a mouldering cloister. In a +month--as if to deepen and sanctify the sadness and sweetness of it +all--the poor little child died. When she felt that he was going she +held him up to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You saw a +feverish haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to spare the poor little +mortal the pain of his position. After that I doubly valued the +mother. She is the simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that +ever bloomed in this brave old land of Italy. She lives in the +memory of her child, in her gratitude for the scanty kindness I have +been able to show her, and in her simple religion! She is not even +conscious of her beauty; my admiration has never made her vain. +Heaven knows that I have made no secret of it. You must have +observed the singular transparency of her expression, the lovely +modesty of her glance. And was there ever such a truly virginal +brow, such a natural classic elegance in the wave of the hair and the +arch of the forehead? I have studied her; I may say I know her. I +have absorbed her little by little; my mind is stamped and imbued, +and I have determined now to clinch the impression; I shall at last +invite her to sit for me!" + +"'At last--at last'?" I repeated, in much amazement. "Do you mean +that she has never done so yet?" + +"I have not really had--a--a sitting," said Theobald, speaking very +slowly. "I have taken notes, you know; I have got my grand +fundamental impression. That's the great thing! But I have not +actually had her as a model, posed and draped and lighted, before my +easel." + +What had become for the moment of my perception and my tact I am at a +loss to say; in their absence I was unable to repress a headlong +exclamation. I was destined to regret it. We had stopped at a +turning, beneath a lamp. "My poor friend," I exclaimed, laying my +hand on his shoulder, "you have DAWDLED! She's an old, old woman-- +for a Madonna!" + +It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the +long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me. + +"Dawdled?--old, old?" he stammered. "Are you joking?" + +"Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take her for a woman of +twenty?" + +He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me with +questioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting +forward, and grasping my arm--"Answer me solemnly: does she seem to +you truly old? Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?" + +Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one by +one, the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in +charmed inaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. +It seemed to me almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. +"I should be sorry to say you are blind," I answered, "but I think +you are deceived. You have lost time in effortless contemplation. +Your friend was once young and fresh and virginal; but, I protest, +that was some years ago. Still, she has de beaux restes. By all +means make her sit for you!" I broke down; his face was too horribly +reproachful. + +He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically +over his forehead. "De beaux restes? I thank you for sparing me the +plain English. I must make up my Madonna out of de beaux restes! +What a masterpiece she will be! Old--old! Old--old!" he murmured. + +"Never mind her age," I cried, revolted at what I had done, "never +mind my impression of her! You have your memory, your notes, your +genius. Finish your picture in a month. I pronounce it beforehand a +masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for it any sum you may choose to +ask." + +He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. "Old--old!" he +kept stupidly repeating. "If she is old, what am I? If her beauty +has faded, where--where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have +I worshipped too long--have I loved too well?" The charm, in truth, +was broken. That the chord of illusion should have snapped at my +light accidental touch showed how it had been weakened by excessive +tension. The poor fellow's sense of wasted time, of vanished +opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his soul in waves of darkness. +He suddenly dropped his head and burst into tears. + +I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted +neither to check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay +the hard truth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to +come so. + +"We will drink a glass of wine," I said, smiling, "to the completion +of the Madonna." + +With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with a +formidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, "I will finish +it," he cried, "in a month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have +it HERE!" And he tapped his forehead. "Of course she's old! She +can afford to have it said of her--a woman who has made twenty years +pass like a twelvemonth! Old--old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!" + +I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he waved me back and +walked away with an air of resolution, whistling and swinging his +cane. I waited a moment, and then followed him at a distance, and +saw him proceed to cross the Santa Trinita Bridge. When he reached +the middle he suddenly paused, as if his strength had deserted him, +and leaned upon the parapet gazing over into the river. I was +careful to keep him in sight; I confess that I passed ten very +nervous minutes. He recovered himself at last, and went his way, +slowly and with hanging head. + +That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his +long-garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort +and hazard of production, seemed at first reason enough for his +continued silence and absence; but as day followed day without his +either calling or sending me a line, and without my meeting him in +his customary haunts, in the galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, +or strolling between the Arno side and the great hedge-screen of +verdure which, along the drive of the Cascine, throws the fair +occupants of barouche and phaeton into such becoming relief--as for +more than a week I got neither tidings nor sight of him, I began to +fear that I had fatally offended him, and that, instead of giving a +wholesome impetus to his talent, I had brutally paralysed it. I had +a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My stay at Florence +was drawing to a close, and it was important that, before resuming my +journey, I should assure myself of the truth. Theobald, to the last, +had kept his lodging a mystery, and I was altogether at a loss where +to look for him. The simplest course was to make inquiry of the +beauty of the Mercato Vecchio, and I confess that unsatisfied +curiosity as to the lady herself counselled it as well. Perhaps I +had done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh and fair as +be conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious to behold once more +the ripe enchantress who had made twenty years pass as a twelvemonth. +I repaired accordingly, one morning, to her abode, climbed the +interminable staircase, and reached her door. It stood ajar, and as +I hesitated whether to enter, a little serving-maid came clattering +out with an empty kettle, as if she had just performed some savoury +errand. The inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little +vestibule and entered the room in which I had formerly been received. +It had not its evening aspect. The table, or one end of it, was +spread for a late breakfast, and before it sat a gentleman--an +individual, at least, of the male sex--doing execution upon a +beefsteak and onions, and a bottle of wine. At his elbow, in +friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the house. Her attitude, +as I entered, was not that of an enchantress. With one hand she held +in her lap a plate of smoking maccaroni; with the other she had +lifted high in air one of the pendulous filaments of this succulent +compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently down her throat. +On the uncovered end of the table, facing her companion, were ranged +half a dozen small statuettes, of some snuff- coloured substance +resembling terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardour, was +apparently descanting on their merits. + +Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped liner maccaroni-- +into her mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a +flushed face. I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina's +secret was even better worth knowing than I had supposed, and that +the way to learn it was to take it for granted. I summoned my best +Italian, I smiled and bowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a +moment, whether or no I had dispelled the lady's irritation, I had at +least stimulated her prudence. I was welcome, she said; I must take +a seat. This was another friend of hers--also an artist, she +declared with a smile which was almost amiable. Her companion wiped +his moustache and bowed with great civility. I saw at a glance that +he was equal to the situation. He was presumably the author of the +statuettes on the table, and he knew a money-spending forestiere when +he saw one. He was a small wiry man, with a clever, impudent, +tossed-up nose, a sharp little black eye, and waxed ends to his +moustache. On the side of his head he wore jauntily a little crimson +velvet smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased in +brilliant slippers. On Serafina's remarking with dignity that I was +the friend of Mr. Theobald, he broke out into that fantastic French +of which certain Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared +with fervour that Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius. + +"I am sure I don't know," I answered with a shrug. "If you are in a +position to affirm it, you have the advantage of me. I have seen +nothing from his hand but the bambino yonder, which certainly is +fine." + +He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a pure Corregio. It +was only a pity, he added with a knowing laugh, that the sketch had +not been made on some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately +Serafina hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was the soul of honour, +and that he would never lend himself to a deceit. "I am not a judge +of genius," she said, "and I know nothing of pictures. I am but a +poor simple widow; but I know that the Signor Teobaldo has the heart +of an angel and the virtue of a saint. He is my benefactor," she +added sententiously. The after-glow of the somewhat sinister flush +with which she had greeted me still lingered in her cheek, and +perhaps did not favour her beauty; I could not but fancy it a wise +custom of Theobald's to visit her only by candle-light. She was +coarse, and her pour adorer was a poet. + +"I have the greatest esteem for him," I said; "it is for this reason +that I have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten days. Have you +seen him? Is he perhaps ill?" + +"Ill! Heaven forbid!" cried Serafina, with genuine vehemence. + +Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not +having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered +the least bit and bridled. "He comes to see me--without reproach! +But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you +may almost call him a man of holy life." + +"He has the greatest admiration for you," I said. "He would have +been honoured by your visit." + +She looked at me a moment sharply. "More admiration than you. Admit +that!" Of course I protested with all the eloquence at my command, +and my mysterious hostess then confessed that she had taken no fancy +to me on my former visit, and that, Theobald not having returned, she +believed I had poisoned his mind against her. "It would be no +kindness to the poor gentleman, I can tell you that," she said. "He +has come to see me every evening for years. It's a long friendship! +No one knows him as well as I." + +"I don't pretend to know him or to understand him," I said. "He's a +mystery! Nevertheless, he seems to me a little--" And I touched my +forehead and waved my hand in the air. + +Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. +He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he filled his +glass again. The padrona hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating +smile than would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. +"It's for that that I love him!" she said. "The world has so little +kindness for such persons. It laughs at them, and despises them, and +cheats them. He is too good for this wicked life! It's his fancy +that he finds a little Paradise up here in my poor apartment. If he +thinks so, how can I help it? He has a strange belief--really, I +ought to he ashamed to tell you--that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: +Heaven forgive me! I let him think what he pleases, so long as it +makes him happy. He was very kind to me once, and I am not one that +forgets a favour. So I receive him every evening civilly, and ask +after his health, and let him look at me on this side and that! For +that matter, I may say it without vanity, I was worth looking at +once! And he's not always amusing, poor man! He sits sometimes for +an hour without speaking a word, or else he talks away, without +stopping, on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty fine +things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg you to understand +that he has never said a word to me that I mightn't decently listen +to. He may be a little cracked, but he's one of the blessed saints." + +"Eh!" cried the man, "the blessed saints were all a little cracked!" + +Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but she told +enough of it to make poor Theobald's own statement seem intensely +pathetic in its exalted simplicity. "It's a strange fortune, +certainly," she went on, "to have such a friend as this dear man--a +friend who is less than a lover and more than a friend." I glanced +at her companion, who preserved an impenetrable smile, twisted the +end of his moustache, and disposed of a copious mouthful. Was HE +less than a lover? "But what will you have?" Serafina pursued. "In +this hard world one must not ask too many questions; one must take +what comes and keep what one gets. I have kept my good friend for +twenty years, and I do hope that, at this time of day, signore, you +have not come to turn him against me!" + +I assured her that I had no such design, and that I should vastly +regret disturbing Mr. Theobald's habits or convictions. On the +contrary, I was alarmed about him, and I should immediately go in +search of him. She gave me his address, and a florid account of her +sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been to him for +various reasons; chiefly because she was afraid of displeasing him, +as he had always made such a mystery of his home. "You might have +sent this gentleman!" I ventured to suggest. + +"Ah," cried the gentleman, "he admires the Signora Serafina, but he +wouldn't admire me." And then, confidentially, with his finger on +his nose, "He's a purist!" + +I was about to withdraw, after having promised that I would inform +the Signora Serafina of my friend's condition, when her companion, +who had risen from table and girded his loins apparently for the +onset, grasped me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of +statuettes. "I perceive by your conversation, signore, that you are +a patron of the arts. Allow me to request your honourable attention +for these modest products of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, +fresh from my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public. I +have brought them here to receive the verdict of this dear lady, who +is a good critic, for all she may pretend to the contrary. I am the +inventor of this peculiar style of statuette--of subject, manner, +material, everything. Touch them, I pray you; handle them freely-- +you needn't fear. Delicate as they look, it is impossible they +should break! My various creations have met with great success. +They are especially admired by Americans. I have sent them all over +Europe--to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some little +specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they +constitute the specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. +They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay +young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make +a prettier present to a person with whom you wished to exchange a +harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but, +between ourselves, isn't classic art sometimes rather a bore? +Caricature, burlesque, la charge, as the French say, has hitherto +been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. Now, it has been my +inspiration to introduce it into statuary. For this purpose I have +invented a peculiar plastic compound which you will permit me not to +divulge. That's my secret, signore! It's as light, you perceive, as +cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! I frankly confess that I really +pride myself as much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity as +upon the other element of novelty in my creations--my types. What do +you say to my types, signore? The idea is bold; does it strike you +as happy? Cats and monkeys--monkeys and cats--all human life is +there! Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with the eye of the +satirist! To combine sculpture and satire, signore, has been my +unprecedented ambition. I flatter myself that I have not egregiously +failed." + +As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of his +persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from +the table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his +knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. +They consisted each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in +some preposterously sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a +certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly the different +phases of what, in delicate terms, may be called gallantry and +coquetry; but they were strikingly clever and expressive, and were at +once very perfect cats and monkeys and very natural men and women. I +confess, however, that they failed to amuse me. I was doubtless not +in a mood to enjoy them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and +vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I looked askance +at the complacent little artist, brandishing them between finger and +thumb and caressing them with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself +little more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered an +admiring grin, however, and he blew another blast. "My figures are +studied from life! I have a little menagerie of monkeys whose +frolics I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has only to +look out of one's back window! Since I have begun to examine these +expressive little brutes, I have made many profound observations. +Speaking, signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my little +designs are not without a philosophy of their own. Truly, I don't +know whether the cats and monkeys imitate us, or whether it's we who +imitate them." I congratulated him on his philosophy, and he +resumed: "You will do use the honour to admit that I have handled my +subjects with delicacy. Eh, it was needed, signore! I have been +free, but not too free--eh? Just a hint, you know! You may see as +much or as little as you please. These little groups, however, are +no measure of my invention. If you will favour me with a call at my +studio, I think that you will admit that my combinations are really +infinite. I likewise execute figures to command. You have perhaps +some little motive--the fruit of your philosophy of life, signore-- +which you would like to have interpreted. I can promise to work it +up to your satisfaction; it shall be as malicious as you please! +Allow me to present you with my card, and to remind you that my +prices are moderate. Only sixty francs for a little group like that. +My statuettes are as durable as bronze--aere perennius, signore--and, +between ourselves, I think they are more amusing!" + +As I pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering +whether she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the +little couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. + +What I had just seen and heard had so deepened my compassionate +interest in my deluded friend that I took a summary leave, making my +way directly to the house designated by this remarkable woman. It +was in an obscure corner of the opposite side of the town, and +presented a sombre and squalid appearance. An old woman in the +doorway, on my inquiring for Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled +blessing and an expression of relief at the poor gentleman having a +friend. His lodging seemed to consist of a single room at the top of +the house. On getting no answer to my knock, I opened the door, +supposing that he was absent, so that it gave me a certain shock to +find him sitting there helpless and dumb. He was seated near the +single window, facing an easel which supported a large canvas. On my +entering he looked up at me blankly, without changing his position, +which was that of absolute lassitude and dejection, his arms loosely +folded, his legs stretched before him, his head hanging on his +breast. Advancing into the room I perceived that his face vividly +corresponded with his attitude. He was pale, haggard, and unshaven, +and his dull and sunken eye gazed at me without a spark of +recognition. I had been afraid that he would greet me with fierce +reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had turned his +contentment to bitterness, and I was relieved to find that my +appearance awakened no visible resentment. "Don't you know me?" I +asked, as I put out my hand. "Have you already forgotten me?" + +He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staring +about the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, +sordid, naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the +scantiest provision for personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and +studio--a grim ghost of a studio. A few dusty casts and prints on +the walls, three or four old canvases turned face inward, and a +rusty-looking colour-box, formed, with the easel at the window, the +sum of its appurtenances. The place savoured horribly of poverty. +Its only wealth was the picture on the easel, presumably the famous +Madonna. Averted as this was from the door, I was unable to see its +face; but at last, sickened by the vacant misery of the spot, I +passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can hardly say that +I was surprised at what I found--a canvas that was a mere dead blank, +cracked and discoloured by time. This was his immortal work! Though +not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that for +five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my +silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose +and looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind +ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, +but he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had +last passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful +smile, "I am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in +this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I +bear you no grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face +to face with the truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty +and nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither +eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my +emotion in an urgent request that he would come home with me and +dine. "That was to have contained my masterpiece! Isn't it a +promising foundation? The elements of it are all HERE. And he +tapped his forehead with that mystic confidence which had marked the +gesture before. "If I could only transpose them into some brain that +has the hand, the will! Since I have been sitting here taking stock +of my intellects, I have come to believe that I have the material for +a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is paralysed now, and they will +never be painted. I never began! I waited and waited to be worthier +to begin, and wasted my life in preparation. While I fancied my +creation was growing it was dying. I have taken it all too hard! +Michael Angelo didn't, when he went at the Lorenzo! He did his best +at a venture, and his venture is immortal. THAT'S mine!" And he +pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas. "I +suppose we are a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme--we +talents that can't act, that can't do nor dare! We take it out in +talk, in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, +let me tell you," he cried, with a toss of his head, "have a way of +being brilliant, and a man has not lived in vain who has seen the +things I have seen! Of course you will not believe in them when that +bit of worm-eaten cloth is all I have to show for them; but to +convince you, to enchant and astound the world, I need only the hand +of Raphael. His brain I already have. A pity, you will say, that I +haven't his modesty! Ah, let me boast and babble now; it's all I +have left! I am the half of a genius! Where in the wide world is my +other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready +fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan, who turns out +by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But it's not for me to +sneer at him; he at least does something. He's not a dawdler! Well +for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless, if I could have +shut my eyes and taken my leap." + +What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to +determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present +inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little +room it was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I +persuaded him to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be +led, and when we began to walk in the open air I was able to +appreciate his pitifully weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed +in a certain way to revive, and murmured at last that he should like +to go to the Pitti Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy +stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on whose walls +seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision, to glow with a sort of +insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyes and lips of the +great portraits appeared to smile in ineffable scorn of the dejected +pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphant authors; +the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna of the Chair, as we +paused in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the sinister +irony of the women of Leonardo. Perfect silence, indeed, marked our +whole progress--the silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my +pulses, as Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after +the other, that he was looking his last. When we came out he was so +exhausted that instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a +carriage and drove him straight to his own poor lodging. He had sunk +into an extraordinary lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his +eyes closed, as pale as death, his faint breathing interrupted at +intervals by a sudden gasp, like a smothered sob or a vain attempt to +speak. With the help of the old woman who had admitted me before, +and who emerged from a dark back court, I contrived to lead him up +the long steep staircase and lay him on his wretched bed. To her I +gave him in charge, while I prepared in all haste to seek a +physician. But she followed me out of the room with a pitiful +clasping of her hands. + +"Poor, dear, blessed gentleman," she murmured; "is he dying?" + +"Possibly. How long has he been thus?" + +"Since a certain night he passed ten days ago. I came up in the +morning to make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in his clothes +before that great canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he +says his prayers to it! He had not been to bed, nor since then, +properly! What has happened to him? Has he found out about the +Serafina?" she whispered, with a glittering eye and a toothless grin. + +"Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful," I said, "and +watch him well till I come back." My return was delayed, through the +absence of the English physician, who was away on a round of visits, +and whom I vainly pursued from house to house before I overtook him. +I brought him to Theobald's bedside none too soon. A violent fever +had seized our patient, and the case was evidently grave. A couple +of hours later I knew that he had brain fever. From this moment I +was with him constantly; but I am far from wishing to describe his +illness. Excessively painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life +burned out in delirium. One night in particular that I passed at his +pillow, listening to his wild snatches of regret, of aspiration, of +rapture and awe at the phantasmal pictures with which his brain +seemed to swarm, comes back to my memory now like some stray page +from a lost masterpiece of tragedy. Before a week was over we had +buried him in the little Protestant cemetery on the way to Fiesole. +The Signora Serafina, whom I had caused to be informed of his +illness, had come in person, I was told, to inquire about its +progress; but she was absent from his funeral, which was attended by +but a scanty concourse of mourners. Half a dozen old Florentine +sojourners, in spite of the prolonged estrangement which had preceded +his death, had felt the kindly impulse to honour his grave. Among +them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I found, on my departure, +waiting in her carriage at the gate of the cemetery. + +"Well," she said, relieving at last with a significant smile the +solemnity of our immediate greeting, "and the great Madonna? Have +you seen her, after all?" + +"I have seen her," I said; "she is mine--by bequest. But I shall +never show her to you." + +"And why not, pray?" + +"My dear Mrs. Coventry, you would not understand her!" + +"Upon my word, you are polite." + +"Excuse me; I am sad and vexed and bitter." And with reprehensible +rudeness I marched away. I was excessively impatient to leave +Florence; my friend's dark spirit seemed diffused through all things. +I had packed my trunk to start for Rome that night, and meanwhile, to +beguile my unrest, I aimlessly paced the streets. Chance led me at +last to the church of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's +phrase about Michael Angelo--"He did his best at a venture"--I went +in and turned my steps to the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in +sadness the sadness of its immortal treasures, I fancied, while I +stood there, that they needed no ampler commentary than these simple +words. As I passed through the church again to leave it, a woman, +turning away from one of the side altars, met me face to face. The +black shawl depending from her head draped picturesquely the handsome +visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped as she recognised me, and I +saw that she wished to speak. Her eye was bright, and her ample +bosom heaved in a way that seemed to portend a certain sharpness of +reproach. But the expression of my own face, apparently, drew the +sting from her resentment, and she addressed me in a tone in which +bitterness was tempered by a sort of dogged resignation. "I know it +was you, now, that separated us," she said. "It was a pity he ever +brought you to see me! Of course, you couldn't think of me as he +did. Well, the Lord gave him, the Lord has taken him. I have just +paid for a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you this, +signore--I never deceived him. Who put it into his head that I was +made to live on holy thoughts and fine phrases? It was his own +fancy, and it pleased him to think so.--Did he suffer much?" she +added more softly, after a pause. + +"His sufferings were great, but they were short." + +"And did he speak of me?" She had hesitated and dropped her eyes; +she raised them with her question, and revealed in their sombre +stillness a gleam of feminine confidence which, for the moment, +revived and illumined her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever name he +had given his passion, it was still her fine eyes that had charmed +him. + +"Be contented, madam," I answered, gravely. + +She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then exhaling a full rich +sigh, as she gathered her shawl together--"He was a magnificent +genius!" + +I bowed, and we separated. + +Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, I +perceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read +before. I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the +superscription of a card that I had carried for an hour in my +waistcoat pocket. On the threshold stood the ingenious artist whose +claims to public favour were thus distinctly signalised, smoking a +pipe in the evening air, and giving the finishing polish with a bit +of rag to one of his inimitable "combinations." I caught the +expressive curl of a couple of tails. He recognised me, removed his +little red cap with a most obsequious bow, and motioned me to enter +his studio. I returned his salute and passed on, vexed with the +apparition. For a week afterwards, whenever I was seized among the +ruins of triumphant Rome with some peculiarly poignant memory of +Theobald's transcendent illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed to +hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, "Cats and monkeys, monkeys and +cats; all human life there!" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Madonna of the Future, by Henry James + diff --git a/old/mdftr10.zip b/old/mdftr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74ca184 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mdftr10.zip |