Eliot Gregory

“ An author who, in telling his hopes and sorrows, amuses or saddens a reader, has in just so much produced a work of art. A lover who, by the sincerity of his accent, communicates the flame that is consuming him to the object of his adoration; the shopkeeper who inspires a purchaser with his own admiration for an object on sale; the baby that makes its joy known to a parent—artists! artists! Brown, Jones, or Robinson, the moment he has consciously produced on a neighbor’s ear or eye the sensation that a sound or a combination of colors has effected on his own organs, is an artist! ”

“ I never doubted that bravery was the leading characteristic of the American temperament; since that glimpse into the secret composition of my compatriots, admiration has been vastly increased. The foolhardy daring it must require—dressed as those men were—to go out in a thunder-storm makes one shudder: it certainly could not be found in any other race. The danger of cross-country hunting or bull-fighting is as nothing compared to the risk a modern American takes when he sits in a trolley-car, where the chances of his machinery forming a fatal “short circuit” must be immense. ”

“ No feeble prose, no characters of black or white, can do justice to the closing scenes of this performance. The roar of the chorus, the thunder of the actors’ voices, the impression of reality left on the breathless spectators by the open-air reality of the scene, the ardent sun, the rustling wind, the play of light and shade across the stage, the invocation of Hercules addressed to the real heavens, not to a painted firmament, combined an effect that few among that vast concourse will forget. ”

“ Nowhere in the world—not even in Moscow, that city of domes—can one see such a collection of pagodas, cupolas, kiosks, and turrets as grace the roofs of our office buildings! Architects evidently look upon such adornments as compensations! The more hideous the structure, the finer its dome! Having perpetrated a blot upon the city that cries to heaven in its enormity, the repentant owner adds a pagoda or two, much in the same spirit, doubtless, as prompts an Italian peasant to hang a votive heart on some friendly shrine when a crime lies heavy on his conscience. ”

“ Demons crawl among the leafy shadows. Not a light is visible, yet the centre of the stage is in strong relief, shading off into a thousand fantastic shadows. The audience sits in complete darkness. Then we see the people of Argos, winding toward us from among the trees, lamenting, as they have done each day for ten years, the long absence of their sons and their king. The old men no longer dare to consult the oracles, fearing to learn that all is lost. ”

“ A certain class of minds enjoy being mystified, and in consequence writers, painters, and musicians have appeared who are willing to juggle for their amusement. The simple definition given to us by the Russian writer comes like a breath of wholesome air to those suffocating in an atmosphere of perfumes and artificial heat. Art is our common inheritance, not the property of a favored few. The wide world we love is full of it, and each of us in his humble way is an artist when with a full heart he communicates his delight and his joy to another. ”

“ The transit from dock to hotel was like a visit to a new circle in the Inferno, where trains rumble eternally overhead, and cable cars glide and block around a pale-faced throng of the damned, who are forced, in expiation of their sins, to hasten forever toward an unreachable goal.
A curious curse has fallen upon our people; an “influence” is at work which forces us to attempt in an hour just twice as much as can be accomplished in sixty minutes. ”

“ Paris alone seems to possess the charm that bewitches all conditions, all ages, all degrees. To hold the frivolous-minded she paints her face and dances, leading them a round of folly, exhaustive alike to health and purse. For the student she assumes another mien, smiling encouragement, and urging him upward towards the highest standards, while posing as his model. She takes the dreaming lover of the past gently by the hand, and leading him into quiet streets and squares where she has stored away a wealth of hidden treasure, enslaves him as completely as her more sensual admirers. ”

“ The burst of applause that his talent called forth would hardly have died away before another figure would take the poet’s place, a wave of laughter welcoming the new-comer, whose twinkling eyes and demure smile promised a treat of fun and humor. So the evening would wear gayly to its end, the younger element in the audience, full of the future, drinking in long draughts of poetry and art, the elders charmed to live over again the days of their youth and feel in touch once more with the present. ”

“ The theatre, having ceased to form an integral part of our social life, has come to be the pastime of people with nothing better to do,—the floating population of our hotels, the shop-girl and her young man enjoying an evening out. The plays produced by the gentlemen who, I am told, control the stage in this country for the moment, are adapted to the requirements of an audience that, having no particular standard from which to judge the literary merits of a play, the training, accent, or talent of the actors, are perfectly contented so long as they are amused. ”

“ It is impossible in feeble prose to give any idea of the impression those lines produce in the stupendous theatre, packed to its utmost limits—the wild night, with a storm in the air, a stage which seems like a clearing in some forest inhabited by Titans, the terrible tragedy of Æschylus following the graceful fête of Apollo.
After the unavoidable confusion at the beginning, the vast audience listen in profound silence to an expression of pure art. They are no longer actors we hear, but demi-gods. ”

“ Nothing that can recall either his life or his labor is changed.
Madame Michelet’s life is in strange contrast with the ways of the modern spouse who, under pretext of grief, discards and displaces every reminder of the dead. In our day, when the great art is to forget, an existence consecrated to a memory is so rare that the world might be the better for knowing that a woman lives who, young and beautiful, was happy in the society of an old man, whose genius she appreciated and cherished, who loves him dead as she loved him living. ”

“ I am convinced that he has given as much pleasure as the Acropolis to most travellers; the knowledge that the hotel proprietors share the expenses of his keep and toilet cannot dispel the charm of those scarlet embroideries and glittering arms.
After preparing their trap, the wily inhabitants of a new watering-place have only to sit down and await events. The first people to appear on the scene are, naturally, the English, some hidden natural law compelling that race to wander forever in inexpensive by-ways and serve as pioneers for other nations. ”

“ Now, in these troubled times of ours, when rumors of war are again in the air, one’s thoughts revert with pleasure to the half-mythical figure on the threshold of the century, and to legends of the clear-eyed giant, with the quizzical smile and the tender, loyal heart, whose life’s work makes him a more lovable model and a nobler example to hold up before the youth of to-day than all the mythological deities that ever disported themselves on the original Mount Ida. ”

“ Otherwise, how can the most imaginative natures lose themselves at an opera? Even when the singers are comely, there is always that eternal double row of stony-faced witnesses in full view, whom no crimes astonish and no misfortunes melt. It takes most of the poetry out of Faust’s first words with Marguerite, to have that short interview interrupted by a line of old, weary women shouting, “Let us whirl in the waltz o’er the mount and the plain!” ”

“ The singers feel they can give an American audience any slipshod performance. I have seen a favorite soprano shrug her shoulders as she entered her dressing-room and exclaim: “Mon Dieu! How I shuffled through that act! They’d have hooted me off the stage in Berlin, but here no one seems to care. Did you notice the baritone to-night? He wasn’t on the key once during our duo. I cannot sing my best, try as I will, when I hear the public applauding good and bad alike!”
It is strange that our pleasure-loving rich people should have hit on the opera as a favorite haunt. ”

“ Drowsy lapses into unconsciousness obscure the senses, like the transparent clouds that from time to time dim the sunlight. A distant bell in the wheel-house chimes the lazy half-hours. Groups of people come and go like figures on a lantern-slide. A curiously detached reeling makes the scene and the actors in it as unreal as a painted ship manned by a shadowy crew. The inevitable child tumbles on its face and is picked up shrieking by tender parents; energetic youths organize games of skill or discover whales on the horizon, without disturbing one’s philosophic calm. ”

“ In the Orient to-day the poet story-teller holds his audience spellbound for hours, teaching the people their history and supplying their minds with food for thought, raising them above the dull level of the brutes by the charm of his verse and the elevation of his ideas. The power of poetry is the same now as three thousand years ago. Modern skeptical Paris, that scoffs at all creeds and chafes impatiently under any rule, will sit to-day docile and complaisant, charmed by the melody of a poet’s voice ”

“ What is it tempts them? It cannot be the climate, for that is vile; nor the city of London, for it is one of the ugliest in existence; nor their “cuisine”—for although we are not good cooks ourselves, we know what good food is and could give Britons points. Neither can it be art, nor the opera,—one finds both better at home or on the Continent than in England. So it must be society, and here one’s wonder deepens! ”

“ Paris is no less adored by the vacant-minded, to whom neither art nor pleasure nor study appeal. Her caprices in fashion are received by the wives and daughters of the universe as laws, and obeyed with an unwavering faith, a mute obedience that few religions have commanded. Women who yawn through Italy and the East have, when one meets them in the French capital, the intense manner, the air of separation from things mundane, that is observable in pilgrims approaching the shrine of their deity. ”

“ Those were cloudless, enchanted days we passed in the tumbled down old atelier: an ardent springtime of life when the future beckons gayly and no doubts of success obscure the horizon. Our young master’s enthusiasm fired his circle of pupils, who, as each succeeding year brought him increasing fame, revelled in a reflected glory with the generous admiration of youth, in which there is neither calculation nor shadow of envy.
A portrait of Madame de Portalais, exhibited about this time, drew all art-loving Paris around the new celebrity’s canvas. ”

“ The air of Newport has always proved fatal to big hotels. One after another they have appeared and failed, the Ocean House alone dragging out a forlorn existence. As the flames worked their will and the careless crowd enjoyed the spectacle, one could not help feeling a vague regret for the old place, more for what it represented than for any intrinsic value of its own. Without greatly stretching a point it might be taken to represent a social condition, a phase, as it were, in our development. In a certain obscure way, it was an epoch-marking structure. ”

“ I should like to ask the architects of New York one question: Have they not been taught that in their art, as in every other, pretences are vulgar, that things should be what they seem? Then why do they continue to hide steel and fire-brick cages under a veneer of granite six inches thick, causing them to pose as solid stone buildings? If there is a demand for tall, light structures, why not build them simply (as bridges are constructed) , and not add a poultice of bogus columns and zinc cornices that serve no purpose and deceive no one? ”

“ It world be difficult to forget that scene,—the banks of the Rhône were lined with the rural population, who had come miles in every direction to acclaim the passage of their poets.
Everywhere along our route the houses were gayly decorated and arches of flowers had been erected. We float past Vienne, a city once governed by Pontius Pilate, and Tournon, with its feudal château, blue in the distance, then Saint Peray, on a verdant vine-clad slope. As we pass under the bridge at Montélimar, an avalanche of flowers descends on us from above. ”

“ The husbands are those dejected individuals wandering aimlessly about over there like lost souls. They are mostly rich men, who, having married beautiful girls for love, wear themselves out maintaining elaborate and costly establishments for them. In return for his labor a husband, however, enjoys but little of his wife’s society, for a really fashionable woman can rarely be induced to go home until she has collapsed with fatigue. In consequence, she contributes little but ‘nerves’ and temper to the household. Her sweetest smiles, like her freshest toilets, are kept for the public. ”

“ Few of us, I imagine, but cherish the memory of some such being in the old home, a soft-voiced grandmother, with silvery hair brushed under a discreet and flattering cap, with soft, dark raiment and tulle-wrapped throat. There are still, it is to be hoped, many such lovable women in our land, but at times I look about me in dismay, and wonder who is to take their places when they are gone. ”

“ When one visits the theatrical abbey across the lake and inspects the too picturesque tombs of Savoy’s sovereigns, or walks in the wonderful old garden, with its intermittent spring, the suspicion occurs, in spite of one’s self, that the whole scene will be folded up at sunset and the bare-footed “brother” who is showing us around with so much unction will, after our departure, hurry into another costume, and appear later as one of the happy peasants who are singing and drinking in front of that absurdly operatic little inn you pass on the drive home. ”

“ Like her classic prototype, Paris is also the companion of the philosophers and leads the arts in her train. Her palaces are the meeting-places of the poets, the sculptors, the dramatists, and the painters, who are never weary of celebrating her perfections, nor of working for her adornment and amusement.
Those who live in the circle of her influence are caught up in a whirlwind of artistic production, and consume their brains and bodies in the vain hope of pleasing their idol and attracting her attention. ”

“ There is, perhaps, in all Paris no more exquisite corner than the Garden of the Luxembourg. At every season it is beautiful. The winter sunlight seems to linger on its stately Italian terraces after it has ceased to shine elsewhere. The first lilacs bloom here in the spring, and when midsummer has turned all the rest of Paris into a blazing, white wilderness, these gardens remain cool and tranquil in the heart of turbulent “Bohemia,” a bit of fragrant nature filled with the song of birds and the voices of children. ”

“ Montmartre is now sprinkled with attractive cabarets, the taste of the public for such informal entertainments having grown each year; with reason, for the careless grace of the surroundings, the absence of any useless restraint or obligation as to hour or duration, has a charm for thousands whom a long concert or the inevitable five acts at the Français could not tempt. It would be difficult to overrate the influence such an atmosphere, breathed in youth, must have on the taste and character. ”

“ There was probably not a hotel in this country at that time where a dinner was served later than three o’clock, and Delmonico’s, newly installed in Mr. Moses Grinnell’s house, corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, was the only establishment of its kind in America, and the one restaurant in New York where ladies could be taken to dine. In those tranquil days when dinner parties were few and dances a rarity, theatre-going was the one ripple on the quiet stream of home life. ”