Grant Allen

“ But when Lothrop Audouin, his guide and benefactor, said to him in a voice of friendly sympathy, 'You'll be a figure painter too, before you've finished, Hiram,' he no more dreamt of refusing or doubting (save in his own inmost soul) than a docile child dreams of resisting its parents in the matter of their choice of its school or its lessons. So he took his hat down from its peg, and followed Audouin blindly, out into that labyrinth of dirty lanes and ill-paved alleys which constitutes the genuine Rome of the native-born modern Romans. ”

“ But it's quite painful to me to look round and see the other men here—some of them younger than myself—to watch their power and experience, their masterly way of sketching in the figure, their admirable imitation of nature—and then to think how very little I myself have yet accomplished. It almost makes one feel despondent for one's own powers. When I watch them, I feel humbled and unhappy.'
'No, no,' Audouin said warmly. 'You needn't think so, I'm sure, Churchill. The man who distrusts his own work is always the truest workman. ”

“ To every intelligent young American, indeed, the first glimpse of England is something more than a mere introduction to a new country; it is as though the sun had gone back upon the dial of history, and had carried one bodily from the democratic modern order of tilings into the midst of an older semifeudal and vastly more heterogeneous state of society. But to Hiram Winthrop in particular, that journey by the London and North-Western Line from Liverpool to Euston was, as it were, a new spiritual birth, a first transference into the one world for which alone he was congenitally fitted. ”

“ Colin felt the sadness of parting, too, but by no means so acutely as Minna. The door of fame was opening at last before him; Rome was looming large upon the mental horizon; dreams in marble were crystallising themselves down into future actuality; and in the near fulfilment of his life-long hopes, it was hardly to be expected that he should take the parting to heart so seriously as the little pupil-teacher herself had taken it. Besides, time, in anticipation at least, never looks nearly so long to men as to women. ”

“ If you will only condescend to give me instruction—to make me your pupil—to let me model in your studio, I shall be eternally grateful to you for such unexpected kindness.'
Maragliano wrung the young man's hand with a kindly fervour. 'That is more than enough already,' he answered. 'Those who love art are all of one family. When will you come to the studio? Let me see; you have not been long in Rome?'
'We've only just come here,' put in Sam, proud of having caught the meaning of the Italian. ”

“ Hiram's voice had a touch of gratitude in it as he answered slowly, 'I didn't know, Miss Russell, you were likely to care about it.'
'Oh, he always loves solitude,' Audouin answered lightly, in a tone that cut Hiram to the quick. 'He doesn't care for society at all. I'm afraid, in that respect, Winthrop and I are both alike—lineal descendants of the old Red Indian. There's nothing he loves so much as to get away to a corner by himself, and commune with nature, with or without his colours, just as he's been doing now, in perfect solitude. ”

“ I think in some ways sculpture's the very finest and noblest art of all—finer and nobler even than painting.'
'The Greeks thought so,' Colin assented with quiet assurance; 'and they say Michael Angelo thought so too. Perhaps I may be prejudiced, but I certainly think so myself. There's a purity about sculpture which you don't get about painting or any other alternative form of art. In painting you may admit what is ugly—sparingly, to be sure, but still you may admit it. In sculpture everything must be beautiful. Beauty of pure form, without the accidental aid of colour, is what we aim at. ”

“ How little we all of us are to some people who are so very, very much to us!
But when she was leaving them at the door of her own hotel, Gwen handed Hiram a card with a smile that made amends for everything, and said so brightly: 'I hope we may see you again, Mr. Winthrop. I haven't forgotten your delightful picture. I'm so fond of everything at all artistic. And how nice it is, too, that you've got that charming Mr. Audouin still with you. You must be sure to bring him to see us here, or rather, I must send papa to call upon you. ”

“ You can see at once that such devotion to art shows what a very remarkable young man he must really be—you're a lover of art yourself, and so you can sympathise with him—to come away as a servant, so as to get to Rome and see the works of Michael Angelo, and Raphael, and—and—and—all that sort of thing, you know,' Gwen added feebly, breaking down in her strenuous effort for a completion to her imagined trio. ”

“ But as Minna lay on her bed alone through that Sunday morning, only for a short time disturbed by the obtrusive sympathy of Anne the slavey, she began to think to herself that it was really very dangerous after all to let Colin remain at Rome without her; and that she ought to try sooner or later to go over and join him there. And as she turned this all but impossible scheme over in her head (for if even Cohn found it hard to get over to Italy, how could she, poor girl, ever expect to find the money for such a long journey, or subsistence afterwards?) ”

“ Who the dickens wants a genius for a valet? I'll take precious good care, when once I'm out of this deuced hobble, that I never engage a fellow who's been first cousin to a marble-cutter as my servant in future. First this young lady comes down upon me and lectures me in the name of high art, what the devil do I mean by keeping this delightful young sculptor pottering about as my own body-servant. ”

“ We laugh about her young man, whom we envisage to ourselves simply as a hulking fellow and a domestic nuisance; we never reflect that to her all the interest and sympathy of life is concentrated and focussed upon that one single shadowy follower. He may be as uninteresting a slip of a plough-boy, turned driver of a London railway van, as ever was seen in this realm of England; or he may be as full of artistic aspiration and beautiful imaginings as Colin Churchill ”

“ Churchill,' Gwen went on, musingly. 'I never fully knew, before I came here, how much I loved art. I perfectly revel in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, and in studios such as Signor Maragliano's. What a fortunate life yours will be—to live always among so much exquisite beauty! I should love an artist's life myself—only I suppose I should never get beyond the most amateur water-colours. But a sculptor, especially! A sculptor's career seems to me to be the grandest thing on earth a man can live for! ”

“ The dream of his life was to go to Rome, and study in a real studio, and become a regular genuine sculptor. Nothing short of that would ever satisfy him, he told Minna: and Minna, though she trembled to think of Colin's going so far away from her—among all those black-eyed Italian women, too— (and Colin had often told her he admired black eyes, like hers, above all others) —poor little Minna could not but admit sorrowfully to herself that Rome was after all the proper school for Colin Churchill. ”

“ It was sacrilege, it was crime, it was sheer blasphemy against the divinity of beauty. 'I'm very sorry, Lord Beaminster,' he said, at last, regretfully. 'I should much have liked to execute the group for you in marble; but I really can't consent to sacrifice the Autumn. It's the central figure and inspiring idea of the entire composition. If you take it at all, I think you ought to take it exactly as the sculptor himself has first designed it. An artist, you know, gives much time and thought to what he is working upon. ”

“ It takes some residence to get over the initial disadvantages of an Italian city. But to an American-born, an unregenerate, not yet cosmopolitanised or Italianate American, fresh from the broad clean streets and neat white houses of American cities, the squalor and griminess of Rome is a thing incredible and almost unutterable. Hiram gazed at it, appalled and awestruck, wondering how on earth he could ever manage to live for a year or two together in that all-pervading murky atmosphere of dust-laden malaria. ”

“ The colonel looked uneasy again, and pulled up his collar nervously. 'Very fine occupation indeed, a sculptor's,' he edged in sideways. 'Delightful faculty to be able to do the living marble and all that kind of thing; very delightful, really.' The colonel was always equal to a transparent platitude upon every occasion, and contributed very little else to the general conversation at any time.
'And so delightful, too, to hear an artist talk about his art,' Gwen added with a touch of genuine enthusiasm. 'Do you know, I think I should love to be a sculptor. ”

“ Every limb must be in perfect proportion, every feature in exquisite harmony. Any deformity, any weakness of outline, any mere ungracefulness, you see, militates against that perfection of shape to which sculpture entirely devotes itself. The coldness, hardness, and whiteness of marble make it appeal only to the highest taste; its rigorous self-abnegation in refusing the aid of colour gives it a special claim in the eyes of the purest and truest judges.'
'Then you don't like tinted statues?' the colonel put it. (He knew his ground here, for had he not seen Gibson's Venus?) ”

“ Even when we're most alone, we have, not only nature with us, but such a glorious company of glorified humanity that has gone before us. We walk with Shelley down the autumn avenues of falling leaves, or we meditate with Pascal beside the great breakers of Homer's much-resounding sea. We look with Claude at the shifting lights and shades on the craggy hillside opposite there, or we gaze upon the clouds and the sunset with something of the halo that flooded the dying eyes of Turner. Somebody has well said somewhere, Miss Russell, that without solitude no great thing was ever yet accomplished. ”

“ For my part, it often occurs to me, when I look at other women; that they think a great deal too little of it. How rarely, after all, does one see art subservient here to nature—a beautiful woman whose dress rather expresses and accentuates than mars or clashes with her own individual type of beauty.'
'How complimentary he is,' thought Gwen; 'and at his age too! Why, I positively believe he must be very nearly forty!'
'Shall we go down and look at the Emissary?' Colin asked, interrupting Audouin's flow of pretty sentimentalities. ”

“ When one sees a member of one's own family after a separation of many years, one judges of him as one judges of a stranger; and Colin was certainly pleased with the first glimpse of this resurrected and wholly transfigured Sam—he seemed such a good-humoured, easygoing, kindly-confidential sort of fellow, that Colin's heart warmed to him immediately. They fell to talking at once about old times at Wootton Mandeville, and Sam told Colin the whole story of how he came to cross the Atlantic again, and what reception he had met with that morning from Sir Henry Wilberforce. ”

“ Doesn't papa see the difference between an enthusiast for art and a common footman? A valet! I can see it all now. Every bit as romantic as Millet, except for the sabots. No wonder his face glowed so when he spoke about the painter who had risen from the ranks of the people. I think I know now what it is they mean by inspiration.'
At last the train reached Amberieu. Great wits jump together; and as the carriage pulled up at the platform, both the colonel and Colin jumped out unanimously, to see whether they could find a vacant place in any other compartment. ”

“ Besides, was he not a little sore and disappointed that Gwen had seen him, and had utterly forgotten him? Was he not just a trifle jealous, not only of Audouin, but also of Colin Churchill? All these things go to colour a man's opinion of towns and places quite as much as those recognised and potent refractive agents, the nature of his digestion or the state of the weather. ”

“ It must be so lovely to see the shape forming itself slowly out of a raw block of marble.'
'Oh, you know, we don't do it all in the marble, at first,' Colin said quickly. 'It's rather dirty work, the first modelling. If you come into a sculptor's studio when he's working in the clay, you'll find him all daubed over with bits of mud, just like a common labourer.'
'How very unpleasant!' said the colonel coldly. 'Hardly seems the sort of profession fit for a gentleman—now does it?'
'Oh, papa, how can you be so dreadful! Why, it's just beautiful. ”

“ Colin, he said, was a person clearly beneath her both in birth and education, while Audouin was the most incomprehensible prig of a Yankee fellow he had ever had the misfortune to set eyes upon in the whole course of his lifetime. But the colonel was one of those forcible-feeble people who are very vehement always in language, but very mild in actual fact; who threaten and bluster a great deal about what they will never do, or what they will never permit, but who do or permit it all the same on the very next occasion when opportunity arises. ”

“ Let us admit that you do not come here to me to learn landscape. The human figure—the divine human figure in all its sublime grandeur—there, Monsieur, is the goal of the highest art; there is the arena of the highest artist.' M. Seguin brought his hand carelessly down upon the fragment of ribbon on his own left breast as he finished this final sentence, as though to imply with due delicacy of feeling that he considered the highest artist and Jean Baptiste Seguin as practically convertible expressions.
Hiram inclined his head a little, partly to hide a smile. ”