John McLure Hamilton

“ AMONG all the men I have known intimately, my father stands out as a positive, straightforward, and inflexible nature. I owe him not only my life but the manner of my life, for it was he who inclined the tree by studying the bent of the twig. Against opposition, mostly silent I imagine, for he was self-willed and determined, he not only encouraged but guided me in the direction of my tastes, placing me, at an early age, under the care of the painter, George W. Holmes, where I met Henry Thouron. ”

“ Why should I not take advantage of this unforeseen permission to paint portraits at my ease, and so be free from the ever-trammelling thought that my sitter was being victimized through being obliged to stare stolidly at the antics and flourishes of an uninspired and uninspiring painter? Are there not enough stark and stiff upright figures looking down at us from the walls of every public and private gallery in the universe, that I should add one more senseless effigy to the number, unless commissioned to do so by a wife who avers that her husband is always upright and his eyes brilliant? ”

“ Ignoring completely the fact that Art, and Art only, made civilization possible, he talks profusely and learnedly of the conflicts between the sovereigns of the Church and the State, and of the rivalries between barons and kings.
Now what do the stones teach? They show us that in Greece and Rome civilization reached its highest expression in temple and in statue, and in all the arts of the hearth and home, as well as of the altar. And what historian has described the literature of the time and the thought and customs of the people so well as the makers of the literature themselves? ”

“ ONSLOW FORD
ONSLOW FORD
WHO can describe this gentle and amiable man? With the allure of the garçon du Quartier Latin, although I believe he studied only for a short time in Paris, his inner personality was that of a true-born, loyal Briton, with that intense love of home and of family life which is characteristic of the race. He was all his life dominated by two strong affections—love of his family and love of Art; and, as is usual where a man is not single-hearted in his loves, jealousies and conflicts occurred between the rival passions. ”

“ That most polished actor, Coquelin, not only did not feel the passion of his part, but he conveyed no emotion to his hearers, save admiration for his technical skill: laughter might be evoked by his mimicry, but tears refused to flow at the sight of his misfortunes. Tact is the great artist, in life as in music, or in painting or sculpture, or architecture. He who touches you wins your sympathy, even though his handling be not quite perfect. ”

“ Henry Thouron knew, as Ruskin knew, that "all ancient Art was religious and all modern art is profane," and he therefore worked zealously to restore Art to its sacred function. He stood among the few in his city as a generous and unselfish patron of Art, and he proved that patronage is not the privilege of the rich only, but of all who love beauty, and cultivate a taste for it; that men of modest means may possess gems of modern Art by ever-increasing care and discrimination in selecting them. ”

“ It is not a little remarkable that astronomers are religious men, and believers in a Divine direction of this vast universe, while scientists who deal with fossils and with biology are incredulous, and as a rule unbelievers. A knowledge of little things seems to be also a dangerous thing. One man looks out of a window and sees mud, another looks out and sees stars.
Tyndall took the safe ground, compromising, as it were, between the knowable and the unknowable. What his fearless and reasonable nature would have thought of the present-day creed that MAN is God I dare not consider. ”

“ Sir Archibald, like John Tyndall, was a doughty champion of the truth that he had found in rocky mountains, in sandy valleys, and in fossils deep down in the strata of the earth—truth that had often exposed the aberrations of the mind of man, for, as he would no doubt have admitted had I put the matter before him, the only false thing on earth is man. Some few animals, like the fox and the spider and the dove, know how to deceive, but as a rule Nature does not lie. ”

“ John Tyndall was the freest, frankest, and most open-minded man I have ever met. Épanouissement, the act of opening out, expresses his nature better than any English word I can think of. He met you and greeted you like the fresh, pine-scented breeze that blows over his beloved hills of Hindhead.
Tyndall built himself two nests—one on Hindhead, overlooking the Devil's Punch Bowl, the other far up on the high Alps. It was in the latter place that he made the experiments which determined that life is not due to spontaneous generation, that where no life is, no life can be derived ”

“ Booth was a Jew, but I could always reply in the negative, because no trace of Israelitish blood appears in either of the two portraits I painted of him.
Lord Leighton had the talents of the race and all its virtues, even though an almost invisible line of that extraordinary and, shall I say, mystery blood flowed in his veins. He was a courtier, a persuasive orator, a graceful painter, and a forceful sculptor; a man of the world, a man of affairs, and, as President of the Royal Academy, unequalled in administrative ability. ”

“ This unity of purpose, diversely expressed, had a similar impulse in dissimilar minds, the impulse to be artists in everything, even in appearance. Here were two men of similar tastes, who could not savour each other's food. Leighton stood for English respectability, and sought the homage of the great. Whistler, a Bohemian malgré lui, stood for his own Art, and was looked upon as a sort of pariah by Philistines, both high and low.
Time sweeps away the excrescences, reduces all men, not to the forked radishes of Carlyle, but to a bag of bones, any two pairs of which are interchangeable. ”

“ Finally, the world of Art is grateful to him for having written the life of the most subtle, the most refined, and at the same time the most direct of modern artists—an etcher and a painter without a peer, James McNeil Whistler. It can rarely be said of a modern artist that he belongs to the world; of Whistler and Pennell it may truthfully be affirmed, and of Pennell it may be added that he has made the world his own. ”

“ No one but Rodin could have presented a naked Victor Hugo without shocking us; but genius will accomplish miracles of audacity where talent does not dare to go beyond a conventional formula.
One of Gilbert's early works, The Sleeper, I am told, is destroyed. Those who remember the figure of the young girl, relaxed in slumber, and almost sinking into the great arm-chair under the spell of the bird that broods over her unconscious form, will be glad to have been privileged to see one of the glories of English art before it disappeared for ever. ”

“ As Lloyd George expressed some surprise at this, saying that the usual practice was to put the visitor in the light, where his emotions could be more easily read, Colonel House replied, "I do not need to see my visitors; I want them to see me, as I might have reason for downing them."
When Mrs. House came in one morning to see the portrait, she exclaimed at once, "I do not like it. I have never seen that look on his face." Turning to her, I said apologetically, "I am not painting a husband, but a public man." ”

“ GENERAL BOOTH
THE most benevolent figure in England in the nineteenth century, perhaps the greatest personality in the world, is that of the organizer and the leader of the Salvation Army.
If we look back over a hundred years, the really conspicuous names are few in number—Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, Lincoln, Gladstone, Disraeli, and Bismarck. Of these seven, one, Lincoln, stood for a sentiment—not a principle. He fought for what is called freedom, whereas the great principle in nature is dependence, and its first duty is service. ”

“ The Strand and Fleet Street were densely crowded with sightseers on foot, gaping in wonderment at the havoc that had been made. Less than half a mile away, in Oxford Street, the traffic was going on as usual, and the pavements were crowded with shoppers, who either did not know, or did not care, that a murderous and destructive raid had taken place.
I first met the Publisher at No. 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, long the residence of Joseph and Mrs. Pennell, whose hospitality to fellow-craftsmen and to publishers and Pressmen was proverbial. ”

“ It might possibly have been wiser, unquestionably it would have been both politic and magnanimous, on the part of the autocrat Tsar of Russia to have listened favourably to the petition of his clamouring subjects on that fateful Sunday morning when they begged loudly for a measure of political freedom; but for Unionists and Royalists to join voices with Socialists and Radicals in the outcry against the most enlightened form of government the world has yet seen, or will ever be likely to see, displays an unpardonable ignorance of history and of human nature. ”

“ He loved Art for its cunning and its craft, and with deft and skilful fingers lingered long over the making of it, full of the joy of creating. At times he could be swift and impress movement and thought upon paper with a magic stroke of his crayon or chalk. Just as Manet and Monet sought for light, Swan aimed for movement, watching always for feline grace and charm in the animals that can purr as well as scream and bite. ”

“ The wealthy and the leisured classes go to Art as the highest and final enjoyment of existence, even those who do not understand it."
"Not so," said Spencer; "it is only another means of distinction. When men fail to make themselves celebrated, they think to make themselves distinguished by their possessions." "But," said I, "referring again to Carlyle, is not literature a form of art?" "That," he replied, "depends on the kind of literature." "Is not Sartor Resartus an artistic work?" I asked. "Yes," he answered, "it is an artistic rendering of a philosophic idea." ”

“ It is enough now to touch lightly upon the artist's work; to treat of the man would be beyond the knowledge and power of any one writer. Those who knew him intimately are dead. Like Cellini, he alone is capable of revealing the vicissitudes of a career that would have surpassed the Italian master's amazing life, had the modern English genius lived in the sixteenth century. ”

“ JOHN SWAN stands in a niche by himself. His Art is precious, like a jewel, to be handled lovingly in the seclusion of a cabinet of treasures, not exposed to the vulgar in the glare and blare of artificiality for ostentation's sake. ”

“ That George Meredith was filled with the emotion of beauty is manifest in his prose and his verse. Love of colour, form, harmony and contrast; a knowledge of Nature and Nature's art speak everywhere in his books. ”

“ JOHN TYNDALL was one of that remarkable group of scientists who dragged Truth from her hiding-place and exposed her, shrinking, to the astonished gaze of gaping multitudes. Falsehood, like all vicious, brazen things, shrieked her shrill protest: Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, standing shoulder to shoulder, stoutly defended the new-found Truth from the vicious attacks of the vixen and her votaries. ”

“ But it is not so much as an artist that I wish to consider him, but as a man. His Shelley, at Oxford, is a beautiful and pathetic figure, but the two works that I love are Folly, the first of the small bronzes, and the last marble, A Snowflake. The latter, a frail young girl, seems to be melting out of life, just as the creator himself melted slowly away. ”

“ In the Temple of Peace there is absolute silence. An older Gladstone is sitting at the desk by the tall window that overlooks the green slope that rises to the hill on which the ruins of the ancient castle stand: a little shrunken maybe—not quite so vigorous—but more beautiful than ever. He writes with his head bent down close to the paper on the table, and every now and then refers to a blue-bound book lying at hand.
The canvas on my easel is small, the same as the first that was painted in the library years before. ”

“ He was an unusually sane and just man. After Art he loved horses, and they returned his affection. He petted, coaxed, and teased them, and when in the country often groomed them himself, winning them by the choicest clumps of clover he could find, and by his manner, that was both firm and fond. Like all tactful men, he was extremely sensitive to every touch of nature, and would respond willingly to the call of both pleasure and pain—to enjoy the one and relieve the other—but he had too much faith to resent the will of God in misfortune. ”

“ In his really miraculous painting in the National Gallery, John Arnolfini and his Wife, the fine art lies in the face of the man, shadowed under the great hat; all the rest is just perfect mechanism and inimitable. ”

“ We might have known each other all our lives. His easy and restful poise, his affable speech, led me to suppose that he was prepared for a friendly talk of any length and that affairs of State could wait.
"I am sorry that His Holiness cannot be approached upon the subject of having his portrait painted," was his ultimatum. "He is not well, is, as you know, old and weak; besides, he does not give sittings for the portraits that are painted of him." ”

“ If the Central Government had been prepared, as it should have been, with an adequate army and navy, the rebellion could have been crushed in its infancy, and lives innumerable and property saved.
Nature and the Designer of nature may consider these long wars that deplete and desolate necessary to a mysterious and preconceived plan of life. I remember Senator Stewart once telling me that he had said in a speech to the Senate that no nation had ever become great until after it had had a great war, and that no senator present had been able to deny it. ”

“ Many of my friends congratulated me on my good fortune in being asked to paint a subject so completely in sympathy with my favourite scheme of colour, and I was happy in the thought that the portrait was destined for my native city, where I was already represented by one of Mr. Gladstone. But l'homme propose et Dieu dispose. No amount of free will on my part could shake the inevitable rock of predestination, and the picture still remains in my imagination, a much more beautiful thing than it could have been on canvas.
No effort had been made to obtain sittings for me ”

“ He well knew that without Cæsar's aid his work would soon come to an end among the penniless unfit, and he was much too wise, and I may say too godly, to give a moment's notice to the vapourings of foolish men whose prime doctrine is a denial of Christ and the elimination of God from the affairs of life.
General Booth was not a visionary, and he was not a social reformer. He was an evangelist of the old-fashioned type, as vigorous as Saint Peter, and as wise as Saint Paul. Woe unto the Salvation Army should one of its leaders become a social reformer! ”

“ His love of Art was deeper and greater far than my own, and I may also say blinder, for study and a wider experience made me conscious and critical of defects, or, more accurately speaking, intolerant of all but the highest and noblest, while his more catholic tastes, led somewhat by his books, accepted Art in general as the one thing to be admired. Had he been wealthy, he would have been a princely patron of every form of Art. ”

“ It may meet the approbation of a few American artists, both sculptors and painters, if it be urged that it is the office of museums to collect old Art, and a duty incumbent upon individuals to patronize living artists. That we owe the existence of the great masterpieces of ancient Art to contemporary patronage is merely to state the obvious.
It is to the deep and steady undercurrent of thought flowing from the minds of men like Judge Simpson that America owes her position to-day as a power for good. ”

“ The butterfly you are to hear about is of another sort, one of those fluttering pale things, like the petals of an evening primrose, that joyously disport themselves among the chestnut-trees of the Champs Élysées, in that atmosphere only found in Paris when Spring has dressed the gay city in tones of tender green under the genial skies of May. Onslow Ford and I, with other painters and sculptors, were in the habit of making annual pilgrimages to Paris to see the Salon. ”

“ The misfortune is that men resemble each other more frequently in ugliness than in beauty, and in passing I may say that the ugliness is increasing, if not in degree, certainly in number. The cult of the beautiful and the noble belongs to the religious age, the age of worship, of veneration, of respect, of loyalty, of fidelity—all the qualities that are now often mocked at and despised. Beauty can be cultivated as flowers are: and it was cultivated in the times gone by when women were content to be women, and not freakish men. ”

“ From making shells and guns, boots and shoes, and food—all of which have been consumed by soldiers, and of which some broken remnants are dumped about, marring the landscape. That money could have built a hundred marble cities roofed in gold. It still is there on books as debts—for some men thought, and other men worked for it. Most wealth is earned by men who think and men who serve, not merely by men who labour with their hands to produce bricks, mortar, and houses. And the men who serve, be they waiters in a café, or priests, or doctors, or lawyers, are the most numerous. ”

“ The inequalities in the universe make it go round instead of flying apart, hold it together instead of disintegrating it. A few fools and many rogues think equality would be heavenly, but it would be deadly dull.
Walter Tyndale soon became fascinated with the East, where he was obliged to pass the winters in order to escape the injurious effects upon his health of the coal-smoke of London. Here his tastes for the beauty of contours and of rich colour found expression in a series of charming watercolour drawings of scenes in Japan, India, Egypt, and Italy. ”