Grinling Gibbons

“ Beyond the statue of Charles I. in the central line, is placed that [I-106] of James II. by Grinling Gibbons, cast from the original now in the court at the back of Whitehall. It is an excellent example of a portrait-statue treated in the classical style; and affords us a proof of the higher reach of Gibbons’s genius; whose well-earned reputation in the seventeenth century, we may remark, rested more especially on his works in ornamental carving, of which the exquisitely cut fruits, flowers, wreaths, and other ornaments on the façade of St. Paul’s, London, are examples. ”

“ Paul's Cathedral; and Greenwich Hospital and Hampton Court were enlarged according to Wren's designs, with the co-operation of the master woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons. In later Jacobean days a splendour of style and an excellence of workmanship were the outcome of the fine achievements in interior woodwork by Grinling Gibbons and the school he founded.{121}
The work of Grinling Gibbons consisted of most natural chains of flowers and foliage, fruit, or birds or cherubs' heads, all faithfully reproduced untrammelled by convention. St. ”

“ Eva, to be sure, had stood out stoutly against the wood-carving, and had pleaded hard for a sculptor in London: but the vicar disarmed her objections somewhat by alleging the admirable precedent of Grinling Gibbons. 'Gibbons, you know, my dear, rose to the very first rank as a sculptor from his trade as a wood-carver. Pity to upset the boy's mind by putting him at once to a regular artist. If there's really anything in him, he'll rise at last ”

“ In all that expanse of quiet night, there was not a single flicker of light, and at that time not a sound to indicate that unmentionable numbers of our men were facing one another in parallel ditches across the silent moor.
"See that clump of trees way out there?" said the lieutenant, directing our vision with his arm. "Now then, hold your hand at arm's length in front of you, straight along a line from your eyes along the left edge of your hand to that clump of trees. Now then, look right along the right edge of your hand and you will be looking at Richecourt. The Boche hold it. ”

“ Gibbons opened the door quite civilly, and Evelyn tells us that when he saw the work close at hand he was quite amazed at its beauty and delicacy. He asked the young carver why he lived in such a lonely spot, and Gibbons told him that he wanted to have time ‘to work hard at his profession without interruption.’
Then Evelyn, who was always ready to do a kind action and to help people, volunteered to introduce him to some ‘great man,’ who might, [56] perhaps, buy the piece of carving, and asked the sum for which Gibbons would sell it. ”

“ Salomon Muller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the results of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hill-sides, and disappear in the darker valleys. ”

“ In the afternoon, Gibbie re-appeared at the Mains, and Robert and Janet set out at once to go home with him. It was a long journey for them—he had to take them so many rounds. They rested at several houses, and saw much misery on their way. It was night before they arrived at the cottage. They found it warm and clean and tidy: Ginevra had, like a true lady, swept the house that gave her shelter: that ladies often do; and perhaps it is yet more their work in the world than they fully understand. For Ginevra, it was heavenly bliss to her to hear their approaching footsteps ”

“ Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds were Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Fox, Gibbon, and Sheridan. Of these Gibbon is not the least distinguished. He is an illustrious example of what an ordinary personality can accomplish by reason of an extraordinary devotion to one purpose. Some few men achieve fame by their brilliant versatility; some, as in the case of Samuel Johnson, by their commanding personal force; Gibbon has won a permanent place in literary history by spending his life in doing one thing. ”

“ Miss Gregory felt herself reddening in the lantern-light. It was plain that she had failed to impress Gruden; he was merely playing with her, and believing her not at all. It would have been fine to produce a purse forthwith and flatten him with a show of unlimited gold for the mere satisfaction of seeing him grovel. But she gathered herself for a last effort.
"Look here," she said strongly; "you can spare yourself the trouble of trying to be impertinent. If you can't see that you 're not dealing with a tramp, you are a fool. ”

“ In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the crisp and nervous prose of the best French writers. We are constantly offended by a superfine diction lavished on barbarous chiefs and rough soldiers of the Lower Empire, which almost reproduces the high-flown rhetoric in which Corneille's and Racine's characters address each other. ”

“ More than once the Daur was frozen thick; for weeks every beast was an absolute prisoner to the byre, and for months was fed with straw and turnips and potatoes and oilcake. Then was the time for stories; and often in the long dark, while yet it was hours too early for bed, would Ginevra go with Nicie, who was not much of a raconteuse, to the kitchen, to get one of the other servants to tell her an old tale. For even in his own daughter and his own kitchen, the great laird could not extinguish the accursed superstition. Not a glimpse did Ginevra get all this time of Donal or of Gibbie. ”

“ The gibbons (including the siamang) have tremendous voices, with numerous variations, and they love to use them. My acquaintance with them began in Borneo, in the dense and dark coastal forest that there forms their home. I remember their cries as vividly as if I had heard them again this morning. While feeding, or quietly enjoying the morning sun, the gray gibbon (Hylobates concolor) emits in leisurely succession a low staccato, whistle-like cry, like "Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!" which one can easily counterfeit by whistling. This is varied by another whistle cry of three notes, thus: "Who-ee-hoo! ”

“ Ginevra was more of a woman, Donal more of a poet, Nicie as nice and much the same, and Gibbie, if possible, more a foundling of the universe than ever. He was growing steadily, and showed such freedom and ease, and his motions were all so rapid and direct, that it was plain at a glance the beauty of his countenance was in no manner or measure associated with weakness. The mountain was a grand nursery for him, and the result, both physical and spiritual, corresponded. Janet, who, better than anyone else, knew what was in the mind of the boy, revered him as much as he revered her ”

“ He was a lean and hardy ancient, with a hayband of whiskers under his chin, and an aspect of wry, dry wisdom about his weather-rough, sun-bitten face.
"She ain't no tramp." he said slowly.
"Quite right," said Miss Gregory; "you 're not such a fool as your master. He wants you to run the risk of getting your legs cut off with this scythe now, and of going to jail to-morrow."
"Don't harken to her," growled Gruden. "She can talk the hind leg off a dog. You, Bill, you get a bat and twizzle that there scythe outen her hands." ”

“ If we lay down Gibbon and take up Neander, for instance, we are conscious that with all the greater fulness of detail, engaging candour, and sympathetic insight of the great Berlin Professor, the general impression of the times is less distinct and lasting. There is no specialism in Gibbon; his book is a broad sociological picture in which the whole age is portrayed. ”

“ It is not every man that keeps such an easy reckoning as you do of the benefits for which his friends are indebted to him.”
“But what benefit have you had from me?” demanded Gibbon.
“I’ll tell you that,” said the West Highlander. “I’ll tell you that in a moment. You see, I have no less than three strapping lasses of daughters. I have married all the three, and to each one of them I gave a tocher which you provided.”
“Tut!” cried Gibbon laughing, “the man is demented. When did I ever give a tocher to daughter of yours? By St. Mungo, I have a strapping lass of a daughter of my own to portion. ”

“ Every moment a tree fell and shot with it like a rocket. Looking up its course, they saw it come down the hillside a white streak, and burst into boiling brown and roar at their feet. The wind nearly swept them from their place; but they clung to the great stones, and saw the airy torrent, as if emulating that below it, fill itself with branches and leaves and lumps of foam. Then first Ginevra became fully aware of the danger in which the house was, and from which Gibbie had rescued her. ”

“ But its sustained vigour [167] and loftiness will always be uncommon; above all its rapidity and masculine length of stride are quite admirable. When he takes up his pen to describe a campaign, or any great historic scene, we feel that we shall have something worthy of the occasion, that we shall be carried swiftly and grandly through it all, without the suspicion of a breakdown of any kind being possible. An indefinable stamp of weightiness is impressed on Gibbon's writing; he has a baritone manliness which banishes everything small, trivial, or weak. ”

“ And in one place there was a piece of observation: "They die just like white people."
The man on the angareb was still again; his time was very near at hand when the door behind Miss Gregory opened. She turned and nodded to the man who stood there looking in, and he entered. He was a young man, clad in soiled and crumpled white linen, with a fez on his head. He had the swarthy skin and delicate features which belong to the Levant; a black moustache stood stiff across his upper lip. In him, too, there were signs of wear; the pair of them had sustained the fight against the plague together. ”

“ Let us turn to the lady's account of the same scenes. "I do not know if I told you," she writes to a friend at Lausanne, "that I have seen Gibbon, and it has given me more pleasure than I know how to express. Not indeed that I retain any sentiment for a man who I think does not deserve much" (this little toss of pique or pride need not mislead us) ; "but my feminine vanity could not have had a more complete and honest triumph. He stayed two weeks in Paris, and I had him every day at my house; he has become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a fault. ”

“ Gibbie woke with the first of the dawn. The rain still fell—descending in spoonfuls rather than drops; the wind kept shaping itself into long hopeless howls, rising to shrill yells that went drifting away over the land; and then the howling rose again. Nature seemed in despair. There must be more for Gibbie to do! He must go again to the foot of the mountain, and see if there was anybody to help. They might even be in trouble at the Mains, who could tell!
Ginevra woke, rose, made herself as tidy as she could, and left her closet. Gibbie was not in the cottage. ”

“ That evening, a little the worse for drink, he accosted Rufus Grim at the post office, where the Gold bluff villagers were wont to congregate on the arrival of the evening coach.
Steve Gibbons was evidently the agressor. “Look’ee here, Mr. Grim,” said Steve Gibbons, approaching him, “you’ve been interferin’ with me for a good many years, and it’s time you was lettin’ up.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Gibbons,” said Grim, “that I have ever interfered with you. I have plenty of business of my own to look after, without bothering with other people’s.” ”

“ At the foot of the staircase Mrs. Gibbons met her cousin, and, as she clutched the latter for support, the barrel shot past her, still continuing its descent—bump—bump—bump! (though the steps as far as she could see had ended) —till the sounds gradually dwindled away in the far distance.
[285] Whilst the manifestations lasted, neither Mrs. Gibbons nor her cousin spoke; but the latter, as soon as the sounds had ceased, dragged Mrs. Gibbons away, and, in a voice shaking with terror, cried: "Quick, quick—don't, for Heaven's sake, look round—worse has yet to come." ”

“ I had not yet turned out ten bricks when he saw me, and paused in his melancholy work.
"'Stop that!' he cried, and scrambled out of the spruit to where I stood. 'I suppose,' he went on, 'you would like your father to know that I had suffered you to work for me like a Kafir.'
"'Kornel!' I cried in horror.
"But he was white on the cheek-bones and breathing hard, and I could not soften him.
"'Rich man's daughter or poor man's wife,' he said, 'you are white, and must keep your station. It is my business to sell myself, not yours. ”

“ Although Gibbie had taken no notice of the laird’s party, he had recognized each of the three as he came up the stair, and in Ginevra’s face read an appeal for deliverance. It seemed to say, “You help everybody but me! Why do you not come and help me too? Am I to have no pity because I am neither hungry nor cold?” ”

“ Most people, in fact, have a lot of happiness."
"Have they?" said the Princess. "But that is strange."
Food and a glass of wine had helped Miss Gregory back to optimism.
"You won't find it strange soon," she declared. "Only let us get word to Mr. Van Cuyp, and your happiness will begin, too."
The Princess blinked like a puzzled child.
"Ah, Daniel!" she said. "Yes, if I could find Daniel——"
"You must eat something," said Miss Gregory. "You need it. And drink some of this wine. And then we'll go and see if Daniel has arrived. No; we can't go till you have eaten something." ”