Jean-Léon Gérôme

“ In the portrait he has given us, we have the master authoritatively proclaiming his37 convictions. This distinguished artist, by the way, was formerly a pupil of Gérôme's. One day when he was complimenting the latter upon his method of teaching, Gérôme replied, in his loud, assertive voice: "When I undertake to do a thing, I do it to the very end. I am a man with a sense of duty." ”

“ Gérôme had travelled extensively in the East, for he loved its vigorous colouring and picturesque customs. Here is a scene glimpsed from the banks of the Nile, and he has transcribed it in this superb picture, vibrant with colour and harmonious in composition.
And when a prominent politician criticised the official curriculum without proposing anything to take its place, it was, according to M.41 Moreau-Vauthier, again Gérôme who replied: "Gentlemen, it is easier to be an incendiary than a fireman!" ”

“ She had never for an instant been unaware of Gregory as the man she loved. He had always been stronger than any moment or any place. The deepest peace had held always, within itself, the power of its own destruction. But there was no personal claim in this silence with Jerome. In their mutual understanding of life's lonely hours, they shared the peace of the roof.
"It's another world—absolutely another world," Jerome said quietly.
Jean nodded. "Nothing's the same up here. Stillness is not empty and color's really sound. Sunrise and sunset are like tremendous chords on a great organ. ”

“ Absorbed by professional engagements, or fiscal cares, the gentlemen of a community are rarely interested in or informed of the last wreck of character which the whirlpool of scandal strews on the strand of society; but vague rumors relative to Mrs. Gerome’s isolation had penetrated even into the quiet precincts of Dr. Grey’s sanctum, and consequently invested his present mission with extraneous interest. ”

“ Abel Edwards had said, confidentially, many a time to his boy, who had listened sagely and nodded.
Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who yields because his opponent is weaker than he, and a struggle beneath his dignity, not because he is actually coerced. Neither he nor his father ever answered back or contradicted; when her shrill voice waxed loudest and her vituperation seemed to fairly hiss in their ears, they sometimes looked at each other and exchanged a solemn wink of understanding and patience. ”

“ Doctor Prescott might hold the mortgage and exact his pound of flesh, these poor backs might bend to the yoke, but there was no cringing in the hearts of Abel Edwards and his wife. It was easy to see where Jerome got his spirit.
However, spirit needs long experience and great strength to assert itself fully at all times before long-recognized power. Jerome, going up the road to Doctor Prescott's, felt rather a fierce submission and obligatory humility than defiance. He felt as if this great man held not only himself, but his mother and sister, their lives and fortunes, at his disposal. ”

“ Jerome, standing straight before the doctor, with a little twitching hand hanging at each side, with his color coming and going, and pulses which could be seen beating hard in his temples and throat, spoke and delivered himself of that innocently overreaching scheme which he had propounded to Squire Eben Merritt.
It seems probable that mental states have their own reflective powers, which sometimes enable one to suddenly see himself in the conception of another, to the complete modification of all his own ideas and opinions. ”

“ Like most real humorists whom I have known, and I have known many from Mark Twain and Bill Nye downwards, Jerome is not a “funny man” in ordinary life. He is, on the contrary, except when he is on his legs, before an audience, or taking his pen in his hand, apt to be a very serious man, though his conversation is always illuminated by flashes of wit. He is much more apt to air strong opinions about serious questions. The Jerome you see in Paul Kelvin and The Third Floor Back is the real Jerome. He is the loyalest friend and most tender-hearted man imaginable. ”

“ Poor little Jerome had never speculated on the laws of heredity; he had only meant to deny that his father had come to any more disgraceful end than the common one of all mankind. He did not dream, as he raced along home with his sister's shoes, of the different construction which they had put upon his words, but he felt angry and injured.
“That Sim' Basset pickin' on me that way,” he thought. A wild sense of the helplessness of his youth came over him. “Wish I was a man,” he muttered—“wish I was a man; I'd show 'em! All them men talkin'—sayin' anything—'cause I'm a boy.” ”

“ In sooth, Gerames’ words had not awakened dread in his soul. Instead, he desired greatly to meet that dwarf, and to try whose will should prove strongest. So he answered that it would [216] ill become a knight, and the son of his father, to shun a meeting with anyone, be he man or fairy, and it might be well for him to take the short road, for many adventures might befall him by the longer.
‘Sir,’ said Gerames, ‘be it as you will; whichever way you take I will go with you.’
Then Huon and Gerames rode at the rear of their company, and entered the wood where Oberon, king of the Fairies, abode. ”

“ Always protected from the weather, Jerome's hair would have been brown; but his hats failed him like his shoes, and often in the summer season were crownless. However, his mother mended them as long as she was able. She was a thrifty woman, although she was a semi-invalid, and sat all day long in a high-backed rocking-chair. She was not young either; she had been old when she married and her children were born, but there was a strange element of toughness in her—a fibre either of body or spirit that kept her in being, like the fibre of an old tree. ”

“ Now and then a gust of cold wind, sweet with unseen blossoms, smote him powerfully, bending his slender body before it like a sapling. A bird flashed past him with a blue dazzle of wings, and Jerome stopped and looked after it. It lit on the fence in front of the house, and shone there in the sunlight like a blue precious stone. The boy gazed at it, leaning on his spade. Jerome always looked hard out of all his little open windows of life, and saw every precious thing outside his daily grind of hard, toilsome childhood which came within his sight. ”

“ From the Carters we turn to a man of a very different type, who made his way to wealth by sterling integrity and honesty of purpose. William Lemon was born at Germoe in 1696, and baptized in Breage Church on the 15th November of the same year. He received his education at the village school, and being a lad of quick intelligence, he became in the first instance a clerk to a Mr. Coster, connected with the local mining industry. ”

“ The girls were not long in reaching the stepping-stones, and presently Jean was at Geordie's side, dancing round him with wild cries of delight, as she flourished her gay prize in his rather bewildered eyes. He had been lying with his face resting on his hands, on one of the soft knolls of turf, looking at the sunset, and thinking of the new lands of which he had lately been hearing from Walter Campbell. He seemed so possessed by his own thoughts and reveries that he heard no sound of coming footsteps till he looked up suddenly, and saw little Jean by his side. ”

“ Across the young springing grass went Jerome—a slender little lad moving with an awkward rustic lope. It was the gait of the homely toiling men of the village which his young muscles had caught, as if they had in themselves powers of observation and assimilation. Jerome at twelve walked as if he had held plough-shares, bent over potato hills, and hewn wood in cedar swamps for half a century. ”

“ When Jerome and Elmira came down-stairs he led the way at once into the north parlor, where the most of the guests were assembled. There were the village young women in their best attire, decked as to heads and bosoms with sweet drooping flowers, displaying all their humble stores of lace and ribbons and trinkets, jostling one another with slurring hisses of silk and crisp rattle of muslins, speaking affectedly with pursed lips, ending often a sibilant with a fine whistle, or silent, with mouths set in conscious smiles and cheeks hot with blushes. ”

“ Jerome during his sojourn at Rome in 382. For the high altar of this church, Domenichino painted his masterpiece of the Communion of St. Jerome already described. The embarkation of Saint Paula, to follow her spiritual teacher St. Jerome to the Holy Land, is the subject of one of Claude’s most beautiful sea pieces, now in the collection of the Duke of Wellington; another picture of this subject, the figures as large as life, is in the Brera, by a clever Cremonese painter, Giuseppe Bottoni.
St. Jerome has detained its long; the other Fathers are, as subjects of Art, much less interesting. ”

“ When Jerome went home he had in his pocket a deed of the land, but on the right bank of the brook only, the lawyer having covenanted not to sell or build upon the left bank. Thus he had enough land upon which to build his mill when he should have saved the money. He felt nearer Lucina than he had ever done before. The sanguineness of youth, which is its best stimulant for advance, thrilled through all his veins. ”

“ The present of game, despite the breach Germain had made on his own account, was still plenteous enough to produce its effect. The widow did not look unaware of its presence, and the suitors cast disdainful glances in its direction.
Germain felt ill at ease in this company, and did not eat heartily. Father Leonard poked fun at him.
“You look very melancholy,” said he, “and you are ill-using your glass. You must not allow love to spoil your appetite, for a fasting lover can make no such pretty speeches as he whose ideas are brightened with a drop of wine.” ”

“ Human strength may endure heavy disappointments and calamities with heroism, but it requires superhuman power to hold one's hand to the grindstone of petty duties and details of life in the midst of them. Jerome had faced his rebuff without a whimper, and with a great stand of spirit, but now he could not go home and work in the garden, and tie his fiery revolt to the earth with spade and hoe. ”

“ The old man always took it, and spat it out when the boy's back was turned.
Jerome used to be fond of storing up checker-berries and sassafras root, and doling them out to a strange small creature with wild, askant eyes and vaguely smiling mouth, with white locks blowing as straightly and coarsely as dry swamp grass, who was wont to sit, huddling sharp little elbows and knees together, even in severe weather, on a stone by the path. She had come into the world and the poorhouse by the shunned byway of creation. ”

“ There was no self-justification in it.
“I s'pose Doctor Prescott will be mad if he hears of your goin' there, an' I dun'no' but I should be in his place,” she said, as Jerome went out. Then, as he did not answer, she added, calling out shrilly:
“I don't see why John Upham can't call in Lawrence, if he wants a doctor; he's begun to study with his father; he can't have nothin' against him. I guess he knows as much as you do.” ”

“ Jerome had buried his past with its mistakes and its follies and humiliations, and he demanded of the world that it treat him accordingly.
Sometimes the startling suddenness of everything would momentarily overcome. And he didn’t know ... well, at any rate, he mustn’t permit life to run away with him; to have life run away with him might not be so bad as to have it crawl away with him; but it would be bad enough. Sometimes when Lili laughed he had a feeling that life was running away with him. He had moments of feeling a trifle wobbly about life. ”

“ But there are some things that must be given to the world. I shall pick out the salient parts and give them chronologically.
Jerome stayed with me. Rather I should say he spent the nights with me. Most of the time he was on the elusive trail of the Rhamda. From the minute of our conversation with Kennedy he held to one conviction. He was positive of that chemist back in the nineties. He was certain of the Rhamda. Whatever the weirdness of his theory it would certainly bear investigation. When he was not on the trail over the city he was at work in the cellar. Here we worked together. ”

“ At the sound of his voice Ann turned around. “It's your father!” she cried out, sharply—“it's your father come home. Abel, here's the children.”
Jerome eyed a small japanned box, or trunk, on the floor, a stout stick, and a handkerchief parcel. He noted then clots of melting snow where the old man had trod. Somehow the sight of the snow did more to restore his faculties than anything else. “For Heaven's sake, let us go to work!” he cried to Elmira, “or he'll die. He's exhausted with tramping through the snow. Get some of that brandy in the cupboard, quick, while I start up the fire.” ”

“ As Ann and Elmira did most of their work on the shoes during the day, Jerome fell into the habit of doing his part, the closing, in his uncle's shop at night. Every evening he would load himself with the sheaf of bound shoes and hasten down the road. He liked to work in company with a man, rather than with his mother and Elmira ”