Who dares
Interpret then my life for me as 't were
One of the undistinguishable many?
COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.
The first time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had taken a
deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly
deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a
spell more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air,
and never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination was
excited, there was yet a gentleness about him which could not fail to
conciliate and prepossess; nor did Clarence omit any opportunity to
soften his reserve, and wind himself into his more intimate
acquaintance. Warner, the only support of an aged and infirm
grandmother (who had survived her immediate children), was distantly
related to Mrs. Copperas; and that lady extended to him, with
ostentatious benevolence, her favour and support. It is true that she
did not impoverish the young Adolphus to enrich her kinsman, but she
allowed him a seat at her hospitable board, whenever it was not
otherwise filled; and all that she demanded in return was a picture of
herself, another of Mr. Copperas, a third of Master Adolphus, a fourth
of the black cat, and from time to time sundry other lesser
productions of his genius, of which, through the agency of Mr. Brown,
she secretly disposed at a price that sufficiently remunerated her for
whatever havoc the slender appetite of the young painter was able to
effect.
By this arrangement, Clarence had many opportunities of gaining that
intimacy with Warner which had become to him an object; and though the
painter, constitutionally diffident and shy, was at first averse to,
and even awed by, the ease, boldness, fluent speech, and confident
address of a man much younger than himself, yet at last he could not
resist the being decoyed into familiarity; and the youthful pair
gradually advanced from companionship into friendship. There was a
striking contrast between the two: Clarence was bold and frank, Warner
close and timid. Both had superior abilities; but the abilities of
Clarence were for action, those of Warner for art: both were
ambitious; but the ambition of Clarence was that of circumstances
rather than character. Compelled to carve his own fortunes without
sympathy or aid, he braced his mind to the effort, though naturally
too gay for the austerity, and too genial for the selfishness of
ambition. But the very essence of Warner's nature was the feverish
desire of fame: it poured through his veins like lava; it preyed as a
worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep; it blackened the
colour of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an impenetrable wall, the
wholesome energies and enjoyments and objects of living men; and,
taking from him all the vividness of the present, all the tenderness
of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and forever amidst
the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was fated never to enjoy.
But these differences of character, so far from disturbing, rather
cemented their friendship; and while Warner (notwithstanding his
advantage of age) paid involuntary deference to the stronger character
of Clarence, he, in his turn, derived that species of pleasure by
which he was most gratified, from the affectionate and unenvious
interest Clarence took in his speculations of future distinction, and
the unwearying admiration with which he would sit by his side, and
watch the colours start from the canvas, beneath the real though
uncultured genius of the youthful painter.
Hitherto, Warner had bounded his attempts to some of the lesser
efforts of the art; he had now yielded to the urgent enthusiasm of his
nature, and conceived the plan of an historical picture. Oh! what
sleepless nights, what struggles of the teeming fancy with the dense
brain, what labours of the untiring thought wearing and intense as
disease itself, did it cost the ambitious artist to work out in the
stillness of his soul, and from its confused and conflicting images,
the design of this long meditated and idolized performance! But when
it was designed; when shape upon shape grew and swelled, and glowed
from the darkness of previous thought upon the painter's mind; when,
shutting his eyes in the very credulity of delight, the whole work
arose before him, glossy with its fresh hues, bright, completed,
faultless, arrayed as it were, and decked out for immortality,--oh!
then what a full and gushing moment of rapture broke like a released
stream upon his soul! What a recompense for wasted years, health, and
hope! What a coronal to the visions and transports of Genius: brief,
it is true, but how steeped in the very halo of a light that might
well be deemed the glory of heaven!
But the vision fades, the gorgeous shapes sweep on into darkness, and,
waking from his revery, the artist sees before him only the dull walls
of his narrow chamber; the canvas stretched a blank upon its frame;
the works, maimed, crude, unfinished, of an inexperienced hand, lying
idly around; and feels himself--himself, but one moment before the
creator of a world of wonders, the master spirit of shapes glorious
and majestical beyond the shapes of men-dashed down from his momentary
height, and despoiled both of his sorcery and his throne.
It was just in such a moment that Warner, starting up, saw Linden (who
had silently entered his room) standing motionless before him.
"Oh, Linden!" said the artist, "I have had so superb a dream,--a dream
which, though I have before snatched some such vision by fits and
glimpses, I never beheld so realized, so perfect as now; and--but you
shall see, you shall judge for yourself; I will sketch out the design
for you;" and, with a piece of chalk and a rapid hand, Warner conveyed
to Linden the outline of his conception. His young friend was eager
in his praise and his predictions of renown, and Warner listened to
him with a fondness which spread over his pale cheek a richer flush
than lover ever caught from the whispers of his beloved.
"Yes," said he, as he rose, and his sunken and small eye flashed out
with a feverish brightness, "yes, if my hand does not fail my thought,
it shall rival even--" Here the young painter stopped short, abashed
at that indiscretion of enthusiasm about to utter to another the
hoarded vanities hitherto locked in his heart of hearts as a sealed
secret, almost from himself.
"But come," said Clarence, affectionately, "your hand is feverish and
dry, and of late you have seemed more languid than you were wont,--
come, Warner, you want exercise: it is a beautiful evening, and you
shall explain your picture still further to me as we walk."
Accustomed to yield to Clarence, Warner mechanically and abstractedly
obeyed; they walked out into the open streets.
"Look around us," said Warner, pausing, "look among this toiling and
busy and sordid mass of beings who claim with us the fellowship of
clay. The poor labour; the rich feast: the only distinction between
them is that of the insect and the brute; like them they fulfil the
same end and share the same oblivion; they die, a new race springs up,
and the very grass upon their graves fades not so soon as their
memory. Who that is conscious of a higher nature would not pine and
fret himself away to be confounded with these? Who would not burn and
sicken and parch with a delirious longing to divorce himself from so
vile a herd? What have their petty pleasures and their mean aims to
atone for the abasement of grinding down our spirits to their level?
Is not the distinction from their blended and common name a sufficient
recompense for all that ambition suffers or foregoes? Oh, for one
brief hour (I ask no more) of living honour, one feeling of conscious,
unfearing certainty that Fame has conquered Death! and then for this
humble and impotent clay, this drag on the spirit which it does not
assist but fetter, this wretched machine of pains and aches, and
feverish throbbings, and vexed inquietudes, why, let the worms consume
it, and the grave hide--for Fame there is no grave."
At that moment one of those unfortunate women who earn their polluted
sustenance by becoming the hypocrites of passions abruptly accosted
them.
"Miserable wretch!" said Warner, loathingly, as he pushed her aside;
but Clarence, with a kindlier feeling, noticed that her haggard cheek
was wet with tears, and that her frame, weak and trembling, could
scarcely support itself; he, therefore, with that promptitude of
charity which gives ere it discriminates put some pecuniary assistance
in her hand and joined his comrade.
"You would not have spoken so tauntingly to the poor girl had you
remarked her distress," said Clarence.
"And why," said Warner, mournfully, "why be so cruel as to prolong,
even for a few hours, an existence which mercy would only seek to
bring nearer to the tomb? That unfortunate is but one of the herd,
one of the victims to pleasures which debase by their progress and
ruin by their end. Yet perhaps she is not worse than the usual
followers of love,--of love, that passion the most worshipped, yet the
least divine,--selfish and exacting,--drawing its aliment from
destruction, and its very nature from tears."
"Nay," said Clarence, "you confound the two loves, the Eros and the
Anteros; gods whom my good tutor was wont so sedulously to
distinguish: you surely do not inveigh thus against all love?"
"I cry you mercy," said Warner, with something of sarcasm in his
pensiveness of tone. "We must not dispute; so I will hold my peace:
but make love all you will; what are the false smiles of a lip which a
few years can blight as an autumn leaf? what the homage of a heart as
feeble and mortal as your own? Why, I, with a few strokes of a little
hair and an idle mixture of worthless colours, will create a beauty in
whose mouth there shall be no hollowness, in whose lip there shall be
no fading; there, in your admiration, you shall have no need of
flattery and no fear of falsehood; you shall not be stung with
jealousy nor maddened with treachery; nor watch with a breaking heart
over the waning bloom, and departing health, till the grave open, and
your perishable paradise is not. No: the mimic work is mightier than
the original, for it outlasts it; your love cannot wither it, or your
desertion destroy; your very death, as the being who called it into
life, only stamps it with a holier value."
"And so then," said Clarence, "you would seriously relinquish, for the
mute copy of the mere features, those affections which no painting can
express?"
"Ay," said the painter, with an energy unusual to his quiet manner,
and slightly wandering in his answer from Clarence's remark, "ay, one
serves not two mistresses: mine is the glory of my art. Oh! what are
the cold shapes of this tame earth, where the footsteps of the gods
have vanished, and left no trace, the blemished forms, the debased
brows, and the jarring features, to the glorious and gorgeous images
which I can conjure up at my will? Away with human beauties, to him
whose nights are haunted with the forms of angels and wanderers from
the stars, the spirits of all things lovely and exalted in the
universe: the universe as it was; when to fountain, and stream, and
hill, and to every tree which the summer clothed, was allotted the
vigil of a Nymph! when through glade, and by waterfall, at glossy
noontide, or under the silver stars, the forms of Godhead and Spirit
were seen to walk; when the sculptor modelled his mighty work from the
beauty and strength of Heaven, and the poet lay in the shade to dream
of the Naiad and the Faun, and the Olympian dwellers whom he walked in
rapture to behold; and the painter, not as now, shaping from shadow
and in solitude the dim glories of his heart, caught at once his
inspiration from the glow of earth and its living wanderers, and, lo,
the canvas breathed! Oh! what are the dull realities and the abortive
offspring of this altered and humbled world--the world of meaner and
dwarfish men--to him whose realms are peopled with visions like
these?"
And the artist, whose ardour, long excited and pent within, had at
last thus audibly, and to Clarence's astonishment, burst forth,
paused, as if to recall himself from his wandering enthusiasm. Such
moments of excitement were indeed rare with him, except when utterly
alone, and even then, were almost invariably followed by that
depression of spirit by which all over-wrought susceptibility is
succeeded. A change came over his face, like that of a cloud when the
sunbeam which gilded leaves it; and, with a slight sigh and a subdued
tone, he resumed,--
"So, my friend, you see what our art can do even for the humblest
professor, when I, a poor, friendless, patronless artist, can thus
indulge myself by forgetting the present. But I have not yet
explained to you the attitude of my principal figure;" and Warner
proceeded once more to detail the particulars of his intended picture.
It must be confessed that he had chosen a fine though an arduous
subject: it was the Trial of Charles the First; and as the painter,
with the enthusiasm of his profession and the eloquence peculiar to
himself, dwelt upon the various expressions of the various forms which
that extraordinary judgment-court afforded, no wonder that Clarence
forgot, with the artist himself, the disadvantages Warner had to
encounter in the inexperience of an unregulated taste and an imperfect
professional education.