Venice, 4th October, 1876.
I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of
Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever
call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men who know the truths
necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s
‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them.
Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is
another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be
thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of
extreme value.
I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work
upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all—much more, at
all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to
come.
His message is written in the Venetian manner, by painting the myths of
the saints, in his own way.
If you will look into the introduction to the ‘Queen of the Air,’ you
will find it explained that a great myth can only be written in the
central time of a nation’s power. This prophecy of Carpaccio’s may be
thought of by you as the sweetest, because the truest, of all that
Venice was born to utter: the painted syllabling of it is nearly the
last work and word of her’s in true life. She speaks it, and virtually,
thereafter, dies, or begins to die.
It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty pictures, chiefly
representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.
The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has
been already partly described in Fors; (August, 1872, p. 14). The
authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the
picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am
making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.
But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three
saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on
whose penman’s work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St.
George, is a very dimly real one,—very disputable by American faith,
and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;—the Order of
the Garter, and sundry sign-boards of the George and Dragon. Venice
supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her
mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all too light to sink a
gondola.
Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none
has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under
scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the
æther,—and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and
the modern German meaning of everything,—the Dawn. [94] Not a relic,
not a word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls “a
utility embodied in a material object.”
The whole of her utility is Immaterial—to us in England, immaterial, of
late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that
Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three
small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but
of the entirely ærial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his
life.
The chief labour;—and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable
in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.
We will suppose, however, at first, for your better satisfaction, that
in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a
Princess Ursula than Shakspeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night’s Dream,
believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just
as much faith in angels as Shakspeare in fairies—and no more. Both
these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies,
the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment, (say your
modern sages,) or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it
your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this
picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say,
toys, for the English and Venetian people.
Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when
they could be amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when
they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.
Below St. George’s land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English
populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George’s island,
many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing
a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The
modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon the beach. There the
suspended population oscillate between sea and sky, and are amused.
Similarly in Venice, no decorative painter at Lido thinks of painting
pictures of St. Nicholas of the Lido, to amuse the modern Venetian. The
white-necktied orchestra plays them a ‘pot-pourri,’ and their steamer
squeaks to them, and they are amused.
And so sufficiently amused, that I, hearing with sudden surprise and
delight the voice of native Venetian Punch last night, from an English
ship, and instantly inquiring, with impatience, why I had not had the
happiness of meeting him before, found that he was obliged to take
refuge as a runaway, or exile, under the British Flag, being forbidden
in his own Venice, for evermore—such the fiat of liberty towards the
first Apostolic Vicar thereof.
I am willing, however, for my own part, to take Carpaccio a step
farther down in the moral scale still. Suppose that he painted this
picture, not even to amuse his public—but to amuse himself!
To a great extent I know that this is true. I know,—(you needn’t ask
how, because you can’t be shown how,—but I do know, trust me,) that he
painted this picture greatly to amuse himself, and had extreme delight
in the doing of it; and if he did not actually believe that the
princess and angels ever were, at least he heartily wished there had
been such persons, and could be.
Now this is the first step to real faith. There may never have been
saints: there may be no angels,—there may be no God. Professors Huxley
and Tyndall are of opinion that there is no God: they have never found
one in a bottle. Well: possibly there isn’t; but, my good Sheffield
friends, do you wish there was? or are you of the French Republican
opinion—“If there were a God, we should have to shoot him” as the first
great step towards the “abolition of caste” proposed by our American
friends? [95]
You will say, perhaps,—It is not a proper intellectual state to
approach such a question in, to wish anything about it. No, assuredly
not,—and I have told you so myself, many a time. But it is an entirely
proper state to fit you for being approached by the Spirits that you
wish for, if there are such. And if there are not, it can do you no
harm.
Nor, so long as you distinctly understand it to be a wish, will it warp
your intellect. “Oh, if I had but Aladdin’s lamp, or Prince Houssain’s
carpet!” thinks the rightly-minded child, reading its ‘Arabian Nights.’
But he does not take to rubbing his mother’s lamps, nor to squatting on
scraps of carpet, hopefully.
Well—concerning these Arabian nights of Venice and the Catholic Church.
Carpaccio thinks,—“Oh, if there had but been such a Princess as this—if
there could but be! At least I can paint one, and delight myself in the
image of her!”
Now, can you follow him so far as this? Do you really wish there were
such a Princess? Do you so much as want any kind of Princess? Or are
your aims fixed on the attainment of a world so constituted that there
shall be no Princesses in it any more,—but only Helps in the kitchen,
who shall “come upstairs to play the piano,” according to the more
detailed views of the American Socialist, displayed in our
correspondence.
I believe you can scarcely so much as propose this question to
yourselves, not knowing clearly what a Princess is. For a Princess is
truly one of the members of that Feudal System which, I hear on all
hands, is finally ended. If it be so, it is needful that I should
explain to you specifically what the Feudal System was, before you can
wish for a Princess, or any other part of it, back again.
The Feudal System begins in the existence of a Master, or Mister; and a
Mistress,—or, as you call her, Missis,—who have deputed authority over
a piece of land, hereditarily theirs; and absolute authority in their
own house, or home, standing on such land: authority essentially dual,
and not by any means admitting two masters, or two missises, still less
our American friend’s calculated desirable quantity of 150, mixed. And
the office of a Master implies the office of Servants; and of a
Mistress, the office of Maids. These are the first Four Chemical
Elements of the Feudal System.
The next members of it in order of rank are the Master of the Masters,
and Mistress of the Mistresses; of whom they hold their land in fee,
and who are recognized still, in a sort, as landlord and landlady,
though for the most part now degenerate into mere tax-gatherers; but,
in their true office, the administrators of law concerning land, and
magistrates, and hearers of appeal between household and household:
[96] their duty involving perfect acquaintance and friendship with all
the households under their rule; and their dominion, therefore, not by
any possibility extending over very large space of territory,—what is
commonly called in England an ‘estate’ being usually of approximately
convenient space.
The next members of the Feudal System in order of rank, are the Lord of
the Landlords, and Lady of the Landladies; commonly called their Duke,
Doge, or leader, and Duchess or Dogaressa: the authority of this fourth
member of the Feudal System being to enforce law and hear appeal
between Lord and Lord; and to consult with them respecting the
harmonious government of their, estates over such extent of land as may
from some speciality of character be managed by common law referring to
some united interest,—as, for instance, Cumberland, by a law having
reference to pastoral life, Cornwall by laws involving the inspection
of mines of tin, and the like,—these provinces, or shires, having each
naturally a capital city, cathedral, town hall, and municipality of
merchants.
As examples of which Fourth Order [97] in the Feudal System, the Dukes
and Dukedoms of York, Lancaster, Venice, Milan, Florence, Orleans, and
Burgundy, may be remembered by you as having taken very practical part
in the government, or, it may be, misgovernment, of the former world.
Then the persons of the Fifth Order, in the Feudal System, are the Duke
of the Dukes, and Duchess of the Duchesses, commonly called the King
and Queen, having authority and magistracy over the Dukes of the
provinces, to the extent in which such provinces may be harmoniously
joined in a country or kingdom, separated from other portions of the
world by interests, manners, and dialect.
Then the Sixth Order in the Feudal System, much, of late years,
misunderstood, and even forgotten, is that of the Commander or
Imperator of the Kings; having the same authority and office of hearing
appeal among the Kings of kingdoms, as they among the Dukes of
provinces.
The systems of all human civilized governments resolve themselves
finally into the balance of the Semitic and lapetic powers under the
anointed Cyrus of the East and Karl of the West. [98]
The practical power of the office has been necessarily lost since the
Reformation; and in recent debates in an English Parliament on this
subject, it appeared that neither the Prime Minister of England, nor
any of her Parliamentary representatives, had the slightest notion of
the meaning of the word.
The reason that the power of the office has been lost since the
Reformation, is that all these temporal offices are only perfected, in
the Feudal System, by their relative spiritual offices. Now, though the
Squire and the Rector still in England occupy their proper symmetrical
position, the equally balanced authority of the Duke and Bishop has
been greatly confused: that of the King and Cardinal was so even during
the fully animated action of both; and all conception of that of the
Emperor and Pope is of course dead in Protestant minds.
But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final
Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to
Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in
whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and
covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these
subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being.
And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most
carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him
anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His
essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere,
truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal System, with
all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end.
In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the
significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s
daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion
over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its
enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for
the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical
bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of
the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people
of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule
of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection
with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed,
than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints.
The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been
collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true
help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit
thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk
who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say
another Pater and Ave.