quarrels do not come to much. Green tells White that Brown is the most
ill-tempered, evil-minded, cross-grained brute that was ever born, that
he thought so before and that now he knows it; that he was a fool to
come abroad with such a beast, and that he was absolutely, finally,
and irrevocably resolved that never, under any circumstances, will he
speak to the man again. The party will be broken up, but he cannot help
that. There will be difficulty about the division of money, but he
cannot help that. Yes; it is true that he is fond of Brown's sister,
but neither can he help that. It has always been his wonder that such a
sister should have such a brother. Only for Mary Brown he never would
have come abroad with this pig of a fellow. The quarrel while it rages
is very hot, and Brown tells White that Green is the greatest ass
under the sun. Nevertheless the quarrel is made up before breakfast on
the following morning, and the three men go on together without much
remembrance of the language which they had used.
I have said that most of us would like to see our sons go out on such
parties, and I think that we should be right in sending them. The
United Englishmen who travel for fun rarely get into much evil. They do
not get drunk, nor do they gamble at the public tables. And undoubtedly
they learn much, though it seems that they are always averse to learn
anything. How education is accomplished or of what it consists, who
yet has been able to explain to us? That by far the greater portion
of our education is involuntary all men will probably admit. We learn
to speak, to walk, to express our emotions, and to control such
expression; to be grave and gay, and to understand the necessity of
alternating between the two, by copying others unconsciously. We
exercise a thousand arts which we do not know how we acquired, and
the more we see of the world the more do we learn of such arts,--even
though we are not aware of the process. That our friends Brown, Green,
and White might have learned more than they did learn on that tour of
theirs, may be true enough; but for all that, they do not come back as
empty as they went.
And they have had this merit,--that they have in truth enjoyed what
they have done. Little clouds there have been,--such as that quarrel
between Brown and his future brother-in-law; but they have been passing
mists which have hardly served to disturb the sunshine of their tour.
Together they started, together they have been over mountains and
through cities, performing feats which, in their own judgments, are
little short of marvellous, and together they return at the end of
their holiday satisfied with themselves and with the world at large.
They have seen pictures and walked through cathedrals; but, above all,
they have stood upon the slopes of the hills and have looked at the
mountains. They have listened to the little rivers as they tumbled, and
have laid their hands upon the edges of mighty rocks; they have smelt
the wild thyme as it gave out its fragrance beneath their feet, and
have peered wondering through the blue crevasses of the glacier. They
have sat in the sweet gloom of the evening and have watched the surface
of the lake as it lay beneath them without a ripple, and have waited
there till the curtain of night has hid the water from their view. Then
they have thrown themselves idly on their backs, and have counted the
stars in the firmament over their head, wondering at the beauty of the
heavens. They have said little perhaps to each other of the romance
of such moments, of the poetry, which has filled their hearts; but the
romance and the poetry have been there; and they have brought home with
them a feeling for beauty which will last them through their lives, in
spite of their crumpled hats, their big bludgeons, their short pipes,
and their now almost indecent knickerbockers.
THE ART TOURIST.
The class of art tourists is very numerous, and of all tourists the art
tourist is, I think, the most indefatigable. He excels the tourist in
search of knowledge both in length of hours and in assiduity while he
is at his work. The art tourist now described is not the man or woman
who goes abroad to learn to paint, or to buy pictures and gems, or to
make curious art investigations. Such travellers are necessarily few
in number, and set about their work as do other people of business.
They are not tourists at all in the now accepted meaning of the word.
Our art tourist is he,--or quite as often she,--who flies from gallery
to gallery, spending hours and often days in each, with a strong
determination to get up conscientiously the subject of pictures.
Sculpture and architecture come also within the scope of the labours
of the art tourist, but not to such an extent as to influence them
materially. Pictures are the ever present subject of the English
art tourist's thoughts, and to them and their authors he devotes
himself throughout his holiday with that laborious perseverance which
distinguishes the true Briton as much in his amusement as in his work.
He is studying painters rather than pictures,--certainly not pictures
alone as things pleasing in themselves. A picture, of which the painter
is avowedly unknown, is to such a one a thing of almost no interest
whatever,--unless in the more advanced period of his study he should
venture to attempt to read the riddle and should take upon himself
to name the unknown. And this work of the art tourist, though it may
lead to a true love of pictures, does in no wise arise from any such
feeling. And, indeed, it is quite compatible with an entire absence of
any such predilection. Men become learned in pictures without caring
in the least for their beauty or their ugliness, just as other men
become learned in the laws, without any strong feeling either as to
their justice or injustice. The lawyer looks probably for a return for
his labours in a comfortable income, and the art tourist looks for
his return in that sort of reputation which is now attached to the
knowledge of the history of painting.
The first great object of the art tourist is to be able to say, without
reference to any card, guide-book, or affixed name, and with some
approach to correctness, who painted the picture then before him;
and his next great object is to be able to declare the date of that
painter's working, the country in which he lived, the master who taught
him, the school which he founded, the name of his mistress or wife,
the manner of his death, and the galleries in which his chief works
are now to be found.
As regards the first object,--that of knowing the painter from his
work,--the art tourist soon obtains many very useful guides to
his memory. Indeed, it is on guides to his memory that he depends
altogether. When he has progressed so far that he can depend on his
judgment instead of his memory, he has ceased to be an art tourist, and
has become a connoisseur. The first guide to memory is the locality of
the picture. He knows that Raphaels are rife at Florence, Titians at
Venice, Vandykes at Genoa, Guidos at Bologna, Van Eykes and Memlings
in Flanders, and Rembrandts and Paul Potters in Holland. Pictures
have been too much scattered about to make this knowledge alone
good for much; but joined to other similar aids, it is a powerful
assistance, and prevents mistakes which in an old art tourist would
be disgraceful. Next to this, probably, he acquires a certain, though
not very accurate idea of dates, which supplies him with information
from the method and manner of the picture. If he is placed before a
work of some early Tuscan painter,--Orcagna, or the like,--he will
know that it is not the work of some comparatively modern painter of
the same country,--such as Andrea del Sarto;--and so he progresses.
Then the old masters themselves were very liberal in the aids which
they gave to memory by repeating their own work,--as, indeed, are some
of their modern followers, who love to produce the same faces year
after year upon their canvas,--I will not say usque ad nauseam, for
how can we look on a pretty face too often? The old masters delighted
to paint their own wives or their own mistresses,--the women, in
short, whom they loved best and were most within their reach, guided
perhaps by some idea of economy in saving the cost of a model; and
this peculiarity on their part is a great assistance to art tourists.
He or she must be a very young art tourist who does not know the
Murillo face, or the two Rubens faces, or the special Raphael face,
or the Leonardo da Vinci face, or the Titian head and neck, or the
Parmigianino bunch of hair, or the Correggio forehead and fingers.
All this is a great assistance, and gives hope to an art tourist in a
field of inquiry so wide that there could hardly be any hope without
such aid. And then these good-natured artists had peculiar tricks with
them, which give further most valuable help to the art tourist in his
work. Jacobo Bassano paints people ever cringing towards the ground,
and consequently a Jacobo Bassano can be read by a young art tourist
in an instant. Claude Lorraine delighted to insert a man carrying a
box. That vilest of painters, Guercino, rejoices in turbans. Schalken
painted even scenes by candle-light, so that he was called Della Notte.
Jan Steen usually greets us with a portrait of himself in a state of
drunkenness. Adrian van Ostade seldom omits a conical-shaped hat, or
Teniers a red cap and a peculiar figure, for which the art tourist
always looks immediately when he thinks of discovering this artist. All
these little tricks of the artist, and many more of the same kind, the
art tourist soon learns, much to his own comfort.
And then he progresses to a kind of knowledge which comes somewhat
nearer to art criticism, but which does not yet amount to the exercise
of any judgment on his own part. He learns to perceive the peculiar
manner of certain artists who painted peculiarly; and though by the
knowledge he so attains he may be led into error,--as when he takes
a Lancret for a Watteau,--still the error is never disgracefully
erroneous. He knows at once the girl by Greuze, with her naked shoulder
and her head on one side; he knows at once the old woman by Denner,
the little wrinkles on whose face, as he looks at them through his
magnifying glass, seem to be so very soft. The unnatural sunshine of
Claude he knows, and the natural sunshine of Cuyp. The blotches of
Rembrandt and the smoothness of Carlo Dolci are to him as A, B, C. The
romantic rocks and trees of Salvator Rosa do not certainly represent
nature,--to which they bear no resemblance,--but to him they represent
Salvator Rosa very adequately. The pietistic purity of Fra Angelico
strikes him forcibly, and the stiff grace of Perugino; though, when he
advances as far as this, he is somewhat prone to make mistakes. And he
learns to note the strong rough work of the brush of Paul Veronese,
and the beautiful blue hills of Titian's backgrounds. He distinguishes
between the graceful dignity of a Venetian nobleman and the manly
bearing of a Florentine citizen; and he recognizes the spears of
Paolo Uccello, who painted battles; and the beards of Taddeo Gaddi,
who painted saints; and the long-visaged virgins with fair hair, by
Sandro Botticelli. And he will gradually come to perceive how those
long-visaged, fair-haired virgins grew out of the first attempts at
female dignity by Cimabue, and how they progressed into the unnatural
grace of Raphael, and then descended into the meretricious inanities of
which Raphael's power and Raphael's falseness were the forerunners.
And so the art tourist goes on till he really knows something about
painting,--even whether he have a taste or no,--and becomes proud of
himself and his subject. That second object of which I have spoken, and
which has reference to the life of the painter, he of course acquires
from books. And it may be remarked that the popularity of this kind of
knowledge has become so strong that much of the information is given
in the ordinary guide-books. We do not much care to know who taught
Christopher Wren to be an architect, or whence Mozart learned the art
of music, or even how Canova became a sculptor. But it is essential to
the art tourist, to the youngest tyro in art touring, that he should
know that Titian was the scholar of Bellini, and Raphael of Perugino,
and Vandyke of Rubens. The little intricacies of the schooling,--how
this man migrated from one school to another, and how the great
pernicious schools of art at last formed themselves, destroying
individual energy,--these come afterwards. But to the diligent art
tourist they do come. And it is delightful to hear the contests on the
subject of art tourists who have formed themselves, one on Kugler and
another on Waagen; who have read the old work of Vasari, or have filled
themselves with a widely-extended mass of art information from the late
excellent book by Mr. Wornum.
The upshot of all this has been the creation of a distinct and new
subject of investigation and study. Men and women get up painting as
other men and women get up botany, or entomology, or conchology, and a
very good subject painting is for the purpose. It is innocent, pretty,
and cheap;--for I take the fact of the tour to be given as a matter of
course. It leads its pursuers to nothing disagreeable, and is as open
to women as to men. And it leads to very little boring of other people
who are not tourists, which, perhaps, is its greatest advantage; for
though the art tourist will sometimes talk to you of pictures, what is
that to the persecution which you are called on to endure in inspecting
cupboards full of pickled snakes or legions of drawers full of empty
egg-shells? The work of an art tourist must at least be more attractive
than the unalluring task of collecting postage-stamps and monograms.
And, above all, let it be remembered that if it so chance that the art
tourist have an eye in his head, he may at last become a lover of art.
The work of the art tourist begins about the middle of September,
is carried on hotly for that and the next three months, and then
completes its season at Rome in Easter. It flourishes, however, only in
autumn, as the normal art tourist is one who is either away from his
business for his holiday, or whose period of travelling is dependent on
some such person. The work is begun at the Louvre, for the disciple in
this school of learning will never condescend to use our own National
Gallery, though for the purposes of such learning our own is perhaps
the best gallery in the world. He begins in the Louvre; and, indeed, in
the tribune of that gallery, under the influence of the great picture
by Paul Veronese, which is probably the most marvellous piece of
painting in the world, the resolution to get up painting is often taken
by the young scholar. Then the galleries of Italy are seen--Venice,
Bologna, Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples; Antwerp and Bruges
probably come next; and then Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. By this time
the art tourist is no longer a tyro, but, stored with much knowledge,
burns for the acquisition of more. He pines after Madrid and Seville,
and steals a day or two from some year's holiday for Amsterdam and the
Hague. He works hard and conscientiously at his galleries, as though he
could turn aside in idleness from no wall, on which pictures are hung,
without dishonesty.
And then how the subject swells before him when he takes to
fresco-painting, and begins to despise easel pictures! He penetrates to
Assisi, and declares the Campo Santo at Pisa to be the centre of the
world of Art! He expatiates to you with vigour on the chapel in the
Carmine, and turns from you in disgust when he finds that you don't
know what that chapel is, or where that chapel may be.
There is an old saying, which the world still holds to be very true,
but which is, nevertheless, I think, very false: "Whatever you do, do
well." Now there are many things which are worth doing which cannot
be done well without the devotion of a lifetime, and which certainly
are not worth such devotion as that. Billiards is a pretty game, but
to play billiards well is a dangerous thing. And chess is a beautiful
game; but they who play chess really well can rarely do much else. Art
tourists are in this danger, that it is quite possible they may teach
themselves to think that they should do their art touring so well as to
make that the one pleasurable pursuit of their lives. After all, it is
but a collecting of dead leaves, unless the real aptitude and taste be
there.
THE TOURIST IN SEARCH OF KNOWLEDGE.
I think that we all know the tourist in search of knowledge, the
tourist who goes abroad determined not to waste a day, who is resolved
to bring back with him when he returns from his travels information
that shall be at any rate an equivalent to him for the money and time
expended. This tourist in search of knowledge no doubt commands our
respect in a certain degree. He is a sedulous man, probably exempt from
any strong evil proclivities, anxious to do the best he can with his
life, imbued with a respectable ambition, and animated by that desire
to be better than those around him which generally saves a man from
being below the average if it does not suffice to do more for him than
that. But, having said so much in praise of tourists of this class, I
do not know that there is much more to be said in their favour. Such
men are usually bores as regards their effect upon others; and, as
regards themselves, they seem in too many cases to have but little
capacity for following up the special career which they have proposed
to themselves. They are diligent in their inquiries, but have laid down
for themselves no course of study. They wish to learn everything, but
have too great a faith for learning everything easily. They have seldom
realized to themselves how hard is the task of mastering information,
and think that in going far afield from their own homes they have
found, or are like to find, a royal road to knowledge. And then they
have a worse fault than this incorrectness of idea which I have imputed
to them. They are apt to forestall the merits which they should in
truth never claim till the knowledge has been won, and as seekers for
wisdom, assume the graces which others should give them when such
acquired wisdom has become the manifest result of their labours.
There are female tourists in search of knowledge as well as male; but
a woman has so much more tact than a man, that she is usually able
to hide that which is objectionable in her mode of action. Perhaps
the middle-aged single lady, or the lady who is not yet middle-aged
but fears that she may soon become so, is more prone to belong to
this class of travellers than any species of man; but she keeps her
investigations somewhat in the background, goes through her heavy
reading out of sight, and asks her most pressing questions _sotto
voce_, when she and her hoped-for informant are beyond the hearing
of the multitude. The male investigator of Continental facts has no
such reticence. He demands the price of wheat with bold voice before a
crowd of fellow-travellers; he asks his question as to the population
of the country, and then answers it himself with a tone of conscious
superiority, and he suggests his doubts as to the political action of
the people around him with an air of omniscience that is intended to
astonish all that stand within hearing of him.
What a glorious thing is knowledge, and how terrible to us are those
lapses of opportunity with which the consciences of most of us are
burdened in this respect! And to us who are ignorant, whose lapses in
that respect have been too long to have been numerous, how great the
man looms who has really used his intellect, and exercised his brain,
and stirred his mind! But as he looms large, so does the ignorant
man who affects acquirements and prides himself on knowledge which
can hardly even be called superficial--as, spread it as thin as he
may, he cannot make it cover a surface--appear infinitesimally mean
and small! The getter-up of quotations from books which he has never
read,--how vile he is to all of us! The man who allows it to be
assumed that he can understand a subject or a language till he breaks
down, caught in the fact, despised, but pitied through the extent of
his misery,--how poor a creature he is in his wretchedness! The tourist
in search of knowledge may of course be a man infinitely too strong
to fall into any of these pitfalls. He may be modest-minded though
ambitious, silent in his search, conscious of his ignorance where he is
ignorant, and doubtful of his learning where he is learned. No doubt
there are such English tourists,--many of them probably passing from
city to city year after year,--with eyes and ears more readily open
than their mouths; but not such a one is the tourist of whom we are
here speaking. Travellers such as they become liable to no remark,
and escape the notice of all observers. But the normal traveller in
search of knowledge, with whom all of us who are habitual tourists
are well acquainted, is altogether of a different nature. He is the
Pharisee among students. He is always thanking God that he is not as
those idlers who pass from country to country learning nothing of the
institutions of the people among whom they travel,--not as that poor
Publican, that lonely traveller, who, standing apart, hardly daring to
open his mouth, asks some humble question which shows thoroughly and at
once the extent of his ignorance.