Vinnie Ream was by no means a Scott heroine, however, but a genuine
American, and doubly remarkable to me as being the first specimen of a
young woman from the United States with whom I became acquainted. Even
after I had seen a good deal of her work, I could not feel wholly
attracted by her talent, which sometimes expressed itself rather in a
pictorial than a plastic form, and had a fondness for emotional
effects. But she was a true artist, and a true woman, and I have never,
in any woman, encountered a will like hers. She was uninterruptedly
busy. Although, now that the time of her departure was so near, a few
boxes were steadily being packed every day at her home, she received
every day visits from between sixteen and twenty-five people, and she
had so many letters by post that I often found three or four unopened
ones amongst the visiting cards that had been left. Those were what she
had forgotten, and if she had read them, she had no time to reply to
them. Every day she sat for a few hours to the clever American painter
Healy, who was an admirer of her talent, and called her abilities
genius. Every day she worked at Antonelli's bust. To obtain permission
to execute it, she had merely, dressed in her most beautiful white
gown, asked for an audience of the dreaded cardinal, and had at once
obtained permission. Her intrepid manner had impressed the hated
statesman of the political and ecclesiastical reaction, and in her
representation of him he appeared, too, in many respects nobler and
more refined than he was. But besides modelling the cardinal's bust,
she put the finishing touches to two others, saw to her parents'
household affairs and expenses, and found time every day to spend a few
hours with me, either in a walk or wandering about the different
picture-galleries.
She maintained the family, for her parents had nothing at all. But when
the statue of Lincoln had been ordered from her, Congress had
immediately advanced ten thousand dollars. So she was able to live free
from care, though for that matter she troubled not at all about money.
She was very ignorant of things outside her own field, and the words
_my work_ were the only ones that she spoke with passion. What she
knew, she had acquired practically, through travel and association with
a multiplicity of people. She hardly knew a dozen words of any language
besides English, and was only acquainted with English and American
writers; of poets, she knew Shakespeare and Byron best; from life and
books she had extracted but few general opinions, but on the other
hand, very individual personal views. These were based upon the theory
that the lesser mind must always subordinate itself to the higher, and
that the higher has a right to utilise freely the time and strength of
the lesser, without being called to account for doing so. She herself
was abjectly modest towards the artists she looked up to. Other people
might all wait, come again, go away without a reply.
Rather small of stature, strong and healthy,--she had never been ill,
never taken medicine,--with white teeth and red cheeks, quick in
everything, when several people were present she spoke only little and
absently, was as cold, deliberate and composed as a man of strong
character; but at the same time she was unsuspecting and generous, and
in spite of her restlessness and her ambitious industry, ingratiatingly
coquettish towards anyone whose affection she wished to win. It was
amusing to watch the manner in which she despatched the dutifully
sighing Italians who scarcely crossed the threshold of her studio
before they declared themselves. She replied to them with a
superabundance of sound sense and dismissed them with a jest.
One day that I went to fetch her to the Casino Borghese, I found her
dissolved in tears. One of the two beautiful doves who flew about the
house and perched on her shoulders, and which she had brought with her
from Washington, had disappeared in the night. At first I thought that
her distress was half jest, but nothing could have been more real; she
was beside herself with grief. I realised that if philologians have
disputed as to how far Catullus' poem of the girl's grief over the dead
sparrow were jest or earnest, it was because they had never seen a girl
weep over a bird. Catullus, perhaps, makes fun a little of the grief,
but the grief itself, in his poem too, is serious enough.
In the lovely gardens of the Villa Borghese, Vinnie Ream's melancholy
frame of mind was dispersed, and we sat for a long time by one of the
handsome fountains and talked, among other things, of our pleasure in
being together, which pleasure was not obscured by the prospect of
approaching parting, because based only on good-fellowship, and with no
erotic element about it. Later in the evening, she had forgotten her
sorrow altogether in the feverish eagerness with which she worked, and
she kept on, by candle-light, until three o'clock in the morning.
A poor man, an Italian, who kept a little hotel, came in that evening
for a few minutes; he sometimes translated letters for Vinnie Ream. As
he had no business with me, I did not address any of my remarks to him;
she, on the contrary, treated him with extreme kindness and the
greatest respect, and whispered to me: "Talk nicely to him, as you
would to a gentleman, for that he is; he knows four languages
splendidly; he is a talented man. Take no notice of his plain dress. We
Americans do not regard the position, but the man, and he does honour
to his position." I had not been actuated by the prejudices she
attributed to me, nevertheless entered into conversation with the man,
as she wished, and listened with pleasure to his sensible opinions. (He
spoke, among other things, of Northern art, and warmly praised Carl
Bloch's _Prometheus_.)