sonorous. He might have earned a larger income with it, perhaps, than he
did by writing and painting. He sang comic songs in a manner peculiarly
his own,--as if the words were enclosed in a parenthesis,--as much as to
say, "I do not approve of this, but I sing it just the same," and this
made the performance all the more amusing. He sang Bret Harte's "Jim" in
a very effective manner, and he often sang the epitaph on Shakespeare's
tomb,
"Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare,"
as a recitative, both in English and Italian,--_In questa tomba_.
He seemed to bring out a hidden force in his singing, which was not
apparent on ordinary occasions. His reading of poetry was also fine, but
he depended in it rather too much on his voice, too little on the meaning
of the verse. It was not equal to Celia Thaxter's reading.
The same types of physiognomy continually reappear among artists. William
M. Hunt looked like Horace Vernet, and Cranch in his old age resembled
the Louvre portrait of Tintoretto, although his features were not so
strong. He used to say in jest that he was descended from Lucas Cranach,
but that the second vowel had dropped out. He cared as little for the
fashions as poets and artists commonly do, but there was no dandy in
Boston who appeared so well in a full dress suit.
In 1873 the Velasquez method of painting was in full vogue at Boston.
Cranch did not believe in imitations, or in adopting the latest style
from Paris, and he set himself against the popular hue-and-cry somewhat
to his personal disadvantage. Charles Perkins and the other art scholars
who founded the Art Museum in Copley Square were all on Cranch's side,
but that did not seem to help him with the public. "They cannot bend the
bow of Ulysses," said Cranch in some disgust. He preferred Murillo to
Velasquez, and once had quite an argument with William Hunt on the
subject in Doll & Richards's picture-store. Hunt asserted that there was
no essential difference between a sketch and a finished picture,--he
might have said there was no difference between a boy and a man,--that
all the artist needed was to express himself, and that it was immaterial
in what way he did so. Cranch thought afterwards, though unfortunately it
did not occur to him at the moment, that the test of such a theory would
be its application to sculpture. He wondered what Raphael would have
thought of it.
It was quite a grief to Cranch that his own daughter, who inherited his
talent, should have deserted him at this juncture, and gone over to the
opposition. She filled his house with rough, heavily-shaded studies of
still-life, flowers, and faces of her friends; but of all Hunt's pupils,
Miss Cranch, Miss Knowlton, and Miss Lamb were the only ones who achieved
artistic distinction in their special work.
It was in order to withdraw her from this Walpurgis art-dance that Cranch
undertook his last journey to Paris in his seventieth year. There the
young lady quickly dropped her Boston method, and, acquiring a more
conservative handling, became an excellent portrait painter; too soon,
however, obliged to relinquish her art on account of ill-health.
Cranch's landscapes now adorn the walls of private houses; very largely
the houses of his numerous friends. He did not paint in the fashion of
the time, but like Millet followed a fashion of his own; and I do not
know of any of his pictures in public collections, although there are
many that deserve the honor. The best landscape of his that I have seen
was painted just before his last visit to Paris. It represents a low-
toned sunset like the "Two Oaks"; an autumnal scene on a narrow river,
with maples here and there upon its banks. The sky is covered by a dull
gray cloud, but in the west the sun shines through a low opening and
gives promise of a better day. The peculiar liquid effect of the setting
sun is wonderfully rendered, and the rich browns and russets of the
foliage lead up, as it were, like a flight of steps to this final glory,
--a restful and impressive scene. This landscape is not painted in the
smooth manner of the "Two Oaks," but with soft, flakelike touches which
slightly remind one of Murillo. Its coloring has the peculiarity that
artificial light wholly changes its character, whereas Cranch's
paintings, previous to 1875, appear much the same by electric light that
they do in daytime. It is called the "Home of the Wood Duck."
Between 1870 and 1880 he published a number of poems in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ as well as a longer piece called "Satan," for which it was
said by a certain wit that he received the devil's pay. His two books for
young folks, "The Last of the Huggermuggers" and "Kobboltozo," ought not
to be overlooked, for the illustrations in them are the only remains we
have of his rare pencil drawings, as good, if not better, than
Thackeray's drawings.
It is likely that the parents read these stories with more pleasure than
their children; for they not only contain a deal of fine wit, but there
is a moral allegory running through them both. An American vessel is
wrecked on a strange island, and the sailors who have escaped death are
astonished at the gigantic proportions of the sand and the sea-shells,
and of the bushes by the shore. Presently the Huggermuggers appear, and
the American mariners in terror run to hide themselves; but they soon
find that these giants are the kindliest of human beings. There are also
dwarfs on the island, larger than ordinary men, but small compared with
the Huggermuggers. They are disagreeable, envious creatures, who wish to
ruin the giants in order to have the island more entirely to themselves.
Having accomplished this in a somewhat mysterious manner, they attempted
to improve their own stature by eating a certain shell-fish which had
been the favorite food of the giants; but the shell-fish had also
disappeared with the Huggermuggers, and after searching for it a long
time they finally summoned the Mer-King, the genius of the sea, who
raised his head above the water in a secluded cove and spoke these
verses:
"Not in the Ocean deep and clear,
Not on the Land so broad and fair,
Not in the regions of boundless Air,
Not in the Fire's burning sphere--
'Tis not here--'tis not there:
Ye may seek it everywhere.
He that is a dwarf in spirit
Never shall the isle inherit.
Hearts that grow 'mid daily cares
Come to greatness unawares;
Noble souls alone may know
How the giants live and grow."
This is an allegory, but of very general application; and it has more
especially a political application. Cranch may have intended it to
illustrate the life of Alexander Hamilton.
Cranch was not a giant himself, but he knew how to distinguish true
greatness from the spurious commodity. Emerson considered his varied
accomplishments his worst enemy; but that depends on how you choose to
look at it. It is probable enough that if Cranch had followed out a
single pursuit to its perfection, and if he had not lived so many years
in Europe, he would have been a more celebrated man; but Cranch did not
care for celebrity. He was content to live and to let live. Men of great
force, like Macaulay and Emerson, who impress their personality on the
times in which they live, communicate evil as well as good; but Cranch
had no desire to influence his fellow men, and for this reason his
influence was of a purer quality. It was like the art of Albert Durer. No
one could conceive of Cranch's injuring anybody; and if all men were like
him there would be no more wars, no need of revolutions. Force, however,
is necessary to combat the evil that is already established.
He died at his house on Ellery Street January 20, 1890, as gently and
peacefully as he had lived. There is an excellent portrait of him by
Duveneck in the rooms of the University Club, at Boston; but the sketch
of his life, by George William Curtis, was refused on the ground that he
was an Emersonian. The same objection might have been raised against
Lowell, or Curtis himself with equally good reason.
T. G. APPLETON.
Thomas G. Appleton, universally known as "Tom" Appleton, was a notable
figure during the middle of the last century not only in Boston and
Cambridge, but in Paris, Rome, Florence, and other European cities. He
was descended from one of the oldest and wealthiest families of Boston,
and graduated from Harvard in 1831, together with Wendell Phillips and
George Lothrop Motley. He was not distinguished in college for his
scholarship, but rather as a wit, a _bon vivant_, and a good fellow.
Yet his companions looked upon him as a strong character and much above
the average in intellect. After taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts he
went through the Law School, and attempted to practise that profession in
Boston. At the end of the first year, happening to meet Wendell Phillips
on the sidewalk, the latter inquired if he had any clients. He had not;
neither had Phillips, and they both agreed that waiting for fortune in
the legal profession was wearisome business. They were both well adapted
to it, and the only reason for their ill success would seem to have been
that they belonged to wealthy and rather aristocratic families, amongst
whom there is little litigation.
At the same time Sumner was laying the foundation by hard study for his
future distinction as a legal authority, and Motley was discussing Goethe
and Kant with the youthful Bismarck in Berlin. Wendell Phillips soon gave
up his profession to become an orator in the anti-slavery cause; and Tom
Appleton went to Rome and took lessons in oil painting.
Nothing can be more superficial than to presume that young men who write
verses or study painting think themselves geniuses. A man may have a
genius for mechanics; and in most instances men and women are attracted
to the arts from the elevating character of the occupation. It is not
likely that Tom Appleton considered himself a genius, for although he had
plenty of self-confidence, his opinion of himself was always a modest
one. He painted the portraits of some of his friends, but he never fairly
made a profession of it. However, he learned the mechanism of pictorial
art in this way, and soon became one of the best connoisseurs of his
time.
His finest enjoyment was to meet with some person, especially a stranger,
with whom he could discuss the celebrated works in the galleries of
Europe. He soon became known as a man who had something to say, and who
knew how to say it. He told the Italian picture-dealers to cheat him as
much as they could, and he gave amusing accounts of their various
attempts to do this. He knew more than they did.
After this time he lived as much in Europe as he did in America. Before
1860 he had crossed the Atlantic nearly forty times. The marriage of his
sister to Henry W. Longfellow was of great advantage to him, for through
Longfellow he made the acquaintance of many celebrated persons whom he
would not otherwise have known, and being always equal to such occasions
he retained their respect and good will. One might also say, "What could
Longfellow have done without _him_?" His conversation was never
forced, and the wit, for which he became as much distinguished in social
life as Lowell or Holmes, was never premeditated, often making its
appearance on unexpected occasions to refresh his hearers with its
sparkle and originality.
In the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" Doctor Holmes quotes this saying
by the "wittiest of men," that "good Americans, when they die, go to
Paris." Now this wittiest of men was Tom Appleton, as many of us knew at
that time. He said of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" that it probably
had faded out from being stared at by sightseers, and that the same thing
might have happened to the Sistine Madonna if it had not been put under
glass,--these being the two most popular paintings in Europe. His fund of
anecdotes was inexhaustible.
Earlier in life he was occasionally given to practical jokes. A woman who
kept a thread and needle store in Boston was supposed to have committed
murder, and was tried for it but acquitted. One day, as Appleton was
going by her place of business with a friend he said: "Come in here with
me; I want to see how that woman looks." Then surveying the premises, as
if he wished to find something to purchase, he asked her if she had any
"galluses" for sale,--gallus being a shop-boy's term at the time for
suspenders.
When the Art Museum in Boston was first built its odd appearance
attracted very general attention, and some one asked Tom Appleton what he
thought of it. "Well," he said, "I have heard that architecture is a kind
of frozen music, and if so I should call the Art Museum frozen 'Yankee
Doodle.'"
Thomas G. Appleton was no dilettante; his interest in the subject was
serious and abiding. He did not wear his art as he did his gloves, nor
did he turn it into an intellectual abstraction. There was nothing he
disliked more than the kind of pretension which tries to make a knowledge
of art a vehicle for self-importance. "Who," he said, "ought not to feel
humble before a painting of Titian's or Correggio's? It is only when we
feel so that we can appreciate a great work of art." He believed that an
important moral lesson could be inculcated by a picture as well as by a
poem,--even by a realistic Dutch painting. "Women worship the Venus of
Milo now," he said, "just as they did in ancient Greece, and it is good
for them, too." He respected William Morris Hunt as the best American
painter of his time, but thought he would be a better painter if he were
not so proud. Pride leads to arrogance, and arrogance is blinding.
After he came into possession of his inheritance he showed that he could
make a good use of money. One of his first acts was to purchase a set of
engravings in the Vatican, valued at ten thousand dollars, for the Boston
Public Library. "I was not such a fool as to pay that sum for it,
though," he remarked to Rev. Samuel Longfellow. He visited the studios of
struggling artists in Rome and Boston, gave them advice and
encouragement,--made purchases himself, sometimes, and advised his
friends to purchase when he found a painting that was really excellent.
He also purchased some valuable old paintings to adorn his house on
Commonwealth Avenue.
He placed two of these at one time on free exhibition at Doll's picture-
store, and going into the rooms where they hung, I found Tom Appleton
explaining their merits to a group of remarkably pretty school-girls.
At the same moment, another gentleman who knew Mr. Appleton entered, and
said, "Ah! a Palma Vecio, Mr. Appleton; how delightful! It is a Palma, is
it not?"
"That," replied Mr. Appleton, "is probably a Palma; but what do you say
to this, which I consider a much better picture?" The gentleman did not
know; but it looked like Venetian coloring.
"Quite right," said Mr. Appleton; "I bought it at the sale of a private
collection in Rome, and it was catalogued as a Tintoretto, but I said,
'No, Bassano;' and it is the best Bassano I ever saw. The Italians call
it '_Il Coconotte_.'"
Mr. Appleton had no intention of palming off doubtful paintings on his
friends or the public; but in regard to "_Il Coconotte_" he was
confident of its true value, and rightly so. The painting, so called from
a head in the group covered very thinly with hair, was the pride of his
collection and one of the best of Bassano's works. The other painting
looked to me like a Palma, and I have always supposed that it was one.
After this Mr. Appleton branched off on to an interesting anecdote
concerning an Italian cicerone, and finally left his audience as well
entertained as if they had been to the theatre.
In 1871 he published a volume of poems for private circulation, in which
there were a number of excellent pieces, and especially two which deserve
a place in any choice collection of American poetry. One is called the
"Whip of the Sky" and relates to a subject which Mr. Appleton often dwelt
upon,--the unnecessary haste and restlessness of American life, and is
given here for the wider circulation which it amply deserves:
THE WHIP OF THE SKY.
Weary with travel, charmed with home,
The youth salutes New England's air;
Nor notes, within the azure dome,
A vigilant, menacing figure there,
Whose thonged hand swings
A whip which sings:
"Step, step, step," sings the whip of the sky:
"Hurry up, move along, you can if you try!"
Remembering Como's languid side,
Where, pulsing from the citron deep,
The nightingale's aerial tide
Floats through the day, repose and sleep,
Reclined in groves,--
A voice reproves.
"Step, step, step," cracks the whip of the sky:
"Hurry up, jump along, rest when you die!"
Slave of electric will, which strips
From him the bliss of easeful hours;
And bids, as from a tyrant's lips,
Rest, quiet, fly, as useless flowers,
He wings his heart
To make him smart.
"Step, step, step," snaps the whip of the sky:
"Hurry up, race along, rest when you die!"
He maddens in the breathless race,
Nor misses station, power or pelf;
And only loses in the chase
The hunted lord of all,--himself.
His gain is loss,
His treasure dross.
"Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky,
"Hurry up, limp along, rest when you die!"
With care he burthens all his soul;
Heaped ingots curve his willing back;
Submissive to that fierce control,
He needs at last the sky-whip's crack,
Till at the grave,
No more a slave,--
"Rest, rest, rest," sighs the whip of the sky:
"Hurry not, haste no more, rest when you die!"
Celia Thaxter, the finest of poetic readers, read this to me one
September morning at the Isles of Shoals, and at the conclusion she
remarked: "If that could only be read every year in our public schools it
might do the American people some good."
As compared with this, the sonnet on Pompeii has the effect of a strong
complementary color,--for instance, like orange against dark blue. It
echoes the pathetic reverie that we feel on beholding the monuments of
the mighty past. It contains not the pathos of yesterday, nor of a
hundred years ago, but as Emerson says, "of the time out of mind."
POMPEII.
The silence there was what most haunted me.
Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite
Feet which shall never come; to left and right
Gay colonnades and courts,--beyond, the glee,
Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea.
O'er roofless homes and waiting streets, the light
Lies with a pathos sorrowfuler than night.
Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death
Wedded; and with a wand restores the Life.
The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath
The open shops, and all the tropic strife
Of voices, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, mix. The wreath
Indolent hangs on far Vesuvius's crest;
And beyond the glowing town, and guiltless sea, sweet rest.
Tom Appleton was greatly interested in the performances of the
spiritualists, trance mediums, and other persons pretending to
supernatural powers. How far he believed in this occult science can now
only be conjectured, but he was not a man to be easily played upon. He
thought at least that there was more in it than was dreamed of by
philosophers. When the Longfellow party was at Florence in April, 1869,
Prince George of Hanover, recently driven from his kingdom by Bismarck,
called to see the poet, and finding that he had gone out, was entertained
by Mr. Appleton with some remarkable stories of hypnotic and
spiritualistic performances. The prince, who was a most amiable looking
young German, was evidently very much interested.
Deafness came upon Mr. Appleton in the last years of his life, though not
so as to prevent his enjoying the society of those who had clear voices
and who spoke distinctly. When one of his friends suggested that the
trouble might be wax in his ears, he shook his head sadly and said: "Oh
no: not _wax_, but _wane_."
He was finally taken ill while all alone in New York City, and the
Longfellows were telegraphed for. When one of his relatives came to him
he spoke of his malady in a stoically humorous manner; and his last words
were when he was dying: "How interesting this all is!" A man never left
this world with a more perfect faith in immortality!
DOCTOR HOLMES
I have often been inside the old Holmes house in Cambridge. It served as
a boarding-house during our college days, but afterwards Professor James
B. Thayer rented it for a term of years, until it was finally swept away
like chaff by President Eliot's broom of reform. The popular notion that
it was a quaint-looking old mansion of the eighteenth century, which
seems to have been encouraged by Doctor Holmes himself, is a
misconception. It was a two-and-a-half story, low-studied house, such as
were built at the beginning of the last century, with a roof at an angle
of forty-five degrees and a two-story ell on the right side of the front
door. Doctor Holmes says:
"Gambrel, gambrel; let me beg
You will look at a horse's hinder leg.
First great angle above the hoof,--
That is the gambrel; hence gambrel roof."
Now, any one who looks carefully at the picture of the old Holmes
house, in Morse's biography of the Doctor, will perceive that this
was not the style of roof which the house had,--at least, in its later
years.
Doctor Holmes graduated at Harvard in 1829 at the age of twenty. His
class has been a celebrated one in Boston, and there were certainly some
good men in it,--especially Benjamin Pierce and James Freeman Clarke,--
but I think it was Doctor Holmes's class-poems that gave it its chief
celebrity, which, after all, means that it was a good deal talked about.
In one of these he said:
"No wonder the tutor can't sleep in his bed
With two twenty-niners over his head."
He was said to have composed twenty-nine poems for his class, and then
declared that he had reached the proper limit,--that it would not be
prudent to go beyond the magical number. It was not a dissipated class,
but one with a good deal of life in it, much given to late hours and
jokes, practical and unpractical. The Doctor himself is mysteriously
silent concerning his college course, and so are his biographers; but we
may surmise that it was not very different in general tenor from
Lowell's; although his Yankee shrewdness would seem to have preserved him
from serious catastrophes.
In the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" Doctor Holmes mentions an early
acquaintance with Margaret Fuller, which is not referred to by Mr. Morse,
but must have arisen either at Mrs. Prentiss's Boston school or at the
Cambridgeport school which young Oliver afterwards attended. Even at that
age he recognized Margaret's intellectual gifts, and he was not a little
emulous of her; for he fancied that he "had also drawn a small prize in
the great literary lottery." He looked into one of her compositions,
which was lying on the teacher's desk, and felt quite crest-fallen by
discovering a word in it which he did not know the meaning of. This word
was _trite_; and it may he suspected that a good many use it without
being aware of its proper significance.
Margaret Fuller rose to celebrity with the spontaneity of true genius,
and left her name high upon the natural bridge of American literature.
Holmes did not come before the public until years after her death; and
then perhaps it might not have happened but for James Russell Lowell and
the _Atlantic_. He was a bright man, and possessed a peculiar mental
quality of his own; but as we think of him now we can hardly call him a
genius. He would evidently have liked in his youth to have made a
profession of literature; but his verse lacked the charm and universality
which made Longfellow popular so readily; nor did he possess the daring
spirit of innovation with which Emerson startled and convinced his
contemporaries. He first tried the law, and as that did not suit his
taste he fell into medicine, but evidently without any natural bent or
inclination for the profession. He was fond of the university, and when,
after a temporary professorship at Dartmouth he was appointed lecturer on
anatomy at the Harvard Medical-School, his friends realized that he had
found his right position.