Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
[Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER.
Engraved by Gustav Kruell; after a daguerreotype in the possession of
Josiah J. Hawes, Boston.]
SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE
PUBLISHED MONTHLY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME XXVI JULY-DECEMBER
1899
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & Co. LIMITED LONDON
Copyright, 1899,
By Charles Scribner's Sons.
Printed by
Trow Directory, Printing and Bookbinding Company,
New York, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
OF
SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE
VOLUME XXVI JULY-DECEMBER, 1899.
PAGE
ACCENT, A QUESTION OF. Point of View, 380
AGUINALDO'S CAPITAL--WHY MALOLOS
WAS CHOSEN, LIEUT.-COL. J. D. MILEY, 320
Illustrated with drawings by Jules Guérin and F. D.
Steele, from photographs.
"AMERICAN LANGUAGE, THE." Point of View, 762
AMERICAN SOCIETY AND THE ARTIST, ALINE GORREN, 628
AMERICAN URBANITIES. Point of View, 121
ANNE. A Story, MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 116
ANTARCTIC, AMERICAN SEAMEN IN THE, ALBERT WHITE VORSE, 700
Illustrations drawn from photographs taken by Frederick
A. Cook, M.D., during the recent voyage of the "Belgica."
ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION, THE POSSIBILITIES OF,
FREDERICK A. COOK, M.D. (Of the "Belgica" Expedition), 705
With drawings from the author's photographs.
ARCHIBALD, JAMES F. J. _Havana Since the Occupation_, 86
ARCHITECTURE, THE USE AND ABUSE OF DECORATIVE CONVENTIONS
IN. Field of Art, FREDERIC CROWNINSHIELD, 381
ART IN THE SCHOOLS--FIRST CONSIDERATIONS. Field of Art, 509
ART IN THE SCHOOLS--THE NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHS, 637
AUNT MINERVY ANN, THE CHRONICLES OF, JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
IV. AN EVENING WITH THE KU-KLUX,
Illustrated by A. B. Frost, 34
V. HOW JESS WENT A-FIDDLIN', 310
VI. HOW SHE AND MAJOR PERDUE FRAILED OUT THE GOSSETT BOYS, 413
VII. HOW SHE JOINED THE GEORGIA LEGISLATURE, 439
AUTHOR'S STORY, AN, MAARTEN MAARTENS, 685
BALZAC, THE PARIS OF HONORÉ DE, BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN
and CHARLOTTE M. MARTIN, 588
Illustrated by J. Fulleylove,
BAXTER, SYLVESTER. _The Great November Storm of 1898_, 515
BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE. _John Wesley--Some Aspects of the
Eighteenth Century in England_, 753
BROWNE, WILLIAM MAYNADIER.
_The Royal Intent_, 496
_A Royal Ally_, 221
BROWNELL, W. C. _The Painting of George Butler_, 301
BUTLER, THE PAINTING OF GEORGE, W. C. BROWNELL, 301
With reproductions of Mr. Butler's work.
CAHAN, ABRAHAM. _Rabbi Eliezer's Christmas_, 661
CHANNING, GRACE ELLERY. _Francisco and Francisca_, 227
CHAT, E. G. _The Foreign Mail Service at New York_, 61
CHINON, ERNEST C. PEIXOTTO, 737
Illustrated by Mr. Peixotto,
COLTON, ARTHUR. _The Portate Ultimatum_, 713
COLVIN, SIDNEY. _See Stevenson Letters_.
COOK, FREDERICK A., M.D. _The Possibilities of
Antarctic Exploration_, 705
COPLEY BOY, A, CHARLES WARREN, 326
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn,
CROWNINSHIELD, FREDERIC. _The Use and Abuse of
Decorative Conventions in Architecture_, 381
CUBA. See _Havana Since the Occupation_.
DAVIS, RICHARD HARDING. _The Lion and the Unicorn_, 129
DEWEY RECEPTION IN NEW YORK, THE SCULPTURES OF THE,
Field of Art,
Illustrated from telephotographs by Dwight L. Elmendorf. 765
DREW, MRS. JOHN, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HER SON, JOHN DREW--I.-II., 417, 553
Illustrations from photographs and prints in the
collections of Peter Gilsey, Douglas Taylor, and
John Drew, and from a Painting by Sully, engraved
by H. Wolf; with Biographical Notes by Douglas Taylor.
ELMENDORF, DWIGHT L. _Telephotography_, 457
ENGLISH VOICE ON THE AMERICAN STAGE. Point of View, 123
FIELD OF ART, THE.
Architecture, The Use and Abuse of Decorative Conventions
in, 381
Art in the Schools--First Considerations, 509
Art in the Schools--The New York Photographs, 637
Dewey Reception in New York, The Sculptures of the, 765
Modern House, One Way of Designing a, 125
Painters Who Express Themselves in Words, Concerning, 254
FRANCISCO AND FRANCISCA, GRACE ELLERY CHANNING, 277
Illustrated by Walter Appleton Clark.
GIBSON, C. D. _The Seven Ages of American Women_, 669
GORREN, ALINE. _American Society and the Artist_, 628
GRANT, ROBERT. _Search-Light Letters_, 104, 364
HADLEY, ARTHUR T. _The Formation and the Control of
Trusts_, 604
HARRIS, JOEL CHANDLER. _The Chronicles of Aunt
Minervy Ann_, 34, 310, 413, 439
HAVANA SINCE THE OCCUPATION, JAMES F. J. ARCHIBALD, 86
Illustrated with drawings by Jules Guérin, E. C. Peixotto,
T. Chominski, and F. D. Steele, and from photographs.
HOAR, SENATOR GEORGE F. _Daniel Webster_, 74, 213
"HUNDRED THOUSAND COPIES, A." Point of View, 253
INANIMATE OBJECTS, ETIQUETTE TOWARD. Point of View, 636
IRLAND, FREDERIC. _Where the Water Runs Both Ways_, 259
JAPANESE FLOWER ARRANGEMENT, THEODORE WORES, 205
Illustrations from paintings by Mr. Wores.
KNOX, JUDSON. _The Man from the Machine_, 447
LA FARGE, JOHN. _Concerning Painters Who Express
Themselves in Words_, 254
LA FARGE, JOHN, RUSSELL STURGIS, 3
Illustrations from unpublished drawings and from paintings
by Mr. La Farge.
LION AND THE UNICORN, THE, RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, 129
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy.
MAARTENS, MAARTEN. _An Author's Story_, 685
MAIL SERVICE AT NEW YORK, THE FOREIGN, E. G. CHAT, 61
Illustrated by W. R. Leigh.
MAN FROM THE MACHINE, THE, JUDSON KNOX, 447
Illustrated by F. D. Steele.
MAN ON HORSEBACK, THE, WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE, 538
Illustrated by A. I. Keller.
MARTIN, BENJAMIN ELLIS AND CHARLOTTE M. _The Paris of
Honoré de Balzac_, 588
MATTHEWS, BRANDER. _In the Small Hours_, 502
MAX--OR HIS PICTURE, OCTAVE THANET, 739
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy.
MILEY, LIEUT.-COL. J. D. _Aguinaldo's Capital_, 320
MILITARISM AND WOMEN. Point of View, 507
MODERN HOUSE, ONE WAY OF DESIGNING A. Field of Art, 125
NAVY, ON A TEXT FROM THE. Point of View, 763
PAGE, THOMAS NELSON. _The Spectre in the Cart_, 179
PAINTERS WHO EXPRESS THEMSELVES IN WORDS, CONCERNING.
Field of Art, JOHN LA FARGE, 254
PEACEMAKER, THE, BLISS PERRY, 643
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
PEIXOTTO, ERNEST C. _Chinon_, 737
PERRY, BLISS. {_The White Blackbird_, 96
{_The Peacemaker_, 643
PHILIPPINES. See _Aguinaldo's Capital_.
"PLAY'S THE THING, THE," ALBERT WHITE VORSE, 167
Illustrations by W. Glackens, reproduced in color.
PHOTOGRAPHY, PICTORIAL, ALFRED STIEGLITZ, 528
Illustrated by the author's photographs.
POINT OF VIEW, THE.
Accent, A Question of, 380
American Language, The, 762
American Urbanities, 121
English Voice on the American Stage, The, 123
"Hundred Thousand Copies, A," 253
Inanimate Objects, Etiquette Toward, 636
Militarism and Women, 507
Navy, On a Text from the, 763
Superstitious, A Convention of the, 634
Vain Seeking, A, 506
Women, The Public Manners of, 122
World with No Country, A, 635
PORTATE ULTIMATUM, THE, ARTHUR COLTON, 713
Illustrated in color by W. Glackens.
PRAED, THE EDUCATION OF, ALBERT WHITE VORSE, 290
Illustrated by Henry McCarter.
QUILLER-COUCH, A. T. _The Ship of Stars_, 47, 234, 354, 402, 611
RABBI ELIEZER'S CHRISTMAS, ABRAHAM CAHAN, 661
Illustrated by W. Glackens.
REAL ONE, THE, JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS, 620
Illustrated by Henry Hutt.
ROYAL ALLY, A, WILLIAM MAYNADIER BROWNE, 221
Illustrated by A. I. Keller.
ROYAL INTENT, THE, WILLIAM MAYNADIER BROWNE, 496
ROYLE, EDWIN MILTON. _The Vaudeville Theatre_, 485
SANDHILL STAG, THE TRAIL OF THE, ERNEST SETON-THOMPSON, 191
Author of "Wild Illustrated by Animals I Have Known."
Mr. Thompson.
SEARCH-LIGHT LETTERS, ROBERT GRANT.
III. Letter To a Young Man Wishing To Be an American, 104
IV. Letter To a Political Optimist, 364
SENIOR READER, THE, ARTHUR COSSLETT SMITH, 725
Illustrations by Albert Sterner.
SEVEN AGES OF AMERICAN WOMEN, THE, C. D. GIBSON, 669
A series of drawings.
SHIP OF STARS, THE, A. T. QUILLER-COUCH (Q.),
Chapters XIV.-XXIX., 47, 234, 351
(_Concluded_.), 402, 611
SMALL HOURS, IN THE, BRANDER MATTHEWS, 502
SMITH, ARTHUR COSSLETT. _The Senior Reader_, 725
SPECTRE IN THE CART, THE, THOMAS NELSON PAGE, 179
Full-page illustration by F. C. Yohn.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS, THE LETTERS OF.
Edited by SIDNEY COLVIN.
FROM BOURNEMOUTH, 1884-85, 20
DRAWING by E. C. Peixotto.
BOURNEMOUTH (CONTINUED), 1885-86, 242
SARANAC LAKE--WINTER, 1887-88, 338
Illustrated with drawings from photographs by Jules
Guérin.
THE VOYAGE OF THE CASCO; HONOLULU (JULY, 1888-JUNE, 1889), 469
LIFE IN SAMOA: NOVEMBER, 1890-DECEMBER, 1894, 570
(Concluded.)
STEVENSON, MRS. ROBERT LOUIS. _Anne_, 116
STIEGLITZ, ALFRED. _Pictorial Photography_, 528
STORM OF 1898, THE GREAT NOVEMBER, SYLVESTER BAXTER, 515
Illustrations by H. W. Ditzler.
STURGIS, RUSSELL. _John La Farge_, 3
SUPERSTITIOUS, A CONVENTION OF THE. Point of View, 634
TELEPHOTOGRAPHY, DWIGHT L. ELMENDORF, 457
Illustrated by the author's photographs and
telephotographs.
THANET, OCTAVE. _Max--Or His Picture_, 739
THOMPSON, ERNEST SETON. _The Trail of the Sandhill Stag_, 191
TRUSTS, THE FORMATION AND THE CONTROL OF, ARTHUR T. HADLEY, 604
President of Yale University.
VAILLANTCOEUR, HENRY VAN DYKE, 153
Illustrated by Walter Appleton Clark.
VAIN SEEKING, A. Point of View, 506
VAN DYKE, HENRY. _Valiantcoeur_, 153
VAUDEVILLE THEATRE, THE, EDWIN MILTON ROYLE, 485
Illustrations by W. Glackens.
VORSE, ALBERT WHITE. {"_The Play's the Thing_," 167
{_The Education of Praed_, 290
{_American Seamen in the
Antarctic_, 700
WARREN, CHARLES. _A Copley Boy_, 326
WATER-FRONT OF NEW YORK, THE, JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS, 385
Illustrated from drawings by Henry McCarter, Jules
Guérin, E. C. Peixotto, W. R. Leigh, C. L. Hinton,
G. A. Shipley, and G. W. Peters.
WEBSTER, DANIEL. I., II. WITH UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS AND
SOME EXAMPLES OF HIS PREPARATION FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING,
GEORGE F. HOAR, 74, 213
Senator from Massachusetts.
With a portrait and fac-similes.
WESLEY, JOHN--SOME ASPECTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY IN ENGLAND, AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, 753
WHERE THE WATER RUNS BOTH WAYS, FREDERIC IRLAND, 259
Illustrated with photographs by the author, and with
drawings by Jules Guérin, H. L. Brown, and Howard Giles
from photographs.
WHITE BLACKBIRD, THE, BLISS PERRY, 96
WHITE, WILLIAM ALLEN. _The Man on Horseback_, 538
WILLIAMS, JESSE LYNCH. {_The Water-Front of New York_, 385
{_The Real One_, 620
WOMEN, THE PUBLIC MANNERS OF. Point of View, 122
WORES, THEODORE. _Japanese Flower Arrangement_, 205
WORLD WITH NO COUNTRY, A. Point of View, 635
POETRY
ADVERTISING SIGN, AN, MARVIN R. VINCENT, 751
BALLAD, J. RUSSELL TAYLOR, 220
CELEBRANTS, THE, CAROLYN WELLS, 85
Illustrated by Oliver Herford.
CRICKET SONG, THE, R. H. STODDARD, 526
Illustrations in color by Harvey Ellis.
ENDURING, THE, JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, 103
HERB O' GRACE, THE, ARTHUR COLTON, 401
Illustrated by Orson Lowell.
HEY NONNY NO. A Song, MARGUERITE MERINGTON, 416
HUSH! A Sonnet, JULIA C. R. DORR, 120
LONELINESS, J. H. ADAMS, 712
NARCISSUS, GUY WETMORE CARRYL, 525
NEMESIS, BENJAMIN PAUL BLOOD, 72
OLD HOME HAUNTS, THE, F. COLBURN CLARKE, 289
Illustrated by Henry Hutt.
POPPY-GARDEN, IN A, SARA KING WILEY, 325
ROMANCE 363
SILENT WAYFELLOW, THE, BLISS CARMAN, 446
SLUMBER SONG, A. _For the Fisherman's Child_, HENRY VAN DYKE, 298
Illustrated by Maude Cowles.
SONG WITH A DISCORD, A, ARTHUR COLTON, 603
SUICIDE, THE, EDWIN MARKHAM, 551
TEARS. A Sonnet, LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE, 569
THREE KINGS, THE. HARRISON S. MORRIS, 653
A Christmas Ballad,
Illustrated in color by Walter Appleton Clark;
decorations by T. Guernsey Moore.
URBAN HARBINGER, AN, E. S. MARTIN, 190
With an illustration by W. Glackens.
VEERY-THRUSH, THE, J. RUSSELL TAYLOR, 350
WIND AT THE DOOR, THE, BLISS CARMAN, 652
SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE
VOL. XXVI. JULY, 1899. NO. 1.
JOHN LA FARGE
By Russell Sturgis
[Illustration: A Study.]
The artist of four hundred years ago, or of any great time for
individual effort as opposed to the associated and unrecorded work of
more primitive times, was a many-sided man. He was probably a
traveller, if not a monk; he was almost certainly a man of adventure;
a man of thought, whether monk or layman. The artist did not travel
far; but he encountered more personal risk between Florence and Naples
than our contemporary does in voyaging to the Isles of Summer; he
encountered in Sicily, in Hungary, or in Spain a people as remote from
him as the Japanese are from us; and he had still Constantinople and
Cairo to visit, places more distant and as inaccessible to him as
Thibet or Kafiristan in the nineteenth century. The old artist was
something of a scholar, too, with a habit of study and meditation, if
not master of many books. And, moreover, the old artist was very much
in love with his work and loved to play with it as well as to work in
it; so that he touched many materials, handled many processes, and
used many methods of artistic utterance. Again it is worth noting that
no one had discovered, in 1499, that architecture was an art to be
practised without regard to the other manifestations of the artistic
spirit; nor yet that the sculptor and the painter were two workmen
whose art was to be practised apart from and independent of building
or other industrial occupation.
All these things have been so much changed of late that it is
noticeable in Mr. La Farge's life that he should be, in many ways,
like a painter of old time, that is, traveller, reader, collector and
student; colorist and decorator; painter in large and in little. He
has been a working artist for forty years, and has done many things.
He has made many book illustrations which have been published and many
which have never been given to the world. The illustrations to
Browning's book, "Men and Women," as it was originally published in
1855, are among these; and there are reproduced here the full-page
design for the beginning of _Protus_ and also two studies for _Fra
Lippo Lippi_:
The little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim's son.
This was early work. The illustration to _Misconceptions_ is as
mystical as that for _Protus_; and that which concludes _Bishop
Blougram's Apology_ is as realistic as these studies of children.
[Illustration: Study for Browning's "Men and Women."]
Then, still of his early days, are to be considered the faithful
little studies and close-to-nature drawings which served as a
foundation for a structure of knowledge which was to pile itself high
enough. _Sic itur ad astra_; and with a different result from the
tower-building recorded in Genesis. The reproduction given [on page 9]
is from a sketch-book of 1860; and the work has been a careful drawing
in black on white, done in the flat country about Bayou Têche. These
are drawings _in values_, or made for values; that is to say, the
relative force of darkness or of light is carefully preserved. A
certain green of the trees may be lighter than the blue, still water
below, but is very much darker than the same water where it reflects
the pale evening sky; the reflection in the water of those same trees
is a shade or two darker than the mass of trees themselves; and so on,
forever. Of the same epoch is this drawing of a beacon [page 10], a
flaming cresset, a signal light seen against a night sky. These are
warnings to steamboats on the Mississippi to avoid a shoal or to make
a landing. Other studies, those of pure line and those of masses,
those of his youth and those of his maturity, are scattered over these
pages.
He has produced also a very great number of water-color drawings,
generally small, and very commonly having for their subjects pieces of
foreground detail, such as one or several blossoms in a pool of water,
or a water-lily or two afloat on the surface of a still pond. It might
almost be said that his water-colors were generally of such detail as
this, except that the work done during his journeys into tropical and
oriental lands has resulted differently.
Again he has produced, during those years of work, a few large
pictures painted in oil-color or by a process which he learned in his
youth and in which melted wax has a part; though this is not the
encaustic process of antiquity or of modern revival. One or two of
these are portraits, several are landscapes, several are studies of
interesting details which he wished to preserve and which for some
reason or other had struck him as more easily rendered on a large
scale and in the more solid material; and some are, to all appearance,
concepts for mural decoration--advance studies for that which was to
be painted on a still larger scale, or in combination with other parts
of a large composition, and finally to be fixed upon the wall where it
was to remain permanently. Some, also, of the water-colors produced
in recent years are, though not large in superficies, very large in
treatment. A glowing color composition suggested by the mountain
country of Fiji, a monochrome study of a river landscape in Japan, may
be as grandiose in character and may contain as much matter, both in
represented detail and in artistic purpose, as an oil-painting of four
times the surface-measurement. Some illustrations given on another
page of this treatise may partly show the qualities here suggested.
[Illustration: Study for Browning's "Men and Women."]
He has produced, also, a few such mural paintings as those whose
intention is assumed in the last paragraph. Of these, much the largest
is that which covers the end wall of the Church of the Ascension in
New York. There are others in St. Thomas's Church and in the Church of
the Incarnation, both in New York City; the interior of Trinity Church
in Boston was painted by him with a series of figure subjects, though
the chromatic treatment of this interior does not include any large
single painting of great importance; and of late years, two lunettes
in the Villard-Reid house in New York and one in the Walker Art
Gallery at Bowdoin College have been added to this summary list. There
is reproduced here the last-named picture [page 17]; a picture of
fantastic subject in the "literary" or narrative sense. _Athens_ is
its given name; but it represents Pallas making a drawing of the
lovely and unadorned genius of the open country or wood, while the
robed and crowned impersonated City looks affectionately at both the
subject and the recording goddess. To be classed under the head of
mural paintings also is the remarkable composition of small pictures
involved in a large design with panels and arabesques, which decorates
the wooden vaults of that gallery in Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt's house,
which used to be called the Water-Color Room, and which now, since the
alteration of the house and the removal of this painted vault into the
new building, may be considered the gallery of entrance for stately
entertainments. To a limited extent, the work of other painters is
associated with his own in the last-named achievement, as also in
Trinity Church. In this, the work of the artist comes very near to
decoration pure and simple. The reader is not to understand that any
sharp distinction is made here between decoration and that painting
which is not so designated. It is to be hoped that he, the reader,
will see as he reads that to deny this distinction is part of the
life-purpose of John La Farge; a purpose which his critic is glad to
recognize and to second. It is merely with reference to its
placing--to its apparent intended service--to its fixed location and
its consequent exclusion from the category of "gallery pictures" or
"easel pictures" that the words decoration and decorative are here
applied to certain paintings. For throughout his career this artist
has leaned strongly toward the treatment of his expressional and
significant painting in a decorative way.
[Illustration: Panel, from One of the Ceilings in Cornelius
Vanderbilt's House. Inlaid glass, ivory, bronze, marble and silver,
and mother-of-pearl.]
[Illustration: Figure from the Vanderbilt Ceiling.]
Decoration in the more usual sense has been also a large part of his
work. Thus, when in 1878 he contracted with Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt
for a carved ceiling, it appeared that his intentions in the matter
were those which could have been suggested only by a mind full of the
decorative idea. "A carved ceiling" might have been almost anything;
but this one was an elaborate composition of colored sculpture, or, if
you please, of polychromy in relief; certainly one of the most
remarkable undertakings of the time. What seem to be (for the true
constructional character of the ceiling is not here guaranteed) what
seem to be the beams, the constructional part of the ceiling, were of
light-colored walnut. The panels within were filled with figures of
armed warriors and of draped women of about half life-size, and these
panels were framed by rim within rim, moulding within moulding, of
elaborate sculptured pattern. All these sculptured patterns, all these
figures, were invested with color in a way which it is hard to
describe; for different chosen woods, alloys of metal of which some
are of Japanese origin, opaque and colored glass, ivory,
mother-of-pearl, and even coral are combined to give delicately tinted
color and subtle variety of surface to the work. That ceiling has been
broken up; but there has been great good judgment shown in its
rearrangement. The panels of the ceiling are now arranged so that they
are well lighted both by day and by night, and show admirably.
Although the original design has disappeared, the separate panels,
each with its enclosing mouldings and woodwork, at least four by six
feet in superficies, are well displayed. One of these panels is here
engraved [page 6]. Here also is given part of a decorative frieze in
which castings specially made of blue glass were used with ivory and
with carvings in solid _nacre_, in combination with the carved walnut.
[Illustration: Dry Bed of the Dayagawa River.
_Drawn by John La Farge._]
[Illustration: Study for Values.]
Similar work has been done by Mr. La Farge in connection with his own
paintings, and sometimes where no paintings were used. This use, on a
large scale, of rich material, rich in color, in surface and in
lustre, as a medium for sculpture, is almost peculiar to this artist
among modern men. Others who have cared for color in sculpture have
played with it, rather, in small objects of the cabinet; and this
remains true in a general way in spite of a pleasant use of enamel in
some French work in bronze of a more important or, at least, more
pretentious character.
At a time not far removed from the undertaking of the ceiling and the
mantelpiece above mentioned, a monument was put up in the Newport
Cemetery under the direction of Mr. La Farge [page 16]. He associated
with himself in this task the sculptor, since so widely known, but
then a young man, Augustus St. Gaudens, who had already worked with
him on the carved and colored ceiling. Every student of architectural
designs will be struck by the informal character of this design: the
steps which are clearly not meant to be ascended and which have an
obvious symbolic meaning; the horizontal cross sunk in the table of
the monument in such a way that few persons can be so placed as to see
it favorably; the inscription carved upon the butt or foot of that
cross; the apparently disproportionate slenderness of the upright
cross with its thin cylindrical shaft; the placing of other
inscriptions on the body of the massive base in which no specially
arranged panels or medallions have been prepared for them; and, most
of all, the treatment of the leaf sculpture which, though composed
carefully enough and far enough in itself from being a piece of crude
realism, is yet realistic in its disposition--suggesting the natural
fall of sprays and branches of leafage allowed to dry and harden in
the sun. No architect--as we now understand the term--no architect,
even one who had kept himself free from the neo-classic influence and
the teaching of the schools, could have designed such a piece as this.
It is the more interesting to see how the highly trained decorative
artist who has not been fettered by the taught maxims of the
architect's school or the architect's office has handled this
problem--a problem rarely met by decorators of modern experience.
About 1876 these same demands upon him for decoration led him to the
careful observation of ancient stained glass, with a view to providing
the modern world with something which might be to it what the windows
of Reims Cathedral and Fairford Church were to the Middle Ages. It
appeared to the modern artist that there was still a course open to
him which had not been tried by the decorators of the Middle Ages,
early or late. It appeared that the modern materials and processes of
glassmaking might give to the artist in glass a "palette" such as the
mediæval man had never possessed. What is called opal glass, opaline,
and also opalescent glass may be said to have formed the basis of a
new system of window decoration, though the other essential, the
leaden framework, was to play its own part in the artistical result.
Uncolored opaline glass has a milky-white look when seen by reflected
light; but by transmitted light its color passes from a cloudy
bluish-gray to red, with a yellow spark. If, now, such glass be
charged with color of many shades, the chromatic effects producible by
the combination of such translucent materials, at once contrasting in
color and harmonized by the opaline quality, might prove successful
beyond what had been known. To this, then, La Farge set himself; to
obtain glass of richness, depth, and glow of color hitherto
unattempted, and in a multitude of tints; so that, whereas the
thirteenth-century artist had five or six colors in all, susceptible
of nothing more than a gradation from darker to lighter, as the glass
was thicker or thinner or more or less thickly flashed--now, colors
were to be supplied by the score, each color capable of these same
gradations in darker and lighter, and each color harmonized with all
the other colors by the common quality of softness and a certain misty
iridescence caused by the opaline stain. Even in a piece of glass so
brilliant in color that the opalescence is hardly perceptible, its
presence in that part of the general chromatic scheme will surely be
felt.
[Illustration: On the Bayou Têche; Study for Values.]
A window is, when considered as a work of fine art in color, a
translucent composition, there being no part of it which can appeal to
the eye by other than transmitted light. The artist has, then, the
need of something strong to lean upon, some background, some _fond_
upon which to relieve his more brilliant pieces of translucency; for
it can be easily understood that color composition which is wholly
translucent will tend toward feebleness, toward paleness, toward a
certain evanescent and doubtful character of its colors, from which it
must be saved. This needed background was found in the use of the
leads; that is to say, of those strips of lead made generally in the
form of a capital I, in which the edges of the separate pieces of
glass are held. By taking these leads as the artistic sub-structure of
the composition, by placing them where needed, and by cutting the
glass accordingly, by combining the colors of the glass in such a way
as to allow the leads to be put where they were needed for this
purpose of background, results were obtained which no artist in glass
had ever yet attempted. La Farge's use of leads, in this way, remains
peculiarly his own in the subtlety and refinement of the linear
design. Occasionally, indeed, a certain amount of opaque painting, of
that solid non-translucent painting which the men of the Middle Ages
used continually, has been used to increase the area of his lead
sash-bars or to diminish the brilliancy of a background. All artists
recognize the need of the _repentir_, of the amendment made after the
work is partly done, or even, to all eyes but their own, completed;
and painting in opaque color has been used by La Farge when it has
appeared that the lead-sash was not quite sufficient for the
background needed. In like manner, painting in translucent colored
enamels has been used by him where it has appeared to him that no
glass available would produce the tone desired. As such instances are
occasional and rare, these devices are not a part of the essence of La
Farge's work in glass, and they are mentioned here merely because
their existence must be understood as accidental. The treatment of
heads and hands and other necessarily nude parts of the body, in order
that these surfaces may harmonize with the generally unpainted drapery
and background, would require pages of discussion if entered upon at
all.
[Illustration: Study of a Mullein-stalk.]
The purpose of this article is not, however, to dwell in detail upon
the historical development of his art, but to criticise it in its main
features, and to institute an inquiry into those traits of La Farge's
personality which have made his work especially interesting to all
persons who care for the retention of noble design in that which is
obviously novel, original, modern in art.
[Illustration: Study of a Beacon.]
In the first place, then, Mr. La Farge is very individual as a
designer. He hardly belongs to any school of designers. The reader
will suggest at once that, as there is no school of designers at the
present day, a man of force is compelled to be individual; and this
dictum will be readily accepted. Inasmuch as there has been no time
since La Farge reached the age of intelligence and of interest in
art--no time when he has not been a student of Japanese art; inasmuch
as he began, as long ago as 1860, to buy and study what few pieces of
Japanese art and handicraft he could find--it has been thought that he
is strongly influenced by Japanese design; but this it will be hard
to establish. His design is individual and personal, and it is that
whether we take design to mean his way of conceiving the human figure;
or his way of composing human figures in large groups with care for
the effect of line and mass; or whether we think, rather, of the
filling of the panel or the canvas, the parallelogram or the
half-circle, with masses of color and tendencies of line.
[Illustration: Study for a Decoration for a Page of Browning's "Men
and Women," 1861.]
Now, in this individuality of his art, there is a weaker as well as a
stronger side. It cannot be ignored by those who admire his larger and
statelier designs that they lack something of stateliness. The figures
in his small woodcuts are carried out of the strict and grave system
of academic drawing into an extreme of freedom of gesture and
movement, and that with the evident purpose of expressing in the
strongest possible way the intense meaning of the artist; but this
hardly allows of mention except as a virtue. Bishop Hatto in his
screaming agony, as the rats attack him on every side while he
crouches at the foot of the column on the capital of which the cat has
taken refuge (for each and all the details of which see Southey's
poem)--Bishop Hatto is almost liquified, has almost lost the solid
substance of his corporeal form, in his horror and hopelessness. Enoch
Arden, "the long-haired, long-bearded solitary," hardly shows the
strong man, the vigorous sailor under his rags and through his
squalor; the emphasis is laid on the fourteen years' solitary
confinement in this lonely island, and the "strong heroic soul" which
the poet drew has not interested the artist as part of this design.
These are small drawings for wood-engraving and for book illustration;
but the same character of design occurs again and again in the larger
and statelier pieces; and it may there be less easy to accept. The
impression made upon a student of mural painting, ancient and modern,
by such a painting as that in the Church of the Ascension is that it
is, in a sense, lacking in repose. The Adoring Angels around the
risen Saviour are individual in their gestures, in the pose of their
bodies, in the expression of their faces. They are personalities
rather than parts of a "Glory of Angels." The figure of Christ itself
has the same peculiarity and is marked by a singularly free and
unconventional pose of the body and gesture of the right arm,
suggestive rather of the teacher of men than of the Son taken up to
his Father. Moreover, this effect as of too much movement and
incident, as of too little stability and gravity, is heightened by the
flowing drapery, which is so marked a feature of the composition that
it remains uppermost in the minds of many students to the very end of
their study of the picture. Something of this may be seen in the
illustration given here of the noble window which was sent to the
Exhibition of 1889 [page 15]. The subject is the Sealing of the
Servants of God. These groups are of indubitable truth and power as
illustrations of the passage in the Apocalypse; but as parts of a
solemn color design another standard needs to be applied to them.
[Illustration: Study for the Wolf-Charmer.]
[Illustration: Another Study for the Wolf-Charmer.]
So much for the less agreeable side of this familiar and personal way
of designing. In the favorable aspect there would, of course, be very
much to be said, for he is no illustrator, he is no story-teller, he
is no composer of pictured fable or pictured record who does not
understand how to give his figures that life and movement, that action
and expression, which will explain all that is explainable of their
purpose and their function. Nothing, for instance, can be more perfect
as a bit of mystical story-telling than the Wolf-Charmer, the picture
in which the gaunt and haggard magician, with his pipe at his lips,
comes out of the forest surrounded by his drove of gigantic wolves.
Two studies for the wolves are given here; and the spirit of the
design is interesting to trace in them. To give the savage creatures
something more than their due size, and, above all, something more
than their due ferocity, is a natural and obvious device; but to
express, as the artist has expressed, their familiarity with their
leader, their sympathy with him, their spirit entering into his as he
heads and controls them, is something admirable in descriptive art. So
in that grim picture in which some part of the spirit of feudal Japan
is contained; the picture which tells the tale of little Kio-Sai; the
rushing and turbulent stream between its high banks is gray and sombre
as if with the swollen waters of a flood; and upon it, whirled along
in its course, the severed head which frightened the child floats face
upward with something of its living expression still lingering about
the eyes and lips, but still as dead, as corpse-like as a severed head
could be. This powerful drawing, made within the last two years, is to
be cited as a characteristic specimen of expressional art. There is
nothing in the picture but whirling water and floating head; and yet
the stern, fierce, half-savage, feudal system of Japan, which
coexisted with an almost too subtle refinement of manners and of
thought, both literary and artistic, is expressed in this little
square of grave coloring. So, in the numerous South Sea Island studies
which have filled many a frame and delighted so many a student of
water-color drawings, it is hard to say whether the pictures of
movement and action, of fishing with cormorants, of riding and
marching, of bustle and life, or the pictures of tropical and oriental
men and women in repose, are more delightful--half naked girls
carrying canoes, seated dancers going through the sacred movements of
the _siva_, portraits of individuals, and studies of groups intended
to preserve for the artist the recollection, and for the instruction
of those at home the singular life, of these brown islanders, so
different from the negroids of the southern groups, so over-civilized
in ceremony and tradition, with all their lack of policing and of
steady social conditions. In all this work the artist's indifference
to the accepted conventional ways of expressing his meaning is
altogether fortunate for his art. He knows how to tell a story in
pictures which have very much, if not all, of his highest artistic
qualities, and this he would hardly be capable of were he more
fettered than he is by the rules of the academies as to how the action
of man should be put into form and color.
[Illustration: The Floating Head.]
In connection with this matter, the question comes up how far Mr. La
Farge is a thorough draughtsman. It hardly becomes one who is not
ready to go into the minute examination of his work, figure by figure,
to challenge its merit in the way of anatomical correctness and
academic severity of drawing; but it is to be said, at least, that the
strongest reason exists for the belief that many of the draped figures
would prove incorrect if an absolutely accurate drawing of the nude
body in the position assumed by the draped figure could be laid upon
the drapery. It is difficult here to express one's exact meaning,
because there is no such thing as an absolutely correct drawing of the
nude body in any position; but if we take a draped angel or a draped
St. Peter or a draped Buddhist priest from this gallery of pictured
men and women, we can imagine the consummate draughtsman, the Paul
Veronese of the present, if there were such a man, pointing out that a
figure seated or standing in that position could not get within the
drapery which the artist has pictured. We can even imagine the painter
aware of the fact--in advance of all criticism by others. It will be
observed that La Farge has seldom painted the nude. His early work
involved a great deal of drawing, both from the nude model and in the
way of designed and composed nude figures. Naked figures represented
on a small scale, as among his numerous Eastern subjects, exist, of
course, in his work in great numbers; but the nude in the larger
European sense of elaborately rendered, well modelled, thoroughly
understood naked figures, male and female, is rare in his work. Mural
painting in churches hardly allows of that; glass is, of course,
wholly foreign in its purpose and mission from such art as includes
the nude, and hardly allows even of the naked hands and head. Now, let
it be admitted for the moment not only that La Farge is not given to
drawing the nude, but even that he has not done consummate work in
that direction; let that be admitted, and let us then see how that
affects his pictures and drawings. It need not be asked whether it
affects the decorative value of his work--considered as a body of art
it cannot affect it badly; we need think, now, only of fine drawing
considered by itself. It is a part of the true traditional doctrine of
art that no man should paint from the model, nude or draped; that no
man should draw from the model, nude or draped, with the intention of
using the drawing upon his wall surface or canvas. It is a tradition
which ought to have been left intact as it came from older men, that
when the artist composes it is his duty to forget his anatomy and to
forget the preparatory drawings which he has made by hundreds, and to
draw directly upon his canvas or sheet of paper the figure which he
now conceives as a part of his design, the figure which he desires to
put into his composition as one of its elements. He is free then to do
what La Farge himself does freely, to compare this result with the
model, nude or draped, or first nude and then draped; but this
comparison has for its purpose, not the correction of the drawing or
the picture with reference to its anatomical correctness nearly so
much as it has in view the lifelike appearance of the figure. Given a
draped figure which does not seem to stand quite as firmly upon its
feet, or to be moving quite as freely, as the composer himself
desires, it is required by consultation of the model to rectify those
errors in the drawing which have led to this unfortunate result and to
give to that figure the lifelike character which it does not yet
possess.
[Illustration: A Study.]
[Illustration: Study for Bacchanal Drawing.]
[Illustration: Study for the Watson Window, 1889.
This is the one carried out and sent to the Paris Exposition.]
It is a characteristic of Mr. La Farge's art as a painter that he is
primarily a colorist. Now it is fairly safe to say that no man since
the great Venetians has been at once a consummate draughtsman of the
human figure and a consummate master of color; and that apparently the
mind of the workman cannot lead his artistic production in such paths
that both of these excellences may be attained at once. The workman,
if he is sincere, and if he is well advised, follows the course which
is easiest for him, and if he conceives of every figure and every
group of figures with their setting of landscape or architecture
primarily as a piece of splendid coloring, to be taken from nature as
an abstract piece of coloring, and so modified that it will tell as
an abstract piece of coloring on canvas or on wall--if that is the
artist's object he will not improve the work produced on these lines
by giving his time and strength to the proposed consideration of
accuracy of drawing.
[Illustration: Monument in Newport Cemetery Erected Under the
Direction of John La Farge and Augustus St. Gaudens.]
To ask whether La Farge's work would be artistically better if it were
consummate in drawing is to ask a question which no one can answer. It
is certain that no wise student will go to La Farge to learn figure
drawing in the technical sense. It is not that which his art offers
the student. There are, however, two large pictures, which can hardly
be challenged--the two lunettes in the Villard-Reid house; and it is
probable that if these pictures were within easy reach of the public,
and could be seen as the wall paintings in the Congressional Library
can be seen by all the world and every day, they would tend to raise
the general opinion of La Farge's capacity and range as a painter
beyond what even his admirers now hold. The pictures represent "The
Dance" and "Music." In each of them, smiling landscape forms the
background, a landscape not to be called sunny because the work of the
true colorist hardly allows of sunshine. Sunshine and full glowing
color are not generally found possible of simultaneous presentation,
and La Farge certainly makes no attempt to combine them. If, then, we
consider one of these two groups of six or eight maidens invested in
rather bright and high-lighted colors and set off by a landscape
somewhat deeper in tone than their own figures--if we consider each of
these pictures as a mural painting intended to be festal in character
and to glorify and heighten the beauty of the room which it adorns,
while at the same time it is in itself a piece of coloring of almost
the highest quality--we have then, perhaps, the fairest and most
complete idea of what one of these lunettes is as a work of art--what
it has been in the artist's well-realized purpose. The beauty of
composition in line and mass in either of the pictures, noticeable as
it is, is not important in comparison. The power of line-composition
is not very rare; except in its very highest manifestation, it is
almost like correct spelling; necessary, but deserving no special
remark. But when it is said of any picture that it is a piece of
coloring of the highest or almost the highest rank, there has been
said of it the utmost that can be said of a work of graphic art. It is
not claimed that color is essentially greater or nobler than form, but
that color is the graphic artist's especial domain, in which he alone
can rule; and further, that color is peculiarly artistical, ideal,
abstract, and in this way loftier. Is it possible for the mind of man
to conceive of anything more perfect, more remote from, and, in a
sense, superior to, whatever else there is in the world of humanity
than a color composition of the highest quality? There is only one
product of the human mind which can be compared with it; a musical
composition of the highest class; a symphony of Beethoven, alone, can
be compared to a great composition by Titian. That such a color-gift
and such a color-purpose are to be seen in all of Mr. La Farge's work
alike would be hardly too much to say. The touch of the consummate
colorist is not as evident, but is as discoverable by one who knows
how to look, in a piece of nature-study from Fiji, six inches square,
as it is in a large composition of saints and angels. The disposition
and the power to give to tinted paper the glow, the radiance, the
wealth and charm of that strange and inexplicable thing, the mingling
of tints into a resulting color-scheme--these are in small work the
same essentially that they are in large. Nor is the background of the
Ascension picture in the eponymic church to be exalted above the bits
of hillside and surf in the drawings of oceanic life, otherwise than
as its greater size allows it greater splendor.
[Illustration: "Athens." Mural Painting in the Walker Art Gallery at
Bowdoin College.]
That this power over color is the life and soul of the decorator need
hardly be urged. Decoration which is applied to a flat surface and
which is not in relief, except, perhaps, to a slight extent and
occasionally, has for its main object, its main _desideratum_,
richness or refinement of coloring, or both. If one has a wall to
decorate, the first idea of the true decorator is to invest it with
splendor or with delicate strength of color. He seeks for fresco, or
the encaustic process, or mosaic, or, as in modern times, oil-painting
upon a strained canvas, indifferently and according to the spirit of
his time and the practice of his contemporaries; but his object is one
and the same--to invest his wall or ceiling with noble color. Little
may he care what the subject of the painting or mosaic may be.
According to the requirements of the epoch or community in which he
lives, it may be a procession of saints or a dance of bacchanals; the
primary object which he has in view is to procure a most enjoyable
and delightful piece of color--and other things are of secondary
importance. Glass, then, would seem to be especially prepared for La
Farge's work, and La Farge especially prepared for glass. Consider the
memorial window which fills a window-opening in a church at North
Easton, Mass., a town which owes much to the lady whose memory is thus
honored. Upon a background of broken and changing blue are relieved
the three figures larger than life-size which nearly fill the opening.
Two of these figures are clothed, one in drapery of the most vivid
green, the other in drapery of orange-brown; that is to say, these are
the general colors offered to the eye of the spectator by the infinite
number of minor tints, all passing into one another in subtle
gradation, which make up the general mass of drapery. It is to be
observed, then, that these figures are also seen to be clothed in
rags, and that the idea, the notion of wretchedness and tatters is
maintained in spite of the sumptuous clothing of glowing color which
invests it all. That is an instance as good as can be found of what
the colorist has to do in this world. He does not ask whether beggars
have ever been dressed in such garments as have been described, but he
has to express the two-fold image, Beggary and splendid color, and out
of these he makes up his work of art, as unlike as may be to anything
in nature, but none the worse for that. To return to mural painting;
there is one merit which all La Farge's brother-painters agree in
awarding to him, and that is the power of putting a painting upon the
wall so that it does not change the character of the wall as a part of
the building. His painting takes nothing away from the solidity of the
wall which it invests. The upright mass retains its rigidity and
weight, it still carries the roof, it still holds firmly to the
adjoining walls, it is a massive and trustworthy part of the
construction, and the painted picture has added to rather than taken
from its permanent and resting quality. How this is done is fully as
inexplicable as is the glow and splendor of color itself. No one can
say abstractly and without having the picture immediately before him
how any such result is attained, nor is it easy to explain the
picture, even to the looker-on, in any such terms as will fully
express this quality. It is one of the most valuable qualities which
mural painting can possess--mural painting which fluctuates between
the flatness which is also feebleness and a kind of realism which
carries with it the effect of out-of-doors--of a hole in the wall. The
same thing obtains in his minor work, and here the background, the
temple, or rock, forty feet away, is as perfectly detached from the
foreground figures as would be a distant and airy mountain miles away,
while still the picture remains flat cardboard or flat canvass
invested with light and shade and color.
We are brought naturally to the consideration of Mr. La Farge's
landscape. He is not generally considered as a landscape painter; and
yet he has produced a great deal of landscape in the secondary or
accessory part of his work. He has also painted landscape of first
intention, so to speak, landscape which is nothing but landscape, and
that, at different times in his life; always succeeding, and yet
always turning away from landscape to what seems to be his chosen work
of figure subject used decoratively. Landscape-painting is
unquestionably the art of our epoch, the one branch of the art of
painting which this century has excelled in; and, therefore, La Farge
was inevitably drawn toward landscape painting, he being a man of his
time, if also a man of strong individual peculiarities. It would be
hard for a student of art in the abstract, a theorizer, a critic and a
lover of the arts of the past, to avoid painting landscape when
everybody around him is painting landscape; and accordingly La Farge
has turned his attention to that, but the odd thing is that he has not
stayed there, that he has not continued to be a landscape painter
primarily. It would seem to the hasty observer of landscape painting
that this department of art alone would have afforded material for all
of his artistic dreams and for all his artistic purposes, for what is
more truly decorative than landscape such as is shown in the wonderful
Paradise Valley? That picture is made up of light and color. The
surface of thick, lush, summer grass, the surface of rock dimly seen,
the surface of ocean, the hazy sky, all together go to form a mass of
glowing and yet delicate color the like of which it is very hard to
find in simple landscape anywhere in ancient or modern art. Until
recent years there were only half a dozen such pictures of wide
landscape, numerous as were his studies in that style; for otherwise
his finished landscapes were chiefly those composed of foreground
rock, of iris seen against a wild-rose covered bank, of three or four
water-lily blossoms and a dozen little buds floating on still water;
or else they were landscape backgrounds to figure subjects in which
the landscape was evidently made, of deliberate purpose, a thing of
less intention and of inferior interest. During the last ten years,
however, La Farge has produced an immense number of singularly
effective drawings in monochrome and in color, made either on the spot
in Samoa, in Fiji, in Japan, or elsewhere in the far East, or made
after his return home, from studies carefully noted during his stay
abroad. Of these landscape drawings, some are of extended and really
vast stretches of country. Mountains are introduced which are several
miles away, and show in relief against a pale sky, every detail of the
mountain being rendered as the eye could have seen it from the point
of view occupied by the painter, and the whole wrought into a
wonderfully glowing panorama of green passing into blue against the
green mystery of the firmament. There are also among these drawings
pictures which are Turnerian in their love of and sympathy with mist
and vapor and their enjoyment of pure and delightful color produced by
sunlight upon such vapor. Among these are four drawings of the Valley
of Tokio seen from a hill above the city, the vision of the artist
reaching across the valley and including its whole extent and the
mountains which form the boundary. In other words, each of these
landscapes includes a range of one hundred square miles of country at
least, and its investing and overflowing drapery of cloud and of
low-lying vapor; and yet these were four small drawings, mere studies
on leaves of a sketch-book. It is the greatest misfortune to Americans
that they have been scattered among four different owners. If it were
possible for the Boston Museum, under its wise direction, to gather
these four drawings into its ownership and to exhibit them side by
side well lighted and isolated from other conflicting art, a real
service would be done to the whole community of art students; for
there is in them an abundance of the true landscape feeling, of the
true landscape sympathy, of that love of the magnificence, and the
refinement of nature which no transcript can give, but which the
thought of the artist when stimulated powerfully by the contemplation
of the glory of nature will transfer to his material medium.
Much of this character exists in the sepia drawing of the "Dry Bed of
the Dayagawa River," [page 7] which hardly needs analysis in words,
since it is capable of fairly complete reproduction.
[Illustration: A Study.]
[Illustration: Skerryvore.]
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Edited by Sidney Colvin
FROM BOURNEMOUTH: 1884-1885
In order of date the letters now to be quoted follow next on those
from the French Riviera which were printed in the April number. When
in the late spring of 1884 Stevenson was prostrated by the worst of
all his many attacks of hemorrhage from the lung, he was still
residing in that chalet at Hyères which he had hoped to make his
permanent abode. Partly the renewed failure of his health, and partly
a bad outbreak of cholera in the old Provençal town, which occurred in
the ensuing summer, compelled him to abandon this hope. As soon as he
recovered strength enough to be able to travel by even the easiest
stages, he moved to Royat in Auvergne, and thence in the course of
July to England. After consultation with several doctors, all of whom
held out good hopes of ultimate recovery in spite of the gravity of
his present symptoms, he moved to Bournemouth. Here he found in the
heaths and pine-woods some distant semblance of the landscape of his
native Scotland, and in sandy curves of the Channel coast a passable
substitute for the bays and promontories of his beloved Mediterranean.
At all events he liked the place well enough to be willing to try it
for a home: and such it became for all but three years, from
September, 1884, to August, 1887. These, although in the matter of
health the worst and most trying years of his life, were in the matter
of work some of the most active and successful. For the first two or
three months the Stevensons occupied a lodging on the West Cliff
called Wensleydale; for the next three or four, from December, 1884,
to March, 1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie Towers,
pleasantly situated amid the pine-woods of Branksome Park; and
lastly, about Easter, 1885, they entered into occupation of a house of
their own, given by the elder Stevenson to his son, and re-named by
the latter Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the great lighthouse
works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish coast. During
all the time of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth he was compelled
to lead the life, irksome to him above all men, but borne with
invincible sweetness and patience, of a chronic invalid and almost
constant prisoner to the house. He was hardly ever free for more than
a few weeks at a time from fits of hemorrhage, fever, and prostration,
accompanied by the nervous exhaustion and general distress consequent
equally upon the attacks themselves and upon the remedies which the
physicians were constrained to employ against them. A great part of
his time was spent in bed, and there almost all his literary work was
produced. Often for days, and sometimes for weeks together, he was
forbidden to speak aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation with
his family and friends in whispers or with the help of pencil and
paper. The few excursions to a distance which he attempted--most
commonly to my house, at the British Museum, once to Matlock, once to
Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as Paris--these excursions almost
always ended in a break-down and a hurried retreat to home and bed.
Nevertheless, seizing on and making the most of every week, nay, every
day and hour of respite, he contrived to produce work surprising
alike, under the circumstances, by quantity and quality. During the
first two months of his life at Bournemouth the two plays _Admiral
Guinea_ and _Beau Austin_ were written in collaboration with Mr.
Henley. In 1885 he published three volumes, viz.: _More New Arabian
Nights_, the _Child's Garden of Verses_, and _Prince Otto_ (the two
latter, it is true, having been for the most part written a year or
two earlier, at Hyères). In 1886 appeared _The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Kidnapped_, the two books which, together
with _Treasure Island_, did most to win for him the fame and honor
which he ever afterward enjoyed among readers on both sides of the
Atlantic. At the same time he was a fairly frequent contributor of
essays to magazines and of stories to Christmas annuals and other
periodical collections. The year 1887, the last of his life in the old
country, was chiefly, with the exception of the _Life of Fleeming
Jenkin_, a year of collections and re-prints; in it were published
_Underwoods, The Merry Men_, _Memories and Portraits_, and the _Black
Arrow_ in volume form.
The correspondence of these three invalid years at Bournemouth is
naturally in a less buoyant key than that of the relatively
flourishing and happy year at Hyères which preceded them. But it is
none the less full of interest, and of that vivid play of mood and
character which never failed in him whether he was sick or well. The
specimens which I shall here give will be taken, with a few
exceptions, from his communications with his brother men of letters,
including some whose acquaintance or friendship he had now for the
first time formed, as Mr. Henry James, Mr. William Archer, and Mr.
Locker-Lampson, besides such intimate friends and associates of
earlier days as Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Symonds and myself.
But first come two or three to his parents and other correspondents:
BOURNEMOUTH,
Sunday, 28th September, 1884.
MY DEAR PEOPLE,--I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the first
time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front. Will
you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown for
nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind, lashing rain; the sea
is a fine colour, and wind-bound ships lie at anchor under the Old
Harry rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.
The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they may
produce some of the ready.--I am, ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH,
October 3rd, 1884.
DEAR MR. CHATTO.--I have an offer of £25 for Otto from America. I do
not know if you mean to have the American rights; from the nature of
the contract, I think not; but if you understood that you were to sell
the sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or finish it
myself and hand you over the money if you are pleased with the
amount. You see, I leave this quite in your hands. To parody an old
Scotch story of servant and master: if you don't know that you have a
good author, I know that I have a good publisher. Your fair, open, and
handsome dealings are a good point in my life, and do more for my
crazy health than has yet been done by any doctor.--Very truly yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
[Mr. Stevenson, the elder, had read the play of _Admiral Guinea_,
written in September by his son and Mr. Henley in collaboration, and
had objected, with his usual energy of expression, to the stage
confrontation of profane blackguarding, in the person of Pew, with
evangelical piety in that of the reformed slaving captain who gives
his name to the piece.]
BONALLIE TOWERS,
BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
(The three B's),
(November 5th, 1884).
MY DEAR FATHER,--Allow me to say, in a strictly Pickwickian sense,
that you are a silly fellow. I am pained indeed, but how should I be
offended? I think you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you had the
same impression of the _Deacon;_ and yet, when you saw it played, were
less revolted than you looked for; and I will still hope that the
_Admiral_ also is not so bad as you suppose. There is one point,
however, where I differ from you very frankly. Religion is in the
world; I do not think you are the man to deny the importance of its
rôle; and I have long decided not to leave it on one side in art. The
opposition of the _Admiral_ and Mr. Pew is not, to my eyes, either
horrible or irreverent; but it may be, and it probably is, very ill
done: what then? This is a failure; better luck next time; more power
to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in the design, and the old
defeat becomes the scene of the new victory. Concern yourself about no
failure; they do not cost lives, as in engineering; they are the
_pierres perdues_ of successes. Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not think
of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no failure will injure
him, whether with God or man.
I wish I could hear a brighter account of yourself; but I am inclined to
acquit the _Admiral_ after having a share in the responsibility. My very
heavy cold is, I hope, drawing off; and the change to this charming
house in the forest will, I hope, complete my re-establishment.--With
love to all, believe me, your ever affectionate,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
[About the same time, Mr. T. Stevenson was in some hesitation as to
letting himself be proposed for the office of President of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh.]
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH,
November, 1884.
MY DEAR FATHER,--I have no hesitation in recommending you to let your
name go up; please yourself about an address; though, I think, if we
could meet, we could arrange something suitable; but what you propose
would be well enough in a way; but so modest as to suggest a whine.
From that point of view it would be better to change a little; but
this, whether we meet or not, we must discuss. Tait, Crystal, the
Royal Society, and I, all think you amply deserve this honour and far
more; it is not the True Blue to call this serious compliment a
"trial"; you should be glad of this recognition. As for resigning,
that is easy enough if found necessary; but to refuse would be husky,
unsatisfactory, and a trifle rotten. _Sic subs._
R. L. S.
My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well. Fanny is very much
out of sorts, principally through perpetual misery with me. I fear I
have been a little in the dumps, which, _as you know, sir_, is a very
great sin. I must try to be more cheerful; but my cough is so
severe--my uvula, larynx, and pharynx being all to pot--that I have
sometimes most exhausting nights and very peevish wakenings. However,
this shall be remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than
the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise
blandly as we sit together on the devil's garden-wall), no more
abominable sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I)
what matters it if we be a little uncomfortable--that is no reason
for mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and _girn_ on the
unfortunate Cassandra.--Your fellow culprit, R. L. S.
With reference to the two following letters, it should be explained
that Stevenson and his old Edinburgh friend and comrade, Mr. Baxter
(who was also his man of business), were accustomed in their
correspondence, as the whim took them, to merge their own identities
in those of two fictitious personages, Johnson-Thomson and
Thomson-Johnson, ex-elders of the Kirk and types of a certain cast of
Edinburgh character. Their language is of the broadest Scots; and for
some readers it may be desirable to mention that "hoast" means cough
and "sculduddery" loose talk.
BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
November 11th.
MY DEAR CHARLES,--I am in my new house, thus proudly styled, as you
perceive: but the deevil a tower ava' can be perceived (except out of
window); this is not as it should be; one might have hoped, at least,
a turret. We are all vilely unwell. I put in the dark watches
imitating a donkey with some success, but little pleasure; and in the
afternoon I indulge in a smart fever, accompanied by aches and
shivers. There is thus little monotony to be deplored; and what might
still weigh upon me my wife lightens by various inexplicable attacks,
now in the pleasant morn, now at the noon of night. I, at least, am a
_regular_ invalid; I would scorn to bray in the afternoon; I would
indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in the night. What is bred in
the bone will come out, sir, in the flesh; and the same spirit that
prompted me to date my letter regulates the hour and character of my
attacks.--I am, sir, yours,
THOMSON.
Postmark, BOURNEMOUTH,
13th November, 1884.
MY DEAR THOMSON,--It's a maist remarkable fac', but nae shüner had I
written yon braggin', blawin' letter aboot ma business habits, when
bang! that very day, my hoast begude in the aifternune. It is really
remaurkable; it's providenshle, I believe. The ink wasnae fair dry,
the wards werenae well ooten ma mouth, when bang, I got the lee. The
mair ye think o't, Thomson, the less ye'll like the looks o't.
Proavidence (I'm no sayin') is all verra weel _in its place_; but if
proavidence has nae mainners, wha's to learn't? Proavidence is a fine
thing, but hoo would you like proavidence to keep your till for ye?
The richt place for proavidence is in the Kirk; it has naething to do
wi' private correspondence between twa gentlemen, nor freendly cracks,
nor a wee bit word of sculduddery ahint the door, nor, in shoart, wi'
ony _hole-and-corner wark_, what I would call. I'm pairfec'ly willin'
to meet in wi' Proavidence, I'll be prood to meet in wi' him, when my
time's come and I _cannae doe nae_ better; but if he's to come
skinking aboot my stairfit, damned, I might as weel be deid for a' the
comfort I'll can get in life. Cannae he no be made to understand that
it's beneath him? Gosh, if I was in his business, I wouldnae steer my
heid for a plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way he taks himsel',
's just aboot as honest as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen
auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a pairfectly respectable and
thoroughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad be kind o'
handsome like; a punnote under his stair door, or a bottle o' auld,
blended malt to his bit marnin', as a teshtymonial like you ye ken sae
weel aboot, but mair successfu'.
Dear Thomson, have I ony money. If I have, _send it_ for the loard's
sake.
JOHNSON.
[The following to Mr. Henry James, who from about this time began to
be a frequent and ever welcome visitor at the Bournemouth home, refers
to the essay of R. L. S. called a "Humble Remonstrance," which had
just appeared in Longman's Magazine. Mr. James had written holding out
the prospect of a continuance of the friendly controversy which had
thus been opened up between them on the aims and qualities of
fiction.]
BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
December 8th, 1884.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--This is a very brave hearing from more points
than one. The first point is that there is a hope of a sequel. For
this I laboured. Seriously, from the dearth of information and
thoughtful interest in the art of literature, those who try to
practice it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of finding no fit
audience. People suppose it is "the stuff" that interests them; they
think, for instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments
in Shakespeare impress by their own weight, not understanding that the
unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think that striking
situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will not
rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate artifice and
set off by painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing well
ventilated, for my own education and the public's; and I beg you to
look as quick as you can, to follow me up with every circumstance of
defeat where we differ, and (to prevent the flouting of the laity) to
emphasise the points where we agree. I trust your paper will show me
the way to a rejoinder; and that rejoinder I shall hope to make with
so much art as to woo or drive you from your threatened silence. I
would not ask better than to pass my life in beating out this quarter
of corn with such a seconder as yourself.
Point the second, I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak so kindly of
my work: rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself a very rude,
left-handed countryman; not fit to be read, far less complimented, by
a man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You will
happily never have cause to understand the despair with which a writer
like myself considers (say) the park scene in Lady Barberina. Every
touch surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when
done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me with
envy. Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine; but
when we come to speak of performance, I recognise myself, compared
with you, to be a lout and slouch of the first water.
Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and the delineation
of character, I begin to lament. Of course, I am not so dull as to ask
you to desert your walk; but could you not, in one novel, to oblige a
sincere admirer, and to enrich his shelves with a beloved volume,
could you not, and might you not, cast your characters in a mould a
little more abstract and academic (dear Mrs. Pennyman had already,
among your other work, a taste of what I mean), and pitch the
incidents, I do not say, in any stronger, but in a slightly more
emphatic key--as it were an episode from one of the old (so-called)
novels of adventure? I fear you will not; and I suppose I must
sighingly admit you to be right. And yet, when I see, as it were, a
book of Tom Jones handled with your exquisite precision and shot
through with those side-lights of reflection in which you excel, I
relinquish the dear vision with regret. Think upon it.
As you know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid; this
puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some
day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be
a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife
and I will be delighted to put you up and give you what we can to eat
and drink (I have a fair bottle of claret).--On the back of which,
believe me, yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S.--I reopen this to say that I have re-read my paper, and cannot
think I have at all succeeded in being either veracious or polite. I
knew, of course, that I took your paper merely as a pin to hang my own
remarks upon; but, alas! what a thing is any paper! What fine remarks
can you not hang on mine! How I have sinned against proportion and,
with every effort to the contrary, against the merest rudiments of
courtesy to you! You are, indeed, a very acute reader to have divined
the real attitude of my mind, and I can only conclude, not without
closed eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the well-worn words
Lay on, Macduff!
[During a crippling fit of ill-health, Stevenson had received a
commission for a sensational story for the Christmas number of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_. The commission ended in his sending the managers
of the paper a recast of a gruesome tale which he had written and
condemned in the Highlands three years before, _The Body-Snatcher_.
He rightly thought this beneath his own standard of merit, and would
not take the full fee which had been offered for it. Two of the
following letters to Mr. Henley refer to this matter: Bloody Jack, or
Jacques, let it be understood, was his regular nickname for his
arch-enemy, hemorrhage from the lungs.]
[Dec. 1884.]
DEAR MAN,--1st Disagreeable. Do try and lay your hands on these three
poems; they were surely not lost in transmission? It seems hard I
should have to make them a _third_ time.
2d Disagreeable. I have done a kind of a damned machine for the P. M.
G., and have near died of it--(weakness, insomnia, Bloody
Jacquerie)--and am now so dissatisfied that I have told them not to
pay me till I see a proof. I think, or I fear I will think, it is not
worth the money offered; in which case, of course, I will not take
it.--Yours ever,
The pale wreck, }
The spectral phantom, } R. L. S.
The abhorred miscarriage, }
[Dec. 1884.]
DEAR LAD,--I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a
copy, which please keep or return. As for not giving a reduction, what
are we? Are we artists or city men? Why do we sneer at stockbrokers? O
nary; I will not take the £40. I took that as a fair price for my best
work; I was not able to produce my best; and I will be damned if I
steal with my eyes open. _Sufficit._ This is my lookout. As for the
paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable. It is no more
above me in money than the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for
honesty are below me. Am I Pepys, that because I can find the
countenance of "some of our ablest merchants," that because ---- and
---- pour forth languid twaddle and get paid for it, I, too, should
"cheerfully continue to steal"? I am not Pepys. I do not live much to
God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am,
like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I
began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and
slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I
hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the
dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade--you,
who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look
at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not plead
Satan's cause, or plead it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect
the good when you see a poor devil trying for it. If this is the
honesty of authors--to take what you can get and console yourself
because publishers are rich--take my name from the rolls of that
association. 'Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the
stronger.--Ever yours,
THE ROARING R. L. S.
You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I think my
dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish; these are my words for
a poor ten-pound note!
[Illustration: Stevenson's Skye Terrier "Bogue."
From a photograph made at Hyères.]
[Christmas, 1884.]
MY DEAR LAD,--Here was I in bed; Bloody Jack; not writing, not
hearing, and finding myself gently and agreeably ill used; and behold
I learn you are bad yourself. Get your wife to send us a word how you
are. I am better decidedly. Bogue got his Christmas card, and behaved
well for three days after. It may interest the cynical to learn that I
started this hæmorrhage by too sedulous attentions to my dear Bogue.
The stick was broken; and that night Bogue, who was attracted by the
extraordinary aching of his bones, and is always inclined to a serious
view of his own ailments, announced with his customary pomp that he
was dying. In this case, however, it was not the dog that died. (He
had tried to bite his mother's ankles.) I have written, with the aid
of bloudie Jack, a long and peculiarly solemn paper on the technical
elements of style. It is path-breaking and epoch-making; but I do not
think the public will be readily convoked to its perusal. Did I tell
you that S. C. had risen to the paper on James? At last! O but I was
pleased; he's (like Johnnie) been lang, lang o' comin', but here he
is. He will not object to my future manoeuvres in the same field, as
he has to my former. All the family are here; my father better than I
have seen him these two years; my mother the same as ever. I do trust
you are better, and I am yours ever, R. L. S.
[Winter, 1884-5.]
DEAR HENLEY,--We are all to pieces in health, and heavily handicapped
with Arabs. [Stories for the _New Arabian Nights_.] I have a dreadful
cough, whose attacks leave me _ætat 90_. Fanny is quite gone up with
my bad health. I never let up on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely
get less than eight pages out of hand, though hardly able to come
downstairs for twittering knees.
I shall put in ----'s letter. He says so little of his circumstances
that I am in an impossibility to give him advice more specific than a
copybook. Give him my love, however, and tell him it is the mark of
the parochial gentleman who has never travelled to find all wrong in a
foreign land. Let him hold on, and he will find one country as good as
another; and in the meanwhile let him resist the fatal British
tendency to communicate his dissatisfaction with a country to its
inhabitants. 'Tis a good idea, but it somehow fails to please. In a
fortnight, if I can keep my spirit in the box at all, I should be
nearly through this Arabian desert; so can tackle something
fresh.--Yours ever, R. L. S.
[BOURNEMOUTH,
Winter, 1884-5.]
DEAR BOY,--I trust this finds you well; it leaves me so-so. The
weather is so cold that I must stick to bed, which is rotten and
tedious, but can't be helped.
I find in the blotting book the enclosed, which I wrote to you the eve
of my blood. Is it not strange? That night, when I naturally thought I
was coopered, the thought of it was much in my mind; I thought it had
gone; and I thought what a strange prophecy I had made in jest, and
how it was indeed like to be the end of many letters. But I have
written a good few since, and the spell is broken. I am just as
pleased, for I earnestly desire to live. This pleasant middle age into
whose port we are steering is quite to my fancy. I would cast anchor
here, and go ashore for twenty years, and see the manners of the
place. Youth was a great time, but somewhat fussy. Now in middle age
(bar lucre) all seems mighty placid. It likes me; I spy a little
bright café in one corner of the port, in front of which I now propose
we should sit down. There is just enough of the bustle of the harbour
and no more; and the ships are close in, regarding us with
stern-windows--the ships that bring deals from Norway and parrots from
the Indies. Let us sit down here for twenty years, with a packet of
tobacco and a drink, and talk of art and women. By the by, the whole
city will sink, and the ships too, and the table, and we also; but we
shall have sat for twenty years and had a fine talk; and by that time,
who knows? exhausted the subject.
I send you a book which (or I am mistook) will please you; it pleased
me. But I do desire a book of adventure--a romance--and no man will
get or write me one. Dumas I have read and re-read too often; Scott,
too, and I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to
begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like _Treasure Island_, alas!
which I have never read, and cannot though I live to ninety. I would
God that some one else had written it! By all that I can learn, it is
the very book for my complaint. I like the way I hear it opens; and
they tell me John Silver is good fun. And to me it is, and must ever
be, a dream unrealised, a book unwritten: O my sighings after romance,
or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will produce me neither!
CHAPTER I
The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul. The single horseman,
cloaked and booted, who pursued his way across Willesden Common, had
not met a traveller, when the sound of wheels--