Cataloguing the Library--A Thousand Volumes--Contrasting Books--Some
Rare Volumes--Mr. Greeley's Collection of Paintings--Authenticity of
the Cenci Questioned--A Portrait of Galileo--Portrait of Martin
Luther--Portrait of Greeley at Thirty--Powers' Proserpine--Hart's Bust
of Mr. Greeley--Mosaics and Medallions.
_July 2_.
This morning we have had a family picnic at the side-hill house, where
the amusement was, however, neither "Twenty Questions," gossip, nor
croquet; but arranging and cataloguing uncle's large library. The
books had hitherto been kept in the house in the woods, with the
exception of those in daily use, filling three good-sized bookcases in
our present residence; but as the house in the woods had been twice
broken into last winter, Ida thought it safer to move them all down
this summer to the side-hill house, where Bernard sleeps. Accordingly,
a wagon-load or two was brought down the other day and deposited in the
dining-room, and this morning, as we had no guests, and no very
pressing occupations, we all, including Minna, went up there directly
after breakfast to look them over.
"I am resolved," Ida had said, "to have the books catalogued, that I
may know in future how many I yearly lose by lending them to my
friends." Consequently the work was doubled by the necessity of
writing down the names, and we had unluckily chosen the hottest day
that we had so far experienced for this laborious task. We all went to
work, however, with as much energy as though the temperature was at a
reasonable degree, and I felt quite proud of my achievements when the
work was done, having catalogued, myself, over three hundred volumes.
Our work was divided: mamma read off the names of the books, and
Marguerite and I wrote them down, and Minna then dusted and carried
them into the next room to Ida, who placed them upon the shelves,
dividing the library into compartments for poetry, biography, science,
fiction, etc. An endless task it seemed at first to sort the books,
for more than one thousand volumes of all sizes and in every variety of
binding from cloth to calf, had been thrown promiscuously on the floor,
and the hottest antagonists in the political and religious world were
now lying side by side in the apparent enjoyment of peace and
good-will. "Slavery Doomed" and "Slavery Justified" composed one
externally harmonious group, while "Footfalls on the Boundary of
Another World," "How I became a Unitarian," and Strauss' "Life of
Jesus," lay beside their rigidly orthodox neighbors, the "Following of
Christ," by Thomas à Kempis, Cardinal Wiseman's "Doctrines of the
Church," and a Jesuit Father's idea of the Happiness of Heaven.
Uncle's fondness for his country home was manifested by thirty or more
large volumes upon Agriculture, and several others upon Rural
Architecture, while his literary and aesthetic taste was displayed by a
superb edition of Macaulay, in eight octavo volumes, combining the
whitest of paper and the largest and clearest type, with richest
binding; Lord Derby's translation of the Iliad, Mackay's "Thousand and
One Gems," a large and elegant volume of Byron's complete works, and
Bryant's "Library of Poetry and Song"--the two latter beautifully bound
and illustrated. Xenophon, Herodotus, Josephus, and Caesar lay off at
an aristocratic distance from their neighbors, and looked down with
scorn upon anything so modern as Noel's "Rebellion," or Draper's "Civil
War in America;" while memories of the buried "Brook Farm" arose from
the past as mamma took up a volume or two upon Co-operative
Associations.
Uncle's strict temperance principles were illustrated by half a dozen
volumes upon the "Effects of Alcohol," including "Scriptural Testimony
against Wine;" and a work or two upon the Tariff Question recalled many
a _Tribune_ editorial penned by the dear, dead hand.
A large dark pile of some twenty volumes loomed up from a distant
corner--Appleton's useful Cyclopaedia--and beside them lay an enormous
Webster's Dictionary, handsomely put up in a chocolate-colored library
binding.
Many elegantly bound volumes were presentation copies from their
authors--among them a magnificent album of languages, beautifully
illuminated, and bound in scarlet morocco, containing the Lord's Prayer
in one hundred different tongues. This book sold, Ida said, for one
hundred dollars a copy.
In striking contrast with this gorgeous volume were two little
yellow-leaved, shabbily bound books, valued, however, at one hundred
dollars each, and treasures which no money could have bought from
uncle--one a copy of Erasmus, dated Basle, 1528, and the other "The
tvvoo Bookes of Francis Bacon on the Proficience and Aduancement of
Learning, diuine and humane," printed, the fly-leaf states, at London,
in 1605.
_July 3_.
I have not yet, I believe, spoken of more than one or two of the
pictures that uncle bought while in Europe the first time. He then
spent ten thousand dollars on paintings, a piece or two of sculpture,
and a few little curiosities of art in the way of mosaics and
antiquities from different ruins of Italy, which, for a man who was by
no means a Stewart or an Astor, showed great liberality. Uncle could
not afford, like ostentatious millionnaires, to dazzle the public with
paintings bought by the yard; but for a man of his means he displayed,
I think, a true love for art and a strong desire to encourage it. His
purchases, too, were very different from the second-rate pictures so
often purchased abroad by uncultivated eyes, for instead of depending
merely upon his own judgment, he asked the assistance of the sculptor
Story in choosing his souvenirs; and his collection, though small, is
admirable, containing two or three _bonâ-fide_ old masters, purchased
at the sales of private galleries in Florence and Rome.
The pictures, like the books, have been kept hitherto in the house in
the woods, but this spring Ida moved them all to the roadside house
that we might constantly enjoy them, and the parlor now presents quite
the appearance of a museum. It is over the music-room, and its long
French windows open upon a balcony, from which we daily admire our
tender, Italian-like sunsets. To the right it is overhung by the
branches of our favorite apple-tree, from whose clusters of tiny fruit
we each chose an apple some days since. Gabrielle then marked them
with the owner's initial cut out of paper, the form of which we will
find in the autumn indelibly impressed in the apple's rosy cheek.
But to return to our museum. Upon ascending the stairs one's eyes
first rest upon the "very saddest face ever painted or conceived," as
Hawthorne describes the beautiful Cenci. While in Rome I resided upon
the Piazza Barberini, opposite the palace containing this exquisite
painting, and I visited it with a devotion almost equalling Hilda's.
Much excitement prevailed that winter in art circles concerning the
authenticity of this picture, and hot discussions took place wherever
the believers and unbelievers chanced to meet. No possible proof
existed, one party would declare, that Guido had ever painted Beatrice
Cenci; and no one had thought of it as other than a fancy head until
Shelley had aroused the interest of the public in the half-forgotten
tragedy of poor Beatrice's sad life by the sombre drama, "The Cenci."
From that time, they say, caprice has christened this picture Beatrice
Cenci, and Hawthorne has added much to its interest by the prominence
he gives it in the "Marble Faun." They, however, are unable to find
the traces of sorrow, the "tear-stained cheeks" and "eyes that have
wept till they can weep no more," so eloquently described by all
writers and art-critics of the present day; and so far I agree with
them--the face does not impress me with such depths of woe.
Their opponents, however, hold the time-honored tradition that Guido
painted Beatrice in her cell upon the morning of her execution, or as
she stood upon the scaffold--for there are two versions of the
story--and that the gown and turban which she wears were made by her
own hands on the night preceding the fatal day. But no words of mine
can give a fair idea of this celebrated painting: I will transcribe
Hawthorne's description of it.
"The picture represented simply a female head; a very youthful,
girlish, perfectly beautiful face, enveloped in white drapery, from
beneath which strayed a lock or two of what seemed a rich though hidden
luxuriance of auburn hair. The eyes were large and brown, and met
those of the spectator, but evidently with a strange, ineffectual
effort to escape. There was a little redness about the eyes, very
slightly indicated, so that you would question whether or no the girl
had been weeping. The whole face was quiet; there was no distortion or
disturbance of any single feature, nor was it easy to see why the
expression was not cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist's
pencil should not brighten it into joyousness. But in fact it was the
very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved an
unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer
by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful
girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a far-off region,
the remoteness of which--while yet her face is so close before
us--makes us shiver as at a spectre."
Next to the Cenci a St. Francis hangs, his hands devoutly folded and
his head bowed in pious meditation upon the sufferings of his Redeemer,
whose figure bound upon the Cross lies before him. The skull at his
feet and the dreary landscape surrounding him indicate his hermit-life
of isolation and penance. The Saint is dressed in the coarse brown
habit of a mendicant friar, and his face is luminous with that
gentleness that distinguished his character after his conversion; for
it is recorded of him that he would step aside rather than harm the
smallest insect.
Above St. Francis is one of the most precious gems, historically and
intrinsically considered, of the collection. The picture is
small--only cabinet size; but it is none the less valuable on that
account, when we reflect that it dates from the sixteenth or early in
the seventeenth century. It is a portrait of Galileo painted from life
by Andrea Bartone, and was bought at a sale of the Santi Gallery. Only
the head and bust are represented--the latter clothed in a dark-brown
open vest, with a scarlet mantle thrown over the shoulders; but the
face is one that would not easily be forgotten--a rugged, powerful
face, with great, earnest eyes, scant hair well sprinkled with gray,
and deep furrows lining the dark brow.
Over the doorway, opening into the room that was formerly Aunt Mary's,
is an antique marble medallion of Juno, the haughty Mother of the gods;
this was dug up near Tusculum.
Next comes an exquisite Madonna and Child by Carlo Dolce (a copy). The
mother's face is youthful and radiant with divine beauty: the Infant
Jesus stands upon her knee, and extends a plump little hand in
benediction.
Next, a portrait of uncle painted in 1839--two years earlier than the
one that hangs in the dining-room. This picture, mamma says, was an
excellent likeness of him when he was twenty-eight years old; and the
biographers who are so prone to describe him in his younger days as
having been "uncouth" and "awkward," would be, I think, much startled
if they could see it. His coat is black, with a black tie, like other
gentlemen, and his air, instead of being "rustic" or "gawky," is
expressive of gentle dignity, while his face, so often described as
plain, is to me beautiful enough to have represented a young saint.
Next these pictures is another medallion--the "Mother of the Gracchi,"
and under them a small table upon which stand several marble
curiosities: a model of the tomb of Scipio, Minerva issuing from the
head of Jupiter, and two busts of Roman soldiers in the time of
Titus--antiques, and quite yellow and valuable.
In the centre of the parlor is a round table bought in Rome, and made
of variegated marble taken from the ruins of the palace of the Caesars.
In a corner, upon a handsome pedestal, stands Powers' bust of
Proserpine, of which uncle was especially proud. He speaks of it in
his "Glances at Europe," in these words:
"I defy Antiquity to surpass--I doubt its ability to rival--Powers'
Proserpine and his Psyche with any models of the female head that have
come down to us; and while I do not see how they could be excelled in
their own sphere, I feel that Powers, unlike Alexander, has still
realms to conquer, and will fulfil his destiny."
A very prominent picture, and one that was a great favorite with uncle,
is an original portrait of Luther, by Lucas Cranach, one of the great
lights of the Flemish school of painting. I have seen in the Dresden
Gallery the counterpart to this picture, painted by the same artist,
but representing Luther after death. I much prefer the animated
expression of the _living_ picture, for it is hard to think of the
fiery reformer as dead, even at this late day.
Over the sofa is a large Holy Family, a painting in the school of
Raphael, and underneath it hangs one of our most valuable pictures--a
veritable Guercino, painted in 1648. The subject is St. Mary Magdalen.
I wish that I had time to write in detail of all the beautiful things
in the parlor--a card-table made like the centre-table of classic
marble from the ruins of Rome, an exquisite moonlight view of a
Benedictine Convent upon the Bay of Naples, with a young girl kneeling
before the shrine of the Madonna; a Venetian scene--the Doge's palace
with its graceful, Moorish architecture; St. Peter and St. Paul; the
Cumaean Sybil, a beautiful female figure whose partly veiled face
seemed full of mystery; St. Agatha, and an Ecce Homo. There are still
some more marble medallions that I have not mentioned; several valuable
antiques, portraits of Alexander the Great and Tacitus, and a
bas-relief representing the flight of Aeneas--the former found near the
Appian Way--and two others that are comparatively modern--likenesses of
Pope Clement XI., and Vittoria Colonna, the gifted Italian poetess of
the fifteenth century.
But I have not yet spoken of the pearl of our museum. This piece of
sculpture was not one of uncle's Italian purchases, nor does it date
back for centuries, but it is priceless to us, especially as it is, we
believe, the only copy now existing. I allude to the bust made of
uncle in 1846 by Hart, the Kentucky sculptor. This bust was the first
work of importance that Mr. Hart had ever executed, for he was then in
the first flush of manhood, and the early vigor of that genius that has
since wrought out so many beautiful creations. Then, however, he had
not modelled his fine statue of Henry Clay, ordered by the ladies of
Virginia, nor had he even dreamed of his lovely "Triumph of Woman" that
when finished will send his name down to posterity, as our greatest
_creative_ American sculptor.
Mamma was living with uncle when Mr. Hart arrived in New York with a
commission from Cassius M. Clay to make this bust, and she has often
told me all the circumstances of the sittings. Uncle was then, as
ever, extremely busy, and it was very difficult for him to give Mr.
Hart an occasional half hour for a sitting. As ordinary means failed,
Mr. Hart brought his clay and instruments to _The Tribune_ office, and
there he worked whilst uncle rested from his daily editorial labors;
but even while "resting," his lap was full of newspapers, and he could
not afford the time to "pose," for his eyes were rapidly scanning their
columns.
"I never," said mamma, "knew an artist to make such a study of
another's face as Mr. Hart did of brother's. He was not content with a
mere sitting from him now and then; he visited him at the house; he
watched his face in company, and attended every occasion when he spoke
in public, that he might model him, he said, in his best mood.
Consequently the bust was the most perfect likeness that had ever been
made of brother, and as his face was then delicate and his features so
classic in their cut, it was, I thought, the most beautiful piece of
sculpture that I had ever seen. It was quite a revelation to dear
brother, who in his modesty had never had an idea of his own beauty."
Ten plaster busts were struck off for the family and a few intimate
friends, but as none of them were ever put into marble, they have all,
I believe, with the exception of this one, been destroyed. Mamma's
copy was overthrown by Marguerite's little hands when a child; another
belonging to one of our cousins was broken by her little son; and
although Cassius Clay's copy was buried, Mr. Hart told me, during the
war to save it from the hands of the soldiers, he had no reason to
suppose that it finally had escaped the fate of the others. Aunt Mary,
however, in her anxiety to preserve her copy, at once enveloped it in
linen, and packed it in a box. Consequently it is now as perfect as
the day it left the studio; but mamma had never seen it from that time
until this spring, when Ida exhumed it from the store-room.
Mr. Hart and uncle were always warm friends, although Mr. Hart left for
Europe soon after completing this bust, where he has since remained,
with the exception of a flying visit to America about twelve years ago.
Uncle speaks of visiting his studio in 1851, in these words ("Glances
at Europe," page 217):
"I saw something of three younger sculptors now studying and working at
Florence--Hart of Kentucky, Galt of Virginia, and Rogers of New York.
I believe all are preparing to do credit to their country. Hart has
been hindered by a loss of the models at sea from proceeding with the
statue of Henry Clay, which he is commissioned by the ladies of
Virginia to fashion and construct; but he is wisely devoting much of
his time to careful study, and to the modelling of the ideal, before
proceeding to commit himself irrevocably by the great work which must
fix his position among sculptors, and make or mar his destiny. I have
great confidence that what he has already carefully and excellently
done is but a foretaste of what he is yet to achieve."