THE TWO FRIENDS AND THE TWO VIGNETTES.
A fine old Norman cathedral, by the side of a famous river--the one
celebrated in history, the other a favourite with poets so long ago as
Spenser.
The great grey cathedral, with its high pitched towers, and its
crumbling walls, threw big dark shadows on the green turf of the
college close, where half-a-dozen comfortable houses formed two sides
of a square. In the centre grew a clump of venerable elms, the home of
a colony of crows which were everlastingly calling to each other from
above.
The other two sides of the square were filled in by the cathedral’s
grey walls, and an old gateway.
The river flowed on without--the famous river with its sedgy banks.
It flowed on outside the monastic-like square, noiselessly mostly,
bearing lazy barges on its big brown bosom towards the sea. When the
floods came down from the west it roared and whirled along in curls
and eddies, the colour of coffee, like Kingsley’s salmon river in the
“Water Babies.”
In the distance, from the upper windows of the cathedral close, on that
side where Arthur lived, you could see the Linktown hills, with their
graceful curving lines cut out against the sky; and if you had stood
upon the Linktowns you might have seen another range of hills, which
shut out Barton Hall from the rude world.
Arthur Phillips, as I have said, lived in this College Green, and his
studio was at the top of one of those old houses, which had a glorious
landscape before it, with the Linktowns for a background.
It was a curious old room, Arthur’s studio, with mullioned windows in
it, and a wonderfully carved fireplace, with grinning heads cut in the
mantelpiece. Several lay-figures were carelessly placed at one end of
the room, and there were a couple of easels with half-finished pictures
upon them. A few sketches in oil and in water-colours were hung about
the room, and there was a guitar upon an old carved couch, and a large
portfolio beside it. The artist wore a loose blouse, and looked at home
in manner and appearance amongst his miscellaneous treasures.
Young Hammerton was a handsome fellow, one of a handsome stock. The
Hammertons had been Earls of Verner for a century or more, and there
was never known an ill-looking man or woman amongst them since the
period when they came into the old island with the Norman Conqueror.
But there must have been much Saxon intermarrying in the family if
one might judge from the fair skin and brown curly hair of Lionel
Hammerton. And he was of sturdy make withal--a fine specimen of a
handsome young Englishman, with a full hazel eye, and white regular
teeth.
Lionel and Arthur had known each other for several years, the
friendship commencing through a series of drawing lessons which Arthur
Phillips had given Mr. Hammerton at Earl Verner’s residence.
The Earl, Lionel’s brother, was a man of great taste in the arts, and
he had been Arthur’s first patron.
Arthur had exhibited several pictures unsuccessfully at the great
Midland Counties Exhibition, when Earl Verner singled out a landscape
with figures in the foreground, by Mr. Phillips, as the best, the most
conscientiously painted picture of that year.
This was Arthur’s first start; the Earl purchased the picture, and the
papers spoke of it in high terms of praise. The _Art Journal_, in a
brief sketch of the Exhibition, noticed this painting as the work of
one of the most promising artists of the day; and next season two works
of Arthur’s were hung at the Royal Academy, and Success came unto him,
and marked him for her own.
Earl Verner gave him several commissions, and placed Lionel Hammerton
under him as a pupil, and this was how their friendship began.
He was a contrast to Arthur Phillips, who often noticed it, and drew
little caricature sketches to illustrate it, which Lionel laughed at,
and threatened to send to _Punch_ as character studies.
Lionel had, indeed, once sent one of Arthur’s funny bits to _Punch_,
which brought a polite note from the editor of that famous periodical,
soliciting a closer acquaintance with the artist; but Mr. Phillips was
a lazy fellow, and his pencil only cut funny capers when Earl Verner’s
brother stirred him up, and suggested comical subjects.
“By Jove! if I were not to come in now and then, and laugh at you,
you’d die of melancholy,” said Lionel Hammerton, on one of his recent
visits to Arthur’s studio.
“No, I don’t think that,” said Arthur, lighting the cigar which his
friend handed to him; “but your society is fatal to dulness. I am too
poor a companion to reciprocate the pleasure which your society gives
me.”
“Nay, dear boy, you are wrong there; I have spent some of my happiest
hours in this old studio of yours, Arthur. What is it that makes an
artist’s den, as you call it, so free and easy, and yet so _distingué_?”
“One gets out of the world, and a little nearer the better land, in a
room consecrated to art, even if the prophet be but a dotard, perhaps,”
said Arthur.
“And its perfect freedom--the absence of conventionality--the Bohemian
character of the class called artists--their opposition to the forms
and ceremonies, eh?”
“The artist only worships one goddess, I suppose; and she permits
smoking, loose garments, unwashed hands, and slippers. Light your
cigar,” Arthur went on, carelessly, offering his friend a fusee.
“What a grand thing it is, too, the painter’s art; of all arts the
most delightful, the most satisfying! He is not like the writer, who
must be read and studied before his audience can understand and enjoy
what he has done. The effect of the artist’s work on the beholder is
instantaneous, the reward of his genius is immediate; to say nothing
of his own personal delight and satisfaction. But I’m getting prosy,
Arthur. Have you been into the Berne neighbourhood lately?”
“Yes, I was there during several days in last week,” said Arthur.
“Well, any news, _mon ami_: are your friends all well?”
Arthur looked at Mr. Hammerton with a curious smile, as he replied, “Do
not my views of Avonworth Valley give additional charms to my studio,
Lionel?”
“News or views--which did you say? views, of course--well, so they do,
and so they will continue to do, as long as you find such lovely bits
of nature there,” said Lionel, laughing.
“Which do you prefer--the landscape or the figure studies?” Arthur
inquired, still smiling, though a little sadly.
“I like them both; but there was a head which you were going to finish
when I was here last. I don’t see it anywhere,” said Lionel, whose eyes
had been wandering into every corner of the room.
“Here it is,” said Arthur. “I have been making a double study of
heads;” and he brought out of a small case, from a cupboard by the
window, two water-colour sketches, and looked curiously into Lionel’s
face as his handsome friend examined them.
The first was something like that picture which appeared in the Strand
shops some years afterwards.
Mr. Phillips had drawn the face full, and thrown the hair backwards in
wavy folds. The lips were parted, and the eyes looked you in the face,
full of hope and trust, and innocence.
Lionel laid this first study down, after a hasty glance or two at it,
and then fairly “devoured” the second one.
A smothered sigh of relief escaped from Arthur as he noticed this, and
a happy smile moved his lips as he watched the expression of approval
which lit up Lionel’s face whilst gazing at the darker beauty.
“By Jove,” said Lionel, after a long pause, “it is exquisite! What a
head! Talk of blood, why this head has all the character of a high-bred
racehorse.”
Arthur smiled, and puffed out a long thin wreath of smoke.
“What eyes! what a neck! And the hair bound tightly to the head,
setting off those little ears! And the chin!--why, all the lines of
beauty are exhausted here,” Lionel went on; and Arthur almost trembled
with delight.
“Give me your hand,” he said at length, no longer able to control his
feelings. “Give me your hand, Lionel Hammerton.”
“With all my heart,” said Lionel, looking as much astonished as he had
previously been delighted. “But what, in the name of all the Arts and
Sciences, is the matter with you? I’m not praising the painter, but the
subject. You have not suddenly become vain, Arthur?”
“No, no,” said the artist, pushing back his long black hair; “it is
because you are praising the subject that I am delighted, Lionel. You
love Amy Somerton.”
“Stop, stop, not so fast, friend Arthur,” said Lionel, colouring a
little, and appearing still more surprised at the artist’s unusual
excitement.
“If you are in love at all, it is not with--with Miss Tallant?” Arthur
went on, his big piercing eyes fixed intently on his friend.
“Oh, oh!” said Lionel, putting his hand upon Arthur’s shoulder, and
laying down Amy Somerton’s portrait. “Oh, oh! Have I caught you in your
own trap, my poor little friend?” said Lionel. “It is _you_ who are in
love! Nay, man, don’t look so woe-begone about it.”
“And you?” said Arthur, hanging his head like a schoolboy.
“May be some day, friend Arthur,” said Lionel; “but _not_ with Miss
Tallant--_not_ with Miss Tallant.”
“Thank God for that!” said the artist, sitting down and fixing his eyes
upon the distant hills, which the sun was making golden.
Lionel’s manner of meeting Arthur’s half confession of love for Miss
Tallant and fear of rivalry, did not for the moment please the artist,
whose sensitive nature revolted at the apparently cool and critical
treatment of his friend.
But when young Hammerton said, “Arthur, my boy, don’t fear me, go in
and win,” the artist forgot his momentary displeasure, and smiled half
sadly, half comically, at his friend; and then told him how he had been
unable to struggle against his admiration for Miss Tallant, and how it
had ripened into love.
Lionel promising not to betray Arthur’s confidence, laughed at the
artist’s notion that he was indulging in an utterly hopeless and
futile passion.
“I suppose you will be at the Festival of the Three Choirs to-morrow,”
said Mr. Hammerton by-and-by, when they had changed the subject and he
had lighted his last cigar.
“I shall be in some part of the building,” Arthur said. “I have the
_entrée_ you know by certain private doors; I am rather a favourite
with the Dean and Chapter. I look down upon you from arches high
up aloft, I listen to the music at various points. I should be too
restless to sit all the time squeezed up amongst the audience.”
Severntown, you must know, was celebrated for its Festival Concerts in
the cathedral, which had been originated as early as 1724, resulting
in noble collections for charitable purposes, and of which the local
journalist a hundred years ago exclaimed, “May God grant that all
charitable undertakings may be carried on with that becoming zeal and
Ardency of Affection which Matters of such allow’d Importance must
always very justly claim!” Newspaper writers in those days, you see,
said what they had to say briefly, and tersely, and to the point.
I mention these Severntown Festivals not with any intention of
describing one of them, but simply because of the train of thought
which the mention of the event by Mr. Hammerton excited in the mind of
Arthur Phillips.
It was at the Festival, three years previously, that Arthur had first
seen Phœbe Tallant, a mere girl, but of such striking beauty that
the image was fixed in his mind, as if it belonged to the glorious
music,--sanctified by the time, and the place, and the holy strains.
And he had gone on the following day, and peered out amongst the throng
to see the same face again, but he saw it not; so he went quietly
alone into the Lady Chapel to think of it, and build up the image in a
picture of angels which he had thought, more than once, of painting. He
never forgot the varied sensations which had been excited within him
by that solitary ramble through private corridors into the Lady Chapel.
Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope have sung the delights of “hidden music.”
Who has not stood at night in some quiet churchyard with his thoughts
reverentially turned to heaven by the solemn strains of an evening hymn
rippling out through the half-open doorway? Who has not sat without the
precincts of cathedral choirs and felt the power of religious strains
move him more deeply than when in the presence of the choristers? Is it
that the mind likes to fall back upon itself now and then, to wed the
music to its own hopes and aspirations?
The Lady Chapel was quite shut out from the choir, nave, and aisles.
As Arthur stood there the whole of the auditory and performers were
completely away from view. The altar-screen was between him and the
gay _parterre_ of bonnets, hemmed in by the surrounding margin of
baize and matting. Around him were decaying monuments, themselves
needing memorials (as Crabbe puts it in “The Borough”); half-finished
slabs fresh from the hands of the restorer, and other evidences of the
struggle of the present to preserve the past.
Subdued morning beams came in through tiers of lancet lights; and
mounting up, echoing along the fretted roof of the nave, the strains
of the chorus came streaming in upon him over the screen, filling
the little chapel with exquisite harmonies which seemed to die away
in mysterious vaults and corridors. In pianissimo passages of solo
or chorus the music receded, and died away in the west, like faint
memories of former strains.
This was a memory worth cherishing; but it was fixed in the artist’s
mind as much by the association of the previous day as it was by its
own intrinsic sublimity.
Six months afterwards it was that Arthur was introduced to Phœbe
Tallant, and then that dear memory came back to him, softened into a
kind of religious tint, as if it came through a painted window of the
mind.
“This girl is my destiny,” thought Arthur at once; for the face was
always in his mind, and somehow it was mixed up with thoughts that were
above the world, mixed up with dreamy pictures of cathedral aisles, and
with memories of swelling anthems.
For a time, after he knew Phœbe, Arthur feared he was drifting into
morbid sensibility. He had led a sober, monkish kind of life for years,
and with this new image in his mind he had at first given himself up to
wanderings about the old cathedral, and a sort of fascinating unreal
saint-worship which he carried out for a time on canvas; but as time
wore on he grew out of these morbid habits and once more there was
a healthy glow in his conversation and in his pictures. But he was
desperately, madly in love, nevertheless.