I
The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which hang
upon its walls. They are its neighbourhood and its outlook. They confer
upon it that touch of life and character, that power to beget love and
bind friendship, which a country house receives from its surrounding
landscape, the garden that embraces it, the stream that runs near it,
and the shaded paths that lead to and from its door.
By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space in
one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan Island
is transferred to an open and agreeable site. It has windows that look
toward the woods and the sunset, watergates by which a little boat is
always waiting, and secret passageways leading into fair places that
are frequented by persons of distinction and charm. No darkness of night
obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house shuts off the view; no
drifted snow of winter makes them impassable. They are always free, and
through them I go out and in upon my adventures.
One of these picture-wanderings has always appeared to me so singular
that I would like, if it were possible, to put it into words.
It was Pierrepont who first introduced me to the picture--Pierrepont the
good-natured: of whom one of his friends said that he was like Mahomet's
Bridge of Paradise, because he was so hard to cross: to which another
added that there was also a resemblance in the fact that he led to a
region of beautiful illusions which he never entered. He is one of
those enthusiastic souls who are always discovering a new writer, a new
painter, a new view from some old wharf by the river, a new place to
obtain picturesque dinners at a grotesque price. He swung out of his
office, with his long-legged, easy stride, and nearly ran me down, as I
was plodding up-town through the languor of a late spring afternoon,
on one of those duty-walks which conscience offers as a sacrifice to
digestion.
“Why, what is the matter with you?” he cried as he linked his arm
through mine, “you look outdone, tired all the way through to your
backbone. Have you been reading the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' or
something by one of the new British female novelists? You will have la
grippe in your mind if you don't look out. But I know what you need.
Come with me, and I will do you good.”
So saying, he drew me out of clanging Broadway into one of the side
streets that run toward the placid region of Washington Square. “No,
no,” I answered, feeling, even in the act of resistance, the pleasure of
his cheerful guidance, “you are altogether wrong. I don't need a dinner
at your new-found Bulgarian table-d'hote--seven courses for seventy-five
cents, and the wine thrown out; nor some of those wonderful Mexican
cheroots warranted to eradicate the tobacco-habit; nor a draught of your
South American melon sherbet that cures all pains, except these which it
causes. None of these things will help me. The doctor suggests that
they do not suit my temperament. Let us go home together and have a
shower-bath and a dinner of herbs, with just a reminiscence of the
stalled ox--and a bout at backgammon to wind up the evening. That will
be the most comfortable prescription.”
“But you mistake me,” said he; “I am not thinking of any creature
comforts for you. I am prescribing for your mind. There is a picture
that I want you to see; not a coloured photograph, nor an exercise in
anatomical drawing; but a real picture that will rest the eyes of your
heart. Come away with me to Morgenstern's gallery, and be healed.”
As we turned into the lower end of Fifth Avenue, it seemed as if I
were being gently floated along between the modest apartment-houses and
old-fashioned dwellings, and prim, respectable churches, on the smooth
current of Pierrepont's talk about his new-found picture. How often a
man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They
are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the
mental desert of the despondent.
“You remember Falconer,” continued Pierrepont, “Temple Falconer, that
modest, quiet, proud fellow who came out of the South a couple of years
ago and carried off the landscape prize at the Academy last year, and
then disappeared? He had no intimate friends here, and no one knew what
had become of him. But now this picture appears, to show what he has
been doing. It is an evening scene, a revelation of the beauty of
sadness, an idea expressed in colours--or rather, a real impression of
Nature that awakens an ideal feeling in the heart. It does not define
everything and say nothing, like so many paintings. It tells no story,
but I know it fits into one. There is not a figure in it, and yet it
is alive with sentiment; it suggests thoughts which cannot be put
into words. Don't you love the pictures that have that power of
suggestion--quiet and strong, like Homer Martin's 'Light-house' up at
the Century, with its sheltered bay heaving softly under the pallid
greenish sky of evening, and the calm, steadfast glow of the lantern
brightening into readiness for all the perils of night and coming storm?
How much more powerful that is than all the conventional pictures of
light-houses on inaccessible cliffs, with white foam streaming from them
like the ends of a schoolboy's comforter in a gale of wind! I tell you
the real painters are the fellows who love pure nature because it is
so human. They don't need to exaggerate, and they don't dare to be
affected. They are not afraid of the reality, and they are not ashamed
of the sentiment. They don't paint everything that they see, but they
see everything that they paint. And this picture makes me sure that
Falconer is one of them.”
By this time we had arrived at the door of the house where Morgenstern
lives and moves and makes his profits, and were admitted to the shrine
of the Commercial Apollo and the Muses in Trade.
It has often seemed to me as if that little house were a silent epitome
of modern art criticism, an automatic indicator, or perhaps regulator,
of the aesthetic taste of New York. On the first floor, surrounded by
all the newest fashions in antiquities and BRIC-A-BRAC, you will see the
art of to-day--the works of painters who are precisely in the focus of
advertisement, and whose names call out an instant round of applause in
the auction-room. On the floors above, in degrees of obscurity deepening
toward the attic, you will find the art of yesterday--the pictures which
have passed out of the glare of popularity without yet arriving at
the mellow radiance of old masters. In the basement, concealed in huge
packing-cases, and marked “PARIS--FRAGILE,”--you will find the art of
to-morrow; the paintings of the men in regard to whose names, styles,
and personal traits, the foreign correspondents and prophetic critics
in the newspapers, are now diffusing in the public mind that twilight of
familiarity and ignorance which precedes the sunrise of marketable fame.
The affable and sagacious Morgenstern was already well acquainted with
the waywardness of Pierrepont's admiration, and with my own persistent
disregard of current quotations in the valuation of works of art. He
regarded us, I suppose, very much as Robin Hood would have looked upon
a pair of plain yeomen who had strayed into his lair. The knights of
capital, and coal barons, and rich merchants were his natural prey, but
toward this poor but honest couple it would be worthy only of a Gentile
robber to show anything but courteous and fair dealing.
He expressed no surprise when he heard what we wanted to see, but smiled
tolerantly and led the way, not into the well-defined realm of the past,
the present, or the future, but into a region of uncertain fortunes, a
limbo of acknowledged but unrewarded merits, a large back room devoted
to the works of American painters. Here we found Falconer's picture;
and the dealer, with that instinctive tact which is the best part of his
business capital, left us alone to look at it.
It showed the mouth of a little river: a secluded lagoon, where the
shallow tides rose and fell with vague lassitude, following the impulse
of prevailing winds more than the strong attraction of the moon. But now
the unsailed harbour was quite still, in the pause of the evening;
and the smooth undulations were caressed by a hundred opalescent hues,
growing deeper toward the west, where the river came in. Converging
lines of trees stood dark against the sky; a cleft in the woods marked
the course of the stream, above which the reluctant splendours of an
autumnal day were dying in ashes of roses, while three tiny clouds,
poised high in air, burned red with the last glimpse of the departed
sun.
On the right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind it,
on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white pillars. It
was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet one could
imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden with beds of
old-fashioned flowers and straight paths bordered with box, and a
little arbour overgrown with honeysuckle. I know not by what subtlety of
delicate and indescribable touches--a slight inclination in one of the
pillars, a broken line which might indicate an unhinged gate, a drooping
resignation in the foliage of the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness
in the blending of subdued colours--the painter had suggested that the
place was deserted. But the truth was unmistakable. An air of loneliness
and pensive sorrow breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and
regret. It was haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold story of
human life.
In the corner Falconer had put his signature, T. F., “LARMONE,” 189-,
and on the border of the picture he had faintly traced some words, which
we made out at last--
“A spirit haunts the year's last hours.”