Mr. John Forster, who was also the intimate friend of Mr. Charles
Dickens, over the same scene, and was fond of telling the story
that the same or some other shepherd shouted suddenly to another of
the same occupation at a short distance on the Moor, “_Ian! Ian!_”
Serjeant Talfourd, who was the author of the once celebrated tragedy
of “Ion,”—with a bland smile of triumph or satisfaction on his face,
turned to Mr. Forster, laid his hand upon his breast, and said,
“Forster, this _is_ fame.” He did not know that _Ian_ was the Gaelic
for John, and that the man was merely calling to his friend by his
Christian name.
Among the odd experiences of the little town in which he passed his
days, Mr. Carruthers related that a gentleman, who had made a large
fortune in India, retired to pass the evening of his life in his native
place. Finding the time hanging heavy on his hands, and being of an
active mind, he established a newspaper, sometime about the year 1840.
He grew tired of it after two or three years, and discontinued it in
a day without a word of notice or explanation. With equal suddenness
he resumed its publication in 1850, and addressed his readers, in his
first editorial, “Since the publication of our last paper, nothing of
importance has occurred in the political world.” Nothing had occurred
of more importance than the French Revolution of 1848—the dethronement
and flight of King Louis Philippe—and convulsions in almost every
country in Europe, Great Britain excepted.
Mr. Carruthers, who had received the degree of Doctor of Laws a few
years previously, died in 1878, full of years and honors, regretted and
esteemed by all the North of Scotland, and by a wide circle of friends
and admirers in every part of the world where English literature is
appreciated; and Scotsmen retain a fond affection for their native
country, and the men whose lives and genius reflect honor upon it.
II. PATRIC PARK, SCULPTOR.
I am glad to be able in these pages to render tribute, however feeble,
to one of the great but unappreciated geniuses of his time; a man of
powerful intellect as well as powerful frame, a true artist of heroic
mould and thought, who dwarfed the poor pigmies of the day in which his
lot was cast by conceptions too grand to find a market: Patric Park,
sculptor, who concealed under a somewhat rude and rough exterior as
tender a heart as ever beat in a human bosom. Had he been an ancient
Greek, his name might have become immortal. Had he been a modern
Frenchman, the art in which he excelled would have brought him not only
bread, but fortune. But as he was only a portrayer of the heroic in
the very prosaic country in which his lot was cast, it was as much as
he could do to pay his way by the scanty rewards of an art which few
people appreciated, or even understood, and to waste upon the marble
busts of rich men, who had a fancy for that style of portraiture, the
talents, or rather the genius, which, had encouragement come, might
have produced epics in stone to have rivalled the masterpieces of
antiquity.
Patrick, or, as he usually signed himself, Patric, Park was born in
Glasgow in 1809, and I made his acquaintance in the _Morning Chronicle_
office in 1842, when he was in the prime of his early manhood. He sent
a letter to the editor to request the insertion of a modest paragraph
in reference to a work of his which had found a tardy purchaser in
Stirling, where it was destined to adorn the beautiful public cemetery
of the city. The paragraph was inserted not as he wrote it, but with
a kindly addition in praise of his work and of his genius. He came to
the office next day to know the writer’s name. And when the writer
avowed himself, a friendship sprung up between the two, which suffered
no abatement during the too short life of the grateful man of genius,
who, for the first time, had been publicly recognized by the humble
pen of one who could command, in artistic and literary matters, the
columns of a powerful journal. Park’s nature was broad and bold, and
scorned conventionalities and false pretence. George Outram, a lawyer
and editor of a Glasgow newspaper, author of several humorous songs
and lyrics upon the odds and ends of legal practice, among which
the “Annuity” survives in perennial youth in Edinburgh and Glasgow
society, and brother of the gallant Sir James Outram, of Indian fame,
used to say of Park, that he liked him because he was not smooth
and conventional. “There is not in the world,” he said to me on one
occasion, “another man with so many delightful corners in his character
as Park. We are all of us much too smooth and rounded off. Give me Park
and genuine nature, and all the more corners the better.”
Park had a very loud voice, and sang Scotch songs perhaps with more
vehemence than many people would admire, but with a hearty appreciation
that was pleasant to witness. It is related that a deputation of
Glasgow bailies came up to London, with Lord Provost Lumsden at their
head, in reference to the Loch Katrine Water Bill, for the supply of
Glasgow with pure water, which was then before Parliament, and that
they invited their distinguished townsman to dine with them at the
Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. After dinner Park was called upon
for a song, and as there was nobody in the dining-room but one old
gentleman, who, according to the waiter, was very deaf, Park consented
to sing, and sang in his very best style the triumphant Jacobite
ballad of “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet,” till, as one of the
bailies said, “he made the rafters ring, and might have been heard at
St. Paul’s.” The deaf gentleman, as soon as the song was concluded,
is reported to have made his way to the table, and apologising for
addressing a company of strangers, to have turned to Park and said,
with extraordinary fervor and emotion, “May God Almighty bless you,
sir, and pour his choicest blessings upon your head! For thirty years I
have been stone deaf and have not heard the sound of the human voice.
But I heard your song, every word of it; God bless you!”
Upon one occasion, when we were travelling together in the Western
Highlands, the captain of one of the Hutcheson steamers was exceedingly
courteous and attentive to his passengers, and took great pains to
point out to those who were making this delightful journey for the
first time all the picturesque objects on the route. At one of the
landing-places the young Earl of Durham was taken on board, with his
servants, and from that moment the captain had neither eyes nor ears
for any other person in the vessel. He lavished the most obsequious
and fulsome attention upon his lordship, and when Park asked him a
question, cut him short with a snappish reply. Park was disgusted, and
expressed his opinion of the captain in a manner more forcible than
polite. As there was a break in the navigation in consequence of some
repairs that were being effected in one of the locks, the passengers
had to disembark and proceed by omnibus to another steamer that awaited
their arrival at Loch Lochy. Park mounted on the box by the side of the
driver, and was immediately addressed by the captain, “Come down out
of that, you sir! That seat’s reserved for his lordship!” Park’s anger
flashed forth like an electric spark, “And who are _you_, sir, that
you dare address a gentleman in that manner?”
“I am the captain of the boat, sir, and I order you to come down out of
that.”
“Captain, be hanged!” said Park, “the coachman might as well call
himself a captain as you. The only difference between you is, that
he is the driver of a land omnibus and that you are the driver of an
aquatic omnibus.” The young Earl laughed, and quietly took his place in
the interior of the vehicle, leaving Park in undisputed possession of
the box-seat.
His contempt for toadyism in all its shapes and manifestations was
extreme. There was an engineer of some repute in his day, with whom he
had often come into contact, and whom he especially disliked for his
slavish subservience to rank and title. The engineer meeting Park on
board of the boat, said, “Mr. Park, I wish you not to talk about me!
I am told that you said, I was not worth a damn! Is it true?” “Well,”
replied Park, “it may be; but if I said so I underrated you. I think
you are worth two damns, and I damn you twice!”
On another occasion, when attending a _soirée_ at Lady Byron’s, he
was so annoyed at finding no other refreshment than tea, which he did
not care for, and very weak port wine negus, which he detested as
an unmanly and unheroic drink, that he took his departure, resolved
to go in search of some stronger potation. The footman in the hall,
addressing him deferentially in search of a “tip,” said, “Shall I call
your carriage, my lord?” “I’m not a lord,” said Park, in a voice like
that of a stentor. “I beg pardon, sir, shall I call your carriage?”
“I have not got a carriage! Give me my walking stick! And now,” he
added, slipping a shilling into the man’s hand, “can you tell me of
any decent public-house in the neighborhood where I can get a glass of
brandy-and-water? The very smell of her ladyship’s negus is enough to
make one sick.”
Park resided for a year or two in Edinburgh, and procured several
commissions for the busts of legal and other notabilities, and,
what was in a higher degree in accordance with his tastes, for some
life-size statues of characters in the poems and novels of Sir Walter
Scott, to complete the Scott monument in Princes Street. He also
executed, without a commission, a gigantic model for a statue of Sir
William Wallace, for whose name and fame he had the most enthusiastic
veneration, with the idea that the patriotic feelings of the Scottish
nation would be so far excited by his work as to justify an appeal to
the public to set it up in bronze or marble (he preferred bronze,) on
the Calton Hill, amid other monuments to the memory of illustrious
Scotsmen. But the deeds of Wallace were too far back in the haze of
bygone ages to excite much contemporary interest. The model was a
noble work, eighteen feet high, and wholly nude. Some of his friends
suggested to him that a little drapery would be more in accordance with
Scottish ideas, than a figure so nude that it dispensed even with the
customary fig-leaf. Park revolted at the notion of the fig-leaf, “a
cowardly, indecent subterfuge,” he said. “To the pure all things are
pure, as St. Paul says. There is nothing impure in nature, but only in
the mind of man. Rather than put on the fig-leaf I would dash the model
to pieces.” “But the drapery?” said a friend, the late Alexander Russel
of the _Scotsman_. “What I have done I have done, and I will not spoil
my design. Wallace was once a man, and if he had lived in the last
century and I had to model his statue, I would have draped it or put it
in armor as if he had been the Duke of Marlborough or Prince Eugene.
But the memory of Wallace is scarcely the memory of a man but of a
demigod. Wallace is a myth; and as a myth he does not require clothes.”
“Very true,” said Russel, “but you are anxious to procure the public
support and the public guineas, and you’ll never get them for a naked
giant.” “Then I’ll smash the model,” said the indignant and dispirited
artist. And he did so, and a beautiful work was lost to the world for
ever.
At the time of our first acquaintance Park was somewhat smitten by the
charms of a beautiful young woman in Greenock, the daughter of one of
his oldest and best friends. The lady had no knowledge of art, and
scarcely knew what was meant by the word sculptor. She asked him one
day whether he cut marble chimney-pieces? This was too much. He was
_désillusionné_ and humiliated, and the amatory flame flickered out, no
more to be relighted.
Park and I and three or four friends were once together on the top of
Ben Lomond, on a fine clear day in August. The weather was lovely,
but oppressively hot, and the fatigue of climbing was great, but not
excessive. At the summit, so pure was the atmosphere that looking
eastward we could distinctly see Arthur’s Seat, overlooking Edinburgh,
and the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, twenty miles beyond. Looking
westward, we could distinctly see Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde.
Thus the eye surveyed the whole diameter of Scotland. By a strange
effect of atmosphere the peak of Goatfell in Arran, separated optically
from the mountain by a belt of thick white cloud, seemed to be
preternaturally raised to a height of at least 20,000 feet above the
sea. I pointed it out to Park. “Nonsense!” he said. “Why Goatfell would
be higher than the Himalayas if your notion were correct.” “But I know
the shape of the peak,” I replied; “I have been on the top of Goatfell
at least half-a-dozen times, and would swear to it, as to the nose on
your face.” And as we were speaking the white cloud was dissipated, and
the Himalayan peak seemed to descend slowly and take its place on the
body of Goatfell, from which it had appeared to have been dissevered.
“Well,” he said, “things are not what they seem, and I maintain that it
was as high as the Himalayas or Chimborazo while the appearance lasted.”
The mountain at this time shone in pale rose-like glow, and Park,
inspired by the grandeur of the scene, preached us a very eloquent
little sermon, addressing himself to the sun, on the inherent dignity
and beauty of sun-worship as practised by the modern Parsees and
the ancient Druids. He concluded by a lament that his own art was
powerless to represent or personify the grand forces of nature as the
Greeks had attempted to do. “The Apollo Belvidere,” he said, “is the
representative of a beautiful young man. But it is not Apollo. Art
can represent Venus—the perfection of female beauty, and Mars—the
perfection of manly vigor; but Apollo; no! Yet I think I would have
tried Apollo myself if I had lived in Athens two thousand years ago.”
“‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’”
“True,” said Park, “I am a living dog, Phidias is a dead lion. I have
to model the unintellectual faces of rich cheesemongers, or grocers, or
iron masters, and put dignity into them, if I can, which is difficult.
And when I add the dignity, they complain of the bad likeness, so that
I often think I’d rather be a cheesemonger than a sculptor.”
I called at Park’s studio one morning, and was informed that he every
minute expected a visit from the great General Sir Charles James
Napier—for whose character and achievements he had the highest
admiration. He considered him by far the greatest soldier of modern
times—and had prevailed upon the general to sit to him for his bust.
Park asked me to stay and be introduced to him, and nothing loth, I
readily consented. I had not long to wait. The general had a nose like
the beak of an eagle—larger and more conspicuous on his leonine and
intellectual face than that of the Duke of Wellington, whose nose was
familiar in the purlieus of the Horse Guards. It procured for him the
title of “conkey” from the street urchins, and I recognised him at
a glance as soon as he entered. On his taking the seat for Park to
model his face in clay, the sculptor asked him not to think of too
many things at a time, but to keep his mind fixed on one subject. The
general did his best to comply with the request, with the result that
his face soon assumed a fixed and sleepy expression, without a trace of
intellectual animation. Park suddenly startled him by inquiring, “Is it
true, general, that you gave way—retreated in fact—at the battle of
——?” (naming the place, which I have forgotten). The general’s eyes
flashed sudden fire, and he was about to reply indignantly when Park
quietly remarked, plying his modelling tool on the face at the time,
“That’ll do, general, the expression is admirable!” The general saw
through the manœuvre, and laughed heartily.
The general’s statue in Trafalgar Square is an admirable likeness. Park
was much disappointed at not receiving the commission to execute it.
Park modelled a bust of myself, for which he would not accept payment.
He found it a very difficult task to perform. I had to sit to him at
least fifty times before he could please himself with his work. On one
occasion he lost all patience, and swearing lustily, _more suo_, dashed
the clay into a shapeless mass with his fist. “D—n you,” he said, “why
don’t you keep to one face? You seem to have fifty faces in a minute,
and all different! I never but once had another face that gave me half
the trouble.”
“And whose was the other?” I inquired.
“Sir Charles Barry’s” (architect of the Houses of Parliament at
Westminster). “He drove me to despair with his sudden changes of
expression. He was a very Proteus as far as his face was concerned,
and you’re another. Why don’t you keep thinking of one thing while I
am modelling, or why can’t you retain one expression for at least five
minutes?”
It was not till fully three months after this outburst that he took
courage to begin again, growling and grumbling at his work, but
determining, he said, not to be beaten either by Sir Charles or myself.
“Poets and architects, and painters and musicians, and novelists,” he
said, “are all difficult subjects for the sculptor. Give me the face
of a soldier,” he added, “such a face as that of the Emperor Napoleon.
There is no mistake about _that_; or, better still, that of Sir Charles
James Napier! If there is not very much immortal soul, so called, in
the faces of such men, there is a very great deal of body.”
Park was commissioned by the late Duke of Hamilton to model a bust
of Napoleon III., and produced, perhaps the very finest of all the
fine portrait-busts which ever proceeded from his chisel. The Emperor
impressed Park in the most favorable manner, and he always spoke of him
in terms of enthusiastic admiration, as well for the innate heroism as
for the tenderness of his character. “All true heroes,” he said, “are
tender-hearted; and the man who can fight most bravely has always the
readiest drop of moisture in his eye when a noble deed is mentioned or
a chord of human sympathy is touched.” The bust of Napoleon was lost
in the wreck of the vessel that conveyed it from Dover to Calais, but
the Duke of Hamilton commissioned the sculptor to execute a second copy
from the clay model, which duly reached its destination.
Patric Park died before he was fifty, and when, to all appearance,
there were many happy and prosperous years before him, when having
surmounted his early difficulties, he might have looked forward to
the design and completion of the many noble works to which he pined
to devote his mature energies, after emancipation from the slavery
of what he called “busting” the effigies of “cheesemongers.” He had
been for some months in Manchester, plying his vocation among the
rich notabilities of that prosperous city, when one day, emerging
from a carriage at the railway station, he observed a porter with a
huge basket of ice upon his head, staggering under the load and ready
to fall. Park rushed forward to the man’s assistance, prevented him
from falling, steadied the load upon his head by a great muscular
exertion, and suddenly found his mouth full of blood. He had broken
a blood-vessel; and stretching forth his hand, took a lump of ice
from the basket, and held it in his mouth to stop the bleeding. He
proceeded to the nearest chemist’s shop for advice and relief, and was
forthwith conveyed to his hotel delirious. A neighboring doctor was
called in, Park beseeching him for brandy. The brandy was refused.
A telegram was sent to his own physician in London. He came down by
the next train, and expressed a strong opinion on seeing the body and
learning all the facts, that the brandy ought to have been given. But
he arrived too late. The noble, the generous, the gifted Park was no
more, and an attached young wife and hundreds of friends, amongst whom
the writer of these words was one of the most attached, were “left
lamenting.”—_Gentleman’s Magazine._
(_To be concluded._)
A FEMALE NIHILIST
BY STEPNIAK.
I.
On the 27th of July, in the year 1878, the little town of Talutorovsk,
in Western Siberia, was profoundly excited by a painful event. A
political prisoner, named Olga Liubatovitch, it was said had miserably
put an end to her days. She was universally loved and esteemed, and
her violent death therefore produced a most mournful impression
throughout the town, and the _Ispravnik_ or chief of the police, was
secretly accused of having driven the poor young girl, by his unjust
persecutions, to take away her life.
Olga was sent to Talutorovsk, some months after the trial known as
that of the “fifty” of Moscow, in which she was condemned to nine
years’ hard labor for Socialist propagandism, a punishment afterwards
commuted into banishment for life. Unprovided with any means whatever
of existence, for her father, a poor engineer with a large family,
could send her nothing, Olga succeeded, by indefatigable industry, in
establishing herself in a certain position. Although but little skilled
in female labor, she endeavored to live by her needle, and became
the milliner of the semi-civilized ladies of the town, who went into
raptures over her work. These fair dames were firmly convinced—it is
impossible to know why—that the elegance of a dress depends above all
things upon the number of its pockets. The more pockets there were,
the more fashionable the dress. Olga never displayed the slightest
disinclination to satisfy this singular taste. She put pockets upon
pockets, upon the body, upon the skirts, upon the underskirts; before,
behind, everywhere. The married ladies and the young girls were as
proud as peacocks, and were convinced that they were dressed like the
most fashionable Parisian, and, though they were less profuse with
their money than with their praises, yet in that country, where living
costs so little, it was easy to make two ends meet. Later on, Olga
had an occupation more congenial to her habits. Before entering the
manufactories and workshops as a sempstress in order to carry on the
Socialist propaganda, she had studied medicine for some years at
Zurich, and she could not now do less than lend her assistance in
certain cases of illness. This soon gave her a reputation, and at the
request of the citizens, the police accorded to her the permission to
fill the post of apothecary and phlebotomist, as the former occupant
of that post, owing to habitual drunkenness, was fit for nothing. Not
unfrequently she even took the place of the district doctor, a worthy
man who, owing to old age and a partiality for brandy, was in such a
state that he could not venture upon delicate operations, because his
hands shook. She acted for him also in many serious cases baffling his
antediluvian knowledge. Some of her cures were considered miraculous;
among others, that of the district judge, whom, by determined
treatment, she had saved after a violent attack of _delirium tremens_,
a malady common to almost all men in that wild country.
In a word, Olga was in great favor with the peaceful citizens of
Talutorovsk. The hatred of the police towards her was all the greater
for that reason. Her proud and independent disposition would not
permit her to submit to the stupid and humiliating exigencies of the
representatives of the Government. Those representatives, barbarous and
overbearing as they were, considered every attempt to defend personal
dignity a want of respect toward themselves—nay, a provocation, and
neglected no occasion of taking their revenge. There was always a
latent war between Olga and her guardians, a war of the weak, bound
hand and foot, against the strong, armed at all points; for the police
have almost arbitrary power over the political prisoners who are under
their surveillance. In this very unequal struggle, however, Olga did
not always come off the worst, as often happens in the case of those
who, proud, daring, and fearing nothing, are always ready to risk
everything for the merest trifle. One of these conflicts, which
lasted four days and kept the whole of the little town in a state of
excitement by its dramatic incidents, was so singular that it deserves
to be related.