THE STUDIO.
I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had wanted
to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now wanted to
take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great oystershells, and
sea-weed.
Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early
day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service
to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had
gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for
leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about my
successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He was
much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not finding
himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could comfortably manage
it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and as the weather was
now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for departure.
I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he
had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would
permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we
had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much
anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as
we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the
only break in the transit.
It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear
the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we
occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before
we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a little
dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in the
weather.
"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.
"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."
_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking before,
always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky of hope. I
lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog this evening in
London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to go through on the
way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me; the world would grow
dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was the last of the way
home.
Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I
knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or
less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought
of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more than the body
that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home to
the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep, and
every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul had
often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what that
home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance; no
mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion even
with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be longing
for a homelier home--one into which I might enter with a sense of
infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know in the
arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human soul
with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with love,
again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest
shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that
not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and
saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching
me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then
I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for
us all. When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall
we be gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries
of pictures--wells of water."
Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love,
his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to
love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us,
with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto
led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all
outward changes--for it is but an outward change--will surely usher us into
a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart,
soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the father, the mother, that make
for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the
parents of a family themselves, when they remember that their fathers and
mothers have vanished.
At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers
such a long way back in heaven?"
But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not
know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how
anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not
to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every
mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as
it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even
should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without
a witness.
Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that
London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a
carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the
fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had
slept for a good many nights before.
After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any objection
to going with me?"
"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's studio
in my life."
"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a
cab, and it won't matter."
She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions,
and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a
very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man
could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A
woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of
the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr.
Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor,"
and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This,
however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front
room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.
Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced
to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed
solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such
a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic
notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio,
must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's
room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I
suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the
fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed
flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from
upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a
corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the
present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which
stood a half-finished oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole
furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one
chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
I have got."
"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,"
I ventured to say.
"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."
"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned.
"If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."
"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
does."
"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
themselves."
"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.
"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the
easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."
"Why?" asked Wynnie.
"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
that none but a painter could do it justice."
"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?"
"I very much want people to look at them."
"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.
"Because you do not need to be pained."
"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.
"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where and
how much, is the question."
"Of course I do not make the pain my object."
"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter
greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain
predominates can be useful in the best way."
"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"
"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant.
Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at least.
It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster
had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot
hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat
by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand
in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the
struggles of two undertaker's men to get the coffin past the turn of the
landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue
sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium
in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.
"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear to
paint such a dreadful picture?"
"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."
"All facts have not a right to be represented."
"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
sight?"
"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."
"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such
pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some discomposure.
"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one
could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow
callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose
to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my
possession, I would--"
"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before
it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger
of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that
they need the Saviour."
"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."
"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would
rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am
certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful. Make
it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something to show
that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering people will
turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at
some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be
pained if it can do no good?"
"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.
"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."
"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see
there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the
window."
He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
make the other look more terrible."
"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture,
I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
meaning into it."
Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that
she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the freedom
with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling on a
little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding
something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it
was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic
mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of
summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the
floor. I turned away.
"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.
"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I
should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
same thing more weakly embodied."
I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in Percivale,
for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had expected better
things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.
"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a
clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise
which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."
"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may pain
me."
"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you have
at hand to show me."
"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."
He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were leaning
against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these he chose
one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that stood
beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will describe
it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke from me
after I had regarded it for a time.
A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin
pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying
knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and another
led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The head and
countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a battle, and
ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for one might read
victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had just reached the
edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley beneath, with the
last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks stood all about in
the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had been down for some
little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a little dull saffron,
but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn sky, divided with a
few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky overhead, which you could
not see for the arrangement of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a
piece of water that lay in the centre of the valley.
"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save me
from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart; it is
glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening; the sun's
work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind him in
a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done too; his day has
set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming peace. They
are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their faces in
the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life that is
ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of corn fully
ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath. The picture
would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven
overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done his work is
bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven
embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe
how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines,
with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward
towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a
picture and a parable."
[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted by
Arthur Hughes.]
I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work
appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.
"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it, I
should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
public wall I have."
"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you
confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
first?"
"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given me
to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound to
disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no sense
of duty."
"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie in
an almost angry tone.
"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and therefore,
again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."
At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
defence:
"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only.
Look at the other."
"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the
same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these might
go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but even
then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever position
it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively nothing--of the aurora in it."
Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a
remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the
pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will
continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little
song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few men who, whether
from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for
something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the poem.
I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure of the
transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not _approve_ of the
poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or hint
of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to every
picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In his hopeful moods, let a
man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the words of gladness--or of
grief, I care not which--to his fellows; in his hours of hopelessness,
let him utter his thoughts only to his inarticulate violin, or in the
evanescent sounds of any his other stringed instrument; let him commune
with his own heart on his bed, and be still; let him speak to God face to
face if he may--only he cannot do that and continue hopeless; but let him
not sing aloud in such a mood into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot
do them much good thereby. If it were a fact that there is no hope, it
would not be a _truth_. No doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known;
but who will dare be confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let
the hopeless moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.
"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at
the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.--If
you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow."
Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any
more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine
with us in the evening.