the statement already made, to the effect that these reproductions
are presented for what pleasure they may give the layman, it should
be said that it is for the reason that such technicalities as are
pointed out may well be within the understanding of all intelligent
persons and that their elucidation may assist greatly toward a fuller
appreciation of the more intellectual merits. And if we fail to
consider sufficiently here those more poetic qualities and to attempt
some description of the meanings and sensations conveyed to us by the
pictures themselves, it will be because it seems that these are matters
best left to the individual observer. This is what might be called
the "literary" side of pictures, and one upon which art criticism has
come too largely to dwell. If, on the other hand, the discussion of
pictures were content to confine itself to the pointing out of what
constitutes the "art" of the work, might we not derive each for himself
a more intimate pleasure in undisturbed enjoyment of those intellectual
conceptions, which, though produced by the same picture, are, in no two
of us, precisely alike?
There are represented in the four drawings here selected (from a
collection so interesting that any selection at all was difficult)
several phases of the artist's ability, each so well demonstrated that
it is scarcely possible to choose between them. This versatility of
mood is a noteworthy evidence in itself of the well grounded mastery of
the artist and of his ability to deal with nature at all points. It is,
in other words, no mere trick or specialty which he has learned as one
might pick out note for note and learn by heart a tune upon the piano;
but the work of a hand and eye and mind turned in perfect accord, like
a single instrument capable of an infinite range of expression.
In the first of the drawings, that of the piece of woodland through
which a path winds off to where it is lost to view among the trees,
carrying our imagination with it to the contemplation of scenes still
farther on, we find virtues of a more uncommon type than in the others.
The large nobility--the _monumental_ quality--is an aspect of nature
wholly out of fashion in our day. The firm bed of earth we can feel
under our feet with a sense that it is good to stand upon, and the
fine pattern of trees and clouds swayed in common movement stirs one
with that martial sense of activity, that vitality of impulse which
recalls the memory of some high-winded, keen-aired autumn day. We have
considered already the spirited and skilful drawing of the trees in
this picture; but it is difficult to turn from it without again noting
some of those qualities of line which are particularly well displayed
in these parts of the composition. To render those long, bare, sinuous
stems, growing upward with their roots unmistakably planted in the
ground and not so that they have the appearance of hanging down from
the clouds, is a feat of no small difficulty, to judge from the
frequent instances one meets with of failure in this regard. This
well established feeling of the growth from the ground upward of the
trunks of the trees and the springing from the branches outward of
the foliage, this complete and harmonious development of the whole
structure from the seed, as it were, is the product of an exhaustive
study, in all of its stages, of the life and characteristics of the
tree itself.
We are confronted in the second drawing with a striking contrast
to the first, in that the merits of vigorous and harmoniously
balanced line and form are supplanted by the more tender effects of
atmosphere, and the vigorous stroke becomes gentle in its handling of
the delicate trees worn by the winds and but half seen through the
uncertain twilight. Here, perhaps, the man is more in evidence than the
draftsman, and the sensitive and sympathetic spirit of the artist seems
abstracted for a time from the more tangible qualities which are the
chief glory of the former work. But like the first drawing it possesses
a carefully built up unity of sentiment and notes no point in the scene
not concerned with the impression of loneliness and neglect it seems
intended to convey.
The third and fourth drawings are more remarkable for skilled and
accomplished draftsmanship than for the expression of any distinctive
feature in the varying moods of nature. Our delight in them comes more
from the beautiful precision of aim whereby a single stroke is made to
record a number of interesting facts at the same time. In the drawing
of the barn and shed over-topped by a rugged tree and with a middle
ground filled by lively detail, we are reminded of the great masters
of etching in the clever abbreviation of each of those details and
the manner in which they are grouped or merged one into the other.
And then, in the last one, note the contour of the earth, how well
it is rendered by that cleverly foreshortened winding line of half
obliterated roadway leading up the hill and into the fresh mass of
foliage which crowns it. This ability to draw the solid ground so that
it appears solid is a rare gift in any draftsman, and it may well be
taken as an evidence of the fullness of his talent and training.
Like Constable, Mr. Manley has been content to draw his inspiration
from the small section of the world in which circumstances have placed
him, the quiet New Jersey country where Inness worked out for himself
the distinguished place his name holds among American landscape
painters. These drawings by no means represent the full range of Mr.
Manley's activities, for he has won high esteem as a painter and an
etcher and holds a position of importance as a miniaturist; but they
are, perhaps, the things in which his rarest talents are displayed,
as they are also the closest to his own pleasure in his art. They are
the pastimes of an uncommonly sincere and scholarly master who shows
integrity in play as well as in work, and who has carried on his career
with an earnestness and a humility and modesty of character which all
but deprived us of any sight of his achievements at all.
THE HOUSE OF MUSIC
BY
GERTRUDE HALL
One elating, blue and white April morning saw a cheerful company of
six assembling in a railroad-station waiting-room. There were the
manager of the tour, Duprez--gray-haired in comparative youth, at
once care-worn and accommodating looking--the foreign stamp on him
not entirely obliterated by the stamp of the country; and his wife,
the popular Pearl Wharton-Duprez, whose habit of facing the world
as an audience must have found its way into her features; she was
recognizable at sight for a singer. Her brilliant face, while not
precluding the possibility of a heart, suggested less remotely a temper.
There was one Milen Odiesky, gripping a black violin-box; who listened
to a hilarious conversation he but half understood, with a fixed
smile, revealing a marked division between his two broad, white front
teeth,--disagreeable, for some reason, though he might pass for
handsome in a dark, hairy, Oriental way.
Then there was one who at first glance looked in the group as if
he must be an acquaintance come to see them off. He was tall and
proportionately broad, with stalwart shoulders, a deep chest, and a big
neck; superlatively well groomed and dressed. The gloss of his silk
hat was not broken by the wilfulness of one hair. He carried himself
a trifle more than erect, and swept his limited horizon with a calm,
kingly eye. His face was close-shaven, a smooth coppery rose, shading
easily into the color of his close-cropped hair. His features were of
the rather thick, round, good-natured type, and time was beginning to
divide up his face into heavier masses than occur in the forties; but
these facts did not prevent his presence on the whole from impressing
an observer with the sense that he looked at something really very
fine. This was Bronson, whose name on the program would occupy the
most room: the great Bronson, Anthony, the tenor of long sustained
fame--sustained, indeed, so long that these appearances in parts that
knew him only by that fame had now been projected.
Then there was a little plump woman, the one who kept the others
laughing; and she carried, besides what one is accustomed to see on the
arms of travelers, all the things she had forgotten to put into her
trunk; among which were an alarm-clock, a sponge-bag, a pink flannel
dressing-sacque, and a little image of the Virgin. She bubbled on, in
a voice as impossible to forget or mistake for another's as her face;
which face, however, was not pretty, but so faithfully reflected a
nature as to be memorable for its want of all malice, concealment,
or suspicion. It was not that her features were child-like which
accounted for her face bringing to mind a child's, but that it shared
some quality inclining one on shortest acquaintance, without fear of
rebuff, to treat its winsome, unsevere, uncritical owner familiarly
and affectionately. She was not pretty, but certainly her dark-edged,
misty, pale blue eyes, with their capacity in the same measure for
humor and sentiment, under eyebrows sympathetically working with her
thoughts, and lids stained a tender bistre, had an attaching sweetness;
and the clear spaces of her face, the forehead and temples, something
cool and rare, like the stamp of talent; while just beside her ear,
where a faint lock of silken black hung an inch or so down a soft,
sallow cheek, was a spot creating an instant desire to kiss it. This
was Miss Nevers, the pianiste; Nevers, they briefly called her in
speaking of her, pronouncing the name like an English one; Marie-Aimée
they called her in speaking to her, all excepting Odiesky, who did
not yet know her well enough; except, too, the sixth member of the
party, who could never take it into his head to do so. The latter was a
homely, thin man, neither young nor old, of the name of Snell, who was
engaged to play common accompaniments, and tune the pianos. He stood
near the others, but only ventured a smile where they laughed.
Yet he with the rest, as they trooped to the train, was conscious of a
lift to his spirits. The tour was a turning the back upon the old and
known. It had the charm of beginnings; it opened to life, with this
new combination, new possibilities. Hard work and wearing travel were a
certainty in the prospect, but it showed nevertheless like a holiday,
enlivened by daily change of scene, faces, food.
Beside these general justifications of a reasonable elation on
starting, there was excuse for the festive jollity which made
people turn to look after our friends as they progressed down the
platform--the stately Bronson now carrying a bulging rubber sponge-bag,
impossible to conceal--in the brilliant artistic auspices under which
these musical peregrinations were undertaken, and the discovery, now
that the artists were come together _en troupe_, that they severally
brought elements promising uncommon liveliness and fun.
* * * * *
About five years had passed since the laurel-laden return of the Duprez
Concert Company, when Marie-Aimée one morning, rather earlier than it
is customary to make a call, rang the door-bell of a certain large
impressive house.
Whether the explanations were hurry in dressing or absence of mind, she
looked, on this occasion, somewhat as if her clothes, as the saying
is, had been thrown at her. The velvet of her little bonnet needed
brushing; and her little gloves, alas, mending. She wore no veil, and
wisps of her hair had been blown on end. But this effect of disorder
culminated in her face itself, where the colors were out of their
places; her cheeks being pale, her poor small nose and her eyelids
red. She had grown stouter since our last sight of her, and on this
day was carrying herself so without pride or heed as to look fairly
round-shouldered.
As she stood waiting, she must have forgotten that she was in a public
street, or else felt bad beyond caring; two or three times she openly
mopped her eyes. When, however, she faced the tall butler who opened
the door, she appeared to have nothing worse the matter with her than a
bad head-cold. She asked if Miss Cheriton were in, gave her card, and
was shown into a vast hushed drawing-room. There, as soon as she had
been left alone, she looked at herself in the mirror; after which she
chose a seat with its back to the windows. She had occupied this but
a moment, when, lest the thoughts stealing back upon her should drive
her again to tears, she crossed over to the grand-piano glimmering in
the half-light with liquid reflections of gilt moldings, brocade, and
palms. She lifted the lid to peer at the name of the maker, and tried
its tone with a scarce audible chord. Then she took up piece after
piece of the music in the rack, questioning it as to Miss Cheriton's
title to her high reputation as an amateur pianist.
On hearing a rustle, she hurriedly laid down the music, and got up,
her heart rushing. Miss Cheriton had shaken hands, with expressions of
pleasure in making her acquaintance, had offered her a seat, and taken
one, before Marie-Aimée had been able to do more than clear her throat.
Miss Cheriton had allotted her a seat well in the lights; her curiosity
about this caller could do no less; wherefore Marie-Aimée's reddened
eyes at first refused a square encounter. But shortly, while Miss
Cheriton was forcing a dullish conversation, Marie-Aimée forgot
herself, and looked Miss Cheriton in the face; full as interested as
she in the looks of the other at close range.
Marie-Aimée saw a well-grown young woman of eight or nine and twenty;
faultlessly dressed in a fawn colored cloth matching her perfectly
arranged abundant hair. Her face was entirely fine, if a little cold.
She gave an impression of great self-poise; she could be imagined to
have always thought and decided for herself, and had the fortune to
see everything go as she wished, which no doubt she laid to the firm
and just management she looked so capable of exercising. She had a
beautiful calm complexion and calm dark-blue eyes, which weighed you
thoughtfully, and would with difficulty, you fancied, alter their
conclusions about you. But at least, Marie-Aimée felt with relief and
hope, they were windows into a mind where there was room to breathe.
She began abruptly, in a suggestive pause occurring in Miss Cheriton's
small talk, "You must be wondering what brought me."
The expression of Miss Cheriton's face, her only answer to this,
signified that though she hoped she had not seemed to be wondering
rudely, she would in effect be pleased to know.
Marie-Aimée picked at her glove. "It is this. I was told that I had
been making mischief. And I came, wishing if possible to remedy it."
Miss Cheriton's eyebrows moved upward just enough to start a ripple
in the beautiful smoothness of her forehead, and she waited, her eyes
inquiring of Miss Nevers' troubled face; in their depths had flashed a
prevision of what might be coming.
"I know I talk a dreadful lot," Marie-Aimée burst forth in disgust,
"I tell everything I know. I can't keep to myself even stories that
are against myself. Whatever is on my heart, I say it. I have been
making a dreadful fool of myself--which is bad enough, but I feel worse
about having given annoyance to others.... Mr. Bronson came to see me
yesterday evening."
She paused, as after a piece of news. Miss Cheriton waited in silence,
her face expressing nothing beyond polite attention.
"And he said that my doing as I have been doing made a lot of gossip,
which inevitably reached you, and was calculated to give you a mistaken
impression of our relations in the past----" Marie-Aimée's voice stuck.
After a moment, "Please, please, don't be distressed," murmured Miss
Cheriton; and as if her uneasiness at the sight of tears had made her
restless, left her seat, and went to stand beside the mantle-piece,
leaning on it with one elbow, ornaments at choice within reach, to pick
up and play with.
Marie-Aimée laughed through a sob. "You see? Was there ever such
a fool? And this is the way I have been ever since I heard of his
engagement. But I want you to understand, Miss Cheriton, that _that's
just me_. How can he help it, unhappy man, if I am made this way? I
have cried like a pump. I have cried upon the shoulder of every one
who would stand it. But I had no right, no possible right, to lament
in the highways like that. It was only--when my heart was full, I
let it run over. But I never in the least meant it as a reproach to
anyone,--any more, put it this way, than a sunflower going draggled and
crazy at sunset. But he told me last night I made him ridiculous. Oh,
he was gentle. For all that, the things he said troubled me horribly;
and I made up my mind, after he had left, to come directly to you and
explain, so that if reports have vexed you, you should not mind them
after this."
Miss Cheriton said quietly, not looking at Marie-Aimée, but at an ivory
Chinaman she held: "It is not necessary, Miss Nevers. I did indeed hear
something, but I did not give it much thought."
Upon which Marie-Aimée, as if these words had contained all the
encouragement necessary, proceeded eagerly, "We never, never were
engaged. You will believe me, whatever you may hear. We merely have
been friends for years. I had known him slightly a long time already,
when we went on a tour together, with Madame Wharton-Duprez. It
was then we became such chums.... Mercy on me, that tour! Shall I
ever forget it? Will any of us?" She smiled, with a sudden drenched
reflection of sunshine on her tear-bedabbled face.
"I know!" Miss Cheriton smiled too. "Mr. Bronson has spoken of it to
me."
"Has he?" asked Marie-Aimée, brightening still further, rainbow-like,
and immediately at greater ease with Miss Cheriton, from a
responsiveness she felt in her smile when the ever fertile subject of
the tour was broached, dear in its time to Anthony Bronson's heart.
"That's good. For it will in part explain.... Don't you agree with me
that laughing together makes a stronger bond than even weeping? Well,
on that tour, what we did best and chiefly, was to laugh. Did he ever
tell you----" She dropped her voice like a person having something good
to relate, and fun played over her face in ripples, "the adventure of
the water-melon? Yes, of course! I suppose he has told you everything.
And the adventure of the face-wash and the curling-irons? And the
night of the great thunderstorm? Oh, make him tell you that one. It is
incredible, the number of things, and the description of things, that
happened to us in those six months. It was as if we had been a sort of
lightening-rod attracting all the incongruous, ludicrous, delicious
happenings that should have been distributed over the country. Or else,
it is that we were in a disposition of mind to find everything funny.
Of course, it may have been that. But still--imagine our arriving
once at a little place where we had never been heard of. There is a
mistake. And no one expects us. And there is no hotel. And it ends in
our being obliged to sleep in the empty jail, we women, a dovecote of
a jail, with just two wee cells; oh, slumbers of sweetness and safety,
after our many nights in strange hostelries. No need for once to look
under the bed for burglars; and the men in a barn. Odiesky didn't get
the hayseed out of his hair that season. And imagine--imagine having
along with you a man who has a nightmare every time he drops off to
sleep. A poor Mr. Snell who went with us was like that, and we used to
run into one another in the lobbies, in curl-papers, at dead of night,
flying to knock him up, he made such awful, such blood-curdling sounds,
which could be heard all over the hotel. It is unkind to laugh at an
infirmity, but the sounds he made, could you have heard them, would
excuse me to you. And imagine--but try to--imagine the six of us, six
people who feel themselves not a little famous, going fourteen miles in
a single-seated wagon, that, or miss our connection, and complications
without end. I don't believe I stopped laughing the whole way. You
see it? We two, the grace and beauty of the party, enthroned upon the
laps of _ces messieurs_--no other way, no other way possible, none.
Wharton-Duprez in the arms of her own husband; and Odiesky astride the
horse, postilion, having to drive; and poor little Snell on the floor
with his knees over the dash-board; and the danger at any moment of
the wagon breaking down----" She pieced out that fourteen-mile long
ecstasy of merriment with more of a singularly rich, unaffected laugh,
in the midst of which her face fell blankly serious, and she held up,
as if she had never seen it before, the hand which in the heat of her
description she had been waving.
"Will you look at my glove?" she said; promptly closing which
parenthesis she continued, "As I was saying, it may have been that
circumstances really justified us, or our mood, which was exceptional.
For myself, I never enjoyed myself so much. Oh, I was impressionable
then, and ready to be pleased. Every day a new place, every night a new
triumph. It was Mr. Bronson's triumph, but his glory fell upon us all.
We lived in an atmosphere of success; and people were so nice to us, we
were entertained everywhere like king and court. It was then, you see,
when we were together from morning until night, we grew to know each
other so well. And, you know him, you know how kind he would be to a
little person traveling as I was doing; kind does not express it, and
thoughtful and considerate. And you know the charming companion that he
is, even-tempered, easy-going, good fellow. And in traveling like that
you know the thousand little services a man can render you, and, among
artists, the good turns. He, you will have discovered, has not a touch
of that queer jealousy so common among artists.
"But there was even more than all that. Before the end of our
engagement, Wharton-Duprez had taken the most cattish dislike to me;
I have never known why. And everything that woman could do to make
things uncomfortable for me she took pains to do, even, will you
believe it, contriving that my luggage should be left behind, and I
forced to appear on the stage in the filthiest little coal-begrimed
traveling-suit--at the fag end of the season, you understand.
Ferdinand, her husband, did not dare to say a word. It would have
been past endurance for me then, had it not been for Mr. Bronson's
invariably showing himself my friend, and keeping her within limits. I
had reason to be grateful to him, you see. I should have had to be a
monster not to become devoted to him. You can put yourself in my place,
can't you? And then, add to everything else his singing. Never, never,
never, to me, has there been anything like it."
Miss Cheriton bowed her head, slowly, in agreement.
"_If with all your heart ye truly seek me_," murmured Marie-Aimée,
looking as if she listened to a voice singing in her memory.
"_In manly worth and honor clad_," murmured the other, likewise.
"It opens a door, doesn't it," Marie-Aimée spoke low, as if they
had entered a church, "into a world where it is all beautiful,
calm, eternal--the only world--where whoever breathes its air must
worship and must love; just his mere voice, when it is what I call
his ballad-voice, doesn't it contain all romance? Moonlight, boats on
lonely seas, lattices with roses; and when it is his anthem-voice,
it contains, doesn't it, all aspiration, cathedrals, matin-bells,
archangel's choirs----"
Again Miss Cheriton nodded dreamily; then, raising her eyes, which in
listening she had dropped, forgot the one of whom they were speaking
for interest in the face of the speaker, who looked ahead with eyes
which clearly did not see what was before them, but the cloudy white
pillars, one might have surmised, and dim glimmering splendors of some
temple of Music and Love.
Marie-Aimée swept her hand across her forehead. "And I," she continued,
raising her voice in a tone of plaintive exculpation, "I was born mad
for music! A voice has power over me like a spell. And I am flesh and
blood! And so----" she ended feebly, "do you wonder?"