SUDDENLY he found himself wide awake. He had been lost in sleep, dreamless and spaceless; and now, without warning, his slumber had left him abruptly and for no reason that he could guess. Although he strained his ear he caught the echo of no unusual sound. He listened in vague doubt whether there might not be someone moving about in the apartment; but he could hear nothing except the shrill creak of the brakes of a train on the elevated railroad nearly a block away. Wilson Carpenter was in the habit of observing his own feelings, and he was surprised to note that he did not really expect to detect any physical cause for his unexpected awakening. Sleep had left him as inexplicably as it had swiftly.
He lay there in bed with no restlessness; he heard the regular breathing of his wife, who was sleeping at his side; he saw the faint illumination from the door open into the next room where the baby was also asleep. He looked toward the window, but no ray of light was yet visible; and he guessed it to be about four o'clock in the morning, perhaps a little earlier. In that case he had not been in bed more than two or three hours at the most. He wondered why he had waked thus unexpectedly, since he had had a fatiguing day. Perhaps it was the excitement—there was no doubt that he had had his full share of excitement that evening—and he thrilled again as he recalled the delicious sensation of dull dread yielding at last to the certainty of success.
He had played for a heavy stake and he had won. That was just what he had been doing—gambling with fate, throwing dice with fortune itself. That was what every dramatic author had to do every time he brought out a new play. The production of a piece at an important New York theatre was a venture as aleatory almost as cutting a pack of cards, and the odds were always against the dramatist. And as the young man quietly recalled the events of the evening it seemed to him that the excitement of those who engineer corners in Wall Street must be like his own anxiety while the future of his drama hung in the balance, only theirs could not but be less keen than his, less poignant, for he was playing his game with men and women, while what they touched were but inanimate stocks. His winning depended upon the actors and actresses who had bodied forth his conception. A single lapse of memory or a single slip of the tongue, and the very sceptical audience of the first night might laugh in the wrong place, and so cut themselves off from sympathy; and all his labor would go for nothing, and all his hopes would shrivel before his eyes. Of a truth it is the ordeal by fire that the dramatist must undergo; and there had been moments that long swift evening when he had felt as though he were tied to the stake, and awaiting only the haggard squaw who was to apply the torch.
Now the trial was over and the cause was gained. There had been too many war-pieces of late, so the croakers urged, and the public would not stand another drama of the rebellion. But he had not been greatly discouraged, for in his play the military scenes were but the setting for a story of everyday heroism, of human conflict, of man's conquest of himself. It was the simple strength of this story that had caught the spectators, before the first act was half over, and held them breathless as situation followed situation. At the adroitly spaced comic scenes the audience had gladly relaxed, joyously relieving the emotional strain with welcome laughter. The future of the play was beyond all question; of that the author felt assured, judging not so much by the mere applause as by the tensity of the interest aroused, and by the long-drawn sigh of suspense he had heard so often in the course of the evening. He did not dread the acrid criticisms he knew he should find in some of the morning papers, the writers of which would be bitterer than usual, since the writer of the new play had been a newspaper man himself.
The author of "A Bold Stroke" knew what its success meant to him. It meant a fortune. The play would perhaps run the season out in New York, and this was only the middle of October. With matinées on Wednesday as well as on Saturday, two hundred performances in the city were not impossible. Then next season there would be at least two companies on the road. He ought to make $25,000 by the piece, and perhaps more. The long struggle just to keep his head above water, just to get his daily bread, just to make both ends meet—that was over forever. He could move out of the little Harlem flat to which he had brought his bride two years before; and he could soon get her the house she was longing for somewhere in the country, near New York, where the baby could grow up under the trees.
The success of the play meant more than mere money, so the ambitious young author was thinking as he lay there sleepless. It meant praise, too—and praise was pleasant. It meant recognition—and recognition was better than praise, for it would open other opportunities. The money he made by the play would give him a home, and also leisure for thought and for adequate preparation before he began his next piece. He had done his best in writing the war-drama; he had spared no pains and neglected no possibility of improvement; it was as good as he could make it. But there were other plays he had in mind, making a different appeal, quieter than his military piece, subtler; and these he could now risk writing, since the managers would believe in him after the triumph of "A Bold Stroke."
It would be possible for him hereafter to do what he wanted to do and what he believed himself best fitted to do. It had always seemed to him that New York opened an infinity of vistas to the dramatist. He intended to seize some of this opulent material and to set on the stage the life of the great city as he had seen it during his five years of journalism. He knew that it did a man good to be a reporter for a little while, if he had the courage to cut himself loose before it was too late, before journalism had corroded its stigma. His reporting had taken him into strange places now and again; but it had also taken him into the homes of the plain people who make New York what it is. Society, as Society was described in the Sunday papers, he knew little about, and he cared less; he was not a snob, if he knew himself. But humanity was unfailingly interesting and unendingly instructive; and it was more interesting, and more instructive in the factories and in the tenements than it was in the immense mansions on Lenox Hill.
His work as a reporter had not only sharpened his eyes and broadened his sympathies; it had led him to see things that made him think. He had not inherited his New England conscience for nothing; and his college studies in sociology, that seemed so bare to him as an undergraduate, had taken on a new aspect since he had seen for himself the actual working of the inexorable laws of life. To sneer at the reformers who were endeavoring to make the world better had not been easy for him, even he was straining to achieve the false brilliance of the star-reporter; and now that he was free to say what he thought, he was going to seize the first opportunity to help along the good cause, to show those rich enough to sit in the good seats in the theatre that the boy perched up in the gallery in his shirt-sleeves was also a man and a brother.
The young playwright held that a play ought to be amusing, of course, but he held also that it might give the spectators something to think about after they got home. He was going to utilize his opportunity to show how many failures there are, and how many there must be, if the fittest is to survive, and how hard it is to fail, how bitter, how pitiful! With an effort he refrained from saying out loud enough to waken his wife the quotation that floated back to his memory:
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
His own success, now it had come, found him wondering at it. He was a modest young fellow at bottom, and he really did not know why he had attained the prize so many were striving to grasp. Probably it was due to the sturdiness of the stock he came from; and he was glad that his ancestors had lived cleanly and had left him a healthy body and a sober mind. His father and his mother had survived long enough to see him through college and started in newspaper work in New York. They had been old-fashioned in their ways, and he was aware that they might not have approved altogether of his choice of a profession, since it would have seemed very strange to them that a son of theirs should earn his living by writing plays. Yet he grieved that they had gone before he was able to repay any of the sacrifices they had made for him; it was the one blot on his good fortune that he could not share it with them in the future.
The future! Yes, the future was in his power at last. As he lay there in the darkness he said to himself that all his ambitions were now almost within his grasp. He was young and well educated; he had proved ability and true courage; he had friends; he had a wife whom he loved and who loved him; his first-born was a son, already almost able to walk. Never before had his prospects appeared so smiling, and never before had he foreseen how his hopes might be fulfilled. And yet, now as he thought of the future, for the first time his pulse did not beat faster. When it was plain to him that he might soon have the most of the things he cared for, he found himself asking whether, after all, he really did care for them so much. He was happy, but just then his happiness was passive. The future might be left to take care of itself all in good time. He was wide awake, yet he had almost the languor of slumber; it surprised him to find himself thus unenergetic and not wanting to be roused to battle, even if the enemy were in sight. He thought of the Nirvana that the oriental philosophers sought to gain as the final good; and he asked himself if perhaps the West had not still something to learn from the East.
Afar, in the silence of the night, he heard the faint clang of an ambulance-bell, and he began to think of the huge city now sunk in slumber all around him. He had nearly four million fellow-citizens; and in an hour or two or three they would awaken and go forth to labor. They would fill the day with struggle, vying one with another, each trying to make his footing secure; and now and again one of them would fall and be crushed to the ground. They would go to bed again at night, wearied out, and they would sleep again, and waken again, and begin the battle again. Most of them would take part in the combat all in vain, since only a few of them could hope to escape from the fight unvanquished. Most of them would fall by the wayside or be trampled under foot on the high road. Most of them would be beaten in the battle and would drop out of the fight, wounded unto death. And for the first time all this ceaseless turmoil and unending warfare seemed to him futile and purposeless.
What was victory but a chance to engage again in the combat? To win to-day was but to have a right to enter the fray again to-morrow. His triumph that evening in the theatre only opened the door for him; and if he was to hold his own he must make ready to wrestle again and again. Each time the effort would be harder than the last. And at the end, what? He would be richer in money, perhaps, but just then money seemed to have no absolute value. He would do good perhaps; but perhaps also he might do harm, for he knew himself not to be infallible. He would not be more contented, he feared, for he had discovered already that although success is less bitter than failure, it rarely brings complete satisfaction. If it were contentment that he really was seeking, why not be satisfied now with what he had won? Why not quit? Why not step out of the ranks and throw down his musket and get out of the way and leave the fighting to those who had a stomach for it?
As he asked himself these questions a gray shroud of melancholy was wrapped about him and all the brightness of youth was quenched in him. Probably this was the inevitable reaction after the strain of his long effort. But none the less it left him looking forward to the end of his life and he saw himself withered and racked with pain; he saw his young wife worn and ugly, perhaps dead—and the ghastly vision of the grave glimpsed before him; he saw his boy dead also, dead in youth; and he saw himself left alone and lonely in his old age, and still struggling, struggling, struggling in vain and forever.
Then he became more morbid even and he felt he was truly alone now, as every one of us must be always. He loved his wife and she loved him, and there was sympathy and understanding between them; but he doubted if he really knew her, for he felt sure she did not really know him. There were thoughts in his heart sometimes that he was glad she did not guess; and no doubt she had emotions and sentiments she did not reveal to him. After all, every human being must be a self-contained and repellent entity; and no two of them can ever feel alike or think alike. He and his wife came of different stocks, with a different training, with a different experience of life, with different ideals; and although they were united in love, they could not but be separate and distinct to all eternity. And as his wife was of another sex from his, so his boy was of another generation, certain to grow up with other tastes and other aspirations.
Wilson Carpenter's marriage had been happy and his boy was all he could wish,—and yet—and yet—Is this all that life can give a man? A little joy for the few who are fortunate, a little pleasure, and then—and then—For the first time he understood how it was that a happy man sometimes commits suicide. And he smiled as he thought that if he wished to choose death at the instant of life when the outsider would suppose his future to be brightest, now was the moment. He knew that there ought to be a revolver in the upper drawer of the table at the side of the bed. He turned gently; and then he lay back again, smiling bitterly at his own foolishness.
A heavy wagon rumbled along down the next street, and he heard also the whistle of a train on the river-front. These signs of returning day did not interest him at that moment when—so it seemed to him, although he was aware this was perfectly unreasonable—when he was at a crisis in his life.
Then there came to him another quatrain of Omar's, a quatrain he had often quoted with joy in its stern vigor and its lofty resolve:
So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff—you shall not shrink.
And youth came to his rescue again, and hope rose within him once more; and his interest in the eternal conflict of humanity sprang up as keen as ever.
The mood of craven surrender passed from him as abruptly as it had come, leaving him older, and with a vague impression as though he had had a strange and unnatural experience. He knew again that life is infinitely various, and that it is worth while for its own sake; and he wondered how it was that he had ever doubted it. Even if struggle is the rule of our existence in this world, the fight is its own reward; it brings its own guerdon; it gives a zest to life; and sometimes it even takes the sting from defeat. The ardor of the combat is bracing; and fate is a foeman worthy of every man's steel.
So long as a man does his best always, his pay is secure; and the ultimate success or failure matters little after all, for though he be the sport of circumstance, he is the master of himself. To be alone even—in youth or in age—is not the worst thing that can befall, if a man is not ashamed of the companionship of his own soul. If his spirit is unafraid and ready to brave the bludgeon of chance, then has man a stanch friend in himself, and he can boldly front whatever the future has in store for him. Only a thin-blooded weakling casts down his weapons for nothing and flees around the arena; the least that a man of even ordinary courage can do is to stand to his arms and to fight for his life to the end.
Wilson Carpenter had no idea how long it was that he had been lying awake motionless, staring at the ceiling. There were signs of dawn now, and he heard a cart rattle briskly up to the house next door.
Perhaps his wife heard this also, for she turned and put out one arm caressingly, smiling at him in her sleep. He took her hand in his, gently, and held it. Peace descended upon him and his brain ceased to torment itself with the future or with the present, or with the past.
He was conscious of no effort not to think, nor indeed of any unfulfilled desire on his part. It seemed to him that he was floating lazily on a summer sea, not becalmed but bound for no destination. And before he knew it, he was again asleep.
A Vain Seeking
THE recent announcements by several men of science that they believe that they have sure proofs of the immortality of the soul may not be so important as they seem to the gentlemen who make them, but at least they are interesting. The proofs that are relied upon are chiefly communications received through mediums, which are said to be so remarkable in the knowledge which they imply, that those who receive them are driven to conclude that they come from the spirits of persons who lately lived on earth. To the average observer spiritualism seems a labyrinth of frauds and mysteries, some deep, some shallow, wherein those who wander grope from delusion to delusion, and arrive nowhere. The cry is not so much that all spiritualism is false, as that whether false or not it is all unprofitable. That is the usual attitude the intelligent public has toward it, and it is based on observation which is wide if not profound. For though we hear of reputations damaged and lives apparently misdirected as a result of spiritualistic experiments, we rarely hear of persons whom spiritualism has helped. The quest seems trivial and disconcerting; not useful.
Few of us think that spiritualism will ever prove the immortality of the soul to the satisfaction of the scientific mind. Still when Professor Hyslop of Columbia University declares that that very thing is about to be done, we are quite ready to give him our attention. We have heard before of Mrs. Piper, the Cambridge medium, who has been for ten or twelve years in the charge of the Psychical Research Society. We know that she is looked upon as a remarkable medium, and that the closest watching for years past has failed to detect her in deceit. It is through her Professor Hyslop says that the proofs which he finds satisfactory have come. They have come then by a notable and reputable route, and they are indorsed by an observer whose indorsement is probably as good as can be given, for Professor Hyslop is not only a man of high character but of a ripe experience in matters of this sort. Psychology is his specialty. He knows the tricks of commercial spiritualism, and has often detected and exposed them. It is human to err, and it is entirely possible that his certainties may turn vague on exposure, and that his conclusions will not stand; but certainly his proofs deserve and will receive respectful inspection.
But, of course, the question is not whether or not we are going to believe the soul immortal, but merely whether we shall consider that these newly advertised proofs of it are worth anything. Most of us instinctively believe in a future life as it is, and will go on believing in it however new proofs may triumph or fail. We think there must be a future life. It is not improbable. What is grossly improbable is that there is none. The wonder is not that there should seem to be feeble glimmerings of intercourse between us who are still here and those who have gone before. The wonder is that it has proved to be so extraordinarily difficult to speak across a grave. Professor Hyslop has probability overwhelmingly with him in his general contention. If we are not agitated by his promises and impatient to read his disclosures, it is because proofs of the sort he deals with have heretofore been inconclusive and disappointing. For some reason the life of earth seems to have been isolated. We scarcely even dream of what life may have preceded it, and though we do dream much about the life that is to follow, we gather surprisingly little information about it. Still, all knowledge is hidden from man until he finds it out. It is not forbidden to him to discover the secrets of earth. Who shall say that it is unlawful to go farther, if he can, and pry into the mysteries that seem to lie outside of earth? Is it trespassing to seek for sure tokens of another life? Who shall say so? The most that conservative observers may say is that, so far, spiritualism has seemed trivial, misleading, and inexpedient. That demoralization, if not madness, has seemed to lie that way; and that those who have been content to go about their business here, taking the future life on trust, have seemed to fare better than those who have directed earthly energies into a search for proofs of unearthly facts.
It may be that science is about to buttress the edifice that faith has reared; but proofs or no proofs, most of us will continue to read "to be continued" at the bottom of the page of this life, and simply wait, each for himself, for the page to be turned. The story does not conclude: it simply breaks off. Of course there will be more of it.
During the recent war with Spain, a statement often made was that women were more in favor of it than men. If its truth or falsity cannot be determined, one may wonder at least how there could have been the slightest justification for it. Hardly any fact in history thrusts itself to the front more persistently and conspicuously than the evils that war brings upon women. Not even the men that bear the brunt of battle pay a greater tribute to Mars than they. To be sure, they do not to-day as in the past fall a prey to a savage soldiery. "Civilized warfare" has done much for them, as it has for men. But there are still moral, intellectual, and economic effects that ought to make them all members of peace societies and ardent advocates of international arbitration.
Several hundred thousand men cannot be withdrawn from the industrial pursuits of a country and assigned to the work of destruction, or to preparations for it, without a profound disturbance. The greatest harm thus wrought is not the enormous waste, positive and negative—the unproductive consumption, as the economists call it, and the check to the production of so many toilers; it is the diversion of women from the lighter duties that belong to them to the heavier ones that belong to men. Whenever or wherever war has levied on the workshop and the field, they have had to fill the vacant places. It is not the savage alone that becomes lost to the feeling of courtesy and humanity and turns his women into beasts of burden. The most enlightened nations commit the same barbarous offence. The drain upon the English working-classes during the Napoleonic wars forced even young children into the exhausting work of adults, leading to a physical degeneracy that was thought to threaten the primacy of the Anglo-Saxon. How many American tourists in Europe realize the terrible significance of the spectacle of women toiling in the fields or dragging through the streets a heavily laden cart? To most of them it seems rather picturesque and attractive. Yet it is the reverse of the medal that commemorates some great battle or some military genius.
In all militant countries, the soldier is the ideal man. His is the most honorable business. Whoever does not bear arms or is unable to endure the hardships of a campaign sinks to a lower level. But no class is thrust into a more intolerable position by this false test of social worth than women. A double stigma attaches to them—that of weakness and that of toilers. Only as mothers of soldiers do they hold a place in public esteem. Napoleon's idea of the noblest woman was she that bore the greatest number of children for his armies. The idea of the present Emperor of Germany is much the same. "Küche, Kirche, Kinder," is the alliterative description attributed to him of the narrow sphere in which he would have them move. Little wonder, therefore, that the condition of the women in the military countries of Europe differs but little from that ignoble ideal. Little wonder, too, that American women that transplant themselves by marriage to the countries where it prevails often find that they have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.
It is a commonplace of sociology that intellectual as well as political despotism is born of war. When a nation is engaged in a desperate struggle with an enemy, the central power must be invested, under penalty of defeat, with all the authority needful to wield effectively the resources of the state. Besides drafting soldiers and levying taxes, it crushes opposition and criticism. The result is that in countries like Russia and Germany, freedom of thought and action has still to be won. Especially is it so in all that relates, even remotely, to politics. But the rights denied to women include many not denied to men. Despite German universities, German science, German philosophy, and German culture in every direction, about which so much is said in glowing praise, the women of the Fatherland are still in the shackles forged by feudalism and despotism. The temples of learning are closed against them. The right of the toilers among them to become associated together to better their condition is repressed. Only as they move in the narrow circle drawn by the soldier can they escape the look of amazement that might be bestowed upon any freak of nature.
Militarism works equal havoc in the moral and spiritual domain. Recently Count Tolstoi described the deplorable condition of the inhabitants of the famous black-earth region. The startling feature of his powerful picture of these victims of military despotism was the apathy, melancholy, and fatalism that have seized them. Perhaps the Russian women do not have to bear more than the men; but since they belong to the more fragile sex, they are less able to bear it. As in France during the last years of the Grand Monarch, the share of the fruits of toil taken by the government to support armies of soldiers and officials has become so large that these unfortunate people are constantly on the verge of starvation. Their normal diet is a third less than sufficient to maintain health and strength. They are not simply weakened by the lack of food—they are paralyzed by the outlook that however much they may exert themselves, they cannot better their condition. "Why should we trouble ourselves?" they say. "We shall not get fat. If we can only live." Bending under this despairing thought, they take little interest in their task. They avail themselves of no discovery and no invention that will make it easier or more profitable. With their primitive plough and staggering horse, they move slowly and drearily over their fields, glad when night comes to deliver them from their thraldom and sad when morning breaks to renew it. The priests themselves testify to their indifference to the consolations of religion. Aside from their desire to get enough to keep them alive, they have no other but to forget their sufferings and disappointments. When surcease is not sought in the natural sleep that comes from heavy toil, it is sought in deep draughts of Russian spirits.
The degradation of character due to militarism takes many forms. There is the vicious ethics of war carried into social and industrial life. The deceit and fraud, more common in militant countries than in pacific, are evils that women must endure with men. There are the callousness and cruelty of war, from which they suffer far mere than men. There is, finally, the moral laxity of war. The full story of the sufferings of women from this cause cannot be written. The standing armies of Europe spread a poison that penetrates the remotest corner of the social fabric. No class escapes it. The gallantry of officers is notorious. Not less so are their mercenary marriages. Among the rank and file occur those illegitimate unions common to every garrison town. Among the toilers the same evil prevails. Militarism acts directly and indirectly to make them unwilling to assume the responsibilities of marriage. How serious this evil has become may be gathered from the report of Dr. Hirscherberg, of Berlin. In that city alone in 1897, 8,000 victims of these Arbeiter-Ehen, as they are called, who had been deserted by their companions, appealed for public relief. In 1895 the number reached 12,000. But Berlin is not the only capital thronging with these unfortunates. They crowd the dark corners of the cities of all the militant countries of Europe.
IT is not this year for the first time that the Regents of the University of New York State have prepared valuable photographs for distribution among the schools of the State. Now, however, there comes a "tentative list" of similar photographs, and this brings up in a forcible way the old question, whether there is any such thing possible as teaching art in the schools, and if so, how it may best be undertaken.
Some preliminary definitions seem to be required, however. The question as to the fitness of the photograph for this purpose is nearly always stated, as if the graphic and plastic arts were expressible in terms of the literary art. Unfortunately, this is not true at all. Indeed, the student of those arts of non-literary expression is apt to go rather too far in asserting the falsity of it.
When the student first perceives clearly that each of the fine arts differs very widely from all the others, he is very apt to assume too much importance for his own differentiation of those arts. He sees such striking differences that he ignores resemblances and similarities; or he is very ready to do so. It is evident to him that the piece of literature needs a subject of the nature of narrative, or description, or exhortation, or prayer, or jest, and that the dignity or meanness of the subject has much to do with the artistical result. Then it appears to him that music requires no subject of that character; that music goes to work in another way and addresses the spirit of man, not by relating or describing, not by appeals to morals or to memory. He hardly disputes Arnold's dictum that poetry is "a criticism of life;" referring only to the same author's explanation of criticism and to the further elucidation of the thought which is contained in the phrases "We turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us;" but he reflects that he would be a rash critic who should try to judge any piece of music in that way. This is clear to the mind of the student; but still he ponders over the graphic arts, over sculpture and painting, in all their forms, wondering why those arts seem to him half-way between literature and music, having less to do with preaching or portraiture than the one, and more, it seems, than the other. He finds that painters are more concerned with light and shade, and also more busy with composition and the leading lines and, again, more thoughtful of bringing whites prettily together, than they are of telling any story or influencing any person's conduct. And the sculptors are concerned with dignity of form, and care as little about whether they deal with piety or with passion as do the musical composers.
He reflects upon architecture, too, if his imagination and memory take him so far out of the present time that architecture seems to him a fine art at all; and he asks: What is the "subject" of that work of art which exists in the interior of Aya Sophia, and which one sees as he enters it by the Porta Basilica? It is, indeed, not surprising that some writers are always at work, comparing architecture and music. Suppose that one were to try to give in words that impressive effect of the inside of the great church. He would have either to describe the effect produced upon him, thus translating from one language into another, or he would have so to combine thoughts, expressed in words, as to give the same impression of awe-inspiring dignity, mingled with grace, with charm, with what one might call suavity. In order to produce this effect upon the reader of a prose passage or a piece of verse, the writer would have to take a subject other than that afforded by the mere description of a building. In other words, he could not translate; the language would break down under him; he could not give the same impression in the language of words which the artist has given in the language of space, of masses, of delicate tones, of light and shade. And he would recall the fact that the time was when Aya Sophia gave also an impression of soft blooming color, of which now only a slight indication remains.
It is not then essential that the work of art in architecture should have a subject in the sense in which the work of art in literature must have a subject. Unless our logic is too rapid for us, it would seem that the same rule must apply in the case of any comparison between two of the fine arts, and that it does not follow from the need of a subject in literature, as of narrative in one poem, of description in another, of patriotism, mingled with exhortation to courage, in a third, and so on, that a painting must needs have similar subject. And the first painting that the student meets as he enters a gallery of pictures will very likely be a landscape, and he will at once see that in this picture there is no narration, no morality, no piety, no appeal to the spirit—nothing but description, and a description admittedly so slight and cursory, so deliberately incomplete, that it may almost be dismissed as not of weight in the consideration of the picture's value. And yet a picture must represent something natural, something tangible; it cannot go straight to the emotions as music can, but has to act through memory and knowledge. And the student is left wondering, as we found him wondering a few lines above, whether painting be, indeed, half-way between music and literature in requiring less subject of the kind that is not merely artistic than the one art, and more than the other.
The question is rather What is the practice of the artist than What ought to be the practice of the artist. When, in some future epoch of thought, these questions about fine art shall be more generally understood by the writers and thinkers than they now are, it may become possible for some Ruskin of the future to preach an acceptable creed as to the proper mission of the artist; but it has not been possible for the Ruskins of the past or of the present to do so, simply because they have failed to understand the conditions under which the artist does his work. There is very little use in exhorting a man to better things until you are able to sympathize with what he is already engaged upon. Now, it requires but a limited observation of artists to ascertain that they are little occupied in narration, in description, in preaching, in devotion, or in jesting; but a very long continued and minute observance of their ways will leave the beholder in the same mind about these, and more and more convinced that artists are chiefly occupied in producing works of art and nothing else. And what are the works of art which they are trying to produce? In the matter of painting, which is our present subject, it is unfortunate that the word impression has been used in a special sense as describing the way of work of a certain special body of painters, because it more accurately described the way in which most painters work than any other single word will suggest it. The object of the landscape-painter is commonly to paint something upon his canvas which will convey to the spectator an impression which he, the landscape-painter, has already received from external nature. That impression may have come upon him during the watches of the night, as he thought about what he had seen by day; or it may have come upon him instantaneously as he faced a piece of hill-side with trees, or a single old tree. Suppose it even to be a sunset sky, with miles of ocean illuminated by the colored fire above; it is with no hope of adequately representing that sea and sky that he sits down to paint, but he proposes to paint an impression which that sea and sky have made upon his sensitive mind, and which he thinks will be interesting when painted. That, then, is the landscape-painter's subject. Not the whole truth, nor even any essential part of the truth, about a hay-stack or a mountain-range, but an interesting artistic impression made upon the artist's mind by the hay-stack or the mountain-range. Here, as in literature, there are nobler subjects and less noble subjects; but here much less than in literature is the nobility of the work of art affected by the nobility of the subject. In two pictures by Homer Martin, one represents the stretch of an Adirondack lake, with mountain and forest and a great wealth of varied cloud-form in the sky above; while the other represents only the ridge of a hill seen from a point so low that the ridge cuts the sky and nothing else is seen against the sky but the tops of a few trees which grow on the farther slope. It is impossible to say which of the two pictures is the nobler. The bigger and fuller picture may, indeed, be a greater work of art than the smaller one could ever be, and yet that is so very small a fact! What the artist has done is, first, to make a design out of the material afforded him by a broad landscape and the varied sky, and in the other instance to make a design out of a monotonous grassy slope, a few tree-tops, left unaccounted for except by the beholder's intelligence, and a very uniform gray firmament beyond. Who shall say which is the nobler design of the two?
Mr. George Moore has published an essay well worthy of consideration, in which he undertakes to show that the "failure of the nineteenth century" in painting is that it has assumed the necessity of taking a subject in the literary sense, in the moral sense, in the sense of those frequenters of picture-galleries who prefer the picture which is to them the most like a novel, or a pathetic poem in words. The assumption is, and it is certainly a safe one, that those persons who are attracted to these pictures in order that they may study archæology or feel a religious thrill, or be made curious and inclined to look up the facts in either story, or, finally, to feel the domestic pathos of the scene at the sick child's bedside—those students of art are on the wrong track, and will never discover what, in most cases, the painter is after when he paints a picture. Italian art and Dutch art had died before "the subject" had appeared, and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that this evil thing "really began to make itself felt, and like the potato blight, it soon became clear that it had come to stay." And the conclusion is that if the painter would now produce pictures worthy of himself he must reject the temptation to attract spectators by tickling their feelings or showing off his learning, and must paint pictures with painter's subjects only.
The argument continually carries us away into a seeming denial to the graphic arts of all subject of any sort other than the painter's subject pure and simple, that is to say, form expressed on a flat surface, light and shade, tints and gradations, and color. And yet we cannot be quite satisfied with this conclusion in view of the fact that the great painters of the past, the men whom Mr. Moore cites throughout his article named above as regardless of "the subject in the modern sense," still painted humanity, and that with interest. The thought expressed in the discussion given above, if it stands alone and by itself, is likely to mislead the student in this way, that he will suppose that the artist in color or light and shade is indifferent to human interest. But this is not exactly so, and an anecdote, nothing in itself, may illustrate this fact. It is only a few days ago that a certain wide reader, one who has much knowledge of men and of affairs, a traveller, too, and a student, but an artist always and primarily, an artist of forty years' constant practice, meditation, and severe training, alone with a friend, was talking to him of Mr. Kipling's recent poem about the torpedo-boats, and the destruction of the enemy's ships by night—and, as this seemed to interest neither party very much, our artist's friend turned to that other poem of Mr. Kipling's which begins with the couplet:
This 'appened in a battle to a batt'ry of the corps.
Which is first among the women an' amazin' first in war.
To the second poem the instantaneous response was made that that indeed was worth reading, that there was human interest in that. Now, this remark would have been of no special value to our present argument had it come from the lips of a literary man, or of a sociologist, a philanthropist, or what you please, except the man who did actually say it, namely, an artist with the brush and with colors. That this painter, living almost exclusively the life of a painter, should have felt the need of human interest in the one case and the presence of it, even in the rough soldiering and coarse-grained emotions of the other, is notable, in a way. But observe that the comment was made upon two poems and not upon two paintings. Had the same two subjects been painted, the case might have been very different, because the picture of the great fleet and the destroying torpedo-boats might have been immeasurably more powerful from every point of view from which a picture should be judged than the picture which would illustrate the incident on the battle-field.
Nearer the wheeling beams that spell
The council of our foes.——
What those two lines in the poem express, and express well for a piece of wording, the picture might easily make a principal incident and a principal part of its subject—its artistical subject. The blaze of the search-lights half illuminating the ocean and leaving the rest of it the darker by contrast, while the fatal torpedo-boat eludes the light and is dimly recognized by the path it has drawn of ripples and foam which themselves catch what little light is diffused through the damp atmosphere from the white beams which pierce the darkness; all this would be a picture, and this which is here described would be the sufficient subject of the picture. On the other hand, the battle-field scene might easily be the stupidest thing possible; red uniforms, with dust and horses of several colors, the gleam of light on the guns and accoutrements; all of this is artistic subject, indeed, but it is of the slightest and most commonplace kind, and unless treated with wonderful technical skill, would fail to command much respect. Unquestionably, the "human interest," if strongly felt by the painter in this case, might be effective to give personality to the driver, to the driver's brother, and even to the slaughtered horse, and a dramatic composition might possibly be made out of that which, in almost any painter's hands, would become a mere narrative picture of the kind most commonly in evidence and most to be deprecated.
And yet there is "human interest" to be found in pictures which are none the worse for having it. The discussion of these is simply the most difficult task that is set to one who would write about the art of painting. Let us take Paul Baudry's picture of Charlotte Corday. The scene is a very small room with a low dado for the protection of the wall, as befits a bath-room. On the left is the bath-tub with high straight sides, and filled with the sheet, the fond de bain, so commonly in use even now on the continent of Europe. Beside the bath-tub, a rough wooden box has been "up-ended" and carries, like a little table, an old-fashioned round ink-stand, a sheet of paper, and a quill pen. A short plank which has been lying across the foot of the bath-tub has tipped into the tub, carrying with it some sheets of paper. A chair which has been standing by the side of the bath-tub is overset. With the chair has fallen a garment which still partly covers it; and a plumed hat fills the extreme right-hand lower corner of the picture. A map of France, as large as the wall of the small chamber allows, hangs opposite to the spectator and to the eye of the person occupying the bath-tub. The well-known facts are that Marat, while following the prescription of his physicians and taking the long-continued bath prescribed, was occupied in writing, and that Charlotte Corday, on her persistent demand, was admitted that she might lodge with him some complaint, and that she then stabbed him to the heart. Of the dying or the dead Marat, nothing is seen but the foreshortened face, one shoulder, and the long bare arms; the handle of the deadly knife projects and is relieved against the livid flesh. The resolute woman stands against the window-jamb, and in full light, relieved by her own and the wall's shadow cast upon the map and the dado behind. Her figure is tall and massive; she is dressed in a gown with strongly marked stripes and wears a voluminously folded handkerchief around her shoulders and neck; her hair is loosened; her figure dominates the picture and seems to reduce everything else to an accessory. The face of the slayer is set, as if with the resolution she has just acted on, and with terror as to what is now to follow. The eyes are wide open and the action of the right hand, with clenched fingers, shows how, in relinquishing the haft of the knife, the muscles have convulsively closed again as if it were still retained by their clutch.
The thing to observe here is the presence of the human interest demanded, and that in a very concentrated form, indeed; but also the relatively larger value of the artistic language in which the story has been told, and of the smaller value, relatively, of the human interest itself. Let us admit that the picture is a nobler work of art because of this expression of human interest—the striking down of the tyrant, the momentary victory of the heroine, the approaching cruel punishment of that heroine—patience, resignation, resolution, patriotism, and just enough of questioning as to the glory and value of the great French Revolution. All this, which in a poem would be insisted on, dwelt upon, which would form the one "subject" of the work of art, here, in the picture, forms but a part of the subject, and in the opinion of every artist, the inferior, secondary part. The chief subject is, after all, form, line and mass, light and shade, and color. The result is better for having the human interest; the work of art is nobler than if the same light and shade and color were investing walls and draperies where no human interest existed; and the conclusion seems to be that what is valuable in the picture is primarily the two human beings as visible objects, and the strong contrast between them in their represented action, their pose, their coloring—that is, in the outward aspect of their life; and, secondly, the organized light and shade of which these human figures form the chief and ruling part. And the lesson to learn seems to be that the language of painting is so immensely more important, relatively, than the language of literature, that the rules of judgment, applied to the one art, fail lamentably when they are tried upon the other.
R. S.