CHAPTER XLI
SNOWDROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS
It being still considerably earlier than the period at which artistsand tourists are accustomed to assemble in Rome, the sculptor and Hildafound themselves comparatively alone there. The dense mass of nativeRoman life, in the midst of which they were, served to press them nearone another. It was as if they had been thrown together on a desertisland. Or they seemed to have wandered, by some strange chance, outof the common world, and encountered each other in a depopulated city,where there were streets of lonely palaces, and unreckonable treasuresof beautiful and admirable things, of which they two became the soleinheritors.
In such circumstances, Hilda's gentle reserve must have been strongerthan her kindly disposition permitted, if the friendship between Kenyonand herself had not grown as warm as a maiden's friendship can ever be,without absolutely and avowedly blooming into love. On the sculptor'sside, the amaranthine flower was already in full blow. But it is verybeautiful, though the lover's heart may grow chill at the perception, tosee how the snow will sometimes linger in a virgin's breast, even afterthe spring is well advanced. In such alpine soils, the summer will notbe anticipated; we seek vainly for passionate flowers, and blossomsof fervid hue and spicy fragrance, finding only snowdrops and sunlessviolets, when it is almost the full season for the crimson rose.
With so much tenderness as Hilda had in her nature, it was strange thatshe so reluctantly admitted the idea of love; especially as, inthe sculptor, she found both congeniality and variety of taste, andlikenesses and differences of character; these being as essential asthose to any poignancy of mutual emotion.
So Hilda, as far as Kenyon could discern, still did not love him, thoughshe admitted him within the quiet circle of her affections as a dearfriend and trusty counsellor. If we knew what is best for us, or couldbe content with what is reasonably good, the sculptor might well havebeen satisfied, for a season, with this calm intimacy, which so sweetlykept him a stranger in her heart, and a ceremonious guest; and yetallowed him the free enjoyment of all but its deeper recesses. Theflowers that grow outside of those minor sanctities have a wild, hastycharm, which it is well to prove; there may be sweeter ones within thesacred precinct, but none that will die while you are handling them, andbequeath you a delicious legacy, as these do, in the perception of theirevanescence and unreality.
And this may be the reason, after all, why Hilda, like so many othermaidens, lingered on the hither side of passion; her finer instinct andkeener sensibility made her enjoy those pale delights in a degree ofwhich men are incapable. She hesitated to grasp a richer happiness, aspossessing already such measure of it as her heart could hold, and of aquality most agreeable to her virgin tastes.
Certainly, they both were very happy. Kenyon's genius, unconsciouslywrought upon by Hilda's influence, took a more delicate character thanheretofore. He modelled, among other things, a beautiful little statueof maidenhood gathering a snowdrop. It was never put into marble,however, because the sculptor soon recognized it as one of those fragilecreations which are true only to the moment that produces them, andare wronged if we try to imprison their airy excellence in a permanentmaterial.
On her part, Hilda returned to her customary Occupations with a freshlove for them, and yet with a deeper look into the heart of things; suchas those necessarily acquire who have passed from picture galleries intodungeon gloom, and thence come back to the picture gallery again. It isquestionable whether she was ever so perfect a copyist thenceforth. Shecould not yield herself up to the painter so unreservedly as in timespast; her character had developed a sturdier quality, which made herless pliable to the influence of other minds. She saw into the pictureas profoundly as ever, and perhaps more so, but not with the devoutsympathy that had formerly given her entire possession of the oldmaster's idea. She had known such a reality, that it taught her todistinguish inevitably the large portion that is unreal, in every workof art. Instructed by sorrow, she felt that there is something beyondalmost all which pictorial genius has produced; and she never forgotthose sad wanderings from gallery to gallery, and from church to church,where she had vainly sought a type of the Virgin Mother, or the Saviour,or saint, or martyr, which a soul in extreme need might recognize as theadequate one.
How, indeed, should she have found such? How could holiness be revealedto the artist of an age when the greatest of them put genius andimagination in the place of spiritual insight, and when, from the popedownward, all Christendom was corrupt?
Meanwhile, months wore away, and Rome received back that large portionof its life-blood which runs in the veins of its foreign and temporarypopulation. English visitors established themselves in the hotels, andin all the sunny suites of apartments, in the streets convenient tothe Piazza di Spagna; the English tongue was heard familiarly along theCorso, and English children sported in the Pincian Gardens.
The native Romans, on the other hand, like the butterflies andgrasshoppers, resigned themselves to the short, sharp misery whichwinter brings to a people whose arrangements are made almost exclusivelywith a view to summer. Keeping no fire within-doors, except possibly aspark or two in the kitchen, they crept out of their cheerless housesinto the narrow, sunless, sepulchral streets, bringing their firesidesalong with them, in the shape of little earthen pots, vases, or pipkins,full of lighted charcoal and warm ashes, over which they held theirtingling finger-ends. Even in this half-torpid wretchedness, they stillseemed to dread a pestilence in the sunshine, and kept on the shady sideof the piazzas, as scrupulously as in summer. Through the open doorwaysw no need to shut them when the weather within was bleaker thanwithout--a glimpse into the interior of their dwellings showed theuncarpeted brick floors, as dismal as the pavement of a tomb.
They drew their old cloaks about them, nevertheless, and threw thecorners over their shoulders, with the dignity of attitude and actionthat have come down to these modern citizens, as their sole inheritancefrom the togated nation. Somehow or other, they managed to keep up theirpoor, frost-bitten hearts against the pitiless atmosphere with a quietand uncomplaining endurance that really seems the most respectable pointin the present Roman character. For in New England, or in Russia, orscarcely in a hut of the Esquimaux, there is no such discomfort to beborne as by Romans in wintry weather, when the orange-trees bear icyfruit in the gardens; and when the rims of all the fountains are shaggywith icicles, and the Fountain of Trevi skimmed almost across with aglassy surface; and when there is a slide in the piazza of St. Peter's,and a fringe of brown, frozen foam along the eastern shore of the Tiber,and sometimes a fall of great snowflakes into the dreary lanes andalleys of the miserable city. Cold blasts, that bring death with them,now blow upon the shivering invalids, who came hither in the hope ofbreathing balmy airs.
Wherever we pass our summers, may all our inclement months, fromNovember to April, henceforth be spent in some country that recognizeswinter as an integral portion of its year!
Now, too, there was especial discomfort in the stately picturegalleries, where nobody, indeed,--not the princely or priestly founders,nor any who have inherited their cheerless magnificence,--ever dreamedof such an impossibility as fireside warmth, since those great palaceswere built. Hilda, therefore, finding her fingers so much benumbed thatthe spiritual influence could not be transmitted to them, was persuadedto leave her easel before a picture, on one of these wintry days, andpay a visit to Kenyon's studio. But neither was the studio anythingbetter than a dismal den, with its marble shapes shivering around thewalls, cold as the snow images which the sculptor used to model in hisboyhood, and sadly behold them weep themselves away at the first thaw.
Kenyon's Roman artisans, all this while, had been at work on theCleopatra. The fierce Egyptian queen had now struggled almost out of theimprisoning stone; or, rather, the workmen had found her within the massof marble, imprisoned there by magic, but still fervid to the touchwith fiery life, the fossil woman of an age that produced statelier,stronger, and more passionate creatures than our o
wn. You already felther compressed heat, and were aware of a tiger-like character even inher repose. If Octavius should make his appearance, though the marblestill held her within its embrace, it was evident that she would tearherself forth in a twinkling, either to spring enraged at histhroat, or, sinking into his arms, to make one more proof of her richblandishments, or, falling lowly at his feet, to try the efficacy of awoman's tears.
"I am ashamed to tell you how much I admire this statue," said Hilda."No other sculptor could have done it."
"This is very sweet for me to hear," replied Kenyon; "and since yourreserve keeps you from saying more, I shall imagine you expressingeverything that an artist would wish to hear said about his work."
"You will not easily go beyond my genuine opinion," answered Hilda, witha smile.
"Ah, your kind word makes me very happy," said the sculptor, "and Ineed it, just now, on behalf of my Cleopatra. That inevitable period hascome,--for I have found it inevitable, in regard to all my works,--whenI look at what I fancied to be a statue, lacking only breath to make itlive, and find it a mere lump of senseless stone, into which I have notreally succeeded in moulding the spiritual part of my idea. I shouldlike, now,--only it would be such shameful treatment for a discrownedqueen, and my own offspring too,--I should like to hit poor Cleopatra abitter blow on her Egyptian nose with this mallet."
"That is a blow which all statues seem doomed to receive, sooner orlater, though seldom from the hand that sculptured them," said Hilda,laughing. "But you must not let yourself be too much disheartened bythe decay of your faith in what you produce. I have heard a poet expresssimilar distaste for his own most exquisite poem, and I am afraid thatthis final despair, and sense of short-coming, must always be the rewardand punishment of those who try to grapple with a great or beautifulidea. It only proves that you have been able to imagine things too highfor mortal faculties to execute. The idea leaves you an imperfect imageof itself, which you at first mistake for the ethereal reality, but soonfind that the latter has escaped out of your closest embrace."
"And the only consolation is," remarked Kenyon, "that the blurred andimperfect image may still make a very respectable appearance in the eyesof those who have not seen the original."
"More than that," rejoined Hilda; "for there is a class of spectatorswhose sympathy will help them to see the perfect through a mist ofimperfection. Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at picturesor statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet orartist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."
"You, Hilda, are yourself the only critic in whom I have much faith,"said Kenyon. "Had you condemned Cleopatra, nothing should have savedher."
"You invest me with such an awful responsibility," she replied, "that Ishall not dare to say a single word about your other works."
"At least," said the sculptor, "tell me whether you recognize thisbust?"
He pointed to a bust of Donatello. It was not the one which Kenyon hadbegun to model at Monte Beni, but a reminiscence of the Count's face,wrought under the influence of all the sculptor's knowledge of hishistory, and of his personal and hereditary character. It stood on awooden pedestal, not nearly finished, but with fine white dust and smallchips of marble scattered about it, and itself incrusted all round withthe white, shapeless substance of the block. In the midst appearedthe features, lacking sharpness, and very much resembling a fossilcountenance,--but we have already used this simile, in reference toCleopatra, with the accumulations of long-past ages clinging to it.
And yet, strange to say, the face had an expression, and a morerecognizable one than Kenyon had succeeded in putting into theclay model at Monte Beni. The reader is probably acquainted withThorwaldsen's three-fold analogy,--the clay model, the Life; the plastercast, the Death; and the sculptured marble, the Resurrection,--andit seemed to be made good by the spirit that was kindling up theseimperfect features, like a lambent flame.
"I was not quite sure, at first glance, that I knew the face," observedHilda; "the likeness surely is not a striking one. There is a gooddeal of external resemblance, still, to the features of the Faun ofPraxiteles, between whom and Donatello, you know, we once insisted thatthere was a perfect twin-brotherhood. But the expression is now so verydifferent!"
"What do you take it to be?" asked the sculptor.
"I hardly know how to define it," she answered. "But it has an effectas if I could see this countenance gradually brightening while I lookat it. It gives the impression of a growing intellectual power andmoral sense. Donatello's face used to evince little more than a genial,pleasurable sort of vivacity, and capability of enjoyment. But here, asoul is being breathed into him; it is the Faun, but advancing towards astate of higher development."
"Hilda, do you see all this?" exclaimed Kenyon, in considerablesurprise. "I may have had such an idea in my mind, but was quite unawarethat I had succeeded in conveying it into the marble."
"Forgive me," said Hilda, "but I question whether this striking effecthas been brought about by any skill or purpose on the sculptor's part.Is it not, perhaps, the chance result of the bust being just so farshaped out, in the marble, as the process of moral growth had advancedin the original? A few more strokes of the chisel might change the wholeexpression, and so spoil it for what it is now worth."
"I believe you are right," answered Kenyon, thoughtfully examining hiswork; "and, strangely enough, it was the very expression that I triedunsuccessfully to produce in the clay model. Well; not another chipshall be struck from the marble."
And, accordingly, Donatello's bust (like that rude, rough mass of thehead of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, at Florence) has ever since remainedin an unfinished state. Most spectators mistake it for an unsuccessfulattempt towards copying the features of the Faun of Praxiteles. Oneobserver in a thousand is conscious of something more, and lingers longover this mysterious face, departing from it reluctantly, and with manya glance thrown backward. What perplexes him is the riddle that he seespropounded there; the riddle of the soul's growth, taking its firstimpulse amid remorse and pain, and struggling through the incrustationsof the senses. It was the contemplation of this imperfect portrait ofDonatello that originally interested us in his history, and impelled usto elicit from Kenyon what he knew of his friend's adventures.
The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 2 Page 18
