‘Perfectly atrocious,’ broke in young Harris. ‘But as I am rather interested in heredity I am curious to know whether you acquired your taste for art and literature after or before your father’s (private or public) exhibition of his skill.’
‘Oh! domestic exhibition. I had always practised it to some extent. I wanted to do a sketch of Romeo and Juliet. I got my father to pose for Romeo, and the servant girl for Juliet. When it was finished my mother came across it and of course thought I had sketched my father kissing the servant girl as I had seen it. Well, I have told you the consequences. It was a practical demonstration of his abhorrence for realism — and preference for decoration. I have altered my style since.’
‘A sure proof,’ gravely asserted Harris, smothering laughter, ‘that the genius of the child is sprung from seed in the parent.’
Rudolph assented. ‘But my father also had mature qualifications which have descended to me. I have inherited from him a remarkable genius for taciturnity and an amazing facility for forgetting things. Just now I am exercising the latter to exorcise the former.’
The plates clattered with the laughter: under its cover Miss Lily said sweetly to Rudolph ‘Len says you also write.’
‘I am afraid I must plead guilty.’
He almost flushed, while young Harris said ‘You should see his verses, mother, he writes beautifully.’
‘Which do you prefer, writing or drawing?’ inquired Mrs. Harris.
‘Drawing when I must write, writing when I must draw,’ replied Rudolph becoming flippant.
‘Then you never enjoy either, as you must do what you don’t want to do: I condole with you!’ sympathised Harris with mock pathos on his face.
‘No need!’ retorted Rudolph. ‘I enjoy my disappointment and laugh at myself.’
From this glimpse of Rudolph we might surmise he was one of those superficial wits who are like bottles of soda-water just being opened, and never open their mouths but to fizzle like a Chinese cracker. This apparent superficiality was the natural consequence of a super-selfconsciousness, a desire not to frustrate expectation, and a lack of sustaining inspiration to keep up with desire. Constructively and inherently he was serious, because he was an enthusiast — and because he was an enthusiast the comic in his nature would run riot once begun. Wit is the flash of the knit brows of a refined intellect, capped by the smile of achievement. Superficiality is the easy snatch at wit when the knit brows refuse to work, and in him the comic always strove to snatch: sometimes happy, sometimes not.
Brought up as he had been: socially isolated, but living in spiritual communion with the great minds of all the ages, he had developed a morbid introspection in all that related to himself, and a persistent frivolousness in relations with others; a dark book for his bedside and a gaudy one for the street. The development of temperament had bred a disassociation from the general run of the people he came in contact with, that almost rendered him inarticulate when circumstances placed him amongst those of more affinity to himself, from disuse of the ordinary faculties and facilities of conversation. Naturally these circumstances would be such where his vanity suggested he had a reputation to sustain, and he would be perpetually on the strain to say something clever. He was totally lacking in the logic of what might be called common sense, but had a whimsical sort of logic of his own which was amusing till it became too clever, and then — patience was a crime.
Now although Rudolph was in the conversational mood, and felt that in the small talk of the table he was acquitting himself well, he was not wholly at his ease. Some of the pins of his evening dress had come out and he had a feeling of general discomfort, and that they were all looking at him and eyeing his suit particularly. He was beginning to curse inwardly the artificialities of convention, the forms that bound each man to be a mechanical demonstration of its monotony, extremely aggravated at not having made more sure of the arrangement of his temporary disguise. When they adjourned for coffee he was afraid to rise lest he would disappear and only an evening dress be seen walking about. He held his chair in front of him as he manoeuvred gingerly along.
‘And how do you find people take your poetry?’ Harris was saying to him. Rudolph sat down. ‘My poetry? well I find that the poet is to the mass so respected that they consider his creations too sacred even to look at. It would be profanation to open a book of poems. The beggar who carries a menagerie in his rags and the poet are the most respected characters we have. Veneration is carried so far that contact with them is unthought of.’
‘I have not been so fortunate as you in that respect,’ replied Harris. ‘Since I published my poems I have been practically suffocated by the pressure of contact. I am in the throes of a—’
He was interrupted by a crash behind. He turned; the butler had dropped the tray with the coffee and was glaring at Rudolph, and his mouth was open in astonishment.
‘What is it?’ exclaimed Rudolph amazed. ‘Surely there is no need to be terrified at so trivial an accident.’
‘There is,’ broke in Harris. ‘It would be an accident if he did not drop it. You are always dropping things, Henry, and—’
‘Er — er — I beg pardon, sir,’ stammered Henry ‘and turning to Rudolph, ‘I... I... I... you... I don’t know how to explain myself—’ and he pointed to the suit, ‘you are wearing my clothes,’ he gasped out.
‘Wha... what do you mean?’ almost whispered Rudolph, oppressed by vague misgivings.
They all stood by, dumbfounded at the strange scene.
The butler pointed to the spots.
‘You see these spots, five of ‘em, heart shaped. Those very spots were done by my little niece Madge two years ago. That was the very suit I wore when
A passage is missing here
the crestfallen Rudolph as by degrees he made himself visible. My extraordinary choice... my situation rendered... my point of observation was somewhat confusing. I did not notice the ladies.’ They were all laughing uproariously while Rudolph, having recovered his self-possession, explained the situation.
‘You see, Henry’, put in Harris, ‘Mr. Rudolph was under the impression that he was going to a fancy-dress ball; and he borrowed the suit on account of the spots from your lodger.’
Rudolph interposed. ‘I’m sorry, Henry, that your wife has suffered on my account, and I hope you feel more comfortable in your property than I do. And I can’t help thinking that if you had paid more attention to your property, and not allowed those spots to find their way on, there would have been no necessity for this disturbance. Besides, your latest additions in coffee stains, although they may be very creditable to your decorative capabilities, do not show a just sense of the relative values of time and place. It positively destroys the harmony. However, Henry, I forgive you.’
It was two hours past midnight when he got out into the street and he experienced a wonderful feeling of rejuvenation. The air was tingling and pure, and he walked under the limpid heaven as under a vague, vast tree. The golden lamplights hung in narrowing perspective and shimmered and scintillated on the iridescent bluish pavement. He walked along, the shadowy trees of the park appearing to creep beside him. Some outcasts of the night slept on benches, some looked wistfully: the miserable blasted fruit of this tree of heaven. Praises rang in his ear, fragments of wit, flashes of lyric, and night played vibrations on the chord of emotion. His mind was in a whirl. His past — what a horrible waste of God’s faculties — unused. If he had only been taken up and moulded; but life had been cruel to him. Now she showed signs of remorse and atonement. He was young, upon the threshold of life. Life would hold the doors for the golden stairs. Chamber after chamber of the house of delight would be thrown open to him and he would wander in the gardens of pleasure holding the hand of love. The fountains of song would make perpetual music and they would glide down the rivers of twilight in an ecstasy of repose. Glimpses of undulating robes, shimmer of pearl, gleam of dresses, creamy arms and gleaming shoulders — ah! life! was it not time?
April 1911
THE PRE-RAPHAELITE EXHIBITION
Notes made by Rosenberg for an article, c. 1912
Whether it is intentional on the Director’s part or unconscious, the present exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood running side by side with Alfred Stevens is a perfect antithesis and brings into projectivity the significance of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Here we have two great activities — both reactions against a school of sickly... that was existent, both of them an indignant protest against the art around, and both a revival, a return to the principle of a form of art apparently forgotten and obsolete, and yet both utterly different. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, temperamentally disgusted with the affectations, the low sentiment, the want of spiritual fervour and sincerity which was guiding Art, saw all this in the early Italians, and taking nature as material and guide, formed themselves on the principles of... They were fascinated by the almost childishness, the naiveness, the genius of their outlook on nature, and the esoteric feeling, the purity and earnestness, and strove to see these qualities in nature, and interpret nature on these principles.
Alfred Stevens, also disgusted... not from the Pre-Raphaelite point of view, took another standpoint. He felt the lack of largeness, dignity and style in art, and he turned to the greatest stylist of all, Michael Angelo, not as a guide and index whereby to see the dignity of nature but...
His ideal was the simplicity of a giant, the large languor of grandly-moulded limbs, and titanic sweep of contour in design. Purity of design to him meant harmonious and sinuous arrangement, to compel nature into a preconception of balance. Thus the soul’s hunger for perfection sought and found in two temperaments a realisation. The Pre-Raphaelites had the acquiescence of a body perhaps because the path was more natural; Alfred Stevens with his sense of monumental, academic design was alone.
What strong and sympathetic lovers of nature these were. How nature is enhanced and how lovingly and earnestly each exquisite blade of grass, each petal assumes a beauty, a fragrance, an importance, and is yet subsidiary to the entire effect. Often the sentiment is trivial and mean, as in many of Millais’ and Hughes’, but enough is compensated by the treatment, the evident delight in earnest endeavour.
In looking at Simeon Solomon’s work we are brought face to face with a psychological contradiction that is not uncommon in the history of art; the antagonism of the relation of art to conduct. In natures like Simeon Solomon’s, who know life only through their art, beyond their art their faculties for the controlling and management of their life are undeveloped; they have poured their souls out with creation and possess none for actuality.
In 1850 three young Academy students were furiously discussing art round the tea-table at the house of the youngest. One, who was evidently the dominating spirit, and to whom the others were somewhat deferential considering the tense state they were in, spoke in a rich loud voice of Keats and the glowing colour of Botticelli and the passion of soul in art, of the correct soullessness of Raphael— ‘O, if he hadn’t lived’; then art had continued uninterrupted — of the crying need of a return to the men before Raphael.
Before they parted for the night they had planned to work a subject on the principles of earnestness and fundamental literalness and exactness to subject and nature. The subject chosen was from Keats, Lorenzo and Isabel. Millais’ drawing is here. It is incredible for his age, and disregarding age it is amazing. For psychological accuracy, consistency and continuity of thought, for variety of minute accessories and yet subordinated to the main interest, and for charm of executive quality, it is remarkable.
The cream of the collection is Rossetti’s pen-and-ink drawings for Tennyson, etc. The wealth of design, the poetic exuberance of the idea, and the extraordinary dramatic and fervid execution of them, make them unique in art.
The most astonishing for technical achievement is Millais’
‘Mariana at the Moated Grange’. It is Dutch in idea, in minuteness of detail and exquisiteness of finish, but it possesses a richness, a daringness, an arrangement of colour that Dutch art never attained to.
Ingenuity of imagination is the prime requisite in their design. They recognised the limitation of the grand style of design and widened the possibilities of natural design. They imagined nature, they designed nature. They were so accurate in design that the design is not felt; and yet though it defies criticism from the naturalistic side we are projected into an absolutely new atmosphere that is real in its unreality.
When I say the naturalistic I mean it in its absolute sense, in the sense that Velasquez painted and Rembrandt, in the sense that the post-impressionists paint. Each of these saw nature in their own way and interpreted it so. All are as truthful to nature and all as unlike each other, in so much as the artist was bent more or less on a particular effect in nature which appealed more to his temperament. Velasquez aimed for realising light as affected by atmosphere. Rembrandt saw nature as one effective chiaroscuro which brought into relief the character and psychology. The post-impressionists paint nature according to the sensation a perception produced upon them, and the Pre-Raphaelites combine all these qualities.
ROMANCE AT THE BAILLIE GALLERIES
The Works of J. H. Amschewitz and the late H. Ospovat
If one were to walk into the Baillie Galleries, Bruton Street, without knowing the names of the artists, the children of whose brain we are dealing with here, one would not suspect for a moment the Jewish parentage of this remarkable progeny.
Whether this is something to be deplored or not is beside the question here, as it is the inevitable result of ages of assimilation and its blame (if a defect) is to be placed on the causes that made us a race, and unmade us as a nation. Yet though these causes have deprived us of any exclusive atmosphere such as our literature possesses, they have given that which nothing else could have given. The travail and sorrow of centuries have given life a more poignant and intense interpretation, while the strength of the desire of ages has fashioned an ideal which colours all our expression of existence. We find this exemplified in the work before us. Where nature has inspired, the hold on life is strong, but there is an added vitality, the life of ideas, and, as all great and sincerely imaginative work must be, the result is more real. Life that is felt and expressed from the immediate fires of conception must naturally be more convincing than what is merely observed and described from without. First is the portrait of a young poet, gazing as if out of ‘dream dimmed’ eyes, holding the pen in his hand, apparently waiting for an inspiration. This he doubtless does as a protest against the legendary unpractical habits of poets. With such prudence and foresight, so long-headed a precaution as the pen implies, no poet surely could incur the stigma of impracticability. It is well studied, except for the mannered and unpleasant way the forms of the shadows repeat themselves, which makes it appear as though style were aimed at rather than exact interpretation. The portrait of Michael Sherbrooke is a most vivid and vivacious rendering of this frank good-humoured modern Roscius. Those who know the original know what a living likeness it is of a mood of a man whose moods are so many. The ease and fluency of the handling, so consistent with the buoyancy of the expression, is characteristic of the spontaneous unlaboured technique, which Mr. Amschewitz knows as well how not to abuse. Then there is the portrait of the painter’s mother, a sympathetic and most gracious piece of painting. The scheme is one of gold and black, rich, yet reserved, beautiful in delicate treatment of the lace diapery, besides being a most human piece of subtle portraiture. The series of illustrations to ‘Everyman’ show, perhaps more than any isolated treasure, the remarkable fertility of Mr. Amschewitz’s versatile and extraord
inary powers. Here he combines a vehement yet orderly dramatic intuition with (to the artist) the larger issues of decorative fitness and harmony. One perhaps might have preferred the text to be illustrated in a purer and more fervid religious spirit. The passion of sense is here more than the passion of soul. But that is merely personal preference. The wealth and opulent colour of some, the restrained delicacy of others, notably No. 10 for this, the breadth, spaciousness, and dignity in the conception of one or two, No. 13 particularly, make the series an extraordinary achievement. Then we come to the landscapes. Some, unaffected fantasies, where nature is used simply as a basis for creation, others, faithful transcripts of recognisable localities, but seen through a richly glowing temperament. They all have the authority and air of experience, autobiographical records of moods, lovely and glad, tinged with the merest grace of melancholy — moods sunny and joyous, brooding and pensive, retiring and shy, or sombre with presentiment of storm and tragedy. There is no space except just to mention as another phase of this artist’s talent the powerful black and white study ‘The hungry’ for its intensity, the yearning tragedy that is its motive.
The works of H. Ospovat shown here are entirely comprised of pen-and-ink illustrations to Matthew Arnold, Browning, and some Shakespeare sonnets. They are very forcible and beautiful interpretations, and show a keenness of insight, and sympathetic appreciation of the poets, wonderful in their way. His influences are apparent, and it seems to me that though he possessed in a great measure the poetic feeling and refinement of the Pre-Raphaelite school of illustrators, he lacked the tenderness and charm of their execution, their patient and honest endeavour for exactness. Sometimes his work recalls Fred Walker, sometimes Rossetti, but neither at their best. When he is personal, as in the ‘Last ride together’, ‘The wandering Jew’, he shows a strength sweetened by refinement that is very rare.
Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg Page 29
