The Seaboard Parish - vol.3
Home - George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - vol.3THE STUDIO.
I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had wanted to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now wanted to take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great oystershells, and sea-weed.
Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about my successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He was much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not finding himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could comfortably manage it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and as the weather was now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for departure.
I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the only break in the transit.
It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a little dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in the weather.
"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.
"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."
Going home. It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking before, always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky of hope. I lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog this evening in London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to go through on the way home. A. shadow like this would fall upon me; the world would grow dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was the last of the way home.
Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought of water to the thirsty soul, for it is the soul far more than the body that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home to the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep, and every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul had often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what that home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance; no mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion even with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be longing for a homelier home--one into which I might enter with a sense of infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know in the arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human soul with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with love, again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for us all. When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries of pictures--wells of water."
Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love, his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes--for it is but an outward change--will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the father, the mother, that make for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the parents of a family themselves, when they remember that their fathers and mothers have vanished.
At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.
"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers such a long way back in heaven?"
But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without a witness.
Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.
Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had slept for a good many nights before.
After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,
"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any objection to going with me?"
"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's studio in my life."
"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a cab, and it won't matter."
She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor," and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.
Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all I have got."
"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses," I ventured to say.
"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."
"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned. "If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."
"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it does."
"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for themselves."
"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.
"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."
"Why?" asked Wynnie.
"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice."
"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?"
"I very much want people to look at them."
"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.
"Because you do not need to be pained."
"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.
"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly. But whether we are wise enough to know when and where and how much, is the question."
"Of course I do not make the pain my object."
"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain predominates can be useful in the best way."
"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"
"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel. Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant. Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at least.
It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker's men to get the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.
"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear to paint such a dreadful picture?"
"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."
"All facts have not a right to be represented."
"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of sight?"
"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."
"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some discomposure.
"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my possession, I would--"
"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that they need the Saviour."
"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."
"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am certain you cannot do people good by showing them only the painful. Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be pained if it can do no good?"
"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.
"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."
"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the window."
He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and make the other look more terrible."
"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture, I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own meaning into it."
Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the floor. I turned away.
"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.
"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the same thing more weakly embodied."
I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.
"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."
"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may pain me."
"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you have at hand to show me."
"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."
He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke from me after I had regarded it for a time.
A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The head and countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had been down for some little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in the centre of the valley.
"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart; it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening; the sun's work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done too; his day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath. The picture would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done his work is bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a picture and a parable."
[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted by Arthur Hughes.]
I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.
"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.
"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it, I should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most public wall I have."
"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you confess--don't you, papa?--that you were too hard on Mr. Percivale at first?"
"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no sense of duty."
"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has some sense of duty," said Wynnie in an almost angry tone.
"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."
At the word publish Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her defence:
"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only. Look at the other."
"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever position it stood in, that had nothing--positively nothing--of the aurora in it."
Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few men who, whether from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not approve of the poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or hint of red which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to every picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In his hopeful moods, let a man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the words of gladness--or of grief, I care not which--to his fellows; in his hours of hopelessness, let him utter his thoughts only to his inarticulate violin, or in the evanescent sounds of any his other stringed instrument; let him commune with his own heart on his bed, and be still; let him speak to God face to face if he may--only he cannot do that and continue hopeless; but let him not sing aloud in such a mood into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot do them much good thereby. If it were a fact that there is no hope, it would not be a truth. No doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known; but who will dare be confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let the hopeless moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.
"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.
"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.--If you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow."
Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine with us in the evening.