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_ About this period, Miriam seems to have been goaded by a weary
restlessness that drove her abroad on any errand or none. She went one
morning to visit Kenyon in his studio, whither he had invited her to see a
new statue, on which he had staked many hopes, and which was now almost
completed in the clay. Next to Hilda, the person for whom Miriam felt
most affection and confidence was Kenyon; and in all the difficulties that
beset her life, it was her impulse to draw near Hilda for feminine
sympathy, and the sculptor for brotherly counsel.
Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the edge of the voiceless
gulf between herself and them. Standing on the utmost verge of that dark
chasm, she might stretch out her hand, and never clasp a hand of theirs;
she might strive to call out, "Help, friends! help!" but, as with
dreamers when they shout, her voice would perish inaudibly in the
remoteness that seemed such a little way. This perception of an infinite,
shivering solitude, amid which we cannot come close enough to human beings
to be warmed by them, and where they turn to cold, chilly shapes of mist,
is one of the most forlorn results of any accident, misfortune, crime, or
peculiarity of character, that puts an individual ajar with the world.
Very often, as in Miriam's case, there is an insatiable instinct that
demands friendship, love, and intimate communion, but is forced to pine in
empty forms; a hunger of the heart, which finds only shadows to feed upon.
Kenyon's studio was in a cross-street, or, rather, an ugly and dirty
little lane, between the Corso and the Via della Ripetta; and though chill,
narrow, gloomy, and bordered with tall and shabby structures, the lane
was not a whit more disagreeable than nine tenths of the Roman streets.
Over the door of one of the houses was a marble tablet, bearing an
inscription, to the purport that the sculpture-rooms within had formerly
been occupied by the illustrious artist Canova. In these precincts (which
Canova's genius was not quite of a character to render sacred, though it
certainly made them interesting) the young American sculptor had now
established himself.
The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough and dreary-looking place,
with a good deal the aspect, indeed, of a stone-mason's workshop. Bare
floors of brick or plank, and plastered walls,--an old chair or two, or
perhaps only a block of marble (containing, however, the possibility of
ideal grace within it) to sit down upon; some hastily scrawled sketches of
nude figures on the whitewash of the wall. These last are probably the
sculptor's earliest glimpses of ideas that may hereafter be solidified
into imperishable stone, or perhaps may remain as impalpable as a dream.
Next there are a few very roughly modelled little figures in clay or
plaster, exhibiting the second stage of the idea as it advances towards a
marble immortality; and then is seen the exquisitely designed shape of
clay, more interesting than even the final marble, as being the intimate
production of the sculptor himself, moulded throughout with his loving
hands, and nearest to his imagination and heart. In the plaster-cast,
from this clay model, the beauty of the statue strangely disappears, to
shine forth again with pure white radiance, in the precious marble of
Carrara. Works in all these stages of advancement, and some with the
final touch upon them, might be found in Kenyon's studio.
Here might be witnessed the process of actually chiselling the marble,
with which (as it is not quite satisfactory to think) a sculptor in these
days has very little to do. In Italy, there is a class of men whose
merely mechanical skill is perhaps more exquisite than was possessed by
the ancient artificers, who wrought out the designs of Praxiteles; or,
very possibly, by Praxiteles himself. Whatever of illusive representation
can be effected in marble, they are capable of achieving, if the object be
before their eyes. The sculptor has but to present these men with a
plaster-cast of his design, and a sufficient block of marble, and tell
them that the figure is imbedded in the stone, and must be freed from its
encumbering superfluities; and, in due time, without the necessity of his
touching the work with his own finger, he will see before him the statue
that is to make him renowned. His creative power has wrought it with a
word.
In no other art, surely, does genius find such effective instruments, and
so happily relieve itself of the drudgery, of actual performance; doing
wonderfully nice things by the hands of other people, when it may be
suspected they could not always be done by the sculptor's own. And how
much of the admiration which our artists get for their buttons and
buttonholes, their shoe-ties, their neckcloths,--and these, at our present
epoch of taste, make a large share of the renown,--would be abated, if we
were generally aware that the sculptor can claim no credit for such pretty
performances, as immortalized in marble! They are not his work, but that
of some nameless machine in human shape.
Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to look at a half-finished
bust, the features of which seemed to be struggling out of the stone; and,
as it were, scattering and dissolving its hard substance by the glow of
feeling and intelligence. As the skilful workman gave stroke after stroke
of the chisel with apparent carelessness, but sure effect, it was
impossible not to think that the outer marble was merely an extraneous
environment; the human countenance within its embrace must have existed
there since the limestone ledges of Carrara were first made. Another
bust was nearly completed, though still one of Kenyon's most trustworthy
assistants was at work, giving delicate touches, shaving off an impalpable
something, and leaving little heaps of marble dust to attest it.
"As these busts in the block of marble," thought Miriam, "so does our
individual fate exist in the limestone of time. We fancy that we carve it
out; but its ultimate shape is prior to all our action."
Kenyon was in the inner room, but, hearing a step in the antechamber, he
threw a veil over what he was at work upon, and came out to receive his
visitor. He was dressed in a gray blouse, with a little cap on the top of
his head; a costume which became him better than tho formal garments which
he wore whenever he passed out of his own domains. The sculptor had a
face which, when time had done a little more for it, would offer a worthy
subject for as good an artist as himself: features finely cut, as if
already marble; an ideal forehead, deeply set eyes, and a mouth much
hidden in a lightbrown beard, but apparently sensitive and delicate.
"I will not offer you my hand," said he; "it is grimy with Cleopatra's
clay."
"No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human," answered Miriam. "I
have come to try whether there is any calm and coolness among your marbles.
My own art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of agitation, for me
to work at it whole days together, without intervals of repose. So, what
have you to show me?"
"Pray look at everything here," said Kenyon. "I love to have painters see
my work. Their judgment is unprejudiced, and more valuable than that of
the world generally, from the light which their own art throws on mine.
More valuable, too, than that of my brother sculptors, who never judge me
fairly,--nor I them, perhaps."
To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens in marble or plaster,
of which there were several in the room, comprising originals or casts of
most of the designs that Kenyon had thus far produced. He was still too
young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things. What he had to
show were chiefly the attempts and experiments, in various directions, of
a beginner in art, acting as a stern tutor to himself, and profiting more
by his failures than by any successes of which he was yet capable. Some
of them, however, had great merit; and in the pure, fine glow of the new
marble, it may be, they dazzled the judgment into awarding them higher
praise than they deserved. Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth,
a pearlfisher; who had got entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the
sea, and lay dead among the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the
seaweeds, all of like value to him now.
"The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,"
remarked she. "But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we
cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well.
I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson;
and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient repose."
In another style, there was a grand, calm head of Milton, not copied from
any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any of them, because all
known representations of the poet had been profoundly studied, and solved
in the artist's mind. The bust over the tomb in Grey Friars Church, the
original miniatures and pictures, wherever to be found, had mingled each
its special truth in this one work; wherein, likewise, by long perusal and
deep love of the Paradise Lost, the Comus, the Lycidas, and L'Allegro, the
sculptor had succeeded, even better than he knew, in spiritualizing his
marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great thing to have
achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and dust of Milton
were like those of any other dead man.
There were also several portrait-busts, comprising those of two or three
of the illustrious men of our own country, whom Kenyon, before he left
America, had asked permission to model. He had done so, because he
sincerely believed that, whether he wrought the busts in marble or bronze,
the one would corrode and the other crumble in the long lapse of time,
beneath these great men's immortality. Possibly, however, the young
artist may have underestimated the durability of his material. Other
faces there were, too, of men who (if the brevity of their remembrance,
after death, can be augured from their little value in life) should have
been represented in snow rather than marble. Posterity will be puzzled
what to do with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions of a
vain selfestimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build into
stone walls, or burn into quicklime, as well as if the marble had never
been blocked into the guise of human heads.
But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endurance, this almost
indestructibility, of a marble bust! Whether in our own case, or that of
other men, it bids us sadly measure the little, little time during which
our lineaments are likely to be of interest to any human being. It is
especially singular that Americans should care about perpetuating
themselves in this mode. The brief duration of our families, as a
hereditary household, renders it next to a certainty that the
great-grandchildren will not know their father's grandfather, and that
half a century hence at furthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump
its knock-down blow against his blockhead, sold at so much for the pound
of stone! And it ought to make us shiver, the idea of leaving our
features to be a dusty-white ghost among strangers of another generation,
who will take our nose between their thumb and fingers (as we have seen
men do by Caesar's), and infallibly break it off if they can do so without
detection!
"Yes," said Miriam, who had been revolving some such thoughts as the above,
"it is a good state of mind for mortal man, when he is content to leave
no more definite memorial than the grass, which will sprout kindly and
speedily over his grave, if we do not make the spot barren with marble.
Methinks, too, it will be a fresher and better world, when it flings off
this great burden of stony memories, which the ages have deemed it a piety
to heap upon its back."
"What you say," remarked Kenyon, "goes against my whole art. Sculpture,
and the delight which men naturally take in it, appear to me a proof that
it is good to work with all time before our view."
"Well, well," answered Miriam, "I must not quarrel with you for flinging
your heavy stones at poor Posterity; and, to say the truth, I think you
are as likely to hit the mark as anybody. These busts, now, much as I
seem to scorn them, make me feel as if you were a magician.. You turn
feverish men into cool, quiet marble. What a blessed change for them!
Would you could do as much for me!"
"O, gladly!" cried Kenyon, who had long wished to model that beautiful
and most expressive face. "When will you begin to sit?"
"Poh! that was not what I meant," said Miriam. "Come, show me something
else."
"Do you recognize this?" asked the sculptor.
He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory coffer, yellow with
age; it was richly carved with antique figures and foliage; and had Kenyon
thought fit to say that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious box, the
skill and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means have discredited
his word, nor the old artist's fame. At least, it was evidently a
production of Benvenuto's school and century, and might once have been the
jewel-case of some grand lady at the court of the De' Medici.
Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was disclosed, but only,
lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully shaped hand, most delicately
sculptured in marble. Such loving care and nicest art had been lavished
here, that the palm really seemed to have a tenderness in its very
substance. Touching those lovely fingers,--had the jealous sculptor
allowed you to touch,--you could hardly believe that a virgin warmth would
not steal from them into your heart.
"Ah, this is very beautiful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a genial smile. "It
is as good in its way as Loulie's hand with its baby-dimples, which Powers
showed me at Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he had wrought
it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as Harriet Hosmer's clasped
hands of Browning and his wife, symbolizing the individuality and heroic
union of two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not question that it is better
than either of those, because you must have wrought it passionately, in
spite of its maiden palm and dainty fingertips."
"Then you do recognize it?" asked Kenyon.
"There is but one right hand on earth that could have supplied the model,"
answered Miriam; "so small and slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet
with a character of delicate energy. I have watched it a hundred times at
its work; but I did not dream that you had won Hilda so far! How have you
persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her hand in marble?"
"Never! She never knew it!" hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate
his mistress's maidenly reserve. "I stole it from her. The hand is a
reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for
an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler
indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life."
"May you win the original one day!" said Miriam kindly.
"I have little ground to hope it," answered the sculptor despondingly;
"Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she
appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down a
white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange, with all her
delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly
sufficient to herself. No; I shall never win her. She is abundantly
capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it, but she has no need of
love."
"I partly agree with you," said Miriam. "It is a mistaken idea, which men
generally entertain, that nature has made women especially prone to throw
their whole being into what is technically called love. We have, to say
the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we have nothing
else to do with our hearts. When women have other objects in life, they
are not apt to fall in love. I can think of many women distinguished in
art, literature, and science,--and multitudes whose hearts and minds find
good employment in less ostentatious ways,--who lead high, lonely lives,
and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned."
"And Hilda will be one of these!" said Kenyon sadly; "the thought makes
me shiver for myself, and and for her, too."
"Well," said Miriam, smiling, "perhaps she may sprain the delicate wrist
which you have sculptured to such perfection. In that case you may hope.
These old masters to whom she has vowed herself, and whom her slender hand
and woman's heart serve so faithfully, are your only rivals."
The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of Hilda's marble hand
into the ivory coffer, and thought how slight was the possibility that he
should ever feel responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original.
He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had made: it had assumed
its share of Hilda's remote and shy divinity.
"And now," said Miriam, "show me the new statue which you asked me hither
to see." _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XIV - CLEOPATRA
Read previous: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XII - A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN
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