CHAPTER XII
THE National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, without taking Ruskin’s word for it, is the most important collection of paintings in Europe. The most expensive purchases are the “Blenheim Raphael,” “Blenheim Van Dyke,” the “Pisani,” “Veronese,” the two “Correggios,” and “Lord Radnor’s” three. They are splendid specimens of the greatest of the English old masters and so many of their successors; whilst the large collection of Turner’s is unrivalled and incomparable. In order to insure the high level of the National Gallery in point of quality, an act was passed in 1883 authorizing the sale of unsuitable works, thinning out the gallery in favor of provincial collections. The result of this wise weeding is that, though there are many galleries in which there are more pictures to be seen, there are none in which they are more really worth seeing. There is another way in which pictures interest the spectator in after ages: a painter inevitably shows us something of himself in his work. He shows us something of his age—of its costumes, its manner of life, and, if a portrait painter, the characters and physiognomy of its men and women. It is necessary to study them in historic order, as we find painting has in each school been a progressive one. I first studied the early Flemish pictures, which are a striking contrast to the Italian pictures. There is no feeling or beauty in them. What is it, then, that gives these pictures their worth, and causes their painters to be included among the greatest masters of the world? Look at the most famous Van Dyke; the longer you look the more you will see its absolute fidelity to nature in dress and detail, especially in portraiture. Here the men and women of the time are set down precisely as they lived. They were the first to discover the mixing of oil with colors, and made oil painting much more popular. Their pictures have an imperishable firmness, with exquisite delicacy.
The French painters were poorly represented here; especially did it seem so after viewing their wonderful exhibit at the Exposition. The Paris school is the chief centre of art teaching in the world; and is marked for its excessive realism and gross sensuality. This reminds me of one of their pictures exhibited at the Exposition—so shockingly realistic it should be barred from any exhibit; no place else would it be allowed to hang. Of course, the French are ideal painters as well; Claude Poussin and Greuze are striking contrasts.
The chief glory of the English school of painting consists in its treatment of landscape. The first man who struck out a more distinctly English line in landscape painting was Gainsborough; then followed Constable, whom every student of Adams in “Muncie Art School” is familiar with. How thoroughly I enjoyed seeing the originals, Constable’s “Valley Farm,” etc. Here they hang in all their originality. But greater than all his predecessors, and uniting in the course of his career the tastes and strength of them all, is Turner. Great difference of opinion is held upon the question wherein his greatness consists. Was it for truths that he recorded, or visions that he invented? It did seem as you looked around at his vast collection—the contrast between the dark and heavy pictures on one wall and the bright and aerial on the other—that “The gleam, the light that never was on sea or land—the consecration and the poet’s dream,” was there shown. His great aim or artistic ambition was to give a complete knowledge, and reach a complete representation of light in all its phases; and his greatest pictures are where he completely attains his aim. He was the first painter who first represented the full beauty of sun-color. He ended by painting such visions of the sun in his glory as in the “Téméraire.” Turner said “the sun was God.” How happy I was to see the real, original “Téméraire,” that I had tried so hard to reproduce with the assistance of J. O. Adams and Wm. Forsythe. As for Turner’s faithful rendering of the forms of natural objects, he was first, says Ruskin, “to draw a mountain or a stone, no other man having learned their organization and possessed himself of their spirit. The first to represent the surface of calm, or the force of agitated, water.” Turner did this with scientific accuracy, not because he was himself learned in science, but because of his genius for seeing into the heart of things and seizing their essential form and character, and that is what is meant by saying “Turner’s landscape is ideal,” and that is why he is the great impressionist he is. His pictures are of scenes not as any one might gather, but as representations of how he himself saw them. He at all times painted his impressions. The faculty of receiving such impressions strongly, and reproducing them vividly, is precisely what distinguishes the poet, whether in language or painting. He was great because the impressions which natural scenery made upon him were noble impressions. He not only saw nature in its truth and beauty, but he saw it in relation and subjection to the human soul. He paints the loveliness of nature, but he ever connects that loveliness with the soul and labor of men. Looking round this great room you cannot help note the spirit of the pictures. I tore myself away as the last call was heard to vacate the room. My next was to try to appreciate Rubens, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, of which there is a large collection, and then Raphael. Just opposite the entrance in Room VI. your eye rests immediately upon his great canvas, the “Ansidei Madonna.” If you had never heard of Raphael, the crowd that at all times surrounds it would attract your attention. His “Garvagh Madonna” is depicted as merely a human mother; so is the child a purely human child, the divinity being only indicated by a halo;—the two figures with a little St. John, the children playing with a pink. As late as 1171 the divinity of the Virgin was insisted upon. I lingered by the canvas of the Holy Family, painted by Michael Angelo. But what is the use of trying to study that wonderful exhibition as a whole, with its Leonardo da Vincis, its Murillos, its Velasquezs, and so on. I lingered in front of one of Rubens’s—a landscape painted in Italy, but a pure Flemish scene, just because Ruskin has said: “The Dutch painters are always contented with their flat fields and pollards,” agreeing with the Lincolnshire farmer in Kingsley’s “Alton Locke”: “None o’ this here darned ups and downs o’ hills, to shake a body’s victuals out of his inwards, but all so vlat as a barn’s vloor for forty miles on end—this is the country to live in!”
The Portrait of “Gevartius,” by Van Dyke, is considered by Van Dyke himself as his masterpiece, and before he gained his great reputation he carried it about with him from court to court to show what he could do as a portrait painter. I only wish I could reproduce it here, so as to show the liquid, living lustre of the eye that Van Dyke puts before you in this great portrait. Then there’s Rembrandt’s many pictures. He is the great master of the school who strive not at representing the color of the objects, but the contrasts of light and shade upon them. These effects he attains with magnificent skill and subtlety. The strong and solitary light, with its impenetrable obscurity around, is the characteristic feature of many of his best works, just such an effect as would be produced by the one ray of light admitted into the lofty chamber of a mill, from the small window, its ventilator. “The Woman Taken in Adultery” is a “tour de force” in the artist’s specialty of contrasts of light and shade; there is a succession of these contrasts which gradually renders the subject intelligible. The eye falls at once on the woman who is dressed in white, passes then to the figure of Christ, which next to her is the most strongly lighted, and so on to Peter, to the Pharisees, to the soldiers, till at length it perceives in the mysterious gloom of the temple, the high altar, with the worshippers on the steps.
But I am naturally drawn back to Turner’s wonderful room, possibly because it seems like associating again with dear old friends, for that which greets my vision as I enter is Turner’s “Crossing the Brook,” so much copied in the art school, although the original is as large again as the copy I attempted of J. O. Adams. It seems twice as valuable to me since I have had the privilege of noting the beautiful expression of tender diffused daylight over this wide and varied landscape. I think it was Charles Lamb who said, “My household gods are held down by stakes deeply driven, and they cannot be removed without drawing blood.” After all, one’s associates and co-workers go to make up an important part of one’s life.
I could not leave without once more turning back to my old “Téméraire.” She, so I have read, was a ninety-eight-gun ship, was the second ship in Nelson’s line at the battle of Trafalgar, 1805, and, having little provisions or water on board, was what sailors call “flying light.” So as to be able to keep pace with the fast sailing “Victory,” when the latter drew upon herself all the enemy’s fire, the “Téméraire” tried to pass her to take it in her stead, but Nelson himself hailed to her to keep astern. She lay with a French 74-gun ship on each side of her,—both her prizes,—one lashed to her mainmast and one to her anchor. She was sold out of the service at Sheerness in 1838, and towed to Rotherhithe to be broken up. The flag which braved the battle and the breeze no longer owns her. The picture was first exhibited at the Academy in 1839, with the above lines cited in the catalogue. Ruskin says this about it: “Of all the pictures, not visibly involving human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic ever painted; the utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to the grave. This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory, surely if ever anything without a soul deserved honor or affection we owe them here. Surely some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts for her—some quiet space amid the lapse of English waters. Nay, not so; we have stern keepers to trust her glory to, the fire and the worm. Never more shall sunlight lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps when the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask idly, ‘Why the moss grows so green on the rugged wood?’ And even the sailor’s child may not answer, nor know, that the night dew lies deep in the war rents of the wood of the old ‘Téméraire.’” The spirit of the picture, the pathetic contrast of the old ship’s past glory with her present end, is caught in the contrast of the sunset with the shadow. The cold, deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has arisen over the vastness of the departing form. As I remember it, Mrs. Rose B. Stewart, of the Muncie Art School, and the writer had a fair copy of the same, thanks to J. O. Adams.
While there is entertainment and recreation in this delightful collection, yet for my own personal benefit, aside from a few pets, I prefer the study and the ownership of modern painters and the new school.
CHAPTER XIII
SCOTLAND
WE pass castle after castle, tradition after tradition, vouching for persecutions and the price of blood paid. Here are the historical surroundings of Queen Mary and her imprisonment, her escape from the dungeon; there the royal property acquired by the Earl of Rosebery; then again a square tower resting on the northwest angle of this pile is replete with history. A mouldering gateway here surmounted by a crown and the initials and year “M.R., 1561,” tradition claiming this as the birthplace of Cromwell’s mother; and so on, until one is dizzy with dates and towers, almost every inch bearing some part in the history of a country during troublesome times. But as Sir Walter Scott is authority for a great part of this history, I will refer you to him as a much more reliable source of information, and will only attempt an outdoor description of this beautiful country, whose landscape lacks none of the fervor, picturesqueness, and sincerity which are ascribed to it—an appropriate background for its unequalled history in those turbulent days.
We were well satiated by this time with royal institutions, including palaces, schools of learning, museums of science and art, botanical gardens, and the zoos, with the exception of one monument in Edinburgh,—Scott’s grand memorial,—one of the most beautiful on the handsomest street in the World,—Princess Street, Edinburgh,—which is unlike any other I had ever seen.
We took what is known as the “Scotch Flyer” from London to Edinburgh. Its schedule time in some places is seventy miles per hour. It was about a five-hundred-miles’ run, devoid of interest. As we neared Edinburgh the grade became very steep, requiring two engines to pull us up—a very long train and crowded. The conductor told us this was its chronic condition. The English, next to Americans, are the greatest gad-abouts in the world. It is hard to decide which does its work the quickest, the “Scotch Flyer” or Scotch whiskey; while the social evil is offensive enough in London and Paris, here it assumes a downright animal coarseness; the effects of Scotch whiskey in Edinburgh is alarmingly apparent. We saw more men and real young boys beastly drunk there than in any place on the continent, the police taking no heed of their noise, apparently so accustomed to it that it went as a matter of course. Saturday afternoon is a half-holiday in Edinburgh; the whole city seems to scatter or seek the country highways and environs. Everybody visits the great Forth Bridge, said to be the greatest and grandest bridge in the world.
The strait, where this wonderful bridge crosses the Forth at Queensferry, has from time immemorial been recognized as the chief natural route of communication between its northern and southern shores. It was known among the Romans as the “Passage Strait.” The inconvenience of being dependent in all kinds of weather upon boats for communication between the two sides of the coast had long been commented upon, and when any bold spirit talked of a bridge from one side to the other, he was looked upon as being highly visionary. The engineering problem involved in the condition at Queensferry was the most serious one. It was then proposed that a bridge formed upon the principle of the Tay Bridge be built; the design was by Sir Thomas Bouch, engineer of the ill-fated Tay Bridge. He proposed to hang his erection on piers 600 feet high and across the stream by two latticed girders of 16,000 feet each, held in position on the suspension principle. This plan involved a double bridge, one for each set of rails. When the Tay Bridge fell, there fell with it previously unshaken confidence in the great engineer, and the feeling against the Forth Suspension bridge became so pronounced that the Abandonment Act was the result. Those of us who are old enough (and I regret to chronicle that I have been on the planet long enough to entitle me to such knowledge) will never forget the sensation produced as they read of this long train with its human freight signalling the time of its departure when leaving the station on one side, but which never signalled its arrival on the other side; never a vestige recovered from that grasping, merciless monster, the North Sea. In 1882 it was decided that plans should be made on the cantilever principle; a steel cantilever bridge should be made—a principle as old as the science of engineering. It had been practically known to the Chinese, but never before had it been applied on so magnificent a scale. A feature of the Paris Exposition was a design for a bridge crossing the English Channel by seventy cantilever spans, offered by an eminent firm as an alternative to the Channel tunnel, at an estimated cost of £34,000,000 Sterling. This project, however, does not meet with the hearty approval of the Englishman, who wants neither done, having no desire to facilitate communication with the French.
Foreign engineers all favor this principle of the Forth Bridge, it is said, since the first publication of the design. Practically every big bridge throughout the world has been built on that principle. To form some opinion yourself, the total height of the structure from its base is fully 450 feet. Visitors can hardly appreciate its actual magnitude until they compare adjacent objects—ships, houses, human beings, etc. Its relative size is seen when in figures you compare it to all other chief erections in the world; higher than the domes of any of the great cathedrals of the world, or monuments of the old world. Its rail level would be as high above the sea as the castle esplanade was above Princess Street, the castle built on the highest overlooking bluff in Edinburgh, and the steel work of the bridge would soar two hundred feet higher. The bridge was formally inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1890, when the Prince of Wales, now the King of England, turned a tap clinching the last bolt; this declared the bridge open. Her Majesty was so much delighted with Sir John Fowler, chief engineer of this gigantic undertaking, and Mr. Benjamin Baker, his colleague in the engineering, that she created them Knights Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. It has taken some time to speak of such a huge affair. We reached Queensferry by the daily coaches (or tally-hos) that run from Princess Street, carrying forty people on top.
The scenery en route is delightfully attractive and varied, and the interest is sustained throughout. In addition to the more commanding natural beauty of the scenery, the woods abound in picturesque vistas—Dalmeny Castle on one side, the seat of the Earl of Rosebery, and on the other side the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun; both are available to the public. But what interested us more than this tiresome pomp and display were the hundreds of beggars or mendicants that line or infest the public road, going through all sorts of antics, from simply standing on their heads in the mud in roadways to some very clever acrobatic feats; others singing and dancing for pennies that are thrown to them from the passing coaches. The most comical sight was a blind Highland fiddler and his bonnie lass (adorned in rags) fiddling, at the same time cursing some youngsters filled with Scotch whiskey, who were guying the poor souls beyond endurance. I have heard of all kinds of swearing, but never by note.
One need not move a step from Princess Street, Edinburgh, to be satisfied with his trip. It is the most beautiful street in the world. We stopped at Hotel Clarendon on Princess Street, just opposite the grand old castle, the scene of such bloody history. The scene from our window was unsurpassed, overlooking the gardens and grand promenade which form one side of this beautiful street, with the lofty and grand Scott Monument just beyond, and the Royal School of Design close by,—so pure in its Grecian architecture that one could imagine he was under the shade of the Parthenon. Holyrood Palace and Abbey, where the Queen’s Park Drive commences, is the finest drive in Europe. The other side of the street teems with commercial interests, as busy a thoroughfare as you see in any great metropolis.
Brilliant color, quick movement, and over-anxious faces are the general rule. Too bracing an air in these Scottish Highlands to admit of sluggish movement. I imagined we would step out of the whirl of modern life when we left London and came up here, where one might breathe easier; but it seems a headland so blessed of two elements—the cool air and the sea—that one is energized, and I longed to stay under its influence and enjoy the physical loveliness of this promontory. One of our favorite walks was a ramble among Salisbury Crags and over Arthur’s Seat. The view here of Edinburgh is grand. As you climb up to Arthur’s Seat you pass over a beautiful plateau of rich meadow-land; this Sabbath day literally alive with men and boys playing all sorts of gambling games, from the shaking of dice or of craps to ace-high. We wound up the hill by terraces, great lengths affording views over the steep wall of rock of the beautiful city below. The air is pure and exhilarating. The city, with its many historical domes, spires, castles, and turrets, is seen to advantage here. As you stand beneath the thick, strong walls, supporting for ages these grand old castles of such great antiquity, you can but wonder if they are capable of carrying these vaulted roofs for generations yet to come. As one climbed these broad, flagged terraces and lounged on the emerald green turf, so deep and inviting, one can scarcely realize that in the same spots, over these steep bluffs, both monks and soldiers climbed centuries ago, and they are still perfectly intact, while in the last two thousand years, on the coasts, temples and palaces of two generations have tumbled into the sea. Old and young have been sitting on these rocks all the while, high above change, worry, and decay, gossiping and loving. There are groups of rocks standing on the edge of precipices like mediæval towers, reminding one a little of the “Garden of the Gods” in Colorado, but not so phenomenal. We emerged upon a wild, rocky slope, barren of vegetation except little tufts of grass, the rocks rising up to the sky behind, as we stood upon the jutting edge of a precipice.
We are waiting in London for our vessel, where we are sitting before a Michigan roll-top desk, with a home-made door-mat under our feet, on a Nebraska swivel chair, dictating a letter on a Syracuse typewriter, signed by a New York fountain pen, and drying same with a blotter-sheet from New England, with a small amount of American brains in our head, and a still smaller amount of American coin in our pockets, ready and anxious to see New York, which in ten years hence will be the art centre of the world.
DEUTSCHLAND LOSES A MAN.
The Swift Liner Buffeted by Storms All the Way Across.
The record-holder Deutschland of the Hamburg-American Line had nothing but weather on the voyage she finished yesterday from Hamburg, Southampton, and Cherbourg. The disturbance began just after she left Cherbourg and kept up almost until she got within sight of the coast of Yankeeland. Despite wind and sea she made an hourly average of 21.16 knots, covering a course of 3,058 knots in 6 days and 33 minutes, thus establishing a reputation as a storm-defier.
While she was plunging through the crested seas at 7 o’clock on Wednesday night a part of the crew were ordered forward to put things shipshape. Eugen Sarazin, an able seaman of Russia, 19 years old, was the first man to respond to the order. As he got out on the open deck the Deutschland plunged into a giant comber. The forward deck of the ship looked for a moment like the beach of Coney Island on a stormy day. The young Russian was caught in the swirl and swept overboard. Shipmates who saw him disappear raised an alarm and the great liner was stopped. A lifeboat with four volunteer seamen, under Second Officer Franck, was lowered. It cruised about in the blackness nearly half an hour and found no trace of the luckless tar.
Passengers aboard the liner crowded to the rails and peered into the night hopefully while the lifeboat was searching for Sarazin. When it got back with no news of him a sympathetic passenger suggested that a purse should be raised for Sarazin’s family. Three contribution boxes were put up in the ship, and passengers filled them with gold, silver, and paper money. By this system of subscription, new in nautical annals, the left hand knew not what the right hand did. The contents of the boxes will be counted to-day.
Capt. Albers of the Deutschland said the voyage was one of the roughest on record for September. The women passengers didn’t have much pleasure. The ship was at times reduced to fifteen knots. The mighty combers through which she smashed scraped the paint off her bows.
Among the big liner’s passengers were: George C. Boldt, Leonard Lewisohn, Rud and Henry Kunhardt, Dr. William Tod Helmuth, Charles Dupont Coudert, and Mr. and Mrs. Carl Spilker.—N. Y. Sun.
Transcriber’s Notes
Some presumed printer’s errors have been corrected, including normalizing punctuation. Further corrections are listed below.
p. [21] bouvelard -> boulevard
p. [45] Deutsche Madchen -> Deutsche Mädchen
p. [48] directon -> direction
p. [70] Amercan -> American
p. [70] most of of the -> most of the
p. [71] Champ Élysées -> Champs Élysées
p. [81] Grindling Gibbons -> Grinling Gibbons
p. [93] ninty-eight -> ninety-eight