Friday, December sixth.
I’m reading a little book on Dürer. What a splendid civilization that was in the Middle Ages, with all its faults. To men with my interests can anything be more conclusive proof of the superiority of that age to this than the position of the artist and the scholar in the community? Let me quote from Dürer’s diary. (Antwerp, a banquet at the burgomaster’s hall.)
“All their service was of silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and very costly meats. All their wives were there also. And as I was being led to the table the company stood on both sides as if they were leading some great lord. And there were among them men of very high position, who all treated me with respectful bows, and promised to do everything in their power agreeable to me that they knew of. And as I was sitting there in such grandeur, Adrian Horebouts, the syndic of Antwerp, came with two servants and presented me with four cans of wine in the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and they had bid him say that they wish thereby to show their respect for me and assure me of their good will. Wherefore I returned my humble thanks—etc. After that came Master Peeter, the town carpenter, and presented me with two cans of wine, with the offer of his willing services. So when we had spent a long and merry time together till late at night, they accompanied us home with lanterns in great honor.”
Oh land of porcelain bath-tubs! A man has only to leave all that by which we to-day estimate culture to realize that all of his own civilization goes with him right to the back woods, and lives there with him refined and undiminished by the hardships there.
Civilization is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the few or of the millions, nor by monarchy, republicanism, or even Freedom, nor by whether we work with hands or levers,—but by the final fruit of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art. The obituary of to-day in America has surely now been written in the poor workshop of some struggling, unknown man. That is all that the future will know of us.
All records for winds are broken by what rages to-night. From the northwest it piles into our cove. The windows are coated with salt, and tons of flying water sail in clouds out of the bay hiding the mountains from the base to half their height. Our rafters bend beneath the blast; ice—from we know not where—falls upon us with a thundering noise. The canvases suspended aloft sway and flap, and from end to end of the cabin the breeze roves at will. It’s so ridiculously bad and noisy and cold that Rockwell and I just laugh. But the wood is plentiful for we cut some more to-day.
“GET UP!”
Last night at bedtime the wind had risen. At some midnight hour the stove went out for I awoke at two and found the cold all about us and the wind hard at it. So with a generous use of kerosene the fire was made to burn again and I returned to a good night’s rest. Somehow one doesn’t mind short exposures to the cold. Many a day I have stood naked out in the wind and then become at once glowing warm again in the hot cabin. Baked bread to-day and it turned out very well. Painted, shivered, wrote, and to-night shall try to design a picture of the “Weird of the Gods.” But at this moment our supper is ready and two hungry, cold mortals cannot be kept from their corn mush.