CLARIAN'S PICTURE.
A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL.
"Turbine raptus ingenii."—SCALIGER.
Mac and I dined together yesterday,—as we are used to do at least once or twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our talk insensibly drifted back to those merry college-days when we not infrequently "heard the chimes at midnight."
"Ah, old fellow," quoth I to my chum, "those good old days are gone by, now, and Israel worships strange gods. Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. 'Fuit Ilium!' The old bell will never again ring out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. 'Ai, Adonai!' No more wilt proud fingers point to the spot whereat entered—not like 'Casca's envious dagger'—that well-aimed cannon-ball which pierced the picture-gallery, punched 'Georgius Res' on the head, and frightened away forever the Hessians that were stabled there, fouling the nest of stout old John Witherspoon. They call other rolls now in chapel and in class-room, and chant other songs at their revels and their feasts. 'Eheu, Posthume!'"
"Pshaw, Ned Blount! there's corn in Egypt still. Out of that bug-riddled old barn we used to know a new and comely Phoenix has been born unto Princeton; the fire hath purged, not destroyed; and we wiseacres who flourished in the old 'flush times' yet survive in tradition, patterns for our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry clangs with a louder peal; even Clarian's Picture, though it hath utterly perished to the eye of sense, lives vivid in a thousand memories, and, having found in the tenderness of tradition and legend an engraver whose burin is as faithful as Raphael Morghen's, has left the damp dark wall, like Leonardo's Cenacolo, to accompany all of us to our firesides."
Clarian's Picture! what memories the mention of it stirred up!
"Poor Clarian!" I murmured.
"Poor, indeed I" repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the brisket. Poor, indeed! 'Tis pity you and I have not experienced a slight attack of that same poverty, Ned Blount!"
"Poor Clarian!" repeated I, sturdily. "To think that a man who could paint such a picture, a soul of imagination so compact, a so delicate ether-breathing spirit, should settle down at last into a mere mechanical, a plodding, every-day merchant, whose finest fancies are given to the condition of the money-market, who governs his actions by a decline of Erie, and narrows his ideas down to the requirements of filthy lucre, like a mere 'wintry clod of earth'! Ay, poor Clarian, poor anybody, when we wake from our bright youth-dream and tread the rough pathway of a reality like this!"
"Potz tausend! the man is fou!" shouted Mac. "Come, drink your wine, Ned, and we'll have our coffee. It is quite time, I think,—and he used to be a three-bottle fellow," muttered my dear old friend, sotto voce. "'Heu, heu! tempora mutantur, et nos'—well, well, well!"
* * * * *
Clarian's Picture! What a gush of recollection the words evoke! I was in the heyday and blossom of my youth then, and now—well, 'tis some years since; yet how vividly I remember that pleasant noontide of a day of early summer, when, as a party of us students were lounging about the gates that opened from our shady campus upon the street, "Dennis" handed me a note from Clarian, in which my little friend announced that his picture was finished at last, and invited Mac and myself to call and see it "exhibited," at nine o'clock that very evening. We were talking about Clarian and his picture, at the time,—as, indeed, we had been doing for a month,—and when I mentioned the purport of the note, curiosity rose to the tiptoe of expectation, and numerous surmises were set afloat. I could have satisfied their queries as to the subject and character of the picture, for Mac and I had seen it only a few days before, but Clarian expected us to be secret about it; so I only listened and smiled, while the eager talk ran on, and a thousand conjectures were hazarded.
"So the magnum opus is finished at last," said Clayt Zoile, showing by his manner, as he joined us, that he at least had not received an invitation; "a precious specimen of Art it will prove, I doubt not, after all the outcry about it. 'Montes parturiunt' etc."
"You'll lose your wish this time, Clayt," drawled Mounchersey, carelessly; "Mr. Cosine told me yesterday that 'Boss' has called on Clarian about his cutting so many prayers and recites, and that, after seeing the unfinished picture, he gave the youngster carte blanche as to time, till it is completed;—so it must be something worth looking at"
"I guess Ned Blount's glad the picture is finished," said Tone Ninyan, turning to me,—"a'n't you, Ned?"
I confessed I was not by any means sorry, for Clarian's sake.
"No," laughed Zoile, "Ned isn't sorry,—be sure of that; for he wants his dear 'Whitewash' restored again to the bosom of society, lest the walls of his reputation should by chance suffer from fly-speck."
These words created a laugh at my expense; for Clarian had shown himself, in his warm, generous way, such a zealous advocate of my immaculate perfection, that he was quite generally known by the sobriquet of "Ned Blount's Whitewash."
Just then Mac came along, on his way to the post-office, and I joined him, showing him Ciarian's note.
"Hum," growled my good old chum, as he read it, "don't want to be disturbed to-day; sick, is he? I'd like to know who's to blame, if he isn't. Wishes me to bring my Shakspeare along;—it's a wonder he had not said Plotinus, or Jacob Böhme's 'Aurora'; they're more in his style. The deuse take that boy and his picture, Ned! What if we two fools have been playing too roughly with such plastic clay? I wish to-night were come and gone safely. I'll go see Dr. Thorne, and ask him to accompany us to-night. He claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac like Thorne."
"You apprehend, then…."
"Sapperment, you owl-face! I apprehend nothing; only it will be as well to have Thorne present, for the boy is out of sorts, and his nerves were never very strong. Now look here, Ned Blount! don't put on that lugubrious phiz, I pray you;—and, moreover, don't you ever dare introduce any more of your Freshmen protégé's to me; for, I warn you, I'll insult them, and you, too,—I will, by Jove!"
I was not less impatient than Mac for the night to come, for I was very anxious about Clarian, dreading lest some catastrophe was about to overtake him,—and the thought was by no means pleasant. For, as Mac had said, the lad was a protégé of mine; he had been given into my charge by his sweet lady-mother; he had looked up to me as his senior and his friend; and I could not help feeling, that, if anything untoward should happen to him, it would be partly my fault.
From the very first I had been strongly attracted towards Clarian. Indeed, the lad was remarkable for a peculiar spiritual beauty of person and sweetness of manner that made almost every one love him. He was, in fact, lovely, in the etymological sense of that misused word, and people softened towards him as to a young, guileless child. I have known men cease swearing when he drew near, drop ribaldry, and take up some more innocent topic, simply through an unconscious impulse of fitness,—feeling that such things had no business to be repeated in his presence. And they were right; for a purer spirit than Clarian's I have never encountered in man or woman. His face most reminded one of the portraits of Raphael at twenty. He had the same broad, smooth forehead,—the same soft skin, delicate, yet rich as the inner leaves of a pale rose,—the same finely shaped nose, and ripe, womanly mouth, which a Persian, in default of a more tangible analogy, would have likened to the seal of Solomon. But his lower face was somewhat less full than Raphael's, the chin being shorter and sharper, and the jaw curving less sensuously. His hair was of the purest chestnut hue, rich and silken, showing here and there a thread of gold; he wore it long, and flowing in half-ringlets upon his neck and shoulders. Clarian's eye was large and dark, tender, rather sad, with now and then a speculative depth, now and then a hint of the Romeo fore-doom, now and then a warm eloquence, when meeting yours, that reminded strangely of a woman loving and in love. Other womanly traits he had, such as the ingenuous blush with which he asked or did a favor, and a certain not very boyish fondness for softness and elegance of dress. Not that Clarian was effeminate, or in any material respect deficient in manly character; but his mother was a widow, and he her only son, and consequently he had been brought up like a girl, at home, without any slightest opportunity to acquire those rough-and-tumble experiences of ordinary boyhood which are so necessary to fit us for battling in the world; for the world, though not unfeeling at core, wears yet a sufficiently rough rind, and pretends but little sympathy with persons of Clarian's stamp.
Hence, when Clarian came to college, he knew very little of life indeed,—and, moreover, he cherished not a few ascetic notions, deeming this world "all a fleeting show," from whose vain illusions it was one's chief duty to shield one's self. He had never read a novel, save "some of Scott's,"—nor ever seen or read a play, not even of Shakspeare's. How I envied him this new world, in whose usages I had been blasé long before I was of an age to appreciate its beauties,—this bright, fancy-fostering world, to which he was to go all fresh and unsophisticated, like a bride to the nuptial sheets! In literature of a more solid kind his practice was quite considerable: he had surveyed many fields of Art, History, and Theology, all of which, however, had first been submitted to the test of that anxious maternal Index Expurgatorius, lest some drop of infidelity or impurity should trickle in unawares, to darken or embitter the pure crystal waters of his soul. Ah, thou poor fond mother, so unreasoningly ignoring the fact that each of us must somehow eat his "peck of dirt"!
Thus intrusted to my charge, and having such attractive elements in his character, I naturally took great interest in Clarian, and particularly spared no effort to give him use in college ways. I saw that the lad was not one to bear being laughed at, and so did all I could to screen him from the embarrassments of ignorance,—taught him our customs, our fashions, and gave him lessons upon that immemorial dialect in which college sublegists delight. I chicaned to secure him a fine room, which his lady-mother furnished "like a bridal chamher", if our Nassau cynics were to be credited,—introduced him where it was necessary, and exercised generally towards him that distinguished patronage which one who "knows the ropes" is able to bestow upon a very Freshman.
A fine generous fellow was Clarian, for all his apron-string antecedents,—bold as a lion, and as trustworthy as he was enthusiastic. He was of rather too nervous a temperament to be precisely healthy in all mental respects, but nevertheless had a fine comprehensive mind, very capable of sustained and concentrated effort. He had been well taught, and, unfortunately, was so far advanced beyond the studies of his class as to have a great deal of leisure. In consequence he turned to reading, and here, again unfortunately, he put himself under my guidance, and suffered me to govern him in his choice of books: unfortunately, I say, for I was then a worshipper of that clay-footed Nebuchadnezzar-image, Metaphysics, which I fondly deemed all of gold, and the most genuine of things. So, when Clarian came to me, I was eager enough to put to his lips the wine of which I was drunken. The boy took his first sip from Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria",—that cracked Bohemian glass, which, handed in a golden salver that might have come from the cunning graver of Cellini, yet forces one to taste, over a flawed and broken edge, the sourest drop of ill-made vin du pays, heavily drugged and made bitter with Paracelsian laudanum. Under that strange patchwork quilt so imaginative a soul as Clarian could not fail to dream. It was a great pity I had not been more circumspect, for the boy was already too deeply steeped in those Acherontic waters. His mother, like many other women, had loved to wander along the dreamy paths of sentimental theology, clothing from her own beautiful mind the dim, unsubstantial spectres that beckoned her, and accepting all their mystic utterances, in blind faith, for genuine oracles of God. Into these by-ways he had followed her, and his clearer vision had just sufficed to reveal to him the ghosts, without teaching him how to master or dispel them. Thus, Cowper's sweetness, which charmed her, became to him Cowper's dejection and despairing sadness, perplexing enough to his young brain. Where she took up and fed her soul upon John Wesley's conclusions, the boy found himself involved in John Wesley's perplexities, and struggling in desperate wrestle with the haunting shapes to which John Wesley had given successful battle. Thus prepared, no wonder my eager little friend plunged headlong into the sea of doubts, impatient to cry, "Eureka!" and plant his foot upon the Islands of the Blessed. The new excitement completely swept his feet from under him. 'Twas but a step from Coleridge and Esemplastic matters to Plotinus, and in a month he had taken that step,—the more readily, that he was a right good Grecian, and found no unpleasant philological difficulties in the "Enneades". Thence he went on in feverish unrest, wildly running up and down all Niffelheim in quest of some centre-point upon which he could stand firm and look around him. He had an excellent mind, and, unexcited, could take sufficiently common-sense views of most matters; but this was too much for him. He made substance of shadows, and then exhausted himself in giving them battle. He became anxious, uneasy, nervous,—showing very plainly, that, in his search after the Alkahest, he had injured his powers by making trial of too many drugs.
Mac, with his sturdy good sense, and unerring mace-like judgment, speedily became aware of this waste of function to which Clarian was subjecting himself, and warned me accordingly.
"Why do you let that boy bother his brains about your stupid Ego and Non-Ego?" said he. "Don't you see he is injuring himself, beginning to sink under a sort of mental albumenurea,—at the very time, too, when he has most need of stamina? He does nothing but read, read, read,—and what, forsooth? Not anything that will teach him the genuineness of life and manhood, but those damnable spirit-exalting, body-despising emasculates of Alexandria,—Madame Guyon's meditations, too, and Isaac Taylor's giddy see-sawings,—all heresies, and bosh,—'Dead-Sea fruits that turn to ashes', and not only disgust you, but blister tongue and lips most vilely. You'll have him next trying to treat with the gods, to attain Brahm's purification, Boodh's annihilation, to jump over the moon, or doing something that will make him candidate for the shaved-head-and-blister treatment. Remember, Ned, his brain is made of finer stuff than that stolid sponge inside your pia mater, that can take in quantum sufficit of beer, fog, and tobacco-smoke, unharmed. He can't stand it, and he's too rare and delicate a machine to go cranky thus soon. You've got the child under your thumb,—bring him out o' that. Make him take a dose of Verulam, get him back into the world again, and order him four hours per diem at the dumb-bells."
And so, the next time Clarian came to our rooms, and was eagerly soliciting my opinion of a little essay he had written, to establish the identity of the Logos with the Demiurgic Mind, ("Plato's World-Soul, called in 'Timæus' the best of Eternal Intelligences, the Noetic Partaker and Digester of Reason", said Clarian in his tract,) with some corollaries for the purpose of reconciling Geist and Freiheit, all sauced down, à l'Allemagne, with numerous capitals and a proper degree of incomprehensibility,—Mac bluffly interrupted the colloquy, and accosted Clarian,—
"Younker! do you know you're a fool?"
Clarian colored up,—
"How, Mac?"
"What are we—Ned, and you, and I—here for?"
"To acquire knowledge."
"Ay, knowledge,—but what for?"
"To fit us for heaven."
"Phew! then you calculate to graduate from 'these classic shades' direct into celestial regions, do you, without sojourning awhile in this terrene purgatory? I do not, and, moreover, je n'en ai pas l'envie; I think the world has some claims upon me, and I mean to pay that debt, D. V."
"So do I, Mac," rejoined Clarian, a little proudly.
"And do you suppose your present studies adapted to fit you for such work? Now, if you want to be a monk, if you are willing, like Origen, to purchase with your entire manhood some supposed facility of spiritual contemplation and depth of insight into the Infinite, or if you intend to become a Brahmin, and seek in your navel the dyspeptic divinity who there wields his sceptre, while your despised body is given up to the predatory ravages of genus pediculus, well and good. Follow your hest, go on and conquer the [Greek: gnosis] and when you have got it, just inform me what it looks like, and whether you will be more able to make use of it than the fellow was of the elephant he bought at auction. But if you desire to take a man's part in this grand world around you, you must leap off your shadow, and never think about thinking, as the new Olympian has it. Let quiddities alone, they are dry-bone vampires, that drain you of your blood without growing fatter themselves."
"But how can truth harm? and that is what I seek,—truth, and beauty; if I commune with the world-soul, then also I know the world."
"Faugh! let shadows alone; believe in the man; do not be persuaded that the body is depraved and corrupt, and only the soul is worthy to be cultivated. Hold fast to the tangible. We know that we have a body, spite the Bishop of Cloyne, far more certainly than we know we have a soul. See, the soul is this smoke, that evanishes so quickly; the body this meerschaum that I have in my fingers, and will smoke again, please God."
"But it is the smoke, not the pipe, that gives you pleasure, and is the important consideration, Mac."
"Confound analogies, and pert Freshmen!" growled my chum, puffing vigorously. "Nevertheless, it is a noble and right royal thing, this body,—a thing to be cared for and cultivated for its own sake, apart from the fact of its being God's chosen sanctuary for what He lends us to see Him by. And you are neglecting it, both in theory and practice, Clarian; so you must give up these infernal Metaphysics. If you will bother about speculative matters, let Bacon teach you the correctives of error, and Locke how to govern and rein in the understanding. But you'd better learn first what men say about men. It may not make you happier, but it will make you wiser, and wisdom ranks high in heaven: Gabriel, Raphael, Michael,—'tis the second person in that archangelic trinity. Did you ever read Shakspeare? No, of course not; and yet I'll wager you have been hankering after the Bhagavat Ghita, and trying to get a copy of the illustrious Trismegistan Gimander! Don't blush,—you're not the first young man who has made an a—ahem—made a mistake. Fie! Learn men, Clarian, and then you will come to know man,—the surest way, I take it, of knowing the Multitudinous God. So read you Shakspeare, and Æschylus, save the 'Prometheus,'—that was begotten of Bactrian lore upon the mysteries of Karnac, and does not touch man nearly, spite of all its grandeur. Here, listen, and I will give you a lesson in the Myriad-Minded whom Stratford-upon-Avon blessed our little earth with."
Therewith, Mac began to read from the first act of "The Tempest." Now chum was a Shakspeare enthusiast, and, withal, a very fine reader, as well as, from long study, quite pervaded with the Master's diction and style of thought. As he read on, he commented, in his brief, pointed way, upon the text, contrasting the Boatswain's practical usefulness with the shivering helplessness of the Courtiers. "Now this is your proper somatology," he added. "What our Bo's'un says to Gonzalo, the world will say to you, Clarian, when you propose to it any of your panaceas: Are you able to do better than we? If so, save us from the shipwreck that threatens. If not, go to your prayers. Anyhow, 'out of our way, I say!'"
"Bravo!" cried I, when the homily came to an end, "Mac is preaching Carlylism, as I'm a sinner. The next utterance will be something about roofing Hell over, or the Everlasting Yea, or Morrison's Pills! Proceed: 'lay on,' Mac! none of us will cry, 'Hold, enough!' save under risible compulsion."
Mac sulked awhile, but soon resumed his reading,—sparing us further comment, however. Thus was Clarian led over the threshold, and introduced into Shakspeare's magic world. When Mac closed his book at the end of the act, Clarian's face glowed with a flattering something that must have pleased my chum, for he was proud of his reading,—and the moisture glittering in the lad's eye, his flushed cheek, and the tremor of his voice as he asked to hear more, spoke volumes.
But Mac said, "No,—enough is as good as a feast, younker, and just now I have to go with Bacchus in quest of a tragedian for Athens,—[Greek: brek kek koax, koax], you know. Study the Master yourself: and let me by all means advise your wisdom to detect a mystery in 'Hamlet,' and to essay the solution of the same. Nobody else has done so, of course, and it will become your long head. I've met several very mild, quiet people, whom you would not suspect of the slightest impropriety; but mention the Dane, and, presto! off they go upon their hobbies, ('theories,' they call 'em,) and canter around Bedlam at a most generous pace. 'Semel insanivimus omnes,' I suppose, and Hamlet and the Apocalypse offer rare opportunities."
"Now, Ned," said Mac, somewhat complacently, when Clarian was gone, "I think I have done that young rascal some good, and the bard will advantage him still more, if he can only be moderate enough."
And, indeed, these new pastures thus unbarred to Clarian's coltish fancies made a great change in the lad. At first he simply revelled in the new world of beauty that the Master's wand evoked, like a bird in the fresh, warm sunshine of returning spring. But this did not last long; the bird must busy himself with nest-building. Clarian's ardent, impetuous nature must evolve results, would not content itself with mere sensations. So he began to study Shakspeare,—not, as he had studied the philosophers, to pluck out and make his own some cosmical, pervading thought, but to find matter for Art-purposes. I think, that, if ever there was a born artist, who united to a fine æsthetic sense the fervor of a devotee, Clarian was that one, heart and soul. Some men make a mistress of Art, and sink down, lost in sensual pleasure and excess, till the Siren grows tired and destroys them. Other men wed Art, and from the union beget them fair, lovely, ay, immortal children, as Raphael did. Some again, confounding Art with their own inordinate vanity, grow stern and harsh with making sacrifices to the stone idol, grinding down their own hearts in vain experimenting after properer pigments, whereby themselves may attain to a chill and profitless immortality. But there are others still, who, elevating Art into a grand divinity, bow down and worship it, devote their lives to its priesthood, and, as a reward, only ask the god to reveal to them once his unveiled effulgence, content with the one communion, though their rashness be fatal, and the god's benison prove but the ashes of Semele. Towards this class Clarian tended, I knew very well, and hence, from the first, I had thrown a damper upon his artistic aspirations, often rewarded by his mournful and reproaching glances, as I sneered at his sketches,—which, to tell the truth, were most admirable, showing at once a keen poetic insight, fine composition, and an unusual mastery of technical details. The obedient fellow had bowed to what he deemed my better judgment, and turned away, with something of a sigh, from his dear love and ambition. Now, however, this love came suddenly back, and with tenfold intensity, as is always the case, and, though I dreaded its unhealthiness, I could no longer thwart him. Indeed, the Art-sense took such complete possession of him that I feared to interpose obstacles. He did not go about his work like a boy, but bent himself to it with the calm, resolute purpose of a man of forty. I could see the increasing mastery of the idea, in his changed eye, in his compressed lip, in his statelier, calmer pose; and, however incredulous we may be respecting results, these initiatory motions never fail to impress us. Even Bluebeard would forbear to strike down his pregnant wife, for the sake of what she bore under her bosom; and I, seeing the boy's careful study, and his long and laborious preparation, could not help looking forward to a result of commensurate importance.
Nevertheless, it was my duty to have combated Clarian's tendencies, for I could not help seeing the daily injury they did him. Ars longa, vita brevis, was an overpowering conviction of the lad's, and he went to work to apply the maddest of correctives. Art so exacting and life so short, then it was his office to labor so much the more earnestly, so much the more eagerly, that he might squeeze dry this orange of the present, and lose no opportunity, no moment. Thus it came to pass with him, as it does with us all who overwork ourselves, that actually he did less than he might have done, and warped himself in a most pitiable way indeed. A conscientious fellow, as he was, Clarian had hitherto been very faithful to his duties in the regular curriculum,—but now all this was changed. Here was a grand something to be done, a something so grand, indeed, that his whole life must bow before its exactions, and all minor duties step out of the way of Juggernaut. Who thinks of etiquette, of drawing-room trivialities, when here we are before this mistress, at whose feet we must pour out our soul? for her love blesses us with new life, her scorn damns us with eternal despair. In this cursed fashion always the Idea masters a man's soul, when he has once listened to its Lurlei-song. Henceforth he is only to see things in the light it chooses to shed upon them. Let your Alchemist but seek his Elixir long enough for the poison to fairly fill his veins, and behold what a slave and a monster the Idea shall make of him! Projection awaits him; the elements are here, commingling in balneo Mariæ; already Rosa Solis lends its generative warmth; already hath Leo Rubeus wooed and won his lily bride; already hath the tincture headed up royally in ruby and in purple, and sublimed, and gone through the entire circle of embryonic processes: quick! there lacks but the one element; in with it, and we are masters of the Life-Secret, of wealth, and power, and all else the world can bestow,—ay, and we can give back to the world all it asks! Yes, but that element is Sanguis Virginis. Well, and why not a virgin's blood? Great things must be purchased,—cannot be plucked, like fruit, from every tree. Were it Sanguis Senis, now, who would tap a vein more readily than we, ay, even were a drop from the carotid required? And must the world lose all this divine gift for a simple? What did Abraham on Moriah? Here is this child; of what use is she to the world?—yet a few ounces of her blood, and man is regenerate. In her innocence, too,—why, a Manichee would have done it for her own sake. Come, quick knife,—and, we do murder! I tell you, by dwelling on it, tasting, smelling of it, taking it into our bosoms, and making ourselves familiar with it, we poor men can finally persuade ourselves that the most damning thought begot of Hell upon a putrescent brain is the fairest, brightest, most glorious Deus vult. Here was the danger that menaced Clarian, ay, had already begun to insinuate its poison into his daily food. The simple fact of his neglecting his studies proved this. It was a venial sin, doubtless,—but still, it was his premier pas, and, as such, ominous enough.
Giving himself up to his art, he soon began to illustrate in his person the effects of confinement and excessive thought. His pale cheek grew paler still, the hollows under his eyes deepened, and his slim fingers waxed slimmer and more transparent than ever. I could see also that he had excessive bile,—not only ascertainable by looking at his imbrowned eye, but deducible from a change in his temper that was by no means an improvement. His room was full of sketches and drawing-material: these attracted visitors, and visitors were a trouble. Perhaps there was impertinence in their curiosity, very likely their presence hindered him; but, nevertheless, it was by no means like the sweet-tempered Clarian to show irritability and petulance, and finally, closing his door obstinately against all comers, to elect for solitude and silence at his work. No,—the boy was changed, grown morbid, a pervert, ripe for whatever Devil's sickle might be put forth to gather him in.
Thus things went on from bad to worse, until the authorities began to take notice of the lad's derelictions. The kind old President sent for me, and made many inquiries about Clarian. Evidently the elders were not a trifle bothered by my little protégé's proceedings, and did not know how to act. He had been much liked, his character was unblemished, he had done himself credit in his studies: what did all this change mean? The Faculty made it a rule to respect every man's privacy as much as possible,—but Mr. Blount well knew that the present state of things could not long be permitted. In their eyes, the backslider was palpably a far more unsavory fact than the original sinner. Could not Mr. Blount use his influence in some way, or suggest some course? Mr. Blount presented Clarian's cause in as favorable a light as possible; spoke of the youth's noble nature; guarantied that there was no moral obliquity; strongly advised leniency; venturing withal to hope, nay, to believe, that all this devotion, so intense, to a single purpose, would not be fruitless, might possibly win him credit. He certainly had fine imagination, and then he was so absorbed in his work;—it was a question whether it would help him most to encourage or to repress his ardor at present. The Doctor pondered, said he would take the matter into consideration,—it were a pity to nip any wholesome enthusiasm i' the bud,—"but it is very apparent, Mr. Blount, that the young man, if he goes on, will experience the fate of Orpheus, and so needs to be curbed in time. 'Medio tutissimus ibis', saith Naso,—a maxim the non-observance of which cost him the pain and disgrace of exile. And you should strive to impress the truth of it upon Clarian; spare no pains to rouse him. This seclusion is what I most dread. The poet Spenser hath made all his viler passions dwellers in caves and darkness, and with truth; for solitude is fatal, where there are morbid and melancholic tendencies. A very wise German, remarking upon the text, 'It is not good for man to be alone,' added, very finely,—'and above all, it is not good for man to work alone; he requires sympathy, encouragement, excitement, to succeed in anything good.'"
But I found the worthy old Doctor's advice easier to inculcate than to practise. Clarian did not need my sympathy, had excitement and encouragement enough in his own hopes, and, in fact, like the Boatswain in "The Tempest," only required to be let alone. Still, he paid us a visit now and then, and gave us to understand that he denied himself our society, did not thrust it aside as something useless and disagreeable. When he came, he would talk freely, and give us but too plain evidence of the change and confusion that were taking place in him. Mac never spared him at these times, and on one occasion, only a fortnight previous to the exhibition of the picture, fairly drove the boy into a passion.
"Well, Mr. Whitewash," said he, as Clarian came in, "how are you at this present writing? You look as if you had been dieting on Gamboge and Flake White. Take care, young man, or you'll put us students to the cost of a tombstone with a Latin epitaph for you, yet,—beginning, Interfecit se.—How comes on the Art? You've given the go-by to Ego and Non-Ego, I suppose, and have resolved to achieve the very [Greek: kudos] upon a ten-foot whitewashed wall, eh? Soit,—but what results? Can you say yet, as Correggio did when he saw the St. Cecilia of Raphael, 'Anch' io son pittore'? or do you intend to limit your ambition, à la Dick Tinto, to the effecting of two liquidations in one by the restoration of tavern-signs?"
"Please do not taunt me, Mac, for I am cast down, almost. I have the grandest conception, but the life-touch escapes me. It is in vain I seek it: we cannot do a thing properly, unless we feel it; passion will not be simulated. What we know, and can do well, must all be repeated from our own experience, says St. Simon,—and I agree with him."
"St. Simon be—hanged!" quoth Mac. "So, it seems, the Metaphysic is not abandoned. St. Simon, forsooth!—why, his doctrine was, that, to comprehend the nature of crime, one had first to commit crime himself. Pah! according to that, he who would most thoroughly learn the philosophy of our carnal lusts must exchange natures with the goat. Pray, why do not you solicit Herr Urian to give you a hircine metamorphosis, Clarian?"
"Nay, Mac, can it be thus put off with a jest and a sneer, after all? What do you think of these words I came across last night?"—and opening his note-book, Clarian read as follows: "For of old it hath been clearly proven, action without passion is nought save idle folly. Passio Christi hominis redemptio. For as sin came into the world by suffering, so also the gift of knowledge, which man would have confessedly lacked, had he not purchased it pretio mortis,—even whereat, meseemeth, 'tis not a commodity too high-priced. And as Philo Judæus hath well observed, (as that arch heretic doth but seldom, wherefore let us ascribe to him the full credit,) 'Materia parens est (etiam ipsa mater) peccali,' so, to attain to anything really spiritual, we have even to be born again of this our parent, by the reëntrance of whose womb, in pain and darkness, we come back to the true and the living, and have provision given us wherewith we shall conquer worlds. For, to fix the pure thought and to identify it with the true and holy, we must first divide it from the base clogs of matter; and how can we effect this disjunction, save, as it hath ever been done, by passion,—not simulate nor taken at second hand, cold,'bis coctum quasi,' but rather presently and in our very selves reiterate? So Naaman dipt in Jordan,—a task unto him, a sin in the eyes of his gods, and painful exceedingly to his pride-gorged humor, that would only have Abana and Pharpar,—yet only so was his skin made whole again, and soft like an infant's. So also did David the king come into tasting of the bliss of a true repentance by the terrible gateways of shameful adultery and blood-thirst."
"Oh, I agree with your author perfectly," said Mac, with inimitable gravity, while I gazed at Clarian, wondering what would come next. "All the greatest gifts man possesses have had evil sponsors or unrighteous baptism. Even Prometheus filched his fire from heaven, or t'other place. Doing evil for the sake of a prospective good is an immemorial custom, and well precedented. Revenue-farming, the parc-aux-cerfs, and Du Barry only went down before La Terreur, Robespierre, and Les Journées de Septembre."
"But seriously, Mac, is it not admissible, now and then, to employ questionable means, ordinary ones failing?"
"Certainly. You may even sin, provided you believe in your cause. Faith is the one save-all and cure-all. You smile? I can give you good authority,—none other than Martin Luther, who, in one of his disputations, says emphatically, 'Si in fide posset fieri adulterium, peccatum non esset'; and he wrote still more plainly upon this point in one of his letters to Melancthon, saying, 'Ab hoc nos non avellet peccatum, etiamsi millies millies uno die fornicamur aut occidamus.' [Footnote: Vie de Luther, par AUDIN, Paris, 1839. An accurate book, but scathingly bitter.] So follow your bent, younker, and they cannot say you are without 'precedent right reverend.'"
Clarian sprang to his feet, his pale face all ablaze with indignation. "You have no right to say such things to me, Sir," he cried, "for you know well enough"—
"I know well enough that you are a crack-brained jackanapes, with your damned fantastics!" bellowed Mac, angry in his turn. "What do you mean,—you, who are a perfect little saint in your life,—what do you mean by thrusting all these foul heresies at me, as if you were a veritable citizen of Sodom, or a rejuvenized Faust, who have just replenished your stock of 'experiences,' as you call them, by seducing Margaret and stabbing her brother? Burn your books, if that filth is all they teach you,—and mend your manners, if you expect to be tolerated in respectable company. Good-bye!" cried he, as Clarian rushed white-heated from the room.
"Pshaw, Ned, spare your remonstrances, if you please,—I'm tired of the little fool's nonsense."
"But the boy is sick, my dear fellow, and requires to be treated more gently. His mind is diseased, and it would not take much to drive him quite desperate."
"No such good luck, Ned. I wish I could make him pitch into somebody or something. Nothing would do the beggar so much good, just now, as to get himself into a regular scrape. It would act like a shower-bath, wake him up, and purge him of these dismal humors."
"Still, you would not like to have it said that you were the cause of his getting into any difficulty; and you know very well he is not one to extricate himself easily, if once involved."
"Never fear. 'Il y a un Dieu pour les enfants et les ivrognes', says a proverb in which I place implicit faith."
* * * * *
We saw nothing of Clarian until some three or four nights after this, when he came hurriedly into our room. It was quite late, but Mac was still at his Mathematics, while I was dawdling with my pipe and a volume of Sternberg's pleasant tales. Clarian walked directly up to Mac, holding out his hand, and saying, "I have come to ask your forgiveness, my dear Mac; I was wrong and foolish the other day."
"Nonsense, you flighty canary-bird!" said Mac; "you owe me nothing, so have done with that. Sit down and smoke a pipe with us."
"No,—I have come for you and Ned; I want you to see my picture to-night. Come, I will take no denial,—I am about to finish it, and I want your criticisms before I lay on the final touches."
"Why not to-morrow, Clarian?"
"Then everybody will want to see. No, it must be to-night."
Mac and I were by no means reluctant to humor the lad, for we were not incurious respecting the picture, and we accompanied him forthwith. His room was quite large, well lighted and airy, with a sleeping-closet attached. Over the blank wall opposite the windows hung a black muslin curtain of most funereal aspect, which rolled up to the ceiling by means of a cord and pulley, and, being now down, effectually concealed from view what we had come to see. Clarian placed three or four candles, made us be seated, filling pipes for us, and taking one himself, a most rare occurrence with him,—all the while talking with more vivacity than I had seen him exhibit for several months. "I have carefully studied my subject, fellows," said he, "and have striven after perfection. I went to Shakspeare for it, Mac, and sought one that would give me at once a proper field, and at the same time pervade me so that I could paint from myself. Singularly enough, I have found this magnetic influence most completely in 'Macbeth'. Do you remember Scene Fourth of the Third Act? That is the situation I have endeavored to portray. Macbeth, wretched criminal, suspects every one of his own dark purposes, or fears their hatred, because he feels himself hateful. He is not a coward, either physically or morally; his fears are all intellectual; he knows that Banquo is too noble to serve him, too powerful to be permitted to serve against him,—so he must out of the way. The murderers have received their commission; the king, satisfied now that all he has to fear will shortly be removed, has said, 'There's comfort yet'; he has cheered his wife with words even merry, as he can with some complacency, for it is truly his principle of action, that
'Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill';
and now, in this scene, he is to meet his courtiers at a state-banquet, given in honor of Banquo, he tells them with hardihood. For we must remember that this jealous king is no longer the warrior Thane whom we first encounter upon the 'blasted heath', and whom we afterwards see haunted by horrid visions of 'air-drawn daggers', as he turns his hand to crime. He has gotten far beyond all this. Murders to him are become but 'trifles light as air'; use has blunted his sensibility, and to bring back all that agony and horror needs a vastly stronger excitement than a mere deed of blood. We see this in the cool way he tells the murderer, 'There's blood upon thy face', as if it simply made him look less presentable. Nevertheless, suffer for it Macbeth must. That is ordained; and the means to it, and particularly the effect of those means, are what I have tried to represent here."
So saying, he drew up the curtain, and the picture stood before us. Mac and I gave it one quick glance, and then, with a simultaneous impulse, extended our hands to Clarian. The lad laughed a little laugh of joy as he returned our embrace, and then silently nodded towards the picture again.
Those old Princetonians who have seen Clarian's Picture will easily be able to explain our emotion upon beholding it thus for the first time. It was in colored crayon, and covered a large portion of the wall, representing a lofty, but entirely unornamented Gothic hall, with a table in the centre, around which were grouped the guests. These showed in their faces and disordered array that dismay and anxiety which were natural to them at sight of their king so strangely and appallingly stricken, but evidently they were entirely and happily unconscious of the THING that sat there in their midst, touching them, consorting its charnel horrors with their warm-blooded humanity,—so near, so close to them, that he fancied the smell of that trickling gore, that dank grave-soil, must necessarily enter in at their nostrils, and he sickened at the thought for very sympathy. The woe-wasted wife, comprehending what it meant, as she chiefly, from the dark depths of her own spotted consciousness, could comprehend, had yet flung her fear aside for the sake of him whom she loved with a love so bitter-costly, and now she stood at his side, fiercely clutching him, and taunting him like a tigress with his unmanly fears. Ah, had that clutch upon his elbow been the searing grasp of white-heated pincers, eating to the bone, it had not stirred him. He stood there, a tall, large-limbed man, brown and weather-stained, one who had endured much, wrinkled somewhat, care-marked about the brow, but very capable, and evidently as bold and daring, to the line, as he asserted himself,—he stood there, flung back, fixed, petrified, as it were, by the baleful judgment that lighted those unearthly eyes which watched him from across the table there; and though his arm be flung up over his face, half to protect, half in menace,—though his fist be clenched and swollen, his brow dark and frowning, we know he will not spring forward, but will stand there still, no life in all that mass of muscle, no will-power in that capable brain, nought but impotent malignity in that murderous frown: for he is stricken,—his sin has found him out,—ay, at the very altar, Orestes hears the Furies shriek their hatred in his ears, exultingly proclaiming that for him at least there is no rest, nor ever shall be!
Such was the impression of Clarian's Picture, and I felt my blood fairly tingle with recognition of the boy's power.
"It is noble, great," said Mac, in those deep tones that spoke how he was moved, "and men shall call you Artist when it is finished."
Finished! what more did it want? what more could be done to this so perfect composition?
"Ah, Mac," said Clarian, enthusiastically seizing my chum's hands, "such recognition as yours is what I have yearned for, and yet—'tis you who have chiefly mocked me. It shall be finished, Mac, and worthily! Do you not think I have prayed for the inspiration, that I might bestow that final, life-giving touch? Two months ago it was as near complete as it is now,—but not until this very night have I felt the power of it. Now, however, my soul is full of it, and it shall wax into a poem. This is why I sought you, dear friends, to-night; for I am too gloriously happy to be selfish, and I want you to share my happiness with me. Yes, Mac, it has come at last, the warm Promethean fire, and at last I can proclaim, 'Anch' io son pittore!'"
I gazed at the lad as he raised his voice with these last words, and was almost awed by his singular beauty. It seemed almost as if a halo should encircle his brow. There was a delicate rose-flush on his cheek that rivalled in strange loveliness the hectic color of the young mother when her first-born nestles close and fondly to her thrilled bosom, and his eyes glowed with a rare lambent light that touched one with the eloquence of a beautiful dream. Mac eyed him with equal wonder and delight, but said, teasingly,—
"Hey! so you have come at last to the 'true and the living,' have you? Art regenerate? I hope thou hast also undergone that true baphometic fire-baptism, whereof the worthy Diogenes Teufelsdröckh hath discoursed so appetizingly, causing us to long after it, none the less that he hath scrupulously refrained from expounding whatever it is."
"Yes, Mac, the new life dawns upon me,—no Plotinian trance, no somnambulic introspection, but a genuine awakening of the soul to a sense of its own beauty."
"Prodigious! as Dominie Sampson would say. Nay, I am not laughing at you, Clarian," said Mac, pointing to the picture; "there is enough to make me believe in you, though how you achieved it I cannot imagine."
"The means, Mac? Is not that rather my question than yours? We judge ourselves from within; 'others judge us by what we have done,' says Goethe. The means, ha, and the motive? Why will men seek stumblingly after these, when actually their sole concern is with the thing done? So, you two look at me,—I was but pondering,—putting a case;—so far, the means here have been simple and innocent,—my hand, my eye, my brain, my purpose; but—Mac!" added he, suddenly, after a pause, "did you never, in reading Rabelais, feel that somehow there was a profound and reverential symbolism underlying the wild froth of words in which the histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel have come down to us? that in all that olla-podrida of filth, quip, jest, wicked folly, and mad wisdom, was yet hidden, like the pearl in the oyster, a deep and most mystic system of world-philosophy?"
"Anan?" said Mac, looking at the boy curiously.
"For instance, in what the good Curé of Meudon says about the 'herb Pantagruelion',—did the symbolism and esoteric meaning of all that never strike you?"
"Oh, yes," cried Mac, with a singularly significant smile, "I see how it is now. I understand. You are improving, Clarian, rapidly. Hum, wonder what your mother would say, if she knew you were a friend of Panurge's, and did draw such inferences from his wisdom! Yes, mon enfant, I have long felt the profundity of Pantagruelion, not less than the oracular efficacy of Bacbuc. And no one can deny that the thinnest strand of Manila, if not full of mysteries per se, can at least open the way for us to the very innermost crypts, and hence may be styled potentially a very gateway to Eleusinia."
"I do not mean that, Mac,—not the mere mechanical warp and woof of it, to hang beggars and sots with,—but the more potent essence, the inner cosmic power of it, to rouse the soul into grand expansive consciousness, and then to suspend it far above the carks and cares of this weary world, to sew it aloft to some leaf of the Tree of Life, like the nest of Jean Paul's tailor-bird, that it may swing there, above the hum and dust of matter, swayed and sung to sleep by the expanding breath of Infinity! Oh, yes!" cried Clarian, while his cheek glowed warmer, his eye flamed brighter, and his voice flowed on with a rhythmic throb, "oh, yes, I know it all, now! The Idea is awake, and dwells in my soul, at once master there and slave. I leap out of this base Present: I stand panting and glowing before the mighty portals of Infinity, from whose inner masses I see the grand Gods beckoning to me, greeting me as of their kindred, summoning me to take my throne also, which awaits me in their midst. I have burst these narrow bonds of flesh, and my soul shall soar henceforth in the grandeur realized of the Spirit, like a proud falcon just unmewed and flung off in sight of the noblest quarry. Art! what a dull, meaningless sound it was yesterday!—but now, the entombing pyramid of matter is up-heaved, flung off forever, and the Spirit stands erect in her bright Palingenesis, half-intoxicate with the all-pervading sense of her own grand beauty. The tree is rent asunder,—Ariel soars again in his element. Psyche has loosed herself from the fettering contact of Daimon, and lo, now, how daintily she poises on tiptoe, fluttering her wings ere she launches like a star into the wide exhilarant ether! O divine Art! pride, glory, first love of my soul! now, indeed, hast thou exchanged the yoke of dull Saturn and the gloomy caverns of earth for the fair heights of Olympus, and the companionship of Zeus [Greek: Nephelaegeretaes], him at whose nod the heavens display themselves like a many-figured arras, all alive with beauties and significance that the dull eye conjectures not, that the impure, unpurged eye shrinks away from, lest it be seared by the too great splendor! I know it all now. I began gropingly, in surmise, error, darkness; but now my brow catches, ay, and reflects, the calm, pure, effulgent light of Nature's definite day, and I bathe myself in its happy warmth. Erst, I grovelled like a worm, blind and earth-fed: now, I shall speed through very space, winged heel and shoulder, a swift, untiring Hermes, who have drunk of the milk that flows rich in Nature's breasts, and am emancipate forever in the decorous freedom of the beautiful self-conscious spirit! Oh, the glory, oh, the boon of Art, the play-deity! Phoebus no longer drives herds for Admetus, but is grown into Helios, feels in his breast the freer life of the very Hyperion, the walker on high. Ay, ay, smile on, Mac, you and Ned! I shall not quarrel with you for not understanding me; it is only just now that I have learned to understand myself. My Art will reward me; even now, while you doubt, it is already doing so. I tell you, you two, whom I love and honor", cried he, rising to his feet, lifted up, as it were, by the exaltation of his soul, while his voice rose like the gush of a fine-toned flute, "I tell you, moreover, that I am an artist, with a work to do that shall be done, and so done that you two who love me will be the first to salute me Artist, to recognize me, and acknowledge me for what I shall become."
"We do that already, Clarian," said Mac's emphatic voice.
"No," said Clarian, firmly, proudly, like a poet about to kneel that he may receive the laurel crown, "no, you do not know me yet."
And he was right. We did not yet know him.
"That is a boy after my own heart", said Mac, after we had returned to our room. He was standing by the open window, and I at his elbow, both of us thinking of the strange child we had just left, while our eyes took note of the fair night, how the silvery sheen of the moonlight glistened upon the leaves, and sprinkled itself in dappling flecks between the trees on the soft even sward of the campus below. "A boy after my own heart,—and, in spite of all his twaddle, will make an artist. It's in him."
"But did you not think him strangely wild to-night? I never heard him talk so fluently; but it was not the talk of a sane man."
Mac looked at me, laughing long and loud. "Thou dear innocent Ned!" cried he at last, "what a diagnostic thou wouldst make! It was indeed the talk of madness, good chum, and a very pretty madness was it, one that needeth not any Anticyran purgatives to expel it. So thou must not fash thyself about the lad, du liebe dummkopf, for he will come right very speedily. Didst remark not what he said about the 'herb Pantagruelion,' which, in the vulgar, meaneth only hemp? And surely you noted the warm flush of his cheek, the dilatation of his eye, and its phosphorescent glow? Dr. Thorne would soon enough tell you what these things signify. The boy is not crazy, Ned, but drunk,—drunk in the decorous delirium of a Damascene Pacha, propped against a Georgian maid, and fanned by Houris of Bethlehem Judah. He has been reading Monte Cristo, perhaps, or has somehow heard about the Indian Hemp, not the 'utilissima funibus cannabis' of practical Pliny, but Cannabis Indica, wherewith, I believe, Amrou spurred on his Arabs to their miraculous feats of war, when he conquered Egypt and drove Alexandria's Prefect into the sea,—the bhang of amok-running Malays, the haschish of Syria and Cairo. This is what hath made him drunk, and, i' faith, the intoxication does not ill become him. He will be all right in the morning, and all the better for this little brush. And anyhow, Ned, you must not watch the boy too closely, nor interfere with him. Let him 'gang his ain gait.' He comes of another breed than ours, I begin to suspect, and our rough fodder and grooming may not suit his higher blood.—Ach, Himmel! Ned," cried he, laughing, "it pleased me, though, to see how adroitly he contrived to twist that new reading out of the bon homme François. It was quite in the style of St. Augustine, and would have delighted that ex-sophist hugely; for, great as he was, and self-denying as he was, he always had a hankering after the dialectic flesh-pots. How he would have rubbed his hands, when Clarian wanted to persuade us that the herb Pantagruelion was no other than Haschish, the expander of souls!—Hollo! yonder goes the lad now. I wonder what he is up to. See him, Ned, yonder, just coming out of the shadow of North College. How fast he walks! how he is swinging his arms! I'll bet he is repeating poetry. I wonder what the lad is after, anyhow.—There he goes, round the corner of West College,—over the fence. Can he mean to have a game of ball by moonlight?—No,—he's making across the fields; if he had a pitcher with him now, I'd say he was going to the spring in the hollow.—Confound that tree! I've lost him."
I proposed following Clarian, being really uneasy about him, but Mac entered his veto,—
"No, Ned,—there's no need, and—it's none of our business. Children like him have a hundred baby-houses we do not know anything about. He wants a bath in the moonlight, I suppose, and wouldn't thank you for playing Actæon to the naked Diana of his midnight musings. Come, 'tis bedtime; or do you want to finish Sternberg's 'Herr von Mondschein'? It is à propos, and I see your book is opened to the very place."
[To be continued.]
* * * * *