LADY TANKERVILLE, WHO HID HER KITTENS
IN THE HEAD OF STORY’S STATUE OF PEABODY.
Roman studios are as well supplied with live “properties” as American or English ones. Will the visitor who has once seen it ever forget that charming staircase, vine-wreathed, flowery and musical, which, although in the busy Piazza di Termini, still keeps an air of forest seclusion? It is the passage to a studio equally retired, fashioned like a nest in the ruined baths of Diocletian. Paintings, bits of tapestry, etc., form a background for various marble inmates, whose serenity is interfered with neither by cat nor dog. It is the staircase, covered with wire netting, that holds the favorites. Pigeons inhabit the upper part, and keep up a continual flutter at the latticed window, their wings gleaming silver in the sunshine. Lower down are musical blackbirds; I remember especially among the latter one beautiful fellow, who shrank back, mute, at the approach of our party, but answered his master’s call at once, and perched, lightly as thistledown, upon his arm.
This master, the sculptor Ezekiel, like most bird-lovers, does not allow cats in his home. He might possibly train Pussy into tolerance, and so have a happy family—only—he does not like cats! which, to a cat lover, seems queer. However, even if unconsciously, he must have some secret understanding of their nature; for in his studio is a marble Judith with arm raised to strike, who, in her magnificent fierceness, recalls, far from ignobly, the feline race.
Elihu Vedder’s pets might be expected to wear a rather tragic and noble air, appropriate to the illustrations of the Rubaiyat; but on the contrary, they have a commonplace appearance of well-being. The studio pet one year was an asthmatic small dog, who had thrown himself upon the artist’s compassion—a grateful, subdued, unassuming object, which, after each spasm of coughing, would look around with a deprecatory expression, as if to apologize for the disturbance. Some intelligent cats, and another small dog, in this instance possessed of vivacious health and spirits, keep the artist’s home lively, and compete with one another for his favor.
A third studio in Rome is that of the sculptor Story. Many famous statues have here been “born in clay and resurrected in marble”—among them that of George Peabody. The marble is now in London, but a colossal plaster-cast remains in the studio.
The philanthropist is seated—a position which allows various projections, or ledges, within the hollow cast—of which a high-minded cat once took advantage.
ENTRANCE AND WINDOW OF THE
SCULPTOR EZEKIEL’S STUDIO IN ROME.