What sort of men would be required to administer such an Empire? Can we not picture them from our own experience of Empire-building? Imagine for a moment that Trajan had established a permanent occupation of the Punjab. It might well have been. As it was, he died after receiving a check at the hands of the Parthians. What would Roman rule in India have entailed? While the weaker states would have been absorbed, many of the stronger ones would have entered the Empire as subject kingdoms. The allies of Rome would, doubtless, have been rewarded with grants of territory at the expense of the harder fighters. In other words, the problem of government would have needed an infinity of administrative tact, for all sorts and conditions of subject states would have had to be appeased or held in subjection. The Roman governor of the Punjab would have been in the first place a soldier. But he would only have been guided in his general conduct by a rough lex provinciæ, so that in practice he would have had to combine with his military duties those of our Lord Chief Justice. It was not an age of cablegrams. The decision upon a host of matters would necessarily have been in his hands. So with his subordinates. They, too, would have had to solve the nicest problems of practical administration every day—success being their only justification.
These were the duties which Rome demanded of her sons. She educated them for such posts as these. The circumstances in which the Romans lived and the characteristics which their lives engendered, in turn, reacted upon their art. As Mr. Dooley has told us, various nations have various methods of treating “what Hogan calls th’ Muse,” when they ask her “f’r to come up an’ spind a week” with them. A country like Rome doesn’t expect her guest “to set all day in th’ hammock on th’ front stoop, singin’ about th’ bur-rds. She’s got to do th’ week’s washin’, clane th’ windows, cook th’ meals, chune th’ pianny, dust th’ furniture, mend th’ socks an’ milk th’ cow be day, an’ be night she’s got to set up an’ balance th’ books iv an Empire.”
Mr. Dooley, of course, has Rudyard Kipling in mind. But the lines so exactly fit the case of the Roman portrait sculptor, that we may well pursue the analogy further.
Kipling is himself the product of political circumstances. He finds expression for the vigorous matter-of-fact vision of an imperialism that is nearly akin to that of Rome. Kipling joined the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore when he was seventeen. He lived in India during the formative period. At twenty-four he was back in England with the essential features of his style fixed. The man the Roman State required and for whom the Roman sculptor worked, was the man for whom Kipling writes and whose ideals he expresses in throbbing prose and verse.
But we may pursue the analogy even further. Rudyard Kipling and the sculptor of the “[Nerva]:” Does a comparison of the styles of these two artists reveal any innate resemblance? In both we see an intense interest in strongly individualized humanity. Neither pays much heed to grace or beauty—in the Hellenic sense of the word. Both are more concerned with actuality than with the more shadowy realms of the ideal. But most striking fact of all, the methods by which both express their body of thought and emotion are strangely similar. Compare a typical Kipling portrait with the “[Nerva].” Let us say Miss Minnie Treegan’s picture of Captain Gadsby.
“He belongs to the Harrar set. I’ve danced with him but I’ve never talked to him. He’s a big yellow man, just like a newly hatched chicken with an e-normous moustache. He walks like this (imitates Cavalry swagger) and he goes ‘Ha-Hmm!’ deep down in his throat, when he can’t think of anything to say. Mamma likes him. I don’t!”
This sketch gives us the heart of the Kipling style. Certain as the day—cocksure, some might say. Photographically true? In a sense only. Emphatic? As emphatic as capitals and apostrophes can make it. Imaginative? Yes. If imagination be the faculty for creating a mental image. These are the characteristics alike of the Kipling portrait and the statue of “[Nerva].” The sculptor is as emphatic in his message and as certain in his delivery as the poet of English Imperialism. He has not given a transcript of reality but has deepened the essential lines until they speak with telling effect.
It is true that we miss the philosophical calm with which a Greek sculptor would have treated such a subject as the imperial jurist Nerva. But, in some ways we must admit that the Roman portraitist is to be rated higher. If the impression that one is gazing upon reality is the proper object of the portrait sculptor, the Roman gives us the more life-like picture. But if the artist’s first function is to show us nature, so that we may form our own judgment as to what is essential and organic by the aid of his insight, then the Greek who carved the very soul of men was the truer artist.
“Do you remember your mother, my dear?” was the question put to the under-fed, under-clothed, Bermondsey waif.
“Yes, she was a stout woman, what beat me.”