The mountain at this time shone in pale rose-like glow, and Park, inspired by the grandeur of the scene, preached us a very eloquent little sermon, addressing himself to the sun, on the inherent dignity and beauty of sun-worship as practised by the modern Parsees and the ancient Druids. He concluded by a lament that his own art was powerless to represent or personify the grand forces of nature as the Greeks had attempted to do. “The Apollo Belvidere,” he said, “is the representative of a beautiful young man. But it is not Apollo. Art can represent Venus—the perfection of female beauty, and Mars—the perfection of manly vigor; but Apollo; no! Yet I think I would have tried Apollo myself if I had lived in Athens two thousand years ago.”
“‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’”
“True,” said Park, “I am a living dog, Phidias is a dead lion. I have to model the unintellectual faces of rich cheesemongers, or grocers, or iron masters, and put dignity into them, if I can, which is difficult. And when I add the dignity, they complain of the bad likeness, so that I often think I’d rather be a cheesemonger than a sculptor.”
I called at Park’s studio one morning, and was informed that he every minute expected a visit from the great General Sir Charles James Napier—for whose character and achievements he had the highest admiration. He considered him by far the greatest soldier of modern times—and had prevailed upon the general to sit to him for his bust. Park asked me to stay and be introduced to him, and nothing loth, I readily consented. I had not long to wait. The general had a nose like the beak of an eagle—larger and more conspicuous on his leonine and intellectual face than that of the Duke of Wellington, whose nose was familiar in the purlieus of the Horse Guards. It procured for him the title of “conkey” from the street urchins, and I recognised him at a glance as soon as he entered. On his taking the seat for Park to model his face in clay, the sculptor asked him not to think of too many things at a time, but to keep his mind fixed on one subject. The general did his best to comply with the request, with the result that his face soon assumed a fixed and sleepy expression, without a trace of intellectual animation. Park suddenly startled him by inquiring, “Is it true, general, that you gave way—retreated in fact—at the battle of ——?” (naming the place, which I have forgotten). The general’s eyes flashed sudden fire, and he was about to reply indignantly when Park quietly remarked, plying his modelling tool on the face at the time, “That’ll do, general, the expression is admirable!” The general saw through the manœuvre, and laughed heartily.
The general’s statue in Trafalgar Square is an admirable likeness. Park was much disappointed at not receiving the commission to execute it.
Park modelled a bust of myself, for which he would not accept payment. He found it a very difficult task to perform. I had to sit to him at least fifty times before he could please himself with his work. On one occasion he lost all patience, and swearing lustily, more suo, dashed the clay into a shapeless mass with his fist. “D—n you,” he said, “why don’t you keep to one face? You seem to have fifty faces in a minute, and all different! I never but once had another face that gave me half the trouble.”
“And whose was the other?” I inquired.
“Sir Charles Barry’s” (architect of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster). “He drove me to despair with his sudden changes of expression. He was a very Proteus as far as his face was concerned, and you’re another. Why don’t you keep thinking of one thing while I am modelling, or why can’t you retain one expression for at least five minutes?”
It was not till fully three months after this outburst that he took courage to begin again, growling and grumbling at his work, but determining, he said, not to be beaten either by Sir Charles or myself. “Poets and architects, and painters and musicians, and novelists,” he said, “are all difficult subjects for the sculptor. Give me the face of a soldier,” he added, “such a face as that of the Emperor Napoleon. There is no mistake about that; or, better still, that of Sir Charles James Napier! If there is not very much immortal soul, so called, in the faces of such men, there is a very great deal of body.”
Park was commissioned by the late Duke of Hamilton to model a bust of Napoleon III., and produced, perhaps the very finest of all the fine portrait-busts which ever proceeded from his chisel. The Emperor impressed Park in the most favorable manner, and he always spoke of him in terms of enthusiastic admiration, as well for the innate heroism as for the tenderness of his character. “All true heroes,” he said, “are tender-hearted; and the man who can fight most bravely has always the readiest drop of moisture in his eye when a noble deed is mentioned or a chord of human sympathy is touched.” The bust of Napoleon was lost in the wreck of the vessel that conveyed it from Dover to Calais, but the Duke of Hamilton commissioned the sculptor to execute a second copy from the clay model, which duly reached its destination.