The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I

by William James Stillman

I gripped close the quarter-deck railing, and drew myself aft to the shelter of the wheelhouse, where, securing myself from being blown away like a piece of paper, I watched the sea. It rose behind us in huge mountains, the summits of which were always combing over and sliding down the weltering flanks of the wave,—not like the surf on a shore, but pushed over like snow; and as a wave overtook us lying in the bottom of the valley, it so overhung that it seemed impossible that when it broke it should not bury us; but the stern was always caught by the forefoot of it, and the old ship began to rise, and went up, up, up, until I was dizzy. Then we hovered on the summit a moment, looking out on such an expanse of gigantic waves as I had never pictured to myself, the distance lost in the driving spray; and, while I looked, the wave passed from under us, and we went down and down with a rapidity of descent which was almost like falling from a balloon. Then, after another moment's rest in the valley, came the shuddering half apprehension of the next wave as it rose above us, threatening again, and then, after again soaring aloft, down again into the driving of the spray; the old ship rolling, plunging, and now and then quivering, as some side wave struck her, with a complication of motions, sidelong and headlong, the huge waves flying before us and yet carrying us on,—wild motions, rolling, pitching, sinking down the long green slope into the valley, to be flung up into the tumult of wind and wave again. In all this complexity of forces we were as helpless as feathers in the wind, cut off from mother earth as much as if we were carried away on the clouds; the feeling of absolute insignificance growing on one as the ship drove on, the creaking of the ship and the hissing rush of the waters hardly audible for the shrieking of the gale through the rigging. In all my life I have never so understood the utter impotence and triviality of humanity as I felt it then.

The ship, though not in measure with the colossi of later times, was yet a huge mass as measured by the man, and she was no more than a cork on the tide. Up and down she went, like a child's swing,—wallowing and rolling, with the sea breaking over the side till the channels were full, and pouring over the bows in green torrents, and then in blinding deluges of spray and water over the stern; tearing along ten knots an hour, and yet always seeming to be left behind by the waves that tore by us,—the great waves, that obeyed the wind only to be crushed down again by it, spurting up here and there fitfully in pinnacles which were instantly driven off in foam and froth; no combing waves, such as the land dweller sees, for no wave could rise enough to comb,—only great hills of water, crystalline with wavelets, streaked with spun foam, heaving as if from a blind impulse, and leaving us, in a contemptuous toleration, to keep afloat if we could. And now and then two great waves raced each other, as they will at long intervals, till they ran close to each other and united, and we were thrown aloft a little higher, to see nothing more than a wild waste of foam, spray, and watery chaos which defies human language to express it.

This was the sea as I had wanted to see it, and as no painter has ever painted, or probably ever will paint it, and as very few could ever have seen it; for in seventy thousand miles of sea travel I have seen it only once. For three days and nights our captain never left the bridge to rest. Of two other ships that left New York the same day that we did, one was dismasted to the south of us, and the other had her quarters stove in and barely escaped foundering just to the north of us. The gale blew out and left us in a dead calm, which lasted a couple of days, when another gale of three days drove us in the direction we wanted to go, and dropped us off Torquay in the morning of what seemed a delicious spring day, all sunshine and south wind. We hailed a fishing boat and went ashore. We had left a land buried in snow and ice, and we reached one in early spring, though it was still January, the gorse in odorous blossoming, and in the hedgerows the early wild flowers in profusion. But we learned, on landing, that the recent gales had strewn the shores of England with wrecks, with great loss of life. It had been one of those terrible winters which have helped make the British sailor the sea dog he is.

I took lodgings in Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, near Wehnert, and worked hard. I had brought my "Bed of Ferns," a large study from nature on Saranac Lake, and one or two smaller studies. I had visits from Dante Rossetti, Leighton (then in all the glory of his Cimabue picture, and in the promise of even a greater career than he finally attained), Millais, Val Prinsep, and Boyce. I had brought letters from Lowell to Tom Hughes, from Norton to Arthur Hugh Clough, from Agassiz to Professor Owen. Hughes introduced me to the Cosmopolitan Club, where I made the acquaintance, amongst others whom I do not remember, of Millais and Monckton Milnes.

The artists who came seemed to be interested in my work, especially in the "Bed of Ferns," of which Rossetti—whose opinion I valued more than any other, for he was very honest and blunt in his criticisms, and not at all inclined to flattery—expressed himself in strong terms of praise. As it was the first thing in which I had attempted to introduce a human interest in the landscape, I was naturally inclined to consider it my most important work, and I was dismayed when Ruskin came to see me, and, in a tone of extreme disgust, said, pointing to the dead deer and man: "What do you put that stuff in for? Take it out; it stinks!" My reverence for Ruskin's opinion was such that I made no hesitation in painting out the central motive of the picture, for which both subject and effect of light had been selected. Unfortunately, I habitually used copal varnish as a medium. When Rossetti called again, he asked me, with a look of dismay, what I had done to my picture. I explained to him that on Ruskin's advice I had painted out the figures, and exclaiming, "You have spoiled your picture!" he walked out of the room in a rage. However, I sent it to the Academy as it was, and had it back, "Not hung, for want of room," or something equivalent. I then tried to remove the pigment which hid my figures; but the varnish was refractory, and, after a vain attempt, I finally cut the picture up and stuck it in the fire.

The incident, though it cost me the work of three months, and was in fact the only important outcome of the summer's study, did not diminish my confidence in Ruskin's judgment and correct feeling for art. It required a still more severe experience. As all the world knows, that knows anything of Ruskin's ways with artists, he was blunt and outspoken in his criticisms, and not in the least tender of their feelings, unless indeed they happened to be women. Knowing this, I took his praise for certain studies and drawings I had brought with me as a patent of ability; and though I was never extravagant in my opinion of my own capacities for art, his approbation of some things that I had done, and his assurance of a respectable attainment if I followed the best methods of study, encouraged me, and I took it without question that the methods were his, and it was a costly experience which undeceived me.

Of the people with whom I made acquaintance in London at this visit, those who most interested me were Clough and Owen. Of the artists I saw little, as they and myself had other things to do than to frequent one another's studios; but by the Rossetti family I profited largely, as I had been more or less in intimate relations with William since he undertook the correspondence of "The Crayon" from England. Of Dante, indeed, I saw little at that time, as he lived by himself; but with William my relations were constant and cordial, and he was for many years my most valued English friend. Through his extreme honesty and liberality, and his extensive knowledge of and wide feeling for art, there was great community of appreciation between us, and our friendship lasted long beyond the direct interest I had in English art matters.

Of Christina I saw a good deal, for the hospitality of the Rossetti family was informal and cordial. She was then in excellent health, and, though she was never what would be, by the generality of tastes, considered a beautiful woman, there was a noble serenity and dignity of expression in her face which was, as is often said of women of the higher type of character, "better than beauty," and in which one saw the spiritual exaltation that, without the least trace of the dévote, dominated in her and made her, before all other women of whom I know anything, the poetess of the divine life. The faith in the divine flamed out in her with a mild radiance which had in it no earthly warmth. She attracted me very strongly, but I should as soon have thought of falling in love with the Madonna del Gran Duca as with her. Being myself in the regions of dogmatic faith, I was in a position to judge sympathetically her religion, and, though we differed in tenets as far as two sincere believers in Christianity could, I found in our discussions of the dogmas a broad and affectionate charity in her towards all differences from the ideal of credence she had formed for herself. I do not remember ever meeting any one who held such exalted and unquestioning faith in the true spiritual life as was hers. From my mother, who was in most respects the most purely spiritual woman I have ever known, Christina differed by this serenity, which in my mother was often disturbed by the doubts that had their seeds in the old and superstitious Calvinism mingled with the ground of her creed, and from which she never could liberate herself.

Christina believed in God, in heaven, in the eternal life, with an unfaltering constancy and fullness which left no questionings except, it might be, concerning her fulfillment of her religious obligations. And while I thought her belief in certain dogmas, such as transubstantiation, and in the fasting and ritual of her High Church observances, to be too trivial for such a really exalted intellect, so near the perception of the essential truth, she held them with such a childlike and tranquil faith that I would sooner have worshiped with her than have disturbed her tranquillity in it. She gave me a demonstration of doctrinal charity which was to me a novelty, and showed me that tenets which are to me, and those trained like me, idle formalities were in reality the steps of a ladder by which she must climb to the realization of the abstract good. Dogmas and observances apart, I felt that her religion was so much loftier than my own that, though it would have been impossible for me to profess acceptance of it, it was equally impossible to argue with her about it,—that it was so woven into the fibre of her existence that to move it in the least would be impossible, or, if possible, only at the cost of mental and spiritual dislocation. But, with all this, there was not in her a trace of the assumption of a religious superiority which I have so often found in the driest non-conformist, or the putting me apart with the creatures that perish and are doomed which I have oftener found in Catholic friends, with whom I have felt that they regarded me with a sort of pitiful friendship, as one certain to be damned, and so only worth a limited regard, lest love should be wasted. In after years I saw her not infrequently, and when illness and grief had touched her, and I saw always the same serenity and the same wide personal charity.

Much of Christina's character one could see in her mother, a noble and worshipful woman, in whom the domestic virtues mingled with the spiritual in a way that set off the singleness of life of Christina singularly, as if it were the same light in an earthen vessel. Mrs. Rossetti was what one often hears spoken of as "a dear, good woman," whose motherly life had absorbed her existence,—one of the witnesses (martyrs) of the practical Christianity, who go, unseen and unknown, to build the universal church of humanity, and whom we reverence without naming them. Of Maria, the elder sister of Christina, I saw less, but enough to know that the same ardent, beautiful religious spirit burned in her, mute. In the years when I, later, saw most of the family, Maria lived in a sisterhood. She had none of the genius or the personal charm of her sister, but possessed the same elevation and serene religious sentiment.