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"Thursday, August 7, 1777"
L s. d.
Super & Loging . . . . . . . 0 1 4
8th. Brakfast, Dinar and 0 1 9
Super and half mug of tody 0 2 6
9th. Lodging, one glass rum half 0 2 6
& Dinar, one mes oats 0 1 4
Super half mug flyp 0 3 0
10th Brakf.--one dram 0 1 8
Dinner, Lodging, horse-keeping 0 2 0
one mug flyp, horse bating 0 3 0
11th. horse keeping 1
13th. glass rum & Diner 1 8
14th. Horse bating 0 0 6
Horse Jorney 28 miles 0 5 10
A true accomp.--total 1 14 6
William Bradford,
Dilivered to Capt. Crosby 2 2 6
Alas! the major's inscription and the foregoing "accomp." are
hollow mockeries to the thirsty traveller, for there is neither
rum nor "flyp" to be had; the bar is dry as an old cork; the door
of the cupboard into which the jovial Howes were wont to stick the
awl with which they opened bottles still hangs, worn completely
through by the countless jabs, a melancholy reminder of the
convivial hours of other days. The restrictions of more abstemious
times have relegated the ancient bar to dust, the idle awl to
slow-consuming rust.
It is amazing how thirsty one gets in the presence of musty
associations of a convivial character. The ghost of a spree is a
most alluring fellow; it is the dust on the bottle that flavors
the wine; a musty bin is the soul's delight; we drink the vintage
and not the wine.
Drinking is a lost art, eating a forgotten ceremony. The pendulum
has swung from Trimalchio back to Trimalchio. Quality is lost in
quantity. The tables groan, the cooks groan, the guests groan,--
feasting is a nightmare.
Wine is a subject, not a beverage; it is discussed, not drunk; it
is sipped, tasted, and swallowed reluctantly; it lingers on the
palate in fragrant and delicious memory; it comes a bouquet and
departs an aroma; it is the fruition of years, the distillation of
ages; a liquid jewel, it reflects the subtle colors of the
rainbow, running the gamut from a dull red glow to the violet rays
that border the invisible.
But, alas! the appreciation of wine is lost. Everybody serves
wine, no one understands it; everybody drinks it, no one loves it.
From a fragrant essence wine has become a coarse reality,--a
convention. Chablis with the oysters, sherry with the soup,
sauterne with the fish, claret with the roast, Burgundy with the
game,--champagne somewhere, anywhere, everywhere; port, grand, old
ruddy port--that has disappeared; no one understands it and no one
knows when to serve it; while Madeira, that bloom of the vinous
century plant, that rare exotic which ripens with passing
generations, is all too subtle for our untutored discrimination.
And if, perchance, a good wine, like a strange guest, finds its
way to the table, we are at loss how to receive it, how to address
it, how to entertain it. We offend it in the decanting and
distress it in the serving. We buy our wines in the morning and
serve them in the evening to drink the sediment which the more
fastidious wine during long years has been slowly rejecting; we
mix the bright transparent liquid with its dregs and our rough
palates detect no difference. But the lover of wine, the more he
has the less he drinks, until, in the refinement and exaltation of
his taste, it is sufficient to look upon the dust-mantled bottle
and recall the delicious aroma and flavor, the recollection of
which is far too precious to risk by trying anew; he knows that if
a bottle be so much as turned in its couch it must sleep again for
years before it is really fit to drink; he knows how difficult it
is to get the wine out of the bottle clear as ruby or yellow
diamond; he knows that if so much as a speck of sediment gets into
the decanter, to precisely the extent of the speck is the wine
injured.
In serving wines, we of the Western world may learn something from
the tea ceremonies of the Japanese,--ceremonies so elaborate that
to our impatient notions they are infinitely tedious, and yet they
get from the tea all the exquisite delight it contains, and at the
same time invest its serving with a halo of form, tradition, and
association. Surely, if wine is to be taken at all, it is as
precious as a cup of tea; and if taken ceremoniously, it will be
taken moderately.
What is the use of serving good wine? No one recognizes it,
appreciates it, or cares for it. It is served by the butler and
removed by the footman without introduction, greeting, or comment.
The Hon. Sam Jones, from Podunk, is announced in stentorian tones
as he makes his advent, but the gem of the dinner, the treat of
the evening, the flower of the feast, an Haut Brion of '75, or an
Yquem of '64, or a Johannisberger of '61, comes in like a tramp
without a word. Possibly some one of the guests, whose palate has
not been blunted by coarse living or seared by strong drink, may
feel that he is drinking something out of the ordinary, and he may
linger over his glass, loath to sip the last drop; but all the
others gulp their wine, or leave it--with the indifference of
ignorance.
Good wine is loquacious; it is a great traveller and smacks of
many lands; it is a bon vivant and has dined with the select of
the earth; it recalls a thousand anecdotes; it reeks with
reminiscences; it harbors a kiss and reflects a glance, but it is
a silent companion to those who know it not, and it is quarrelsome
with those who abuse it.
It seemed a pity that somewhere about the inn, deep in some long
disused cellar, there were not a few--just a few--bottles of old
wine, a half-dozen port of 1815, one or two squat bottles of
Madeira brought over by men who knew Washington, an Yquem of '48,
a Margaux of '58, a Johannisberger Cabinet--not forgetting the
"Auslese"--of '61, with a few bottles of Romani Conti and Clos de
Vougeot of '69 or '70,--not to exceed two or three dozen all told;
not a plebeian among them, each the chosen of its race, and all so
well understood that the very serving would carry one back to
colonial days, when to offer a guest a glass of Madeira was a
subtle tribute to his capacity and appreciation.
It is a far cry from an imaginary banquet with Lucullus to the New
England Saturday night supper of pork and beans which was spread
before us that evening. The dish is a survival of the rigid
Puritanism which was the affliction and at the same time the
making of New England; it is a fast, an aggravated fast, a scourge
to indulgence, a reproach to gluttony; it comes Saturday night,
and is followed Sunday morning by the dry, spongy, antiseptic,
absorbent fish-ball as a castigation of nature and as a
preparation for the austere observance of the Sabbath; it is the
harsh, but no doubt deserved, punishment of the stomach for its
worldliness during the week; inured to suffering, the native
accepts the dose as a matter of course; to the stranger it seems
unduly severe. To be sent to bed supperless is one of the terrors
of childhood; to be sent to bed on pork and beans with the
certainty of fishballs in the morning is a refinement of torture
that could have been devised only by Puritan ingenuity.
At the very crisis of the trouble in China, when the whole world
was anxiously awaiting news from Pekin, the papers said that
Boston was perturbed by the reported discovery in Africa of a new
and edible bean.
To New England the bean is an obsession; it is rapidly becoming a
superstition. To the stranger it is an infliction; but, bad as the
bean is to the uninitiated, it is a luscious morsel compared with
the flavorless cod-fish ball which lodges in the throat and stays
there--a second Adam's apple--for lack of something to wash it
down.
If pork and beans is the device of the Puritans, the cod-fish ball
is the invention of the devil. It is as if Satan looked on
enviously while his foes prepared their powder of beans, and then,
retiring to his bottomless pit, went them one better by casting
his ball of cod-fish.
"But from the parlor of the inn
A pleasant murmur smote the ear,
Like water rushing through a weir;
Oft interrupted by the din
Of laughter and of loud applause
"The firelight, shedding over all
The splendor of its ruddy glow,
Filled the whole parlor large and low."
The room remains, but of all that jolly company which gathered in
Longfellow's days and constituted the imaginary weavers of tales
and romances, but one is alive to-day,--the "Young Sicilian."
"A young Sicilian, too, was there;
In sight of Etna born and bred,
Some breath of its volcanic air
Was glowing in his heart and brain,
And, being rebellious to his liege,
After Palermo's fatal siege,
Across the western seas he fled,
In good king Bomba's happy reign.
His face was like a summer night,
All flooded with a dusky light;
His hands were small; his teeth shone white
As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke."
To the present proprietor of the inn the "Young Sicilian" wrote
the following letter:
Rome, July 4, 1898.
Dear Sir,--In answer to your letter of June 8, I am delighted to
learn that you have purchased the dear old house and carefully
restored and put it back in its old-time condition. I sincerely
hope that it may remain thus for a long, long time as a memento of
the days and customs gone by. It is very sad for me to think that
I am the only living member of that happy company that used to
spend their summer vacations there in the fifties; yet I still
hope that I may visit the old Inn once more before I rejoin those
choice spirits whom Mr. Longfellow has immortalized in his great
poem. I am glad that some of the old residents still remember me
when I was a visitor there with Dr. Parsons (the Poet), and his
sisters, one of whom, my wife, is also the only living member of
those who used to assemble there. Both my wife and I remember well
Mr. Calvin Howe, Mr. Parmenter, and the others you mention; for we
spent many summers there with Professor Treadwell (the Theologian)
and his wife, Mr. Henry W. Wales (the Student), and other visitors
not mentioned in the poem, till the death of Mr. Lyman Howe (the
Landlord), which broke up the party. The "Musician" and the
"Spanish Jew," though not imaginary characters, were never guests
at the "Wayside Inn." I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Luigi Monti (the "Young Sicilian").
But there was a "Musician," for Ole Bull was once a guest at the
Wayside,
"Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
His figure tall and straight and lithe,
And every feature of his face
Revealing his Norwegian race."
The "Spanish Jew from Alicant" in real life was Israel Edrehi.
The Landlord told his tale of Paul Revere; the "Student" followed
with his story of love:
"Only a tale of love is mine,
Blending the human and divine,
A tale of the Decameron, told
In Palmieri's garden old."
And one by one the tales were told until the last was said.
"The hour was late; the fire burned low,
The Landlord's eyes were closed in sleep,
And near the story's end a deep
Sonorous sound at times was heard,
As when the distant bagpipes blow,
At this all laughed; the Landlord stirred,
As one awaking from a swound,
And, gazing anxiously around,
Protested that he had not slept,
But only shut his eyes, and kept
His ears attentive to each word.
Then all arose, and said 'Good-Night.'
Alone remained the drowsy Squire
To rake the embers of the fire,
And quench the waning parlor light;
While from the windows, here and there,
The scattered lamps a moment gleamed,
And the illumined hostel seemed
The constellation of the Bear,
Downward, athwart the misty air,
Sinking and setting toward the sun.
Far off the village clock struck one."
Before leaving the next morning, we visited the ancient ballroom
which extends over the dining-room. It seemed crude and cruel to
enter this hall of bygone revelry by the garish light of day. The
two fireplaces were cold and inhospitable; the pen at one end
where the fiddlers sat was deserted; the wooden benches which
fringed the sides were hard and forbidding; but long before any of
us were born this room was the scene of many revelries; the vacant
hearths were bright with flame; the fiddlers bowed and scraped;
the seats were filled with belles and beaux, and the stately
minuet was danced upon the polished floor.
The large dining-room and ballroom were added to the house
something more than a hundred years ago; the little old
dining-room and old kitchen in the rear of the bar still remain,
but--like the bar--are no longer used.
The brass name plates on the bedroom doors--Washington, Lafayette,
Howe, and so on--have no significance, but were put on by the
present proprietor simply as reminders that those great men were
once beneath the roof; but in what rooms they slept or were
entertained, history does not record.
The automobile will bring new life to these deserted hostelries.
For more than half a century steam has diverted their custom,
carrying former patrons from town to town without the need of
half-way stops and rests. Coaching is a fad, not a fashion; it is
not to be relied upon for steady custom; but automobiling bids
fair to carry the people once more into the country, and there
must be inns to receive them.
Already the proprietor was struggling with the problem what to do
with automobiles and what to do for them who drove them. He was
vainly endeavoring to reconcile the machines with horses and house
them under one roof; the experiment had already borne fruit in
some disaster and no little discomfort.
The automobile is quite willing to be left out-doors over night;
but if taken inside it is quite apt to assert itself rather
noisily and monopolize things to the discomfort of the horse.
Stables--to rob the horse of the name of his home--must be
provided, and these should be equipped for emergencies.
Every country inn should have on hand gasoline--this is easily
stored outside in a tank buried in the ground--and lubricating
oils for steam and gasoline machines; these can be kept and sold
in gallon cans.
In addition to supplies there should be some tools, beginning with
a good jack strong enough to lift the heaviest machine, a small
bench and vise, files, chisels, punches, and one or two large
wrenches, including a pipe-wrench. All these things can be
purchased for little more than a song, and when needed they are
needed badly. But gasoline and lubricating oils are absolutely
essential to the permanent prosperity of any well-conducted
wayside inn.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN RHODE ISLAND AND CONNECTICUT
CALLING THE FERRY
Next morning, Sunday the 8th, we left the inn at eleven o'clock
for Providence. It was a perfect morning, neither hot nor cold,
sun bright, and the air stirring.
We took the narrow road almost opposite the entrance to the inn,
climbed the hill, threaded the woods, and were soon travelling
almost due south through Framingham, Holliston, Medway, Franklin,
and West Wrentham towards Pawtucket.
That route is direct, the roads are good, the country rolling and
interesting. The villages come in close succession; there are
many quaint places and beautiful homes.
In this section of Massachusetts it does not matter much what
roads are selected, they are all good. Some are macadamized, more
are gravelled, and where there is neither macadam nor gravel, the
roads have been so carefully thrown up that they are good; we
found no bad places at all, no deep sand, and no rough, hard blue
clay.
When we stopped for luncheon at a little village not far from
Pawtucket, the tire which had been put on in Boston was leaking
badly. It was the tire that had been punctured and sent to the
factory for repairs, and the repair proved defective. We managed
to get to Pawtucket, and there tried to stop the leak with liquid
preparations, but by the time we reached Providence the tire was
again flat and--as it proved afterwards--ruined.
Had it not been for the tire, Narragansett Pier would have been
made that afternoon with ease; but there was nothing to do but
wire for a new tire and await its arrival.
It was not until half-past three o'clock Monday that the new one
came from New York, and it was five when we left for the Pier.
The road from Providence to Narragansett Pier is something more
than fair, considerably less than fine; it is hilly and in places
quite sandy. For some distance out of Providence it was dusty and
worn rough by heavy travel.
It was seven o'clock, dark and quite cold, when we drew up in
front of Green's Inn.
The season was over, the Pier quite deserted. A summer resort
after the guests have gone is a mournful, or a delightful, place--
as one views it. To the gregarious individual who seeks and misses
his kind, the place is loneliness itself after the flight of the
gay birds who for a time strutted about in gorgeous plumage
twittering the time away; to the man who loves to be in close and
undisturbed contact with nature, who enjoys communing with the
sea, who would be alone on the beach and silent by the waves, the
flight of the throng is a relief. There is a selfish satisfaction
in passing the great summer caravansaries and seeing them closed
and silent; in knowing that the splendor of the night will not be
marred by garish lights and still more garish sounds.
Were it not for the crowd, Narragansett Pier would be an ideal
spot for rest and recreation. The beach is perfect,--hard, firm
sand, sloping so gradually into deep water, and with so little
undertow and so few dangers, that children can play in the water
without attendants. The village itself is inoffensive, the country
about is attractive; but the crowd--the crowd that comes in
summer--comes with a rush almost to the hour in July, and takes
flight with a greater rush almost to the minute in August,--the
crowd overwhelms, submerges, ignores the natural charms of the
place, and for the time being nature hides its honest head before
the onrush of sham and illusion.
Why do the people come in a week and go in a day? What is there
about Narragansett that keeps every one away until a certain time
each year, attracts them for a few weeks, and then bids them off
within twenty-four hours? Just nothing at all. All attractions the
place has--the ocean, the beach, the drives, the country--remain
the same; but no one dares come before the appointed time, no one
dares stay after the flight begins; no one? That is hardly true,
for in every beautiful spot, by the ocean and in the mountains,
there are a few appreciative souls who know enough to make their
homes in nature's caressing embrace while she works for their pure
enjoyment her wondrous panorama of changing seasons. There are
people who linger at the sea-shore until from the steel-gray
waters are heard the first mutterings of approaching winter; there
are those who linger in the woods and mountains until the green of
summer yields to the rich browns and golden russets of autumn,
until the honk of the wild goose foretells the coming cold; these
and their kind are nature's truest and dearest friends; to them
does she unfold a thousand hidden beauties; to them does she
whisper her most precious secrets.
But the crowd--the crowd--the painted throng that steps to the
tune of a fiddle, that hangs on the moods of a caterer, whose
inspiration is a good dinner, whose aspiration is a new dance,--
that crowd is never missed by any one who really delights in the
manifold attractions of nature.
Not that the crowd at Narragansett is essentially other than the
crowd at Newport--the two do not mix; but the difference is one of
degree rather than kind. The crowd at Newport is architecturally
perfect, while the crowd at Narragansett is in the adobe stage,--
that is the conspicuous difference; the one is pretentious and
lives in structures more or less permanent; the other lives in
trunks, and is even more pretentious. Neither, as a crowd, has
more than a superficial regard for the natural charms of its
surroundings. The people at both places are entirely preoccupied
with themselves--and their neighbors. At Newport a reputation is
like an umbrella--lost, borrowed, lent, stolen, but never
returned. Some one has cleverly said that the American girl,
unlike girls of European extraction, if she loses her reputation,
promptly goes and gets another,--to be strictly accurate, she
promptly goes and gets another's. What a world of bother could be
saved if a woman could check her reputation with her wraps on
entering the Casino; for, no matter how small the reputation, it
is so annoying to have the care of it during social festivities
where it is not wanted, or where, like dogs, it is forbidden the
premises. Then, too, if the reputation happens to be somewhat
soiled, stained, or tattered,--like an old opera cloak,--what
woman wants it about. It is difficult to sit on it, as on a wrap
in a theatre; it is conspicuous to hold in the lap where every one
may see its imperfections; perhaps the safest thing is to do as
many a woman does, ask her escort to look out for it, thereby
shifting the responsibility to him. It may pass through strange
vicissitudes in his careless hands,--he may drop it, damage it,
lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the
time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state
of preservation, or a new one of some kind in its place.
Narragansett possesses this decided advantage over Newport, the
people do not know each other until it is too late. For six weeks
the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents
and reputations; no questions are asked, no information
volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,--
information frequently of apocryphal value. The gay beau of the
night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the
summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does
it make? If the beau beaus and the baron barons, is not the
feminine cup of happiness filled to overflowing? the only
requisite being that beau and baron shall preserve their incognito
to the end; hence the season must be short in order that no one's
identity may be discovered.
At Newport every one labors under the disadvantage of being
known,--for the most part too well known. How painful it must be
to spend summer after summer in a world of reality, where the
truth is so much more thrilling than any possible fiction that
people are deprived of the pleasure of invention and the
imagination falls into desuetude. At Narragansett every one is
veneered for the occasion,--every seam, scar, and furrow is hidden
by paint, powder, and rouge; the duchess may be a cook, but the
count who is a butler gains nothing by exposing her.
The very conditions of existence at Newport demand the exposure of
every frailty and every folly; the skeleton must sit at the feast.
There is no room for gossip where the facts are known. Nothing is
whispered; the megaphone carries the tale. What a ghastly society,
where no amount of finery hides the bald, the literal truth; where
each night the same ones meet and, despite the vain attempt to
deceive by outward appearances, relentlessly look each other
through and through. Of what avail is a necklace of pearls or a
gown of gold against such X-ray vision, such intimate knowledge of
one's past, of all one's physical, mental, and moral shortcomings?
The smile fades from the lips, the hollow compliment dies on the
tongue, for how is it possible to pretend in the presence of those
who know?
At Narragansett friends are strangers, in Newport they are
enemies; in both places the quality of friendship is strained. The
two problems of existence are, Whom shall I recognize? and, Who
will recognize me? A man's standing depends upon the women he
knows; a woman's upon the women she cuts. At a summer resort
recognition is a fine art which is not affected by any prior
condition of servitude or acquaintance. No woman can afford to
sacrifice her position upon the altar of friendship; in these
small worlds recognition has no relation whatsoever to friendship,
it is rather a convention. If your hostess of the winter passes
you with a cold stare, it is a matter of prudence rather than
indifference; the outside world does not understand these things,
but is soon made to.
Women are the arbiters of social fate, and as such must be
placated, but not too servilely. In society a blow goes farther
than a kiss; it is a warfare wherein it does not pay to be on the
defensive; those are revered who are most feared; those who nail
to their mast the black flag and show no quarter are the
recognized leaders,--Society is piracy.
Green's Inn was cheery, comfortable, and hospitable; but then the
season had passed and things had returned to their normal routine.
The summer hotel passes through three stages each season,--that of
expectation, of realization, and of regret; it is unpleasant
during the first stage, intolerable during the second, frequently
delightful during the third. During the first there is a period
when the host and guest meet on a footing of equality; during the
second the guest is something less than a nonentity, an humble
suitor at the monarch's throne; during the third the conditions
are reversed, and the guest is lord of all he is willing to
survey. It is conducive to comfort to approach these resorts
during the last stage,--unless, of course, they happen to be those
ephemeral caravansaries which close in confusion on the flight of
the crowd; they are never comfortable.
The best road from Boston to New York is said to be by way of
Worcester, Springfield, and through central Connecticut via
Hartford and New Haven; but we did not care to retrace our wheels
to Worcester and Springfield, and we did want to follow the shore;
but we were warned by many that after leaving the Pier we would
find the roads very bad.
As a matter of fact, the shore road from the Pier to New Haven is
not good; it is hilly, sandy, and rough; but it is entirely
practicable, and makes up in beauty and interest what it lacks in
quality.
We did not leave Green's Inn until half-past nine the morning
after our arrival, and we reached New Haven that evening at
exactly eight,--a delightful run of eighty or ninety miles by the
road taken.
The road is a little back from the shore and it is anything but
straight, winding in and out in the effort to keep near the coast.
Nearly all day long we were in sight of the ocean; now and then
some wooded promontory obscured our view; now and then we were
threading woods and valleys farther inland; now and then the road
almost lost itself in thickets of shrubbery and undergrowth, but
each time we would emerge in sight of the broad expanse of blue
water which lay like a vast mirror on that bright and still
September day.
We ferried across the river to New London. At Lyme there is a very
steep descent to the Connecticut River, which is a broad estuary
at that point. The ferry is a primitive side-wheeler, which might
carry two automobiles, but hardly more. It happened to be on the
far shore. A small boy pointed out a long tin horn hanging on a
post, the hoarse blast of which summons the sleepy boat.
There was no landing, and it seemed impossible for our vehicle to
get aboard; but the boat had a long shovel-like nose projecting
from the bow which ran upon the shore, making a perfect
gang-plank.
Carefully balancing the automobile in the centre so as not to list
the primitive craft, we made our way deliberately to the other
side, the entire crew of two men--engineer and captain--coming out
to talk with us.
The ferries at Lyme and New London would prove great obstacles to
anything like a club from New York to Newport along this road; the
day would be spent in getting machines across the two rivers.
It was dark when we ran into the city. This particular visit to
New Haven is chiefly memorable for the exceeding good manners of a
boy of ten, who watched the machine next morning as it was
prepared for the day's ride, offered to act as guide to the place
where gasoline was kept, and, with the grace of a Chesterfield,
made good my delinquent purse by paying the bill. It was all
charmingly and not precociously done. This little man was well
brought up,--so well brought up that he did not know it.
The automobile is a pretty fair touchstone to manners for both
young and old. A man is himself in the presence of the unexpected.
The automobile is so strange that it carries people off their
equilibrium, and they say and do things impulsively, and therefore
naturally.
The odd-looking stranger is ever treated with scant courtesy and
unbecoming curiosity; the strange machine fares no better. The man
or the boy who is not unduly curious, not unduly aggressive, not
unduly loquacious, not unduly insistent, who preserves his poise
in the presence of an automobile, is quite out of the ordinary,--
my little New Haven friend was of that sort.
It is a beautiful ride from New Haven to New York, and to it we
devoted the entire day, from half-past eight until half-past
seven.
At Norwalk the people were celebrating the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the town; the hotel where
we dined may have antedated the town a century or two.
Later in the afternoon, while wheeling along at twenty miles an
hour, we caught a glimpse of a signpost pointing to the left and
reading, "To Sound Beach." The name reminded us of friends who
were spending a few weeks there; we turned back and made them a
flying call.
Again a little farther on we stopped for gasoline in a dilapidated
little village, and found it was Mianus, which we recalled as the
home of an artist whose paintings, full of charm and tender
sentiment, have spread the fame of the locality and river. It was
only a short run of two or three miles to the orchard and hill
where he has his summer home, and we renewed an acquaintance made
several years before.
It is interesting to follow an artist's career and note the
changes in manner and methods; for changes are inevitable; they
come to high and low alike. The artist may not be conscious that
he no longer sees things and paints things as he did, but time
tells and the truth is patent to others. But changes of manner and
changes of method are fundamentally unlike. Furthermore, changes
of either manner or method may be unconscious and natural, or
conscious and forced.
For the most part, an artist's manner changes naturally and
unconsciously with his environment and advancing years; but in the
majority of instances changes in method are conscious and forced,
made deliberately with the intention--frequently missed--of doing
better. One painter is impressed with the success of another and
strives to imitate, adopts his methods, his palette, his key, his
color scheme, his brush work, and so on;--these conscious efforts
of imitation usually result in failures which, if not immediately
conspicuous, soon make their shortcomings felt; the note being
forced and unnatural, it does not ring true.
A man may visit Madrid without imitating Velasquez; he may live in
Harlem without consciously yielding to Franz Hals; he may spend
days with Monet without surrendering his independence; but these
strong contacts will work their subtle effects upon all
impressionable natures; the effects, however, may be wrought
unconsciously and frequently against the sturdy opposition of an
original nature.
No painter could live for a season in Madrid without being
affected by the work of Velasquez; he might strive against the
influence, fight to preserve his own eccentric originality and
independence, but the very fact that for the time being he is
confronted with a force, an influence, is sufficient to affect his
own work, whether he accepts the influence reverentially or
rejects it scoffingly.
There is infinitely more hope for the man who goes to Madrid, or
any other shrine, in a spirit of opposition,--supremely
egotistical, supremely confident of his own methods, disposed to
belittle the teaching and example of others,--than there is for
the man who goes to servilely copy and imitate. The disposition to
learn is a good thing, but in all walks of life, as well as in
art, it may be carried too far. No man should surrender his
individuality, should yield that within him which is peculiarly
and essentially his own. An urchin may dispute with a Plato, if
the urchin sticks to the things he knows.
Between the lawless who defy all authority and the servile who
submit to all influences, there are the chosen few who assert
themselves, and at the same time clearly appreciate the strength
of those who differ from them. The urchin painter may assert
himself in the presence of Velasquez, providing he keeps within
the limits of his own originality.
It is for those who buy pictures to look out for the man who
arbitrarily and suddenly changes his manner or method; he is as a
cork tossed about on the surface of the waters, drifting with
every breeze, submerged by every ripple, fickle and unstable; if
his work possess any merit, it will be only the cheap merit of
cleverness; its brilliancy will be simply the gloss of dash.
It requires time to absorb an impression. Distance diminishes the
force of attraction. The best of painters will not regain
immediately his equilibrium after a winter in Florence or in Rome.
The enthusiasm of the hour may bring forth some good pictures, but
the effect of the impression will be too pronounced, the copy will
be too evident. Time and distance will modify an impression and
lessen the attraction; the effect will remain, but no longer
dominate.
It was so dark we could scarcely see the road as we approached New
York.
How gracious the mantle of night; like a veil it hides all
blemishes and permits only fair outlines to be observed. Details
are lost in vast shadows; huge buildings loom up vaguely towards
the heavens, impressive masses of masonry; the bridges, outlined
by rows of electric lights, are strings of pearls about the throat
of the dusky river. The red, white, and green lights of invisible
boats below are so many colored glow-worms crawling about, while
the countless lights of the vast city itself are as if a
constellation from above had settled for the time being on the
earth beneath.
It is by night that the earth communes with the universe. During
the blinding brightness of the day our vision penetrates no
farther than our own great sun; but at night, when our sun has run
its course across the heavens, and we are no longer dazzled by its
overpowering brilliancy, the suns of other worlds come forth one
by one until, as the darkness deepens, the vault above is dotted
with these twinkling lights. Dim, distant, beacons of suns and
planets like our own, what manner of life do they contain? what
are we to them? what are they to us? Is there aught between us
beyond the mechanical laws of repulsion and attraction? Is there
any medium of communication beyond the impalpable ether which
brings their light? Are we destined to know each other better by
and by, or does our knowledge forever end with what we see on a
cloudless night?
It was Wednesday evening, September 11, when we arrived in New
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