How noble is that yellow one, whose yellowness is pure,Which traverses the regions, and whose journeying is afar.Told abroad are its fame and repute:Its lines are set as the secret sign of wealth;Its march is coupled with the success of endeavours;Its bright look is loved by mankind,As though it had been molten of their hearts.By its aid whoever has got it in his purse assails boldly,Though kindred be perished or tardy to help.Oh! charming are its purity and brightness;Charming are its sufficiency and help.How many a ruler is there whose rule has been perfected by it!How many a sumptuous one is there whose grief, but for it, would be endless!How many a host of cares has one charge of it put to flight!How many a full moon has a sum of it brought down!How many a one, burning with rage, whose coal is flaming,Has it been secretly whispered to and then his anger has softened.How many a prisoner, whom his kin had yielded,Has it delivered, so that his gladness has been unmingled.Now by the Truth of the Lord whose creation brought it forth,Were it not for His fear, I should say its power is supreme.
The sovereign, our dinar, does it not answer exactly to this poem of the Arabian written in the days of the Crusades! It is yellow, it is pure, it travels vast distances, and is as valuable in India as here, it is famous and has a reputation, the inscription on it is the mark of its worth, it is the sinew of war, the world loves its brightness as if it was coined from their hearts, those who have it in their purses are bold, it helps every one who has it, it banishes all cares, and one might say, were it not for fear of the Lord, that the sovereign was all mighty.
All mighty for good as it seemed to Amaryllis thinking in her garret, leaning her head on herhand, and gazing at her violets; all mighty for good—if only she could get the real solid, golden sovereign!
But the golden coin has another side—the obverse—another Fate, for evil, clinging to it, and the poet, changing his tone, thunders:—
Ruin on it for a deceiver and insincere,The yellow one with two faces like a hypocrite!It shows forth with two qualities to the eye of him that looks on it,The adornment of the loved one, the colour of the lover.Affection for it, think they who judge truly,Tempts men to commit that which shall anger their Maker.But for it no thief's right hand were cut off;Nor would tyranny be displayed by the impious;Nor would the niggardly shrink from the night-farer;Nor would the delayed claimant mourn the delay of him that withholds;Nor would men call to God from the envious who casts at them.Moreover the worst quality that it possessesIs that it helps thee not in straits,Save by fleeing from thee like a runaway slave.Well done he who casts it away from a hilltop,And who, when it whispers to him with the whispering of a lover,Says to it in the words of the truth-speaking, the veracious,"I have no mind for intimacy with thee,—begone!"
"The worst quality that it possesses" remains to this day, and could Amaryllis have obtained the sovereign, still it would only have helped her by passing from her, from her hand to that of the creditor's, fleeing like a runaway slave.
But Amaryllis surrounded with the troubles of her father and mother, saw only the good side ofthe golden sovereign, only that it was all powerful to bless.
How unnatural it seems that a girl like this, that young and fresh and full of generous feelings as she was, her whole mind should perforce be taken up with the question of money; an unnatural and evil state of things.
It seems to me very wicked that it should be so.
T
HOUGH the portfolio was pushed aside and dust had gathered on the table, except where her arm touched it, Amaryllis came daily, and often twice a day, to her flowers to pray.
From the woods she brought the delicate primrose opening on the mossy bank among the grey ash-stoles; the first tender green leaflet of hawthorn coming before the swallow; the garden crocus from the grass of the garden; the first green spikelet from the sward of the meadow; the beautiful white wild violets gathered in the sunlit April morning while the nightingale sang.
With these she came to pray each day, at the window-niche. After she had sat awhile at the table that morning, thinking, she went and knelt at the window with her face in her hands; the scent of the violets filled her hair.
Her prayer was deeper than words and was not put in language, but came rushing through her heart;—"That her dear mother might not suffer any more, that the strain of ceaseless trouble might beremoved from her mind, that peace and rest might come to her in her old age. Let her step become firm, and the nervousness depart, and her eyes shine like they used to, so clear and bright, and do not let the grey hairs show more than they do now, or increase in number. Let her smile and be happy and talk cheerfully, and take an interest in the house and all the order of household things, and also see and understand that her husband meant to please her, even in such a little thing as splitting up useful wood for the fire, that he intended to please her, and that she might not misunderstand him any more. He intended to be kind in many ways, but misfortune had blinded her, and she took things the wrong way. And give her more change and friends to ask her out from home on visits, so that she might be amused, and make them come to see her and pass the time in contentment. Give her also enough money to buy good clothes so as to look nice as she ought to do, and if possible a conveyance of some kind—not a grand carriage, she did not wish for that—but a conveyance to drive about now and then, because she was not so strong as she used to be, and could not walk far. And let me, thought Amaryllis, let me be able to give her a watch, for other people have watches, and my mother has not got one, and it does seem so strange it should be so after all the hard work she has done. Let me, too, get her some nice things to eat, some fish and wine, for she cannot eat our plain bacon now every day, she has not gotan appetite, and her teeth too are bad, and I should so like to give her a set of artificial teeth that her food might do her more good. But what I really want is that she may be happy, and be like my mother herself really is when she is herself. Give my father money enough to pay his creditors, for I know that though he is so quiet and says nothing, these debts are wearing him out, and I know he wishes to pay them, and does not willingly keep them waiting. He is so patient, and so good, and bears everything, I am sure no one was ever like him, and it is so dreadful to see him work, work, work, every day from five o'clock in the morning, and yet to be always worried with these debts and people that will not let him have peace one single day. Do, please, let him have less work to do, it makes me miserable to see him in the rain, and he is not young now, and sometimes carrying such heavy things, great pieces of timber and large trusses of hay, and making his back ache digging. Surely it must soon be time for him to leave off working, he has done such a lot, and I do not think he can see quite so well as he used to, because he holds the paper so close to his eyes. Please let him leave off working soon now and have some rest and change, and go about with my mother, and when he is at home not have anything more to do than his garden, because he is so fond of that; let him love the flowers again as he used to, and plant some more, and have nothing harder to do than to gather the fruit from the trees he has planted. And letme get him some new books to read, because I know he is so fond of books; he has not had a new book for so long. Let him go to London and see people and things, and life, because I know he is full of ideas and thoughts though he works and digs, and that is what would do him good. Give him some money now at last, now he has worked all these years, forty years on this farm, and ever so much work before that; do give him some money at last. Do make my grandfather kinder to him and not so harsh for the rent, let him give the place to my father now, for it can be no use to him; let my father have it for his very own, and then I think he would be happy after all, he does so like to improve things and make them beautiful, and if it was his very own there is so much that he could do. That would be nice work and work that he would enjoy doing, and not just to get a few wretched shillings to pay other people. I am sure he would never be cross then, and he would be so kind to my mother, and kind and good to everybody. There is nobody like him, as you know, in this place; they are not clever like him, and good to the labouring men and their families like he is (and so is my mother too); they are so rough, and so unkind and stupid; I do not mean anything against them, but they are not like he is. And if you were to help him he would soon help the poor people and give them food and more wages; you know how good he is in his heart. And he would do it, not because other people should praise him, but because he would like to do it; ifhe does not go to church his heart is very true, and it is because he likes to be true and genuine, and not make any false show. Do, please, help him, and give him some money, and do, please, let him have this place for his very own, for I do so fear lest those who set my grandfather against him, should have a will made, so that my father should not have this house and land as he ought to do, as the son. He has made it so beautiful with trees, and brought the fresh spring water up to the house, and done so many clever things, and his heart is here, and it is home to him, and no other place could be like it. I think it would kill him not to have it, and for me, I should be so—I cannot tell, I should be so miserable if he did not, but I will not think of myself. There are so many things I know he wants to do if only he was not so worried with debts, and if he could feel it was his own land; he wants to plant a copse, and to make a pond by the brook, and have trout in it, and to build a wall by the rick-yard. Think how my dear father has worked all these years, and do help him now, and give him some money, and this place, and please do not let him grow any more grey than his hair is now, and save his eyes, for he is so fond of things that are beautiful, and please make my mother happy with him."
When Amaryllis rose from her knees her face was quite white, emotion had taken away her colour, and tears were thick on her cheek. She sat a little while by the table to recover herself, still thinking, and remembered that again last night she haddreamed the same dream about fire in the thatch. Somehow there seemed to be an alarm in the night, and they ran out of doors and found the corner of the roof on fire, over the window with the wire network instead of glass. It ran up from the corner towards the chimney, where the roof was mossy by the ridge. There was no flame, but a deep red seething heat, as if the straw burned inwardly, and was glowing like molten metal. Each straw seemed to lie in the furious heat, and a light to flicker up and down, as if it breathed fire. The thatch was very thick there, she knew, and recollected it quite well in her dream; Iden himself had laid on two thick coats in his time, and it was heavy enough before then. He talked about the thatching of it, because it was an argument with him that straw had a great power of endurance, and was equal to slates for lasting. This thickness, she saw, was the reason the fire did not blaze up quickly, and why, fortunately, it was slow in moving up the roof. It had not yet eaten through, so that there was no draught—once it got through, it would burn fast—if only they could put it out before then all might yet be saved. In the midst of her anxiety Iden came with the largest ladder in the rickyard, and mounted up, carrying a bucket of water. She tried to follow, holding on to the rungs of the ladder with one hand, and dragging up a heavy bucket with the other—the strain and effort to get up woke her.
This dream had happened to her so many times,and was so vivid and circumstantial—the fire seemed to glow in the thatch—that at last she began to dread lest it should come true. If it did not come true of the house itself, perhaps it would of the family, and of their affairs; perhaps it signified that the fire of debt, and poverty, and misfortune would burn them, as it were, to the ground. She tried to think whether in the dream they were getting the fire under before she woke, or whether they could not master it; it seemed dubious.
She did not tell her mother of the dream, afraid lest it might excite her again; nor could she tell Iden, who would have laughed at her.
Yet, though she knew it was but a dream, and dreams have ceased to come true, she did not like it; she felt uncertain, as if some indefinable danger was threatening round about. As she sat at the table she added to her prayer the supplication that the dear old house might not be burned down.
Soon afterwards she went down stairs, and on the lower flight paused, to listen to voices—not those of her mother and Iden—creditors, doubtless, come to cry aloud, "Pay me that thou owest!"—the very sum and total of religion. Her heart beat quicker—the voices came again, and she thought she recognized them, and that they were not those of creditors. She entered the sitting-room, and found that two visitors, from widely separated places, had arrived; one with a portmanteau, the other with an old, many-coloured carpet-bag. They were Amadis Iden, from IdenCourt, over the Downs, the Court Idens, as they were called, and Alere Flamma, from London; the Flammas were carpet-bag people.
Her father was making them very welcome, after his wont, and they were talking of the house the Idens of yore had built in a lonely spot, expressly in order that they might drink, drink, drinkundisturbedby their unreasonable wives.
T
HEY talked on and on, these three, Iden, Amadis Iden, and Alere Flamma, with Amaryllis listening, from the end of April till near the end of May; till "a month passed away," and still they were talking. For there is nothing so good to the human heart as well agreed conversation, when you know that your companion will answer to your thought as the anvil meets the hammer, ringing sound to merry stroke; better than wine, better than sleep, like love itself—for love is agreement of thought—"God listens to those who pray to him; let us eat and drink, and think of nothing," says the Arabian proverb. So they ate and drank—very moderate the drinking—and thought of nothing, and talked, which should be added to complete felicity. Not, of course, all of them always together, sometimes all four, sometimes Alere, Amadis, and Amaryllis, sometimes only the last two.
The round summer-house was their Parliament House whenever the east winds sank and the flowers shone forth like sunshine; as the sun shines whenthe clouds withdraw, so when the harsh east winds cease the May flowers immediately bloom and glow.
It was a large round house, properly builded of brick, as a summer-house should be—put not thy faith in lath work—and therefore dry and warm; to sit in it was like sitting in a shell, warm and comfortable, with a sea of meadow-grass, smooth and coloured, stretching in front, islanded about with oak, and elm, and ash.
The finches came to the boughs that hung over the ivy-grown thatch, and sang in the sycamore opposite the door, and in the apple-trees, whose bloom hung down almost to the ground.
These apple-trees, which Iden had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed, spendthrift, wasteful—perfectly prodigal—quantities of rose-tinted petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never questioning but what there will be plenty of water to follow.
Flowers, and trees, and grass, seemed to spring up wherever Iden set down his foot: fruit and flowers fell from the air down upon him. It was his genius to make things grow—like sunshine and shower; a sort of Pan, a half-god of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a sort of Nature in human shape, moving about and sowing Plenty and Beauty.
One side of the summer-house was a thick holly-bush, Iden had set it there; he builded the summer-house and set the ivy; and the pippin at theback, whose bloom was white; the copper-birch near by; the great sycamore alone had been there before him, but he set a seat under it, and got woodbine to flower there; the drooping-ash he planted, and if Amaryllis stood under it when the tree was in full leaf you could not see her, it made so complete an arbour; the Spanish oak in the corner; the box hedge along the ha-ha parapet; the red currants against the red wall; the big peony yonder; the damsons and pear; the yellow honey-bush; all these, and this was but one square, one mosaic of the garden, half of it sward, too, and besides these there was the rhubarb-patch at one corner; fruit, flowers, plants, and herbs, lavender, parsley, which has a very pleasant green, growing in a thick bunch, roses, pale sage—read Boccaccio and the sad story of the leaf of sage—ask Nature if you wish to know how many things more there were.
A place to eat and drink, and think of nothing in, listening to the goldfinches, and watching them carry up the moss, and lichen, and slender fibres for their nest in the fork of the apple; listening to the swallows as they twittered past, or stayed on the sharp, high top of the pear tree; to the vehement starlings, whistling and screeching like Mrs. Iden herself, on the chimneys; chaffinches "chink, chink," thrushes, distant blackbirds, who like oaks; "cuckoo, cuckoo," "crake, crake," buzzing and burring of bees, coo of turtle-doves, now and then a neigh, to remind you that there were horses,fulness and richness of musical sound; a world of grass and leaf, humming like a hive with voices.
When the east wind ceases, and the sun shines above, and the flowers beneath, "a summer's day in lusty May," then is the time an Interlude in Heaven.
And all this, summer-house and all, had dropped out of the pocket of Iden's ragged old coat.
There was a magic power of healing in the influences of this place which Iden had created. Both Amadis and Alere Flamma had already changed for the better.
That morning when Amaryllis had found them, just arrived, the one with a portmanteau, and the other with a carpet-bag, they were both pale to the last degree of paleness.
Three years had gone by since Amadis had stayed at Coombe Oaks before, when Amaryllis was thirteen and he eighteen; fine romps they had then, a great girl, and a great boy, rowing on the water, walking over the hills, exploring the woods; Amadis shooting and fishing, and Amaryllis going with him, a kind of gamekeeper page in petticoats. They were of the same stock of Idens, yet no relations; he was of the older branch, Amaryllis of the younger.
She had grown into a woman; Amadis Iden into a man.
Sadly, indeed, he had altered. Looking at him, she could scarce believe he was the same; so pale, so thin, so drooping, and fireless—the spark of lifesunk into the very ashes. He sat at the dinner-table that morning like a ghost. He was convalescent from low fever: that dread disease which has taken the place of ague in the country. At one time it was ague; in these times it is low fever.
At Coombe Oaks they had heard of his illness in a far-off way, but had received no distinct particulars, for the news came in a roundabout way by word of mouth, country-folk never write. The distance between the two houses was less than ten miles, and might as well have been five hundred for all the communication.
So that the ghastly paleness of his face came upon her as a spectre in daylight. You could see at a glance what was wrong—the vital energy had been sapped; as a tree fades without a branch broken, or bark scored, fades and withers from the lack of the mysterious force which brings forth fresh leaves, so he drooped in his chair. The body—the tree—was there, but the life was not in it.
Alere Flamma, aged forty-nine, or nearly, was pale from other causes, and it was a different kind of paleness; not bloodlessness, like Amadis, but something lacking in the blood, a vitiated state. Too much Fleet Street, in short; too much of the Oracle—Pantagruel's Oracle of the Bottle.
His hands shook as he held his knife and fork—oddly enough, the hands of great genius often do shake; now and then when he put his glass to his lips, his teeth snapped on it, and chinked.
It seemed curious that such puffy, shaky handscould hold a pencil, and draw delicate lines without a flaw.
Many who never resort to the Oracle have hands that tremble nearly as much—the nervous constitution—and yet execute artists' work of rare excellence.
Alere's constitution, the Flamma constitution, naturally nervous, had been shaken as with dynamite by the bottle, and the glass chinked against his teeth. Every two or three years, when he felt himself toppling over like a tree half sawn through, Alere packed his carpet-bag, and ran down to Coombe Oaks. When the rats began to run up the wall as he sat at work in broad daylight, Alere put his slippers into his carpet-bag and looked out some collars.
In London he never wore a collar, only a bright red scarf round his neck; the company he kept would have shunned him—they would have looked him up and down disdainfully:—"Got a collar on—had no breakfast." They would have scornfully regarded him as no better than a City clerk, the class above all others scorned by those who use tools.
"Got a collar on—had no breakfast." The City clerk, playing the Masher on thirty shillings a week, goes without food to appear the gentleman.
Alere, the artist, drank with the men who used hammer, and file, or set up type—a godless set, ye gods, how godless, these setters up of type at four o'clock in the morning; oysters and stout at 4 a.m.; special taverns they must have open for them—openbefore Aurora gleams in the east—Oh! Fleet Street, Fleet Street, what a place it is!
By no possible means could Alere work himself into a dress-coat.
Could he have followed the celebrated advice—"You put on a dress-coat and go into society"—he would soon have become a name, a fame, a taker of big fees, a maker of ten thousand yearly.
To a man who could draw like Alere, possessed, too, of the still rarer talent—the taste to see what to draw—there really is no limit in our days; for as for colour, you do not require a genius for colour in an age of dinginess—why, the point, nowadays, is to avoid colour, and in a whole Academy you shall scarcely find as much as would tint a stick of sealing-wax.
"You put on a black coat and go into society"—that is the secret of commissions, and commissions are fortune. Nothing so clever in the way of advice has been sent forth as that remark. The great Tichborne said something about folk that had money and no brains, and folk that had brains but no money; and they as has no brains ought to be so managed as to supply money to those who had. But even the greatness of the great Tichborne's observation falls into insignificance before Chesterfield in one sentence: "Put on a black coat and go into society."
What are the sayings of the seven wise men of Greece compared tothat?
B
Y no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat. The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners—those great institutions of the day—were all closed to him because of the Dress Coat.
If he had really desired to enter, of course he would have squeezed into the evening monkey-skin somehow; but, in truth, Alere did not want to enter.
Inside he might have finished a portrait a month at a thousand guineas—twelve portraits per annum equals twelve thousand guineas a year; you see I am looking up the multiplication table, preparatory to going into the tallow trade.
What he actually did was to make designs for book-covers—magnificent book-covers that will one day fetch their weight in bank-notes—manipulating a good deal of it himself—"tooling"—for the libraries of noble connoisseurs. They were equal to anything ever done in Paris.
For a week's work—say half-an-hour a day—he got perhaps about ten pounds. With the tenpounds he was satisfied—ten pounds represents a good deal of brandy, or stout, or even wine, about as much as one man can manage at a bout; besides tobacco, the gallery at the theatre, and innumerable trifles of that kind. Ten pounds represents a good deal of street life.
Sometimes he drew—and engraved—illustrations for books, being as clever with the engraver's tools as with the pencil; sometimes he cut out those odd, fantastic "initials," "ornaments," "finials," which are now so commonly seen in publications, catching the classical grotesque of the Renaissance to perfection, and deceiving the experienced; sometimes he worked in the press-room in the House of Flamma, Fleet Street, pulling artists' proofs, or printing expensively illustrated volumes—numbered, and the plates destroyed—actual manual work, in his shirt sleeves.
He could stop when he liked and take a swig of stout. That was the Alere style.
Smoking was forbidden in the old House of Flamma because of the worm-eaten beams, the worm-eaten rafters and staircase, the dusty, decayed bookshelves, the dry, rotten planks of the floor, the thin wooden partitions, all ready to catch fire at the mere sight of a match. Also because of the piles of mouldy books which choked the place, and looked fit for nothing but a bonfire, but which were worth thousands of pounds; the plates and lithographic stones, artists' proofs, divers and sundry Old Masters in a room upstairs, all easily destructible.
But Alere, being a son of the house, though not in command, did not choose to be amenable to rules and orders in fact, in fiction he was. He smoked and kept the glue-pot ready on the stove; if a certain step was known to be approaching the pipe was thrust out of sight, and some dry glue set melting, the powerful incense quite hiding the flavour of tobacco. A good deal of dry glue is used in London in this way.
If I could but write the inside history of Fleet Street, I should be looked upon as the most wonderful exponent of human life that had ever touched a pen. Balzac—whom everybody talks of and nobody has read, because the discrimination of Paternoster Row has refused him a translation till quite lately—Zola, who professes to be realistic, who is nothing if not realistic, but whose writings are so curiously crude and merely skim the surface; even the great Hugo, who produced the masterpiece of all fiction,Les Misérables; all three of them, the entire host of manuscript-makers, I am sure I could vanquish them all, if I could only write the inside life of Fleet Street.
Not in any grace of style or sweeping march of diction, but just pencil-jotted in the roughest words to hand, just as rich and poor, well-dressed ladies and next-door beggars are bundled into a train, so, without choice of language, but hustling the first words anyhow, as it were, into the first compartment. If I could only get Alere to tell me all he had seen in Fleet Street, and could just jot it down on themargin of a stained newspaper, all the world would laugh and weep. For such things do go on in Fleet Street as no man has written yet.
If only Victor Hugo were alive and young again!
Alere liked pulling off the proofs in his shirt-sleeves, swigging his stout, smoking on the sly, working with all the genius of an inspired mechanic one moment and dropping into absolute idleness the next, spending infinite pains in finishing one bit of work, as if his very life depended on the smoothing of an edge of paper, putting off the next till the end of the month, pottering, sleeping, gossiping, dreaming over old German works, and especially dreaming over Goethe, humming old German songs—for he had been a great traveller—sometimes scrawling a furious Mazzinian onslaught in a semi-Nihilist foreign print, collecting stray engravings, wandering hither and thither.
Alere Flamma, artist, engraver, bookbinder, connoisseur, traveller, printer, Republican, conspirator, sot, smoker, dreamer, poet, kind-hearted, good-natured, prodigal, shiftless, man of Fleet Street, carpet-bag man, gentleman shaken to pieces.
He worked in his shirt-sleeves and drank stout, but nothing vulgar had ever been recorded against Alere Flamma. He frequented strong company—very strong meat—but no vile word left his lips.
There was a delicacy in all his ways in the midst of the coarsest surroundings, just as he appeared in the press-room among the printer's ink in thewhitest of clean shirt-sleeves, fit to wear with the abhorred dress-coat.
In his rooms at his lodgings there were literally hundreds of sketches, done on all sorts and sizes of paper, from the inside of an envelope hastily torn open to elephant. The bureau was full of them, crammed in anyhow, neither sorted nor arranged; nothing, of course, could be found if it was wanted. The drawers of the bookcase—it was his own furniture—were full of them; the writing-table drawer; a box in one corner; some were on the mantelpiece smoked and gritty; some inside his books, most of which were interleaved in this manner; literally hundreds of sketches, the subjects as numerous and varied.
Views in English country lanes, views on the Danube, bands playing in band-loving Vienna, old Highgate Archway, studies from Canterbury Cathedral, statuary in the Louvre, ships battling with the north wind in the North Sea—a savage fight between sail and gale—horses in the meadow, an aged butler, a boy whipping a top, charcoal-burners in the Black Forest, studies from the nude—Parisian models, Jewesses, almost life-size, a drayman heaving up a huge tankard, overshadowing his face like Mount Atlas turned over his thumb, designs to illustrate classical mythology, outlines expressing the ideas of Goethe—outlines of Marguerite and Faust among the roses—"He loves me; he loves me not," big-armed Flemish beauties with breasts as broad as the Zuyder-Zee was deep in the song,roofs of Nuremberg, revolutionary heroes charging their muskets in the famous year '48, when Alere had a bullet through his hat, in Vienna, I think; no end to them.
Sometimes when Alere had done no work for a month or two, and his ten pounds were spent, if he wanted a few guineas he would take a small selection of these round to the office of a certain illustrated paper; the Editor would choose, and hand over the money at once, well aware that it was ready money his friend needed. They were not exactly friends—there are no friends in London, only acquaintances—but a little chummy, because the Editor himself had had a fiery youth, and they had met in sunny Wien. That was the only paper that ever got sketches out of Alere.
If only Alere would have gone and sketched what he wasaskedto sketch! Ah! there is the difference; he could not do it, his nature would not let him; he could draw what he saw with his own eyes, but not what other people wanted him to see. A merry income he might have made if he would only have consented to see what other eyes—common, vulgar eyes—wanted to see, and which he could so easily have drawn for them.
Out of these piles of varied sketches there were two kinds the Editor instantly snapped at: the one was wild flowers, the other little landscape bits.
Wild flowers were his passion. They were to Flamma as Juliet to Romeo. Romeo's love, indeed, rushed up like straw on fire, a great blaze offlame; he perished in it as the straw; perhaps he might not have worshipped Juliet next year. Flamma had loved his wild flowers close upon forty years, ever since he could remember; most likely longer, for doubtless the dumb infant loved the daisies put in his chubby hand.
His passion they were still as he drew near fifty, and saw all things become commonplace. That is the saddest of thoughts—as we grow older the romance fades, and all things become commonplace.
Half our lives are spent in wishing for to-morrow, the other half in wishing for yesterday.
Wild flowers alone never become commonplace. The white wood-sorrel at the foot of the oak, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the thyme on the wind-swept downs, they were as fresh this year as last, as dear to-day as twenty years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as it were, in the earth we have made for them of our hopes, our prayers, our emotions, our thoughts.
Sketch-book upon sketch-book in Alere's room was full of wild flowers, drawn as he had found them in the lanes and woods at Coombe Oaks—by the footpaths, by the lake and the lesser ponds, on the hills—as he had found them, not formed into an artificial design, not torn up by the roots, or cut and posed for the occasion—exactly as they were when his eye caught sight of them. A difficult thing to do, but Alere did it.
In printing engravings of flowers the illustratedmagazines usually make one of two mistakes; either the flower is printed without any surroundings or background, and looks thin, quite without interest, however cleverly drawn, or else it is presented with a heavy black pall of ink which dabs it out altogether.
These flowers the Editor bought eagerly, and the little landscapes. From a stile, beside a rick, through a gap in a hedge, odd, unexpected places, Alere caught views of the lake, the vale, the wood, groups of trees, old houses, and got them in his magical way on a few square inches of paper. They were very valuable for book illustration. They were absolutely true to nature and fact.
P
ERHAPS the reason Alere never took to colours was because of his inherent and unswerving truthfulness of character. Genuine to a degree, he could not make believe—could not deceive—could not masquerade in a dress-coat.
Now, most of the landscape-painting in vogue to-day is nature in a dress-coat.
In a whole saloon of water colours, in a whole Academy, or Grosvenor Gallery you shall hardly find three works that represent any real scene in the fields.
I have walked about the fields a good deal in my brief, fretful hour, yet I have never seen anything resembling the strange apparitions that are hung on these walls every spring. Apparitions—optical illusions, lit up with watery, greenish, ghastly, ghost-light—nothing like them on earth I swear, and I suspect not in Heaven or Hades.
Touched-up designs: a tree taken from one place, a brook from another, a house from another—and mixed to order, like a prescription by the chemist—xv.grs. grass, 3 dr. stile, iiij. grs. rustic bridge. Nature never plants—nature is no gardener—no design, no proportion in the fields.
Colours! Passing a gasworks perhaps you may have noticed that the surface of the water in the ditch by the roadside bears a greenish scum, a pale prismatic scum; this is the colour-box of modern landscape.
How horrible the fields would look if they wore such hues in reality as are accepted on canvas at the galleries! Imagine these canvas tints transferred to the sward, the woods, the hills, the streams, the sky!Dies iræ, dies illæ—it would, indeed, be an awful day, the Last Day of Doom, and we should need the curtain at Drury Lane drawn before our eyes to shut it out of sight.
There are some who can go near to paint dogs and horses, but a meadow of mowing grass, not one of them can paint that.
Many candrawnature—drawings are infinitely superior generally to the painting that follows; scarce one now paints real nature.
Alere could not squeeze his sketches into the dress-coat of sham colour for any sacred exhibition wall whatever.
One thing Alere never attempted to draw—a bird in flight. He recognized that it was impossible; his taste rejected every conventional attitude that has been used for the purpose; the descending pigeon, the Japanese skewered birds, the swallow skimming as heavily as a pillow. You cannot drawa bird in flight. Swallows are attempted oftenest, and done worst of all.
How can you draw life itself? What is life? you cannot even define it. The swallow's wing has the motion of life—its tremble—its wonderful delicacy of vibration—the instant change—the slip of the air;—no man will ever be able to draw a flying swallow.
At the feet of this Gamaliel of Fleet Street, Amaryllis had sat much, from time to time, when the carpet-bag was packed and Alere withdrew to his Baden-Baden—i.e., to Coombe Oaks and apple-bloom, singing finch, and wild-flowers.
There were no "properties" in Alere's room at his lodgings; no odd bits collected during his wanderings to come in useful some day as make-up, realistic rock work, as it were, in the picture. No gauntlets or breast-plates, scraps of old iron; no Turkish guns or yataghans, no stags' horns, china, or carvings to be copied some day into an illustration. No "properties."
No studio effects. The plaster bust that strikes the key and tones the visitors' mind to "Art," the etchings, the wall or panel decorations, the sliding curtains, the easels in the corner, the great portfolios—the well-known "effects" were absent.
A plain room, not even with a north light, plain old furniture, but not very old—not ostensibly ancient, somewhere about 1790 say—and this inherited and not purchased; Flamma cared not one atom for furniture, itself, old or new; dusty bookseverywhere, under the table, on the mantelpiece, beside the coal scuttle; heaps on chairs, quartos on the sofa, crowds more in his bedroom, besides the two bookcases and drawers; odd books most of them, Cornelius Agrippa,Le Petit Albert, French illustrated works, editions of Faust, music, for Flamma was fond of his many-keyed flute.
Great people once now and then called and asked to see Alere Flamma at the business place in Fleet Street; people with titles, curiously out of place, in the press-room, gold leaf on the floor, odour of printer's ink, dull blows of machinery, rotten planking, partitions pasted over with illustrations and stained with beer, the old place trembling as the engine worked; Flamma, in his shirt-sleeves, talking to "His Excellency."
Flamma's opinion, information he could give, things he knew; abroad they thought much of him.
Presents came occasionally—a boar's head from Germany; fine Havana cigars—Alere always had a supply of the best cigars and Turkish tobacco, a perennial stream of tobacco ran for him; English venison; once a curious dagger from Italy, the strangest present good-natured Alere could possibly have received!
Sometimes there came a pressing invitation from a noble connoisseur to his country seat; Flamma's views were wanted about the re-arrangement of the library, the re-binding of some treasure picked up in a cover all too poor for its value, the building of another wing, for the artist is the true architect,as the princes of Italy knew of old time. Till the artist is called in we shall never again see real architecture in the world. Did not Benvenuto design fortifications? Did not Michael Angelo build St. Peter's at Rome?
If my lord duke wants a palace he cannot have it till he calls in the artist, the Alere Flamma, to draw it for him; if my lord bishop needs a cathedral he cannot have it till he calls in the poet-draughtsman, till he goes to Alere Flamma.
Our so-called architects are mere surveyors, engineers, educated bricklayers, men of hard straight ruler and square, mathematically accurate, and utterly devoid of feeling.
The princes of Italy knew better—they called in the poet and the painter, the dreamers to dream for them.
You call in your "practical" architect, and he builds you a brick box; not for a hundred thousand pounds in fees could he build you a palace or a cathedral.
The most ignorant of men are the "practical" people. It is meet and fitting that they should be worshipped and set on high. The calf worshipped of old was at least golden, and these are of lead.
But Alere could not go; he would do anything he was asked in this way; he would take infinite pains to please, but he could not leave Fleet Street for any mansion.
When a man once gets into Fleet Street he cannot get out.
Conventionally, I suppose, it would be the right thing to represent Alere as a great genius neglected, or as a genius destroyed by intemperance. The conventional type is so easy—so accepted—so popular; it would pay better, perhaps, to make him out a victim in some way.
He was not neglected, neither was he the victim of intemperance in the usual sense.
The way to fame and fortune had always been wide open to him; there were long intervals when he did not drink, nor did drink enfeeble his touch; it was not half so much to struggle against as the chest diseases from which professional men so often suffer; I believe if he had really tried or wished he could have conquered his vice altogether. Neither of these causes kept him from the foremost rank.
There was no ambition, and there was no business-avarice. So many who have no ideal are kept hard at work by the sheer desire of money, and thus spurred onward, achieve something approaching greatness. Alere did not care for money.
He could not get out of Fleet Street. Ten pounds was a large sum in the company he frequented; he did not want any more.