CHAPTER XXIV.
What is this soul, then? Whence
Came it?--It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity!
Some fearful end must be--
. . . . . .
There never lived a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
But starved and died.--KEATS: Endymion.
On entering his home, Warner pushed aside, for the first time in his
life with disrespect, his aged and kindly relation, who, as if in
mockery of the unfortunate artist stood prepared to welcome and
congratulate his return. Bearing his picture in his arms, he rushed
upstairs, hurried into his room, and locked the door. Hastily he tore
aside the cloth which had been drawn over the picture; hastily and
tremblingly he placed it upon the frame accustomed to support it, and
then, with a long, long, eager, searching, scrutinizing glance, he
surveyed the once beloved mistress of his worship. Presumption,
vanity, exaggerated self-esteem, are, in their punishment, supposed to
excite ludicrous not sympathetic emotion; but there is an excess of
feeling, produced by whatever cause it may be, into which, in spite of
ourselves, we are forced to enter. Even fear, the most contemptible
of the passions, becomes tragic the moment it becomes an agony.
"Well, well!" said Warner, at last, speaking very slowly, "it is
over,--it was a pleasant dream,--but it is over,--I ought to be
thankful for the lesson." Then suddenly changing his mood and tone,
he repeated, "Thankful! for what? that I am a wretch,--a wretch more
utterly hopeless and miserable and abandoned than a man who freights
with all his wealth, his children, his wife, the hoarded treasures and
blessings of an existence, one ship, one frail, worthless ship, and,
standing himself on the shore, sees it suddenly go down! Oh, was I
not a fool,--a right noble fool,--a vain fool,--an arrogant fool,--a
very essence and concentration of all things that make a fool, to
believe such delicious marvels of myself! What, man!" (here his eye
saw in the opposite glass his features, livid and haggard with
disease, and the exhausting feelings which preyed within him)--"what,
man! would nothing serve thee but to be a genius,--thee, whom Nature
stamped with her curse! Dwarf-like and distorted, mean in stature and
in lineament, thou wert, indeed, a glorious being to perpetuate grace
and beauty, the majesties and dreams of art! Fame for thee, indeed--
ha-ha! Glory--ha-ha! a place with Titian, Correggio, Raphael--ha--ha
--ha! O, thrice modest, thrice-reasonable fool! But this vile daub;
this disfigurement of canvas; this loathed and wretched monument of
disgrace; this notable candidate for--ha--ha--immortality! this I
have, at least, in my power." And seizing the picture, he dashed it
to the ground, and trampled it with his feet upon the dusty boards,
till the moist colours presented nothing but one confused and dingy
stain.
This sight seemed to recall him for a moment. He paused, lifted up
the picture once more, and placed it on the table. "But," he
muttered, "might not this critic be envious? am I sure that he judged
rightly--fairly? The greatest masters have looked askant and jealous
at their pupils' works. And then, how slow, how cold, how damned
cold, how indifferently he spoke; why, the very art should have warmed
him more. Could he have--No, no, no: it was true, it was! I felt the
conviction thrill through me like a searing iron. Burn it--did he
say--ay--burn it: it shall be done this instant."
And, hastening to the door, he undid the bolt. He staggered back as
he beheld his old and nearest surviving relative, the mother of his
father, seated upon the ground beside the door, terrified by the
exclamations she did not dare to interrupt. She rose slowly, and with
difficulty as she saw him; and, throwing around him the withered arms
which had nursed his infancy, exclaimed, "My child!--my poor--poor
child! what has come to you of late? you, who were so gentle, so mild,
so quiet,--you are no longer the same,--and oh, my son, how ill you
look: your father looked so just before he died!"
"Ill!" said he, with a sort of fearful gayety, "ill--no: I never was
so well; I have been in a dream till now; but I have woke at last.
Why, it is true that I have been silent and shy, but I will be so no
more. I will laugh, and talk, and walk, and make love, and drink
wine, and be all that other men are. Oh, we will be so merry! But
stay here, while I fetch a light."
"A light, my child, for what?"
"For a funeral!" shouted Warner, and, rushing past her, he descended
the stairs, and returned almost in an instant with a light.
Alarmed and terrified, the poor old woman had remained motionless and
weeping violently. Her tears Warner did not seem to notice; he pushed
her gently into the room, and began deliberately, and without uttering
a syllable, to cut the picture into shreds.
"What are you about, my child?" cried the old woman "you are mad; it
is your beautiful picture that you are destroying!"
Warner did not reply, but going to the hearth, piled together, with
nice and scrupulous care, several pieces of paper, and stick, and
matches, into a sort of pyre; then, placing the shreds of the picture
upon it, he applied the light, and the whole was instantly in a blaze.
"Look, look!" cried he, in an hysterical tone, "how it burns and
crackles and blazes! What master ever equalled it now?--no fault now
in those colours,--no false tints in that light and shade! See how
that flame darts up and soars!--that flame is my spirit! Look--is it
not restless?--does it not aspire bravely?--why, all its brother
flames are grovellers to it!--and now,--why don't you look!--it
falters--fades--droops--and--ha--ha--ha! poor idler, the fuel is
consumed--and--it is darkness."
As Warner uttered these words his eyes reeled; the room swam before
him; the excitement of his feeble frame had reached its highest pitch;
the disease of many weeks had attained its crisis; and, tottering back
a few paces, he fell upon the floor, the victim of a delirious and
raging fever.
But it was not thus that the young artist was to die. He was reserved
for a death that, like his real nature, had in it more of gentleness
and poetry. He recovered by slow degrees, and his mind, almost in
spite of himself, returned to that profession from which it was
impossible to divert the thoughts and musings of many years. Not that
he resumed the pencil and the easel: on the contrary, he could not
endure them in his sight; they appeared, to a mind festered and sore,
like a memorial and monument of shame. But he nursed within him a
strong and ardent desire to become a pilgrim to that beautiful land of
which he had so often dreamed, and which the innocent destroyer of his
peace had pointed out as the theatre of inspiration and the nursery of
future fame.
The physicians who, at Talbot's instigation, attended him, looked at
his hectic cheek and consumptive frame, and readily flattered his
desire; and Talbot, no less interested in Warner's behalf on his own
account than bound by his promise to Clarence, generously extended to
the artist that bounty which is the most precious prerogative of the
rich. Notwithstanding her extreme age, his grandmother insisted upon
attending him: there is in the heart of woman so deep a well of love
that no age can freeze it. They made the voyage: they reached the
shore of the myrtle and the vine, and entered the Imperial City. The
air of Rome seemed at first to operate favourably upon the health of
the English artist. His strength appeared to increase, his spirit to
expand; and though he had relapsed into more than his original silence
and reserve, he resumed, with apparent energy, the labours of the
easel: so that they who looked no deeper than the surface might have
imagined the scar healed, and the real foundation of future excellence
begun.
But while Warner most humbled himself before the gods of the pictured
world; while the true principles of the mighty art opened in their
fullest glory on his soul; precisely at this very moment shame and
despondency were most bitter at his heart: and while the enthusiasm of
the painter kindled, the ambition of the man despaired. But still he
went on, transfusing into his canvas the grandeur and simplicity of
the Italian school; still, though he felt palpably within him the
creeping advance of the deadliest and surest enemy to fame, he
pursued, with an unwearied ardour, the mechanical completion of his
task; still, the morning found him bending before the easel, and the
night brought to his solitary couch meditation rather than sleep. The
fire, the irritability which he had evinced before his illness had
vanished, and the original sweetness of his temper had returned; he
uttered no complaint, he dwelt upon no anticipation of success; hope
and regret seemed equally dead within him; and it was only when he
caught the fond, glad eyes of his aged attendant that his own filled
with tears, or that the serenity of his brow darkened into sadness.
This went on for some months; till one evening they found the painter
by his window, seated opposite to an unfinished picture. The pencil
was still in his hand; the quiet of settled thought was still upon his
countenance; the soft breeze of a southern twilight waved the hair
livingly from his forehead; the earliest star of a southern sky lent
to his cheek something of that subdued lustre which, when touched by
enthusiasm, it had been accustomed to wear; but these were only the
mockeries of life: life itself was no more! He had died, reconciled,
perhaps, to the loss of fame, in discovering that Art is to be loved
for itself, and not for the rewards it may bestow upon the artist.
There are two tombs close to each other in the strangers' burial-place
at Rome: they cover those for whom life, unequally long, terminated in
the same month. The one is of a woman, bowed with the burden of many
years: the other darkens over the dust of the young artist.
