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Page 1
"I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her so lovely as
tonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty
streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream
made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass
judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should
come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. The
plainest burgher of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter!
That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his
broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes
clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk,
carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom,
holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing
but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are
gone! But do you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew suddenly almost
familiar in this visionary fervour--"I fancy the light of that time rests
upon us here for an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, the
Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of John of Bologna and of
Baccio Bandinelli seem to realise the artist's dream. I feel as if the
moonlit air were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as if,
standing here in religious attention, we might--we might witness a
revelation!" Perceiving at this moment, I suppose, my halting
comprehension reflected in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist
paused and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, "You think me a
moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It's not my habit to bang about the
piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But tonight, I confess, I am
under the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!"
"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the term.
But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your eloquent
remarks have only deepened it."
"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, with an
expressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late in the
evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over the
traveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay
his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!"
The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He must have
been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. "None the less
so, I trust," I answered, "if the young man is a sordid New Yorker."
"New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!" he answered, urbanely.
For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere Yankee
enterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush who had
posted himself here to extort an "order" from a sauntering tourist? But
I was not called to defend myself. A great brazen note broke suddenly
from the far-off summit of the bell-tower above us, and sounded the first
stroke of midnight. My companion started, apologised for detaining me,
and prepared to retire. But he seemed to offer so lively a promise of
further entertainment that I was indisposed to part with him, and
suggested that we should stroll homeward together. He cordially
assented; so we turned out of the Piazza, passed down before the statued
arcade of the Uffizi, and came out upon the Arno. What course we took I
hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion
delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I
listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He
confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his American
origin.
"We are the disinherited of Art!" he cried. "We are condemned to be
superficial! We are excluded from the magic circle. The soil of
American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! we
are wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as
much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neither
taste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude and
garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant
pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that
nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of
bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual
exile."
"You seem fairly at home in exile," I answered, "and Florence seems to me
a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? Nothing is so
idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, of
inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do something
fine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent,
create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much as
one of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses," I
added, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out of
the house of bondage!"
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