Part 8 (1/2)
Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland's rides an alliance which might have been called defensive on the part of the former and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard, was an excessively ugly old lady, highly esteemed in Roman society for her homely benevolence and her shrewd and humorous good sense. She had been the widow of a German archaeologist, who had come to Rome in the early ages as an attache of the Prussian legation on the Capitoline. Her good sense had been wanting on but a single occasion, that of her second marriage. This occasion was certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent, are not test cases. A couple of years after her first husband's death, she had accepted the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow. The marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction. He had finally run off with a prima donna a.s.soluta, who, it was to be hoped, had given him a taste of the quality implied in her t.i.tle. He was believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small black spot in Madame Grandoni's life, and for ten years she had not mentioned his name. She wore a light flaxen wig, which was never very artfully adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no secret of it. She used to say, ”I was not always so ugly as this; as a young girl I had beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig.” She had worn from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white c.r.a.pe shawl embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years' observation of Roman society had sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular favor. Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wis.h.i.+ng him to get married. She never saw him without whispering to him that Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind the central bouquet at his circular dinner-table. The dinner was very prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast.
He had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this occasion he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory.
He drank freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence.
Singleton sat gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person were talking. Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident disposition to draw Roderick out. Rowland was rather regretful, for he knew that theory was not his friend's strong point, and that it was never fair to take his measure from his talk.
”As you have begun with Adam and Eve,” said Gloriani, ”I suppose you are going straight through the Bible.” He was one of the persons who thought Roderick delightfully fresh.
”I may make a David,” said Roderick, ”but I shall not try any more of the Old Testament people. I don't like the Jews; I don't like pendulous noses. David, the boy David, is rather an exception; you can think of him and treat him as a young Greek. Standing forth there on the plain of battle between the contending armies, rus.h.i.+ng forward to let fly his stone, he looks like a beautiful runner at the Olympic games. After that I shall skip to the New Testament. I mean to make a Christ.”
”You 'll put nothing of the Olympic games into him, I hope,” said Gloriani.
”Oh, I shall make him very different from the Christ of tradition; more--more”--and Roderick paused a moment to think. This was the first that Rowland had heard of his Christ.
”More rationalistic, I suppose,” suggested Miss Blanchard.
”More idealistic!” cried Roderick. ”The perfection of form, you know, to symbolize the perfection of spirit.”
”For a companion piece,” said Miss Blanchard, ”you ought to make a Judas.”
”Never! I mean never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made anything ugly, and I 'm a h.e.l.lenist; I 'm not a Hebraist! I have been thinking lately of making a Cain, but I should never dream of making him ugly. He should be a very handsome fellow, and he should lift up the murderous club with the beautiful movement of the fighters in the Greek friezes who are chopping at their enemies.”
”There 's no use trying to be a Greek,” said Gloriani. ”If Phidias were to come back, he would recommend you to give it up. I am half Italian and half French, and, as a whole, a Yankee. What sort of a Greek should I make? I think the Judas is a capital idea for a statue. Much obliged to you, madame, for the suggestion. What an insidious little scoundrel one might make of him, sitting there nursing his money-bag and his treachery! There can be a great deal of expression in a pendulous nose, my dear sir, especially when it is cast in green bronze.”
”Very likely,” said Roderick. ”But it is not the sort of expression I care for. I care only for perfect beauty. There it is, if you want to know it! That 's as good a profession of faith as another. In future, so far as my things are not positively beautiful, you may set them down as failures. For me, it 's either that or nothing. It 's against the taste of the day, I know; we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty in the large, ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted. But I don't hesitate to proclaim it--I mean to lift them again! I mean to go in for big things; that 's my notion of my art. I mean to do things that will be simple and vast and infinite. You 'll see if they won't be infinite! Excuse me if I brag a little; all those Italian fellows in the Renaissance used to brag. There was a sensation once common, I am sure, in the human breast--a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble image newly created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity.
When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of G.o.ddesses unveiled in the temples of the AEgean, don't you suppose there was a pa.s.sionate beating of hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror? I mean to bring it back; I mean to thrill the world again! I mean to produce a Juno that will make you tremble, a Venus that will make you swoon!”
”So that when we come and see you,” said Madame Grandoni, ”we must be sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few soft sofas conveniently placed.”
”Phidias and Praxiteles,” Miss Blanchard remarked, ”had the advantage of believing in their G.o.ddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that the pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome where we sit talking nineteenth century English.”
”Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!” cried Madame Grandoni. ”Mr.
Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno--that 's you and I--arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver, too.”
”But, my dear fellow,” objected Gloriani, ”you don't mean to say you are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and Hebes.”
”It won't matter what you call them,” said Roderick. ”They shall be simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That 's all the Greek divinities were.”
”That 's rather abstract, you know,” said Miss Blanchard.
”My dear fellow,” cried Gloriani, ”you 're delightfully young.”
”I hope you 'll not grow any older,” said Singleton, with a flush of sympathy across his large white forehead. ”You can do it if you try.”
”Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,”
Roderick went on. ”I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I mean to make a magnificent statue of America!”
”America--the Mountains--the Moon!” said Gloriani. ”You 'll find it rather hard, I 'm afraid, to compress such subjects into cla.s.sic forms.”
”Oh, there 's a way,” cried Roderick, ”and I shall think it out. My figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous deal.”