Part 4

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The greatest praise is due Mr. Philip de Boilleau for his beautiful and distinguished painting entitled “Hydrangias,” which we reproduce on the opposite page. This picture,—an harmonious arrangement in soft grays,—was painted in Milan during the past summer, and has only recently been brought to Baltimore. We consider it one of Mr. Boilleau’s best works, and pin this modest little _boutonniere_ on the lapel of his coat in recognition of his resourceful and extremely personal talent.

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The presence of the Boston Symphony organization in Baltimore this fall was thoroughly enjoyed, but it would not have been financially possible had not ten of our wealthy and very liberal citizens formed a guarantee fund and contributed enough money to insure the entire success of the venture. We have not yet seen any public commendation of this very public spirited action, and therefore feel that it would not be amiss to assure these gentlemen (whose names are withheld at their own request) that the professional musicians as a class, and the real music-loving Baltimoreans as well, are deeply appreciative and grateful for the signal liberality they have shown and the example they have set for others to follow. Such things should not be taken as a matter of course, or be passed over in complete silence.

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Mr. George N. Mackenzie’s suggestion, made public in the SUN of Dec. 13th, of placing tablets on houses that have sheltered famous persons should commend itself to all those interested in historical work or the improvement of the city. Southern towns are particularly rich in this class of historic objects, as the result of a pronounced reverence for old things and a reluctance to tear down and rebuild. However strongly present methods of progress may demand the destruction of these ancient piles, we cannot altogether condemn the unprogressiveness that leaves them standing. They are a means of important instruction to the public; and their presence in a town cannot but add to its attractiveness and prosperity, if attention is properly directed to their existence. It may safely be said that the solidarity of the English nation is in great part maintained by the constant inspiration afforded by the innumerable monuments, of all kinds, that cover English soil. They are material evidence of past greatness. Is there a more powerful agent than precedent? We step from the past to the present, and in proportion to the firmness of the position of the rear foot we advance. Preserve the monuments at any cost! The houses of great men are as sacred as their graves; and it should be a shame to that city that negligently or wilfully suffers them to be destroyed.

There is a very laudable scheme on foot just now to erect a monument, or statue, to the memory of Maryland’s contingent of Confederate and Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-field of Antietam. The idea of such a memorial does great credit to the magnanimity of the American people, and offers another convincing proof to the world at large that we are again a truly united and broadminded nation. The lofty patriotism that suggests and makes practicable the erection of a monument of this description is beyond all praise and cannot be commended too highly: There is, however,—if a recent experience teaches us anything—an unfortunate element of danger that, no matter what noble-minded motives may have originally inspired this projected tribute to our brave dead, its artistic side may actually leave much to be desired; and that in the next century, when we shall have at length become a truly artistic people, we may turn our heads aside and blush for it, as we do now for the hideous Firemen’s Tablet and the Lord Baltimore of Cathedral street.

There is no reason but ignorance for the existence of such a state of things. Nothing is easier than to get expert judgment on those architectural and sculptural plans that may be submitted to the committee in charge of the erection of this monument. There is a very common, and most erroneous, idea that trained technical and artistic knowledge is unnecessary in such cases, whereas no task is in reality more difficult. To be able to choose correctly, from the many rough little wax and clay suggestions huddled momentarily together, the project which will produce, when it is thrown up on a large scale and carefully finished, the most beautiful and inspiring work of art, requires an experience that is almost invariably lacking in the persons so thoughtlessly given the power to say which theme is to be adjudged the best.

In the recent case to which we have referred, a committee of laymen apparently judged the sketches submitted to them solely from the point of view of finish,—a most immaterial matter in a sketch, as every artist knows,—and consequently one of our great national heroes, instead of being eternally honored as was intended by many of his admirers, is compelled to rest under a mediocre pile of stone and bronze that, while far from being as good as it ought to be, is just good enough to insure its remaining where it is for many years to come. Is this sort of thing fair to the art-loving people who contribute to the building of our public monuments, or to posterity that must receive and preserve them, or to those heroes themselves in whose memory and to whose glory we would like to erect enduring proofs of our love and admiration?

The Theatrical Trust has at last met with a well merited rebuke for its peculiar methods of business. The BALTIMORE NEWS took it in hand the other day and told it some very plain truths. It seems that the local representative of the Trust went to the NEWS office with a proposition to publish a half-page “ad” every Saturday providing a local “ad-writer”, who thinks himself an authority on things theatrical, was allowed to polish up the swell front advance notices. The NEWS not only declined the proposition but exposed the whole affair. The Academy took its “ad” out immediately, and published for a few days, “We do not advertise in the News.” Foolish mistake! What is the use of flinging mud at a man who owns a mud-machine?

We heartily commend the NEWS for the action it has taken in this matter. It is an outrage that a few men should attempt to control this business. They made every effort to close the doors of the very popular Lyceum, and leave Mr. Albaugh to starve if he saw fit, but the energy and perseverance of his son Jack were entirely successful in defeating their purpose, and the good people of Baltimore have fully shown their appreciation of his pluck. Now the Trust is measuring steel with the Fords, but in spite of giving them the worst of it in the way of attractions, the Fords are making more money than the Academy. Ford and Albaugh are the names that represent everything theatrical in Baltimore. Years and years ago these two men had firmly established themselves with Baltimoreans, and it will take more than a theatrical trust to inspire hostility where there has always existed confidence and good-will.

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There can be no doubt as to the precarious condition of music in Baltimore at the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and ninety-nine; but there is much that can be done to improve its really sad plight. In other words, its state, while deplorable in the extreme, is not altogether hopeless. It is deeply to be regretted that the recent manager of the Peabody Institute, a man of great and acknowledged musical ability, having had the chance to make Baltimore the recognized musical centre of America, should have failed so utterly to add that distinction to the metropolis of the South.

His successor, a young man of education, of refinement, and of apparent ambition, although undoubtedly handicapped by the legacy of sterile contentions and discouragements left him by his predecessor, has still a very brilliant opportunity before him. Will he succeed ultimately where his master has so conspicuously failed? We sincerely hope so, and trust that some few of our misgivings, arising from what we fear is a tendency to cultivate the noisy and pretentious few at the expense of the more modest, but by far the more musical, majority may prove after all to be groundless.

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Nothing so forcibly illustrates the inability of even educated persons to distinguish between the good and the bad as the family portrait. How seldom one sees in houses otherwise marked by refinement and good taste this really necessary and, to future generations, valuable object characterized by sufficient artistic merit to insure to it one’s attention for five minutes. And how often it is a mere caricature of the person whose portrayal has been attempted. What man dare call himself educated who has not sufficiently acquainted himself with the elements of drawing and color to know when he, or some member of his family, is being transferred to canvas for no better purpose than to afford amusement for persons of greater knowledge and judgment. It is true all of us cannot spare the time to acquire even the elements of an art education, but then it is equally true that the upper class of Americans is not truly a cultivated class, is not possessed of the culture of the same class in Europe. This is lamentable; but sadder still is the knowledge that the egotism (widely known as the American spirit) of the average man of refinement will preclude for a long time to come a betterment of the situation.

Baltimore, among other cities noted for their educated class, has been, and still is, an easy victim to the artist of the solar-print. Nothing more thoroughly delights the heart of a Baltimorean of average development than to come into possession of one of those family portraits that exhibit all the rotundity of objects turned on a lathe, the burnish (in the high lights) of excessively polished metal-ware, and the finish of a miniature done under the glass of a microscope. In such work the ideal of portrait painting is reached—for the Baltimorean of average development. The revered canvas is given the place of honor in the most prominent room of the house and there left for the adoration of all who enter—no one daring to call down upon his head, for adverse criticism, the pitying scorn of the deluded family. “It is a speaking likeness rendered with unusual technical skill.” One often wishes, as a relief for tortured eyes, that painters could do without technique altogether, and might be allowed to indulge the wildest flights of imagination conceivable in depicting the features of beloved relatives and friends.

But little can be said in defense of the “artist” who produces this class of work. It is the result of either a base commercial spirit or of untalented affrontery that trades on the ignorance of those who should blush for their little knowledge. In many instances these painters have had every opportunity for study at home and abroad, and yet seek to degrade a profession they can in no wise benefit. Have the patrons of these men concluded that honesty has lost its worth, and that a bad painter is more useful that a good photographer? An almost hopeless ignorance of art is, in these cases, the true explanation of why this phase of brush-work has not long since disappeared from among intelligent people. As long as men are found willing to pay for a bad thing the parodists of art will continue to flourish. That it is not the ignorant, or unscrupulous, painter who needs to be educated is easily seen.

Baltimore, with its unusually large number of thinking people, is not altogether hopeless of improvement in its ideas of art. Fortunately there are here a few families that have true judgment in such matters, and whose influence, although at present but little felt, has a tendency to create a future favorable to good work. May that happy epoch not be synchronous with the Millennium.

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MR. JAMES TURNS THE SCREW.

Mr. Henry James is perhaps the one anomaly of American art. True, we have Howells at his heels, some people may say at his head, but Howells is by no means an inexplicable product, and he is as far from being like James as James is far from being the counterpart of Turgeneff, the master inspiration of them both. One may not like Mr. James—and there are many who will simply not face his difficulties—but one must concede that he is literature. He is indeed so emphatically literature that he is not always life as well. It is not a little to say of an author on the shady side of his prime that he still reserves for his public the quality of continual surprise. Long ere this, one is minded to assert, judging on general principles, Mr. James must have declared his reach. Such utterances are, however, always contradicted by his latest book. And his latest books, especially in the last few years, have been a succession of surprises—shocks would be a better word, it may be—that uproot presumptions. “What Maizie Knew,” for example, was a glance of Mr. James’ brilliancy from quite a new angle. It was such an extraordinary ray of his art that it has not yet ceased to leave a green spot of bewilderment on the vision of the critic. With the cry caused by “In a Cage” still in the air, comes his very newest volume, “The Two Magics” (New York: The Macmillan Co.,) as unprecedented a composition as any of his repertory. To say that “The Turn of the Screw” dashes one with amazement is not to be in the least hyperbolic. It does amaze—it simply takes one’s breath and keeps it until one has finished the tale. One is amazed at the art, one is amazed at the substance—and one is amazed at Mr. James himself, and that, perhaps, most of all. It is an incredible production for a Bostonian, no matter though he be long acclimated to foreign heaths as in the instances of the author. We know of no other case where Bostonian blood has failed so signally to tell.

One is saved from the supreme shock, however, by one thing—the matter of Maizie. Maizie in “What Maizie knew” was at least an intimation of the terrible facts of Miles and Flora. These angelic visions of eight and ten are a twin-birth of horror before which the hideous perspicacity of Maizie pales to insignificance. They are veritable limbs of Satan not in any human forgivable sense, but astounding monsters of precocious sinfulness that give one a positive chill to consider as within the bounds of possibility. Their portrayal is a slaughter of the innocents equal to that of Herod. One arraigns Mr. James’ inhumanity in thus stooping to cast so cruel a stain on the character of childhood. Maizie was surely enough—much more than enough.

Can the treatment of such abomination be within the pales of art? One is obliged to admit that it can be, because Mr. James has demonstrated it—demonstrated it as we hope it will not be demonstrated often. It has, however, required all the resources of his skill. The marvel is that he never even falters—makes one false stroke with his brush. As it stands, “The Turn of the Screw” is a masterpiece; one fails to see how it could be improved. Its art gives the envelopment to the subject that saves it superbly. It is the kind of envelopment one finds in the portraits of Whistler, for instance, and that is perfect.

Far from blurting out the business he may have in hand, Mr. James can scarcely be said, at least in these latter days of his art, to tell it at all. Most readers of “What Maizie Knew” must have been struck in the perusal with the fact that never once did the story for all its plotless volume state in cold type what the child really did know. And yet that Maizie knew what she shouldn’t have known was as obvious as though she had drawn naughty pictures on her slate. The reader knew what Maizie knew by a more subtle means of intelligence—by a kind of telepathic communication. The book was a supreme piece of insinuation. Perfectly proper, indeed, as far as the print was concerned, but what scandal between the lines! One finds oneself subject to this same sort of telepathic play in “The Turn of the Screw.” It is all secretive enough—superficially. The nightmare of children’s little obsessed souls is not dragged into the light of day, but the horror is there, nevertheless, patent to the eye and palpable to the touch. Mr. James turns the screw, indeed! To set down the details of the story would be to mar its subtle relation of style and substance. It is for the reader to take or to leave, as he finds it in Mr. James’ volume.

“Covering End,” the other tale, included under the title of “The Two Magics,” is quite in Mr. James’ usual manner. The “magic” of this charming comedy is a very white magic, being no more than the brisk spell exerted by the heroine—a Daisy Miller of later growth—upon the hero, the owner of an old English “show” country house. “It was magnificent and shabby, and the eyes of the dozen dark old portraits seemed, in their eternal attention, to count the cracks in the pavement, the rents in the seats of the chairs and the missing tones in the Flemish tapestry.” We have again all the sentiment of “old things” as found in “The Spoils of Poynton.” The story is the kind of comedy that would “scream” in the hands of ordinary art. Mr. James’ material is, however, never so ill-bred. Mrs. Gracedew, widow, “from Missouri Top,” bursts upon all this faded splendor and question of mortgages with a perfect whirl of Americanism. Her conversation is a kind of metal skirt-dancing—a perpetual flash of pink fleshings. She is everywhere in the house at the same time—“an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and explanation,” indeed. She covets the house, she covets “the good and faithful servant”—poor Chivers, whom she calls “Rembrant van Rhyn, with three stars”; she covets the mortgaged owner, Clement Yule. They are all “types.” Even Cora Prodmore is a type—“the ‘awfully nice girl’ of all the English novels, the ‘simple maiden in her flower’ of—who is it?—your great poet.” It is Daisy Miller with additional assurance of widowhood. She “grabs” the whole situation with all the prompt enterprise of Missouri Top. “I’m here,” she announces to “the lawful heir,” “for an act of salvation—I’m here to avert a sacrifice!” That she will avert it the reader never questions. It is all delightfully spirited and worthy of Mr. James. It is quite as much a masterpiece of subtlety and finished style as “The Turn of the Screw,” if not so new a note in conception. After the horror of this latter tale it is more than a matter of refreshment—it has the virtue of salvation.

A GERMAN MASTERPIECE.

The interest of the Anglo-Saxon public in German fiction has always been languid compared with the avidity with which it devours the works, good, bad and indifferent, of French authors. Mrs. Wister, Clara Bell, and a few other translators, suffice to supply the English-speaking market with all it demands in literature from the land of Goethe and Schiller, while, on the other hand, hundreds can scarcely fill the publishers’ orders for translations from the French. It may be that German novels are too limited in their appeal—too intrinsically German and hearth-centered—too largely lacking in that modern “finish” for which English authors so frantically strive and French authors so frequently attain; too deficient in what we are pleased to regard as the saving sense of “smartness.” German novels as a rule have more soul than smartness, and that is almost unforgivable in an age when genius like the reformed pirate is expected to do fancy work.

It is perhaps because of this characteristic “high seriousness,” to use a favorite phrase of Matthew Arnold’s, of Hermann Sudermann’s pen that he has remained so little known to us in spite of his rare force. He belongs to the brainy band of modern novelists which can almost be told off on the fingers; of which in England Geo. Meredith is the lone Pompey’s Pillar; Balzac, in France, the pyramid; and in Russia Turgeneff, the sardonic sphinx. Sudermannn first reached our transatlantic consciousness through the success of Duse’s portrayal of Magda in “Home”, a tragedy full of fierce psychic value and human pathos.

In “Regina or The Sins of Fathers,” translated by Beatrice Marshall (London and New York, John Lane) Sudermann has given us in the heroine a character of such stuff as Magdas are made of—a Magda in the raw, a Magda unintellectualized. The story treats of man’s honor and truth to himself as in “Home” the author treats of woman’s. The main difference is that in “Regina,” Boleslav’s self-trust comes too late for happiness. It is only as the story closes he echoes Arnold’s

“Ah! love, let us be true To one another—”

in a burst of passionate insight; but the chance had passed, Regina’s lifeless, blood-smeared body lay under the Cats’ Bridge, where her imbecile father had hurled it. Her fate is not unlike Ophelia’s. She is piteously involved in the misfortunes of a hero burdened with a performance as harsh as it was akin to that of Hamlet’s. The novel is a virile work, deep-voiced, full of dramatic color and agitating some vital moral questions. Acrid to the taste it is in many respects, but absorbing throughout in its appeal.

Boleslav is pursued by the curse of his father’s treason with a good deal of that grimness with which a hero of the Greek tragedies is harrowed by the Eumenides. One lash of the furies’ whip provokes another until life seems a madness scarcely to be borne. His friends and sweetheart forsake him; the false name under which he enters the German Array fails to protect him from the ignominy of the paternal crime; he is ostracised by the whole world. We find him as the story opens returning to the ruined home of his ancestors, where lies the dead body of his traitor sire, denied the last offices of the church. It is there he meets Regina, the mistress of the deceased, a wild and beautiful peasant girl, to the portraiture of whom the story owes its chief interest. Regina is a magnificent, unforgettable creature—one of those rich chords that nature but rarely strikes upon the harp of being; she reverberates through one’s senses with a rough sweetness that represents a real experience. Her mould is Homeric; she is a creation of primal days and primal passions. To blame her is to quarrel with nature itself. Regina becomes the refuge of the stricken man whose noble motive of life is to redeem his father’s name from shame, to rebuild the homestead of his race, to face unmerited dishonor with manly dignity.