Chapter 8

"He says he didn't fight," said his mother, "and he says he didn't fall down. He won't tell me, and I told him he must tell you. I don't know why he doesn't want to tell; he isn't ashamed or very much frightened, and he didn't cry after he came home."

Bob heard Papa Jack's footsteps cross the hall and come in upon the hard-wood library floor, and then on the big rug by the library couch. Papa Jack sat down beside him and put his big fingers around Bob's little ones.

"Well, what about it, Son?"

Bob looked up and smiled. Always such a pleasant, warm feeling came over him when Papa Jack came near him and talked to him.

"What about it, Son?"

But Bob could not reply. His eyes grew serious as they looked back into his father's.

"What did this, Bob?" asked Papa Jack, gently touching the hazelnut bruise with a finger.

"A boy," said Bob.

"What boy?" asked Papa Jack. "A big boy?"

Silence, and then a shake of the head.

"Did you strike him first?"

Again Bob shook his head.

"What did you do to him?"

Still another shake of the head.

"Do you mean he just came up and struck you without any provocation?"

"He laughed," said Bob.

"What else?"

"Spit on my new shoes," reddening.

Papa Jack drew his mustache down between his lip and teeth. "Hm! He did, eh? What else?"

"Said 'Bob-tail, bob-cat,'"

Papa Jack looked puzzled.

"Said I was--Bob, bob-tail, bob-cat," explained Bob.

"Oh!" Papa Jack seemed to see light. "And then he struck you?"

A nod once more.

Mr. McAllister looked out the window and his fingers closed tightly around Bob's. "When was this, Bob--before school?"

"Mm."

"And you came right home?"

A nod.

"Did you strike him back?"

Bob's eyes widened. "No."

Papa Jack's eyes widened also. "Why?"

"Because."

"Because what, Bob?"

"Because mama said not to fight."

"And you promised?"

Bob nodded again.

"I see." Papa Jack's eyes suddenly lighted with something Bob did not understand, and he sat looking down at Bob for a long minute. "I see," he said again, and then he turned and called to mother. "Helen!" And mother came in, with a piece of white sewing in her hands.

"Helen," said Papa Jack, "it's a case of bullying. The boy promised you not to fight, and he didn't. It's a mistake, mother. He's been set upon by some young bully, and couldn't defend himself because of his promise."

Mother looked at Bob; there was distress in her eyes, but something else came into them, too.

"It's only the beginning, dear--the beginning of battles," said Papa Jack, and he put his other hand on mother's.

"Bob," he said, "mother doesn't mean you're not to defend yourself. Understand? By fighting, mother only means beginning fights, picking fights, provoking other boys to fight. We _have_ to defend ourselves. It isn't right to pick a fight; that's what mother means."

Bob saw tears come into his mother's eyes. Papa Jack saw them, too.

"There's only one way among boys, Helen dear. The bullies must be fought, you know. Our boy's got to be a boy's boy if he's to be a man's man by-and-by."

Suddenly mother bent over and kissed Bob, and held him, with her arms thrust under and about him--held him hard.

"The only thing, Bob, is to be a man always. Be square and white. Do the right thing. I can't tell you what it will be every time; neither can anybody else: but you your own self will know. It may be right even to fight sometimes, for yourself and for others who are bullied; but every boy knows for himself when it's right and when it's wrong. If he does as he _knows_, he'll do right."

It was a quiet lunch that day. Father and mother talked little and the meal was quickly over. Bob hardly knew what he himself ate or did or thought. There was a strange excitement in his heart and in his head, a feeling that he could not define. It was not that he was going back to school after dinner. It was not that he would probably meet those boys again, nor that he would sooner or later have to face again that Curly Davis. Neither was it that, when he did face Curly Davis, he meant to--yes, to fight him. No, it was none of these things, though his heart did beat the faster as he thought of them. It was something else; it was something about what his father had said, not so much his words, but the way he had said "a man's man" and "we must defend ourselves"--something that thrilled him, made him proud and humble, all at once. Someway, father seemed to have taken a new attitude toward him, and in that change even Bob seemed to see father's recognition that babyhood was over for his small son.

Mother stood in the door and watched him go. She had been crying again, a little; she had even wanted to keep him at home. But father had said, "No, let him go; as well now as to-morrow," and so she had kissed him and cried again, a little. And then she had begged him to "try to keep away from those bad little boys," and to "play only with good boys who did not want to fight"; and Bob had said yes--doubtfully. He waved his hand to her from the gate, and again from the corner of the block, and then he set his face once more toward school, and walked very fast.

It was five o'clock when Bob came home again. School closed at four, but the clock on the library mantel was tinkling five when he opened the door and closed it very softly. He didn't want mother to see him just then.

He was trembling and very white--his little mirror by the window showed him that. There was a brown-and-blue bruise just in the corner of his little brown eyebrow, of which he had felt carefully a dozen times on the way home, but which did not look so big in the glass as it had felt. There was a rubbed place on his chin, and the soft knuckles of his hands were grimy and stained. He laid his school-bag and box carefully on a chair, and went to look out the window for a moment. And then a strange feeling came over him.

--This was his little room; yes, it was his--the same little room; the same white curtains, the same little window, the same view of the little green door-yard and the apple-tree and the cedar-hedge; the same soft sunset light coming in upon him where it had come so many, many other evenings, ever since he could remember. But the boy--that little boy who had looked upon it all, who had lived there and loved the white curtains and the sun and the apple-tree--where was he? he wondered.

When he closed his eyes he could see just one thing--one whirling, seething vision: a ring of boys, excited, eager, yelling, laughing, cheering, with only here and there a frightened face; and there in the midst himself and another--some one who was striking and kicking and scratching at him, but whose blows he did not seem to feel, so hard and fierce and fast he himself was striking, and so hotly ran his blood. And in his ears were ringing the cries which had gone up at the end, when that other boy--he of the curly hair--had suddenly, at last, turned from him and run away through the crowd, beaten and sniveling and--alone. And he remembered that he had felt sorry then--oh, so sorry--sorry for that other boy!

He washed his face and hands carefully, and looked again in the little mirror. Perhaps mother wouldn't notice--much. He opened his door and crept softly down the stairs and into the library, and there was mother, looking anxiously from the window, and father, who had just come in, putting on his hat as if he were going out again. And they both turned and looked at him; and mother ran and caught him up in her arms, just as if he were that baby-boy again--that baby he had been yesterday. He wondered.

Father looked at the brown bruise and the scuffed knuckles critically, while mother held him with her face against his hair.

"Do you think he'll bother you any more, Bob?" father asked, just as if the whole story had been told.

Bob shook his head, and mother suddenly clasped him closer, while father turned away with a grim smile. And Bob himself just wondered--wondered about that baby-boy he had been yesterday.

TWO PORTRAITS BY GILBERT STUART

A NOTE ON A RECENT ACCESSION OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

BY SAMUEL ISHAM

The name of Don Josef de Jaudenes y Nebot has not impressed itself deeply on the memory of the world. It does not appear in the great, many-volumed biographical dictionaries nor in the indexes of the standard histories of the United States. Even in the library of the Hispanic Society of America there is no record of him. He was, however, a man of some importance in the early diplomacy of the nation. The beginning of his official career may be definitely determined by a letter of Washington's of July 20, 1791, in which he says: "I yesterday had Mr. Jaudenes, who was in this country with Mr. Gardoqui and is now come over in a public character, presented to me for the first time by Mr. Jefferson."

Gardoqui came to America in 1786 as _charge d'affaires_ for the negotiation of a treaty with Spain. The "public character" in which Jaudenes was presented in 1791 was that of commissioner of Spain, and he had united with him on the commission Josef de Viar, all their official documents being signed with both names. Their main business, like Gardoqui's, was the negotiation of a treaty between Spain and the United States; a treaty which was to settle boundaries, rights of trade between the two nations, and also the question of the "occlusion" of the Mississippi River; but there was much outside diplomatic sparring over the disputes between the Governor of Louisiana and the Georgians about trespasses and conflicting rights. The last communication of the commissioners was dated in 1794. The next year the negotiations were transferred to Madrid and the treaty was signed there and Jaudenes probably then returned to Spain. There seems to be no trace of him after that.

The only other facts in regard to him are to be gathered from the two pictures recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which are the subject of this article. They are signed G. Stuart, R. A., New York, September 8, 1794, and bear inscriptions in Spanish which, to complete the record, are here given in full:

DON JOSEF DE JAUDENES Y NEBOT COMISARIO ORDENADOR DE LOS REALES EXERCITOS Y MINISTRO EMBIADO DE SU MAGESTAD CATHOLICA CERCA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA. NACIO EN LA CIUDAD DE VALENCIA REYNO DE ESPANA EL 25 DE MARZO DE 1764.

DONA MATILDE STOUGHTON DE JAUDENES--ESPOSA DE DON JOSEF DE JAUDENES Y NEBOT COMISARIO ORDENADOR DE LOS REALES EXERCITOS DE SU MAGESTAD CATHOLICA Y SU MINISTRO EMBIADO CERCA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA. NACIO EN LA CIUDAD DE NUEVA-YORK EN LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL 11 DE ENERO DE 1778.

We learn from these that Don Josef was thirty and his bride in her seventeenth year, and that she was born in New York. Unfortunately this is all that we know about her. Stoughton is a sufficiently familiar name in the colonial records of the New England and Middle States, but the lady of the portrait has not yet been identified nor has a search of the newspapers of the day revealed any mention of her marriage. It may very probably have taken place on September 8th, 1794, the date placed after Stuart's name on both canvases; but the journalists of that time took less note of such international alliances than those of the present. Something more about the lady is, however, certain to be found by the genealogists and delvers in old diaries and correspondence, for the wedding of the young Spanish diplomat with the pretty American girl just midway in her teens must have set tongues wagging and pens inditing. How the match turned out we do not know, but some argument as to their happiness may be based on the fact that Jaudenes' successor, the Marquis d'Yrujo, followed his example and took an American bride in the person of Miss Sally McKean, who was also painted by Stuart.

_Two Portraits by_ GILBERT STUART

_reproduced by permission of_

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

_Printed from plates made by the Colorplate Engraving Company, New York_

Having thus disposed (somewhat unsatisfactorily, it is true) of the personality of the sitters, we can turn to the portraits themselves. The accompanying reproductions make extended description unnecessary. They are characteristic Stuarts, more elaborate, more complete, than most of his subsequent work, but showing clearly his personal point of view and the difference between his portraits and those of his contemporaries. He is less poetic, more literal than the rivals with whom he had contended, not unsuccessfully, for the patronage of London society. For him a pretty girl is a pretty girl, and it is enough. He seats her comfortably in a chair and paints her as she is. One cannot imagine him turning her into a nymph, a shepherdess, or a priestess of Hymen, or painting her with a very modish coiffure on her head and a pair of blue-ribboned sandals on her bare feet. These things Reynolds did habitually and moreover put his figures in attitudes with up-rolled eyes and extended arms and filled out his larger canvases with altars and tombs and allegorical attributes. This he did to bring his pictures in accord with those of the old masters whom he laboriously studied and deeply admired. His achievement fully justified him. His sumptuous canvases, rich in color, elaborate in composition, perfected with every technical resource, have ever since remained unequalled of their kind.

In spite of his stay in West's studio, Stuart had none of this respect for tradition nor any wish to attempt the grand style. In this he was more like Gainsborough, but Gainsborough invested his portraits, even of prosaic sitters, with a strange, penetrating, poetic charm such as no other painter has been able to convey. Ranking artists in the order of their merit is an unprofitable business, but it may gratify some methodical minds to have it stated that these canvases by Stuart are not in the same class as good Gainsboroughs or Reynolds. With the best of other contemporary portraits they stand approximately on a footing of equality. In spite of the quiet pose, the lack of strongly contrasted light and shade and all of the clever tricks and forced accents of Lawrence and his followers, they are alive and alert. The characterization is excellent. The young people were not of so profound or complicated a nature as the Father of his Country, and the faces are not wrought out with the delicate subtlety of the Gibbs-Channing Washington which hangs between them, but they are clear-cut, compelling belief in their truth. The execution, too, has all of Stuart's skill. Others may have attempted higher things, but none did what he attempted with such perfect ease and sureness. In neither of the canvases is there a sign of uncertainty, hesitation, or alteration. Each touch is put exactly where it should be and left. There is none of the scumbling and glazing and re-working so common in the English portraits of the time. It is to this that the canvases owe their admirable freshness which makes them look as if painted yesterday. The heads have all of Stuart's pearly gray and rose tones unimpaired by ill-usage or restoration. The clothes and accessories are more swiftly and summarily done, the silver lace and the high lights being touched in with amazing sureness and cleverness. The composition and arrangement is pleasing, and Stuart's besetting fault of putting his heads too low on the canvas is excused and justified in the case of Don Josef by the necessity of having his portrait correspond with that of his wife, whose elaborate and stylish head-dress fills the top of her picture. In short, New York is to be congratulated on the winning back after a sojourn abroad of more than a century of these two most important and charming paintings executed here in the early days of the Republic.

At this point this article might well end, but there may be some who recall that last summer for a week or so there appeared in the papers articles headed "Fakes at the Museum" or "The Metropolitan Gets Lemons," which assailed the genuineness of these portraits. The discussion did not get far beyond the daily press, which, after its habit, registered the charges as picturesquely and vehemently as it could, but attempted no serious investigation of them. They were brought by a critic whose position as a special student of Stuart entitled them to respectful consideration, but after giving them that they do not seem conclusive or even important. They were based on the fact that the pictures were signed G. Stuart, R. A., and bore coats of arms and long Spanish inscriptions. It was claimed that this made the genuineness of the canvases doubtful, for Stuart signed few of his paintings--possibly none except the standing Washington in the Philadelphia Academy; he was not an R. A. (Royal Academician); nor was he a heraldic illuminator. Furthermore, the painting of the male portrait and the dress and accessories in the companion piece did not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and started one of his wife, which through some freak of temper he left (as he frequently did) with only the head and part of the background finished. These being brought to Spain, some artist there finished the lady's portrait, painted from Stuart's original a companion piece of her husband, and added to both the coats of arms, the inscriptions, and Stuart's name.

Now, frankly, this is not possible. As for the portrait of Dona Matilde being left unfinished, there exists in Stuart's handwriting a list of gentlemen who are to have copies of his portrait of Washington, consisting of thirty-two names. A few take two copies, no one takes more save Jaudenes, who subscribes for five. The list is dated April 20th, 1795, which is seven months after the date on the pictures, and is the strongest possible evidence that Jaudenes was greatly pleased with Stuart--presumably on account of these portraits--and is entirely irreconcilable with the idea that the painter had quarreled with the diplomat's wife or left her portrait unfinished.

As to the coats of arms, the most casual examination makes it clear that they were painted by another hand than executed any part of the portraits. In all probability they were done after the canvases reached Spain, and the inscriptions and signatures would naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would never have engrossed a long Spanish inscription, and that he should have signed his name (contrary to his habit) and have added the "R. A." to which he had no right is most unlikely. What is most unlikely of all, however, is that there should have been found in Spain an artist capable of painting a portrait like the Don Josef. Both heads are absolutely alike in handling, in texture, in mixing of the pigments, and in all of those things are absolutely characteristic of Stuart, whose methods were peculiarly his own and could not be caught even by men like Sully, who not only intently studied his processes but sat and watched him when he was at work. That a Spaniard with entirely different training and ideals could have reproduced them is impossible.

As for the costumes, it may be admitted that they differ from most of Stuart's American work; but the difference is more in subject than in method and is chiefly noticeable because he never again painted a gentleman in silver-sprigged scarlet waistcoat and small clothes. He hated such work, and his position in America enabled him to do as he chose, and he could tell sitters that if they wanted clothes they could go to a mantua-maker or a tailor, he painted the works of God. So distasteful was such labor to him that we know that he employed assistants in the details of some of his Washington portraits. In the present canvases the heads are painted with an interest and a thoroughness very different from that displayed in the costumes. These latter are skilfully done. The dexterity displayed is amazing and such as no copyist is at all likely to have had, but it is dexterity applied to getting a striking result as quickly as possible and with the least possible effort of hand or brain.

Now, to explain this, we should remember that Stuart only returned to America in 1793, and the pictures are both dated September 8, 1794. Whatever that date may mean, both pictures were presumably finished before then and were thus among the first, perhaps the very first, important works that Stuart did in New York. He would consequently have every motive, both from the desire to establish his reputation and from the position and charm of his sitters, to do his very best. The workmanship should be compared, not with what he did afterwards in America but rather with what he had done before in England and Ireland, when he was compelled by the exigencies of his sitters and the rivalry of his fellow artists to give some importance to costume and composition. Unfortunately, Stuart's foreign work is practically unknown to Americans (and to foreigners also, for that matter). There is little of it in the public galleries, and a large proportion of it has probably been rechristened with other and more attractive names. As far as we may judge from a few examples and from the many engravings after it (some of them large enough and good enough to give an idea of the handling), the costumes were done much in the style of those we are considering.

After all, the strongest argument for the authenticity of the portraits is the portraits themselves. They are beautiful, they are skilful, done in Stuart's style and entirely worthy of him. To suppose them done by any one else involves the doubter at once in a maze of improbabilities and impossibilities. The present writer is willing to put himself on record as quite convinced that they were painted by Stuart and are wholly by his own hand and are unusually important specimens of his work.

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

THE STORY OF HER LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

BY

GEORGINE MILMINE

XIV

MRS. EDDY'S BOOK AND DOCTRINE

"_No human tongue or pen taught me the Science contained in this book, 'Science and Health'; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it._"--MARY BAKER G. EDDY.