Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861




Other works than those of portraiture have won for Mr. Page the
attention of the world. This attention has elicited from individuals
praise and dispraise, dealt out promptly, and with little qualification.
But we have looked in vain for some truly appreciative notice of the
so-called historical pictures executed by this artist. We do not object
to the prompt out-speaking of the public. So much is disposed of, when
the mass has given or withheld its approval. We know whether or not the
work appeals to the hearts of human beings. Often, too, it is the most
nearly just of any which may be rendered. Usually, the conclusions
of the great world are correct, while its reasonings are absurd. Its
decisions are immediate and clear; its arguments, subsequent and vague.

This measure, however, cannot be meted to all artists. A painter may
appeal to some wide, yet superficial sympathy, and attain to no other
excellence.

That Mr. Page might have found success in this direction will not be
denied by any one who has seen the engraving of a girl and lamb, from
one of his early works. It is as sweet and tenderly simple as a face by
Francia. But not only did he refuse to confine himself to this style
of art, as, when that engraving is before us, we wish he had done,--he
passed out of and away from it. And those phases which followed
have been such as are the least fitted to stand the trial of public
exhibition. His pictures do not command the eye by extraordinary
combinations of assertive colors,--nor do they, through great pathos,
deep tenderness, or any overcharged emotional quality, fascinate and
absorb the spectator.

Much of the middle portion of this artist's professional life is marked
by changes. It was a period of growth,--of continual development and of
obvious transition. Not infrequently, the transition seemed to be from
the excellent to the crude. Nevertheless, we doubt not, that, through
all vicissitudes, there has been a steady and genuine growth of Mr.
Page's best artistic power, and that he has been true to his specialty.

We should like to believe that the Venetian visit of 1853 was the
closing of one period of transition, and the beginning of a new era in
Mr. Page's artistic career. It is pleasant to think of the painter's
pilgrimage to that studio of Titian, Venice,--for it was all his,--not
in nebulous prophetic youth,--not before his demands had been revealed
to his consciousness,--not before those twenty long years of solitary,
hard, earnest work,--but in the full ripeness of manhood, when prophecy
had dawned into confident fulfilment, when the principles of his
science had been found, and when of this science his art had become the
demonstration. It was fine to come then, and be for a while the guest of
Titian.

There is evidence that he began after this visit to do what for years he
had been learning to do,--yet, of course, as is ever the case with the
earnest man, doing as a student, as one who feels all truth to be of the
infinite.

The result has been a series of remarkable pictures. There are among
these the specimens of portraiture, a few landscapes, and a number of
ideal, or, as they have been called, historical works. Of these last
named there is somewhat to be said; and those to which we shall refer
are selected for the purpose of illustrating principles, rather than for
that of description. These are all associated with history. There are
three representations of Venus, and several renderings of Scriptural
subjects.

If these pictures are valuable, they are so in virtue of elements which
can be appreciated. To present these elements to the world, to appeal to
those who can recognize them, is, it is fair to assume, the object of
exposition. Not merely praise, but the more wholesome meed of justice,
is the desire of a true artist; and as we deal with such a one, we do
not hesitate to speak of his works as they impress us.

First of all, in view of the artist's skill as a painter, it is well
to regard the external of his work. Here, in both Scriptural and
mythological subjects, there is little to condemn. The motives have been
bravely and successfully wrought out; the work is nobly, frankly done.
The superiority of methods which render the texture and quality of
objects becomes apparent. There is no attempt at illusion; yet the
representation of substances and spaces is faultless,--as, for instance,
the sky of the "Venus leading forth the Trojans." Nor have we seen that
chaste, pearly lustre of the most beautiful human skin so well rendered
as in the bosom of the figure which gleams against the blue.

But there is a pretension to more than technical excellence in the
mythological works; there is a declaration of physical beauty in the
very idea; in both these and the Scriptural there is an assumption of
historical value.

While we believe that the problem of physical beauty can be solved and
demonstrated, and the representations of Venus can be proved to possess
or to lack the beautiful, we choose to leave now, as we should be
compelled to do after discussion, the decision of the question to
those who raise it. It is of little avail to prove a work of art
beautiful,--of less, to prove it ugly. Spectators and generations cannot
be taken one by one and convinced. But where the operation of judgment
is from the reasoning rather than from the intuitive nature, facts,
opinions, and impressions may exert healthful influences.

The Venus of Page we cannot accept,--not because it may be unbeautiful,
for that might be but a shortcoming,--not because of any technical
failure, for, with the exception of weakness in the character of waves,
nothing can be finer,--not because it lacks elevated sentiment, for this
Venus was not the celestial,--but because it has nothing to do with
the present, neither is it of the past, nor related in any wise to any
imaginable future.

The present has no ideal of which the Venus of the ancients is a
manifestation. Other creations of that marvellous Greek mind might be
fitly used to symbolize phases of the present. Hercules might labor now;
there are other stables than the Augean; and not yet are all Hydras
slain. Armor is needed; and a Vulcan spirit is making the anvil ring
beneath the earth-crust of humanity. But Venus, the voluptuous, the
wanton,--no sensuousness pervading any religion of this era finds in her
its fitting type and sign. She, her companions, and her paramours, with
the magnificent religion which evolved them, were entombed centuries
ago; and no angel has rolled the stone from the door of their sepulchre.
They are dead; the necessity which called the Deistic ideal into
existence is dead; the ideal itself is dead, since Paul preached in
Athens its funeral sermon.

As history of past conditions, no value can be attached to
representations produced in subsequent ages. In this respect all these
pictures must be false. The best can only approximate truth. Yet his
two pictures of Scriptural subjects--one from the remoteness of Hebrew
antiquity, the other from the early days of Christianity--are most
valuable even as history: not the history of the flight from Egypt, nor
that of the flight into Egypt, but the history of what these mighty
events have become after the lapse of many centuries.

Herein lies the difference between Mythology and Christianity: the one
arose, culminated, and perished, soul and body, when the shadow of the
Cross fell athwart Olympus; the other is immortal,--immortal as is
Christ, immortal as are human souls, of which it is the life. No century
has been when it has not found, and no century can be when it will not
find, audible and visible utterance. The music of the "Messiah" reveals
the relation of its age to the great central idea of Christianity. Fra
Angelico, Leonardo, Bach, Milton, Overbeck, were the revelators of human
elevation, as sustained by the philosophy of which Christ was the great
interpreter.

Therefore, to record that elevation, to be the historian of the present
in its deepest significance, the noblest occupation. Dwelling, as an
artist must dwell, in the deep life of his theme, his work must go forth
utterly new, alive, and startling.

Thus did we find the "Flight into Egypt" a picture full of the spirit of
that marvellous age, hallowed by the sweet mystery which all these years
have given. Who of those who were so fortunate as to see this work of
Mr. Page will ever forget the solemn, yet radiant tone pervading the
landscape of sad Egypt, along which went the fugitives? Nothing ever
swallowed by the insatiable sea, save its human victims, is more worthy
of lament than this lost treasure.

Thus, too, is the grandest work of Mr. Page's life, the Moses with hands
upheld above the battle. Were we on the first page instead of the last,
we could not refrain from describing it. Yet in its presence the impulse
is toward silence. We feel, that, viewed even in its mere external, it
is as simple and majestic as the Hebrew language. The far sky, with its
pallid moon,--the deep, shadowy valley, with its ghostly warriors,--the
group on the near mountain, with its superb youth, its venerable age,
and its manhood too strong and vital for the destructive years;--in the
presence of such a creation there is time for a great silence.




KNITTING SALE-SOCKS.


"He's took 'ith all the sym't'ms,--thet 's one thing sure! Dretful pain
in hez back an' l'ins, legs feel 's ef they hed telegraph-wires inside
'em workin' fur dear life, head aches, face fevered, pulse at 2.40,
awful stetch in the side, an' pressed fur breath. You guess it's
neuralogy, Lurindy? I do'no' nothin' abeout yer high-flyin' names fur
rheumatiz. _I_ don't guess so!"

"But, Aunt Mimy, what _do_ you guess?" asked mother.

"I don' guess nothin' at all,--I nigh abeout know!"

"Well,--you don't think it's"----

"I on'y wish it mebbe the veryaloud,--I on'y wish it mebbe. But that's
tew good luck ter happen ter one o' the name. No, Miss Ruggles,
I--think--it's--the raal article at first hand."

"Goodness, Aunt Mimy! what"----

"Yes, I du; an' you'll all hev it stret through the femily, every one;
you needn't expect ter go scot-free, Emerline, 'ith all your rosy
cheeks; an' you'll all hev ter stay in canteen a month ter the least;
an' ef you're none o' yer pertected by vaticination, I reckon I"----

"Well, Aunt Mimy, if that's your opinion, I'll harness the filly and
drive over for Dr. Sprague."

"Lor'! yer no need ter du _thet_, Miss Ruggles,--I kin kerry yer all
through jest uz well uz Dr. Sprague, an' a sight better, ef the truth
wuz knowed. I tuk Miss Deacon Smiler an' her hull femily through the
measles an' hoopin'-cough, like a parcel o' pigs, this fall. They _du_
say Jane's in a poor way an' Nathan'l's kind o' declinin'; but, uz I
know they say it jest ter spite me, I don' so much mind. You _a'n't_
gwine now, be ye?"

"There's safety in a multitude of counsellors, you know, Aunt Mimy, and
I think on the whole I had best."

"Wal! ef that's yer delib'rate ch'ice betwixt Dr. Sprague an' me, ye
kin du ez ye like. I never force my advice on no one, 'xcept this,--I'd
advise Emerline there ter throw them socks inter the fire; there'll
never none o' them be fit ter sell, 'nless she wants ter spread the
disease. Wal, I'm sorry yer 've concluded ter hev thet old quack
Sprague; never hed no more diplomy 'n I; don' b'lieve he knows cow-pox
from kine, when he sees it. The poor young man's hed his last well day,
I'm afeard. Good-day ter ye; say good-bye fur me ter Stephen. I'll call
ag'in, ef ye happen ter want any one ter lay him eout."

And, staying to light her little black pipe, she jerked together the
strings of her great scarlet hood, wrapped her cloak round her like a
sentinel at muster, and went puffing down the hill like a steamboat.

Aunt Mimy Ruggles wasn't any relation to us, I wouldn't have you think,
though our name was Ruggles, too. Aunt Mimy used to sell herbs, and she
rose from that to taking care of the sick, and so on, till once Dr.
Sprague having proved that death came through her ignorance, she had to
abandon some branches of her art; and she was generally roaming round
the neighborhood, seeking whom she could devour in the others. And so
she came into our house just at dinner-time, and mother asked her to sit
by, and then mentioned Cousin Stephen, and she went up to see him, and
so it was.

Now it can't be pleasant for any family to have such a thing turn up,
especially if there's a pretty girl in it; and I suppose I was as pretty
as the general run, at that time,--perhaps Cousin Stephen thought a
trifle prettier; pink cheeks, blue eyes, and hair the color and shine of
a chestnut when it bursts the burr, can't be had without one 's rather
pleasant-looking; and then I'm very good-natured and quick-tempered, and
I've got a voice for singing, and I sing in the choir, and a'n't afraid
to open my mouth. I don't look much like Lurindy, to be sure; but
then Lurindy's an old maid,--as much as twenty-five,--and don't go to
singing-school.--At least, these thoughts ran through my head as I
watched Aunt Mimy down the hill.--Lurindy a'n't so very pretty,
I continued to think,--but she's so very good, it makes up. At
sewing-circle and quilting and frolics, I'm as good as any; but somehow
I'm never any 'count at home; that's because Lurindy is by, at home.
Well, Lurindy has a little box in her drawer, and there's a letter in
it, and an old geranium-leaf, and a piece of black silk ribbon that
looks too broad for anything but a sailor's necktie, and a shell. I
don't know what she wants to keep such old stuff for, I'm sure.

We're none so rich,--I suppose I may as well tell the truth, that we're
nearly as poor as poor can be. We've got the farm, but it's such a small
one that mother and I can carry it on ourselves, with now and then a
day's help or a bee,--but a bee's about as broad as it is long,--and
we raise just enough to help the year out, but don't sell. We've got
a cow and the filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and
Lurindy spins,--I can't spin, it makes my head swim,--and I knit,
knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a
pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and
then the work goes off like machinery. Why, I can knit two pair, and
sometimes three, a day, and get just as much for them as I do for the
nice ones,--they're warm. But when I want to knit well, as I did the day
Aunt Mimy was in, I take my best blue needles and my fine white yarn
from the long wool, and it takes me from daybreak till sundown to knit
one pair. I don't know why Aunt Jemimy should have said what she did
about my socks; I'm sure Stephen hadn't been any nearer them than he had
to the cabbage-bag Lurindy was netting, and there wasn't such a nice
knitter in town as I, everybody will tell you. She always did seem to
take particular pleasure in hectoring and badgering me to death.

Well, I wasn't going to be put down by Aunt Mimy, so I made the needles
fly while mother was gone for the doctor. By-and-by I heard a knock up
in Stephen's room,--I suppose he wanted something,--but Lurindy didn't
hear it, and I didn't so much want to go, so I sat still and began to
count out loud the stitches to my narrowings. By-and-by he knocked
again.

"Lurindy," says I, "a'n't that Steve a-knocking?"

"Yes," says she,--"why don't you go?"--for I had been tending him a good
deal that day.

"Well," says I, "there's a number of reasons; one is, I'm just binding
off my heel."

Lurindy looked at me a minute, then all at once she smiled.

"Well, Emmy," says she, "if you like a smooth skin more than a smooth
conscience, you're welcome,"--and went up-stairs herself.

I suppose I had ought to 'a' gone, and I suppose I'd ought to wanted to
have gone, but somehow it wasn't so much fear as that I didn't want to
see Stephen himself now. So Lurindy stayed up chamber, and was there
when mother and the doctor come. And the doctor said he feared Aunt Mimy
was right, and nobody but mother and Lurindy must go near Stephen, (you
see, he found Lurindy there,) and they must have as little communication
with me as possible. And his boots creaked down the back-stairs, and
then he went.

Mother came down a little while after, for some water to put on
Stephen's head, which was a good deal worse, she said; and about the
middle of the evening I heard her crying for me to come and help them
hold him,--he was raving. I didn't go very quick; I said, "Yes,--just
as soon as I've narrowed off my toe"; and when at last I pushed back my
chair to go, mother called in a disapproving voice and said that they'd
got along without me and I'd better go to bed.

Well, after I was in bed I began to remember all that had happened
lately. Somehow my thoughts went back to the first time Cousin Stephen
came to our place, when I was a real little girl, and mother'd sent me
to the well and I had dropped the bucket in, and he ran straight down
the green slippery stones and brought it up, laughing. Then I remembered
how we'd birds-nested together, and nutted, and come home on the
hay-carts, and how we'd been in every kind of fun and danger together;
and how, when my new Portsmouth lawn took fire, at Martha Smith's
apple-paring, he caught me right in his arms and squeezed out the fire
with his own hands; and how, when he saw once I had a notion of going
with Elder Hooper's son James, he stepped aside till I saw what a nincom
Jim Hooper was, and then he appeared as if nothing had happened, and
was just as good as ever; and how, when the ice broke on Deacon Smith's
pond, and I fell in, and the other boys were all afraid, Steve came and
saved my life again at risk of his own; and how he always seemed to
think the earth wasn't good enough for me to walk on; and how I'd
wished, time and again, I might have some way to pay him back; and here
it was, and I'd failed him. Then I remembered how I'd been to his place
in Berkshire,--a rich old farm, with an orchard that smelled like the
Spice Islands in the geography, with apples and pears and quinces
and peaches and cherries and plums,--and how Stephen's mother, Aunt
Emeline, had been as kind to me as one's own mother could be. But now
Aunt Emeline and Uncle 'Siah were dead, and Stephen came a good deal
oftener over the border than he'd any right to. Today, he brought some
of those new red-streaks, and wanted mother to try them; next time,
they'd made a lot more maple-sugar on his place than he wanted; and next
time, he thought mother's corn might need hoeing, or it was fine weather
to get the grass in: I don't know what we should have done without him.
Then I thought how Stephen looked, the day he was pall-bearer to Charles
Payson, who was killed sudden by a fall,--so solemn and pale, nowise
craven, but just up to the occasion, so that, when the other girls burst
out crying at sight of the coffin and at thought of Charlie, I cried,
too,--but it was only because Stephen looked so beautiful. Then I
remembered how he looked the other day when he came, his cheeks were
so red with the wind, and his hair, those bright curls, was all blown
about, and he laughed with the great hazel eyes he has, and showed his
white teeth;--and now his beauty would be spoiled, and he'd never care
for me again, seeing I hadn't cared for him. And the wind began to
come up; and it was so lonesome and desolate in that little bed-room
down-stairs, I felt as if we were all buried alive; and I couldn't get
to sleep; and when the sleet and snow began to rattle on the pane, I
thought there wasn't any one to see me and I'd better cry to keep it
company; and so I sobbed off to dreaming at last, and woke at sunrise
and found it still snowing.

Next morning, I heard mother stepping across the kitchen, and when I
came out, she said Lurindy'd just gone to sleep; they'd had a shocking
night. So I went out and watered the creatures and milked Brindle, and
got mother a nice little breakfast, and made Stephen some gruel. And
then I was going to ask mother if I'd done so very wrong in letting
Lurindy nurse Stephen, instead of me; and then I saw she wasn't thinking
about that; and besides, there didn't really seem to be any reason why
she shouldn't;--she was a great deal older than I, and so it was more
proper; and then Stephen hadn't ever _said_ anything to me that should
give me a peculiar right to nurse him more than other folks. So I just
cleared away the things, made everything shine like a pin, and took
my knitting. I'd no sooner got the seam set than I was called to send
something up on a contrivance mother'd rigged in the back-entry over a
pulley. And then I had to make a red flag, and find a stick, and hang it
out of the window by which there were the most passers. Well, I did it;
but I didn't hurry,--I didn't get the flag out till afternoon; somehow I
hated to, it always seemed such a low-lived disease, and I was mortified
to acknowledge it, and I knew nobody'd come near us for so long,--though
goodness knows I didn't want to see anybody. Well, when that was done,
Lurindy came down, and I had to get her something to eat, and then she
went up-stairs, and mother took _her_ turn for some sleep; and there
were the creatures to feed again, and what with putting on, and taking
off, and tending fires, and doing errands, and the night's milking, and
clearing the paths, I didn't knit another stitch that day, and was glad
enough, when night came, to go to bed myself.

Well, so we went on for two or three days. I'd got my second sock pretty
well along in that time,--just think! half a week knitting half a
sock!--and was setting the heel, when in came Aunt Mimy.

"I a'n't afeard on it," says she; "don't you be skeert. I jest stepped
in ter see ef the young man wuz approachin' his eend."

"No," said I, "he isn't, any more than you are, Aunt Mimy."

"Any more 'n I be?" she answered. "Don't you lose yer temper, Emerline.
We're all approachin' it, but some gits a leetle ahead; it a'n't no
disgrace, ez I knows on. What yer doin' of? Knittin' sale-socks yet?
and, my gracious! still ter work on the same pair! You'll make yer
fortin', Emerline!"

I didn't say anything, I was so provoked.

"I don' b'lieve you know heow ter take the turns w'en yer mother a'n't
by to help," she continued. "Can't ye take up the heel? Widden ev'ry
fourth. Here, let me! You won't? Wal, I alluz knowed you wuz mighty
techy, Emerline Ruggles, but ye no need ter fling away in thet style.
Neow I'll advise ye ter let socks alone; they're tew intricate fur
sech ez you. Mitt'ns is jest abeout 'ithin the compass uv your
mind,--mitt'ns, men's single mitt'ns, put up on needles larger 'n them
o' yourn be, an' by this rule. Seventeen reounds in the wrist,--tew an'
one's the best seam"----

"Now, Miss Jemimy, just as if I didn't know how to knit mittens!"

"Wal, it seems you don't," said she, "though I don' deny but you may
know heow ter give 'em; an' ez I alluz like ter du w'at good I kin, I'm
gwine ter show ye."

"Show away," says I; "but I'll be bound, I've knit and sold and eaten up
more mittens than ever you put your hands in!"

"Du tell! I'm glad to ha' heern you've got sech a good digestion," says
she, hunting up a piece of paper to light her pipe. "Wal, ez I
wuz sayin'," says she, "tew an' one's the best seam, handiest an'
'lastickest; twenty stetches to a needle, cast up so loose thet the fust
one's ter one eend uv the needle an' the last ter t'other eend,--thet
gives a good pull."

"I guess your smoke will hurt Stephen's head," said I, thinking to
change her ideas.

"Oh, don't you bother abeout Stephen's head; ef it can't stan' thet,'t
a'n't good fur much. Wal, an' then you set yer thumb an' knit plain,
'xcept a seam-stetch each side uv yer thumb; an' you widden tew
stetches, one each side,--s'pose ye know heow ter widden? an'
narry?--ev'ry third reound, tell yer 've got nineteen stetches acrost
yer thumb; then ye knit, 'ithout widdenin', a matter uv seven or eight
reounds more,----you listenin', Emerline?"

"Lor', Miss Jemimy, don't you know better than to ask questions when I'm
counting? Now I've got to go and begin all over again."

"Highty-tighty, Miss! You're a weak sister, ef ye can't ceount an' chat,
tew. Wal, ter make a long matter short, then ye drop yer thumb onter
some thread an' cast up seven stetches an' knit reound fur yer hand, an'
every other time you narry them seven stetches away ter one, fur the
gore."

"Dear me, Aunt Mimy! do be quiet a minute! I believe mother's
a-calling."

"I'll see," said Aunt Mimy,--and she stepped to the door and listened.

"No," says she, coming back on tiptoe,--"an' you didn't think you heern
any one neither. It's ruther small work fur ter be foolin' an old woman.
Hows'ever, I don' cherish grudges; so, ez I wuz gwine ter say, ye knit
thirty-six reounds above wheer ye dropped yer thumb, an' then ye toe off
in ev'ry fifth stetch, an' du it reg'Iar, Emerline; an' then take up yer
thumb on tew needles, an' on t'other you pick up the stetches I told yer
ter cast up, an' knit twelve reounds, an' thumb off 'ith narryin' ev'ry
third"----

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