Books: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6
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Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6
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A short time ago, there shot across the artistic firmament a comet
of daring and dazzling brightness. Every comet is hurling onward to
its death: destruction is its only end: and upon each line and
tracery of the work of Aubrey Beardsley is the taint of decay.
To deny the genius of the man were vain--he had elements in his
character that made him akin to Keats, Shelley, Burns, Byron, Chopin
and Stephen Crane. With these his name will in brotherhood be
forever linked. He was one made to suffer, sin and die--a few short
summers, and autumn came with yellow leaves and he was gone. And the
principal legacy he left us is the thought of wonder as to what he
might have been had he only lived!
Aubrey Beardsley's art was the art of the ugly. His countenances are
so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and
leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women
is a puzzle that we can not lay aside--we want to solve the riddle
of this paradox of existence--the woman whose soul is mire and whose
heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but
we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and
imagination. Art shows you the thing you might have done or been.
Burke says the ugly attracts us, because we congratulate ourselves
that we are not it.
The Madonna pictures, multiplied without end, stand for peace,
faith, hope, trustfulness and love. All that is fairest, holiest,
purest, noblest, best, men have tried to portray in the face of the
Madonna. All the good that is in the hearts of all the good women
they know, all the good that is in their own hearts, they have made
to shine forth from the "Mother of God." Woman has been the symbol
of righteousness and faith.
On the other hand, it was a woman--Louise de la Ramee--who said,
"Woman is the instrument of lust." Saint Chrysostom wrote, "She is
the snare the Devil uses to lure men to their doom." I am not quite
ready to accept the dictum of that old, old story that it was the
woman who collaborated with the serpent and first introduced sin and
sorrow into the world. Or, should I believe this, I wish to give
woman due credit for giving to man the Fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge--the best gift that ever came his way. But the first
thought holds true in a poetic way: it has always been, is yet, and
always will be true, that the very depths of degradation are sounded
only by woman. As poets, painters and sculptors have ever chosen a
woman to stand for what is best in humanity, so she has posed as
their model when they wanted to reveal the worst.
This desire to depict villainy on a human face seems to have found
its highest modern exponent in Aubrey Beardsley. With him man is an
animal, and woman a beast. Aye, she is worse than a beast--she is a
vampire. Kipling's summing up of woman as "a rag and a bone and a
hank of hair" gives no clue to the possibilities in way of subtle,
reckless reaches of deviltry compared with a single, simple, outline
drawing by Beardsley. Beardsley's heroines are the kind of women who
can kill a man with a million pin-pricks, so diabolically, subtly
and slyly administered that no one but the victim would be aware of
the martyrdom--and he could not explain it.
As you enter the main gallery of statuary at the Luxembourg, you
will see, on a slightly raised platform, at the opposite end of the
room, the nude figure of a man. The mold is heroic, and the strong
pose at once attracts your attention. As you approach closer you
will see, standing behind the man, the figure of a woman. Her form
is elevated so she is leaning over him and her face is turned so her
lips are about to be pressed upon his. You approach still closer,
and a feeling of horror flashes through you--you see that the
beautiful arms of the woman end in hairy claws. The claws embrace
the man in deadly grasp, and are digging deep into his vitals. On
his face is a look of fearful pain, and every splendid muscle is
tense with awful agony.
Now, if you do as I did, you will suddenly turn and go out into the
fresh air--the fearful realism of the marble will for the moment
unnerve you.
This is the piece of statuary that gave Philip Burne-Jones the cue
for his painting, "The Vampire," which picture suggested the poem,
by the same name, to Rudyard Kipling.
Aubrey Beardsley gloated on the Vampire--she was the sole goddess of
his idolatry.
No wonder it was that the story of Salome attracted him! Salome was
a woman so wantonly depraved that Beardsley, with a touch of pious
hypocrisy, said he dared not use her for dramatic purposes, save for
the fact that she was a Bible character.
You remember the story: John the Baptist, the strong, fine youth,
came up out of the wilderness crying in the streets of Jerusalem,
"Repent ye! Repent ye!" Salome heard the call and looked upon the
semi-naked young fanatic from her window, with half-closed, catlike
eyes. She smiled, did this idle creature of luxury, as she lay there
amid the cushions on her couch, arid gazed through the casement upon
the preacher in the street. Suddenly a thought came to her! She
arose on her elbow--she called her slaves.
They clothed her in a gaudy gown, dressed her hair, and led her
forth.
Salome followed the wild, weird, religious enthusiast. She pushed
through the crowd and placed herself near the man, so the smell of
her body would reach his nostrils, and his eyes would range the
swelling lines of her body.
Their eyes met. She half-smiled and gave him that look which had
snared the soul of many another. But he only gazed at her with
passionless, judging intensity, and repeated his cry, "Repent ye,
Repent ye, for the day is at hand!"
Her reply, uttered soft and low, was this: "I would kiss thy lips!"
He turned away and she reached to seize his garment, repeating, "I
would kiss thy lips--I would kiss thy lips!" He turned aside and
forgot her, as he continued his warning cry, and went his way.
The next day she waylaid the youth again; as he came near she
suddenly and softly stepped forth and said in that same low voice,
"I would kiss thy lips!"
He repulsed her with scorn. She threw her arms about him and sought
to draw his head down near hers. He pushed her from him with sinewy
hands, sprang as from a pestilence, and was lost in the pressing
throng.
That night she danced before Herod Antipas, and when the promise was
recalled that she should have anything she wished, she named the
head of the only man who had ever turned away from her--"The head of
John the Baptist on a charger!"
In an hour the wish is gratified. Two eunuchs stand before Salome
with a silver tray bearing its fearsome burden. The woman smiles--a
smile of triumph--as she steps forth with tinkling feet. A look of
pride comes over the painted face. Her jeweled fingers reach into
the blood-matted hair. She lifts the head aloft, and the bracelets
on her brown, bare arms fall to her shoulders, making strange music.
Her face presses the face of the dead. In exultation she exclaims,
"I have kissed thy lips!"
The most famous picture by Botticelli is the "Spring," now in the
Academy at Florence. The picture has given rise to endless inquiry,
and the explanation was made in the artist's day, and is still made,
that it was painted to illustrate a certain passage in Lucretius.
This innocent little subterfuge of giving a classic turn to things
in art and literature has allowed many a man to shield his
reputation and gloss his good name. When Art relied upon the
protecting wing of the Church, the poet-painters called their risky
little things, "Susannah and the Elders," "The Wife of Uriah," or
"Pharaoh's Daughter." Lucas van Leyden once pictured a Dutch wench
with such startling and realistic fidelity that he scandalized a
whole community, until he labeled the picture, "Potiphar's Wife."
When the taste for the classics began to be cultivated, we had "Leda
and the Swan," "Psyche," "Phryne Before the Judges," "Aphrodite
Rising From the Sea," and, later, England experienced quite an
artistic eruption of Lady Godivas. Literature is filled with many
such naive little disguises as "Sonnets From the Portuguese," and
Robert Browning himself caught the idea and put many a maxim into
the mouth of another, for which he preferred not to stand sponsor.
Botticelli painted the "Spring" for Lorenzo the Magnificent, to be
placed in the Medici villa at Castello. The picture, it will be
remembered, represents seven female figures, a flying cupid, and a
youth. The youth is a young man of splendid proportions; he stands
in calm indifference with his back to the sparsely clad beauties,
and reaches into the branches of a tree for the plenteous fruit.
This youth is a composite portrait of Botticelli and his benefactor,
Lorenzo. The women were painted from life, and represent various
favorites and beauties of the court. The drawing is faulty, the
center of gravity being lost in several of the figures, and the
anatomy is of a quality that must have given a severe shock to the
artist's friend, Leonardo. Yet the grace, the movement and the
joyous quality of Spring are in it all. It is a most fascinating
picture, and we can well imagine the flutter it produced when first
exhibited four hundred years ago.
Two figures in the picture challenge attention. One of these
represents approaching maternity--a most daring thing to attempt.
This feature seems to belong to the School of Hogarth alone--a
school which, let us pray, is hopelessly dead.
Cimabue and several of his pupils painted realistic pictures
representing Mary visiting Elizabeth, but the intense religious zeal
back of them was a salt that saved from offending. Occasionally, the
staid and sober Dutch successfully attempted the same theme, and
their stolidity stood for them as religious zeal had done for the
early Italians--we pardon them simply because they knew no better
than to choose a subject that is beyond the realm of art.
The restorers and engravers have softened down Botticelli's intent,
which was originally well defined, but we can easily see that the
effect was delicate and spiritual. The woman's downcast gaze is full
of tenderness and truth. That figure when it was painted was
history, and must have had a very tender interest for two persons at
least. Had the painter dared to suggest motherhood in that other
figure--the one with the flowered raiment--he would have offended
against decency, and the art-sense of the world would have stricken
his name from the roster of fame forever, and made him anathema.
More has been written and said, and more copies made of that woman
in the flowered dress in the "Spring" than of any other portrait I
can remember, save possibly the "Mona Lisa."
The face is not without a certain attractiveness; the high cheek-
bones, the narrow forehead, and the lines above her brow show that
this is no ideal sketch--it is the portrait of a woman who once
lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman
looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in
the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto--she
can find it in an instant--and as she looks at you out of those
impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable
spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder,
curiosity, modesty or passion. All that we call the eternally
feminine is obliterated.
"Mona Lisa" is infinitely wise, while this woman is only cunning.
All the lure she possesses is the lure of warm, pulsing youth--grown
old she will be a repulsive hag. Speculation has made her one of the
Borgias, for in the days of Botticelli a Borgia was Pope, and Cesare
Borgia and his court were well known to Botticelli--from such a
group he could have picked his model, if anywhere. Ruskin has linked
this unknown wicked beauty with Machiavelli. But Machiavelli had a
head that outmatched hers, and he would certainly have left her to
the fool moths that fluttered around her candle. Machiavelli used
women, and this woman has only one ambition, and that is to use men.
She represents concrete selfishness--the mother-instinct swallowed
up in pride, and conscience smothered by hate. Certainly sex is not
dead in her, but it is perverted below the brute. Her passion would
be so intense and fierce that even as she caressed her lover, with
arm about his neck, she would feel softly for his jugular, mindful
the while of the stiletto hidden in her hair. And this is the
picture that fired the brain of Aubrey Beardsley, and caused him to
fix his ambition on becoming the Apostle of the Ugly.
To liken Beardsley to Botticelli, however, seems indeed a sin. The
master was an artist, but Beardsley only gave chalk talks. His work
is often crude, rude and raw. He is only a promise, turned to dust.
Yet let the simple fact stand for what it is worth, that Beardsley
had but one god, and that was Botticelli. Most of the things
Beardsley did were ugly; many of the things Botticelli did were
supremely beautiful.
Yet in all of Botticelli's work there is a tinge of melancholy--a
shade of disappointment. The "Spring" is a sad picture. On the faces
of all his tall, fine, graceful girls there is a hectic flush. Their
cheeks are hollow, and you feel that their beauty is already
beginning to fade. Like fruit too much loved by the sun, they are
ready to fall.
Botticelli had the true love nature. By instinct he was a lover,
proof of which lies in the fact that he was deeply religious. The
woman he loved he has pictured over and over again. The touch of
sorrow is ever in her wan face, but she possessed a silken strength,
a heroic nature, a love that knew no turning. She had faith in
Botticelli, and surely he had faith in her. For forty years she was
in his heart; at times he tried to dislodge her and replace her
image with another; but he never succeeded, and the last Madonna he
drew is the same wistful, loving, patient face--sad yet proud,
strong yet infinitely tender.
In that piece of lapidary work, "How Sandro Botticelli Saw Simonetta
in the Spring," is a bit of heart psychology which, I believe, has
never been surpassed in English.
Simonetta, of the noble house of Vespucci, was betrothed to
Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Simonetta was tall,
stately--beautiful as Venus, wise as Minerva and proud as Juno. She
knew her worth, realized her beauty, and feeling her power made
others feel it, too.
On a visit to the villa of the Medici at Fiesole she first saw
Sandro Botticelli at an evening assembly in the gardens. She had
heard of the man and knew his genius. When they suddenly met face to
face under the boughs, she noted how her beauty startled him. His
gaze ranged the exquisite lines of her tall form, then sought the
burnished gold of her hair. Their eyes met.
First of all this man was an artist: the art-instinct in him was
supreme: after that he was a lover.
Simonetta saw he had looked upon her merely as a "subject." She was
both pleased and angry. She, too, loved art, but she loved love
more. She was a woman. They separated, and Simonetta inwardly
compared the sallow, slavish scion of a proud name, to whom she was
betrothed, with this God's Nobleman whom she had just met.
Giuliano's words were full of soft flattery; this man uttered an
oath of surprise under his breath, on first seeing her, and treated
her almost with rudeness.
She fought the battle out there, alone, leaning against a tree,
listening to the monotonous voice of a poet who was reading from
Plato. She felt the disinterested greatness of Sandro, she knew the
grandeur of his intellect--she was filled with a desire to be of
service to him. Certainly she did not love him--a social abyss
separated them--but could not her beauty and power in some way be
allied with his, so that the world should be made better?
"Shame is of the brute dullard who thinks shame," came the resonant
voice of the reader. The words rang in her ears. Sandro was greater
than the mere flesh--she would be, too. She would pose for him, and
thus give her beautiful body to the world--beauty is eternal! Her
action would bless and benefit the centuries yet to come. She was
the most beautiful of women--he the greatest of artists. It was an
opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the
painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and
hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known
her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive
look about--"who is there in Florence like me?"
"There is no one," calmly answered Sandro.
"I will be your Lady Venus," she went on breathlessly, stepping
closer--"You shall paint me rising from the sea!"
Very early the next morning, before the household was astir, Sandro
entered the apartments of the lady Simonetta. She was awaiting him,
leaning with feigned carelessness against the balustrade, arrayed
from head to toe in a rose-colored mantle. One bare foot peeped
forth from under the folds of the robe.
Neither spoke a word.
Sandro arranged his easel, spread his crayons on the table, and
looked about the room making calculations as to light.
He motioned her to a certain spot. She took the position, and as he
picked up a crayon and examined it carelessly she raised her arms
and the robe fell at her feet.
Sandro faced her, and saw the tall, delicate form, palpitating
before him. The rays of the morning sun swept in between the
lattices and kissed her shoulder, face and hair.
For an instant the artist was in abeyance. Then from under his
breath he exclaimed: "Holy Virgin! what a line! Stay as you are, I
implore you--swerve not a hair's breadth, and soon you shall be mine
forever!"
The pencil broke under his impetuous stroke. He seized another and
worked at headlong speed. The woman watched him with eyes dilated.
She was agitated, and the pink of her fair skin came and went. Her
face grew pale, and she swayed like a reed.
All the time she watched the artist, fearfully. She was at his
mercy!
Ah God! he was only an artist with the biggest mouth in all
Florence! She noted how he tossed the hair from his eyes every
moment. She saw the heavy jaw, the great, broad-spreading feet, the
powerful chest. His smothered exclamations as he worked filled her
with scorn. What had she done? Who was she, anyway, that she should
thus bare her beauty before such a creature? He had not even spoken
to her! Was she only a thing? She grew deadly pale and reeled as she
stood there. Two big tears chased each other down her cheeks. The
painter looking up saw other tears glistening on her lashes. He
noted her distress.
He dropped his crayon and made a motion as if to advance to her
relief.
A few moments before and he might have folded her mantle about her
and assisted her to a seat--then they would have talked, reassured
each other, and been mutually understood. To be understood--to be
appreciated--that is it!
It was too late, now--she hated him.
As he advanced she recovered herself.
She pointed her finger to the door, and bade him begone.
Hastily he huddled his belongings into a parcel, and without looking
up, passed out of the door. She heard his steps echoing down the
stairway, and soon from out the lattice she saw him walk across the
court and disappear. He did not look up!
She threw herself upon her couch, buried her face in the pillows and
burst into tears.
In one short week word came to Sandro that Simonetta was dead--a
mysterious quick fever of some kind--she had refused all food--the
doctors could not understand it--the fever had just burned her life
out!
Let Maurice Hewlett tell the rest:
"They carried dead Simonetta through the streets of Florence, with
her pale face uncovered and a crown of myrtle in her hair. People
thronging there held their breath, or wept to see such still
loveliness; and her poor parted lips wore a patient little smile,
and her eyelids were pale violet and lay heavy on her cheek. White,
like a bride, with a nosegay of orange-blossoms, and syringa at her
throat, she lay there on her bed, with lightly folded hands and the
strange aloofness and preoccupation all the dead have. Only her hair
burned about her like molten copper.
"The great procession swept forward; black brothers of Misericordia,
shrouded and awful, bore the bed or stalked before it with torches
that guttered and flared sootily in the dancing light of day.
"Santa Croce, the great church, stretched forward beyond her into
the distances of gray mist and cold spaces of light. Its bare
vastness was damp like a vault. And she lay in the midst listless,
heavy-lidded, apart, with the half-smile, as it seemed, of some
secret mirth. Round her the great candles smoked and flickered, and
mass was sung at the High Altar for her soul's repose. Sandro stood
alone, facing the shining altar, but looking fixedly at Simonetta on
her couch. He was white and dry--parched lips and eyes that ached
and smarted. Was this the end? Was it possible, my God! that the
transparent, unearthly thing lying there so prone and pale was dead?
Had such loveliness aught to do with life or death? Ah! sweet lady,
dear heart, how tired she was, how deadly tired! From where he stood
he could see with intolerable anguish the somber rings around her
eyes and the violet shadows on the lids, her folded hands and the
straight, meek line to the feet. And her poor wan face with its
wistful, pitiful little smile was turned half-aside on the delicate
throat, as if in a last appeal: Leave me now, O Florentines, to my
rest. Poor child! Poor child! Sandro was on his knees with his face
pressed against the pulpit and tears running through his fingers as
he prayed.
"As he had seen her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a
cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her
a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent
sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still
dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a
dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue;
and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce
of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are
asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their
play, or see the creatures of the darkness--owls and night-hawks and
heavy moths--flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so
here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's
self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you have caught
the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over the pasture to
the copse. And that, indeed, was Sandro's fortune. He caught her in
just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and
undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of
time ere she had lighted. Another moment and a buxom nymph of the
grove would fold her in a rosy mantle, colored as the earliest wood-
anemones are. She would vanish, we know, into the daffodils or a
bank of violets. And you might tell her presence there, or in the
rustle of the myrtles, or coo of doves mating in the pines; you
might feel her genius in the scent of the earth or the kiss of the
west wind; but you could only see her in mid-April, and you should
look for her over the sea. She always comes with the first warmth of
the year. But daily, before he painted, Sandro knelt in a dark
chapel in Santa Croce, while a priest said mass for the repose of
Simonetta's soul."
George Eliot gives many a side-glimpse of the art life of Florence
in the days of the luxury-loving Medici. She saturated herself in
Italian literature and history; and the days of Fra Angelico, Fra
Lippo Lippi and Fra Girolamo Savonarola are bodied forth from lines
deeply etched upon her heart.
When you go to Florence carry "Romola" in your side-pocket, just as
you take the "Marble Faun" to Rome. "Romola" will certainly make
history live again and pass before your gaze. The story is
unmistakably high art, for from the opening lines of the proem you
hear the slow, measured wing of death; and after you have read the
volume, forever, for you, will the smoke of martyr-fires hover about
the Piazza Signoria, and from the gates of San Marco you will see
emerge that little man in black robe and cowl--that homely,
repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the
dark, leathery skin--that man who lured and fascinated by his poise
and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his
enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as a warning
to those whom he had hypnotized, they burned his swart, shrunken
body in the public square, just as he had burned their books and
pictures.
Sandro Botticelli, the painter, who made sensuality beautiful,
ugliness seductive, and the sin-stained soul attractive, renounced
all and followed the Monk of San Marco--sensuality and asceticism at
the last are one. When the procession headed for the Piazza
Signoria, where the fagots were piled high, Sandro stood afar off
and his heart was wrung in anguish, as he saw the glare of the
flames gild the eastern sky. And this anguish was not for the
friends who had perished--no, no, it was for himself; the thought
that he was unworthy of martyrdom filled his mind--he had fallen at
the critical moment. Basely and cravenly he had saved himself. By
saving all he lost all. To lose one's self-respect is the only
calamity. Sandro Botticelli had failed to win the approval of his
Other Self--and this is defeat, and there is none other. He might
have sent his soul to God on the wings of victory, in glorious
company, but now it was too late--too late!
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