Chapter VII: THE SPELL of the LAURENZIANA 271 (4)

Now our pilgrimage takes us from Paris to Venice, to study that priceless treasure of the Library of San Marco, the _Grimani Breviary_, the gem of the Flemish School (which should properly be called “Netherlandish”). This style overlapped, distinctly, into Germany and France, and further complicated any certainty of identification by the fact that the number of Netherlandish illuminators was large, and they scattered themselves over Europe, practising their art and style in France, Germany, and Italy. They all worked with the same minute care, and it is practically impossible to identify absolutely the work even of the most famous artists. There has always been a question whether the chief glory of the _Grimani Breviary_ belonged to Hans Memling or to Gerard Van-der-Meire, but from a study of the comparative claims the Memling enthusiasts would seem to have the better of the argument.

Internal and external evidence place the date of the execution of the _Grimani Breviary_ at 1478 to 1489,--ten years being required for its completion. It is believed that the commission was given by Pope Sixtus IV. The Pontiff, however, died before the volume was finished, and it was left in the hands of one of the artists engaged upon it. Antonello di Messina purchased it from this artist, who is supposed to have been Hans Memling, and brought it to Venice, where he sold it for the sum of 500 ducats to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, whose name it bears.

_La Vie au Mois de Janvier_

(Biblioteca San Marco, Venice. 10 × 9 inches)]

This Cardinal Grimani was a man noted not only for his exemplary piety but also as a literary man of high repute, and a collector of rare judgment. When he died, the _Breviary_ was bequeathed to his nephew, Marino Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, on the condition that at his death the precious manuscript should become the property of the Venetian Republic. Marino carried the _Breviary_ with him to Rome, where it remained until his death in 1546. In spite of his precautions, however, this and several other valuable objects would have been irretrievably lost had not Giovanni Grimani, Marino’s successor as Patriarch at Aquileia, searched for it, and finally recovered it at great cost to himself.

In recognition of his services, Venice granted Giovanni the privilege of retaining the manuscript in his possession during his lifetime. Faithful to his trust, Giovanni, fearing lest the volume be again lost, on October 3, 1593, sent for his great friend, Marco Antonio Barbaro, Procurator of Saint Mark’s, placed the treasure in his hands, and charged him to deliver it to the Doge Pasquale Cicogna in full Senate. This was done, and the volume was stored in the Treasury of the Basilica for safe keeping. Here it remained through the many vicissitudes of Venice, and even after the fall of the Republic, until the librarian Morelli persuaded the authorities to allow its removal to the Library of San Marco, whither it was transferred October 4, 1797.

When the _Breviary_ was delivered to the Doge Pasquale, the Republic voted to entrust the binding to one Alessandro Vittoria. The cover is of crimson velvet, largely hidden by ornaments of silver gilt. On one side are the arms and the medallion of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, and on the other those of his father, the Doge Antonio. Both covers contain further decorations and Latin inscriptions, relating in the first case to the gift, and in the other to its confirmation. In the small medallions in the border one sees a branch of laurel, the emblem of vigilance and protection, crossed by a branch of palm,--the symbol of the religious life. The dove typifies purity, and the dragon stands for defense.

The volume itself contains 831 pages about 10 by 9 inches in size. There are the usual Calendar pages, containing the signs of the Zodiac, and further decorated with small miniatures (_opp. page_), alternating with twelve superb full-page illuminations (_page 142_), showing the occupations of the months. Following these, come the Prayers, with sixty additional full-page miniatures based on Bible history or the lives of the Saints. At the end are eighteen pages with smaller miniatures assigned to the saints of special devotion, placed at the beginning of the office dedicated to each.

_Text Page showing Miniature and Decoration_

(Biblioteca San Marco, Venice. 10 × 9 inches)]

The marginal decorations throughout the book are wonderfully wrought. Some pages are adorned with perpendicular bands, with constantly varying color combinations. Arabesques of all kinds are used, and interspersed among the ornamentation are flowers and fruits, animals, birds, fishes, and all kinds of natural objects. In addition to these, one finds little buildings, landscapes, architectural ornaments, statues, church ornaments, frames, vases, cameos, medals, and scenes from Bible history and from every-day life as well,--all showing the genius of the artists who put themselves into the spirit of their work.

When the old Campanile fell in 1902, one corner of the Library of San Marco was damaged. Immediately telegrams poured in from all over the world, anxiously inquiring for the safety of the _Grimani Breviary_. Fortunately it was untouched. The last time I saw this precious manuscript was in 1924. Doctor Luigi Ferrari, the librarian, courteously took the volume from its case and laid it tenderly on a low table, extending to me the unusual privilege of personal examination. Thus I could turn the pages slowly enough to enjoy again the exquisite charm of its miniatures, the beauty of its coloring, and to assimilate the depth of feeling which pervades it throughout. My friends at the British Museum think that in the Flemish pages of the _Sforza Book of Hours_ they have the finest example of the Flemish School. They may be right; but no miniatures I have ever seen have seemed to me more marvelously beautiful than those in the _Grimani Breviary_.

Whenever I examine a beautiful manuscript, and take delight in it, I find myself comparing it with the Italian masterpiece of Francesco d’Antonio del Cherico. It may be that this is due to my dramatic introduction to that volume, as recorded at the beginning of this chapter. Its date is perhaps half a century earlier than the _Hours of Anne of Brittany_; it is of the same period as the _Grimani Breviary_ and the _Antiquities of the Jews_; it is fifty years later than the _Bedford Book of Hours_, and a century and a half later than _Queen Mary’s Psalter_. Which of all these magnificent manuscripts is the most beautiful? Who would dare to say! In all there is found the expression of art in its highest form; in each the individual admirer finds some special feature--the beauty of the designs, the richness of the composition, the warmth of the coloring, or the perfection of the execution--that particularly appeals.

By Francesco d’Antonio del Cherico

(R. Lau. Bibl. Ashb. 1874. 7 × 5 inches)]

When one considers the early civilization of Italy, and the heights finally attained by Italian illuminators, it is difficult to understand why the intervening centuries show such tardy recognition of the art. Even as late as the twelfth century, with other countries turning out really splendid examples, the Italian work is of a distinctly inferior order; but by the middle of the thirteenth century, the great revival in art brought about by Cimabue and Giotto stimulated the development in illumination. During the next hundred years the art became nationalized. The ornament diverged from the French type, and assumed the peculiar straight bar or rod, with profile foliages, and the sudden reversions of the curves with change of color, which are characteristic of fourteenth-century Italian work. The miniatures, introducing the new Tuscan manner of painting, entirely re-fashioned miniature art. The figure becomes natural, well-proportioned, and graceful, the heads delicate in feature and correct in expression. The costumes are carefully wrought, the drapery folds soft, yet elaborately finished. The colors are vivid but warm, the blue being particularly effective.

The vine-stem style immediately preceded the Classic revival which came when the Medici and other wealthy patrons recognized the artistic importance of illumination. In this style the stems are coiled most gracefully, slightly tinted, with decorative flowerets. The grounds are marked by varying colors, in which the artists delicately traced tendrils in gold or white.

The great glory of Italy in illumination came after the invention of printing. Aside from the apprehensions of the wealthy owners of manuscript libraries that they would lose prestige if books became common, beyond the danger to the high-born rulers of losing their political power if the masses learned argument from the printed book,--these true lovers of literature opposed the printing press because they believed it to cheapen something that was so precious as to demand protection. So they vied with one another in encouraging the scribes and the illuminators to produce hand-written volumes such as had never before been seen.

Certainly the _Book of Hours_ of d’Antonio is one of the marvels of Florentine art. The nine full-page miniatures have never been surpassed. No wonder that Lorenzo de’ Medici, lover of the beautiful, should have kept it ever beside him! The delicate work in the small scenes in the Calendar is as precise as that in the larger miniatures; the decoration, rich in the variety of its design, really surpassed the splendor and glory of the goldsmith’s art (_page 146_). Some deplore the fact that England lost this treasure when the Italian government purchased the Ashburnham Collection in 1884; but if there ever was a manuscript that belongs in Florence, it is this.

You may still see d’Antonio’s masterpiece at the Laurenziana Library, but it is no longer kept in the ancient wooden desk. The treasures of illumination are now splendidly arrayed in cases, where all may study and admire. There are heavy choir-books, classic manuscripts, books of hours, and breviaries, embellished by Lorenzo Monaco, master of Fra Angelico; by Benozzo Gozzoli, whose frescoes still make the Riccardi famous; by Gherado, and Clovio, and by other artists whose names have long since been forgotten, but whose work remains as an everlasting monument to a departed art that should be revived.

* * * * *

Experts, I believe, place the work of Jean Foucquet, in the _Antiquities of the Jews_, ahead of that of Jean Bourdichon (probably Foucquet’s pupil) in the _Hours of Anne of Brittany_; but frankly this sixteenth century manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris, always yields me greater pleasure. Perhaps this is in compensation for not knowing too much! I will agree with them that the decorative borders of Foucquet are much more interesting than Bourdichon’s, for the return of the Flemish influence to French art at this time was not particularly fortunate. In the borders of the _Grimani Breviary_ realism in reproducing flowers, vegetables, bugs, and small animal life, would seem to have been carried to the limit, but Bourdichon went the _Grimani_ one better, and on a larger scale. The reproductions are marvelously exact, but even a beautifully painted domesticated onion, on which a dragon-fly crawls, with wing so delicately transparent that one may read the letter it seems to cover, is a curious accompaniment for the magnificently executed portraits of Anne and her patron saints in the miniature pages! Here the artist has succeeded in imparting a quality to his work that makes it appear as if done on ivory instead of vellum (see _page 148_). The costumes and even the jewels are brilliant in the extreme. The floral decorations shown in the reproduction opposite are far more decorative than the vegetables, but I still object to the caterpillar and the bugs!

_The Education of the Child Jesus by the Virgin and Saint Joseph_

(Bibl. Nat. MS. Lat. 9474. 12 × 7½ inches)]

_Page showing Text and Marginal Decoration_

(Bibl. Nat. MS. Lat. 9474. 12 × 7¼ inches)]

In 1508 there is a record that Anne of Brittany, Queen of Louis XII, made an order of payment to Bourdichon of 1050 _livres tournois_ for his services in “richly and sumptuously historiating and illuminating a great Book of Hours for our use.” This consists of 238 leaves of vellum, 12 by 7½ inches in size. There are sixty-three full pages, including forty-nine miniatures, twelve reproductions for the various months, and a leaf containing ornaments and figures at the beginning and end of the volume. Of the text, there are some 350 pages surrounded by borders. The Italian influence shows in the architectural and sculptural decorations, just as the Flemish obtains in the borders.

The manuscript is bound in black shagreen, with chased silver clasps.

* * * * *

The question naturally arises as to the reason for the decline and practically the final extinction of the art. I believe it to be that which the princely Italian patrons foresaw. Their apprehensions, though selfish in motive, have been confirmed by history. The invention of printing did make the book common, and as such, its true significance came to be forgotten because of greater familiarity. The book as the developer of the people in science and in literature crowded out the book as an expression of art.

I wonder if it is too late to revive illumination. Never has there existed in America or England a keener appreciation of beautiful books; never have there been so many lovers of the book blessed with the financial ability to gratify their tastes. There are still artists familiar with the art, who, if encouraged, could produce work worthy of the beautifully printed volumes the best Presses are capable of turning out. What is lacking is simply a realization that illumination stands side by side with art at its best. In America, the opportunities for studying illumination are restricted, but a student would have no difficulty in finding in certain private collections and in a few public libraries more than enough to establish his basic understanding of the art. The great masterpieces are permanently placed now, and strictly enforced laws prevent national monuments from being further transferred from one country to another; but even of these, excellent facsimile reproductions have been made and distributed throughout the world

No true lover of art visits Europe without first preparing himself by reading and study for a fuller understanding and more perfect enjoyment of what he is to find in the various galleries. Assuming that no one can be an art lover without also being a lover of books, it is perhaps a fair question to ask why he should not make an equal effort to prepare himself to understand and enjoy those rich treasures in the art of illumination which are now so easily accessible

Order of payment of 1050 _livres tournois_ to Jean Bourdichon, 1508]

V

FRIENDS THROUGH THE PEN

Maurice Hewlett combined to an unusual degree those salient characteristics that go to make the great writer: he was a discerning observer, and had formed the habit of analyzing what he observed; his personal experiences had taught him the significance of what he had seen and enabled him to assess its valuation. Beyond all,--having observed, analyzed, and understood,--he possessed the power to interpret to others.

At the time I first met him, _The Queen’s Quair_ was having a tremendous run, and the volume naturally came into the conversation.

“In spite of its success,” he said with much feeling, “I am disappointed over its reception. I have always wanted to write history, but not the way history has always been written. There are certain acts attributed to the chief characters which, if these characters are studied analytically, are obviously impossible; yet because a certain event has once been recorded it keeps on being repeated and magnified until history itself becomes a series of distortions. Mary, Queen of Scots, has always been my favorite historical figure, and I know that in _The Queens Quair_ I have given a truer picture of her character than any that at present exists. But alas,” he added with a sigh, “no one accepts it as other than fiction.”

After this statement from him I turned again to my copy of _The Queen’s Quair_ and re-read the author’s prologue, in which I found:

_A hundred books have been written and a hundred songs sung; men
enough of these latter days have broken their hearts over Queen
Mary’s; what is more to the point is that no heart but hers was
broken at the time. All the world can love her now, but who
loved her then? Not a man among them. A few girls went weeping;
a few boys laid down their necks that she might fall free of
the mire. Alas, the mire swallowed them up and she needs must
conceal her pretty feet. This is the note of the tragedy; pity
is involved, rather than terror. But no song ever pierced the
fold of her secret, no book ever found out the truth because
none ever sought her heart. Here, then, is a book which has
sought nothing else, and a song which springs from that only._

I wonder if every writer in his heart does not feel the same ambition. The novelist is a story-teller who recites bed-time stories to his audience of grown-up children, while the humorist plays the clown; but in writing history one is dealing with something basic. Within a year a volume has been published containing alleged documentary evidence to prove that Mary, Queen of Scots, was innocent of the charge of treason. What a triumph if an author through character analysis could correct tradition! It was a loss to the world that Hewlett permitted himself to be discouraged by unsympathetic critics from carrying out a really big idea.

To meet Maurice Hewlett at his home at Broad Chalke, a little English village nearly ten miles from a railroad station, and to walk with him in his garden, one might recognize the author of _The Forest Lovers_; but an afternoon with him at a London club would develop another side which was less himself. Instead of discussing flowers and French memoirs and biography in a delightfully whimsical mood, Hewlett’s slight, wiry figure became tense, his manner alert, his eyes keen and watchful. In the country he was the dreamer, the bohemian, wholly detached from the world outside; in the city he was confident and determined in approaching any subject, his voice became crisp and decisive, his bearing was that of the man of the world.

His early life was more or less unhappy, due partly to his precociousness which prevented him from fitting in with youth of his own age. This encouraged him to reach beyond his strength and thus find disappointment.

“I was never a boy,” he said once, “except possibly after the time when I should have been a man. As I look back on my youth, it was filled with discouragements.”

The classics fascinated him, and he absorbed Dante. Then Shelley and Keats shared the place of the Italian poet in his heart. Even after he married, he continued to gratify his love of Bohemia, and his wife wandered with him through Italy, with equal joy; while in England they camped out together in the New Forest,--the scene of _The Forest Lovers_.

The peculiar style which Hewlett affected in many of his volumes resulted, he told me, from his daily work in the Record Office in London, as Keeper of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments, during which period he studied the old parchments, dating back to William the Conqueror. In this respect his early experience was not unlike that of Austin Dobson’s, and just as the work in the Harbours Department failed to kill Dobson’s poetic _finesse_, so did Hewlett rise above the deadly grind of ancient records and archives. In fact it was during this period that Hewlett produced _Pan and the Young Shepherd_, which contains no traces of its author’s archaic environment.

One point of sympathy that drew us closely together was our mutual love for Italy. My first desire to know Maurice Hewlett better was after reading his _Earthwork Out of Tuscany_, _Little Novels of Italy_, and _The Road in Tuscany_. I have always preferred these volumes to any of his later ones, as to me they have seemed more spontaneous and more genuine expressions of himself. We were talking about Italy, one day, when he made a remark which caused me to suggest that what he said was the expression of a modern humanist. Hewlett was obviously surprised yet pleased by my use of this expression.

“I don’t often meet any one interested in the subject of humanism,” he said. “It is one of my hobbies.”

I explained my association with Doctor Guido Biagi, librarian of the Laurenziana Library at Florence, and the work I had done there in connection with my designs for a special face of type, based upon the beautiful hand letters of the humanistic scribes (see _page 16_). With that introduction we discussed the great importance of the humanistic movement as the forerunner and essence of the Renaissance. We talked of Petrarch, the father of humanism, and of the courageous fight he and his sturdy band of followers made to rescue the classics. We both had recently read Philippe Monnier’s _Le Quattrocento_, which gave additional interest to our discussion.

“Monnier is the only writer I have ever read who has tried to define humanism,” Hewlett continued. “He says it is not only the love of antiquity, but the worship of it,--a worship carried so far that it is not limited to adoration alone, but which forces one to reproduce.”

“And the humanist,” I added, picking up the quotation from Monnier, which I knew by heart, “is not only the man who knows intimately the ancients and is inspired by them; it is he who is so fascinated by their magic spell that he copies them, imitates them, rehearses their lessons, adopts their models and their methods, their examples and their gods, their spirit and their tongue.”

“Well, well!” he laughed; “we _have_ struck the same street, haven’t we! But does that exactly express the idea to you? It isn’t antiquity we worship, but rather the basic worth for which the ancients stand.”

“Monnier refers to the obsession that comes from constant contact with the learning of the past, and the atmosphere thus created,” I replied. “Only last year Biagi and I discussed that very point, sitting together in his luxuriant garden at Castiglioncello, overlooking the Gulf of Leghorn. The ‘basic worth’ you mention is really Truth, and taking this as a starting point, we worked out a modern application of Monnier’s definition:

_“The humanist is one who holds himself open to receive Truth,
unprejudiced as to its source, and, after having received
Truth, realizes his obligation to give it out again, made
richer by his personal interpretation.”_

“There is a definition with a present application,” Hewlett exclaimed heartily. “I like it.--Did you have that in mind when you called me a modern humanist, just now?”

“No one could read _Earthwork Out of Tuscany_ and think otherwise,” I insisted.

Hewlett held out his hand impulsively. “I wish I might accept that compliment with a clear conscience,” he demurred.

* * * * *

Meeting Austin Dobson after he became interpreter-in-chief of the eighteenth century, it was difficult to associate him with his earlier experiences as a clerk in the Board of Trade office, which he entered when he was sixteen years old, and to which service he devoted forty-five useful but uneventful years, rising eventually to be a principal in the Harbours Department. With so quiet and unassuming a personality, it seems incredible that he could have lifted himself bodily from such unimaginative environment, and, through his classic monographs, bring Steele, Goldsmith, Richardson, Fielding, Horace Walpole, Fanny Burney, Bewick, and Hogarth, out of their hazy indefiniteness, and give to them such living reality. Perhaps Dobson’s very nature prevented him from seeing the coarseness and indecency of the period, and enabled him to introduce, or perhaps reintroduce, to England from France the _ballade_ and the _chante royal_, the _rondeau_ and the _rondel_, the _triolet_, the _villanelle_, and other fascinating but obsolete poetical forms in which he first became interested through his French grandmother.

Dobson was the most modest literary man I ever met. I happened to be in London at the time when the English government bestowed upon him an annuity of £1,000, “for distinguished service to the crown.” When I congratulated him upon this honor his response was characteristic:

“I don’t know why in the world they have given me this, unless it is because I am the father of ten children. I have no doubt that would be classified under ‘distinguished service to the crown.’”

One afternoon Austin Dobson and Richard Garnett, then Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, happened to come to my hotel in London for tea at the same time. On a table in the apartment was a two-volume quarto edition in French of _Don Quixote_, a prize I had unearthed at a bookstall on the Quai Voltaire in Paris. It was beautifully printed, the letterpress just biting into the paper, and making itself a part of the leaf, which is so characteristic of the best French presswork. The edition also contained the famous Doré illustrations. Dobson picked up one of the volumes and exclaimed over its beauty.

“This edition,” he said, “is absolutely perfect.”

“Not quite,” I qualified his statement. “It is lacking in one particular. It requires your _Ode to Cervantes_ to make it complete.”

Dobson laughed. “Send the book to me,” he said, “and I will transcribe the lines on the fly leaf.”

When the volume was returned a few days later, a letter of apology came with it. “When I copied out the _Ode_ on the fly leaf,” Dobson wrote, “it looked so lost on the great page that I ventured to add the poem which I composed for the tercentenary. I hope you won’t mind.”

My eleven-year-old son came into the reception room while our guests were drinking their tea. Dobson took him on his lap, and after quite winning his affection by his gentleness, he quietly called his attention to Garnett, who was conversing with my wife in another part of the room.

“Never forget that man, my boy,” Dobson said in a low voice. “We have never had in England, nor shall we ever have again, one who knows so much of English literature. If the record of every date and every fact were to be lost by fire, Garnett could reproduce them with absolute accuracy if his life were spared long enough.”

Within fifteen minutes the youngster found himself on Garnett’s knee. Without knowing what Dobson had said, the old man whispered in the child’s ear, “It is a privilege you will be glad to remember that you have met such a man as Austin Dobson. Except for Salisbury’s desire to demean the post of poet laureate, Dobson would hold that position today. Never forget that you have met Austin Dobson.”

A few months after our return to America, Garnett died, and Dobson sent me the following lines. I have never known of their publication:

_RICHARD GARNETT_

Sit tibi terra levis

_Of him we may say justly: Here was one
Who knew of most things more than any other,--
Who loved all Learning underneath the sun,
And looked on every Learner as a brother._

_Nor was this all. For those who knew him, knew,
However far his love’s domain extended,
It held its quiet “poet’s corner,” too,
Where Mirth, and Song, and Irony, were blended._

Garnett was a rare spirit, and the British Museum has never seemed the same since he retired in 1899. Entrance to his private office was cleverly concealed by a door made up of shelf-backs of books, but once within the sanctum the genial host placed at the disposal of his guest, in a matter-of-fact way, such consummate knowledge as to stagger comprehension. But, far beyond this, the charm of his personality will always linger in the minds of those who knew him, and genuine affection for the man will rival the admiration for his scholarship.

One afternoon at Ealing, after tennis on the lawn behind the Dobson house, we gathered for tea. Our little party included Hugh Thomson, the artist who so charmingly illustrated much of Dobson’s work, Mr. and Mrs. Dobson, and one of his sons. The poet was in his most genial mood, and the conversation led us into mutually confidential channels.

“I envy you your novel writing,” he said. “Fiction gives one so much wider scope, and prose is so much more satisfactory as a medium than poetry. I have always wanted to write a novel. Mrs. Dobson would never have it. But she is always right,” he added; “had I persisted I should undoubtedly have lost what little reputation I have.”

He was particularly impressed by the fact that I wrote novels as an avocation. It seemed to him such a far cry from the executive responsibility of a large business, and he persisted in questioning me as to my methods. I explained that I devoted a great deal of time to creating mentally the characters who would later demand my pen; that with the general outline of the plot I intended to develop, I approached it exactly as a theatrical manager approaches a play he is about to produce, spending much time in selecting my cast, adding, discarding, changing, just so far as seemed to me necessary to secure the actors best suited to the parts I planned to have them play. He expressed surprise when I told him that I had long since discarded the idea of working out a definite scenario, depending rather upon creating interesting characters, and having them sufficiently alive so that when placed together under interesting circumstances they are bound to produce interesting dialogue and action.

“Of course my problem, writing essays and poetry, is quite different from yours as a novelist,” he said; “but I do try to assume a relation toward my work that is objective and impersonal. In a way, I go farther than you do.”

Then he went on to say that not only did he plan the outline of what he had to write, whether triolet or poem, wholly in his head, but (in the case of the poetry) even composed the lines and made the necessary changes before having recourse to pen and paper.

“When I actually begin to write,” he said, “I can see the lines clearly before me, even to the interlinear corrections, and it is a simple matter for me to copy them out in letter-perfect form.”

Dobson’s handwriting and his signature were absolutely dissimilar. Unless one had actually seen him transcribe the text of a letter or the lines of a poem in that beautiful designed script, he would think it the work of some one other than the writer of the flowing autograph beneath.

* * * * *

Posterity is now deciding whether Mark Twain’s fame will rest upon his humor or his philosophy, yet his continuing popularity would seem to have settled this much-mooted question. Humor is fleeting unless based upon real substance. In life the passing quip that produces a smile serves its purpose, but to bring to the surface such human notes as dominate Mark Twain’s stories, a writer must possess extraordinary powers of observation and a complete understanding of his fellow-man. Neither Tom Sawyer nor Huckleberry Finn is a fictional character, but is rather the personification of that leaven which makes life worth living.

When an author has achieved the dignity of having written “works” rather than books, he has placed himself in the hands of his friends in all his varying moods. A single volume is but the fragment of any writer’s personality. I have laughed over _Innocents Abroad_, and other volumes which helped to make Mark Twain’s reputation, but when I seek a volume to recall the author as I knew him best it is _Joan of Arc_ that I always take down from the shelf. This book really shows the side of Mark Twain, the man, as his friends knew him, yet it was necessary to publish the volume anonymously in order to secure for it consideration from the reading public as a serious story.

_At the Villa di Quarto, Florence_

From a Snap-shot]

“No one will ever accept it seriously, over my signature,” Mark Twain said. “People always want to laugh over what I write. This is a serious book. It means more to me than anything I have ever undertaken.”

Mark Twain was far more the humorist when off guard than when on parade. The originality of what he did, combined with what he said, produced the maximum expression of himself. At one time he and his family occupied the Villa di Quarto in Florence (_page 172_), and while in Italy Mrs. Orcutt and I were invited to have tea with them. The villa is located, as its name suggests, in the four-mile radius from the center of the town. It was a large, unattractive building, perhaps fifty feet wide and four times as long. The location was superb, looking out over Florence toward Vallombrosa and the Chianti hills.

With Snap-shot of Villa di Quarto]

In greeting us, Mark Twain gave the impression of having planned out exactly what he was going to say. I had noticed the same thing on other occasions. He knew that people expected him to say something humorous or unusual, and he tried not to disappoint them.

“Welcome to the barracks,” he exclaimed. “Looks like a hotel, doesn’t it? You’d think with twenty bedrooms on the top floor and only four in my family there would be a chance to put up a friend or two, wouldn’t you? But there isn’t any one I think so little of as to be willing to stuff him into one of those cells.”

We had tea out of doors. Miss Clara Clemens, who later became Mrs. Gabrilowitch, served as hostess, as Mrs. Clemens was confined to her bed by the heart trouble that had brought the family to Italy. As we sipped our tea and nibbled at the delicious Italian cakes, Mark Twain continued his comments on the villa, explaining that it was alleged to have been built by the first Cosimo de’ Medici (“If it was, he had a bum architect,” Mark Twain interjected); later it was occupied by the King of Württemberg (“He was the genius who put in the Pullman staircase”); and still later by a Russian Princess (“She is responsible for that green majolica stove in the hall. When I first saw it I thought it was a church for children”); and then it fell into the hands of his landlady (“Less said about her the better. You never heard such profanity as is expressed by the furniture and the carpets she put in to complete the misery. I’m always thankful when darkness comes on to stop the swearing”).

The garden was beautiful, but oppressive,--due probably to the tall cypresses (always funereal in their aspect), which kept out the sun, and produced a mouldy luxuriance. The marble seats and statues were covered with green moss, and the ivy ran riot over everything. One felt the antiquity unpleasantly, and, in a way, it seemed an unfortunate atmosphere for an invalid. But so far as the garden was concerned, it made little difference to Mrs. Clemens,--the patient, long-suffering “Livy” of Mark Twain’s life,--for she never left her sick chamber, and died three days later.

After tea, Mr. Clemens offered me a cigar and watched me while I lighted it.

“Hard to get good cigars over here,” he remarked. “I’m curious to know what you think of that one.”

I should have been sorry to tell him what my opinion really was, but I continued to smoke it with as cheerful an expression as possible.

“What kind of cigars do you smoke while in Europe?” he inquired.

I told him that I was still smoking a brand I had brought over from America, and at the same time I offered him one, which he promptly accepted, throwing away the one he had just lighted. He puffed with considerable satisfaction, and then asked,

“How do you like that cigar I gave you?”

It seemed a matter of courtesy to express more enthusiasm than I really felt.

“Clara,” he called across to where the ladies were talking, “Mr. Orcutt likes these cigars of mine, and he’s a judge of good cigars.”

Then turning to me he continued, “Clara says they’re rotten!”

He relapsed into silence for a moment.

“How many of those cigars of yours have you on your person at the present time?”

I opened my cigar case, and disclosed four.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said suddenly. “You like my cigars and I like yours. I’ll swap you even!”

In the course of the afternoon Mark Twain told of a dinner that Andrew Carnegie had given in his New York home, at which Mr. Clemens had been a guest. He related with much detail how the various speakers had stammered and halted, and seemed to find themselves almost tongue-tied. His explanation of this was their feeling of embarrassment because of the presence of only one woman, Mrs. Carnegie.

Sir Sidney Lee, who was lecturing on Shakesperian subjects in America at the time, was the guest of honor. When dinner was announced, Carnegie sent for Archie, the piper, an important feature in the Carnegie _ménage_, who appeared in full kilts, and led the procession into the dining-room, playing on the pipes. Carnegie, holding Sir Sidney’s hand, followed directly after, giving an imitation of a Scotch dance, while the other guests fell in behind, matching the steps of their leader as closely as possible. Mark Twain gave John Burroughs credit for being the most successful in this attempt.

Some weeks later, at a dinner which Sir Sidney Lee gave in our honor in London, we heard an echo of this incident. Sir Sidney included the story of Mark Twain’s speech on that occasion, which had been omitted in the earlier narrative. When called upon, Mr. Clemens had said,

“I’m not going to make a speech,--I’m just going to reminisce. I’m going to tell you something about our host here when he didn’t have as much money as he has now. At that time I was the editor of a paper in a small town in Connecticut, and one day, when I was sitting in the editorial sanctum, the door opened and who should come in but Andrew Carnegie. Do you remember that day, Andy?” he inquired, turning to his host; “wasn’t it a scorcher?”

Carnegie nodded, and said he remembered it perfectly.

“Well,” Mark Twain continued, “Andrew took off his hat, mopped his brow, and sat down in a chair, looking most disconsolate.

“‘What’s the matter?’ I inquired. ‘What makes you so melancholy?’--Do you remember that, Andy?” he again appealed to his host.

“Oh, yes,” Carnegie replied, smiling broadly; “I remember it as if it were yesterday.”

“‘I am so sad,’ Andy answered, ‘because I want to found some libraries, and I haven’t any money. I came in to see if you could lend me a million or two.’ I looked in the drawer and found that I could let him have the cash just as well as not, so I gave him a couple of million.--Do you remember that, Andy?”

“No!” Carnegie answered vehemently; “I don’t remember that at all!”

“That’s just the point,” Mark Twain continued, shaking his finger emphatically. “I have never received one cent on that loan, interest or principal!”

I wonder if so extraordinary an assemblage of literary personages was ever before gathered together as at the seventieth anniversary birthday dinner given to Mark Twain by Colonel George Harvey at Delmonico’s in New York! Seated at the various tables were such celebrities as William Dean Howells, George W. Cable, Brander Matthews, Richard Watson Gilder, Kate Douglas Wiggin, F. Hopkinson Smith, Agnes Repplier, Andrew Carnegie, and Hamilton W. Mabie.

It was a long dinner. Every one present would have been glad to express his affection and admiration for America’s greatest man-of-letters, and those who must be heard were so numerous that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning before Mark Twain’s turn arrived to respond. As he rose, the entire company rose with him, each standing on his chair and waving his napkin enthusiastically. Mark Twain was visibly affected by the outburst of enthusiasm. When the excitement subsided, I could see the tears streaming down his cheeks, and all thought of the set speech he had prepared and sent to the press for publication was entirely forgotten. Realizing that the following quotation differs from the official report of the event, I venture to rely upon the notes I personally made during the dinner. Regaining control of himself, Mark Twain began his remarks with words to this effect:

_When I think of my first birthday and compare it with this
celebration,--just a bare room; no one present but my mother
and one other woman; no flowers, no wine, no cigars, no
enthusiasm,--I am filled with indignation!_

* * * * *

Charles Eliot Norton is a case in point in my contention that to secure the maximum from a college course a man should take two years at eighteen and the remaining two after he has reached forty. I was not unique among the Harvard undergraduates flocking to attend his courses in Art who failed utterly to understand or appreciate him. The ideals expressed in his lectures were far over our heads. The estimate of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold, that Mr. Norton was foremost among American thinkers, scholars, and men of culture, put us on the defensive, for to have writers such as these include Norton as one of themselves placed him entirely outside the pale of our undergraduate understanding. He seemed to us a link connecting our generation with the distant past. As I look back upon it, this was not so much because he appeared old as it was that what he said seemed to our untrained minds the vagaries of age. Perhaps we were somewhat in awe of him, as we knew him to be the intimate of Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, as he had been of Longfellow and George William Curtis, and thus the last of the Cambridge Immortals. I have always wished that others might have corrected their false impressions by learning to know Norton, the man, as I came to know him, and have enjoyed the inspiring friendship that I was so fortunate in having him, in later years, extend to me.

In the classroom, sitting on a small, raised platform, with as many students gathered before him as the largest room in Massachusetts Hall could accommodate, he took Art as a text and discussed every subject beneath the sun. His voice, though low, had a musical quality which carried to the most distant corner. As he spoke he leaned forward on his elbows with slouching shoulders, with his keen eyes passing constantly from one part of the room to another, seeking, no doubt, some gleam of understanding from his hearers. He told me afterwards that it was not art he sought to teach, nor ethics, nor philosophy, but that he would count it success if he instilled in the hearts of even a limited number of his pupils a desire to seek the truth.

As I think of the Norton I came to know in the years that followed, he seems to be a distinctly different personality, yet of course the difference was in me. Even at the time when Senator Hoar made his terrific attack upon him for his public utterances against the Spanish War, I knew that he was acting true to his high convictions, even though at variance with public opinion. I differed from him, but by that time I understood him.

“Shady Hill,” his home in Norton’s Woods on the outskirts of Cambridge, Massachusetts, exuded the personality of its owner more than any house I was ever in. There was a restful dignity and stately culture, a courtly hospitality that reflected the individuality of the host. The library was the inner shrine. Each volume was selected for its own special purpose, each picture was illustrative of some special epoch, each piece of furniture performed its exact function. Here, unconsciously, while discussing subjects far afield, I acquired from Mr. Norton a love of Italy which later was fanned into flame by my Tuscan friend, Doctor Guido Biagi, the accomplished librarian of the Laurenziana Library, in Florence, to whom I have already frequently referred.

Our real friendship began when I returned from Italy in 1902, and told him of my plans to design a type based upon the wonderful humanistic volumes. As we went over the photographs and sketches I brought home with me, and he realized that a fragment of the fifteenth century, during which period hand lettering had reached its highest point of perfection, had actually been overlooked by other type designers (see _page 16_), he displayed an excitement I had never associated with his personality. I was somewhat excited, too, in being able to tell him something which had not previously come to his attention,--of the struggle of the Royal patrons, who tried to thwart the newborn art of printing by showing what a miserable thing a printed book was when compared with the beauty of the hand letters; and that these humanistic volumes, whose pages I had photographed, were the actual books which these patrons had ordered the scribes to produce, regardless of expense, to accomplish their purpose.

The romance that surrounded the whole undertaking brought out from him comments and discussion in which he demonstrated his many-sided personality. The library at “Shady Hill” became a veritable Florentine rostrum. Mr. Norton’s sage comments were expressed with the vigor and originality of Politian; when he spoke of the tyranny of the old Florentine despots and compared them with certain political characters in our own America, he might have been Machiavelli uttering his famous diatribes against the State. Lorenzo de’ Medici himself could not have thrilled me more with his fascinating expression of the beautiful or the exhibition of his exquisite taste.

Each step in the development of the Humanistic type was followed by Mr. Norton with the deepest interest. When the first copy of Petrarch’s _Triumphs_ came through the bindery I took it to “Shady Hill,” and we went over it page by page, from cover to cover. As we closed the volume he looked up with that smile his friends so loved,--that smile Ruskin called “the sweetest I ever saw on any face (unless perhaps a nun’s when she has some grave kindness to do),”--and then I knew that my goal had been attained (_page 32_).

While the Humanistic type was being cut, Doctor Biagi came to America as the official representative from Italy to the St. Louis Exposition. Later, when he visited me in Boston, I took him to “Shady Hill” to see Mr. Norton. It was an historic meeting. The Italian had brought to America original, unpublished letters of Michelangelo, and at my suggestion he took them with him to Cambridge. Mr. Norton read several of these letters with the keenest interest and urged their publication, but Biagi was too heavily engaged with his manifold duties as librarian of the Laurenziana and Riccardi libraries, as custodian of the Buonarroti and the da Vinci archives, and with his extensive literary work, to keep the promise he made us that day.

The conversation naturally turned upon Dante, Biagi’s rank in his own country as interpreter of the great poet being even greater than was Norton’s in America. Beyond this they spoke of books, of art, of music, of history, of science. Norton’s knowledge of Italy was profound and exact; Biagi had lived what Norton had acquired. No matter what the subject, their comments, although simply made, were expressions of prodigious study and absolute knowledge; of complete familiarity, such as one ordinarily has in every-day affairs, with subjects upon which even the well-educated man looks as reserved for profound discussion. Norton and Biagi were the two most cultured men I ever met. In listening to their conversation I discovered that a perfectly trained mind under absolute control is the most beautiful thing in the world.

* * * * *

Climbing the circular stairway in the old, ramshackle Harper plant at Franklin Square, New York, I used to find William Dean Howells in his sanctum.

“Take this chair,” he said one day after a cordial greeting; “the only Easy Chair we have is in the _Magazine_.”

Howells loved the smell of printer’s ink. “They are forever talking about getting away from here,” he would say, referring to the long desire at Harpers’--at last gratified--to divorce the printing from the publishing and to move uptown. “Here things are so mixed up that you can’t tell whether you’re a printer or a writer, and I like it.”

Our acquaintance began after the publication by the Harpers in 1906 of a novel of mine entitled _The Spell_, the scene of which is laid in Florence. After reading it, Howells wrote asking me to look him up the next time I was in the Harper offices.

“We have three reasons to become friends,” he said smiling, after studying me for a moment with eyes that seemed probably more piercing and intent than they really were: “you live in Boston, you love Italy, and you are a printer. Now we must make up for lost time.”

After this introduction I made it a habit to “drop up” to his sanctum whenever I had occasion to go to Franklin Square to discuss printing or publishing problems with Major Leigh or Mr. Duneka. Howells always seemed to have time to discuss one of the three topics named in his original analysis, yet curiously enough it was rarely that any mention of books came into our conversation.

Of Boston and Cambridge he was always happily reminiscent: of entertaining Mr. and Mrs. John Hay while on their wedding journey, and later Bret Harte, in the small reception room in the Berkeley Street house, where the tiny “library” on the north side was without heat or sunlight when Howells wrote his _Venetian Days_ there in 1870; of early visits with Mark Twain before the great fireplace in “the Cabin” at his Belmont home, over the door of which was inscribed the quotation from _The Merchant of Venice_, “From Venice as far as Belmont.”--“In these words,” Howells said, “lies the history of my married life”;--of the move from Belmont to Boston as his material resources increased.

“There was a time when people used to think I didn’t like Boston,” he would chuckle, evidently enjoying the recollections that came to him; “but I always loved it. The town did take itself seriously,” he added a moment later; “but it had a right to. That was what made it Boston. Sometimes, when we know a place or a person through and through, the fine characteristics may be assumed, and we may chaff a little over the harmless foibles. That is what I did to Boston.”

He chided me good-naturedly because I preferred Florence to Venice. “Italy,” he quoted, “is the face of Europe, and Venice is the eye of Italy. But, after all, what difference does it make?” he asked. “We are both talking of the same wonderful country, and perhaps the intellectual atmosphere of antiquity makes up for the glory of the Adriatic.”

Then he told me a story which I afterwards heard Hamilton Mabie repeat at the seventy-fifth birthday anniversary banquet given Howells at Sherry’s by Colonel George Harvey in 1912.

Two American women met in Florence on the Ponte Vecchio. One of them said to the other, “Please tell me whether this is Florence or Venice.”

“What day of the week is it?” the other inquired.

“Wednesday.”

“Then,” said the second, looking at her itinerary, “this is Venice.”

“I was born a printer, you know,” Howells remarked during one of my visits. “I can remember the time when I couldn’t write, but not the time when I couldn’t set type.”

He referred to his boyhood experiences in the printing office at Hamilton, Ohio. His father published there a Whig newspaper, which finally lost nearly all its subscribers because its publisher had the unhappy genius of always taking the unpopular side of every public question. Howells immortalized this printing office in his essay _The Country Printer_,--where he recalls “the compositors rhythmically swaying before their cases of type; the pressman flinging himself back on the bar that made the impression, with a swirl of his long hair; the apprentice rolling the forms; and the foreman bending over them.”

The Lucullan banquet referred to outrivaled that given by Colonel Harvey to Mark Twain. How Mark Twain would have loved to be there, and how much the presence of this life-long friend would have meant to Howells! More than four hundred men and women prominent in letters gathered to do honor to the beloved author, and President Taft conveyed to him the gratitude of the nation for the hours of pleasure afforded by his writings.

In the course of his remarks, Howells said:

_I knew Hawthorne and Emerson and Walt Whitman; I knew
Longfellow and Holmes and Whittier and Lowell; I knew Bryant
and Bancroft and Motley; I knew Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia
Ward Howe; I knew Artemus Ward and Stockton and Mark Twain; I
knew Parkman and Fiske._