Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

"THEIR LANTERN JUST BROUGHT OUT THE GHOSTLINESS OF GRAVESTONES LEANING
BETWEEN THE COLUMNS OF THE CYPRESSES"

_See "The Valley of Mills," page 659_]

McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI OCTOBER, 1908 No. 6

FAMILIAR LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

EDITED BY ROSE STANDISH NICHOLS

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

_Copyright, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved_

These familiar letters from Augustus Saint-Gaudens show the artist as his intimate friends knew him. They were written at odd moments, often in haste, and never with a shadow of self-consciousness. They are interesting, not as literary productions, but as the simple record of a critical period in his career.

"Le Coeur au Métier," the motto which he wished to place in his studio, will be seen to express the spirit of his life. Other keen interests he had, but they were never allowed to interfere with his work, and he seldom felt the need of any recreation apart from it. One of his friends used to complain that in the midst of their merrymaking an abstracted look would come into his eyes and his mind would hark back to sculpture. Although he was extremely modest and was given to underrating his powers in other directions, from his childhood he confidently expected to be a great artist. As a little school-boy, sent from his father's shop to do errands, he would sit in the omnibus and look about at his well-dressed fellow-passengers, and wonder what they would think if they realized what he was going to be some day. But even as a child he never dreamed of achieving his ambition without years of ceaseless struggle.

When the boy left school, at the age of thirteen, this struggle began. In 1848 his father, a Frenchman, had brought his Irish wife and his baby, Augustus, to New York, where he worked as a shoemaker. He was poor, and was anxious that his eldest son should become self-supporting as soon as possible; so at thirteen the boy was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter, whose trade he mastered with surprising readiness, at the same time studying drawing at the Cooper Institute in the evenings. In a little while he was not only earning his own living by cameo-cutting, but excelled all his fellow-pupils at the night-school in talent and perseverance.

Saint-Gaudens' artistic education was completed in Europe, where he went at the age of eighteen and stayed almost continuously for nearly fourteen years. His father sent him first to Paris. There his progress in the art schools was marked, although he continued to support himself by his trade, and could give only half his time to sculpture. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he reluctantly refrained from enlisting in the French army and left for Italy. It was in Rome that he first found sculpture remunerative, and finally was able to drop cameo-cutting. The years from 1866 to 1880, which he spent in Rome and Paris, with only occasional visits to America, were singularly happy ones, characterized by a capacity for continuous work at a high pitch of excellence.

The letters from Saint-Gaudens printed here were written eighteen years later, when the sculptor had come into full possession of his genius. They cover a most critical period in his career, and record his greatest artistic triumph--his recognition in France as one of the foremost of modern sculptors. After he returned to the United States in 1880 he lived and worked in New York, and by 1897 had built up a national reputation. His work was progressing under the most favorable conditions, with the encouragement of an ever-increasing circle of friends and admirers. On the other hand, in France, his father's country, where he himself had been educated, his work was practically unknown. A few of his former comrades at the Beaux-Arts, judging his sculpture from photographs, did not hesitate to tell Saint-Gaudens that it had been over-praised in America and would obtain no such appreciation in France. The sculptor felt that, in order to learn his own deficiencies and to find out where he really stood among his contemporaries, he must return to Paris, exhibit at the Salon, and run the gauntlet of the best critics. All his friends on both sides of the water discouraged him from taking this step, and he himself dreaded it; but he believed that, in justice to himself and to his work, he must make this venture.

After his decision was made, however, his departure had to be postponed until various duties were fulfilled. The Shaw and Logan monuments had first to be completed and unveiled, and a number of smaller commissions had to be executed. From the beginning of his work upon the Shaw memorial there had been bitter opposition upon the part of his friends to the symbolical figure hovering above Colonel Shaw and his men, but the sculptor clung to his original conception with great tenacity. Saint-Gaudens' best friend, Bion, a Parisian sculptor and critic, whose opinion he valued highly, had never liked the idea of this figure. Just before Bion's death he received a photograph of the monument as finished in the clay, and he wrote a long letter to Saint-Gaudens, complaining that the angel was as superfluous as a figure of Simplicity would be, floating in the air above the bent figures in Millet's "Gleaners," and concluding: "I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu' allegory on the ceiling. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel leading them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action."

Concerning this letter of Bion's, Saint-Gaudens wrote:

"The Players, New York, Jan. 26th, 1897

"Dear ----

"I meant to write you at length tonight but I started with a
letter to Bion which has kept me busy till now, 11 P.M. It is in
reply to the one from him that I enclose, in which at the end he
says a word of you.

"I am not disturbed by his dislike of my figure. It is because
it does not look well in the photograph. If the figure in itself
looked well, he would have liked it, I know, and notwithstanding
his admirable comparison with the Millet I still think that a
figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the scheme,
is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans did it finely in
their sculpture. After all it's the way the thing's done that
makes it right or wrong, that's about the only creed I have in
art. However his letter is interesting, although very sad, dear
old boy.

DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE WITH THE
HEAD TURNED MORE IN PROFILE, AS IN THE FINAL EXECUTION]

"All of the Shaw is out of the studio. They cast the Logan on
Monday and I am working like the devil on the Sherman. I've found
precisely the model I wished, just his size, the same pose of the
head and the same thinness; a Milanese peasant who poses like a
rock. Next week I commence the nude of the Victory from a South
Carolinian girl with a figure like a goddess.

"Affectionately yours
A. ST.-G."

Bion died shortly after writing his objections to the allegorical figure, and if anything could have changed Saint-Gaudens' decision regarding his composition of the Shaw monument, his friend's letter would certainly have done so. Although Saint-Gaudens and Bion had studied sculpture together at the Beaux-Arts in their youth, it was not until years afterward that, through a constant interchange of letters, their relation became a close one. Bion gave up sculpture as a profession, and devoted himself to friendship and philosophy. He dropped into the studios of a few intimates every day, frequented art exhibitions, and attended lectures upon philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne or the Collège de France; but the long letters which he used to write Saint-Gaudens every week became more and more the chief business of his life. He kept his friend informed as to what was going on in Paris; of the doings of their little circle of acquaintances; and wrote him detailed descriptions of all important events in the world of art, besides giving him a great deal of disinterested advice upon every conceivable subject, including his work and the conduct of his life. Saint-Gaudens used to reply at great length, but his letters were destroyed, according to directions left in his friend's will. When the news of Bion's death reached Saint-Gaudens, he wrote:

"148 W. 36th St., Feb. 17th, 1897

"Of course the one thing on my mind, the terrible spectre that
looms up, is poor Bion's death; night and day, at all moments, it
comes over me like a wave that overwhelms me, and it takes away
all heart that I may have in anything. Today, however, I have had
a kind of sad feeling of companionship with him, that seems to
bring him to me, in working over the head of the flying figure of
the Shaw. The bronze founders are not ready for it yet. I have had
a stamp made of the figure and have helped it a great deal, I am
sure you will think. You know that Thayer told me he thought an
idea I once had of turning the head more profile, was a better one
than that I had evolved, and I've always wished to do it. It is
done, and it's the feeling of death and mystery and love in the
making of it that brought my friend back to me so much today....
But the young, thank Heaven, do not feel these blows so profoundly
as do older people. In one of my blue fits the other day I felt
the end of all things, and reasoning from one thing to the other
and about the hopelessness of trying to fathom what it all means,
I reached this: that we know nothing, (of course) but a deep
conviction came over me like a flash that at the bottom of it all,
whatever it is, the mystery must be beneficent. It does not seem
as if the bottom of all were something malevolent; and the thought
was a great comfort.

MONUMENT TO COLONEL ROBERT GOULD SHAW, ERECTED AT BOSTON]

"I shall be all the week at the figure. I've made an olive branch
instead of the palm,--it looks less 'Christian martyr'-like,--and
I have lightened and simplified the drapery a great deal. I had
not seen it for two or three months and I had a fresh impression.

"At 27th Street I've finished the nude of the Sherman and next
week I begin to put his clothes on him. I had another day with the
model for the Victory last Sunday, and that, too, is progressing
rapidly. Zorn, the Swedish artist, was with me all day Sunday
making an etching of me while the model rested; it is an admirable
thing and I will send you a copy of it.

"The studio is once more in a fearful condition with the casting
of the Logan, and the getting of the Puritan ready to photograph
and cast for the Boston Museum and to send abroad to have the
reductions made....

"This letter is no good, but it must go; the clatter of seven
moulders and sculptors does not help to the expression or the
development of thought, confusion only----

"Affectionately
A. ST.-G."

"May 15th or 16th, 1897

"The Shaw goes to Boston on Thursday or Friday. I've done little
else lately but run around about it until I am frantic. On the
other hand, while waiting for some workmen yesterday, I had a
great walk in the Babylonian East Side here. It was a beautiful
day and one of great impressions.

"I have not commenced the Howells medallion yet, as I expected to
be absent. I believe I told you I had a nice note from him.

A. ST.-G."

The Shaw memorial was unveiled in Boston, in the latter part of May, 1897. The erection of the monument had been so long delayed that Saint-Gaudens feared that the public had lost interest in the work, or would expect too much and be disappointed. On the contrary, its success was immediate, and made him very happy. Its appeal was to men of every condition, laymen as well as artists, and nothing ever pleased the sculptor more than the way it arrested the attention of almost every passer-by. In June, scarcely a month after the unveiling of the Shaw, another soldier's monument, the equestrian statue of General Logan, was unveiled at Chicago, and Saint-Gaudens went there to be present at the ceremony.

"1142 The Rookery, Chicago, June 23, 1897

"I am again at the top of this big building here, and I will
give you some description of the last 24 hours. At one o'clock
yesterday Mrs. Deering, Mrs. French, Mr. French (brother and
sister-in-law of Dan French) and I were placed in one carriage,
Mr. Deering, Mrs. St. G. and the editor of the 'Chicago Tribune'
in another, and in the wake of a lot of other carriages and
followed by a procession of them, we drove to the big stand. A
great day; with a high wind and glorious sun. I was put in one
of the seats in the Holy of Holies alongside of Mrs. Logan,
if you please, and the president of the ceremonies. A lot of
speeches, one of which was very good, and at the right moment the
complicated arrangement of flags dropped, the cannon fired, the
band played, Mrs. Logan wept, and I posed for a thousand snap
photographs, 'a gleam of triumph passed over my face,' think of
that! (vide 'Chicago Tribune').

"However, the monument looks impressive as I see it this morning
for the first time with much of the disfiguring scaffolding gone.
I stay here until Sunday, when I take the 5.30 P.M. train and
shall get to New York Monday at 6 or 7. Last night we went to a
great golf place where high merriment prevailed. This afternoon to
Fort Sheridan. Tonight a reception at the Art Institute; tomorrow
a lawn party at Burnham's and Sunday a visit to the great dredging
canal; on Monday the cars and rest."

After the sculptor's return from Chicago, he continued his preparations for departure in New York.

"The Players, August 7, 1897

"Brander Matthews has just come and interrupted this with a long
and interesting talk on the conventional in art and an article he
has written and sent to Scribner's on it. You have often wondered
what I think about things--I wonder myself; I think anything and
everything. This seeing a subject so that I can side with either
side with equal sympathy and equal convictions I sometimes think a
weakness. Then again I'm thinking it a strength.

"Last night I dined with X---- and Y---- and passed a delightful
evening with them. X---- cracked his constructed jokes and
manufactured his silversmith puns, and cackled over them. We
talked literature, English, French, and Taine's great work on
English literature. We afterward went to the open air concert
at the Madison Square Garden, and when we were not talking of
anything else we talked on that subject of eternal interest and
mystery 'les femmes.'"

Finally, in the autumn of 1897, after both the Shaw and Logan monuments had been unveiled, and various minor obstacles to his departure had been removed, Saint-Gaudens was ready to leave America. Opposition to his plan still came from every side. Many of his friends in New York seemed to feel that he was casting a certain reproach upon his country by his desire to profit by foreign criticism and to measure his work by European standards. They prophesied that his work would deteriorate under French influence. His few friends in Paris were equally discouraging. They did not hesitate to warn him that if he persisted in coming there he must be prepared to face indifference and failure. Even Bion, when Saint-Gaudens had asked him to get the opinions of a few French artists upon photographs of the Shaw memorial, had refused to do so, saying: "I shan't show your photographs to anyone. Shiff, MacMonnies, and Proctor have seen them, my poor old friend, and the others do not know you. They are quite indifferent about what goes on outside their own little show."

Saint-Gaudens himself feared that he might be making a serious mistake. The ocean voyage in itself was an ordeal to him, and before leaving he wrote: "I continue fencing and am preparing for the voyage as one prepares for a fight. I go to the theatre and that tides over the blue hours which lie between dinner and bed-time." But he felt that he must make the venture, whatever lay before him, and that he could never be satisfied until he had stood the test of a comparison with his chief contemporaries and until his work had been passed upon by the most sophisticated and penetrating critics of art. At the end of September, 1897, accompanied by his wife and his son, Homer, he sailed for England. After crossing to France, he thus described his first impressions:

"Hotel Normandy, Paris, Nov. 7th, 1897

"The beauty of the scenery and of the English homes and villages
on the railroad from Southampton to London recalled the delightful
impression of the last trip, when I was so light-hearted. The
sense of order and thrift appealed to me strongly in comparison
with the shiftlessness of America. Then London with its
extraordinary impression of power and also of order. Homer and I
went to see Hamlet. Read it, R----. As I grow older, the greatness
of Shakspeare looms higher and higher; every line, every word is
so deep, so true, 'never offending the modesty of nature withal,'
as Hamlet himself advises the players.

"From London we came on the following day to Paris. The country
between Calais and Dover seemed very grand; great rolling lands
with immense fields being ploughed in the waning day. The peace,
simplicity, and calm of it all was profoundly impressive. Just a
ploughman and a boy, alone in the country on a hillside, following
the horses and the plough along the deep, straight furrows; no
fences, a clear sky with the half moon, and only a small clump or
two of trees--all so orderly and grand."

For the first few weeks in Paris Saint-Gaudens was miserable. His studio, on the Rue de Bagneux, in the Latin Quarter, was large and cheerful, with comfortable quarters adjoining for his assistants, and he was extremely interested in his work upon the equestrian statue of General Sherman. But he missed his old friends and haunts in New York, the weather was gloomy and depressing, and he felt enervated and homesick. Almost none of the friends of his student days were there to welcome him back to Paris, and he was not in the mood to make new ones. Dr. Shiff, a retired physician with a philosophic turn of mind, and many years the sculptor's senior, was the only man he could count upon for regular companionship, though occasionally an old friend like Henry Adams, John Alexander, or Garnier would drop into the studio. John Sargent was another warm friend who helped to keep up his spirits and whom he admired intensely both as a man and as an artist. With Helleu, the etcher, they enjoyed spending a day or two at Chartres and Rheims. In the following letter he describes his first meeting with Whistler:

"Paris, Nov. 16th, 1897

"Mac and I made a short call on Whistler, whom I found much more
human than I imagined him to be, and today I went to the Court of
Appeals where a trial of his was to come off--it didn't,--but I
had a delightful chat with him. He is a very attractive man with
very queer clothes, a kind of 1830 coat with an enormous collar
greater even than those of that period; a monocle, a strong jaw,
very frizzly hair with a white mesh in it, and an extraordinary
hat."

The brightest spot in Saint-Gaudens' winter was his visit to the south of France and to Italy, in the company of his friend Garnier, who, like Bion, had been a fellow-student of his at the École des Beaux-Arts years before. They left Paris in December, and went almost directly to Aspet and Salies du Salat, Gascon villages where Saint-Gaudens' father was born and where he worked at his trade as a young man. This was the first time that Augustus Saint-Gaudens had visited that country on the Spanish frontier where his paternal ancestors had lived for centuries and where many of their name still survived.

"Aspet, December, 1897

"I write this in the village where my father was born and
today has been one of the most delightful days of my life. I
have invited my old friend Garnier (a dear friend and the most
delightful of companions) to travel with me. We left Paris
yesterday morning and slept at Toulouse last night. We left there
this morning before dawn and saw the sun rise over the Pyrenees on
our way to Salies du Salat, a most picturesque and dirty village
at the foot of the beautiful mountains. I inquired at the station
if any Saint-Gaudens lived there. 'Yes, opposite the mairie.' We
walked up a narrow Spanish-looking street and there was a little
shoe-store and on it the sign 'Saint-Gaudens.' I woke my cousin
up. His is the very house where father passed his childhood. We
three walked over the town up to the cradle of the 'Comminges'
just back of father's house, and we went around on the sward and
on the old moat where the children now play and where his father
and my father played when children. I cannot describe to you how I
was moved by it all.

"After a characteristic déjeuner with the cousin, a typical French
peasant, and his typical wife, we hired a wagon with two horses
and drove three hours into the mountains through a wonderfully
beautiful country, very Spanish in character, to this delightful
village. Here father was born, and baptized in the little church
right at hand from where I write. There are delightful fountains
at every corner and an air of thrift, order, and cleanliness that
you cannot imagine. We are in a nice hotel, a homelike place, and
tomorrow, after seeing Market Day, we walk to Saint-Gaudens, about
12 miles from here. It is a most romantic spot; all the country
and the people here have a good deal of the Spanish dignity. We
are 30 miles from the frontier of Spain. I must stop now because
my third cousin (his grandfather and mine were brothers) is
coming. He is the postman of the village and the surrounding
country, a handsome young fellow who carries the mail around on
horseback, and who between times makes shoes."

Leaving this out-of-the-way corner of Gascony, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, Saint-Gaudens and Garnier traveled by Toulouse to Marseilles. From this port the sculptor had sailed twenty-seven or eight years before, when he first went to study in Rome. Now, with his old friend, he again climbed up to where the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde overlooks the Mediterranean, and was amused to remember the three days he had spent upon that hill-top, with little to eat but figs and chocolate, while awaiting the departure of his ship for Italy.

The two artists went by train from Marseilles to Nice and Ventimiglia, and then walked along the superb Cornice road to San Remo, conscious that every step brought them nearer to their beloved Italy. The hills, covered with palms and orange-trees, the sacred-looking groves of gray-green olives detached against the deep blue of the sea, recalled to Saint-Gaudens a story by Anatole France describing some early Christians in an olive grove overlooking the Mediterranean.

In Italy they stopped first at Pisa, and did not reach Rome much before midnight. Regardless of fatigue, Saint-Gaudens insisted upon starting out that night to revisit the favorite haunts of his student days, taking the reluctant Garnier with him. At a late hour they ended their excursion at the Café Greco, where the sculptor talked with a waiter who had served him with coffee in 1871. The next morning they spent in the gardens and the Bosco of the Villa Medici. Nothing seemed to them much changed, and their happiness was as great as if they had found their youth again in the land where they had left it. Saint-Gaudens afterward said that on the night of that arrival in Rome he felt as if he were slaking a great thirst. Before their return they also visited the Bay of Naples. Vivid memories of Italy were present with the sculptor until the end of his life, and during his last illness he said that one thing he wished to live for was to take again the drive from Salerno to Amalfi: the vineyards clinging to the hillsides, the cliffs with the blue waves breaking at their base, haunted him as a vision of exquisite beauty.

Late in the winter Saint-Gaudens returned to Paris, and when spring and the pleasant weather came on he was working again with great enthusiasm, preparing for the Salon. His exhibit at the Champs de Mars attracted much attention and elicited unexpected praise from the severest French critics.

"3, rue de Bagneux, Paris, May 16th, 1898

... "I must be brief today for Dr. Shiff is coming in to talk,
and help me with his consoling philosophy as Bion did; and I must
work, for the model leaves shortly, and I must use him every hour
I can; so I will tell you briefly of what has happened.

"This Paris experience, as far as my art goes, has been a great
thing for me. I never felt sure of myself before, I groped ahead.
All blindness seems to have been washed away. I see my place
clearly now, I know, or think I know, just where I stand. A great
self-confidence has come over me and a tremendous desire and will
to achieve high things, with a confidence that I shall, has taken
possession of me. I exhibited at the Champs de Mars and the papers
have spoken well and it seems as if I were having what they call
a 'success' here. I send you some of the extracts from several of
the principal artistic papers here, the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,'
'Art et Décoration,' and from the 'Dictionaire Encyclopédique
Larousse'; four of these have asked permission to reproduce my
work. The Director of the Luxembourg tells me he wishes something
of mine, and other friends have asked that I be given the Legion
of Honour. Of this latter you must say nothing, and I only speak
of it to give you a true idea of what impressions I am undergoing.

"For four months it rained incessantly, but the great interest of
preparing for the Salon has interested me. The sunshine has been a
blessing, and Paris, with her smiles and green dress and the blue
skies overhead captivates like a beautiful woman.

"There is something in the air here which pushes one to do
beautiful things; it seems something actually atmospheric,
something soft and gentle in the air.... Later Sargent came in
very good spirits. We dined and went to the theatre together
last night. He wished me to tell him when I go to London, as the
fellows there wish to give me a great 'blow off.' And so it all
goes; the sun is now pouring into the studio, and it all seems
like a great dream."

The article in _Art et Décoration_ to which Saint-Gaudens refers was written by Paul Leprieur. After attacking with great severity Rodin's "Balzac," the critic said:

"The more completely to forget this sinister vision, one may well linger before the work of a great sculptor, almost unknown among us, who reveals himself to us, so to speak, for the first time, with an altogether remarkable collection of monumental sculpture and photographs of monuments previously executed. We refer to M. Saint-Gaudens, an Irishman by birth, who has worked mainly for America, and who was, if I mistake not, the teacher of Mr. MacMonnies--a teacher far superior to his pupil. His exhibit is one of the surprises and delights of the Champs de Mars.

"Had we only the photographs which he shows us--whether of his Peter Cooper, his President Lincoln, the noble and serious allegorical figure for a tomb, called the Peace of God, or the charming caryatid for the Vanderbilt house--we could already perceive the grasp of composition, the decision of the contours, the depth of the sentiment expressed without any splurge or noise. This sculpture, in its acceptance, or ingenious re-shaping, of traditions from ancient sources, as well as in its modern inventiveness, imparts a savor of intimate charm, of dignity without parade, which are rare indeed in our day.

"The actual work exhibited simply confirms the impression of the photographs. To say nothing of the placques and medallions, models of a fine funeral bas-relief, and the highly entertaining and picturesque statue of a Puritan, the large high-relief dedicated to the memory of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw may well be esteemed as a model of intelligent decoration.

"The idea of representing, not the death scene itself, but the moment preceding it, and of showing the army of blacks, led by the white officer, filing by as if in a march to death, grave of mien, solemn, and heroic, is as novel as it is boldly treated. While presenting prodigies of skill (absolutely without triviality or pettiness in matters of detail), and modeled with a great freedom and understanding of how to arrange the various groups of lines in perspective,--which all men of his profession will admire,--everything is kept subordinate to the ensemble and to the predetermined unity of motion. Upon each of the faces one feels more or less the reflection of the motto of self-sacrifice and enthusiastic faith inscribed on a flat surface in the background (Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam), and the superb figure of a woman with flying drapery, symbolical of glory or of death, comparable to the loveliest creations in this style by Watts or Gustave Moreau, succeeds in giving to this very sculpturesque composition a distinguished moral significance."

Two months later the critic Léonce Benedite, in his article on the salons of 1898, wrote, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_:

"It is a foreign sculptor, an American artist whose name alone had previously reached us, M. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who affords us an example of a commemorative monument composed of modern elements and broadly executed in the simplest and purest sculptural spirit. Half French, not only by descent, but by his whole education, trained in our school,--which he honors today,--the illustrious chief of the future American school of sculpture has produced numerous beautiful works in his own country. Photographic reproductions of these accompany his exhibited works and demonstrate their rare dignity and grandeur of style. His beautiful mortuary statues, one of which is on exhibition at the Salon, together with the caryatid of the Vanderbilt house--long and slender, with beautiful, severe draperies--are figures of distinguished elegance, of austere grace.

"But above all, the statues of President Lincoln and Peter Cooper, the mural tablets of Dr. McCosh and Dr. Bellows, show us with how exalted an appreciation of his art the American master has succeeded in making the most of the complete modernity of his subjects. To be sure, he has not misrepresented the characteristic local physiognomy of his models, or the unique effect of the accessories of costume and furniture; far from it. But with what elegance and vigor he makes them all speak to one, from the skirt of the coat to the slightest fold of the trousers!

"We find ourselves face to face with a powerful and self-restrained master, who is able to comprehend and to express emotion, who speaks a simple but expressive language, and who has the power to convince and to fascinate. The monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, erected at Boston, and exhibited in plaster at the Salon, affords us a striking proof of this. It is a large high-relief, set in a graceful and exceedingly simple architectural frame. In the center a young officer, mounted, sword in hand, is leading a company of black soldiers who are marching by his side, musket on shoulder, with a drummer at their head. In the upper field floats a grave and melancholy figure, flying horizontally; it is Duty, and with a sweeping and eloquently mournful gesture she points out to them the road leading to glory and to death. The measured march of the men, the expression of resigned and submissive gravity on the faces of those colored troops, contrasting with the proud, absorbed energy of the young white man who leads them, his beautiful young steed nervous and quivering, emphasizes yet more the restrained enthusiasm and patient determination of the commander. All this, and even the sculptural comprehension of all this paraphernalia of war, impresses one simply yet powerfully, and holds one enthralled by its genuine epic grandeur."

"June 14th, Paris

"I am going to stay alone in Paris and on Sundays go and see Brush
and Garnier and the Proctors and go to St. Moritz for a week or
ten days; further than that I have no plans.... I see Shiff every
other night and dine with him then; occasionally I see F----,
whom I rather like. I'm working hard but slowly. I want a little
rest, so in two days I go to London to see the exhibit there;
besides, Sargent gives me a dinner on the 20th. Paris is really
a wonderfully attractive city and the 'cut' atmosphere, to use
a very unpleasant phrase, is clearly a great thing. There can
never be more than a few big men that one respects, but there are
so many people deeply interested in art, literature and music,
so many that are working hard, that you feel a great deal of
intelligence around you in the direction in which you are working,
beside the unusual amount of general intelligence which surrounds
one."

Toward the end of June Saint-Gaudens and his family went to England. In London, Sargent, always hospitable, gave a dinner to introduce Saint-Gaudens to many distinguished sculptors and painters. Burne-Jones, unfortunately, had died a few days before. Saint-Gaudens had always admired his work greatly, and treasured photographs of his pictures.

After two days at Broadway with Edwin Abbey, the family separated. Saint-Gaudens and his son Homer then returned to Paris for the summer, while Mrs. Saint-Gaudens went to take a cure at Vichy and St. Moritz. During that summer in Paris Saint-Gaudens saw as much as possible of George De Forest Brush and his family, who were then living near Fontainebleau. His intimacy with the Brushes dated back to his student days in Paris, and had been kept up in America. The two families had often been neighbors at Cornish, New Hampshire. Indeed, the Brushes had spent their first summer there encamped in an Indian "tepee," which was pitched on the edge of a field in front of the Saint-Gaudens' house. Their life always impressed every one as singularly beautiful and happy, and their presence so near Paris helped Saint-Gaudens to get through the long, dull weeks of the summer.

"Paris, July 10th or 11th

"Lately I have had a great time with X----, driving and lunching
with him and sometimes with the ladies, going to Versailles and
the museums. Next Sunday we go to Chantilly, another day to
Dampierre where Rude's great statue of Louis (XIII, I think) is.
We go to the Cluny, to the Louvre, and sit sipping in front of
cafés, X---- telling me how much the woman question from one point
of view troubles him and I doing the same from another, and the
big world turns round, and we all suffer, and men fight, and women
mourn. Courage and love is what we all need, isn't it?

"Yesterday I went with Homer to Fontainebleau to see Brush and
Proctor who live near there at 'Marlotte Montigny.' The day was
fine, and I enjoyed it greatly, particularly the walk with Brush
and his two lovely eldest children. How remarkable Brush is! All
the children are so beautiful and nice-mannered. He has commenced
another picture of his wife, this time with all the children and
himself, and it is already a stimulating thing, the composition is
so fine and what there is of it that is drawn, is so splendidly
drawn."

"Paris, July 14th

"It is the third or fourth really fine day that we have had
since coming to France eight months ago. The whole city is alive
with sunshine, a sky with white floating clouds, and every place
brilliant with flags, and there is an unusual feeling of peace in
this big studio as I sit alone in it and write to you.

"I have your letter with the enclosure from the _Transcript_.
'That's the way things is,' as Bryant said to me. I send you some
more Hosannahs in my honour by this mail, and there is going to be
more still in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,' as I judge from the
way Ary Renan talked to me the other night. He is son of the great
Renan and is one of the editors of the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts'
and wished to meet me so much that Pallier, another critic, asked
us to dine with him night before last. Pallier is the one who
wrote the long article in the Liberté about me.

"You speak of Browning--I shall read the 'Ring and the Book,' but
unless a man's style is clear I am too lazy and I have too little
time to devote to digging gold out of the rocks, fine as it may
be. On the other hand I got the Schopenhauer that Shiff spoke
about with the intention of sending it to you, but it is so deadly
in its pessimism, judging from the ten or eleven lines that I
read, that I flung it away. It was so terribly true from his point
of view, but what's the use of taking that point of view? We can't
remedy matters by weeping and gnashing our teeth over the misery
of things. 'That's the way things is' again, and although I have
been told all my life it's best to put on a brave face and bear
all cheerfully, it's only lately that it is really coming into my
philosophy.

"It seems as if we are all in one open boat on the ocean,
abandoned and drifting no one knows where, and while doing all
we can to get somewhere, it is better to be cheerful than to be
melancholy; the latter does not help the situation, and the former
cheers up one's comrades.

"Michel, a friend of mine, had a beautiful nude marble bought for
the Luxembourg, a pure noble chaste figure. There was a remarkable
statuette by Gerôme, two or three other good things in sculpture
and the same among the objets d'art, and one swell thing in
painting, the Puvis de Chavannes. _That_ appealed to me, but of
course there were a lot of other very fine things, by Aman Jean,
Henri Martin, Besnard and others. I send you some publications
with the good things marked. I think if the Champs-Elysées were
sifted there would be more good work found in it or as much as at
the Champs de Mars. It is remarkable how much good work is done in
Paris, but the first impression is bad, as the good is concealed
in such a mountain of trash; but it's like gold in a mountain."

"Paris, July 24th

"Last night I dined with an old 'camarade d'atelier' at his home
in the Cité Boileau at Passy and it was a great pleasure to be
with him, one of the nicest kind of Frenchmen, a sculptor who
is doing admirable work, a man of calm manners and large views,
intensely interested in his work. His wife and three children
are by the seaside, and on their return, if Homer does not go to
America and I remain too, I'm looking forward to Homer's meeting
his children. His boy, who is seventeen, is going to work in his
atelier with him. It was delightful, as he took one through the
rooms of his three children, to see the photographs of admirable
works of art they had selected to hang on the walls. He has a
house with a garden and we dined outside. (His name is) Lenoir
and he is the son of a distinguished architect and grandson of a
Lenoir whose bust is erected in the Cour des Beaux-Arts, a man
of great distinction here on account of his love of art and his
efforts to prevent the Revolutionists in 1795 from destroying the
public monuments."

Early in August, while his wife was still away, Saint-Gaudens took his son Homer to Holland, where they had a delightful trip, extending to the quaint dead cities of the north. Ten days or so after their return to Paris they made another successful expedition together to join some friends at the sea-shore.

"3 rue de Bagneux, Paris, Aug. 26.

"It was intensely hot in Paris. I discovered that the Brushes were
at Boulogne as well as the Proctors, so off we packed and we have
had a great time, what with bathing and lolling all day on the
cliffs, which I adore doing. The two Mears sisters followed us
down there, and we, the Brushes, Proctors, Mears, babies, and all
started off in the mornings, and, with the luncheon mixed up with
the babies in the carriage, passed most delightful days, either on
the cliffs or by the shore."

Saint-Gaudens, however, could never be happy long away from his work, and he was soon writing from his studio again.

"Paris, Sept. 2d

"A Russian professor at one of the Universities here has sent me
his translation of Tolstoi's last work 'What is Art?' and has
asked me (with highly eulogistic terms about what I have done, in
an inscription on the fly leaf) to give him my opinion, which he
wishes to publish with those of other men of note. So I am in for
reading it. You read it too, please, and tell me what you think
of it, then I'll sign it and send it as my opinion! For I have
no opinion, or so many that trying to put them into shape would
result in driving me into the mad-house sooner than I am naturally
destined to be there. Yes, 5000 different points of view that are
possible. After all, we are like lots of microscopical microbes on
this infinitesimal ball in space, and all these discussions seem
humourous at times. I suppose that every earnest effort toward
great sincerity or honesty or beauty in one's production is a drop
added to the ocean of evolution, to the Something higher that I
suppose we are rising slowly (d----d slowly) to, and all the other
discussions upon the subject seem simply one way of helping the
seriousness of it all.

"Shiff's letter that I enclose is in reply to one asking whether
the professor's request was all right and whether I should bother
about it. In answer he wrote that the Russian was a very serious
man who had done admirable work. I once told Shiff that at times
I thought that 'beauty must mean at least some goodness'--that
explains part of his letter to me."

TO BE CONCLUDED IN NOVEMBER

THURNLEY ABBEY

BY PERCEVAL LANDON

Three years ago I was on my way out to the East, and as an extra day in London was of some importance, I took the Friday evening mail train to Brindisi instead of the usual Thursday morning Marseilles express. Many people shrink from the long forty-eight-hour train journey through Europe, and the subsequent rush across the Mediterranean on the nineteen-knot _Isis_ or the _Osiris_; but there is really very little discomfort on either the train or the mail-boat, and unless there is actually nothing for me to do, I always like to save the extra day and a half in London before I say good-bye to her for one of my longer tramps. This time--it was early, I remember, in the shipping season, probably about the beginning of September--there were few passengers, and I had a compartment in the P. and O. Indian express to myself all the way from Calais. All Sunday I watched the blue waves dimpling the Adriatic, and the pale rosemary along the cuttings; the plain white towns, with their flat roofs and their bold "duomos," and the gray-green gnarled olive orchards of Apulia. The journey was just like any other. We ate in the dining-car as often and as long as we decently could. We slept after luncheon; we dawdled the afternoon away with yellow-backed novels; sometimes we exchanged platitudes in the smoking-room, and it was there that I met Alistair Colvin.

Colvin was a man of middle height, with a resolute, well-cut jaw; his hair was turning gray; his mustache was sun-whitened, otherwise he was clean-shaven--obviously a gentleman, and obviously also a preoccupied man. He had no great wit. When spoken to, he made the usual remarks in the right way, and I dare say he refrained from banalities only because he spoke less than the rest of us; most of the time he buried himself in the Wagonlit Company's Time-table, but seemed unable to concentrate his attention on any one page of it. He found that I had been over the Siberian railway, and for a quarter of an hour he discussed it with me. Then he lost interest in it, and rose to go to his compartment. But he came back again very soon, and seemed glad to pick up the conversation again.

Of course this did not seem to me to be of any importance. Most travelers by train become a trifle infirm of purpose after thirty-six hours' rattling. But Colvin's restless way I noticed in somewhat marked contrast with the man's personal importance and dignity; especially ill suited was it to his finely made large hand with strong, broad, regular nails and its few lines. As I looked at his hand I noticed a long, deep, and recent scar of ragged shape. However, it is absurd to pretend that I thought anything was unusual. I went off at five o'clock on Sunday afternoon to sleep away the hour or two that had still to be got through before we arrived at Brindisi.

Once there, we few passengers transhipped our hand baggage, verified our berths--there were only a score of us in all--and then, after an aimless ramble of half an hour in Brindisi, we returned to dinner at the Hôtel International, not wholly surprised that the town had been the death of Virgil. If I remember rightly, there is a gaily painted hall at the International--I do not wish to advertise anything, but there is no other place in Brindisi at which to await the coming of the mails--and after dinner I was looking with awe at a trellis overgrown with blue vines, when Colvin moved across the room to my table. He picked up _Il Secolo_, but almost immediately gave up the pretense of reading it. He turned squarely to me and said:

"Would you do me a favor?"

One doesn't do favors to stray acquaintances on Continental expresses without knowing something more of them than I knew of Colvin. But I smiled in a noncommittal way, and asked him what he wanted. I wasn't wrong in part of my estimate of him; he said bluntly:

"Will you let me sleep in your cabin on the _Osiris_?" And he colored a little as he said it.

Now, there is nothing more tiresome than having to put up with a stable-companion at sea, and I asked him rather pointedly:

"Surely there is room for all of us?" I thought that perhaps he had been partnered off with some mangy Levantine, and wanted to escape from him at all hazards.

Colvin, still somewhat confused, said: "Yes; I am in a cabin by myself. But you would do me the greatest favor if you would allow me to share yours."

This was all very well, but, besides the fact that I always sleep better when alone, there had been some recent thefts on board these boats, and I hesitated, frank and honest and self-conscious as Colvin was. Just then the mail-train came in with a clatter and a rush of escaping steam, and I asked him to see me again about it on the boat when we started. He answered me curtly--I suppose he saw the mistrust in my manner--"I am a member of White's and the Beefsteak." I smiled to myself as he said it, but I remembered in a moment that the man--if he were really what he claimed to be, and I make no doubt that he was--must have been sorely put to it before he urged the fact as a guarantee of his respectability to a total stranger at a Brindisi hotel.

That evening, as we cleared the red and green harbor-lights of Brindisi, Colvin explained. This is his story in his own words:

"When I was traveling in India some years ago, I made the acquaintance of a youngish man in the Woods and Forests. We camped out together for a week, and I found him a pleasant companion. John Broughton was a light-hearted soul when off duty, but a steady and capable man in any of the small emergencies that continually arise in that department. He was liked and trusted by the natives, and his future was well assured in Government service, when a fair-sized estate was unexpectedly left to him, and he joyfully shook the dust of the Indian plains from his feet and returned to England. For five years he drifted about London. I saw him now and then. We dined together about every eighteen months, and I could trace pretty exactly the gradual sickening of Broughton with a merely idle life. He then set out on a couple of long voyages, returned as restless as before, and at last told me that he had decided to marry and settle down at his place, Thurnley Abbey, which had long been empty. He spoke about looking after the property and standing for his constituency in the usual way. He was quite happy and full of information about his future.

"Among other things, I asked him about Thurnley Abbey. He confessed that he hardly knew the place. The last tenant, a man called Clarke, had lived in one wing for fifteen years and seen no one. He had been a miser and a hermit. It was the rarest thing for a light to be seen at the Abbey after dark. Only the barest necessities of life were ordered, and the tenant himself received them at the side-door. His one half-caste man-servant, after a month's stay in the house, had abruptly left without warning, and had returned to the Southern States. One thing Broughton complained bitterly about: Clarke had wilfully spread the rumor among the villagers that the Abbey was haunted, and had even condescended to play childish tricks with spirit-lamps and salt in order to scare trespassers away at night. He had been detected in the act of this tomfoolery, but the story spread, and no one, said Broughton, would venture near the house except in broad daylight. The hauntedness of Thurnley Abbey was now, he said with a grin, part of the gospel of the countryside, but he and his young wife were going to change all that. Would I propose myself any time I liked? I, of course, said I would, and equally, of course, intended to do nothing of the sort without a definite invitation.

"The house was put in thorough repair, though not a stick of the old furniture and tapestry were removed. Floors and ceilings were relaid; the roof was made watertight again, and the dust of half a century was scoured out. He showed me some photographs of the place. It was called an Abbey, though as a matter of fact it had been only the infirmary of the long-vanished Abbey of Closter some five miles away. The larger part of this building remained as it had been in pre-Reformation days, but a wing had been added in Jacobean times, and that part of the house had been kept in something like repair by Mr. Clarke. He had in both the ground and the first floors set a heavy timber door, strongly barred with iron, in the passage between the earlier and the Jacobean parts of the house, and had entirely neglected the former. So there had been a good deal of work to be done.