Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (155 page)

Mrs. Blyth raised her eyes from the prints directly, and smiled as she saw the girl puckering up her fresh, rosy face into a childish imitation of old age, bending her light figure gravely in a succession of formal bows, and kissing her hand several times with extreme suavity and deliberation. These signs were meant to indicate Mrs. Blyth’s father, the poor engraver, whose old-fashioned habit it was to pay homage to all his friends among the ladies, by saluting them from afar off with tremulous bows and gallant kissings of the hand.

“Ah!” thought Mrs. Blyth, nodding, to show that she understood the signs — ”Ah! there’s father. I felt sure he would be the first; and I know exactly what he will do when he gets in. He will admire the pictures more than anybody, and have a better opinion to give of them than anybody else has; but before he can mention a word of it to Valentine, there will be dozens of people in the painting-room, and then he will get taken suddenly nervous, and come up here to me.”

While Mrs. Blyth was thinking about her father, Madonna signalized the advent of two more visitors. First, she raised her hand sharply, and began pulling at an imaginary whisker on her own smooth cheek — then stood bolt upright, and folded her arms majestically over her bosom. Mrs. Blyth immediately recognised the originals of these two pantomime portrait-sketches. The one represented Mr. Hemlock, the small critic of a small newspaper, who was principally remarkable for never letting his whiskers alone for five minutes together. The other portrayed Mr. Bullivant, the aspiring fair-haired sculptor, who wrote poetry, and studied dignity in his attitudes so unremittingly, that he could not even stop to look in at a shop-window, without standing before it as if he was his own statue.

In a minute or two more, Mrs. Blyth heard a prodigious grating of wheels, and trampling of horses, and banging of carriage-steps violently let down. Madonna immediately took a seat on the nearest chair, rolled the skirt of her dress up into her lap, tucked both her hands inside it, then drew one out, and imitated the action of snuff-taking — looking up merrily at Mrs. Blyth, as much as to say, “You can’t mistake that, I think?” — Impossible! old Lady Brambledown, with her muff and snuff-box, to the very life.

Close on the Dowager Countess followed a visitor of low degree. Madonna — looking as if she was a little afraid of the boldness of her own imitation — began chewing an imaginary quid of tobacco; then pretended to pull it suddenly out of his month, and throw it away behind her. It was all over in a moment; but it represented to perfection Mangles, the gardener; who, though an inveterate chewer of tobacco, always threw away his quid whenever he confronted his betters, as a duty that he owed to his own respectability.

Another carriage. Madonna put on a suppositions pair of spectacles, pretended to pull them off, rub them bright, and put them on again; then, retiring a little from the window, spread out her dress into the widest dimensions that it could be made to assume. The new arrivals thus portrayed, were the doctor, whose spectacles were never clean enough to please him; and the doctor’s wife, an emaciated fine lady, who deceitfully suggested the presence of vanished charms, by wearing a balloon under her gown — which benevolent rumour pronounced to be only a crinoline petticoat.

Here there was a brief pause in the procession of visitors. Mrs. Blyth beckoned to Madonna, and began talking on her fingers.

“No signs of Zack yet — are there, love?”

The girl looked anxiously towards the window, and shook her head.

“If he ventures up here, when he does come, we must not be so kind to him as usual. He has been behaving very badly, and we must see if we can’t make him ashamed of himself.”

Madonna’s colour rose directly. She looked amazed, sorry, perplexed, and incredulous by turns. Zack behaving badly? — she would never believe it!

“I mean to make him ashamed of himself, if he ventures near me!” pursued Mrs. Blyth.

“And I shall try if I can’t console him afterwards,” thought Madonna, turning away her head for fear her face should betray her.

Another ring at the bell! “There he is, perhaps,” continued Mrs. Blyth, nodding in the direction of the window, as she signed those words.

Madonna ran to look: then turned round, and with a comic air of disappointment, hooked her thumbs in the arm-holes of an imaginary waistcoat. Only Mr. Gimble, the picture-dealer, who always criticized works of art with his hands in that position.

Just then, a soft knock sounded at Mrs. Blyth’s door; and her father entered, sniffing with a certain perpetual cold of his which nothing could cure — bowing, kissing his hand, and frightened up-stairs by the company, just as his daughter had predicted.

“Oh, Lavvie! the Dowager Countess is downstairs, and her ladyship likes the pictures,” exclaimed the old man, snuffling and smiling infirmly in a flutter of nervous glee.

“Come and sit down by me, father, and see Madonna doing the visitors. It’s funnier than any play that ever was acted.”

“And her ladyship likes the pictures,” repeated the engraver, his poor old watery eyes sparkling with pleasure as he told his little morsel of good news over again, and sat down by the bedside of his favorite child.

The rings at the bell began to multiply at compound interest. Madonna was hardly still at the window for a moment, so many were the visitors whose approach up the garden walk it was now necessary for her to signalize. Down-stairs, all the vacant seats left in the painting room were filling rapidly; and the ranks of standers in the back places were getting two-deep already.

There was Lady Brambledown (whose calls at the studio always lasted the whole morning), sitting in the centre, or place of honour, taking snuff fiercely, talking liberal sentiments in a cracked voice, and apparently feeling extreme pleasure in making the respectable middle classes stare at her in reverent amazement. Also, two Royal Academicians — a saturnine Academician, swaddled in a voluminous cloak; and a benevolent Academician, with a slovenly umbrella, and a perpetual smile. Also, the doctor and his wife, who admired the massive frame of “Columbus,” but said not a word about the picture itself. Also, Mr. Bullivant, the sculptor, and Mr. Hemlock, the journalist, exchanging solemnly that critical small talk, in which such words as “sensuous,” “aesthetic,” “objective,” and “subjective,” occupy prominent places, and out of which no man ever has succeeded, or ever will succeed, in extricating an idea. Also, Mr. Gimble, fluently laudatory, with the whole alphabet of Art-Jargon at his fingers’ ends, and without the slightest comprehension of the subject to embarrass him in his flow of language. Also, certain respectable families who tried vainly to understand the pictures, opposed by other respectable families who never tried at all, but confined themselves exclusively to the Dowager Countess. Also, the obscure general visitors, who more than made up in enthusiasm what they wanted in distinction. And, finally, the absolute democracy, or downright low-life party among the spectators — represented for the time being by Mr. Blyth’s gardener, and Mr. Blyth’s cook’s father — who, standing together modestly outside the door, agreed, in awe-struck whispers, that the “Golden Age” was a Tasty Thing, and “Columbus in sight of the New World,” a Beautiful Piece.

All Valentine’s restlessness before the Visitors arrived was as nothing compared with his rapturous activity, now that they were fairly assembled. Not once had he stood still, or ceased talking since the first spectator entered the room. And not once, probably, would he have permitted either his legs or his tongue to take the slightest repose until the last guest had departed from the Studio, but for Lady Brambledown, who accidentally hit on the only available means of fixing his attention to one thing, and keeping him comparatively quiet in one place.

“I say, Blyth,” cried her ladyship (she never prefixed the word “Mister” to the names of any of her male friends) — ”I say, Blyth, I can’t for the life of me understand your picture of Columbus. You talked some time ago about explaining it in detail. When are you going to begin?”

“Directly, my dear madam, directly: I was only waiting till the room got well filled,” answered Valentine, taking up the long wand which he used to steady his hand while he was painting, and producing the manuscript tied round with blue ribbon. “The fact is — I don’t know whether you mind it? — I have just thrown together a few thoughts on art, as a sort of introduction to — to Columbus, in short. They are written down on this paper — the thoughts are. Would anybody be kind enough to read them, while I point out what they mean on the picture? I only ask, because it seems egotistical to be reading my opinions about my own works. —
Will
anybody be kind enough?” repeated Mr. Blyth, walking all along the semicircle of chairs, and politely offering his manuscript to anybody who would take it.

Not a hand was held out. Bashfulness is frequently infectious; and it proved to be so on this particular occasion.

“Nonsense, Blyth!” exclaimed Lady Brambledown. “Read it yourself. Egotistical? Stuff! Everybody’s egotistical. I hate modest men; they’re all rascals. Read it and assert your own importance. You have a better right to do so than most of your neighbours, for you belong to the aristocracy of talent — the only aristocracy, in my opinion, that is worth a straw.” Here her ladyship took a pinch of snuff, and looked at the middle-class families, as much as to say: — ”There! what do you think of that from a Member of your darling Peerage?”

Thus encouraged, Valentine took his station (wand in hand) beneath “Columbus,” and unrolled the manuscript.

“What a very peculiar man Mr. Blyth is!” whispered one of the lady visitors to an acquaintance behind her.

“And what a very unusual mixture of people he seems to have asked!” rejoined the other, looking towards the doorway, where the democracy loomed diffident in Sunday clothes.

“The pictures which I have the honour to exhibit,” began Valentine from the manuscript, “have been painted on a principle — ”

“I beg your pardon, Blyth,” interrupted Lady Brambledown, whose sharp ears had caught the remark made on Valentine and his “mixture of people,” and whose liberal principles were thereby instantly stimulated into publicly asserting themselves. “I beg your pardon; but where’s my old ally, the gardener, who was here last time? — Out at the door is he? What does he mean by not coming in? Here, gardener! come behind my chair.”

The gardener approached, internally writhing under the honour of public notice, and covered with confusion in consequence of the noise his boots made on the floor.

“How do you do? and how are your family? What did you stop out at the door for? You’re one of Mr. Blyth’s guests, and have as much right inside as any of the rest of us. Stand there, and listen, and look about you, and inform your mind. This is an age of progress, gardener; your class is coming uppermost, and time it did too. Go on, Blyth.” And again the Dowager Countess took a pinch of snuff, looking contemptuously at the lady who had spoken of the “mixture of people.”

“I take the liberty,” continued Valentine, resuming the manuscript, “of dividing all art into two great classes, the landscape subjects, and the figure subjects; and I venture to describe these classes, in their highest development, under the respective titles of Art Pastoral and Art Mystic. The ‘Golden Age’ is an attempt to exemplify Art Pastoral. ‘Columbus in Sight of the New World’ is an effort to express myself in Art Mystic. In ‘The Golden Age’ “ — (everybody looked at Columbus immediately) — ”In the ‘Golden Age,’“ continued Mr. Blyth, waving his wand persuasively towards the right picture, “you have, in the foreground-bushes, the middle-distance trees, the horizon mountains, and the superincumbent sky, what I would fain hope is a tolerably faithful transcript of mere nature. But in the group of buildings to the right” (here the wand touched the architectural city, with its acres of steps and forests of pillars), “in the dancing nymphs, and the musing philosopher” (Mr. Blyth rapped the philosopher familiarly on the head with the padded end of his wand), “you have the Ideal — the elevating poetical view of ordinary objects, like cities, happy female peasants, and thoughtful spectators. Thus nature is exalted; and thus Art Pastoral — no! — thus Art Pastoral exalts — no! I beg your pardon — thus Art Pastoral and Nature exalt each other, and — I beg your pardon again! — in short, exalt each other — ”

Here Valentine broke down at the end of a paragraph; and the gardener made an abortive effort to get back to the doorway.

“Capital, Blyth!” cried Lady Brambledown. “Liberal, comprehensive, progressive, profound. Gardener, don’t fidget!”

“The true philosophy of art — the true philosophy of art, my lady,” added Mr. Gimble, the picture-dealer.

“Crude?” said Mr. Hemlock, the critic, appealing confidentially to Mr. Bullivant, the sculptor.