Collected Stories by Henry James
‘I have the greatest esteem for him,’ I said; ‘it is for this reason that I have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten days. Have you seen him? Is he perhaps ill?’
‘Ill! Heaven forbid!’ cried Serafina, with genuine vehemence.
Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit and bridled. ‘He comes to see me – without reproach! But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you may almost call him a man of holy life.’
‘He has the greatest admiration for you,’ I said. ‘He would have been honoured by your visit.’
She looked at me a moment sharply. ‘More admiration than you. Admit that!’ Of course I protested with all the eloquence at my command, and my mysterious hostess then confessed that she had taken no fancy to me on my former visit, and that, Theobald not having returned, she believed I had poisoned his mind against her. ‘It would be no kindness to the poor gentleman, I can tell you that,’ she said. ‘He has come to see me every evening for years. It’s a long friendship! No one knows him as well as I.’
‘I don’t pretend to know him, or to understand him,’ I said. ‘He’s a mystery! Nevertheless, he seems to me a little –’ And I touched my forehead and waved my hand in the air.
Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, as he filled his glass again. The padrona hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smile than would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. ‘It’s for that that I love him!’ she said. ‘The world has so little kindness for such persons. It laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them. He is too good for this wicked life! It’s his fancy that he finds a little Paradise up here in my poor apartment. If he thinks so, how can I help it? He has a strange belief – really, I ought to be ashamed to tell you – that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven forgive me! I let him think what he pleases, so long as it makes him happy. He was very kind to me once, and I am not one that forgets a favour. So I receive him every evening civilly, and ask after his health, and let him look at me on this side and that! For that matter, I may say it without vanity, I was worth looking at once! And he’s not always amusing, poor man! He sits sometimes for an hour without speaking a word, or else he talks away, without stopping, on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty fine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg you to understand that he has never said a word to me that I mightn’t decently listen to. He may be a little cracked, but he’s one of the saints.’
‘Eh!’ cried the man, ‘the saints were all a little cracked!’
Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but she told enough of it to make poor Theobald’s own statement seem intensely pathetic in its exalted simplicity. ‘It’s a strange fortune, certainly,’ she went on, ‘to have such a friend as this dear man, – a friend who’s less than a lover and more than a friend.’ I glanced at her companion, who preserved an impenetrable smile, twisted the end of his moustache, and disposed of a copious mouthful. Was he less than a lover? ‘But what will you have?’ Serafina pursued. ‘In this hard world one mustn’t ask too many questions; one must take what comes and keep what one gets. I’ve kept my good friend for twenty years, and I do hope that, at this time of day, Signore, you’ve not come to turn him against me!’
I assured her that I had no such design, and that I should vastly regret disturbing Mr Theobald’s habits or convictions. On the contrary, I was alarmed about him, and I should immediately go in search of him. She gave me his address and a florid account of her sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been to him, for various reasons; chiefly because she was afraid of displeasing him, as he had always made such a mystery of his home. ‘You might have sent this gentleman!’ I ventured to suggest.
‘Ah,’ cried the gentleman, ‘he admires the Signora Serafina, but he wouldn’t admire me.’ And then, confidentially, with his finger on his nose, ‘He’s a purist!’
I was about to withdraw, on the promise that I would inform the Signora Serafina of my friend’s condition, when her companion, who had risen from table and girded his loins apparently for the onset, grasped me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of statuettes. ‘I perceive by your conversation, signore, that you are a patron of the arts. Allow me to request your honourable attention for these modest products of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, fresh from my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public. I have brought them here to receive the verdict of this dear lady, who is a good critic, for all she may pretend to the contrary. I am the inventor of this peculiar style of statuette, – of subject, manner, material, everything. Touch them, I pray you; handle them; you needn’t fear. Delicate as they look, it is impossible they should break! My various creations have met with great success. They are especially admired by Americans. I have sent them all over Europe, – to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they constitute the speciality. There is always a crowd about the window. They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn’t make a prettier present to a person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn’t classic art sometimes rather a bore? Caricature, burlesque, la charge, as the French say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce it into statuary. For this purpose I have invented a peculiar plastic compound which you will permit me not to divulge. That’s my secret, signore! It’s as light, you perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! I frankly confess that I really pride myself as much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity as upon the other element of novelty in my creations, – my types. What do you say to my types, signore? The idea is bold; does it strike you as happy? Cats and monkeys, – monkeys and cats, – all human life is there! Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with the eye of the satirist! To combine sculpture and satire, signore, has been my unprecedented ambition. I flatter myself that I have not egregiously failed.’
As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of his persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from the table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly with his head on one side. They consisted each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly the different phases of what, in delicate terms, may be called gallantry and coquetry; but they were strikingly clever and expressive, and were at once very perfect cats and monkeys and very natural men and women. I confess, however, that they failed to amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing them between finger and thumb, and caressing them with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself little more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered an admiring grin, however, and he blew another blast. ‘My figures are studied from life! I have a little menagerie of monkeys whose frolics I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has only to look out of one’s back window! Since I have begun to examine these expressive little brutes, I have made many profound observations. Speaking, signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my little designs are not without a philosophy of their own. Truly, I don’t know whether the cats and monkeys imitate us, or whether it’s we who imitate them.’ I congratulated him on his philosophy, and he resumed: ‘You will do me the honour to admit that I have handled my subjects with delicacy. Eh, it was needed, signore! I have been free, but not too free – eh? Just a hint, you know! You may see as much or as little as you please. These little groups, however, are no measure of my invention. If you will
As I pocketed his card, I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom.
What I had just seen and heard had so deepened my compassionate interest in my deluded friend, that I took a summary leave, and made my way directly to the house designated by this remarkable woman. It was in an obscure corner of the opposite side of the town, and presented a sombre and squalid appearance. An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring for Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and an expression of relief at the poor gentleman having a friend. His lodging seemed to consist of a single room at the top of the house. On getting no answer to my knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent; so that it gave me a certain shock to find him sitting there helpless and dumb. He was seated near the single window, facing an easel which supported a large canvas. On my entering, he looked up at me blankly, without changing his position, which was that of absolute lassitude and dejection, his arms loosely folded, his legs stretched before him, his head hanging on his breast. Advancing into the room, I perceived that his face vividly corresponded with his attitude. He was pale, haggard, and unshaven, and his dull and sunken eye gazed at me without a spark of recognition. I had been afraid that he would greet me with fierce reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had turned his peace to bitterness, and I was relieved to find that my appearance awakened no visible resentment. ‘Don’t you know me?’ I asked, as I put out my hand. ‘Have you already forgotten me?’
He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staring about the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid, naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest provision for personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and studio, – a grim ghost of a studio. A few dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four old canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking colour-box formed, with the easel at the window, the sum of its appurtenances. The place savoured horribly of poverty. Its only wealth was the picture on the easel, presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this was from the door, I was unable to see its face; but at last, sickened by the vacant misery of the spot, I passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can hardly say that I was surprised at what I found, – a canvas that was a mere dead blank, cracked and discoloured by time. This was his immortal work! Though not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that for five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last, my silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind, ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between us. ‘You were right,’ he said with a pitiful smile, ‘I’m a dawdler! I’m a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you no grudge. Amen! I’ve been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty and nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I’ve neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!’ he went on, as I relieved my emotion in the urgent request that he would come home with me and dine. ‘That was to have contained my masterpiece! Isn’t it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all here.’ And he tapped his forehead with that mystic confidence which had marked the gesture before. ‘If I could only transpose them into some brain that had the hand, the will! Since I’ve been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I’ve come to believe that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is paralysed now, and they’ll never be painted. I never began! I waited and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was growing, it was dying. I’ve taken it all too hard! Michael Angelo didn’t when he went at the Lorenzo! He did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. That’s mine!’ And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas. ‘I suppose we’re a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme, – we talents that can’t act, that can’t do nor dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let me tell you,’ he cried, with a toss of his head, ‘have a way of being brilliant, and a man hasn’t lived in vain who has seen the things I have! Of course you’ll not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. I have his brain. A pity, you’ll say, I haven’t his modesty! Ah, let me babble now; it’s all I have left! I’m the half of a genius! Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But it’s not for me to sneer at him; he at least does something. He’s not a dawdler! Well for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless, if I could have shut my eyes and dealt my stroke!’
What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little room it seemed such cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded him to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when we began to walk in the open air I was able to measure his pitifully weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to revive, and murmured at last that he would like to go to the Pitti Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision, to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyes and lips of the great portraits seemed to smile in ineffable scorn of the dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphant authors; the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna in the Chair, as we paused in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the sinister irony of the women of Leonardo. Perfect silence indeed marked our whole progress, – the silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my pulses, as Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after the other, that he was looking his last. When we came out, he was so exhausted that, instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a carriage and drove him straight to his own poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes closed, as pale as death, his faint breathing interrupted at intervals by a sudden gasp, like a smothered sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of the old woman who had admitted me before, and who emerged from a dark back court, I contrived to lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him on his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge, while I prepared in all haste to seek a physician. But she followed me out of the room with a pitiful clasping of her hands.
‘Poor, dear, blessed gentleman,’ she murmured; ‘is he dying?’
‘Possibly. How long has he been thus?’
‘Since a night he passed ten days ago. I came up in the morning to make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in his clothes before that great canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he says his prayers to it! He had not been to bed, nor since then properly! What has happened to him? Has he found out about the Serafina?’ she whispered with a glittering eye and a toothless grin.
‘Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful,’ I said, ‘and watch him well ti
‘Well,’ she said, relieving at last with a significant smile the solemnity of our immediate greeting, ‘and the great Madonna? Have you seen her, after all?’