Mr. Longfellow and the Artists

WHEN the history of civilization in America comes to be written, the judicious author will begin a consideration of the period which we are just now unwittingly closing somewhat as follows : There was as yet no sign of any general interest in the graphic arts. Here and there a painter of portraits found a scanty recognition among families moved more by pride of station than by love of art, and a lonely painter of landscapes had tried to awaken enthusiasm for autumn scenes, which were supposed to be the contribution of America to subjects in landscape art; but such men escaped to Europe, if fortunate, and found a more congenial home there. Popular apprehension of art was wanting ; there was no public to which the painter could appeal with any confidence, nor indeed any public out of which a painter would naturally emerge. Then it was that a group of poets began to sing, having little personal connection with each other, forming no school, very diverse in aim, but all obedient to the laws of art. The effect upon the people was not confined to a development of the love of poetry ; it was impossible that the form which art first took in America should be exclusive of other forms : on the contrary, poetry, the pioneer, led after it in rapid succession the graphic and constructive arts and music. Now we may trace this influence of poetry most distinctly in the case of Mr. Longfellow’s work. Not only was his poetry itself instinct with artistic power, but his appropriating genius drew within the circle of his art a great variety of illustration and suggestion from the other arts. The subjects which he chose for his verse often compelled the interpretation of older examples of art. He had a catholic taste, and his rich decoration of simple themes was the most persuasive agency at work in familiarizing Americans with the treasures of art and legend in the Old World. Even when dealing expressly with American subjects, his mind was so stored with the abundance of a maturer civilization that he was constantly, by reference and allusion, carrying the reader on a voyage to Europe. Before museums were established in the cities, and before his countrymen had begun to go in shoals to the Old World, Mr. Longfellow had, in his verse, made them sharers in the riches of art. It is not too much to say that he was the most potent individual force for culture in America, and the rapid spread of taste and enthusiasm for art which may be noted in the people near the end of his long and honorable career may be referred more distinctly to his influence than to that of any other American.

So far our judicious historian, who has, as men of his class are apt to have, a weakness for periods and sounding phrases. Still, a quotation from his forthcoming treatise does not seem wholly out of place as an introduction to an examination of the singularly abundant illustration of Mr. Longfellow’s works by artists, which this season brings. If, as we believe, art in America is indebted largely to Mr. Longfellow, it is pleasant to be assured that some part of the debt is discharged in the most graceful of ways. The very nature of Mr. Longfellow’s work makes it easy and natural to call in the explication and adornment which the other arts afford. Probably no living poet has been so frequently accompanied by music, and subjects from his poems may be found in American and English picture-galleries. It is, however, through the most popular form of art that this most popular poet has met with illustration, and for many years his poems have been published with designs executed in wood and stone. Now, when the artist and engraver have come to a more reasonable relation with each other than ever before, it is satisfactory to find that some of the most praiseworthy results have been in connection with the illustration of Mr. Longfellow’s verse.

Three years ago, Mr. Longfellow’s publishers issued his poetical works in two illustrated quarto volumes. They have now issued a corresponding volume,¹ comprising his complete prose works and such of his poetry as had not been published at the time. The later poems thus included in this volume consist of those which were gathered in the little volume In the Harbor, not long after the poet’s death, and of the dramatic poem Michael Angelo, which first saw the light in this magazine. The collection, therefore, in the three volumes of this quarto edition is complete, and by the addition of all of Mr. Longfellow’s prose, treated in a similar manner, a work has been finished which will long stand as a remarkable monument to the genius and memory of an American poet.

The same general plan has been followed in this third volume which was adopted for its predecessors, but in one respect an improvement may be noted. There is greater variety and richness in the strictly decorative features. Mr. Ipsen has won an honorable recognition by the definite and carefully-studied character of his work in the previous volumes; he is supplemented here by Mr. S. L. Smith, who has taken a wider range of thought and imported into the borders and tablets a richness of fancy which makes these apparently conventional parts to have a high value. The reproduction of these decorative designs, whether by engraving or by mechanical process, is a marked feature of excellence. Exception must be taken to the piece closing page 949, where the folds of the drapery are too hard and substantial ; one can scarcely get it out of his head that he is looking at the trunk of an oak.

Our interest in the volume is chiefly in the interpretation of the prose. While this was capable of frequent illustration, preference has been given to large and comprehensive designs; and very properly, for in the diffusiveness of prose there is less occasion for those expansions which pictorial art so readily gives to the suggestions of poetry. Of the smaller designs there are several which keep before the eye a remembrance of the large element of travelsketch in Mr. Longfellow’s prose. The interior of Rouen cathedral nave, on page 1029, preserves appropriately the sentiment of the author : for it is more than an architectural perspective ; it is, like the accompanying prose, a glimpse of the dark ages. The sentiment in the minor landscape and architectural subjects agrees well with the romantic light which touches Mr. Longfellow’s prose. Thus, the allusive design on page 1039 is a continuation of the mood in which the reader is left by the text, and the poetic landscape which closes Hyperion has an imaginative charm which is of more value than any mere transcript of the scene of action. With so much of beauty and aptness in the smaller designs, it is a little disappointing to find the figure-subjects, which prevail among the larger pictures, of less distinct excellence. The artists who worked upon Hyperion have been conscientiously desirous of reproducing the dress of the period embraced by the romance, but they have scarcely been equally successful in reproducing the character of Paul Flemming, — type of romantic, dreaming youth. It is unfortunate that the same artist should not have furnished all the designs in which Flemming was to appear; consistency of type, at least, would thus have been secured. Mr. Smedley’s Flemming is not ill-considered, though in the picture where the young man waits upon the sketching Mary Ashburton, earnestness is almost travestied; where he walks in thoughtful mood with the baron, a better success has been reached ; but when he is turned over to the mercy of Mr. Share, he is made to be a subdued caricature of the traditional Yankee. Something of this is due to his contrasted relation toward the no less conventional John Bull. Mr. Parsons’s Monk of St. Anthony, also, is better than Mr. Share’s more realistic figure, and Mr. Gaugengigl’s Sexagenarian is exceptionally good, if we are not too much influenced by our association with very hearty examples of sixty years’ life.

The large landscapes are among the best work in the book. The Jungfrau, by Mr. Woodward, has almost the value of a painting ; it is strong, rich, and greatly helped by the carefulness of the foreground. Mr. Ross Turner’s Venice by Moonlight, again, is more than effective ; it has a genuine poetic worth. Some of the smaller landscapes, also, should be noted, as that of Lake Lucerne, on page 1194, and the noble one of the amphitheatre of Vespasian, on page 1117. On the whole, if this volume has not the profuseness of the two earlier ones, it represents, to our thinking, a firmer art and more even excellence of work.

If we are right in thinking that Mr. Longfellow’s poetry led the way in art, then it is a specially happy sequence which is intimated by the illustration which Mr. Ernest Longfellow has given of certain of his father’s poems.² He has selected twenty, with no other rule, apparently, than to take such as offered free play for his brush. His choice has been chiefly of scenes which permit the quiet, secluded, half-dreamy phases of nature and life, — the boat becalmed, the cattle standing knee-deep in the river or crossing the wet sands, twilight and moonlight, shadowed aisles, reflections ; and when we name these, still more when we look at the engravings, we are reminded how large a place such scenes have filled in Mr. Longfellow’s verse. There are added a few records, doubly interesting from the authenticity which one feels them to possess : thus the illustrations to The Bells of Lynn, Three Friends of Mine, and The Tides are like pictorial and half-biographical notes to those poems, while the sketches of foreign scenes are direct commentaries upon the lines which call up the memories of them. The fancy in the poem of Moonlight is given a slight enlargement, which adds to its value, and everywhere there is an unstrained rendering into line of the thought which lies so tranquilly upon the surface of the poetry. The aspects of nature most readily recalled from the poetry are simply and truthfully reflected in the art, and the result is one of harmony and grace. A portrait of the poet by his son prefaces the book, and agrees admirably with the interpretation of the poems ; for the face has precisely that musing, half-remote expression which suggests a subjective study of outward nature.

In speaking of the third volume of the collected works in the illustrated quarto edition, we omitted any mention of the treatment of Michael Angelo, because, while that poem occurs, with many illustrations, in its proper place, it is also published in separate form ³ with more complete illustration, and in a style which calls for special notice. A quarto, printed on clear white paper, and bound in a novel but dignified manner, the book attracts the eye at once as a piece of unusual mechanical excellence. Then the printing is admirable. The generous page of pica type is rich in color; the engravings have ample space, and are printed with decision and refinement; altogether, the book has the elegance of a fine simplicity and breadth of treatment. The work of the artists who have been engaged upon it is carefully studied, and generally of a high order. The strict historical limitations, under which both poet and artists labored, have served as a protection against caprice and mere ingenuity, so that there is a stateliness about the designs and an orderliness which lift the book into dignity. Possibly one exception may be made. Mr. Shirlaw’s composition of the Casting of Perseus, page 155, is in a measure true to the text which it accompanies, although it would be difficult to find the exact moment to which it refers ; it is expressive also, in the principal figure, of the volatile Cellini; and yet, vigorous as the picture is, it impresses us as out of key, and producing a slight discord. The energy of the picture leans to the demoniac, and the entire conception of the poem, this particular part as well, is directly opposed to the demoniac. The serenity of Mr. Longfellow’s art has rarely had a more commanding expression than in this poem, and it is a pity that the whole illustrative appurtenance should not have conspired to the same end.

The general scheme of the illustration looks to a careful commentary upon the historic and biographic facts of the poem. Mr. Longfellow, as our readers have perceived when reading Michael Angelo in this magazine, built his poem upon a chronological series of incidents in Michael Angelo’s life, introduced either directly or by reference the persons with whom the great artist held close connection, and made the action of the poem to be associated with monuments of art. Consequently the graphic comment is in the reproduction of portraits, the definition of localities, the illustration of archæology, and in the dramatic action of figures, these last being in intention of historical accuracy.

The brief and useful notes at the close of the volume enable the reader to trace the portraits to their original sources, and remind him with how much painstaking these interesting representations of the characters in the poem have been brought together. If he be not solicitous to verify the truthfulness of the portraits, he can find an artistic pleasure in studying the great beauty of the draughtsman’s and engraver’s work. The noble portrait of Michael Angelo which fronts the volume, familiar enough to readers, takes on a special worth through Mr. Kruell’s massive, sharplydefined engraving ; quite as good in its own way is the small engraving after Buonasoni’s, on page 36. So, too, the small portraits of Titian and Cardinal Ippolito show with what spirit engravers on wood can follow masterpieces of engraving on steel.

The places whose names are conspicuous in the poem are presented in a poetic rather than in a matter-of-fact way. Mr. Turner’s Venice by Night, to which we have already referred, is accompanied by a smaller view of Venice, and both are not more spiritualized than his Vesuvius. With these two transcripts of Venice we could perhaps have spared Mr. Wendell’s City of Silence floating in the Sea, since it is a somewhat feeble design. Mr. Gibson’s Ischia is something of a surprise, and a pleasant one, for he has exchanged his dreamland landscapes for a clear and strong composition. Mr. Schell’s Florence is more severe and matter of fact than the other representations of places. Compared with Mr. Gibson’s Ischia, it seems unnecessarily hard ; and the comparison is fairer with that than with Mr. Turner’s views, which are so differently conceived.

The archæological and decorative features deserve especial attention. They are to be found principally in the headings and half-titles, and are the work there of Mr. Smith. Barring a slight tendency to dwarfing the human figure, this artist seems to us to have more genius in catching the spirit of great work and reproducing it in decorative form than any other American. We say this without forgetting Mr. Vedder. Mr. Smith has not Mr. Vedder’s originality, but he has, what is of infinite value in decorative work, an assimilating faculty, a capacity for renewing great art under other conditions, and a freedom of execution in which boldness never becomes rudeness. In so slight a matter as lettering this is observable, as any one may see who lights upon the dedication page. All the half-titles bear evidence of Mr. Smith’s power, but the bravest illustration is the Finis, directly facing the last page of the poem. With what exquisite feeling has all the ornament here been conceived and executed ! And when we have said this, we wish to join with the draughtsman the engraver, who is plainly wing and wing with him in the work. A better design of its class, and a more masterly piece of engraving and printing, one would search far to find. And would he find it, after all ?

The dramatic action of the poem is interpreted in a series of figure pieces, which are of varying degrees of merit, and none of careless or inferior work. Mr. Hovenden’s Michael Angelo in his study is the least satisfactory, for the figure is rather lumpish ; but the subject was certainly a difficult one. Mr. De Thulstrup is unequal : his little figure of Cellini at the siege of Rome is an eager, spirited sketch, and his Michael Angelo and Bindo Altoviti is bright, with a narrow escape from too much consciousness ; his Michael Angelo and Urbino has awkwardness instead of animation in the figure of Urbino, and Michael Angelo’s face is not so carefully studied as in other designs. Mr. Millet has given a character of his own to his work, and we think we should like it better by itself. Here it seems to us a little insistent, as if the artist were almost willful in calling attention to his solidity of style. Mr. Shirlaw’s pictures are all good : they are thoughtful; they have a grace which, without being academic, shows the influence of academies. The death scene of Vittoria Colonna marks his highest reach in this volume.

So we have gone through the book, lingering over its pages, as we trust many of our readers will do. Taken all in all, it is the most satisfactory work of illustrative art which has appeared in America. Other books may have shown single designs of higher imaginative power, but none have presented a combination of merits of so high an order. It is a pleasure to consider that the occasion of the book was Mr. Longfellow’s latest poem of magnitude. The reader of Michael Angelo can scarcely have missed the voice of the poet in the utterances of the hero of the poem. Michael Angelo rehearsing his art is dramatically conceived, and there is no lapse into the poet’s own speech; for all that, and because of that, the reader is always aware of the presence of Longfellow, wise, calm, reflective, brooding over the large thoughts of life and art. The whole poem is a spiritual autobiography, cast in a form remote from the facts of the poet’s life, but not the less indicative of his experience. Therefore, we repeat, it is a pleasure that he who was so large a prophet of art should at the end of his life have given the opportunity for so excellent a testimony to the truth of his prediction.