Poor Hiram sighed somewhat wearily. 'Churchill has too good an opinion altogether of my little attempts,' he said in all sincerity4.
'I'm afraid you'll find very little here that's worthy5 your attention. May I venture to ask your name?'
'Never mind my name, sir,' the old gentleman said, with a blandness7 that contrasted oddly with the rough wording of his brusque sentences. 'Never you mind my name, I say,—what's that to you, pray? My name's not at all in question. I've come to see your pictures.'
'Are you a dealer8, perhaps?' Hiram suggested, with another sigh at his own excessive frankness in depreciating9 what was after all his bread and butter—and a great deal more to him. 'You want to buy possibly?
'No, I don't want to buy,' the old gentleman answered flatly, with a certain mild and kindly10 fierceness. 'I don't want to buy certainly. I'm not a dealer; I'm an art-critic.'
'Oh, indeed,' Hiram said politely. The qualification is not one usually calculated to endear a visitor to a struggling young artist.
'And you, I should say by your accent, are an American. That's bad, to begin with. What on earth induced you to leave that cursed country of yours? Oh generation of vipers—don't misinterpret that much-mistaken word generation; it means merely son or offspring—who has warned you to flee from the wrath11 that is?'
Hiram smiled in spite of himself. 'Myself,' he said; 'my own inner prompting only.'
'Ha, that's better; so you fled from it.
You escaped from the city of destruction. You saved yourself from Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, well, having had the misfortune to be born an American, what better thing could you possibly do? Creditable, certainly, very creditable. And now, since you have come to Rome to paint, pray what sort of wares12 have you got to show me?'
Hiram pointed13 gravely to the unfinished Capture of Babylon.
'It won't do,' the old gentleman said decisively, after surveying the principal figures with a critical eye through his double eyeglass. 'Oh, no, it won't do at all. It's painted—I admit that; it's painted, solidly painted, which is always something nowadays, when coxcombs go splashing their brushes loosely about a yard or two of blank canvas, and then positively14 calling it a picture. It's painted, there's no denying it. Still, my dear sir, you'll excuse my saying so, but there's really nothing in it—absolutely nothing. What does it amount to, after all? A line farrago of tweedledum and tweedledee, in Assyrian armour15 and Oriental costume, and other unnatural16, incongruous upholsterings, with a few Roman models stuck inside it all, to do duty instead of lay figures. Do you really mean to tell me, now, you think that was what the capture of Babylon actually looked like? Why, my dear sir, speaking quite candidly17, I assure you, for my own part I much prefer the Assyrian bas-reliefs.'
Hiram's heart sank horribly within him. He knew it, he knew it; it was all an error, a gigantic error. He had mistaken a taste for painting for a genius for painting. He would never, never, never make a painter; of that he was now absolutely certain. He could have sat down that moment with his face between his hands and cried bitterly, even as he had done years before when the deacon left him in the peppermint18 lot, but for the constraining19 presence of that mild-mannered ferocious20 oddly-compounded old gentleman.
'Is this any better?' he asked humbly21, pointing with his brush-handle to the Second Triumvirate.
'No sir, it is not any better,' the relentless22 critic answered as fiercely yet as blandly23 as ever. 'In fact, if it comes to that, it's a great deal worse. Look at it fairly in the face and ask yourself what it all comes to. It's a group of three amiable24 sugar-brokers in masquerade costume discussing the current price-lists, and it isn't even painted, though it's by way of being finished, I suppose, as people paint nowadays. Is that drawing, for example,' and he stuck his forefinger25 upon young C?sar's foreshortened foot, 'or that, or that, or that, or that, sir? Oh, no, no; dear me, no. This is nothing like either drawing or colouring. The figure, my dear sir—you'll excuse my saying so, but you haven't the most rudimentary conception even of drawing or painting the human figure.'
Hiram coincided so heartily at that moment in this vigorous expression of adverse26 opinion, that but for Gwen he could have pulled out his pocket-knife on the spot and made a brief end of a life long failure.
But the stranger only went coolly through the studio piece by piece, passing the same discouraging criticisms upon everything he saw, and after he had finally reduced poor Hiram to the last abyss of unutterable despair, he said pleasantly in his soft, almost womanly voice, 'Well, well, these are all sad trash, sad trash certainly. Not worth coming from America to Rome to paint, you must admit; certainly not. Who on earth was blockhead enough to tell you that you could ever possibly paint the figure? I don't understand this. Churchill's an artist; Churchill's a sculptor27; Churchill knows what a human body's like, he's no fool, I know. What the deuce did he send me here for, I wonder? How on earth could he ever have imagined that those stuffed Guy Fawkeses and wooden marionettes and dancing fantoccini were real living men and women? Preposterous29, preposterous. Stay. Let me think. Churchill said something or other about your trying landscape. Have you got any landscapes, young man, got any landscapes?'
'I've a few back here,' Hiram answered timidly, 'but I'm afraid they're hardly worth your serious consideration. They were mostly done before I left America, with very little teaching, or else on holidays here in Europe, in the Tyrol chiefly, without much advice or assistance from competent masters.'
'Bring them out!' the old gentleman said in a tone of command. 'Produce your landscapes. Let's see what this place America is like, this desert of newfangled towns without, any castles.'
Hiram obeyed, and brought out the poor little landscapes, sticking them one after another on the easel in the light. There were the Thousand Island sketches30, and the New York lakes, and the White Mountains, and a few pine-clad glens and dingles among the Tyrolese uplands and the lower Engadine. The stranger surveyed them all attentively31 through his double eyeglass with a stony32 critical stare, but still said absolutely nothing. Hiram stood by in breathless expectation. Perhaps the landscapes might fare better at this mysterious person's unsparing hands than the figure pieces. But no: when he had finished, the stranger only said calmly, 'Is that all?'
'All, all,' Hiram murmured in blank despair. 'The work of my lifetime.'
The stranger looked at him steadily33.
'Young man,' he said with the voice and manner of a Hebrew prophet, 'believe me, you ought never to have come away from your native America.'
'I know it, I know it,' Hiram cried, in the profoundest depth of self-abasement.
'No, you ought never to have come away from America. As I wrote years ago in the Seven Domes34 of Florence——'
'What!' Hiram exclaimed, horror-stricken.
'The Seven Domes of Florence! Then—then—then you are Mr. Truman?'
'Yes,' the stranger went on unmoved, without heeding35 his startled condition. 'My name is John Truman, and, as I wrote years ago in the Seven Domes of Florence——'
Hiram never heard the end of his visitor's long sonorous36 quotation37 from his former self (in five volumes), for he sank back unmanned into an easy-chair, and fairly moaned aloud in the exceeding bitterness of his disappointment.
John Truman! It was he, then, the great art-critic of the age; the man whose merest word, whose slightest breath could make or mar28 a struggling reputation; the detector38 of fashionable shams39, the promoter of honest artistic40 workmanship—it was he that had pronounced poor Hiram's whole life a miserable41 failure, and had remitted42 him remorselessly once more to the corn and potatoes of Geauga County. The tears filled Hiram's eyes as he showed the great man slowly and regretfully out of his studio; and when that benevolent43 beaming face had disappeared incongruously with the parting Parthian shot, 'Go back to your woods and forests, sir; go back immediately to your woods and forests,' Hiram quite forgot the very presence of the decked-out Persian commander, and burst into hot tears such as he had not shed before since he ran away to nurse his boyish sorrows alone by himself in the old familiar blackberry bottom.
How very differently he might have felt if only he could have followed that stooping figure down the Via Colonna and heard the bland6 old gentleman muttering audibly to himself, 'Oh, dear no, the young barbarian44 ought never to have come away from his native America. No castles—certainly not, but there's nature there clearly, a great deal of nature; and he knows how to paint it too, he knows how to paint it. Great purity of colouring in his Tyrolese sketches; breadth and brilliancy very unusual in so young an artist; capital robust45 drawing; a certain glassy liquid touch that I like about it all, too, especially in the water. Who on earth ever told him to go and paint those incomprehensible Assyrian monstrosities? Ridiculous, quite ridiculous. He ought to have concentrated himself on his own congenial lakes and woodlands. He has caught the exact spirit of them—weird, mysterious, solemn, primitive46, unvulgarised, antidemotic, titanic47, infinite. The draughtsmanship of the stratification in the rocks is quite superb in its originality48. Oh, dear no, he ought never to have come away at all from his native natural America.
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1
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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blandness
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| n.温柔，爽快 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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depreciating
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| v.贬值，跌价，减价( depreciate的现在分词 )；贬低，蔑视，轻视 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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18
peppermint
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| n.薄荷，薄荷油，薄荷糖 | |
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constraining
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| 强迫( constrain的现在分词 )； 强使； 限制； 约束 | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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blandly
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| adv.温和地，殷勤地 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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mar
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| vt.破坏，毁坏，弄糟 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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34
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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heeding
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的现在分词 ) | |
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sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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detector
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| n.发觉者，探测器 | |
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shams
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| 假象( sham的名词复数 )； 假货； 虚假的行为（或感情、言语等）； 假装…的人 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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42
remitted
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| v.免除（债务），宽恕( remit的过去式和过去分词 )；使某事缓和；寄回，传送 | |
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43
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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45
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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46
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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47
titanic
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| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
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48
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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