bring them about; they cease when that effort is discontinued; they abound in indications of being produced by independent intelligencies; they are inexplicable upon any recognized theory of physics; and, therefore, there is nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. And what then? Then, of course, there must be spirits, and a life after the death of the body; and the great question of Immortality is answered in the affirmative!
Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that the manifestations upon which the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or can be produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect our means for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first place we find that all the manifestations–be their cause what it may–can occur only on the physical plane. However much the origin of the phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena themselves must be purely material, in so far as they are perceptible at all. “Raps” are audible according to the same laws of vibration as other sounds: the tilting table is simply a material body displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized hand or face is nothing but physical substance assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as much right to ascribe a spiritual source to such phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as a tree or a man’s body,–just as much right–and no more! Consequently, we are no nearer converting our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admits the physical manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: but when we proceed to argue that the manifestations are wrought by spirits, he points out to us that this is sheer assumption on our part. “I have not seen a spirit,” he says: “I have not heard one; I have not felt one; nor is it possible that my bodily senses should perceive anything that is not at least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactions effected by means unknown to me–possibly by the action of a natural law not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in the affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline to lend my countenance to any such pretensions.”
That would be the reply of the sceptic who was equal to the emergency. But let us suppose that he is not equal to it: that he is a weak-kneed, impressionable person, with a tendency to jump at conclusions; and that he is scared or mystified into believing that “spirits” may be at the bottom of it. What, then, will be the character of the faith which the Positive Revelation has furnished him? He has discovered that existence continues, in some fashion, after the death of the body. He has learned that there may be such a thing as–not immortality exactly, but–postmortem consciousness. He has been saddled with the conviction that the other world is full of restless ghosts, who come shuddering back from their cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain here. “Have faith: be not impatient: the conditions are unfavorable: but we are working for you!”–such is the constant burden of the communications. But, if there be a God, why must our relations with him be complicated by the interference of such forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as these? we do not wish to be “worked for,”–to be carried heavenward on some one else’s shoulders: but to climb thither by God’s help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in darkened rooms, and by vapid exhibitions addressed to our outward senses. He approaches each man in the innermost sacred audience-chamber of his heart, and there shows him good and evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. And that choice, if made aright, becomes a genuine and undying belief, because it was made in freedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajoleries.
Such belief is, itself, immortality,–something as distinct from post- mortem consciousness as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelligence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to be little real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields the soul is too meagre; and–save on that one bare point of life beyond the grave, which might just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infinite blessing–it affords no trustworthy news whatever.
But these objections do not apply to magic proper. Magic seems to consist mainly in the control which mind may exceptionally exercise over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly believes and obeys the operator. If he be told that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in tears or explodes with laughter, according as the operator tells him he has cause for merriment or tears: and if he be assured that the water he drinks is Madeira wine or Java coffee, he has no misgiving that such is not the case.
To say that this state of things is brought about by the exercise of the operator’s will, is not to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in different terms. What is the will, and how does it produce such a result? Here is a man who believes, at the word of command, that the thing which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse. How is such misapprehension on his part possible? our senses are our sole means of knowing external objects: and this man’s senses seem to confirm–at least they by no means correct–his persuasion that a given object is something very different. Could we solve this puzzle, we should have done something towards gaining an insight into the philosophy of magic.
We observe, in the first place, that the _rationale_ of hypnotism, and of trance in general, is distinct from that of memory and of imagination, and even from that of dreams. It resembles these only in so far as it involves a quasi-perception of something not actually present or existent. But memory and imagination never mislead us into mistaking their suggestions for realities: while in dreams, the dreamer’s fancy alone is active; the bodily faculties are not in action. In trance, however, the subject may appear to be, to all intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, unlike the others, is abnormal. The brain seems to be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a detached condition; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, nor can it examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. Furthermore, it cannot receive or interpret the reports of its own bodily senses. In short, its relations with the external world are suspended: and since the body is a part of the external world, the brain can no longer control the body’s movements.
Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a certain stimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding muscular contractions follow: and this whether or not the stimulus be applied in a normal manner. Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for instance,–the person would give every sensible indication of having adopted that figment as a fact.
But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of his senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized–that is to say, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him?
Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest of the world, towards him the entranced person is awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily senses; neither the magnetizer nor any one else can approach by that route. It is true that, if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he does not hear physically; because he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. But since whatever does not belong to his body must belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be preferable), it follows that the magnetizer must communicate with the magnetized on the mental or spiritual plane; that is, immediately, or without the intervention of the body.
Let us review the position we have reached:–We have an entranced or magnetized person,–a person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain process, been so far withdrawn from conscious communion with his own bodily senses as to disable him from receiving through them any tidings from the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its organic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is therefore neither out of the body nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway between the two,–a state in which he can receive no sensuous impressions from the physical world, nor be put in conscious communication with the spiritual world through any channel–save one.
This one exception is, as we have seen, the person who magnetized him. The magnetizer is, then, the one and only medium through which the person magnetized can obtain impressions: and these impressions are conveyed directly from the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that of the magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, but is in the normal exercise of his bodily functions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, his normal ability to originate ideas and to impart them: and whatever ideas he chooses to impart to the magnetized person, the latter is fain passively and implicitly to accept. And having so received them, they descend naturally into the automatic mechanism of the body, and are by it mechanically interpreted or enacted.
So far, the theory is good: but something seems amiss in the working. We find that a certain process frequently issues in a certain effect: but we do not yet know why this should be the case. Some fundamental link is wanting; and this link is manifestly a knowledge of the true relations between mind and matter: of the laws to which the mental or spiritual world is subject: of what nature itself is: and of what Creation means. Let us cast a glance at these fundamental subjects; for they are the key without which the secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden.
In common speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation; but philosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation: everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man exists: he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass prism and hold in the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism represent man: the sun, man’s Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by the prism, nature, or the material universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray vanishes: it vanishes, also, if we take away the prism: but so long as the sun and the prism–God and man–remain in their mutual relation, so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, in short, is not God; neither is it man; but it is the inevitable concomitant or expression of the creative attitude of God towards man. It is the shadow of the elements of which humanity or human nature is composed: or, shall we say, it is the apparition in sense of the spiritual being of mankind,–not, be it observed, of the being of any individual or of any aggregation of individuals; but of humanity as a whole. For this reason, also, is nature orderly, complete, and permanent,–that it is conditioned not upon our frail and faulty personalities, but upon our impersonal, universal human nature, in which is transacted the miracle of God’s incarnation, and through which He forever shines.
Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can be; and whatever else seems to be, must be only a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow of a shade, but it serves an indispensable use. For since there can be no direct communication between finite and Infinite–God and man–a medium or common ground is needed, where they may meet; and nature, the shadow which the Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance, serving him for foothold and background, and assisting him to attain self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means of revealing Himself to His creature without compromising the creature’s freedom. Man supposes the universe to be a physical structure made by God in space and time, and in some region of which He resides, at a safe distance from us His creatures: whereas, in truth, God is distant from us only so far as we remove ourselves from our own inmost intuitions of truth and good.
But what is that substance or quality which underlies and gives homogeneity to the varying forms of nature, so that they seem to us to own a common origin?–what is that logical abstraction upon which we have bestowed the name of matter? scientific analysis finds matter only as forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents an atomic theory, and lets it go at that. But if, discarding the scientific method, we question matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall find it less obdurate.
Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of volition and intelligence; or, what is the same, of emotion or affection, and of the thoughts which are created by this affection. Nothing can be affirmed of man as a spirit which does not fall under one or other of these two parts. Now, a creature consisting solely of affections and thoughts must, of course, have something to love and to think about. Man’s final destiny is no doubt to love and consider his Creator; but that can only be after a reactionary or regenerative process has begun in him. Meanwhile, he must love and consider the only other available object–that is, himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow this attention upon himself, he must first be made aware of his own existence. In order to effect this, something must be added to man as spirit, enabling him to discriminate between the subject thinking and loving, and the object loved and thought of. This additional something, again, in order to fulfill its purpose, must be so devised as not to appear an addition: it must seem even more truly the man than the man himself. It must, therefore, perfectly represent or correspond to the spiritual form and constitution; so that the thoughts and affections of the spirit may enter into it as into their natural home and continent.
This continent or vehicle of the mind is the human body. The body has two aspects,–substance and form, answering to the two aspects of the mind,– affection and thought: and affection finds its incarnation or correspondence in substance; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the body, much as the body realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the looking-glass: but it does more than this, for it identifies itself with this its image. And how is this identification made possible?
It is brought about by the deception of sense, which is the medium of communication between the spiritual and the material man. Until this miraculous medium is put in action, there can be no conscious relation between these two planes, admirably as they are adapted to each other. Sense is spiritual on one side and material on the other: but it is only on the material side that it gathers its reports: on the spiritual side it only delivers them. Every one of the five messengers whereby we are apprised of external existence brings us an earthly message only. And since these messengers act spontaneously, and since the mind’s only other source of knowledge is intuition, which cannot be sensuously confirmed,– it is little wonder if man has inclined to the persuasion that what is highest in him is but an attribute of what is lowest, and that when the body dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness.
Creative energy, being infinite, passes through the world of causes to the world of effects–through the spiritual to the physical plane. Matter is therefore the symbol of the ultimate of creative activity; it is the negative of God. As God is infinite, matter is finite; as He is life, it is death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, matter veils. And as the relation of God to man’s spirit is constant and eternal, so is the physical quality of matter fixed and permanent. Now, in order to arrive at a comprehension of what matter is in itself, let us descend from the general to the specific, and investigate the philosophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A pebble is two things: it is a mineral: and it is a particular concrete example of mineral. In its mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and is–not a fact, but–a truth; a perception of the mind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has no relation to sense, but only to thought: and on the other hand, in so far as it is a particular concrete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by thought; for what is in sense is out of thought: the one supersedes the other. But if sense thus absorbs matter, so as to be philosophically indistinguishable from it, we are constrained to identify matter with our sensuous perception of it: and if our exemplary pebble had nothing but its material quality to depend upon, it would cease to exist not only to thought, but to sense likewise. Its metaphysical aspect, in short, is the only reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, may be defined as the impact upon sense of that prismatic ray which we have called nature.
To apply this discussion to the subject in hand: Magic is a sort of parody of reality. And when we recognize that Creation proceeds from within outwards, or endogenously; and that matter is not the objective but the subjective side of the universe, we are in a position to perceive that in order magically to control matter, we must apply our efforts not to matter itself, but to our own minds. The natural world affects us from without inwards: the magical world affects us from within outwards: instead of objects suggesting ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, in the former case, when the object is removed the idea vanishes; so in the latter case, when the idea is removed, the object vanishes. Both objects are illusions; but the illusion in the first instance is the normal illusion of sense, whereas in the second instance it is the abnormal illusion of mind.
The above argument can at best serve only as a hint to such as incline seriously to investigate the subject, and perhaps as a touchstone for testing the validity of a large and noisy mass of pretensions which engage the student at the outset of his enquiry. Many of these pretensions are the result of ignorance; many of deliberate intent to deceive; some, again, of erroneous philosophical theories. The Tibetan adepts seem to belong either to the second or to the last of these categories,–or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of all three. They import a cumbrous machinery of auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they divide man into seven principles, nature into seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as a refined form of matter, and matter as the one absolute fact of the universe,–the alpha and omega of all things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold out hopes of a practical deityship for the majority of the human race. In short, their philosophy appeals to the most evil instincts of the soul, and has the air of being ex-post-facto; whenever they run foul of a prodigy, they invent arbitrarily a fanciful explanation of it. But it will be found, I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, and a systematized use of spiritism, will amply account for every miracle they actually bring to pass.
Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the most respectable forms of magic,–an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of big cry and little wool. A child might have told us that matter is not almighty, that minds are sometimes transparent to one another, that love and faith can work wonders. And we also know that, in this mortal life, our means are exquisitely adapted to our ends; and that we can gain no solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow our way a few inches further into the region of the occult and abnormal. Magic, however specious its achievements, is only a mockery of the Creative power, and exposes its unlikeness to it. “It is the attribute of natural existence,” a profound writer has said, “to be a form of use to something higher than itself, so that whatever does not, either potentially or actually, possess within it this soul of use, does not honestly belong to nature, but is a sensational effect produced upon the individual intelligence.” [Footnote: Henry James, in “Society the Redeemed Form of Man.”]
No one can overstep the order and modesty of general existence without bringing himself into perilous proximity to subjects more profound and sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not be barren of mystery and miracle to any one of us; but they shall be such tender mysteries and instructive miracles as the devotion of motherhood, and the blooming of spring. We are too close to Infinite love and wisdom to play pranks before it, and provoke comparison between our paltry juggleries and its omnipotence and majesty.
CHAPTER XI.
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART.
The hunter and the sportsman are two very different persons. The hunter pursues animals because he loves them and sympathizes with them, and kills them as the champions of chivalry used to slay one another–courteously, fairly, and with admiration and respect. To stalk and shoot the elk and the grizzly bear is to him what wooing and winning a beloved maiden would be to another man. Far from being the foe or exterminator of the game he follows, he, more than any one else, is their friend, vindicator, and confidant. A strange mutual ardor and understanding unites him with his quarry. He loves the mountain sheep and the antelope, because they can escape him; the panther and the bear, because they can destroy him. His relations with them are clean, generous, and manly. And on the other hand, the wild animals whose wildness can never be tamed, whose inmost principle of existence it is to be apart and unapproachable,–those creatures who may be said to cease to be when they cease to be intractable,–seem, after they have eluded their pursuer to the utmost, or fought him to the death, to yield themselves to him with a sort of wild contentment–as if they were glad to admit the sovereignty of man, though death come with the admission. The hunter, in short, asks for his happiness only to be alone with what he hunts; the sportsman, after his day’s sport, must needs hasten home to publish the size of the “bag,” and to wring from his fellow-men the glory and applause which he has not the strength and simplicity to find in the game itself.
But if the true hunter is rare, the union of the hunter and the artist is rarer still. It demands not only the close familiarity, the loving observation, and the sympathy, but also the faculty of creation–the eye which selects what is constructive and beautiful, and passes over what is superfluous and inharmonious, and the hand skilful to carry out what the imagination conceives. In the man whose work I am about to consider, these qualities are developed in a remarkable degree, though it was not until he was a man grown, and had fought with distinction through the civil war, that he himself became aware of the artistic power that was in him. The events of his life, could they be rehearsed here, would form a tale of adventure and vicissitude more varied and stirring than is often found in fiction. He has spent by himself days and weeks in the vast solitudes of our western prairies and southern morasses. He has been the companion of trappers and frontiersmen, the friend and comrade of Indians, sleeping side by side with them in their wigwams, running the rapids in their canoes, and riding with them in the hunt. He has met and overcome the panther and the grizzly single-handed, and has pursued the flying cimmaron to the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains, and brought back its crescent horns as a trophy. He has fought and slain the gray wolf with no other weapons than his hands and teeth; and at night he has lain concealed by lonely tarns, where the wild coyote came to patter and bark and howl at the midnight moon. His name and achievements are familiar to the dwellers in those savage regions, whose estimate of a man is based, not upon his social and financial advantages, but upon what he is and can do. Yet he is not one who wears his merit outwardly. His appearance, indeed, is striking; tall and athletic, broad-shouldered and stout-limbed, with the long, elastic step of the moccasined Indian, and something of the Indian’s reticence and simplicity. But he can with difficulty be brought to allude to his adventures, and is reserved almost to the point of ingenuity on all that concerns himself or redounds to his credit. It is only in familiar converse with friends that the humor, the cultivation, the knowledge, and the social charm of the man appear, and his marvellous gift of vivid and picturesque narration discloses itself. But, in addition to all this, or above it all, he is the only great animal sculptor of his time, the successor of the French Barye, and (as any one may satisfy himself who will take the trouble to compare their works) the equal of that famous artist in scope and treatment of animal subjects, and his superior in knowledge and in truth and power of conception. It would be a poor compliment to call Edward Kemeys the American Barye; but Barye is the only man whose animal sculptures can bear comparison with Mr. Kemeys’s.
Of Mr. Kemeys’s productions, a few are to be seen at his studio, 133 West Fifty-third Street, New York city. These are the models, in clay or plaster, as they came fresh from the artist’s hand. From this condition they can either be enlarged to life or colossal size, for parks or public buildings, or cast in bronze in their present dimensions for the enrichment of private houses. Though this collection includes scarce a tithe of what the artist has produced, it forms a series of groups and figures which, for truth to nature, artistic excellence, and originality, are actually unique. So unique are they, indeed, that the uneducated eye does not at first realize their really immense value. Nothing like this little sculpture gallery has been seen before, and it is very improbable that there will ever again be a meeting of conditions and qualities adequate to reproducing such an exhibition. For we see here not merely, nor chiefly, the accurate representation of the animal’s external aspect, but–what is vastly more difficult to seize and portray–the essential animal character or temperament which controls and actuates the animal’s movements and behavior. Each one of Mr. Kemeys’s figures gives not only the form and proportions of the animal, according to the nicest anatomical studies and measurements, but it is the speaking embodiment of profound insight into that animal’s nature and knowledge of its habits. The spectator cannot long examine it without feeling that he has learned much more of its characteristics and genius than if he had been standing in front of the same animal’s cage at the Zoological Gardens; for here is an artist who understands how to translate pose into meaning, and action into utterance, and to select those poses and actions which convey the broadest and most comprehensive idea of the subject’s prevailing traits. He not only knows what posture or movement the anatomical structure of the animal renders possible, but he knows precisely in what degree such posture or movement is modified by the animal’s physical needs and instincts. In other words, he always respects the modesty of nature, and never yields to the temptation to be dramatic and impressive at the expense of truth. Here is none of Barye’s exaggeration, or of Landseer’s sentimental effort to humanize animal nature. Mr. Kemeys has rightly perceived that animal nature is not a mere contraction of human nature; but that each animal, so far as it owns any relation to man at all, represents the unimpeded development of some particular element of man’s nature. Accordingly, animals must be studied and portrayed solely upon their own basis and within their own limits; and he who approaches them with this understanding will find, possibly to his surprise, that the theatre thus afforded is wide and varied enough for the exercise of his best ingenuity and capacities. At first, no doubt, the simple animal appears too simple to be made artistically interesting, apart from this or that conventional or imaginative addition. The lion must be presented, not as he is, but as vulgar anticipation expects him to be; not with the savageness and terror which are native to him, but with the savageness and terror which those who have trembled and fled at the echo of his roar invest him with,–which are quite another matter. Zoological gardens and museums have their uses, but they cannot introduce us to wild animals as they really are; and the reports of those who have caught terrified or ignorant glimpses of them in their native regions will mislead us no less in another direction. Nature reveals her secrets only to those who have faithfully and rigorously submitted to the initiation; but to them she shows herself marvellous and inexhaustible. The “simple animal” avouches his ability to transcend any imaginative conception of him. The stern economy of his structure and character, the sureness and sufficiency of his every manifestation, the instinct and capacity which inform all his proceedings,–these are things which are concealed from a hasty glance by the very perfection of their state. Once seen and comprehended, however, they work upon the mind of the observer with an ever increasing power; they lead him into a new, strange, and fascinating world, and generously recompense him for any effort he may have made to penetrate thither. Of that strange and fascinating world Mr. Kemeys is the true and worthy interpreter, and, so far as appears, the only one. Through difficulty and discouragement of all kinds, he has kept to the simple truth, and the truth has rewarded him. He has done a service of incalculable value to his country, not only in vindicating American art, but in preserving to us, in a permanent and beautiful form, the vivid and veracious figures of a wild fauna which, in the inevitable progress of colonization and civilization, is destined within a few years to vanish altogether. The American bear and bison, the cimmaron and the elk, the wolf and the ‘coon–where will they be a generation hence? Nowhere, save in the possession of those persons who have to-day the opportunity and the intelligence to decorate their rooms and parks with Mr. Kemeys’s inimitable bronzes. The opportunity is great–much greater, I should think, than the intelligence necessary for availing ourselves of it; and it is a unique opportunity. In other words, it lies within the power of every cultivated family in the United States to enrich itself with a work of art which is entirely American; which, as art, fulfils every requirement; which is of permanent and increasing interest and value from an ornamental point of view; and which is embodied in the most enduring of artistic materials.
The studio in which Mr. Kemeys works–a spacious apartment–is, in appearance, a cross between a barn-loft and a wigwam. Round the walls are suspended the hides, the heads, and the horns of the animals which the hunter has shot; and below are groups, single figures, and busts, modelled by the artist, in plaster, terracotta, or clay. The colossal design of the “Still Hunt”–an American panther crouching before its spring–was modelled here, before being cast in bronze and removed to its present site in Central Park. It is a monument of which New York and America may be proud; for no such powerful and veracious conception of a wild animal has ever before found artistic embodiment. The great cat crouches with head low, extended throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn far back, the fore paws huddled beneath the jaws. The long, lithe back rises in an arch in the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, while the angry tail makes a strong curve along the ground to the right. The whole figure is tense and compact with restrained and waiting power; the expression is stealthy, pitiless, and terrible; it at once fascinates and astounds the beholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling this animal, an incident occurred which he has told me in something like the following words. The artist does not encourage the intrusion of idle persons while he is at work, though no one welcomes intelligent inspection and criticism more cordially than he. On this occasion he was alone in the studio with his Irish factotum, Tom, and the outer door, owing to the heat of the weather, had been left ajar. All of a sudden the artist was aware of the presence of a stranger in the room. “He was a tall, hulking fellow, shabbily dressed, like a tramp, and looked as if he might make trouble if he had a mind to. However, he stood quite still in front of the statue, staring at it, and not saying anything. So I let him alone for a while; I thought it would be time enough to attend to him when he began to beg or make a row. But after some time, as he still hadn’t stirred, Tom came to the conclusion that a hint had better be given him to move on; so he took a broom and began sweeping the floor, and the dust went all over the fellow; but he didn’t pay the least attention. I began to think there would probably be a fight; but I thought I’d wait a little longer before doing anything. At last I said to him, ‘Will you move aside, please? You’re in my way.’ He stepped over a little to the right, but still didn’t open his mouth, and kept his eyes fixed on the panther. Presently I said to Tom, ‘Well, Tom, the cheek of some people passes belief!’ Tom replied with more clouds of dust; but the stranger never made a sign. At last I got tired, so I stepped up to the fellow and said to him: ‘Look here, my friend, when I asked you to move aside, I meant you should move the other side of the door.’ He roused up then, and gave himself a shake, and took a last look at the panther, and said he, ‘That’s all right, boss; I know all about the door; but–what a spring she’s going to make!’ Then,” added Kemeys, self-reproachfully, “I could have wept!”
But although this superb figure no longer dominates the studio, there is no lack of models as valuable and as interesting, though not of heroic size. Most interesting of all to the general observer are, perhaps, the two figures of the grizzly bear. These were designed from a grizzly which Mr. Kemeys fought and killed in the autumn of 1881 in the Rocky Mountains, and the mounted head of which grins upon the wall overhead, a grisly trophy indeed. The impression of enormous strength, massive yet elastic, ponderous yet alert, impregnable for defence as irresistible in attack; a strength which knows no obstacles, and which never meets its match,–this impression is as fully conveyed in these figures, which are not over a foot in height, as if the animal were before us in its natural size. You see the vast limbs, crooked with power, bound about with huge ropes and plates of muscle, and clothed in shaggy depths of fur; the vast breadth of the head, with its thick, low ears, dull, small eyes, and long up-curving snout; the roll and lunge of the gait, like the motion of a vessel plunging forward before the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, and the huge bluntness of the posteriors; and all these features are combined with such masterly unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the diminutive model insensibly grows mighty beneath your gaze, until you realize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the burly slouch of the arrested stride, are of themselves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic Venuses and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling back on his haunches, with all four paws in the air, munching some grapes from a vine which he has torn from its support. The contrast between the savage character of the beast and his absurdly peaceful employment gives a touch of terrific comedy to this design. After studying these figures, one cannot help thinking what a noble embellishment either of them would be, put in bronze, of colossal size, in the public grounds of one of our great Western cities. And inasmuch as the rich citizens of the West not only know what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and independent, and therefore often more correct in their artistic opinion than the somewhat sophisticated critics of the East, there is some cause for hoping that this thing may be brought to pass.
Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, or cimmaron, the most difficult to capture of all four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved horns are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a hunter can bring home with him. The sculptor has here caught him in one of his most characteristic attitudes–just alighted from some dizzy leap on the headlong slope of a rocky mountainside. On such a spot nothing but the cimmaron could retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and secure as the rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigid and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily in attendance upon them. “The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he never makes a mistake,” is Mr. Kemeys’s laconic comment; and we can recognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at home and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves its great neck and turns its head upward, gazing aloft toward the height whence it has descended. “It’s the golden eagle he hears,” says the sculptor; “they give him warning of danger.” It is a magnificent animal, a model of tireless vigor in all its parts; a creature made to hurl itself head-foremost down appalling gulfs of space, and poise itself at the bottom as jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of timid imaginations. I find myself unconsciously speaking about these plaster models as if they were the living animals which they represent; but the more one studies Mr. Kemeys’s works, the more instinct with redundant and breathing life do they appear.
It would be impossible even to catalogue the contents of this studio, the greater part of which is as well worth describing as those examples which have already been touched upon; nor could a more graphic pen than mine convey an adequate impression of their excellence. But there is here a figure of the ‘coon, which, as it is the only one ever modelled, ought not to be passed over in silence. In appearance this animal is a curious medley of the fox, the wolf, and the bear, besides I-know-not-what (as the lady in “Punch” would say) that belongs to none of those beasts. As may be imagined, therefore, its right portrayal involves peculiar difficulties, and Mr. Kemeys’s genius is nowhere better shown than in the manner in which these have been surmounted. Compact, plump, and active in figure, quick and subtle in its movements, the ‘coon crouches in a flattened position along the limb of a tree, its broad, shallow head and pointed snout a little lifted, as it gazes alertly outward and downward. It sustains itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on the branch, the fore legs being spread apart, while the left hind leg is withdrawn inward, and enters smoothly into the contour of the furred side; the bushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and light bands, curving to the left. Thus posed and modelled in high relief on a tile-shaped plaque, Mr. Kemeys’s coon forms a most desirable ornament for some wise man’s sideboard or mantle-piece, where it may one day be pointed out as the only surviving representative of its species.
The two most elaborate groups here have already attained some measure of publicity; the “Bison and Wolves” having been exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1878, and the “Deer and Panther” having been purchased in bronze by Mr. Winans during the sculptor’s sojourn in England. Each group represents one of those deadly combats between wild beasts which are among the most terrific and at the same time most natural incidents of animal existence; and they are of especial interest as showing the artist’s power of concentrated and graphic composition. A complicated story is told in both these instances with a masterly economy of material and balance of proportion; so that the spectator’s eye takes in the whole subject at a glance, and yet finds inexhaustible interest in the examination of details, all of which contribute to the central effect without distracting the attention. A companion piece to the “Deer and Panther” shows the same animals as they have fallen, locked together in death after the combat is over. In the former group, the panther, in springing upon the deer, had impaled its neck on the deer’s right antler, and had then swung round under the latter’s body, burying the claws of its right fore foot in the ruminant’s throat. In order truthfully to represent the second stage of the encounter, therefore, it was necessary not merely to model a second group, but to retain the elements and construction of the first group under totally changed conditions. This is a feat of such peculiar difficulty that I think few artists in any branch of art would venture to attempt it; nevertheless, Mr. Kemeys has accomplished it; and the more the two groups are studied in connection with each other, the more complete will his success be found to have been. The man who can do this may surely be admitted a master, whose works are open only to affirmative criticism. For his works the most trying of all tests is their comparison with one another; and the result of such comparison is not merely to confirm their merit, but to illustrate and enhance it.
For my own part, my introduction to Mr. Kemeys’s studio was the opening to me of a new world, where it has been my good fortune to spend many days of delightful and enlightening study. How far the subject of this writing may have been already familiar to the readers of it, I have no means of knowing; but I conceive it to be no less than my duty, as a countryman of Mr. Kemeys’s and a lover of all that is true and original in art, to pay the tribute of my appreciation to what he has done. There is no danger of his getting more recognition than he deserves, and he is not one whom recognition can injure. He reverences his art too highly to magnify his own exposition of it; and when he reads what I have set down here, he will smile and shake his head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect idea in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I greatly err, however, no one but himself is competent to take that exception. The genuine artist is never satisfied with his work; he perceives where it falls short of his conception. But to others it will not be incomplete; for the achievements of real art are always invested with an atmosphere and aroma–a spiritual quality perhaps–proceeding from the artist’s mind and affecting that of the beholder. And thus it happens that the story or the poem, the picture or the sculpture, receives even in its material form that last indefinable grace, that magic light that never was on sea or land, which no pen or brush or graving-tool has skill to seize. Matter can never rise to the height of spirit; but spirit informs it when it has done its best, and ennobles it with the charm that the artist sought and the world desired.
*** Since the above was written, Mr. Kemeys has removed his studio to Perth Amboy, N. J.