The Prophetic Pictures

“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only excels in
his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and
science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in anatomy to Dr.
Boylston. In a word, he will meet the best-instructed man among us on his own
ground. Moreover, he is a polished gentleman, a citizen of the world — yes, a
true cosmopolite; for he will speak like a native of each clime and country on
the globe, except our own forests, whither he is now going. Nor is all this what I
most admire in him.”
“Indeed!” said Elinor, who had listened with a women's interest to the
description of such a man. “Yet this is admirable enough.”
“Surely it is,” replied her lover, “but far less so than his natural gift of adapting
himself to every variety of character, insomuch that all men — and all women
too, Elinor — shall find a mirror of themselves in this wonderful painter. But
the greatest wonder is yet to be told.”
“Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these,” said Elinor, laughing,
“Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you telling me of a
painter, or a wizard?”
“In truth,” answered he, “that question might be asked much more seriously
than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a man's features, but his
mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and passions and throws them
upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in the portraits of dark-souled men,
like a gleam of infernal fire. It is an awful gift,” added Walter, lowering his
voice from its tone of enthusiasm. “I shall be almost afraid to sit to him.”
“Walter, are you in earnest?” exclaimed Elinor.
“For Heaven's sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look which you now
wear,” said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed. “There! it is passing
away now; but when you spoke, you seemed frightened to death, and very sad
besides. What were you thinking of?”
“Nothing, nothing!” answered Elinor, hastily. “You paint my face with your
own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit this wonderful
artist.”
But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a remarkable
expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face of his mistress. It was
a sad and anxious look, little in accordance with what should have been the
feelings of a maiden on the eve of wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen
of her heart.
“A look!” said Elinor to herself. “No wonder that it startled him if it expressed
what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how frightful a look may
be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it at the time; I have seen nothing
of it since; I did but dream it;” and she busied herself about the embroidery of a
ruff in which she meant that her portrait should be taken.
The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native artists
who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the Indians and
manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts. Perhaps, if he could have
revoked his life and prearranged his destiny, he might have chosen to belong to
that school without a master in the hope of being at least original, since there
were no works of art to imitate nor rules to follow. But he had been born and
educated in Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or beauty of
conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the most famous pictures
in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of churches till there was nothing
more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add nothing to its lessons, but
Nature might. He had, therefore, visited a world whither none of his
professional brethren had preceded him, to feast his eyes on visible images that
were noble and picturesque, yet had never been transferred to canvas. America
was too poor to afford other temptations to an artist of eminence, though many
of the colonial gentry on the painter's arrival had expressed a wish to transmit
their lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill. Whenever such proposals
were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant and seemed to look him
through and through. If he beheld only a sleek and comfortable visage, though
there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for
it, he civilly rejected the task and the reward; but if the face were the index of
anything uncommon in thought, sentiment or experience, or if he met a beggar
in the street with a white beard and a furrowed brow, or if sometimes a child
happened to look up and smile, he would exhaust all the art on them that he
denied to wealth.
Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an object of
general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the technical merit of his
productions, yet there were points in regard to which the opinion of the crowd
was as valuable as the refined judgment of the amateur. He watched the effect
that each picture produced on such untutored beholders, and derived profit from
their remarks, while they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature
herself as him who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it an offence
against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of the Creator, to
bring into existence such lively images of his creatures. Others, frightened at the
art which could raise phantoms at will and keep the form of the dead among the
living, were inclined to consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the
famous Black Man of old witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These
foolish fancies were more, than half believed among the mob. Even in superior
circles his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like smoke-
wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused by the varied
knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his profession.
Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to obtain
their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped, would be a long series
of family pictures. The day after the conversation above recorded they visited
the painter's rooms. A servant ushered them into an apartment where, though the
artist himself was not visible, there were personages whom they could hardly
forbear greeting with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole assembly
were but pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the idea of life and intellect
from such striking counterfeits. Several of the portraits were known to them
either as distinguished characters of the day or their private acquaintances.
There was Governor Burnett, looking as if he had just received an undutiful
communication from the House of Representatives and were inditing a most
sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and
somewhat puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir
William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an imperious
old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a very young man,
wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long afterward made him a
distinguished general. Their personal friends were recognized at a glance. In
most of the pictures the whole mind and character were brought out on the
countenance and concentrated into a single look; so that, to speak paradoxically,
the originals hardly resembled themselves so strikingly as the portraits did.
Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had
almost vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but unfaded
Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now regarded the
lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to worship too.
“How singular a thought,” observed Walter Ludlow, “that this beautiful face has
been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all beauty would endure so
well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?”
“If earth were heaven, I might,” she replied. “But, where all things fade, how
miserable to be the one that could not fade!”
“This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he be,”
continued Walter; “he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at us.”
“Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks,” said Elinor.
The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that had been
recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to recognize the
features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman, growing into shape and
life, as it were, out of a cloud.
“Kind old man!” exclaimed Elinor. “He gazes at me as if he were about to utter
a word of paternal advice.”
“And at me,” said Walter, “as if he were about to shake his head and rebuke me
for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I shall never feel quite
comfortable under his eye till we stand before him to be married.”
They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the painter, who
had been some moments in the room and had listened to a few of their remarks.
He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well worthy of his own pencil.
Indeed, by the picturesque though careless arrangement of his rich dress, and
perhaps because his soul dwelt always among painted shapes, he looked
somewhat like a portrait himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred
between the artist and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped
from the canvas to salute them.
Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the object of
their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart his figure and Elinor's
with so happy an effect that they also seemed living pictures of youth and
beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The artist was evidently struck.
“My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston must be
brief,” said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant glance, he added, “But
your wishes shall be gratified though I disappoint the chief-justice and Madame
Oliver. I must not lose this opportunity for the sake of painting a few ells of
broadcloth and brocade.”
The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into one picture
and represent them engaged in some appropriate action. This plan would have
delighted the lovers, but was necessarily rejected because so large a space of
canvas would have been unfit for the room which it was intended to decorate.
Two half-length portraits were therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave,
Walter Ludlow asked Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influence
over their fates the painter was about to acquire.
“The old women of Boston affirm,” continued he, “that after he has once got
possession of a person's face and figure he may paint him in any act or situation
whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do you believe it?”
“Not quite,” said Elinor, smiling. “Yet if he has such magic, there is something
so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it well.”
It was the painter's choice to proceed with both the portraits at the same time,
assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he sometimes used, that
the faces threw light upon each other. Accordingly, he gave now a touch to
Walter and now to Elinor, and the features of one and the other began to start
forth so vividly that it appeared as if his triumphant art would actually
disengage them from the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade they
beheld their phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be perfect,
they were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more vague than in
most of the painter's works. He, however, was satisfied with the prospect of
success, and, being much interested in the lovers, employed his leisure
moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon sketch of their two figures.
During their sittings he engaged them in conversation and kindled up their faces
with characteristic traits, which, though continually varying, it was his purpose
to combine and fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the
portraits would be ready for delivery.
“If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last touches which I
meditate,” observed he, “these two pictures will be my very best performances.
Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects.” While speaking he still bent his
penetrative eye upon them, nor withdrew it till they had reached the bottom of
the stairs.
Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of the
imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why should it be
so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the andirons, the mirror-like
water, and all other reflecting surfaces, continually present us with portraits —
or, rather, ghosts — of ourselves which we glance at and straightway forget
them. But we forget them only because they vanish. It is the idea of duration —
of earthly immortality — that gives such a mysterious interest to our own
portraits.
Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to the
painter's room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those pictured shapes
which were to be their representatives with posterity. The sunshine flashed after
them into the apartment, but left it somewhat gloomy as they closed the door.
Their eyes were immediately attracted to their portraits, which rested against the
farthest wall of the room. At the first glance through the dim light and the
distance, seeing themselves in precisely their natural attitudes and with all the
air that they recognized so well, they uttered a simultaneous exclamation of
delight.
“There we stand,” cried Walter, enthusiastically, “fixed in sunshine for ever. No
dark passions can gather on our faces.”
“No,” said Elinor, more calmly; “no dreary change can sadden us.”
This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an
imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them, busied himself
at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his visitors to form their own
judgment as to his perfected labors. At intervals he sent a glance from beneath
his deep eyebrows, watching their countenances in profile with his pencil
suspended over the sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of
the other's picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing Elinor's
portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
“Is there not a change?” said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone. “Yes; the
perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It is certainly the same
picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the features, all are the same, and yet
something is altered.”
“Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?” inquired the painter, now
drawing near with irrepressible interest.
“The features are perfect Elinor,” answered Walter, “and at the first glance the
expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the portrait has changed
countenance while I have been looking at it. The eyes are fixed on mine with a
strangely sad and anxious expression. Nay, it is grief and terror. Is this like
Elinor?”
“Compare the living face with the pictured one,” said the painter.
Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and absorbed,
fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter's portrait, Elinor's face had
assumed precisely the expression of which he had just been complaining. Had
she practised for whole hours before a mirror, she could not have caught the
look so successfully. Had the picture itself been a mirror, it could not have
thrown back her present aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She
appeared quite unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.
“Elinor,” exclaimed Walter, in amazement, “what change has come over you?”
She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her hand, and
thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she looked from the picture
to the face of the original.
“Do you see no change in your portrait?” asked she.
“In mine? None,” replied Walter, examining it. “But let me see. Yes; there is a
slight change — an improvement, I think, in the picture, though none in the
likeness. It has a livelier expression than yesterday, as if some bright thought
were flashing from the eyes and about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I
have caught the look, it becomes very decided.”
While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the painter. She
regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with sympathy and
commiseration, though wherefore she could but vaguely guess.
“That look!” whispered she, and shuddered. “How came it there?”
“Madam,” said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her apart, “in
both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The artist — the true artist —
must look beneath the exterior. It is his gift — his proudest, but often a
melancholy one — to see the inmost soul, and by a power indefinable even to
himself to make it glow or darken upon the canvas in glances that express the
thought and sentiment of years. Would that I might convince myself of error in
the present instance!”
They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched cottages,
old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and all such
picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle moments. Turning them over with
seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was disclosed.
“If I have failed,” continued he — ”if your heart does not see itself reflected in
your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to trust my delineation of the
other — it is not yet too late to alter them. I might change the action of these
figures too. But would it influence the event?” He directed her notice to the
sketch.
A thrill ran through Elinor's frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but she stifled it
with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who hide thoughts of fear
and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from the table, she perceived that
Walter had advanced near enough to have seen the sketch, though she could not
determine whether it had caught his eye.
“We will not have the pictures altered,” said she, hastily. “If mine is sad, I shall
but look the gayer for the contrast.”
“Be it so,” answered the painter, bowing. “May your griefs be such fanciful
ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your joys, may they be
true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely face till it quite belie my
art!”
After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two most
splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side, separated by a
narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly, yet always returning the
gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen who professed a knowledge of such
subjects reckoned these among the most admirable specimens of modern
portraiture, while common observers compared them with the originals, feature
by feature, and were rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
class — neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people of
natural sensibility — that the pictures wrought their strongest effect. Such
persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming interested, would return
day after day and study these painted faces like the pages of a mystic volume.
Walter Ludlow's portrait attracted their earliest notice. In the absence of himself
and his bride they sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter
had intended to throw upon the features, all agreeing that there was a look of
earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less diversity of
opinion in regard to Elinor's picture. They differed, indeed, in their attempts to
estimate the nature and depth of the gloom that dwelt upon her face, but agreed
that it was gloom and alien from the natural temperament of their youthful
friend. A certain fanciful person announced as the result of much scrutiny that
both these pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy strength of
feeling in Elinor's countenance bore reference to the more vivid emotion — or,
as he termed it, the wild passion — in that of Walter. Though unskilled in the
art, he even began a sketch in which the action of the two figures was to
correspond with their mutual expression.
It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor's face was assuming a
deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render her too true a
counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the other hand, instead of
acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas, became
reserved and downcast, with no outward flashes of emotion, however it might
be smouldering within. In course of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of
purple silk wrought with flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before
the pictures, under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light
dim them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the silk must
never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her presence.
Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to the north
to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look over the vast round of
cloud and forest from the summit of New England's loftiest mountain. But he
did not profane that scene by the mockery of his art. He had also lain in a canoe
on the bosom of Lake George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and
grandeur till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection.
He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had flung his
hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as soon paint the roar
as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous cataract. In truth, it was seldom
his impulse to copy natural scenery except as a framework for the delineations
of the human form and face instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With
store of such his adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of
Indian chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the frontier
fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French partisan bred in courts,
but grown gray in shaggy deserts, — such were the scenes and portraits that he
had sketched. The glow of perilous moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles
of fierce power, love, hate, grief, frenzy — in a word, all the worn-out heart of
the old earth — had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which genius
would transmute into its own substance and imbue with immortality. He felt
that the deep wisdom in his art which he had sought so far was found.
But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its overwhelming
peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the companions of his way.
Like all other men around whom an engrossing purpose wreathes itself, he was
insulated from the mass of humankind. He had no aim, no pleasure, no
sympathies, but what were ultimately connected with his art. Though gentle in
manner and upright in intent and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his
heart was cold: no living creature could be brought near enough to keep him
warm. For these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil. He had
pried into their souls with his keenest insight and pictured the result upon their
features with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall short of that standard which no
genius ever reached, his own severe conception. He had caught from the
duskiness of the future — at least, so he fancied — a fearful secret, and had
obscurely revealed it on the portraits. So much of himself — of his imagination
and all other powers — had been lavished on the study of Walter and Elinor that
he almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the thousands with which
he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore did they flit through the twilight
of the woods, hover on the mist of waterfalls, look forth from the mirror of the
lake, nor melt away in the noontide sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as
mockeries of life nor pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits, each
with an unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of
the soul. He could not recross the Atlantic till he had again beheld the originals
of those airy pictures.
“O glorious Art!” Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the street.
“Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable forms that wander in
nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live again; thou recallest them
to their old scenes and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at
once earthly and immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of
history. With then there is no past, for at thy touch all that is great becomes for
ever present, and illustrious men live through long ages in the visible
performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. O potent Art! as
thou bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in that narrow strip of sunlight
which we call 'now,' canst thou summon the shrouded future to meet her there?
Have I not achieved it? Am I not thy prophet?”
Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he passed
through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his reveries nor
could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man to cherish a solitary
ambition. Unless there be those around him by whose example he may regulate
himself, his thoughts, desires and hopes will become extravagant and he the
semblance — perhaps the reality — of a madman. Reading other bosoms with
an acuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his
own.
“And this should be the house,” said he, looking up and down the front before
he knocked. “Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it will never
vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it is framed within
them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest tints — the faces of the
portraits, the figures and action of the sketch!”
He knocked.
“The portraits — are they within?” inquired he of the domestic; then,
recollecting himself, “Your master and mistress — are they at home?”
“They are, sir,” said the servant, adding, as he noticed that picturesque aspect of
which the painter could never divest himself, “and the portraits too.”
The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door with an
interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was empty, he passed to
the entrance of the second, within which his eyes were greeted by those living
personages, as well as their pictured representatives, who had long been the
objects of so singular an interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing before
the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich and voluminous
folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel with one hand, while the
other grasped that of his bride. The pictures, concealed for months, gleamed
forth again in undiminished splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across
the room rather than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had
been almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had
successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of time into
a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very
expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and dull or animated only
by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness for their momentary illumination.
He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and thence to his own, in the
contemplation of which he finally stood absorbed.
The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him on its
progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his mind. Was not his
own the form in which that Destiny had embodied itself, and he a chief agent of
the coming evil which he had foreshadowed?
Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as with his
own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil influence that the painter
had cast upon the features. Gradually his eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched
the increasing wildness of his face her own assumed a look of terror; and when,
at last, he turned upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was
complete.
“Our fate is upon us!” howled Walter. “Die!”
Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground, and aimed it
at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude of each the painter
beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with all its tremendous coloring,
was finished.
“Hold, madman!” cried he, sternly.
He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the wretched
beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny as to alter a scene
upon the canvas. He stood like a magician controlling the phantoms which he
had evoked.
“What!” muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement into
sullen gloom. “Does Fate impede its own decree?”
“Wretched lady,” said the painter, “did I not warn you?”
“You did,” replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the quiet grief
which it had disturbed. “But I loved him.”
Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all our deeds be
shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate and hurry onward,
others be swept along by their passionate desires, and none be turned aside by
the prophetic pictures.