Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

  Gleich einer Leiche  Die grollend ausgeworfen das Meer—  "Like a corpse which the bellowing sea  has cast out."

Strange life! O utter barrenness of existence! A pipe, a fire, fish, rags and a bed of straw. God pity thee! God pity thee, thou poor stricken deer! Take heart, man, take heart! Be brave, and dash away the bitter tear. Look up from the lowly cabin-door into the solemn night with its golden-burning stars, and even the loosened harp-strings of thy shattered old frame will vibrate and tremble to the eternal melodies that thrill through the mystic All: "God is in his heaven."

Dickens and Hawthorne have each written of canal-life in America, the one in a satirico-humorous way, the other sympathetically. People side with one or the other according as their disposition is active and restless or indolent and epicurean. I fight under the banner of Hawthorne in defence of the canal. The following sketch of one of the old picturesque Pennsylvania canals may be called a vignette, for it is a fragment without definite border or setting. But admirers of Dickens are respectfully requested to note that it is no mere fancy sketch of a poetic mind, but was drawn from Nature, every bit of it.

The first and most novel sensation I experienced was that of the quiet and seemingly mysterious gliding movement of the boat. Ever and anon we passed through a lock. How strange and thrilling the feeling, to stand on the deck and see yourself slowly sinking into the great mossy box, and then to see the great valves of the lock slowly open, disclosing what seemed a new land and fresh vistas of green landscape! It was like the opening of the gates of the future (I pleased myself with fancying) to my triumphant progress. Gate after gate swung back its ponderous valves: I was Habib advancing from isle to isle of the enchanted sea. I uttered the word of power, and the huge unwieldy gates of opposition swung back with sullen and unwilling deference, compelled to respect the talisman I held. But hark! Hear the sweet notes of the supper-horn floating through the cool gloom of twilight as the tired reapers trudge home with their grain-cradles swung over their shoulders. Listen to the tinkling mule-bells on the tow-path, see the bright crimson tassels of the bridles, and the gayly-decorated boats, their cabin-roofs adorned with pots of herbs and flowers.

As we glide down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; the momentum of the boat carries it on; the rope slackens, disappears in the water, except at the two ends; the approaching horses step over it, and the approaching boat glides over it. When the approaching "light boat" has passed nearly or entirely over the rope our captain shouts to his horses to go on: the rope tightens, and all is as before.

The parts of the canal lying between the locks are called "levels." On long levels we could often see one or two boats far ahead of us and going in the same direction. Nothing could be prettier than the thin blue streamer of wood-smoke trailing out from the stovepipe of the cabin-roof against the bright green of the foliage along the banks. It told us the cheery news that the fragrant coffee or tea was a-making in the cozy little cabin below. And now, when supper is done, the captain brings up his guitar and plays sweet plaintive airs as we glide through the quiet evening shadows. Night deepens: the stars come out one by one, and are reflected in the smooth dark water below in dreamy, dusky splendor. We brush the dew from the heavy foliage as we pass along. Lithe alders and heavy vines trail in the cool flood, and the fresh evening air is filled with grateful harvest-scents and the perfume of unseen flowers. And now our pretty painted lamp-board is fixed in its place in the bow. The bright lamp throws its rich golden splendor before us. The lamp is hid from us by the board which holds it. We stand behind in the dark, and watch the overhanging sprays of foliage making strange, grotesque shadows that move fantastically and sport and clutch and writhe like wanton fiends, while the solid banks of foliage themselves, reflected in the water below, look, one fancies, like hanging gardens in the weird world to which the water is but a window, and far, far down upon whose dusky floor the flowers are golden stars.

The canal over which I am now conducting my readers is one of the oldest in the country. For many miles it is cut out of the solid rock, following the windings of the river and clinging close to the contours of the hills. The particolored rocks jut out in great square blocks, which, in summer, are usually tufted with grass or flowers. There is an indescribable air of coziness and safety about the amphibious life one leads on such a canal. You can here snap your fingers at the terrors of the cruel water. Here the mocking waves cannot "curl their monstrous heads" as on the sea, when with blind fury they dash against the helpless ship their ponderous and shapeless forms, while sailors and passengers alike are every moment expecting the final stroke that shall sink them beneath the waves. On the canal you cannot be drowned, on the canal you cannot be wrecked. The shore is so delightfully near! You exult in the friendly companionship of the rocky wall that towers above you, and in the assuring presence of the flowers and shrubs that cling there or reach out to you their thin elvish hands. You feel that here untamed Nature (that great wolf) cannot get her claws upon you. Upon this thread of water you are soothed by the thought that you are under the friendly and beneficent protection of man.

About nine or ten o'clock each evening the boats tie up at some lock. At all of these locks there are refreshment-stands and neat taverns of which the traveller must avail himself, since there are no accommodations for visitors on the boats. On the fourth day, wishing to vary my experience, I boarded another boat. Her deck was the very model of neatness. Verily the spirit of either a Yankee housewife or a Dutch vrow must have presided over that boat and tyrannized over the poor wretches who managed it. Black Care seemed to sit continually upon their brows. They were living scrubbing-brushes. They were scrub-mad. From morn to dewy eve they scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and doubtless in their dreams they still scrubbed on. The crew consisted of a man and his wife, their boy and an old uncle of the boy. I found, to my delight, that the boy was a very communicative young gentleman, flowing freely in talk without any pumping on my part. The various quaint technical phrases which I learned from him shall now be imparted to the reader. The berme, or heel-path, is the side of the canal opposite the tow-path; basins are small coves in the canal where boats may lie over; stop-lock, a sort of quay; the bit, a timber-head at the bow of the boat. Snub her! is a phrase of command, meaning, "Tie the boat to a post on the bank." Pipe-poles are steering-poles. The stern pile (of coal on this canal) is in a large crib near the stern and just in front of the cabin, and is placed in this particular part of the long and unwieldy boat in order to make her obey the helm better. Timber-heads project above the deck to "snub" lines on. Tow-posts are short upright posts near the bow, to which the tow-line is fastened. The combings are the pieces the hatches rest on and surround the hold in an oval form. The wale-plank is the edge of the deck, projecting out over the water like a welt around the entire circumference of the boat.

It may surprise many persons to learn that on the tablelands of the Alleghany Mountains there are still thousands of square miles of virgin forests of hemlock and pine through which roam bears and deer in considerable numbers. The hemlock trees are rapidly succumbing, however, to the axe of the lumberman and the bark-peeler. Bark-peeling is the great industry there, almost every mountain-hollow along the lines of the few railways that have penetrated the region in Pennsylvania having its tannery in active operation. This tanning business, by the way, is in a very prosperous condition, owing to the foreign demand for the liquor extracted from the bark as well as to the steadiness of the leather market. There is a primitive freshness in the life of the mountaineers and lumbermen of the Alleghanies like that of the mining regions of the far West. There is a sprinkling of Canadians among the lumbermen, and as a whole they are the most honest, good-natured, childlike set of men in existence. They are the true priests of those high and dim-green temple-aisles—priests of Nature one might call them. The cabins of the bark-peelers are made of rough, sweet-smelling hemlock planks. The smell of the hemlock bark is fresh and tonical, and appetizing in the highest degree. The men eat fabulous quantities of food: some require five meals a day. I well remember my first meal in a mountain hemlock shanty. Imagine a long table of unpainted boards with X-shaped legs, and along each side of the table benches for seats. Let there be upon the table three large bowls of black sugar, here and there towering stacks of white bread (the slices an inch thick at least), and beside each cover a teacup and saucer, a huge bowl filled to the brim with steaming-hot apple-sauce, together with a bowl of the same dimensions containing beans. Now blow the supper-horn, and hearken to the far halloo from the mountain-side. Twenty blowzed and bearded men, ravenous and wild-eyed with hunger, presently file into the room. They sit down: there is an awful and solemn silence—they are evidently impressed with the momentous importance of the occasion. You find your face growing long; you think of funerals; make a timid and humble remark which you hope will be acceptable and within the range of their comprehension. No answer: you evidently have their pity. No word breaks the sullen silence, except an occasional request to pass something, uttered with an effort as if the speaker had the lockjaw. The meal is bolted with frightful rapidity, generally in five or six minutes. I remember that I was considerably scared and dazed, on my first acquaintance with these mountain-fauns, at seeing such a systematic snatching and grabbing, such a ferocious plying of knives and forks and rattling of cups, by those huge-limbed, brawny, whiskered fellows.

It is difficult to describe the perennial beauty of the hemlock trees, with their dark, rich foliage-masses and aromatic odor. It seems a sacrilege to destroy them so ruthlessly. When stripped of their bark and stained with the dark-red sap, they look like fallen giants spoiled of their armor, lying there prone and white-naked, as if there had been a battle of the giants and the gods. These giants were perfumed, it seems. Their huge green plumes are now withered and torn, and their red blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground on every side.

Everything is on a large scale in these mighty forests. The horizon of your life noiselessly widens, rolls gradually back into immeasurable distances, and "deepens on and up." There is elasticity and stretch in your thoughts. If you have read Richter, his towering, godlike dreams of time and eternity here find their fit interpretation. He had his Fichtelgebirge, and you have your hemlock mountains. Life seems heroic once more: you exult in existence, and fondly think that here you could be happy for ever. To live far away from the cruel, hurrying world in a sweet little hamlet you wot of, sunk in the heart of the mountains at the bottom of a deep, mossy mountain-chalice—a chalice of richest chasing and filled with the pure wine of God, the mountain-air; to live there during the long summer days; to stand in the flush of dawn with bared head and inhale the fragrance of the dew-drenched grass and the scarlet balsams; to walk with hushed step through the wide forests, communing with the powerful sylvan spirits that labor there, watching with what miraculous delicacy of touch their unseen fingers weave the rich fantastic shrouds of fern and moss that deck the dead and fallen trees or anon give to the living their faint and mottled tints of green and gray;—to live thus through the summer hours, and through autumn, winter, spring watch the unrolling of the gorgeous scroll of Time,—this, you think, were living to some purpose!—WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP

THE PARIS SALON OF 1880

The Salon (official) catalogue contains this year 696 pages. There are 3957 paintings exhibited; 2085 designs, sketches in charcoal and watercolors; 30 engravings on stone, etc.; 111 designs for architecture; 46 specimens of lithography; 701 pieces of sculpture; 305 eaux-fortes; and 54 specimens of monumental art—in all 7280 objects. Though we all thought last year that the number of paintings exhibited was immense, this year the number is 917 more. Alas for the poor critics! How many an additional ache that implies for them! Still, as we have a cozy reading-room at the Palais de l'Industrie—an innovation of this season for the benefit of those who get tired of looking at the pictures and wish to "take a rest"—the weary critic may enter and take a seat (if he can find one unoccupied, which is highly improbable), and there write out his "notes," as I am doing at this moment.

While standing in front of a charming picture by Dagnan-Bouveret (Un Accident), I felt a soft arm brush gently against mine, and glancing down recognized the capricious Sara Bernhardt. Yes, Sara was there, leaning on the arm of Mr. Stevens, the Belgian painter who is credited with finishing Sara's paintings, and followed by her son Maurice and a little retinue of admirers, mostly young men—artists and actors—and stared at with persistency by all who saw her pass. "There goes Bernhardt!" "Did you see Bernhardt?" were the remarks on all sides. Her head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice with the same colored chevelure.

The Salon this year contains at least four good—one might almost say great—pictures. Of these four, the one to which popular opinion seems to award the grande médaille d'honneur, is Bastien-Lepage's Jeanne d'Arc. This large painting (3-15/100 mètres by 3-45/100 mètres) represents the Maid at the moment when, seeing the vision of the Virgin, she is inspired to go forth and save her country. A peasant-girl, strong and muscular, she leans against a tree, her face uplifted to heaven and aglow with a noble inspiration. The cottage in the background, the trees and weeds in the middle distance, the distribution of light and the subdued tones of this impressive picture, are all excellent. Some critics object to the artist's perspective, but I fancy that is a bit of hypercriticism.

Then comes Fernand Cormon's Flight of Cain, suggested by Victor Hugo's lines:

  Lorsqu' avec ses enfants couverts de peaux de bêtes,  Échevelé, livide au milieu des tempêtes,  Caïn se fut enfui de devant Jéhovah.

This canvas is one of the largest in the Salon—4 by 7 mètres. The chief figures are grandly painted and the whole picture is very impressive.

Alphonse Alexis Morot's Good Samaritan is an exceedingly strong picture. The Samaritan is represented holding upon his own beast the poor maltreated Jew and walking by his side. The figure-painting is wonderful in its vigor and verve.

The fourth picture is Alexandre Cabanel's Phèdre. The source of the artist's inspiration was the well-known passage from Euripides: "Consumed upon a bed of grief, Phèdre shuts herself up in her palace, and with a thin veil envelops her blonde head. It is now the third day that her body has partaken of no nourishment: attacked by a concealed ill, she longs to put an end to her sad fate." Phèdre, as she lies wishing only for death as a surcease of sorrow, gazed upon with solicitude by her pitying attendants, is a vivid picture of all-consuming grief. The decorative work of the bed and the wall is chaste and classic.

Of the minor pictures, that of Dagnan-Bouveret, Un Accident, is one of the best. It is indeed a rare picture in the excellence of its execution in every detail. A boy has been badly wounded in the wrist by some accident, and the surgeon is engaged in dressing the injured part. The dirty foot of the boy as it peeps out beneath the chair, shod in a rough sabot which fails to conceal its grime, the bowl standing on the table half full of blood and water while the wrist is now being skilfully bandaged by the surgeon, whose operations are watched with great solicitude by the group of sympathetic relatives,—all these features give a living interest to this painting which is unusual. The red, grimy hands of the old mother of the boy are very faithfully painted. The expression on the lad's face of heroic endurance and a determination not to cry in any case is touching.

As for Mademoiselle Sara Bernhardt's La Jeune Fille et la Mort—a veiled skeleton coming up behind a young girl and touching her on the shoulder—it would attract little attention if it had not been signed by the flighty (and lately fleeing) actress. The verses underneath the picture are the best part of it:

  La Mort glisse en son rêve, et tout bas:  "Viens," dit elle,  "L'Amour c'est l'éphémère, et je suis l'immortelle."

The great names—Meissonier, Gérôme, Munkacsy, Madrazo, Berne-Bellecour, Détaille, De Neuville, Rosa Bonheur, Flameng, etc.—are conspicuous this year by their absence from the catalogue of the Salon. It is whispered that the reason Munkacsy does not exhibit is because the administration of the Beaux-Arts saw fit to place the pictures by foreign artists separately in the Galérie des Étrangers. An "impressionist" artist-friend of mine—Miss Cassatt, the sister of Vice-President Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company—says that the reason these distinguished artists do not exhibit any more is that they are disgusted with the way in which the Salon is conducted by Edmond Turquet, the present sous-secrétaire aux Beaux-Arts, and the very unfair acts committed in the awarding of medals, admission of pictures, etc.

M. Jean Jacques Henner's La Fontaine is a true Correggio in delicacy and clearness of tone. His treatment of the flesh is peculiar, and much envied by many a Paris artist. In this picture the nymph, leaning over the fountain, is dressed in a very inexpensive costume—in fact, the same fashion that Mother Eve introduced into Eden. There in the placid water the beautiful creature contemplates the reflection of her face, and seems to breathe, with all her being, those charming lines of Lafenestre:

  Heure silencieuse, où la nymphe se penche    Sur la source des bois qui lui sert de miroir,  Et rêve en regardant mourir sa forme blanche    Dans l'eau pâle où descend le mystère du soir.

Gustave Jacquet's Le Minuet is one of those pictures which fascinate and draw us back again and again. A rarely-beautiful girl is dancing the minuet, surrounded by a group of her friends, beautiful blonde girls and a fair-haired young man. The costumes are perfectly exquisite, yet there is not too much chiffonnerie in the picture. There is a remarkable effect of depth in the painting of the figure of the dancing girl, especially at the feet and at the bottom of her skirt. Perhaps the only criticism that could fairly be passed upon M. Jacquet's picture is that there is too much of mere "prettiness" about his principal figures.

A curious feature in this year's exhibition is that there are three pictures of the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday, two of which are hung in the same room. There are also three paintings representing a scene from Victor Hugo's Histoire d'un Crime, "L'enfant avait reçu deux balles dans la tête." The child is represented in Henry Gervex's picture as being lifted up by his friends, who are examining the poor little wounded, bleeding head. It is powerful in composition and a very thrilling, realistic picture. The other two representations of this subject are by Paul Langlois and Paul Robert.

Gustave Courtois's Dante and Virgil in Hell: The Circle of the Traitors to their Country, is a picture very much studied by all the artists who visit the Salon because of its strange landscape, its wonderful effect of the glacial formations and its marvellous effects of color. Benjamin Constant's Les Derniers Rebelles is one of the best efforts of this artist, so fruitful in scenes drawn from Morocco and Egyptian life. He has depicted the sultan going forth in great splendor from the gates of the city of Morocco, surrounded by his army and courtiers, and before him are brought, either dead or alive, all the principal chiefs of the revolted tribes. There is much that is noble in the composition, and the coloring is perfect.

The arrangement of the pictures this year is not altogether satisfactory to the artists. A radical change has been made—grouping all the hors-concours men by themselves, and all the foreigners by themselves, and crowding about one thousand pictures out of doors into the corridors which run around the garden of the Palais de l'Industrie. A friend of mine saw a French artist mount a stepladder and deliberately cut out of the frame his picture and carry it away with him, because it was so badly hung.

The Illustrated Catalogue of the Salon is a somewhat remarkable work. It is specially noticeable for the very curious English translations of the titles of some of the paintings. For instance, the title of Gabriel Boutel's picture, Bonne à tout faire—a soldier seated with a baby in his arms—is rendered, Maid for anything(!). Prière à Saint Janvier is rendered Prayer AT Saint Januarious. Le Cabaret du Pot d'Étain is translated The Tavern of the Brass POT (instead of Pewter Mug). Ed. Morin's Promenade en Marne is A F_rip on the Marne!_ Our friend from Boston, Edwin Lord Weeks, is mentioned as "LORD" Edwin Weeks! But the best of all is La Cruche cassée, translated The Broken PIG! The title of another picture is (in the catalogue) _Good-bye, Swee_L hart!

Out of the 3957 oil paintings exhibited, our country is represented by 113 pictures, the productions of 83 Americans. Then we claim 13 of the aquarelle painters, and there are in addition 11 natives of the United States who exhibit designs in charcoal, sanguine, gouache, and paintings on either porcelain or faïence; also 7 sculptors—in all, 114 of our compatriots whose works are in the present Salon. New York claims the lion's share of these artists, 40 being accredited to that State. Of the remainder, 18 are from Boston, 13 from Philadelphia, 6 from New Orleans, 3 from Chicago, 2 from Toledo, 2 from San Francisco, etc. etc.

I think it will be generally admitted that the only really strong pictures exhibited by the American artists are John S. Sargent's portrait of Madame Pailleron (wife of the author of L'Étincelle) and his Fumée d'Ambre Gris; Henry Mosler's Toilette de Noce; D.R. Knight's Une Halte; Miss Gardner's Priscilla the Puritan; F.A. Bridgman's Habitation Arabe à Biskra; Charles E. DuBois's Autumn Evening on Lake Neuchâtel; and Edwin L. Weeks's Embarkment of the Camels and Gateway of an Old Fondak in the Holy City of Sallée (Morocco)—both of which were sold immediately after the opening. Of course there are several other good pictures by our compatriots, and some that possess great merit. But the ones indicated above are the only ones which (excepting Picknell's two landscapes, Sur le Bord du Marais and La Route de Concarneau) have called forth any special notice from French critics or in any way attracted much of the public attention thus far. Mr. Sargent is a surprise and a wonder to even his master, Carolus Duran, whose portrait, painted by Sargent, attracted great attention in the Salon of last year and received an "honorable mention." He has painted this year a full-length in the open air, producing a very sunny, strong out-door effect. The hands attract much praise, but opinions vary as to the face. His Fumée d'Ambre Gris represents a woman of Tangiers engaged in perfuming her clothing with the fumes from a lamp in which ambergris is burning. The white robes of the woman set off against a pearly-gray background, the rising smoke, the curiously-tinted finger-nails of the woman, and the rich rug on which the lamp stands, combine to make a very notable and curious picture.