El hospital de la transfiguración (Impedimenta) (Spanish Edition)

El hospital de la transfiguración

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We know what the corruptions of slum existence are to white people: Apart from Christianity, with the best intentions, one may go very far astray if one takes up a partisan attitude. For us the question is not of the rights of man, but of the purpose of God, " Who will have all men to be saved. Boegner Director of the Paris Missionary Society has so admirably said: Starting for the Victoria Falls. This irritating regulation prevails throughout South Africa. We have very little luggage, as we are only allowed to take lb. Quite a number of passengers ; one wonders what they can all be going north for.

The mail just arrived informs us that M. CoiUard's new tent, ordered from England, is awaiting us at Mbangi Tank, the present terminus ; and the transport agent from whom we have hired the cart says he will lend us another tent gratis, "considering M. CoiUard's position in the country," so we have no more misgivings on that score.

The railway runs for twelve hours from Bulawayo, through a teak forest ; not Burmese teak certainly, but a very hard red timber, which, though it grows to no great size, would be excellent for railway sleepers, but for the white ants. Here they have to use iron sleepers. The road runs absolutely straight for seventy-two miles ; the longest stretch but one in the world without a curve. The train carries natives to work on the line, goods of every kind, and several tank trucks, which are filled at the places where there is water, and emptied at the wayside camps where there is none.

He had no family to support, and I fear he found us rather unsympathetic on the subject. I am sitting on a box in a cattle truck roofed, happily at Mbanji Tank Station. From here on there is as yet only a construction line. Per- sonally, I prefer it to the first class on this line ; more room and more air. We ought to have been at Mbanji at 7 p. By this time it was dark, and I was extremely hungry, not having had anything since 5.

Our fellow-passengers were having an impromptu concert in the second-class part of our corridor car. Sentimental ditties unknown to me, then something patriotic, next some evening psalms our two young Dutchmen, I suppose, the Boers traveUing by the same train joining in. Now an unmistakably EngUsh voice is singing, solo, " Lead Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom " ; a general chorus, " All people that on earth do dwell," instantly followed by a music-hall patter song and others of the same sort.

A sultry cloudy evening. We reached Mbanji Tank three and a half hours late ; a black night, no stars. Blazing camp fires fitfully lighted up a few iron sheds, against a background of trees and brushwood. A welter of Matebele boys and passengers in shirt-sleeves precipitated themselves on their luggage, by the light of lanterns which are always being whisked away just when you want them.

The station-master says we may sleep in the other train, which is fortunate, as there is certainly nowhere else to sleep ; the first-class carriage is the only hotel. I share it with a lady, Mrs. Robin Bolitho, who has just come down from the Falls with her husband and brother. They arrived at the Falls one morning, admired them all day, and left the same night, as they have to go up the East Coast to Uganda, visit Entebbe and get back to England by October!

Owing to their driver's dawdling, they missed the Bulawayo 46 Good-bye to Civilization train here, and had to spend three days sleeping in trucks in this desolate place, which they might have spent at the Zambesi. The line is open for four hours farther on, but only trucks are running with road material.

The engine leaves at 6 a. Our gratitude was premature as it turned out. Half the night I watched blanketed figures rolling them- selves up and huddling over their fires ; tried to sleep — impossible. The fact was borne in upon me that an air- cushion on the top of a hard bag is a very wretched pillow, and it was all Z. We were all locked in. For hours our train shunted and whistled, the engine was making up her train for next day. Suddenly wakened by a terrific jolt and shrieks from everybody. All the guns in the racks had been thrown down by the shock on to the people sleeping below.

Great difficulty in finding any ; at last a few drops are produced from a tea basket. Woke feeling it was 5 a. Pitch dark — no lamps, no matches. Brummer, one of our Dutchmen, brought a lantern, so that I could collect my things and leave this train for ours. We all sat on the sand in the grey dawn, watching natives straying about with lanterns. Our kind fellow-travellers handed us tea from the train — our canteen was with Z. Hereupon he bustled up, just out of his bed.

Too late — the early morning train had left! He had overslept himself, but did his best to make up for it by offering us his house to breakfast in, and some fresh eggs. So we had a civilized meal, the last for some time. While consuming it, I noticed that the mail bags for the interior confided to his custody had burst, and their contents were littered all over the floor, mixed up with his personal belong- ings.

C, a railway employe, kindly invited us to dine at his house. His wife had wanted us to come to breakfast, but he could not find us. They spoke heartily of the intercourse they had had with our missionaries a few weeks before, and of a service 47 The New Zambesi Trail which the latter had held close by their house, attended by every one in the camp. It is full of railway people, white and native. One of them informed us that the shock we heard in the night was caused by collision with a truck of dynamite, cases, left on the lines in the dark.

A mercy we were not all blown up. We leave the teak and enter the Mopane forest ; trees with butterfly leaves of glossy green, useless for timber, and always indicating poor soil. Many baobabs — it is the elephant among trees as much by its size as by its pachydermatous bark, and the distinctly elephantine character of its gigantic curves. Very pretty country ; the line runs round sharp curves and steep gradients under hills crowned with castellated rocks and dark green Euphorbia bushes. We come upon gangs of natives working on different sections of line ; deep guUeys where bridges and culverts are being constructed ; fitted girders and cylinders stand waiting here and there among the trees till their sockets are prepared.

We reached Lukusi, the present railhead, just at sunset 6 p. In the dull red glow, tents and shanties loomed through clouds of dust against the surrounding trees. We found our future driver, H , a typical Boer. They were furnished with Kartels, i. He fetched clean cotton blankets and pillows out of store to make them comfortable for us ; they were just like two little huts.

Our two Dutchmen slept alfresco, as doubtless they had often done before on commando. While Uncle Frank was inquiring about our baggage and especially the tents, I watched the inspanning of a large team of oxen — a novelty to me. It was 48 Good-bye to Civilization a most beautiful sight: The camp is a dreary and hideous spot, but picturesque between lights, the wood fires and lanterns gleaming here and there, and the last glimmer of day illuminating the dust clouds, so that men and beasts seem to move in a dim aureole.

We supped wearily and uncomfortably, too tired to cook and consternated by the discovery that there were no tents! A preceding party had carried off the one bale containing the new tent, not knowing what it was. Uncle Frank and the others will have to sleep on the ground: My waggon tent was very cosy, but a dog, getting under- neath where he was evidently used to sleeping, " shivered my timbers " most disturbingly, and, of course, I thought through my slumbers it was a lion. Off next morning, Wednesday, in the dark. This is real campaigning. We are travelling in a Belingwe cart, which is like a Cape cart, only on two wheels instead of four.

It has good springs and is very comfortable as long as it is going on, but directly the oxen eight of them are out- spanned it drops forward aslant to the ground, so that it is anything but agreeable to sleep in it. Brummer, we left at Lukusi. They are not going to the Falls at all but to Kazungula, the old entrance to Barotseland, with Uncle F. Scarcely had we started than we had to cross the deep dry drift. The cart nearly went over: We had to eat it aftenvards all the same. We pounded on through dusty woods ; but the first trek 49 D The New Zambesi Trail was very delightful nevertheless.

At our first halt, lo a. A man playing a Kangombio, and three pretty young girls beautifully dressed in skins and beads. One in particular would have been a joy to any artist. She wore an antelope skin softly dressed and dyed to match her own rich chocolate colour, and embroidered all over in triangles of red and white beads, and strings of the same here and there a blue one on her head, neck and arms. From the centre of her necklace hung a kind of medallion, a circular piece of ostrich egg-shell pierced in the centre.

Her ear-rings were of copper. By the way, I once saw a native in Cape Town, contemplating Mr. Rhodes' lions at Groote Schuur, wearing a couple of swivel watchkeys as ear-rings, and very neat they looked. The second girl wore strings of huge green and white beads, and a few red ones ; the third had a blanket dyed to a beautiful dark terra-cotta shade, and her front hair arranged in a thick fringe, every woolly lock being threaded through two white beads, on her person she wore many strings of the same.

I walked round them and admired them, which seemed to gratify them very much: I wished I could have carried off some of their finery, but these things were betrothal gifts from their prospective bridegrooms, so they would not have parted with them ; and besides it is not permitted to carry skins about for fear of infection on account of the rinderpest. Another thing is that the beautiful texture of the embroidered leather was due to the grease rubbed all over it: The scenery here was lovely: A highly scented sort of honeysuckle shrub grew here, attracting butterflies.

The water, however, was shocking ; it looked like cafe an lait, so we did not use it. As it takes too long to boil and filter water and leave it to cool, the custom is to quench one's thirst with tea or coffee. Ima-Kombiri makes both, the best you ever 50 Good-bye to Civilization tasted, with the worst appUances — just dropping the tea leaves or ground coffee into the kettle the water is boiled in. We use Ideal Milk, which is better than condensed.

Here we changed oxen. H , our Boer driver, says he will go all night if we like: The next trek was hotter and indeed very trying, through the coal forest to Wankie's Coal Fields, which we reached at midday. The dust was black and so voluminous we could not see even the hind oxen. The dark shale cropped out of the ground: We were half -choked. In these blackened woods one thing is unsmirched, an exquisite pale flower, growing scantily on a bare slender stem, and lifting its delicate sprays, faintly tinted, towards the light.

Each blossom has a purple heart: We all look like stokers, and I feel quite ashamed to dismount at the " boarding-house. We dined on four courses of tinned meat with tea: We outspanned at 4. Before I am out of the cart, Ima-Kombiri seems to have a fire alight and the kettle filled. The vehicle is simply a wooden box or tray with seats, hooded, but without side curtains — a serious omission. It only holds four with luggage. We could not get a wagonette, which would have been better for camping, as it forms one tent above and another below: Here we had trouble with our driver, who, in spite of his previous assertion that he could trek all night, thought he had done enough for the day and wanted to camp at once.

We knew that if he did not make three stages in a day we could not arrive when we wished, so Uncle Frank insisted upon going on. It ended in victory, but our man was in a fury.

He is a primitive person, a Cape Dutchman named H , a volcano of ardent feelings — mostly good, but childishly uncontrolled ; handsome, kind-hearted, full of a winning simplicity. He fought with the Boers in the war, has since been campaigning in Somaliland. He passes on to the perfections of his wife, only fifteen when he married her two years ago. I can keep my wife. I can get I2s. I could drive eight horses when I was five years old. The " leader " is a native who walks in front holding the trek chain to guide the team. I do not wonder he didn't want to go on. The new moon is very beautiful, the slender crescent hangs horizontally between its horns: But lovely as it is, it gives a very poor light, and our road is very bad, up and down ravines, over rocky torrent-beds, all through the woods.

My neck felt broken long before we reached the outspan. H , beginning to recover his temper, talked cheerfully about the lions which abound from Wankie's onward. All day I had been wishing to hear a lion roar — a desire which the advent of darkness considerably modified. For a transport rider to leave his gun at home is like an Alpine guide forgetting his rope. It always does," Illustrative 52 Good-bye to Civilization anecdotes failed to reassure me.

I addressed the question to Uncle Frank. He suggests trusting in Providence. This seems a better plan, especially if one is a bad shot. Knowing a gun would be of no use to ine if I had one, I decided not to worry about it till the lion appeared. We camped at a very lonely spot on a hill — just a scherm or stockade for the oxen, and some lean natives in charge of it. Quite dark but for camp fires by this time. The natives rephed — " How can we get water from a mile away when there are lions about, and we have not been paid for two months?

I felt much happier when he came back alive, and almost inclined to pour the water out on the ground, ex voto, like David. The cart, unharnessed, was all on a slope, but boxes and cushions transformed it into a very acceptable sleeping place for me. I woke up and thought I did, but it was only the snorting of the oxen. The camp fires were out, no one was watching. I wondered what I should do in the morning when I arose and found a family of lions feasting on my protectors, who were slumbering in the open air.

But we were not molested, not even by mosquitoes.

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A beautiful open country, long grass and sparse trees, now leafless: Indeed it is like a rather neglected park. Our first halt was in a lovely spot, where there was nice clean coarse sand like the seaside, instead of the dirty impalpable dust everywhere else. We are crossing a high plateau ; a dry and thirsty land indeed. I, who never suffer from thirst, wanted to be drinking water all the time.

H says, " Here is the lion's walk, where I always see liis spoor tracks. Very steep descents, twice we had to get out and walk down a hill. We alighted and walked down to the river, a real river with water in it. Just 53 The New Zambesi Trail as I was thinking how much a human figure would improve the landscape, we saw a man by the wayside.

A gun, a roll of blankets and a tin kettle seemed to comprise his effects. A prospector has been defined as " a man who has no prospects, and lives on them," and certainly this seemed to be true of those we met from time to time. They all looked half starved and tired out. Some are commissioned and paid by mining companies, but most are working independently. There are very many up and down the country ; one seldom meets them on the beaten track. They live on what they can shoot or find — and that is very little. One longed to give him a good meal, but if he had shot anything I dare say he had a better one than we did, for our own campaigning was not luxurious.

We have had hardly any bread and that only what we brought with us. Uncle Frank had left some supplies and cooking utensils in Bulawayo with a friend who entrusted them to his boy. When we called for them, this conversation ensued or something like it. Coillard's bag of flour? We were left to infer that the mice had eaten that also.

Anyhow we have done no cooking on this trip except making coffee and soup. Just beyond the river lay a wide pool with green grass and brushwood and leafy lofty trees, a perfect oasis in the sere woods around. We camped at 6. Here we found two Greeks, one was the sub-contractor for a section of the railway, the other his aide-de-camp. They were on the way to the Zambesi. The country beyond Wankie's is too broken for the railway to run parallel with the road, but at first we kept coming upon bits of it: But now we are in the stiU virgin wilderness.

But I was not at all nervous this time, because we were getting supper two hours earlier than the evening before. I do not know why the prospect of being made a meal of should be so much more alarming when one is hungry oneself, but so it certainly is. As we had outspanned early, but too late to trek again, Uncle Frank said we must be up at 3 a.

We breakfasted, rearranged the cart, packed up our bedding. Uncle Frank went to where he lay sleeping, and considerately — not called him, that were too great an indignity but asked him if he felt better than the evening before, as he had complained of indisposition, due, I fear, to " Cape smoke " or " dop. His business is to conduct " tenderfoot " parties who know nothing of Africa, and to arrange the journey to suit himself. What he would like would be to get up when he chooses, and tell his passengers that he has let them sleep far too long, and that if they don't hurry he won't answer for their safety towards evening.

To find that his employer is a more experienced hand than himself does not suit him at all. Accordingly, he was in a fury, which he worked off upon leader and oxen with kicks and cuffs and vituperations, and upon us by relating all the blood-curdling lion stories his memory could furnish. In reality they covered a considerable area of time and space. But sitting there shivering in the dim starhght, and watching him wave his long whip to emphasize every fatality, I received a general impression that they all began with, " Last week just about here," and one did!

I really can't help it: I breathed more freely when we were back in the cart again. Previously it had seemed a very poor shelter ; but by comparison with the dark rocky road it was a perfect ark of security. We had trudged close behind it, but that was not much comfort, for the lion is said always to jump upon the hindmost.

However, neither then nor afterwards did we see or hear a sign of one, except the lair I mentioned before. The sky was glorious: Presently the stars all seemed to dance, sparkling with a sudden flickering brilliancy ; then they paled as the clear dawn rose in the sky.

For the first time I understood how " the morning stars sang together: We changed oxen at 8 a. The trek lasted till 3. How our driver kept up I do not know, wading all the time ankle deep through choking dust, cracking his whip and shouting to his team. He is most kind and attentive, especially to me. We have been making three treks a day whereas two is usually the maximum. At last at an open space we met a special cart. It contained two men who bowed with effusion, and we were so pleased to meet some fellow-creatures that we responded cordially. A minute later our feelings changed, when we learnt from their driver who was lagging behind at a muddy waterhole, that they had carried off the only relay of oxen at the next outspan, and that their own had gone back to the Falls.

This meant we had to finish our journey with tired beasts, and we had hoped to arrive at the Zambesi that evening, Friday! Well, there was no help for it. We halted at a very pretty 56 Good-bye to Civilization little camp. Scarcely had we alighted when a white man came out of a tent with two hammock chairs, which he placed at our disposal. Nothing could be more welcome. The back of the cart is formed by a loose curtain, and affords no rest for the head, and after being jolted since 4 a.

Guyon, came and talked to us: They could hardly drag along, so we were forced to camp at 8. There was plenty of the long coarse rye-grass about, of which Uncle Frank had hitherto made his couch, but as this was not a proper outspansplaat he had no one to cut it for him, and had to sleep on the hard ground. The oxen lay down beside their gear, relieved only of their yokes.

We supped wearily by the uncertain light of grass fires. Lanterns in- variably burn out just at the critical moment. We had had to send the leader on ahead to the river to bring us the oxen our supplanters had sent there, and Ima-Kombiri had taken his place. It was a new experience for him, and one he did not at all enjoy. No wonder, for we found the poor little boy he is about thirteen or fourteen instead of guiding them, thought he had to take the pole and pull the whole equipage, oxen, cart and passengers by main force. By this time I was quite at home in my cart, and slept delightfully ; nor was I the least nervous about the lions, though this was the night if any ; no shelter of any sort for the oxen, and no one to watch or keep the fires alight.

The lions young may hungry be And they may lack their food ; But they that truly fear the Lord Shall not lack any good. Close by us were about twenty Barotsi, returning home from the mines and starving. They cannot carry enough food to support them on these long journeys. WTiat a boon the railway will be to them! It was half an hour before we reached this place that we had the first glimpse of the Falls from the summit of a hill ; 57 The New Zambesi Trail the towers of spray about three miles off, ghmmering mys- tically in the moonlight on the far horizon. The roar of the cataracts filled our ears all night.

One felt, like Alexander, there were no worlds left to conquer! The stars alone are unattainable.

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Here under their great kindly canopy, how newly the records of Genesis appeal to us. We seem to be transported back to the childhood of the world, and of our race, taking the way- side water and the herbage for our cattle from the immediate hand of Providence, just as Abraham did. One realizes too how the old Voor-trekkers identified themselves with his seed. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Yes, overpowering as surrounding Nature is, we stand upright in the midst, " all things under our feet. For it always eludes him. That boasted dominion — how long does it last?

Just till his next meal time. If food and water fail, the elements triumph over him. There must be some secret of sovereignty we have lost. Shall we ever recover it? We rose at five next morning, and after the usual cup of coffee and the last crust of our bread we started. We had not long to wait before perceiving the columns of spray once more, and at one turn of the road saw through a clearing the great river with its islands and palm- trees looking amid the morning mists like a great opalescent lake set in an emerald ring.

By 9 o'clock we reached the outspan which is quite close to the cataract, so close that the intervening woods quite conceal it. The noise too, strange to say, was much more audible at a distance of two or three miles than close by. After a hasty walk and a glimpse of the Falls, of which we could only see a very small part from this point, we resumed our trek.

We had misjudged the distance from our destination and had thought it not worth while to open a fresh case of provisions so near the end. The heat was very great. Palms and palm-fems abounded, but I must say Kew Gardens is a great improvement upon nature — no doubt that is why Eden needed Adam.

It is the exquisite lawns of Kew Gardens that set off the arborescence to such advantage, while here it springs from the sand, shaggy, straggly, and disfigured by withered branches. Perhaps it is not so in summer ; this season corre- sponds to March at home. Two huge placards affixed to trees flank the highway. Evidently the days of untamed Nature are already gone by.

No question after this, but that N. Rhodesia is a civilized country. At midday precisely we reached the Zambesi at Clarke's Drifts Mr. Clarke is the trader and agent to the B. He owns the steam launch which plies across the ferry. I was disappointed not to cross in a native canoe — till I saw one! The cool breeze crossing was delightful, but we had to wait for the launch an hour and a half: The sun was vertical and penetrated the leafless woods remorselessly.

We had been up since five, and had had no breakfast, a circumstance to which hardened Africans seem quite indifferent, but one requires more than a week to get acclimatized in this respect. The two Greeks we had met once before caught us up here, made lemonade with sparklets and offered us some. H , our driver, also nobly presented me with the remains of an English plumcake.

I don't know which is the more miscellaneous in these out of the way places, the food provided for the body or for the mind. The odd kinds of literature one picks up in a camp are most surprising. On receiving these bounties, I realized for the first time that a tramp's gratitude for what he calls " a poke-out," undemonstrative though it usually is, may really be too deep for words. Mine at least was — but there is a stage of hunger at which the wolf refuses to be appeased except by a square meal. I don't think I shall ever see a " Weary Willie " again, however undeserving, without longing to give him one.

After all, what was I but a tramp myself? I asked myself, and as for " deserving," there isn't a native woman in Africa 60 The Victoria Falls probably who does not lead a more useful and productive life than a South African traveller who is not a scientific explorer. I sat under a tree, wrapped in most recriminating thoughts on this subject ; thoughts which I confess calmer moments have only ripened into convictions.

The industry and resourcefulness of the South African woman, both white and black, fill me with admiration. I don't mean the black woman whom we take unfortunate necessity! The tragedy of her life is that she is a mere chattel, and doesn't want to be anything better ; her higher faculties are dormant ; her life is passed grovelling in the grossest materialism.

But we, with liberty and ideals — are we of equal use to the community? Are our awakened faculties as usefully employed? As for the white women out here, I hope the posterity for whom they are spending themselves will honour them as they ought to be honoured. This is a digression, but not altogether out of place, as one comes for the first time into a pioneer camp, and sees what the life means for the women bred to every comfort and refinement who are " comforting the waste places.

In savage Africa the garden and field is woman's sphere, as the hunting and herding of animals pertains to man. The white women cherish their gardens too. Doubtless it was Eve's first and dearest resource in exile to try and reproduce ever such a little bit of Paradise. As to thistles — one cannot blame the soil of Africa. It was a man — and a Scotchman at that — who introduced them, and now they are a scourge like locusts in some parts — not here as yet, fortunately.

Delightful as our cart journey had been in many ways, it was a very pleasant change to bathe and dine and have a 6i The New Zambesi Trail good rest, first under Mr. Clarke's hospitable roof and then at the mission station, ten minutes away in the bush. Here we were kindly entertained by some friends — settlers — who were occupying the station in the Coisson's absence on furlough.

I was very glad to enter a house that was a " going concern " instead of having to picnic there all the time, as we had expected to have to do. The mission station, which Mr. Coisson has entirely built and planned himself, stands on the peninsula formed by a bend of the Zambesi which flows close behind it, though the front of the house is quite a little walk from our landing place. Within a stake fence stands a spacious church, a cottage with veranda and a high-pitched thatched roof, divided into two rooms, another much smaller cottage divided into kitchen and store, and three or four round huts.

I am lodged in the house itself, ceilings of reeds, walls and floors of mud. There is also close to the front door, a tiny garden with spinach, lettuce, etc. On one side the bush is fairly open towards the river ; thick woods close it on the other sides. A very tall tree grows by the back gate shedding immense blossoms all over the ground. Imagine musk flowers as large as melon flowers and cut out of crimson velvet. The husks of last year's fruit still hang on it, long pods like cucumbers. Seed vessels lie all about, most curious and interesting: Next day, Sunday, August 30, our host sent his boys round with a big bell to the native camp to tell them the missionary invited them to a service at 10 o'clock.

There is really no native population here: These natives were their heterogeneous and ever-changing personal servants, and employes, mostly " untainted by missionary influence. The Victoria Falls For the two messengers came back unsuccessful, charged by the invites to ask " how much the Moruti would pay them if they came? I wanted to go with them but could not catch them up before I missed them in the woods, and wandered for two hours in the blazing sun before finding my way back to camp.

The sun smiting is more literal than figurative. You feel just as if some one was hitting you over the head ; however, I was none the worse. As the natives have moved into the bush, there is no regular congregation as yet. It is a very different thing from Europe: It is always breaking in upon me afresh, how extraordinarily httle we realize that if we would seek and save the lost, we must lay aside our own importance, even on occasion our real and legitimate position.

It seems to be making oneself so cheap to be trudging round, offering people what they don't want, warning them of dangers they don't believe in, trying to rescue them from the very mire they enjoy. But our aloofness will not save many. If we stand on a cliff, let us say, and try to haul a man up to our level from the bottom which we can only do if he has the strength to hold on himself , it requires a much greater leverage than coming down to his level and hauling him up over a pulley at the Top.

It always seems to me that civilization is the former kind of leverage ; and Christianity the latter: By 12 o'clock, Uncle F. One was a " Cape girl," i. Natives seem to love doing things in unison: One must be patient and remember that as with children, love outstrips obedience. Their Saviour is real to them, and I believe He would say oftener than we think, " Their sins which are many are forgiven, for they loved much.

They were in native costume, skins and rags, " like the dyer's hand subdued to that it works in. Soon they all seemed at ease, confiding their bodily and other complaints, and ready to be pleased with the hymn we sang them, " Come to Jesus," which, in Sesuto, they easily committed to memory verse by verse with the refrain. Then they learned John iii. It was just like teaching an Infant Class in a Sunday School except in one particular which, when one comes to think of it, covers nearly the whole ground, namely, that disinterested love conveys no meaning to them, whereas references to evil in all its forms and depths, they understand only too well.

They have no ideals. We have been told this scores of times, but face to face with these blank expressions one realizes that, and understands many other things: We passed a missionary's grave and another, and from the improvised churchyard we passed to the improvised church, namely, Mr. Clarke's dining- room — a round hut — where Uncle F.

Nearly all the residents, Dutch and English, must have turned up ; there 64 The Victoria Falls were twenty inside not counting ourselves and the black- smith's five children, and a few who could not stand the stuffi- ness and stayed outside. There were several ladies. We had three hymns, " Holy, Holy, Holy," " O God our help in ages past," and " Rock of Ages," which every one knew by heart and sang heartily ; we had no hymn books, and couldn't have seen to read them if we had.

There was nothing perfunctory about this service, every one seemed to enjoy it heartily, and it is touching to see the universal respect for M.

There were present the Magistrate, the Controller, the Accountant to the Government and his wife, the Postmaster, the Chemist, several pohce, traders, storekeepers and settlers. It is getting to be quite a community. Moffatt had been up a few weeks before, no other parson for a twelvemonth. I suppose when the railway comes, they will have some one or other. It goes to one's heart to see white people in outlying places starving spiritually, while we are preaching to the natives.

We had two days' rest badly needed before going to visit the Falls. It gave me an insight into the life of a pioneer woman, of whom I saw several. We think of you as Making History and Building up Civihzation. Wednesday, September 2, I wished we could have employed these two days in seeing something of mission-work, but that is the worst of these semi-nomadic people, the Zam- besians. No sooner is a mission station established which 65 E The New Zambesi Trail takes two or three years than the population, having exhausted local resources, decamps to some other neighbourhood, and that is what has happened here.

They have all gone far inland, and are at present being looked after by a native evangelist. Meanwhile this is a strategic point of the highest importance, a transport station for the interior, a sanatorium for the exhausted mission- aries of the Upper River ; and when the railway comes, it will be an important mission centre, as so many of the evan- gelized natives of the Barotse Valley are working on the line, and really need looking after.

This day we started for the Falls, which are six miles off, down-river. We were going with the stream. We could only progress safely by keeping close to the banks, and even then we were always getting into rapids. The water broke over our little steam launch, saturating the screens we made of our biggest and thickest cloaks ; Mrs. The boys had to keep baling, and the craft would not always answer to her helm. In spite of the little naked engine lo horse- power, I beheve going full steam ahead, the slender bronze pistons pumping away for dear life, it was all they could do with the tiller hard astern to keep her head in the right direction.

We stuck in an eddy, then in the rushes, fortunately not on a shoal. This sort of thing lasted over two hours, during which we made only three miles, having to cross at one time to get under the lee of a large island, as the wind and current were too strong on the north bank. It was not very comfortable, especially with the thought that a hippopotamus might come along at any time and complicate matters.

I supposed it was the usual thing, but, when we landed at a creek, the others said they had never known such a stormy passage. We were still three miles from the Falls, but it being the dry season, the water was too low for the launch. Our canoe 66 The Victoria Falls journey occupied an hour of perfect enjoyment. We had considerable difficulty in getting through the rapids, but no danger except of a ducking, as the water was so shallow.

Now and then we had to get out and walk. We saw a hippo, swimming out of harm's way. WTiite feathery rushes waved along the banks, and fringed the lovely islets under the tall palms. We saw no water birds, however: On the islets the grass grows very fine and slender, mingled with bright pink blossoms. It is too early for the flowering season, but we found a few, corresponding curiously in colour, appearance and habit with European flowers of a totally different family, as e. At last we landed, perceiving no hint of the Falls, only seeing before us a screen of rocky-based bright green forest, apparently closing in the river, like a lake.

Ten minutes' walk brought us to the camp, on a cliff which literally overhung the gorge, and we saw the cataract thundering down into the BoiUng Pot at our feet. The walls of the chasm, feet high, were spanned by a rainbow 11 a. We gazed, had our lunch, gazed again, and set off walking to other points of view.

The charm of these Falls lies not in the one overwhelming crash as at Niagara, but in the cumulative effect of various glimpses, the matchless beauty of the surroundings, and the strangeness of the whole setting, but chiefly in the columns of spray the Thundering Smoke , and in the ever-changing rainbows. As every one knows, the mile-wide river suddenly drops into a yauTiing crack in the ground, stretching right across the stream at right angles to the banks, a foaming trough, quite narrow, of which the walls rise feet above the surface of the water.

How deep they are below I do not know. To this trough there is only one small exit, near the north bank, through which the whole furious mass of water forces its way, and enters the deep gorge, winding for fifty miles farther on. Uncle Frank took many photographs. We stopped in our walk at the site where the bridge is to be. At present it is crossed by four wires, and a copper telephone wire at a slightly different angle, glittering in the 67 The New Zambesi Trail Sim. I believe these wires had just that morning been laid.

The first was fired across by a rocket. We had returned to the camp for a rest, when Uncle F. One of these was Mr. Beresford Fox, son of Mr. Imbault, a Frenchman, from Marseilles, in the service of the Cleveland Bridge Company of Darlington, which has the contract. You may be sure it was a very agreeable surprise to Uncle F.

Imbault seems very young for such an important responsibility. He was delighted to meet Uncle F. Till April, , when the bridge material is expected to arrive, he will be building his house near the site of it, and he said, " When your missionaries come to Sesheke Lower River for the conference next year you must all come and visit the Falls, and I will entertain you at my place.

Tulloch and myself sharing one. Darkness soon fell, and we sat on the cliff edge and watched the ghostly water. A pale rainbow lay across the chasm, white in the moonlight. The clouds of spray rose up like disembodied spirits. After supper I came back alone. The aspect seemed changed: Holding on to a tree, I bent over the brink and listened.

A fearful sound ascended like drums and thunder, mingled with the chattering shrieks and laughter of the baboons. It seemed like looking into hell. There is nothing like it except the closing chapters of the Apocalypse, just as there is nothing like Niagara, except its opening passages — the sea of glass, the emerald-circled throne, and the majesty that speaks peace, not terror. But Mosi-oa-Thunya images nothing but the Dies Irae.

The spot where our party camped 68 The Victoria Falls is the brow of a great cliff jutting in front of the Fall, the Knife Edge. After an early breakfast, Uncle F. It was too much of a scramble for Mrs. However, one had an enjoyable feeling of Pioneering mth a big P. It was all our fancy pictured it in Jungle, Peak and Plain and similar books of childhood. Baboons jumping overhead along the thick lianas roping the palms and other forest trees together, so that we had to hew our way through — no path!

But how much more thrilling and adventurous our sensations used to be in exploring a preserve at home: If we had only had a good big axe to " pioneer " with in those days as we had here, these early explorations might have ended less ignominously than they generally did. Emerging we found ourselves on the brink of the Boiling Pot ; we could not see the Fall at all, only a narrow passage like the Lorelei, about loo yards wide and the cliffs feet high where the whole great Zambesi passes between two points of rock and turns sharp round a corner.

The ground shakes under one's feet. What must the depth be! On our return we found the camp struck. We had a difficult journey back — one of our party seriously ill lying in the bottom of the skiff. Our journey up the rapids took three hours: The atmosphere around the Falls is extraordinarily exhilarating. I suppose it is the cool incessant motion of the air. Anj'how it was for me a day of the most unremitting exertion under the most 69 The New Zambesi Trail unaccustomed circumstances, gone through, not merely with- out any sense of fatigue, but on the contrary with the keenest enjoyment, sorry though one was for the circumstances, which obUged one to be cook, housemaid and hospital nurse for the rest of the day.

The " boys " speared two fish, a kind of bream, quite delicious, and baked them in hot ashes: The white ants are a pest, they make big holes in the floor in a single night, and carry the earth all over the clothes hanging on the walls or over a chair. We left the station at 4 o'clock. We were to have left at 2 p. I was grieved to leave the patient still so ill, though I knew she had friends at hand. She was lying in bed too ill to lift up her head, and yet trying to mix the yeast from some compUcated recipe so that the boys could make bread. These are the ups and downs of African life, even in a lovely spot like this in the fine cool weather.

Picture it then in the hot season, on a remote station where there are no traders, no supplies except one's own, no residents, no chance visitors — mission and schools as well as housework standing still, and perhaps three or four children to be cared for, while the house mistress is unable to move, her husband away, and everything must be left to two or three shiftless and mischievous little servant boys of fourteen or so.

This is no fancy picture, but one often repeated. Life is very difficult just now at the Drift: The Commissioner's camp is beginning to supply vegetables on sale to the settlement. Ima-Kombiri made bread for our journey in an iron pot, but as we had no yeast, and he committed the mistake of kneading the dough with baking powder in it, our provision consisted of lumps the size and colour of his own black head, and weighing like cannon balls.

Soon after we started in the cart on the S. Bank, a native, 70 The Victoria Falls our driver's usual baker, ran out of the woods to him with two light crusty loaves. H insisted upon giving them to us and also some eggs. I don't know what we should have done without them. We camped quite close to the Falls. It was a most exquisite evening, stars twinkhng above the palms in a violet sky, a gUmpse of the spray-cloud above the forest — could you picture a rainbow in pastel tints and thrice its usual breadth?

Anyone who did not know of the cataract would wonder what mysterious portent it could be. This was the great day for the Falls. But it was worth making an effort for. It was marvellous, even though the river is immemorably low just now. We walked from point to point. Rainbows bridged the gulf: It was a carnival of colour. At the edge of the chff grew little green ixias, and the long grass was knotted into bunches, an act of prayer or thanksgiving for a safe journey on the part of numerous natives towards the Spirit of the Falls.

But these manifestations of natural religion, often beautiful and touching as in this case, always end en queue de poisson — in some puerile anti-climax. They are persuaded that we white people manufacture white calico and striped blankets out of the abyss — somehow materializing the fleecy Fall and the rainbows. If ever there were a natural Sanctuary of power and beauty, it is this!

And I am glad to think that even we are not so much a part of surrounding nature as above it. That once known, one sees a thousand glories in the world one never saw before, and yet it no longer fully satisfies. One never feels that more strongly than here where Nature, if anywhere, is perfect: We walked along the slippery rocks facing the Fall. At the centre you could see nearly the whole extent if it were not for the obscuring foam-clouds. As this is low water, they were not so heavy as at flood-time, and every now and then the wind blew them about, and we had glimpses of the cataract thundering down not as one overwhelming avalanche, but in a million Staubbachs.

Then we were caught in the cloud as in a tropical downpour. Blinded for the moment and afraid to move for fear of falling over the edge, I stood in the midst of the warm wafting spray, rainbows glancing all around over the bright pebbles. Rider Haggard plunge " She-who-must-be-obeyed " into an underground furnace to be rejuvenated, when he might so naturally and so much more appropriately have brought her to renew her youth by bathing in this prismatic shower?

I emerged soaked to the skin but completely revived: It is surely the apothe- osis of the water-cure ; and the invigorating effect lasted during the six days of our return journey. It was very hard to tear ourselves away ; indeed I don't know how I could have done so but for the urgent necessity of getting dry clothes.

Flora Poste y los artistas (Impedimenta nº 44) (Spanish Edition)

We left at midday: We went back to the grey dusty camp, and sent Ima-Kombiri who had been carrying the camera with the Coissons' boy, Bonabi, back to the Falls to await Uncle F. This is to save his fare in the post cart when Uncle F. Having no boy to do for us, things are even more difficult, 72 The Victoria Falls especially as all baggage by post cart being charged is.

Now, too, he has to spread his blankets on the rough uneven ground, as there is no one to cut grass for his bed at night. We have stayed too long at the Falls and are travelling against time to catch the train at Bulawayo. At the outspan there is no time to cook, not even at night. We unload the cart while the " leader " makes the fire and fetches the water. Then we make tea, coffee or soup in ten minutes, tear open a tin and divide the contents first setting out our tablecloth on a box with plates and saucers , wash up and perform a hasty toilette.

It was not nearly so hot on the return journey, a cool wind meeting us all the time ; but we had so little luggage there was no ballast for the cart, and oh! WTien the scrub widens out, vast prairies of tall grass look like fields of red wheat against the forest background. We saw no wild creatures except locusts ; the traffic on the road frightens them away.

We crash over all obstacles, nobody ever takes anything out of the way ; young trees, e. One of the things I was not prepared for, is the painful state of hands and ankles from veld-sores. Soft gloves are soothing, but exposure to air or water almost unbearable. I don't know the cause, for there are no mos- quitoes. Otherwise, it is extremely enjoyable, as long as the cart is moving — couldn't be more so.

While we were breakfasting at the Railway Survey Camp called Leo , a gentleman, not the one we had met there before, came and brought us chairs, joined in our morning service, and kindly invited us to dinner. It was very strange to unite in the " Te Deum," three people alone in the wilderness, and very cheering to be reminded in these solitudes that " The Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee, the Father of an Infinite Majesty. Our engineer friend, who has been out since , told us that he had calculated the span for the bridge by triangulation for the Railway Co.

Imbault did it for the Bridge Building Co. The exact distance is feet ; the bridge is to be an arch with girders resting on rock buttresses which Nature has conveniently placed on either side, rising half-way up the cliff. We discussed the wages of native domestic servants, which seem to me preposterous. The railway pays labourers only los. On my asking what they did with all this money, Mr.

At the next camp they told us that the lions as to whose existence I had grown rather sceptical had been prowhng round the kraal after the oxen, since we passed a little more than a week ago. Farther on, we saw platforms in the trees built by the travelling natives to sleep on out of the way of these lions ; they infest the country just here. The full moon rose the same instant the sun set. I love these great skies.

I have only two tiny books with me. One is Bacon's Essays and the other is Silcx Scintillans, and sometimes when it is not too jolty. As travelloLirs when the twiUght's come, And in the sky the stars appear, The past dale's accidents do summe With, Thus wee saw there, and thus here.

We met many natives either coming back from the mines or coming up in gangs to work on fresh sections of the railway. But we saw none hastening south 74 The Victoria Falls to take the places of those returning home. The latter were mostly in very poor condition, some quite starving and emaci- ated, with wolfish eyes, others hardly able to walk. But his comprehension of them would not seem to have kept pace with his study, for at the same age, on the death of his father, he was found wandering off over the moors in search of the kingdom of Heaven, whither, he was told, 1 82 1 rAKEXTAGE 3 his father had gone.

The ' wabster ' who found him in this situation offered to be, and in the event became, a second father to him, in so far as a step- father could supply the place. That he did so in a most excellent decree is proved by his continuing his stepson's education on a higher grade at Dunse Grammar School, where John was the pupil, and in a very short time the favourite pupil, of ' the celebrated Cruickshank.

Cruickshank, however, urged so effectually the assurance of John Brown's ultimate success as a 'seceding preacher,' that the young John was returned to school, where Cruickshank instructed him gratis, and, three years after, appointed him his usher. His ultimate progress towards medical fame was a no easy one.

All chance of his succeeding as a preacher was sacrificed to his unwillingness to submit to a public rebuke for the heinous crime of attending an Episcopal service. He became a laird's tutor, but was dismissed his place or rather manumitted himself because sufficient respect was not paid to his rank, and because he supported a thesis that ' Providence was unjust' by the argument that she so ' frequently made blockheads lairds' This reply being returned to an insulting question from a convocation B 2 4 LIFE OF FORD MADOX BROWN of intoxicated lairds that was held in his employer's house, ensured his dismissal.

He determined to leave the life of ' treading another's stairs,' and, repairing to Edinburgh, earned a living by translating into Latin the inaugural dis- sertations of medical students. This fired him with the idea of ' rolling in his own carriage,' as he put it, and he became a medical student, finally making himself so proficient in that branch of learning that he opened a boarding-house, and, as it were, a private college for medical students. His success with his pupils, and his personal popularity amongst them, were so great that in a short time 'his income was most con- siderable, but his manner of living was by much too liberal for his resources.

Cullen, whose correspondence with a hundred conti- nental learned societies was of necessity carried on in Latin, being himself an indifferent Latinist, made ample use of the ' transcendent ' ] classical abilities of Brown, and extended his patronage to the extent of promising him the then vacant chair of ' Theory of Medicine. At a very advance 1 age, according to Dr. Beddoes,he could quote 'every line that Horace had ever written. Cullen, the doctrines mooted therein were hideously heterodox.

Cullen, therefore, withdrew his countenance from Brown's candidature, with fatal results. Nevertheless, Brown's popularity with his students, and their number, increased daily. Whether for this reason, or out of conscientious dislike to his teachings, which struck at the universal panacea the lancet and prescribed the now accepted doctrine of ' feeding ' rather than ' starving a fever,' his unpopularity among the physicians became greater even than his popu- larity with the students.

Edinburgh students were a class of men to whom the degree was a matter of crucial importance, and they abandoned perforce their popular instructor. His disciples at the time numbered over Somewhat of his popularity was, without doubt, due to his personality, which was remarkable for its bonhomie and goodfellowship. To quote from a letter of Madox Brown on the subject: Brown, although engaged all his life in fierce contests of will and struggles with prejudice, was in his home remark- able chiefly for his lively good temper and his af- fectionate care for his many children, rising by five in the morning to teach his daughters Greek and Latin.

His person, which, in consideration of the eminence of the man ought to have been mentioned with decency if not with respect, is likened to that of the clumsy buffoon of Cervantes; his voice is men- tioned to have been croaking, and his metaphors in conversation, though, according to Dr. Beddoes, vigorous, animated, and agreeable to all around him, were disagreeable to him, by whom his company was not desired a second time. In any case, the fiat of expulsion went forth against Dr. Brown, and, having refused l an invitation to settle in Berlin as body-physician to Frederick the Great, he came to London with the view of establish- ing a practice there.

He made a slow and semi- triumphal progress through the North of England.

Magnitud imaginaria (Impedimenta nº 32) (Spanish Edition)

His convivial faculties rendered him extremely popular, and the story of his ill-usage had turned warm friends 1 There is a certain mystery about this transaction. Brown was certainly invited and refused. A doctor or rather an obscure Welsh ii: To such an extent was his journey retarded by hospitality, that he at last resorted to the expedient of selling his too easily digressing postchaise and horses, and booking the places for himself and his family on a stage-coach. Thus he ultimately arrived in London. Here, after making the acquaintance of the Court of King's Bench and the Fleet Prison for insolvent debtors, he contrived to lay the foundation of an extensive practice, and, moreover, enrolled upwards of new pupils.

Unfortunately apoplexy or, as his calumniators had it, an overdose of his favourite gout-medicine, brandy and opium cut shoit his career at its most prosperous point. He was found dead in his bed on the morning of October 7, His robust per- sonality is preserved in the series of John Kay's ' Edinburgh Portraits,' and a portrait of him was etched by William Blake in In both of them he appears as a somewhat burly man, with a tightly buttoned coat and a substantial bob-wig.

His features are strongly marked and rather hard, but distinctly Scotch in character. After his death his popularity became considerable. The students of Pavia put on mourning for him, whilst those of Gottingen raised a riot in his honour. On the Continent his name is preserved as rillustre fondateur du systcme Brunonien, to quote the French ' Dictionnaire Universelle Biographique. Helena, set himself vigorously to dispute with any medical man who chanced or chose in his presence to oppose Brunonian ideas, invariably turning his back on anyone who proved obstinate in his discussion.

A sufficient evidence of the esteem in which Brown was posthumously held is afforded by the subjoined letter from his son Ford to his grandson Ford Madox: Copland, one of the most eminent visiting physicians, gives me advice gratis, and would not hear of a second fee when he knew who I was, which fortunately he discovered from my likeness to your grandfather's picture, and then would hear of no further fees.

He also gives your Aunt Bessy advice gratis. He is a most amiable, talented man of the first rank, and lectures at the London Institution, where he is much esteemed, although there was a row among the youths, but not among his. In spite of this apparent triumph of his principles after his death, a calumnious ' Life of Dr. John Brown' was issued by Dr. Beddoes, a physician otherwise of note as having been the father of the poet. Brown's ' Life,' prefixed to Brown's works, and an appreciative biographical notice in Dr.

The article on 4 Medicine,' however, does considerable justice to him, and the notice of Brown in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' by Dr. Creighton, is a ' labour of love. John Brown left two sons, one of whom, his biographer, William Cullen Brown, rose to a position of considerable distinction among Scottish surgeons, becoming- President of the Edinburgh College of that faculty.

The second son was, as has been related, Ford Brown, 1 the father of Ford Madox. Although a purser's control of ship's material fre- quently gave him an opportunity of amassing a con- siderable fortune, Ford Brown does not seem to have availed himself of the somewhat nefarious means open to him of turning an honest penny. An episode in one of Captain Chamier's naval romances represents the dying ravings and revelations of thieving by the fever-stricken purser's mate of the ' Arethusa,' of which historic vessel Ford Brown was for a time purser. But the thefts of his mate would tell rather against than for his privnte purse.

After serving through the Napoleonic wars, he retired on little more than his half-pay, and married Miss Caroline Madox, a representative of an ancient Kentish family, claiming descent from the legendary Prince Madoc of Wales. This claim, however, would 1 So called in honour of Dr. Ford, a favourite pupil and friend of John Broun. As far as may be judged from effigies and monu- mental brasses extant in several Kentish churches, his wife's forefathers would seem to have been a race of sturdy and occasionally combative and rebellious yeomen and small gentry, and many shades of the character of the traditional ' Man of Kent ' were not undiscoverable in the nature of Madox Brown.

After his marriage in Ford Brown led a roving life, principally on the Continent, for economy's sake, moving from town to town near Calais, or in the Low Countries. In was born his daughter, named Elizabeth Coffin, in compliment to the famous admiral who had been Ford Brown's captain, and, on April 16, , his son Ford Madox.

I extract the following' from a necessarily unfinished autobiographical sketch dictated to me by the artist on the second day of the illness to which he succumbed four clays later: I remember Brummell very well he said , a venerable old gentleman with a long white beard, who used to take a daily constitutional on the walls, accompanied by a large bull-dog. It must, I should think, have been very nearly at the time of his death but my nurse used to point him out to me and say in an awestruck whisper: Of course this annoyed her a great deal, and she gave the poor brute a kick and called it a bad name.

I shall never forget the dignified manner in which poor Brummell took off his hat and said: As it is -' he replaced his hat and passed on with a bow. I don't suppose the poor fellow had five sous in his pocket. I remember it all very clearly a great deal more so than anything I ever saw in later days.

His childhood was passed in a series of peregrina- tions from France to England. His mother's relations were many, most of them established in Kent, others, however, as far afield as Llangollen, in the heart of wild Wales, and to these worthy people he paid many visits, sometimes with, often without, his parents. Such a life was, of course, more likely to give him a ' knowledge of the world ' than to allow him to receive any very settled education.

A certain childish facility with the violin, which his sister supplemented with guitar accompaniments, made his society much sought after amongst his mother's lady friends ; other- wise his studies progressed little beyond the range of the three ' R's. Drawing was with him a passion that con- tinued, and grew as he grew, and was not merely the malady of paint and pencil incidental to most child- hood. He first copied these hangings, and afterwards launched out into more adventurous designs of huntsmen and dogs that he saw for him- self.

When he was seven years of age his father procured for him an Italian drawing-master, who set him to copy prints after Raphael and Correggio, and some Bartolozzi engravings that were among his mother's art treasures. Ford Brown was at first opposed to his son's obvious trend towards the ungentlemanly life of an artist, and applied to Sir Isaac Coffin, the commodore, for his influence to procure a midshipman's berth for the young Ford.

At the age of thirteen, too, the life of a ' sucking Nelson ' offered great attractions to the young artist, who cordially disliked the routine of copying to which successive private masters subjected him, and, but for an estrangement of his father from his patron, it is not improbable that the future painter of Work would have experienced the hard lot of the midship- man's mess, and have died ' a superintendent of coastguards on the retired list' Such dangers are, however, incident to most artistic careers, and Ford Brown, a shrewd man, who had gained little but rheumatism and half-pay during his long service, was well aware of the small chance of i 4 LIFE OF FORD MADOX BROWN success open to a young man unless supported by powerful interest at the Admiralty.

In Belgium, more- over, he saw how honours and emoluments awaited a successful artist, and, sacrificing his pride of place to the desire for his son's success, he removed with his family to Bruges, and enrolled his fourteen-year-old son among the students of the Academy under Gregorius, a pupil of the great David.

It is possible that a portrait of Ford Brown, senior, painted by his son in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, contributed not a little to this end. For a painter of that age, with very little education, the picture is a remarkable one. Grown now so dark with age l that nothing is visible but the head and hands, the decided drawing and the characterisation are surprisingly powerful.

When the methods and abilities of his instructors are considered, one is at a loss to know whence he drew his inspirations. His studies under Gregorius of Bruges, which continued for a year, and under Van Hanselaer of Ghent, which lasted somewhat longer, seem to have done little more than temporarily extirpate any indi- viduality that he may have possessed. A portrait of his sister Eliza, in my possession, and painted at the end of his seventeenth year, is singu- larly bad, and save as an example of how indifferent 1 This was the case when I last saw the picture.

The reproducer's camera has revealed more than was then visible ; but this does not render necessary any material change of opinion. Two other pictures were painted in the years and , but neither of them is now traceable. One, his first composition, was life-size, and represented a Blind Beggar and his Child. His second work, entitled Showing the Way, was given away ; a study of a Head of a Flemish Fishwife was traceable to a later date, being ' exchanged with five other studies of the same and slightly later periods for the large picture of Chaucer in the year At the end of this period the extended reputation of Gustaf, Baron Wappers, the distinguished fresco- painter, induced Madox Brown's parents to migrate to Antwerp that he might have the benefit of that master's tuition.

Accordingly, during the years and they made Antwerp the centre of their occa- sional flights to English, Welsh, and French towns. Madox Brown lived sometimes with them and some- times in Bohemian lodgings in or in the neighbour- hood of the Rue des Peignes. He lived en pension at the ' Hotel du Pot d'Etain,' occupying a mansarde with his almost lifelong friend Daniel Casey. Living was not expensive, and on his weekly allowance of 20 francs he fared not at all ill.

The interests of the ' Pot d'Etain' centred largely in the cuisine. Except on those evenings when their purse would not admit of a visit to the opera, they spent little of their time at their own rooms. The classes at the Academy began early in the morning and lasted till midday, and attendance was compulsory if the prize was to be gained.

Midday was the dinner-hour. There were three rates of pay- ment at the pension. Twenty sous a day commanded lodging, the morning's coffee, dinner, and supper. Fifteen meant ostensibly the same, but the dinner was skilfully timed to be on the table exactly two courses before the officers were released from drill-parade. They were all ' qninze-sous ' pensionnaires, and, out of deference to their feelings, it was arranged that the soup and ragout should have disappeared from the board to give place to a great bowl of potatoes which formed the third course, and arrived at the table just as the first officer dashed into the room.

He would unbuckle his belt, cast it and the sword into the corner behind the door, and without further ceremony fall to, in which example he was followed by his fellow-officers. The artists returned to the atelier in the afternoon, and worked till light failed them, Madox Brown in particular being an indefatigable worker. In the evening a penny purchased a great piece of hot ' gallette,' or a paper cone full of roasted chestnuts, whilst five sous gave admission to the theatre.

When the necessary centimes were not forthcoming there remained the pension supper and an evening spent in leaning out of the window smoking enormous Studentenpfeifen filled with 'canaster' or 'varinas. But she did not deign to look up ; I suppose she must have known what we were up to.

She stamped on one of the bunches of violets, and that was how I came to know that she had small feet, but I don't think I ever saw her face. There was not much dissipation, and in what there was, Madox Brown, although taking an occasional share, did not participate to any large extent ; a fact due as much to his passion for work as to his parents' influence. In addition to ' telling a good tale,' he could ' sing a good song,' and possessed a bass voice well adapted for rendering such masterpieces as ' 'Tis Jolly to Hunt. These various faculties rendered him popular with his fellow-students, and although in time both instrumental and vocal powers deserted him, he retained several of their favourite tales that he told in a curious Belgian- French, with occasional lapses into Walloon.

During the first two years of his Antwerp life he painted two pictures, one of which, a Friday of the Poor, was given away, the other, Job among the Ashes, after being exhibited at Ghent in , being sent over to England in , in the hope of its finding a purchaser as the Blind Beggar had done.

Another work of was a Head of a Page, of which Madox Brown painted a finished picture, which was given away. A charcoal study for it survives, entitled Domestique qui rit. Both are works of really remarkable vigour, the Elizabeth especially being an almost violent study of a hard- featured face under the influence of sudden passion. In January of Madox Brown's family made the visit to England during which his father wrote the letter quoted on p.

There had been some thought of Maclox Brown accompanying his parents, but at the time his health was weak and the effects of winter travelling were feared. He remained working at the Academy, and painting a picture of 'Colonel Kirke,' 1 concerning which his father writes to him from England: I forgot to tell you the principal.

I feel convinced your improvement keeps pace with my most sanguine hopes, professionally, I mean, but you say nothing about your health, which gives us a deal of anxiety. The complaints were weakness of the heart and lungs, due to overgrowth. Under cover of the same letter his mother writes: The other four pounds is to enable you to do another picture.

It is not so much money makes your papa want you back, as to send you of little messages and waste your time for him, for he is just as figity after Eliza, he wants someone to grumble at. His mother was a woman of very sweet temper, who, whilst humouring and soothing her husband, contrived to smooth the way for her son, sending him little sums of money for a corps de reserve, lest his father's mind should change as to the money matters.

At last his mother found the English climate disappeared at the time of their owner's death, I quote the note kindly afforded me by Mr. His wife appealed to K. In the morning K. I saw, towards , the picture which repre- sents K. A repulsive sort of picture, painted with some force and of its class strong expression.

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Figures which are half-figures life sizes or little less. Front original in possession of Mrs. The restless spirit of his father was a constant source of danger during that time, but, partly by persuasion, and partly by resorting to little- conspiracies, she con- trived to secure for her son the object he desired. He had much to thank her for. Her husband did not long survive her, and before December of the same year, Ford Madox Brown and his sister were keeping house alone at ' Rue Marche au Lait, in Antwerp.

This culminated in several commissions for portraits, of accepting which he was by no means so chary after his father's death as he had been during his life- time, when the fear of being dragged from his studies had made him dislike any interruption in their course. Thus we find his sister writing in December Slingenger [sic] l to inquire about your palto [probably paletot], as he sent it off to you because he said he had a proper case to send it in.

Baron Wappers called over your name at the Academy, and Mr. Slingenger then told him you was gone into Luxembourg to paint portraits. He was surprised that you had not been to tell him you was going, but he said he did not care about your going to paint portraits, but he did not like a good scholar to absent himself for any other reason when he had so much likelihood of gaining the prize. Uncle Madox has sent us over some law papers, and I have been obliged to get Mr.

Whitcomb to witness them. Fortunately I met him coming out of church, therefore had not to go to their house. It was about the sail of a little bit of wharf to Mr. Borret, because our ground went into his. In several of his works were exhibited at South Kensington at a time when Belgian art was still popular in England. He says he wishes you could run over in the spring when Trissy is at home and take his and aunty's portraits, and adds that the portraits would pav the passage. Madox Brown was then engaged on the portraits of ' Monsieur Dombinsky, his lady, and his brother,' for M.

Dombinsky, who was a captain in the army of Luxemburg. I cite three entries of the same period from a little red account-book in which Madox Brown was accustomed to enter particulars of the work he exe- cuted, a practice he continued, using the same note- book, to the last days of his life.

Portrait of Surtees or Pembroke his name was quite uncertain a fiddler. Portrait of a gentleman of Ghent, name forgotten. He also commenced the picture of the Execution of Mary Stuart. Under the auspices of Baron Wappers he had acquired the considerable knowledge that did not desert him in later life, and ' which,' as the critic of the ' Athenaeum ' puts it, ' distinguished him from first to last from the majority of the contemporaries of his youth in England, who were by no means so well trained.

It made him a master of all the processes of the art, from etching and lithography to painting in pastels, fresco, encaustic, oils and water-colours. He was enabled to distinguish himself in all these directions because he thoroughly understood the technique of each method. It is possible that a generous, if somewhat rash, act of his friend hastened their departure.

A letter of Madox Brown's sister, written a day or two before that date, chronicles the event which occurred at the. Casey, who WHS Irish by descent and slightly hot-headed, without any parley precipitated the offenders- into the grave, and in consequence was s wanted ' by the ecclesiastical police. Whether the affair was compromised, or whether Casey hurried his departure in fear of the consequences, I have not been able to discover ; in any case, Madox Brown followed him to Paris after a short interval. During that time he was painting his first great historical picture, the Execution of Mary Qiieen of Scots.

Here he painted portraits of all his relations there resident. They are mostly quaint little medallions. It is only necessary to cite, in particular, that of his Aunt Madox, a rather hard-favoured lady, whose expression Madox Brown had reproduced with more fidelity than flattery. Another portrait, that of his cousin, Elizabeth Bromley, caused an ensnaring of hearts and the subse- quent early marriage, which took place the same year in Paris. It was, however, just at this time that the first notions of realistic painting began to disturb his mind, and caused him to feel a desire for further study.

According to the prevailing idea at that date, the only city that offered great inducement was Paris. Thither, too, he was drawn by his continental sympathies and, to some extent, by the desire to live an pins bon inarchc. The death of his sister Elizabeth had doubled his small income, and to this was to be added a somewhat smaller addition the dowry of his wife.

The joint produce of these three sources was about Madox Brown was somewhat older than her husband, and was sufficiently handsome and accomplished to move with some distinction in the society of the better class of Knglish in that city. Madox Brown, on the other hand, was not only young in as far as the date of his birth was concerned, but his appearance was so juvenile as to make the clergyman who officiated at his wedding ask with some asperity, ' Where is the bridegroom?

The three were, in fact, known as the ' English triumvirate. Not finding a congenial master, Madox Brown did not enrol himself among the pupils at any of the ateliers, but spent the greater portion of his time at the Louvre, where he studied ' Rembrandt and the Spanish masters. These, however, were painted during the years and Before this time he had conceived the idea of painting pictures in which the real effects of light should be recorded.

The immediate outcome of this was the picture of Manfred on the Jnngfrau, speak- ing of which, in I, 1 ne savs: This work, composed in , when I was nineteen, and painted in Paris, belongs, with the five following examples, to the period of my art studentship in Belgium and Paris. In this instance, how- ever, the picture has been much touched upon as recently as , so that the original scheme of colour is obliterated, little more than the dramatic sentiment and effect of black and white remaining.

Such 1 Catalogue of the Piccadilly Exhibition. The work is intended for consideration merely on the human and dramatic side, glaciers not having formed part of my scheme of study in those days. Another work of the same period, in which the same 'not very recognisable attempt' at realism of light is made, is also a subject from ' Manfred '- Manfred in the Chamois Hunter s Hut.

This, which is a much smaller work, hardly more than a large sketch, has not been retouched to nearly the same extent, and affords a better idea of Madox Hrown's work in this stage of his art career. That it is not particularly attractive goes without saying as far as execution goes, it is even more 1 painty ' than the works executed the year before under the eye of Wappers. The colours are brighter, and have a more tentative effect.

The drawing of Manfred himself is intensely dramatic, but the rest of the picture is very little finished. At this point he would seem, for some reason, to have dropped his Promethean ideas, perhaps owing to the coldness with which Casey and his other student friends received them. It was then that he set to work diligently to copy the Rembrandts at the Louvre. The immediate outcome of this course of study was the picture of Parisina s Sleep. I quote from the Catalogue: Parisina in her sleep mutters a name which first gives weight and direction to the suspicions already implanted in the mind of her husband, the Prince Azo: Such as it is, this style, I must observe, is neither Belgian, such as I learned in the school of Baron Wappers, nor that of the Parisian ateliers, the latter I always entertained the greatest aversion for.

Cold pedantic drawing and heavy opaque colour are impartially dis- pensed to all in those huge manufactories of artists, from which, however, every now and then a man of feeling or genius surges up and disentangles himself. The style has rather its origin in the Spanish pictures and in Rembrandt. The subsequent history of the picture is curious. It was rejected at the exhibition of the French Salon in , a polite accompanying" note stating that the subject was too improper for the walls of a French gallery under Louis Philippe, but neither subject nor execution prevented its appearance at the exhibition of the British Institution, when Victoria was Queen in Another design in this style that has survived is that of the Prisoners of Chilian, which, although lighter in its scheme of colouring, presents the same dramatic intensity and power of drawing, and much the same mark of Rembrandtish influence.

As far as the ' literary ' side of Madox Brown's work of the period is concerned, the influence of Byron is visible enough, and is not to be wondered at. The romantic school was then at its height in Paris, and the one modern English poet with whose 1 PARIS 31 works Maclox Brown would either boast of or wish for acquaintance was Lord Byron ; indeed, to a very much later date Byron subjects occupied and filled his mind, to the exclusion perhaps of all poets but Shakespeare and Rossetti.

Up to the time of his final settlement in this country, Madox Brown was essentially a foreigner as regards his know- ledge of the arts, and only poets of ' European ' reputation appealed, or were practically accessible, to him. In his earlier clays ' Till Eulenspiegel ' had been his favourite reading, as it had been that of the student society to which he belonged, otherwise he w r ould appear to have read little more than the historical works from which he drew his subjects.

In Paris Dumas was the god of his comrades' worship, and Madox Brown, who, in later days and in his own art, became a stern realist, worshipped Dumas with a perfervid and now nearly incomprehensible worship. This extended in a less degree to Victor Hugo and to the minor Romanticists. The students' talk was for ever of Dumas. The myriad wildly impossible tales that have been circu- lated about him found a ready credence in their circle.

Then, with his cabin full of priceless weapons, he had shipped his anchor, unfurled his sails, and left the harbour at midnight. The plunder fetched enough to keep him forty days in Paris, and the student- world said: All Paris and all student Paris rushed to gaze at Dumas in his capacity of tailor's dummy. The artist's admiration for Dumas led to no pictorial result ; and, although he was taken to visit the demigod of fiction, he remembered little of the visit. It is possible that the industry called forth by the announcement of the Westminster Hall competi- tions put all other considerations out of his head, just as it set so many to work on cartoons of enormous size.

The subjects that Madox Brown selected were 1 It is, of course, scarcely necessary to state that these anecdotes have little or no foundation on fact. They serve their turn well enough as indicant of the type of stories of the temps jadis that remained fixed in Madox Brown's mind.

Vr, which was begun in the winter of and exhibited in at West- minster Hall. In the following year the cartoon and painting of Harold at Hastings and the cartoon and water-colour sketch of the Spirit of Justice were exhibited. Of the three compositions the Adam and Eve is the simplest in point of literary idea. It is evening; a mighty wind is blowing the leaves of the garden all 1 The cartoons are thus described in the Catalogue of the Frescoes: By Ford Madox Brown, 15 feet by 13 feet.

Coloured sketch of the above encaustic painting , 4 feet 4 inches by 3 feet 9 inches. Cartoon by Ford Madox Brown, 8 feet 8 inches by 7 feet 7 inches. The five figures at the top are personifications of Justice, with, on the right, Mercy and Erudition, and on her left, Truth and Wisdom. The two groups in the foreground are indicative of power and weakness. A coloured sketch of ditto. A portion of same. The feeling of terror sug- gested is almost strong enough to present some of the mysticism of Blake.

The other two designs are much more complicated. Writing of the Harold, ] in , Madox Brown says: Excessive and exuberant joy is described by the old chronicles as possessing the Norman host after the victory. This is shown variously in the demeanour and expressions of the conquerors. Harold was a more than usually large and athletic man, even among Saxon heroes. Three men bear his body to the victorious Duke. All that are left alive on the scene are Normans no prisoners were taken. Quarter was neither expected nor given. One ancient knight, somewhat of the Polonius kind, with raised hand, seems to say, ' Here indeed was a man.

Others seem of the same mind. One of William's attendants, of the waggish sort, catches a silly camp-boy by the fist and exhibits its puny pro- portions alongside of the dead Harold's hand, still with the broken battle-axe in its iron grasp, drawing a grim smile from the conqueror. A fair- haired Norman officer, regardless of the fact that his body is gashed pretty freely with wounds, twists about to get a sight of Harold. The monk, who is dressing his wounds, tired out with much of such work, surlily bids him be quiet. Friends join hands glad to meet again after such a day.

A father supports his wounded son. In one corner, embraced in death-grapple, lie the bodies of a Norman and Saxon, one has stabbed the other in the back, while he in turn has bitten his adversary's throat like a dog. The effect is after sunset. The cartoon of the Spirit of [n slice represents a widow, whose husband has been murdered by a knight, appealing to the Spirit of Justice, who, blind and seated on high with scales and sword, is surrounded by reverend counsellors.

The knightly murderer, in the meanwhile, stands fully armed, and, although sur- rounded by followers, seems to be depressed, as if realising that neither weapons nor power avail him in the presence in which he stands. The cartoons quite failed to make any impression on their exhibition, and are not even mentioned in the report of the Royal Commissioners. To ' Grand Style' Haydon, however, they did appeal.

In his diary ] he records: The only bit of fresco fit to look at is by Ford Brown. It is a figure of Justice, and is exquisite as far as that figure goes. His death intervening before that picture's com- pletion, the remainder of the sum subscribed was devoted to the purchase of the artist's picture of Christ and Peter, and of this and other cartoons for presentation to various Schools of Art. I quote a passage from one of his lectures, that on ' Style in Art ': This was as it was told how Dyce got his employment from the Government: Cor- nelius, with that scorn of littleness which is so characteristic of the historic painter abroad, replied: Hopeless of his work attracting the English approbation of the day, he had not even taken part in the competitions then in abeyance.

Hastily he was bidden to send in a specimen of fresco to the third Westminster Hall Exhibition, in order to legitimatise his employment in the Houses of Parliament. Dyce had, at that time, just completed a fresco in the palace of the Archbishop at Lambeth. He hastily copied a small portion, just large enough to meet the specified terms of the competition. Competitors were up in arms, and went about with pocket rules. In size, however, they could detect no flaw. In that great hall the small fresco looked in super- ficies, like a pocket-handkerchief, but it was not too small, even by a quarter of an inch.

It was not so big as a church door, but ' it was enough,' as Mercutio said. Those who knew what Art was held their peace. Babblers pronounced it quaint it was a copy of some old work it was papistical it was German it was that most abhorrent thing, Christian Art. How could a bishop have it in his palace? The outcome of all this was the fresco of the baptism of Ethelbert in the House of Lords that most refined and beautiful of all the frescoes there ; also the frescoes from the ' Mort d' Arthur,' which Dyce began in the Queen's robing-room of the same building.

These noble works are too much overlooked, and yet these works 1 PARIS 37 may claim brotherhood with all that is greatest in contemporary art, and descent direct from Raphael's own progeny of masterpieces. Rough and ostentatiously unfinished as they are, there need be little hesitation in calling them one of the most, if not the most, effective and vigorous series of designs for any of Shakespeare's plays.

Attrac- tiveness is, of course, hardly to be expected of them, and would certainly have militated against the reflec- tion of the barbaric spirit in the tragedy, which is their chief merit. In the summer of the Madox Browns left Paris for Kngland, with the intention of determining whether the condition of Mrs. Brown's health would support the climate of this country. For a time they lived with the Bromleys, at Meopham, in Kent, and in consequence we have this record of work done during the stay: Portrait of Augustus Bromley.

Portrait of Helen Bromley. Portrait of their horse. Madox Brown had his studio at Tudor Lodge, in the neighbourhood of Mornington Crescent, and here he began to make a few acquaintances amongst the denizens of that artist-populated district. The almost forgotten John Cross and the late Mr. Armitage he had known in Paris. Tudor Lodge was a nest of studios ; of these, F. John Marshall, the surgeon, was also a competitor, and frequented Tudor Lodge.

Amongst these artists Madox Brown was considered as an authority, ' as he was up in the Belgian school and Wappers,' to quote Mr. At Tudor Lodge he finished the cartoon of the Spirit of Justice, but the period was not one of very great industry. Much of it was spent with Mrs. Madox Brown at Meopham, and it was only when a reawakened sense of his artistic duties galled him that Madox Brown returned to his work in the studio, and even there much of his time was convivially spent.

Through the introduction of one of the Tudor Lodge congeries he contracted a certain acquaintance with Douglas Jerrold, the Cruickshanks, and the group of more or less humorous writers and artists who revolved around those two centres. The society was not, however, over-congenial to Madox Brown. Coming directly as a foreigner into the circle, the constant fire of puns and idiomatic quips rather dazed than amused him. Jerrold, in particular, would seem to have disturbed his equanimity with an inextinguish- ably buoyant flow of talk.

This more or less pleasant life was, however, soon interrupted in its course. The rapidly failing- health of Mrs. Maclox Brown made the prospect of wintering in K upland an almost fatal one, and with that in view Madox Brown, his wife and child, set out for Rome. At that time the advantages "of the Riviera and the Maritime Alps were comparatively unknown in Kngland. Rome, Italy, and the warmth of the South were deemed synonymous terms of health for the sufferer from pulmonary diseases. The Eternal City,' moreover, held out incomparable attractions to the artist.

As far as regards its description of his person, it is somewhat vaguely and inaccurately filled in. The sigualcwcnt reads as follows: Ford Madox Brown, ne et domicilie en Angleterre, age de 24 ans. Ckeveux, chatains ; Jront, ordinaire 1 ; ucz, moyen ; wciiton, rond ; visage, ovale ; harbe, blonde; et taillc, i m. In its influence on Madox Brown's art the other- wise uneventful journey was, of course, of the first importance. I quote a letter addressed by him to a friend who asked his advice as to what pictures should have particular attention accorded to them during an Italian tour.

Written just twenty years later than the year under consideration, it may be regarded as the crystallisation of the artist's thoughts upon the subject, though the haste with which it is written deprives it of much of the weight that would have otherwise attached to it: As you say, I fear there is no chance at all of my meeting you in Italy this time, with all this coming on, but wish there was, I should enjoy it much.

It is a long time since I was in Italy, and so much so that my memory could scarce be of much use to you in comparison with the many valuable books that have been written of late on the subject. Murray's eternal handbook, the Kugler translation, is still as valuable as ever, and just recently a new history has appeared which is said to be very excellent, it is by two men, an Englishman named Crowe and an Italian whose name I forget, but it is something like Crowe and Caralcanti, 1 as far as I remember and any bookseller could tell what it meant.

I have written to ask if Mr. Rossetti might have any information likely to interest you. After a lapse of eighteen really twenty or nineteen 1 Cavalcaselle. The paintings of Fra Angelico, executed on the walls of his con- vent in Florence; the admirable pictures of almost every school in the Pitti Palace there; of course the great works of Rafael and Michael! This work was to have occupied the central compartment, the' lateral ones being filled with portraits of Shakespeare and Byron the whole forming an apotheosis of English poetry. The sketch for this picture was painted, and the picture itself commenced, in the year , at Rome.

Circumstances, however, which required my immediate return home, caused me to abandon that first beginning. This present work was begun in London in , and finished early in During this interval, however, the pictures of Wickliff, King Lear, the Infant's Repast, Shake- speare, Windermere, and other works not here exhibited, were painted. As the sketch shows, the picture was originally designed as a triptych, figures of other great English poets occupying the wings. But this idea was conceived abroad at a time when I had little opportunity of knowing the march of literary events at home.

On my coming to England, I soon found that the illustrious in poetry were not all among the dead, and to avoid what must either have remained incomplete, or have appeared pretentious criticism, I gave up the idea indicated in the side compartments. Chaucer, along with Dante, is one of the only two supremely great mediaeval poets who have come down to us, at least by name. But Chaucer is at the same time as much a perfect English poet I am almost tempted to say a modern English poet as any of the pre- sent day. Spelling, and a few of the minor proprieties apart, after a lapse of five hundred years, his delicate sense of naturalistic beauty and his practical turn of thought, quite at variance with the iron grasp of realism, the deep-toned passionate mysticism, and super- sensual grace of the great Italian, comes home to us as naturally as the last volume we hail with delight from the press.

At his setting out he intended to establish himself there for some little time, after the fashion of the more or 1 From the Catalogue of the Piccadilly Exhibition, Cir- cumstances, however, in the shape of a sudden decline in the state of his wife's health intervened, and in May of the next year he returned to Kngland.

His achievements in art during that time were limited to commencing the Chaucer, and the paint- ing of the portraits of his wife and infant daughter Lucy. An interesting incident during its course was his introduction to the survivors of the German Pre- Raphaelite Brethren.

Other than in name;, this body had little affinity, elective or spiritual, with the Brethren of whom so much has been heard in this country. Founded in the year by the German painters Cornelius and Overbeck, its adherents speedily became numerous in Rome, and eventually carried the propaganda of the once famous ' Catholic Art ' into almost every country in which the effects of art move- 1 I learn from Mr. Holman Hunt, who possesses a copy of the picture executed by I. Rossetti, that the principal characteristic of the work was its 'German' balance of composition.

In its own way, and for many of the artists who adhered to it, it was the outcome of a spirit of revolt against their national schools ; but in the case of Overbeck it was more emphatically a protest against the prevailing irreligion of the art and artists of the day. For him the painters who painted before Raphael were ascetic religious, whose art, divinely inspired, was given to the decoration of their monastic cells, and the body whom Overbeck and Cornelius gathered round them resolved to conform to monastic customs, hiring a palace for that purpose, and clothing themselves in religious garb long robes with girdles of rope.

For a time they plied their art with the full fervour of Catholic revivalists ; but at the date of Madox Brown's visit to Rome the Brethren, as such, seemed to have died out. His description of a visit to the studios of Over- beck and Cornelius I am enabled, by the courtesy of Mr.

From the ' Universal Review. Overbeck I visited first. No introductions were necessary in Rome at that time. I was very young not, I believe, above two or three-and-twenty. Overbeck was in a small studio with some four or five visitors. When he spoke to me it was with the humility of a saint. Being so young at the time I noticed this the more. He had some five or six cartoons on view, all of the same size, about 24 inches by 30, all sacred subjects.

I noted that where any naked flesh was shown it looked exactly like wooden dolls' or lay- figures'. I heard him explain that he never drew these parts from nature, on the principle of avoiding the sensuous in religious art. In spite of this, nevertheless, the sentiment as depicted in the faces was so vivid, so unlike most other art, that one felt a dis- inclination to go away.

One could not see enough of it. To-day, more than forty years afterwards, when coming suddenly on one of these designs in a print-shop window, I again experienced the same sensation. As this large canvas was between him and the door I suppose I did not hear his summons to enter, for he came out sharply, and said petulantly, 'Mais, eiifrez done. The studio was a waste, as painting-rooms were in those days, when bnc-a-bnu, Oriental rugs, or armour were not much thought of. He was explaining his picture exactly as a showman would, and I have remembered the lesson since.

Some twenty years ago I saw this cartoon again in London, and it produced on me exactly the same effect it did at first. Full of action and strange character, it was everything reverse of that dreadful commonplace into which Art on the Continent seems to be hurrying back. But Cornelius was no commonplace being ; with his small fiery eyes and his lump on his cheek, like David's, he was the man of genius, the man of the unexpected emphatically. Cornelius's dressing-gown, of which Madox Brown speaks, was probably a survival of the monastic robe above mentioned. Madox Brown began to show more and more signs of a fatal decay, and, as much in accordance with her desire to die in her native land as in any hope of prolonging her life, Madox Brown resolved to return to England by the shortest available route.

In the transit from Leghorn they met with a furious storm, which nearly sent the ship to the bottom and materially delayed their passage. Madox Brown seemed to fall asleep in the carriage, with her head on her husband's shoulder, and, on alighting at their hotel, was found to be dead. Her body was conveyed to England and buried in Highgate Cemetery. The blow was a terrible one to Madox Brown. For the remainder of the year he abandoned his work, and I am inclined to ascribe to the effects of the loss the appearance of age and misanthropy which many of his friends considered as characteristic of him at that period and for several years after.

Rossetti Rossetti's letter Its reception Rossetti becomes. Rossetti Disagreement of these authorities. His work in conse- quence suffered materially. It is certain that he still entertained ideas of returning to the Continent. In the meanwhile the little coterie of artists that had drawn his thoughts towards Paris was breaking up.

De Grouckel, him- self in Brussels, chronicles the departure of one of the circle to Geneva, and of the death of another, and perhaps the best beloved, James, he writes a pathetic and somewhat minute account. Later, newly formed and more congenial connections tied Madox 1 Brown to his native land. In , Madox Brown moved from Meopham to j Southend, Southend to Bromley, thence to Cheapside, j and it was not until the beginning of tnat ne settled down in Kensington and began to set earnestly to work.

To quote Casey, who thenceforth sinks into the character of a warm friend, outre Manche: Casey to Ford Madox Brown. Je suis enchante de savoir que tu t'occupes, e'est le meilleur remede aux tristes idees le travail en detruit le mauvais effet et laisse subsider les souvenirs. Aliens, mon vieux Fordy, du courage et ne fais pas comme moi ; travaille ferme ; quand je ne suis pas en train de peindre je me suis mis depuis quelques jours a dessiner 1'ecorche', pour tacher de ne pas rester sans rien faire et c.

Bamford, the original of which had been the only work of the year 1 It may also be recorded that along with On re Ladyc it was rejected by the Trafalgar Square authorities in Towards the end of the year Madox Brown moved to 2O-i- Clipstone Street, where he occupied a studio in a range of stabling, which had been converted to suit this purpose.

Hither his household furniture, lay figures, and the like were sent by Casey from Paris, where they had remained. It was begun in November of and finished in March, and as such may be said to have been the first of his pictures in his ' English style ' to see completion. It is memorable in another way ; for, being ex- hibited in the Free Exhibition ] it drew from D.

In this case the exhibition was held at Hyde Park Corner in the building celebrated as having seen the exhibition of the Chinese junk and of other Chinese works of art. I quote the criticism of the Athemcum on the picture of Wickliffe. Of the few papers that noticed the picture I have selected this one. The circumstances of their actual coming together are so well known as to make recapitulation an almost unnecessary task, but for the sake of continuity I pro- pose briefly to state them. By permission of Mr. Rossetti to Ford Madox Broivn.

Since the first time I ever went to an exhibition which show in an interesting way the gradual decline of esteem in which he was held, as, little by little, it was realised that he had identified himself with the P. Ford Madox Brown's First Translation of the Bible into English, obviously designed with a view to its execution in fresco.

There is so much merit in the whole composition as to excuse in some degree a very badly contrived situation, in which the painter has supposed Wickliffe reading his translation of the Scriptures to his protector John of Gaunt, in the presence of Chaucer and Gower and his retainers. The merits of the picture are, however, much more in the manner than the matter the painters views, as before said, having been directed to a peculiar mode of execution.

His judgment has been shown in having arranged much that can be done in a material where effect is to be attained rather by opposition of colour than strong contrasts of light and shade, or the delicate gradations of half tint. To his intention, realised in figures of half the natural size, we can well predict success, presuming that the artist, in revision of his work, will be induced to make some abatements of punctilious accuracy in the costumes unfitted to the severity of historical treatment in certain particulars which are the accidents of a bygone time, and when so much insisted on, subject their author to the imputation of pedantry.

The outline from your Abstract of Representation of Justice which appeared in one of the illustrated papers, constitutes, together with an engraving after that great painter Von Hoist, the sole pictorial adornment of my room. And as for the Mury Qne? It is not, therefore, to be wondered at if, wishing to obtain some knowledge of colour which I have as yet scarcely attempted , the hope suggests itself that you may probably admit pupils to profit by your invaluable assistance.

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