Puslapio vaizdai
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Rodin.

Wave group by Anna V. Hyatt

Mrs. Whitney was one of the three or four women chosen to design fountains for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Her "Fountain of Eldorado" aroused much enthusiastic interest, especially for the modeling of the figures in the relief, which seek with straining nerves the magic fountain that lies hidden behind the half-closed doors, the access to which is barred by two guarding figures. The idea of the design is original, the technic of the eager figures remarkable. Mrs. Whitney has won an honorable mention in the Paris Salon and the first prize at

of a cross. The money for the memorial was contributed in sums of ten cents each by American women as a tribute to the daring men who did not hesitate to give their lives to save the women.

Miss Evelyn Longman is a third woman who contributed a fountain to the San Francisco exposition. The group "L'Amour," exhibited not long ago at the Gorham gallery, is one of the purest and most idealized expressions of the love of a man and a woman known to the writer. Miss Longman has recently won by competition the design for the new

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Longman is a young woman, a pupil of Isidore Konti and Daniel Chester French, and has done some impressive work in

her short artistic career. She designed the doors of the chapel at the

United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was awarded a silver medal at the St. Louis exposition.

Miss Anna Vaughn Hyatt is unique among American women sculptors, because she deals

ited at the Salon in Paris, won an honorable mention. The jury remarked that if they had been convinced that it was the work of a woman and that a man did not do the actual work, they would have given it the first prize. It was a significant illustration of the attitude of the French

Study of a Great Dane, by Anna V. Hyatt

almost entirely with expression of animal life. She has an instinctive understanding of animals that has been equaled by few modern sculptors. The peculiar characteristic of each is seized by her mind and portrayed convincingly. She understands what lies behind the outward form, and effectively expresses it. Her equestrian statue of Jeanne d'Arc, when first exhib

mind toward woman's creative ability. It was, however, a proved fact that no sculptor had entered Miss Hyatt's studio during the time she was at work upon the group, in order to guard

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possible misun

derstanding or

misrepresentation. This

same design, enlarged and improved, has been erected on Riverside Drive in New York. Miss Hyatt's work is remarkable for its strength, spirited handling of subject, and truth to the scientific fact of underlying

structure.

The fountains of Edith Baretto Parsons are original, spontaneous, delicious expressions of charming fancy. Mrs. Parsons is also a mother, and thinks that a woman's freedom from the burden of breadwinning is an opportunity for a broader, happier spirit in artistic work untainted by pessimism. It is an interesting conception of woman's power in creative work.

YES,

By MAY SINCLAIR

Author of "The Divine Fire," "The Creators," etc.

VES, it looks like a commission; that 's why I keep it stuck up there. But it is n't a commission; it's a portrait of my uncle, Colonel Simpson-Simpson of Chitral.

No, he did n't. Does he look as if he 'd sit for anybody for five minutes? Does it look as if he 'd sat? You don't get portraiture like that out of sittings or out of any possible series of sittings, because, in the first place, you don't get the candor, the naïveté, the self-revelation. Of course I might have made an Academy thing of him, painted him in scarlet and crimson, with his decorations, or in khaki and a solar topi, if I'd wanted Simpson of Chitral. But I did n't want him. Simpson of Chitral was only part of my uncle, and this-this is all my uncle.

Like the portraits of Strindberg, did you say? But he was like them. He was Strindberg. He had the same scored and crumpled face, the same twisted, tormented eyebrows, the same irritable, irascible scowl and glare. He had every bit of Strindberg's face except its genius and its great, square, bulging forehead. My uncle's forehead was rather like a lion's or a tiger's, straight and a little receding. But the torment 's the thing, and the torment 's there.

He was worth painting as an instance of conjugal fidelity carried to excess, carried beyond the bounds of reason. This is a composite portrait: it 's my uncle and my aunt. You could n't separate their two faces. They could n't separate them themselves. It was not simply that they 'd lived so long together that they grew like each other; it was because they behaved like each other to each other. They said the same things to each other, they irritated each other, they tore at each other's nerves, the same nerves, in the same way. They devastated each other's faces with the same remarkable results.

I've no clear recollection of my uncle's face before my aunt got to work on it, but there's a family tradition of Uncle Roly as a pink and chubby subaltern, and his regimental nickname was "The Cherub." He must have been home on his first leave somewhere in the later eighties. I remember him because of the model steam-engine he gave me. He always gave you interesting and expensive presents, and I never knew him tip you less than a sovereign. He was chubby even then, and absolutely uncrumpled, so it could n't have been India altogether. I think he 'd been engaged to her for ages, for he married her as soon as he got his captaincy, and took her out with him.

Then for a time we lost track of him. India seems to have swallowed them up. They were two years in a lonely up-country station in Bengal where the heat was awful. The other men had left their wives up in the hills or sent them home, so he never saw any European women except my aunt. Fancy that through the hot season and for two blessed years! Their first child was born there.

The heat seems to have had no effect whatever on my aunt. She was out five -six years. She simply would n't come home, and he-that 's the odd thing-did n't want her to. I've told you conjugal fidelity was a perfect vice with him. It was her vice, too. After Bengal it was Bombay-Poona-and another baby. She was told they 'd lose both their children if they did n't send them home, and she shilly-shallied. She did n't want to send them with strangers, and she did n't want to go with them herself. Her place, she said, was at her husband's side. She shillyshallied into another hot season, and the children died. That, you see, was where the vice came in.

It was n't till the death of the babies that they began to feel the devilishness of

the climate. Then it went suddenly for my uncle's liver, while my aunt was down with dysentery. I got all this from old Lumby, who was my uncle's subaltern. He says she must have taken to nagging him long before, perhaps in their honeymoon, to be so expert at it, but that it was n't till my uncle's nerves gave way that he nagged back. You gathered that she was fairly decent in public, but what goes on in a bungalow leaks out sooner or later into cantonments. Then came Chitral. Lumby says he does n't know what would have happened to my uncle if it had n't come. It saved him.

As long as there was trouble on the frontier he was all right. He would have sent her home then, but she would n't go. She said if there was to be fighting, her place was more than ever at his side, or within reasonable distance of his side. Their one chance was to separate, and they would n't take it. And when it was all over and he was Simpson of Chitral, she nagged him out of the service. He might have been anything after Chitral, but my aunt insisted on his retiring. She would n't leave him another year in India alone, and another year would have killed her. As it was, he thought she was dying, and he flung up his career and brought her back to England.

They used to come up to London for the season, and when it was over, he went to Harrogate to recover from it, and on to Scotland for the shooting, staying in people's houses. They were glad to have him; after all, he was Simpson of Chitral, and just at first he really had some social success. But not for long, because wherever he went, my aunt went with him. He would n't have gone without her; that would have been against his ideas of faithfulness and common decency. I can see him lugging her about with him on all his visits and nagging at her as he did it.

They'd quarrel about any mortal thing, the cab-fares and the trains and the hours of their arrival and departure and the time it took to catch them and about the porters' tips. Lumby said they were simply awful to travel with.

And then people got shy of asking them. He could have got on all right by himself, to his friends he was always "good old Roly," and to outsiders he was Simpson of Chitral,-but wherever they went she was only Mrs. Simpson, the woman who had nagged him out of the service and wrecked a brilliant career. Other women did n't care about her, and when he had rubbed it into them that they could n't have him without her, they were n't so particularly keen on him. He was shelved, anyhow, when he left the service. Besides, people used to hear them quarreling in their bedroom.

So gradually they dropped out of things. I don't think either of them minded. She was afraid of society-of what he might do if he fairly got into it; and he, poor beggar, may have been afraid of himself.

And yet, no, I don't think he really was afraid. Fidelity seems to have come easy to him, and the changes in my aunt's face were so gradual it 's quite possible he did n't notice them.

They left London and went to live in Cheltenham and then in Bath. They nagged each other out of all these places in succession. And then they nagged each other into taking a rather large house at Tunbridge Wells. My people. made me go and stay with them there. The old boy had a sort of sneaking affection for me because they 'd called me after him.

I found them quarreling in the kitchen garden. garden. He wanted strawberry beds and, I think, asparagus, and she wanted a herbaceous border, with delphiniums in it. I remember her saying to me: "Your uncle does n't care about anything he can't eat. If he could eat delphiniums, he 'd plant them fast enough." And he said she'd got the whole place to grow her delphiniums in, and he would n't have 'em in his kitchen garden.

I can see it all, I can feel the hot sun baking the beds, I can smell the hot peaches ripening, I can hear my uncle's voice and my aunt's voice rising in a crescendo of irritation; I can see their poor

middle-aged faces twitching and getting more and more heated, and the little twists and lines of annoyance and resentment showing through the heat like a pattern. They must have been going at it hammer and tongs before I arrived, for my uncle was looking quite tired and crumpled then. And they kept it up a long time after, for I remember the garden was cool again before they 'd done.

They quarreled all the time I stayed with them. They quarreled about whether I had enough to eat or not and about what room I was to have and about the time I was to be called in the morning and about the places I was to be taken to see. In the evenings we went to the Pantiles to hear the band play, and they quarreled about whether we were to sit or to walk up and down. Every evening except Sunday they went to the Pantiles to hear the band play, and every evening they quarreled about whether they should sit or walk up and down. On Sunday they seemed to call a truce; anyhow, they agreed that I was to go to church, which was the one thing I did n't want to do. But when it was all over, after evening service, they quarreled worse than ever because of the restraint they'd put on themselves all day.

The odd thing was that they were neither of them naturally cantankerous, and they never quarreled or even disagreed with other people. It was marvelous to watch the automatic rapidity with which my aunt's face untied itself to expand to you, and my uncle could be positively

suave.

The phenomenon of irritability seemed to be related solely to the tie that bound them. It increased with the tightening of the tie.

Finally they nagged each other out of the house at Tunbridge Wells and into a flat in Talbot Road, Bayswater.

It was about this time that my aunt's cousin and trustee mislaid my uncle's private income. She had nagged him into the arrangements that had made it possible. And odder still, now that he really had a grievance, he never uttered a single word of reproach or even of annoyance.

He simply sold the Tunbridge Wells house, cut down expenses, and declined on Bayswater and his pension. The cousin could n't touch the house and furniture or the pension. And that 's how I came to know him-really know him.

Lumby used to go to see them fairly often; but I'm afraid I did n't, at least. not so often as I might have done. It was brutal of me, because I'd every reason to believe that their only happy moments were when either Lumby or I was with them. Their lives could n't have been worth living when they were shut up alone together in that awful little flat. They were desperate-I mean spiritually desperate-now, and you felt that they snatched at you as they 'd have snatched at any straw; and I was afraid, mortally afraid, of being sucked under. Still, I went. I was interested in their faces. The first time, I remember, they made me stay to dinner, and my uncle flew into a passion because the servant had n't put any chillies or any green gherkins into the curry. He said my aunt ought never to have engaged her; she might have seen by the woman's face that she could n't make a curry. My aunt said he 'd better go into the kitchen and make it himself, if he was so particular; and he said he 'd be driven to it, and that the cat could make a better curry. They were always quarreling about curry, and yet my uncle would have it. That 's nothing in itself; I've never seen the Anglo-Indian yet that was n't sensitive about curry. Still, I sometimes think he had it on purpose. As for the servant, I 'm quite sure my aunt engaged her as an agent provocateur.

Then-I don't know which of them began it-they took to playing chess in the evenings to wile away the frightful hours, and that was horrible. You'd come upon them there, in the little stuffy, shabby sitting-room, cramped together over the chess-board, my aunt's hand, poised with her pawn, hovering, shifting, and hovering again, and her poor old head shaking in a perfect palsy of indecision, while my uncle, horribly close, sat and glared at her in torment and in hatred till he could n't

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