Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the late Exposition to begin lifting his hat in recognition of this fact. There was one picture in particular-a small canvas by Winslow Homer-"A Wave on the Maine Coast," which could have kept an American bareheaded for hours if he had had enough red corpuscles running through his veins to set his heart tingling when his eye lighted on some master-effort of his countryman. If there was another landscape in the Exposition expressing more power, truth, beauty, and poetry than was contained within its modest space, I could not find it. The Jury of Awards gave Mr. Homer the Gold Medal. That was what he deserved, and that was very well as far as it went, but they should have studded the medal with diamond stars-one for every grateful State in the Union.

And Homer was not alone. There were Sargent, and Abbey, and Whistler. These men proved what our American school has accomplished. Inness is gone, to be sure, and so are Homer Martin and Wyant, but Tryon, Davis, Bruce Crane, Hassam, Palmer, and a dozen other landscape-painters are alive, and so are Chase, Cecilia Beaux, Brush, Thayer, and the rest of them. Eminently sane painters these, with a thought behind every brush-stroke; and painters, too, who have crowded so close to the top that Europe for the first time has this year caught sight of their heads.

If, however, this Exposition lacked the ineffable beauty which one found in Chicago, it presented in place of it a subtle picturesqueness not found in our own. This quality of the picturesque was not, of course, seen in the Bath-Chair nor in many of the other monstrosities that some absinthe-laden brain had evolved from strainings after the queer. Nor was it felt in that display of sensationalism which has of late weakened if not degraded much of the art of France, and which, if this Exposition is to be regarded as furnishing standards, is now beginning to be felt in her architecture. It was to be found, however, in the many charming and delightful bits that one met in sauntering along the garden-paths of the superb Park. Indeed, the distinguishing characteristic of the whole area within the inclosure, with all it contains, was almost wholly one of picturesqueness.

The entrance of the Petit Palace, for instance, with its deep-set rounded arch and dome of gold and purple, incrusted with statues grouped about it, suggested neither dignity nor classic beauty, and yet it was so picturesque that it became one of the delights of the Exposition. The Alexander Bridge was equally fascinating. One did not, of course, hold one's breath, overwhelmed by its grandeur. The span itself, as seen from the river, was not even graceful, nor did its piers and abutments compare favorably in design with many of the other bridges binding together both sides of the Seine. It was only when the great square towers surmounted with goldplated sculpture, the bas-reliefs on each side, and the broad open plaza effect of the roadway greeted you, that you began to get any lump in your throat or confine your vocabulary to the Ohs! and Ahs!

This new bridge, of which all the world is talking, by the way, suggested few of the qualities which have made other bridges famous-solidity, spring of arch, lightness, and grace. It is only a great promenade-a section of the Champs Elysées, without its trees, spanning the river, decorated with wonderful pedestals holding equally wonderful gold statues and bas-reliefs of stone and bronze. It needs a thousand people in gay costumes to make it enjoyable, and it will undoubtedly have them always wandering over its roadway, so charming and attractive is its open-air quality.

The less important objects which made. this or that spot delightful also added to the picturesque effect of the whole. The Palace of Glass, while it was but a big child's kaleidoscope at night when the lights flashed within, was wonderfully picturesque in the day. It was built on a little lake overhung by weeping willows and surrounded by smaller grotesque kiosks, booths, and cafés. Each individual structure around this Glass Palace, judged by itself, might have passed for the creation of an unbalanced brain, and yet the general mass of gold and vermilion kiosks, seen against the rich green foliage, the whole reflected in the smooth stillness of the toy lake, produced an effect so charmingly picturesque that you invested a sou at once and sat down in an iron chair to enjoy it.

You felt the same quality even in the

details of the larger buildings-in those of the Grand Palais, for instance. None of the architects seemed to have dared to trust to the power and beauty to be obtained by the use of simple lines and broad flat surfaces. The side entrance leading from the Champs Elysées approach was in itself a dignified flight of steps flanked by simple columns. But here again the restless and unskilled hand of the designer broke the line of the steps and decorated the level with a statue. Without this statue-for it is only an ornament, and as much out of place as a Milo would be on a mantelpiece-the entrance would have gained a dignity which would have stood for classic beauty. With it the flight of steps becomes only picturesque.

This quality was found also in almost every one of the national buildingswhether they were the work of French architects and designers, or those of other countries. The high tower erected by the little kingdom of Monaco, that rose out of the Street of Nations; the Buddhist temple on the brow of the Hill of the Trocadero and overlooking the valley of the Court of Honor-as well as the various buildings of the several Governments erected along the Seine-were all picturesque.

No, not all.

There was a narrow shoe-box of a building, surmounted by a half-round fly-screen of a dome with a horse and rider backed into one end, that stood near the beautiful Italian building, and inside and out it possessed no other quality than one of pure, unadulterated ugliness. If the picture of the "Wave on the Coast of Maine " instinctively

caused every American proud of his blood to bare his head, this shoe-box should make him wish to hide it in a diver's helmet, cut his air-hose, and drop quietly and peacefully into the oblivion of the Seine. Charles Sumner defined Thackeray as the most perfect of gentlemen because, when visiting him. in Washington, he carefully avoided by word or look all reference to Jackson's equestrian statue, although they passed it arm in arm twice a day. But then the great satirist never saw the American Building at the French Exposition of 1900.

The American architect whose name has been connected with this monstrosity

needs no defense from those of us who know his work, especially that classic structure on the lake front at Chicago. We need not " bite our thumbs" at him. But there is still due an explanatory note, omitted at the bottom of the official catalogue, giving us the name, age, and nationality of the distinguished gentleman who caused this libel on our good taste to be erected where all the world could seeand laugh.

And the people who thronged the sideshows of this vast pleasure-ground were as picturesque as their surroundings, and as necessary to the general stage-setting as the coryphées and supers in a pantomime. Turks in fez and baggy trousers locked arms with Algerians in embroidered jackets and balloon skirts. Black men from the Colonies took their coffee side by side with the palefaces of the boulevard. Long processions of African chiefs with their wives and warriors, beating tom-toms and brandishing spears, threaded their way through the crowds. Or a dozen scantily attired houris from Bagdad followed behind a huge, shambling camel led by an Egyptian demanding backsheesh, the houris distributing advertisements giving the hour and place of the next dance while the camel swayed his neck over the tables of the open-air cafés, the waiters dodging out of his reach as he passed. Once or twice a day a Dahomey girl, with her cheeks as brown and shining as the bowl of a meerschaum pipe, would stride down the board walk dressed in a square of calico and a string of beads, or a party of John Chinamen, in their little stub-toed shoes and silk tunics, would hurry by as if avoiding attention.

It was hard to believe, in spite of the genuineness of their appointments, that they were not the Simon-pure article, each and every one of them-fresh from jungles, harems, or rice-fields. I would often find myself sympathizing with these poor exiles, banished from home to make a Parisian holiday. One poor Dahomey chief-a sad chief, with an abnormal thirst and an insatiable craving for cigarettes-especially appealed to me. I would have contributed my mite to send him home, had I not passed him one day in an entrance gate. He had his two

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][ocr errors]

wives with him, mountains of flesh these, in calico and beads and head-dresses of feathers. The officer of duty saluted, and the salute was returned by his dusky Highness and their Imperial Fatnesses, not, as I expected, by a rubbing of noses or prostrations on the asphalt, but in true Parisian style, the wives dipping a little forward, while the Chief's two fingers jerked up toward his head-dress, as if it was a fatigue-cap and he an officer on parade. I caught their dialect as I passed in, but it sounded to my comprehension more like that of the Latin Quarter than of the jungle.

So, too, with a charming dark-eyed gazelle from Persia-a wavy, lithe, and thinly-clad young odalisque, with dreamy eyes and a wealth of blue-black hair. She wore a veil of silken gauze when my eyes first looked into hers, with a tunic of gold and silver and a head-dress of coins. Her voice was slightly worn, but that was because for many days and nights she had stood at the door of the Moorish Palace recounting in seductive tones the delights within its tile-incrusted portal. When I drew nearer, and, to conceal the purpose of my advance, ordered a cup of coffee of the waiter in a dialect I had learned shortly after my baptism, and which I am still able to speak with some fluency, she started, beckoned me to her, and, with a smile that would have beguiled the most cruel of Sultans for a second thousand nights at least, said:

"From New York? ain't ye? Gee!

Don't I wish I was there now!" And then, in answer to my astonished inquiries, "No, I come from Detroit; my man's inside here running the show, and I gits 'em in. Oolah! oolah!!" and the din began again.

I had another shock.

It was not a girl this time, but a great mass of superbly carved brown-stone serving as gate-posts for the marvelous iron gate presented by the Czar of All the Russias to the French Government in commemoration of the Exposition. As it will one day close the entrance to a palace or a park, where all the people can see and rejoice over its workmanship, I was glad that the sham of lath and plasterthe "staff" of which all the ephemeral buildings of the Exposition had been constructed-had in this instance been replaced by solid stone masonry.

One day, to reassure myself, I, like a doubting Thomas, thrust in my knife. It would have gone clean through but for a nail in the lath!

But, then, is not all this sham and pretense characteristic of every Exposition? Are they ever real? And, if not, is it best to peep under the curtain of the tent and catch the clowns off their guard? Shall we lose faith in the Woolly Horse, or the Wild Boy from Borneo, or the Man-eating Gorilla from Timbuctoo?

I try not to, but I often fail. Somehow I can always see the laths grinning behind the plaster, and the pale, drawn face of the tired girl under her paint.

[graphic]
« AnteriorContinuar »