The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Posterity will be puzzled what to do with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions of a vain self-estimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build into stone walls, or burn into quicklime, as well as if the marble had never been blocked into the guise of human heads.
But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endurance, this almost indestructibility, of a marble bust! Whether in our own case, or that of other men, it bids us sadly measure the little, little time during which our lineaments are likely to be of interest to any human being. It is especially singular that Americans should care about perpetuating themselves in this mode. The brief duration of our families, as a hereditary household, renders it next to a certainty that the great-grandchildren will not know their father’s grandfather, and that half a century hence at furthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump its knock-down blow against his blockhead, sold at so much for the pound of stone! And it ought to make us shiver, the idea of leaving our features to be a dusty-white ghost among strangers of another generation, who will take our nose between their thumb and fingers (as we have seen men do by Caesar’s), and infallibly break it off if they can do so without detection!
“Yes,” said Miriam, who had been revolving some such thoughts as the above, “it is a good state of mind for mortal man, when he is content to leave no more definite memorial than the grass, which will sprout kindly and speedily over his grave, if we do not make the spot barren with marble. Methinks, too, it will be a fresher and better world, when it flings off this great burden of stony memories, which the ages have deemed it a piety to heap upon its back.”
“What you say,” remarked Kenyon, “goes against my whole art. Sculpture, and the delight which men naturally take in it, appear to me a proof that it is good to work with all time before our view.”
“Well, well,” answered Miriam, “I must not quarrel with you for flinging your heavy stones at poor Posterity; and, to say the truth, I think you are as likely to hit the mark as anybody. These busts, now, much as I seem to scorn them, make me feel as if you were a magician.. You turn feverish men into cool, quiet marble. What a blessed change for them! Would you could do as much for me!”
“O, gladly!” cried Kenyon, who had long wished to model that beautiful and most expressive face. “When will you begin to sit?”
“Poh! that was not what I meant,” said Miriam. “Come, show me something else.”
“Do you recognize this?” asked the sculptor.
He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory coffer, yellow with age; it was richly carved with antique figures and foliage; and had Kenyon thought fit to say that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious box, the skill and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means have discredited his word, nor the old artist’s fame. At least, it was evidently a production of Benvenuto’s school and century, and might once have been the jewel-case of some grand lady at the court of the De’ Medici.
Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was disclosed, but only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully shaped hand, most delicately sculptured in marble. Such loving care and nicest art had been lavished here, that the palm really seemed to have a tenderness in its very substance. Touching those lovely fingers, — had the jealous sculptor allowed you to touch, — you could hardly believe that a virgin warmth would not steal from them into your heart.
“Ah, this is very beautiful!” exclaimed Miriam, with a genial smile. “It is as good in its way as Loulie’s hand with its baby-dimples, which Powers showed me at Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he had wrought it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as Harriet Hosmer’s clasped hands of Browning and his wife, symbolizing the individuality and heroic union of two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not question that it is better than either of those, because you must have wrought it passionately, in spite of its maiden palm and dainty fingertips.”
“Then you do recognize it?” asked Kenyon.
“There is but one right hand on earth that could have supplied the model,” answered Miriam; “so small and slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet with a character of delicate energy. I have watched it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won Hilda so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her hand in marble?”
“Never! She never knew it!” hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate his mistress’s maidenly reserve. “I stole it from her. The hand is a reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life.”
“May you win the original one day!” said Miriam kindly.
“I have little ground to hope it,” answered the sculptor despondingly; “Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down a white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange, with all her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly sufficient to herself. No; I shall never win her. She is abundantly capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it, but she has no need of love.”
“I partly agree with you,” said Miriam. “It is a mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature has made women especially prone to throw their whole being into what is technically called love. We have, to say the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we have nothing else to do with our hearts. When women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall in love. I can think of many women distinguished in art, literature, and science, — and multitudes whose hearts and minds find good employment in less ostentatious ways, — who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned.”
“And Hilda will be one of these!” said Kenyon sadly; “the thought makes me shiver for myself, and and for her, too.”
“Well,” said Miriam, smiling, “perhaps she may sprain the delicate wrist which you have sculptured to such perfection. In that case you may hope. These old masters to whom she has vowed herself, and whom her slender hand and woman’s heart serve so faithfully, are your only rivals.”
The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of Hilda’s marble hand into the ivory coffer, and thought how slight was the possibility that he should ever feel responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original. He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had made: it had assumed its share of Hilda’s remote and shy divinity.
“And now,” said Miriam, “show me the new statue which you asked me hither to see.”
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