"Helen, thy beauty is to me "Lo! in yon brilliant window niche, It is a pity that where a Helen is so evident to one passionate pilgrim, she should merely be Nell to the world in general. But so it is; and, alas! the very last person to perceive the connection with Psyche is often Nell herself. Poets get little gratitude, as a rule, for the glorification they effect. Poor bards! they are apt to address as Ideala those who would rather be called Nell, and dedicate their deepest life-music to a mistress who, while flattered, really understands neither the poetry nor the poet, and can be more eloquent over a gift of gloves than over a work of genius. Thus hath it ever been; doubtless thus it shall continue. As long as there are fair women, there will be strong men ready to lose their highest heritage for a mess of among the pottage. As innumerable kinds of flowers where the bee may roam and gather honey there is that flower of Trebizond whose fatal blooms allure the unwitting insect to madness or death, so among women there are some who irresponsibly lure men to sure calamity. Who was the man who said that fair women are fair demons who make us enter hell through the door of paradise? Doubtless he loved a flower of Trebizond. Idealists, ponder ! Nevertheless, though we would not naturally seek Ideala among the Nell Gywnnes, it would be a mistake to rise to the high remote air where dwell the saints who have not yet transcended mortality. A touch of sin must be in that man whom we hail as brother, that woman we greet as sister. There was shrewd worldly wisdom in the remark of a French prince, that, however virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure. Concurrently we may take that instructive passage in Cunningham's British Painters where we learn how Hoppner complained of the painted ladies of Sir Thomas Lawrence that they showed "a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespassed on moral as well as professional chastity," while by implication he claimed for his own portraits purity of look as well as purity of style with this result-" Nor is it the least curious part of this story, that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who 'trespassed on moral as well as on professional chastity."" Où est Women should not be wroth with men because that each male, sound of heart and brain, is a Ponce da Leon. Parenthetically, let me add— on the authority of Arsène Houssaye!—that all the energies of Creation do not succeed in producing throughout the whole world one hundred grandes dames yearly. And how many of these die as little girls-how few attain to "la beauté souveraine du corps et de l'âme "? "Voilà,' he adds "voilà pourquoi la grande dame est une oiseau rare. le merle blanc ?" "The Quest of the White Blackbird": fair women, ponder this significant phrase. We all seek the Fountain of Youth, the Golden Isles, Avalon, Woman (as distinct from the fairest of women), Ideala, or whatever sunbright word or words we cap our quest with. If wives could but know it, they have more cause to be jealous of women who have never lived than of any rival "young i' the white and red.” Yet, paradoxically, with a true man, a wife, if she be a true woman, need never turn her back upon the impalpable Dream; for, after all, it is her counterpart, a rainbow-phantom. Fair Women, all men are not travailing with love of you! There are Galileos who would say e pur se muove, though Woman suddenly became passée, nay, though she became a by no means indispensable adjunct. It is even possible there are base ones among us who may envy the Australian god Pundjel, who has a wife whom he may not see! Alas, Fair Women only laugh when they behold Man going solitary to the tune of "O! were there an island, Though ever so wild, Where women might smile, and No man be beguiled!" 66 PART III "And I said, 'By the love I bear you, visions of beauty, come before me and play me magnificent shows.'"-LEIGH HUNT, A Sight of the Gods. "Not these alone but every legend fair Which the supreme Caucasian mind I It will be news to most people, as it was to the present writer, that there was a Fair Woman exhibition other than that at the Grafton. In fact, the one I allude to is not of a season, but perennial. It is called the Kennaquhair Gallery. Presumably there is a byway into it from the Grafton : at any rate, I found myself there one day when I had traversed the several rooms and was by the farther wall of the End Gallery. I had been looking at Van Dyck's Venetia, wife of the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby, concerning whose beauty and attainments rumour was so busy, and about whose complaisance gossip was so rife and was vaguely wondering if it was true that her husband had killed her by giving her viper-wine to preserve that beauty of which he was so proud: when I stepped suddenly into a passage I had never descried before. There was a moment's darkness, then the gleam of the golden letters inscribed above a portal of sunlit marble: "The Kennaquhair Gallery." In less than a minute I paid my price of rainbowgold, and stood within. My first glance bewildered me. Before me was an immense gallery, on both walls of which hung, in a single line, and with a wide space between each canvas, an innumerable series of pictures. The glow, the colour, the lovely radiance, the immediate sense of an indefinable air of beauty and ideal grace-all this, with something of haunting reminiscence, with something of dreams realised, is indescribable. My bewilderment became greater on the discovery that as soon as one stood opposite any canvas it was absolutely vacant ! No, I was not dreaming! There was the room, there were other visitors moving to and fro, there were the pictures, there was the glow, the radiance. It was only then I noticed a catalogue in not remember having taken or been given one. ity I looked at it, and then turned to its preface. ran thus my hand. I did With eager curiosExternally the legend THE KENNAQUHAIR GALLERY OF FAIR WOMEN (ENGLISH SECTION). Chaucer to Swinburne and the Later Victorians. On the first page was the following note, prefatory to a brief introduction by a Mr. Dreemer, with whose name I was not familiar :— * Visitors to the Kennaquhair Gallery must bear in mind (1) that the artist is never to be held responsible for the aspect of his picture in the eyes of the person who realises it; (2) that in almost every instance the painter's own vision will transcend that of the person to whom he appeals; (3) that frequently the lines of Depicture cannot be realised fully without previous knowledge of their context; (4) though the hues in which these Word-Pictures are painted are immortal, they are apt to be fugitive at times, at times somewhat dulled, at times radiant to the exclusion of everything else; but in each case, the reality or vagueness of the vision will depend upon the visitor himself; (5) no pictures are for sale, though replicas of one or many can be carried away in the mind without charge or interference on the part of the Directors, who, however, have nothing to do with the liability of these replicas to fade; (6) the Kennaquhair Gallery is open to all, without any distinction, and at all hours of the day or night, Sundays included; (7) entrance granted immediately on presentation of a piece of rainbow-gold, which can. be had in any quantity on application at the House Beautiful. N.B. For the sake of the common weal, those who have not even a patch of the Ideal Life wherewith to hide the barrenness of their souls cannot gain entrance to the House Beautiful. ** The Galleries are at present arranged as follows: I. English. II. Scottish. III. Irish. IV. Celtic. V. Ancient Greek. VI. Ancient Italian. VII. Renaissance Italian. VIII. Modern Italian. IX. French. X. Provençal. XI. Spanish. XII. Portuguese. XIII. Flemish and Belgian and Dutch. XIV. Scandinavian. XV. Slavonic. XVI.-XIX. Oriental: Ancient and Modern. XX.-XXIII. America, North and South. XXIV.-XXV. Miscellaneous. **In a few instances there are adjacent rooms: e.g. beside the first pourtrayal of Beatrice, there is a Dante Room; beside the strangely beautiful dark woman, called The Worser Spirit, by Shakespere, there opens off the large Shakespere Gallery; again there are a Spenser Room, a Byron Room, a Tennyson Room, a Browning Room, a Meredith Room, a Swinburne Room. Thus, also, in all the Foreign Galleries there are some separate chambers: e.g. in the Greek section a Homer Room; in the Roman, a Virgil Room; in the German, a Goethe Room; in the French, a Voltaire Room, a Victor Hugo Room, and others. By a slight exercise of a mental process these rooms can be entered and enjoyed exclusively, or their contents can be seen on line. * *** A piece of rainbow-gold will at any time procure an optical illusion whereby one or more pictures may be isolated; or whereby chronological sequence may be set at naught. Thus the Helen of Homer and the Helen of Marlowe may be seen side by side. In a word, the rainbow-gold can, if wished, be used as an irresistible spell over time, history, space. On the next page I read : FAIR WOMEN PAINTED BY THE POETS AND ROMANCISTS Thereafter followed the preface. FEMINA. The most beautiful women are those who have never lived, as we understand it. These are wrought of Beauty, Ideal Love, Immortality. Their garments are lovely words, their voice is music, the light upon their faces is the morning glory of Imagination. These Fair Women are the daughters of the Soul of Man by the Beauty of the World, whom he calls Femina. They are immortal, for even if in the passage of years, or through accident, they fade in the memories of mankind, they live again in the ever new and beautiful births which are the offspring of this divine marriage. Time, however, cannot touch their pictured loveliness. They are limned on a canvas beyond the reach of the moth. They are in the mind of man as the innumerable stars are in the firmament. Femina is born daily. Her soul, Ideala, weaves a rainbow for ever. In the weaving, Femina is wooed by the Soul of Man; when the weft is woven, the lovely Dreams are born; when the rainbow fades, while another is swiftly woven from it, its fugitive glories drift into the Looms of Life, |