This story's recognition of the limitations of an artist bridges Hawthorne's greatest writing success between Romanticism and Dark Romanticism, with themes of human fallibility and a predisposition towards sin.
Bugboy, Monarch Butterfly, 2009
An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passingalong the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudyevening into the light that fell across the pavement from thewindow of a small shop. It was a projecting window; and on theinside were suspended a variety of watches, pinchbeck, silver,and one or two of gold, all with their faces turned from thestreets, as if churlishly disinclined to inform the wayfarerswhat o'clock it was. Seated within the shop, sidelong to thewindow with his pale face bent earnestly over some delicate pieceof mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated lustre of ashade lamp, appeared a young man.
"What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old Peter Hovenden,himself a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this sameyoung man whose occupation he was now wondering at. "What can thefellow be about? These six months past I have never come by hisshop without seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It wouldbe a flight beyond his usual foolery to seek for the perpetualmotion; and yet I know enough of my old business to be certainthat what he is now so busy with is no part of the machinery of awatch."
"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest inthe question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of timekeeper. I amsure he has ingenuity enough."
"Poh, child! He has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anythingbetter than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerlybeen put to much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "Aplague on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of itwas to spoil the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop.He would turn the sun out of its orbit and derange the wholecourse of time, if, as I said before, his ingenuity could graspanything bigger than a child's toy!"
"Hush, father! He hears you!" whispered Annie, pressing the oldman's arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and youknow how easily disturbed they are. Do let us move on."
So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on withoutfurther conversation, until in a by-street of the town they foundthemselves passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. Withinwas seen the forge, now blazing up and illuminating the high anddusky roof, and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct ofthe coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows waspuffed forth or again inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. Inthe intervals of brightness it was easy to distinguish objects inremote corners of the shop and the horseshoes that hung upon thewall; in the momentary gloom the fire seemed to be glimmeringamidst the vagueness of unenclosed space. Moving about in thisred glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the blacksmith,well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of light andshade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night, asif each would have snatched his comely strength from the other.Anon he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it onthe anvil, uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped inthe myriads of sparks which the strokes of his hammer scatteredinto the surrounding gloom.
"Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watchmaker. "I knowwhat it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron afterall is said and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. Whatsay you, daughter Annie?"
"Pray don't speak so loud, father," whispered Annie, "RobertDanforth will hear you."
"And what if he should hear me?" said Peter Hovenden. "I sayagain, it is a good and a wholesome thing to depend upon mainstrength and reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare andbrawny arm of a blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzledby his wheels within a wheel, or loses his health or the nicetyof his eyesight, as was my case, and finds himself at middle age,or a little after, past labor at his own trade and fit fornothing else, yet too poor to live at his ease. So I say onceagain, give me main strength for my money. And then, how it takesthe nonsense out of a man! Did you ever hear of a blacksmithbeing such a fool as Owen Warland yonder?"
"Well said, uncle Hovenden!" shouted Robert Danforth from theforge, in a full, deep, merry voice, that made the roof re-echo."And what says Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, willthink it a genteeler business to tinker up a lady's watch than toforge a horseshoe or make a gridiron."
Annie drew her father onward without giving him time for reply.
But we must return to Owen Warland's shop, and spend moremeditation upon his history and character than either PeterHovenden, or probably his daughter Annie, or Owen's oldschool-fellow, Robert Danforth, would have thought due to soslight a subject. From the time that his little fingers couldgrasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicateingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood,principally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed toaim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. But it was always forpurposes of grace, and never with any mockery of the useful. Hedid not, like the crowd of school-boy artisans, construct littlewindmills on the angle of a barn or watermills across theneighboring brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in theboy as to think it worth their while to observe him closely,sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to imitatethe beautiful movements of Nature as exemplified in the flight ofbirds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, anew development of the love of the beautiful, such as might havemade him a poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was ascompletely refined from all utilitarian coarseness as it couldhave been in either of the fine arts. He looked with singulardistaste at the stiff and regular processes of ordinarymachinery. Being once carried to see a steam-engine, in theexpectation that his intuitive comprehension of mechanicalprinciples would be gratified, he turned pale and grew sick, asif something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him.This horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy ofthe iron laborer; for the character of Owen's mind wasmicroscopic, and tended naturally to the minute, in accordancewith his diminutive frame and the marvellous smallness anddelicate power of his fingers. Not that his sense of beauty wasthereby diminished into a sense of prettiness. The beautiful ideahas no relation to size, and may be as perfectly developed in aspace too minute for any but microscopic investigation as withinthe ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rainbow. But,at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects andaccomplishments made the world even more incapable than it mightotherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warland's genius. Theboy's relatives saw nothing better to be done--as perhaps therewas not--than to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping thathis strange ingenuity might thus be regulated and put toutilitarian purposes.
Peter Hovenden's opinion of his apprentice has already beenexpressed. He could make nothing of the lad. Owen's apprehensionof the professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceivablyquick; but he altogether forgot or despised the grand object of awatchmaker's business, and cared no more for the measurement oftime than if it had been merged into eternity. So long, however,as he remained under his old master's care, Owen's lack ofsturdiness made it possible, by strict injunctions and sharpoversight, to restrain his creative eccentricity within bounds;but when his apprenticeship was served out, and he had taken thelittle shop which Peter Hovenden's failing eyesight compelled himto relinquish, then did people recognize how unfit a person wasOwen Warland to lead old blind Father Time along his dailycourse. One of his most rational projects was to connect amusical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that allthe harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and eachflitting moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden dropsof harmony. If a family clock was intrusted to him forrepair,--one of those tall, ancient clocks that have grown nearlyallied to human nature by measuring out the lifetime of manygenerations,--he would take upon himself to arrange a dance orfuneral procession of figures across its venerable face,representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours. Several freaksof this kind quite destroyed the young watchmaker's credit withthat steady and matter-of-fact class of people who hold theopinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether consideredas the medium of advancement and prosperity in this world orpreparation for the next. His custom rapidly diminished--amisfortune, however, that was probably reckoned among his betteraccidents by Owen Warland, who was becoming more and moreabsorbed in a secret occupation which drew all his science andmanual dexterity into itself, and likewise gave full employmentto the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This pursuit hadalready consumed many months.
After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at himout of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warland was seized witha fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble tooviolently to proceed with such delicate labor as he was nowengaged upon.
"It was Annie herself!" murmured he. "I should have known it, bythis throbbing of my heart, before I heard her father's voice.Ah, how it throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on thisexquisite mechanism to-night. Annie! dearest Annie! thou shouldstgive firmness to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus; forif I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form and giveit motion, it is for thy sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet!If my labor be thus thwarted, there will come vague andunsatisfied dreams which will leave me spiritless to-morrow."
As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his task, theshop door opened and gave admittance to no other than thestalwart figure which Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, asseen amid the light and shadow of the blacksmith's shop. RobertDanforth had brought a little anvil of his own manufacture, andpeculiarly constructed, which the young artist had recentlybespoken. Owen examined the article and pronounced it fashionedaccording to his wish.
"Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling theshop as with the sound of a bass viol, "I consider myself equalto anything in the way of my own trade; though I should have madebut a poor figure at yours with such a fist as this," added he,laughing, as he laid his vast hand beside the delicate one ofOwen. "But what then? I put more main strength into one blow ofmy sledge hammer than all that you have expended since you were a'prentice. Is not that the truth?"
"Very probably," answered the low and slender voice of Owen."Strength is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. Myforce, whatever there may be of it, is altogether spiritual."
"Well, but, Owen, what are you about?" asked his oldschool-fellow, still in such a hearty volume of tone that it madethe artist shrink, especially as the question related to asubject so sacred as the absorbing dream of his imagination."Folks do say that you are trying to discover the perpetualmotion."
"The perpetual motion? Nonsense!" replied Owen Warland, with amovement of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. "Itcan never be discovered. It is a dream that may delude men whosebrains are mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such adiscovery were possible, it would not be worth my while to makeit only to have the secret turned to such purposes as are noweffected by steam and water power. I am not ambitious to behonored with the paternity of a new kind of cotton machine."
"That would be droll enough!" cried the blacksmith, breaking outinto such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bellglasses on his work-board quivered in unison. "No, no, Owen! Nochild of yours will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won'thinder you any more. Good night, Owen, and success, and if youneed any assistance, so far as a downright blow of hammer uponanvil will answer the purpose, I'm your man."
And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop.
"How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaninghis head upon his hand, "that all my musings, my purposes, mypassion for the beautiful, my consciousness of power to createit,--a finer, more ethereal power, of which this earthly giantcan have no conception,--all, all, look so vain and idle whenevermy path is crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad wereI to meet him often. His hard, brute force darkens and confusesthe spiritual element within me; but I, too, will be strong in myown way. I will not yield to him."
He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute machinery, whichhe set in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intentlyat it through a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with adelicate instrument of steel. In an instant, however, he fellback in his chair and clasped his hands, with a look of horror onhis face that made its small features as impressive as those of agiant would have been.
"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, theinfluence of that brute force,--it has bewildered me and obscuredmy perception. I have made the very stroke--the fatalstroke--that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over--thetoil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined!"
And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered inthe socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.
Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination andappear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men callvaluable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contactwith the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist topossess a force of character that seems hardly compatible withits delicacy; he must keep his faith in himself while theincredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief; he muststand up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both asrespects his genius and the objects to which it is directed.
For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitabletest. He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continuallyresting in his hands that the towns-people had scarcely anopportunity to see his countenance. When at last it was againuplifted to the light of day, a cold, dull, nameless change wasperceptible upon it. In the opinion of Peter Hovenden, however,and that order of sagacious understandings who think that lifeshould be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden weights, thealteration was entirely for the better. Owen now, indeed, appliedhimself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous towitness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheelsof a great old silver watch thereby delighting the owner, inwhose fob it had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his ownlife, and was accordingly jealous of its treatment. Inconsequence of the good report thus acquired, Owen Warland wasinvited by the proper authorities to regulate the clock in thechurch steeple. He succeeded so admirably in this matter ofpublic interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged hismerits on 'Change; the nurse whispered his praises as she gavethe potion in the sick-chamber; the lover blessed him at the hourof appointed interview; and the town in general thanked Owen forthe punctuality of dinner time. In a word, the heavy weight uponhis spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his ownsystem, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock wereaudible. It was a circumstance, though minute, yet characteristicof his present state, that, when employed to engrave names orinitials on silver spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters inthe plainest possible style, omitting a variety of fancifulflourishes that had heretofore distinguished his work in thiskind.
One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old PeterHovenden came to visit his former apprentice.
"Well, Owen," said he, "I am glad to hear such good accounts ofyou from all quarters, and especially from the town clock yonder,which speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four.Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about thebeautiful, which I nor nobody else, nor yourself to boot, couldever understand,--only free yourself of that, and your success inlife is as sure as daylight. Why, if you go on in this way, Ishould even venture to let you doctor this precious old watch ofmine; though, except my daughter Annie, I have nothing else sovaluable in the world."
"I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied Owen, in adepressed tone; for he was weighed down by his old master'spresence.
"In time," said the latter,--"In time, you will be capable ofit."
The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on hisformer authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had inhand at the moment, together with other matters that were inprogress. The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head.There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold,unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything wasconverted into a dream except the densest matter of the physicalworld. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed fervently to bedelivered from him.
"But what is this?" cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up adusty bell glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something,as delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly's anatomy."What have we here? Owen! Owen! there is witchcraft in theselittle chains, and wheels, and paddles. See! with one pinch of myfinger and thumb I am going to deliver you from all futureperil."
"For Heaven's sake," screamed Owen Warland, springing up withwonderful energy, "as you would not drive me mad, do not touchit! The slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me forever."
"Aha, young man! And is it so?" said the old watchmaker, lookingat him with just enough penetration to torture Owen's soul withthe bitterness of worldly criticism. "Well, take your own course;but I warn you again that in this small piece of mechanism livesyour evil spirit. Shall I exorcise him?"
"You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, much excited,--"you andthe hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondencythat you fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago haveachieved the task that I was created for."
Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt andindignation which mankind, of whom he was partly arepresentative, deem themselves entitled to feel towards allsimpletons who seek other prizes than the dusty one along thehighway. He then took his leave, with an uplifted finger and asneer upon his face that haunted the artist's dreams for many anight afterwards. At the time of his old master's visit, Owen wasprobably on the point of taking up the relinquished task; but, bythis sinister event, he was thrown back into the state whence hehad been slowly emerging.
But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulatingfresh vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summeradvanced he almost totally relinquished his business, andpermitted Father Time, so far as the old gentleman wasrepresented by the clocks and watches under his control, to strayat random through human life, making infinite confusion among thetrain of bewildered hours. He wasted the sunshine, as peoplesaid, in wandering through the woods and fields and along thebanks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement inchasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects.There was something truly mysterious in the intentness with whichhe contemplated these living playthings as they sported on thebreeze or examined the structure of an imperial insect whom hehad imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was an apt emblem of theideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours; butwould the beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand like thebutterfly that symbolized it? Sweet, doubtless, were these days,and congenial to the artist's soul. They were full of brightconceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual world as thebutterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and were realto him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity, andmany disappointments of attempting to make them visible to thesensual eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry, or whateverother material, may not content himself with the inward enjoymentof the beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond theverge of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being inseizing it with a material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulseto give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any ofthe poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer andfainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of theirvisions.
The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creatingthe one idea to which all his intellectual activity referreditself. Always at the approach of dusk he stole into the town,locked himself within his shop, and wrought with patient delicacyof touch for many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap ofthe watchman, who, when all the world should be asleep, hadcaught the gleam of lamplight through the crevices of OwenWarland's shutters. Daylight, to the morbid sensibility of hismind, seemed to have an intrusiveness that interfered with hispursuits. On cloudy and inclement days, therefore, he sat withhis head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his sensitivebrain in a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief toescape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled toshape out his thoughts during his nightly toil.
From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entranceof Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of acustomer, and also with something of the familiarity of achildish friend. She had worn a hole through her silver thimble,and wanted Owen to repair it.
"But I don't know whether you will condescend to such a task,"said she, laughing, "now that you are so taken up with the notionof putting spirit into machinery."
"Where did you get that idea, Annie?" said Owen, starting insurprise.
"Oh, out of my own head," answered she, "and from something thatI heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a littlechild. But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine?"
"Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen Warland,--"anything,even were it to work at Robert Danforth's forge."
"And that would be a pretty sight!" retorted Annie, glancing withimperceptible slightness at the artist's small and slender frame."Well; here is the thimble."
"But that is a strange idea of yours," said Owen, "about thespiritualization of matter."
And then the thought stole into his mind that this young girlpossessed the gift to comprehend him better than all the worldbesides. And what a help and strength would it be to him in hislonely toil if he could gain the sympathy of the only being whomhe loved! To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the commonbusiness of life--who are either in advance of mankind or apartfrom it--there often comes a sensation of moral cold that makesthe spirit shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudesaround the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, thecriminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but separatedfrom the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen felt.
"Annie," cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, "howgladly would I tell you the secret of my pursuit! You, methinks,would estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with areverence that I must not expect from the harsh, material world."
"Would I not? to be sure I would!" replied Annie Hovenden,lightly laughing. "Come; explain to me quickly what is themeaning of this little whirligig, so delicately wrought that itmight be a plaything for Queen Mab. See! I will put it inmotion."
"Hold!" exclaimed Owen, "hold!"
Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, with the pointof a needle, to the same minute portion of complicated machinerywhich has been more than once mentioned, when the artist seizedher by the wrist with a force that made her scream aloud. She wasaffrighted at the convulsion of intense rage and anguish thatwrithed across his features. The next instant he let his headsink upon his hands.
"Go, Annie," murmured he; "I have deceived myself, and mustsuffer for it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied,and dreamed that you might give it me; but you lack the talisman,Annie, that should admit you into my secrets. That touch hasundone the toil of months and the thought of a lifetime! It wasnot your fault, Annie; but you have ruined me!"
Poor Owen Warland! He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for ifany human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processesso sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman's. Even AnnieHovenden, possibly might not have disappointed him had she beenenlightened by the deep intelligence of love.
The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied anypersons who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him thathe was, in truth, irrevocably doomed to unutility as regarded theworld, and to an evil destiny on his own part. The decease of arelative had put him in possession of a small inheritance. Thusfreed from the necessity of toil, and having lost the steadfastinfluence of a great purpose,--great, at least, to him,--heabandoned himself to habits from which it might have beensupposed the mere delicacy of his organization would have availedto secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a man of geniusis obscured the earthly part assumes an influence the moreuncontrollable, because the character is now thrown off thebalance to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which,in coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. OwenWarland made proof of whatever show of bliss may be found inriot. He looked at the world through the golden medium of wine,and contemplated the visions that bubble up so gayly around thebrim of the glass, and that people the air with shapes ofpleasant madness, which so soon grow ghostly and forlorn. Evenwhen this dismal and inevitable change had taken place, the youngman might still have continued to quaff the cup of enchantments,though its vapor did but shroud life in gloom and fill the gloomwith spectres that mocked at him. There was a certain irksomenessof spirit, which, being real, and the deepest sensation of whichthe artist was now conscious, was more intolerable than anyfantastic miseries and horrors that the abuse of wine couldsummon up. In the latter case he could remember, even out of themidst of his trouble, that all was but a delusion; in the former,the heavy anguish was his actual life.
From this perilous state he was redeemed by an incident whichmore than one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest couldnot explain or conjecture the operation on Owen Warland's mind.It was very simple. On a warm afternoon of spring, as the artistsat among his riotous companions with a glass of wine before him,a splendid butterfly flew in at the open window and flutteredabout his head.
"Ah," exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, "are you alive again,child of the sun and playmate of the summer breeze, after yourdismal winter's nap? Then it is time for me to be at work!"
And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he departed andwas never known to sip another drop of wine.
And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the woods andfields. It might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which hadcome so spirit-like into the window as Owen sat with the ruderevellers, was indeed a spirit commissioned to recall him to thepure, ideal life that had so etheralized him among men. It mightbe fancied that he went forth to seek this spirit in its sunnyhaunts; for still, as in the summer time gone by, he was seen tosteal gently up wherever a butterfly had alighted, and losehimself in contemplation of it. When it took flight his eyesfollowed the winged vision, as if its airy track would show thepath to heaven. But what could be the purpose of the unseasonabletoil, which was again resumed, as the watchman knew by the linesof lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland's shutters? Thetowns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all thesesingularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universallyefficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injuredsensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method ofaccounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinaryscope! From St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of theBeautiful, the same talisman had been applied to the elucidationof all mysteries in the words or deeds of men who spoke or actedtoo wisely or too well. In Owen Warland's case the judgment ofhis towns-people may have been correct. Perhaps he was mad. Thelack of sympathy--that contrast between himself and his neighborswhich took away the restraint of example--was enough to make himso. Or possibly he had caught just so much of ethereal radianceas served to bewilder him, in an earthly sense, by itsintermixture with the common daylight.
One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary rambleand had just thrown the lustre of his lamp on the delicate pieceof work so often interrupted, but still taken up again, as if hisfate were embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by theentrance of old Peter Hovenden. Owen never met this man without ashrinking of the heart. Of all the world he was most terrible, byreason of a keen understanding which saw so distinctly what itdid see, and disbelieved so uncompromisingly in what it could notsee. On this occasion the old watchmaker had merely a graciousword or two to say.
"Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my house to-morrownight."
The artist began to mutter some excuse.
"Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, "for the sake ofthe days when you were one of the household. What, my boy! don'tyou know that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth?We are making an entertainment, in our humble way, to celebratethe event."
That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed coldand unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden's; and yet therewas in it the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which hecompressed within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. Oneslight outbreak. however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, heallowed himself. Raising the instrument with which he was aboutto begin his work, he let it fall upon the little system ofmachinery that had, anew, cost him months of thought and toil. Itwas shattered by the stroke!
Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable representationof the troubled life of those who strive to create the beautiful,if, amid all other thwarting influences, love had not interposedto steal the cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been noardent or enterprising lover; the career of his passion hadconfined its tumults and vicissitudes so entirely within theartist's imagination that Annie herself had scarcely more than awoman's intuitive perception of it; but, in Owen's view, itcovered the whole field of his life. Forgetful of the time whenshe had shown herself incapable of any deep response, he hadpersisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success withAnnie's image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritualpower that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay anot unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he haddeceived himself; there were no such attributes in Annie Hovendenas his imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect whichshe wore to his inward vision, was as much a creature of his ownas the mysterious piece of mechanism would be were it everrealized. Had he become convinced of his mistake through themedium of successful love,--had he won Annie to his bosom, andthere beheld her fade from angel into ordinary woman,--thedisappointment might have driven him back, with concentratedenergy, upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand, had hefound Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich inbeauty that out of its mere redundancy he might have wrought thebeautiful into many a worthier type than he had toiled for; butthe guise in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that theangel of his life had been snatched away and given to a rude manof earth and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate herministrations,--this was the very perversity of fate that makeshuman existence appear too absurd and contradictory to be thescene of one other hope or one other fear. There was nothing leftfor Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that had beenstunned.
He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery his smalland slender frame assumed an obtuser garniture of flesh than ithad ever before worn. His thin cheeks became round; his delicatelittle hand, so spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work,grew plumper than the hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had achildishness such as might have induced a stranger to pat him onthe head--pausing, however, in the act, to wonder what manner ofchild was here. It was as if the spirit had gone out of him,leaving the body to flourish in a sort of vegetable existence.Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk, and notirrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin tothink him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length ofmarvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but whichhe had learned to consider as absolutely fabulous. Among them heenumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, andthe Brazen Head of Friar Bacon; and, coming down to later times,the automata of a little coach and horses, which it was pretendedhad been manufactured for the Dauphin of France; together with aninsect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly, and yet wasbut a contrivance of minute steel springs. There was a story,too, of a duck that waddled, and quacked, and ate; though, hadany honest citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have foundhimself cheated with the mere mechanical apparition of a duck.
"But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, "I am now satisfiedare mere impositions."
Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he once thoughtdifferently. In his idle and dreamy days he had considered itpossible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and tocombine with the new species of life and motion thus produced abeauty that should attain to the ideal which Nature has proposedto herself in all her creatures, but has never taken pains torealize. He seemed, however, to retain no very distinctperception either of the process of achieving this object or ofthe design itself.
"I have thrown it all aside now," he would say. "It was a dreamsuch as young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now thatI have acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh to thinkof it."
Poor, poor and fallen Owen Warland! These were the symptoms thathe had ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that liesunseen around us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and nowprided himself, as such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdomwhich rejected much that even his eye could see, and trustedconfidently in nothing but what his hand could touch. This is thecalamity of men whose spiritual part dies out of them and leavesthe grosser understanding to assimilate them more and more to thethings of which alone it can take cognizance; but in Owen Warlandthe spirit was not dead nor passed away; it only slept.
How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps the torpid slumberwas broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a formerinstance, the butterfly came and hovered about his head andreinspired him,--as indeed this creature of the sunshine hadalways a mysterious mission for the artist,--reinspired him withthe former purpose of his life. Whether it were pain or happinessthat thrilled through his veins, his first impulse was to thankHeaven for rendering him again the being of thought, imagination,and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased to be.
"Now for my task," said he. "Never did I feel such strength forit as now."
Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the morediligently by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in themidst of his labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all menwho set their hearts upon anything so high, in their own view ofit, that life becomes of importance only as conditional to itsaccomplishment. So long as we love life for itself, we seldomdread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of anobject, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side byside with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in ourinvulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any taskthat seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, andwhich the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave itunaccomplished. Can the philosopher, big with the inspiration ofan idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to bebeckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when heis mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should heperish so, the weary ages may pass away--the world's, whose lifesand may fall, drop by drop--before another intellect is preparedto develop the truth that might have been uttered then. Buthistory affords many an example where the most precious spirit,at any particular epoch manifested in human shape, has gone henceuntimely, without space allowed him, so far as mortal judgmentcould discern, to perform his mission on the earth. The prophetdies, and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on.The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond thescope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter--asAllston did--leaves half his conception on the canvas to saddenus with its imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth thewhole, if it be no irreverence to say so, in the hues of heaven.But rather such incomplete designs of this life will be perfectednowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects mustbe taken as a proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealizedby piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises andmanifestations of the spirit. In heaven, all ordinary thought ishigher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he addanother verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?
But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, good or ill,to achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space ofintense thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wastinganxiety, succeeded by an instant of solitary triumph: let allthis be imagined; and then behold the artist, on a winterevening, seeking admittance to Robert Danforth's fireside circle.There he found the man of iron, with his massive substancethoroughly warmed and attempered by domestic influences. Andthere was Annie, too, now transformed into a matron, with much ofher husband's plain and sturdy nature, but imbued, as OwenWarland still believed, with a finer grace, that might enable herto be the interpreter between strength and beauty. It happened,likewise, that old Peter Hovenden was a guest this evening at hisdaughter's fireside, and it was his well-remembered expression ofkeen, cold criticism that first encountered the artist's glance.
"My old friend Owen!" cried Robert Danforth, starting up, andcompressing the artist's delicate fingers within a hand that wasaccustomed to gripe bars of iron. "This is kind and neighborly tocome to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion hadbewitched you out of the remembrance of old times."
"We are glad to see you," said Annie, while a blush reddened hermatronly cheek. "It was not like a friend to stay from us solong."
"Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting,"how comes on the beautiful? Have you created it at last?"
The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by theapparition of a young child of strength that was tumbling abouton the carpet,--a little personage who had come mysteriously outof the infinite, but with something so sturdy and real in hiscomposition that he seemed moulded out of the densest substancewhich earth could supply. This hopeful infant crawled towards thenew-comer, and setting himself on end, as Robert Danforthexpressed the posture, stared at Owen with a look of suchsagacious observation that the mother could not help exchanging aproud glance with her husband. But the artist was disturbed bythe child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it and PeterHovenden's habitual expression. He could have fancied that theold watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and lookingout of those baby eyes, and repeating, as he now did, themalicious question: "The beautiful, Owen! How comes on thebeautiful? Have you succeeded in creating the beautiful?"
"I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momentary light oftriumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in suchdepth of thought that it was almost sadness. "Yes, my friends, itis the truth. I have succeeded."
"Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping outof her face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what thesecret is?"
"Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come," answered OwenWarland. "You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess thesecret! For, Annie,--if by that name I may still address thefriend of my boyish years,--Annie, it is for your bridal giftthat I have wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this harmony ofmotion, this mystery of beauty. It comes late, indeed; but it isas we go onward in life, when objects begin to lose theirfreshness of hue and our souls their delicacy of perception, thatthe spirit of beauty is most needed. If,--forgive me, Annie,--ifyou know how--to value this gift, it can never come too late."
He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carvedrichly out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fancifultracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly,which, elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was flyingheavenward; while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy inhis strong desire that he ascended from earth to cloud, and fromcloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the beautiful. This case ofebony the artist opened, and bade Annie place her fingers on itsedge. She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly flutteredforth, and, alighting on her finger's tip, sat waving the amplemagnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if inprelude to a flight. It is impossible to express by words theglory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness which weresoftened into the beauty of this object. Nature's ideal butterflywas here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern ofsuch faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of thosewhich hover across the meads of paradise for child-angels and thespirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The richdown was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemedinstinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around thiswonder--the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparentlyby its own radiance, and illuminated the finger and outstretchedhand on which it rested with a white gleam like that of preciousstones. In its perfect beauty, the consideration of size wasentirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mindcould not have been more filled or satisfied.
"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Annie. "Is it alive? Is italive?"
"Alive? To be sure it is," answered her husband. "Do you supposeany mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly, or would puthimself to the trouble of making one, when any child may catch ascore of them in a summer's afternoon? Alive? Certainly! But thispretty box is undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufacture; andreally it does him credit."
At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motionso absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and evenawestricken; for, in spite of her husband's opinion, she couldnot satisfy herself whether it was indeed a living creature or apiece of wondrous mechanism.
"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than before.
"Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in herface with fixed attention.
The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered roundAnnie's head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor,still making itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam inwhich the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on thefloor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. Afterflying about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and settledagain on Annie's finger.
"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on whichthe gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that thebutterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell meif it be alive, or whether you created it."
"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" replied OwenWarland. "Alive? Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possesslife, for it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in thesecret of that butterfly, and in its beauty,--which is not merelyoutward, but deep as its whole system,--is represented theintellect, the imagination, the sensibility, the soul of anArtist of the Beautiful! Yes; I created it. But"--and here hiscountenance somewhat changed--"this butterfly is not now to mewhat it was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of myyouth."
"Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything," said theblacksmith, grinning with childlike delight. "I wonder whether itwould condescend to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine?Hold it hither, Annie."
By the artist's direction, Annie touched her finger's tip to thatof her husband; and, after a momentary delay, the butterflyfluttered from one to the other. It preluded a second flight by asimilar, yet not precisely the same, waving of wings as in thefirst experiment; then, ascending from the blacksmith's stalwartfinger, it rose in a gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling,made one wide sweep around the room, and returned with anundulating movement to the point whence it had started.
"Well, that does beat all nature!" cried Robert Danforth,bestowing the heartiest praise that he could find expression for;and, indeed, had he paused there, a man of finer words and nicerperception could not easily have said more. "That goes beyond me,I confess. But what then? There is more real use in one downrightblow of my sledge hammer than in the whole five years' labor thatour friend Owen has wasted on this butterfly."
Here the child clapped his hands and made a great babble ofindistinct utterance, apparently demanding that the butterflyshould be given him for a plaything.
Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discoverwhether she sympathized in her husband's estimate of thecomparative value of the beautiful and the practical. There was,amid all her kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder andadmiration with which she contemplated the marvellous work of hishands and incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn--too secret,perhaps, for her own consciousness, and perceptible only to suchintuitive discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in thelatter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region inwhich such a discovery might have been torture. He knew that theworld, and Annie as the representative of the world, whateverpraise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word norfeel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompenseof an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a materialtrifle,--converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,--had wonthe beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment washe to learn that the reward of all high performance must besought within itself, or sought in vain. There was, however, aview of the matter which Annie and her husband, and even PeterHovenden, might fully have understood, and which would havesatisfied them that the toil of years had here been worthilybestowed. Owen Warland might have told them that this butterfly,this plaything, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to ablacksmith's wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a monarchwould have purchased with honors and abundant wealth, and havetreasured it among the jewels of his kingdom as the most uniqueand wondrous of them all. But the artist smiled and kept thesecret to himself .
"Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the oldwatchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, "do come andadmire this pretty butterfly."
"Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with asneer upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himselfdid, in everything but a material existence. "Here is my fingerfor it to alight upon. I shall understand it better when once Ihave touched it."
But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of herfather's finger was pressed against that of her husband, on whichthe butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings andseemed on the point of falling to the floor. Even the brightspots of gold upon its wings and body, unless her eyes deceivedher, grew dim, and the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and thestarry lustre that gleamed around the blacksmith's hand becamefaint and vanished.
"It is dying! it is dying!" cried Annie, in alarm.
"It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As Itold you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism,or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery itsexquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of himwho instilled his own life into it. It has already lost itsbeauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparablyinjured."
"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale."Here is my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There,perhaps, its life will revive and its colors grow brighter thanever."
Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. Thebutterfly then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion,while its hues assumed much of their original lustre, and thegleam of starlight, which was its most ethereal attribute, againformed a halo round about it. At first, when transferred fromRobert Danforth's hand to the small finger of the child, thisradiance grew so powerful that it positively threw the littlefellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extendedhis plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, andwatched the waving of the insect's wings with infantine delight.Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity thatmade Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden,partially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard scepticisminto childish faith.
"How wise the little monkey looks!" whispered Robert Danforth tohis wife.
"I never saw such a look on a child's face," answered Annie,admiring her own infant, and with good reason, far more than theartistic butterfly. "The darling knows more of the mystery thanwe do."
As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of somethingnot entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternatelysparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand ofthe infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upwardwithout an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with which itsmaster's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair visioninvoluntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction,it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But itslustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of itswings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two,as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on thecarpet. Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead ofreturning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards theartist's hand.
"Not so! not so!" murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiworkcould have understood him. "Thou has gone forth out of thymaster's heart. There is no return for thee."
With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, thebutterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and wasabout to alight upon his finger; but while it still hovered inthe air, the little child of strength, with his grandsire's sharpand shrewd expression in his face, made a snatch at themarvellous insect and compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed.Old Peter Hovenden burst into a cold and scornful laugh. Theblacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and foundwithin the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, whence themystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for Owen Warland, helooked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, andwhich was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly thanthis. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful,the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal sensesbecame of little value in his eyes while his spirit possesseditself in the enjoyment of the reality.
Visit our Transcendentalism Study Guide for more on this genre.
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
