As I Sat Reading In The Great Armchair, I Kept
Looking Round With The Tail Of My Eye At The Quaint, Bright Picture
That Was About Me, And Could Not Help Some Pleasure And A Certain
Childish Pride In Forming Part Of It.
The book I read was about
Italy in the early Renaissance, the pageantries and the light loves
of princes,
The passion of men for learning, and poetry, and art;
but it was written, by good luck, after a solid, prosaic fashion,
that suited the room infinitely more nearly than the matter; and
the result was that I thought less, perhaps, of Lippo Lippi, or
Lorenzo, or Politian, than of the good Englishman who had written
in that volume what he knew of them, and taken so much pleasure in
his solemn polysyllables.
I was not left without society. My landlord had a very pretty
little daughter, whom we shall call Lizzie. If I had made any
notes at the time, I might be able to tell you something definite
of her appearance. But faces have a trick of growing more and more
spiritualised and abstract in the memory, until nothing remains of
them but a look, a haunting expression; just that secret quality in
a face that is apt to slip out somehow under the cunningest
painter's touch, and leave the portrait dead for the lack of it.
And if it is hard to catch with the finest of camel's-hair pencils,
you may think how hopeless it must be to pursue after it with
clumsy words. If I say, for instance, that this look, which I
remember as Lizzie, was something wistful that seemed partly to
come of slyness and in part of simplicity, and that I am inclined
to imagine it had something to do with the daintiest suspicion of a
cast in one of her large eyes, I shall have said all that I can,
and the reader will not be much advanced towards comprehension. I
had struck up an acquaintance with this little damsel in the
morning, and professed much interest in her dolls, and an impatient
desire to see the large one which was kept locked away for great
occasions. And so I had not been very long in the parlour before
the door opened, and in came Miss Lizzie with two dolls tucked
clumsily under her arm. She was followed by her brother John, a
year or so younger than herself, not simply to play propriety at
our interview, but to show his own two whips in emulation of his
sister's dolls. I did my best to make myself agreeable to my
visitors, showing much admiration for the dolls and dolls' dresses,
and, with a very serious demeanour, asking many questions about
their age and character. I do not think that Lizzie distrusted my
sincerity, but it was evident that she was both bewildered and a
little contemptuous. Although she was ready herself to treat her
dolls as if they were alive, she seemed to think rather poorly of
any grown person who could fall heartily into the spirit of the
fiction.
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