Rapid creative sketching in
chalk and charcoal. Then a chaos of colors and clouds, put on now with
brushes, now with fingers. "God began with chaos," said he, quoting
Prudhon. "We cannot expect to do better than God."
With intensest enjoyment I watched the chaotic clouds forming on the
canvas round a certain nucleus, gradually resolving themselves into
shape, and lightening up with tints and touches, until a head seemed
slowly emerging from amidst the shadows.
Meanwhile, an animated conversation was proceeding. M. Belloc, in his
rich, glorious French, rolling out like music from an organ, discussed
the problems of his art; while we ever and anon excited him by our
speculations, our theories, our heresies. H. talked in English, and
Mrs. C. translated, and I put in a French phrase sidewise every now
and then.
By and by, M. Charpentier came in, who is more voluble, more _ore
rotundo, grandiose_, than M. Belloc. He began panegyrizing Uncle
Tom; and this led to a discussion of the ground of its unprecedented
success. In his thirty-five years' experience as a bookseller, he had
known nothing like it. It surpassed all modern writers. At first he
would not read it; his taste was for old masters of a century or two
ago. "Like M. Belloc in painting," said I. At length, he found his
friend, M. Alfred de Musee, the first intelligence of the age, reading
it.
"What, you too?" said he.
"Ah, ah!" said De Musee; "say nothing about this book! There is
nothing like it. This leaves us all behind - all, all, miles behind!"
M. Belloc said the reason was because there was in it more _genuine
faith_ than in any book. And we branched off into florid eloquence
touching paganism, Christianity, and art.
"Christianity," M. Belloc said, "has ennobled man, but not made him
happier. The Christian is not so happy as the old Greek. The old Greek
mythology is full of images of joy, of lightness, and vivacity; nymphs
and fauns, dryads and hamadryads, and all sportive creations. The arts
that grow up out of Christianity are all tinged with sorrow."
"This is true in part," replied H., "because the more you enlarge a
person's general capacity of feeling, and his quantity of being, the
more you enlarge his capacity of suffering. A man can suffer more than
an oyster. Christianity, by enlarging the scope of man's heart, and
dignifying his nature, has deepened his sorrow."
M. Belloc referred to the paintings of Eustache le Soeur, in the
Louvre, in illustration of his idea - a series based on the experience
of St. Bruno, and representing the effects of maceration and ghostly
penance with revolting horrors.
"This," H. replied, "is not my idea of Christianity. Religion is not
asceticism, but a principle of love to God that beautifies and exalts
common life, and fills it with joy."
M. Belloc ended with a splendid panegyric upon the ancient Greeks, the
eloquence of which I will not mar by attempting to repeat.
