The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 68/130

About this period, Miriam seems to have been goaded by a weary

restlessness that drove her abroad on any errand or none. She went one

morning to visit Kenyon in his studio, whither he had invited her to

see a new statue, on which he had staked many hopes, and which was now

almost completed in the clay. Next to Hilda, the person for whom

Miriam felt most affection and confidence was Kenyon; and in all the

difficulties that beset her life, it was her impulse to draw near Hilda

for feminine sympathy, and the sculptor for brotherly counsel.

Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the edge of the

voiceless gulf between herself and them. Standing on the utmost verge of

that dark chasm, she might stretch out her hand, and never clasp a hand

of theirs; she might strive to call out, "Help, friends! help!" but, as

with dreamers when they shout, her voice would perish inaudibly in

the remoteness that seemed such a little way. This perception of an

infinite, shivering solitude, amid which we cannot come close enough to

human beings to be warmed by them, and where they turn to cold, chilly

shapes of mist, is one of the most forlorn results of any accident,

misfortune, crime, or peculiarity of character, that puts an individual

ajar with the world. Very often, as in Miriam's case, there is an

insatiable instinct that demands friendship, love, and intimate

communion, but is forced to pine in empty forms; a hunger of the heart,

which finds only shadows to feed upon.

Kenyon's studio was in a cross-street, or, rather, an ugly and dirty

little lane, between the Corso and the Via della Ripetta; and though

chill, narrow, gloomy, and bordered with tall and shabby structures,

the lane was not a whit more disagreeable than nine tenths of the Roman

streets. Over the door of one of the houses was a marble tablet, bearing

an inscription, to the purport that the sculpture-rooms within had

formerly been occupied by the illustrious artist Canova. In these

precincts (which Canova's genius was not quite of a character to render

sacred, though it certainly made them interesting) the young American

sculptor had now established himself.

The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough and dreary-looking

place, with a good deal the aspect, indeed, of a stone-mason's workshop.

Bare floors of brick or plank, and plastered walls,--an old chair

or two, or perhaps only a block of marble (containing, however, the

possibility of ideal grace within it) to sit down upon; some hastily

scrawled sketches of nude figures on the whitewash of the wall. These

last are probably the sculptor's earliest glimpses of ideas that may

hereafter be solidified into imperishable stone, or perhaps may remain

as impalpable as a dream. Next there are a few very roughly modelled

little figures in clay or plaster, exhibiting the second stage of the

idea as it advances towards a marble immortality; and then is seen the

exquisitely designed shape of clay, more interesting than even the

final marble, as being the intimate production of the sculptor himself,

moulded throughout with his loving hands, and nearest to his imagination

and heart. In the plaster-cast, from this clay model, the beauty of

the statue strangely disappears, to shine forth again with pure white

radiance, in the precious marble of Carrara. Works in all these stages

of advancement, and some with the final touch upon them, might be found

in Kenyon's studio.