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II. Patric Park, Sculptor
I am glad to be able in these pages to render tribute, however feeble, to one of the great but unappreciated geniuses of his time; a man of powerful intellect as well as powerful frame, a true artist of heroic mould and thought, who dwarfed the poor pigmies of the day in which his lot was cast by conceptions too grand to find a market: Patric Park, sculptor, who concealed under a somewhat rude and rough exterior as tender a heart as ever beat in a human bosom. Had he been an ancient Greek, his name might have become immortal. Had he been a modern Frenchman, the art in which he excelled would have brought him not only bread, but fortune. But as he was only a portrayer of the heroic in the very prosaic country in which his lot was cast, it was as much as he could do to pay his way by the scanty rewards of an art which few people appreciated, or even understood, and to waste upon the marble busts of rich men, who had a fancy for that style of portraiture, the talents, or rather the genius, which, had encouragement come, might have produced epics in stone to have rivalled the masterpieces of antiquity.
Patrick, or, as he usually signed himself, Patric, Park was born in Glasgow in 1809, and I made his acquaintance in the Morning Chronicle office in 1842, when he was in the prime of his early manhood. He sent a letter to the editor to request the insertion of a modest paragraph in reference to a work of his which had found a tardy purchaser in Stirling, where it was destined to adorn the beautiful public cemetery of the city. The paragraph was inserted not as he wrote it, but with a kindly addition in praise of his work and of his genius. He came to the office next day to know the writer’s name. And when the writer avowed himself, a friendship sprung up between the two, which suffered no abatement during the too short life of the grateful man of genius, who, for the first time, had been publicly recognized by the humble pen of one who could command, in artistic and literary matters, the columns of a powerful journal. Park’s nature was broad and bold, and scorned conventionalities and false pretence. George Outram, a lawyer and editor of a Glasgow newspaper, author of several humorous songs and lyrics upon the odds and ends of legal practice, among which the “Annuity” survives in perennial youth in Edinburgh and Glasgow society, and brother of the gallant Sir James Outram, of Indian fame, used to say of Park, that he liked him because he was not smooth and conventional. “There is not in the world,” he said to me on one occasion, “another man with so many delightful corners in his character as Park. We are all of us much too smooth and rounded off. Give me Park and genuine nature, and all the more corners the better.”
Park had a very loud voice, and sang Scotch songs perhaps with more vehemence than many people would admire, but with a hearty appreciation that was pleasant to witness. It is related that a deputation of Glasgow bailies came up to London, with Lord Provost Lumsden at their head, in reference to the Loch Katrine Water Bill, for the supply of Glasgow with pure water, which was then before Parliament, and that they invited their distinguished townsman to dine with them at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. After dinner Park was called upon for a song, and as there was nobody in the dining-room but one old gentleman, who, according to the waiter, was very deaf, Park consented to sing, and sang in his very best style the triumphant Jacobite ballad of “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet,” till, as one of the bailies said, “he made the rafters ring, and might have been heard at St. Paul’s.” The deaf gentleman, as soon as the song was concluded, is reported to have made his way to the table, and apologising for addressing a company of strangers, to have turned to Park and said, with extraordinary fervor and emotion, “May God Almighty bless you, sir, and pour his choicest blessings upon your head! For thirty years I have been stone deaf and have not heard the sound of the human voice. But I heard your song, every word of it; God bless you!”
Upon one occasion, when we were travelling together in the Western Highlands, the captain of one of the Hutcheson steamers was exceedingly courteous and attentive to his passengers, and took great pains to point out to those who were making this delightful journey for the first time all the picturesque objects on the route. At one of the landing-places the young Earl of Durham was taken on board, with his servants, and from that moment the captain had neither eyes nor ears for any other person in the vessel. He lavished the most obsequious and fulsome attention upon his lordship, and when Park asked him a question, cut him short with a snappish reply. Park was disgusted, and expressed his opinion of the captain in a manner more forcible than polite. As there was a break in the navigation in consequence of some repairs that were being effected in one of the locks, the passengers had to disembark and proceed by omnibus to another steamer that awaited their arrival at Loch Lochy. Park mounted on the box by the side of the driver, and was immediately addressed by the captain, “Come down out of that, you sir! That seat’s reserved for his lordship!” Park’s anger flashed forth like an electric spark, “And who are you, sir, that you dare address a gentleman in that manner?”
“I am the captain of the boat, sir, and I order you to come down out of that.”
“Captain, be hanged!” said Park, “the coachman might as well call himself a captain as you. The only difference between you is, that he is the driver of a land omnibus and that you are the driver of an aquatic omnibus.” The young Earl laughed, and quietly took his place in the interior of the vehicle, leaving Park in undisputed possession of the box-seat.
His contempt for toadyism in all its shapes and manifestations was extreme. There was an engineer of some repute in his day, with whom he had often come into contact, and whom he especially disliked for his slavish subservience to rank and title. The engineer meeting Park on board of the boat, said, “Mr. Park, I wish you not to talk about me! I am told that you said, I was not worth a damn! Is it true?” “Well,” replied Park, “it may be; but if I said so I underrated you. I think you are worth two damns, and I damn you twice!”
On another occasion, when attending a soirée at Lady Byron’s, he was so annoyed at finding no other refreshment than tea, which he did not care for, and very weak port wine negus, which he detested as an unmanly and unheroic drink, that he took his departure, resolved to go in search of some stronger potation. The footman in the hall, addressing him deferentially in search of a “tip,” said, “Shall I call your carriage, my lord?” “I’m not a lord,” said Park, in a voice like that of a stentor. “I beg pardon, sir, shall I call your carriage?” “I have not got a carriage! Give me my walking stick! And now,” he added, slipping a shilling into the man’s hand, “can you tell me of any decent public-house in the neighborhood where I can get a glass of brandy-and-water? The very smell of her ladyship’s negus is enough to make one sick.”
Park resided for a year or two in Edinburgh, and procured several commissions for the busts of legal and other notabilities, and, what was in a higher degree in accordance with his tastes, for some life-size statues of characters in the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott, to complete the Scott monument in Princes Street. He also executed, without a commission, a gigantic model for a statue of Sir William Wallace, for whose name and fame he had the most enthusiastic veneration, with the idea that the patriotic feelings of the Scottish nation would be so far excited by his work as to justify an appeal to the public to set it up in bronze or marble (he preferred bronze,) on the Calton Hill, amid other monuments to the memory of illustrious Scotsmen. But the deeds of Wallace were too far back in the haze of bygone ages to excite much contemporary interest. The model was a noble work, eighteen feet high, and wholly nude. Some of his friends suggested to him that a little drapery would be more in accordance with Scottish ideas, than a figure so nude that it dispensed even with the customary fig-leaf. Park revolted at the notion of the fig-leaf, “a cowardly, indecent subterfuge,” he said. “To the pure all things are pure, as St. Paul says. There is nothing impure in nature, but only in the mind of man. Rather than put on the fig-leaf I would dash the model to pieces.” “But the drapery?” said a friend, the late Alexander Russel of the Scotsman. “What I have done I have done, and I will not spoil my design. Wallace was once a man, and if he had lived in the last century and I had to model his statue, I would have draped it or put it in armor as if he had been the Duke of Marlborough or Prince Eugene. But the memory of Wallace is scarcely the memory of a man but of a demigod. Wallace is a myth; and as a myth he does not require clothes.” “Very true,” said Russel, “but you are anxious to procure the public support and the public guineas, and you’ll never get them for a naked giant.” “Then I’ll smash the model,” said the indignant and dispirited artist. And he did so, and a beautiful work was lost to the world for ever.
At the time of our first acquaintance Park was somewhat smitten by the charms of a beautiful young woman in Greenock, the daughter of one of his oldest and best friends. The lady had no knowledge of art, and scarcely knew what was meant by the word sculptor. She asked him one day whether he cut marble chimney-pieces? This was too much. He was désillusionné and humiliated, and the amatory flame flickered out, no more to be relighted.
Park and I and three or four friends were once together on the top of Ben Lomond, on a fine clear day in August. The weather was lovely, but oppressively hot, and the fatigue of climbing was great, but not excessive. At the summit, so pure was the atmosphere that looking eastward we could distinctly see Arthur’s Seat, overlooking Edinburgh, and the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, twenty miles beyond. Looking westward, we could distinctly see Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde. Thus the eye surveyed the whole diameter of Scotland. By a strange effect of atmosphere the peak of Goatfell in Arran, separated optically from the mountain by a belt of thick white cloud, seemed to be preternaturally raised to a height of at least 20,000 feet above the sea. I pointed it out to Park. “Nonsense!” he said. “Why Goatfell would be higher than the Himalayas if your notion were correct.” “But I know the shape of the peak,” I replied; “I have been on the top of Goatfell at least half-a-dozen times, and would swear to it, as to the nose on your face.” And as we were speaking the white cloud was dissipated, and the Himalayan peak seemed to descend slowly and take its place on the body of Goatfell, from which it had appeared to have been dissevered. “Well,” he said, “things are not what they seem, and I maintain that it was as high as the Himalayas or Chimborazo while the appearance lasted.”
The mountain at this time shone in pale rose-like glow, and Park, inspired by the grandeur of the scene, preached us a very eloquent little sermon, addressing himself to the sun, on the inherent dignity and beauty of sun-worship as practised by the modern Parsees and the ancient Druids. He concluded by a lament that his own art was powerless to represent or personify the grand forces of nature as the Greeks had attempted to do. “The Apollo Belvidere,” he said, “is the representative of a beautiful young man. But it is not Apollo. Art can represent Venus – the perfection of female beauty, and Mars – the perfection of manly vigor; but Apollo; no! Yet I think I would have tried Apollo myself if I had lived in Athens two thousand years ago.”
“‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’”
“True,” said Park, “I am a living dog, Phidias is a dead lion. I have to model the unintellectual faces of rich cheesemongers, or grocers, or iron masters, and put dignity into them, if I can, which is difficult. And when I add the dignity, they complain of the bad likeness, so that I often think I’d rather be a cheesemonger than a sculptor.”
I called at Park’s studio one morning, and was informed that he every minute expected a visit from the great General Sir Charles James Napier – for whose character and achievements he had the highest admiration. He considered him by far the greatest soldier of modern times – and had prevailed upon the general to sit to him for his bust. Park asked me to stay and be introduced to him, and nothing loth, I readily consented. I had not long to wait. The general had a nose like the beak of an eagle – larger and more conspicuous on his leonine and intellectual face than that of the Duke of Wellington, whose nose was familiar in the purlieus of the Horse Guards. It procured for him the title of “conkey” from the street urchins, and I recognised him at a glance as soon as he entered. On his taking the seat for Park to model his face in clay, the sculptor asked him not to think of too many things at a time, but to keep his mind fixed on one subject. The general did his best to comply with the request, with the result that his face soon assumed a fixed and sleepy expression, without a trace of intellectual animation. Park suddenly startled him by inquiring, “Is it true, general, that you gave way – retreated in fact – at the battle of – ?” (naming the place, which I have forgotten). The general’s eyes flashed sudden fire, and he was about to reply indignantly when Park quietly remarked, plying his modelling tool on the face at the time, “That’ll do, general, the expression is admirable!” The general saw through the manœuvre, and laughed heartily.
The general’s statue in Trafalgar Square is an admirable likeness. Park was much disappointed at not receiving the commission to execute it.
Park modelled a bust of myself, for which he would not accept payment. He found it a very difficult task to perform. I had to sit to him at least fifty times before he could please himself with his work. On one occasion he lost all patience, and swearing lustily, more suo, dashed the clay into a shapeless mass with his fist. “D – n you,” he said, “why don’t you keep to one face? You seem to have fifty faces in a minute, and all different! I never but once had another face that gave me half the trouble.”
“And whose was the other?” I inquired.
“Sir Charles Barry’s” (architect of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster). “He drove me to despair with his sudden changes of expression. He was a very Proteus as far as his face was concerned, and you’re another. Why don’t you keep thinking of one thing while I am modelling, or why can’t you retain one expression for at least five minutes?”
It was not till fully three months after this outburst that he took courage to begin again, growling and grumbling at his work, but determining, he said, not to be beaten either by Sir Charles or myself. “Poets and architects, and painters and musicians, and novelists,” he said, “are all difficult subjects for the sculptor. Give me the face of a soldier,” he added, “such a face as that of the Emperor Napoleon. There is no mistake about that; or, better still, that of Sir Charles James Napier! If there is not very much immortal soul, so called, in the faces of such men, there is a very great deal of body.”
Park was commissioned by the late Duke of Hamilton to model a bust of Napoleon III., and produced, perhaps the very finest of all the fine portrait-busts which ever proceeded from his chisel. The Emperor impressed Park in the most favorable manner, and he always spoke of him in terms of enthusiastic admiration, as well for the innate heroism as for the tenderness of his character. “All true heroes,” he said, “are tender-hearted; and the man who can fight most bravely has always the readiest drop of moisture in his eye when a noble deed is mentioned or a chord of human sympathy is touched.” The bust of Napoleon was lost in the wreck of the vessel that conveyed it from Dover to Calais, but the Duke of Hamilton commissioned the sculptor to execute a second copy from the clay model, which duly reached its destination.
Patric Park died before he was fifty, and when, to all appearance, there were many happy and prosperous years before him, when having surmounted his early difficulties, he might have looked forward to the design and completion of the many noble works to which he pined to devote his mature energies, after emancipation from the slavery of what he called “busting” the effigies of “cheesemongers.” He had been for some months in Manchester, plying his vocation among the rich notabilities of that prosperous city, when one day, emerging from a carriage at the railway station, he observed a porter with a huge basket of ice upon his head, staggering under the load and ready to fall. Park rushed forward to the man’s assistance, prevented him from falling, steadied the load upon his head by a great muscular exertion, and suddenly found his mouth full of blood. He had broken a blood-vessel; and stretching forth his hand, took a lump of ice from the basket, and held it in his mouth to stop the bleeding. He proceeded to the nearest chemist’s shop for advice and relief, and was forthwith conveyed to his hotel delirious. A neighboring doctor was called in, Park beseeching him for brandy. The brandy was refused. A telegram was sent to his own physician in London. He came down by the next train, and expressed a strong opinion on seeing the body and learning all the facts, that the brandy ought to have been given. But he arrived too late. The noble, the generous, the gifted Park was no more, and an attached young wife and hundreds of friends, amongst whom the writer of these words was one of the most attached, were “left lamenting.” —Gentleman’s Magazine.
(To be concluded.)
A FEMALE NIHILIST
BY STEPNIAK
I
On the 27th of July, in the year 1878, the little town of Talutorovsk, in Western Siberia, was profoundly excited by a painful event. A political prisoner, named Olga Liubatovitch, it was said had miserably put an end to her days. She was universally loved and esteemed, and her violent death therefore produced a most mournful impression throughout the town, and the Ispravnik or chief of the police, was secretly accused of having driven the poor young girl, by his unjust persecutions, to take away her life.
Olga was sent to Talutorovsk, some months after the trial known as that of the “fifty” of Moscow, in which she was condemned to nine years’ hard labor for Socialist propagandism, a punishment afterwards commuted into banishment for life. Unprovided with any means whatever of existence, for her father, a poor engineer with a large family, could send her nothing, Olga succeeded, by indefatigable industry, in establishing herself in a certain position. Although but little skilled in female labor, she endeavored to live by her needle, and became the milliner of the semi-civilized ladies of the town, who went into raptures over her work. These fair dames were firmly convinced – it is impossible to know why – that the elegance of a dress depends above all things upon the number of its pockets. The more pockets there were, the more fashionable the dress. Olga never displayed the slightest disinclination to satisfy this singular taste. She put pockets upon pockets, upon the body, upon the skirts, upon the underskirts; before, behind, everywhere. The married ladies and the young girls were as proud as peacocks, and were convinced that they were dressed like the most fashionable Parisian, and, though they were less profuse with their money than with their praises, yet in that country, where living costs so little, it was easy to make two ends meet. Later on, Olga had an occupation more congenial to her habits. Before entering the manufactories and workshops as a sempstress in order to carry on the Socialist propaganda, she had studied medicine for some years at Zurich, and she could not now do less than lend her assistance in certain cases of illness. This soon gave her a reputation, and at the request of the citizens, the police accorded to her the permission to fill the post of apothecary and phlebotomist, as the former occupant of that post, owing to habitual drunkenness, was fit for nothing. Not unfrequently she even took the place of the district doctor, a worthy man who, owing to old age and a partiality for brandy, was in such a state that he could not venture upon delicate operations, because his hands shook. She acted for him also in many serious cases baffling his antediluvian knowledge. Some of her cures were considered miraculous; among others, that of the district judge, whom, by determined treatment, she had saved after a violent attack of delirium tremens, a malady common to almost all men in that wild country.
In a word, Olga was in great favor with the peaceful citizens of Talutorovsk. The hatred of the police towards her was all the greater for that reason. Her proud and independent disposition would not permit her to submit to the stupid and humiliating exigencies of the representatives of the Government. Those representatives, barbarous and overbearing as they were, considered every attempt to defend personal dignity a want of respect toward themselves – nay, a provocation, and neglected no occasion of taking their revenge. There was always a latent war between Olga and her guardians, a war of the weak, bound hand and foot, against the strong, armed at all points; for the police have almost arbitrary power over the political prisoners who are under their surveillance. In this very unequal struggle, however, Olga did not always come off the worst, as often happens in the case of those who, proud, daring, and fearing nothing, are always ready to risk everything for the merest trifle. One of these conflicts, which lasted four days and kept the whole of the little town in a state of excitement by its dramatic incidents, was so singular that it deserves to be related.
Olga had sent from her parents a parcel of books, which, in her position, was a gift indeed. She went to the Ispravnik to get them, but met with an unforeseen obstacle. Among the books sent to her was a translation of the “Sociology” of Herbert Spencer, and the Ispravnik mistook it for a work on Socialism, and would not on any account give it up to her. In vain Olga pointed out to him that the incriminated book had been published at St. Petersburg with the license of the Censorship; that sociology and socialism were very different things, etc. The Ispravnik was stubborn. The discussion grew warm. Olga could not restrain some sharp remarks upon the gross ignorance of her opponent, and ended by telling him that his precautions were utterly useless, as she had at home a dozen books like that of Herbert Spencer.
“Oh! you have books like this at home, have you?” exclaimed the Ispravnik. “Very well; we’ll come and search the house this very day.”
“No,” exclaimed Olga, in a fury; “you will do nothing of the kind; you have no right, and if you dare to come I will defend myself.”
With these words she left the place, thoroughly enraged.
War was declared, and the rumor spread throughout the town, and everywhere excited a kind of timorous curiosity.
Directly Olga reached her home she shut herself up and barricaded the door. The Ispravnik, on his side, prepared for the attack. He mustered a band of policemen, with some poniatye, or citizen-witnesses, and sent them to the enemy’s house.
Finding the entrance closed and the door barricaded, the valorous army began to knock energetically, and ordered the inmate to open.
“I will not open the door,” replied the voice of Olga within.
“Open, in the name of the law.”
“I will not open the door. Break it in! I will defend myself.”
At this explicit declaration the band became perplexed. A council of war was held. “We must break open the door,” they all said. But as all these valiant folks had families, wives, and children whom they did not wish to leave orphans, no one cared to face the bullets of this mad-woman, whom they knew to be capable of anything. Each urged his neighbor onward, but no one cared to go forward himself.
Recourse was had to diplomacy.
“Open the door, miss.”
No reply.
“Please to open the door, or you will repent it.”
“I will not open the door,” replied the firm voice of the besieged.
What was to be done? A messenger was sent to the Ispravnik to inform him that Olga Liubatovitch had shut herself up in her house, had pointed a pistol at them, and had threatened to blow out the brains of the first who entered.
The Ispravnik, considering that the task of leadership would fall to him as supreme chief (and he also had a family), did not care to undertake the perilous enterprise. His army, seeing itself thus abandoned by its leader, was in dismay; it lost courage; demoralisation set in, and after a few more diplomatic attempts, which led to nothing, it beat a disgraceful retreat. A select corps of observation remained, however, near the enemy’s citadel, intrenched behind the hedges of the adjoining kitchen-gardens. It was hoped that the enemy, elated by the victory in this first encounter, would make a sortie, and then would be easily taken, in flank and rear, surrounded, and defeated.
But the enemy displayed as much prudence as firmness. Perceiving the manœuvres of her adversaries, Olga divined their object, and did not issue from the house all that day, or the day after, or even on the third day. The house was provided with provisions and water, and Olga was evidently prepared to sustain a long siege.
It was clear that if no one would risk his life, which naturally no one was disposed to risk, nothing could be done save to reduce her by hunger. But who, in that case, could tell how long the scandal of this flagrant rebellion would last? And then, who could guarantee that this Fury would not commit suicide instead of surrendering? And then, what complaints, what reprimands from superiors!
In this perplexity, the Ispravnik resolved to select the least among many evils, and on the fourth day he raised the siege.
Thus ended the little drama of July 1878, known in Siberia as the “Siege of Olga Liubatovitch.” The best of the joke was, however, that she had no arms of a more warlike character than a pen-knife and some kitchen utensils. She herself had not the slightest idea what would have happened had they stormed her house, but that she would have defended herself in some way or other is quite certain.
The Ispravnik might have made her pay for her rebellion by several years of confinement, but how could he confess to his superiors the cowardice of himself and his subordinates? He preferred, therefore, to leave her in peace. But he chafed in secret, for he saw that the partisans of the young Socialist – and they were far from few – ridiculed himself and his men behind their backs. He determined to vindicate his offended dignity at all cost, and, being of a stubborn disposition, he carried out his resolve in the following manner.
A fortnight after the famous siege, he sent a message to Olga to come to his office at eight o’clock in the morning. She went. She waited an hour; two hours; but no one came to explain what she was wanted for. She began to lose patience, and declared that she would go away. But the official in attendance told her that she must not go; that she must wait; such were the orders of the Ispravnik. She waited until eleven o’clock. No one came. At last a subaltern appeared, and Olga addressed herself to him and asked what she was wanted for. The man replied that he did not know, that the Ispravnik would tell her when he came in. He could not say, however, when the Ispravnik would arrive.
“In that case,” said Olga, “I should prefer to return some other time.”
But the police officer declared that she must continue to wait in the antechamber of the office, for such were the orders of the Ispravnik. There could be no doubt that all this was a disgraceful attempt to provoke her, and Olga, who was of a very irascible disposition, replied with some observations not of the most respectful character, and not particularly flattering to the Ispravnik or his deputy.
“Oh! that’s how you treat the representatives of the Government in the exercise of their functions, is it?” exclaimed the deputy, as though prepared for this. And he immediately called in another policeman as a witness, and drew up a statement of the charge against her.
Olga went away. But proceedings were taken against her before the district judge, the very man whom she had cured of delirium tremens, who sentenced her to three days’ solitary confinement. It was confinement in a dark, fetid hole, full of filth and vermin.
Merely in entering it, she was overcome with disgust. When she was released, she seemed to have passed through a serious illness. It was not, however, the physical sufferings she had undergone so much as the humiliation she had endured which chafed her proud disposition.
From that time she became gloomy, taciturn, abrupt. She spent whole days shut up in her room, without seeing anybody, or wandered away from the town into the neighboring wood, and avoided people. She was evidently planning something. Among the worthy citizens of Talutorovsk, who had a compassionate feeling towards her, some said one thing, some another, but no one foresaw such a tragic ending as that of which rumors ran on July 27.
In the morning the landlady entered her room and found it empty. The bed, undisturbed, clearly showed that she had not slept in it. She had disappeared. The first idea which flashed through the mind of the old dame was that Olga had escaped, and she ran in all haste to inform the Ispravnik, fearing that any delay would be considered as a proof of complicity.
