sculptured figure or beast. It lingers longest on MacMonnies’s fountain, the fitting jewel resting lightly on the bosom of this Venetian beauty whom but yesterday we called Chicago; and well it may, as in a degree the fountain is the clou of the Exposition. It seems but fair to call this fountain the most important of all the decorative sculptures. Every exposition has its great fountain, and the choice of Mr. MacMonnies to execute this one was most happy. Our sculptors as a rule have had too little opportunity to exercise the decorative side of their art, and we do not possess as does France a small army of sculptors who can be, as they were in ’89, turned loose to decorate a great exposition with groups and figures. It demands not only a decorative instinct but practice as well, a certain habit of and delight in handling huge masses of form which men who are capable perhaps of graver and more ponderated work may lack or have lost. Thus fifteen years ago Saint-Gaudens, fresh from school and filled with its traditions, would have in the course of natural selection been the man for the work; but with years and widening experience it is a question whether he would have undertaken to design and carry out in the short space of time that which his brilliant pupil has undertaken and carried through with all the audacity and fire of youth, tempered by a delicacy of taste which gives it after all its greatest value. Anything more typical of the youth and hope which we fondly believe to be the characteristic of our nation is hard to conceive; and if, as is to be so greatly desired, the monument is to be made permanent (which the completeness of the modelling of individual parts, an unusual quality in works like this, would render easy), it might well stand to represent an era. Mr. French’s massive and dignified figure of America may be taken as the matron of this generation, tried and made strong through war; but MacMonnies’s epitome of youth represents the future of our as yet experimental civilization, and though the boat is propelled by the arts and sciences, it is the young girl who fills such a large part in our experiment who is really to the fore. It is Smith and Wellesley who row with the young girl enthroned; and vogue la galère, with pleasant waters ahead and a safe port at last!
Of Mr. Saint-Gaudens we have only a figure of Columbus, which he has signed in collaboration with another of his pupils, Miss Mary G. Lawrence. It is a good exemplification of what has already been said that at the first glance this figure seems almost out of place here. It is of a character—the highest character—of work which depends on the most serious study. Conception and pose are reduced to the simplest, almost archaic form, and while it does not seem quite as successful, it is of the same family as the Lincoln here in Chicago or the Deacon Chapin in Springfield. The best of the sculpture here, while subject to the limitations twice mentioned, has perhaps gained a quality more essentially American by the absence of what may be called the ready-made decorative quality. The quadriga on the Peristyle, by French & Potter, the Indian girl and the bull, and indeed all the figures and animals at which these artists have worked together, are thoroughly satisfactory as decoration, and more native and appropriate to our soil than the lighter touch and greater facility of the sculpture at the exhibition on the Champ de Mars would have been.
The painters of the band of allied artists had the more difficult task. In the first place our country has arbitrarily forced our painters to work on a miniature scale, and with little exception our men affronted their task with theory and enthusiasm as their preparation. The sculptors had at least the practice of modelling large works; but with the exception of Mr. Maynard, who has taken Pompeian motives and given us under the porches of the Agricultural building a thoroughly architectural and adequate decoration in which his past experience has rendered him service, the painters were virtually winning their first spurs. Taking this into consideration their success is marked. Tried by the standard that the space allotted to a decoration should be filled, and filled by a composition which could not serve within any other shaped space than that for which it is devised, Mr. Blashfield’s seems the most successful. In addition to this quality it has great charm of color and dignity of conception, which latter quality, combined with clean, workmanlike drawing, is shared by Mr. Cox. Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Weir’s domes also have charming qualities, while Mr. Shirlaw’s gives one the impression of a complete mastery of his scheme and intention. At the southern end of the Liberal Arts building, Mr. Melchers and Mr. McEwen have large compositions, those of the latter being marked perhaps by the greater individuality; but while they are all (each painter having two compositions) executed in a very able manner, they seem somewhat lacking in spontaneity. In another part of the grounds in the Women’s building the feminine contingent makes a brave show. Mrs. MacMonnies here leads the van with a composition sober in line and excellent in color. Miss Cassatt, having apparently defied the laws of decoration, has divided her space in three parts, in each of which she has painted pictures which, from her previous work, must be judged to be of excellent quality, but which, from the height at which they are seen and by reason of the small scale of the figures, are virtually lost. But this partial and cursory enumeration of what may be seen at the Fair could be continued beyond the limits of an article like this, and still leave unnamed and apparently unappreciated much that is admirable and more that is hopeful. Of the delights of living in the midst of this, of seeing our people in holiday trim and, albeit, taking their pleasure somewhat sadly and getting as much instruction combined with it as possible, still enjoying it, much could be said. No mention has been made of the State buildings, which give, however, so much character to the grounds. New York’s imperial palace, bright and luxurious, is flanked on one side by Massachusetts’s staid and trim reproduction of John Hancock’s mansion, with additions of a character which must temper the smile of gentle reproof with which it regards its frivolous neighbor; while on the other stands Pennsylvania’s broad piazzaed home which shelters the Liberty bell. New Jersey reproduces a colonial “Head-quarters” mansion, and Washington is big and new and booming; California shows her fruits and extols her wines in a lowlying structure which recalls the adobe missions of her first settlers; and each and every State has here its home, first for its own people and then for the neighbors. Strange neighbors we have too, for the Midway Plaisance is not far away with its turbaned, sandalled, greased, and befeathered inhabitants, with its German and Austrian bands, its great difference of tongues and great similarity of cuisine. The outdoor life which is made so much of in Europe here seems unappreciated; the numberless cafés and out-of-door restaurants which make up so much of the comfort with which one sees an exposition there still “leave to be desired” here. But these are details and of things earthy. The moral of the tale is short and easily read.
Our work-a-day nation awakened, it has been frequently said, to knowledge of the existence of art as a factor in life at Philadelphia seventeen years ago, and here and now attains as it were its majority. We may leave out our exhibit in the Fine Arts building proper, with the mere registration of the fact that by general consent it holds its own as well or better than close students of our art have known that it has done for several years past. The exhibition, or that part controlled by the Columbian Commission, is our best sign of progress, nay, of achievement. It has proved that throughout the land when occasion arises to build, to carve, or to paint, we have the men to do it. Art hath her victories no less than commerce; the qualities which have given us our place among nations, now that the struggle is past, are turned in gentler paths; and that which was prophecy so short a time ago is now truth realized:
FOREGROUND AND VISTA AT THE FAIR
By W. Hamilton Gibson
BY the time this brief sketch shall have appeared in print the world’s greatest international fair will have thrown open its gates to the impatient multitudes, and millions will have looked with rapture upon its impressive perspectives of palaces and enjoyed their treasures. Even to the great general public, who are as yet awaiting with eager anticipation the indispensable outing at the Fair, its surpassing architectural features are already enticingly familiar. The “White City” is already a heritage of delight and inspiration to a vast multitude who have spent their available days beneath the spell of its enchantment.
It is no small thing thus to have penetrated the veil, as it were, as is here actually done for many—to have materialized a vision—to have embodied a paradise. The “Heavenly City,” the “New Jerusalem,” with gates of gold and pearl, which in one questionable shape or another hovers in the hopeful, faithful fancy of so many of the sons of Adam will here find a realization, supplanting or exalting the ideal which has hitherto not always been to the glory of Heaven.
But in thus paying tribute to the architect we are perhaps unconsciously crediting him with more than his due; certainly more than he would himself claim. Of what avail were beautiful palaces if they could not be seen? and how easily might such an assemblage of heroic structures such as these at Jackson Park, as in previous similar expositions, have been so disposed, with relation to each other and their environment, as to have completely lost not only their individual impressiveness but the infinite advantage of their imposing ensemble.
We traverse the winding lagoon for an hour in continual delight, every passing moment, every quiet turn of our launch or gondola beneath arching bridge or jutting revetement opening up in either direction new and ravishing vistas of architectural beauty. Yet how little have we considered that the very means of our enjoyment, the pure blue waterway upon which our gondola so listlessly floats, is the crowning artifice by which the work of the architect is glorified—a very triumph and inspiration in the great scheme of landscape—say rather waterscape—gardening, which has made this Columbian Fair a unique model for all others of its kind. I think it is conceded by the architects of the Fair that in no way are its buildings to be seen to such satisfaction or full effect as from the lagoon. And it is well to remember, if only as an instructive object-lesson, as we glide upon this liquid street, how much of our present enjoyment is due to the forethought of a supreme design, which, even before a single foundation-wall was laid, had taken into account the most effective grouping of the architectural features.
More than this, too, how many of these fortunate architects must have realized the rare satisfaction of having builded better than they knew, when for the first time they viewed their works from the vantage point afforded by their collaborator, the landscape artist, and saw these superb creations given back to them in twofold beauty from the clear mirror of the lagoon. The unique character and important innovation of this lagoon feature may be inferred when we consider that we have here an Exposition covering over five hundred and fifty acres, comfortably filled to its limits with the ample buildings, and yet no vehicles are to be allowed within its enclosure, and none will be required. The circuitous elevated
railroad will of course transport the multitudes; while by the interior skilful distribution of the water-ways, rippling with gayly caparisoned gondolas by the score, and a hundred trim electric launches and other equally picturesque craft, every portion of the grounds will be easily accessible. The entire circuit on this water-course, from any given point, will occupy nearly an hour. The luxurious tourist arriving at his destination is invited at the water’s edge by ascending terraces of marble steps, their balustrades on either side overtopped by picturesque masses of tropic and other luxuriant vegetation. Huge bronze-like agaves surmount the lofty marble urns; cannas, musas, caladiums, in most effective and artistic groups, are dispersed among broad expanses of velvety sward, begemmed with parterres of brilliant bloom.
But it is not alone in these picturesque settings of lawn and garden which everywhere abound throughout the grounds that we find our fullest appreciation of the landscape art. In the spell of these imposing structures, towering above the revetement walls on each side as we traverse the lagoon, we had utterly ignored another feature of its banks, or perhaps had our attention only momentarily inveigled thither by the invitation of the bevy of snowy ducks or geese or graceful swans hastening from our prow, and gliding beneath the overhanging boughs of feathery gray willows. Here indeed is a haven for a tired soul, a fairy realm whose modest charms are apt to be overlooked in the claims of the overwhelming architectural surroundings. But sooner or later its restful refuge will be discovered and welcomed. How many a foot-sore mortal, weary from the very excess of enthusiasm, will seek this quiet retirement, content for the moment to consign the architect to the accessory place of vista and horizon, while he roams and pries and muses among the labyrinthian paths, fragrant bowers, and shadowy glades, and along the reedy flowery borders of this sylvan fairy island, which the artistic genius of Olmsted and Codman has here, in two short years, conjured up like magic from the muddy, dreary marsh.
Connected to the mainland by a half-dozen spans of bridges, it is readily accessible from any approach. It is a realm of strange inconsistencies and surprises, harmonies and pleasant discords, unified with the rarest skill. The familiar park or garden at one moment, its curving walks encircling more or less—generally less—conventional parterre, diversified with closely bedded mosaic of bright blossoms; and now a path leading us between high walls of blossom-laden shrubbery, skirting a rustic arbor, or winding beneath the shade of tall, dense branches of trees, which, however at home they may appear, so wonderfully has the skill of the landscapist concealed his artifice, are still almost as much strangers to the soil as ourselves; the adjustment and grouping giving the complete illusion of nature’s random planting.
Only a very few of the thousands of trees upon this “wooded island”—medium-sized white-oaks—are native tenants of the place. Only two years ago isolated in the more elevated dunes of a great morass, they now find themselves in strange company; the soil from the bed of the lagoon, having levelled the former slopes about their feet, is now peopled with individuals as large as themselves. Many a rare nook upon the island’s borders would defy the critical scrutiny of the botanist or artist to detect a single tell-tale evidence of artifice. Would you step from the conventional park to the wild garden in
ten paces? Follow me through this winding path, embowered with its snowy banks of spiræa. Pry your way here beneath the branches. A few more steps, and the ripples gleam through the branches before us, and we emerge at the water’s edge beneath a tangle of willows, while a brood of white ducks, disturbed at our approach, glide out upon the mill-pond—for such indeed is the irresistible association from the surroundings. This haphazard chaos of willows and alders disarms all suspicion of artificial planting. We already anticipate the scene at the brink, and as we press our way among the yielding oziers, find ourselves listening for the familiar “c-r-o-n-k” among the spatter-docks. In a moment more we confront a tiny cove bordered with sedges and tall bulrushes, and intermingled gray-green willows and alders, while the water beneath is hidden by dense clumps of lush pickerel-weed, luxuriant in their feathery spikes of azure bloom. A tiny sportive frog leaps from the border mud, and a dragon-fly darts past on shimmering wing.
It is only as we contemplate the vista across the water that we realize the beautiful deception as yonder beetling dome, in its gilded splendor, or sunlit palaces everywhere gleaming through the waters are brought to our feet in ripples from gliding gondola, swan, or duck.
Was ever border-tangle brushed by mill-pond raft or fishing-punt more wild or spontaneous than this! Foreground and vista in endless combination and surprise greet us as we follow our course about the shore, with Flora’s own wild calendar from week to week. Here a secluded harbor, bristling with arrowheads and white with its spires of bloom, its sedgy banks aflame with cardinal flowers, whose scarlet reflections mingle with the snowy glints from the sunlit façade or spangling flashes from the crystal dome across the water. Here we invade the sheltered retreat of a bittern or small heron, which stalks away with ruffled temper at our intrusion. Creeping between the neighboring bank of alders, we emerge upon a sequestered nook shut off from the main lagoon by a small, straggling islet, plumy with willows and sedges, the main banks fringed with rushes and burr-marigolds and tall galingales that wave their graceful heads above a wild garden of blossoming blue flag. In and out among its willows beyond, the ever-present fleet of ducks glides among the dancing ripples, or snow-white swans “float double—swan and shadow,” as in the enchanted vision of “St. Mary’s Isle.”
As we leave this beguiling haunt the air is suddenly bewitched with entrancing perfume, and our fancy lit with luminous visions of the Orient from the great golden doorway which glows through the branches from the opposite brink and floods the water with its liquid replica. Attar of roses! One such inviting whiff is sufficient. Leaving the water’s edge we return toward the interior of the island, and are soon confronted by the wonderful rose-garden wherein are assembled all the roses of the world, with their thousands of varieties. Roses single and double, pink roses, white roses, roses yellow, crimson, orange, and saffron, and, indeed, of every hue but blue, mingling their beauty and their fragrance in an acre of bloom, and sprinkling the ground in showers of petals with every breeze.
The now famous rose-garden lies in the southern end of the island, approached through winding walks, garlanded with flowery shrubs of every habit and hue, of graceful blossom-burdened spiræas, drooping as with a weight of snow, or varied with rare foliaged plants which vie with the flowers in the endless play of their brilliant colors. Through the skilful foresight and planning of Mr. John Thorpe, the custodian of this realm dedicated to Flora, the fair goddess has crowned him with a new decoration of wreath or laurel for every week, from the earliest yellow glow of May to the brilliant maples and the final autumnal glory of the chrysanthemum.
Japonica! Japonica! How continually does the spirit of the flowery land hover here! It is, indeed, scarcely a surprise that the actual, familiar outlines of its quaint massive gables suddenly confronts us, looking down above a mass of the Mikado’s own chrysanthemum, and we suddenly find ourselves transported to Tokio or Yokohama, surrounded by a veritable epitome of Japan, embracing all the actual features, floral, ornamental, and utilitarian, with which, through the educational influence of painted fan and screen and household gods of vase and kakemono, we have become so pleasantly familiar.
The long, low-roofed, wooden temple is surrounded from its foundation by a characteristic terraced garden, embracing many examples of those “precious goods done up in small parcels,” which have always been the particular fad of the Japanese horticulturist—tiny giants of trees, so to speak, arranged in miniature parks, which, for the moment, make the beholder seem to be upon a mighty cliff or in flight with the soaring falcon, else how could he thus gaze down upon the summit of such a huge, lofty pine as this which he now sees beneath him! A fine example of one of these arboreal paradoxes is to be seen in the Japanese exhibit in the Horticultural Building—an aged dwarf of an arbor vitæ (Thuja) like a gigantic cedar of Lebanon, which, while having all the inherent characteristics of an actual age and dignity of over one hundred years, is still, with the big vase which it occupies, barely the height of one’s shoulders.
In no structure within the grounds is the outward expression so sympathetically reflective of its architectural purpose as in the Fisheries Building. Itself reflected in the blue lagoon, in its architectural functions and sculptural ornament, it in turn reflects the lacustrine life of the waters, which not only almost lave its foundation walls but actually pour into its interior in fountain and cascade and gigantic aquaria. As we follow around these green translucent walls within, our passage lit only from the diffused light transmitted from above the water, we can almost fancy ourselves walking on the actual river-bed, ogled by familiar forms of sun-fish, perch, or pickerel; or perhaps wandering as in a dream among fair ocean caves abloom with brilliant sea-anemones, and embowered with mimic groves of branching corals and all manner of softly swaying sea-weed—graceful crimson laminaria reaching to the surface of the water, responding in serpentine grace to the soft invasion of waving fin. Rare living gems of fishes, very butterflies of the deep, float past flashing in iridescence with every subtile turn of their painted bodies. Star-fish, at first apparently stationary, as though in mid-water, glide across the illusive plane of glass, with their thousand fringy discs of feet. Strange crabs and mollusks and bivalves sport on the pebbly bottoms, and portentous monsters, with great gaping mouths, threaten us as they emerge from their nebulous obscurity and steal to within a few inches of our faces.
All of its interior ichthyological features might have been anticipated even at the threshold of the building, with its rich and effective portals, where so many of these very forms are seen petrified in surface ornament. The building is in the form of a rectangular central structure with two octagonal annexes, each with its own beautiful portal, and connected to the main edifice by curved colonnades, with arch and balustrade—portal and pillar, capital, entablature and arch and panel—everywhere sculptured with ornaments whose themes are drawn from the subaqueous life to which the building is dedicated. The very balcony upon which we lean is supported by columns composed of four ingeniously and gracefully interlocked dolphins, while the pillars on right and left and throughout the entire exterior suggest curious geometric fossils from the deeps. Here a spiral procession of huge toads, whose uncouth shapes thus embodied in conventional ornament are singularly agreeable and effective. Each successive pillar is a study alike for the naturalist or designer—here a sinuous procession of river-horses (hippocampus), the incurved tail forming a volute repeated with pleasant effect in the spiral bands of ornament. Accommodating star-fishes embrace their respective pillars, touching points in geometric design. Here are eels and fishes meandering among bulrushes and arrowheads. Lizards, crabs, and turtles, each combine in effective ornament about their particular columns, which are surmounted by capitals of even greater ingenuity and effectiveness of design, perhaps because less geometric. Gaping frogs leaping among water-weeds; lobsters captive and sprawling in their wicker “pots;” fishes entangled in the meshes of nets, or engaged in mortal combat, their gaping mouths finely utilized in effective points of shadow—the modelling of each and all suggests the perfection of a cast from nature. To those who look for a happy blending of architectural purpose and harmonious ornament, this building will be a welcome innovation. To the naturalist or the idler in quest of the mere picturesque, the Fisheries Building with its wandering façade and colonnade, its roof of ruddy tiles and almost Moresque richness of surface ornament in high relief, will be found well worth careful study.
How many are the obvious natural themes yet awaiting their sculptured memorial in the temple of architecture. Must the classical and testy acanthus
forever guard that exalted basket unchallenged, and the antique, indeed almost palæontologic lotus forever keep us oblivious to the abounding wealth of natural suggestion of even surpassing opportunity? What a rare suggestion for a national architectural theme, for instance, has nature thus far wasted on the wilderness in that elk-horn fern of Australia, which forms one of the most conspicuous features of the arboreal exhibit of that land of tropic contradictions and zoölogical anomalies. Where can there be found another such ready-made and graceful model for a massive capital?
Had this remarkable plant chanced to have been a native of ancient Egypt or Rome or Greece, it is difficult to conceive of its having escaped being immortalized in stone. Will the future national architecture of Australia ever embody its opportunities? Here is a veritable capital of clustered fern-forms, springing in graceful relief from a solid sculptured base. In some of the examples shown it simply surrounds the trunk upon which it is a parasite, and in others, the architectural suggestion is heightened by the cluster appearing at the summit of its pillar, the dead continuation of the trunk above having fallen.
Superlative anticipation of our hopes is often disastrous to their full realization. But no such danger awaits the visitor to the Columbian Fair. The most extreme glorification of this superb achievement at Chicago still leaves us the superlative of actual experience.
Dull indeed must be the intelligence which fails to respond to the vision of beauty which the genius of architecture has here created. Whatever oblivion may await the other features of the Exposition, the fame of the architect is secure. Even though in their substance his creations here are but as the flowers of a day, to be cut down ere the coming of winter, their very evanescence constitutes their most abiding charm.
Though we may spend weeks in the enjoyment of the unexampled treasures within these walls, confusion will at length claim most of our minor reminiscences, and the winnowing process of the years will at last leave few tokens. But the glamour of this celestial city, this throng of ethereal palaces hovering between sky and sky, buoyant as with uplifting archangel wings from dome and pinnacle and acroteria—these will abide to the end of our days.
THE PICTURESQUE SIDE
By F. Hopkinson Smith
I.
A BLAZING sun and a clear limpid sky, a long lagoon, gray-green and silver, a noble flight of steps serving as water-landing for half a dozen gay-colored gondolas, a grand balustrade protecting a broad platform leading to the porch and entrance of the most exquisitely beautiful building of modern times—the Art Palace of the Great Exposition!
From the corner of this balustrade a red rag of an awning, torn from an old tarpaulin, is stretched to an oar, its black shadow spilling down the white steps. Under this awning, flat on his back, sound asleep, lies a gondolier, fresh from Venice. Despite his nondescript costume of brigand’s leggings and cavalier’s cap I cannot mistake that broad chest and sunny face, the crisp black hair, and the fine lines of the throat and thigh.
“Espero!” I call out in glad surprise.
“Commandi Signore,” comes the quick reply, as he springs to his feet.
Other gondoliers join us: Marco, who at home plys a boat at the Traghetto, just above the Salute; and Luigi, who for five years past has won at the Annual Regatta on the Grand Canal—a superb fellow is Luigi, as handsome as a Venetian, and every inch a gondolier; and Francesco, his brother, first gondolier to the Countess, whose palace fronts the Accademia. For the instant I am in Venice again, while they all talk to me at once, telling me of their friends and mine whom we have known there—subjects far more absorbing than all the surprises of this new world. Five minutes later we are swinging up the Lagoon, Marco bending his oar aft, Espero on the cushions beside me.
There is to me a seeming fitness in entering the Court of Honor reclining in a gondola and rowed by a gondolier. No other craft that floats could so perfectly harmonize with these surroundings; none so dainty, so graceful, so dignified. There are no other oarsmen who could move with such ease and finish. These stately water-birds of Venice and their masters add, too, an element of the picturesque. They are to the lagoons what the flowers are to the esplanades, or the swans to the smaller inlets. The launches, noiseless as they are, seem out of place here and jar upon your senses; they are too new, too suggestive of progress and revenue and time-saving. But the gondola revives the traditions and customs of those earlier centuries, when this great White City of the Lake was still in its glory. Moreover, it is the only sort of princely craft which these noble families, whom you feel sure have lived for centuries in these great palaces, could use in their magnificent goings and comings.
For whenever I stand on the bridge of the Peristyle and look across the Court of Honor, surrendering myself to the magic spell of its beauty, I cannot help yielding to the conviction that this noble quadrangle is surrounded by palaces of marble
which have taken centuries to perfect; that the grounds and walks, stretches of grass, masses of flowering plants, and bold colossal statues have all been added from time to time, as in other palace gardens of old, when opportunity or royal whim dictated; that this great city was built ages ago, long before the time of the Greeks, who modelled their own temples along their classic lines; and that not only were its builders the ablest and most learned men of all ages, but that their descendants, those who live beneath these roofs, are the wisest, the most cultured, and the most artistic men and women of their time.
To me, moreover, the City is never evanescent nor unreal; never like a house built upon the sands. It is, when I look at it in amazed delight, not only entirely genuine, but firm and solid as the marble which it resembles. It is too vast, and the elements of atmosphere, perspective and proportion, enter too largely into its ensemble to make it appear other than genuine. When, for instance, you stand in Athens, near the Parthenon, and your eye falls on a broken column at your feet, you see that it is marble, and you know that it is heavy. But without this sample stone in the foreground, and your knowledge of the character and quality of the material, the whole temple is to you, from where you look, only a film of light, now ivory, now alabaster, now lost in purple shadows. Here, about the White City, there is no broken column as an eye test, there are only superb façades, reaching skyward, and great stretches of columns and arches, relieved by gilded domes and sculptured frieze. They are never close to you—no comprehensive view is possible nearer than two hundred feet, and who can tell “staff” from marble at that distance—but far away, across the shimmer of the Lagoon, or over the massing of foliage or clustered roofs.
There is, in addition to all this element of reality, a reality which every one must feel for himself, still another charm—an undefinable quality that constantly surprises and delights you. To this is united a majestic picturesqueness investing these superb palaces and royal gardens with a distinction never attained by any of their predecessors. This does not seem to be due so much to colossal proportions nor to the never-ending series of buildings piled one behind the other, as to the skill shown by architects
and landscape gardeners in the general plan. Especially is this charm felt in the absence of rectangular lines of construction; in the winding in and out of the lagoons; in the neglected fringing of untrimmed foliage skirting the water’s edge; in the half submerged bits of islands where the ducks plume their feathers; in the informal formality of great massing of plants; in the dotting of broad stretches of gray-green water with gay-colored gondolas; and in the colossal proportions of superb decorative statues, so that a glimpse of Venice can be caught between the forelegs of a huge sculptured bull, and the columns of a classic temple be outlined over the back of some water-sprayed mermaid.
It is easy while under the spell of this Ancient City to persuade myself that in this their festival year, these nobles who dwell here are holding high carnival, with much feasting and merry-making, and illuminations at night. That they have bidden all the nations of the earth to join them in these gracious festivities lasting many months; and that as an especial honor, and for the delight and entertainment of these distinguished guests, they have decreed that a great fair shall be held where may be seen many strange people from the uttermost parts of the earth, who, with barbaric dancing and weird music may depict the manners and customs of their climes. That this Fair of the Festival Year shall be placed, not within the lines of the Palaces but outside the walls of the Great City, at the end of a broad highway, rolled out like a huge carpet of many colors.
Rousing myself from these reveries, I bid Espero good-by, join the throng, follow through the gates and so out upon this broad highway, the Plaisance. My dreams are all true. Along the crowded thoroughfare move half the wild tribes of the earth—Javanese, Esquimaux, natives of the Soudan, Bedouins from beyond the Great Desert, Algerians, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Turks. Fringing each edge of this gay promenade I find the huts of the Javanese and Soudanese, the tents of the Bedouins and Arabs, and the more pretentious booths and structures of the Algerians and kindred people. Here, too, are the quaint gateways and open squares of old German and Austrian towns; the low-roofed, deftly constructed houses of the Japanese; the intricate carvings of India covering the booths, and, draping the doors of the Eastern bazaars the rich stuffs, rugs, and tapestries of the Orient.
Near the entrance to the Turkish village, tucked away on one side of the highway, just out of the rush of the never-ceasing throng, and yet close enough to be within call, rises the dome of a small Mosque. Above this a single, snow-white minaret shoots up into the blue.
When the sun is gone there leans from a tiny balcony high up on this needle of a minaret, a white-robed priest. Suddenly above the whirl and hurry there filters down through the soft twilight air the Muezzin’s call for prayer:
“La Ilah Ell-Allah Muhammed Rassoul Ell-Allah.”
To me there is nothing so simple, nothing so impressive, nothing so devout, as a Muhammedan standing in the presence of his God. There is a childlike faith, a manly trust, a sincere belief evinced and experienced by these believers, that never seems to predominate in any other form of religion.
How often, in a great cathedral, do you come upon a figure silently leaving the confessional, and catching a full view of the face, detect a lingering trace of sorrow, or anxiety, or doubt. But watch the faces of these Muhammedans, these poor sedan-chair carriers, and of that broad-shouldered Arab, who has been moving great boxes of unpacked goods on his back all day. How tired they all look as they enter the Mosque, bowing low with reverent awe, and prostrating themselves wearily to the pavement. It is as if each penitent had brought his very burden within these sacred precincts, supplicating for relief.
Now look, when the silent service is over, and study these same faces as, with a light-hearted spring, each man rises from his knees and with serene expression, and calm, restful eyes takes up once more the burden of his life.
This exquisite and picturesque little Mosque—it is the prototype of the purest bit of Eastern architecture in Stamboul—these thoroughly genuine people, this sacred service—not as a necessary part of the Oriental exhibit, but as an essential, indispensable part of the life of the natives themselves—this combination of the genuine and the picturesque is to me the true keynote of the Great Exposition.
II.
My old and valued friend, Far-away Moses:—What a superb old Shylock he is; not in the sense of “three thousand ducats and for three months,” but in the unique quality of the character itself! Neither Irving nor Booth ever conceived so fine and fitting a costume as this old man wears every day in and out of his bazaar, and along the streets of his transplanted village; a costume of soft material, with an under-vest delicately embroidered, the over-jacket a coat of brown camel’s-hair with dark red voluminous waist-sash and the wide Eastern skirts covering his still sturdy legs.
My old and valued friend, Far-away Moses, I say, invited me to dinner. I have enjoyed this especial privilege very often in his own bazaar in Stamboul, and the aroma of the Mocha and the soothing qualities of his Narghilehs have haunted me ever since. Now, thanks to his courtesy, I can enjoy them every day. There is nothing missing in the surroundings of his own bazaar here on the
Plaisance. The walls are hung with the wealth of the East. Divans are scattered about. On a low table, octagon-shaped and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, lie yataghans and Turkish arms, embossed with silver and enriched with quaint design. The light struggles in through the small windows and half defines the odd interior, quite as it does in his shop along the Bosphorus. I throw myself upon a pile of Eastern rugs and begin adjusting the pillows in true Oriental fashion.
The old man claps his hands, and instantly, as if rising through the rug itself, an attendant appears, receives an order in Turkish, and vanishes. Not a gentleman, if you please, in a soiled necktie, frayed shirt-front, and hired-by-the-month swallow-tail coat, but a swarthy Turk in gold-embroidered vest and the rest of it, who reappears in a flash with one of those exquisite squatty little tables that might serve in a baby house. Then more clapping of hands, and more Turks, one a gorgeous fellow in a solid gold jacket (the light is dim), under-vest of purple and silver, sash brilliant scarlet, and so on, down to his magnificent slippers of red morocco, very much turned up at the toes. And then an inlaid tray with two dainty little cups, mere thimbles, into which is poured from a long-handled brass pot, sizzling hot over a charcoal fire, two mouthfuls of fragrant Mocha. Then the Narghilehs, with their long flexible tubes, amber mouth-pieces, and the bits of burning coal, keeping alight the little heap of Turkish tobacco on the top of the slender caraffe-shaped glass.
We talk of the old days in Stamboul and of the morning we spent at the Bath, where I was parboiled and rubbed full of holes by two insufficiently clad Greeks; and then of the festival night at Saint Sophia when, as a member of his household, I entered the Sacred Mosque barefooted and befezzed. Later on a lighted lantern is brought in, and we follow another gorgeous slave into the mysteries of my host’s private apartments where a repast of kebabs and boiled rice is served.