Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-17
THINGS In GENERAL.
The Amount OF Work Necessary to Write
About Persons and Things of the Past
Difficulties of Painting-The Genius of
Infiuite Palma

| Difficulties of Painting-The Genius of
! Infinite Pains.
| Walter Besant, / see, is writing up
| London in Hdrper's Mogazine-old London,
beginning back in the days of the Romans.
| That sort of writing is not the kind that can
| be constructed out of a pile of paper and au
| ink-bottle and good head. Nobody, who has
| ever tried it, knows how much reading, and
| digesting, and searching, and thinking it
takes to get clear notion of the kind of life
| men lived hundred years or so ago. You
have got to know so many things, architect
ure, and dress, and cooking, and politics,
and topography-no end to it. Indeed, you
| have got to know as much as you would
| need If you were to write a novel or paint q
| picture.
Woodworking seems easy enough, to the un-
! initiated. And some move writing, n o doubt,
| is very easy indeed-and very hard reading.
| And painting does not seem so particularly
| difficult. The painters seem to sketch with
out any very laborions effort. But imagine
yourself before blank canvas, or a blank
| paper. The subject is the surf and the
rocks at Magnolia Beach. Go on now, paint
| the white surf and the red rocks. But wait;
| first. you must know exactly how the green
waves rise up into that wonderful foam and
spray, and tumble over on the sand: and you
| must know exactly what these glowing tints
are which CLINT along the shining stones,
with all the lights and shadows. And to do
that you must see. And seeing ia one of the
most difficult pieces of business in the whole
world.
Yes; seeing. Something which we do straight
along, l5 or IS hours every day. Watch the
sleight of hand miracles of u coniuror. He
counts on our blind eyes. He knows that he
can do 20 things minute that we won't see at
ALL Our eyes are not quick enough to fol-
low him.
1t takes long education to be able to see.
Nobody but an artist sees what an artist
sees. In order to paint a picture, real
picture, we have got to see.
Features Which Require Study.
But suppose that the picture, instead
of being the sort OF work that Mr.. Woodwell
does, is the sort of work that Mr. Abbey does.
There are figures in it. And these people
wear clothes. And as they live, say in the
seventeenth century, they must wear the
clothes of the seventeenth century. Now,
how did people dress in the seventeenth
century? Before Mr.. Abbey can paint one
of those quaint pictures of his he must know
exactly how people dressed in the days OF
Shakespeare and Herrick. And that takes
hard study. Mr.. Abbey has picture on his
canvas Of an outdoor supper scene from the
"Vicar of Wakefield" The whole picture is
finished except the setting of the table.
How did they set a table in the days of the
Vicar of Wakefield? What did they have to
eat2 what sort of plates did they have to eat
it from? and how were these dishes ar
ranged upon the table? Mr.. Abbey has read
novels upon novels of that period and ran
sacked museums, and old houses. and FASH
ion plates, and sober histories, but he has
found no one as yet to tell him how Mistress
Olivia set her table. And so the picture
waits.
Good pictures are not painted off-hand.
Those delightful casts of Barye's lions and
elephants which they have at Gillespie's did
not come into being off-hand. Even the
casts took eyes and fingers which had been
trained for years. And the originals took
more care and study than most people will
believe. Those galloping elephants-one
must first know how an elephant looks and
how it gallops.
A Difference in Nationalities.
Everybody knows the old story about
the difference between the English, French
and German minds, as illustrated by the pro-
cess of studying an elephant. The English
man will betake himself to the haunts of the
elephant and live for two years in jungle,
observing the elephant from every point of
view and taking the most copious notes.
At the end of that time he will return to
civilization, and presently will publish the
results of his observations in eight large
volumes, which will contain all that any
human being can possibly know about the
elephant, but stated in such dry, scientific
and uninteresting fashion that nobody but
the type settlers and the proof-readers will
ever have the courage to go through it.
The Frenohman will spend some sunny
day at the Zoo, where he will see an elephant
or two, and a great many other interesting
things; and he will write his book during
the following two weeks, part Of It about
beautiful Paris, part of it about the charm
ing Zoo, part of it about the bright
sayings of o most delightful COM
pany of brilliant men and fair women in
whose society he made his journey of OBJ
servation, part of 1t about the Franco-Prus-
sian war, and part of it about the elephant
Everybody will read the book, and every
reader will find in 1t a little. about every
thing, even about elephants.
The German, however, will shut himself
up in a narrow study, with supply OF pipes
and tobacco and Munich beer and will de-
vote himself to intense thinking At the
end of week he will have evolved the idea
of an elephant "out of his inner conscious
ness"
his inner consciousness.
Il have just been reading Walter Be-
SAINTS "For Faith and Freedom" 1t is a
novel of the seventeenth century. It begins
with the restoration of the Stuarts. The
work that must be done in preparation for
such book is enormous. These articles of
Besant's about London are just the gather
ing up of the chips out of the corners of his
literary carpenter shop He had to know
all this and n pood deal more beforo ba
could go back into the old centuries and
live there with his Puritan heroes and he
roines. 1t is astonishing how much nov
elist needs to know. The setting of a tea
table is but an incident All the customs
and prejudiees, and manners of speech, the
political and theological discussions, his
tory, state of England in the seventeenth
century, at his fingers ends!
"In the gardens of the Manor House. hard
by the church, the sunfiowers and the holly
hooks were at their ta1lest and their best:
the yellow roses on the wall were still in |
cluster: the sweet peas hung with tangles of
vine and flower upon their stalks; the bach |
elors' buttons, the sweet mignonette, the
nasturtium, the gillyflowers and stocks, the
sweetwilliaTns and the pansies, offered their |
late summer blossoms to the hot sun |
among the lavender, thyme, parsley, sage, |
feverfew and vervain of my lady's garden, |
That is not long nor particularly impor- |
tant paragraph, but Walter Besant didn't |
compose it out of his inner consciousness |
He had to find out, before lie began to write |
it, Just what sort of blossoms scented the |
gardens of the year of grace 1862 And that. |
l promise you, was not found out in any five |
minutes.
The Genius of Infinite Pains.