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.