A Culture-Ghost: or, Winthrop's Adventure, Chapters I-IV [pp. 330-345]

APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
A CUL TURE-GH0OS T. OR, WINTHR OP'S 4 D VE7NTURE.
I.
LL the intimates at the villa S knew
Julian Winthrop to be an odd sort of
creature, but I am sure no one ever expected
from him such an eccentric scene as that which
took place on the first Wednesday of last September.
Winthrop had been a constant visitor at the
Countess S's villa ever since his arrival in
Florence, and the better we knew, the more we
liked, his fantastic character. Although quite
young, he had shown very considerable talent for
painting, but every one seemed to agree that this
talent would never come to anything. His nature was too impressionable, too mobile, for
steady work; and he cared too much for all
kinds of art to devote himself exclusively to any
one; above all, he had too ungovernable a fancy,
and too uncontrollable a love of detail, to fix and
complete any impression in an artistic shape; his
ideas and fancies were constantly shifting and
changing like the shapes in a kaleidoscope, and
their instability and variety were the chief sources
of his pleasure. All that he did and thought and
said had an irresistible tendency to become arabesque, feelings and moods gliding strangely into
each other, thoughts and images growing into
inextricable tangles, just as when he played he
passed insensibly from one fragment to another
totally incongruous, and when he drew one form
merged into another beneath his pencil. His
head was like his sketch-book-full of delightful
scraps of color, and quaint, graceful forms, none
finished, one on the top of the other: leaves
growing out of heads, houses astride on animals,
scraps of melodies noted down across scraps of
verse, gleanings from all quarters-all pleasing,
and all jumbled into a fantastic, useless, but very
delightful whole. In short, Winthrop's artistic
talent was frittered away by his love of the picturesque, and his career was spoiled by his love of
adventure; but, such as he was, he was almost
a work of art, a living arabesque himself.
On this particular Wednesday we were all
seated out on the terrace of the villa S at
Bellosguardo, enjoying the beautiful serene yellow moonlight, and the delightful coolness, after
an intensely hot day. The Countess S —, who
was a great musician, was trying over a violin
sonata with one of her friends in the drawingroom, of which the doors opened on to the terrace. Winthrop, who had been particularly gay
all the evening, had cleared away the plates and
cups from the tea-table, had pulled out his sketchbook and begun drawing in his drowsy, irrelevant
fashion-acanthus-leaves uncurling into sirens'
tails, satyrs growing out of passion-flowers, little
Dutch manikins in tail coats and pigtails peeping
out of tulip-leaves under his whimsical pencil,
while he listened partly to the music within,
partly to the conversation without.
When the violin sonata had been tried over,
passage by passage, sufficiently often, the Countess, instead of returning to us on the terrace,
addressed us from the drawing-room:
"Remain where you are," she said; "I want
you to hear an old air which I discovered last
week among a heap of rubbish in my father-inlaw's lumber-room. I think it quite a treasure,
as good as a wrought-iron ornament found
among a heap of old rusty nails, or a piece of Gubbio majolica found among cracked coffee-cups.
It is very beautiful to my mind. Just listen."
The Countess was an uncommonly fine singer,
without much voice, and not at all emotional, but
highly delicate and refined in execution, and with
a great knowledge of music. The air which she
deemed beautiful could not fail really to be so;
but it was so totally different from all we moderns are accustomed to, that it seemed, with its
exquisitely finished phrases, its delicate vocal
twirls and spirals, its symmetrically ordered ornaments, to take one into quite another world of
musical feeling, of feeling too subdued and artistic, too subtly and cunningly balanced, to move
us more than superficially-indeed, it could not
move at all, for it expressed no particular state
of feeling; it was difficult to say whether it was
sad or cheerful; all that could be said was that
it was singularly graceful and delicate.
This is how the piece affected me, and I believe, in less degree, all the rest of our party; but,
turning toward Winthrop, I was surprised at seeing how very strong an impression its very first
bars had made on him. He was seated at the
table, his back turned toward me, but I could
see that he had suddenly stopped drawing, and
was listening with intense eagerness. At one
moment I almost fancied I saw his hand tremble as it lay on his sketch-book, as if he were
breathing spasmodically. I pulled my chair near
his; there could be no doubt, his whole frame
was quivering.
"Winthrop," I whispered.
He paid no attention to me, but continued
listening intently, and,his hand unconsciously
crumpled up the sheet he had drawn on.
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