The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862

'Water is my peculiar study; I am now engaged experimenting on it—see there!' Here Phlamm pointed to a basin.

'Been washing your hands?' asked Caper.

'Scientifically experimenting, not manually. Water is soup-or-fish-all—earth is not soup-or-fish-all.'

'Our dinners are, during Lent,' quoth Caper, 'unless we're heretics.'

'I don't understand your frivolity—what do you mean?'

'Didn't you say, 'Soup or all fish?''

'Pshaw! You will never make an artist—never, never—you are too, too superficiall, too much of the earth, dirty.'

'Oh! now I understand,' answered Caper; 'give it to me, I deserve it.'

'I was studying water, its shadows and its superficiality, in that basin,' continued Phlamm, 'and I study the ocean there, and have devolved great principles from it. What makes my pictures sought for by the high and the low, wealthy? What? It's the Truth in 'em, the Mystery, the Naychure. The old masters were humbugs, they weren't mysterious, they had no inner sight into the workings of Naychure. Who'd buy one of their pictures when he might have a Turner for the same price? Nobody.'

'Wouldn't he?' asked Caper. 'Try him with a Raphael, just a small one.'

'Raphael? You mean Raffaele. Ah! he was a painter, he wasn't one of the old masters, however, he was a middle-age master. What sweetness, what a kind of—sweetness generally; what a blending of the prayerful infant with the enthusiastic beauty; the—the polished chastity of his Mad-donas; the folds of his drapery, and—the drapery of his folds. Truly enchanting, and so very uncommonly gentlemanly in his colors.'

'The Chesterfield of oil-colors?' suggested Rocjean. 'But à propos of Nature, you never paint a picture directly from her, do you?'

'Never! Does a great historical painter use the model? No, sir; he draws on his imagination for his figures. He scorns to copy from a model. I convey the impression of mystery that Naychure gives me; I am no servile copyist. And I claim to leave an impression on the minds of the beholders of my works. Why, even Caper, I believe, can see what I wish to tell, and read my poems on canvas. Tell me, Caper, what idea does even that rough sketch of Venice awake in your imaginative faculties, and all that?'

Caper's face wore a deeply thoughtful look, as he answered: 'I do see it; I do claim to read the lesson you would teach–'

'Speak it out,' interrupted Phlamm, 'I knew you would feel the deep, mysterious sentiment as is in it.'

'Spider-tracks and crows' feet on the blue mud of a big marsh,' spoke Caper resolutely.

'Pshaw!' exclaimed Phlamm impetuously; 'you have no Faith, and without that, all Art is a sealed thing. Goldburg, to whom I lately sold a painting, had faith; he saw the grand idea which I explained to him in that picture; he knew that the Earl of Bigbarns had purchased a work of mine, and he said to me: 'The opinion of such a man is an opinion as should be a valuable opinion to a business man, and govern the sentiments of those who worship Art.' Other artists see Naychure, but how do they see her? I answer, blindly! They don't feel her here!' (Phlamm struck his waistcoat in fearful proximity to a pocket in it, and altogether too low for his heart.)

'Nay-chure,' said Caper to Rocjean, as they left this studio of the mysterious one, 'ruined a good Barnum to make a poor Phlamm, when she made him.'

A BATH-HUNT

It is a mournful sight to see a city of one hundred and eighty thousand five hundred and thirty-nine inhabitants, including one thousand three hundred and thirty-one priests, two thousand four hundred and four monks, and eight hundred and fifty-four Jews, Turks, and heretics, as the census had it, attacked with hydrophobia. But it is so. A preternatural dread of water rages among all the inhabitants of Rome, from the untitled down to the titled.

'Madame,' said Rocjean to a distinguished female model, 'I assure you that, in the sixth century, [or as Sir Gardiner Wilkinson has it, in the five hundred,] there were nine thousand and twenty-five baths in this city.'

'Those must have been good times,' replied she, 'for the washerwomen, seguro! There are a good many clothes of the forestieri [strangers] washed here now; but not so many different places to wash them in.'

'I mean places to bathe one's self all over in.'

'Mai! Never, never!' exclaimed the woman with horror; 'never! 'twould give them the fever, kill them dead!'

Mr. Van Brick, of New-York, arriving in Rome early in the morning, demanded of the porter at the hotel where he could find a bagno, or place where he could get a bath. He was directed to go down the Babuino, and at such a number he would find the establishment. Forgetting the number before he was three steps from the hotel, he inquired of a man who was driving a she-jackass to be milked, where the bath was. As he spoke very little Italian, he had to make up by signs what he wanted in words. The man, probably believing he wanted a church, and that his motions signified being sprinkled with water, pointed to the Greek church, and Van Brick, thinking it was a solemn-looking old bagno, strode in, to his astonishment finding out as soon as he entered that he was by no means in the right place. As he turned to go out, he saw an amiable-looking young man, with a black cocked hat in his hand, and a black serge shirt on that came down to his heels, and had a waist-band drawing it in over his hips. He asked the young man, as well as he could in Italian, where there was a bagno.

'The signore is English?' asked the youth in the black shirt.

'I want a bath,' said Van Brick, 'which way?'

'Have patience, signore. There are a great many English in Rome.'

'Farewell!' quoth Van Brick, turning on his heel, reflecting: 'That youth talks too much; he does it to conceal his ignorance; he don't know what a bath is.' Coming out of the church, he met a good-natured looking Roman girl, without any bonnet, as usual, going along with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'Chi lo sa, signore.'

This CHI LO SA, or, 'who knows?' of the Romans, is a shaft that would kill Paul Pry. It nearly throws an inquisitive man into convulsions. He meets it at every turn. The simplest question is knocked to pieces by it. So common is it for a Roman of the true plebs breed to give you this for an answer to almost every question, that Rocjean once won a hat from Caper in this wise: they stood one evening in front of a grocer's store, down by the Pantheon; it was brilliantly illuminated with hundreds of candles, displaying piles of hams, cheese, butter, eggs, etc., etc. Chandeliers constructed of egg-shells, where candles shone brightly, particularly struck Caper.

'You see,' said Rocjean, 'as anyone else can see, that those chandeliers are made of egg-shells. Now, I will bet you a hat that I will ask four men, one after another, who may come to look in this window, what those chandeliers are made of, and three at least, if not all four of them, will answer, 'Who knows?' (Chi lo sa.)

'Done!' said Caper.

Rocjean asked four men, one after another. All four answered; 'Who knows?'

But to continue the bath-hunt: Van Brick was thrown over by the girl's answer, and next asked an old woman, who was standing at the door of a house, buying broccoli from a man with a hand-cart.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'The bath?'

'Yes, the bath.'

'Is it where they boil water for the English?'

'That must be the shop,' quoth Brick.

'That's the place,' pointing with her finger to a house on the opposite side of the way.

Van Brick crossed over, and after five minutes' hunt over the whole house, was coming down disheartened, when he saw a pretty girl, about eighteen years old, standing by the doorway.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'Seguro! I attend to them. You can't have a warm bath for two or three hours yet, for there is no fire; but you can have a cold one.'

'Well, let me have it as quickly as possible.'

'Yes, sir. We have no soap for sale, but you can get it two doors off.'

Van Brick went out, and after a time returned with a cake of soap.

'Signore,' said the girl, when he went back, 'the water is all running out of the hole in the bottom of the tub, and I can't stop it.'

'H'm! Show me the tub; I am a splendid mechanic.'