[
132]
Thomas G. Appleton, universally known as “Tom”
Appleton, was a notable figure during the middle of the last century not only in
Boston and
Cambridge, but in
Paris,
Rome,
Florence, and other
European cities.
He was descended from one of the oldest and wealthiest families of
Boston, and graduated from Harvard in 1831, together with
Wendell Phillips and
George Lothrop Motley.
He was not distinguished in college for his scholarship, but rather as a wit, a bon vivant, and a good fellow.
Yet his companions looked upon him as a strong character and much above the average in intellect.
After taking his degree of
Bachelor of Arts he went through the Law School, and attempted to practise that profession in
Boston.
At the end of the first year, happening to meet
Wendell Phillips on the sidewalk, the latter inquired if he had any clients.
He had not; neither had
Phillips, and they both agreed that waiting for fortune in the legal profession was wearisome business.
They were both well adapted to it, and the only reason for their ill success would seem to have been that they belonged to wealthy and rather aristocratic families, amongst whom there is little litigation.
At the same time
Sumner was laying the foundation
[
133]
by hard study for his future distinction as a legal authority, and
Motley was discussing
Goethe and
Kant with the youthful
Bismarck in
Berlin.
Wendell Phillips soon gave up his profession to become an orator in the antislavery cause; and
Tom Appleton went to
Rome and took lessons in oil painting.
Nothing can be more superficial than to presume that young men who write verses or study painting think themselves geniuses.
A man may have a genius for mechanics; and in most instances men and women are attracted to the arts from the elevating character of the occupation.
It is not likely that
Tom Appleton considered himself a genius, for although he had plenty of self-confidence, his opinion of himself was always a modest one.
He painted the portraits of some of his friends, but he never fairly made a profession of it. However, he learned the mechanism of pictorial art in this way, and soon became one of the best connoisseurs of his time.
His finest enjoyment was to meet with some person, especially a stranger, with whom he could discuss the celebrated works in the galleries of
Europe.
He soon became known as a man who had something to say, and who knew how to say it. He told the
Italian picture-dealers to cheat him as much as they could, and he gave amusing accounts of their various attempts to do this.
He knew more than they did.
[
134]
After this time he lived as much in
Europe as he did in
America.
Before 1860 he had crossed the
Atlantic nearly forty times.
The marriage of his sister to
Henry W. Longfellow was of great advantage to him, for through
Longfellow he made the acquaintance of many celebrated persons whom he would not otherwise have known, and being always equal to such occasions he retained their respect and good will.
One might also say, “What could
Longfellow have done without
him?”
His conversation was never forced, and the wit, for which he became as much distinguished in social life as
Lowell or
Holmes, was never premeditated, often making its appearance on unexpected occasions to refresh his hearers with its sparkle and originality.
In the “Autocrat of the breakfast table”
Doctor Holmes quotes this saying by the “wittiest of men,” that “good
Americans, when they die, go to
Paris.”
Now this wittiest of men was
Tom Appleton, as many of us knew at that time.
He said of Leonardo da
Vinci's “Last supper” that it probably had faded out from being stared at by sightseers, and that the same thing might have happened to the
Sistine Madonna if it had not been put under glass,--these being the two most popular paintings in
Europe.
His fund of anecdotes was inexhaustible.
[
135]
Earlier in life he was occasionally given to practical jokes.
A woman who kept a thread and needle store in
Boston was supposed to have committed murder, and was tried for it but acquitted.
One day, as
Appleton was going by her place of business with a friend he said: “Come in here with me; I want to see how that woman looks.”
Then surveying the premises, as if he wished to find something to purchase, he asked her if she had any “galluses” for sale,--gallus being a shop-boy's term at the time for suspenders.
When the Art Museum in
Boston was first built its odd appearance attracted very general attention, and some one asked
Tom Appleton what he thought of it. “Well,” he said, “I have heard that architecture is a kind of frozen music, and if so I should call the Art Museum frozen ‘
Yankee Doodle.’
”
Thomas G. Appleton was no dilettante; his interest in the subject was serious and abiding.
He did not wear his art as he did his gloves, nor did he turn it into an intellectual abstraction.
There was nothing he disliked more than the kind of pretension which tries to make a knowledge of art a vehicle for self-importance.
“Who,” he said, “ought not to feel humble before a painting of Titian's or Correggio's? It is only when we feel so that we can appreciate a great work of art.”
He believed that
[
136]
an important moral lesson could be inculcated by a picture as well as by a poem,--even by a realistic
Dutch painting.
“Women worship the
Venus of
Milo now,” he said, “just as they did in ancient
Greece, and it is good for them, too.”
He respected
William Morris Hunt as the best American painter of his time, but thought he would be a better painter if he were not so proud.
Pride leads to arrogance, and arrogance is blinding.
After he came into possession of his inheritance he showed that he could make a good use of money.
One of his first acts was to purchase a set of engravings in the Vatican, valued at ten thousand dollars, for the
Boston Public Library.
“I was not such a fool as to pay that sum for it, though,” he remarked to
Rev. Samuel Longfellow.
He visited the studios of struggling artists in
Rome and
Boston, gave them advice and encouragement,--made purchases himself, sometimes, and advised his friends to purchase when he found a painting that was really excellent.
He also purchased some valuable old paintings to adorn his house on Commonwealth Avenue.
He placed two of these at one time on free exhibition at Doll's picture-store, and going into the rooms where they hung, I found
Tom Appleton explaining their merits to a group of remarkably pretty school-girls.
[
137]
At the same moment, another gentleman who knew
Mr. Appleton entered, and said, “Ah!
a Palma Vecio,
Mr. Appleton; how delightful!
It is a Palma, is it not?”
“That,” replied
Mr. Appleton, “is probably a Palma; but what do you say to this, which I consider a much better picture?”
The gentleman did not know; but it looked like
Venetian coloring.
“Quite right,” said
Mr. Appleton; “I bought it at the sale of a private collection in
Rome, and it was catalogued as a Tintoretto, but I said, “No,
Bassano;” and it is the best
Bassano I ever saw. The
Italians call it “
Il Coconotte.””
Mr. Appleton had no intention of palming off doubtful paintings on his friends or the public; but in regard to “
Il Coconotte” he was confident of its true value, and rightly so. The painting, so called from a head in the group covered very thinly with hair, was the pride of his collection and one of the best of
Bassano's works.
The other painting looked to me like a Palma, and I have always supposed that it was one.
After this
Mr. Appleton branched off on to an interesting anecdote concerning an Italian cicerone, and finally left his audience as well entertained as if they had been to the theatre.
In 1871 he published a volume of poems for
[
138]
private circulation, in which there were a number of excellent pieces, and especially two which deserve a place in any choice collection of American poetry.
One is called the “Whip of the sky” and relates to a subject which
Mr. Appleton often dwelt upon,--the unnecessary haste and restlessness of American life, and is given here for the wider circulation which it amply deserves:
The Whip of the sky.
Weary with travel, charmed with home,
The youth salutes
New England's air;
Nor notes, within the azure dome,
A vigilant, menacing figure there,
Whose thonged hand swings
A whip which sings:
“Step, step, step,” sings the whip of the sky:
“Hurry up, move along, you can if you try!”
Remembering
Como's languid side,
Where, pulsing from the citron deep,
The nightingale's aerial tide
Floats through the day, repose and sleep,
Reclined in groves,--
A voice reproves.
“Step, step, step,” cracks the whip of the sky:
“Hurry up, jump along, rest when you die!”
Slave of electric will, which strips
From him the bliss of easeful hours;
And bids, as from a tyrant's lips,
Rest, quiet, fly, as useless flowers,
[
139]
He wings his heart
To make him smart.
“Step, step, step,” snaps the whip of the sky:
“Hurry up, race along, rest when you die!”
He maddens in the breathless race,
Nor misses station, power or pelf;
And only loses in the chase
The hunted lord of all,--himself.
His gain is loss,
His treasure dross.
“Step, step, step,” mocks the whip of the sky,
“Hurry up, limp along, rest when you die!”
With care he burthens all his soul;
Heaped ingots curve his willing back;
Submissive to that fierce control,
He needs at last the sky-whip's crack,
Till at the grave,
No more a slave,--
“Rest, rest, rest,” sighs the whip of the sky:
“Hurry not, haste no more, rest when you die!”
Celia Thaxter, the finest of poetic readers, read this to me one September morning at the
Isles of Shoals, and at the conclusion she remarked: “If that could only be read every year in our public schools it might do the
American people some good.”
As compared with this, the sonnet on
Pompeii has the effect of a strong complementary color, --for instance, like orange against dark blue.
It echoes the pathetic reverie that we feel on
[
140]
beholding the monuments of the mighty past.
It contains not the pathos of yesterday, nor of a hundred years ago, but as
Emerson says, “of the time out of mind.”
The silence there was what most haunted me.
Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite
Feet which shall never come; to left and right
Gay colonnades and courts,--beyond, the glee,
Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea.
O'er roofless homes and waiting streets, the light
Lies with a pathos sorrowfuler than night.
Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death
Wedded; and with a wand restores the Life.
The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath
The open shops, and all the tropic strife
Of voices,
Roman,
Greek, Barbarian, mix. The wreath
Indolent hangs on far
Vesuvius's crest;
And beyond the glowing town, and guiltless sea, sweet rest.
Tom Appleton was greatly interested in the performances of the spiritualists, trance mediums, and other persons pretending to supernatural powers.
How far he believed in this occult science can now only be conjectured, but he was not a man to be easily played upon.
He thought at least that there was more in it than was dreamed of by philosophers.
When the
Longfellow party was at
Florence in April, 1869, Prince George of
Hanover, recently driven from his kingdom by
Bismarck, called to
[
141]
see the poet, and finding that he had gone out, was entertained by
Mr. Appleton with some remarkable stories of hypnotic and spiritualistic performances.
The prince, who was a most amiable looking young
German, was evidently very much interested.
Deafness came upon
Mr. Appleton in the last years of his life, though not so as to prevent his enjoying the society of those who had clear voices and who spoke distinctly.
When one of his friends suggested that the trouble might be wax in his ears, he shook his head sadly and said: “Oh no: not
wax, but
wane.”
He was finally taken ill while all alone in New York City, and the Longfellows were telegraphed for. When one of his relatives came to him he spoke of his malady in a stoically humorous manner; and his last words were when he was dying: “How interesting this all is!”
A man never left this world with a more perfect faith in immortality!
