Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/144

870 all. His pen is dipped in charity, and he prefers subjects where this pleasantest of the virtues need not despair of proper opportunity. There are Bohemians, ragamuffins, persons whose characters will not bear investigation; but he seldom shows you the most revolting vices, such as cruelty, mercilessness, or the hatred of good. And, thanks probably in part to his very remarkable power of depicting beautiful human beings (a gift, I venture to think, rather curiously rare), he turns by preference to the attractive sides of life and draws for much of his work on the normal, simple, healthy procession of our days from an eager youth, through a vigorous middle age, to a calm and honorable decline. But youth is his favorite; when its reality is gone he will still bring it back in visions. Look at these two pictures, "Previous Tenants" and "The Old Tune." These touch finely the note of gentle sadness with which man, resigned but never reconciled, accepts his decay and mortality; they breathe the sigh with which he remembers how the fruit of life tasted and that now he is too stiff and infirm to climb the trunk of the tree and bring down the prize. But there is no moroseness; the young girl stands by the old man, reminding us that youth is deathless, although the young are not.

The same color of mood is very visible in Mr. Gibson's treatment of love, a subject which properly engages much of his attention. The little figure of Cupid which he is so fond of drawing seems to me very significant as well as very charming. No doubt the satirist peeps out here; the boy is not tragic (Mr. Gibson perhaps eschews as too easy that path to a reputation for profundity); he is hardly serious, though he is engaged on work that has serious results. He can, indeed, assume great emotions for his own purposes; he can sigh and look very despairing. But there is a want of sincerity about these assumptions; they are tricks played to persuade you to let him in. His native temper is an insinuating impishness, cloaked sometimes by a deceitful innocence and pathos, but breaking through at every minute. This may be studied in "The Last Guest." Here, again, the artist lightly touches the note of sorrow, of youth gone, of the inevitable contrast that years so cruelly perfect. But Cupid does not take the moment that way at all. He sits laughing and sipping champagne! He's not old. And he seems very much amused to find himself where he is; the place was very different when he came; he is chaffing his faithful hosts; he finds them, I fear, a little absurd. Look at him again in a most delightful drawing, "One More Victim," where he stands in his smith's apron and looks at the chains with which he has bound his prisoner; his face is alight with roguish triumph, and he hugs himself with fat little arms; he had those chains locked on her before she knew that he had so much as begun to forge them. There is another drawing, which I have not before me now, but remember very well. A pretty young widow, clad in mournful black, sits alone—as she thinks; the world is over for her, poor thing! Then her eyes fall suddenly on the small impudent form which has got into the house somehow and sits there deriding her; he exults all the more because he knows that the solemn will be much shocked by his arrival. In such a guise he is irresistible; you would fall in love, if only for the sake of sharing the fun.

It helps us to sympathize with Cupid's triumphs when we look at the girls over whom they are won. We perceive that there is something to conquer. For the girl whom the artist gives us is not a ready prey to sentiment and does not yield very easily. She is happy, healthy, and proud; there is a touch of austerity and a hint of haughtiness in her maidenly air; she does not languish, though no doubt she might sometimes flirt securely. Love must stalk his game; though confident of success in the end, he is strategic in his approaches; he seeks to surprise her, gets in when she isn't looking, and knows that he is most dangerous when he is least expected. So it should be; the artist's humorous presentment of the artifices of his Cupid's pursuit is a true testimony to the quarry's purity of heart and healthy soundness of nature; we believe that the hard-won victory will be complete, and do not refuse our consent when we are invited to trust to such a permanence of it as will resist the lapse of years and the decay of beauty. And Mr. Gibson is most commendably jealous for his pretty girls; he knows that they have much to give, and would not have them give it unworthily. He finds for them very handsome young men, fine fellows who worship them as they deserve, and he is roused to an unusual directness of indignation when they play false to themselves and go hunting after money, rank, and such-like snares. His pencil is never more relentless than in depicting the husband in such a match, with his lined,