Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/141

 by most people to belong to a very extravagant, and by many to a thoroughly depraved type. Others found in them strange secrets of the plastic and paid huge prices for them; and indeed to be able to point to one of Gloriani's figures in the best light in your library was tolerable proof that you were not a fool. Of an art that had wandered far they freely spoke, and of a taste that was the latest fruit of time. It was the artist's opinion that there is no essential difference between beauty and ugliness; that they overlap and intermingle in a quite inextricable manner; that there is no saying where one begins and the other ends; that hideousness grimaces at you suddenly from out of the very bosom of loveliness, and beauty blooms before your eyes in the lap of vileness; that it is a waste of wit to nurse metaphysical distinctions and a sadly meagre entertainment to caress imaginary lines; that the thing to aim at is the expressive and the way to reach it is by ingenuity; that for this purpose everything may serve and that a consummate work is a sort of hotch-potch of the pure and the impure, the graceful and the grotesque. Its prime duty is to amuse, to puzzle, to fascinate, to report on a real aesthetic adventure. Gloriani's effects, elegant and strange, exquisite and base, made no appeal to Rowland as a purchaser, but the artist was such an independent spirit, and was withal so deluged with orders, that this signified nothing for their friendship. This highly modern master was a free and vivid talker, whose phrase seemed ever to have in it, if not the touch of the brush, at least the print 107