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The short, big-mustached, bald- headed man swinging the cane, was Bianchi Julius Bianchi known to the Skylarkers as "The Pole," and to the world at large as an accomplished lithographer and maker of mezzotints. Bianchi was a piece of the early artistic driftwood cast upon our shores an artist every inch of him drawing from life, and handling the crayon like a master.
It was gusty outside, as could be perceived by the shower of yellow beech leaves that slanted across the view; but indoors a great fire flaming up the chimney, a Turkey carpet fading into beauty, rich eighteenth century mezzotints on the walls, reposeful leather-covered chairs and a comfortable bookcase gave an atmosphere of warmth and coziness.
From this dispiriting exercise I turned to the native amusements of the inn coffee-room, and studied for some time the mezzotints that frowned upon the wall. The railway guide, after showing me how soon I could leave Stallbridge and how quickly I could reach Paris, failed to hold my attention.
These were but fleeting moments, however; for the most part she succeeded, or thought she succeeded, in dismissing him to the limbo of the past. So now she resisted the impulse to ask news of him. When it came to negotiations Margaret Elizabeth and Augustus, leaving Mrs. Pennington to conduct them, moved about the room, viewing the Miser's curios. "Do you care for mezzotints?" she asked him.
She turned her face toward him, and he saw that it had lost its flower-like quality; it looked as if it had been carved in stone. "He lived in a small, intensely loyal town," she continued; "and when Virginia seceded it burned with a single high flame of sacrifice. My father had been always a diffident man; he collected mezzotints and avoided people.
No chintzes were so smartly calendered as hers, and on the walls were mezzotints of the ladies whom Sir Joshua had painted. The chimney-piece was adorned with Lowestoft china, and on the silver table was a collection of old English spoons. She had chosen her butler because he went so well with the house.
The rare mezzotints, stipples, and delicate line engravings, to say nothing of the more valuable colour prints, often realize far more than the books themselves. Ancient art is more valued than the literary efforts of past masters of wielding the pen! It is thus that the books are often thrown away after the pictures or even superadded illustrations or mere name-plates have been removed.
Colville confessed to a deep and abiding pleasure in this branch of art, tempered, he admitted with a laugh, by a colossal ignorance. He then proceeded to give the lie to his own modesty by talking easily and well of mezzotints and etchings. "But," he said, interrupting himself with evident reluctance, "I am forgetting my obligations.
"Non-ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa." Besides the Grecian paintings there are some mezzotints; full length pictures of presidents and statesmen, chiefly General Jackson, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, which have hung their day in the offices or parlors of country politicians.
As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer.
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