International studio (32.1907)

Bits of Old China

ITS OF OLD CHINA. BY
INGLIS SHELDON-WILLIAMS.

There was once a Chinese Mandarin
who built himself a house in the old walled city of
Shanghai, hundreds of years ago, and laid out the
cramped space about it with many artfully designed
paths and terraces, grottoes and subways, where, in
the space of fifty square yards, one may walk for
half-an-hour without retracing one's footsteps.

Perhaps this called for more art and ingenuity
than even Kubla Khan might boast, with all the
wide valley at his disposal to deck and beautify for
a setting to his stately pleasure dome. From in-
numerable terraced standpoints, from above, from
below, through doorways carved with an amazing
richness and intricacy of design and detail the eye
may gaze in turn on every elaborated angle and
perspective of the dainty dwelling poised on its
conventional rock-clouds that seem to float with
their airy burden on the sutface of a little lake,
reflecting the complex and bewildering succession
of curve on curve of heavily
corniced roofing, each tiled
and sweeping line crowned
from eave to rooftree with
its interlaced network of
carved foliage and symbols,
each pinnacle and apex
poising little sitting, danc-
ing, or standing figures,
dragons and emblems,
wrought with as lavish a
care and completion as the
carved and gilded woodwork
above the round doorway
that gives upon the inner
court, or the sinuous folds
of the serpent that crowns
the coping of the outer wall.

Here, in the heart of
squalor, this perfect bit of
brie - a - brae endures un-
changed, the whole no
bigger than a Surrey cot-
tage; so small a gem set in
the midst of the crammed
and uncouth city, neglected
by the myriads without its
walls, but seemingly im-
mune from decay, it appears
to brood in a rapt and self-
absorbed silence on past
pageants and pomp.

The wise painter will look on such a thing as
this with that side of his mind in the ascendant
that absorbs the mystic poetry and philosophy of
unpaintable things, his hands will be idle ; his mind
registering with an almost painful speed and vivid-
ness, impressions that have no relationship with the
technical problems of his craft. Long ago, in the
first half-second, the wTholly satisfying effect of
weathered ivory and ancient parchment in a wmrld
of turquoise blue has enthralled his colour sense;
in the midst of a scheme of subtlest blue and gold
he begins to think, but not along lines of tone and
values, intricacies of perspective design and what
not—there is no room here for these elementary
problems or the common-places of imitative execu-
tion, at best a meretricious sacrilege. Rather he
ponders over the marvellous brotherhood of great
designers ; separated by thousands of miles, almost
by thousands of years, the work of the ancient
architect of the east would stand in complete
harmony beside the most precious example of
Gothic art; with every sentiment, every tradition,

A SHANGHAI PEDI.AR STOCKTAKING”

BY INGLIS SHELDON-WILLIAMS

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