Studio: international art (5.1895)

Quebec as a Sketching Ground

BY D. Y. CAMERON

GROUND. BY BERTRAM
GROSVENOR GOODHUE

not for its merit, but because it had been bitten in years ago, when we came out of the little station

on a copper-plate, then it seemed as if these simple at Paso del Norte ? and how we felt that we were

axioms had been entirely forgotten by public and saying good-bye to all that is beautiful on the

etchers alike. To day, however, the photogravure continent ? And we were not far from right, you

has driven the commercial etching out of the field, and I, looking at the thing from our bigoted point

and so there is a hope that its future may be in more of view. And do you remember how we sat in

legitimate ways, and that the real masters who never the " smoker," alongside of all the garrulous dons,

pandered to the taste of a debased craze will re- and settled for ever the difference between the

sume supreme authority, and attract successors beautiful and the picturesque ?

as capable as Mr. D. Y. Cameron has already Well, allowing Mexico to represent the one,

proved himself to be. Quebec certainly will do for the other, for it's all

picturesqueness and no real beauty. It isn't a
difficult place to reach, once you make up your
mind to it, for, leaving Boston at one in the after-
noon, you will find yourself with me the next
morning. It took me longer, but I've been vaga-

My dear-, — You will, no bonding it all the way. The country is lovely,

"doubt, be surprised at finding a letter after a " beauty unadorned" fashion, from the

of mine interspersed with sketches, since I have time you emerge from the White Mountain

always expressed but slight regard for such things ; region—that Paradise where the Hebrews and

but, my dear fellow, there are sketches—and their ancient enemies, the Philistines, live in

sketches. When one works with the simplest apparent harmony and great numbers—until you

materials like my B. pencil and schoolboy's pad arrive at Levis, just across the river from Quebec.

—well and good—those are sketches ; but it's a I suppose the White Mountains are to be admired,

different thing when he spends several days on since so many seem to do so, Hawthorne among

each one of his drawings from Nature; and then, the rest, but to my mind they are a bit too

when the winter cometh and no man can sketch, violently Alpine. The whole of the journey, too,

goes back to town and holds an exhibition (duly is through quite classic ground for America; one

postered) and sells those same sketches for good ought to read up on the French and Indian wars

round sums. before starting. I didn't myself, but you must.

Before sending these to you, I tried to clean I am stopping at Miss Leonard's on the Place

them up a bit, and now I'm almost sorry I did so, d'Armes, and my lodgings are all I could ask,

because they were never more than merely per- though as different from anything of the sort we

sonal memoranda, and would have been more have in the States as is possible to fancy. The

valuable to me in their first state. price of my little room, with three good meals, is

Do you remember our adieu to Mexico, four $1.50 a day, and this is about the average rate
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