DOI issue:
No. 200 (November, 200)
DOI article:Macklin, Alys Eyre: Alfred Gilbert at Bruges: by Alys Eyre Macklin
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20968#0132
A If red Gilbert
—the clean-shaven, strong-featured, well-built solid
figure, breezy fearless attitude, and simple manners,
heightening the impression — the effect of that
fighting jaw and set mouth remains the same, and
you feel that it is good for those who might
have been his adversaries that his fight has rarely
been for anything but the right to live in accord-
ance with his artistic ideals.
To get the key-note of this complex personality,
however, you must follow Gilbert into his music-
room, a lofty chamber where the light of two or
three wax candles shows a piano, a little organ
whose tall back and candlesticks suggest an
altar, and—shadows. Silently he seats himself
at the piano, where he transforms early English
melodies by weaving into them rippling embroi-
deries, drops into songs he composed in bygone
days for his children, passes on to Beethoven, to
Bach's fugues, and presently goes to the organ,
where he loses himself in improvisation. Listening,
you feel that but for the dominant' "plastic gift,
he would have been a great musician. The son
of two celebrated musicians, descendant of a line
of five, he was not only cradled and brought up
in music, but one might say born of it. Hence,
of course, the uniquely harmonious, entirely
musical form of expression in sculpture which
has founded a school and echoes in the work of
nearly all young English sculptors. Hence also
the excessive, the violent temperament that makes
him an enigma to the evenly-balanced, and sets
him apart even among artists.
When finally you sit down to the simple supper,
waited on by your host whose talk is ever of ideas,
books, theories—he rarely leaves his house, sees no
papers, writes few letters, knows practically nothing
of what is going on in the world—a shadow of his
monastic detachment has fallen on you, and looked
at from the inside, the existence of this man—
which is not what we others unders'and as life,
LOWER PART OF SIHFTESBURY MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN IN PICCADILLY CIRCUS. (PAotO: Hollyer)
I IO
—the clean-shaven, strong-featured, well-built solid
figure, breezy fearless attitude, and simple manners,
heightening the impression — the effect of that
fighting jaw and set mouth remains the same, and
you feel that it is good for those who might
have been his adversaries that his fight has rarely
been for anything but the right to live in accord-
ance with his artistic ideals.
To get the key-note of this complex personality,
however, you must follow Gilbert into his music-
room, a lofty chamber where the light of two or
three wax candles shows a piano, a little organ
whose tall back and candlesticks suggest an
altar, and—shadows. Silently he seats himself
at the piano, where he transforms early English
melodies by weaving into them rippling embroi-
deries, drops into songs he composed in bygone
days for his children, passes on to Beethoven, to
Bach's fugues, and presently goes to the organ,
where he loses himself in improvisation. Listening,
you feel that but for the dominant' "plastic gift,
he would have been a great musician. The son
of two celebrated musicians, descendant of a line
of five, he was not only cradled and brought up
in music, but one might say born of it. Hence,
of course, the uniquely harmonious, entirely
musical form of expression in sculpture which
has founded a school and echoes in the work of
nearly all young English sculptors. Hence also
the excessive, the violent temperament that makes
him an enigma to the evenly-balanced, and sets
him apart even among artists.
When finally you sit down to the simple supper,
waited on by your host whose talk is ever of ideas,
books, theories—he rarely leaves his house, sees no
papers, writes few letters, knows practically nothing
of what is going on in the world—a shadow of his
monastic detachment has fallen on you, and looked
at from the inside, the existence of this man—
which is not what we others unders'and as life,
LOWER PART OF SIHFTESBURY MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN IN PICCADILLY CIRCUS. (PAotO: Hollyer)
I IO