itively of the tree
of artistic knowledge), in order to re-embark on the morrow for the
United States; but that morrow never came--it has never come yet.
Certainly now it never _can_ come, for the country that Mr. Boughton
left behind him in his youth is no longer there; the "old New York" is
no longer a port to sail to, unless for phantom ships. In imagination,
however, the author of "The Return of the _Mayflower_" has several times
taken his way back; he has painted with conspicuous charm and success
various episodes of the early Puritan story. He was able on occasion
to remember vividly enough the low New England coast and the thin New
England air. He has been perceptibly an inventor, calling into being
certain types of face and dress, certain tones and associations of color
(all in the line of what I should call subdued harmonies if I were not
afraid of appearing to talk a jargon), which people are hungry for when
they acquire "a Boughton," and which they can obtain on no other terms.
This pictorial element in which he moves is made up of divers delicate
things, and there would be a roughness in attempting to unravel the
tapestry. There is old English, and old American, and old Dutch in
it, and a friendly, unexpected new Dutch too--an ingredient of New
Amsterdam--a strain of Knickerbocker and of Washington Irving. There is
an admirable infusion of landscape in it, from which some people regret
that Mr. Boughton should ever have allowed himself to be distracted by
his importunate love of sad-faced, pretty women in close-fitting coifs
and old silver-clasped cloaks. And indeed, though his figures are very
"tender," his landscape is to my sense tenderer still. Moreover, Mr.
Boughton bristles, not aggressively, but in the degree of a certain
conciliatory pertinacity, with contradictious properties. He lives in
one of the prettiest and most hospitable houses in London, but the note
of his work is the melancholy of rural things, of lonely people and of
quaint, far-off legend and refrain. There is a delightful ambiguity of
period and even of clime in him, and he rejoices in that inability to
depict the modern which is the most convincing sign of the contemporary.
He has a genius for landscape, yet he abounds in knowledge of every sort
of ancient fashion of garment; the buckles and button-holes, the very
shoe-ties, of the past are dear to him. It is almost always autumn or
winter in his pictures. His horizons are cold, his tre