"I

'M getting more out of this art criticism than I got out of my two years of work in art schools in New York and Chicago."

The speaker was a young Western woman who was preparing for a career as a sculptor. She spoke at the conclusion of the afternoon session of a summer school of pictorial photography. So far as the writer knows, there is only one such school, and it is conducted by Clarence H. White at East Canaan, Connecticut.

Pictorial photography? Is there any other kind? There certainly is, and lots of it, in the opinion of the pictorialists. They try to get away as far as possible from what they call "commercial" photography, from the "snap-shots" that merely make a record of a conventional scene, and from the scientific photography that makes strictly accurate, optically perfect negatives with anastigmatic lenses.

They want atmosphere" in their photographs just as much as any painter wants it; they want beauty of tone and line; they want harmony, feeling, and pleasing composition; in a word, they want pictures, not photographs. And they believe that photography is a means for making real pictures, just as much as is pencil or brush.

Foremost among the pictorial photographers who have preached this gospel is the head of the above-named school. And he has inculcated his lesson so successfully, in spite of some opposition on the part of people who begrudge photography a place in the sun as a means of artistic expression, that at least one great university has sanctioned his teaching of pictorial photography within its walls, and another great popular educational institution has now for several years announced him on its faculty of lecturers. The summer school of pictorial photography at East Canaan, Connecticut, is the outgrowth of the ideas of this man.

White is a genius in his way, and was irresistibly called to his work, like most individualistic men. He was for thirteen years a clerk in a grocery store, but all his spare time was spent in doing experimental work in photography and getting gold medals for it, and finally the thing got such a hold on him that one day he was "called down" by

his employer for some supposed neglect in his task of wrapping up sugar and flour. Perhaps he had packed up flour instead of sugar, or undercharged a customer, or sent a wrong total to the bookkeeper; at any rate, when he was thus reprimanded for possibly the first mistake in his thirteen years of faithful service, he wisely realized that the psychological moment had come for getting out forever from the grocery business and for taking up his real foreordained work, picturemaking by photography.

The afternoon session of the school at which the Western girl gave her tribute to Mr. White was prepared for on this wise: Every one of the score or more of pupils had gone out the previous day with his or her camera to work out a "problem." One was to make a study of a figure under a tree; another was to photograph a head, simply lighted; another, to make a child's portrait; still another, a picture of a doorway or an ornamental window; while another worker was to make, perhaps, a study of "joyous youth" or of a girl in a garden. The class had enthusiastically set forth to work out their problems. The exposed plates were developed late in the afternoon, or, by the specially earnest workers, at night. In the morning the negatives, dry by this time, were "proofed," and given to the instructor for examination. Then, before the assembled class, gathered under a fine old tree for shade and coolness, the proofs were shown, criticised, praised and blamed. The teacher is certainly remarkably keen and just in his criticisms. "There should be something of interest in every part of your print;" "That obtrusive high light takes something away from what you are really photographing, and should be sunned down;" "That is very nice; the interest follows pleasantly from the arm to the head, then to the overhanging bough, and that leads us back again ;" "The foreground is mushy; you must learn to focus ;" "That is very good indeed; there is in it a nice quality of light and shade;" "The figure would be better if placed a little higher on the plate;" Now you need an accent of light here; watch me put in a highlight"-and the lecturer puts a small piece of white paper on the proof, to its manifest

improvement; "That is so good that I would like to see it done over again." These are samples of remembered criticisms. They were indeed illuminative, and they were gently phrased. No one is ever offended by this genial teacher. He is so manifestly anxious for the improvement of the learner that the victim of his severest criticism gets some consolation out of it and resolves at once to try it again, and this time make a picture worth while.

And the school is in a place where there is plenty of opportunity for picture-making. Its home is on a large farm in the Litchfield Hills, and there are plenty of agricultural pic ture-making possibilities-haymakers, dairy workers, herds of cattle, plowmen. The house itself where the camera people live is a pre-Revolutionary one which is said to have been an inn once. Some quaint examples of antique furniture still survive in it. Its nearest neighbor has the date 1801 on its door lintel. Fine,old trees, very photographable, line the highway; one of the elms near by is said to be the largest but one in the State. A beautiful old church is in the quiet village, and near it is a hillside cemetery which gave the suggestion for one of the class problems a competition for the best photograph to illustrate a line from Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." For this the school's leader offered as a prize one of his own prints and to his admirers this was as if Whistler, in his teaching days, had offered his pupils one of his own paintings as a spur to quicken their industry. Another prize was offered for the best post-card photograph to celebrate the charms of little-known East Canaan.

The delightful thing about this summer school was the continual variety of interest it offered. One day its leader would say, "We'll all go down by the river this morning and see what we can do with that as a problem." And he was so enthusiastic in carrying out the suggestion of one worker there that her camera was actually carried out by him into midstream-it was a shallow place, of course to get a better point of view. Never mind wet feet, if we get a real picture," was the leader's comment. Another time the demonstration took the form of showing the difference between a lens por trait and one made with a pinhole, both taken in full sunlight; then there was a procession of camera-carriers to the village church-a difficult but fascinating subject; and always

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there were problems of photographic plates and papers," gum prints," "bromoils," and other interesting mediums for advanced workers. There was, indeed, a judicious mixture of art and science in the course of instruction-the art side, as well as much practical advice, being furnished in endless variety by Mr. White, and the science ably contributed in daily lectures by his assistant, himself a well-known pictorialist, Mr. Paul L. Anderson.

A summer school, to be of any use to pupils who are occupying their vacations with a more useful form of activity than that furnished by the usual summer hotel or boarding place, must have its play hour as well as its class time. And so the School of Pictorial Photography arranged for one or two picnics every week. Only, it could not keep its enthusiastic members from carrying their working tools to the picnic groundsor waters, as it was in the case of the initial picnic, which involved an excursion to a charming lake for boating and bathing. Then there was the trolley picnic through the Berkshire Hills, passing Sheffield, Great Barrington, and Stockbridge, loveliest of New England villages, with incidental visits to the summering places of well-known artist photographers-Mrs. Gertrude Kasebier among them, and George H. Seeley, whose wellknown poster-like pictures, all made in the vicinity of Stockbridge, were exhibited to the class, and proved that one does not need to travel far afield to find subjects for genuinely pictorial work.

"The angel sought so far away

Is waiting at your door."

Perhaps one of the chief benefits that come from such a gathering of kindred spirits is in the pleasant social life that it engenders. What bright sallies at the dinner table! What keen comments on art and letters! What joyous mirth on the occasional straw rides by moonlight! Here the irrepressible talker finds his or her antidote in the gay repartee that stops the flow of words; the sententious story-teller has his grateful opportunity: the quiet thinker is moved to contribute his quota to the conversation; the organizer finds scope for his faculty in promoting dark-room and studio efficiency by forming co-operative committees; the COStume committee" shows its genius by providing unexpected wardrobes from the shelves of the country store; and in the taking of candlelight pictures" there is perhaps even

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an opportunity for a harmless flirtation such as the wariest summer girl sometimes indulges in.

Then the exhibition of prints, when the last week comes, and all the neighbors drop in to see what these camera cranks have been doing. That surely was an occasion! Many were the naïve comments. One of the goodnatured farmers who had posed said, "You certainly made me look like a tramp ;" the photographer's feelings were mollified when the farmer's hired man remarked, "That's a good picture; it looks just like ye." An

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other said, "Now I wish you would take a picture of us when we're dressed up; I'd really like to have one of that kind!"--witnessing to the universal wish to be "dolled up" when our photographs are taken, instead of looking like our usual selves as our friends know us. But on the whole the comments are kindly, and the school terminates its sessions with the good will of the entire community, and the hope that its members will call again when summer days once more lure the camera devotee to the woods and the fields and the riverside.

W

HEN one calls on the Cardinal, one wanders through long, white halls. in the archiepiscopal palace, through cloisters formerly opened to wind and rain, now closed and glassed from the elements by a less heroic race. In the salon formerly used for a reception-room a German shell has torn through the roof and burst, leaving jagged fragments in the mirrors, so that they are splintered like ice under the hammer and fling grotesque reflections and spars of light into the emptiness overhead. The daïs, with its crimson hangings, droops in shreds. The hardwood floor is plowed and uprooted, and carved cherubim smile placidly from the débris. In still another room huddle portraits of archbishops of old; saints and politicians, some of them in Louis Quatorze wigs; and the familiar faces of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and the present Pope, Benedict XV.

The Cardinal receives in a tiny whitewashed room, furnished with horsehair chairs, walnut-wood desk and table, and a small coal stove. On the walls are an image of the Virgin, framed in glass, and a pencil drawing of the Cardinal as a boy. Through the windows one looks into a dead garden where shells have plunged and burst.

The Cardinal is like a Degas painting, if Degas had pictured cardinals instead of chorus-girls and ballet-dancers. He seems

1 See the picture entitled "The Christian Indictment' -A Symbolic Portrait of Cardinal Mercier," in our alcogravure section in this issue.

preternaturally tall-six feet five, I think. His face, thin, scholarly, ascetic, with sparse grayish-white hair above it, is bloodless, and his forehead so white that one feels one looks on the naked bone. His eyes are deep-set, the eyes of a man who sees a great deal. There is a pleasantly humorous expression about the corners of the firm mouth, but the expression of his face in conversation shows a man who knows what he thinks, measures what he says, and feels in advance the exact effect of every remark that he makes and of every look that he casts upon one. His black habit with the cardinal-red braid, the heavy gold chain about his neck and the heavy gold cross at his breast, the wide cardinal sash, and the black-skirted cassock-all serve to emphasize the old-ivory whiteness and tooled artistry of the fine face above them. There is something feminine in the Cardinal's face-a feminine deference and sympathy and comprehension perhaps but the effect which he makes on a caller is the same that he makes on the world at large, that of a finely poised, keenly intelligent, yet very gentle Prince of the Church and shepherd of a nation.

They tell in Belgium of an American tourist who called on the Cardinal. "You're a Catholic, ain't you, Mr. Cardinal?" he inquired.

The Cardinal understands English, and gently answered, "Yes."

"Well, I'm a Presbyterian myself, but I ain't got no prejudices," said the visitor.

Unlike this American, the Cardinal has prejudices. He is strongly prejudiced in favor of Belgium, and any one or anything which helps Belgium. He is a steadfast upholder of the work of Herbert C. Hoover and the Commission for Relief in Belgium. He speaks in exalted terms of America and Americans. He is not afraid to be pro-Ally, and his written and spoken words have been a keen embarrassment to the occupying government. In him conquered Belgium has found a voice.

It has found also an example of patriotic recalcitrance. In May, 1915, when Malines was isolated by Governor-General von Bissing in an effort to force the railway repair-shop workmen to work for the Germans, and a cordon of soldiers was thrown about the city to keep the people from going in and out, the Cardinal wished to go to Brussels to celebrate a High Mass. He sent word of this to the German commandant, but the commandant courteously replied that, on order of the Governor-General, the Pass Bureau was closed, and that for the present no pass could be issued to his Eminence. The Cardinal at once sent word to the commandant that he would be obliged to walk to Brussels, and two hours afterwards he left his palace on foot, accompanied by two or three priests, and began the long march south.

Men, women, and children thronged about him, priests came from all over the city, and before the Cardinal was fairly started on his way his walk had taken on the character of a dangerous popular demonstration.

At the first sentries he was stopped and his personal Ausweis-a card of identification which all Belgians must carry-was demanded. After a brief argument, he and two of his priests were permitted to proceed. The crowd, however, was balked. An excited argument began, and one of the soldiers arrested a priest. I am told that the priest retaliated by beating the sentry with an umbrella and disarming him; the second sentry called

for help, and in a moment more the warlike priest was under arrest and soldiers were charging into the crowd.

Then an extraordinary thing occurred. The Cardinal had continued on his way, but the disturbance behind caused him to stop. He saw the danger to the priest, retraced his steps, and followed the soldiers having the priest in charge into a little guard-house. Civilians and soldiers alike made way for the Prince of the Church. The Cardinal strode in, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his extraordinary height lifting him head and shoulders over the crowds about him. Then he caught sight of the priest. Onlookers say he merely looked at him steadfastly, raised his right arm, and beckoned; and, without a word having been spoken on either side, the priest followed the Cardinal out of the door and down the road, and they continued on their way to Brussels.

The Cardinal was then sixty-four years old, yet he walked from Malines to Vilvorde, a distance of seven miles, and there took the electric tram.

"They are so stupid, these Germans ! Sometimes I feel that they are like silly, cruel children, and that I should do something to help them."

The Cardinal is quoted as having used these words, and they are a fair statement of his political attitude. Even in his disobedience to the powers that be he is always priest as well as Prince. This gives him an uncanny power over his people, and over the invaders as well. It is impossible to dissociate the paternal from the political reason for his acts, and so the Governor-General, who is a bold, downright, hard-handed military administrator in Belgium, finds all mouths closed but one, all arms paralyzed but one, all heads outwardly humbled but one-and that one the Cardinal's. Yet he can do nothing to change matters. The drama of Canossa and Canterbury is being played again in the twentieth century, and the priest still is victor.