Even in art, one
can hardly begin with Antwerp Cathedral and the Descent from the
Cross. He merely got drunk on his emotions, and had then to get
sober as he best could. He was terribly sober when he saw Antwerp
half a century afterwards. One lesson he did learn without
suspecting that he must immediately lose it. He felt his middle
ages and the sixteenth century alive. He was young enough, and
the towns were dirty enough -- unimproved, unrestored,
untouristed -- to retain the sense of reality. As a taste or a
smell, it was education, especially because it lasted barely ten
years longer; but it was education only sensual. He never dreamed
of trying to educate himself to the Descent from the Cross. He
was only too happy to feel himself kneeling at the foot of the
Cross; he learned only to loathe the sordid necessity of getting
up again, and going about his stupid business.
This was one of the foreseen dangers of Europe, but it vanished
rapidly enough to reassure the most anxious of parents. Dropped
into Berlin one morning without guide or direction, the young man
in search of education floundered in a mere mess of
misunderstandings. He could never recall what he expected to
find, but whatever he expected, it had no relation with what it
turned out to be. A student at twenty takes easily to anything,
even to Berlin, and he would have accepted the thirteenth century
pure and simple since his guides assured him that this was his
right path; but a week's experience left him dazed and dull.
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