"Yes; that is the place!" she said.
The sun's rays were growing warmer. I took off my coat and tucked it
through the handle of the basket. White Pigeon took off her jacket to keep
it company, and toting the basket, slung on my cane between us, we moved
on up the gently winding way to the village of By. Everybody was asleep at
By, or else gone on a journey. Soon we came to the old, massive,
moss-covered gateposts that marked the entrance to the mansion. A chain
was stretched across the entrance and we crawled under. The driveway was
partly overgrown with grass, and the place seemed to be taking care of
itself. Half a dozen long-horned Bonnie Brier Bush cows were grazing on
the lawn, their calves with them; and evidently these cows and calves were
the only mowing-machines employed. On this wide-stretching meadow were
various old trees; one elm I saw had fallen split through the center--each
part prostrate, yet growing green.
Close up about the house there was an irregular stone wall and an
ornamental iron gate with a pull-out Brugglesmith bell at one side. We
pulled the bell and were answered by a big shaggy Saint Bernard that came
barking and bouncing around the corner. I thought at first our time had
come. But this giant of a dog only approached within about ten feet, then
lay down on the grass and rolled over three times to show his goodwill. He
got up with a fine, cheery smile shown in the wag of his tail, just as a
little maid unlocked the gate.
"Don't you know that dog?" asked White Pigeon.
"Certainement--he is on the wall of your room."
We were shown into a little reception-parlor, where we were welcomed by a
tall, handsome woman, about White Pigeon's age.
The woman kissed White Pigeon on one cheek, and I afterwards asked White
Pigeon why she didn't turn to me the other, and she said I was a fool.
Then the tall woman went to the door and called up the stairway:
"Antoine, Antoine, guess who it is? It's White Pigeon!"
A man came down the stairs three steps at a time, and took both of White
Pigeon's hands in his, after the hearty manner of a gentleman of France.
Then I was introduced.
Antoine looked at our lunch-basket with the funniest look I ever saw, and
asked what it was.
"Lunch," said White Pigeon; "I can not tell a lie!"
Antoine made wild gesticulations of displeasure, denouncing us in
pantomime.
But White Pigeon explained that we only came on a quiet picnic in search
of ozone and had dropped in to make a little call before we went on up to
the forest. But could we see the horses?
Antoine would be most delighted to show Monsieur Littlejourneys anything
that was within his power. In fact, everything hereabouts was the absolute
property of Monsieur Littlejourneys to do with as he pleased.
He disappeared up the stairway to exchange his slippers for shoes, and the
tall woman went in another direction for her hat. I whispered to White
Pigeon, "Can't we see the studio?"
"Are we from Chicago, that we should seek to prowl through a private
house, when the mistress is away? No; there are partly finished canvases
up there that are sacred."
"Come this way," said Antoine. He led us out through the library, then
the dining-room and through the kitchen.
It is a very comfortable old place, with no extra furniture--the French
know better than to burden themselves with things.
The long line of brick stables seemed made up of a beggarly array of empty
stalls. We stopped at a paddock, and Antoine opened the gate and said,
"There they are!"
"What?"
"The horses."
"But these are broncos."
"Yes; I believe that is what you call them. Monsieur Bill of Buffalo, New
York, sent them as a present to Madame Rosalie when he was in Paris."
There they were--two ewe-necked cayuses--one a pinto with a wall-eye; the
other a dun with a black line down the back.
I challenged Antoine to saddle them and we would ride. The tall lady took
it in dead earnest, and throwing her arms around Antoine's neck begged him
not to commit suicide.
"And the Percherons--where are they?"
"Goodness! we have no Perches."
"Those that served as models for the 'Horse Fair,' I mean."
White Pigeon took me gently by the sleeve, and turning to the others
apologized for my ignorance, explaining that I did not know the "Marche
aux Chevaux" was painted over forty years ago, and that the models were
all Paris cart-horses.
Antoine called up a little old man, who led out two shaggy little cobs,
and I was told that these were the horses that Madame drove. A roomy,
old-fashioned basket phaeton was backed out; White Pigeon and I stepped in
to try it, and Antoine drew us once around the stable-yard. This is the
only carriage Madame uses. There were doves, and chickens, and turkeys,
and rabbits; and these horses we had seen, with the cows on the lawn, make
up all the animals owned by the greatest of living animal-painters.
Years ago Rosa Bonheur had a stableful of horses and a kennel of dogs and
a park with deer. Many animals were sent as presents. One man forwarded a
lion, and another a brace of tigers, but Madame made haste to present them
to the Zoological Garden at Paris, because the folks at By would not
venture out of their houses--a report having been spread that the lions
were loose.
"An animal-painter no more wants to own the objects he paints than a
landscape-artist wishes a deed for the mountain he is sketching," said
Antoine.
"Or to marry his model," interposed White Pigeon.
"If you see your model too often, you will lose her," added the Tall Lady.
We bade our friends good-by and trudged on up the hillside to the storied
Forest of Fontainebleau. We sat down on a log and watched the winding
Seine stretching away like a monstrous serpent, away down across the
meadow; just at our feet was the white village of By; beyond was Thomeray,
and off to the left rose the spires of Fontainebleau.
"And who is this Antoine and who is the Tall Lady?" I asked, as White
Pigeon began to unpack the basket.
"It's quite a romance; are you sure you want to hear it?"
"I must hear it."
And so between bites White Pigeon told me the story.
The Tall Lady is a niece of Madame Rosalie's. She was married to an army
officer at Bordeaux when she was sixteen years old. Her husband treated
her shamefully; he beat her and forced her to write begging letters and to
borrow money of her relatives, and then he would take this money and waste
it gambling and in drink. In short, he was a Brute.
Madame Rosalie accidentally heard of all this, and one day went down to
Bordeaux and took the Tall Lady away from the Brute and told him she would
kill him if he followed.
"Did she paint a picture of the Brute?"
"Keep quiet, please!"
She told him she would kill him if he followed, and although she is
usually very gentle I believe she would have kept her word. Well, she
brought the Tall Lady with her to By, and this old woman and this young
woman loved each other very much.
Now, Madame Rosalie had a butler and combination man of business, by name
of Jules Carmonne. He was a painter of some ability and served Madame in
many ways right faithfully. Jules loved the Tall Lady, or said he did, but
she did not care for him. He was near fifty and asthmatic and had watery
eyes. He made things very uncomfortable for the Tall Lady.
One night Jules came to Madame Rosalie in great indignation and said he
could not consent to remain longer on account of the way things were going
on. What was the trouble? Trouble enough, when the Tall Lady was sneaking
out of the house after decent folks were in bed, to meet a strange man
down in the evergreens! Well I guess so!!
How did he know?
Ah, he had followed her. Moreover, he had concealed himself in the
evergreens and waited for them, to make sure.
Yes, and who was the man?
A young rogue of a painter from Fontainebleau named Antoine de
Channeville.
Madame Rosalie took Jules Carmonne at his word. She said she was sorry he
could not stay, but he might go if he wished to, of course. And she paid
him his salary on the spot--with two months more to the end of the year.
The next day Madame Rosalie drove her team of shaggy ponies down to
Fontainebleau and called on the young rogue of an artist. He came out
bareheaded and quaking to where she sat in the phaeton waiting. She
flecked the off pony twice and told him that as Carmonne had left her she
must have a man to help her. Would he come? And she named as salary a sum
about five times what he was then making.
Antoine de Channeville seized the wheel of the phaeton for support, gasped
several gasps, and said he would come.
He was getting barely enough to eat out of his work, anyway, although he
was a very worthy young fellow. And he came.
He and the Tall Lady were married about six months after.
"And about the Brute and--and the divorce!"
"Gracious goodness! How do I know? I guess the Brute died or something;
anyway, Antoine and the Tall Lady are man and wife, and are devoted lovers
besides. They have served Madame Rosalie most loyally for these fifteen
years. They say Madame Rosalie has made her will and has left them the
mansion and everything in it for their ownest own, with a tidy sum besides
to put on interest."
It was four o'clock when we got back to the railroad-station at
Fontainebleau. We missed the train we expected to take, and had an hour to
wait. White Pigeon said she did not care so very much, and I'm sure I
didn't. So we sat down in the bright little waiting-room, and White Pigeon
told me many things about Madame Rosalie and her early life that I had
never known before.
* * * * *
Early in the century there lived in Bordeaux a struggling artist (artists
always struggle, you know) by the name of Raymond Bonheur. He found life a
cruel thing, for bread was high in price and short in weight, and no one
seemed to appreciate art except the folks who had no money to buy. But the
poor can love as well as the rich, and Raymond married. In his nervous
desire for success, Raymond Bonheur said that if he could only have a son
he would teach him how to do it, and the son would achieve the honors that
the world withheld from the father.
So the days came and went, and a son was expected--a firstborn--an heir.
There wasn't anything to be heir to except genius, but there was plenty of
that. The heir was to bear the name of the father--Raymond Bonheur.
Prayers were offered and thanksgivings sung.
The days were fulfilled. The child was born.
The heir was a girl.
Raymond Bonheur cursed wildly and tousled his hair like a bouffe artist.
He swore he had been tricked, trapped, seduced, undone. He would have
bought strong drink, but he had no money, and credit, like hope, was gone.
The little mother cried.
But the baby grew, although it wasn't a very big baby. They named her
Rosa, because the initial was the same as Raymond, but they always called
her Rosalie.
Then in a year another baby came, and that was a boy. In two years
another, but Raymond never forgave his wife that first offense. He
continued to struggle, trying various styles of pictures and ever hoping
he would yet hit on what the public desired. Mr. Vanderbilt had not yet
made his famous remark about the public, and how could Raymond plagiarize
it in advance?
At last he got money enough to get to Paris--ah, yes, Paris, Paris, there
talent is appreciated!
In Paris another baby was born--it was looked upon as a calamity. The poor
little mother of the four little shivering Bonheurs ceased to struggle.
She lay quite still, and they covered her face with a white sheet and
talked in whispers, and walked on tiptoe, for she was dead.
When an artist can not succeed, he begins to teach art--that is, he shows
others how. Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in
four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school. Rosa
Bonheur was ten years old: a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a
linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her
back tied with a shoestring. She could draw--all children can draw--and
the first things children draw are animals.
Her father had taught her a little and laughed at her foolish little lions
and tigers, all duly labeled.
When twelve years of age the good people with whom she lived said she must
learn dressmaking. She should be an artist of the needle. But after some
months she rebelled and, making her way across the city to where her
father was, demanded that he should teach her drawing. Raymond Bonheur
hadn't much will--this controversy proved that--the child mastered, and
the father, who really was an accomplished draftsman, began giving daily
lessons to the girl. Soon they worked together in the Louvre, copying
pictures.
It was a queer thing to teach a girl art--there were no women artists
then. People laughed to see a little girl with yellow braid mixing paints
and helping her father in the Louvre; others said it wasn't right.
"Let's cut off the braid, and I'll wear boy's clothes and be a boy," said
funny little Rosalie.
Next day, Raymond Bonheur had a close-cropped boy in loose trousers and
blue blouse to help him.
The pictures they copied began to sell. Buyers said the work was strong
and true. Prosperity came that way, and Raymond Bonheur got his four
children together and rented three rooms in a house at One Hundred
Fifty-seven Faubourg Saint Honore.
Rosalie saw that her father had always tried to please the public; she
would please no one but herself. He had tried many forms; she would stick
to one. She would paint animals and nothing else.
When eighteen years old, she painted a picture of rabbits, for the Salon.
The next year she tried again. She made the acquaintance of an honest old
farmer at Villiers and went to live in his household. She painted
pictures of all the livestock he possessed, from rabbits to a Norman
stallion. One of the pictures she then made was that of a favorite Holland
cow. A collector came down from Paris and offered three hundred francs for
the picture.
"Merciful Jesus!" said the pious farmer; "say nothing, but get the money
quick! The live cow herself isn't worth half that!"
The members of the Bonheur family married, one by one, including the
father. Rosa did not marry: she painted. She discarded all teachers, all
schools; she did not listen to the suggestions of patrons, and even
refused to make pictures to order.
And be it said to her credit, she never has allowed a buyer to dictate the
subject. She followed her own ideas in everything; she wore men's clothes,
and does even unto this day.
When she was twenty-five, the Salon awarded her a gold medal. The
Ministere des Beaux Arts paid her three thousand francs for her "Labourge
Nivernais."
Raymond Bonheur grew ill in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but before he
passed out he realized that his daughter, then twenty-seven years old, was
on a level with the greatest masters, living or dead.
She began "The Horse Fair" when twenty-eight. It was the largest canvas
ever attempted by an animal-painter. It was exhibited at the Salon in
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, and all the gabble of jealous competitors
was lost in the glorious admiration it excited. It became the rage of
Paris. All the honors the Salon could bestow were heaped upon the young
woman, and by special decision all her work henceforth was declared exempt
from examination by the Jury of Admission. Rosa Bonheur, five feet four,
weighing one hundred twenty pounds, was bigger than the Salon.
But success did not cause her to swerve a hair's breadth from her manner
of work or life. She refused all social invitations, and worked away after
her own method as industriously as ever. When a picture was completed, she
set her price on it and it was sold.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty she bought this fine old house at By, that she
might work in quiet. Society tried to follow her, and in Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-four the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went to By, and the
Empress pinned to the blue blouse of Rosa Bonheur the Cross of the Legion
of Honor, the first time, I believe, that the distinction was ever
conferred on a woman.
And now at seventy-four she is still in love with life, and while taking a
woman's tender interest in all sweet and gentle things, has yet an
imagination that in its strength and boldness is splendidly masculine.
Rosa Bonheur has received all the honors that man can give. She is rich;
no words of praise that tongue can utter can add to her fame; and she is
loved by all who know her.