The next great master in the art was Bernard Palissy,--a man
distinguished not only for his artistic genius, but for his
philosophical attainments, his noble, manly character, and zealous
piety. Born of poor parents about the beginning of the sixteenth
century, Bernard Palissy was taken as apprentice by a land-surveyor, who
had been much struck with the boy's quickness and ingenuity.
Land-surveying, of course, involved some knowledge of drawing; and thus
a taste for painting was developed. From drawing lines and diagrams he
went on to copy from the great masters. As this new talent became known
he obtained employment in painting designs on glass. He received
commissions in various parts of the country, and in his travels employed
his mind in the study of natural objects. He examined the character of
the soils and minerals upon his route, and the better to grapple with
the subject, devoted his attention to chemistry. At length he settled
and married at Staines, and for a time lived thriftily as a painter.
One day he was shown an elegant cup of Italian manufacture, beautifully
enamelled. The art of enamelling was then entirely unknown in France,
and Palissy was at once seized with the idea, that if he could but
discover the secret it would enable him to place his wife and family in
greater comfort. "So, therefore," he writes, "regardless of the fact
that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for these enamels as a
man gropes in the dark. I reflected that God had gifted me with some
knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him
to give me wisdom and skill."
[Illustration: PALISSY THE POTTER. Page 242.]
He lost no time in commencing his experiments. He bought a quantity of
earthen pots, broke them into fragments, and covering them with various
chemical compounds, baked them in a little furnace of his own
construction, in the hope of discovering the white enamel, which he had
been told was the key to all the rest. Again and again he varied the
ingredients of the compositions, the proportions in which they were
mixed, the quality of the clay on which they were spread, the heat of
the furnace to which they were subjected; but the white enamel was still
as great a mystery as ever. Instead of discouraging, each new defeat
seemed to confirm his hope of ultimate success and to increase his
perseverance. Painting and surveying he no longer practised, except when
sheer necessity compelled him to resort to them to provide bread for his
family. The discovery of the enamel had become the great mission of his
life, and to that all other occupations must be sacrificed. "Thus
having blundered several times at great expense and through much
trouble, with sorrows and sighs, I was every day pounding and grinding
new materials and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money, and
consumed my wood and my time." Two years had passed now in fruitless
effort. Food was becoming scarce in the little household, his wife worn
and shrewish, the children thin and sickly. But then came the thought to
cheer him,--when the enamel was found his fortune would be made, there
would then be an end to all his privations, anxieties, and domestic
unhappiness, Lisette would live at ease, and his children lack no
comfort. No, the work must not be given up yet. His own furnace was
clumsy and imperfect,--perhaps his compositions would turn out better in
a regular kiln. So more pots were bought and broken into fragments,
which, covered with chemical preparations, were fired at a pottery in
the neighbourhood. Batch after batch was prepared and despatched to the
kiln, but all proved disheartening failures. Still with "great cost,
loss of time, confusion, and sorrow," he persevered, the wife growing
more shrewish, the children more pinched and haggard. By good luck at
this time came the royal commissioners to establish the gabelle or tax
in the district of Saintonge, and Palissy was employed to survey the
salt marshes. It was a very profitable job, and Palissy's affairs began
to look more flourishing. But the work was no sooner concluded, than
the "will o' the wisp," as his wife and neighbours held it, was dancing
again before his eyes, and he was back, with redoubled energy, to his
favourite occupation, "diving into the secret of enamels."
Two years of unremitting, anxious toil, of grinding and mixing, of
innumerable visits to the kiln, sanguine of success, with ever new
preparations; of invariable journeys home again, sad and weary, for the
moment utterly discouraged; of domestic bickerings; of mockery and
censure among neighbours, and still the enamel was a mystery,--still
Palissy, seemingly as far from the end as ever, was eager to prosecute
the search. He appeared to have an inward conviction that he would
succeed; but meanwhile the remonstrances of his wife, the pale, thin
faces of his bairns, warned him he must desist, and resume the
employments that at least brought food and clothing. There should be one
more trial on a grand scale,--if that failed, then there should be an
end of his experiments. "God willed," he says, "that when I had begun to
lose my courage, and was gone for the last time to a glass-furnace,
having a man with me carrying more than three hundred pieces, there was
one among those pieces which was melted within four hours after it had
been placed in the furnace, which trial turned out white and polished,
in a way that caused me such joy as made me think I was become a new
creature." He rushed home, burst into his wife's chamber, shouting, "I
have found it!"
From that moment he was more enthusiastic than ever in his search. He
had discovered the white enamel. The next thing to be done was to apply
it. He must now work at home and in secret. He set about moulding
vessels of clay after designs of his own, and baked them in a furnace
which he had built in imitation of the one at the pottery. The grinding
and compounding of the ingredients of the enamel cost him the labour,
day and night, of another month. Then all was ready for the final
process.
The vessels, coated with the precious mixture, are ranged in the
furnace, the fire is lit and blazes fiercely. To stint the supply of
fuel would be to cheat himself of a fortune for the sake of a few pence,
so he does not spare wood. All that day he diligently feeds the fire,
nor lets it slacken through the night. The excitement will not let him
sleep even if he would. The prize he has striven for through these weary
years, for which he has borne mockery and privation, is now all but
within his grasp; in another hour or two he will have possessed it.
The grey dawn comes, but still the enamel melts not. His boy brings him
a portion of the scanty family meal. There shall soon be an end to that
miserable fare! More faggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and
the sun rises on the third day of his tending and watching at the
furnace door, but still the powder shows no signs of melting. Pale,
haggard, sick at heart with anxiety and dread, worn with watching,
parched and fevered with the heat of the fire, through another, and yet
another and another day and night, through six days and six nights in
all, Bernard Palissy watches by the glaring furnace, feeds it
continually with wood, and still the enamel is unmelted. "Seeing it was
not possible to make the said enamel melt, I was like a man in
desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled to
myself that in my mixture there might be some fault. Therefore I began
once more to pound and grind more materials, all the time without
letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound,
grind, and maintain the fire. I was also forced to go again and purchase
pots in order to prove the said compound, seeing that I had lost all the
vessels which I had made myself. And having covered the new pieces with
the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, keeping the fire still at
its height."
By this time it was no easy matter to "keep the fire at its height." His
stock of fuel was exhausted; he had no money to buy any more, and yet
fuel must be had. On the very eve of success--alas! an eve that so
seldom has a dawn--it would never do to lose it all for want of wood,
not while wood of any kind was procurable. He rushed into the garden,
tore up the palings, the trellis work that supported the vines, gathered
every scrap of wood he could find, and cast them on the fire. But soon
again the deep red glow of the furnace began to fade, and still it had
not done its work. Suddenly a crashing noise was heard; his wife, the
children clinging to her gown, rushed in. Palissy had seized the chairs
and table, had torn the door from its hinges, wrenched the window frames
from their sockets, and broken them in pieces to serve as fuel for the
all-devouring fire. Now he was busy breaking up the very flooring of the
house. And all in vain! The composition would not melt.
"I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted
and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further to console me, I was
the object of mockery; even those from whom solace was due, ran, crying
through the town that I was burning my floors. In this way my credit was
taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman," if not, as he tells us
elsewhere, as one seeking ill-gotten gains, and sold to the evil one for
filthy lucre.
He made another effort, engaged a potter to assist him, giving the
clothes off his own back to pay him, and afterwards receiving aid from a
friendly neighbour, and this time proved that his mixture was of the
right kind. But the furnace having been built with mortar which was full
of flints, burst with the heat, and the splinters adhered to the
pottery. Sooner than allow such imperfect specimens of his art to go
forth to the world, Palissy destroyed them, "although some would have
bought them at a mean price."
Better days, however, were at hand for himself and family. His next
efforts were successful. An introduction to the Duke of Montmorency
procured him the patronage of that nobleman, as well as of the king. He
now found profitable employment for himself and food for his family.
"During the space of fifteen or sixteen years in all," he said
afterwards, "I have blundered on at my business. When I had learned to
guard against one danger, there came another on which I had not
reckoned. All this caused me such labour and heaviness of spirit, that
before I could render my enamels fusible at the same degrees of heat, I
verily thought I should be at the door of my sepulchre.... But I have
found nothing better than to observe the counsel of God, his edicts,
statutes, and ordinances; and in regard to his will, I have seen that he
has commanded his followers to eat bread by the labour of their bodies,
and to multiply their talents which he has committed to them."
When the Reformation came, Palissy was an earnest reformer, on Sunday
mornings assembling a number of simple, unlearned men for religious
worship, and exhorting them to good works. Court favour exempted him
from edicts against Protestants, but could not shield him from popular
prejudice. His workshops at Saintes were destroyed; and to save his
life and preserve the art he had invented, the king called him to Paris
as a servant of his own. Thus he escaped the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. Besides being a skilful potter, Palissy was a naturalist of
no little eminence. "I have had no other book than heaven and earth,
which are open to all," he used to say; but he read the wondrous volume
well, while others knew it chiefly at second-hand, and hence his
superiority to most of the naturalists of the day. He was in the habit
of lecturing to the learned men of the capital on natural history and
chemistry. When more than eighty years of age he was accused of heresy,
and shut up in the Bastille. The king, visiting him in prison, said, "My
good man, if you do not renounce your views upon religious matters, I
shall be constrained to leave you in the hands of my enemies." "Sire,"
replied Palissy, "those who constrain you, a king, can never have power
over me, because I know how to die." Palissy died in prison, aged and
exhausted, in 1590, at the age of eighty.
Before his death his wares had become famous, and were greatly prized.
The enamel, which he went through so much toil and suffering to
discover, was the foundation of a flourishing national manufacture.