Three painters, and a school for pifferari -- Gabriel Decamps,
Eugene Delacroix, and Horace Vernet -- The prices of pictures in
the forties -- Delacroix' find no purchasers at all -- Decamps'
drawings fetch a thousand francs each -- Decamps not a happy man
-- The cause of his unhappiness -- The man and the painter -- He
finds no pleasure in being popular -- Eugene Delacroix -- His
contempt for the bourgeoisie -- A parallel between Delacroix and
Shakespeare -- Was Delacroix tall or short? -- His love of
flowers -- His delicate health -- His personal appearance -- His
indifference to the love-passion -- George Sand and Delacroix --
A miscarried love-scene -- Delacroix' housekeeper, Jenny
Leguillou -- Delacroix does not want to pose as a model for one
of George Sand's heroes -- Delacroix as a writer -- His approval
of Carlyle's dictum, "Show me how a man sings," etc. -- His
humour tempered by his reverence -- His failure as a caricaturist
-- His practical jokes on would-be art-critics -- Delacroix at
home -- His dress while at work -- Horace Vernet's, Paul
Delaroche's, Ingres' -- Early at work -- He does not waste time
over lunch -- How he spent his evenings -- His dislike of being
reproduced in marble or on canvas after his death -- Horace
Vernet -- The contrast between the two men and the two artists --
Vernet's appearance -- His own account of how he became a painter
-- Moral and mental resemblance to Alexandre Dumas pere -- His
political opinions -- Vernet and Nicholas I. -- A bold answer --
His opinion on the mental state of the Romanoffs -- The comic
side of Vernet's character -- He thinks himself a Vauban -- His
interviews with M. Thiers -- His admiration for everything
military -- His worship of Alfred de Vigny -- His ineffectual
attempts to paint a scene in connection with the storming of
Constantine -- Laurent-Jan proposes to write an epic on it -- He
gives a synopsis of the cantos -- Laurent-Jan lives "on the fat
of the land" for six months -- A son of Napoleon's companion in
exile, General Bertrand -- The chaplain of "la Belle-Poule" --
The first French priest who wore the English dress -- Horace
Vernet and the veterans of "la grande armee" -- His studio during
their occupancy of it as models -- His budget -- His hatred of
pifferari -- A professor -- The Quartier-Latin revisited.
A few weeks ago,[30] when rummaging among old papers, documents,
memoranda, etc., I came upon some stray leaves of a catalogue of a
picture sale at the Hotel Bullion[31] in 1845. I had marked the prices
realized by a score or so of paintings signed by men who, though living
at that time, were already more or less famous, and many of whom have
since then acquired a world-wide reputation. There was only one
exception to this--that of Herrera the Elder, who had been dead nearly
two centuries, and whose name was, and is still, a household word among
connoisseurs by reason of his having been the master of Velasquez. The
handiwork of the irascible old man was knocked down for three francs
seventy-five centimes, though no question was raised as to the
genuineness of it in my hearing. It was a saint--the catalogue said no
more,--and I have been in vain trying to recollect why I did not buy it.
There must have been some cogent reason for my not having done so, for
"the frame was no doubt worth double the money," to use an auctioneer's
phrase. Was it suspicion, or what? At any rate, two years later, I heard
that it had been sold to an American for fourteen thousand francs,
though, after all, that was no guarantee of its value.
[Footnote 30: Written in 1882.]
[Footnote 31: The Hotel Bullion was formerly the town mansion
of the financier of that name, and situated in the Rue
Coquilliere.--EDITOR.]
In those days it was certainly better to be a live artist than a dead
one, for, a little further on among these pages, I came upon a marginal
note of the prices fetched by three works of Meissonier, "Le Corps de
Garde," "Une partie de piquet," and "Un jeune homme regardant des
dessins," all of which had been in the salon of that year,[32] and each
of which fetched 3000 francs. I should not like to say what their
purchasing price would be to-day, allowing for the difference in the
value of money. Further on still, there is a note of a picture by Alfred
de Dreux, which realized a similar amount. Allowing for that same
difference in the value of money, that work would probably not find a
buyer now among real connoisseurs at 200 francs.[33] At the same time,
the original sketch of David's "Serment du Jeu de Paume" did not find a
purchaser at 2500 francs, the reserve price. A landscape by Jules Andre,
a far greater artist than Alfred de Dreux, went for 300 francs, and
Baron's "Oies du Frere Philippe" only realized 200 francs more. There
was not a single "bid" for Eugene Delacroix' "Marc-Aurele," and when he
did sell a picture it was for 500 or 600 francs; nowadays it would fetch
100,000 francs. On the other hand, the drawings of Decamps' admirable
"Histoire de Samson" realized 1000 francs each.
[Footnote 32: The annual salon was held in the Louvre then; in
1849 it was transferred to the Tuileries. In 1850, '51, and '52
it was removed to the galleries of the Palais-Royal; in 1853
and '54 the salon was held in the Hotel des Menus-Plaisirs, in
the Faubourg Poissonniere, which became afterwards the
storehouse for the scenery of the Grand Opera. In 1855 the
exhibition took place in a special annex of the Palais de
l'Industrie; after that, it was lodged in the Palais
itself.--EDITOR.]
[Footnote 33: Alfred de Dreux was not an unknown figure in
London society. He came in 1848. He was a kind of Comte
d'Orsay, and painted chiefly equestrian figures. After the Coup
d'Etat he returned to Paris, and was patronized by society, and
subsequently by Napoleon III. himself, whose portrait he
painted. He was killed in a duel, the cause of which has never
been revealed.--EDITOR.]
Yet Gabriel Decamps was a far unhappier man than Eugene Delacroix. The
pictures rejected by the public became the "apples" of Delacroix' eyes,
with which he would not part, subsequently, at any price, as in the case
of his "Marino Faliero." Decamps, one day, while he lived in the
Faubourg Saint-Denis, deliberately destroyed one hundred and forty
drawings, the like of which were eagerly bought up for a thousand francs
apiece, though at present they would be worth four times that amount.
Delacroix was content with his God-given genius; "he saw everything he
had made, and behold it was very good," Decamps fumed and fretted at the
supposed systematic neglect of the Government, which did not give him a
commission. "You paint with a big brush, but you are not a great
painter," said Sir Joshua to a would-be Michael-Angelo. To Gabriel
Decamps the idea of being allowed or invited by the State to cover a
number of yards of canvas or wall or ceiling was so attractive that he
positively lost his sleep and his appetite over it. It was, perhaps, the
only bitter drop in his otherwise tolerably full cup of happiness, but
that one drop very frequently embittered the whole. He had many good
traits in his character, though he was not uniformly good-tempered.
There was an absolute indifference as to the monetary results of his
calling, and an inherent generosity to those who "had fallen by the
way." But he was something of a bear and a recluse, not because he
disliked society, but because he deliberately suppressed his sociable
qualities, lest he should arouse the suspicion of making them the
stepping-stone to his ambition. No man ever misread the lesson, "Do well
and fear not," so utterly as did Decamps. He was never tired of
well-doing; and he was never tired of speculating what the world would
think of it. There is not a single picture from his brush that does not
contain an original thought; he founded an absolutely new school--no
small thing to do. The world at large acknowledged as much, and yet he
would not enjoy the fruits of that recognition, because it lacked the
"official stamp." When Decamps consented to forget his real or fancied
grievances he became a capital companion, provided one had a taste for
bitter and scathing satire. I fancy Jonathan Swift must have been
something like Gabriel Decamps in his daily intercourse with his
familiars. But he rarely said an ill-natured thing of his
fellow-artists. His strictures were reserved for the political men of
his time, and of the preceding reign. The Bourbons he despised from the
bottom of his heart, and during the Restauration his contempt found vent
in caricatures which, at the moment, must have seared like a red-hot
iron. He had kept a good many of these ephemeral productions, and, I am
bound to say, they struck one afterwards as unnecessarily severe. "If
they" (meaning the Bourbons) "had continued to reign in France," he said
one day, "I would have applied for letters of naturalization to the
Sultan."
Decamps was killed, like Gericault, by a fall off his horse, but long
before that he had ceased to work. "I cannot add much to my reputation,
and do not care to add to my store," he said. In 1855, the world
positively rang with his name, but I doubt whether this universal
admiration gave him much satisfaction. He exhibited more than fifty
works at the Exposition Universelle of that year, a good many of which
had been rejected by the "hanging committees" of previous salons. True
to his system, he rarely, perhaps never directly, called the past
judgment in question, but he lived and died a dissatisfied man. Unlike
Mirabeau, who had not the courage to be unpopular, Decamps derived no
gratification from popularity.
I knew Eugene Delacroix better than any of the others in the marvellous
constellation of painters of that period, and our friendship lasted till
the day of his death, in December, 1863. I was also on very good terms
with Horace Vernet; but though the latter was perhaps a more lively
companion, the stronger attraction was towards the former. I was one of
the few friends whom he tolerated whilst at work. Our friendship lasted
for nearly a quarter of a century, and during that time there was never
a single unpleasantness between us, though I am bound to admit that
Delacroix' temper was very uncertain. Among all those men who had a
profound, ineradicable contempt for the bourgeois, I have only known one
who despised him even to a greater extent than he; it was Gustave
Flaubert. Though Delacroix' manners were perfect, he could scarcely be
polite to the middle classes. With the exception of Dante and
Shakespeare, Delacroix was probably the greatest poet that ever lived; a
greater poet undoubtedly than Victor Hugo, in that he was absolutely
indifferent to the material results of his genius. If Shakespeare and
the author of the "Inferno" had painted, they would have painted like
Delacroix; his "Sardanapale" is the Byronic poem, condensed and
transferred to canvas.
Long as I knew Delacroix, I had never been able to make out whether he
was tall or short, and most of his friends and acquaintances were
equally puzzled. As we stood around his coffin many were surprised at
its length. His was decidedly a curious face, at times stony in its
immobility, at others quivering from the tip of chin to the juncture of
the eyebrows, and with a peculiar movement of the nostrils that was
almost pendulum-like in its regularity. It gave one the impression of
their being assailed by some unpleasant smell, and, one day, when
Delacroix was in a light mood, I remarked upon it. "You are perfectly
right," he replied; "I always fancy there is corruption in the air, but
it is not necessarily of a material kind."
Be this as it may, he liked to surround himself with flowers, and his
studio was often like a hothouse, apart from the floral decorations. The
temperature was invariably very high, and even then he would shiver now
and again. I have always had an idea that Delacroix had Indian blood in
his veins, which idea was justified to a certain extent by his
appearance, albeit that there was no tradition to that effect in his
family. But it was neither the black hair, the olive skin, nor the
peculiar formation of the features which forced that conclusion upon me;
it was the character of Delacroix, which for years and years I
endeavoured to read thoroughly, without succeeding to any appreciable
degree. There was one trait that stood out so distinctly that the merest
child might have perceived it--his honesty; but the rest was apparently
a mass of contradiction. It is difficult to imagine a poet, and
especially a painter-poet, without an absorbing passion for some
woman--not necessarily for the same woman; to my knowledge Delacroix had
no such passion, for one can scarcely admit that Jenny Leguillou, his
housekeeper, could have inspired such a feeling. True, when I first knew
Delacroix he was over forty, but those who had known him at twenty and
twenty-five never hinted at any romantic attachment or even at a sober,
homely affection. And assuredly a man of forty is not invulnerable in
that respect. And yet, the woman who positively bewitched, one after
another, so many of Delacroix' eminent contemporaries, Jules Sandeau,
Alfred de Musset, Michel de Bourges, Chopin, Pierre Leroux, Cabet,
Lammenais, etc., had no power over him.
Paul de Musset, perhaps as a kind of revenge for the wrongs suffered by
his brother, once gave an amusing description of the miscarried attempt
of George Sand "to net" Eugene Delacroix.
It would appear that the painter had shown signs of yielding to the
charms which few men were able to withstand, or, at any rate, that
George Sand fancied she could detect such signs. Whether it was from a
wish on George Sand's part to precipitate matters or to nip the thing in
the bud, it would be difficult to determine, but it is certain that she
pursued her usual tactics--that is, she endeavoured to provoke an
admission of her admirer's feeling. Though I subsequently ascertained
that Paul de Musset's story was substantially true, I am not altogether
prepared, knowing his animosity against her, to accept his hinted theory
of the lady's desire "de brusquer les fiancailles."
One morning, then, while Delacroix was at work, George Sand entered his
studio. She looked out of spirits, and almost immediately stated the
purpose of her visit.
"My poor Eugene!" she began; "I am afraid I have got sad news for you."
"Oh, indeed," said Delacroix, without interrupting his work, and just
giving her one of his cordial smiles in guise of welcome.
"Yes, my dear friend, I have carefully consulted my own heart, and the
upshot is, I am grieved to tell you, that I feel I cannot and could
never love you."
Delacroix kept on painting. "Is that a fact?" he said.
"Yes, and I ask you once more to pardon me, and to give me credit for my
candour--my poor Delacroix."
Delacroix did not budge from his easel.
"You are angry with me, are you not? You will never forgive me?"
"Certainly I will. Only I want you to keep quiet for ten minutes; I have
got a bit of sky there which has caused me a good deal of trouble, it is
just coming right. Go and sit down or else take a little walk, and come
back in ten minutes."
Of course, George Sand did not return; and equally, of course, did not
tell the story to any one, but somehow it leaked out. Perhaps Jenny
Leguillou had overheard the scene--she was quite capable of listening
behind a screen or door--and reporting it. Delacroix himself, when
"chaffed" about it, never denied it. There was no need for him to do so,
because theoretically it redounded to the lady's honour; had she not
rejected his advances?
I have noted it here to prove that the poetry of Delacroix n'allait pas
se faufiler dans les jupons, because, though we would not take it for
granted that where George Sand failed others would have succeeded, it is
nevertheless an authenticated fact that only one other man among the
many on whom she tried her wiles remained proof against them. That man
was Prosper Merimee, the author of "Colomba" and "Carmen," the friend of
Panizzi. "Quand je fais un roman, je choisis mon sujet; je ne veux pas
que l'on me decoupe pour en faire un. Madame Sand ne met pas ses amants
dans son coeur, elle les mets dans ses livres; et elle le fait si
diablement vite qu'on n'a pas le temps de la devancer." Merimee was
right, each of George Sand's earlier books had been written with the
heart's blood of one of the victims of her insatiable passions--for I
should not like to prostitute the word "love" to her liaisons; and I am
glad to think that Eugene Delacroix was spared that ordeal. It would
have killed him; and the painter of "Sardanapale" was more precious to
his own art than to hers, which, with all due deference to eminent
critics, left an unpleasant sensation to those who were fortunate enough
to be free from incipient hysteria.
A liaison with George Sand would have killed Eugene Delacroix, I am
perfectly certain; for he would have staked gold, she would have only
played with counters. It would have been the vitiated atmosphere in
which the cradle of his life and of his genius--which were one, in this
instance--would have been extinguished.
As it was, that candle burned very low at times, because, during the
years I knew Delacroix, he had nearly always one foot in the grave; the
healthy breezes of art's unpolluted air made that candle burn brightly
now and again; hence the difference in quality, as striking, of some of
his pictures.
Perhaps on account of his delicate health, Delacroix was not very fond
of society, in which, however, he was ever welcome, and particularly
fitted to shine, though he rarely attempted to do so. I have said that
Dante and Shakespeare, if they had painted, would have painted as
Delacroix did; I am almost tempted to add that if Delacroix' vocation
had impelled him that way, he would have sung as they sang--of course, I
do not mean that he would have soared as high, but his name would have
lived in literature as it does in painting, though perhaps not with so
brilliant a halo around it. For, unlike many great painters of his time,
Delacroix was essentially lettre. One has but to read some of his
critical essays in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of that period, to be
convinced of that at once. Theophile Gautier said, one evening, that it
was "the style of a poet in a hurry." The sentences give one the
impression of newly-minted golden coins. Nearly every one contains a
thought, which, if reduced to small change, would still make an
admirable paragraph. He gives to his readers what he expects from his
authors--a sensation, a shock in two or three lines. The sentences are
modelled upon his favourite prose author, who, curious to relate, was
none other than Napoleon I. I often tried to interest him in English
literature. Unfortunately, he knew no English to speak of, and was
obliged to have recourse to translations. Walter Scott he thought
long-winded, and, after a few attempts at Shakespeare in French, he gave
it up. "Ca ne peut pas etre cela," he said. But he had several French
versions of "Gulliver's Travels," all of which he read in turn. One day,
I quoted to him a sentence from Carlyle's "Lectures on Heroes:" "Show me
how a man sings, and I will tell you how he will fight." "C'est cela,"
he said; "if Shakespeare had been a general, he would have won his
battles like Napoleon, by thunderclaps" (par des coups de foudre).
Delacroix had what a great many Frenchmen lack--a keen sense of humour,
but it was considerably tempered by what, for the want of a better term,
I may call the bump of reverence. He could not be humorous at the
expense of those he admired or respected, consequently his attempts at
caricature at the early period of his career in _Le Nain Jaune_ were a
failure; because Delacroix' admiration and respect were not necessarily
reserved for those with whom he agreed in art or politics, but for
everyone who attempted something great or useful, though he failed. The
man who, at the age of sixty, would enthusiastically dilate upon his
meeting forty years before with Gros, whose hat he had knocked off by
accident, was not the likely one to hold up to ridicule the celebrity of
the hour or day _without_ malice prepense. And this malice prepense
never uprose within him, except in the presence of some bumptious,
ignorant nobody. Then it positively boiled over, and he did not mind
what trick he played his interlocutor. The latter might be a wealthy
would-be patron, an influential Government official, or a well-known
picture-dealer; it was all the same to Delacroix, who had an utter
contempt for patronage, nepotism, and money. It was as good as a clever
scene in a comedy to see him rise and draw himself up to his full
height, in order to impress his victim with a sense of the importance of
what he was going to say. To get an idea of him under such
circumstances, one must go and see his portrait in the Louvre, painted
by himself, with the semi-supercilious, semi-benevolent smile playing
upon the parted lips, and showing the magnificent regular set of teeth,
of which he was very proud, beneath the black bushy moustache, which
reminds one curiously of that of Rembrandt. Of course, the victim was
mesmerized, and stood listening with all attention, promising himself to
remember every word of the spoken essay on art, with the view of
producing it as his own at the first favourable opportunity. And he
generally did, to his own discomfiture and the amusement of his hearers,
who, if they happened to know Delacroix, which was the case frequently,
invariably detected the source of the speaker's information. I once
heard a spoken essay on Holbein reproduced in that way, which would have
simply made the fortune of any comic writer. The human parrot had not
even been parrot-like, for he had muddled the whole in transmission. I
took some pains to reproduce his exact words, and I never saw Delacroix
laugh as when I repeated it to him. For, as a rule, and even when he was
mystifying that kind of numskull in the presence of half a dozen
well-informed friends, Delacroix remained perfectly serious, though the
others had to bite their lips lest they should explode. In fact, it
would have been difficult at any time to guess or discover, beneath the
well-bred man of the world, with his charming, courtly, though somewhat
distant manner, the painter who gave us "La Barque de Dante," and "Les
Massacres de Scio;" still, Delacroix was that man of the world,
exceedingly careful of his appearance, particular to a degree about his
nails, which he wore very long, dressed to perfection, and, in spite of
the episode with George Sand, recorded above, most ingratiating with
women.
Different altogether was he in his studio. Though he was "at home" from
three till five, to visitors of both sexes, it was distinctly understood
that he would not interrupt his work for them, or play the host as the
popular painter of to-day is supposed to do. The atelier, encumbered
with bric-a-brac and sumptuous hangings and afternoon tea, had not been
invented: if the host wore a velvet coat, a Byronic collar, and gorgeous
papooshes, it was because he liked these things himself, not because he
intended to impress his visitors. As a rule, the host, though in his
youth perhaps he had been fond of extravagant costumes, did not like
them: Horace Vernet often worked in his shirt-sleeves, Paul Delaroche
nearly always wore a blouse, and Ingres, until he became "a society
man," which was very late in life, donned a dressing-gown. Delacroix
was, if anything, more slovenly than the rest when at work. An old
jacket buttoned up to the chin, a large muffler round his neck, a cloth
cap pulled over his ears, and a pair of thick felt slippers made up his
usual garb. For he was nearly always shivering with cold, and had an
affection of the throat, besides, which compelled him to be careful.
"But for my wrapping up, I should have been dead at thirty," he said.
Nevertheless, at the stroke of eight, winter and summer, he was in his
studio, which he did not leave until dark, during six months of the
year, and a little before, during the other six. Contrary to the French
habit, he never took luncheon, and generally dined at home a little
after six--the fatigue of dining out being too much for him.
I may safely say that I was one of Delacroix' friends, with whom he
talked without restraint. I often went to him of an evening when the
weather prevented his going abroad, which, in his state of health, was
very often. He always chafed at such confinement; for though not fond of
society in a general way, he liked coming to the Boulevards, after his
work was over, and mixing with his familiars. Delacroix smoked, but,
unlike many addicted to tobacco, could not sit idle. His hands, as well
as his brain, wanted to be busy; consequently, when imprisoned by rain
or snow, he sat sketching figures or groups, talking all the while. By
then his name had become familiar to every art student throughout the
world, and he often received flattering letters from distant parts. One
evening, shortly after the death of David d'Angers, to an episode in
whose life I have devoted a considerable space in these notes, Delacroix
received an American newspaper, the title of which I have forgotten, but
which contained an exceedingly able article on the great sculptor, as an
artist, and as a man. It wound up with the question, "And what kind of
monument will be raised to him by the man who virtually shortened his
life by sending him into exile, because David remained true to the
republican principles which Napoleon only shammed--or, if not shammed,
deliberately trod underfoot to ascend a tyrant's throne?"
I translated the whole of the article, and, when I came to the last
lines, Delacroix shook his head sadly. "You remember," he said, "the
answer of our friend Dumas, when they asked him for a subscription
towards a monument to a man whom every one had reviled in the beginning
of his career. 'They had better be content with the stones they threw at
him during his existence. No monument they can raise will be so eloquent
of their imbecility and his genius.' I may take it," he went on, "that
such a question will be raised one day after my death, perhaps many
years after I am gone. If you are alive you will, by my will, raise your
voice against the project. I have painted my own portrait; while I am
here, I will take care that it be not reproduced; I will forbid them to
do so after I am at rest. There shall not be a bust on my tomb."
About a fortnight before his death he made a will to that effect, and up
to the present hour (1883) its injunctions have been respected.
Delacroix lies in a somewhat solitary spot in Pere-Lachaise. Neither
emblem, bust, nor statue adorns his tomb, which was executed according
to his own instructions. "They libelled me so much during my life," he
said one day, "that I do not want them to libel me after my death, on
canvas or in marble. They flattered me so much afterwards, that I knew
their flattery to be fulsome, and, if anything, I am more afraid of it
than of their libels."
It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than there existed
between Eugene Delacroix, both as a man and an artist, and Horace
Vernet. The one loved his art with the passionate devotion of an
intensely poetical lover for his wayward mistress, whom to cease wooing
for a moment might mean an irreparable breach or, at least, a long
estrangement; the other loved his with the calm affection of the
cherished husband for the faithful wife who had blessed him with a
numerous offspring, whom he had known from his very infancy, a marriage
with whom had been decided upon when he was a mere lad, whom he might
even neglect for a little while without the bond being in any way
relaxed. According to their respective certificates of birth, Vernet was
the senior by ten years of Delacroix. When I first knew them, about
1840, Vernet looked ten years younger than Delacroix. If they had chosen
to disguise themselves as musketeers of the Louis XIII. period, Vernet
would have reminded one of both Aramis and d'Artagnan; Delacroix, of
Athos.
Montaigne spoke Latin before he could speak French; Vernet drew men and
horses before he had mastered either French or Latin. His playthings
were stumpy, worn-out brushes, discarded palettes, and sticks of
charcoal; his alphabet, the pictures of the Louvre, where his father
occupied a set of apartments, and where he was born, a month before the
outbreak of the first Revolution. He once said to me, "Je suis peintre
comme il y des hommes qui sont rois--parceque ils ne peuvent pas etre
autre chose. Il fallait un homme de genie pour sortir d'un pareil
bourbier et malheureusement je n'ai que du talent." By the "bourbier" he
meant his great-grandfather, his two grandfathers, and his father, all
of whom were painters and draughtsmen.
Posterity will probably decide whether Horace Vernet was a genius or
merely a painter of great talent, but it will scarcely convey an
approximate idea of the charm of the man himself. There was only one
other of his contemporaries who exercised the same spell on his
companions--Alexandre Dumas _pere_. Though Vernet was a comparative
dwarf by the side of Dumas, the men had the same qualities, physical,
moral, and mental. Neither of them knew what bodily fatigue meant; both
could work for fourteen or fifteen hours a day for a fortnight or a
month; both would often have "a long bout of idleness," as they called
it, which, to others not endowed with their strength and mental
activity, would have meant hard labour. Both were fond of earning money,
fonder still of spending it; both created almost without an effort.
Dumas roared with laughter while writing; Vernet sang at the top of his
voice while painting, or bandied jokes with his visitors, who might come
and go as they liked at all hours. Dumas, especially in the earlier days
of his career, had to read a great deal before he could catch the local
colour of his novels and plays--he himself has told us that he was
altogether ignorant of the history of France. But when he had finished
reading up the period in question, he wrote as if he had been born in
it. Vernet was a walking cyclopaedia on military costume; he knew,
perhaps, not much more than that, but that he knew thoroughly, and never
had to think twice about the uniforms of his models, and, as he himself
said, "I never studied the thing, nor did I learn to paint or to draw.
According to many people, I do not know how to paint or to draw now: it
may be so; at any rate I have the comfort of having wasted nobody's time
in trying to learn."
Like Dumas, he was very proud of his calling and of the name he had made
for himself in it, which he would not have changed for the title of
emperor--least of all for that of king; for, like his great
contemporary, he was a republican at heart. It did not diminish either
his or Dumas' admiration for Napoleon I. "I can understand an absolute
monarchy, nay, a downright autocracy, and I can understand a republic,"
said Vernet, "but I fail to understand the use of a constitutional king,
just because it implies and entails the principle of succession by
inheritance. An autocracy means one ruler over so many millions of
subjects; a constitutional monarchy means between five and six hundred
direct rulers, so many millions of indirect ones, and one subject who is
called king. Who would leave his child the inheritance of such slavery?
A la bonne heure, give me a republic such as we understand it in France,
all rulers, all natural-born kings, gods in mortals' disguise who dance
to the piping of the devil. There have been two such since I was born;
there may be another half-dozen like these within the next two
centuries, because, before you can have an ideal republic, you must have
ideal republicans, and Nature cannot afford to fritter away her most
precious gifts on a lot of down-at-heels lawyers and hobnail-booted
scum. She condescends now and then to make an ideal tyrant--she will
never make a nation of ideal republicans. You may just as well ask her
to make a nation of Raffaelles or Michael Angelos, or Shakespeares or
Molieres."
Both men, in spite of their republican opinions, were personally
attached to some members of the Orleans family; both had an almost
invincible objection to the Bourbons. Vernet had less occasion to be
outspoken in his dislike than Dumas, but he refused to receive the Duc
de Berri when the latter offered to come and see the battle-pieces
Vernet was painting for the then Duke of Orleans (Louis-Philippe).
Vernet had stipulated that his paintings should illustrate exclusively
the campaigns of the first Republic and the Empire, though subsequently
he depicted some episodes of the Algerian wars, in which the son of the
king had distinguished himself. "Tricolour cockades or no pictures," he
remarked, and Louis-Philippe good-humouredly acquiesced. Though
courteous to a degree, he never minced matters to either king or beggar.
While in Russia Nicholas took a great fancy to him. It appears that the
painter, who must have looked even smaller by the side of the Czar than
he did by that of Dumas, had accompanied the former, if not on a
perilous, at least on a very uncomfortable journey in the middle of the
winter. He and the Emperor were the only two men who had borne the
hardships and privations without grumbling, nay, with Mark Tapleyean
cheerfulness. That kind of fortitude was at all times a passport to
Nicholas' heart, doubly so in this instance, by reason of Vernet's by no
means robust appearance. From that moment Nicholas became very attached
to, and would often send for, him. They would often converse on subjects
even more serious, and, one day, after the partition of Poland, Nicholas
proposed that Vernet should paint a picture on the subject.
"I am afraid I cannot do it, sire," was the answer. "I have never
painted a Christ on the cross."
"The moment I had said it," continued Vernet, when he told me the story,
which is scarcely known, "I thought my last hour had struck. I am
positively certain that a Russian would have paid these words with his
life, or at least with lifelong exile to Siberia. I shall never forget
the look he gave me; there was a murderous gleam in the eyes; but it was
over in an instant. Nevertheless, I feel convinced that Nicholas was
mad, and, what is more, I feel equally convinced that there is incipient
madness throughout the whole of the Romanoff family. I saw a good many
of its members during my stay in Russia. They all did and said things
which would have landed ordinary men and women in a lunatic asylum. At
the same time there was an unmistakable touch of genius about some of
them. I often endeavoured to discuss the matter with the resident
foreign physicians, but, as you may imagine, they were very reticent.
But mark my words, one day there will be a terrible flare-up. Of course,
the foreigner, who sees the superstitious reverence, the slavish respect
with which they are surrounded, scarcely wonders that these men and
women should, in the end, consider themselves above, and irresponsible
to, the millions of grovelling mortals whom they rule; in spite of all
this, the question can only be one of time, and when the Russian empire
falls, the cataclysm will be unlike any other that has preceded it."
There was a comic side to Horace Vernet's character. By dint of painting
battle-pieces he had come to consider himself an authority on strategy
and tactics, and his criticisms on M. Thiers' system of fortifications
used to set us roaring. I am under the impression--though I will not
strictly vouch for it--that at the recommendation of one or two of the
inveterate jokers of our set, Laurent-Jan[34] and Mery, he had a couple
of interviews with M. Theirs, but we never ascertained the result of
them. It was almost certain that the minister of Louis-Philippe, who at
one period of his life considered himself a Napoleon and a Vauban rolled
into one, did not entertain Vernet's suggestions with the degree of
enthusiasm to which he thought them entitled; at any rate, from that
time, the mention of M. Thiers' name generally provoked a contemptuous
shrug of the shoulders on Vernet's part. "C'est tout a fait comme
Napoleon et Jomini, mon cher Vernet," said Laurent-Jan; "mais, apres
tout, qu'est que cela vous fait? La posterite jugera entre vous deux,
elle saura bien debrouiller la part que vous avez contribuee a ces
travaux immortels."
[Footnote 34: Laurent-Jan was a witty, though incorrigibly idle
journalist. He is entirely forgotten now save by such men as
MM. Arsene Houssaye and Roger de Beauvoir, who were his
contemporaries. He was the author of a clever parody on
Kotzebue's "Menschenhasz und Reue," known on the English stage
as "The Stranger."--EDITOR.]
Much as Horace Vernet admired his great contemporaries in art and
literature, his greatest worship was reserved for Alfred de Vigny, the
soldier-poet, though the latter was by no means a sympathetic companion.
Next to his society, which was rarely to be had, he preferred that of
Arthur Bertrand, the son of Napoleon's companion in exile. Arthur
Bertrand had an elder brother, Napoleon Bertrand, who, at the storming
of Constantine, put on a new pair of white kid gloves, brought from
Paris for the purpose. Horace Vernet made at least fifty sketches of
that particular incident, but he never painted the picture. "I could
not do it justice," he said, when remonstrated with for his
procrastination. "I should fail to realize the grandeur of the thing."
Thereupon Laurent-Jan, who had no bump of reverence, proposed a poem in
so many cantos, to be illustrated by Vernet. I give the plan as
developed by the would-be author.
1. The kid in its ancestral home among the mountains. A mysterious voice
from heaven tells it that its skin will be required for a pair of
gloves. The kid objects, and inquires why the skin of some other kid
will not do as well. The voice reveals the glorious purpose of the
gloves. The kid consents, and at the same moment a hunter appears in
sight. The kid, instead of taking to its heels, assumes a favourable
position to be shot. It makes a dying speech.
2. A glove-shop on the Boulevard. Enter Napoleon Bertrand, asking for a
pair of gloves. The girl tells him that she has only one pair left, and
communicates the legend connected with it. The price is twenty francs.
Napoleon Bertrand demurs at it, and tells her, in his turn, what the
gloves are wanted for. The girl refuses to take the money, and her
employer, overhearing the conversation, dismisses her there and then. He
keeps the wages due to her as the price of the gloves. Napoleon Bertrand
puts the latter in his pocket, offers the girl his arm, and invites her
to breakfast in a _cabinet particulier_, "en tout bien, en tout
honneur." To prove his perfectly honourable intentions, he tells her the
story of Jeanne d'Arc. The girl's imagination is fired by the recital,
and after luncheon she goes in search of a book on the subject. An
unscrupulous, dishonest second-hand bookseller palms off an edition of
Voltaire's "La Pucelle." The girl writes to Napoleon Bertrand to tell
him that he has made a fool of her, that Jeanne d'Arc was no better than
she should be, and that she is going to join the harem of the Bey of
Constantine.
3. Napoleon Bertrand stricken with remorse before Constantine. Orders
given for the assault. Napoleon Bertrand looks for his gloves, and finds
that they are too small. He can just get them on, but cannot grasp the
handle of his sword. His servant announces a mysterious stranger, a
veiled female stranger. She is admitted; she has made her escape from
the harem; a mysterious voice from heaven--the same that spoke to the
kid--having warned her the night before that the gloves would be too
small, and that she was to let a piece in. Reconciliation. Tableau. The
bugles are sounding "boot and saddle." Storming of Constantine.
I have reproduced the words of Laurent-Jan; I will not attempt to
reproduce his manner, which was simply inimitable. Horace Vernet and
Arthur Bertrand shook with laughter, and the latter offered Laurent-Jan
to keep him for a twelvemonth if he would write the poem. Jan consented,
and lived upon the fat of the land during that time, but the poem never
saw the light.
Arthur Bertrand was one of the most jovial fellows of his time. He,
Eugene Sue, and Latour-Mezerai were the best customers of the florist on
the Boulevards. It was he who accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St.
Helena to bring back the remains of Napoleon. After their return a new
figure joined our set now and then. It was the Abbe Coquereau, the
chaplain of "La Belle-Poule." The Abbe Coquereau was the first French
Catholic priest who discarded the gown and the shovel hat, and adopted
that of the English clergy. He was a charming man, and by no means
straight-laced, but he drew the line at accompanying Arthur in his
nightly perambulations. One evening he, Arthur Bertrand, and Alexandre
Dumas were strolling along the Boulevards when the latter tried to make
the abbe enter the Varietes. The abbe held firm, or rather took to his
heels.
In those days there were still a great many veterans of the _grande
armee_ about, and a great deal of Horace Vernet's money went in
entertaining them at the various cafes and restaurants--especially when
he was preparing sketches for a new picture. The ordinary model, clever
and eminently useful as he was at that period, was willingly discarded
for the old and bronzed warrior of the Empire, some of whom were even
then returning from Africa. "They may just as well earn the money I pay
the others," he said; consequently it was not an unusual thing to see a
general, a couple of colonels, half a dozen captains, and as many
sergeants and privates, all of whom had served under Napoleon, in
Vernet's studio at the same time. Of course, the officers were only too
pleased to give their services gratuitously, but Vernet had a curious
way of making up his daily budget. Twenty models at four francs--for
models earned no more then--eighty francs. Fifteen of them refused their
pay. The eighty francs to be divided between five. And the five veterans
enjoyed a magnificent income for weeks and weeks at a time.
Truth compels me to state, however, that during those weeks "the careful
mother could not have taken her daughter" to Vernet's studio. A couple
of live horses, not unfrequently three, an equal number of stuffed ones,
camp kettles, broken limbers, pieces of artillery, an overturned
ammunition waggon, a collection of uniforms, that would have made the
fortune of a costumier, scattered all over the place; drums, swords,
guns and saddles: and, amidst this confusion, a score of veterans, some
of whom had been comrades-in-arms and who seemed oblivious, for the time
being, of their hard-earned promotion in the company of those who had
been less lucky than they, every man smoking his hardest and telling his
best garrison story: all these made up a scene worthy of Vernet himself,
but somewhat appalling to the civilian who happened to come upon it
unawares.
Vernet was never happier than when at work under such circumstances.
Perched on a movable scaffolding or on a high ladder, he reminded one
much more of an acrobat than of a painter. Like Dumas, he could work
amidst a very Babel of conversation, but the sound of music, however
good, disturbed him. In those days, itinerant Italian musicians and
pifferari, who have disappeared from the streets of Paris altogether
since the decree of expulsion of '81, were numerous, and grew more
numerous year by year. I, for one, feel sorry for their disappearance,
for I remember having spent half a dozen most delightful evenings
listening to them.
The thing happened in this way. Though my regular visits to the
Quartier-Latin had ceased long ago, I returned now and then to my old
haunts during the years '63 and '64, in company of a young Englishman
who was finishing his medical studies in Paris, who had taken up his
quarters on the left bank of the Seine, and who has since become a
physician in very good practice in the French capital. He had been
specially recommended to me, and I was not too old to enjoy an evening
once a week or a fortnight among my juniors. At a cafe, which has been
demolished since to make room for a much more gorgeous establishment at
the corners of the Boulevards Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain, we used to
notice an elderly gentleman, scrupulously neat and exquisitely clean,
though his clothes were very threadbare. He always sat at the same table
to the right of the counter. His cup of coffee was eked out by frequent
supplements of water, and meanwhile he was always busy copying music--at
least, so it seemed to us at first. We soon came to a different
conclusion, though, because every now and then he would put down his
pen, lean back against the cushioned seat, look up at the ceiling and
smile to himself--such a sweet smile; the smile of a poet or an artist,
seeking inspiration from the spirits supposed to be hovering now and
then about such.
That man was no copyist, but an obscure, unappreciated genius, perhaps,
biding his chance, hoping against hope, meanwhile living a life of
jealously concealed dreams and hardship. For he looked sad enough at the
best of times, with a kind of settled melancholy which apparently only
one thing could dispel--the advent of a couple or trio of pifferari.
Then his face would light up all of a sudden, he would gently push his
music away, speak to them in Italian, asking them to play certain
pieces, beating time with an air of contentment which was absolutely
touching to behold. On the other hand, the young pifferari appeared to
treat him with greater deference than they did the other customers; the
little girl who accompanied them was particularly eager for his
approval.
In a little while we became very friendly with the old gentleman, and,
one evening, he said, "If you will be here next Wednesday, the pifferari
will give us something new."
On the evening in question he looked quite smart; he had evidently "fait
des frais de toilette," as our neighbours have it; he wore a different
coat, and his big white neckcloth was somewhat more starched than usual.
He seemed quite excited. The pifferari, on the other hand, seemed
anxious and subdued. The cafe was very full, for all the habitues liked
the old gentleman, and had made it a point of responding to his
quasi-invitation. They were well rewarded, for I have rarely heard
sweeter music. It was unlike anything we were accustomed to hear from
such musicians; there was an old-world sound about it that went straight
to the heart, and when we looked at the old gentleman amidst the genuine
applause after the termination of the first piece, there were two big
tears coursing down his wrinkled cheeks.
The pifferari came again and again, and though they never appealed to
him directly, we instinctively guessed that there existed some
connection between them. All our efforts to get at the truth of the
matter were, however, in vain, for the old gentleman was very reticent.
Meanwhile my young friend had passed his examinations, and shifted his
quarters to my side of the river. He did not abandon the Quartier-Latin
altogether, but my inquiries about the old musician met with no
satisfactory response. He had disappeared. Nearly two years went by,
when, one afternoon, he called. "Come with me," he said; "I am going to
show you a curious nook of Paris which you do not know, and take you to
an old acquaintance whom you will be pleased to see again."
The "curious nook" of Paris still exists to a certain extent, only the
pifferari have disappeared from it. It is situated behind the Pantheon,
and is more original than its London counterpart--Saffron Hill. It is
like a corner of old Rome, Florence, or Naples, without the glorious
Italian sun shining above it to lend picturesqueness to the rags and
tatters of its population; swarthy desperadoes with golden rings in
their ears and on their grimy fingers, their greasy, soft felt hats
cocked jauntily on their heads, or drawn over the flashing dark eyes,
before which their womankind cower and shake; old men who but for the
stubble on their chins would look like ancient cameos; girls with
shapely limbs and handsome faces; middle-aged women who remind one of
the witches in Macbeth; women younger still, who have neither shape nor
make; urchins and little lassies who remind one of the pictures of
Murillo; in short, a population of wood-carvers and modellers, vendors
of plaster casts, artist-models, sugar-bakers and mosaic-workers, living
in the streets the greater part of the day, retiring to their wretched
attics at night, sober and peaceful generally, but desperate and
unmanageable when in their cups.
The cab stopped before a six-storied house which had seen better days,
in a dark, narrow street, into which the light of day scarcely
penetrated. The moment we alighted we heard a charivari of string
instruments and voices, and as we ascended the steep, slimy, rickety
staircase the sound grew more distinct. When we reached the topmost
landing, my friend knocked at one of the three or four doors, and,
without waiting for an answer, we entered. It was a scantily furnished
room with a bare brick floor, an old bedstead in one corner, a few
rush-bottomed chairs, and a deal table; but everything was scrupulously
clean. Behind the table, a cotton nightcap on his head, his tall thin
frame wrapt in an old overcoat, stood our old friend, the composer; in
front, half a dozen urchins, in costumes vaguely resembling those of the
Calabrian peasantry, grimy like coalheavers, their black hair standing
on end with attention, were rehearsing a new piece of music. Then I
understood it all. He was the professor of pifferari, an artist for all
that, an unappreciated genius, perhaps, who, rather than not be heard at
all, introduced a composition of his own into their hackneyed programme,
and tasted the sweets of popularity, without the accompanying rewards
which, nowadays, popularity invariably brings. This one had known
Paisiello and Rossini, had been in the thick of the excitement on the
first night of the "Barbiere," and had dreamt of similar triumphs.
Perhaps his genius was as much entitled to them as that of the others,
but he had loved not wisely, but too well, and when he awoke from the
love-dream, he was too ruined in body and mind to be able to work for
the realization of the artistic one. He would accept no aid. Three years
later, we carried him to his grave. A simple stone marks the place in
the cemetery of Montparnasse.