sending him back again to Cherbourg, where he began to study under
another master, Langlois, and to have hopes once more for his artistic
future, now that he was free at last to pursue it in his own way. At
this time, he read a great deal--Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Byron,
Goethe's "Faust," Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand; in fact, all the great
works he could lay his hands upon. Peasant as he was, he gave himself,
half unconsciously, a noble education. Very soon, it became apparent
that the Cherbourg masters could do nothing more for him, and that, if
he really wished to perfect himself in art, he must go to Paris. In
France, the national interest felt in painting is far greater and more
general than in England. Nothing is commoner than for towns or
departments to grant pensions (or as we should call them, scholarships)
to promising lads who wish to study art in Paris. Young Millet had
attracted so much attention at Cherbourg, that the Council General of
the Department of the Manche voted him a present of six hundred francs
(about 24 pounds) to start him on the way; and the town of Cherbourg
promised him an annual grant of four hundred francs more (about 16
pounds). So up to Paris Millet went, and there was duly enrolled as a
student at the Government "School of Fine-Arts."
Those student days in Paris were days of hunger and cold, very often,
which Millet bore with the steady endurance of a Norman peasant boy.
But they were also days of something worse to him--of effort
misdirected, and of constant struggling against a system for which he
was not fitted. In fact, Millet was an original genius, whereas the
teachers at the School of Fine Arts were careful and methodical
rule-of-thumb martinets. They wished to train Millet into the ordinary
pattern, which he could not follow; and in the end, he left the school,
and attached himself to the studio of Paul Delaroche, then the greatest
painter of historical pictures in all Paris. But even Delaroche,
though an artist of deep feeling and power, did not fully understand
his young Norman pupil. He himself used to paint historical pictures
in the grand style, full of richness and beauty; but his subjects were
almost always chosen from the lives of kings or queens, and treated
with corresponding calmness and dignity. "The Young Princes in the
Tower," "The Execution of Marie Antoinette," "The Death of Queen
Elizabeth," "Cromwell viewing the Body of Charles I."--these were the
kind of pictures on which Delaroche loved to employ himself. Millet,
on the other hand, though also full of dignity and pathos, together
with an earnestness far surpassing Delaroche's, did not care for these
lofty subjects. It was the dignity and pathos of labour that moved him
most; the silent, weary, noble lives of the uncomplaining peasants,
amongst whom his own days had been mostly passed. Delaroche could not
make him out at all; he was such a curious, incomprehensible, odd young
fellow! "There, go your own way, if you will," the great master said
to him at last; "for my part, I can make nothing of you."
So, shortly after, Millet and his friend Marolle set up a studio for
themselves in the Rue de l'Est in Paris. The precise occasion of their
going was this. Millet was anxious to obtain the Grand Prize of Rome
annually offered to the younger artists, and Delaroche definitely told
him that his own influence would be used on behalf of another pupil.
After this, the young Norman felt that he could do better by following
out his own genius in his own fashion. At the Rue de l'Est, he
continued to study hard, but he also devoted a large part of his time
to painting cheap portraits--what artists call "pot-boilers;" mere
hasty works dashed off anyhow to earn his daily livelihood. For these
pictures he got about ten to fifteen francs apiece,--in English money
from eight to twelve shillings. They were painted in a theatrical
style, which Millet himself detested--all pink cheeks, and red lips,
and blue satin, and lace collars; whereas his own natural style was one
of great austerity and a certain earnest sombreness the exact reverse
of the common Parisian taste to which he ministered. However, he had
to please his patrons--and, like a sensible man, he went on producing
these cheap daubs to any extent required, for a living, while he
endeavoured to perfect himself meanwhile for the higher art he was
meditating for the future. In the great galleries of the Louvre at
Paris he found abundant models which he could study in the works of the
old masters; and there, poring over Michael Angelo and Mantegna, he
could recompense himself a little in his spare hours for the time he
was obliged to waste on pinky-white faces and taffeta gowns. To an
artist by nature there is nothing harder than working perforce against
the bent of one's own innate and instinctive feelings.
In 1840, Millet found his life in Paris still so hard that he seemed
for a time inclined to give up the attempt, and returned to Greville,
where he painted a marine subject of the sort that was dearest to his
heart--a group of sailors mending a sail. Shortly after, however, he
was back in Paris--the record of these years of hard struggle is not
very clear--with his wife, a Cherbourg girl whom he had imprudently
married while still barely able to support himself in the utmost
poverty. It was not till 1844 that the hard-working painter at last
achieved his first success. It was with a picture of a milkwoman, one
of his own favourite peasant subjects; and the poetry and sympathy
which he had thrown into so commonplace a theme attracted the attention
of many critics among the cultivated Parisian world of art. The
"Milkwoman" was exhibited at the Salon (the great annual exhibition of
works of art in Paris, like that of the Royal Academy in London, but on
a far larger scale); and several good judges of art began immediately
to inquire, "Who is Jean Francois Millet?" Hunting his address out, a
party of friendly critics presented themselves at his lodgings, only to
learn that Madame Millet had just died, and that her husband, half in
despair, had gone back again once more to his native Norman hills and
valleys.
But Millet was the last man on earth to sit down quietly with his hands
folded, waiting for something or other to turn up. At Cherbourg, he
set to work once more, no doubt painting more "pot-boilers" for the
respectable shopkeepers of the neighbourhood--complacent portraits,
perhaps, of a stout gentleman with a large watch-chain fully displayed,
and of a stout lady in a black silk dress and with a vacant smile; and
by hook or by crook he managed to scrape together a few hundred francs,
with which once more he might return to Paris. But before he did so,
he married again, this time more wisely. His wife, Catharine Lemaire,
was a brave and good woman, who knew how to appreciate her husband, and
to second him well in all his further struggles and endeavours. They
went for a while to Havre, where Millet, in despair of getting better
work, and not ashamed of doing anything honest to pay his way, actually
took to painting sign-boards. In this way he saved money enough to
make a fresh start in Paris. There, he continued his hard battle
against the taste of the time; for French art was then dominated by the
influence of men like Delaroche, or like Delacroix and Horace Vernet,
who had accustomed the public to pictures of a very lofty, a very
romantic, or a very fiery sort; and there were few indeed who cared for
stern and sympathetic delineations of the French peasant's unlovely
life of unremitting toil, such as Millet loved to set before them.
Yet, in spite of discouragement, he did well to follow out this inner
prompting of his own soul; for in that direction he could do his best
work--and the best work is always the best worth doing in the long run.
There are some minds, of which Franklin's is a good type, so versatile
and so shifty that they can turn with advantage to any opening that
chances to offer, no matter in what direction; and such minds do right
in seizing every opportunity, wherever it occurs. But there are other
minds, of which Gibson and Millet are excellent examples, naturally
restricted to certain definite lines of thought or work; and such minds
do right in persistently following up their own native talent, and
refusing to be led aside by circumstances into any less natural or less
promising channel.
While living in Paris at this time, Millet painted several of his
favourite peasant pictures, amongst others "The Workman's Monday,"
which is a sort of parallel in painting to Burns's "Cotter's Saturday
Night" in poetry. Indeed, there is a great deal in Millet which
strongly reminds one at every step of Burns. Both were born of the
agricultural labouring class; both remained peasants at heart, in
feelings and sympathies, all their lives long; neither was ashamed of
his origin, even in the days of his greatest fame; painter and poet
alike loved best to choose their themes from the simple life of the
poor whose trials and hardships they knew so well by bitter experience;
and in each case they succeeded best in touching the hearts of others
when they did not travel outside their own natural range of subjects.
Only (if Scotchmen will allow one to say so) there was in Millet a far
deeper vein of moral earnestness than in Burns; he was more profoundly
impressed by the dignity and nobility of labour; in his tender sympathy
there was a touch of solemn grandeur which was wanting in the too
genial and easy-going Ayrshire ploughman.
In 1848, the year of revolutions, Millet painted his famous picture of
"The Winnower," since considered as one of his finest works. Yet for a
long time, though the critics praised it, it could not find a
purchaser; till at last M. Ledru Rollin, a well-known politician,
bought it for what Millet considered the capital price of five hundred
francs (about 20 pounds). It would now fetch a simply fabulous price,
if offered for sale. Soon after this comparative success Millet
decided to leave Paris, where the surroundings indeed were little
fitted to a man of his peculiarly rural and domestic tastes. He would
go where he might see the living models of his peasant friends for ever
before him; where he could watch them leaning over the plough pressed
deep into the earth; cutting the faggots with stout arms in the
thick-grown copses; driving the cattle home at milking time with weary
feet, along the endless, straight white high-roads of the French rural
districts. At the same time, he must be within easy reach of Paris;
for though he had almost made up his mind not to exhibit any more at
the Salon--people didn't care to see his reapers or his fishermen--he
must still manage to keep himself within call of possible purchasers;
and for this purpose he selected the little village of Barbizon, on the
edge of the forest of Fontainebleau.
The woods of Fontainebleau stand to Paris in somewhat the same relation
that Windsor Great Park stands to London; only, the scenery is more
forest-like, and the trees are big and antique looking. By the
outskirts of this great wood stands the pretty hamlet of Barbizon, a
single long street of small peasant cottages, built with the usual
French rural disregard of beauty or cleanliness. At the top of the
street, in a little three-roomed house, the painter and his wife
settled down quietly; and here they lived for twenty-seven years, long
after Millet's name had grown to be famous in the history of
contemporary French painting. An English critic, who visited the spot
in the days of Millet's greatest celebrity, was astonished to find the
painter, whom he had come to see, strolling about the village in rustic
clothes, and even wearing the sabots or wooden shoes which are in
France the social mark of the working classes, much as the smock-frock
used once to be in the remoter country districts of England. Perhaps
this was a little bit of affectation on Millet's part--a sort of proud
declaration of the fact that in spite of fame and honours he still
insisted upon counting himself a simple peasant; but if so, it was,
after all, a very pretty and harmless affectation indeed. Better to see
a man sticking pertinaciously to his wooden shoes, than turning his
back upon old friends and old associations in the days of his worldly
prosperity.
At Barbizon Millet's life moved on so quietly that there is nothing to
record in it almost, save a long list of pictures painted, and a
gradual growth, not in popularity (for THAT Millet never really
attained at all), but in the esteem of the best judges, which of course
brought with it at last, first ease, then comfort, and finally
comparative riches. Millet was able now to paint such subjects as
pleased him best, and he threw himself into his work with all the
fervour of his intensely earnest and poetical nature. Whatever might be
the subject which he undertook, he knew how to handle it so that it
became instinct with his own fine feeling for the life he saw around
him. In 1852 he painted his "Man spreading Manure." In itself, that
is not a very exalted or beautiful occupation; but what Millet saw in
it was the man, not the manure--the toiling, sorrowing, human
fellow-being, whose labour and whose spirit he knew so well how to
appreciate. And in this view of the subject he makes us all at once
sympathize. Other pictures of this period are such as "The Gleaners,"
"The Reapers," "A Peasant grafting a Tree," "The Potato Planters," and
so forth. These were very different subjects indeed from the dignified
kings and queens painted by Delaroche, or the fiery battle-pieces of
Delacroix but they touch a chord in our souls which those great
painters fail to strike, and his treatment of them is always truthful,
tender, melancholy, and exquisite.
Bit by bit, French artistic opinion began to recognize the real
greatness of the retiring painter at Barbizon. He came to be looked
upon as a true artist, and his pictures sold every year for
increasingly large prices. Still, he had not been officially
recognized; and in France, where everything, even to art and the
theatre, is under governmental regulation, this want of official
countenance is always severely felt. At last, in 1867, Millet was
awarded the medal of the first class, and was appointed a Chevalier of
the Legion of Honour. The latter distinction carries with it the right
to wear that little tag of ribbon on the coat which all Frenchmen prize
so highly; for to be "decorated," as it is called, is in France a spur
to ambition of something the same sort as a knighthood or a peerage in
England, though of course it lies within the reach of a far greater
number of citizens. There is something to our ideas rather absurd in
the notion of bestowing such a tag of ribbon on a man of Millet's aims
and occupations; but all honours are honours just according to the
estimation of the man who receives them and the society in which he
lives; and Millet no doubt prized his admission to the Legion of Honour
all the more because it had been so long delayed and so little truckled
for.
To the end of his days, Millet never left his beloved Barbizon. He
stopped there, wandering about the fields, watching peasants at work,
imprinting their images firmly upon his eye and brain, and then going
home again to put the figures he had thus observed upon his vivid
canvas. For, strange to say, unlike almost every other great painter,
Millet never painted from a model. Instead of getting a man or woman
to sit for him in the pose he required, he would go out into the
meadows and look at the men and women at their actual daily
occupations; and so keen and acute was his power of observation, and so
retentive was his inner eye, that he could then recall almost every
detail of action or manner as clearly as if he had the original present
in his studio before him. As a rule, such a practice is not to be
recommended to any one who wishes to draw with even moderate accuracy;
constant study of the actual object, and frequent comparison by
glancing from object to copy, are absolutely necessary for forming a
correct draughtsman. But Millet knew his own way best; and how
wonderfully minute and painstaking must his survey have been when it
enabled him to reproduce the picture of a person afterwards in every
detail of dress or movement.
He did not paint very fast. He preferred doing good work to much
work--an almost invariable trait of all the best workmen. During the
thirty-one years that he worked independently, he produced only eighty
pictures--not more, on an average, than two or three a year. Compared
with the rate at which most successful artists cover canvas to sell,
this was very slow. But then, Millet did not paint mainly to sell; he
painted to satisfy his own strict ideas of what constituted the highest
art. His pictures are usually very simple in their theme; take, for
example, his "Angelus," painted at the height of his fame, in 1867. A
man and a woman are working in the fields--two poor, simple-minded,
weather-beaten, devout French peasants. It is nightfall; the bell
called the "Angelus" rings out from the church steeple, and the two
poor souls, resting for a moment from their labours, devote a few
seconds to the silent prayers enjoined by their church. That is all;
and yet in that one picture the sorrows, the toils, and the
consolations of the needy French peasantry are summed up in a single
glimpse of a pair of working and praying partners.
Millet died somewhat suddenly in 1875. Strong and hearty as he was,
even the sturdy health of the Norman peasant had been undermined by the
long hardships of his early struggles, and his constitution gave way at
last with comparative rapidity. Still, he had lived long enough to see
his fame established, to enjoy ten years of ease and honour, and to
find his work cordially admired by all those for whose admiration he
could have cared to make an effort. After his death, the pictures and
unfinished sketches in his studio were sold for 321,000 francs, a
little less than 13,000 pounds. The peasant boy of Greville had at
last conquered all the difficulties which obstructed his path, and had
fought his own way to fame and dignity. And in so fighting, he had
steadily resisted the temptation to pander to the low and coarse taste
in art of the men by whom he was surrounded. In spite of cold, and
hunger, and poverty, he had gone on trying to put upon his canvas the
purer, truer, and higher ideas with which his own beautiful soul was
profoundly animated. In that endeavour he nobly succeeded. While too
many contemporary French pictures are vicious and sensual in tone and
feeling, every one of Millet's pictures is a sermon in colour--a thing
to make us sympathize more deeply with our kind, and to send us away,
saddened perhaps, yet ennobled and purified.
VI.
JAMES GARFIELD, CANAL BOY.
At the present time, the neighbourhood of Cleveland, Ohio, the busiest
town along the southern shore of Lake Erie, may fairly rank as one of
the richest agricultural districts in all America. But when Abram
Garfield settled down in the township of Orange in 1830, it was one of
the wildest and most unpeopled woodland regions in the whole of the
United States. Pioneers from the older states had only just begun to
make little clearings for themselves in the unbroken forest; and land
was still so cheap that Abram Garfield was able to buy himself a tract
of fifty acres for no more than 20 pounds. His brother-in-law's family
removed there with him; and the whole strength of the two households
was immediately employed in building a rough log hut for their common
accommodation, where both the Garfields and the Boyntons lived together
during the early days of their occupation. The hut consisted of a mere
square box, made by piling logs on top of one another, the spaces
between being filled with mud, while the roof was formed of loose stone
slabs. Huts of that sort are everywhere common among the isolation of
the American backwoods; and isolated indeed they were, for the
Garfields' nearest neighbours, when they first set up house, lived as
far as seven miles away, across the uncleared forest.
When Abram Garfield came to this lonely lodge in the primaeval
woodlands, he had one son and one daughter. In 1831, the year after
his removal to his new home, a second boy was born into the family,
whom his father named James Abram. Before the baby was eighteen months
old, the father died, and was buried alone, after the only possible
fashion among such solitary settlers, in a corner of the wheat field
which he himself had cleared of its stumps. A widow's life is always a
hard one, but in such a country and under such conditions it is even
harder and more lonely than elsewhere. Mrs. Garfield's eldest boy,
Thomas, was only eleven years old; and with the aid of this one
ineffectual helper, she managed herself to carry on the farm for many
years. Only those who know the hard toil of a raw American township
can have any idea what that really means. A farmer's work in America
is not like a farmer's work in England. The man who occupies the soil
is there at once his own landlord and his own labourer; and he has to
contend with nature as nobody in England has had to contend with it for
the last five centuries at least. He finds the land covered with
trees, which he has first to fell and sell as timber; then he must dig
or burn out the stumps; clear the plot of boulders and large stones;
drain it, fence it, plough it, and harrow it; build barns for the
produce and sheds for the cows; in short, MAKE his farm, instead of
merely TAKING it. This is labour from which many strong men shrink in
dismay, especially those who have come out fresh from a civilized and
fully occupied land. For a woman and a boy, it is a task that seems
almost above their utmost powers. Nevertheless, Mrs. Garfield and her
son did not fail under it. With her own hands, the mother split up the
young trees info rude triangular rails to make the rough snake fences
of the country--mere zigzags of wood laid one bit above the other;
while the lad worked away bravely at sowing fall and spring wheat,
hoeing Indian corn, and building a little barn for the harvest before
the arrival of the long cold Ohio winter. To such a family did the
future President originally belong; and with them he must have shared
those strong qualities of perseverance and industry which more than
anything else at length secured his ultimate success in life.
For James Garfield's history differs greatly in one point from that of
most other famous working men, whose stories have been told in this
volume. There is no reason to believe that he was a man of exceptional
or commanding intellect. On the contrary, his mental powers appear to
have been of a very respectable but quite ordinary and commonplace
order. It was not by brilliant genius that James Garfield made his way
up in life; it was rather by hard work, unceasing energy, high
principle, and generous enthusiasm for the cause of others. Some of
the greatest geniuses among working men, such as Burns, Tannahill, and
Chatterton, though they achieved fame, and though they have enriched
the world with many touching and beautiful works, must be considered to
have missed success in life, so far as their own happiness was
concerned, by their unsteadiness, want of self-control, or lack of
fixed principle. Garfield, on the other hand, was not a genius; but by
his sterling good qualities he nevertheless achieved what cannot but be
regarded as a true success, and left an honourable name behind him in
the history of his country.
However poor an American township may be, it is seldom too poor to
afford its children a moderate and humble education. While James
Garfield was still very young, the settlers in the neighbourhood
decided to import a schoolmaster, whom they "boarded about" between
them, after a fashion very common in rural western districts. The
school-house was only a log hut; the master was a lad of twenty; and
the textbooks were of the very meagrest sort. But at least James
Garfield was thus enabled to read and write, which after all is the
great first step on the road to all possible promotion. The raw,
uncouth Yankee lad who taught the Ohio boys, slept at Widow Garfield's,
with Thomas and James; and the sons of the neighbouring settlers worked
on the farm during the summer months, but took lessons when the long
ice and snow of winter along the lake shore put a stop almost entirely
for the time to their usual labours.