barking joyfully to give us a welcome.
The next morning, early, we went up to the studio to see L’Amour au
Village, which was to go to Paris that day.
The subject of this picture is well known; it is one of the most real
and the most original that the artist has painted: the daylight is
waning; at the gate of a village garden, a lad of twenty, who has been
binding sheaves, and still wears his leggings of leather, is talking,
leaning against a fence, with a young girl, who turns her back to the
spectator; what he is saying to her may be guessed from his awkward
manner of twisting his stiff fingers, and also from the attentive but
embarrassed air of the young girl. One feels that they are not saying
much, but that love exhales from every word, so difficult to speak.
Around them summer spreads the robust verdure of the country. The fruit
trees stand lightly silhouetted against a background of kitchen herbs,
gently sloping up to the houses of the village, whose brown roofs and
pointed spire come against the soft and misty twilight sky. All this,
bathed in a subdued light, is marvellously painted. The young girl, her
short plaits falling over her shoulders, her neck bent, the form of
her back, so young, so delicate, is an exquisite figure; the face of
the young harvester, so energetic, so ingenuously in love, is charming
in expression; the treatment of the hands, the bust, the dress, is
masterly. There is in this picture a true and manly poetry, which is
strengthening and refreshing, like the odour of ripe corn.
Bastien was glad to have completed this difficult work, and his
satisfaction enabled him to bear with cheerfulness the pains in his
loins, and the digestive troubles which were becoming more and more
frequent.
It was long since I had seen him so gay and unreserved. This happy
holiday-week spent at Damvillers was the pendant to the walk through
the Argonne. The sullen sky, continually blotted out by chilling
showers, allowed us few walks in the open air; but every morning we
went up to the studio. Jules dismissed the little sweep, who was
sitting for a picture that he had on hand, and, taking a sheet of
copper, he made us pose for an etching. I have this plate before me
now; it did not bite well. It represents the whole family, including
the grandfather, making a circle round our friend F., who, standing up
and very grave, is reciting one of La Fontaine’s fables. While I look
at it, I seem to hear again the merry laughter which filled the studio,
alternating with the rattling of the hail against the windows.
In the evening, after supper, we placed ourselves at the round
table, and played at Diable or Nain rouge. Jules, throwing away his
best cards, always managed to let the grandfather win; and when the
octogenarian, quite proud of his success, took up the stakes, he would
pat him on the shoulder, and cry out, with a merry twinkle of the eye,
“Ha! what a lucky man! he will ruin us all!” and the laughter began
again.
We did not go to bed till well on into the night, after having roused
the little domestic, Felix, who had dozed off in the kitchen while
copying a portrait of Victor Hugo.
[Illustration: FATHER JACQUES, THE WOODMAN.
_By Jules Bastien-Lepage._]
In the intervals of sunshine, Bastien-Lepage took us to visit “his
fields.” He had a peasant’s love for the land, and he employed his
gains in adding to the paternal domains. He had just bought an
orchard situated in the old moat of the town, which had belonged to
an unfrocked priest. He intended to build a châlet there, where his
friends, painters or poets, might come and live in their holidays
and dream at their ease. He explained to us with the delight of a
child, his plans for the future. When, with his portraits, he should
have gained an independent fortune, he would execute at his ease
and in freedom, the grand rustic pictures that he dreamed of, and
among others, that burial of a young village girl, for which he had
already made many notes and sketched the principal details. We only
took one long walk, and it was in those woods of Réville which form
the background of his landscape, Ripe Corn. The weather had remained
cold, and there were still patches of snow on the backs of the grey
hills, though the sun shone sometimes. Except a few downy buds on the
willows, the woods were without verdure; but the ploughed fields had
a beautiful brown colour; the larks sang; the tops of the beeches began
to have that reddish hue, which indicates the rising of the sap, the
swelling buds. “Look,” said Bastien to me, when we were in the forest,
“my Wood-cutter in the last Salon was reproached with want of air….
Well, here we are in a wood, and the trees are still without leaves,
yet look how little the figure stands out from the undergrowth of trees
and bushes. There is a great deal of routine and prejudice in that
criticism of the perspective of my pictures done in the open air. It is
the criticism of people who have never looked at a landscape, except
crouching down or sitting. When you sit down to paint, you naturally
see things quite differently from the way you see them standing.
Sitting, you see more sky and you have more objects――trees, houses,
or living beings standing out sharply in silhouette against the sky,
which gives the illusion of a greater distance and a wider atmosphere.
But it is not in this way that we generally see a landscape. We look
at it standing, and then the objects, animate or inanimate, that are
nearest to us, instead of being seen in profile against the sky, are
silhouetted upon the trees, or upon the fields, grey or green. They
stand out with less clearness, and sometimes mix with the background,
which then, instead of going away, seems to come forward. We need to
renew the education of our eye, by looking with sincerity upon things
as they are in nature, instead of holding as absolute truths the
theories and conventions of the school and the studio.”
All the afternoon passed thus happily away in friendly talking and slow
smoking along the wooded paths. The blackbirds were whistling; from
time to time we discovered a flower in the open spaces, which showed
that spring was surely coming; a wood anemone, with its milk-white
petals, or a branch of mezereon, with its pink flowers opening before
the leaves, and its Japanese appearance.
Jules stopped and gathered a stem of black helebore. “Ah, how
beautiful!” he said. “How one would like to make a careful study of
these leaves――so decorative, so finely cut――of dark green, almost
brown, out of which comes this pale green stem, with its clusters of
greenish flowers edged with pale rose-colour. What lovely forms, and
what a variety of tender shades! This is what they ought to give as a
copy to the children in the schools of design, instead of the eternal
and wearisome Diana de Gabies!”
[Illustration: SKETCH FOR FATHER JACQUES]
We did not return till evening, when there was a magnificent sunset,
which crimsoned the smoky roofs of Réville, and made the light clouds
scattered over the sky look like a strew of rose-leaves.
The next day was the last of my visit. We took leave after long
embraces, making fine plans for returning to Damvillers for the
September holiday, while the grandfather, shaking his hoary head,
murmured sadly, “Who knows if you will find me here?” And Barbeau, and
Golo, and Basse bounded and barked round the omnibus that took us away
with tremendous noise.
I did not see Jules again till a month later, at the opening of the
Salon, in front of L’Amour au Village, which had a full success. He was
ill, and complained of pains in the loins more acute than formerly;
then he suddenly disappeared mysteriously. The door of the atelier in
Rue Legendre was closed, and visitors were told that the painter was
gone into the country. We did not know till later that he had hidden
himself, to undergo a sharp and painful treatment, and that, scarcely
convalescent, he had gone to breathe the sea air in Brittany, at
Concarneau. He spent his days there, in a boat, painting the sea, and
forgetting his pains by the help of work.
When he came to see us again in October, he appeared to be recovered;
but digestion was still a difficulty, and his habitual gaiety was,
as it were, clouded over. His character was changed. There were no
more of those trenchant affirmations of which his comrades sometimes
complained; he was indulgent, and even affectionate, much more than
was usual with him. He did not stay long in Paris, but hastened back
to Damvillers, to get seriously to work again. He arrived in time to
be present during his grandfather’s last moments. The old man departed
loaded with years; but, though surely expected, his death was a painful
blow to the survivors. “The house,” he wrote, “is empty more than one
could believe. Only a few days ago, at any moment, a door would open
and the grandfather appeared, without motive, without object, without
speaking or being spoken to; but the sight of his kindly face was
enough. One kissed him, and he went away, as before, without object,
sitting down, going into the garden, coming back, and always with the
same kind face. I remember now that he has been growing paler for
some days…. No, you can have no idea how empty the house is. I cannot
get accustomed to it. We often talk of him with my mother――with what
pleasure! It is not that we weep for him with tears; we reason about
it, and we appear resigned and courageous; but behind all that there is
a sad feeling of want, of absolute loss. It is the touch one wants…. I
have been ill with it, and am so still. I have not been able to work;
to-day, for the first time, I went out to shoot larks; the weather was
fine, the sun was shining, and the country beautiful. This did me good.”
Indeed, the health of the artist, far from improving, was becoming
daily more uncertain. “It is the digestive tube,” said he, “that is out
of order.” Nevertheless, he worked with his usual courage, overlooking
his Concarneau studies, planning a new picture, and only stopping to go
out shooting or to saunter through the woods.
“Our evening walks are the best part of the day”――(letter to Ch.
Baude, Nov. 27, 1883)――“that is, from the setting of the sun till it
is dark. Every night the spectacle is new. The programme changes with
the weather. Sometimes the subject of the piece is dramatic; the next
day it is soft and charming; and, with the constant rain, our inundated
meadows reflect the brilliant scenery. Can you imagine all our
pleasure, in your dingy Paris? The next morning is too slow in coming;
one wants so much to put down last night’s impression; so that I am
making a heap of sketches, and find much pleasure in it. Then――here is
a surprise!――I have a new picture on the way…. Guess!… The subject is a
wounded deer taken by the dogs. The scene is, naturally, the wood, and
the wood at this time of year: only a few leaves of brilliant yellow
against the marvellous rosy-grey of the branches of the trees; then
the violet tone of the dead leaves flattened on the soil, and a few
green briars round a pool under a willow. The place was not chosen by
me. The deer chose it himself to die there; for I killed him the other
day, and he went there to be taken, a hundred yards from where he was
shot――just opposite the spot where Minet killed a hare. It was then
that this picture struck me. Afterwards I sketched in and reconstructed
the scene; and, as I wanted a model, I killed a second deer….”
Here is a characteristic symptom: he who formerly only wrote the
shortest of notes, scribbled in haste at the corner of a table, now
sent long, expansive letters to his friends, showing signs of redoubled
love of life, of art, of the beauties of nature:――
“My dear friends” (Jan. 3, 1884), “if you could see your poor Bastien,
with this heap of letters to write, you would certainly say: ‘How he
is changed!’… If my wishes had the extraordinary virtue of fulfilling
themselves, I should like that you, whom I love, should profit by it,
and that 1884 should bring health and happiness and success to all.
My mother’s wishes are the same as mine, and she rejoices that we are
to see you soon. Ah, my dear friend, what pleasure you would have
in living upon the woods, as I feed upon them now almost every day,
along with Golo and Barbeau! What marvellously delicate tones! and
the fading out of daylight, and when the evening comes on! The woods
are exquisitely fine, with their tall, dry, ivory-coloured grasses;
they are so tall in some of the open spaces that they caress your face
as you pass, and the cool touch upon your face and hands, hot with
walking, is a delicious sensation. I rarely leave the woods before
night, for I must send up a few salutes to the wild ducks with my gun
before going in. One hears them coming from a great distance, but it is
difficult to judge if they are far away or near, from the peculiarity
of their cry; so they have often passed, and are already a good way
off, before one finds out that one has missed them.
“This is to let you know that I am not a stay-at-home, as you might
think. I find it important to walk a good deal, for in this way I
regain a little health. My stomach was beginning to get wrong, but it
is better!…”
A few days after this I met a mutual friend of ours. “Well,” he said to
me, “our poor Bastien is very ill…. They think it is hopeless.”
V.
Indeed he was very ill. The treatment he had undergone in the summer
of 1883 had not been successful. The pains in the loins and bowels had
returned with greater violence at the end of January.
By the advice of his friend Dr. Watelet he again went to Paris in March
to consult Dr. Potain. Without any illusions as to the fatal nature of
the disease, the doctors thought that a change of air and of climate
might, morally and physically, produce good results. They advised that
he should go to Algiers for two months.
Bastien himself, seized with that longing desire for movement which
often torments invalids who are seriously ill, had experienced a wish
to go to the south. It was decided that he should start as soon as
possible for Algiers, accompanied by his servant Felix, and by his
mother.
On the morning of the day fixed for starting I went to the Rue Legendre
to say good-bye to him. He had gone to complete some arrangements with
his picture-agent. I found only Mme. Bastien, who was occupied in
filling the trunks which were scattered about the studio. The brave
little mother, who had never left her home at Damvillers for more than
a few days together, was preparing for this long journey to an unknown
country quite simply, with an apparent tranquillity, as if she were
going as far as Saint Cloud.
The hope that the change might be good for Jules was enough to give her
courage to face this upsetting of all her old ways of living. Sometimes
only, when she was carefully arranging the linen in the trunk, the
tears would rise to her eyes and a quiver of pain pass over her lips.
Upon the chairs and against the walls were placed the recent studies
brought from Damvillers, and one felt one’s heart tighten at the sight
of these last works, where nature had been observed and rendered with
incomparable skill, penetration, and charm. They were The Frog-fisher,
The Little Sweep, The Washerwoman, The Pond at Damvillers, The Edge of
the Wood, The Church at Concarneau, and that study of A Midnight Sky
so original, with the clouds scattered over an azure that was almost
black.
At this moment Bastien-Lepage came in, and on seeing him walk with
difficulty into the studio, I was distressed at the change that had
come over him. His thin face had become quite bloodless; the skin of
his neck was peeling off; his hair seemed to have no life in it. His
questioning blue eyes expressed an anguish and weariness that was
heartrending. “Well,” said he, after having embraced me, “are you
looking at my studies? When people see them at George Petit’s, they
will say that the little Bastien could paint the landscape too, when he
gave himself the trouble!…” When I said to him that his long absence
that morning had made his mother anxious, he added quite low, and
taking me into one corner of the studio: “When one is going to take a
journey so far, one must prepare for it…. I wanted to put my affairs in
order. Poor little mother!” he went on; “she has been very brave! Down
at home she used to spend whole nights in rubbing me for my rheumatism,
and I let her think that it did me good…. Now, perhaps the Algiers sun
will cure me.” Hope alternated with discouragement. During breakfast
he recovered a little. I was to go to Spain at the end of March; he
urged me to change my plans, and to join him in Algiers. We ended with
a half-promise. We tried hard to appear gay; we clinked our glasses
as we drank to the hope of soon meeting again, but each one felt his
throat tighten, and turned away to hide from the other his moist eyes.
I left the house in the Rue Legendre with my heart full of the saddest
forebodings.
Jules left the same night for Marseilles. They had a good crossing, and
his first letter, dated March 17th, was reassuring:――
“My dear friends, there is no getting out of it; you must come, for
a thousand reasons. Here it is just like May in Paris. Everything is
in flower; and such flowers!――heaps of them, everywhere. The verdure
is delicate and grey, and, like patches, always well placed; the
outlines picturesque and new, the trees very dark green. And in the
midst of all this, upon the roads, the Arabs, of astonishing calmness
and splendid carriage, under their earth-coloured and ash-coloured
draperies――ragamuffins as proud as kings, and better dressed than
Talma. They all wear a shirt and burnous; not one is like another. It
seems as if each one, at every moment, gave expression to his thought
by his manner of draping his garment. It is once more the triumph of
blank truth over arrangement and conventionalism. The sorrowful man,
whether he wishes it or not, in spite of himself is not draped like the
gay. Beauty, I am convinced, is exact truth: neither to the right nor
to the left, but in the middle.
“All this without telling you we have hired a house at Mustapha
Superior. It is half Arab, half French, quite white, with an interior
court opening into a garden twice as big as that at Damvillers.
The garden is full of orange-trees, and lemon, almond, fig, and a
quantity of other trees, the names of which I do not know and probably
never shall. All this, not trim like a park, but left a little _à la
diable_, like our garden at home. Then we have the right of walking in
a magnificent garden which joins ours. We have at least eight rooms;
in counting them I thought of you. In all directions round this house
there are delightful walks within reach for invalid limbs; in short, it
is a Mahomet’s Paradise, … ‘_moins les femmes_.’ I have said nothing
about Kasbah, the old Arab town――my legs have only let me see it from
a distance as yet; but, my good friend, imagine that against a morning
sky you have, sometimes in the palest rose, sometimes in silvery grey,
sometimes in faint blue, and so on――everywhere against the pearly
sky――more or less elongated rectangles, placed irregularly, but always
horizontally, in the manner of a line of low hills, and you will have
the delicate colouring of the old town. One would not suppose it was
a town with habitations, so delicate is the tone of it, but for some
little holes of rare windows placed here and there. One could not have
a sensation more unexpected, and never a sweeter and finer joy. So
you must come! My mother is counting upon it, and what, then, am I?
What new things you could say about all this! The sea was very fine at
the beginning and end of our crossing. Midway some of the passengers
suffered: my mother and Felix among them, but they got some sleep. We
were twenty hours in crossing, and we were not tired on arriving. Come,
set off; start!… A good embrace from my mother and from me.”
His first letter, as may be seen, was full of ardour. The climate of
Algeria did him good at first, and his sufferings seemed to be relieved.
“I am preparing myself bravely for the ordeal by fire” (April letter
to Ch. Baude); “may my rheumatism take flight and depart with the
coming attack of the sun! When it is hot here, it is still quite
bearable. Apart from these calculations about the heat and these health
experiences, I am happy, even excited, by all that I have seen; and
yet I have only seen what any bagman might see who is busy about the
selling of his goods; but it has been enough to give me great delight.
What remains of the old Arab town is marvellous; one holds one’s breath
when, at a sudden turn, the vision reappears. For those unhappy eyes
that only see the colours on the palette, it is white; but picture to
yourself a long hill, rather high, with a depression in the middle, and
sloping as if to the sea, and this hill all covered with elongated or
elevated cubes of which one cannot distinguish the thickness; all this
remaining unnoticed by the eye that is ravished by the delicate tone,
rosy, greenish, pale blue, making altogether white tinted with salmon.
“If one did not know it beforehand, one would never dream that
amongst these cubes of plaster thousands of men are walking, talking,
sleeping――men of noble manner, proud and calm, and with something very
like indifference or contempt for us. And they are right. They are
beautiful, we are ugly. What matter is it to me that they are knaves!
They are beautiful!…
“Yesterday I went to take a bath. I had to go three or four hundred
steps through streets full of merchants. In a passage a Jew was selling
silks, pearls and corals; in front of his shop, not two yards wide,
were three Arabs――an old man, another of middle age, the third about
seventeen. There they were, seated, attentive, calm, wishing to buy,
consulting together, making scarcely a gesture with their hands, always
kept at full length, but sitting quietly, never hurrying, reflecting
enormously, and keeping all the while under their burnouses the
softest, gentlest attitudes. The youngest was superb――so handsome that
mama was struck with it. ‘They are like beautiful statues,’ said she.
I could not understand the scene and the relations that united these
three Arabs. It was clear they were come to buy; they had come down
from the higher part of the town. They were poor, for the youngest was
in rags, and the burnouses of the others, though not in rags, were very
much worn; but they took such pains in counting the little pieces of
false coral that it was clear the Jew was selling dear to these big
children a thing of no value. The one of middle age was counting on the
table, with his flat hand by groups of five, the little pieces of coral
which he chose as he counted them; thus adding each time five pieces
to the heap that he drew towards him.
“What strikes one is this simple colouring, these magnificent folds,
and then this serious childishness.
“I was not able to wait till the end of the scene. It was cold and
draughty in this passage, which brought me back to the fact of my poor
crazy legs. I long for the time when I shall be a man again; what
lovely things I shall see, and perhaps I shall do!”
April 23rd (to the same): “Now I take myself by the ear and drag myself
to the letter-paper, and all the needful things. Nothing is wanting,
neither the thousand things I have to say, nor above all the tender
affection that I keep in store for you.
“Emile says that you are coming, and soon: don’t be alarmed, you will
not melt in the hot sun. There are cool places in the garden, where one
can stretch oneself, with a magnificent landscape at one’s feet. We
have only had the heat since yesterday; you will see how good you will
find it, your muscles will relax, and you will go back quite young. We
will make some excursions together if I am up to it. Any way there are
plenty all round us to tempt you to make some.
“You have heard from Emile that I went to Blidah. I bore the little
journey very well at first, but I was tired afterwards. I am going
to begin to rest, and go slowly, in order that I may go farther. I
have scarcely done anything till now, for I don’t feel myself up to
remaining long in the same position, as a painter must, who thinks only
of his work.”