addressed to me by that veteran patriot and true philanthropist, Jean
Dollfus.
And how could it be otherwise? M. Dollfus, as well as other
representatives of the French subjects of Prussia in the Reichstag, had
protested against the annexation of Alsace in vain. They pointed out the
heavy cost to the German empire of these provinces, in consequence of the
vast military force required to maintain them, the undying bitterness
aroused, the moral, intellectual, and material interests at stake. I use
the word intellectual advisedly, for, amongst other instances in point, I
was assured that the book trade in Mulhouse had greatly declined since
the annexation. The student class has diminished, many reading people
have gone, and those who remain feel too uncertain about the future to
accumulate libraries. Moreover, the ordeal that all have gone through has
depressed intellectual as well as social life. Mulhouse has been too much
saddened to recover herself as yet, although eminently a literary place,
and a sociable one in the old happy French days. The balls, soirées and
reunions, that formerly made Mulhouse one of the friendliest as well as
the busiest towns in the world, have almost ceased. People take their
pleasures very soberly.
It is hardly possible to write of Mulhouse without consecrating a page
or two to M. Jean Dollfus, a name already familiar to some English
readers. The career of such a man forms part of contemporary history,
and for sixty years the great cotton-printer of Mulhouse, the
indefatigable philanthropist--the fellow-worker with Cobden,
Arles-Dufour, and others in the cause of Free Trade--and the ardent
patriot, had been before the world.
The year before my visit was celebrated, with a splendour that would be
ridiculed in a novel, the diamond wedding of the head of the numerous
house of Dollfus, the silver and the golden having been already kept in
due form.
Mulhouse might well be proud of such a fête, for it was unique, and the
first gala-day since the annexation. When M. Dollfus looked out of his
window in the morning, he found the familiar street transformed as if by
magic into a bright green avenue abundantly adorned with flowers. The
change had been effected in the night by means of young fir-trees
transplanted from the forest. The day was kept as a general holiday.
From an early hour the improvised avenue was thronged with visitors of
all ranks bearing cards, letters of congratulation or flowers. The great
Dollfus works were closed, and the five thousand workmen with their
wives, children and superannuated parents, were not only feasted but
enriched. After the banquet every man, woman and child received a present
in money, the oldest and those who had remained longest in the employ of
M. Dollfus being presented with forty francs. But the crowning sight of
the day was the board spread for the Dollfus family and the gathering of
the clan, as it may indeed be called. There was the head of the house,
firm as a rock still, in spite of his eighty-two years; beside him the
partner of sixty of those years, his devoted wife; next according to age,
their numerous sons and daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; duly
following came the grandsons and grand-daughters, then the
great-grandsons and great-granddaughters, and lastly, the babies of their
fifth generation, all accompanied by their nurses in the picturesque
costume of Alsace and Lorraine. This patriarchal assemblage numbered
between one and two hundred guests. On the table were represented, in the
artistic confectionery for which Mulhouse is famous, some of the leading
events of M. Dollfus's busy life. Here in sugar was a model of the
achievement which will ever do honour to the name of Jean Dollfus,
namely, the _cités ouvrières_, and what was no less a triumph of the
confectioner's skill, a group representing the romantic ride of M. and
Mme. Dollfus on camels towards the Algerian Sahara when visiting the
African colony some twenty years before.
This patriarchal festival is said to have cost M. Dollfus half a million
of francs, a bagatelle in a career devoted to giving! The bare conception
of what this good man has bestowed takes one's breath away! Not that he
was alone; never was a city more prolific of generous men than Mulhouse,
but Jean Dollfus, _"Le Père Jean,"_ as he is called, stood at the
head. He received with one hand to bestow with the other, and not only on
behalf of the national, intellectual and spiritual wants of his own
workmen and his own community--the Dollfus family are Protestant--but
indiscriminately benefiting Protestant, Catholic, Jew; founding schools,
hospitals, libraries, refuges, churches, for all.
We see at a glance after what fashion the great manufacturers set to work
here to solve the problem before them. The life of ease and the life of
toil are seen side by side, and all the brighter influences of the one
brought to bear on the other. The tall factory chimneys are unsightly
here as elsewhere, and nothing can be uglier than the steam tramways,
noisily running through the streets. But close to the factories and
workshops are the cheerful villas and gardens of their owners, whilst
near at hand the workmen's dwellings offer an exterior equally
attractive. These _cités ouvrières_ form indeed a suburb in
themselves, and a very pleasant suburb too. Many middle-class families in
England might be glad to own such a home, a semi-detached cottage or
villa standing in a pretty garden with flowers and trees and plots of
turf. Some of the cottages are models of trimness and taste, others of
course are less well kept, a few have a neglected appearance. The general
aspect, however, is one of thrift and prosperity, and it must be borne in
mind that each dwelling and plot of ground are the property of the owner,
gradually acquired by him out of his earnings, thanks to the initiative
of M. Dollfus and his fellow-workers. "It is by such means as these that
we have combated Socialism," said M. Dollfus to me; and the gradual
transformation of the workman into an owner of property, is but one of
the numerous efforts made at Mulhouse to lighten, in so far as is
practicable, the burden of toil.
These pleasant avenues are very animated on Sundays, especially when a
universal christening of babies is going on. The workmen at Mulhouse are
paid once a fortnight, in some cases monthly, and it is usually after
pay-day that such celebrations occur. We saw one Sunday afternoon quite
a procession of carriages returning from the church to the _cité
ouvrière_, for upon these occasions nobody goes on foot. There were
certainly a dozen christening parties, all well dressed, and the babies
in the finest white muslin and embroidery. A very large proportion of the
artisans here are Catholics, and as one instance among others of the
liberality prevailing here, I mention that one of the latest donations of
M. Dollfus is the piece of ground, close to the _cité ouvrière_, on
which now stands the new, florid Catholic church.
There are free libraries for all, and a very handsome museum has been
opened within the last few years, containing some fine modern French
pictures, all gifts of the Dollfrees, Engels, and Köchlins, to their
native town. The museum, like everything else at Mulhouse, is as French
as French can be, no German element visible anywhere. Conspicuous among
the pictures are portraits of Thiers and Gambetta, and a fine subject of
De Neuville, representing one of those desperate battle-scenes of 1870-71
that still have such a painful hold on the minds of French people. It was
withheld for some time, and had only been recently exhibited. The
bombardment of Strasburg is also a popular subject in Mulhouse.
I have mentioned the flower-gardens of the city, but the real
pleasure-ground of both rich and poor lies outside the suburbs, and a
charming one it is, and full of animation on Sundays. This is the
Tannenwald, a fine bit of forest on high ground above the vineyards and
suburban gardens of the richer citizens. A garden is a necessity of
existence here, and all who are without one in the town hire or purchase
a plot of suburban ground. Here is also the beautiful subscription garden
I have before alluded to, with fine views over the Rhine valley and the
Black Forest.
Nor is Mulhouse without its excursions. Colmar and the romantic site of
Notre Dame des Trois Épis may be visited in a day. Then there is Thann,
with its perfect Gothic church, a veritable cathedral in miniature, and
the charming, prosperous valley of Wesserling. From Thann the ascent of
the Ballon d'Alsace may be made, but the place itself must on no account
be missed. No more exquisite church in the region, and most beautifully
is it placed amid sloping green hills! It may be said to consist of nave
and apse only. There are but two lateral, chapels, evidently of a later
period than the rest of the building. The interior is of great beauty,
and no less so the façade and side porch, both very richly decorated.
One's first feeling is of amazement to find such a church in such a
place; but this dingy, sleepy little town was once of some importance
and still does a good deal of trade. There is a very large Jewish
community here, as in many other towns of Alsace. Whether they deserve
their unpopularity is a painful question not lightly to be taken up.
[Illustration: COLMAR]
Leisurely travellers bound homeward from Mulhouse will do well to diverge
from the direct Paris line and join it at Dijon, by way of Belfort--the
heroic city of Belfort, with its colossal lion, hewn out of the solid
rock--the little Protestant town of Montbéliard, and Besançon. Belfort is
well worth seeing, and the "Territoire de Belfort" is to all intents and
purposes a new department, formed from that remnant of the Haut Rhin
saved to France after the war of 1870-71. The "Territoire de Belfort"
comprises upwards of sixty thousand hectares, and a population, chiefly
industrial, of nearly seventy thousand inhabitants, spread over many
communes and hamlets. There is a picturesque and romantic bit of country
between Montbéliard and Besançon, well worth seeing, if only from the
railway windows. But the tourist who wants to make no friendly calls on
the way, whose chief aim is to get over the ground quickly, must avoid
the _détour_ by all means, as the trains are slow and the stoppages
many.
[Illustration: SKETCH BY GUSTAVE DORÉ, AETAT EIGHT YEARS]
V
THE 'MARVELLOUS BOY' OF ALSACE
I
It is especially at Strasburg that travellers are reminded of another
"marvellous boy," who, if he did not "perish in his pride," certainly
shortened his days by overreaching ambition and the brooding bitterness
waiting upon shattered hopes.
Gustave Doré was born and reared under the shadow of Strasburg
Cathedral. The majestic spire, a world in itself, became indeed a world
to this imaginative prodigy. He may be said to have learned the minster
of minsters by heart, as before him Victor Hugo had familiarized himself
with Notre Dame. The unbreeched artist of four summers never tired of
scrutinizing the statues, monsters, gargoyles and other outer
ornamentations, while the story of the pious architect Erwin and of his
inspirer, Sabine, was equally dear. Never did genius more clearly
exhibit the influence of early environment. True child of Alsace, he
revelled in local folklore and legend. The eerie and the fantastic had
the same fascination for him as sacred story, and the lives of the
saints, gnomes, elves, werewolves and sorcerers bewitched no less than
martyrs, miracle-workers and angels.
His play-hours would be spent within the precincts of the cathedral,
whilst the long winter evenings were beguiled with fairy-tales and
fables, his mother and nurse reading or reciting these, their little
listener being always busy with pen or pencil. Something much more than
mere precocity is shown in these almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant
fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined
figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable
precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he
celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two
portraits and a mannikin surmounting the text.
[Footnote: See his life by Blanch Roosevelt, Sampson Low & Co. 1885;
also the French translation of the same, 1886.]
His groups of peasants and portraits, made three or four years later,
possess almost a Rembrandt strength, unfortunately passion for the
grotesque and the fanciful often lending a touch of caricature.
Downright ugliness must have had an especial charm for the future
illustrator of the _Inferno_, his unconscious models sketched by the
way being uncomely as the immortal Pickwick and his fellows of Phiz. A
devotee of Gothic art, he reproduced the mediæval monstrosities adorning
cornice and pinnacle in human types. Equally devoted to nature out of
doors, the same taste predominated. What he loved and sought was ever
the savage, the legend-haunted, the ghoulish, seats and ambuscades of
kelpie, hobgoblin, brownie and their kind.
[Illustration: SKETCH BY GUSTAVE DORÉ, ÆTAT EIGHT YEARS]
From the nursery upwards, if the term can be applied to French children,
his life was a succession of artistic abnormalities and _tours de
force_. The bantling in petticoats who could astound his elders with
wonderfully accurate silhouettes, continued to surprise them in other
ways. His memory was no less amazing than his draughtsmanship. When
seven years of age, he was taken to the opera and witnessed _Robert le
Diable_. On returning home he accurately narrated every scene.
At eight he broke his right arm, but became as if by magic ambidextrous,
whilst confined to bed, cheerily drawing all day long with the left
hand. At ten he witnessed a grand public ceremony. In 1840 Strasburg
celebrated the inauguration of a monument to Gutenberg, the festival
being one of extraordinary splendour. Fifteen cars represented the
industrial corporations of the city, each symbolically adorned, and in
each riding figures suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and
children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the
corporations figured the _Peintres-verriers_, or painters on stained
glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on.
Intoxicated by the colour and movement of the fête, garlanded and
beflagged streets, the symbolic carriages, the bands, civic and
military, and the prevailing enthusiasm, the child determined to get up
an apotheosis of his own: in other words, to repeat the performance on a
smaller scale. Which he did. Cars, costumes, banners and decorations
were all designed by this imp of ten. With the approval of his
professors and the collaboration of his school-fellows, the Doré
procession, consisting of four highly decorated cars, drawn by boys,
defiled before the college authorities and made the round of the
cathedral, the youthful impresario at its head. The car of the painters
on glass was conspicuously elaborate, a star copied from a Cathedral
window showing the superscription, _G. Doré, fecit_. Small wonder is it
that the adoring mother of an equally adoring son should have believed
in him from the first, and seen in these beginnings the dawn of genius,
the advent, indeed, of a second Michael Angelo or Titian.
The more practical father might chide such overreaching vaticinations,
might reiterate--
"Do not fill the boy's head with nonsense."
The answer would be--
"I know it. Our son is a genius."
And Doré _père_ gave way, under circumstances curious enough.
II
In 1847 the family visited Paris, there to Gustave's delight spending
four months. Loitering one day in the neighbourhood of the Bourse, his
eye lighted upon comic papers with cuts published by MM. Auber and
Philipon. Their shop windows were full of caricatures, and after a long
and intent gaze the boy returned home, in two or three days presenting
himself before the proprietors with half-a-dozen drawings much in the
style of those witnessed. The benevolent but businesslike M. Philipon
examined the sketches attentively, put several questions to his young
visitor, and, finding that the step had been taken surreptitiously,
immediately sat down and wrote to M. and Mme. Doré. He urged them with
all the inducements he could command to allow their son the free choice
of a career, assuring them of his future.
A few days later an agreement was signed by father and publisher to this
effect: During three years the latter was to receive upon certain terms
a weekly cartoon from the sixteen-year-old artist, who, on his side,
bound himself to offer no sketches elsewhere.
[Footnote: This document was reproduced in _Le Figaro_ of
December 4, 1848.]
Meanwhile, Gustave would pursue his studies at the Lycée Charlemagne,
his patron promising to look after his health and well-being. The
arrangement answered, and in _Le Journal pour rire_ the weekly
caricature signed by Doré soon noised his fame abroad. Ugly, even
hideous, as were many of these caricatures, they did double duty, paying
the lad's school expenses, and paving the way to better things. Of
caricature Doré soon tired, and after this early period never returned
to it. Is it any wonder that facile success and excessive laudation
should turn the stripling's head? Professionally, if not artistically
speaking, Doré passed straight from child to man; in one sense of the
word he had no boyhood, the term tyro remained inapplicable. This
undersized, fragile lad, looking years younger than he really was, soon
found himself on what must have appeared a pinnacle of fame and fortune.
Shortly after his agreement with Philipon, his father died, and Mme.
Doré with her family removed to Paris, settling in a picturesque and
historic hôtel of the Rue St. Dominique. Here Doré lived for the rest of
his too short life.
The house had belonged to the family of Saint Simon, that terrible
observer under whose gaze even Louis XIV. is said to have quailed. So
aver historians of the period. The associations of his home immediately
quickened Doré's inventive faculties. He at once set to work and
organized a brilliant set of _tableaux vivants_, illustrating scenes
from the immortal Mémoires. The undertaking proved a great social
success, and henceforth we hear of galas, soirées, theatricals and other
entertainments increasing in splendour with the young artist's
vogue--and means.
The history of the next twenty years reads like a page from the _Arabian
Nights_. Although dazzling is the record from first to last, and despite
the millions of francs earned during those two decades, the artist's
ambition was never satisfied. We are always conscious of bitterness and
disillusion. As an illustrator, no longer of cheap comic papers but of
literary masterpieces brought out in costly fashion, Doré reached the
first rank at twenty, his _Rabelais_ setting the seal on his renown. So
immense was the success of this truly colossal undertaking and of its
successors, the _Don Quixote_, the _Contes de fées_ of Perrault
and the rest, that he meditated nothing less than the illustration of
cosmopolitan _chefs 'd' oeuvre, en bloc_, a series which should include
every great imaginative work of the Western world! Thus in 1855 we find
him noting the following projects, to be carried out in ten years'
time:--illustrations of Æschylus, Lucan, Ovid, Shakespeare, Goethe
_(Faust)_, Lamartine _(Méditations)_, Racine, Corneille, Schiller,
Boccaccio, Montaigne, Plutarch's Lives--these names among others. The
jottings in question were written for a friend who had undertaken to
write the artist's biography.
The _Rabelais, Don Quixote, The Inferno_, and several more of these
sumptuous volumes were brought out in England. Forty years ago Doré's
bold and richly imaginative work was in great favour here; indeed,
throughout his life he was much more appreciated by ourselves than by
his countrymen. All the drawings were done straight upon wood. Lavish in
daily life, generous of the generous, Doré showed the same lavishness in
his procedure. Some curious particulars are given upon this head.
Fabulous sums were spent upon his blocks, even small ones costing as
much as four pounds apiece. He must always have the very best wood, no
matter the cost, and it was only the whitest, smoothest and glossiest
boxwood that satisfied him. Enormous sums were spent upon this material,
and to his honour be it recorded, that no matter the destination of a
block, the same cost, thought and minute manipulation were expended upon
a trifling commission as upon one involving thousands of pounds. The
penny paper was treated precisely the same as the volume to be brought
out at two guineas. In the zenith of his fame as an illustrator, at a
time when tip-top authors and editors were all clamouring for his
drawings, he did not despise humbler admirers and clients. His delight
in his work was only equalled by quite abnormal physical and mental
powers. Sleep, food, fresh air, everything was forgotten in the
engrossment of work. At this time he would often give himself three
hours of sleep only.
Doré's ambition--rather, one of his ambitions--was to perfect wood
engraving as an art, hence his indifference to the cost of production.
Hence, doubtless, his persistence in drawing on wood without preliminary
sketch or copy.
Perhaps such obsession was natural. How could he foresee the variety of
new methods that were so soon to transform book illustration? Anyhow,
herein partly lies the explanation of the following notice in a
second-hand book catalogue, 1911--
"No. 355. Gustave Doré: _Dante's Inferno_, with 76 full-page
illustrations by Doré. 4to, gilt top, binding soiled, but otherwise good
copy. _42s._ for _3s. 6d._ London, n.d."
A leading London publisher consulted by me on the subject, writes
as follows--
"Doré's works are no longer in vogue. One of the reasons lies in the
fact that his pictures were done by the old engraved process. He drew
them straight on wood, and there are, accordingly, no original drawings
to be reproduced by modern methods."
The words "fatal facility" cannot be applied to so consummate a
draughtsman as the illustrator of Dante, Cervantes and Victor Hugo. But
Doré's almost superhuman memory was no less of a pitfall than manual
dexterity. The following story will partly explain his dislike of
facsimile and duplication.
An intimate friend, named Bourdelin, relates how one day during the
siege of Paris, the pair found themselves by the Courbevoie bridge. One
side of this bridge was guarded by French gendarmes, the other by
German officers, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, a dozen in all. For a
quarter of an hour the two Frenchmen lingered, Doré intently gazing on
the group opposite. On returning home some hours later he produced a
sketch-book and in Bourdelin's presence swiftly outlined the twelve
figures, exactly reproducing not only physiognomic divergences but
every detail of costume! Poor Doré! In those ardently patriotic days he
entirely relied upon victory and drew an anticipatory picture of France
triumphant, entitled, "Le Passage du Rhin." But the French never
crossed the Rhine, and the drawing was given to this friend with the
words: "My sketch has no longer any _raison d'être_. Keep it in memory
of our fallacious hopes."
III
In an evil hour for his peace of mind and his fame, Doré decided to
leave illustration and become a historic painter. He evidently regarded
genius as a Pandora's gift, an all-embracing finality, an endowment that
could neither be worsened nor bettered, being complete in itself.
A reader of Ariosto, he had not taken to heart one of his most memorable
verses, those mellifluous lines in which the poet dwells upon the
laboriousness of intellectual achievement. Nor when illustrating the
_Arabian Nights_ had the wonderful story of Hasan of El-Basrah
evidently brought home to him the same moral.