candidates for London University, Girton College, or our senior local
examination; but it is an enormous improvement on the old conventual
system, and several points are worthy of imitation. Thus a girl quitting
the Lycée would have attained, first and foremost, a thorough knowledge
of her own language and its literature; she would also possess a fair
notion of French common law, of domestic economy, including needlework
of the more useful kind, the cutting out and making up of clothes, and
the like. Gymnastics are practised daily. In the matter of religion the
municipality of Toulouse shows absolute impartiality. No sectarian
teaching enters into the programme, but Catholics and Protestants and
Jews in residence can receive instruction from their respective
ministers.
The Lycée competes formidably with the convents as regards fees.
Twenty-eight pounds yearly cover the expense of board, education, and
medical attendance at the upper school; twenty-four at the lower; day
boarders pay from twelve to fifteen pounds a year; books, the use of the
school omnibus, and laundress being extras. Three hundred scholars in
all attended during the scholastic year ending July 1891.
Day-pupils not using the school omnibus must be accompanied to and from
the school, and here an interesting point is to be touched upon. In so
far as was practicable, the Lycée for girls has been modelled on the
plan of the time-honoured establishments for boys. As yet a uniform
curriculum to begin with was out of the question; the programme is
already too ambitious in the eyes of many, whilst ardent advocates of
the higher education of women in France regret that the vices as well as
the virtues of the existing system have been retained. Educationists and
advanced thinkers generally would fain see a less strait-laced routine,
a less stringent supervision, more freedom for play of character. The
Lycée student, boy or girl, youth or maiden, is as strictly guarded as a
criminal; not for a moment are these citizens of the future trusted to
themselves.
In the vast dormitory of the high school here we see thirty neat
compartments with partitions between, containing bed and toilet
requisites, and at the extreme end of the room, commanding a view of
the rest, is the bed of the under-mistress in charge, _surveillante_ as
she is called. Sleeping or waking, the students are watched. This
massing together of numbers and perpetual supervision no longer find
universal favour.
But I am here writing of fifteen years ago. Doubtless were I to repeat
my visit I should find progressive changes too numerous for detail.
Happy little middle-class Parisians now run to and from their Lycées
unattended. Young ladies in society imitate their Anglo-Saxon sisters
and have shaken off that incubus, _la promeneuse_ or walking chaperon.
Works on social France, as is the case with almanacs, encyclopædias and
the rest, require yearly revision. Manners and customs change no less
quickly than headgear and skirts.
Charles Lamb would have lived ecstatically at the Languedocian capital.
It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules
Richepin's cherished _Gueux_. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented
over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian
reformation--your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its
abuses--is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering
tatters of the bugbear _Mendicity_. Scrips, wallets, bags, staves, dogs
and crutches, the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are
fast hasting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution."
No, here is what the best beloved of English humorists calls "the oldest
and the honourablest form of pauperism," here his vision would have
feasted on "Rags, the Beggars' robes and graceful insignia of his
profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected
to show himself in public." "He is never out of fashion," adds Lamb, "or
limpeth outwardly behind it. He is not required to wear court mourning.
He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less
change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not
obliged to study appearances."
Here, too, would the unmatchable writer have gazed upon more than one
"grand fragment, as good as an Elgin marble." And alas! many deformities
more terrible still, and which, perhaps, would have damped even Lamb's
ardour. For in the Toulouse of 1894, as in the London of sixty years
before, its mendicants "were so many of its sights, its Lions." The city
literally swarmed with beggars. At every turn we came upon some living
torso, distorted limb and hideous sore. Begging seemed to be the
accepted livelihood of cripples, blind folk and the infirm. Let us hope
that by this time something better has been devised for them all. Was it
here that Richepin partly studied the mendicant fraternity, giving us in
poetry his astounding appreciation, psychological and linguistic? And
perhaps the bard of the beggars, like the English humorist, would wish
his _pauvres Gueux_ to be left unmolested.
The sights of Toulouse would occupy a conscientious traveller many days.
The least leisurely should find time to visit the tiny square called
_place du Salin_. Here took place the innumerable _autos-da-fé_ of the
Toulousain Inquisition, and here, so late as 1618, the celebrated
physician and scientist Vanini was atrociously done to death by that
truly infernal tribunal, and for what? For simply differing from the
obscurantism of his age, and having opinions of his own.
The atrocious sentence passed on Vanini was in part remitted, evidently
public opinion already making itself felt. His tongue was cut out, but
strangulation preceded the burning alive. Here one cannot help noting
the illogical, the puerile--if such words are applicable to devilish
wickedness--aspect of such Inquisitorial sentences. If these
hounders-down of common-sense and the reasoning faculty really believed,
as they affected to believe, that men who possessed and exercised both
qualities were thereby doomed to eternal torments, why set up the
horrible and costly paraphernalia of the Inquisition? After all, no
matter how ingeniously inventive might be their persecutors, they could
only be made to endure terminable and comparatively insignificant
torments, not a millionth millionth fraction of eternity!
Refreshing it is to turn to the Toulouse of minstrelsy. The proud seat
of the troubadours, the Academy of the Gay Science and of the poetic
tourneys revived in our own day! Mistral's name has long been European,
and other English writers have charmingly described the _Feux Floraux_
of the olden time and the society of _Lou Felibrige_ with its revival of
Provençal literature. But forty years ago, and twenty years before his
masterpiece had found a translator here, he was known and highly
esteemed by a great Englishman.
In Mill's _Correspondence_ (1910) we find a beautiful letter, and
written in fine stately French, from the philosopher to the poet, dated
Avignon, October 1869.
Mill had sent Mistral the French translation of his essay, "The
Subjection of Women," and in answer to the other's thanks and flattering
assurance of his own conversion, he wrote: "Parmi toutes les adhésions
qui ont été données à la thèse de mon petit livre, je ne sais s'il y en
a aucune qui m'ont fait plus de plaisir que la vôtre."
The letter as a whole is most interesting, and ends with a
characterization, a strikingly beautiful passage in the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ. Hard were it to match this appreciation among
orthodox writers.
So transparent is the atmosphere here that the Pyrenees appear within an
hour's ride: they are in reality sixty miles off! Lovely are the clearly
outlined forms, flecked with light and shadow, the snowy patches being
perfectly distinct.
IX
MONTAUBAN, OR INGRES-VILLE
An hour by rail from Toulouse lies the ancient city of Montauban, as far
as I know unnoticed by English tourists since Arthur Young's time. This
superbly placed _chef-lieu_ of the Tarn and Garonne is alike an artistic
shrine and a palladium of religious liberty. Here was born that strongly
individualized and much contested genius, Dominique Ingres, and here
Protestantism withstood the League, De Luyne's besieging army and the
dragonnades of Louis XIV.
The city of Ingres may be thought of by itself; there is plenty of food
for reflection here without recalling the prude whose virtue caused more
mischief than the vices of all the Montespans and Dubarrys put together.
Let us forget the Maintenon terror at Montauban, the breaking up of
families, the sending to the galleys of good men and women, the
torturings, the roastings alive, and turn to the delightful and soothing
souvenirs of genius! Every French town that has given birth to shining
talent is straightway turned into a Walhalla. This ancient town, so
strikingly placed, breathes of Ingres, attracts the traveller by the
magic of the painter's name, has become an art pilgrimage. The noble
monument erected by the townsfolk to their great citizen and the
picture-gallery he bequeathed his native city well repay a much longer
journey than that from Toulouse. We see here to what high levels public
spirit and local munificence can rise in France. We see also how close,
after all, are the ties that knit Frenchman and Frenchman, how the glory
of one is made the pride of all. The bronze statue of the painter, with
the vast and costly bas-relief imitating his "Apotheosis of Homer" in
the Louvre, stand in the public walk, the beauty of which aroused even
Arthur Young's enthusiasm. "The promenade," he wrote in June 1787, "is
finely situated. Built on the highest part of the rampart, and
commanding that noble vale, or rather plain, one of the richest in
Europe, which extends on one side to the sea and in front to the
Pyrenees, whose towering masses heaped one upon another in a stupendous
manner, and covered with snow, offer a variety of lights and shades from
indented forms and the immensity of their projections. This prospect,
which contains a semicircle of a hundred miles in diameter, has an
oceanic vastness in which the eye loses itself; an almost boundless
scene of cultivation; an animated but confused mass of infinitely varied
parts, melting gradually into the distant obscure, from which emerges
the amazing frame of the Pyrenees, rearing their silvered heads above
the clouds."
The Ingres Museum contains, I should say, more works from the hand of a
single master than were ever before collected under the same roof.
Upwards of a thousand sketches, many of great power and beauty, are
here, besides several portraits and one masterpiece, the Christ in the
Temple, brilliant as a canvas of Holman Hunt, although the work of an
octogenarian. The painter's easel, palette, and brushes, his violin, the
golden laurel-wreath presented to him by his native town, and other
relics are reverently gazed at on Sundays by artisans, soldiers and
peasant-folk. The local museum in France is something more than a little
centre of culture, a place in which to breathe beauty and delight. It is
a school of the moral sense, of the nobler passions, and also a temple
of fame. Therein the young are taught to revere excellence, and here the
ambitious are stimulated by worthy achievement.
Ingres-ville recalls an existence stormy as the history of Montauban
itself. This stronghold of reform throughout her vicissitudes did not
show a bolder, more determined front to the foe than did her great
citizen his own enemies and detractors. Dominique Ingres and his
life-story favour those physicists who discern in native soil and
surroundings the formative influences of aptitudes and character. The
man and his birthplace matched each other. Indomitableness characterized
both, and to understand both we must know something of their respective
histories. To Montauban Henri Martin's great history does ample justice,
to her illustrious son contemporary writers have recently paid worthy
tributes.
[Footnote: See _Les Grands Artistes--Ingres_, par J. Mommeja,
Paris, Laurens; _Le Roman d'amour de M. Ingres_, par H. Lapauze, Paris,
Lafitte, 1911.]
"When a writer is praised above his merits in his own times," wrote
Savage Landor, "he is certain of being estimated below them in the
times succeeding." In the case of Ingres, opposition and contumely were
followed by perhaps excessive laudation whilst he lived, after his
death ensuing a long period of reaction. Time has now set the seal upon
his fame. The great Montalbanais has been finally received into the
national Walhalla.
The father of the so-called French Raphaël, writes his biographer, was
not even a Giovanni Santi. Joseph Ingres, in the words of M. Momméja,
was _un petit ornemaniste_, a fabricator of knick-knacks, turning out
models in clay, busts in plaster, miniatures and other trifles for sale
at country fairs. Who can say, this humble craftsman may yet have had
much to do with his son's aspirations?
An inferior artist can appraise his masters. From the humble artificer
and purveyor of bagatelles the youth not only imbibed a passion for
art and technical knowledge: he inherited the next best thing to a
calling, in other words, a love of music. From the palette throughout
his long life Ingres would turn with never-abated enthusiasm to his
adored violin.
The learned monograph above-named gives a succinct and judicial account
of the painter's career. The second writer mentioned tells the story of
his inner life; one, indeed, of perpetual and universal interest.
For to this sturdy young bourgeois early came a crisis. He found himself
suddenly at the parting of the ways, on the one hand beckoning
Conscience, on the other ambition in the flattering shape of Destiny. To
which voice would he hearken? Would love and plighted troth overrule
that insistent siren song, Vocation? Would he yield, as have done
thousands of well-intentioned men and women before him, to self-interest
and worldly wisdom? The problem to be solved by this brilliantly endowed
artist just twenty-six--how many a historic parallel does it recall!
What three words can convey so much pathos, heroism and generosity as
"il gran riffiuto?"--the great renunciation. Does the French language
contain a more touching record than that of the great Navarre's farewell
to his Huguenot brethren? What bitter tears shed Jeanne d'Albret's son
ere he could bring himself to sacrifice conscience on the altar of
expediency and a great career!
At the age of twenty we find Dominique Ingres studying in Paris under
David, then in his apogee.
The son of an obscure provincial, however promising, would hardly be
overwhelmed with hospitalities; all the more welcome came the
friendliness of an honourable magistrate and his wife, by name
Forestier. During five years the young man had lived on terms of
closest intimacy with these good folks, under his eyes growing up their
only daughter.
Alas! poor Julie. Mighty, says Goethe, is the god of propinquity. On
Dominique's part attachment seems to have come insensibly, as a matter
of course and despite the precariousness of his position. M. Forestier
encouraged the young man's advances. To Julie love for the brilliant
winner of the Prix de Rome became an absorption, her very life. Not
particularly endowed by Nature--we have her portrait in M. Momméja's
volume--she described her own physiognomy as "not at all remarkable, but
expressive of candour and goodness of heart." For Julie, as we shall
see, turned her love-story into a little novel, only unearthed the other
day by M. Lapauze.
The Prix de Rome meant, of course, a call to Rome, the worthy magistrate
exacting from his prospective son-in-law a promise that in twelve
months' time he would return. During that interval correspondence went
on apace not only between the affianced lovers, but between M. Forestier
and Ingres, the former taking affectionate and not uncritical interest
in the other's projects. For Ingres was before all things a projector,
anticipating by decades the achievements of his later years. The glow of
enthusiasm, the fever of creativeness were at its height. Italy
possessed Ingres' entire being when the crisis came.
After delays, excuses, pleadings, Julie's father lost patience. He would
brook no further tergiversations. Ingres must choose between Italy and
Paris; in other words, so the artist interpreted it, between art and
marriage, a proud destiny or self-extinction.
Never had a young artist more completely fallen under the spell of
Italy. The recall seemed a death-blow. "On my knees," he wrote to Julie,
whom he really loved, "I implore you not to ask this. It is impossible
for me to quit immediately a land so full of marvel."
But the practical M. Forestier would not give way. Ingres' persistence
looked like folly, even madness in his eyes. The young man was with
difficulty living from hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely
keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would
ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point
render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was
fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become
important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and
prolonged self-reproach, _il gran riffiuto_ was made, youthful passion,
worldly advantages--and plighted faith--were cast to the winds.
Henceforth he would live for his palette only, defying poverty,
detraction and fiercely antagonistic opinion; if failing in allegiance
to others, at least remaining staunch to his first, best, highest self,
his genius.
Julie, the third imperishable Julie of French romance, never married.
Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called
a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her
story, _Emma, ou la fiancée,_ ends with the aphorism: "Without the
scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither happiness
nor inner peace."
Did that backsliding in early life disturb the great painter's stormy
but dazzling career? Who can say? We learn that Ingres was twice, and,
according to accredited reports, happily, married. His first wife, a
humbly-born maiden from his native province, died in 1849, leaving the
septuagenarian so desolate, helpless and stricken that kindly
interveners set to work and re-married him. The second Mme. Ingres,
although thirty years his junior, gave him, his biographer tells us,
"that domestic peace and happiness of which for a brief space he had
been deprived." Heaped with honours, named by Napoleon III. Grand
Officer of the Legion of Honour, Senator, Member of the Institut, Ingres
died in 1869. Within a year of ninety, he was Dominique Ingres to the
last, undertaking new works with the enthusiasm and vitality of Titian.
A few days before his death he gave a musical party, favourite works of
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven being performed by skilled amateurs. His
funeral was a veritable apotheosis, disciples, admirers and detractors
swelling the enormous cortège.
Those who, like myself, have times without number contemplated the
master's _opus magnum_ in the Louvre, and have studied his art as
represented in the provincial museums, will quit the Musée Ingres with
mixed feelings. It must occur to many that, perhaps, after all, _il gran
riffiuto_ of opposite kind might have better served art and the artist's
fame. Had he returned to France--and to Julie--at the stipulated period,
the following eighteen years being spent not on Italian but on native
soil, how different the result! Then of his work he could have said, as
did Chantecler of his song--
"Mon chant
Qui n'est pas de ces chants qu'on chante en cherchant
Mais qu'on reçoit du sol natal comme une sève."
Would not most of us willingly give Ingres' greatest classical and
historic canvases for one or two portraits, say that of Bertin, or,
better still, for a group like that of the Stamiti family? What a
portrait gallery he would have bequeathed, how would he have made the
men and women of his time live again before us!
[Footnote: Both are reproduced, with many other works, in M.
Momméja's volume.]
Ingres, the artist, ever felt sure of himself. Did the lover look back,
regretting the broken word, the wrong done to another? We do not know.
His life was throughout upright, austere, free from blot; born and bred
a Catholic, he had doubtless Huguenot blood in his veins, many of his
most striking characteristics pointed to this inference.
A word more concerning Montauban itself. The stronghold of reform, that
defied all Richelieu's attempts to take it, is to this day essentially a
Protestant town. Half of its inhabitants have remained faithful to the
faith of their ancestors. Tourists will note the abundance of cypress
trees marking Huguenot graves, the capital of Tarn and Garonne is a
veritable Calvinistic _Campo Santo_. After the Revocation, many families
fled hence to England, their descendants to this day loving and
reverencing the country which gave them a home.
Montauban, as we should expect, has raised a splendid monument to its
one great citizen.
Since writing these lines, an Ingres exhibition has been opened in the
Georges Petit Gallery, Paris. Apropos of this event, the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ (May 15, 1911) contains a striking paper by the art-critic, M.
de Sizeraine. Some of the conclusions here arrived at are startling.
Certain authorities on art are said to regard the great Montalbanais as
a victim of daltonism--in other words, colour-blind!
In company of the mere amateur, this authority turns with relief from
the master's historical and allegorical pieces to his wonderfully
speaking portraits. Here, he says, all is simple, nothing is
commonplace, nothing is unexpected, and yet nothing resembles what we
have seen elsewhere; we find no embellishment, no stultification. He
adds: "In art, as in literature, works which survive are perhaps those
in which the artist or writer has put the most of himself, not those in
which he has had most faith. The "Voeu de Louis XIII," the "Thétis" of
Ingres, we may compare to Voltaire's _Henriade_ and to the
_Franciade_ of Ronsard, all belong to the category of the
_opus magnum_ that has failed, and of which its creator is proud."
With the following charming simile the essay closes--
"Posterity is a great lady, she passes, reviews the _opus magnum, la
grande machine_ disdainfully, satirically; all seems lost, the artist
condemned. But by chance she catches sight of a neglected picture turned
to the wall in a corner or passage, some happy inspiration that has cost
its author little pains, but in which he has not striven beyond his
powers, and in which he has put the best of himself. The _grande dame_
catches it up, holds it to the light. 'Ha! here is something pretty!'
she cries. And the artist's fame is assured."
Has not Victor Hugo focused the same truth in a line--
"Ici-bas, le joli c'est le nécessaire!"
And our own Keats also--
"For 'tis the eternal law,
That first in beauty should be first in might."
X
MY PYRENEAN VALLEY AT LAST
Osse, la bien aimée
Toi, du vallon
Le choix, la fille aînée
Le vrai fleuron!
C'est sur toi qu'est fixée
Dans son amour,
La première pensée
Du roi du jour
Comme à sa fiancée
L'amant accourt.
Xavier Navarrot.
Between Toulouse and Tarbes the scenery is quite unlike that of the
Gard and the Aude. Instead of the interminable vineyards round about
Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne, we gaze here upon a varied landscape.
Following the Garonne with the refrain of Nadaud's famous song in
our minds--
"Si la Garonne avait voulu,"--
we traverse a vast plain or low vale rich in many-coloured crops:
buckwheat, sweeps of creamy blossom, dark-green rye, bluish-green Indian
corn with silvery flower-head, and purple clover, and here and there a
patch of vine are mingled together before us; in the far distance the
Pyrenees, as yet mere purple clouds against the horizon.