Theoretically, the house was open to all corners; practically, it was a
kind of club. The guests protected themselves, and, in so doing, they
protected Siron. Formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was
the more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to feel the pulse of the
society; and a breach of its undefined observances was promptly punished.
A man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of speech as he
desired; but to a touch of presumption or a word of hectoring these free
Barbizonians were as sensitive as a tea-party of maiden ladies. I have
seen people driven forth from Barbizon; it would be difficult to say in
words what they had done, but they deserved their fate. They had shown
themselves unworthy to enjoy these corporate freedoms; they had pushed
themselves; they had “made their head”; they wanted tact to appreciate
the “fine shades” of Barbizonian etiquette. And once they were
condemned, the process of extrusion was ruthless in its cruelty; after
one evening with the formidable Bodmer, the Baily of our commonwealth,
the erring stranger was beheld no more; he rose exceeding early the next
day, and the first coach conveyed him from the scene of his discomfiture.
These sentences of banishment were never, in my knowledge, delivered
against an artist; such would, I believe, have been illegal; but the odd
and pleasant fact is this, that they were never needed. Painters,
sculptors, writers, singers, I have seen all of these in Barbizon; and
some were sulky, and some blatant and inane; but one and all entered at
once into the spirit of the association. This singular society is purely
French, a creature of French virtues, and possibly of French defects. It
cannot be imitated by the English. The roughness, the impatience, the
more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent friendships of the
Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember such a commonwealth. But this random
gathering of young French painters, with neither apparatus nor parade of
government, yet kept the life of the place upon a certain footing,
insensibly imposed their etiquette upon the docile, and by caustic speech
enforced their edicts against the unwelcome. To think of it is to wonder
the more at the strange failure of their race upon the larger theatre.
This inbred civility—to use the word in its completest meaning—this
natural and facile adjustment of contending liberties, seems all that is
required to make a governable nation and a just and prosperous country.
Our society, thus purged and guarded, was full of high spirits, of
laughter, and of the initiative of youth. The few elder men who joined
us were still young at heart, and took the key from their companions. We
returned from long stations in the fortifying air, our blood renewed by
the sunshine, our spirits refreshed by the silence of the forest; the
Babel of loud voices sounded good; we fell to eat and play like the
natural man; and in the high inn chamber, panelled with indifferent
pictures and lit by candles guttering in the night air, the talk and
laughter sounded far into the night. It was a good place and a good life
for any naturally-minded youth; better yet for the student of painting,
and perhaps best of all for the student of letters. He, too, was
saturated in this atmosphere of style; he was shut out from the
disturbing currents of the world, he might forget that there existed
other and more pressing interests than that of art. But, in such a
place, it was hardly possible to write; he could not drug his conscience,
like the painter, by the production of listless studies; he saw himself
idle among many who were apparently, and some who were really, employed;
and what with the impulse of increasing health and the continual
provocation of romantic scenes, he became tormented with the desire to
work. He enjoyed a strenuous idleness full of visions, hearty meals,
long, sweltering walks, mirth among companions; and still floating like
music through his brain, foresights of great works that Shakespeare might
be proud to have conceived, headless epics, glorious torsos of dramas,
and words that were alive with import. So in youth, like Moses from the
mountain, we have sights of that House Beautiful of art which we shall
never enter. They are dreams and unsubstantial; visions of style that
repose upon no base of human meaning; the last heart-throbs of that
excited amateur who has to die in all of us before the artist can be
born. But they come to us in such a rainbow of glory that all subsequent
achievement appears dull and earthly in comparison. We were all artists;
almost all in the age of illusion, cultivating an imaginary genius, and
walking to the strains of some deceiving Ariel; small wonder, indeed, if
we were happy! But art, of whatever nature, is a kind mistress; and
though these dreams of youth fall by their own baselessness, others
succeed, graver and more substantial; the symptoms change, the amiable
malady endures; and still, at an equal distance, the House Beautiful
shines upon its hill-top.
V
Gretz lies out of the forest, down by the bright river. It boasts a
mill, an ancient church, a castle, and a bridge of many sterlings. And
the bridge is a piece of public property; anonymously famous; beaming on
the incurious dilettante from the walls of a hundred exhibitions. I have
seen it in the Salon; I have seen it in the Academy; I have seen it in
the last French Exposition, excellently done by Bloomer; in a
black-and-white by Mr. A. Henley, it once adorned this essay in the pages
of the _Magazine of Art_. Long-suffering bridge! And if you visit Gretz
to-morrow, you shall find another generation, camped at the bottom of
Chevillon’s garden under their white umbrellas, and doggedly painting it
again.
The bridge taken for granted, Gretz is a less inspiring place than
Barbizon. I give it the palm over Cernay. There is something ghastly in
the great empty village square of Cernay, with the inn tables standing in
one corner, as though the stage were set for rustic opera, and in the
early morning all the painters breaking their fast upon white wine under
the windows of the villagers. It is vastly different to awake in Gretz,
to go down the green inn-garden, to find the river streaming through the
bridge, and to see the dawn begin across the poplared level. The meals
are laid in the cool arbour, under fluttering leaves. The splash of oars
and bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the trim canoes beside the
jetty, tell of a society that has an eye to pleasure. There is
“something to do” at Gretz. Perhaps, for that very reason, I can recall
no such enduring ardours, no such glories of exhilaration, as among the
solemn groves and uneventful hours of Barbizon. This “something to do”
is a great enemy to joy; it is a way out of it; you wreak your high
spirits on some cut-and-dry employment, and behold them gone! But Gretz
is a merry place after its kind: pretty to see, merry to inhabit. The
course of its pellucid river, whether up or down, is full of gentle
attractions for the navigator: islanded reed-mazes where, in autumn, the
red berries cluster; the mirrored and inverted images of trees, lilies,
and mills, and the foam and thunder of weirs. And of all noble sweeps of
roadway, none is nobler, on a windy dusk, than the highroad to Nemours
between its lines of talking poplar.
But even Gretz is changed. The old inn, long shored and trussed and
buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and the place
as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former guests. They,
indeed, recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall the rainy evening,
the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, and the company that
gathered round the pillar in the kitchen. But the material fabric is now
dust; soon, with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall
follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the same law, and, both in
name and lineament, vanish from the world of men. “For remembrance of
the old house’ sake,” as Pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one
story. When the tide of invasion swept over France, two foreign painters
were left stranded and penniless in Gretz; and there, until the war was
over, the Chevillons ungrudgingly harboured them. It was difficult to
obtain supplies; but the two waifs were still welcome to the best, sat
down daily with the family to table, and at the due intervals were
supplied with clean napkins, which they scrupled to employ. Madame
Chevillon observed the fact and reprimanded them. But they stood firm;
eat they must, but having no money they would soil no napkins.