Philip Gilbert Hamerton Part 12

Captain Turnbull knew some English people in the colony at Paris, so he introduced me to two or three houses, and if my object had been to speak English instead of French, I might have gone into the Anglo-Parisian society of that day. One house was interesting to me, that of Thackeray's mother, Mrs. Carmichael Smith. Her second husband, the major, was still living, and she was a vigorous and majestic elderly lady. She talked to me about her son, and his pursuit of art, but I do not remember that she told me anything that the public has not since learned from other sources. I soon discovered that she had very decided views on the subject of religion, and that she looked even upon Unitarians with reprobation, especially as they might be infidels in disguise. My own subsequent experience of the world has led me to perceive that, when infidels wear a cloak, they generally put on a more useful and fas.h.i.+onable one than that of Unitarianism--they a.s.sume the religion that can best help them to get on in the world. However, I was not going to argue such a point with a lady who was considerably my senior, and I was constantly in expectation of being examined about my own religious views, knowing that it would be impossible for me to give satisfactory answers. I therefore decided that it would be better to keep out of Mrs. Carmichael Smith's way, and learned afterwards that she had a reputation for a.s.serting the faith that was in her, and for expressing her disapproval of everybody who believed less. For my part, I confess to a cowardly dread of elderly religious Englishwomen. They have examined me many a time, and I have never come out of the ordeal with satisfaction, either to them or to myself.

Thackeray's three daughters were in Paris at that time. I remember Miss Thackeray quite distinctly. She struck me as a young lady of uncommon sense and penetration, and it was not at all a surprise to me when she afterwards became distinguished in literature. Thackeray himself was in London, so I did not meet him.

I went occasionally in the evening to see that remarkable woman, Madame Mohl. She was the oddest-looking little figure, with her original notions about toilette, to which she was by no means indifferent. In the year 1855 she still considered herself a very young woman, and indeed was so, relatively to the great age she was destined to attain. After I had been about six weeks in Paris, her husband gave me the first bit of really valuable encouragement about speaking French that I had received from any one.

"Can you follow what is said by others?"

"Yes, easily."

"Very well; then you may be free from all anxiety about speaking--you will certainly speak in due time."

An eccentric but thoroughly manly and honest Englishman, named Scholey, was staying at the Hotel du Louvre at the same time with Captain Turnbull. He was an old bachelor, and looked upon marriage as a snare; but I learned afterwards that he had been in love at an earlier period of his existence, and that the engagement had been broken off by the friends of the young lady, because Scholey combined the two great defects of honesty and thinking for himself in religious matters. So long as people prefer sneaks and hypocrites to straightforward characters like Scholey, such men are likely to be kept out of polite society. A dishonest man will profess any opinion that you please, or that is likely to please you, so long as it will advance his interest.

If, therefore, a lover runs the risk of breaking off a marriage rather than turn hypocrite, it is clear that his sense of honor has borne a crucial test.

"I had not loved thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more!"

Scholey spoke French fluently, and, as he lived on the edge of England, he often crossed over into France. I deeply regret not to have seen much more of him. One of his acts of kindness, in 1855, was to take me to see his old friend William Wyld, the painter, with whom I soon became acquainted, and who is still one of my best and most attached friends.

Wyld lived and worked at that time in the same studio, in the Rue Blanche, where he is still living and working in this present year (1887), an octogenarian with the health and faculties of a man of fifty.

There was, in those days, an Indian staying at the Hotel du Louvre, who spoke English very well, but not French, so he was working at French diligently with a master. This Indian was always called "the Prince" in the hotel, though he was not a prince at all, and never pretended to be one, but disclaimed the t.i.tle whenever he had a chance. He lived rather expensively, but without the least ostentation, and had very quiet manners. He progressed well with his French studies, but did not stay long enough to master the language. I was very much interested in him, as a young man is in all that is strange and a little romantic. He talked about India with great apparent frankness, saying, that naturally the Indians desired national independence, but were too much divided amongst themselves to be likely to attain it in our time. The Mutiny broke out rather more than a year afterwards, and then I remembered these conversations.

"The Prince" had some precious and curious things with him, which he showed me; but his extreme dislike to attracting attention made him dress quite plainly at all times, especially when he went out, which was usually in a small brougham. Now and then an English official, from India, or some military officer, would call upon him, and sometimes they spoke Arabic or Hindostanee.

There was a lady at the hotel who has always remained in my memory as one of the most extraordinary human beings I ever met. She was an Italian, good-looking, yet neither pretty nor handsome, and, above all, intelligent-looking. She dressed with studiously quiet taste, and used to dine at the _table d'hote_ with the rest of us. Besides her native Italian, she spoke French and English with surprising perfection, and her manners were so modest, so unexceptionable in every way, that no one not in the secret would or could have suspected her real business, which was to secure a succession of temporary husbands in the most respectable manner, and without leaving the hotel. Her linguistic accomplishments gave her a wide field of choice, and representatives of various nations succeeded each other at irregular but never very long intervals. As I shall be dead when this is published, perhaps it may be as well to say that I was not one of the series. The reader may believe this when he remembers that I was very economical for the time being, in consequence of the loss on my book of poems. After a while my French teacher informed me that "the Prince" had been caught by the fair Italian, who established herself quietly somewhere in his suite of rooms. People did not think this very wrong in a Mahometan, but after his departure from Paris I happened to be studying some old Italian religious pictures in the Louvre, and suddenly became aware that the same lady was looking at a Perugino near me. This time she was with the Prince's successor,--a most respectable English gentleman, and so far as absolute correctness of outward appearance went, there was not a more presentable couple in the galleries. It is my opinion that she succeeded more by her good manners and quiet way of dressing than by anything else. She must have been a real lady, who had fallen into that way of life in consequence of a reverse of fortune.

After a while I came to the conclusion that I was too much with English people at the Hotel du Louvre, and an incident occurred which altered the whole course of my future life, and is the reason why I am now writing this book in France. I had been up late one night at the Opera, and the next morning rose an hour later than usual. An American came into the breakfast-room of the hotel and found me taking my chocolate.

Had I risen only half-an-hour earlier, I should have got through that cup of chocolate and been already out in the streets before the American came down. To have missed him would have been never to know my wife, never even to see her face, as the reader will perceive in the sequel, and the consequences of not marrying her would have been incalculable.

One of them is certain in my own mind. The modest degree of literary reputation that makes this autobiography acceptable from a publisher's point of view has been won slowly and arduously. It has been the result of long and steadfast labor, and there is no merely personal motive that would have ever made me persevere. Consequently, the existence of this volume, and any meaning that now belongs to the name on its t.i.tle page, are due to my getting up late that morning in the Hotel du Louvre.

The American and I being alone in the breakfast-room, and shamefully late, were drawn together by the sympathy created by an identical situation, and began to talk. He gave some reasons for being in Paris, and I gave mine, which was to learn French. We then agreed that to get accustomed to the use of a foreign language the first thing was to surround ourselves with it entirely, and that this could not be done in a cosmopolitan place like the Hotel du Louvre.

"I have a French friend," the American said, "who could give you the address of some purely French hotel where you would not hear a syllable of English."

After breakfast he kindly took me to see this friend, who was a merchant sitting in a pretty and tidy counting-house all in green and new oak.

The merchant spoke English (he had lived in America) and said, "I know exactly what you want,--a quiet little French hotel in the Champs elysees where you can have clean rooms and a well-kept _table d'hote_."

He wrote me the address on a card, and I went to look at the place.

The hotel, which exists no longer, was in the Avenue Montaigne. It suited my tastes precisely, being extremely quiet, as it looked upon a retired garden, and the rooms were perfectly clean. There was only one story above the ground-floor, and here I took a bedroom and sitting-room looking upon the garden. The house was kept by a widow who had very good manners, and was, in her own person, a pleasant example of the cleanliness that characterized the house. I learned afterwards (not from herself) that she had been a lady reduced to poor circ.u.mstances by the loss of her husband, and that her relations being determined that she should do something for her living, had advanced some money on condition that she set up an establishment. Having no experience in hotel-keeping, she soon dissipated the little capital and lived afterwards on a pittance in the strictest retirement.

When I took my rooms the small hotel seemed modestly prosperous. There were about a dozen people at the _table d'hote_, but they did not all stay in the house. We had an officer in the army who had brought his young provincial wife to Paris, a beautiful but remarkably unintelligent person, and there were other people who might be taken as fair specimens of the better French _bourgeoisie_. The most interesting person in the hotel was an old white-headed gentleman whose name I may give, Victor Ouvrard, a nephew of the famous Ouvrard who had been a great contractor for military clothes and accoutrements under Napoleon I. Victor Ouvrard was living on a pension given by a wealthy relation, and doing what he could to push a hopeless claim on Napoleon III. for several millions of francs due by the first Emperor to his uncle. I know nothing about the great contractor except the curious fact that he remained in prison for a long time rather than give up a large sum of money to the Government, saying that by the mere sacrifice of his liberty he was earning a handsome income. The nephew was what we call a gentleman, a model of good manners and delicate sentiments. He would have made an excellent character for a novelist, with his constantly expressed regret that he had not a speciality.

"Si j'avais une specialite!" he would say, as he tapped his snuff-box and looked up wistfully to the ceiling--"si j'avais seulement une specialite!" He felt himself humiliated by the necessity for accepting his little pension, and still entertained a chimerical hope that if the Emperor did not restore the millions that were due, he might at least bestow upon him enough for independence in his last years. There had been some slight indications of a favorable turn in the Emperor's mind, but they came to nothing. Meanwhile M. Victor Ouvrard lived on with strict economy, brus.h.i.+ng his old coats till they were threadbare, and never allowing himself a vehicle in the streets of Paris. He was an excellent walker, and we explored a great part of the town together on foot. He kindly took patience with my imperfect French, and often gently corrected me. The long conversations I had with M. Ouvrard on all sorts of subjects, in addition to my daily lessons from masters, got me forward with surprising rapidity. I observed a strict rule of abstinence from English, never calling on any English people, with the single exception of Mr. Wyld, the painter, nor reading any English books. When M. Ouvrard was not with me in the streets of Paris, I got up conversations with anybody who would talk to me, merely to get practice, and in my own room I wrote French every day. Besides this, for physical exercise, I became a pupil in a gymnasium, and worked there regularly.

One thing seemed strange in the way they treated us. When we were as hot as possible with exercise, at the moment of leaving off and changing our dress, men came to the dressing-rooms to sponge us with ice-cold water.

They said it did nothing but good, and certainly I never felt any bad effects from the practice.

The ice-cold water reminds me of a ridiculous incident that occurred in the garden of the Tuileries. M. Ouvrard and I were walking together in the direction of the palace, when we saw a Frenchman going towards it with his eyes fixed on the edifice. He was so entirely absorbed by his architectural studies that he did not notice the basin just in front of him. The stone lip of the basin projects a little on the land side, so that if you catch your foot in it no recovery is possible. This he did, and was thrown violently full length upon the thin ice, which offered little resistance to his weight. The basin is not more than a yard deep, so he got out and made his way along the Rue de Rivoli, his clothes streaming on the causeway. Some spectators laughed, and others smiled, but M. Ouvrard remained perfectly grave, saying that he could not understand how people could be so unfeeling as to laugh at a misfortune, for the man would probably take cold. Perhaps the reader thinks he had no sense of humor. Yes, he had; he was very facetious and a hearty laugher, but his delicacy of feeling was so refined that he could not laugh at an accident that seemed to call rather for his sympathy.

A French gentleman who was staying at the hotel had a friend who came occasionally to see him, and this friend was an amiable and interesting talker. He had at the same time much natural politeness, and seeing that I wanted to practise conversation he indulged me by patiently listening to my bad French, and giving me his own remarkably pure and masterly French in return. His name, I learned, was Gindriez, and he was living in Paris by the tolerance of the Emperor. He had been Prefect of the Doubs under the second Republic, and had resigned his prefecture as soon as the orders emanating from the executive Government betrayed the intention of establis.h.i.+ng the Empire. As a member of the National a.s.sembly he had voted against the Bonapartists, and was one of the few representatives who were concerting measures against Napoleon when he forestalled them by striking first. After the _coup d'etat_ M. Gindriez fled to Belgium, but returned to Paris for family reasons, and was permitted to remain on condition that he did not actively set himself in opposition to the Empire. M. Gindriez looked upon his own political career as ended, though he could have made it prosperous enough, and even brilliant, by serving the power of the day. A more flexible instrument had been put into his prefecture, a new legislative body had been elected to give a false appearance of parliamentary government, and an autocratic system had been established which M. Gindriez believed destined to a prolonged duration, though he felt sure that it could not last forever. Subsequent events have proved the correctness of his judgment. The Empire outlasted the lifetime of M. Gindriez, but it did not establish itself permanently.

It was a peculiarity of mine in early life (which I never thought about at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M.

Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancas.h.i.+re had, no doubt, been kind in their own way, that is, in welcoming me to their houses, but they were both excessively reserved. Being at that time deeply interested in France, I was delighted to find a man like M.

Gindriez who could give me endless information. His chief interest in life lay in French politics; art and literature being for him subjects of secondary concern, but by no means of indifference, and the plain truth is that he had a better and clearer conception of art than I myself had in those days, or for long afterwards. There was also for me a personal magnetism in M. Gindriez, which it was not easy to account for then, but which is now quite intelligible to me. He had in the utmost strength and purity the genuine heroic nature. I came to understand this in after years, and believe that it impressed me from the first. It is unnecessary to say more about this remarkable character in this place, because the reader will hear much of him afterwards. It is enough to say that I was attracted by his powers of conversation and his evident tenderness of heart.

When we had become better acquainted, M. Gindriez invited me to spend an evening at his house after dinner, and I went. He was living at that time on a boulevard outside the first wall, which has since been demolished. His _appartement_ was simply furnished, and not strikingly different in any way from the usual dwellings of the Parisian middle cla.s.s. I had now been absent for some weeks from anything like a home, and after living in hotels it was pleasant to find myself at a domestic fireside. M. Gindriez had several children. The eldest was a girl of sixteen, extremely modest and retiring, as a well-bred _jeune fille_ generally is in France, and there was another daughter, very pretty and engaging, but scarcely more than a child; there were also two boys, the eldest a very taciturn, studious lad, who was at that time at the well-known college of Sainte Barbe. Their mother had been a woman of remarkable beauty, and still retained enough of it to attract the eye of a painter. She had also at times a certain unconscious grace and dignity of pose that the great old Italian masters valued more than it is valued now. M. Gindriez himself had a refined face, but my interest in him was due almost entirely to the charm and ease of his conversation.

In writing an autobiography one ought to give impressions as they were received at the time, and not as they may have been modified afterwards.

I am still quite able to recall the impression made upon me by the eldest daughter in the beginning of 1856. I did not think her so pretty as her sister, though she had a healthy complexion, with bright eyes and remarkably beautiful teeth, whilst her slight figure was graceful and well formed; but I well remember being pleased and interested by the little glimpses I could get of her mind and character. It was a new sort of character to me, and even in the tones of her voice there was something that indicated a rare union of strength and tenderness. The tenderness, of course, was not for me, a foreign temporary guest in those days, but I found it out by the girl's way of speaking to her father. I perceived, too, under an exterior of cheerfulness, rising at times to gayety, a nature that was really serious, as if saddened by a too early experience of trouble.

The truth was, that in consequence of her father's checkered career, this girl of sixteen had pa.s.sed through a much greater variety of experience than most women have known at thirty. Her mother, too, had for some time suffered almost continuously from ill-health, so that the eldest daughter had been really the active mistress of the house. Her courage and resolution had been put to the test in various ways that I knew nothing about then, but the effects of an uncommon experience were that deepening of the young nature which made it especially interesting to me. Afterwards I discovered that Eugenie Gindriez had read more and thought more than other girls of her age. This might have been almost an evil in a quiet life, but hers had not been a quiet life.

We soon became friends in spite of the French conventional idea that a girl should not open her lips, but it did not occur to me that we were likely ever to be anything more than friends. Had the idea occurred, the obstacle of a difference in nationality would have seemed to me absolutely insuperable. I thought of marriage at that time as a possibility, but not of an international marriage. In fact, the difficulties attending upon an international marriage are so considerable, and the subsequent practical inconvenience so troublesome, that only an ardently pa.s.sionate and imprudent nature could overlook them.

I, for my part, left Paris without being aware that Mademoiselle Gindriez had anything to do with my future destiny; but she, with a woman's perspicacity, knew better. She thought it at least probable, if not certain, that I should return after long years; she waited patiently, and when at last I did return there was no need to tell on what errand.

An incident occurred that might have been a partial revelation to me and a clear one to her. Before my departure from Paris, M. Ouvrard said to me that he had been told I was engaged to "une Francaise."

"What is her name?"--he mentioned another young lady. Now to this day I remember that when he spoke of a French marriage as a possibility for me I at once saw, mentally, a portrait of Eugenie Gindriez. However, as a French marriage was _not_ a possibility, I thought no more of the matter.

CHAPTER XXVII

1856.

Specialities in painting.--Wyld's practice.--Projected voyage on the Loire.--Birth of the Prince Imperial.--Scepticism about his inheritance of the crown.--The Imperial family.--I return home.--Value of the French language to me.

Being entirely absorbed in the study of French during my first visit to Paris, I did little in the practice of art. My Lancas.h.i.+re neighbor, who was studying in Paris, worked in Colin's atelier, and I have since regretted that I did not at that time get myself entered there, the more so that it was a decent and quiet place kept under the eye of the master himself, who had long been accustomed to teaching. My friend had certainly made good progress there. I was unfortunately influenced by two erroneous ideas, one of them being that the studies of a figure-painter could be of no use in landscape, [Footnote: This idea had been strongly confirmed by Mr. Pett.i.tt.] and the other that it was wiser to be a specialist, and devote myself to landscape exclusively. It is surprising that the notion of a limited speciality in painting should have taken possession of me then, as in other matters I have never been a narrow specialist, or had any tendency to become one.

The choice of a narrow speciality may be good in the industrial arts, but it is not good in painting, for the reason that a painter may at any time desire to include something in his picture which a specialist could not deal with. To feel as if the world belonged to him a painter ought to be able to paint everything he sees. There is another sense in which speciality may be good: it may be good to keep to one of the graphic arts in order to effect that intimate union between the man and his instrument which is hardly possible on any other terms.

Wyld would have taught me landscape-painting if I had asked him, and I did at a later period study water-color with him; but his practice in oil did not suit me, for this reason: it was entirely tentative, he was constantly demolis.h.i.+ng his work, so that it was hard to see how a pupil could possibly follow him. The advantage in working under his eye would have been in receiving a great variety of sound artistic ideas; for few painters know more about _art_ as distinguished from nature. However, by mere conversation, Wyld has communicated to me a great deal of this knowledge; and with regard to the practical advantages of painting like him they would probably not have ensured me any better commercial success, as his style of painting has now for a long time been completely out of fas.h.i.+on.

My scheme in 1856 was to make a great slow boat voyage on the Loire, with the purpose of collecting a quant.i.ty of sketches and studies in ill.u.s.tration of that river; and my ardor in learning to speak French had for an immediate motive the desire to make that voyage without an interpreter. I have often regretted that this scheme was never carried out. I have since done something of the same kind for the Saone, but my situation is now entirely different. I am now obliged to make all my undertakings _pay_, which limits them terribly, and almost entirely prevents me from doing anything on a great scale. For example, these pages are written within a few miles of Loire side; the river that flows near my home is a tributary of the Loire; I have all the material outfit necessary for a great boating expedition, and still keep the strength and the will; but no publisher could prudently undertake the ill.u.s.tration of a river so long as the Loire and so rich in material, on the scale that I contemplated in 1856.

It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with my crude impressions of European painting in the Universal Exhibition of that year. I no more understood French art at that time than a Frenchman newly transplanted to London can understand English art. The two schools require, in fact, different mental adjustments. Our National Gallery had sufficiently prepared me for the Louvre, which I visited very frequently; and there I laid the foundations of a sort of knowledge which became of great use many years afterwards, though for a long time there was nothing to show for it.

No historical event of importance occurred during my stay in Paris, except the birth of the Prince Imperial. I was awakened by the cannon at the Invalides, and having been told that if there were more than twenty-one guns the child would be a boy, I counted till the twenty-second, and then fell asleep again. There existed, even then, the most complete scepticism as to the transmission of the crown. Neither M.

Gindriez, nor any other intelligent Frenchman that I met, believed that the newly born infant had the faintest chance of ever occupying the throne of France. Before the child's birth I had seen his father and mother and all his relations at the closing ceremony of the Universal Exhibition, and thought them, with the exception of the Empress, a common-looking set of people. They walked round the oblong arena in the Palais de l'Industrie exactly as circus people do round the track at the Hippodrome. The most interesting figure was old Jerome--interesting, not for himself, as he was a nonent.i.ty, but as the brother of the most famous conqueror since Caesar.

Being called back to England on a matter of business, I cut short my stay in Paris, and arrived at Hollins without having advanced much as an artist, but with an important linguistic acquirement. The value of French to me from a professional point of view is quite incalculable.

The best French criticism on the fine arts is the most discriminating and the most accurate in the world, at least when it is not turned aside from truth by the national jealousy of England and the consequent antipathy to English art. At the same time, there are qualities of delicacy and precision in French prose which it was good for me to appreciate, even imperfectly.

CHAPTER XXVIII.