Greuze

by Harold Armitage

ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY

It was peculiarly fitting that a lady should deposit upon the coffin of Greuze a bouquet of immortelles, for his romantic and chivalrous regard for women, from a very early period in his career, had a great influence upon his life and work. Even as a pupil of Grandon, Greuze fell in love with his master's wife, a woman of very great beauty and charm. He never told his love; but one day Grandon's daughter surprised Greuze on his knees in the studio. She asked him what he was doing there, and he replied that he was looking for something he had lost. But she had seen that he had one of her mother's shoes, and that he was covering it with ardent kisses.

Exceptionally romantic, too, was his love for the beautiful Lætitia during the two years that he spent in Italy. Greuze had carried with him to that country letters of introduction to the Duc del Or...., by whom he had been received with great cordiality. The Duke's wife had died, but he had a charming daughter, Lætitia, to whom it was arranged that Greuze should give lessons in painting. Greuze was a man to whom women and girls were instinctively attracted, and Lætitia fell in love with him, with all the violence and passion of the Italian temperament. Her beauty and her charming manners had also fascinated Greuze; but he was very much disconcerted when he found that she loved him, because he was conscious of the gulf which birth and fortune had placed between them. He, therefore, rigorously repressed his desire to see her, and forced himself to stay away from the palace.

Meanwhile, his doleful demeanour, innocent face, and light curls obtained for him, from Fragonard and other French students, who were in Italy at the time, the name of the love-sick cherub.

Greuze at length heard that Lætitia was ill, and that no one could discover the cause or nature of her malady. He loitered near her home to try to obtain tidings of her, and one day he encountered the Duke, who took him to the palace to show him two pictures by Titian, which he had recently purchased.

"My daughter," he said, "has promised herself the pleasure of copying them when her health has been restored. I hope that you will come to superintend her work. That is what she wishes."

The Duke further asked Greuze to make a copy of one of the pictures as soon as he could, because he wished to send the copy away as a present. Greuze could not refuse; and thus he was soon installed in the palace again, working there day by day. Each morning he was informed, by an old retainer of the family, who had been Lætitia's nurse, how the young lady fared. The old nurse knew the two were in love with each other. Indeed, a little later, she arranged a secret interview between them, and Greuze found his idol pale and thin, but not less beautiful than before.

At first neither of them could speak; but, encouraged by the nurse, Lætitia blurted out:

"Monsieur Greuze, I love you. Tell me frankly, do you love me?"

Greuze was too happy to speak, and Lætitia, mistaking the cause of his silence, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears.

This melted Greuze to the uttermost. He threw himself at her feet, and then, in the intervals between his impetuous kisses, he poured out impassioned declarations of his love.

"I can now be happy," cried Lætitia, clapping her hands, and behaving like a gladdened child. She ran and embraced her nurse, and again and again gave expression to her ecstasy. "Listen to me, you two; here is my scheme. I love Greuze, and I will marry him."

"My dear child, you dream," replied the nurse. "What about your father?"

"My nurse, you wish to say that my father will not consent. Well I know that. He wishes me to marry his eternal Casa—the oldest and the ugliest of men; or the young Count Palleri, whom I do not know, nor ever wish to know. I am rich through my mother, and I give my fortune to Greuze, whom I marry. He takes me to France, and you will follow us there."

And intoxicated with the future which she had arranged, she detailed, with a delicious volubility, the life that they would lead together in Paris. Greuze would continue to paint. He would become another Titian, and in the end her father would be proud to have such a son-in-law.

When Greuze next saw Lætitia he had had time to review all the circumstances, and he appeared with a woeful face. Lætitia derided him, and then tried to coax him tenderly out of his gloomy mood. At last, becoming angry, she called him perfidious, and reproached him that he had pretended to love her that he might the more easily break her heart. She cried and tore her hair, and Greuze fell at her feet, and promised to obey her blindly.

But as soon as he had left the palace he saw the folly of it all. He saw the despair of her father, heard his maledictions, and felt his vengeance, and all the misfortune which would come upon their love. He then decided that he would not relent again, nor see Lætitia any more. As an excuse for not visiting her he pretended that he was ill, and this simulated illness became real. For three months he was ailing, and part of the time he was consumed by fever and delirium.

At the end of his illness Lætitia was still eager to marry him; but with extraordinary firmness of will he resisted the temptation and fled from Italy, carrying with him secretly a copy of the portrait of Lætitia, which he had painted for her father.

Many years later, when Greuze was once more a poor man, he wrote in reply to the Grand Duchess of Russia, who had offered ten thousand livres for the portrait of Lætitia, "If you were to give me all the riches of the Empire of Russia they would not pay for that picture," and probably in his old age he read yet again the letter he had received from Lætitia, eight years after he quitted Rome. "Yes, my dear Greuze, your old pupil is now a good mother; I have five charming children, whom I adore. My eldest daughter is worthy to be offered as a subject for your happy talent; she is beautiful as an angel. Ask the Prince d'Este. My husband almost convinces me that I continue to be young and pretty, so much does he still love me. As I have told you, this happiness is due to you, and I love you for having prevented me from loving you."

Greuze had scarcely returned from Italy when he was attracted by Mademoiselle Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, who was in charge of a bookshop in Paris. Diderot, who had himself been very much in love with her, has described her as a smart dashing young woman, of upright carriage, and with a complexion of lilies and roses. De Goncourt also speaks of her numerous charms. She had a pretty face, which Greuze seemed to be never tired of painting. It was the smooth face of a child, and had an attractive roundness, and a soft, tender, peach-like delicate complexion. The expression was simple and unaffected, and there was enough of piquancy to animate a face which, for all its manifold good qualities, would else have had a tendency towards insipidity. Her eyebrows were very much arched, and this circumstance lent to her face its expression of naïveté. Her eyelashes were long, and when her eyes were downcast they gave a charming look to her face, resting like a caress upon her cheeks. Her little nose, the nose of a child, was exquisitely formed, and seemed to indicate an alert and lively character, and her rosy lips were also finely shaped, and particularly alluring.

Her portrait appears often in the paintings of Greuze in La Philosophie Endormie, La Mère Bien Aimée, La Voluptueuse, and in many others.

The story of their first encounter, and of their subsequent relations, is best told by a few extracts from a document which Greuze had cause to execute some years afterwards. He wrote:

"A few days after having arrived from Rome—I know not by what fatality—I passed along the Rue Saint Jacques, and saw in her shop Mademoiselle Babuty, who was the daughter of a bookseller.

"I was struck with admiration, for she had a very beautiful figure; and that I might have a better chance of seeing her I bought a number of books. Her face was without character, and was indeed rather sheep-like. I paid her as many compliments as she could wish, and she knew who I was, for my reputation had already commenced, and I had been recognised by the Academy.

"She was then thirty and some odd years of age, and therefore in danger of remaining single all her life. She employed all the cajoleries that were possible to attach me to her, and to cause me to come again, and I continued to pay her visits for about a month. One afternoon I found her more animated than usual. She took one of my hands, and, regarding me with a very passionate look, she said, 'Monsieur Greuze, would you marry me if I were to consent?'

"I avow I was confounded by such a question. I said to her, 'Mademoiselle, would not one be too happy to pass his life with a woman so lovable as you are?'

"Of course, this was but lightly said, yet that did not prevent her from taking action at once; for, upon the very next morning, she went with her mother to the Quai des Orfèvres, and there bought, at the shop of Monsieur Strass, earrings of false diamonds, and next day she did not hesitate to wear these in her ears.

"As she lived in a shop, the neighbours were not slow in paying her compliments, and in asking her who had presented these jewels to her.

"With downcast eyes she answered softly, 'It is Monsieur Greuze who has given them to me.'

"'You are married, then?'

"'Ah, no;' but this was said in a way that implied that secretly she had married me. My friends began at once to congratulate me, but I assured them there was nothing more false than the news they had heard, and that I had not money enough to enable me to marry.

"Outraged at such effrontery, I did not return to Mademoiselle Babuty any more. I lived at that time in le faubourg Saint Germain, rue du Petit Lion, in an hotel of furnished rooms called l'Hôtel des Vignes. Three days passed, during which I heard no more of the matter, and I was already thinking of other affairs, when one fine day she came knocking at my door accompanied by her little servant girl. I took no notice of the knocks, but she knew I was there, and she attacked my door with her hands and feet like a veritable fury. Then, to prevent a public scandal, I opened my door, and she threw herself into my room all in tears. She said to me:

"'I have done wrong, Monsieur Greuze, but it is love which has misled me. It is the attachment I have for you which has made me resort to such a stratagem. My life is in your hands.' Then she flung herself at my knees, and said she would not rise again until I had promised that I would marry her. She took my two hands in hers, and they were wet with tears. I pitied her, and I promised all she wished.

"We were not married until two years afterwards, in the parish of Saint Medard—which was not her parish—for fear of the pleasantries that would have been made, seeing that she had said that we were already married. I commenced housekeeping with twenty-six livres the day after our wedding."

During the first seven years of their married life they had three children. One of the children died, leaving the artist and his wife with two daughters.

Concerning these seven years no complaint is made about the conduct of Madame Greuze; but from that time it would be difficult to find a more unhappy household than that of Greuze. His wife was a continual torment, hindering him in his work, putting his life on a lower level, and making his home intolerable. Diderot even blamed her for the infelicity of his Academy picture, and Greuze himself suspected her of having poisoned the minds of the members of the Academy against him.

Her faithlessness, gross as it was, received further aggravation from the insolent openness in which it manifested itself. She received men of the most disreputable character at her house, caring naught whether her husband knew or not; and she polluted the morals of his boy pupils. Her children she neglected and put into a convent, one for eleven years, and the other for twelve. "It is a year and seven days since mamma saw us," said one of the girls sadly one day, when their father had gone to visit them.

Many a time Greuze went in bodily fear of her violence. When she asked for the help of a servant, and Greuze suggested that she should wait a little longer, until he could pay the wages of one, she dealt him, with all her might, a blow upon his face. She squandered in all manner of foolish extravagance the large fortune which Greuze received from the sale of the engravings from his works; and then she destroyed his account books, that the extent of her defalcations might never be known. Her household duties were abandoned, and Greuze nearly died when one day he warmed for himself some food in a saucepan in which verdigris had been suffered to accumulate.

At last her violence, her rank immorality, her extravagance and her neglect could be borne no longer, and in despair Greuze obtained from the magistrates the legal right to live apart from his wife.