An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

Montaigne spoke Latin before he could speak French; Vernet drew men and horses before he had mastered either French or Latin. His playthings were stumpy, worn-out brushes, discarded palettes, and sticks of charcoal; his alphabet, the pictures of the Louvre, where his father occupied a set of apartments, and where he was born, a month before the outbreak of the first Revolution. He once said to me, "Je suis peintre comme il y des hommes qui sont rois—parceque ils ne peuvent pas être autre chose. Il fallait un homme de génie pour sortir d'un pareil bourbier et malheureusement je n'ai que du talent." By the "bourbier" he meant his great-grandfather, his two grandfathers, and his father, all of whom were painters and draughtsmen.

Posterity will probably decide whether Horace Vernet was a genius or merely a painter of great talent, but it will scarcely convey an approximate idea of the charm of the man himself. There was only one other of his contemporaries who exercised the same spell on his companions—Alexandre Dumas père. Though Vernet was a comparative dwarf by the side of Dumas, the men had the same qualities, physical, moral, and mental. Neither of them knew what bodily fatigue meant; both could work for fourteen or fifteen hours a day for a fortnight or a month; both would often have "a long bout of idleness," as they called it, which, to others not endowed with their strength and mental activity, would have meant hard labour. Both were fond of earning money, fonder still of spending it; both created almost without an effort. Dumas roared with laughter while writing; Vernet sang at the top of his voice while painting, or bandied jokes with his visitors, who might come and go as they liked at all hours. Dumas, especially in the earlier days of his career, had to read a great deal before he could catch the local colour of his novels and plays—he himself has told us that he was altogether ignorant of the history of France. But when he had finished reading up the period in question, he wrote as if he had been born in it. Vernet was a walking cyclopædia on military costume; he knew, perhaps, not much more than that, but that he knew thoroughly, and never had to think twice about the uniforms of his models, and, as he himself said, "I never studied the thing, nor did I learn to paint or to draw. According to many people, I do not know how to paint or to draw now: it may be so; at any rate I have the comfort of having wasted nobody's time in trying to learn."

Like Dumas, he was very proud of his calling and of the name he had made for himself in it, which he would not have changed for the title of emperor—least of all for that of king; for, like his great contemporary, he was a republican at heart. It did not diminish either his or Dumas' admiration for Napoléon I. "I can understand an absolute monarchy, nay, a downright autocracy, and I can understand a republic," said Vernet, "but I fail to understand the use of a constitutional king, just because it implies and entails the principle of succession by inheritance. An autocracy means one ruler over so many millions of subjects; a constitutional monarchy means between five and six hundred direct rulers, so many millions of indirect ones, and one subject who is called king. Who would leave his child the inheritance of such slavery? À la bonne heure, give me a republic such as we understand it in France, all rulers, all natural-born kings, gods in mortals' disguise who dance to the piping of the devil. There have been two such since I was born; there may be another half-dozen like these within the next two centuries, because, before you can have an ideal republic, you must have ideal republicans, and Nature cannot afford to fritter away her most precious gifts on a lot of down-at-heels lawyers and hobnail-booted scum. She condescends now and then to make an ideal tyrant—she will never make a nation of ideal republicans. You may just as well ask her to make a nation of Raffaelles or Michael Angelos, or Shakespeares or Molières."

Both men, in spite of their republican opinions, were personally attached to some members of the Orléans family; both had an almost invincible objection to the Bourbons. Vernet had less occasion to be outspoken in his dislike than Dumas, but he refused to receive the Duc de Berri when the latter offered to come and see the battle-pieces Vernet was painting for the then Duke of Orléans (Louis-Philippe). Vernet had stipulated that his paintings should illustrate exclusively the campaigns of the first Republic and the Empire, though subsequently he depicted some episodes of the Algerian wars, in which the son of the king had distinguished himself. "Tricolour cockades or no pictures," he remarked, and Louis-Philippe good-humouredly acquiesced. Though courteous to a degree, he never minced matters to either king or beggar. While in Russia Nicholas took a great fancy to him. It appears that the painter, who must have looked even smaller by the side of the Czar than he did by that of Dumas, had accompanied the former, if not on a perilous, at least on a very uncomfortable journey in the middle of the winter. He and the Emperor were the only two men who had borne the hardships and privations without grumbling, nay, with Mark Tapleyean cheerfulness. That kind of fortitude was at all times a passport to Nicholas' heart, doubly so in this instance, by reason of Vernet's by no means robust appearance. From that moment Nicholas became very attached to, and would often send for, him. They would often converse on subjects even more serious, and, one day, after the partition of Poland, Nicholas proposed that Vernet should paint a picture on the subject.

"I am afraid I cannot do it, sire," was the answer. "I have never painted a Christ on the cross."

"The moment I had said it," continued Vernet, when he told me the story, which is scarcely known, "I thought my last hour had struck. I am positively certain that a Russian would have paid these words with his life, or at least with lifelong exile to Siberia. I shall never forget the look he gave me; there was a murderous gleam in the eyes; but it was over in an instant. Nevertheless, I feel convinced that Nicholas was mad, and, what is more, I feel equally convinced that there is incipient madness throughout the whole of the Romanoff family. I saw a good many of its members during my stay in Russia. They all did and said things which would have landed ordinary men and women in a lunatic asylum. At the same time there was an unmistakable touch of genius about some of them. I often endeavoured to discuss the matter with the resident foreign physicians, but, as you may imagine, they were very reticent. But mark my words, one day there will be a terrible flare-up. Of course, the foreigner, who sees the superstitious reverence, the slavish respect with which they are surrounded, scarcely wonders that these men and women should, in the end, consider themselves above, and irresponsible to, the millions of grovelling mortals whom they rule; in spite of all this, the question can only be one of time, and when the Russian empire falls, the cataclysm will be unlike any other that has preceded it."

There was a comic side to Horace Vernet's character. By dint of painting battle-pieces he had come to consider himself an authority on strategy and tactics, and his criticisms on M. Thiers' system of fortifications used to set us roaring. I am under the impression—though I will not strictly vouch for it—that at the recommendation of one or two of the inveterate jokers of our set, Laurent-Jan[34] and Méry, he had a couple of interviews with M. Theirs, but we never ascertained the result of them. It was almost certain that the minister of Louis-Philippe, who at one period of his life considered himself a Napoléon and a Vauban rolled into one, did not entertain Vernet's suggestions with the degree of enthusiasm to which he thought them entitled; at any rate, from that time, the mention of M. Thiers' name generally provoked a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders on Vernet's part. "C'est tout à fait comme Napoléon et Jomini, mon cher Vernet," said Laurent-Jan; "mais, après tout, qu'est que cela vous fait? La postérité jugera entre vous deux, elle saura bien débrouiller la part que vous avez contribuée à ces travaux immortels."

Much as Horace Vernet admired his great contemporaries in art and literature, his greatest worship was reserved for Alfred de Vigny, the soldier-poet, though the latter was by no means a sympathetic companion. Next to his society, which was rarely to be had, he preferred that of Arthur Bertrand, the son of Napoléon's companion in exile. Arthur Bertrand had an elder brother, Napoléon Bertrand, who, at the storming of Constantine, put on a new pair of white kid gloves, brought from Paris for the purpose. Horace Vernet made at least fifty sketches of that particular incident, but he never painted the picture. "I could not do it justice," he said, when remonstrated with for his procrastination. "I should fail to realize the grandeur of the thing." Thereupon Laurent-Jan, who had no bump of reverence, proposed a poem in so many cantos, to be illustrated by Vernet. I give the plan as developed by the would-be author.

1. The kid in its ancestral home among the mountains. A mysterious voice from heaven tells it that its skin will be required for a pair of gloves. The kid objects, and inquires why the skin of some other kid will not do as well. The voice reveals the glorious purpose of the gloves. The kid consents, and at the same moment a hunter appears in sight. The kid, instead of taking to its heels, assumes a favourable position to be shot. It makes a dying speech.

2. A glove-shop on the Boulevard. Enter Napoléon Bertrand, asking for a pair of gloves. The girl tells him that she has only one pair left, and communicates the legend connected with it. The price is twenty francs. Napoléon Bertrand demurs at it, and tells her, in his turn, what the gloves are wanted for. The girl refuses to take the money, and her employer, overhearing the conversation, dismisses her there and then. He keeps the wages due to her as the price of the gloves. Napoléon Bertrand puts the latter in his pocket, offers the girl his arm, and invites her to breakfast in a cabinet particulier, "en tout bien, en tout honneur." To prove his perfectly honourable intentions, he tells her the story of Jeanne d'Arc. The girl's imagination is fired by the recital, and after luncheon she goes in search of a book on the subject. An unscrupulous, dishonest second-hand bookseller palms off an edition of Voltaire's "La Pucelle." The girl writes to Napoléon Bertrand to tell him that he has made a fool of her, that Jeanne d'Arc was no better than she should be, and that she is going to join the harem of the Bey of Constantine.