Erckmann.
About 1868.
The first portrait of Émile Erckmann is contemporary with Madame Thérèse, one of the most admirable and best known of their romans nationaux. A second portrait, which is reproduced here, seems a trifle older and of about the year 1868. That year the Théâtre de Cluny in Paris produced a piece adapted by the two friends from the novel Le Juif Polonais. Erckmann at that time wore a beard. His dress, like his appearance, is without care, but in that serious face and behind those spectacles there shines the profound and concentrated look of one accustomed to gaze upon the waters and the mountains of the Vosges; and the expression, brilliant as a fixed star, obliterates all that is crude and inharmonious in this face, which otherwise reminds one of a German schoolmaster. In contradistinction to Chatrian, who spent nearly the whole of his life in Paris and its environs, Erckmann seems to pine for the green woods and scenery of that beautiful country where the healthy and simple people are so much in harmony with nature. Thus is he shown to us here. His features remind us both of Taine and Cherbuliez, though he possessed nothing in common with them beyond that serene look full of reflection and deduction. Erckmann worked in Alsace; Chatrian, on the contrary, whose administrative duties kept him all day at his desk in Paris, could indulge his taste for novel-writing only in the evenings, occasionally stealing a few hours in the day out of the time which he was bound to devote to his Government work. To the calm and quietude of his companion Chatrian added the animation of an ardent and inventive spirit. To the reflective and poetic talent of Erckmann, he opposed the hastiness of his own dashing and spontaneous genius. To his pen, no doubt, can be assigned all those parts where the story, leaving the description of rustic life, plunges boldly into dramatic action.
A double portrait, from a photograph taken about 1874, depicts them in the constrained attitude characteristic of the work of Daguerre and his followers. Doubtless they were together in that little house at Raincy, where they often met to discuss the plot of some new work, and where the photographer must have invaded their privacy.
ERCKMANN AND CHATRIAN.
About 1874. (After a photograph)
"Only once did I see that little garden at Raincy," writes one of their friends, "but I can see again the kindly, portly Erckmann seated under the shade of a cherry-tree, a picture which later on I saw reproduced again at the Théâtre Français in L'Ami Fritz—Erckmann with his calm face and shrewd eyes, smoking his pipe, and throwing out philosophical theories between the whiffs of tobacco. He is, as it were, the dream, and Chatrian the reality in this partnership. Erckmann would willingly have kept to the fantastic tales of their early days, but it was Chatrian, the type of the soldier, with the mustache and face of a somewhat harsh-looking non-commissioned officer, and a strict disciplinarian, who directed the collaboration towards the Napoleonic era and the national chronicles. This, in a measure, explains the portraits and helps us to show them both, united in a work simultaneously conceived, both simple and great in their baffling expression, happy in knowing themselves understood by the multitude of the poor and humble. That photograph dates from the representation of L'Ami Fritz in the Théâtre Français.
After the defeat of the Alsatians these poets, deeply touched, sing to us in their heartfelt words of the picturesqueness of their mountains and forests, henceforth to be under German rule. At that moment (and it is also the last portrait we have been able to find) Erckmann is aged, his beard and mustache are silvered, his appearance no longer that of a professor, but rather that of an old officer whom the close of the war has thrown out of employment. Chatrian, on the other hand, though only four years his junior, with hair and beard still abundant, seems alive with vigour and strength. His glance is keen, frank, and loyal, his face open and bold, his attitude full of energy. No picture could express better than this the striking contrast between two temperaments so widely dissimilar, and yet so well designed to supplement each other and form a complete whole.
ERCKMANN AND CHATRIAN.
After a caricature by André Gill, 1879.
André Gill, in a typical and humorous caricature, has admirably shown the expressions of the two writers as their faces appear above a jug of beer, each with an Alsatian pipe in his mouth. A peaceful happiness marks their brotherly features. They are enjoying the dramatic successes of the Rantzau and Madame Thérèse. The final disagreement, which did not happen until 1890, at Villemomble, and which ended only with Chatrian's death, had not yet come, like a detestable intruder, to separate those two strong characters. Their dreams, their work, and their successes were still joint property at the time Andre Gill drew this caricature. The two writers have been termed the "Siamese twins" of historical romance. One cannot understand why these two figures, so full of contrast, were never delineated in painting nor sculpture, in view of the large measure of success which directed attention to their names. Such incomprehensible mysteries do sometimes occur in the lives of celebrated men, and we fail to find the solution of the enigma, which forces us to admit that Erckmann and Chatrian left us no portraits, no important engravings, no great popular lithographs, nor any medallions or busts. If ever posterity thinks of raising a monument to the memory of these two curious writers, the artist to whom the task is assigned will have some difficulty in finding any other valid and interesting documents than the few pictures which are collected here.