That smile was his ever-brave defiance of life, but, too, a thought for France—for the France he adored, and which he dreamed of so often though it had rejected him. That last picture, painted in these humid Marquesas in his house set in a grove of cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees, was of Brittany and was a snow scene. He did not defeat his enemy, but sank into his last sleep content to go because the struggle had become too anguishing. He knew he was beaten, but he flew no flag of surrender. He passed alone, with only the smile as a token of his final moment of consciousness, and the emotion that stirred his soul.
As was said best by his friend and biographer, Charles Morice, Gauguin was one of the most necessary artists of the nineteenth century. His name now signified a distinctive conception of the nature of art, a certain spirit of creation and mastery of strange technique, and a revolt against established standards and methods which constituted an opposition to the accepted thoughts and morals of art—if not a school, at least a distinct class of graphic achievement. As the French say, it was a catégorie. For the conservatives, the regular painters and critics, he had created un frisson nouveau, a new shudder in art, as Hugo said Baudelaire had in literature.
Gauguin was not a distinguished writer. “Noa Noa” was written by his friend, Morice, in Paris, from letters to him. The painter commented upon the book that it was “not the result of an ordinary collaboration, that is, of two authors working in common, but that I had the idea, speaking for non-civilized people, to contrast their characters with ours, and I had enough originality to write it simply, just like a savage, and to ask Morice, for his part, to put it in civilized words.” His “Intimate Journals” are actually revelatory of the man, but “Noa Noa” is a tropical dish seasoned with sophistries, though beautiful, and, to a large degree, true. It is a poetical interpretation by Morice, a Parisian, of Gauguin’s adventures in Tahiti.
Gauguin spent little time in writing. Every fiber of his weakening body and every lucubration of his mind were bent on expressing himself in painting, or in clay or wood, but he thought clearly and individualistically, and wrote forcefully and with wit. He was not a poet, nor had he felicity of language.
I revived Gauguin’s memory in the South Seas. Having known about him in Tahiti, I was interested to find out all I could of his brief life and sorrowful death here. Lovaina, the best known woman in the South Seas, at whose Hotel Tiaré I lived in Tahiti, spoke of Gauguin one day. She had heard a whisper between Temanu and Taata-Mata, two of her handmaids, that I might leave the Tiaré, her impossible auberge in Papeete, to lodge with Madame Charbonnier or Madame Fanny.
Lovaina, three quarters American by blood, but all Tahitian in looks, language, and heart, was not assured that her impossible hotel was the only possible one within thousands of miles, as it was really, and she said:
“Berina, I think more better you go see that damn house before you make one bargain. You know what Gauguin say. He have room with Madame Charbonnier, and eve’y day, some time night, she come make peep his place. He had glass door between that room for him and for other man, and he say one day to me (I drink one Pernod with him):
“‘That sacré French women she make peep me. I beelong myself. I make one damn pictu’e stop that.’
“You go look for yourse’f to-day. You see that door. Gauguin say he make ugly so nobody make look.”
“That Gauguin was a very happy man in my maison,” said Madame Charbonnier in French to me. “He and I had but one disagreement. One day a native woman accompanied him here. I knew he must have models, but I want no hussies in my house. I am a respectable citizeness of France. I looked through the glass door, and I warned him, though he had paid in advance, I must preserve my reputation. O, la la la! He painted that mauvaise picture of that very Tahitian girl on my door to spite me. La voila! Is it not affrighting?”