After Jean Limousin, descendant of the great Léonard, and his school, enameling as a truly fine art began to die out at Limoges, in 1610. Colin, Martin, Poncet, Laudin, and the Noalhers carried on the work, but Jean Limousin stood shoulders above them all. Toutin introduced enamel-painting on gold in 1732 and the products became daintily and insipidly delicate, quite in the taste of Louis XIV and his successors, until at last enameling became little better than a rivaling imitation of china-painting.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ROMANCE OF A POTTER: BERNARD PALISSY
FAR better it is that one man or a small number of men should make their profit from some art by living honestly, than that a large number of men should struggle, one against the other, so that they cannot gain a livelihood save by profaning the arts, leaving things half done. So said Master Bernard Palissy, born some four hundred years ago—in 1510, to be exact—near Château Biron in Périgord, France.
Where in the whole history of the arts will a more interesting figure be found? His was not the swashbuckling career of a Cellini; nevertheless the serious-minded would not exchange him for the volatile Italian who seemed ever and anon to be swallowing diamond dust or crossing a cardinal for copy. Palissy’s was romance of a different sort, but romance of a fine type.
I have often wondered why we of to-day have almost forgotten about Master Bernard, Master Bernard whom the readers of our grandmothers’ generation immortalized. I suppose the cultivated virtue of novelty which in this restless era demands incessant changing of school-books from term to term failed to bring old Palissy along with it. In earlier days it was part and parcel of one’s polite education to know something of Master Bernard, at least to know that there had once lived such a person. In those less curriculumed yesterdays the story of Palissy the Potter was always a welcome one. Perhaps we ourselves have merely overlooked the matter, and so I make here this venture, believing time has intended no slight to Master Bernard’s memory.
How well I recall a certain lower shelf in a library which regaled a rainy autumn day in my tender years! There were treasures here convenient to the hand of one aged nine, treasures fitting the advancement of learning laboriously attained under the unflinching persistence of an all-too-faithful governess. In this sanctuary I chanced in childhood to come upon a tiny octavo bound in blue, stamped with gilt morning-glories, morning-glories such as I have always associated, for some unexplained reason, with the long-late Prince Albert and the equally long-late Lucy Larcom! Within the covers of this little book was a highly embellished frontispiece, hand-stenciled in colors of saffron, scarlet, and azure, with an overwhelmingly deep dash of bottle-green. I imagine this volume emerged from the press at a time when aniline dyes self-proclaimed their advent to the mediocrity of the day. Beyond that I do not venture a date.
This giddy frontispiece seemed, even in my childish eyes, profanely gay for the subject it presented. Here was depicted the figure of a bearded man in foreign dress, visage forlorn, person unkempt. The artist pictured him in the act of destroying a quantity of furniture of a sort that might have given distinction to an early Victorian parlor.
Just what seemed so terrifying about the situation I do not know, unless it was that, as I distinctly recall, I myself had occasionally been regarded as somewhat destructive in the furniture line—as when, quite unintentionally, I scratched my great-aunt’s mahogany sofa in making a desperate attempt not to slide off its hair-covered plateau at a moment when the peculiarly poignant texture of this revered fabric had caused me unwittingly to squirm about in manœvering for a less irritating bit of the area. From that time on a certain Miss Solander, occupying the important post of governess, could not adjust her perspective to considering me other than a menace to mahogany in the front of the house or black walnut in the rear.
Thus you can well imagine how heroically there loomed forth from that frontispiece the figure of one who was deliberately breaking up chairs, tables, stools, four-posters, and what not—and a grown man at that! But the thrillingness of the situation was further enhanced by the fact that not only was he breaking up the furniture but he was feeding it to the flames! There was no doubt of it: a copious employment of carmine and saffron made that point clear. That any one should have dared to be so deliberately destructive at once awakened my curiosity, and I am not sure it did not awaken my admiration as well. I hope not, for as we grow older we like to think that our Golden Days were paragon in their virtues.
It was not long before I discovered in the background of the picture the figure of a woman in a Breton cap—inexcusable anachronism, though I did not know it then. Who was she? The furniture-breaker’s governess, perhaps; no, that could not be, for he was older than she. From the corner of my eye I took a swift visual dart at Miss Solander. The lady in the picture appeared timid and weeping. No, it would not be a governess.