death before it could hold the wreaths of fame. One and all of the illustrious ones were misapprehended; and Auguste Rodin, when he made his first appeal to public judgment, stepped into this rank, and awakened “the idiot risibles of a gaping stupidity,” instead of the grave appreciation that was his due.
Rodin is of the people, and was born in Paris in 1840. His parents were poor, and during the long years—apparently fruitless, and heaping disappointment on disappointment—urged him to take to a trade which would bring him immediate results. “I have no history,” he says; “my life is simply the story of constant struggle and unchanged poverty. I was poor, but I was strong; and in the moments when I was not bitterly discouraged I felt a certain stimulus in setting myself against the world. Over by the École de Médecine, in Paris, is the little school where I went as a boy, and where I first took simple lessons in drawing.”
He acknowledges the influence of no directed instruction on his art. In his young manhood he was a workman in the atelier of Baryé, and the models of twisted cobras, lithe tigers, crouching panthers, maddened lions—their graceful contours and curves, the attitude of savage grace—may have impressed their images on the keen memory of the young journeyman. At all events, in his types of the animal triumphant in man, in the pose and gesture of abandon, there is much that suggests kinship between the human being and the uncivilised beast—the barbarous grace and beauty of both. But Rodin is not conscious of the effect of any school: in the ateliers of both Baryé or Carrier-Belleuse he sold his skill for his daily bread.
In 1864 he sent the head of “The Man with the Broken Nose” to the Salon. This mask, perfectly modelled, worthy the seal of antiquity, was refused “because of its originality.” The refusal was a bitter blow to Rodin; and whether or not the verdict appeared to him just, it had the effect of intimidating him, and he waited thirteen years before again appearing before his adverse jury.
At this period (1864-70), on the edge of his own doorstep, as it were, with no power to franchise the threshold, he worked, a paid daily labourer, for Baryé, Carrier-Belleuse, and in 1871-77 for Van Rasbourg in Brussels. “During the long time,” he says, “when I gave what power I possessed to others, my thoughts were keen and alive toward my own creations. On Sunday I was free, and that day I afforded a model for myself and worked in my little room from the life. I
LE DÉSESPOIR