"My friend," he wrote to an English boon companion, on March 16, 1881, "she is no more. I am alone. You are a clergyman, I entreat you to pray for the repose of her beloved soul and the preservation of my reason."
A few days later he wrote to the same friend of his "frightful solitude," adding his regret at not having anticipated such a blank and made for himself a home—in other words, taken a wife.
Some kind matchmaking friends set to work and found, so at least they fancied, a bride exactly calculated to render him happy.
But on January 23, 1883, Doré died, prematurely aged and broken down by grief, corroding disappointment and quite frenzied overwork and ambition.
He never attained recognition as a historic painter among his country-folks. One canvas, however, "Tobit and the Angel," is placed in the Luxembourg, and his monument to Dumas ornaments the capital. His renown as an illustrator remains high as ever in France. And one, that one, the passionately desired prize of every Frenchman, became his: in 1861 he was decorated with the Red Ribbon. Six of Doré's great religious subjects retain their place in the Bond Street Gallery, but for reasons given above his wonderfully imaginative illustrations are here forgotten.
The superb edition of the Enid (Moxon, 1868), a folio bound in royal purple and gold, and printed on paper thick as vellum, the volume weighing four pounds, awakens melancholy reflections. What would have been poor Doré's feelings had he lived to see such a guinea's worth, and cheap at the price, gladly sold, rather got rid of, for three shillings!
Doré's last work, the unconventional monument to the elder Dumas, was left unfinished.
Completed by another hand, the group now forms a conspicuous object in the Avenue Villiers, Paris.
The striking figure of the great quadroon, with his short crisped locks, suggests a closer relationship to the race thus apostrophized by Walt Whitman—
"You, dim descended, black, divine souled African...."