The stranger at Limoges is perforce an early riser. He is aroused from his slumbers at daybreak by a furious reveille of drum and bugle from the numerous barracks about the city, and from that time on bugle-practice and drum-practice hold high revel, until the despairing visitor is obliged, in sheer self-defence, to rise, dress and stroll out to see where all the racket comes from. He will understand it when he learns that of the seventy thousand people in the city about him, ten thousand are soldiers. If he would gain some idea of the number and extent of the casernes in which this good-sized army is quartered—in fact, if he would have a view of the whole city just awakening to its daily life—let him stroll up through one or another of the steep streets leading to the Place d'Orsay, a hilltop park crowned with forest trees and overlooking all Limoges. There was once a Roman arena on this spot, but its memory now lives only in the name of an adjacent street. If the morning be clear the view from this point is superb. Let the spectator turn where he may, he looks over densely-crowded housetops toward a vast amphitheatre of surrounding hills dotted with châteaux and farms, and enclosing the circular valley or basin in the centre of which, upon a knoll, stands the city itself. About him the busy hum of toil is already audible. Scores of tall chimneys puffing out smoke and flames mark the numerous porcelain-factories scattered here and there through the city's limits. Close at hand the tapering spire of St. Michael's, and beyond it that of St. Pierre, stand out in clear relief against the morning sky, while farther in the distance the cathedral looms up grand and shapely among the morning shadows rising from the river at its base.
By this time the shops are opened, everybody is stirring, and the visitor may as well take a stroll over to the market-place. On his way he will pass the Palais de Justice on the Place d'Aisne and the military club-house on the Rue Darnay, both of them elegant structures; he will traverse a quarter where the names on the signs and the noses on the shopkeepers' faces give an emphatic answer, so far as Limoges is concerned, to the time-honored query, "Where, oh where, are the Hebrew children?" he will pass through the fashionable shopping-region, where great dry-goods stores, dedicated "Au Louvre," "À la Ville de Paris," etc., glare at him with their enormous plateglass panes and a wealth of fabrics within; he will remark a surprising predominance of pastry-shops and drug-stores, though it need not necessarily be inferred that one is the complement of the other: in some streets he will find the sidewalks wide and well laid, in others they are rough and painful, tapering off to nothing alongside the base of some projecting building. If he asks a question of the shopkeepers in the doorways, they answer him pleasantly and politely; if he scan the faces of passers-by, he finds them bright, hopeful and good-natured. Groups of neatly-dressed, bareheaded working-girls go chatting by: men in blouses and slouch hats, carrying tin dinner-pails, hurry past. Vellum-faced old women crying vegetables in the shrillest of voices; here and there a guard of soldiers following a forage-wagon piled high with loaves of bread two feet long; milkmen's wagons, bakers' wagons, and an occasional patient donkey toiling up-hill with a stout country dame and a load of cabbages in the cart behind him; sedate housewives hurrying homeward, followed by little bonnes with laden baskets on their arms,—all tell the observer that he is in the neighborhood of the market.
What a babel of confusion it is, this motley gathering of fruit-and vegetable-women, seated in long rows of improvised stalls along the paved slope, enclosed on all sides by tall buildings, which forms the market-place! They all wear red-and-yellow head-kerchiefs, and are chattering away for dear life. It is a recognized principle in their code to ask any price they think they can get for their wares, but for all that living is not costly at Limoges. Good beef and mutton sell at eighteen cents a pound, and articles of charcuterie, such as ham, sausage, pâtés and galantine, are sold in great quantities. Vegetables of all kinds are plentiful and cheap, and in the season there is an abundance of pears, apples, grapes and figs. In the autumn, too, thousands of bushels of a giant species of chestnut are gathered and sold or shipped to other markets. Mushrooms as large round as a dinner-plate are sold by weight, and women and children can be seen munching them as they would crusts of bread. Wine is poor and high-priced, for the Limousin is not a vine-growing province, and with the recent rise in price the poorer classes have to forego the daily litre of vin rouge which their compatriots in the neighboring Charente still consider indispensable to their health and happiness. Looking at these market-people about him, the observer can easily see that they are not habitual wine-drinkers. They take a little cider, a little beer, but wine only now and then. Simplicity and frugality of diet, in fact, mark the habits of all the people, rich and poor, of the province. A cup of coffee on rising, a plate of soup at nine, a substantial meal at mid-day, and another plate of soup between six and eight in the evening, make up the bill of fare for the day.
The hotels, however, keep up the Parisian hours for meals, and as breakfast does not come until eleven o'clock, it would be well for our visitor to devote his remaining morning hours to the famous Ceramic Museum, which is not far from the Place d'Orsay, and which contains the finest collection of faïence and porcelains in the world excepting that at the Louvre. All the principal European countries are here found represented by specimens of their wares, but the United States, alas! is conspicuous by its absence, notwithstanding the fact that last year a notice was generally published throughout the American press advising our porcelain-makers that samples, if sent by them to the United States consular agent at Limoges, would be exhibited in the museum side by side with the rest. In connection with the establishment a free school for drawing and porcelain-decoration has been inaugurated by the city, and with such success that it numbers six hundred and fifty pupils of both sexes and all ranks of society.
After his morning stroll our visitor to Limoges will doubtless breakfast well. At either the Boule d'Or, the Richelieu or La Paix he cannot fail to do so, provided he furnish the appetite. There are other hotels, some of them rejoicing in such fanciful names as "The Golden Chariot" or "The Silver Eagle," but the three first named are those that the arriving stranger generally hears screamed in his ears by the runners at the railway-dépôt. The prices at either of them, varying from a dollar and a half to two dollars per day, seem ridiculously cheap to an American, for the bill of fare embraces an elaborate array of courses at the table-d'hôte, and wine is included. Carriage-hire, too; is remarkably reasonable: for a five-franc piece one can hire for the best part of the afternoon either a one-horse coupé or a two-horse barouche with a liveried driver. Tell the coachman to drive you out of town anywhere to get a good view of the city. He will touch his hat, crack his whip, and away you go. He will probably take you past the statue of Marshal Jourdan, the Cercle de l'Union—a splendidly-appointed private club—and so down through the Cité to the Boulevard Pont Neuf, leading to the bridge of the same name. The view up and down the river as you cross is extremely picturesque, the banks ascending in steep declivities on either side. Above is the ancient bridge of St. Étienne, and below is the equally ancient bridge of St. Martial, each, like the Pont Neuf, leading to its faubourg beyond the river. Under the shade of the shapely poplars lining the placid current hundreds of laundresses are to be seen kneeling in little wooden boxes at the water's edge, each having before her a smooth flat stone on which she scrubs, kneads and pounds somebody's family linen. The roadway up through the faubourg is dirty and tedious: unkempt children are playing in the street and ill-bred dogs run out to bark as you pass. But beyond are the loveliest of rural scenes—long, shaded road-ways where, through the closely-aligned trees, one looks down upon the city and the river spread like a picture beneath: here and there, standing back from the roadside and embowered in foliage, are ancestral châteaux, seeming to care very little for the common world about them. The farms are models of agricultural industry and neatness. Prosperity and thrift are written in large letters all over the cultivated fields and well-cared-for pastures that meet the eye at every turn. Men and women are working together among the grain or in the hay-meadows. A turn in the road brings us to Panazol, a little hamlet with not over twenty houses, yet with a vine-clad toy of a church, and a little shed, New England like, adjoining it, for the convenience of the farmers who come here to mass on Sundays. Before the doors peasant-women sit working at their looms, and bright-faced matrons sit knitting in the windows. The village streets are grass-grown and still, and but for an occasional old woman, with an immense broad-brimmed straw hat on her head and a load of fagots on her back, our carriage might dash at breakneck speed through Panazol without fear of injuring any one.
Within a radius of a few miles there are a dozen pleasant points for afternoon drives—Rochechouart, with its historic château; St. Yrieix, a bright and pretty town, with a church that has a history; St. Léonard, with its famous church, an exact model of St. Sepulchre at Jerusalem; the abbaye of Solignac, where St. Éloi worked as a silversmith; and Aix, farther down on the Vienne, where you can drive down for dinner, and then return home along the river-bank by moonlight. Either one of these trips would prove interesting: your gorgeous driver is very communicative, and tells you all about the owners of this place and that, what their family pedigrees are, whom they married, how much they are worth and how much they paid per hectare for the property.
There is a fair theatre where one can hear Le Petit Duc, Les Cloches or some other popular opera sung three times a week. One sees very few elaborately-dressed ladies in the audiences, for the city, being an industrial one and with a large majority of its population given to their daily labor for support, is not much wedded to fashion: it is practical rather than worldly. The constant round of dinners, soirées, balls and receptions which characterizes French high life in many and even smaller cities is lacking here. The wealthier people, as a rule, are the porcelain-manufacturers, who live in a quiet, substantial, sensible way, eschewing the follies and fatigues of fashionable existence. Full half of the population depends, directly or indirectly, on the porcelain industry for its support. It was only a hundred and thirty years ago that this industry had its birth. For centuries before that, it is true, Limoges had been famous through all Europe for its enamels. Bernard Palissy was a citizen of Limoges, and Léonard Limousin was appointed "enamel-painter in ordinary" to King Francis I. It is possible that this art was brought here from Italy by some Venetian merchants, who in 977 built up a portion of what is now the Faubourg St. Martial and established an extensive trade in fabrics and spices with the Levant. But it was not until 1765 that Doctor Darnay, a surgeon of Limoges, discovered near the neighboring village of St. Yrieix the inexhaustible quarries of kaolin which were destined to become a source of wealth and employment for all the surrounding population. Like most discoverers, he failed to realize any substantial benefits. A Bordeaux druggist, one De Villaret, managed to secure a patent in advance of him, and poor Darnay, defeated in a suit for damages, had to content himself with the posthumous honor of having a street named after him in the city which has most profited by his discovery.
In 1772 the first porcelain-factory was established at Limoges by Messrs. Massier, Fourneyra & Grellet frères, under the protection of the wise and liberal intendant Turgot. It is the decoration of the porcelain that gives it its value as well as its charm. Its manufacture is comparatively easy and simple. The kaolin, a dry, whitish-yellow clay, is first taken in lumps from the quarry and carried to one or another of the numerous mills lining the Vienne, where it is ground fine and reduced to a liquid paste closely resembling bread-dough. In this shape it is carried in sacks to the factory, where, having been again worked over to secure fineness and pliability, it is ready for the moulder's or the turner's hands. Nothing can exceed the deftness and skill with which, under the magic touch of the experienced workman, shapeless lumps of this prepared clay are fashioned into cups, dishes, vases and every conceivable form of the most delicate pottery. It is so quickly done, too! One handy operative can make two hundred cups a day. Once moulded into shape, the piece of pottery is dipped into liquid enamel which gives it hardness and brilliancy. It receives too the stamp of the manufacturer. It is then placed in what is called a gazette to be put into the oven to bake. The gazette is composed of a pair of deep earthen saucers fitting tightly together and forming a circular box, varying in dimensions according to the sizes of the objects to be baked. The greater part of those in use are little larger than an ordinary soup-plate. In this gazette the piece of porcelain is hermetically sealed up, and then it goes into the oven with thousands of other gazettes, until the great circular furnace, twenty feet in diameter and two stories high, is packed full from side to side and from bottom to top. Then the doors are closed, the fires are lit, and for a period varying from thirty-four to fifty hours the baking process goes on at a temperature of thirty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even after the fires are extinguished the heat in the furnace continues intense, and twelve hours more must elapse before it subsides sufficiently to permit the workmen to enter, remove and open the gazettes, take out the porcelains, which are now hard and brilliant, and send them to the artists for decoration. There are in all some seventy of these ovens in Limoges, with an average capacity of six thousand pieces. As most of them are kept going night and day, the reader can form some idea of the amount daily manufactured.
But thus far we have only followed the process through its homelier stages. The decorative work, yet to come, is the most delicate as it is the most interesting. But not every piece of porcelain that comes out of the oven reaches the decorator's hands. Of every hundred pieces baked, an average of twenty-five are thrown out as inferior, and the remaining seventy-five are divided or sorted out into four grades, known as second choice, choice, élite and special, in the average proportion of thirty, twenty-five, fifteen and five to each class respectively. The special is employed only for very rich decorations; élite is recommended for best selection; the choice is for ordinary usage; and the second choice is of such fair quality as to be pronounced less imperfect than the best porcelain sent from China and Japan, and specially recommended as the most economical pottery. The price of decoration varies according to the selection of porcelain to which it is applied. Thus, for instance, the lower grades of artists are employed upon the second-choice porcelain, while the best painters and decorators work upon the élite: the special is only given to artists of the most exceptional merit. The various artists, painters and decorators, are paid salaries which, according to the French standard, are considered munificent, though they sound small enough to American ears. Much of the decorating, such as flowers, birds, vines, etc., is done by laying the paper designs upon the porcelain and painting over them. The gilding is more laborious, and enormous quantities of pure gold-leaf are used. The gold, once laid on, can only become permanently part and parcel of the porcelain by being subjected to an additional six hours' baking at a temperature of eight hundred degrees Réaumur.
Not less important is the decoration of faïence-ware, which varies infinitely according to the desired effect. Haviland & Co., who may be taken as a standard, classify their faïences into six groups—viz. cream faïences, which are thus named from their color, and which are decorated with paintings under the enamel or with translucid enamels; enamelled paintings, possessing all the tone, richness and variety of oil-paintings; grand-fire fresco paintings, or exact representations of wall frescoes, and especially adapted for panels or architectural ornaments; gilt enamels, reproducing Chinese lac-paintings or vases of precious stones; Limoges enamels, very similar to the ancient enamels of Léonard Limousin; and sculptured faïences, painted either under the enamel or in grand-fire frescoes: the figures alone are never painted in these latter. Each piece of sculptured faïence is the model itself, signed by the artist: not one of them is ever reproduced by moulding. In the museum connected with the Haviland works are to be seen some remarkably fine specimens of their faïence-wares. The Havilands, themselves Americans, who by their enterprise and integrity reflect credit upon their country, have done much to popularize the love for ceramics in the New World, and the head of the house, Mr. Charles Haviland, was worthily decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at the close of the Paris Exposition. The firm has recently completed the manufacture of an elaborate dinner-service for the White House at Washington, based upon designs by a well-known American artist. Long may that service grace the board of the first magistrate of our nation as a souvenir and symbol of the two great republics of the world—as a substantial evidence of what French resources, combined with American industry, have produced from the rough and shapeless clods of clay which so many preceding centuries have passed by unnoticed!