And nowhere could he have better artistic encouragement and emulation than in his native city. We do not remember who said that "in Geneva every child is born an artist," but the statement would bear investigation. Talent as well as taste for drawing and painting is almost universal, and belongs as well to the poor as to the rich. It may not be well known that De Candolle, the celebrated and untiring Genevese botanist, made use, in a course of lectures, of a valuable collection of tropical American plants, intrusted to his care by a Spanish botanist. Unfortunately, the herbarium was needed by its owner sooner than expected, and Professor De Candolle was requested to send it back. This he stated to his audience, with many a regret for so irreparable a loss. But some of the ladies present at once offered to copy the whole collection in one week, This was done. The drawings, "filling thirteen folio volumes, and amounting in number to eight hundred and sixty, were accurately executed by one hundred and fourteen women-artists in the time specified." In most cases the principal parts of the plants alone were colored; the rest was only pencilled with great accuracy. Where is the other city of the same size in which such a number of amateur lady-artists could be found? One of these very drawings, having been accidentally dropped in the street, was picked up by a little girl ten years old, and was returned to De Candolle, copied by the child; and it is no blemish to the collection.
The son of an artist, Töpffer found his own career ready made, and stepped into it with all the instincts of his Art-loving nature. His few early paintings are full of promise. But the young artist was not destined to distinguish himself in his chosen career. A disease of the eyes compelled him to give up his favorite pursuit. His brush, still warm from the passionate ardor with which it had been grasped, was broken and thrown away. Töpffer lamented all his life long the privation that was thus forced upon him. Art, as a profession, was closed against his eager ambition; yet he loved Art, and lived for it. Happily for him, he was still in the complete possession of all his hopes and illusions. Happily for him, he was young; and, without being discouraged by his great disappointment, he turned the bent of his mind study-ward. Töpffer became a close student of human nature. He took to analyzing it instinctively, as the bird takes to the air. He was more than a dreamer, though the charming dreams which we have from him make us half regret, perhaps, that he did something else besides dreaming. He says, in his story, "La Bibliothèque de mon Oncle,"—"The man who does not enjoy dreaming his time away is but an automaton, who travels from life to death like a locomotive rushing from Manchester to Liverpool. A whole summer spent in this listless manner does not seem de trop in a refined education. It is even probable that one such summer would not prove enough to produce a great man. Socrates dreamed his time away for years. Rousseau did the same till he was forty years old; La Fontaine—his whole life. And what a charming mode of working is that science of losing time!"
But, either dreaming or working, Töpffer knew well what he was capable of; and without impatience, without restlessness, he awaited the future, consoling himself with the sentiment he expresses so well in the following sentence:—"What can be said of those beardless poets who dare to sing at that age, when, if they were true poets, they would not have too much in their whole being with which to feel, and to inhale silently, those perfumes which later only they may know how to diffuse in their verse? There are precocious mathematicians; but precocious poets—never."
Töpffer was right. Life is the true poet. Its teachings drop in tears, and the heart receives them kneeling, and is in no hurry to babble to the world all their silent beauty.
If Töpffer studied, it was not alone. He had devoted himself to the serious task of education. His pupils, mostly the sons of wealthy Englishmen and Russians, together with a few lads from France, Italy, and America, served only to widen his family circle. His relation to them was charming. As an authority, he used the most winning persuasion. He respected the mental individuality even of a child, and would use his admirable tact in kindly encouraging every indication of talent, which, from want of a sufficient self-reliance or of a timely care, was hiding itself. Year after year, in vacation-time, Töpffer left the city with his thirty or forty young companions, and with them he travelled on foot through the mountains and around the lakes of Switzerland,—sometimes pushing in the track of Agassiz over glacier billows, sometimes wandering far down upon the fertile plains of Lombardy and Venetia. These were always most delightful excursions, when the ordinary halt became a common enjoyment, not only from the fun-loving spirit of the master, but also for the promise of future illustrations. After the return home, during the long winter evenings, Töpffer took either his pen or his pencil, and, with his pupils, re-gathered from their memoranda and drawings their summer impressions and adventures. Then he made his paper laugh with the spirited and piquant sketches which all know who have peeped into the "Voyages en Zig-Zag." Thus his fireside amusements have become those of the world. The "Voyages en Zig-Zag," before his death, were already classic in France. The richest luxury of type, paper, and illustration has not been spared, and edition after edition is scattered in Europe from the Neva to the Tagus. In the "Voyages" we find the most correct delineation, in words and sketches, of the peculiarities and glories of Alp-land. The exquisite French of this work has never yet found a translator.
His early style had something so fresh and so quaint that it can be accounted for only by going to the books which Töpffer studied. His dii majores were Montaigne and Amyot, and Paul Louis Courier, a learned Hellenistic scholar, as well as vivacious writer of the French Revolution and of the first Empire. For Montaigne Töpffer cherished the highest admiration. In his "Reflections and Short Disquisitions upon Art," (Réflexions et Menus Propos,) he thus tersely sums up the excellency of the French philosopher:—"Thinker full of probity and grace; philosopher so much the greater by that which he said he did not know than by that which he thought he knew." In our own language, Shakspeare was his favorite author. M. de Sainte-Beuve says, "Töpffer was sworn to Shakspeare," and adds that the works of Hogarth first taught the Genevese writer to appreciate Shakspeare, Richardson, and Fielding.
Besides possessing the ability to convey instruction to others, Töpffer was a fine classical scholar. With two other literary gentlemen, he published some excellent editions of the Greek classics, which he enriched with notes. All these qualifications marked him as the man for a still higher position. Accordingly, in 1832, when only thirty-three, he was appointed Professor of Belles-Lettres in the College of Geneva. At the same time, while discharging faithfully his duties in the College, he conducted, aided by tutors, his little pension, now so well known by the "Voyages en Zig-Zag."
It was in the midst of these various occupations that Töpffer took his recreation in contributing to the literary periodicals of Geneva superior essays on Art, and many of those charming stories which to-day delight us in the collection entitled "Les Nouvelles Génevoises." He also wrote for political journals. But what made him first known outside those communities where the French tongue is spoken were his humoristic sketches. They were not thrown off from his fertile and genial hand for gain or for renown. From childhood, under the influence of artistic example at home, and of his admiration of Hogarth, he had acquired a remarkable skill in graphically delineating whatever his close observation of men prompted. Like Hogarth, his artist-wit, his fun, and his moral teachings took the shape of series. These were handed around the circle of his intimate friends; yet he had thoughts only of his own amusement and of that of his companions, and did not contemplate offering them to the public. It was at the urgency of Goethe that he gave them to the world.
In 1842, as we stated before, "M. Vieux Bois" (Mr. Oldbuck) appeared in the United States; and the following year, 1843, "M. Cryptogame," under the name of "Bachelor Butterfly," (by no means so amusing or so full of hits for America as some other sketches,) delighted the Transatlantic reader.
Visitors to Geneva had their attention drawn to the "Voyages en Zig-Zag" as soon as it was published; and in 1841 "Les Nouvelles Génevoises" took the literary and artistic world of Paris by surprise. These simple graphic stories gained the hearts of thousands. French tourists and French artists sought the basin of Lake Leman, the wild passes of the Vallée de Trient, the Lac de Gers, the Col d'Anterne, and the Deux Scheidegg, wooed thither by the picturesque pages of Töpffer. The "Presbytère," a fresh story in the epistolary form, not long after crossed the Jura, and amidst the artificial, heated literature of Paris, appeared as reviving as a bracing morning in the Alps.