In this modest way M. Töpffer was unconsciously building up his European reputation. The warp of his talent is the richest of humor blended with woman-like sensibility and tenderness. Fanciful, but never exaggerated, he stands before us an amiable philosopher, whose heart is large enough to comprehend and to pity the frailties of human nature, yet whose spotless purity serves as a beacon—light on the wreck-strewn shore of human passions. He has not the exaltation nor the ardent vehemence of Rousseau, neither has he the sentimental morbidity of Xavier de Maistre. On the contrary, he is always true and always simple, and he remains within the bounds of emotion which the family circle allows. This must be accounted for by the peaceful life which he led, (a life so different from that of his French literary brothers,) as well as by the beneficial influence of the society in which he resided. That society, though cultivated and liberal, has, in contrast with that of France, remained pure. It retains as its birthright a certain nameless innocence, unknown in the polished French circles a few leagues beyond. M. de Sainte-Beuve wonders at this, and asks,—"Is it that man is kept pure and good by the magnificent beauties in which Nature rocks him there from his babyhood? Is it that the heart becomes awed in presence of that sublime calm of Nature, and, before he is aware of it, the passions have transformed themselves into a religious adoration?"
But the true source of the Genevese author's purity was apart from, though deeply influenced by Nature. He was a man of principle and of religious faith. Töpffer had but to gaze into his own heart to find all the sweet, the graceful, and the fresh poetry of his country. His untiring and patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study. An insect crawling on a leaf,—a bit of grass bringing the joy of its short life around the stones of the pavement,—a cloud floating over the meadows,—a murmur of voices in the air,—the wings of a butterfly, or the thundering of the storm above the lake,—all and everything was the domain where his genial disposition reaped so plentiful a harvest of rare graces and smiles.
When Töpffer abandoned his brushes for his pen, it seems that the vision of his mind became intensified, and he began to study man as minutely as he had studied Nature. He became a moral portrait-painter, in the same way as his illustrious townsmen, Calame and Diday, were landscape painters. To analyze and to describe became the occupation he most delighted in; and the more minute the analysis and the more subtile the description, the more also was he pleased with it.
Töpffer's writings are eminently moral. There are few works in French literature in which the moral aspiration is so alive and the worship of duty so eloquently advocated. In reading them one feels that the writer did not step beyond his own sentiments, that he did not borrow convictions, that he did not affect the austerity of a stolen creed. He writes as he feels, and he feels rightly,—never forgetting to remain indulgent, even when he appears most unbendingly severe. Then to it all he adds an inexhaustible cheerfulness. His mind wears no dark-colored glasses; it is strong and healthy enough to bear the dazzling effulgence of the sun. Töpffer was a joyous man. If he so rapidly seized the ridiculous, it was through his love of fun; but while he laughed at others, so kind and genial was he ever that he made others join and laugh with him also.
We said that his genius was universal. He is eminently so in his artistic creations. Take, for instance, his unique comic sketches and compare them with those of other leading caricaturists. Our impression must be that none are like his. Leech, Doyle, and Gavarni have attained a reputation which the world acknowledged long ago, and which no one would dare dispute; yet they differ entirely from the Genevese caricaturist. "Oldbuck" (M. Vieux Bois) is as universal as music or Shakspeare, and belongs to no one country in particular. All of Leech's pretty women, his "Mr. Briggs" and his "Frederick Augustus," with his "Haw" and other swell words and airs, are all unmistakably English. They could have been born on no other soil than England. It requires an Englishman, or an American familiar with English fashions and foibles, to appreciate them. The German, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Italian, or the Russian, could no more understand them without a previous initiation, or study and experience of English manners, than they could speak English without long application and practice. The same may be said of Richard Doyle's famous "Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson." Here we have an irresistible series of sketches, depicting what the famous trio saw, what they said, and what they did, in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. The interest of that work lies in an intense expression of English nationality, carried everywhere by the three Englishmen. Their mishaps and adventures are exactly such as every American has witnessed a thousand times, when some of his cousins from the fast-anchored isle have visited him. Gavarni, though freer with his pencil than either Doyle or Leech, is still as much of a Parisian as Albert Smith was a Londoner. Every one of his spirited sketches is intensely French, and, above all, Parisian. To a person who knew nothing of Paris, who had never been in Paris, and who was not somewhat au fait with the gay and triste, the splendid and squalid, the brilliant and unequal society there, these sketches would be meaningless. Again, Gavarni's pictures are not series. He does not develop his heroes and heroines. He does not make us feel for them in their mishaps. We do not laugh with them, as we would with friends or acquaintances, but we laugh at them. We do not once recognize ourselves in them. His portraits stand before us, but we gaze at them as we would at some half-civilized creatures, with curiosity more than with mirth; and while we admire and acknowledge the truthfulness of the sketch, we do not desire to have any familiarity or contact with the individuals represented. Furthermore, Gavarni is more limited than Doyle, by making the "Sweep," the "Rag-Picker," the "Grisette," tell his or her own story; and what each one says is necessary to the comprehension of the person before you. But very different is Töpffer. He possesses, with the funny conception of Leech and Doyle, a freer pictorial conception than either, and holds a pencil that is more at command than Gavarni's. In his single outlines, often of the rudest kind, there is the very rollicking of freedom, the exact hitting of traits and character. He dashes down his creation with the quickness of thought, and with as much confidence that Messrs. Oldbuck, Crépin, and Jabot will leap into the very existence he wishes them to assume, as Giotto had, when, with a single sweep of his arm, he drew his magic circle. It may be objected, that the comparison between the two Englishmen and the two Continentals is hardly equal. Doyle and Leech lost, doubtless, much of their freedom by drawing with hard pencils upon box for the wood-engraver. Töpffer and Gavarni swept the soft, yielding crayon over the lithographer's stone, and hence we have the very conception of the artists in their sketches.
The whole Continent roared over "M. Vieux Bois," then England began to laugh, and finally America. Yet "M. Vieux Bois" was only the portrait of a foolish old bachelor in love. Though born in Geneva, he was neither Swiss nor French, neither English nor American; he was simply human. He exemplifies Töpffer's universality.
I have already mentioned the "Nouvelles Génevoises," the "Voyages en Zig-Zag," and the "Presbytère." But it is not possible to quote from them. Before pages so lively and so picturesquely effective, one feels embarrassed in selecting any particular portion, lest another should be left unnoticed,—like the child, who, being told that he may help himself to choice flowers, feels afraid that he will not take those he most wants, and, in his hesitation, dares not so much as untie the bouquet. The reader must choose for himself. He can accompany the amiable philosopher in his summer excursions, take the Alpine-stock, and with him visit the mountain solitudes, or linger around the blue lakes—those air-hung forget-me-nots—which gem the highest valleys of Switzerland.
His remaining works, published in book-form, are "Rosa et Gertrude," and the "Réflexions et Menus Propos d'un Peintre Génevois, ou Essai sur le Beau dans les Arts."
"Rosa et Gertrude," given to the public a short time before his death, is considered by some as holding the first place in Töpffer's works of imagination. It is a touching story of two orphan girls, deeply attached to each other, one of whom, deceived and maltreated by the world, receives that kind and Christian charity "which thinketh no evil" from M. Bernier, the good old clergyman, who is the guardian of Rosa and Gertrude, as well as the narrator of their simple history. In this book Töpffer has abandoned the humoristic, his ordinary vein in his short stones, and in taking up the more serious mode of treating his characters has succeeded so well that Albert Aubert of Paris, in his criticism, says, "In 'Rosa and Gertrude' M. Töpffer has surpassed himself"; and yet it is not so characteristic as his other writings.
However, that one of M. Töpffer's works which, it seems to me, is destined to live longest in the future, is his "Réflexions et Menus Propos," etc.,—"Reflections and Short Disquisitions on Art." Here are the results of twelve years' meditations on Art, by one who felt Art in his inmost soul, and who understood its practice as well as its theory. In this work we find a Ruskin without dogmatism, uncertainty, or man-worship. If Töpffer had written several volumes on his favorite subject, we should not find him, in each succeeding tome, taking back what he had said in the first. He studied, reflected, rewrote, and then waited patiently for years before he committed his mature judgment to the perpetuity of print. Long before Ruskin's first volume appeared, Töpffer's "Réflexions et Menus Propos" had commanded the admiration of the best writers and artists of the Continent. As an æsthetic and philosophic work, it is of the highest value. Pearls of thought and beauty are dropped on every side. It is relieved by fanciful episodes; and yet the whole book starts from and plays around a stick of India ink! It is not merely a volume in which the professional artist can gain great advantage, but one by which the general reader is fascinated as well as instructed. The former may discern its scope and its importance in the felicity with which Töpffer illustrates the true aim of Art, as being the expression, the idealization, and not the rigid copy of Nature. He maintains that Nature should be the only teacher, and that we are to be wedded to no man's mannerism.