We were going to say that the ideal state of art would be that all artists should be born rich; but, though that would have its advantages, it would perhaps take away from the dignity of art. Meyerbeer was born of a wealthy family, and Titian lived like a prince, but those are exceptions. Besides, Titian won his riches by his art, though his is a bad example to refer to, by the way, since he truckled very much to the prevalent taste of his gorgeous era. All artists who have touched the noblest chords of human nature have lived and died poor, and all artists in the future who care to emulate these giants of the past will have to resign themselves to a like poverty. Money, in these days—and perhaps, if we had lived in other days, we should have found it much the same then—means a compromise with principle. Those who are born with it can alone enjoy it unmolested, and, say what you will, they will always know how to enjoy it best. No one is so discriminating a patron of art and so considerate a friend of artists as the hereditary land-owner whose ancestors for generations were born to wealth and its duties; no one loves beauty so disinterestedly as one to whom the beautiful has never in any shape been a source of profit.
An aristocracy of birth and education is better fitted than one of wealth to appreciate the aristocracy of intellect; both are, in the purest sense of the word, a “privileged class,” and both ought to be actuated by the proud old motto: Noblesse oblige. Money can never be the test of the unseen; genius cannot be purchased, and art has no price. The heaviest equivalent ever paid for any work of art is but a drop in the ocean compared to the thing gained; for it is not the material you pay for—the canvas, the marble, or the painting; it is not even the artist’s time, though that is most precious; but it is the very soul of the man, the breath of his life, the essence of his being. What can ever be sufficient compensation for that? You can buy the expression of his thought, but his thought itself remains with him, so that his work is more his own than it is yours even after you have purchased it. His creations are his children, and belong to him by that inalienable right of paternity which no human law of sale and barter could possibly supersede.
After this, what are we to think of art? Simply that it is the most divine gift, in the natural order, vouchsafed to man, and entitles the artist to a place more exalted than that of any favorite of fortune, be he prince, noble, or merchant. When will the common world of rich men understand that? When will artists themselves ensure that it be not forgotten? That it is not merely a means of living, a bread-winning drudgery? It is a reflection of God, a ray of his creative power, a solace given to earth, a humanizing influence left among the barbarians of all times (for we are all barbarians in the long run, and saints and artists are the only civilized beings worth notice!) Let us, then, bow down our heads, and accept the dictation of art, rather than presume to impose our trivial conventionalities on one of God’s chosen messengers.
[MADAME JEANNETTE’S PAPERS.]
FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.
When I was a boy, I used to go every day after school to watch Jean-Pierre Coustel, the turner, at his work. He lived at the other end of the village. He was an old man, partly bald, with a queue hanging down his back, and his feet encased in old worn-out shoes. He used to love to talk of his campaigns on the Rhine and on the Loire in La Vendée. Then he would look at you and smile to himself. His little wife, Mme. Jeannette, sat spinning in the corner behind him; she had large black eyes, and her hair was so white that it looked like flax. I can see her now. She would sit there listening, and she would stop spinning whenever Jean-Pierre spoke of Nantes; it was there they were married in ‘93. Yes; I can see all these things as if it were yesterday: the two small windows overgrown with ivy; the three bee-hives on a board above the old worm-eaten door, the bees fluttering in the sunshine over the roof of the hovel; Jean-Pierre Coustel with his bent back turning bobbins or rods for chairs; the shavings winding themselves into the shape of corkscrews.... I can see it all!
And I can also see coming in the evenings Jacques Chatillon, the dealer in wood, with his rule under his arm, and his thick red whiskers; the forest-keeper, Benassis, with his game-bag on his hip and his hunting-cap over his ears; M. Nadasi, the bailiff, walking proudly, with his head up, and spectacles on his nose, his hands in his coat-pockets, as if to say: “I am Nadasi, and I carry the citations to the insolvent”; and then my Uncle Eustache, who was called “brigadier,” because he had served at Chamboran, and many others besides; without counting the wife of the little tailor Rigodin, who used to come after nine o’clock in search of her husband, in order to be invited to drink half a pint of wine—for, besides his trade of a turner, Jean-Pierre Coustel kept a wayside tavern. The branch of fir hung over the low door; and in winter, when it rained, or when the snow covered the window-panes, many liked to sit under the shelter of the old hut, and listen to the crackling of the fire, and the humming sound of Jeannette’s spinning-wheel, and the wind whistling out of doors through the street of the village.
For my part, I did not stir from my corner until Uncle Eustache, shaking out the ashes of his pipe, would say to me: “Come, François, we must be going.... Good-night all!...”