This appeal has not been without effect. There appears in the Monde, from the pen of M. Léon Gautier, the author of several pious and learned works, a Letter “Against Certain Pictures,” addressed “to the president of the Conference of T——,” in which the absurdity of these silly compositions is attacked with much spirit and good sense. The Semaine Religieuse de Paris reproduces this letter, with an entreaty to its readers to enroll themselves in the crusade therein preached by the eminent writer—a crusade the opportuneness of which must be only too evident to every thoughtful and religious mind. M. Léon Gautier writes as follows:
You have requested me, dear friend, to purchase for you a “gross” of little pictures for distribution among your poor and their children.…
As to the selection of these pictures I must own myself greatly perplexed, and must beg to submit to you very humbly my difficulties, and not only my difficulties, but also my distress, and, to say the truth, my indignation. I have before my eyes at this moment four or five hundred pictures which have been sold to me as “pious,” but which I consider as in reality among the most detestable and irreverent of any kind of merchandise. A great political journal the other day gave to one of its leaders the title of L’Ecœurement.[170] I cannot give a title to my letter, but, were it possible to do so, I should choose this one in preference to any other. I am in the unfortunate state of a man who has swallowed several kilograms of adulterated honey. I am suffering from an indigestion of sugar; and what sugar! Whilst in the act of buying these little horrors, I beheld numberless purchasers succeed each other with feverish eagerness in the shops, which I will not specify. Yes, I had the pain of meeting there with Christian Brothers and with Sisters of Charity, who made me sigh by their simple avidity and ingenuous delight at the sight of these frightful little black or rose-colored prints. They bought them by hundreds, by thousands, by ten thousands; for schools, for orphanages, for missions. Ah! my dear friend, how many souls are going to be well treacled in our hapless world! It is the triumph of confectionery. “Why are you choosing such machines as these?” I asked of the good Brother Theodore, whom, to my great astonishment, I found among the purchasers; “they are disagreeable.” “Agreed.” “They are stupid.” “I know it.” “They are dear.” “My purse is only too well aware of the fact.” “Then why do you buy them?” “Because I find that these only are acceptable.” And thereupon the worthy man told me that he had the other day distributed among his children pictures taken from the fine head of our Saviour attributed to Morales—a chef-d’œuvre. The children, however, perceiving that there was no gilding upon them, had thrown them aside, gaping. Decidedly, the evil is greater than I had supposed, and it is time to consider what is to be done.
In spite of all this, I have bought your provision of pictures; but do not be uneasy—I am keeping them myself, and will proceed to describe them to you. I do not wish that the taste of your beloved poor should be vitiated by the sight of these mawkish designs; but I will take upon myself to analyze them for your benefit, and then see if you are not very soon as indignant as myself.
In the first place we have the “symbolical” pictures, and these are the most numerous of all. I do not want to say too much against them. You know in what high estimation I hold true symbolism, and we have many a time exchanged our thoughts on this admirable form of the activity of the human mind. A symbol is a comparison between things belonging to the physical and things belonging to the immaterial world. Now, these two worlds are in perfect harmony with each other. To each phenomenon of the moral order there corresponds exactly a phenomenon of the visible order. If we compare these two facts with each other, we have a symbol. There is a life, a breath, a whiteness, which are material. Figurative language is nothing else than a vast and wonderful symbolism, and you remember the marvellous things written on this subject by the lamented M. Landriot. In the supernatural order it is the same, and all Christian generations have made use of symbolism to express the most sacred objects of their adoration. There has been the symbolism of the Catacombs; there has been also that of the Middle Ages. The two, although not resembling, nevertheless complete, each other, and eloquently attest the fact that the Christian race has never been without the use of symbols.
Thus it is not symbolism which I condemn, but this particular symbolism of which I am about to speak, and which is so odiously silly. I write to you with the proofs before me. I am not inventing, but, mirror-wise, merely reflecting. I am not an author, but a photographer.
Firstly, here we have a ladder, which represents “the way of the soul towards God.” This is very well, although moderately ideal; but then who is mounting this ladder? You would never guess. It is a dove! Yes; the poor bird is painfully climbing up the rounds as if she were a hen getting back to roost, and apparently forgetting that she owns a pair of wings. But we shall find this dove elsewhere; for our pictures are full of the species, and are in fact a very plentifully-stocked dove-cote. I perceive down there another animal; it is a roe with her fawn, and with amazement I read this legend: “The fecundity of the breast of the roe is the image of the abundance and sweetness of grace.” Why was the roe selected, and why roe’s milk? Strange! But here again we have a singular collection. On a heart crowned with roses is placed a candlestick (a candlestick on a heart!), and this candelabrum, price twenty-nine sous, is surmounted by a lighted candle, around which angels are pressing. This, we are told underneath, is “good example.” Does it mean that we are to set one for the blessed angels to follow? Next, what do I see here? A guitar; and this at the foot of the cross. Let us see what can be the reason of this mysterious assemblage; the text furnishes it: Je me délasserai à l’abri de la Croix—“I will refresh myself in the shelter of the cross”—from whence it follows that one can play the guitar upon Golgotha. Touching emblem! And what do you say of this other, in which our Saviour Jesus, the Word, and, as Bossuet says, the Reason and Interior Discourse of the Eternal Father, is represented as occupied in killing I know not what little insects on the leaves of a rose-bush? “The divine Gardener destroys the caterpillars which make havoc in his garden,” says the legend. I imagine nothing, but merely transcribe, and for my part would gladly turn insecticide to this collection of imagerie.
This hand issuing out of a cloud I recognize as the hand of my Lord God, the Creator and Father of all, who is at the same time their comforter, their stay, and their life. I admit this symbol, which is ancient and truly Christian; but this divine hand, which the Middle Ages would most carefully have guarded against charging with any kind of burden; this hand, which represents Eternal Justice and Eternal Goodness—can you imagine what it is here made to hold? [Not even the fiery bolt which the heathen of old times represented in the grasp of their Jupiter Tonans, but] a horrible and stupid little watering-pot, from the spout of which trickles a driblet of water upon the cup of a lily. Further on I see the said watering-pot is replaced by a sort of jug, which the Eternal is emptying upon souls in the shape of doves; and this, the legend kindly informs me, is “the heavenly dew.” Heavenly dew trickling out of a jug! And there are individuals who can imagine and depict a thing like this when the beneficent Creator daily causes to descend from his beautiful sky those milliards of little pearly drops which sparkle in the morning sunshine on the fair mantle of our earth! Water, it must be owned, is scarcely a successful subject under any form with our picture-factors. Here is a poor and miserably-painted thread lifting itself up above a basin, while I am informed underneath that “the jet of water is the image of the soul lifting itself towards God by meditation.”
I also need to be enlightened as to how “a river turned aside from its course is an image of the good use and of the abuse of grace.” It is obscure, but still it does not vulgarize and debase a beautiful and Scriptural image, like the next I will mention, in which, over the motto, “Care of the lamp: image of the cultivation of grace in our hearts,” we have a servant-maid taking her great oily scissors and cutting the wick, of which she scatters the blackened fragments no matter where.
The quantity of ribbon and string used up by these symbol-manufacturers is something incalculable. Here lines of string unite all the hearts of the faithful (doves again!) to the heart of Our Blessed Lady; there Mary herself, the Immaculate One and our own incomparable Mother, from the height of heaven holds in leash, by an interminable length of string, a certain little dove, around the neck of which there hangs a scapular. This, we are told, means that “Mary is the directress of the obedient soul.” Elsewhere the string is replaced by pretty rose-colored or pale-blue ribbons, which have doubtless a delicious effect to those who can appreciate it. Here is a young girl walking along cheerfully enough, notwithstanding that her heart is tied by one of these elegant ribbons to that of the Blessed Mother of God, apparently without causing her the slightest inconvenience. Her situation, however, is, I think, less painful than that of this other young person, who is occupied in carving her own heart into a shape resembling that of Mary. Another young female has hoisted this much-tormented organ (her own) on an easel, and is painting it after the same pattern. But let us hasten out of this atelier to breathe the open air among these trees. Alas! we there find, under the form and features of an effeminate child of eight years old, “the divine Gardener putting a prop to a sapling tree,” or “grafting on the wild stock the germ of good fruits.” This is all pretty well; but what can be said of this ciborium which has been energetically stuck into a lily, with the legend, “I seek a pure heart”? These gentlemen, indeed, treat you to the Most Holy Eucharist with a free-and-easyness that is by no means fitting or reverent. It is forbidden to the hands of laics to touch the Sacred Vessels, and it is only just that the same prohibition should apply to picture-makers. They are entreated not to handle thus lightly and irreverently that which is the object of our faith, our hope, and our love.