Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands - Vol. 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  This house pertains to the government, and is held by M. Belloc in virtue of his situation as director of the Imperial School of Design, to which institution about one half of it is devoted. A public examination is at hand, in preparing for which M. Belloc is heart and soul engaged. This school is a government provision for the gratuitous instruction of the working classes in art. I went into the rooms where the works of the scholars are arranged for the inspection of the judges. The course of instruction is excellent—commencing with the study of nature. Around the room various plants are growing, which serve for models, interspersed with imitations in drawing or modelling, by the pupils. I noticed a hollyhock and thistle, modelled with singular accuracy. As some pupils can come only at evening, M. Belloc has prepared a set of casts of plants, which he says are plaster daguerreotypes. By pouring warm gelatine upon a leaf, a delicate mould is made, from which these casts are taken. He showed me bunches of leaves, and branches of the vine, executed by them, which were beautiful. In like manner the pupil commences the study of the human figure, with the skeleton, which he copies bone by bone. Gutta percha muscles are added in succession, till finally he has the whole form. Besides, each student has particular objects given him to study for a certain period, after which he copies them from memory. The same course is pursued with prints and engravings.

  When an accurate knowledge of forms is gained, the pupil receives lessons in combination. Such subjects as these are given: a vase of flowers, a mediaeval or classic vase, shields, Helmets, escutcheons, &c., of different styles. The first prize composition was a hunting frieze, modelled, in which were introduced fanciful combinations of leaf and scroll work, dogs, hunters, and children. Figures of almost every animal and plant were modelled; the drawings and modellings from memory were wonderful, and showed, in their combination, great richness of fancy. Scattered about the room were casts of the best classic figures of the Louvre, placed there, as M. Belloc gracefully remarked, not as models, but as inspirations, to cultivate the sense of beauty.

  I was shown, moreover, their books of mathematical studies, which looked intricate and learned, but of which I appreciated only the delicate chirography. “And where,” said I, “are these young mechanics taught to read and write?” “In the brothers' schools,” he said. Paris is divided into regular parishes, centring round different churches, and connected with each church is a parochial school, for boys and girls, taught by ecclesiastics and nuns.

  With such thorough training of the sense of beauty, it may be easily seen that the facility of French enthusiasm in aesthetics is not, as often imagined, superficial pretence. The nerves of beauty are so exquisitely tuned and strung that they must thrill at every touch.

  One sees this, in French life, to the very foundation of society. A poor family will give, cheerfully, a part of their bread money to buy a flower. The idea of artistic symmetry pervades every thing, from the arrangement of the simplest room to the composition of a picture. At the chateau of Madame V. the whiteheaded butler begged madame to apologize for the central flower basket on the table. He “had not had time to study the composition.”

  The English and Americans, seeing the French so serious and intent on matters of beauty, fancy it to be mere affectation. To be serious on a barrel of flour, or a bushel of potatoes, we can well understand; but to be equally earnest in the adorning of a room or the “composition” of a bouquet seems ridiculous. But did not He who made the appetite for food make also that for beauty? and while the former will perish with the body, is not the latter immortal? With all New England's earnestness and practical efficiency, there is a long withering of the soul's more ethereal part,—a crushing out of the beautiful,—which is horrible. Children are born there with a sense of beauty equally delicate with any in the world, in whom it dies a lingering death of smothered desire and pining, weary starvation. I know, because I have felt it.—One in whom this sense has long been repressed, in coming into Paris, feels a rustling and a waking within him, as if the soul were trying to unfold her wings, long unused and mildewed. Instead of scorning, then, the lighthearted, mobile, beauty-loving French, would that we might exchange instructions with them—imparting our severer discipline in religious lore, accepting their thorough methods in art; and, teaching and taught, study together under the great Master of all.

  I went with M. Belloc into the gallery of antique sculpture. How wonderful these old Greeks I What set them out on such a course, I wonder—anymore, for instance, than the Sandwich Islanders? This reminds me to tell you that in the Berlin Museum, which the King of Prussia is now finishing in high style, I saw what is said to be the most complete Egyptian collection in the world; a whole Egyptian temple, word for word—pillars, paintings, and all; numberless sarcophagi, and mummies ad nauseam! They are no more fragrant than the eleven thousand virgins, these mummies! and my stomach revolts equally from the odor of sanctity and of science.

  I saw there a mummy of a little baby; and though it was black as my shoe, and a disgusting, dry thing, nevertheless the little head was covered with fine, soft, auburn hair. Four thousand years ago, some mother thought the poor little thing a beauty. Also I saw mummies of cats, crocodiles, the ibis, and all the other religious bijouterie of Egypt, with many cases of their domestic utensils, ornaments, &c.

  The whole view impressed me with quite an idea of barbarism; much more so than the Assyrian collection. About the winged bulls there is a solemn and imposing grandeur; they have a mountainous and majestic nature. These Egyptian things give one an idea of inexpressible ungainliness. They had a clumsy, elephantine character of mind, these Egyptians. There was not wanting grace, but they seemed to pick it up accidentally; because among all possible forms some must be graceful. They had a kind of grand, mammoth civilization, gloomy and goblin. They seem to have floundered up out of Nile mud, like that old, slimy, pre-Adamite brood, the what's-their-name—megalosaurus, ichthyosaurus, pterodactyle, iguanodon, and other misshapen abominations, with now and then wreaths of lotus and water lilies round their tusks.

  The human face, as represented in Assyrian sculptures, is a higher type of face than even the Greek: it is noble and princely; the Egyptian faces are broad, flat, and clumsy. If Egypt gave birth to Greece, with her beautiful arts, then truly this immense, clumsy roc's egg hatched a miraculous nest of loves and graces.

  Among the antiques here, my two favorites are Venus de Milon, which I have described to you, and the Diane Chasseresse: this goddess is represented by the side of a stag; and so completely is the marble made alive, that one seems to perceive that a tread so airy would not bend a flower. Every side of the statue is almost equally graceful. The small, proud head is thrown back with the freedom of a stag; there is a gay, haughty self-reliance, an airy defiance, a rejoicing fulness of health and immortal youth in the whole figure. You see before you the whole Greek conception of an immortal—a creature full of intellect, full of the sparkle and elixir of existence, in whom the principle of life seems to be crystallized and concentrated with a dazzling abundance; light, airy, incapable alike of love and of sympathy; living for self, and self only. Alas for poor souls, who, in the heavy anguish of life, had only such goddesses to go to! How far in advance is even the idolatry of Christianity! how different the idea of Mary from the Diana!

  Yet, as I walked up and down among these remains of Greek art, I could not but wonder at the spectacle of their civilization: no modern development reproduces it, nor ever can or will. It is well to cherish and make much of that ethereal past, as a specimen of one phase of humanity, for it is past forever. Those isles of Greece, with their gold and purple haze of light and shadow, their exquisite, half-spiritual, half-bodily formation—islands where flesh and blood became semi-spiritual, and where the sense of beauty was an existence—have passed as a vision of glory, never to return. One scarcely realizes how full of poetry was their mythology; all successive ages have drawn on it for images of beauty without exhausting it; and painters and artists, to this day, are fetter
ed and repressed by vain efforts to reproduce it. But as a religion for the soul and the heart, all this is vain and void; all powerless to give repose or comfort. One who should seek repose on the bosom of such a mythology is as one who seeks to pillow himself on the many-tinted clouds of evening; soft and beautiful as they are, there is nothing real to them but their dampness and coldness.

  Here M. and Madame Belloc entered, and as he wanted my opinion of the Diane, I let her read this part of the letter to him in French. You ought to have seen M. Belloc, with tears in his eyes, defending the old Greeks, and expounding to me, with all manner of rainbow illustrations, the religious meanings of Greek mythology, and the morale of Greek tragedy. Such a whole souled devotion to a nation dead and gone could never be found but in France.

  Madame Belloc was the translator of Maria Edgeworth by that lady's desire; corresponded with her for years, and still has many of her letters. Her translation of Uncle Tom has to me all the merit and all the interest of an original composition. In perusing it I enjoy the pleasure of reading the story with scarce any consciousness of its ever having been mine. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall called. They are admirably matched—he artist, she author. The one writes stories, the other illustrates them. Madame M. also called. English by birth, she is a true Parisienne, or, rather, seems to have both minds, as she speaks both languages, perfectly. Her husband being a learned Oriental scholar, she, like some other women enjoying similar privileges, has picked up a deal of information, which she tosses about in conversation, in a gay, piquant manner, much as a kitten plays with a pin ball.

  Madame remembers Mesdames Recamier and De Stael, and told me several funny anecdotes of the former. Madame R., she said, was always coquetting with her own funeral; conversed with different artists on the arrangements of its details, and tempting now one, now another, with the brilliant hope of the “composition” of the scene. Madame M. offered me her services as cicerone to Paris, and so to-day out we went—first to the Pantheon, of which, in her gay and piquant style, she gave me the history.

  Begun first in the time of Louis XVI. as a church, in the revolution its destination was altered, and it was to be a temple to the manes of great men, and accordingly Rousseau, Voltaire, and many more are buried here. Well, after the revolution, the Bourbons said it should not be a temple for great men, it should be a church. The next popular upset tipped it back to the great men again; and it staid under their jurisdiction until Louis Napoleon, who is very pious, restored it to the church. It is not possible to say how much further this very characteristic rivalry between great men and their Creator is going to extend. All I have to say is, that I should not think the church much of an acquisition to either party. He that sitteth in the heavens must laugh sometimes at what man calls worship. This Pantheon is, as one might suppose from its history, a hybrid between a church and a theatre, and of course good for neither—purposeless and aimless. The Madeleine is another of these hybrid churches, begun by D'Ivry as a church, completed as a temple to victory by Napoleon, and on second thoughts, re-dedicated to God.

  After strolling about a while, the sexton, or some official of the church, asked us if we did not want to go down into the vaults below. As a large party seemed to be going to do the same, I said, “0, yes, by all means; let us see it out.” Our guide, with his cocked hat and lantern, walked ahead, apparently in a now of excellent spirits. These caverns and tombs appeared to be his particular forte, and he magnified his office in showing them. Down stairs we went, none of us knowing what we wanted to see, or why. Our guide steps forth, unlocks the gate? of Hades, and we enter a dark vault with a particularly earthy smell. Bang! he shuts the door after him. Clash! he locks it; now we are in for it! and elevating his lantern, he commences a deafening proclamation of some general fact concerning the very unsavory place in which we find ourselves. Of said proclamation I hear only the thundering “Voila” at the commencement. Next he proceeds to open the doors of certain stone vaulted chambers, where the great men are buried, between whose claims and their Creator's there seems to be such an uncertainty in France. Well, here they were, sure enough, maintaining their claim by right of possession.

  “Voila le tombeau de Rousseau!” says the guide. All walked in piously, and stood to see a wooden tomb painted red. At one end the tomb is made in the likeness of little doors, which stand half open, and a hand is coming out of them holding a flambeau, by which it is intimated, I suppose, that Rousseau in his grave is enlightening the world. After a short proclamation here, we were shown into another stone chamber with “Voila le tombeau de Voltaire!” This was of wood also, very nicely speckled and painted to resemble some kind of marble. Each corner of the tomb had a tragic mask on it, with that captivating expression of countenance which belongs to the tragic masks generally. There was in the room a marble statue of Voltaire, with that wiry, sharp, keen, yet somewhat spiteful expression which his busts commonly have.

  But our guide has finished his prelection here, and is striding off in the plenitude of his wisdom. Now we are shown a long set of stone apartments, provided for future great men. Considering the general scarcity of the article in most countries, these sleeping accommodations are remarkably ample. Nobody need be discouraged in his attempts at greatness in Paris, for fear at last there won't be room to bury him. After this we were marched to a place where our guide made a long speech about a stone in the floor—very instructive, doubtless, if I had known what it was: my Parisian friend said he spoke with such a German accent she could not understand; so we humbly took the stone on trust, though it looked to the eye of sense quite like any other.

  Then we were marched into a part of the vault celebrated for its echo. Our guide here outdid himself; first we were commanded to form a line en militaire with our backs to the wall. Well, we did form en militaire. I did it in the innocence of my heart, entirely ignorant of what was to come next. Our guide, departing from that heroic grandeur of manner which had hitherto distinguished him, suddenly commenced screaming and hooting in a most unparalleled style. The echo was enough to deafen one, to be sure, and the first blast of it made us all jump. I could think of nothing but Apollyon amusing himself at the expense of the poor pilgrims in the valley of the shadow of death; for the exhibition was persisted in with a pertinacity inscrutable to any wisdom except his own. It ended by a brace of thumps on the wall, each of which produced a report equal to a cannon; and with this salvo of artillery the exhibition finished.

  This worthy guide is truly a sublime character. Long may he live to show the Pantheon; and when he dies, if so disagreeable an event must be contemplated, may he have the whole of one of these stone chambers to himself; for nothing less could possibly contain him. He regretted exceedingly that we could not go up into the dome; but I had had enough of stair climbing at Strasbourg, Antwerp, and Cologne, and not even the prospect of enjoying his instructions could tempt me.

  Now this Pantheon seems to me a monument of the faults and the weakness of this very agreeable nation. Its history shows their enthusiasm, their hero worship, and the want of stable religious convictions. Nowhere has there been such a want of reverence for the Creator, unless in the American Congress. The great men of France have always seemed to be in confusion as to whether they made God or he made them. There is a great resemblance in some points between the French and the ancient Athenians: there was the same excitability; the same keen outward life; the same passion for ideas; the same spending of life in hearing or telling some new thing; the same acuteness of philosophical research. The old Athenians first worshipped, and then banished their great men,—buried them and pulled them up, and did generally a variety of things which we Anglo-Saxons should call fantastic. There is this difference, that the Athenians had the advantage of coming first. The French nation, born after this development, are exposed by their very similarity of conformation, and their consequent sympathy with the old classic style of feeling, to become imitators. This betrays itself in their painters and sculptors, a
nd it is a constant impulse to a kind of idolatry, which is not in keeping with this age, and necessarily seems absurd. When the Greeks built altars to Force, Beauty, Victory, and other abstract ideas, they were doing an original thing. When the French do it, they imitate the Greeks. Apotheosis and hero worship in the old times had a freshness to it; it was one of the picturesque effects of the dim and purple shadows of an early dawning, when objects imperfectly seen are magnified in their dimensions; but the apotheosis, in modern times, of a man who has worn a dress coat, wig, and shoes is quite another affair.

  I do not mean either to say, as some do, that the French mind has very little of the religious element. The very sweetest and softest, as well as the most austere and rigid type of piety has been given by the French mind; witness Fenelon and John Calvin—Fenelon standing as the type of the mystic, and Calvin of the rationalistic style of religion. Fenelon, with his heart so sweet, so childlike, so simple and tender, was yet essentially French in his nature, and represented one part of French mind; and what English devotional writer is at all like him? John Newton had his simplicity and lovingness, but wanted that element of gracefulness and classic sweetness which gave so high a tone to the writings of Fenelon. As to Calvin, his crystalline clearness of mind, his calm, cold logic, his severe vehemence are French, also. To this day, a French system of theology is the strongest and most coercive over the strongest of countries—Scotland and America; and yet shallow thinkers flippantly say the French are incapable of religious ideas.

  After Madame M. and I had finished the Pantheon we drove to the Conciergerie; for I wanted to see the prison of the hapless Marie Antoinette. That restless architectural mania, which never lets any thing alone here, is rapidly modernizing it; the scaffoldings are up, and workmen busy in making it as little historical as possible. Nevertheless, the old, gloomy arched gateway, and the characteristic peaked Norman towers, still remain; and we stopped our carriage the other side of the Seine, to get a good look at it. We drove to the door, and tried to go in, but were told that we could not without an order from somebody or other. (I forget who;) so we were obliged to content ourselves with an outside view.