Part 8

A zigzaggery, indeed, was this journey from Nîmes to my Pyrenean valley. That metropolis of art and most heroic town, Montauban, I could not on any account miss. Toulouse necessarily had to be taken on the way to Ingres-ville, as I feel inclined to call the great painter's birthplace and apotheosis. But why write of Toulouse? The magnificent city, its public gardens, churches, superbly housed museums and art galleries, its promenades, drives and panoramas are all particularized by Murray, Joanne and Baedeker. Here, however, as elsewhere, are one or two features which do not come within the province of a guide-book.

The only city throughout France that welcomed the Inquisition was among the first to open a _Lycée pour jeunes filles._ In accordance with the acts of 1880-82 public day schools for girls were opened throughout France; that of Toulouse being fairly representative, I will describe my visit.

The school was now closed for the long vacation, but a junior mistress in temporary charge gave us friendliest welcome, and showed us over the building and annexes. She evidently took immense and quite natural pride in the little world within world of which she formed a part. Her only regret was that we could not see the scholars at work. Here may be noted the wide field thrown open to educated women by the above-named acts, from under-mistresses to _Madame la directrice_, the position being one of dignity and provision for life, pensions being the reward of long service.

The course of study is prepared by the rector of the Toulousain Academy, and the rules of management by the municipal council, thus the programme of instruction bears the signature of the former, whilst the prospectus, dealing with fees, practical details, is signed by the mayor in the name of the latter.

We find a decree passed by the town council in 1887 to the effect that in the case of two sisters a fourth of the sum-total of fees should be remitted, of three, a half, of four, three-quarters, and of five, the entire amount. Even the outfit of the boarders must be approved by the same authority. A neat costume is obligatory, and the number and material of undergarments is specified with the utmost minuteness. Besides a sufficient quantity of suitable clothes, each student must bring three pairs of boots, thirty pocket-handkerchiefs, a bonnet-box, umbrella, parasol, and so forth.

Such regulations may at first sight look trivial and unnecessary, but there is much to be said on the other side. From the beginning of the term to the end, the matron, whose province is quite apart from that of the head-mistress, is never worried about the pupils' dress, no shoes in need of repair, no garments to be mended, no letters to be written begging Mme. A. to send her daughter a warm petticoat, Mme. B. to forward a hair-brush, and so on. Again, the uniform obligatory on boarders prevents those petty jealousies and rivalries provoked by fine clothes in girls' schools. Alike the child of the millionaire and of the small official wear the same simple dress.

Children are admitted to the lower school between the ages of five and twelve, the classes being in the hands of certificated mistresses. The upper school, at which pupils are received from twelve years and upwards, and are expected to remain five years, offers a complete course of study, lady teachers being aided by professors of the Faculté des Lettres and of the Lycée for youths. Students who have remained throughout the entire period, and have satisfactorily passed final examinations, receive a certificate entitling them to admission into the great training college of Sèvres or to offer themselves as teachers in schools and families.

The curriculum is certainly modest compared with that obligatory on candidates for London University, Girton College, or our senior local examination; but it is an enormous improvement on the old conventual system, and several points are worthy of imitation. Thus a girl quitting the Lycée would have attained, first and foremost, a thorough knowledge of her own language and its literature; she would also possess a fair notion of French common law, of domestic economy, including needlework of the more useful kind, the cutting out and making up of clothes, and the like. Gymnastics are practised daily. In the matter of religion the municipality of Toulouse shows absolute impartiality. No sectarian teaching enters into the programme, but Catholics and Protestants and Jews in residence can receive instruction from their respective ministers.

The Lycée competes formidably with the convents as regards fees. Twenty-eight pounds yearly cover the expense of board, education, and medical attendance at the upper school; twenty-four at the lower; day boarders pay from twelve to fifteen pounds a year; books, the use of the school omnibus, and laundress being extras. Three hundred scholars in all attended during the scholastic year ending July 1891.

Day-pupils not using the school omnibus must be accompanied to and from the school, and here an interesting point is to be touched upon. In so far as was practicable, the Lycée for girls has been modelled on the plan of the time-honoured establishments for boys. As yet a uniform curriculum to begin with was out of the question; the programme is already too ambitious in the eyes of many, whilst ardent advocates of the higher education of women in France regret that the vices as well as the virtues of the existing system have been retained. Educationists and advanced thinkers generally would fain see a less strait-laced routine, a less stringent supervision, more freedom for play of character. The Lycée student, boy or girl, youth or maiden, is as strictly guarded as a criminal; not for a moment are these citizens of the future trusted to themselves.

In the vast dormitory of the high school here we see thirty neat compartments with partitions between, containing bed and toilet requisites, and at the extreme end of the room, commanding a view of the rest, is the bed of the under-mistress in charge, _surveillante_ as she is called. Sleeping or waking, the students are watched. This massing together of numbers and perpetual supervision no longer find universal favour.

But I am here writing of fifteen years ago. Doubtless were I to repeat my visit I should find progressive changes too numerous for detail. Happy little middle-class Parisians now run to and from their Lycées unattended. Young ladies in society imitate their Anglo-Saxon sisters and have shaken off that incubus, _la promeneuse_ or walking chaperon.

Works on social France, as is the case with almanacs, encyclopædias and the rest, require yearly revision. Manners and customs change no less quickly than headgear and skirts.

Charles Lamb would have lived ecstatically at the Languedocian capital. It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules Richepin's cherished _Gueux_. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation--your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses--is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear _Mendicity_. Scrips, wallets, bags, staves, dogs and crutches, the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are fast hasting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution."

No, here is what the best beloved of English humorists calls "the oldest and the honourablest form of pauperism," here his vision would have feasted on "Rags, the Beggars' robes and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public." "He is never out of fashion," adds Lamb, "or limpeth outwardly behind it. He is not required to wear court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances."

Here, too, would the unmatchable writer have gazed upon more than one "grand fragment, as good as an Elgin marble." And alas! many deformities more terrible still, and which, perhaps, would have damped even Lamb's ardour. For in the Toulouse of 1894, as in the London of sixty years before, its mendicants "were so many of its sights, its Lions." The city literally swarmed with beggars. At every turn we came upon some living torso, distorted limb and hideous sore. Begging seemed to be the accepted livelihood of cripples, blind folk and the infirm. Let us hope that by this time something better has been devised for them all. Was it here that Richepin partly studied the mendicant fraternity, giving us in poetry his astounding appreciation, psychological and linguistic? And perhaps the bard of the beggars, like the English humorist, would wish his _pauvres Gueux_ to be left unmolested.

The sights of Toulouse would occupy a conscientious traveller many days. The least leisurely should find time to visit the tiny square called _place du Salin_. Here took place the innumerable _autos-da-fé_ of the Toulousain Inquisition, and here, so late as 1618, the celebrated physician and scientist Vanini was atrociously done to death by that truly infernal tribunal, and for what? For simply differing from the obscurantism of his age, and having opinions of his own.

The atrocious sentence passed on Vanini was in part remitted, evidently public opinion already making itself felt. His tongue was cut out, but strangulation preceded the burning alive. Here one cannot help noting the illogical, the puerile--if such words are applicable to devilish wickedness--aspect of such Inquisitorial sentences. If these hounders-down of common-sense and the reasoning faculty really believed, as they affected to believe, that men who possessed and exercised both qualities were thereby doomed to eternal torments, why set up the horrible and costly paraphernalia of the Inquisition? After all, no matter how ingeniously inventive might be their persecutors, they could only be made to endure terminable and comparatively insignificant torments, not a millionth millionth fraction of eternity!

Refreshing it is to turn to the Toulouse of minstrelsy. The proud seat of the troubadours, the Academy of the Gay Science and of the poetic tourneys revived in our own day! Mistral's name has long been European, and other English writers have charmingly described the _Feux Floraux_ of the olden time and the society of _Lou Felibrige_ with its revival of Provençal literature. But forty years ago, and twenty years before his masterpiece had found a translator here, he was known and highly esteemed by a great Englishman.

In Mill's _Correspondence_ (1910) we find a beautiful letter, and written in fine stately French, from the philosopher to the poet, dated Avignon, October 1869.

Mill had sent Mistral the French translation of his essay, "The Subjection of Women," and in answer to the other's thanks and flattering assurance of his own conversion, he wrote: "Parmi toutes les adhésions qui ont été données à la thèse de mon petit livre, je ne sais s'il y en a aucune qui m'ont fait plus de plaisir que la vôtre."

The letter as a whole is most interesting, and ends with a characterization, a strikingly beautiful passage in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Hard were it to match this appreciation among orthodox writers.

So transparent is the atmosphere here that the Pyrenees appear within an hour's ride: they are in reality sixty miles off! Lovely are the clearly outlined forms, flecked with light and shadow, the snowy patches being perfectly distinct.

IX

MONTAUBAN, OR INGRES-VILLE

An hour by rail from Toulouse lies the ancient city of Montauban, as far as I know unnoticed by English tourists since Arthur Young's time. This superbly placed _chef-lieu_ of the Tarn and Garonne is alike an artistic shrine and a palladium of religious liberty. Here was born that strongly individualized and much contested genius, Dominique Ingres, and here Protestantism withstood the League, De Luyne's besieging army and the dragonnades of Louis XIV.

The city of Ingres may be thought of by itself; there is plenty of food for reflection here without recalling the prude whose virtue caused more mischief than the vices of all the Montespans and Dubarrys put together. Let us forget the Maintenon terror at Montauban, the breaking up of families, the sending to the galleys of good men and women, the torturings, the roastings alive, and turn to the delightful and soothing souvenirs of genius! Every French town that has given birth to shining talent is straightway turned into a Walhalla. This ancient town, so strikingly placed, breathes of Ingres, attracts the traveller by the magic of the painter's name, has become an art pilgrimage. The noble monument erected by the townsfolk to their great citizen and the picture-gallery he bequeathed his native city well repay a much longer journey than that from Toulouse. We see here to what high levels public spirit and local munificence can rise in France. We see also how close, after all, are the ties that knit Frenchman and Frenchman, how the glory of one is made the pride of all. The bronze statue of the painter, with the vast and costly bas-relief imitating his "Apotheosis of Homer" in the Louvre, stand in the public walk, the beauty of which aroused even Arthur Young's enthusiasm. "The promenade," he wrote in June 1787, "is finely situated. Built on the highest part of the rampart, and commanding that noble vale, or rather plain, one of the richest in Europe, which extends on one side to the sea and in front to the Pyrenees, whose towering masses heaped one upon another in a stupendous manner, and covered with snow, offer a variety of lights and shades from indented forms and the immensity of their projections. This prospect, which contains a semicircle of a hundred miles in diameter, has an oceanic vastness in which the eye loses itself; an almost boundless scene of cultivation; an animated but confused mass of infinitely varied parts, melting gradually into the distant obscure, from which emerges the amazing frame of the Pyrenees, rearing their silvered heads above the clouds."

The Ingres Museum contains, I should say, more works from the hand of a single master than were ever before collected under the same roof. Upwards of a thousand sketches, many of great power and beauty, are here, besides several portraits and one masterpiece, the Christ in the Temple, brilliant as a canvas of Holman Hunt, although the work of an octogenarian. The painter's easel, palette, and brushes, his violin, the golden laurel-wreath presented to him by his native town, and other relics are reverently gazed at on Sundays by artisans, soldiers and peasant-folk. The local museum in France is something more than a little centre of culture, a place in which to breathe beauty and delight. It is a school of the moral sense, of the nobler passions, and also a temple of fame. Therein the young are taught to revere excellence, and here the ambitious are stimulated by worthy achievement.

Ingres-ville recalls an existence stormy as the history of Montauban itself. This stronghold of reform throughout her vicissitudes did not show a bolder, more determined front to the foe than did her great citizen his own enemies and detractors. Dominique Ingres and his life-story favour those physicists who discern in native soil and surroundings the formative influences of aptitudes and character. The man and his birthplace matched each other. Indomitableness characterized both, and to understand both we must know something of their respective histories. To Montauban Henri Martin's great history does ample justice, to her illustrious son contemporary writers have recently paid worthy tributes.

[Footnote: See _Les Grands Artistes--Ingres_, par J. Mommeja, Paris, Laurens; _Le Roman d'amour de M. Ingres_, par H. Lapauze, Paris, Lafitte, 1911.]

"When a writer is praised above his merits in his own times," wrote Savage Landor, "he is certain of being estimated below them in the times succeeding." In the case of Ingres, opposition and contumely were followed by perhaps excessive laudation whilst he lived, after his death ensuing a long period of reaction. Time has now set the seal upon his fame. The great Montalbanais has been finally received into the national Walhalla.

The father of the so-called French Raphaël, writes his biographer, was not even a Giovanni Santi. Joseph Ingres, in the words of M. Momméja, was _un petit ornemaniste_, a fabricator of knick-knacks, turning out models in clay, busts in plaster, miniatures and other trifles for sale at country fairs. Who can say, this humble craftsman may yet have had much to do with his son's aspirations?

An inferior artist can appraise his masters. From the humble artificer and purveyor of bagatelles the youth not only imbibed a passion for art and technical knowledge: he inherited the next best thing to a calling, in other words, a love of music. From the palette throughout his long life Ingres would turn with never-abated enthusiasm to his adored violin.

The learned monograph above-named gives a succinct and judicial account of the painter's career. The second writer mentioned tells the story of his inner life; one, indeed, of perpetual and universal interest.

For to this sturdy young bourgeois early came a crisis. He found himself suddenly at the parting of the ways, on the one hand beckoning Conscience, on the other ambition in the flattering shape of Destiny. To which voice would he hearken? Would love and plighted troth overrule that insistent siren song, Vocation? Would he yield, as have done thousands of well-intentioned men and women before him, to self-interest and worldly wisdom? The problem to be solved by this brilliantly endowed artist just twenty-six--how many a historic parallel does it recall! What three words can convey so much pathos, heroism and generosity as "il gran riffiuto?"--the great renunciation. Does the French language contain a more touching record than that of the great Navarre's farewell to his Huguenot brethren? What bitter tears shed Jeanne d'Albret's son ere he could bring himself to sacrifice conscience on the altar of expediency and a great career!

At the age of twenty we find Dominique Ingres studying in Paris under David, then in his apogee.

The son of an obscure provincial, however promising, would hardly be overwhelmed with hospitalities; all the more welcome came the friendliness of an honourable magistrate and his wife, by name Forestier. During five years the young man had lived on terms of closest intimacy with these good folks, under his eyes growing up their only daughter.

Alas! poor Julie. Mighty, says Goethe, is the god of propinquity. On Dominique's part attachment seems to have come insensibly, as a matter of course and despite the precariousness of his position. M. Forestier encouraged the young man's advances. To Julie love for the brilliant winner of the Prix de Rome became an absorption, her very life. Not particularly endowed by Nature--we have her portrait in M. Momméja's volume--she described her own physiognomy as "not at all remarkable, but expressive of candour and goodness of heart." For Julie, as we shall see, turned her love-story into a little novel, only unearthed the other day by M. Lapauze.

The Prix de Rome meant, of course, a call to Rome, the worthy magistrate exacting from his prospective son-in-law a promise that in twelve months' time he would return. During that interval correspondence went on apace not only between the affianced lovers, but between M. Forestier and Ingres, the former taking affectionate and not uncritical interest in the other's projects. For Ingres was before all things a projector, anticipating by decades the achievements of his later years. The glow of enthusiasm, the fever of creativeness were at its height. Italy possessed Ingres' entire being when the crisis came.

After delays, excuses, pleadings, Julie's father lost patience. He would brook no further tergiversations. Ingres must choose between Italy and Paris; in other words, so the artist interpreted it, between art and marriage, a proud destiny or self-extinction.

Never had a young artist more completely fallen under the spell of Italy. The recall seemed a death-blow. "On my knees," he wrote to Julie, whom he really loved, "I implore you not to ask this. It is impossible for me to quit immediately a land so full of marvel."

But the practical M. Forestier would not give way. Ingres' persistence looked like folly, even madness in his eyes. The young man was with difficulty living from hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and prolonged self-reproach, _il gran riffiuto_ was made, youthful passion, worldly advantages--and plighted faith--were cast to the winds. Henceforth he would live for his palette only, defying poverty, detraction and fiercely antagonistic opinion; if failing in allegiance to others, at least remaining staunch to his first, best, highest self, his genius.

Julie, the third imperishable Julie of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, _Emma, ou la fiancée,_ ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither happiness nor inner peace."

Did that backsliding in early life disturb the great painter's stormy but dazzling career? Who can say? We learn that Ingres was twice, and, according to accredited reports, happily, married. His first wife, a humbly-born maiden from his native province, died in 1849, leaving the septuagenarian so desolate, helpless and stricken that kindly interveners set to work and re-married him. The second Mme. Ingres, although thirty years his junior, gave him, his biographer tells us, "that domestic peace and happiness of which for a brief space he had been deprived." Heaped with honours, named by Napoleon III. Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, Senator, Member of the Institut, Ingres died in 1869. Within a year of ninety, he was Dominique Ingres to the last, undertaking new works with the enthusiasm and vitality of Titian. A few days before his death he gave a musical party, favourite works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven being performed by skilled amateurs. His funeral was a veritable apotheosis, disciples, admirers and detractors swelling the enormous cortège.

Those who, like myself, have times without number contemplated the master's _opus magnum_ in the Louvre, and have studied his art as represented in the provincial museums, will quit the Musée Ingres with mixed feelings. It must occur to many that, perhaps, after all, _il gran riffiuto_ of opposite kind might have better served art and the artist's fame. Had he returned to France--and to Julie--at the stipulated period, the following eighteen years being spent not on Italian but on native soil, how different the result! Then of his work he could have said, as did Chantecler of his song--

"Mon chant Qui n'est pas de ces chants qu'on chante en cherchant Mais qu'on reçoit du sol natal comme une sève."

Would not most of us willingly give Ingres' greatest classical and historic canvases for one or two portraits, say that of Bertin, or, better still, for a group like that of the Stamiti family? What a portrait gallery he would have bequeathed, how would he have made the men and women of his time live again before us!