CHAPTER II

Alfred Johannot

The first who appears to me, because he was the first who left us, is pale and sad as he was when living. His hair is cut short, his forehead is prominent, his glance is both gloomy and gentle beneath his thick eyebrows, the moustache and beard are russet-brown, the face long and melancholy. His name is Alfred Johannot, and he has been dead now for sixteen years.

Come, brother! come nearer to me; it is I, a friend who calls thee. Speak, tell, in the tongue of the dead, of thy youth and glorious life, and I will repeat it in the language of the living. Spirits of the night, silence even the shaking of your moth-like wings, that all may be still; even thou, too, O Night--silence, dumb son of darkness! The dead speak low, but I will speak aloud. We have all seen him, young men of twenty-five, men of forty, old men of seventy. Was he not indeed such as I have described him to be? Now, here is his biography.

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He was born with the century, in 1800; with the spring, on 21 March; he was born in the grand-duchy of Hesse, in the little town of Offenbach, upon the banks of the charming river beloved of fishermen and water-sprites, which men call the Mein, which has its source in Bavaria and which empties itself in the Rhine opposite Mayence. His father was a wealthy merchant of Frankfort, and his ancestors were Protestants whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had compelled to take shelter in foreign countries. After a stay of several years in Lyons, M. Johannot, the father, founded at Frankfort the first great silk factory. Trade, when it reaches the pitch to which he carried it, rises to the elevation of poetry; besides, he was an excellent painter of flowers and spent his life among artists. In 1806, M. Johannot was ruined and came to settle in Paris. This upheaval, though sad for the parents, was a happy one for Alfred. Every change and all excitement amuses childhood. His mother, who adored him, endeavoured to educate him herself; from thence, perhaps, came that which throughout his life people took for melancholy, and which was merely the modest sensitiveness of a heart entirely moulded by a woman's hand.

Alfred Johannot was eight years old when they took him to the Louvre the first time. You who read these lines will remember the Louvre under the Empire? It was the rendezvous of all the finest things in the world; every masterpiece seemed to have the right to be there, and appeared to be only at home there. He was astounded, deeply moved, dazzled. He went in a child, without any vocation: he came out adolescent and a painter. On his return home, he took to his pencil and never left it again. He had a brother, a clever engraver, Charles Johannot, who died before he did, also young like him, alas! The age of the three brothers at the time of the death of each scarcely reached that of a mature man. This brother lent him his artist's card of admission to the Louvre and, under the protection of his brother's name, he was able to work there. When they wanted to punish him cruelly they said to him: "Alfred, you shall not go to the Louvre to-morrow." When he was in the Louvre he lived no longer, he did not exist, he was absorbed in his work, and it was in that that he lived and had his being.

One day, alone with his thoughts, as was his habit, genius encouraging him with those sweet whispered words which keep the eyes and lips of youth always in a smile, he was copying a Raphael, when he felt a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. He turned round and stood confounded. In the centre of a circle of officers in military dress and courtiers in court dress, he stood alone by the side of a man in a very simple uniform. The hand which this man had lightly placed on his shoulder, when pressed on the far ends of the earth made the world reel: it was the hand of Napoleon.

"Courage, my friend!" a voice, almost as soft as a woman's, said to him.

It was the voice of the Emperor. Then the wonderful man went away, leaving the child pale, dumb, trembling and almost breathless; but, as he moved away, he inquired who the child was. A secretary stayed behind from the Emperor's suite, came to Alfred, asked him his name and where his parents lived, then rejoined the brilliant group, which disappeared into a neighbouring room.

Some days afterwards, Alfred Johannot's father was appointed inspector of the library at Hamburg, then a French town. The whole family set out for this destination and Alfred was not to see Paris again until 1818. He was never to see the Emperor again; but the recollection of the scene we have just described remained deeply engraved on the child's memory. I remember one evening, the evening on which he himself told me the story--it was in my rooms--he took up a pen and paper and drew a pen-and-ink sketch of the scene. I never saw a finer portrait of Napoleon, more dignified, greater or more gentle, I will even say more fatherly. In Alfred's thoughts, the Emperor remained as in 1810, beautiful, radiant and victorious!

In default of good masters, the child found excellent engravers at Hamburg; this is the reason that, as a young man, he preferred at first graving tools to the paint brush. He was thirteen when disaster overtook the Empire. The enemy laid siege to Hamburg; and Hamburg made up its mind to resist to the very last and, indeed, its defence was a celebrated one.

Alfred three times only just escaped death: by a bullet, by starvation and by typhus fever! One day, when he was on the ramparts, a bullet flew by two yards from him, a little nearer and it would have been the end of him; but he was spared. It was a different matter with starvation and, above all, in the matter of typhus! Hunger weakened his digestion, typhus burned up his blood: hence, the paleness of his cheeks and the fever in his eyes: he died in 1837 from the effects of the famine and fever of 1813.

The whole family, as we have said, returned to Paris in 1818 and settled near Charles, who then did one of his wonderful engravings, _Le Trompette blessé,_ by Horace Vernet. The poor people were totally ruined. It was essential that the children they had nourished should, in their turn, look after those who had nourished them.

Alfred set to work at first to make engravings for confectioners and to illuminate images of the saints. This lasted for seven years. It was Charles who brought in the larger contribution to the common purse. He died in 1825, just the same age as was Alfred when he died, thirty-seven. God permitted that, from henceforth, Alfred's powers should increase, on account of the burden which this misfortune laid upon him. A young brother and aged parents--these were the responsibilities which the death of his brother left him!

The world does not sufficiently recognise the story of those saintly struggles of filial love against poverty, but I shall tell the story again and again!

Alfred's life was a strange one! He had no youth and was not to have an old age. The furrows of mature age, which line the careworn brow of the thinker, were engraved upon him by starvation when he was thirteen, by exile and by fatigue they were continued when he was eighteen, and poverty took up the task when he was twenty-five.

"Did you, who knew him, ever see him smile?"

"No." And yet this gravity had nothing in it of the melancholy of disgust or of despair; it was the calm of resignation.

The first plate which he published--for he began by devoting himself to engraving: feeling himself to be feeble he sought some support on which to lean--was that of Scheffer's _Orphelins._ This publication brought him the patronage of Gérard. In the first instance, this master entrusted him with a scene from _Ourika,_ then the reproduction of his great picture of _Louis XIV. présentant Philippe V. aux ambassadeurs d'Espagne._ From that moment Alfred Johannot became known. It was the period when English publications introduced the taste for illustrations into France. Since Moreau, junior, who had admirably reproduced the pictures of the age of Louis XIV., and particularly those of the time of Louis XV., there was not a more distinguished engraver in France than Alexandre Desenne. Alfred went to him and asked to be allowed to study under his direction. Genius is simple, kind and friendly: Desenne gave him excellent advice. Then Desenne died, and the only well-known engraver who was left was Achille Devéria--You knew that fine intellect? that fecund producer, who, having to choose between genius, which leaves people to die of hunger, and talent, which can support a family, tore himself weeping from the disconsolate embraces of genius, flinging in its arms as a substitute his brother Eugène. Some day I will tell his story as I am telling Alfred's, and I will compel the jeering and ungrateful world to bow its head before the pious son, the industrious father, who, by working sixteen hours a day, kept a whole family in comfort.

O Devéria, how noble wert thou in God's sight when thou didst deny thyself the chance of becoming as great in the eyes of men as thou couldst have been!

But, soon, Devéria left painting and engraving for lithography. Then, Alfred assumed the first position in book illustration, which his brother was soon to share and to whom he abandoned it altogether when he was dying.

During all this time, Tony had been growing up under the protection of that friendship which had in it both the intimacy of brotherhood and the protective tenderness of fatherhood. And, from the time when the young life became connected with that of Alfred, there was no separation: the figurative phrases about ivy and elms, creepers and oaks, would seem to have been conceived with these two artists in view. One day, death broke down the eldest; but the survivor was left, with his roots springing from the grave of the one who was dead. For, indeed, from the moment when they joined forces together, they kept the same step and pace, until it was impossible to say which was ahead of the other. Tony blended into Alfred, became an engraver with the engraver, designer and painter with the designer and painter, forming the unique spectacle of a triple fraternity of blood, mind and talent. It was not as on the playbills of a theatre, where the name of the oldest in art precedes that of the younger: one as often spoke of Alfred and Tony as of Tony and Alfred. Like the inseparable Siamese twins, a moment came when they themselves wished to separate, but could not do so. And thus, for ten years, the history of one is that of the other. One can no more separate this history than, one league from Lyons, one can separate the Saône from the Rhone; or, a league from Mayence, the Moselle from the Rhine. When they depended on one another they felt themselves to be strong. It was no longer the drawings of others that they engraved, but their own. Aquafortis engraving became their favourite process; and it was at this time that the vignettes of Walter Scott, of Cooper and of Byron appeared. All the great literary names bore their signature. There is little poetry scattered over the world the illustrations to which have not been traced by their graving tools.

Then, marvellous to relate, each of them dreamed of still greater glory; from copyists, they became engravers; from engravers, they decided to make themselves painters. It was no longer from designs that they executed their aquafortis work: it was after the charming little pictures in the Salon of 1831--so remarkable that we returned two or three times to see them--that they exhibited their plates, which were placed, I recollect, in the embrasure of a window of the great gallery to the left. There were twenty-four compositions. From that moment, each became both artist and engraver at one and the same time.

Let us follow Alfred; we shall return to Tony later. In 1831 Alfred did his first great easel painting: _L'Arrestation de Jean Crespière_. This was a success. The same year he finished _Don Juan naufragé_ and a scene from _Cinq-Mars_.

In 1832 and 1833 he produced _L'Annonce de la Victoire de Hastenbeck_ for King Louis-Philippe's gallery, and _L'Entrée de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, pendant la Fronde, à Orléans_; in 1834, _François Ier et Charles Quint_; in 1835, _Le Courrier Vernet saigne et pause par le roi Louis-Philippe, Henri II., Catherine de Médicis et leurs enfants_; in 1836, _Marie Stuart quittant l'Écosse,--Anne d'Este, Duchesse de Guise se présentant à la cour de Charles IX.,--Saint Martin_,--and _La bataille de Saint-Jacques_.

But during the last two years nature had been exhausted in Alfred; he succumbed under a final effort. He recognised his condition, and knew that when the finger of time pointed to the early months of the winter of 1837 the hour of eternity would strike for him. So the last eighteen months of his life are prodigious in activity: pictures, vignettes, water-colours, aquafortis, wood-engravings, pencil sketches, pen-and-ink drawings, he undertook everything, hurried on and carried all through. A lifetime would scarcely have been enough to finish what he had begun, and he only had a few months!

In the midst of this feverish output, this agonising productiveness, he received a letter from Mannheim. It was from his sister; his father was ill and desired to see him. He announced his departure; it was in vain for people to tell him that, however seriously ill his father might be, his father was not so ill as he was himself; that the old man had longer to live than the young man: he did not listen to anything; his father called for him and he felt he must go! He went, he remained absent three months from Paris and returned late in November. His father was out of danger; but he was dying. On 7 December 1837, he died, with his sketches, tools and vignettes on his bed and his eyes fixed on his unfinished pictures!

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The phantom has just ceased speaking. Then, turning in its direction I said to it: It was so, brother, was it not? Have I translated thy words well? But I saw nothing more than a white vapour which faded away, I heard nothing but a faint sigh, which was lost in the air after having articulated the word "Yes!"