CHAPTER V

Tony Johannot

Grandville disappeared. Did he mount up to heaven on the rays of one of those stars with the faces of women, to whom he made love? Did he lie down to sleep in the tomb, to listen, during the sleep of death, to the growing of those women to whom he had given the stems of flowers? Oh! that is the great secret which the grave guards mysteriously, which death cannot tell life, which Hamlet asked fruitlessly of Yorick, of his father's ghost, of the interrupted song of Ophelia!

This secret my two dear and excellent friends who died on the same day--4 August 1852--Tony Johannot and Alfred d'Orsay, would assuredly have told me if it had been permitted to them. What poetry of sorrow could, then, be adequate to express the feelings of my heart the morning I woke to receive two such letters as these?

"MY DEAR FATHER,--Did you ever hear anything equal to this? I went to Tony Johannot's house yesterday with your letter, to ask him if he could undertake the vignettes for _Isaac Laquedem,_ and they said to me: 'Sir, he has just died!'

"Tony Johannot dead! I met him the day before yesterday and we made an appointment for to-day. Dead! This single syllable felt like the tolling of a bell. It awoke the same kind of vibration in my heart. Dead! Tony Johannot is dead! If people die like this, one ought never to leave those one loves. Come back at once to Paris or I shall start for Brussels.--Yours, "ALEX. DUMAS, _fils"_

"MY DEAR DUMAS,--Our well-beloved Alfred d'Orsay died this morning at four o'clock, in my arms laughing, talking, making plans and without any idea he was dying. One of the last names he uttered was yours, for one of his last projects was to renew the lease of your shooting, which he much enjoyed last year. The funeral will take place the day after to-morrow at Chambourcy. Come, if my letter reaches you in time! It would be a comfort to Agénor and to the Duchesse de Grammont to have you with them at such a time.--Yours affectionately, "CABARRUS"

Another time I will tell you the whole of d'Orsay's history, d'Orsay the gentleman, the man of fashion, the artist, and, above all, the man of kindly heart; and I shall certainly not have room in one chapter to do that. For the present, let us restrict ourselves to Tony Johannot, the one among the four dead men whose lives I am relating with whom I was the most intimate.

* * * * *

He was born in 1803, in the little town of Offenbach, as was his brother; I have given the history of his parents and of his early days in relating that of Alfred. He must, therefore, appear before our readers as a young man in the same frame as Alfred; it was in this way, indeed, that the _Artiste_ published them in its two excellent portraits of those twin-geniuses of art. Tony was delightful in those days, when about thirty years old: a clear, fresh complexion which a woman might have envied, short, curly hair, a dark moustache, small, but bright, intelligent and sparkling eyes, medium height in figure but wonderfully well-proportioned. Like Alfred, he was silent; but he was not as taciturn: his melancholy never went so far as depression: he was a man of few words and never launched out into a long sentence, but what he said always showed delicacy of perception and flashes of wit. Finally, his talent reflected his character like a mirror, and any one not knowing him could have formed a perfectly correct idea of him from his drawings, vignettes and pictures. The first time I saw him, if I remember rightly, was at the house of our dear good friend, Nodier. Nodier was very fond of both of the brothers. Tony brought a lovely water-colour to Marie Nodier. I can see it now: it represented a woman being murdered, either a Desdemona or a Vanina d'Ornano. It was meant for Marie's album. We drew together at once without hesitation, as if our two hearts had been in search of one another for twenty-five years; we were the same age, almost, he a little younger than I. I have related in these Memoirs that we went through the Rambouillet campaign side by side and that we returned from it together. A score of times he had tried to make a portrait sketch of me; a score of times he had erased the paper clean, rubbed off the wood, scratched the paint off the canvas, dissatisfied with his work. It was in vain I told him it was a good likeness.

"No," he said, "and no one could do it, any more than I can."

"Why so?"

"Because your face changes in expression every ten seconds. How can one make a likeness of a man who is not like himself?"

Then, to compensate me he would turn over his portfolios and give me a charming drawing of _Minna et Brenda,_ or a lovely sketch of the _Last of the Mohicans._

The chief merit of the character of Tony Johannot and the particular note of his talent was that gift of heaven bestowed specially on flowers, birds and women--charm. Tony even delighted his critics. His colour was, perhaps, a trifle monotonous, but it was cheerful, light and silvery in tone. His women were all like one another, Virginie and Brenda, Diana Vernon and Ophelia; what did it matter since they were all young and beautiful and gracious and chaste? The daughters of the poets, to whatever country they belong, have all one and the same father-genius. Charlotte and Desdemona, Leonora and Haidée, dona Sol and Amy Robsart are sisters. Now who can reproach sisters for bearing a family likeness?

Other illustrators found fault with Tony for monopolising every book as they blamed me for monopolising every newspaper. Ah! well, Tony has been dead eighteen months; let us see where, then, are those vignettes which were only waiting for a chance to be produced? Where, then, are all the illustrated _Pauls and Virginies,_ the _Manon Lescauts, Molières, Coopers, Walter Scotts_ which were to cause those of the poor dead artist to be forgotten? Where, then, are the fancies and whims which are to succeed this rage? Where is the art which is to replace this trade? So far as I am concerned, since they have brought the same reproach of monopolising against me, and an occasion offers to say a word on this subject, I will say it without circumlocution. At the present moment, 15 December 1853, I have for some time past more or less left _La Presse_ free, _Le Siècle_ free, _Le Constitutionnel_ free; I have only one more story to write for _Le_ _Pays_: see, you victimised gentlemen, the gates stand open, the columns are empty; besides _Le Constitutionnel, Le Siècle, La Presse,_ you have _La Patrie, l'Assemblée nationale, Le Moniteur,_ the _Revue de Paris,_ the _Revue des Deux Mondes;_ write your _Reine Margots,_ gentlemen! Write _Monte-Cristo,_ the _Mousquetaires, Capitaine Paul, Amaury, Comtesse de Charny, Conscience, Pasteur d'Ashbourn_; write all these, gentlemen! do not wait till I am dead. I have but one regret: it is that I cannot divert myself from my gigantic work by reading my own books; distract my thoughts by letting me read yours, and I assure you it will be a good thing for both me and yourselves and, perhaps, even better for you than for me.

Tony did as I did; he first of all worked at the rate of six hours a day, then eight, then ten, then twelve, then fifteen: work is like the intoxication of hashish and of opium: it creates a fictitious life inside real life, so full of delicious dreams and adorable hallucinations that one ends by preferring the fictitious life to the real one. Tony then worked fifteen hours a day--which speaks for itself.

Thus, after he had exhibited with his brother, the series of _tableaus-vignettes_ to which I have referred in connection with Alfred, he did the following by himself: _Minna et Brenda sur le bord de la mer, La Bataille de Rosbecque, La Mort de Julien d'Avenel, La Bataille de Fontenoy, l'Enfance de Duguesclin, l'Embarquement d'Élisabeth à Kenilworth, Deux Jeunes Femmes près d'une fenêtre, La Sieste, Louis XIII. forçant le passage du Méandre,_ a subject taken from George Sand's _André,_ a subject from the Gospels, one from the _Imitation of Christ, Le Roi Louis-Philippe offrant à la reine Victoria deux tapisseries des Gobelins au Château d'Eu._ Then, after failing to exhibit in the Exhibitions of 1843, 1845 and 1846, he sent twelve pictures in 1848, five in 1850, three in 1851 and, in 1852, a _Scène de village_ and the _Plaisirs de l'automne._ Three or four years previously, Tony's friends had been alarmed by a thing which, in spite of the fear of the doctors, seemed nevertheless quite impossible. He had been threatened with pulmonary phthisis. Nothing could have been more solidly constructed, it must be said, than Tony Johannot's chest, and, allowing for immoderate ambition, never were lungs more commodiously situated for fulfilling their functions; so Tony's friends did not feel anxious. He coughed, spat a little blood, took a course of treatment and got better. He had not stopped working. Work is a factor of health in the case of all who are producers. He had just done his _Évangile_ and _Imitation of Christ,_ he had stopped work on an oil-painting of _Ruth and Boaz_ to start upon illustrations to the works of Victor Hugo, when, suddenly, he sank down and fell on his knees. He was struck by a crushing attack of apoplexy. On 4 August 1852, he died. The twofold news came too late: I could neither follow d'Orsay to the cemetery of Chambourcy, nor follow Tony Johannot to the cemetery of Montmartre. There it is that the creator of many charming vignettes, many fascinating pictures, sleeps in the vault where his two brothers Charles and Alfred had preceded him.