Part 2

But when we come to _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), etched in the same year as these copies after Zeeman, and exhibited in the Salon of 1850, we are aware of quite a different vision, a different order of intellect, as well as greater perfection of technical skill. It is becoming difficult for us after the lapse of seventy years, in which so many other etchers have been working on Meryon’s lines, to realise how new, how epoch-making in the strict sense of the word, was such an etching as _Le Petit Pont_ in 1850. There had been fine engravers and etchers of architecture before Meryon; there had been Hollar, there had been Canale, Piranesi and Rossini. But they in their different degrees were facile and fluent, rhetorical, diffuse, commercial, in comparison with the severe, tense, concentrated style of Meryon. In his “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris,” which extend in date from 1850 to 1854, he achieved a body of work which led the way in what is called the modern revival of etching and in its own special style has never been surpassed, though other etchers have triumphed in other styles of etching which were entirely outside Meryon’s limited compass. Not only was he in advance of all the other notable etchers of his generation, but he had finished this series of masterpieces before the others had begun to produce anything of importance. Millet began to etch in 1855; Whistler’s Paris set dates from 1858; Haden, though he had etched in the forties, did little that really counts till about 1858. Jacque and Daubigny were working before Meryon, but they are hardly in the same class. It was consonant with Meryon’s brooding, introspective temperament that he took the work of etching very seriously. He acquired a profound knowledge of the technique of the art and applied it, in the case of all his important etchings, with conscientious thoroughness. Disdaining anything like a sketchy treatment of his subject, he built up the whole design laboriously, painfully, with tireless perseverance, after making the most conscientious studies of detail. He was, in fact, by habit and temperament more an engraver than an etcher, though he used the etching process instead of attacking the copper with a burin.

But nothing that I have yet said explains what there is in Meryon that makes us regard him as a great artist. Any etcher might have taken all these pains and yet remained to the end nothing but an industrious plodder. It was the combination, in Meryon, of this high degree of mechanical skill with a fine instinct for design and the poet’s vision which was still more specially his prerogative, that places him in a different category from a Lalanne, a Martial-Potémont or an Edwin Edwards. The old streets of Paris were not, for him, merely storehouses of picturesque motives, structures composed of walls and porticoes, gables and spires, on which the sun arranged at different times of day different patterns of light and shade; they were that, certainly, and his etcher’s eye, trained to observe niceties of gradation between black and white rather than varieties of actual colour, took full advantage of their hitherto unexplored wealth of suggestion. Leaving all metaphor out of court, his actual eyesight was astonishingly keen; he saw details of architecture with the naked eye which would be revealed to average persons only by a telescope. But to him the streets of Paris were haunted places, peopled with ghosts and wet with tears. Their atmosphere was infected by old crimes and miseries and sins. The lonely meditations of a brain already morbid, affected even when he was a boy by the discovery that he was a bastard, suspicious in later life and shrinking from human intercourse, were reflected in the melancholy which seems, to sympathetic observers, to brood over the dark narrow streets, survivors of a mediæval Paris, much of which was doomed to destruction in the great demolitions and reconstructions of the Second Empire. But Meryon did not trust entirely to sympathetic observation to discern his meaning. He expressed himself directly in verses, which were meant to be published, and in some cases actually were published, along with the architectural etchings, to explain what reflections the subjects aroused in the etcher’s mind. Sometimes these verses were etched at the foot of the subject itself, as in the fourth state of _Le Stryge_; more often they were etched on separate plates, in cursive writing, with little ornaments and rather elaborate capitals, the stanzas carefully spaced in a decorative arrangement. They may be seen reproduced, so far as they were actually etched, in M. Loys Delteil’s catalogue, but the whole of Meryon’s verses, including some that he did not etch, are collected and presented in a more legible form, being printed with type, in Aglaüs Bouvenne’s “Notes et Souvenirs sur Charles Meryon.” They are jerky, queer and amateurish verses, but they throw so much light on Meryon’s mentality that they must not be neglected by any student of his art.

It is time that we returned to the Paris etchings themselves, of which only one, _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), has hitherto been mentioned in our survey of the progress of Meryon’s work. The complete series as he published them himself, in three parts, between 1852 and 1854, consists of twenty-two etchings,[2] preceded by a portrait of Meryon etched by Bracquemond; not the half-length portrait, seated, with the hand resting on the back of a chair (plate 1),[3] which was etched in 1853 (Beraldi 77), but the head in profile to the left (Beraldi 78), in imitation of an antique sculpture in relief, with the legend, composed and etched by Meryon himself, in 1854:

Messire Bracquemond A peint en cette image Le sombre Meryon Au grotesque visage.

Of the “cahiers” which were issued of the Paris set, containing this portrait, probably not one remains to-day intact. The twenty-two etchings by Meryon himself consisted of an etched title (plate 2) printed on grey, brown, blue or green paper (in which, it should be noticed, as well as in the address etched at the foot of each plate, the etcher calls himself Meryon, not Méryon), four small preliminary etchings, twelve important subjects, which bear numbers in the final state, which was not printed till 1861 and then in an edition of thirty only, and five more plates which were never numbered, and which, as regards size at least, must be counted as “minor” works, though they include _La Rue des Mauvais Garçons_ (plate 10), a plate to which posterity attaches a high value, if Meryon did not do so himself. Some of the minor etchings are so extremely rare that they must have been printed in small numbers and not generally included in the “cahier.” Several rather important etchings of Paris were done at a later date, and did not form part of the “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris” set.

The dedication to Zeeman, “peintre des matelots” (plate 3), is in verses which express in simple language Meryon’s love and admiration for the master who had inspired his early efforts, concluding with the words:--

Mon maître et matelot, Renier toi que j’aime Comme un autre moi-même A revoir, à bientôt.

The frontispiece (plate 4), a round composition in which a devil carrying a great scroll hovers against a lurid sky over the Gothic gateway of the Palais de Justice, is a sinister design. The Tomb of Molière (plate 23), tail-piece to the set, was etched on the same plate, and a proof exists from the undivided copper containing both designs. The verses following the frontispiece are a comment on the latter, and express Meryon’s conviction that the city of Paris, “Paris le Paradis des amours et des Ris,” is possessed by a “noir Diabloton, malicieux, mutin,” fostered by science, and that this “méchant animal, Origine du mal” cannot be exorcised without razing the city to the ground. These etched verses are very rare. The symbolical coat of arms of the city of Paris (plate 5) is another of the minor pieces inserted in 1854, when the set was being completed. Then follows _Le Stryge_ (plate 6), etched in 1853, one of the most original and impressive of all Meryon’s etchings. His elbows propped on the ledge of the balcony, one of the Gothic monsters of the western towers of Notre-Dame broods with head in hands and lolling tongue, an enigmatical and evil expression in his eye, over the city of Paris seen far below, with the Tour St. Jacques as the most prominent object. Jackdaws circle in the air about the towers, and graven beneath the oval, in one state only of the plate, is the sinister couplet:--

Insatiable vampire, l’éternelle luxure Sur la grande cité convoite sa pâture.

The delicacy of the work, in fine proofs, is beyond the power of any mechanical process to reproduce. Two pencil studies, formerly in the Macgeorge collection, are very interesting as showing Meryon’s conscientious method of preparation for this plate. He made one very highly finished drawing of all that is seen of the city of Paris down below, reserving blank spaces for the Stryge and for the Tour St. Jacques--there is also a trial state of the plate, showing that all this portion of the design was etched first, directly from this drawing--and then another equally finished drawing of the tower and the stone monster by themselves, with all the rest of the subject drawn in outline, probably traced from the first drawing. A drawing by Meryon of another of the monsters of Notre Dame, a monkey, with a set of verses written beside it, is reproduced in Bouvenne’s “Notes et Souvenirs.” Then follows _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), in which the twin towers of Notre-Dame, beautifully placed on the plate, surmount the long rows of houses on the Quai du Marché Neuf and dominate the whole composition. The outline drawing which Meryon made from the level of the shore, showing the towers very much lower, is reproduced in M. Delteil’s catalogue. _L’Arche du Pont Notre-Dame_ (plate 8), especially in the beautiful proofs on green paper, is one of the most charming of the whole series and free from any eccentricity. _La Galerie Notre-Dame_ (plate 9) is a very beautiful rendering of Gothic architecture, and a most delicate study of effects of light, direct and reflected. The impressions vary much, some being rich in tone and rather veiled, others clean wiped and of a silvery clearness. The highly finished drawing which Meryon etched almost in facsimile, only adding clouds in the sky, was in the Macgeorge collection.

_La Rue des Mauvais Garçons_ (plate 10), which formed the _cul-de-lampe_ or tail-piece of the first _livraison_ of “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris,” has always impressed modern observers as one of the most powerful and impressive of the etchings, fraught with mystery, enigmatic, suggestive of long past tragedies. “Quel mortel habitait,” are the verses etched on the building, “En ce gîte si sombre? Qui donc là se cachait Dans la nuit et dans l’ombre?” Was it Virtue, in silent poverty; was it Crime? No answer to the riddle is attempted. The street exists no longer.

_La Tour de l’Horloge_ (plate 11) was drawn and etched in 1852 while alterations were in progress which materially altered the appearance of Le Châtelet. This plate has always struck me as being a very straightforward and masterly portrait of a building, but without so much personal expression as Meryon generally contrived to impart to his other etchings. An edition of 600 copies of Delteil’s sixth state was published in _L’Artiste_ in 1858, and it was only after this large edition had been struck off that Meryon made a rather important change in the plate, which appears in the last two states, by making rays of light issue, somewhat unaccountably, from the windows between the high square tower and the first of the round ones. _Tourelle de la rue de la Tixéranderie_ (plate 12), also etched in 1852, was drawn just before its demolition. The etching gives a very beautiful effect of sunlight on a most picturesque old house, with the lower part of its turret wreathed in the foliage of a creeper; but the mediæval knight in helm and plumes, who rides along the street, and the nude woman standing in the doorway (in the first state) are curious additions to the scene. The latter figure was retouched in the final state. _Saint-Etienne-du-Mont_ (plate 13), also etched in 1852, is similar in style, as in dimensions, to the last subject. It gives, again, a beautiful effect of sunlight, and the architectural details of the church are shown with an exquisite clearness. The little figures are lively and interesting, but in the state here reproduced a blemish may be noticed; the raised arms of a workman on the scaffolding, near the gas lamp on the right, have been effaced, to be restored in the next state.

_La Pompe Notre-Dame_ (plate 14), another plate belonging to the prolific year 1852, is one of the most picturesque etchings of the series. The proportions of the various masses of architecture to the oblong plate are perfectly satisfying, and the eye delights in the intricate lines, alternately light and dark, of the two wooden structures that rise out of the water like the piles of a “lake dwelling.” Meryon excuses himself, in an interesting letter, for making the towers of Notre-Dame higher than they should be, as actually seen from this point of view: “Les Tours saillent aussi un peu plus que dans la réalité; mais je considère que ce sont licenses permises, puisque c’est pour ainsi dire dans ce sens que travaille l’esprit, sitôt que l’objet qui l’a frappé a disparu de devant les yeux” (quoted by M. Loys Delteil from a letter to Paul Mantz). This plate was published in an edition of 600 by _L’Artiste_ in 1858; before that time the building itself had been demolished. Meryon alludes to the impending demolition in the rather insignificant little design, with some doggerel verses etched within it, known as _La Petite Pompe_ (plate 15), of 1854.

_Le Pont-Neuf_ (plate 16), an etching of 1853, is the ninth of the set as Meryon numbered it. It is a solid, masterly piece of architectural etching about which there is not much to be said. The light falling on the truncated turrets of the bridge and reflected on the surface of the river is very subtly observed. In the sixth state, and in that only, eight verses are etched, beginning

Ci-gît du vieux Pont Neuf Tout radoubé de neuf L’exacte ressemblance Par récente ordonnance.

This is poor stuff, and Meryon was well advised to suppress it in later states.

_Le Pont-au-Change_ (plates 17, 18), etched in 1854, shows again Le Châtelet and the Tour de l’Horloge, and, beyond the bridge, the tower, with which we are now familiar, of La Pompe Notre-Dame. This etching is remarkable for the many changes introduced into the sky in successive states. From the second to the sixth state of Delteil there is a balloon floating in the sky towards the left, inscribed SPERANZA (plate 17), to which the verses _L’Espérance_ (plate 19) allude. In the seventh state this balloon disappears; in its stead there are great flights of birds across the sky, of which the lower resemble wild duck, while the upper ones, with longer wings, have got hooked beaks which make them look more like birds of prey than the jackdaws which one would expect to fly round the towers of a city. These remain (plate 18) during several alterations in the plate, until the tenth state, when they have disappeared from the left, though a concentrated flock wheels about the Tour de l’Horloge, and their place is taken by new balloons, near and distant, and in the eleventh state by still more balloons, one of which bears the name of Vasco de Gama. This is all rather crazy, and the alterations were made, like those on other plates to which we shall refer later, after Meryon’s mind had finally become deranged. This is evidently the etching referred to in a letter from Baudelaire to Poulet Malassis (quoted by M. Loys Delteil): “Dans une de ses grandes planches, il a substituté à un petit ballon une nuée d’oiseaux de proie, et, comme je lui faisais remarquer qu’il était invraisemblable de mettre tant d’aigles dans un ciel parisien, il m’a répondu que cela n’était pas dénué de fondement, puisque ces gens-là (le gouvernement de l’Empereur) avaient souvent lâché des aigles pour étudier les présages, suivant le rite,--et que cela avait été imprimé dans les journaux, même dans le _Moniteur_. Je dois dire qu’il ne se cache en aucune façon de son respect pour toutes les superstitions, mais il les explique mal, et il voit de la cabale partout.” This letter dates from January 1860, a few months after Meryon had been released from his first confinement in an asylum, and it must be observed that any eccentricities due to mental derangement can only be traced in plates etched subsequently to 1859, or in the _late states_, produced by re-touching after that date, of the “Eaux-fortes sur Paris” themselves, which, as first completed in 1854, the year of this publication, had been perfectly normal.

Another of the etched poems, “_L’Espérance_,” accompanies _Le Pont-au-Change_. After this, two more of the “Eaux-Fortes” remain to be noticed, and they are by general agreement the finest of the whole set: _La Morgue_ and _L’Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris_, both etched in 1854. _La Morgue_ (plate 20) combines a masterly distribution of black and white spaces and a perfectly successful treatment of the windows, roofs and chimneys, which rise in a curious succession of different levels from the riverside, with a motive of poignant human interest in the dramatic group that bears, on the left, the body of a drowned man from the Seine towards the “Doric little Morgue,” as Browning calls it, on the right. The associations of the building, irresistibly suggested by this incident, are explained in the pathetic little poem, “_L’Hôtellerie de la Mort_” (plate 21), Meryon’s finest effort in verse, etched on two separate plates and intended to accompany _La Morgue_, but so rare that it very seldom does so. “The bed and the table that the City of Paris offers gratis at any time to its poor children,” we can imagine what they are--a marble slab, with water dripping down it, under that roof so magnificently etched.

“Puissiez-vous ne point voir Là sur le marbre noir De quelqu’âme chérie La navrante effigie!”

The poem was evidently completed originally in the first column, ending with Meryon’s name, address and date, to which he added as an afterthought a second column of verses full of consoling thoughts and ending with words of faith and hope about the expansion of a flower “à la fraiche corolle, à la sainte auréole,” a flower of love and happiness, from the germ that is in man’s heart. In the impression at the British Museum, words of bad omen, like “Mort,” “Misère,” “Plaisir,” are printed in red, and the good words, “Dieu,” “Cieux,” “Amour,” and “Bonheur,” are printed in blue. Then follows _L’Abside_ (plate 22), the justly famous masterpiece for which higher sums are paid to-day than for any other etching except some of Rembrandt’s. The design of the whole plate, the lighting of the sky and of the side of the majestic cathedral, the proportion of the towers and high-pitched roof of Notre-Dame to the massive but comparatively insignificant buildings along the line of the Seine combine to produce a total effect of unrivalled dignity and charm. How eloquent, too, is the contrast of all that splendid architecture across the river with the squalid foreground, where heaps of sand are being shovelled into carts, and barges of the humblest kind are moored along the shore. _L’Abside_, again, has a little etched poem “O toi dégustateur de tout morceau gothique,” to accompany it, but this is one of the very rarest of Meryon’s etchings and is not in the British Museum, though the verses are written in pencil by Meryon’s hand on the margin of one of the states of _L’Abside_ in that collection. Then, with the _Tombeau de Molière_ (plate 23) the series closes. Not only in the intensity of this realisation of his subject and in the perfect skill of the actual etching was Meryon a great innovator, but also in the importance that he attached to the utmost care in printing. In collaboration with Auguste Delâtre, the best printer of etchings of his day, Meryon produced exquisite proofs of the early states of the “Eaux-fortes sur Paris” printed in carefully composed brown and black inks on the choicest papers, green, brown, yellowish, white, of old Dutch manufacture or imported from Japan. This was a complete innovation in 1850, and he set an example which the most scrupulous etchers and printers have endeavoured to follow to this day but have never surpassed. Like most French etchers, Meryon preferred proofs from clean wiped plates to those printed with any considerable amount of tone. A letter from Meryon himself on this subject, written in 1863, is quoted by Burty.

During the production of all these masterpieces Meryon was living, almost a recluse, in his rooms in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont. He had great difficulty in selling proofs of his etchings, though he asked no more than 30 francs for a Paris set. He took them in vain to various publishers; there were then no dealers who sold etchings of this kind. He had spent the money left to him by his mother; he gained no rewards at the Salon; the Chalcographie Impériale du Louvre ignored him. He was almost starving, says Burty, when he made the acquaintance of M. Jules Niel, librarian at the Ministry of the Interior, a cultivated man who recognised at once the significance of Meryon’s work. He obtained the purchase of several sets of the etchings by the Minister and orders for other work to be done by Meryon in the shape of reproductions of historical drawings. In the winter of 1855-56 the Duke of Aremberg had seen the Views of Paris at Montpellier. In 1857 he sent for Meryon to Belgium, and commissioned him to etch views of his park at Enghien. But Meryon was just then becoming a prey to mental disease, and he returned to Paris, in great trouble of mind, in March 1858. He became more and more unsociable, especially after he removed to a little hotel in the Rue Fossé St. Jacques. Delâtre looked after him as best he could, but Meryon refused to leave his bed, saying that he could not cross a sea of blood, and threatened with a pistol those who approached him. Whilst he was in this state Léopold Flameng drew, in May 1858, the well-known portrait of Meryon in bed, sitting up, with a large black cravat round his neck, the dark shadow of his head thrown upon the wall by the rays of a lamp (plate 24). The features are sharp and emaciated with self-imposed fasting. When the drawing was finished, Meryon asked to see it. He sprang out of bed and tried to tear it up, but Flameng fled with the portrait. On the following day, May 12th, Meryon was carried off to the asylum at Charenton St. Maurice. The discipline and regular food, instead of semi-starvation, had a good effect on him, and he was quiet, gentle and polite. While he was in the asylum he made one etching, from a drawing of the ruins of Pierrefonds brought to him by the architect, Viollet le Duc. It was during this time that Delâtre had impressions of some of his plates published by _L’Artiste_. On the 25th August, 1859, Meryon was released on leave for three weeks, and did not actually go back to the asylum until 1866.

OTHER ETCHINGS OF THE ’FIFTIES