The rest of the nouveaux were variously treated. Some, after being stripped, were grotesquely decorated with designs and pictures not suitable for general inspection. Others were made to sing, to recite, or to act scenes from familiar plays, or, in default of that, to improvise scenes, some of which were exceedingly funny. Others, attached to a rope depending from the ceiling, were swung at a perilous rate across the atelier, dodging easels in their flight.
At half-past twelve the sport was over. The barricade was removed, the Turk's clothes hidden, the Turk left howling on his shelf, and the atelier abandoned. The next morning there was trouble. The director was furious, and threatened to close the atelier for a month, because the Turk had not been discovered until five o'clock, when his hoarse howls attracted the attention of the gardien of the fires. His trousers and one shoe could not be found. It was three months before Haidor appeared at the atelier again, and then everything had been forgotten.
Bishop was made miserable during the ensuing week. He would find himself roasting over paper fires kindled under his stool. Paint was smeared upon his easel to stain his hands. His painting was altered and entirely re-designed in his absence. Strong-smelling cheeses were placed in the lining of his "plug" hat. His stool-legs were so loosened that when he sat down he struck the floor with a crash. His painting-blouse was richly decorated inside and out with shocking coats of arms that would not wash out. One day he discovered that he had been painting for a whole hour with currant jelly from a tube that he thought contained laque.
Then, being a nouveau, he could never get a good position in which to draw from the model. Every Monday morning a new model is posed for the week, and the students select places according to the length of time they have been attending. The nouveaux have to take what is left. And they must be servants to the ancients,—run out for tobacco, get soap and clean towels, clean paint-brushes, and keep the studio in order. With the sculptors and architects it is worse. The sculptors must sweep the dirty, clay-grimed floor regularly, fetch clean water, mix the clay and keep it fresh and moist, and on Saturdays, when the week's work is finished, must break up the forty or more clay figures, and restore them to clay for next week's operations. The architects must build heavy wooden frames, mount the projects and drawings, and cart them about Paris to the different exhibition rooms.
At the end of a year the nouveau drops his hated title and becomes a proud ancient, to bully to his heart's content, as those before him.
Mondays and Wednesdays are criticism days, for then M. Gérôme comes down and goes over the work of his pupils. He is very early and punctual, never arriving later than half-past eight, usually before half the students are awake. The moment he enters all noises cease, and all seem desperately hard at work, although a moment before the place may have been in an uproar. Gérôme plumps down upon the man nearest to him, and then visits each of his élèves, storming and scolding mercilessly when his pupils have failed to follow his instructions. As soon as a student's criticism is finished he rises and follows the master to hear the other criticisms, so that toward the close the procession is large.
Bishop's first criticism took him all aback. "Comment!" gasped the master, gazing at the canvas in horror. "Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait?" he sternly demanded, glaring at the luckless student, who, in order to cultivate a striking individuality, was painting the model in broad, thick dashes of color. Gérôme glanced at Bishop's palette, and saw a complete absence of black upon it. "Comment, vous n'avez pas de noir?" he roared. "C'est très important, la partie matérielle! Vous ne m'écoutez pas, mon ami,—-je parle dans le désert! Vous n'avez pas d'aspect général, mon ami," and much more, while Bishop sat cold to the marrow. The students, crowded about, enjoyed his discomfiture immensely, and, behind Gérôme's back, laughed in their sleeves and made faces at Bishop. But many others suffered, and Bishop had his inning with them.
All during Gérôme's tour of inspection the model must maintain his pose, however difficult and exhausting. Often he is kept on a fearful strain for two hours. After the criticism the boys show Gérôme sketches and studies that they have made outside the Ecole, and it is in discussing them that his geniality and kindliness appear. Gérôme imperiously demands two things,—that his pupils, before starting to paint, lay on a red or yellow tone, and that they keep their brushes scrupulously clean. Woe to him who disobeys!
After he leaves with a cheery "Bon jour, messieurs!" pandemonium breaks loose, if the day be Saturday. Easels, stools, and studies are mowed down as by a whirlwind, yells shake the building, the model is released, a tattoo is beaten on the sheet-iron stove-guard, everything else capable of making a noise is brought into service, and either the model is made to do the danse du ventre or a nouveau is hazed.
The models—what stories are there! Every Monday morning from ten to twenty present themselves, male and female, for inspection in puris naturalibus before the critical gaze of the students of the different ateliers. One after another they mount the throne and assume such academic poses of their own choosing as they imagine will display their points to the best advantage. The students then vote upon them, for and against, by raising the hand. The massier, standing beside the model, announces the result, and, if the vote is favorable, enrols the model for a certain week to come.
There is intense rivalry among the models. Strange to say, most of the male models in the schools of Paris are from Italy, the southern part especially. As a rule, they have very good figures. They begin posing at the age of five or six, and follow the business until old age retires them. Crowds of them are at the gates of the Beaux-Arts early on Monday mornings. In the voting, a child may be preferred to his seniors, and yet the rate of payment is the same,—thirty francs a week.
Many of the older models are quite proud of their profession, spending idle hours in studying the attitudes of figures in great paintings and in sculptures in the Louvre or the Luxembourg, and adopting these poses when exhibiting themselves to artists; but the trick is worthless.
Few of the women models remain long in the profession. Posing is hard and fatiguing work, and the students are merciless in their criticisms of any defects of figure that the models may have,—the French are born critics. During the many years that I have studied and worked in Paris I have seen scores of models begin their profession with a serious determination to make it their life-work.
They would appear regularly at the different ateliers for about two years, and would be gratified to observe endless reproductions of their graces in the prize rows on the studio walls. Then their appearance would be less and less regular, and they would finally disappear altogether—whither? Some become contented companions of students and artists, but the cafés along the Boul' Mich', the cabarets of Montmartre, and the dance-halls of the Moulin Rouge and the Bal Bullier have their own story to tell. Some are happily married; for instance, one, noted for her beauty of face and figure, is the wife of a New York millionaire. But she was clever as well as beautiful, and few models are that. Most of them are ordinaire, living the easy life of Bohemian Paris, and having little knowledge of le monde propre. But, oh, how they all love dress! and therein lies most of the story. When Marcelle or Hélène appears, all of a sudden, radiant in silks and creamy lace petticoats, and sweeps proudly into the crowded studios, flushed and happy, and hears the dear compliments that the students heap upon her, we know that thirty francs a week could not have changed the gray grub into a gorgeous butterfly.
"C'est mon amant qui m'a fait cadeau," Marcelle will explain, deeming some explanation necessary. There is none to dispute you, Marcelle. This vast whirlpool has seized many another like you, and will seize many another more. And to poor Marcelle it seems so small a price to pay to become one of the grand ladies of Paris, with their dazzling jewels and rich clothes!
An odd whim may overtake one here and there. One young demoiselle, beautiful as a girl and successful as a model a year ago, may now be seen nightly at the Cabaret du Soleil d'Or, frowsy and languishing, in keeping with the spirit of her confrères there, singing her famous "Le Petit Caporal" to thunderous applause, and happy with the love, squalor, dirt, and hunger that she finds with the luckless poet whose fortunes she shares. It was not a matter of clothes with her.
It is a short and easy step from the studio to the café. At the studio it is all little money, hard posing, dulness, and poor clothes; at the cafés are the brilliant lights, showy clothes, tinkling money, clinking glasses, popping corks, unrestrained abandon, and midnight suppers. And the studios and the cafés are but adjoining apartments, one may say, in the great house of Bohemia. The studio is the introduction to the café; the café is the burst of sunshine after the dreariness of the studio; and Marcelle determines that for once she will bask in the warmth and glow.... Ah, what a jolly night it was, and a louis d'or in her purse besides! Marcelle's face was pretty—and new. She is late at the studio next morning, and is sleepy and cross. The students grumble. The room is stifling, and its gray walls seem ready to crush her. It is so tiresome, so stupid—and only thirty francs a week! Bah!... Marcelle appears no more.
All the great painters have their exclusive model or models, paying them a permanent salary. These favored ones move in a special circle, into which the ordinaire may not enter, unless she becomes the favorite of some grand homme. They are never seen at the academies, and rarely or never pose in the schools, unless it was there they began their career.
Perhaps the most famous of the models of Paris was Sarah Brown, whose wild and exciting life has been the talk of the world. Her beautiful figure and glorious golden hair opened to her the whole field of modeldom. Offers for her services as model were more numerous than she could accept, and the prices that she received were very high. She was the mistress of one great painter after another, and she lived and reigned like a queen. Impulsive, headstrong, passionate, she would do the most reckless things. She would desert an artist in the middle of his masterpiece and come down to the studio to pose for the students at thirty francs a week. Gorgeously apparelled, she would glide into a studio, overturn all the easels that she could reach, and then shriek with laughter over the havoc and consternation that she had created. The students would greet her with shouts and form a circle about her, while she would banteringly call them her friends. Then she would jump upon the throne, dispossess the model there, and give a dance or make a speech, knocking off every hat that her parasol could reach. But no one could resist Sarah.
She came up to the Atelier Gérôme one morning and demanded une semaine de femme. The massier booked her for the following week. She arrived promptly on time and was posed. Wednesday a whim seized her to wear her plumed hat and silk stockings. "C'est beaucoup plus chic," she naively explained. When Gérôme entered the studio and saw her posing thus she smiled saucily at him, but he turned in a rage and left the studio without a word. Thursday she tired of the pose and took one to please herself, donning a skirt. Of course protests were useless, so the students had to recommence their work. The remainder of the week she sat upon the throne in full costume, refusing to pose. She amused herself with smoking cigarettes and keeping the nouveaux running errands for her.
It was she who was the cause of the students' riot in 1893,—a riot that came near ending in a revolution. It was all because she appeared at le Bal des Quat'z' Arts in a costume altogether too simple and natural to suit the prefect of police, who punished her. She was always at the Salon on receiving-day, and shocked the occupants of the liveried carriages on the Champs-Elysées with her dancing. In fact, she was always at the head of everything extraordinary and sensational among the Bohemians of Paris. But she aged rapidly under her wild life. Her figure lost its grace, her lovers deserted her, and after her dethronement as Queen of Bohemia, broken-hearted and poor, she put an end to her wretched life,—and Paris laughed.
The breaking in of a new girl model is a joy that the students never permit themselves to miss. Among the many demoiselles who come every Monday morning are usually one or two that are new. The new one is accompanied by two or more of her girl friends, who give her encouragement at the terrible moment when she disrobes. As there are no dressing-rooms, there can be no privacy. The students gather about and watch the proceedings with great interest, and make whatever remarks their deviltry can suggest. This is the supreme test; all the efforts of the attendant girls are required to hold the new one to her purpose. When finally, after an inconceivable struggle with her shame, the girl plunges ahead in reckless haste to finish the job, the students applaud her roundly.
But more torture awaits her. Frightened, trembling, blushing furiously, she ascends the throne, and innocently assumes the most awkward and ridiculous poses, forgetting in that terrible moment the poses that she had learned so well under the tutelage of her friends. It is then that the fiendishness of the students rises to its greatest height. Dazed and numb, she hardly comprehends the ordeal through which she is now put. The students have adopted a grave and serious bearing, and solemnly ask her to assume the most outlandish and ungraceful poses. Then come long and mock-earnest arguments about her figure, these arguments having been carefully learned and rehearsed beforehand. One claims that her waist is too long and her legs too heavy; another hotly takes the opposite view. Then they put her through the most absurd evolutions to prove their points. At last she is made to don her hat and stockings; and the students form a ring about her and dance and shout until she is ready to faint.
Of course the studio has a ringleader in all this deviltry,—all studios have. Joncierge is head of all the mischief in our atelier. There is no end to his ingenuity in devising new means of torture and fun. His personations are marvellous. When he imitates Bernhardt, Réjane, or Calvé, no work can be done in the studio. Gérôme himself is one of his favorite victims. But Joncierge cannot remain long in one school; the authorities pass him on as soon as they find that he is really hindering the work of the students. One day, at Julian's, he took the class skeleton, and with a cord let the rattling, quivering thing down into the Rue du Dragon, and frightened the passers out of their wits. As his father is chef d'orchestre at the Grand Opéra, Joncierge junior learns all the operas and convulses us with imitations of the singers.
Another character in the studio is le jeune Siffert, only twenty-three, and one of the cleverest of the coming French painters. Recently he nearly won the Prix de Rome. His specialty is the imitation of the cries of domestic fowls and animals, and of street venders. Gérôme calls him "mon fils," and constantly implores him to be serious. I don't see why.
Then there is Fiola, a young giant from Brittany, with a wonderful facility at drawing. He will suddenly break into a roar, and for an hour sing one verse of a Brittany chant, driving the other students mad.
Fournier is a little curly-headed fellow from the south, near Valence, and wears corduroy trousers tucked into top-boots. His greatest delight is in plaguing the nouveaux. His favorite joke, if the day is dark, is to send a nouveau to the different ateliers of the Ecole in search of "le grand réflecteur." The nouveau, thinking that it is a device for increasing the light, starts out bravely, and presently returns with a large, heavy box, which, upon its being opened, is found to be filled with bricks. Then Fournier is happy.
Taton is the butt of the atelier. He is an ingénu, and falls into any trap set for him. Whenever anything is missing, all pounce upon Taton, and he is very unhappy.
Haidor, the Turk, suspicious and sullen, also is a butt. Caricatures of him abundantly adorn the walls, together with the Turkish crescent, and Turkish ladies executing the danse du ventre.
Caricatures of all kinds cover the walls of the atelier, and some are magnificent, being spared the vandalism that spares nothing else. One, especially good, represents Kenyon Cox, who studied here.
W———, the student from Nebraska, created a sensation by appearing one day in the full regalia of a cowboy, including two immense revolvers, a knife, and a lariat depending from his belt. With the lariat he astonished and dismayed the dodging Frenchmen by lassoing them at will, though they exercised their greatest running and dodging agility to escape. They wanted to know if all Americans went about thus heeled in America.
There is something uncanny about the little Siamese. He is exceedingly quiet and works unceasingly. One day, when the common spirit of mischief was unusually strong among the boys, the bolder ones began to hint at fun in the direction of the Siamese. He quietly shifted a pair of brass knuckles from some pocket to a more convenient one, and although it was done so unostentatiously, the act was observed. He was not disturbed, and has been left strictly alone ever since.
One day the Italian students took the whole atelier down to a little restaurant on the Quai des Grands-Augustins and cooked them an excellent Italian dinner, with Chianti to wash it down. Two Italian street-singers furnished the music, and Mademoiselle la Modèle danced as only a model can.
EVER since New Year's, when Bishop began his great composition for the Salon, our life at the studio had been sadly disarranged; for Bishop had so completely buried himself in his work that I was compelled to combine the functions of cook with those of chambermaid.
This double work, with increasing pressure from my modelling, required longer hours at night and shorter hours in the morning. But I was satisfied, for this was to be Bishop's masterpiece, and I knew from the marvellous labor and spirit that he put into the work that something good would result.
The name of his great effort was "The Suicide." It was like him to choose so grisly a subject, for he had a lawless nature and rebelled against the commonplace. Ghastly subjects had always fascinated him. From the very beginning of our domestic partnership he had shown a taste for grim and forbidding things. Often, upon returning home, I had found him making sketches of armless beggars, twisted cripples, and hunchbacks, and, worse than all, disease-marked vagabonds. A skull-faced mortal in the last stages of consumption was a joy to him. It was useless for me to protest that he was failing to find the best in him by developing his unwholesome tastes. "Wait," he would answer patiently; "the thing that has suffering and character, that is out of the ordinary, it is the thing that will strike and live."
The suicide was a young woman gowned in black; she was poised in the act of plunging into the Seine; a babe was tightly clutched to her breast; and behind the unspeakable anguish in her eyes was a hungry hope, a veiled assurance of the peace to come. It fascinated and haunted me beyond all expression. It was infinitely sad, tragic, and terrible, for it reached with a sure touch to the very lowest depth of human agony. The scene was the dead of night, and only the dark towers of Notre-Dame broke the even blackness of the sky, save for a faint glow that touched the lower stretches from the distant lamps of the city. In the darkness only the face of the suicide was illuminated, and that but dimly, though sufficiently to disclose the wonderfully complex emotions that crowded upon her soul. This illumination came from three ghastly green lights on the water below. The whole tone of the picture was a black, sombre green.
That was all after the painting had been finished. The making of it is a story by itself. From the first week in January to the first week in March the studio was a junk-shop of the most uncanny sort. In order to pose his model in the act of plunging into the river, Bishop had rigged up a tackle, which, depending from the ceiling, caught the model at the waist, after the manner of a fire-escape belt, and thus half suspended her. He secured his green tone and night effect by covering nearly all the skylight and the window with green tissue-paper, besides covering the floor and walls with green rugs and draperies.
The model behaved very well in her unusual pose, but the babe—that was the rub. The model did not happen to possess one, and Bishop had not yet learned the difficulties attending the procuring and posing of infants. In the first place, he found scores of babes, but not a mother, however poor, willing to permit her babe to be used as a model, and a model for so gruesome a situation. But after he had almost begun to despair, and had well advanced with his woman model, an Italian woman came one day and informed him that she could get an infant from a friend of her sister's, if he would pay her one franc a day for the use of it. Bishop eagerly made the bargain. Then a new series of troubles began.
The babe objected most emphatically to the arrangement. It refused to nestle in the arms of a strange woman about to plunge into eternity, and the strange woman had no knack at all in soothing the infant's outraged feelings. Besides, the model was unable to meet the youngster's frequent demands for what it was accustomed to have, and the mother, who was engaged elsewhere, had to be drummed up at exasperatingly frequent intervals. All this told upon both Bishop and Francinette, the model, and they took turns in swearing at the unruly brat, Bishop in English and Francinette in French. Neither knew how to swear in Italian, or things might have been different. I happened in upon these scenes once in a while, and my enjoyment so exasperated Bishop that he threw paint- tubes, bottles, and everything else at me that he could reach, and once or twice locked me out of the studio, compelling me to kick my shins in the cold street for hours at a time. On such occasions I would stand in the court looking up at our window, expecting momentarily that the babe would come flying down from that direction.
When Bishop was not sketching and painting he was working up his inspiration; and that was worst of all. His great effort was to get himself into a suicidal mood. He would sit for hours on the floor, his face between his knees, imagining all sorts of wrongs and slights that the heartless world had put upon him. His husband had beaten him and gone off with another woman; he had tried with all his woman-heart to bear the cross; hunger came to pinch and torture him; he sought work, failed to find it; sought charity, failed to find that; his babe clutched at his empty breasts and cried piteously for food; his heart broken, all hope gone, even God forgetting him, he thought of the dark, silent river, the great cold river, that has brought everlasting peace to countless thousands of suffering young mothers like him; he went to the river; he looked back upon the faint glow of the city's lights in the distance; he cast his glance up to the grim towers of Notre-Dame, standing cold and pitiless against the blacker sky; he looked down upon the black Seine, the great writhing python, so willing to swallow him up; he clutched his babe to his breast, gasped a prayer....
At other times he would haunt the Morgue and study the faces of those who had died by felo-de-se; he would visit the hospitals and study the dying; he would watch the actions and read the disordered thoughts of lunatics; he would steal along the banks; of the river on dark nights and study the silent mystery and tragedy of it, and the lights that gave shape to its terrors. In the end I grew afraid of him.
But all things have an end. Bishop's great work was finished in the first days of March. Slowly, but surely, his native exuberance of spirits returned. He would eat and sleep like a rational being. His eyes lost their haunted look, and his cheeks filled out and again took on their healthy hue. And then he invited his friends and some critics to inspect his composition, and gave a great supper in celebration of the completion of his task. Very generous praise was given him. Among the critics and masters came Gérôme and Laurens at his earnest supplication, and it was good to see their delight and surprise, and to note that they had no fault to find,—was not the picture finished, and would not criticism from them at this juncture have hurt the boy without accomplishing any good? Well, the painting secured honorable mention in the exhibition, and five years later the French government completed the artist's happiness by buying one of his pictures for the Luxembourg Gallery.
But about the picture: the canvas was eight by ten feet, and a frame had to be procured for it. Now, frames are expensive, and Bishop had impoverished himself for material and model hire. So he employed a carpenter in the court to make a frame of thick pine boards, which we painted a deep black, with a gold cornice. The whole cost was twenty- five francs.
Next day we hired a good-sized voiture-à-bras at eight sous an hour, and proceeded to get the tableau down to the court. It was a devilish job, for the ceilings were low and the stairs narrow and crooked. The old gentleman below us was nearly decapitated by poking his head out of his door at an inopportune moment, and the lady below him almost wiped the still wet babe from the canvas with her gown as she tried to squeeze past. The entire court turned out to wish Bishop good success.
The last day on which pictures are admitted to the Salon, there to await the merciless decision of the judges, is a memorable one. In sumptuous studios, in wretched garrets; amid affluence, amid scenes of squalor and hunger, artists of all kinds and degrees have been squeezing thousands of tubes and daubing thousands of canvases in preparation for the great day. From every corner of Paris, from every quarter of France and Europe, the canvases come pouring into the Salon. Every conceivable idea, fad, and folly is represented in the collection, and most of them are poor; but in each and every one a fond hope centres, an ambition is staked.
Strange as it may seem, most of these pictures are worked upon until the very last day; indeed, many of them are snatched unfinished from their easels, to receive the finishing touches in the dust and confusion and deafening noise of the great hall where they are all dumped like so much merchandise. We saw one artist who, not having finished his picture, was putting on the final touches as it was borne ahead of him along the street on the back of a commissionnaire.
And all this accounts for the endless smearing everywhere noticeable, and for the frantic endeavors of the artists to repair the damage at the last moment.
One great obstacle to poor artists is the rigid rule requiring that all tableaux shall be framed. These frames are costly. As a result, some artists paint pictures of the same size year after year, so that the same frame may be used for all, and others resort to such makeshifts as Bishop was compelled to employ. But these makeshifts must be artistically done, or the canvases are ignored by the judges. These efforts give rise to many startling effects.
It was not very long, after an easy pull over the Boulevard St.-Germain, before we crossed the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde, traversed the Place de la Concorde, and turned into the Champs-Elysées, where, not far away, loomed the Palais des Beaux-Arts, in which the Salon is annually held in March. The Avenue des Champs-Elysées, crowded as it usually is in the afternoons, was now jammed with cabs, omnibuses, hand-carts, and all sorts of moving vans, mingling with the fashionable carriages on their way to the Bois. The proletarian vehicles contained art,—art by the ton. The upper decks of the omnibuses were crowded with artists carrying their pictures because they could not afford more than the three-sous fare. And such an assortment of artists!
There were some in affluent circumstances, who rolled along voluptuously in cabs on an expenditure of thirty-five francs, holding their precious tableaux and luxuriantly smoking cigarettes.
The commissionnaires had a great day of it. They are the ones usually seen asleep on the street corners, where, when awake, they varnish boots or bear loads by means of a contrivance on their backs. On this day every one of them in Paris was loaded down with pictures.
Many were the hard-up students, like Bishop, tugging hand-carts, or pairing to carry by hand pictures too large to be borne by a single person. And great fun they got out of it all.
Opposite the Palais de Glace was a perfect sea of vehicles, artists, porters, and policemen, all inextricably tangled up, all shouting or groaning, and wet pictures suffering. One artist nearly had a fit when he saw a full moon wiped off his beautiful landscape, and he would have killed the guilty porter had not the students interfered. Portraits of handsome ladies with smudged noses and smeared eyes were common. Expensive gold frames lost large sections of their corners. But still they were pouring in.
With infinite patience and skill Bishop gradually worked his voiture-à- bras through the maze, and soon his masterpiece was in the crushing mass at the wide entrance to the Salon. There it was seized and rushed along, and Bishop received in return a slip of paper bearing a number.
While within the building we reconnoitred. Amid the confusion of howling inspectors, straining porters bearing heavy pictures, carpenters erecting partitions, and a dust-laden atmosphere, numerous artists were working with furious haste upon their unfinished productions. Some were perched upon ladders, others squatted upon the floor, and one had his model posing nude to the waist; she was indifferent to the attention that she received. Thoughtful mistresses stood affectionately beside their artist amants, furnishing them with delicate edibles and lighting cigarettes for them.
Some of the pictures were so large that they were brought in rolled up. One artist had made himself into a carpenter to mount his mammoth picture. Frightful and impossible paintings were numerous, but the painter of each expected a première médaille d'honneur.
It was nearing six o'clock, the closing hour. Chic demoiselle artistes came dashing up in cabs, bringing with them, to insure safe delivery, their everlasting still-life subjects.
Shortly before six the work in the building was suspended by a commotion outside. It was a contingent of students from the Beaux-Arts marching up the Champs-Elysées, yelling and dancing like maniacs and shaking their heavy sticks, the irresistible Sarah Brown leading as drum-maior. She was gorgeously arrayed in the most costly silks and laces, and looked a dashing Amazon. Then, as always, she was perfectly happy with her beloved étudiants, who worshipped her as a goddess. She halted them in front of the building, where they formed a circle round her, and there, as director of ceremonies, she required them to sing chansons, dance, make comic speeches, and "blaguer" the arriving artists.
The last van was unloaded; the great doors closed with a bang, and the stirring day was ended. All the students, even the porters, then joined hands and went singing, howling, and skipping down the Champs-Elysées, and wishing one another success at the coming exhibition. At the Place de la Concorde we met a wild-eyed artist running frantically toward the Salon with his belated picture. The howls of encouragement that greeted him lent swifter wings to his legs.
The pictures finally installed, a jury composed of France's greatest masters pass upon them. The endless procession of paintings is passed before them; the raising of their hands means approval, silence means condemnation; and upon those simple acts depends the happiness or despair of thousands. But depression does not long persist, and the judgment is generally accepted in the end as just and valuable. For the students, in great part, flock to the country on sketching tours, for which arrangements had been already made; and there the most deeply depressed spirits must revive and the habit of work and hope come into play. Year after year the same artists strive for recognition at the Salon; and finally, when they fail at that, they reflect that there is a great world outside of the Salon, where conscientious effort is acceptable. And, after all, a medal at the Salon is not the only reward that life has to offer.
And then, it is not always good for a student to be successful from the start. Just as his social environment in Paris tries his strength and determines the presence or absence of qualities that are as useful to a successful career as special artistic qualifications, so the trial by fire in the Salon exhibitions hardens and toughens him for the serious work of his life ahead. Too early success has ruined more artists than it has helped. It is interesting also to observe that, as a rule, the students who eventually secure the highest places in art are those whose difficulties have been greatest. The lad with the pluck to live on a crust in a garret, and work and study under conditions of poverty and self-denial that would break any but the stoutest heart, is the one from whom to expect renown in the years to come. Ah, old Paris is the harshest but wisest of mothers!
"H! ah! vive les Quat'z' Arts! Au Molin Rouge—en route!" the lamplit streets of Paris as cab after cab and bus after 'bus went thundering across town toward Montmartre, heavily freighted with brilliantly costumed revellers of les Quat'z' Arts. Parisians ran from their dinner- tables to the windows and balconies, blasé boulevardiers paused in their evening stroll or looked up from their papers at the café-tables, waiters and swearing cabbies and yelling newsboys stopped in the midst of their various duties, and all knowingly shook their heads, "Ah, ce sont les Quat'z' Arts!"?
For to-night was the great annual ball of the artists, when all artistic Paris crawls from its mysterious depths to revel in a splendid carnival possible only to the arts. Every spring, after the pictures have been sent to the Salon, and before the students have scattered for the summer vacation, the artists of Paris and the members of all the ateliers of the four arts—painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving—combine their forces in producing a spectacle of regal splendor, seen nowhere else in the world; and long are the weeks and hard the work and vast the ingenuity devoted to preparations,—the designing of costumes and the building of gorgeous floats.
During the last three weeks the élèves of the Atelier Gérôme abandoned their studies, forgot all about the concours and the Prix de Rome, and devoted all their energies to the construction of a colossal figure of Gérôme's great war goddess, "Bel-lona." It was a huge task, but the students worked it out with a will. Yards of sackcloth, rags, old coats, paint rags, besides pine timbers, broken easels and stools, endless wire and rope, went into the making of the goddess's frame, and this was covered with plaster of Paris dexterously moulded into shape. Then it was properly tinted and painted and mounted on a chariot of gold. A Grecian frieze of galloping horses, mounted, the clever work of Siffert, was emblazoned on the sides of the chariot. And what a wreck the atelier was after all was finished! Sacré nom d'un chien! How the gardiens must have sworn when cleaning-day came round!
The ateliers in the Ecole are all rivals, and each had been secretly preparing its coup with which to capture the grand prix at the bal.
The great day came at last. The students of our atelier were perfectly satisfied with their handiwork, and the massier made all happy by ordering a retreat to the Café des Deux Magots, where success to the goddess was drunk in steaming "grog Américain." Then Bellona began her perilous journey across Paris to Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge.
This was not an easy task, as she was fifteen feet high; signs and lamp- posts suffered, and sleepy cab-horses danced as their terrified gaze beheld the giant goddess with her uplifted sword. Crowds watched the progress of Bellona on the Avenue de l'Opéra, drawn by half a hundred students yelling the national hymn. The pull up the steep slope of Montmartre was heavy, but in less than two hours from the start at the Ecole the goddess was safely housed in the depths of the Moulin Rouge, there to await her triumphs of the night.
Bishop, besides doing his share in the preparation of the figure, had the equally serious task of devising a costume for his own use at the ball. It was not until the very last day that he made his final decision,—to go as a Roman orator. Our supply of linen was meagre, but our only two clean bed-sheets and a few towels were sufficient, and two kind American ladies who were studying music and who lived near the old church of St. Sulpice did the fitting of a toga. The soles of a pair of slippers from which Bishop cut the tops served as sandals, and some studio properties in the way of Oriental bracelets completed his costume. I was transformed into an Apache Indian by a generous rubbing into my skin of burnt sienna and cadmium, which I was weeks in getting rid of; a blanket and some chicken-feathers finished my array. Our friend Cameron, next door, went in his Scotch kilts. After supper we entered the Boul' Mich' and proceeded to the Café de la Source, where the students of the Atelier Gérôme were to rendezvous.
The Boul' was a spectacle that night. Time had rolled back the curtain of centuries; ancient cemeteries had yielded up their dead; and living ghosts of the ages packed all the gay cafés. History from the time of Adam had sent forth its traditions, and Eves rubbed elbows with ballet- girls. There was never a jollier night in the history of the Quartier Latin.
We found the Café de la Source already crowded by the Gérôme contingent and their models and mistresses, all en costume and bubbling with merriment and mischief. It was ten o'clock before all the students had arrived. Then we formed in procession, and yelled and danced past all the cafés on the Boul' Mich' to the Luxembourg Palace and the Théâtre de l'Odéon, to take the 'buses of the Montmartre line. These we quickly seized and overloaded in violation of the law, and then, dashing down the quiet streets of the Rive Gauche, headed for Montmartre, making a noise to rouse the dead. As we neared the Place Blanche we found the little streets merging from different quarters crowded with people in costume, some walking and others crowding almost innumerable vehicles, and the balconies and portes-cochères packed with spectators. The Place Blanche fronts the Moulin Rouge, and it was crowded and brilliantly lighted. The façade of the Moulin Rouge was a blaze of electric lights and colored lanterns, and the revolving wings of the mill flamed across the sky. It was a perfect night. The stars shone, the air was warm and pleasant, and the trees were tipped with the glistening clean foliage of early spring. The bright cafés fronting the Place were crowded with gay revellers. The poets of Bohemia were there, and gayly attired cocottes assisted them in their fun at the café tables, extending far out into the boulevard under the trees. At one corner was Gérôme's private studio, high up in the top of the house, and standing on the balcony was Gérôme himself, enjoying the brilliant scene below.
As the Bal des Quat'z' Arts is not open to the public, and as none but accredited members of the four arts are admitted, the greatest precautions are taken to prevent the intrusion of outsiders; and wonderful is the ingenuity exercised to outwit the authorities. Inside the vestibule of the Moulin was erected a tribune (a long bar), behind which sat the massiers of the different studios of Paris, all in striking costumes. It was their task not only to identify the holders of tickets, but also to pass on the suitability of the costumes of such as were otherwise eligible to admittance. The costumes must all have conspicuous merit and be thoroughly artistic. Nothing black, no dominos, none in civilian dress, may pass. Many and loud were the protestations that rang through the vestibule as one after another was turned back and firmly conducted to the door.
Once past the implacable tribunes, we entered a dazzling fairy-land, a dream of rich color and reckless abandon. From gorgeous kings and queens to wild savages, all were there; courtiers in silk, naked gladiators, nymphs with paint for clothing,—all were there; and the air was heavy with the perfume of roses. Shouts, laughter, the silvery clinking of glasses, a whirling mass of life and color, a bewildering kaleidoscope, a maze of tangled visions in the soft yellow haze that filled the vast hall. There was no thought of the hardness and sordidness of life, no dream of the morrow. It was a wonderful witchery that sat upon every soul there.
This splendid picture was framed by a wall of lodges, each sumptuously decorated and hung with banners, tableaux, and greens, each representing a particular atelier and adorned in harmony with the dominant ideals of their masters. The lodge of the Atelier Gérôme was arranged to represent a Grecian temple; all the decorations and accessories were pure Grecian, cleverly imitated by the master's devoted pupils. That of the Atelier Cormon repre sented a huge caravan of the prehistoric big- muscled men that appeal so strongly to Cormon; large skeletons of extinct animals, giant ferns, skins, and stone implements were scattered about, while the students of Cormon's atelier, almost naked, with bushy hair and clothed in skins, completed the picture. And so it was with all the lodges, each typifying a special subject, and carrying it out with perfect fidelity to the minutest detail.
The event of the evening was the grand cortège; this, scheduled for one o'clock, was awaited with eager expectancy, for with it would come the test of supremacy,—the awarding of the prize for the best. For this was the great art centre of the world, and this night was the one in which its rivalries would strain the farthest reach of skill.
Meanwhile, the great hall swarmed with life and blazed with color and echoed with the din of merry voices. Friends recognized one another with great difficulty. And there was Gérôme himself at last, gaudily gowned in the rich green costume of a Chinese mandarin, his white moustache dyed black, and his white locks hidden beneath a black skull-cap topped with a bobbing appendage. And there also was Jean Paul Laurens, in the costume of a Norman, the younger Laurens as Charlemagne. Léandre, the caricaturist, was irresistible as a caricature of Queen Victoria. Puech, the sculptor, made a graceful courtier of the Marie Antoinette régime. Willett was a Roman emperor. Will Dodge was loaded with the crown, silks, and jewels of a Byzantine emperor.
Louis Loeb was a desperate Tartar bandit. Castaigne made a hit as an Italian jurist. Steinlen, Grasset, Forain, Rodin,—in fact, nearly all the renowned painters, sculptors, and illustrators of Paris were there; and besides them were the countless students and models.