Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2199 page)

Here our cruise ended, and here my narrative closes with it. Fare-thee-well, thou lively Tomtit! Tiny home of joyous days, may thy sea-fortunes be happy, and thy trim sails be set prosperously, for many a year still to the favouring breeze! And fare-ye-well heartily, honest sailor-brothers, whose helping hands never once failed us whose zeal in our service never once slackened, whose close companionship from the day of setting out to the day of return, has left us no recollections but such as we can now recal and talk over with unmixed pleasure!

From
Household Words
XII No.300 22 December 1855

IN a recent number of this journal, we endeavoured, in an article called “ To Think, or Be Thought For?”* to induce our readers to form their own opinions on pictures
especially in the case of pictures by Old Masters, which might come under their observation. And we ventured, at the same time, to own that we doubted the sense and usefulness of the principle upon which the national picture-money is at present expended in stocking the National Gallery with works of Art. Our heretical opinions on this latter point, have lately received a curious and unexpected confirmation in the shape of a letter from Mr. WILLIAM STIRLING (a recognised authority in matters of Art), which has been published in the columns of a weekly contemporary, and which we beg permission briefly to refer to in this place.

The subject of the letter is a well-known picture in the National Gallery, which is described as a Boar Hunt, by Velasquez, and the object of the writer is to settle how much of this picture has been done by the dead Spaniard, Velasquez, and how much by the living Englishman (and skilled artist), Mr. Lance. On this point, Mr. Stirling, the constituted authority, and Mr. Lance, the skilled artist, are at issue. Mr. Lance states before a Committee of the House of Commons, that he had made many extensive repairs in the picture, and instances, as one of the chief of these, the painting of a group of mules in the foreground, “out of his own head.” To this startling statement he afterwards adheres publicly, in a printed letter; adding that, when he was before the picture in the National Gallery, several of the committee (apparently quite incapable of distinguishing for themselves, which was old painter
’
s work, and which was new), asked him, by two or three at a time (so eager was their thirst for knowledge), and pointing all over the picture (so bewildered were they as to the real extent of the repairs), “Did you do this, Mr. Lance? Did you do that, Mr. Lance?”
and so on. Mr. Lance, an interval of twenty years having elapsed since he made the canvas presentable to the public eye, is naturally unable to identify every touch of his modern brush on the ancient picture. One thing, however, he can tell the committee with certainty
that he did six weeks
’
work upon it. What does the paying British public think of its bargain?
a work by an old master which requires to be painted on for six weeks by a modern artist before it can be presented to the popular gaze. What a lucky people we are, and how well our constituted authorities employ the national resources!

But we must not forget Mr. Stirling. Mr. Stirling
’
s point is
not at all that the picture was originally purchased in such a decently genuine condition, as to need only the ordinary cleansing from dirt, and the after coating of varnish, to which its age might fairly entitle it
,
but how much did Mr. Lance do of it? For this purpose, he sends to Madrid for a tracing of a copy of the picture, executed by Goza
that tracing only extending to the portion of the work on which Mr. Lance alleged that the most important of his many “repairs” had been made. By the evidence I thus obtained, Mr. Stirling finds out that Mr. Lance has greatly exaggerated the extent of bare canvas which he says he covered, that the group in the restored picture agrees with that in Goza
’
s copy, but that variations occur in the details. Where Velasquez (on the evidence of the copy) painted horses, Mr. Lance has painted mules (a slight variation, this!); where Velasquez painted a man showing a hand out of a cloak, Mr. Lance has painted a man showing a hand and a leg; where Velasquez painted a man on foot turning his back on the spectator, Mr. Lance has painted a man on horseback prancing towards the spectator. Thus, the only question between Mr. Stirling and Mr. Lance is a question of quantity. Mr. Stirling disputes (on the evidence of the tracing from the copy), that so much has been done to the picture “out of Mr. Lance
’
s own head,” as Mr. Lance himself alleges. Of the extent to which Mr. Stirling himself admits that Mr. Lance has distinctly, with his own modern brush, worked upon and changed the old picture, we have enabled the reader to judge. To an unlearned apprehension, the admitted transformation which the picture has undergone, at the hands of Mr. Lance, appears something simply astounding. Astounding in every point of view. Astounding, when we remember that this picture
in which old horses have been turned into modern mules, in which a man on horseback does duty vice a man on foot, resigned
was purchased with the national money as a genuine article by constituted authorities who profess to be judges of the genuineness of pictures. Astounding, also, as showing the shameless dishonesty of the man, or men, who sold this piece of patchwork for a work of Velasquez. Were we so very hasty and wrong, a few weeks back, when we said that the national-picture money was occasionally spent for the confusion of the nation?

We have waited, before writing these lines, to ascertain if Mr. Lance would make any rejoinder to Mr. Stirling
’
s letter. He has been silent, and Mr. Stirling enjoys the privilege of having said the triumphant last word. He speaks it in a perfectly moderate and gentlemanlike manner
but his evident incapability of perceiving the conclusions to which his own admissions lead, is, to say the least of it, not a little amazing.

First published
Household Words
25 October 1856

CHARLES PINEAU DUCLOS was a French writer of biographies and novels, who lived and worked during the first half of the eighteenth century. He prospered sufficiently well, as a literary man, to be made secretary to the French Academy, and to be allowed to succeed Voltaire in the office of historiographer of France. He has left behind him, in his own country, the reputation of a lively writer of the second class, who addressed the public of his day with fair success, and who, since his death, has not troubled posterity to take any particular notice of him.

Among the papers left by Duclos, two manuscripts were found, which he probably intended to turn to some literary account. The first was a brief Memoir, written by himself; of a Frenchwoman, named Mademoiselle Gautier, who began life as an actress and who ended it as a Carmelite nun. The second manuscript was the lady
’
s own account of the process of her conversion, and of the circumstances which attended her moral passage from the state of a sinner to the state of a saint. There are certain national peculiarities in the character of Mademoiselle Gautier and in the narrative of her conversion, which are perhaps interesting enough to be reproduced with some chance of pleasing the reader of the present day.

It appears, from the account given of her by Duclos, that Mademoiselle Gautier made her appearance on the stage o
n
the Th
ea
tre Fran
c
ois in the year seventeen hundred and sixteen. She is described as a handsome woman, with a fine figure, a fresh complexion, a lively disposition, and a violent temper. Besides possessing capacity as an actress, she could write very good verses, she was clever at painting in miniature, and, most remarkable quality of all, she was possessed of prodigious muscular strength. It is recorded of Mademoiselle, that she could roll up a silver plate with her hands, and that she covered herself with distinction in a trial of strength with no less a person than the famous soldier, Marshal Saxe.

Nobody who is at all acquainted with the social history of the eighteenth century in France, need be told that Mademoiselle Gautier had a long list of lovers,
for the most part, persons of quality, marshals, counts, and so forth. The only man, however, who really attached her to him, was an actor at the Th
ea
tre Fran
c
ois, a famous player in his day, named Quinault Dufresne. Mademoiselle Gautier seems to have loved him with all the ardour of her naturally passionate disposition. At first, he returned her affection; but, as soon as she ventured to test the sincerity of his attachment by speaking of marriage, he cooled towards her immediately, and the connection between them was broken off. In all her former love-affairs, she bad been noted for the high tone which she adopted towards her admirers, and for the despotic authority which she exercised over them even in her gayest moments. But the severance of her connection with Quinault Dufresne wounded her to her heart. She had loved the man so dearly, had made so many sacrifices for him, bad counted so fondly on the devotion of her whole future life to him, that the first discovery of his coldness towards her broke her spirit at once and for ever. She fell into a condition of hopeless melancholy, looked back with remorse and horror at her past. life, and abandoned the stage and the society in which she had lived, to end her days repentantly in the character of a Carmelite nun.

So far, her history is the history of hundreds of other women before her time and after it. The prominent interest of her life, for the student of human nature, lies in the story of her conversion, as told by herself. The greater part of the narrative
every page of which is more or less characteristic of the Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century
may be given, with certain suppressions and abridgments, in her own words. The reader will observe, at the outset, one curious fact. Mademoiselle Gautier does not so much as hint at the influence which the loss of her lover had in disposing her mind to reflect on serious subjects. She describes her conversion as if it had taken its rise in a sudden inspiration from Heaven. Even the name of Quinault Dufresne is not once mentioned from one end of her narrative to the other.