BOOKS.

GUSTAVE DORE.* ALTHOUGH the author of this lively volume was only acquainted with Dore during the last years of his life, we are inclined to think that, so far from suffering thereby, her account has only gained in impartiality and completeness. So long as she is content to act as the mirror of Dore's friends and critics, to let them speak for themselves or to reproduce their information in her chatty and vivacious fashion, we readily condone her irrele- vant comments, her disregard for chronological order, and the frequent barbarisms of her style. It is only in the latter chapters, when, giving free rein to her imagination, she endeavours to pictnre the thoughts that passed through the mind of Dore as he visited Stratford-on-Avon, or lay on his death-bed, that she wanders beyond the province of thebiographer and disfigures her pages by indiscriminate hero-worship. It is true that she has prepared her readers for these divagations into "the domain of the unreal," defending the practice on the somewhat original plea that they were the natural outcome of an attempt to identify herself "with the one predominating element of Dore's character—his imagination." Such a pre- cedent, were it generally followed, would lead to the establish- ment of a new Romantic School of Biography. But we do not anticipate that Miss Roosevelt's rhapsodies, clever as they are, will meet with general acceptance, or serve as models to workers in this branch of literature. To us they constitute the only serious blemish on an otherwise readable and attractive memoir.

Gustave Dore, the second of the three sons of a well-to-do civil engineer, was born at Strasburg, January 6th, 1832, and retained throughout his life a deep affection for Alsace. Even as a child of four or five he was in the habit of illustrating his letters from school—some of which are here reproduced—and the sketches with which he filled his exercise-books in the evenings at home gave proofs of an exuberant imagination and astonishing memory. He took no drawing-lessons, his father and grand- mother sharing the provincial dislike for all artists ; while his mother was content to accept him as a genius. So great was his fondness for music, mimicry, and acrobatic feats of all sorts, that his friends prophesied he would turn into an actor or musician. These tastes he remained faithful to as long as he lived, being in after-life an excellent violinist, a charming " tenorino," on the authority of Rossini, while from his fifth to his fiftieth year he never outgrew his taste for juggling and somersaults. When he was in good health and spirits he would often walk round his studio on his hands ; at Verona he once earned enough by playing the mountebank in the streets to pay for a good dinner for himself and his friends ; and two wounds from knives, one of which might have proved fatal, are recorded in these pages as the results of his indulgence in juggling tricks. At the age of eight he gave a convincing proof of his versatility by reproducing, with the aid of his school friends, on their master's fete-day, a pro- cession of guilds which had recently taken place on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue to Gutenberg. Dole devised and carried out the whole thing in forty-eight hours, painting the banners from memory, and acting as master of the ceremonies. This exploit decided his friends that he would find a career in art ; but the elders of his family were still loth to encourage his bent. As his grandmother told him, there were "other and more serious things in the world than making sketches of broken-backed animals and weak-kneed vagrants," for his taste for grotesque objects had already developed itself ; and the opera of Robert le Diable, which he heard about this time, gave a great impetus to his natural fondness for "the supernatural and demoniac." For the rest, he was, on the testimony of a life-long friend, " a superlative demon, so far as gaiety, fun, and mischief were concerned," but with a Goldsmith-like vein of tender-heartedness, even to the giving away of his boots to a beggar ; sensitive to a slight from a friend, and showing in his relations with all about him a strange mixture of obstinacy and

S Life and R4IlltilliSCSIIC611 of Gustave Dori. By Blanche Roosevelt. London : Sampson Low and Co, gentleness. He frequently accompanied his father on his surveys, exploring every nook of the Vosges, and eagerly drinking in all

the legends of Alsace and the Black Forest, the actors in which were such real persons to him that he knew the colour of their eyes and hair, their complexion, height, and even the sound of their voices. As his biographer well says :-

" He abode in spirit with his saints, elves, and gnomes He

lived more in the ideal world than in the real, and throughout life never conquered the habit of believing in illusions and expecting miracles to be performed in his favour, as soon as he set his heart upon anything."

In September, 1847, he visited Paris with his parents, and, dis- liking the notion of a return to provincial life, took some of his sketches to Philipon, the publisher of the Journal pour Eire, with the result that his father signed a contract in which his son was bound for three years to supply a weekly page of drawings to Philipon's journal. This engagement was faith- fully kept, and Dore owned in after-years his indebtedness for a start in life to this publisher, though he fretted at the time at being restricted entirely to caricature, Philipon's sole speciality. Meantime, he attended the Lycee Charlemagne, where Taine and About were among his schoolfellows, paying his fees with his earnings, and employing his leisure moments in "serious study," under his only master—himself. He was never idle, and had already developed an extra- ordinary faculty for continuous work ; but it never occurred to him, nor did any of his associates venture to suggest, that he should take lessons. Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob), Balzac's brother-in-law, presumed so far on his posi- tion as a friend of the Dore family, as to impress upon him the necessity of studying from models ; but Gustave retorted that he saw three hundred in the swimming-bath every day ; and it was useless to argue with a boy who misconstrued advice into lack of appreciation, threw somersaults over the best sofa, and disarmed criticism by his prodigious industry and creative power. On the death of her husband, in 1848, Madame Dore moved up to Paris, and took a large house in the Rue St, Dominique, where Gustave lived with his mother until her death. His filial devotion was one of the finest features in his character ; and at the age of forty "he lived with her just as if he had been a child," sleeping in a little " schoolboy's sanctum " which opened off his mother's room. As his old nurse Francoise, who plays a prominent part in these memoirs, told Miss Roosevelt, "he never got to be so big a boy but that he wanted to sleep within sound of his mother's voice." We have already alluded to Paul Lacroix's reminiscences of Dore's youth, which are, perhaps, the most interesting in the book, and from which we extract the following curious anecdote :-

" One paramount idea beset him to be constantly at work and constantly before the public. When I. :s sketches were not accepted and paid for, he often gave thew away, in order to

be able to say, So-and-so is my publisher.' For a time he literally depreciated the value of his own labour by the enormous prodigality of his pencil."

In another passage he describes Dore's impatience with his engravers, men three or four times his age. "He even attempted to show them the right way to engrave, and gave them elaborate instructions in an art he had never learnt himself." In 1848 he witnessed the street-fighting which ensued on the overthrow of Louis Philippe, an experience to which his biographer traces his skill in grouping ; and in 1850, while only a boy of eighteen, his fame as a draughtsman had crossed the Channel, and brought him his first English commission, a volume of gro- tesque sketches. In 1853 he obtained his publisher's leave to illustrate Rabelais—" the first thing of mine which made a sensation," to quote his own words—and released him from the restrictions which had hitherto confined his published work to the domain of caricature. So great was the success of the Rabelais that he declined for the time-being to illustrate Boc- caccio and Montaigne, in order to dispel the notion that he had a special talent for mediaeval buffoonery. In 1853 he visited Switzerland; but was so bitterly disappointed by the inadequate recognition of his talents shown him on his return vid Alsace, that he refused to adopt that route in the following year. On these holiday excursions he generally made a great many sketches, which were never executed on the spot, but drawn or painted from memory, and often by lamp-light, on his return to the inn or hotel. By this time Dore had begun to turn his atten- tion seriously in the direction of oil-painting, and, according to Lacroix, had already conceived a vehement dislike for all con- temporary artists :-

" He never heard of any other artist's success without brooding

over it jealously or unhappily The high prices Gerome and Meissonier realised made him frantic He never seemed to under-

stand the fact that age and experience could make any difference in the achievements of great successes."

This jealousy is farther illustrated by the facts that he col- lected no other works of art in his studio or house save his own, that the topic of art was tabooed at his dinner-parties, and that the only instance recorded in these pages of a generous admiration expressed for the paintings of others was wrung reluctantly from his lips. Determined to " paralyse the world," he painted twelve huge pictures representing " Les Vilenies de Paris," which Gautier, himself no prude, pronounced to be indecent. Some enterprising Americans offered him 110,000f. for the series. His mother urged him to hold out for 140,000f. ; the negotiations fell through, and the pictures were never heard of again.

From 1854 onwards, Dore was a constant exhibitor in the Salon ; but the lack of notice or material recognition in the shape of medal or purchaser which his paintings encountered was a constant source of disappointment to him. To keep up his mother's establishment he had to work like a galley-slave at illustrations, and the catalogue of work done in 1855 is a truly

formidable list, headed by 425 drawings for Balzac's Conte,s Drolatiques. His Salon exhibits this year—in spite of the praise of Gautier and About, the latter of whom called him

" The Zouave of Painting "—again failed to create the sensation he had hoped for. But a trip to Switzerland, and another to the

Pyrenees in the congenial company of his friends, Dalloz and Gautier, restored his spirits to their buoyant level; he had begun to study Dante with a view to illustrating the Inferno, and his designs in black-and-white to Le Jul.( Errant achieved a remarkable success in 1856. The illustrations to the Inferno,

completed in little more than a year, were not brought out until

1860, and then at the artist's expense. On these designs Gautier wrote a very remarkable criticism, of which Miss Roosevelt has given a rendering more spirited than accurate. Square menu,

which she renders "frothy," should be " scaly." In another

passage, she translates incomprie " incomprehensible ;" and there is a curious blunder in her version of a letter from Victor Hugo. A propos of Gautier, it is worth mentioning that the phrase " un gamin de genie " was applied by him to Dore. M.

Dalloz, after describing the success of the Inferno, gives an amusing account of how Madame Dore shook him because her

son had not been decorated, and was "reduced to the very verge of distraction and suicide" in consequence. He at once posted off to the Minister of Public Instruction, secured the coveted dis- tinction, and restored peace and happiness to the Dore household. With regard to Dore's earnings, some interesting statistics are given. It is estimated that between 1850 and 1870 his illustrations brought him in no less than £280,000. A morning's work has been known to realise £400. But it was the number of his works, quite as much as the nnprecedentedly high rate of re- muneration which he commanded, that made his earnings so large. "Everything brought grist to his mill, from Dante to an almanack." He was not " actuated by a greed of gain," but by the desire " to establish a monopoly of talent in his own person?'

About the age of twenty-three he conceived the plan of illustrat- ing some forty of the great masterpieces of literature, from Homer downwards, on the scale of his Inferno, and by 1865 he had executed seven of the number. The entire scheme is

given in some autobiographical notes written down in that year for the benefit of some intending biographer, and winding up with the curious declaration,—" I am neither a husband nor a father, a national guard nor a freemason."

In 1862 he spent his holiday at Baden-Baden, where he discussed Don Quixote with Viardot, whose edition he was going to illustrate, and entertained his friends with his winnings at roulette. Though a staunch Orleanist, Dore had a personal liking for the late Emperor, whom he visited at Compiegne in December, 1864; but he positively refused the request of the Empress that he would form one of the Imperial suite at Suez on the occasion of the opening of the Canal. He visited Baden- Baden again in the same year, where he was laid up with bron- chitis, his first serious illness, and a good deal of his experiences at this resort were summed up in his enormous "Tapia Vert," which contains a portrait of the celebrated Pauline Viardot, Malibran's sister, and the original of George Sand's " Consuelo." Musicians were more largely represented amongst his friends and guests than any other section of the artistic world. He was an intimate and attached friend of Rossini's, and Gonnod, Faure, Liszt, Albani, Nilsson, and Patti were constant guests at his recep-

tions and dinner-parties. In1866 he illustrated Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea" to the great satisfaction of the poet. who spoke of the artist's work as a " magnificent translation" of his own. In the following year he painted his well-known picture, "The Neophyte," and made arrangements for bringing out his illus- trations to the Bible in England. He had already conceived the design of illustrating Shakespeare with 1,000 drawings, "a round and sonorous number," as he wrote to Messrs. Cassell. Miss Roosevelt devotes a good deal of space to a pleasant de- scription of Dore as a host, and the pleasure he took in devising original ways of diverting his guests, with musical decanters, novel dishes, and menus and tableaux et la Dore. When he entertained the Postmaster-General of Paris, " the nap- kins were folded like envelopes, the rags served in the form of billets-doux, the tarts were enveloped in telegraph forms, and the ices in official pigeon-holes." An interesting chapter is devoted—or " consecrated " as Miss Roosevelt would say—to his personal character, and we are inclined to agree with his biographer that the finest traits in it were those which the public were never aware of. Amongst these, we may mention his kindness to sick friends and sick children, his generosity and his habit of treasuring up all gifts, no matter how slight. He was constantly in love, but, apparently, devotion to his mother and habit always proved stronger than passion in the long-run ; and it was not until after her death that he realised with bitter self-reproach, that he had let himself glide on into middle age " without having established a home and hearth for himself."

He had often been urged to visit England, but was long de- terred by vague presentiments. " Something told him that if he went he would break up all associations with his native land and lose much of the prestige and influence he now possessed in France." Then, too, there were the fogs and—the Channel. At last he made up his mind, after two years of hesitation, and came over in 1868, in which year the Dore Gallery in Bond Street took its present shape. His letters to his friends describing the Homeric banquetings off bullocks and " cloudy wines " in what he calls the "Babylon of lunches " are intensely amusing ; but in spite of all his gaiety he was very homesick at heart, and longing to return to Paris, " where the sky was of a deeper blue, where woman's foot had a daintier arch and where champagne [his favourite and almost only beverage] flowed in rivulets." Amongst his other London experiences was a fish dinner at Greenwich. At first his appetite was momentarily appeased. But at the close, he exclaimed,—" But why so much fish P This is not Friday " And on returning to town, he hurried to his club, and called at once for "two—if you please—two large beefsteaks." About this time be became more firmly convinced than ever that his true vocation was that of a painter. Henceforth, as he himself told Miss Roosevelt, he illustrated only to keep himself in paints and brushes ; and there is something rather pathetic in the way in which he embarked upon these colossal canvasses before he knew what would become of them. There seems to be little doubt that his death was hastened by the mortification he felt at finding neither appreciation nor purchasers in France. What the deliberate opinion of the French critics was, and is, may be gathered from the reply made by one of them to an English friend who proposed a visit to see the works of "your greatest painter." " He is neither greatest nor great ; indeed, we never knew he was a painter at all until you told us so." As a draughtsman and aquarelliste, he was allowed to stand in the front rank ; but this was not enough, and thus it was that "in a spirit of lofty bravado be carried off his paintings to England and established himself there." A solitary instance of his consenting to take advice is recorded in connection with his painting, " Christ leaving the Przetorium," for which he re- ceived the sum of £6,000. These prolonged visits to England, and the war of 1870-71, broke up the periodical meetings of his pleasant circle, in which death had already made many gaps. The high pressure at which he had lived for so many years began to make itself felt in the form of organic disorder and mental depression. Still, in the company of his intimate friends, English as well as French, his boyish nature would still reassert itself. In April, 1873, he visited Scotland with Colonel Teesdale, "the best and most precious guide heart could wish," who endeavoured to initiate him into the art of salmon-fishing. But Dore did not prove an apt pupil, and owned that he " fished above all in order to catch beautiful landscapes," which, according to his wont, were executed in the evenings at their hotel, or at the close of the tour under the title of souvenir& In spite of his frequent visits, Dord never learnt to speak English fluently. In writing to his friends in Paris he would, however, often lapse for their diversion into passages such as the following :- " Ten weeks spent in this country without speaking a word of

French, that is my singular life from long ago I am most satisfied of my stay in this hospitable country The Right Honourable Lord Mayor and all the Aldermen of the City beg me send to you their best compliments, and I add to you a strong hand- breaking."

In the last few years of his life he made a fresh effort to win recognition at the hands of his countrymen by his essays in sculpture, but without success. His works often coat him several thousand pounds to produce, and the failure to recoup himself for this initial expense, or to secure any official commendation, cut his sensitive nature to the quick. Domestic worries also began to harass him, and to crown all his mother's health broke down. For two years he 'nursed her with unre- mitting devotion, sitting up night after night in her room over his blocks, at a time when his own seriously impaired constitu- tion was in need of rest and change. She died in March, 1881, and Gustave Dord survived her less than two years. He was struck down by an apoplectic fit in January, 1883, rallied, and sank suddenly after a brief illness, in which his dominant thought was,—" I have not time to be ill ; I have not time." One of his first questions, on rallying, had reference to the casting of his statue of Alexander Dumas pare, which he had with characteristic generosity executed gratuitously for the committee, who had approved his design.

We had marked a great many other passages for quota- tion and comment, but this notice has already run to undue length, and must here be concluded with a cordial recom- mendation to all our readers to possess themselves of this memoir. Whether they admire Dares paintings or not, they cannot fail to be interested in the personality of the versatile Alsatian who combined the best features of Bohemianism with strong domestic instincts. The value of Miss Roosevelt's volume would be greatly increased by a good index, and a better arrangement of the numerous illustrations strewn somewhat at random throughout her pages.