Chard

“ He crashed through the dry currant and gooseberry bushes. Bang! bang! at Chard's back door! Mrs. Chard opened, her arms white with flour, flour on her nose, fright in her eyes.
"Whatever is the matter?" she asked.
"My boy—my little chap—dying!"
She began to wipe the flour off her arms. "What is the matter? What does he act like?" ”

“ Bodley-Chard abandoned all his efforts to attract her and treated her in a very off-hand manner. Without being positively rude, his manner was most offensive.
Isla, however, entrenched herself behind her natural reserve and did not mind. One day she made so bold as to put a very straight question to Mr. Chard.
"Mrs. Chard is very unwell to-day," she said quietly and politely. "She is quite unable to give her mind to any of her ordinary affairs."
"There is no occasion for her to give her mind to anything. People are paid to do the work of the house," he said pointedly. ”

“ So they talk about Evolution and the Unknowable and 'may be something in it.'"
"The religion of the Oxford don," said Chard magnificently from his corner, "is the sickly bastard of nervousness and inertia."
"I'll give you a quid to say that at the Union," said Martin. But Chard valued his career at more than a sovereign.
"Aren't you men a little out of date?" interrupted Davenant. "Chivvying priests and kings was about 1870, wasn't it?"
"Exactly," Rendell cried in triumph. "You've done for priests and kings. Nobody believes in them any more. ”

“ Martin said to him. "It's been a great business. At least one of the Push is a made man."
"It has been fun," Chard admitted. He was intensely happy.
"All the same it was just as well we had that little smash. By Jove, we had some luck. No damage done and just enough mud to be convincing. And then that carrier's cart to get us in absolutely up to time."
"Certainly I owe a good many votes to your enterprise in fetching me and to the terrific blend of eagerness and incompetence which put me in the ditch."
"I can't help a skid," said Martin.
"Whose bike?" asked Chard. ”

“ Now I'm trying to keep my temper, but I strongly advise you men to stick to your autoharp and plough, and leave me to manage my affairs in my own way."
"I have my wife and family to think of," said Chard. "This is putting the whole neighbourhood under a cloud. I have to try to keep my children's minds pure. They are hearing words they haven't any right to hear."
"It's terrible for their pure little minds to be sullied," murmured Mr. Barker.
"What sort of words?" asked Derek.
"Well, Mr. Vale," replied Chard, a yellowish flush creeping over his face, "concubine for one. ”

“ It would be better to have someone who knows the man. You can arrange what names to call each other."
Chard was attracted. Bavin was, he thought, a bouncing jackass, but he bounced before a large audience. He was certainly a person to 'acquire,' and Chard went about the world 'acquiring' the people whom he deemed worthy of that honour. It would be useful to know Bavin well and the formal President's dinner would not give him much chance. Smith-Aitken, too, had been civil lately; he really wasn't such a bad chap. So Chard accepted with alacrity and Martin watched them being driven away. ”

“ He (Mr. Carr) then, being greatly excited, added that Captain Hendry, being a married man with a large family, was little better than a brute beast in his mode of life, else he would not have brought half a dozen native harlots on board—women whose very presence insulted even his native crew. Mr. Chard then advanced towards Mr. Carr in a threatening manner, whereupon the whole native crew, headed by a white stoker named Cleaver, rushed the after-deck, seized Captain Hendry and Mr. Chard, and threw them below into the saloon. ”

“ Two elderly Indians in check shirts and black trousers sat on either side of her. Near by, wearing a clean white apron over her torn skirt, sat Solomon's present wife. She wiped her face continually with a red and white handkerchief and gazed with sorrowful eyes at the floral Gates Ajar that Mrs. Chard had placed upon the coffin. Around her were grouped her family—the little girls and idiot boy at her feet, her daughters and their husbands holding moon-faced babies behind her. ”

“ In 1869 he succeeded to his uncle’s property of Whitestaunton, near Chard, in Somerset. During the later years of his life he retired to a great extent from legal practice, and devoted much of his time to literary work. He died at Whitestaunton on the 23rd of April 1900. ”

“ In August 1651, while minister of Chard, he refused to sign the engagement, and was consequently ordered to leave the town, not to come within ten miles of it, and not to preach in any market town in Somerset. ”

“ How dull, how bald, how negative the smooth course of this life of virtue and honest labour seems, contrasted with the eventful, stormy, passionate life of a Boucher or a Fragonard who were in the stream of fashion, and adopted the manner and licentiousness and vices of their courtly patrons. There is never an immodest thought, never a piquant suggestion in Chardin's paintings. They reflect his own life ”

“ There’s a still-life there that’s a gem, as good as Chardin, and even better, for there’s always something sentimental about Chardin—always the suggestion of the old folks at home, the false dramatic touch, the idea of the hard-working French peasant coming in presently to eat the bread and drink the wine. ”

“ At the rampart of biscuit boxes were several vacant places ere the first beams of light showed in the sky. Where Hook knelt three men had previously been shot. But under the cool direction of Chard, Bromhead, and Assistant-Commissary Dalton, another of the garrison, the line of defenders kept up a deadly fire against the Zulus which stayed the rushes time and time again, and drove back the picked warriors of Cetewayo’s army to the shelter of their rocks and ant-heaps. Thirteen hours in all the fight lasted, until the Zulus drew off, baffled, beaten. ”

“ It is all rendered with such truth and simplicity that one acquires an affection for Chardin, who with his art got to the root of family life and bestowed upon it the subtlest gifts of observation and generous comprehension, while none the less his domesticity never became commonplace. ”

“ There is a touch of deepest pathos in the reference made by Chardin to his son at the close of an address to his Academic colleagues in 1765: [45] "Gentlemen, gentlemen, be indulgent! He who has not felt the difficulty of art does nothing that counts; he who, like my son, has felt it too much, does nothing at all. ”

“ The hospital was the first building to receive the [183] attack, but at the outer wall of defence a fierce hand-to-hand struggle soon ensued. Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead were fighting hard at the front, the latter being conspicuous in many a bayonet charge at the dark-skinned figures that climbed again and again over the mealie-bags. Prominent, too, in repelling the Zulus at this position was one Corporal Schiess, a Swiss, who left the hospital to join in the fight, and distinguished himself by creeping along a wall to shoot a Zulu who was firing from the end. ”

“ Jock came to him through the pantry crawling on his belly.
What was wrong? For God's sake what was wrong? Buckskin! Buck!
He was lying, wedged, between the row of chairs and the couch. He was writhing—twisting. The whites of his eyes showed through the half-closed lids, his lips were blue.
Derek snatched him up and shook him. Buckskin! Waken up! Thank God, there came a flicker of those white eyelids!
Oh, for a woman! Any woman! Lottie Rain. . . . Miles away. . . . Mrs. Chard. He laid the child on the pillow and ran wildly through the house. ”

“ I wheeled my horse as soon as possible and rode back where lay poor Chardon, gasping to start his breath again, and within a few paces of him his huge victim, with his heels high in the air, and the horse lying across him. I dismounted instantly, but Chardon was raising himself on his hands, with his eyes and mouth full of dirt, and feeling for his gun, which lay about 30 feet in advance of him. ‘Heaven spare you! are you hurt, Chardon?’ ‘Hi-hic—hic—hic—hic—no;—hic—no—no, I believe not. ”

“ Docility in human beings is always a dreadful quality, but docility in matters of taste is shameful. I sighed, and fixed my eyes on what looked like a Chardin. Oh, yes, Chardin was “in” now, I remembered. But an ordinary private family would be as little likely to own a real Chardin as a real Veermeer. I reflected that as soon as it was discovered not to be a genuine one, it would certainly be sent off to the junk shop. And yet it was a delightful canvas, apparently by some one of the period who had absorbed Chardin’s atmosphere and loved it as we do. ”

“ Perhaps they have just left the room, but the atmosphere is still filled with their presence.
If ever there was a painter to whom the old saying celare artem est summa ars is applicable, surely it was Chardin! A slow, meticulously careful worker, who bestowed no end of time and trouble upon every canvas, and whom nothing but perfection would satisfy, he never attempted to gain applause by a display of cleverness or by technical fireworks. The perfection of the result conceals the labour expended upon it and the art by means of which it is achieved. ”

“ The attitude of the woman, who has just returned from market and is depositing her load of victuals, is admirably true to life; and the still-life painting of the black bottles on the ground, the pewter plate, the loaf of bread, and so forth, testifies to the master's supreme skill. From the glimpse of the courtyard through the open door, it can be seen that the setting of the sun is identical with that of "The Fountain"—that is to say, that it represents the modest house in the Rue Princesse, in which Chardin lived up to the time of his second marriage. ”

“ Chardin's art is living and sincere, with never a trace of affectation. In his paintings the most unpromising material, the most prosaic objects on a humble kitchen table, the uneventful daily routine of lower [16] middle-class life, are rendered interesting by the warming flame of human sympathy which moved the master to spend his supreme skill upon them ”

“ The great and learned traveller Jean Chardin, son of Jean Chardin and Jeanne Ghiselin, was born at Paris 26th November 1643. His father was a rich jeweller, who by Caron was named along with a Monsieur Raisin, and both were described as très-honnestes gens et marchands très-experimentés. ”

“ Chardin’s figures do not cease to be typical of the race, while they retain the delicate accuracy of personal studies, and betray an untiring reference not to a few models only, but to all the nature he lived amongst. Always without exaggeration, always with directness and a deep simplicity, the self-effacing art of Chardin accomplished its task, writing for us in picture after picture, or print after print, the history of the quietest of refined lives that the Eighteenth Century knew; arresting for us the delicate gesture, in itself so slight, yet so completely revealing ”

“ He died at the beginning of the Restoration at Paris, where he had come to solicit the sanction of the Academy of Science, in despair at the lack of result, leaving a wife and two children poverty-stricken. [Lost Illusions.]
CHARDON (Madame) , nee Rubempre, wife of the preceding. The final branch of an illustrious family. Saved from the scaffold in 1793 by the army surgeon Chardon who declared her enceinte by him and who married her despite their mutual poverty. Reduced to suffering by the sudden death of her husband, she concealed her misfortunes under the name of Mme. Charlotte. ”

“ About nine o’clock the young apothecary returned, bringing with him a basketful of drugs, enough, to all appearance, to kill or cure a regiment of patients. “For whom,” inquired Chardin, “are all those medicines?”—“For you,” replied the young man; “these are what the hakīm has ordered you to take this morning, and you must swallow them as quickly as possible.” Fevers make men docile. The traveller immediately began to do as he was commanded ”

“ Chardenal joined me later and, concealing our swag under our British warms, we walked as quickly as we could until the Brigadier stopped and had a little chat with us about things in general. And there we had to stand for a quarter of an hour on a freezing afternoon with two fingers holding the box and the other fingers holding the coat down to effect better concealment. Chardenal was in so much pain and wore such an expression of agonized innocence that the Brigadier wanted him to come into headquarters until he felt better. ”

“ Indeed, it may be said that all Chardin's still-life partakes of genre as much as his genre partakes of still-life. A loaf of bread, a knife, and a black bottle on a crumpled piece of paper; a basket, a few eggs, and a copper pot, and such like material, suffice for him to create so vivid a picture of [24] simple home life, that only the presence of the housewife or serving-maid is needed to raise the painting into the sphere of domestic genre. Sometimes this scarcely needed touch of actual life is given by the introduction of some domestic animal ”

“ Chardin knew not how to impart his marvellous technique to young Fragonard, and Fragonard returned to Boucher without having appreciably benefited by Chardin's instruction. The master had no better luck with his own son, though in this case the failure was due rather to lack of talent than to bad teaching, for Van Loo and Natoire were equally unsuccessful in their efforts to develop the unfortunate young man's feeble gifts. ”