Étienne-Jules Marey

“ Still, the immense solidity of Méryo etching gives it a realism as much its own as is all the wealth of its poetry. The very simplification of the facts must have been deliberate, and it accomplished its end. It would be ridiculous to suggest that a draughtsman of architecture so patient and thorough as Méryon, could not have set forth each detail, as well as the general{106} character, had it been his aim. ”

“ Among their works may be mentioned 'Napoléon en Egypte' and 'Waterloo.' In connection with Gérard De Nerval, whose Sanscrit attainments have already been mentioned in another note, Méry published a translation of the Sanscrit drama 'Mritsakati' or 'Le Chariot d'Enfant,' which thus, after two thousand years, transplanted from its native soil, had a new lease of vitality in the centre of civilisation—Paris. Méry's greatest merits are fecundity and diversity. All languages and lands seem familiar to him, and he flies from one to another without ever appearing to be out of his native region. ”

“ To give as much dignity, and as great a semblance of justice as possible to a proceeding so unwarrantable as that of calling upon her to answer for an imaginary offence, forty of the most illustrious persons in the kingdom were appointed Commissioners, and were intrusted with the charge of hearing the cause, and deciding upon the question of life or death.
On the 25th of September 1586, Mary had been taken from Chartley to the Castle of Fotheringay in Northamptonshire, where she was more strictly watched than ever by Sir Amias Paulet, who was a harsh and inflexible gaoler. ”

“ As she surveyed herself finally in the long glass, she flung out the somewhat caustic remark:
"When I get down-stairs and look at Mary Ballard, I shall feel like a Beardsley poster propped up beside a Helleu etching."
After lunch, Porter took Aunt Isabelle and Barry and the three girls to Fort Myer. The General and Mr. Jeliffe met them at the drill hall, and as they entered there came to them the fresh fragrance of the tan bark.
As the others filed into their seats, Barry held Leila back. "We will sit at the end," he said. "I want to talk to you." ”

“ Several of them were his by hereditary right, such as those of Lord High Admiral, and the Sheriffships of Berwick, Haddington, and Edinburgh. Part of his authority on the Borders he had acquired during the time of the late Queen-Regent, Mary’s mother, having been made her Lieutenant, and keeper of Hermitage Castle, in 1558; and it was immediately after his restoration to favour, during the continuance of Murray’s rebellion, that he was appointed Lieutenant of the West and Middle Marches, a situation which implied the superiority of the Abbeys of Melrose and Haddington. ”

“ Under the pretence that there was too great a concourse of strangers from Scotland, Lord Scroope and Sir Francis Knollys ordered the fortifications of Carlisle Castle to be repaired, and Mary was not allowed to ride out to any distance. The most distinguished of the few friends who were now with [Pg 163] her, and who remained faithful to her to the end of her life, were Lesley, Bishop of Ross,—the Lords Herries, Livingston, and Fleming, and George and William Douglas. ”

“ The stories move rapidly and defy criticism by the very occasion of their being, invented to amuse and astonish a jaded autocrat.
Hence we feel no shock in reading of an island where the commonest utensils are made of gold, a nursery of whales, five months in the interior of an iceberg, or a journey among the clouds during a thunderstorm. The demand for brevity strengthens Marryat's style, and saves him from padding. He is very happy in contriving expediences, and evinces considerable wit in the conception, for instance, of Yussuf the water-carrier. ”

“ It is only the four oblong subjects of Paris and its vicinity after Zeeman that count for something more, because they show very plainly on what Meryon formed his taste, and anticipate, in the proportions and ordonnance of the plate and in the treatment of river boats and of the little figures on the banks of the Seine that we see in Le Pavillon de Mademoiselle and in La Rivière de Seine et l’angle du Mail, habits that we shall soon come to regard, when we consider the original etchings of Paris, as specially characteristic of Meryon himself. ”

“ The art of Méryon is completely misconceived when his etchings are spoken of as views of Paris. They are often “views,” but they are so just so far as is compatible with their being likewise the visions of a poet and the compositions of an artist. It was an epic of Paris that Méryon determined to make, coloured strongly by his personal sentiment, and affected here and there by the occurrences of the moment—in more than one case, for instance, he hurried with particular affection to etch his impression of some old-world building which was on the point of destruction. ”

“ It is nothing wonderful that such gentlemen as M. Paul Feval and poor blind Jacques Arago, should take le gin and le boxe to be the Alpha and Omega of English propensities and manners, and should proceed upon that presumption in romances of such distinguished merit as Les Mystères de Londres and Zambala l'Indien. But M. Méry is a man of letters esteemed amongst his fellows—a hasty and slovenly writer, certainly, but possessing wit, and tact, and style, when he chooses to employ them ”

“ He telephoned at once to Mary, "I'm coming up."
She was radiant. "Constance and Gordon arrived Monday, and I want you for dinner. Leila will be here and the General and Aunt Frances and Grace from New York."
His growl came back to her. "And that means that I won't have a minute alone with you."
"Oh, Porter—please. There are so many other girls in the world—and you've had the whole summer to find one."
"The summer has been a howling wilderness. But mother has put me through my paces at the resorts. Mary, I've learned such a lot of new dances to teach you."
"Teach them to Grace." ”

“ We rafted off several casks of water during that day, and on the following we completed our water, and then ran to the east end of the island to anchor near, and wait for our consort the whaler, the captain of which had come in his boat to visit us: I conversed with him, and was struck with one remark which he made.
"You Englishmen go to work in a queerish kind of way," said he; "you send a parcel of soldiers to live on an island where none but sailors can be of use. You listen to all that those red coats tell you ”

“ John soon followed, holding his under-jaw in his hand, looking very dismal and very frightened, for two reasons; one, because he thought that his jaw was broken, and the other, because he thought he had seen the devil.
"Mercy on us, what is the matter?" exclaimed the farmer's wife again. "Mary, Mary, Mary!" screamed she, beginning to be frightened herself, for with all her efforts she could not remove Susan from the bed of dough, where she lay senseless and heavy as lead. ”

“ This marai and aparatus for sacrafice belongd we were told to Oborea and Oamo. The greatest pride of an inhabitant of Otahite is to have a grand Marai, in this particular our freinds far exceed any one in the Island, and in the Dolphins time the first of them exceeded every one else in riches and respect as much. The reason of the difference of her present apearance from that I found by an accident which I now relate: in going too and coming home from the Marai our road lay by the the sea side, and every where under our feet were numberless human bones cheifly ribbs and vertebrae. ”

“ Every chief, however low in rank, is sure to have one of these merais, of which he is very proud, and from which he can scarcely be induced to part. The great chiefs have their merais made of green jade, such as has already been described when treating of Maori ornaments. These weapons are handed down from father to son, and are so highly valued by the natives that it is hardly possible to procure one, unless it be captured in battle. If a chief should die without a son to whom his merai can descend, the weapon is generally buried with him. ”

“ Circumstances are not so much the slaves of men, as men are of circumstances. Mary lived at an age, and in a country, which only rendered her risk the greater the more exalted her station. In France, where civilization had made more progress, she might perhaps have avoided the evils which overtook her at home ”

“ At a later period he was associated with Barthélemy in an [Pg 76] intrigue for the restoration of the Bonapartes; and went to pay his respects to Queen Hortense, while his colleague vainly endeavoured to talk with the Eaglet through the gilded bars of his cage.
Méry could, in short, do everything, and everything very well. He possessed the faculty of turning base metal into gold. ”

“ THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON INTRODUCTION. CENTURY has passed since the birth of Meryon, a circumstance which excuses, if it does not actually demand, a survey in retrospect of the great etcher’s work and the growth of his renown. There is no indication, it must be said at once, that the lapse of time has weakened in any degree the sure fabric of his fame. About no other modern etcher, save Whistler, is there an equal consensus of opinion among those whose opinion counts, that he ranks among the great masters of his art. ”

“ The streets of all the etchings of the sixties are filled with excited crowds or little groups of tall, unnatural looking people, and all kinds of curious monsters and allegorical figures hover in the sky or swoop in rapid flight across it. The Collège Henri IV (plate 29) in some of its states, has for background a sea with sails and whales and sea-gods, and the figures in the foreground are the most extraordinary that Meryon ever drew. ”

“ LIST OF MERYON’S ETCHINGS
Besides the earliest full catalogue of Meryon’s etchings, that by P. Burty, translated into English by M. B. Huish (1879) , which derives its value from Burty’s Memoir of Meryon and his notes on certain of the etchings, there are two catalogues of Meryon in general use, that written by the late Sir F. Wedmore (“Méryon and Méryon’s Paris,” 2nd ed., London, 1892) and the much more thorough catalogue by M. Loys Delteil (1907) which forms Tome II. of the series, “Le Peintre-Graveur illustré.” ”

“ Their colours were lovely salmon pink, ochre, pale green, or a silvery pearly grey.
We shall be leaving the King Country to-morrow, and I must here say a few words about the Maoris. There are altogether some 15,000 in the North Island, while in the South Island they only number 2000. The large tracts of bare pumice country which we have been passing through all belong to the Maoris. The land is utterly useless to them, as they attempt no kind of cultivation. As a race, the men have a fine physique ”

“ Meriel laughed gaily. "I cannot even conceive such a possibility," she said. "It seems to me you are preaching anarchy, and I'm not the least little bit of an anarchist."
The approach of a third person interrupted Guy's reply. Looking away from Meriel he saw Captain Marven standing beside him. The Captain had heard his niece's concluding words and he corroborated them. [Pg 115]
"I can safely swear that a more tyrannical dictator of law and order than Meriel never stepped over a man's threshold. You must accuse her of something else, Hora." ”

“ Miss Taft, the telephone! Chung, my coat! Good-bye, Trent, good-bye!"
An hour later Edward Henry met Mr. Marrier at the Grand Babylon Hotel.
"Well, sir," said Mr. Marrier, "you are the greatest man that ever lived!"
"Why?"
Mr. Marrier showed him the stop-press news of a penny evening paper, which read: "Sir John Pilgrim has abandoned his ceremonious departure from Tilbury in order to lay the corner-stone of the new Regent Theatre on Wednesday week. He and Miss Cora Pryde will join the Kandahar at Marseilles."
"You needn't do any advertaysing," said Mr. Marrier. ”

“ Nor is an artist always the best judge of a fellow artist who pursues very different aims from his own. Meryon’s reputation, though it is ungrudgingly admitted and admired by most etchers of to-day and yesterday, was established by the critics and collectors of a generation now extinct. Philippe Burty, who published the first critical article on Meryon and the first catalogue of his etchings in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts of 1863, was the first to discern clearly and to proclaim to the world his peculiar genius. ”

“ The Maoris unlike the early pioneers seldom attempted to ford a river alone, hence they suffered far less severely. They always travelled in parties, their method being to get a strong light pole long enough for all to get a good hold of, the heaviest and strongest men taking the upstream end, with more heavy men on the other extremity, the women and children being in between. ”

“ I replied, “that your wife instigated you to act as you did, or you would never have so behaved. In attempting to revenge the death of one husband she has lost two.”
“C’est vrai,” replied the Frenchman, composedly, and I then quitted the cabin, and went on board of the Arrow.
“Well, Elrington,” said Captain Levee, “what do you intend to do with the French captain? Is he to pay the forfeit, and awing at the yard-arm?”
“I don’t like hanging a man, especially a brave man, in cold blood,” I replied. ”

“ Naturally the latter could not have failed to observe the admiration which Guy Hora exhibited toward Meriel. It was patent in his every glance, and he made no effort to conceal it. He approached Meriel with the proud assurance of the man who feels that he has the right to lay the tribute of his admiration at the feet of the woman whom he admires, and is not ashamed of letting the whole world perceive upon whom his choice had fallen. ”