Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

From Tait's Magazine.

THE PAINTERS AND GLAZIERS OF PARIS.

THE ears of a stranger in a French town, whether it be Paris or any small town or city of the departments, will be assailed from time to time by a shrill, piercing and unintelligible cry. The syllables" V'la l'vitri-i-i," pronounced in a kind of screaming falsetto, strike upon his typanum, but carry no signification with them, until, upon inquiry, he learns that this singular utterance announces the arrival of the travelling glazier, and his anxiety for employment. This peripatetic tradesman has nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He wears the universal blouse of the Gallic workman, and the long loose trowsers, splashed with mud, peculiar to the class. Upon his head is a close-fitting cap with a small leather eye-shade, and strapped to his back he carries a rudely-constructed wooden frame stocked with squares of glass of various size and quality. Add to this a stout staff in his hand, and you have good idea of his outer man. So soon as his squealing voice is heard in the neighborhood, the inhabitants begin to examine their cracked and broken windows, and to meditate repair, especially if cold weather is coming on. He will obviate in a few minutes the damage done by wind or hail or the awkwardness of three ruinous and destructive plagues. His opportune intervention may perhaps save you from cold, catarrh, rheumatism or sometimes worse.

a servant

a

It is easy to see by his black hair and dark brown complexion that the travelling glazier is not a northern by birth: he is, in fact, a Piedmontese, or a Limousin, or a native of some one of the southern districts of France.

He has listened to the narrative of some traveller to whom his old mother has offered the shelter of the paternal cabin, who has told how, having adopted the trade of a travelling glazier, he has wandered through the world, contemplated its wonders, and, at the same time, amassed a capital, which it is his intention to augment by a new trip. Then the ambition of the young peasant has been aroused; he dreams of broken windows and the glories of the empire; he sees himself already on the road to Paris and to for

tune, and, in his enthusiasm, he cries out with Correggio-not "I also am a painter," but "I also am a travelling glazier"—and he sets forth upon his travels under the conduct of an experienced compatriot and friend.

His ignorance of the language and customs of the north is at first a great obstacle to the success of the young exile. He finds a difficulty in exchanging the broad and sonorous dialect of the south for the mute vowels and elided syllables of the French tongue; nevertheless, in time he contrives for himself a jargon tolerably intelligible-begins as soon as he can to work on his own account, and goes screaming along the highway, with his nose in the air, and his eyes directed towards the windows, "V’là l'vitri-i-i !”

It requires no great capital to set him up in trade. The whole expense of his outfit, including diamond, glass, glass frame, hammer, and putty knives, does not much exceed thirty francs. The emoluments of his profession are computed to average about two shillings a day; at favorable seasons, when the housekeepers are bent upon stopping out the weather in order to make all snug for the winter, he gains much more than double that sum; but then in the height of summer he has but little to do, and must live upon his savings. But he is sober, careful and frugal: his association with the dwellers in cities has not eradicated from his memory the simple and pious precepts of his parents, and thus he preserves his integrity, his abstinent and temperate habits, and the sentiments of religion. He generally resides with one of his fellowcountrymen, and hires a part of a chamber situated outside the barriers, or in the neighborhood of the Place Maubert. The wife of one of them manages the domestic affairs, and stews the rice, the meat and potatoes, which each one buys in his turn; three or four pounds of leg of beef will suffice for the meals of a whole week; and if a grocer has a cask or bag of damaged rice to dispose of, he finds customers for it among the travelling glaziers.

At the end of some few years' wandering the travelling glazier is sure to be over

taken by the home sickness, under the influence of which he directs his steps towards his native soil. Arrived at home he hunts up his old sweetheart, marries, and, after the repose of a few months, starts upon a new campaign in order to earn a patrimony for his future posterity. He carries on these expeditions from time to time until his limbs, palsied by age, refuse their office.

lapidated apartment is astonished at the legion of workmen who defile before him and take possession of his house. Jean gives the first coat in dead color, and stops because the second coat in oil is no part of his business. Peter paints the sash of a window and leaves the east wind blowing into the room until it shall please Matthew to come and repair the glass which he has broken. Jacques gives the cornice a coat and then gives himself a holiday, while Henri consents in his turn to do a like office for the doors.

The consequence of all this is, that when the bill is presented for payment, the account is altogether beyond your comprehension. The long columns of items couched in technical language defy your skill and penetration; and the sum total, which is far more than you expected, has to be added to the ravages which the painter's workmen have been able to effect in your cellar and kitchen, with the connivance of the chambermaids, to whom they are in the habit of paying assiduous and by no means disinterested attentions. They are notoriously fond of pleasure, and as idleness is one of their chief delights, their grand study is to labor as little as possible; every now and then they are off for the purpose of diversion or refreshment at a coffee shop or a billiard table, and they will smoke with a pertinacity and nonchalance perfectly oriental.

The travelling glazier is the humblest of all the members of the great family of painters and glaziers. When a painter and glazier has an important commission to execute, he will sometimes engage a number of the travelling glaziers in his service. On the other hand, there are many working painters who, in the winter, when there is no painting to be done, shoulder their glass frames and sally forth as travelling glaziers. Notwithstanding this mutual exchange of position, and in spite of relationship between them, the working painters and glaziers form two distinct classes, the former of which is divided into an infinite number of different callings. We know that the inhabitants of the East Indica have been from time immemorial, and still are, divided into numerous castes-bramahs, rajahs, saaners, chetties, &c., &c.,each one having his function rigorously determined. An unfortunate European is therefore condemned to entertain an army of domestics. The Bengalee who blacks the boots will never consent to handle a broom, and It is in the absence of the master of the the valet who brushes your coat would sub-house, and when they have no one to overlook mit to be thrown headlong into the Ganges, their proceedings but his wife or housekeeper, rather than lend a hand to the bearer who that the working painters indulge their laziness carries your palanquin. It is just the same to the most scandalous extent; they sprawl in the large painting and glazing establish- about upon their steps and ladders in theatriments; a multitude of workmen, under the cal attitudes, giving now and then a dab or two direction of supervisors, are charged each with the brush-and not content with obtainwith a single special function. ing refreshments by wheedling the nursemaid, they will lay snares for the mistress herself.

There is the painter of rough work, who daubs the walls, the staircases, the wainscotting, and panelling; there is the ornamental painter, who does the signs of the King's Head, the Gray Goose, or Napoleon the Great, as well as imitation statues and foliage; there is the letterer, who does inscriptions and designations of all sorts; and there is the decorative painter, who counterfeits, by skilful combinations of color, the substance of marble, or porphyry, or jasper, or the grain and veins of oak, walnut, Spanish mahogany, or acacia, or, indeed, any wood that grows. Besides these there are a multitude of other exclusive laborers, whose special duties none but a person initiated into the mysteries of the trade could possibly recount. A proprietor who gives orders for the restoration of a di

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. IV.

"What an insupportable smell of paint!" says the good lady, as she enters the room; "is there no means of getting rid of it?"

"Certainly, madam, nothing is more easy," replies the foreman. "How do you generally purify the air of your chamber when it is vitiated ?"

"Well, I generally burn a little sugar upon the shovel."

[ocr errors]

Perfectly right, madam, but that would not be sufficient in this case. To banish this smell of paint, and at the same time to make the colors dry with brilliancy, we make use of a very simple and economical procedure: we take a pint of Cogniac brandy of the very best quality, we mix with it sugar and the juice of a few lemons, with a proper

86

quantity of boiling water, and we put them | from twelve to two o'clock. The first asto simmer on the top of a stove in the mid-sembly, which goes by the name of the Cordle of the room, the doors and windows of which must be kept carefully shut: the alcoholic vapors disengaged by this process possess the qualities both of a mordant and and a dessiccative, and in a very short time the smell of the paint is no longer perceptible, and the most agreeable odors prevail instead."

If the good lady of the house is struck with the force of this reasoning, she immediately provides the necessary materials, and in a few minutes the workmen, having, according to the recipe, hermetically closed the doors, are grouped comfortably round a capital bowl of punch, and warming their stomachs at the expense of the too credulous hostess.

There is another mode of employing the mordant virtue of alcoholic vapors. A painter's workman will pretend that the mirrors of an apartment have lost their lustre, and that it is indispensable that they be properly polished; in order to this, he demands a bumper of brandy, which he drinks, a sip at a time, tarnishing the mirror at intervals with his breath, and then wiping it with a cloth.

ner, is a daily gathering of the workmen out of employment; the second, which is called the Chapel, is devoted to the discussion of the interests of the fraternity. These reunions have occasionally been proscribed by the police on the ground that they served for the dissemination of revolutionary doctrines; but, from the known character of the journeymen painters, we are led to doubt very much the truth of such allegations; this class of workmen being much more given to the charms of the bottle than to questions of social philosophy, and much more liable to transgress the laws of temperance than those for the maintenance of public order.

Nevertheless, the journeymen painters and glaziers have a private and special motive for taking part in all public outbreaks, because, on such occasions, they have an opportunity of giving a fillip to business by breaking windows without the danger of being called upon to pay for them. It is said that, on such occasions, they are found, together with their friends, the ambulatory glaziers, in great numbers in the middle of the crowd: their only weapons are pebbles, and in discharging them against the municipal forces, they invariably contrive to break the neighbors' glass.

he boldly invites to avail themselves of his well-known skill in all the departments of the profession.

Before entering into the jovial, indolent, and gambling community of working painters, the candidate must undergo an appren- When the journeyman painter is fortunate ticeship of from three to five years. The and provident enough to save a little money, young man who has submitted to this cere- he takes to himself a wife, and opens shop mony, gains at first two francs and a half or as a painter and glazier. He crams his "litthree francs a day; if he have a respectable tle box," as his shop is derisively called by exterior, and if his chin be sufficiently gar- the great men of the profession, with all the nished, he boldly puts in his claim to be con- outward and visible signs of a large business. sidered and paid as an accomplished work- Pictures, prints, statues, and decorative ornaman, and backed by the suffrages of his comments attract the eyes of the public, whom panions, he soon gains the four francs a day, the established wages of able journeymen painters. From beginning to the end of his career he is dressed in a blue blouse, dirty, stained, speckled, veined, and spotted all over like the skin of a leopard. A Greek, helmet-shaped cap has replaced the old one of painted paper which he wore during apprenticeship; but he patronizes a pair of dilapidated and patched pantaloons, in which he struts about like the ragged hero of a bombastic farce, and his feet are protected -to use his own expression-by "stove pipes which snuff up the dust of the gutters."

If you have a desire to become better acquainted with the journeymen painters of Paris, you must betake yourself to the Place du Chatelet on any week day from five to seven o'clock in the evening-or on Sunday

Have you any broken windows to repair, any rooms to paper, any furniture to clean, any frames to gild, any floors to polish, any pictures to frame or to re-varnish-the painter and glazier is ready; he will perform any of these offices for you at a moderate price. Nay, ask him to paint your portrait, and he will incontinently arm himself with the palette and colors of the artist, and make an attempt upon your face; he prefers, however, painting a tradesman's sign to painting his face. He is at home with the Black Bull, the Golden Lion, the White Horse, or the Tomb of Saint Helena, and nothing pleases him better than to have a carte blanche given him for the decoration and

embellishment of a suburban café or tavern. To say the simple truth, he is often a man of real talent, not to say genius, who was born with a natural taste for the arts: he gave, perhaps, early indications of his vocation by his sketches with charcoal upon the walls of his paternal dwelling, but having no resources to draw upon for subsistence during the necessary studies of years, he has fallen from the category of artists to that of artizans. Who can tell what intellects are thus lost and buried for ever, from the want of the necessary education to draw them forth? It is to the existence of a large amount of artistic talent among this class of professors,

that the splendid appearance of the cafés of Paris is mainly due. Many of them have been metamorphosed into actual palaces, or into saloons of Louis the Fifteenth's time, under their hands. They have covered the walls with gilded arabesques; they have crowded the wainscotting with exquisite figures, and filled the pannelling with groups of flowers. It is no longer the great proprietors or the nobles alone who build gorgeous dwellings; art is submissive to the wants of the citizen, and exhausts its most brilliant resources to embellish the place where the modest shopkeeper plays at dominoes with his neighbor for a cup of coffee.

IMPROVEMENT IN PHOTOGRAPHY.-At a magnificence at an expense not under 3500l. conversation at the Polytechnic Institution, a or 4000l. per annum. The average may be curious illustration was given of the capabili- estimated at 1400l. a year, which makes a toties of photography in experienced hands. tal of 126,000l. circulated through the meTwo photographs were exhibited-one the dium of hounds and horses. That is, howlargest, and the other the smallest ever pro-ever, a trifle compared with the expenditure duced by the process. The first was a por- of those gentlemen who compose the fields, trait the full size of life; and the last was a of which it is difficult to form an estimate. copy of the front sheet of the Times, on a sur- The Yorkshire Gazette" published an artiface scarcely exceeding two inches by three. cle last year calculating that "there were one Both pictures were exceedingly perfect, the thousand hunting men in that county, keepportrait being more pleasing and far more ing on an average four horses each, at a cost correct than those usually produced; while of 50l. for each horse per annum. It apthe copy, notwithstanding its exceeding min- pears a high estimate, but Yorkshire is a uteness, could be read without the assistance great horse breeding country, and is particuof a magnifying-glass. The photographs larly celebrated for its sportsmen. Taking were exhibited by Mr. Mayall, the well-known one country with another, and averaging the artist of Argyll Place, Regent Street, and number of horses kept in each for the exexcited considerable interest during the even- clusive purposes of hunting, at one hundred ing.-Times. and seventy-which from observation, and the best data I can obtain, I believe to be near the mark-we have fifteen thousand three hundred horses employed in this service. According to the proportion in York

NUMBER AND EXPENSE OF FOX-HUNTING ESTABLISHMENTS.-We imagined that the introduction of rail-roads and recent changes in the habits of society had greatly diminish-shire, this appears to be a very low compued the field-sports so characteristic of the olden time. In this supposition, however, we find ourselves altogether mistaken. According to a work upon this subject, lately published, entitled "Records of the Chase," it appears that at the present time, the number of fox-hunting establishments kept up in England and Wales amounts to ninety-six; there may be a few more, but they are unimportant ones. "To show the increase, in 1830, sixty-eight packs of hounds were compounded for; in 1850, eighty-four, according to the returns of assessed taxes. Some of these are maintained with princely

tation; but it must be remembered that many of the two days a week packs are not in populous countries, and many of the attendants upon them do not keep more than a single horse. Calculating the keep of each horse at 40l. a year-still below the Yorkshire estimate-the aggregate amount will be 68007., which, added to 14001. for the expenses of the hounds, causes an expenditure of 82007. per annum, as the average allowance for the ninety packs, which is circulated in the agricultural districts. To this may be added a host of contingent expenses, which it would be utterly impossible to compute."

[blocks in formation]

for the morning's ne'er forgotten task of de

"Ir was a lovely morning in June"The air, exulting in its freshness and per-votion was over, and every attention of the fume, as if just loosed from heaven's portals, played joyously around the hills of the Lowlands, entrancing all who felt its influence, from the noble invalid in his pillowed chariot to the sunburnt goatherd reclining on the heather, into a deeper love of nature than their physical compositions were apparently adapted to imbibe.

"It was indeed a glorious, heavenly morning. The fleecy clouds seemed loth to glide across the blue infinity above, and joyously did the sun illumine the little enclosure (yclept the garden') that lay before a whitewashed cot at the foot of one of the Lowland mountains.

"It was the only habitation in sight, and so clean and white it looked as if it had been built only to make its appearance on such a day as this.

The two upper lattices of the cottage, thrown open to their utmost extent, let in the passing zephyr to fan the fever-stricken temples of two beautiful sisters, who were passing from the world ere their sun had reached its meridian, and who, drinking in the balmy air, prayed that heaven might be as sweet, and turned to pain and misery again!

"But to her who watched by her dying children's pillows, the sunniest day had no charms nor brightness!

"Oh! how gladly would she have exchanged the gifts of fortune that had raised her above her sphere, to see those children like what she herself once was!

"But it is time to introduce the principal character of our tale.

"On an old arm-chair, outside the cottagedoor, an old man sat-not that years had made him old as much as toil and hardship, -but his hair was grey, although he had scarcely numbered fifty summers, and as he doffed the forage-cap of the gallant th Regiment-saving that they were white his locks flowed thick as ever. On his knees rested a volume that even the reckless and dissolute atmosphere of a barrack-room had never separated him from. It was closed,

veteran seemed to be riveted on an urchin some eight or nine years old, who, having made himself master of his father's walkingstick, was going through the manual and platoon exercises under the old man's instructions; a duty that at times was sadly interrupted, to the utter extinction of all discipline, by some huge drone that intruded upon the parade-ground;' whereupon the juvenile musketeer, exclaiming, 'Oh! Daddy; there's Boney!' would forthwith make a grand charge at the encroaching foe, beating the air with his wooden weapon until some chance and lucky blow sent the miserable interloper, humming, and buzzing, and kicking, on his back upon the ground.

66

[ocr errors]

It was during one of these charging exploits that the incipient hero, happening to look through the garden-gate, had his gaze attracted by an object that made him exclaim, with more alarm than pluck, 'Oh! pa! here's Boney come, sure 'nough!' and, alas! for poor puerile self-conceit, the old stick was suddenly dropped, and master Bobby might, the moment after, have been espied standing very still and very white, behind the cottagedoor, with his thumb in his mouth.

"Scarcely less astonished was the father of the boy, when he saw the splendid livery of the Castle approach his humble dwelling, (he had been there but a week,) and mentioning his name, deliver a letter sealed with such a profusion of wax as he had only witnessed once before; namely, on his being the bearer of a despatch on the occasion of the meeting of the Allied Armies in France.

"The contents of the missive were, an invitation to the veteran to take a seat that evening at dinner at the table of the Castle, where its munificent owner-himself a Waterloo man-was giving a feast in humble imitation of the great captain of the age, on the anniversary of the day that sealed the destiny of Europe, and witnessed the downthrow of the greatest curse incarnate ever let loose on the world and man.

"A verbal reply, humbly and thankfully

« ПредишнаНапред »