The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

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It was in the midst of these various occupations that Toepffer took his
recreation in contributing to the literary periodicals of Geneva
superior essays on Art, and many of those charming stories which to-day
delight us in the collection entitled "Les Nouvelles Genevoises." He
also wrote for political journals. But what made him first known outside
those communities where the French tongue is spoken were his humoristic
sketches. They were not thrown off from his fertile and genial hand for
gain or for renown. From childhood, under the influence of artistic
example at home, and of his admiration of Hogarth, he had acquired a
remarkable skill in graphically delineating whatever his close
observation of men prompted. Like Hogarth, his artist-wit, his fun, and
his moral teachings took the shape of series. These were handed around
the circle of his intimate friends; yet he had thoughts only of his own
amusement and of that of his companions, and did not contemplate
offering them to the public. It was at the urgency of Goethe that he
gave them to the world.

In 1842, as we stated before, "M. Vieux Bois" (Mr. Oldbuck) appeared in
the United States; and the following year, 1843, "M. Cryptogame," under
the name of "Bachelor Butterfly," (by no means so amusing or so full of
hits for America as some other sketches,) delighted the Transatlantic
reader.

Visitors to Geneva had their attention drawn to the "Voyages en Zig-Zag"
as soon as it was published; and in 1841 "Les Nouvelles Genevoises" took
the literary and artistic world of Paris by surprise. These simple
graphic stories gained the hearts of thousands. French tourists and
French artists sought the basin of Lake Leman, the wild passes of the
Vallee de Trient, the Lac de Gers, the Col d'Anterne, and the Deux
Scheidegg, wooed thither by the picturesque pages of Toepffer. The
"Presbytere," a fresh story in the epistolary form, not long after
crossed the Jura, and amidst the artificial, heated literature of Paris,
appeared as reviving as a bracing morning in the Alps.

In this modest way M. Toepffer was unconsciously building up his European
reputation. The warp of his talent is the richest of humor blended with
woman-like sensibility and tenderness. Fanciful, but never exaggerated,
he stands before us an amiable philosopher, whose heart is large enough
to comprehend and to pity the frailties of human nature, yet whose
spotless purity serves as a beacon--light on the wreck-strewn shore of
human passions. He has not the exaltation nor the ardent vehemence of
Rousseau, neither has he the sentimental morbidity of Xavier de Maistre.
On the contrary, he is always true and always simple, and he remains
within the bounds of emotion which the family circle allows. This must
be accounted for by the peaceful life which he led, (a life so different
from that of his French literary brothers,) as well as by the beneficial
influence of the society in which he resided. That society, though
cultivated and liberal, has, in contrast with that of France, remained
pure. It retains as its birthright a certain nameless innocence, unknown
in the polished French circles a few leagues beyond. M. de Sainte-Beuve
wonders at this, and asks,--"Is it that man is kept pure and good by the
magnificent beauties in which Nature rocks him there from his babyhood?
Is it that the heart becomes awed in presence of that sublime calm of
Nature, and, before he is aware of it, the passions have transformed
themselves into a religious adoration?"

But the true source of the Genevese author's purity was apart from,
though deeply influenced by Nature. He was a man of principle and of
religious faith. Toepffer had but to gaze into his own heart to find all
the sweet, the graceful, and the fresh poetry of his country. His
untiring and patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as
a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him.
Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile
and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of
contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose
rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study.
An insect crawling on a leaf,--a bit of grass bringing the joy of its
short life around the stones of the pavement,--a cloud floating over the
meadows,--a murmur of voices in the air,--the wings of a butterfly, or
the thundering of the storm above the lake,--all and everything was the
domain where his genial disposition reaped so plentiful a harvest of
rare graces and smiles.

When Toepffer abandoned his brushes for his pen, it seems that the vision
of his mind became intensified, and he began to study man as minutely as
he had studied Nature. He became a moral portrait-painter, in the same
way as his illustrious townsmen, Calame and Diday, were landscape
painters. To analyze and to describe became the occupation he most
delighted in; and the more minute the analysis and the more subtile the
description, the more also was he pleased with it.

Toepffer's writings are eminently moral. There are few works in French
literature in which the moral aspiration is so alive and the worship of
duty so eloquently advocated. In reading them one feels that the writer
did not step beyond his own sentiments, that he did not borrow
convictions, that he did not affect the austerity of a stolen creed. He
writes as he feels, and he feels rightly,--never forgetting to remain
indulgent, even when he appears most unbendingly severe. Then to it all
he adds an inexhaustible cheerfulness. His mind wears no dark-colored
glasses; it is strong and healthy enough to bear the dazzling effulgence
of the sun. Toepffer was a joyous man. If he so rapidly seized the
ridiculous, it was through his love of fun; but while he laughed at
others, so kind and genial was he ever that he made others join and
laugh with him also.

We said that his genius was universal. He is eminently so in his
artistic creations. Take, for instance, his unique comic sketches and
compare them with those of other leading caricaturists. Our impression
must be that none are like his. Leech, Doyle, and Gavarni have attained
a reputation which the world acknowledged long ago, and which no one
would dare dispute; yet they differ entirely from the Genevese
caricaturist. "Oldbuck" (_M. Vieux Bois_) is as universal as music or
Shakspeare, and belongs to no one country in particular. All of Leech's
pretty women, his "Mr. Briggs" and his "Frederick Augustus," with his
"_Haw_" and other swell words and airs, are all unmistakably English.
They could have been born on no other soil than England. It requires an
Englishman, or an American familiar with English fashions and foibles,
to appreciate them. The German, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the
Italian, or the Russian, could no more understand them without a
previous initiation, or study and experience of English manners, than
they could speak English without long application and practice. The same
may be said of Richard Doyle's famous "Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown,
Jones, and Robinson." Here we have an irresistible series of sketches,
depicting what the famous trio saw, what they said, and what they did,
in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. The interest of that work lies in an
intense expression of English nationality, carried everywhere by the
three Englishmen. Their mishaps and adventures are exactly such as every
American has witnessed a thousand times, when some of his cousins from
the fast-anchored isle have visited him. Gavarni, though freer with his
pencil than either Doyle or Leech, is still as much of a Parisian as
Albert Smith was a Londoner. Every one of his spirited sketches is
intensely French, and, above all, Parisian. To a person who knew nothing
of Paris, who had never been in Paris, and who was not somewhat _au
fait_ with the gay and triste, the splendid and squalid, the brilliant
and unequal society there, these sketches would be meaningless. Again,
Gavarni's pictures are not series. He does not develop his heroes and
heroines. He does not make us feel for them in their mishaps. We do not
laugh _with_ them, as we would with friends or acquaintances, but we
laugh _at_ them. We do not once recognize _ourselves_ in them. His
portraits stand before us, but we gaze at them as we would at some
half-civilized creatures, with curiosity more than with mirth; and while
we admire and acknowledge the truthfulness of the sketch, we do not
desire to have any familiarity or contact with the individuals
represented. Furthermore, Gavarni is more limited than Doyle, by making
the "Sweep," the "Rag-Picker," the "Grisette," tell his or her own
story; and what each one says is necessary to the comprehension of the
person before you. But very different is Toepffer. He possesses, with the
funny conception of Leech and Doyle, a freer pictorial conception than
either, and holds a pencil that is more at command than Gavarni's. In
his single outlines, often of the rudest kind, there is the very
rollicking of freedom, the exact hitting of traits and character. He
dashes down his creation with the quickness of thought, and with as
much confidence that Messrs. Oldbuck, Crepin, and Jabot will leap into
the very existence he wishes them to assume, as Giotto had, when, with a
single sweep of his arm, he drew his magic circle. It may be objected,
that the comparison between the two Englishmen and the two Continentals
is hardly equal. Doyle and Leech lost, doubtless, much of their freedom
by drawing with hard pencils upon box for the wood-engraver. Toepffer and
Gavarni swept the soft, yielding crayon over the lithographer's stone,
and hence we have the very conception of the artists in their sketches.

The whole Continent roared over "M. Vieux Bois," then England began to
laugh, and finally America. Yet "M. Vieux Bois" was only the portrait of
a foolish old bachelor in love. Though born in Geneva, he was neither
Swiss nor French, neither English nor American; he was simply human. He
exemplifies Toepffer's universality.

I have already mentioned the "Nouvelles Genevoises," the "Voyages en
Zig-Zag," and the "Presbytere." But it is not possible to quote from
them. Before pages so lively and so picturesquely effective, one feels
embarrassed in selecting any particular portion, lest another should be
left unnoticed,--like the child, who, being told that he may help
himself to choice flowers, feels afraid that he will not take those he
most wants, and, in his hesitation, dares not so much as untie the
bouquet. The reader must choose for himself. He can accompany the
amiable philosopher in his summer excursions, take the Alpine-stock, and
with him visit the mountain solitudes, or linger around the blue
lakes--those air-hung forget-me-nots--which gem the highest valleys of
Switzerland.

His remaining works, published in book-form, are "Rosa et Gertrude," and
the "Reflexions et Menus Propos d'un Peintre Genevois, ou Essai sur le
Beau dans les Arts."

"Rosa et Gertrude," given to the public a short time before his death,
is considered by some as holding the first place in Toepffer's works of
imagination. It is a touching story of two orphan girls, deeply attached
to each other, one of whom, deceived and maltreated by the world,
receives that kind and Christian charity "which thinketh no evil" from
M. Bernier, the good old clergyman, who is the guardian of Rosa and
Gertrude, as well as the narrator of their simple history. In this book
Toepffer has abandoned the humoristic, his ordinary vein in his short
stones, and in taking up the more serious mode of treating his
characters has succeeded so well that Albert Aubert of Paris, in his
criticism, says, "In 'Rosa and Gertrude' M. Toepffer has surpassed
himself"; and yet it is not so characteristic as his other writings.

However, that one of M. Toepffer's works which, it seems to me, is
destined to live longest in the future, is his "Reflexions et Menus
Propos," etc.,--"Reflections and Short Disquisitions on Art." Here are
the results of twelve years' meditations on Art, by one who _felt_ Art
in his inmost soul, and who understood its practice as well as its
theory. In this work we find a Ruskin without dogmatism, uncertainty, or
man-worship. If Toepffer had written several volumes on his favorite
subject, we should not find him, in each succeeding tome, taking back
what he had said in the first. He studied, reflected, rewrote, and then
waited patiently for years before he committed his mature judgment to
the perpetuity of print. Long before Ruskin's first volume appeared,
Toepffer's "Reflexions et Menus Propos" had commanded the admiration of
the best writers and artists of the Continent. As an aesthetic and
philosophic work, it is of the highest value. Pearls of thought and
beauty are dropped on every side. It is relieved by fanciful episodes;
and yet the whole book starts from and plays around a stick of India
ink! It is not merely a volume in which the professional artist can gain
great advantage, but one by which the general reader is fascinated as
well as instructed. The former may discern its scope and its importance
in the felicity with which Toepffer illustrates the true aim of Art, as
being the expression, the idealization, and not the rigid copy of
Nature. He maintains that Nature should be the only teacher, and that we
are to be wedded to no man's mannerism.

It is to be hoped that some day the "Reflexions et Menus Propos" may be
rendered into English by one fully acquainted, not only with French, but
with the philosophic and the aesthetic writings of France. If the late
Bayle St. John (whose knowledge of the French language and manner of
thought was so thorough) had possessed the finished style of the author
of "Six Months in Italy," he would have been the very man to have
introduced M. Toepffer's works to English readers.

Whoever reads the works which I have thus briefly mentioned will regret
that so genial and gifted a man as M. Toepffer should have been so soon
snatched away from earth. It is rare to find in any author's or artist's
life such calm happiness as that which smiled over his existence. Fame
did not spoil him; and if he lived long enough to win it, he died too
soon to enjoy it.

The last two years of M. Toepffer's life were years of continual
suffering, through which his amiable cheerfulness never faltered. When
he was told by his physicians that he could not recover, as if he
thought only of alleviating the sorrow of those who loved him, he did
not give way for one hour to impressions of sadness, and his private
journal alone received the confidence of the keen regret he felt in
taking farewell of his young wife and his lovely children. To the very
last day of his life his friends found him in the evening surrounded by
his family, and even then handling the pencil for their amusement and
his own.

On Sundays, Calame dined with him; and we may imagine what a brilliant
coloring of thought must have characterized the conversation of these
two sympathetic men.

In 1844, when M. Toepffer had just concluded his romance of "Rosa et
Gertrude," his disease took an alarming turn, and he became aware that
he was fast drawing to the close of his earthly voyage. After two
repeated visits to the French watering-place of Vichy, he returned to
Geneva. Towards the end of the following winter he was obliged to
abandon those duties which hitherto had been to him so pure an
enjoyment. Unable now to write, he tried painting, which, it will be
remembered, he had given up in early manhood. Leaning heavily forward in
his chair, his easel before him, he painted with an enthusiasm which was
the last of his life. But that diversion could not be kept up long, and
he was soon compelled to sit motionless, awaiting his release.

On the morning of the 8th of June, 1846, consoled by the hopes of the
Christian, he expired. On the 14th he was followed to his final
resting-place by the whole city, among whom were those who in him had
lost their friend, their colleague, and their master. His remains sleep
in the cemetery of Plain-palais, which he has so graphically described
in "La Peur"; but his memory and his works still live in the minds of
his countrymen, and his fame is daily widening, wherever the good, the
true, and the beautiful are appreciated.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

X.

THE WOMAN QUESTION: OR, WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER?

"Well, what will you do with her?" said I to my wife.

My wife had just come down from an interview with a pale, faded-looking
young woman in rusty black attire, who had called upon me on the very
common supposition that I was an editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."

By the bye, this is a mistake that brings me, Christopher Crowfield,
many letters that do not belong to me, and which might with equal
pertinency be addressed, "To the Man in the Moon." Yet these letters
often make my heart ache,--they speak so of people who strive and sorrow
and want help; and it is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for
help which you know it is perfectly impossible for you to give.

For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand, setting forth the old
distress,--She is poor, and she has looking to her for support those
that are poorer and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing,
but can make little at it; tried teaching, but cannot now get a
school,--all places being filled, and more than filled; at last has
tried literature, and written some little things, of which she sends you
a modest specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can gain her
living by writing. You run over the articles, and perceive at a glance
that there is no kind of hope or use in her trying to do anything at
literature; and then you ask yourself, mentally, "What is to be done
with her? What can she do?"

Such was the application that had come to me this morning,--only,
instead of by note, it came, as I have said, in the person of the
applicant, a thin, delicate, consumptive-looking being, wearing that
rusty mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereavement and
material poverty.

My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. Crowfield; and it is
to be confessed that this worthy woman spends a large portion of her
time and wears out an extraordinary amount of shoe-leather in performing
the duties of a self-constituted intelligence-office.

Talk of giving money to the poor!--what is that, compared to giving
sympathy, thought, time, taking their burdens upon you, sharing their
perplexities? They who are able to buy off every application at the door
of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill are those who free
themselves at least expense.

My wife had communicated to our friend, in the gentlest tones and in the
blandest manner, that her poor little pieces, however interesting to her
own household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to enable her to
make her way in the thronged and crowded thoroughfare of letters,--that
they had no more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than a
broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough; and it took some resolution in
the background of her tenderness to make the poor applicant entirely
certain of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the very
greatest, the only true kindness.

It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged shade which passed
over her thin, tremulous features, when this certainty forced itself
upon her. It is hard, when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush
at which the hand clutches uprooted; hard, when alone in the crowded
thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a
counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the
shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this
trouble, where I have turned so many others, upon my wife.

"Well, what shall we do with her?" said I.

"I really don't know," said my wife, musingly.

"Do you think we could get that school in Taunton for her?"

"Impossible; Mr. Herbert told me he had already twelve applicants for
it."

"Couldn't you get her plain sewing? Is she handy with her needle?"

"She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, and cough; and
the Doctor has told her it will not do for her to confine herself."

"How is her handwriting? Does she write a good hand?"

"Only passable."

"Because," said I, "I was thinking if I could get Steele and Simpson to
give her law-papers to copy."

"They have more copyists than they need now; and, in fact, this woman
does not write the sort of hand at all that would enable her to get on
as a copyist."

"Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at last hitting on a
bright masculine expedient, "I'll tell you what must be done. She must
get married."

"My dear," said my wife, "marrying for a living is the very hardest way
a woman can take to get it. Even marrying for love often turns out badly
enough. Witness poor Jane."

Jane was one of the large number of people whom it seemed my wife's
fortune to carry through life on her back. She was a pretty, smiling,
pleasing daughter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as
nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching a little idyllic
affair growing up between her and a joyous, good-natured young Irishman,
to whom at last we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to
drinking and unsteady courses, and the result has been to Jane only a
yearly baby, with poor health, and no money.

"In fact," said my wife, "if Jane had only kept single, she could have
made her own way well enough, and might have now been in good health and
had a pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry not only
her, but her three children, on my back."

"You ought to drop her, my dear. You really ought not to burden yourself
with other people's affairs as you do," said I, inconsistently.

"How _can_ I drop her? Can I help knowing that she is poor and
suffering? And if I drop her, who will take her up?"

Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this kind, spoken of in a
quaint old book, which occurred strongly to me at this moment:--

"If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one
of you say unto them, 'Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,'
notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the
body, what doth it profit?"

I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of the closing
question, I looked with an evil eye of longing on this very easy way of
disposing of such cases: a few sympathizing words, a few expressions of
hope that I did not feel, a line written to turn the case into somebody
else's hands,--any expedient, in fact, to hide the longing eyes and
imploring hands from my sight was what my carnal nature at this moment
greatly craved.

"Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of her thoughts in regard
to the subject just now before us,--"as to marriage, it's out of the
question at present for this poor child; for the man she loved and would
have married lies low in one of the graves before Richmond. It's a sad
story;--one of a thousand like it. She brightened for a few moments, and
looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his bravery and goodness. Her
father and lover have both died in this war. Her only brother has
returned from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and her poor old
mother to care for, and so she seeks work. I told her to come again
to-morrow, and I would look about for her a little to-day."

"Let me see, how many are now down on your list to be looked about for,
Mrs. Crowfield?--some twelve or thirteen, are there not? You've got
Tom's sister disposed of finally, I hope,--that's a comfort!"

"Well, I'm sorry to say she came back on my hands yesterday," said my
wife, patiently. "She is a foolish young thing, and said she didn't like
living out in the country. I'm sorry, because the Morrises are an
excellent family, and she might have had a life-home there, if she had
only been steady and chosen to behave herself properly. But yesterday I
found her back on her mother's hands again; and the poor woman told me
that the dear child never could bear to be separated from her, and that
she hadn't the heart to send her back."

"And, in short," said I, "she gave you notice that you must provide for
Miss O'Connor in some more agreeable way. Cross that name off your list,
at any rate. That woman and girl need a few hard raps in the school of
experience before you can do anything for them."

"I think I shall," said my long-suffering wife; "but it's a pity to see
a young thing put in the direct road to ruin."

"It is one of the inevitables," said I, "and we must save our strength
for those that are willing to help themselves."

"What's all this talk about?" said Bob, coming in upon us rather
brusquely.

"Oh, as usual, the old question," said I,--"'What's to be done with
her?'"

"Well," said Bob, "it's exactly what I've come to talk with mother
about. Since she keeps a distressed-women's agency-office, I've come to
consult her about Marianne. That woman will die before six months are
out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies. There we are, twelve
miles out from Boston, in a country villa so convenient that every part
of it might almost do its own work,--everything arranged in the most
convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting, patent-right,
perfective manner,--and yet, I tell you, Marianne will die of that
house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of conveniences.'
For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a bed in one
corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a fire-place only six
feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin
baker,--that's all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind
last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior; and I am convinced, if I
could move Marianne into it at once, that she would become a healthy and
a happy woman. Her life is smothered out of her with comforts: we have
too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knickknacks, too
much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets;
the children all have too many clothes;--in fact, to put it
Scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our
gold and our silver is cankered,--and, in short, Marianne is sick in
bed, and I have come to the agency-office for-distressed-women to take
you out to attend to her.

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