Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art Part 5

V

By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker.

At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris was on the verge of her aesthetic nineties. A small group of writers, chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarme, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled Decadents. This t.i.tle was soon abandoned for the better designation of Symbolists.

Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here was a man whose revolt was something not fict.i.tious. He had definitely broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of symbol.

Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded.

It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging.

Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Odilon Redon.

Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel taken part in the Volpini exhibition.

It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea.

De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amus.e.m.e.nt. Every summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as "the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on the former's return from Martinique in 1887.

To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).]

The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[2]

The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece ent.i.tled _Loss Of Maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an etching representing Mallarme with Poe's Raven in the background.

Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday.

At all events Gauguin was feted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were auctioned off at the Hotel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A banquet was held at the Cafe Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were a.s.sembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally a benefit performance was given by the Theatre d'Art for the departing artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of his last years.[3]

The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play _L'Intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage.

Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to expect. And yet he did not draw back.

On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept.

And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, touching words:--

"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have made, which is utterly irreparable."

With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization.

[Footnote 1: _Les Marges_, Paris, May 15, 1918.]

[Footnote 2: Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.]

[Footnote 3: It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.]

PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895

I

Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest.

Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting currents. How then had they reached Tahiti?

The anthropologists a.s.sure us that the race is physically a branch of the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are a tall, well built, ma.s.sive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay.

Their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy, again contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to artificial flattening in infancy.

We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, where traces of their pa.s.sing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889.

To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the aim he had cherished since the Martinique days--to be the first painter of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, because he believed that here was a country where one could live for almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead.

In my work as a painter, ditto--I do not trouble about anything, but each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great point."

Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The G.o.ds do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its own terrible parable to all men.

II

On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to take to his bed.

He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although possessed of a normally strong const.i.tution, fortified by the open-air existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for livelihood.

His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to all whites.

A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct.

Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the att.i.tude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to revive at any favorable opportunity.

He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by enigmatic and evasive smiles.

Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as "dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his vanity, and smiled behind his back.

Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble.

This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was taking its little revenge.

He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his pa.s.sage back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Old Spirit.]

On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_.

The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about.

Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, Bernard, Serusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cezanne and Van Gogh were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his departure from Paris was rapidly fading.

He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old.