DOI issue:
Vol. 6, No. 1 (February, 1916)
DOI article:Bradley, William Aspenwall: The goncourts and their circle
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49980#0142
Ill
At Gavarni’s occasionally they found other artists.
Once it was Bracquemond, with whom the master of the
house was engaged in tripotant “some eaux-fortes . . .
in sketching with the point on the copper a series of
celebrities, among which he shows us a Balzac of ad-
mirable workmanship.” Then all four, the day’s work
done, went off to dine at a little restaurant.
Another time it was Constantin Guys, the staff artist
of the Illustrated London News, who had reported the
Crimean War so brilliantly for that paper.
“A little man with a face expressing energy, with
gray moustaches, with the aspect of a grognard; limping
a trifle as he walked, and continually drawing up his
sleeves with the flat of his hand on his bony arms; dif-
fuse in his talk, trailing off into parentheses, zigzagging
from one idea to another, getting off the track, lost, but
finding himself again and regaining your attention with
a metaphorical bit of gutter-slang, a word borrowed
from the terminology of German thinkers, a technical
term from some art or industry, and always holding you
under the impact of his highly colored speech which
made everything, as it were, visible to the eyes. And
there were a thousand souvenirs that he evoked during
this walk, casting among them, from time to time, hand-
fuls of ironies, of sketches, of landscapes, of bloody,
disemboweled cities perforated with bullets, of hospi-
tals where the rats gnawed the wounded.
“Then, on the reverse of this, as in an album, or as, on
the back of a drawing by Decamps, you find a thought
by Balzac, there issue from the mouth of this devil of a
102
At Gavarni’s occasionally they found other artists.
Once it was Bracquemond, with whom the master of the
house was engaged in tripotant “some eaux-fortes . . .
in sketching with the point on the copper a series of
celebrities, among which he shows us a Balzac of ad-
mirable workmanship.” Then all four, the day’s work
done, went off to dine at a little restaurant.
Another time it was Constantin Guys, the staff artist
of the Illustrated London News, who had reported the
Crimean War so brilliantly for that paper.
“A little man with a face expressing energy, with
gray moustaches, with the aspect of a grognard; limping
a trifle as he walked, and continually drawing up his
sleeves with the flat of his hand on his bony arms; dif-
fuse in his talk, trailing off into parentheses, zigzagging
from one idea to another, getting off the track, lost, but
finding himself again and regaining your attention with
a metaphorical bit of gutter-slang, a word borrowed
from the terminology of German thinkers, a technical
term from some art or industry, and always holding you
under the impact of his highly colored speech which
made everything, as it were, visible to the eyes. And
there were a thousand souvenirs that he evoked during
this walk, casting among them, from time to time, hand-
fuls of ironies, of sketches, of landscapes, of bloody,
disemboweled cities perforated with bullets, of hospi-
tals where the rats gnawed the wounded.
“Then, on the reverse of this, as in an album, or as, on
the back of a drawing by Decamps, you find a thought
by Balzac, there issue from the mouth of this devil of a
102