McClures Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 | Page 5

busy with her needle, the children at their lessons, and the painter, whom even then tradition painted a sad and cheerless misanthrope, contentedly playing at dominoes with one of the children, or his honest Norman face wreathed in smiles as the conversation took an amusing turn. This, it is true, was when the master of the house was free from his terrible enemy, the headache, which laid him low so often, and which in these days became more and more frequent.
[Illustration: FIRST STEPS. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRAN?OIS MILLET.
Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. As Sensier remarks, Millet, with nine children, had abundant opportunity to study them. This charming drawing was one of the collection of Millet's pastels formed by M. Gavet, which was unfortunately dispersed by auction soon after the artist's death.]
The house, to resume the description of Millet's home, went back at right angles from the street, and contained the various apartments of the family, many of them on the ground floor, and all of the most modest character. It was a source of wonder how so large a family could inhabit so small a house. The garden lay in front, and extended back of the house. A high wall with a little door, painted green, by which you entered, ran along the street, and ended at the studio, which was, like the dining-room, on the street. The garden was pleasant with flowers and trees, the kitchen garden being at the rear. But a few short years ago, within its walls Madame Millet plucked a red rose, and gave it to me, saying: "My husband planted this." Outside the little green door, on either hand, were stone benches set against the wall, on which the painter's children sometimes sat and played; but it is somewhat strange that I never remember Millet at his door or on the village street. He walked a great deal, but always went out of the garden to the fields back of the house, and from there gained the forest or the plain. Among the young painters who frequented Barbizon in those days (which were, however, long after the time when the men of Millet's age established themselves there), there were, strange as it may seem, few who cared for Millet's work, and many who knew little or nothing of it. The prejudices of the average art student are many and indurated. His horizon is apt to be bounded by his master's work or the last Salon success, and as Millet had no pupils, and had ceased to exhibit at the Salon, he was little known to most of the youths who, as I look back, must have made Barbizon a most undesirable place for a quiet family to live in. An accident which made me acquainted with Millet's eldest son, a painter of talent, seemed for a time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one day some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration for his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a recently completed picture.
If the crowd of young painters who frequented the village were indifferent to Millet, such was not the case with people from other places. The "personally conducted" were then newly invented, and I have seen a wagon load of tourists, who had been driven to different points in the forest, draw up before Millet's modest door and express indignation in a variety of languages when they were refused admittance. There were many in those days who tried with little or no excuse to break in on the work of a man whose working days were already counted, and who was seldom free from his old enemy migraine. I was to learn this when--I hope after having had the grace to make it plain that, though I greatly desired to know Millet, I felt no desire to intrude--the son had arranged for a day when, at last, I was admitted to the studio.
Millet did not make his appearance at once; and when he came, and the son had said a few kindly words of presentation, he seemed so evidently in pain that I managed, in a French which must have been distinguished by a pure New York accent and a vocabulary more than limited, to express a fear that he was suffering, and suggested that my visit had better be deferred.
"No, it will pass," was his answer; and going to his easel he placed, with the help of his son, picture after picture, for my delectation.
It was Millet's habit to commence a great number of pictures. On some of them he would work as long, according to his own expression, as he saw the scene in nature before him; for, at least at this