McClures Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 | Page 2

in
Millet's country, represented the struggle of man with nature; and each
parcel of land, every stone in the walls which kept the earth from being
engulfed in the floods beneath, bore marks of his handiwork. Small
wonder, then, that this rude people should engender the painter who has
best expressed the intimate relation between the man of the fields and

his ally and foe, the land which he subjugates, and which in turn
enslaves him. The inherent, almost savage, independence of the peasant
had kept him freer and of a nobler type than the English yokel even in
the time before the Revolution, and in the little hamlet where Millet
was born, the great upheaval had meant but little. Remote from the
capital, cultivating land which but for their efforts would have been
abandoned as worthless, every man was a land-owner in a small degree,
and the patrimony of Millet sufficed for a numerous family of which he
was the eldest son. Sufficed, that is, for a Spartan subsistence, made up
of unrelaxing toil, with few or no comforts, save those of a spiritual
nature which came in the guise of religion.
[Illustration: PEASANT REPOSING. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN
FRANCOIS MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1863.
Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. This picture,
popularly known as "The man with the hoe," was the cause of much
discussion at the time of its exhibition. Millet was accused of socialism;
of inciting the peasants to revolt; and from his quiet retreat in the
country, he defended himself in a letter to his friend Sensier as follows:
"I see very clearly the aureole encircling the head of the daisy, and the
sun which glows beyond, far, far over the country-side, its glory in the
skies; I see, not less clearly, the smoking plough-horses in the plain,
and in a rocky corner a man bent with labor, who groans as he works,
or who for an instant tries to straighten himself to catch his breath. The
drama is enveloped in splendor. This is not of my creation; the
expression, 'the cry of the earth,' was invented long ago."]
Millet was reared by his grandmother, such being the custom of the
country; the younger women being occupied in the service of the
mastering earth, and the elders, no longer able to go afield, bringing up
the children born to their children, who in turn replaced their parents in
the never-ending struggle. This grandmother, Louise Jumelin, widow
of Nicolas Millet, was a woman of great force of character, and
extremely devout. The most ordinary occupation of the day was made
the subject not of uttered prayer, for that would have entailed
suspension of her ceaseless activity, but of spiritual example tersely
expressed, which fell upon the fruitful soil of Millet's young
imagination, and left such a lasting impression that to the end of his life
his natural expression was almost Biblical in character of language.

Another formative influence of this young life was that of a granduncle,
Charles Millet, a priest who, driven from his church by the Revolution,
had returned to his native village and taken up the simple life of his
people, without, however, abandoning his vocation. He was to be seen
behind his plough, his priest's robe gathered up about his loins, his
breviary in one hand, following the furrow up and down the undulating
fields which ran to the cliffs.
[Illustration: THE MILK-CARRIER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN
FRANÇOIS MILLET.
Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Probably
commenced at Cherbourg, where Millet took refuge with his family
during the Franco-Prussian War, as Sensier mentions it on Millet's
return. This picture, or a replica of it (Millet was fond of repeating his
subjects, with slight changes in each case), was in his studio in 1873,
and called forth the remark quoted in the text, about the women in his
country.]
Gifted with great strength, he piled up great masses of granite, to
reclaim a precious morsel of earth from the hungry maw of the sea;
lifting his voice, as he worked, in resonant chants of the church. He it
was who taught Millet to read; and, later, it was another priest, the
Abbé Jean Lebrisseux, who, in the intervals of the youth's work in the
fields, where he had early become an efficient aid to his father,
continued his instruction. With the avidity of intelligence Millet
profited by this instruction, not only in the more ordinary studies, but in
Latin, with the Bible and Virgil as text-books. His mind was also
nourished by the books belonging to the scanty library of his
granduncle. These were of a purely religious character--the "History of
the Saints," the "Confessions" of St. Augustine, the letters of St. Jerome,
and the works