The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction | Page 9

thee! Mind thy paper, and give over spying!" How meanly he was kept in regard to clothing--how he had to sleep, for his life long, in a child's bed, far too short for him, for want of a straw mattress--and how, under such continual toil and miserable constraint, he at last sank, and died of water in the chest, it is now needless to say or to lament. We turn, rather, to the more pleasing contemplation of what Mind, in this most unfavourable situation, nevertheless succeeded in performing, and rendering himself as an artist.
Mind's special talent for representing cats was discovered and awakened by chance.[4] It was not till after Freudenberger's death that Mind fully developed his peculiar talent for the objects to which, subsequently, through his whole life, he applied himself with such special affection, and which, accordingly, he succeeded in representing with such fidelity and truth. The condition of peasant children, their sorrows and joys, their sports and bickerings--the coarse insolence of the richer, the timid dispiritment of the needy, all stood in lively remembrance before his fancy, which liked to go back into that first and only period of his freedom, though, perhaps, also of his beggarhood. In Freudenberger's school he had learned a natural, easy, and comprehensible arrangement of little groups, and a neat, dainty manner, in which wise it was no difficult task for him to represent such scenes with truth and grace. Thus we find these pictures of his, which, for the most part, are painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings, quarrellings, sledge-parties of children, with their half-frozen but still merry faces, in their puffy yet not unpicturesque costume; his beggar-boys, with their rag-ware on their backs, are almost always genial and pleasing. In the course of his narrow, in-doors life, he had worked himself into a friendly, nay, as it were, almost paternal relation with domestic and fire-side animals, especially with cats. While he sat painting, a cat might generally be seen sitting on his back or on his shoulder; and many times he kept, for hours, the most awkward postures, that he might not disturb it. Frequently there was a second cat sitting by him on the table, watching how the work went on; sometimes a kitten or two lay in his lap under the table. Frogs (in bottle) floated beside his easel; and with all these creatures he kept up a most playful, loving style of conversation; though, often enough, any human beings about him, or such even as came to see him, were growled or grunted at in no social fashion. His countenance, especially in latter years, was a mixture of the bear's, the lion's, and the human, for most part of a dull brick-colour; so that many people, particularly children, were afraid to look at him. In figure he was very small, and bent; but, at the same time, had hands and fingers of extraordinary size and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right delineation of their forms he had the art to seize the general nature of this animal, and, in the portrait-like indication of their various physiognomies, to reflect the specific character of each. The sycophantic look full of falseness, the dainty movements of the kittens, several of which are sometimes painted sporting round their dam--all this, in the most multifarious postures, turns, groups, sports, and quarrels, is depicted with a true observance to nature,--nay, one might say with genius and fidelity.
On Sundays and winter nights, Mind, by way of pastime, used, out of dried, wild chestnuts, to carve little cats, bears, and other beasts, and this with so much art that these little dainty toys were shortly in no less request than his drawings. It is a pity that insects, such as frequently exist in the interior of chestnuts, have already destroyed so many of these carvings.
At the Barengraben (bear-yard) in Bern, where a few live bears are always to be seen, Mind passed many a happy hour; and, between the beasts and him there seemed to prevail a singularly confidential feeling. The moment Friedli--such was the name Mind was best known by in Bern--made his appearance, the bears hastened towards him with friendly grumbling, stationed themselves on their hind feet, and received, impartially, each a piece of bread or an apple out of his pocket. For this reason, bears, next to cats, were a favourite subject of his art; and he reckoned himself, not unjustly, better able to delineate these animals than even celebrated painters have been. Moreover, next to his intercourse with living cats and bears, Mind's greatest joy was in looking at objects of art, especially copper-plates, in