1892] Carolus Duran 79 



Hampton Court. It is what Versailles ought to have been and failed 

 to be, the ideal of all that is great and sumptuous in the French Renais- 

 sance style, and at the same time not too vast, a house to live in, not 

 merely a palace for show. Its present proprietor, one Sommier, a 

 sugar merchant, bought it a few years back for £ 100,000, and has spent 

 another £100,000 on restoring and furnishing it, all fortunately in the 

 perfection of good taste. His son, a plain youth with yellow hair, 

 rather ungainly, but with good voice and manner, received us on the 

 perron, and showed us over everything sensibly and with knowledge. 

 One feels happy, sugar or no sugar, that this architectural gem has 

 fallen into such reverent and understanding hands. It had (been 

 offered to the Gustave Rothschilds, who fortunately let it go by. It 

 is now being carefully put in order, the square mile of garden brought 

 back from the waste into which it had fallen, statues and vases re- 

 placed, and water let in to the ruined pieces d'eau ; this is real restora- 

 tion, not a stone has been scraped, not an idea improved on. When 

 one looks at a creation like this, dating from two hundred and more 

 years ago, the talk of modern progress in the nineteenth century sounds 

 childish. From Vaux to Ferrieres is as great a descent in the intellec- 

 tual work of man as from Shakespeare to Mark Twain. 



" Coming into the hall this evening for dinner, I saw a grey-headed 

 man entering at the opposite door, whom for a moment I took to be 

 Leighton, but it proved to be Carolus Duran, and he tells me he has 

 been several times taken for Leighton. Duran (or M. Carolus, as he 

 prefers to be called, Berthe says, on the pretext that he is of Spanish 

 origin, his real name being Durand, of a cotton-spinning family at 

 Lille) is an excellent specimen of the French artiste and homme d' esprit. 

 An exceedingly good talker on a variety of subjects, art, poetry, lan- 

 guages, music, and his own heart. We drew him out on every one, 

 and on every one he said things worth remembering. He talked of the 

 Chicago Exhibition and the prospects of painting in America. Most 

 American artists, he said, had been his own or Meissonier's pupils. 

 Art was a matter of education. The Americans would learn it in time. 

 In poetry he declaimed against Victor Hugo, and exalted Musset, cit- 

 ing corresponding passages to Musset's advantage. ' All great poets,' 

 he said, ' are exponents of their own country's genius and ideas, not 

 of any other country's (see Shakespeare, Moliere, Dante, Cervantes), 

 this, although they are also for all mankind.' He did not think much 

 of Byron, but quoted Goethe and one or two Italians. He told us he 

 was Spanish, and had learned Spanish entirely by ear and with a per- 

 fect accent, but his quotations hardly bore that out. His Italian ac- 

 cent was better. On music he seemed to talk well, adoring Wagner, 

 Berlioz, and Beethoven, and he sang snatches of Malagenas in illus- 

 tration of his ideas on oriental music. Lastly about his own sentiments 



