LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN.
Thetraveller who, leaving Paris by express at 10A.M., reaches the Orleans dépôt at Limoges at six in the evening, will see spacious boulevards, imposing buildings and a general air of stateliness and pretension, recalling the metropolis he left behind him in the morning. His omnibus will whisk him through streets crowded with promenaders, a picturesque panorama of well-dressed people, with a generous sprinkling of the light-blue jackets of the chasseurs, the gleaming helmets of the dragoons, the red kepis of the infantry, the broad-brimmed hats and sable mantles of the priesthood and the red-and-orange head-kerchiefs of the working-women. If it be late in the season and the days are short, he will see at every turn cafés ablaze with light, and the wide sidewalks before them lined with tables at which, cool as it may be, crowds of loungers are seated sipping bier, absinthe or eau sucrée. But, looking up the dingy side-streets, here and there he may detect, by the lines of flickering, straggling gas-lights, glimpses of another Limoges—glimpses of steep streets ending in stairways; of narrow and darkened passages where the opposite buildings nod to each other from across the street until they all but touch; of courts where curious little enshrined images of the Madonna and the saints look down from niches in the corners, and where heads are peeping out from every window to catch a whiff of evening air; and of sombre alleys, each lighted by a single lamp suspended midway, under the uncertain rays of which swarms of children and dogs are vying to awaken the loudest echoes.
A great conflagration devastated Limoges in 1865, but it proved to that city what our political economists would have us believe the national debt has been to the United States—a blessing in disguise. Incident to the rebuilding of the burnt quarter a spirit of general renovation seems to have crept over the minds of the city fathers, and from that time to the present the work of tearing down old buildings and widening or straightening narrow or crooked streets has been pushed forward to such a degree that weresome Limousin Rip Van Winkle, after a twenty years' slumber in the adjacent mountains, to happen in suddenly upon the haunts of his childhood, he would open his eyes as wide as did his Knickerbocker namesake. But there are some things that no amount of outlay or engineering can accomplish; and though many costly improvements have been made in modernizing Limoges and bringing it up to a realizing sense of its dignity as the great porcelain-manufacturing city of Europe, there are yet within its walls some streets so crooked that nothing short of total demolition will ever straighten them, and others so steep and rocky that enough nitro-glycerine to shake down a hundred neighboring houses would have to be employed to level them. So it has come to be acknowledged that, with all the goodwill in the world for putting on modern airs, there are tumble-down, straggling, rickety relics of the past in Limoges which no amount of municipal resolutions or appropriations—nothing, in fact, but an earthquake—can ever remove. Every lover of the antique and quaint will fervently pray that no such disaster may ever come to efface the curious reminders of a time gone by.
For they are the pages upon which successive centuries have left their imprints. Here, for instance, is a street called the Rue du Consulat. By a happy coincidence, the United States consular office fronts upon it, but let not the patriotic American flatter himself that the street thence derives its name. Here lived one of the Roman proconsuls, and here stood the building in which the governors of the city, formerly known as "consuls," held their sessions. In this simple fact we discover a suggestion of the impress left by the domination of the Romans. But on their heels, in turn, came the Visigoths; then Clovis, who made Limoges one of his first conquests; and then the Saracens, who barely set foot on the soil ere Charles Martel's victory at Poitiers compelled them to leave. Some fragmentary bands, however, remained in the province, and one of them founded the neighboring city of Eymontiers, where buildings of Arabic architecture are still standing.
The Moors, surging northward from Spain, have left their impress in these fertile valleys that border the Vienne—an impress everywhere visible in the olive complexions and the costumes of the people, and audible in their language. The ethnologist is astonished at discovering so far to the North all the characteristics of a Spanish population. On fair-days, when the peasantry from a wide circuit are gathered on the Champ de Foires, one hears spoken a dialect incomprehensible to ordinary Frenchmen. It is a patois, a rolling, mellifluous brogue, much resembling the Gascon or the tongue spoken in the Basque provinces among the Pyrenees. Nor are the country-people the sole monopolists of this singular accent: the talk of most of the town-people is more or less tinctured with it. It is to the pure French what a good sweet Irish brogue is to the pure English. It is "Gascon"—and, after all, that is the only word that describes it—and you hear it spoken at every corner in Limoges, just as you meet everywhere swarthy faces, lustrous black eyes, raven hair and a marked dominance of the Southern type.
Limoges has had many masters. Charlemagne made a present of it to his son, Louis le Débonnaire. On another occasion, though the place is nearly two hundred miles inland, the Norman pirates came marching in and sacked it utterly. Louis the Stammerer, Carloman and Eudes were each in turn here crowned king of Aquitaine, and the last in 876 established the line of viscounts of Limoges, the last of whom, Henry of Navarre, reunited the domain to the crown of France. These viscounts inhabited from the thirteenth century the castle of Chalusset, about ten miles distant from the city. Its ruins are still interesting, and are a favorite resort for pleasure-parties. But still more frequently visited are the ruins of the castle of Chalus or Chabrol, where Richard Cœur de Lion fell in 1199. A railway-ride of an hour to Bussière-Galand, and another hour by stage, bring the visitor there. The very spot on which Richardfell is pointed out, and even at this late day it is proposed to erect there a monument bearing this inscription:
ANNO DOMINI 1199,
HIC
TELUM LEMOGIÆ OCCIDIT LEONEMANGLIÆ.
After Richard's death Limoges kept on changing masters as before. In 1355, Edward the Black Prince unfurled the British flag from its battlements, but Bishop Jean de Crose, in whose charge he had left it, delivered it over to the king of France. Edward returned in wrath, recaptured it and put many of the inhabitants to the sword. Under Charles VII. Limoges became permanently a French city, retaining its peculiar form of local government by twelve consuls, which constituted it a sort of independent republic. As Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry of Navarre, was viscountess of Limoges, it was impossible that the surrounding province should escape being drawn into the wars of religion. At Roche l'Abeille, a few miles south of the city, is the battle-field where Admiral Coligny's Protestant army met and defeated the royal forces under the duke of Anjou. But with the accession of Henry IV. came a new order of things, and the visit of that monarch in 1605 opened an era of industry, prosperity and peace.
To this day the butchers of Limoges have good cause to remember Henry's visit. That chivalrous but improvident ruler was always pecuniarily embarrassed, and never, it appears, more so than on that October day when, preceded by the flower of the military, magistracy and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the province, he rode in through the gorgeous gateway surmounted by a colossal figure of the giant Limovex, the traditional founder of the city, which held a silver key in the right hand and a heart in the left, by way of tendering to His Majesty the submission and affections of the city. The butchers' guild was at that period notoriously prosperous and wealthy. A happy conceit entered the royal mind. For and in consideration of a handsome sum of money and so many horses he offered to accord them in perpetuity the right of heading the escort whenever thereafter royalty should enter the city. The butchers took up the offer, paid the cash, produced the required number of horses, and in return received a charter and privileges which they have jealously guarded to this day. In 1810, when the duc de Berri, and in 1844, when the duc de Montpensier, visited Limoges, the butchers, with their white flag bearing a green cross, led the van in the processions that escorted them. The butchers form a little community, living all to themselves in the heart of the city, and intermarrying to such a degree that only five or six surnames are to be found among the eighty-odd families composing them. In the crooked, narrow little street, only two blocks long, which they inhabit—it is called the Rue des Boucheries—there are none but meat-shops, and the names "Cibeau," "Malvolin" and one or two others predominate on the signs over the doorways. In this babel of patronymics nicknames become necessary to distinguish one from another, and accordingly we find one man known as "aliasLouis XVIII.," another as "aliasthe Captain," and so on through a variety of amusing sobriquets. These butchers are richer to-day, if anything, than they were in Henry's time, and there is no impecunious monarch to levy on them now. They have their own place of worship too, a little chapel dedicated to St. Aurelien, and standing modestly aside in a court at the foot of their narrow street. It is scarcely larger than the vestibule of an ordinary church, and its exterior is as plain as that of any country barn. But step quietly in, and as soon as your eyes are accustomed to the gloom look about you. What a surprise! Frescoes, stained glass, paintings, statuary, tapestries and vessels of gold and silver are crowded together with lavish profuseness in that little sanctuary. A monolith cross dating from the fifteenth century stands just outside the portal, bearing exquisitely-carved representations of Christ, the Virgin and the apostles—a gem of sculpture rearing itself unexpectedly in the midst of a muddy and squalid neighborhood.
The history of Limoges, like that of most European cities, is closely interwoven with that of its churches. St. Michael of the Lions, familiarly known as the Church of the Boule d'Or from a large gilded ball which adorns its tapering spire, stands upon one of the highest points in the city. About its base, in the niches between its projecting abutments, cobblers and dealers in old clothes and bric-à-brac have, with the sanction of time, reared unopposed their rickety shanties, so that the church-walls, with their ancient carvings and quaint designs, seem to spring up incongruously out of a medley of combustible rubbish. On the steps at the main doorway, in careless disorder, are to be seen the three life-size stone lions which gave the church its name. They date from the twelfth century, and are so worn by time that only the outlines of their features are still discernible. St. Michael's spire, which is one hundred and sixty-five feet high and ascended by an iron ladder on the exterior, was completed in 1383. The interior of the church is richly adorned, though somewhat defaced during the Revolutionary days of '93, when it was reared into a temple of Reason and witnessed many a saturnalian orgy, during one of which one of its finest windows was broken to fragments.
But it is at the cathedral that the Revolution has left most plainly visible to future generations the marks of its iconoclastic hammers and chisels. To reach it from St. Michael's we must thread our way across the town from the heights to the plateau overlooking the river, where, in the heart of the ancient quarter known as "the Cité," stands the grand old cathedral of St. Étienne. Its cornerstone was laid June 1, 1273, though two other churches and a Roman temple to Jupiter had previously stood on the same site. Successive bishops have pushed it toward completion, but it was only in 1847 that a complete restoration of the edifice was begun. Monsigneur Duquesnay, the present bishop, has raised a subscription of half a million of francs for that purpose. The tower, one hundred and eighty-six feet high, when viewed from any point in the environs looms up a conspicuous object in the picture. Within, the church is remarkable for the boldness of its vaults and arches and the elegance of its workmanship. Numerous works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—among which are six bas-reliefs representing the Labors of Hercules—adorn the walls. These classical works the Revolutionists spared: it was only upon the ecclesiastical sculptures that they sought to wreak their hate. In the chancel the remains of three bishops—Raynard de la Porte (1325), Bernard Brun (1349) and Jean de Langeac (1541) repose beneath stone mausoleums, the last of which contains fourteen bas-reliefs of the Visions of the Apocalypse. These mausoleums too are sadly defaced: the full-length stone figures of the deceased prelates which lie recumbent on top of their respective tombs are minus noses and hands.
But to the antiquarian the most interesting feature of the cathedral is that portion of its foundation which formed a part of the Roman basilica that stood on this site. It was transformed from a temple of Jupiter to a Christian church by St. Martial, a contemporary of the apostles, sent hither from Rome to preach the gospel to the Gentile Lemovices. St. Martial is honored to this day as the patron saint of Limoges. When he died some pious priests formed a brotherhood to preserve his tomb, and at that tomb have since knelt Popes Urban II. and Clement V., Edward of England, Blanche of Castile, Henry IV., Louis VII., XI. and XIII. of France, and many great lords and princes, who, it must be remembered, had to journey hither in days when no palace-coaches and lightning mail-trains were at their disposal. Railroads have put a heavy discount on the ancient pilgrimage business.
In the tenth century a terrible plague, known as themal des ardents, swept off forty thousand Limousins in a few weeks. The survivors, hopeless save of divine intervention, prayed that St. Martial's remains might be brought from the tomb where they had been reposing for nearly a thousand years and exposed to publicview. All the relics of other saints that could be collected in the neighborhood were brought into Limoges, as if to form a cortége of honor to the remains of the patron saint of Aquitaine. Upon a hill in the environs, now known as the Mont de la Joie, the sacred fossils of the departed just were held up that all might gaze upon them and be healed. By what particular process the manifestation of these osseous fragments of defunct ecclesiastics resulted in a banishment of the pestilence one finds it difficult to explain, save on general principles of faith and Professor Tyndall's prayer-test. Nevertheless, history records that the plague was stayed. A chapel was erected upon the hilltop, which is now tunnelled by a railroad, and from that day the public display of these saintly relics, at intervals of every seven years, has become an established ceremonial known as the Festival of the Ostension. It is celebrated on Thursday of Mid-Lent by a procession conducted with great pomp and ceremony. The flag of the brotherhood of St. Martial, an immense white banner with a red cross, is first blessed by the bishop, after which, followed by a numerous cortége, it is borne through the city to the sound of music and an incessant fusillade of musketry. It is then hoisted to the summit of the spire of St. Michael, which forms the repository of St. Martial's remains.
The procession itself is a curious and motley spectacle. So great is the emulation in the preparation of costumes that many families are accustomed to buy the materials and begin the work two years in advance. In the ranks are to be seen represented all the saints both of the Old and New Testament, the seven Maccabei, and the entire Passion, including our Saviour, the Virgin Mary and the apostles. Twenty-four angels carry the instruments of the Passion. "We participated in this festival in 1820," writes the late Abbé Tesier, "and can recall the tears, and even indignation, of the multitude when the personage representing Our Lord fell under the weight of an immense cross." On the same occasion four thousand pupils of the College of St. Mary marched in line, representing the prophets, martyrs, confessors and virgins. After them came long lines of soldiers fantastically clad in the military costumes of the Middle Ages, and equipped with crossbows, matchlock arquebuses and all varieties of ancient weapons, which had been handed down in families from generation to generation to be used on these occasions. There were in line, too, all the rulers and magistrates of the province, and scores of religious orders and brotherhoods to which successive centuries of Romanism had given birth. Chief among these latter are the Penitents, a curious fraternity which merits more than a passing mention.
Though dating from the thirteenth century in France, it was not until 1598 that the order made its appearance in Limoges. It gained ground there so rapidly, however, that in 1789 but one other city, Marseilles, contained a greater number of lodges. Each lodge, to obtain its charter, had to bind itself to rebuild some ruined church, name some special mission of good it was to accomplish and choose some special color for its costume. Thus at Limoges we find Black, Blue, Gray, White, Purple, Violet and Dead-Leaf Penitents, each charged with some special benevolent function, such as settling disputes between alienated members of one family, escorting the condemned to the scaffold and holding the crucifix to their lips, relieving imprisoned debtors, and so on. People of all ages and conditions flocked to their ranks. A unanimous election was required to obtain admission. The order grew so wealthy and powerful that at times it even dared to oppose the authority of the Church itself. The annual procession on Holy Thursday called out the entire population. It took place at nightfall, the brethren marching disguised and barefoot through the streets, holding lighted tapers and lanterns suspended from long poles, carrying a cross covered with crape at their head, and chanting a dirge as they went. But by and by trouble arose, and the Penitents found themselves in hot water. In 1742 a malefactor whom they escorted to the scaffold managed to escape, through theaid, it was believed, of the throng of disguised Penitents about him. Henceforward their interference in executions was forbidden. The Revolution dealt what was practically a deathblow to the order, for, though revived in 1804, it provoked ridicule as out of keeping with modern ideas. The Ostension procession of 1862 saw the six surviving lodges parade together for the last time. The events of 1870-71 finished the work of disorganization, and to-day the costumes and ornaments of the Penitents Noirs—who, it seems, had survived all the others—remain as curiosities in the possession of the last treasurer of the lodge.
The stranger at Limoges is perforce an early riser. He is aroused from his slumbers at daybreak by a furious reveille of drum and bugle from the numerous barracks about the city, and from that time on bugle-practice and drum-practice hold high revel, until the despairing visitor is obliged, in sheer self-defence, to rise, dress and stroll out to see where all the racket comes from. He will understand it when he learns that of the seventy thousand people in the city about him, ten thousand are soldiers. If he would gain some idea of the number and extent of thecasernesin which this good-sized army is quartered—in fact, if he would have a view of the whole city just awakening to its daily life—let him stroll up through one or another of the steep streets leading to the Place d'Orsay, a hilltop park crowned with forest trees and overlooking all Limoges. There was once a Roman arena on this spot, but its memory now lives only in the name of an adjacent street. If the morning be clear the view from this point is superb. Let the spectator turn where he may, he looks over densely-crowded housetops toward a vast amphitheatre of surrounding hills dotted with châteaux and farms, and enclosing the circular valley or basin in the centre of which, upon a knoll, stands the city itself. About him the busy hum of toil is already audible. Scores of tall chimneys puffing out smoke and flames mark the numerous porcelain-factories scattered here and there through the city's limits. Close at hand the tapering spire of St. Michael's, and beyond it that of St. Pierre, stand out in clear relief against the morning sky, while farther in the distance the cathedral looms up grand and shapely among the morning shadows rising from the river at its base.
By this time the shops are opened, everybody is stirring, and the visitor may as well take a stroll over to the market-place. On his way he will pass the Palais de Justice on the Place d'Aisne and the military club-house on the Rue Darnay, both of them elegant structures; he will traverse a quarter where the names on the signs and the noses on the shopkeepers' faces give an emphatic answer, so far as Limoges is concerned, to the time-honored query, "Where, oh where, are the Hebrew children?" he will pass through the fashionable shopping-region, where great dry-goods stores, dedicated "Au Louvre," "À la Ville de Paris," etc., glare at him with their enormous plateglass panes and a wealth of fabrics within; he will remark a surprising predominance of pastry-shops and drug-stores, though it need not necessarily be inferred that one is the complement of the other: in some streets he will find the sidewalks wide and well laid, in others they are rough and painful, tapering off to nothing alongside the base of some projecting building. If he asks a question of the shopkeepers in the doorways, they answer him pleasantly and politely; if he scan the faces of passers-by, he finds them bright, hopeful and good-natured. Groups of neatly-dressed, bareheaded working-girls go chatting by: men in blouses and slouch hats, carrying tin dinner-pails, hurry past. Vellum-faced old women crying vegetables in the shrillest of voices; here and there a guard of soldiers following a forage-wagon piled high with loaves of bread two feet long; milkmen's wagons, bakers' wagons, and an occasional patient donkey toiling up-hill with a stout country dame and a load of cabbages in the cart behind him; sedate housewives hurrying homeward, followed by littlebonneswith laden baskets on their arms,—all tell the observer that he is in the neighborhood of the market.
What a babel of confusion it is, thismotley gathering of fruit-and vegetable-women, seated in long rows of improvised stalls along the paved slope, enclosed on all sides by tall buildings, which forms the market-place! They all wear red-and-yellow head-kerchiefs, and are chattering away for dear life. It is a recognized principle in their code to ask any price they think they can get for their wares, but for all that living is not costly at Limoges. Good beef and mutton sell at eighteen cents a pound, and articles ofcharcuterie, such as ham, sausage,pâtésandgalantine, are sold in great quantities. Vegetables of all kinds are plentiful and cheap, and in the season there is an abundance of pears, apples, grapes and figs. In the autumn, too, thousands of bushels of a giant species of chestnut are gathered and sold or shipped to other markets. Mushrooms as large round as a dinner-plate are sold by weight, and women and children can be seen munching them as they would crusts of bread. Wine is poor and high-priced, for the Limousin is not a vine-growing province, and with the recent rise in price the poorer classes have to forego the daily litre ofvin rougewhich their compatriots in the neighboring Charente still consider indispensable to their health and happiness. Looking at these market-people about him, the observer can easily see that they are not habitual wine-drinkers. They take a little cider, a little beer, but wine only now and then. Simplicity and frugality of diet, in fact, mark the habits of all the people, rich and poor, of the province. A cup of coffee on rising, a plate of soup at nine, a substantial meal at mid-day, and another plate of soup between six and eight in the evening, make up the bill of fare for the day.
The hotels, however, keep up the Parisian hours for meals, and as breakfast does not come until eleven o'clock, it would be well for our visitor to devote his remaining morning hours to the famous Ceramic Museum, which is not far from the Place d'Orsay, and which contains the finest collection of faïence and porcelains in the world excepting that at the Louvre. All the principal European countries are here found represented by specimens of their wares, but the United States, alas! is conspicuous by its absence, notwithstanding the fact that last year a notice was generally published throughout the American press advising our porcelain-makers that samples, if sent by them to the United States consular agent at Limoges, would be exhibited in the museum side by side with the rest. In connection with the establishment a free school for drawing and porcelain-decoration has been inaugurated by the city, and with such success that it numbers six hundred and fifty pupils of both sexes and all ranks of society.
After his morning stroll our visitor to Limoges will doubtless breakfast well. At either the Boule d'Or, the Richelieu or La Paix he cannot fail to do so, provided he furnish the appetite. There are other hotels, some of them rejoicing in such fanciful names as "The Golden Chariot" or "The Silver Eagle," but the three first named are those that the arriving stranger generally hears screamed in his ears by the runners at the railway-dépôt. The prices at either of them, varying from a dollar and a half to two dollars per day, seem ridiculously cheap to an American, for the bill of fare embraces an elaborate array of courses at the table-d'hôte, and wine is included. Carriage-hire, too; is remarkably reasonable: for a five-franc piece one can hire for the best part of the afternoon either a one-horse coupé or a two-horse barouche with a liveried driver. Tell the coachman to drive you out of town anywhere to get a good view of the city. He will touch his hat, crack his whip, and away you go. He will probably take you past the statue of Marshal Jourdan, the Cercle de l'Union—a splendidly-appointed private club—and so down through the Cité to the Boulevard Pont Neuf, leading to the bridge of the same name. The view up and down the river as you cross is extremely picturesque, the banks ascending in steep declivities on either side. Above is the ancient bridge of St. Étienne, and below is the equally ancient bridge of St.Martial, each, like the Pont Neuf, leading to its faubourg beyond the river. Under the shade of the shapely poplars lining the placid current hundreds of laundresses are to be seen kneeling in little wooden boxes at the water's edge, each having before her a smooth flat stone on which she scrubs, kneads and pounds somebody's family linen. The roadway up through the faubourg is dirty and tedious: unkempt children are playing in the street and ill-bred dogs run out to bark as you pass. But beyond are the loveliest of rural scenes—long, shaded road-ways where, through the closely-aligned trees, one looks down upon the city and the river spread like a picture beneath: here and there, standing back from the roadside and embowered in foliage, are ancestral châteaux, seeming to care very little for the common world about them. The farms are models of agricultural industry and neatness. Prosperity and thrift are written in large letters all over the cultivated fields and well-cared-for pastures that meet the eye at every turn. Men and women are working together among the grain or in the hay-meadows. A turn in the road brings us to Panazol, a little hamlet with not over twenty houses, yet with a vine-clad toy of a church, and a little shed, New England like, adjoining it, for the convenience of the farmers who come here to mass on Sundays. Before the doors peasant-women sit working at their looms, and bright-faced matrons sit knitting in the windows. The village streets are grass-grown and still, and but for an occasional old woman, with an immense broad-brimmed straw hat on her head and a load of fagots on her back, our carriage might dash at breakneck speed through Panazol without fear of injuring any one.
Within a radius of a few miles there are a dozen pleasant points for afternoon drives—Rochechouart, with its historic château; St. Yrieix, a bright and pretty town, with a church that has a history; St. Léonard, with its famous church, an exact model of St. Sepulchre at Jerusalem; the abbaye of Solignac, where St. Éloi worked as a silversmith; and Aix, farther down on the Vienne, where you can drive down for dinner, and then return home along the river-bank by moonlight. Either one of these trips would prove interesting: your gorgeous driver is very communicative, and tells you all about the owners of this place and that, what their family pedigrees are, whom they married, how much they are worth and how much they paid per hectare for the property.
There is a fair theatre where one can hearLe Petit Duc, Les Clochesor some other popular opera sung three times a week. One sees very few elaborately-dressed ladies in the audiences, for the city, being an industrial one and with a large majority of its population given to their daily labor for support, is not much wedded to fashion: it is practical rather than worldly. The constant round of dinners, soirées, balls and receptions which characterizes French high life in many and even smaller cities is lacking here. The wealthier people, as a rule, are the porcelain-manufacturers, who live in a quiet, substantial, sensible way, eschewing the follies and fatigues of fashionable existence. Full half of the population depends, directly or indirectly, on the porcelain industry for its support. It was only a hundred and thirty years ago that this industry had its birth. For centuries before that, it is true, Limoges had been famous through all Europe for its enamels. Bernard Palissy was a citizen of Limoges, and Léonard Limousin was appointed "enamel-painter in ordinary" to King Francis I. It is possible that this art was brought here from Italy by some Venetian merchants, who in 977 built up a portion of what is now the Faubourg St. Martial and established an extensive trade in fabrics and spices with the Levant. But it was not until 1765 that Doctor Darnay, a surgeon of Limoges, discovered near the neighboring village of St. Yrieix the inexhaustible quarries of kaolin which were destined to become a source of wealth and employment for all the surrounding population. Like most discoverers, he failed to realize any substantial benefits. A Bordeaux druggist, one De Villaret, managed to secure a patent in advance of him, and poor Darnay,defeated in a suit for damages, had to content himself with the posthumous honor of having a street named after him in the city which has most profited by his discovery.
In 1772 the first porcelain-factory was established at Limoges by Messrs. Massier, Fourneyra & Grelletfrères, under the protection of the wise and liberal intendant Turgot. It is the decoration of the porcelain that gives it its value as well as its charm. Its manufacture is comparatively easy and simple. The kaolin, a dry, whitish-yellow clay, is first taken in lumps from the quarry and carried to one or another of the numerous mills lining the Vienne, where it is ground fine and reduced to a liquid paste closely resembling bread-dough. In this shape it is carried in sacks to the factory, where, having been again worked over to secure fineness and pliability, it is ready for the moulder's or the turner's hands. Nothing can exceed the deftness and skill with which, under the magic touch of the experienced workman, shapeless lumps of this prepared clay are fashioned into cups, dishes, vases and every conceivable form of the most delicate pottery. It is so quickly done, too! One handy operative can make two hundred cups a day. Once moulded into shape, the piece of pottery is dipped into liquid enamel which gives it hardness and brilliancy. It receives too the stamp of the manufacturer. It is then placed in what is called agazetteto be put into the oven to bake. The gazette is composed of a pair of deep earthen saucers fitting tightly together and forming a circular box, varying in dimensions according to the sizes of the objects to be baked. The greater part of those in use are little larger than an ordinary soup-plate. In this gazette the piece of porcelain is hermetically sealed up, and then it goes into the oven with thousands of other gazettes, until the great circular furnace, twenty feet in diameter and two stories high, is packed full from side to side and from bottom to top. Then the doors are closed, the fires are lit, and for a period varying from thirty-four to fifty hours the baking process goes on at a temperature of thirty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even after the fires are extinguished the heat in the furnace continues intense, and twelve hours more must elapse before it subsides sufficiently to permit the workmen to enter, remove and open the gazettes, take out the porcelains, which are now hard and brilliant, and send them to the artists for decoration. There are in all some seventy of these ovens in Limoges, with an average capacity of six thousand pieces. As most of them are kept going night and day, the reader can form some idea of the amount daily manufactured.
But thus far we have only followed the process through its homelier stages. The decorative work, yet to come, is the most delicate as it is the most interesting. But not every piece of porcelain that comes out of the oven reaches the decorator's hands. Of every hundred pieces baked, an average of twenty-five are thrown out as inferior, and the remaining seventy-five are divided or sorted out into four grades, known as second choice, choice, élite and special, in the average proportion of thirty, twenty-five, fifteen and five to each class respectively. The special is employed only for very rich decorations; élite is recommended for best selection; the choice is for ordinary usage; and the second choice is of such fair quality as to be pronounced less imperfect than the best porcelain sent from China and Japan, and specially recommended as the most economical pottery. The price of decoration varies according to the selection of porcelain to which it is applied. Thus, for instance, the lower grades of artists are employed upon the second-choice porcelain, while the best painters and decorators work upon the élite: the special is only given to artists of the most exceptional merit. The various artists, painters and decorators, are paid salaries which, according to the French standard, are considered munificent, though they sound small enough to American ears. Much of the decorating, such as flowers, birds, vines, etc., is done by laying the paper designs upon the porcelain and painting over them. The gilding is more laborious, and enormous quantities of pure gold-leaf are used. Thegold, once laid on, can only become permanently part and parcel of the porcelain by being subjected to an additional six hours' baking at a temperature of eight hundred degrees Réaumur.
Not less important is the decoration of faïence-ware, which varies infinitely according to the desired effect. Haviland & Co., who may be taken as a standard, classify their faïences into six groups—viz. cream faïences, which are thus named from their color, and which are decorated with paintings under the enamel or with translucid enamels; enamelled paintings, possessing all the tone, richness and variety of oil-paintings; grand-fire fresco paintings, or exact representations of wall frescoes, and especially adapted for panels or architectural ornaments; gilt enamels, reproducing Chinese lac-paintings or vases of precious stones; Limoges enamels, very similar to the ancient enamels of Léonard Limousin; and sculptured faïences, painted either under the enamel or in grand-fire frescoes: the figures alone are never painted in these latter. Each piece of sculptured faïence is the model itself, signed by the artist: not one of them is ever reproduced by moulding. In the museum connected with the Haviland works are to be seen some remarkably fine specimens of their faïence-wares. The Havilands, themselves Americans, who by their enterprise and integrity reflect credit upon their country, have done much to popularize the love for ceramics in the New World, and the head of the house, Mr. Charles Haviland, was worthily decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at the close of the Paris Exposition. The firm has recently completed the manufacture of an elaborate dinner-service for the White House at Washington, based upon designs by a well-known American artist. Long may that service grace the board of the first magistrate of our nation as a souvenir and symbol of the two great republics of the world—as a substantial evidence of what French resources, combined with American industry, have produced from the rough and shapeless clods of clay which so many preceding centuries have passed by unnoticed!
George L. Catlin.