LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 66, 13 March 1912, Page 2

LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

The cheapest .kind of funeral procession, what the Parisians cat. “cnterrcinent des the other dav in a hy-qnaitci ii s Much 'is told hy the quoted ,for' ii.-KmsH.il .t >•;;<! mil'll to oqual the collmnuii iwu” <- Briellv, lie is the man idiom L .lot lovwl, with Whom ....... 1.0 ,i o .,u harshlv. .Nearly all the men ;-ho followed that last, solemn jour"‘yin, wore their heir long a I were quite obviously l )ll,, T ls jj’ {] lC Latin Quarter, and nea.K a women were extremely pittt> nidliters’ models. “Who is dead? enquired the English representative of an English paper. IIO Y I se JJ ’ said his informant, “P?° " ltl Eos scan,” and his eyes twinkled. it was the burying of Heim llousseau, the man who his .whole lite long had been the happy victim ot a great joke IHe was; till a few months before his death a Customhouse official, am was 1 the most unlikely man to make his name in . art. Henri llousseau painted , pictures when he was not tumbling for contraband, and ho believed him’self a man of genius. He was, he said, the true primitive, the first of the nest impressionists, in evidence he showed his canvases. V itteen years before the students had found’him and had made him a member of the Salon des Independants hung his ihctnres on the line, and until the day of Ids death kept up the jest of his genius. It "as a "do jest for poor Rousseau’s pictures were extraordinary tilings. lor example, one of them was a triumph of post-imnressionism. He called k Jadwigha (“after a Polish girl whom X knew in my youth, he said), it was a lifesi/.c picture of a woman, .mule, reelininc on a sofa of red velvet 'in a' forest. In the middle of a tanVlo 5 of' tropical vegetation, in a tor■k s t which the foot of civilised man had obviously never trodden, was a ]mere rod velvet sofa with copper nails,' and on the sofa Jadwigha was .jviuu. Perhaps liecanse they loved hi in'" they -never let .him know that hip pictures were ridiculous. His work always found buyers at some very small price. It never occurred to him that ids work was absurd. His art was food and drink for him, be would say. He was more than deperbted when he visited the Salon des In dependants on varnishing day, .to find a circle of young artists dancing round Ids picture and singing the refrain which he had painted on the grass. “This.” he said, bursting into tears, “is really fame!” And nobody undeceived him. Presently, when real buyers grew weary of buying his work as a curiosity, the students clubbed together, bought it, and wrote him letters from imaginary Grand Dukes. His last speech was typical, typically said: “Perhaps the German Emperor would give •Jadwigha. back to, France? Now that I am dying I should like to think that Jadwigha would hang in the Louvre.” All being said, there’s not a hand’s breadth between laughter and tears.