TROUBLE WITH HORTENSE

Things were turning sour for me after the first difficult phase with Hortense: money was shorter than ever, and the predictable consequence of our relationship, her pregnancy, occured.

This sharpened my fears of discovery by my father, and with that disastrous revelation, the loss of my allowance, our only means of support. The threat of poverty, I could think of nothing else, destroyed me. I was silent and withdrawn, I couldn't work, lying stretched out on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling. Although I blamed Hortense for my apprehensions about the future, I knew that the impending crisis, like most of my trouble, was self-inflicted. The possibility of having the money cut off brought on nightmares, I sweated, I experienced chills, my stomach was tightly knotted, I was unable to eat. I was frozen in place, my heart beating wildly, and the dawn of each day, a symbol of the reality before me, was terrifying. Without money, which appeared certain now, there could be no future for my painting, or for that matter, anything else I wanted to do with my life. Louis-Auguste was not the forgiving type, he wanted me to make a fool of myself, he wanted to demonstrate how right he had been all along. I clung to the only choice left to me:  the fragile hope of maintaining secrecy, of keeping the birth of the child from reaching channels where it would be passed on to eager ears in Aix-en-Provence. As a start in this direction, I made frantic moves to prevent my radical friends from gaining knowledge of Hortense's condition. Gossip moves fast, even friends cannot be trusted, and an innocent slip of the tongue, a misdirected letter, could reach the dinner table at 23 Rue Boulegon. Trying to remain as secluded as possible, we moved to a rundown building on the Rue Fueillantines, a structure situated in a section of small tradesmen and factories. Concentration on my work, when I tried to establish routines, was almost impossible. I was still subject to the angry brooding, the dislike of being trapped in such a dilemma, and I took my fury out on Hortense. I had periodic phases where I was overcome with a desire to escape, to do anything which might allow me to avoid the pressures that were consuming me, but the realities of my position made running away a pointless and cowardly act. I contemplated suicide as a means of obliterating everything, the bliss of knowing nothing, feeling nothing, of striving for nothing, seemed a kind of paradise. I viewed the relationship with Hortense as a disastrous decision, and even worse, as an obstacle to all that I had worked for over the years. She received the brunt of my resentment, she had caused my troubles, she was blamed for my failures. The injustice of this was never apparent as my emotions dominated my thoughts; I needed a target, she was the closest, and readily available. The flat was dark and forbidding, as the struggle between us became more intense. She struck back with silence and passivity, I responded with invective, sometimes pushing or striking her, unreasonable in my hostility. We were two separate human beings, enemies to what each represented, and forced by circumstances to remain together, tied by a bond that could not be dissolved on either side. When Hortense moved in with me, I accepted it as a natural development of wanting a normal life style, something that had always eluded me. What I overlooked was the fact that I was financially and mentally unprepared to shoulder the responsibilities of a lover and husband. In retrospect, the decision to go ahead, agonizing and painful when I made it, was a serious mistake. My folly had made the slender thread of support from my father more fragile and uncertain. Facing a problem which appeared impossible to solve, I backed off, and was buried in the misery of my thoughts. The communication between Hortense and myself, after the bitter arguments, was reduced to perfunctory exchanges which could not be avoided. We were two people living together, without intimate contact, strangers to each other. I reacted unemotionally when she gave birth to a boy on June 4, 1872, acknowledged by me, and duly registered at the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondisement as Paul Cezanne, Jr. Art had become a distant entity, subordinated by a series of events which cast long shadows over my ability to continue my studies to be a professional painter. Apprehension of the future dominated my feelings; I was suspended by a terrifying premonition of doom all out of touch with reality, and I was conscious of how this condition complicated the decisions I would probably have to make in the near future. A warning bell deep within me, an instinct perhaps for self-preservation, warned me that it was a time for caution, that I should avoid throwing everything away by some foolish and irresponsible act. This was not easy for me; I wasn't patient by nature, and waiting, trying to determine what was best in each instance, was difficult; I was inclined toward precipitous moves, to be aggressively destructive, or ignominious in dismal failure. I chose neither of these extremes and decided to allow the days ahead to unravel on their own in the vague hope that things might work out advantageously. Good options, I reflected, had never been part of my life; from the start, the direction of my life had been in other people's hands, a life of anxiety and predictable trouble; those who controlled the money bags called the tune; in Paris, or painting in the countryside in Aix-en-Provence, I may have escaped the immediate pressures of dealing with Louis-Auguste, but his autocratic image remained, a force which affected every move I made. Freedom, I agonized, is an illusion fostered by a hypocritical political and social system which has no intention of letting people run their own lives in a way that satisfies their personal desires. I hear freedom discussed on all sides; citizens say it is essential to their happiness; yet I do not see it anywhere .... Pissarro, who had come to Paris to submit his pictures to the judgement of the Hanging Committee of the Salon d'Automne, came to the flat to cheer me up. Monet had told him of my predicament, saying he was concerned that I was facing a serious crisis which might possibly have tragic consequences. "Your work," he assured me, "is far more important than your troubles, bad as they may appear at the moment. Believe me when I say that all human beings suffer in one way or another; this is not something you alone endure; we all have our troubles; security is at the heart of it; and we think that the injustices of the world rest on our shoulders. My advice is for you to concentrate on your painting, to view your difficulties in a more rational manner, and to settle down to hard work to the exclusion of other matters." Pissarro, obviously, was correct; I could see this right away; and, actually, he was the traditional picture of the struggling artist trying desperately to keep his head above the water. In contrast to myself, he never complained about the huge burdens of supporting his growing family, or of the terrible problems of penetrating an art market which was hostile to the radical movement. His rejections at the Salon d'Automne, the failures of the independent shows, had not changed his confident attitude about the future. Whenever we met, he was cheerful, outgoing, and his concerns were always for others, offering whatever help he could manage, even at times when his own life was in crisis .... Pissarro lived this philosophy, bending with the troubles of life, refusing to be defeatist about the future, and determined to overcome all obstacles to the goals he had set for himself. When I was with him, his strength gave me the hope that I could view the frustrations of my life this way, but I realized that I lacked his calm wisdom and his inner spirit which carried him through bad times. When we parted, he shook hands, looked me in the eye, and said: "You mustn't be bitter about the circumstances you find yourself in, panic never solved anything, and hatred for your dependence on the family will not provide adequate answers. My advice is to see the advantages of your position, use them to make progress, and don't worry about events which have not yet happened." I wanted to follow this sensible approach to my problems but I lacked the mentality to deal with them in a controlled way. My personality, unlike Pissarro's or Monet's, was unbalanced, an uncertain entity, which was incapable of sustaining a consistent attitude to either social or personal difficulties. Pissarro, I knew, understood this deficiency in my character, and whenever he counseled me, he treated this defect with great diplomacy, knowing it didn't take very much to trigger some sort of uncontrolled reaction. He had warned about the grave risks of overly-emotional assessment of each aspect of my life, and he consistently emphasized that one difficult problem which could not be immediately resolved, did not, necessarily, mean the end of everything. Shortly after his visit to the flat on the Rue Fueillantines, I received a letter from Pissarro inviting me to Pontoise, where we could paint together, talk a bit more about the situation I faced, and escape some of the unpleasant aspects of life in Paris. "I forgot to tell you," he wrote, "that there are wonderful motifs in the vicinity of Auvers-sur-Oise, which might interest you. If you feel free to do so, why not come up here on a holiday? We can walk around the countryside, find subject-matter, debate its merits, and concentrate on painting to the exclusion of everthing else. There are reasonable accomodations at a small hotel in Pontoise, and while you are here, I would like you to meet a friend of mine, Doctor Gachet, a homeopathic surgeon, who is partial to art and artists. Julie and the rest of the family anticipate your coming, and promise the usual Pissarro hospitality. My eldest son, Lucien, who has heard of your reputation as a poet, can't wait to hear your opinions on this subject, knowing you have a lot to say to him about this particular form of writing. Being gifted in this direction, he sees himself as a prospective Baudelaire or Hugo, and he is preparing to discuss the mysteries of iambic pentameter, free verse, and all the rest, whatever it implies!" I appreciated Pissarro's kind invitation, but put it off because I was involved with the decision of what painting, or paintings, I would submit to the Hanging Committee of the Salon d'Automne. My black mood was not shared by most of the other dissidents; they were optimistic about the liberal attitudes of the Academie, an opinion that I considered ridiculous if you examined previous national exhibitions. "This is the year," Oller y Cestero insisted, "for the radicals to gain respectability!" Guillaumin, usually cautious about assessing the conservatives, agreed with Cestero's estimate of the situation. "Academic resistance," he said, "is weakening, and I can believe that a turnabout in their thinking is not an unreasonable assumption." I had listened to this kind of wishful thinking in the past and I believed it was as far off target as it had ever been. It would be, I predicted, demoralizing when they woke up and realized that the truth was something else, and that the optimism about official approbation of their art was pure delusion, that what they wished for was beyond the realm of possibility.... Those in power were laughing up their sleeves at the naivete of the dissidents, and they were convinced there was not the slightest indication that the threat to their monopoly of art was in serious jeopardy. In an overall way, I thought, both sides were a little too smug about the standoff between the two factions. The truth was that nobody could possibly foresee the future, it was dependent on many factors, and the answers would emerge as the game was played out to a finish. One critic in L'Art Moderne said: "Academic mentality varies from day to day, giving a little here, giving a little there, but always without sacrificing anything substantial. The reality we face is that the old predjudices will continue to be with us, they will remain with us, and it would take some sort of miraculous change in either faction to alter the nature of the confrontation. Nothing, absolutely nothing, suggests otherwise, and it is clearly evident that those who visualize a turn towdrd liberalism on one side or compromise on the other, are nurturing false hopes. The time for enlightenment on the part of the conservatives is predictable; it has to come in the natural order of events, but when this will happen depends on their ability to disguise a desire for power by using the subterfuge of theoretical privilege. Moderation by their adversaries, who have been the victims of discrimination, is advised simply because any other tactic will only lead to worsening of the contretemps, a situation which would undoubtedly exacerbate the inequities that already exist. At the heart of the issues are men; they are at fault, and it is only fair to say that they are on both sides of the controversy. The real culprit, I insist, is history, the accumulated knowledge which had come down to us over centuries, a history which is not ready to accept the radical changes we see taking place in the last decades of this century. Whether those that resist this like it or not, a new era in art is in the making, and it will replace that of the past." The name under this article in Le Figaro was Octave Mirbeau, whom I immediately remembered as one of the critics Pissarro had referred to as sympathetic to the dissidents and courageous enough to challenge the theoretical base of official art. Mirbeau, if I was not mistaken, had been at several of the meetings I had attended at the Cafe Guerbois. He was a handsome gentleman, softly spoken, in his late twenties, elegantly dressed, and somewhat in awe, I thought, of the establishment writers, Duranty, Halevy, Huysmans, and Ballu. At that time, it was evident that he was not ready to play a prominent role in the arguments between the Academic majority and the radical painters, but since the events of those days, he had apparently decided to take a definite stand, an unpopular one, as a defender of the new art. The rebel painters who carried their work to the Palais d'Industrie in 1872 for judgement by the Hanging Committee, encountered hardcore resistance for canvasses at variance with official guidelines. The issue between the opposing groups, as I had predicted, was dead, and the academic dominance was firmly established with no question of compromise. The dissident artists found themselves worse off than ever before, put down by the press, and denied access to having their work seen by the general public. The fact that I had correctly assessed the attitude of the Hanging Committee provided no satisfaction for me, but it did serve the purpose of clearing my head of the idea that hoping for compromise from the Academie was the route the dissidents should take. So the brutal putdown at the Salon d'Automne was a good thing if you skipped over the pain of rejection because it emphasized that we would have to establish ourselves on our own or it wouldn't be done at all. The silence which occured following the debacle at the Salon d'Automne indicated the profound depression which affected all of the artists in the dissident camp. Not much was said as they gathered at the Barracks to collect their rejected pictures; Pissarro, carrying four canvasses in a small grocery cart, was especially upset by the Hanging Committee's cruel policy. His economic plight was in a crisis stage, money for food was short, and he was behind in the monthly payments for his rented cottage in Pontoise. Julie was pregnant again, another worry, and two of his other children were down with the measles. "With the situation touch and go with the family," he said, "it is painful to bring news like this home." Then he had, added, stroking his beard absentmindly, and looking off into the distance: "Sales at Durand-Ruel are not sufficiently large to maintain us, and his customers, who are influenced by what goes on at the Salon d'Automne, will buy even less," Monet, Renoir, and Degas refused to give in to the defeatist mood of the group and Monet, in particular, was not intimidated: "We will go it alone," he declared. "We will get the money to establish our own exhibitions, we will get our work before the public, and we will establish the quality of our painting despite academic opposition!" Brave words, I thought, but such a plan required capital and strong leadership to carry it through to a successful conclusion. None of the group, as far as I knew, had any funds, with the possible exception of Degas, and it would be unfair to place the whole burden on him. In the dialogue that followed, I backed the idea, however, of private showings, and promised to participate if the others joined in. Actually, the discussion was vague, no concrete proposals were made, and the gathering broke up without agreeing on a course of action to take.

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