5. the Death of Henri—La Gilde
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John Charlot: Chapter 5: Henri—La Gilde draft 7/10/17 !1 5. THE DEATH OF HENRI—LA GILDE 5.1. THE ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HENRI CHARLOT July 1914 marks the first major division in Charlot’s life with the breakdown and subsequent lingering illness and death of his father Henri. Charlot’s life, art, and thinking were transformed. Already unusually earnest for a person of his age, Charlot intensified his pursuits in art, literature, and scholarship. Charlot recognized this clearly. He divided his first two collections of poems between those up to July and those “à partir d’Août 1914 (retour d’Allemagne)” ‘from August 1914 (return from Germany).’ The poems of the first collection I have described in chapter 3 “Childhood and Adolescence”; the next poems have a new seriousness and are more directly personal expressions, becoming a prime biographical source. A similar change can be seen in much of Charlot’s artwork. Up to July, the drawings and watercolors continue the earlier trends. For instance, he paints Forest Scene at his uncle Caplain’s summer place at Chaumontel. His happy mood is expressed in two pencil and watercolor self-portraits and one portrait of an adolescent of the same age, probably a school friend, that he made certainly before July.1 The three are done in his mature pencil and wash style of the time, and all are sunny. The friend is portrayed affectionately as lively and at ease with his tousled hair and open shirt. The first self-portrait is a studious depiction. Charlot is wearing a brown jacket and gray shirt. He leans forward as if listening to a conversation with an engaged, slightly amused expression; a young intellectual. The second self- portrait is unique among Charlot’s. The freest in its washes and the sunniest of the three—bright sunlight casting strong shadows over his face—Charlot presents himself informally, coatless and with tousled hair, including a long strand curling over his left eye. Most unusual, Charlot is smiling, an almost unique occurrence in his portraits and perhaps evidence that the watercolor is based on a photograph. A larger self-portrait is related to the two above but is completely different in mood.2 The clothes are similar to, if not the same as, those in the studious self-portrait, and the face and hair are like the smiling one. But the larger watercolor is darker and more foreboding with its strong charcoal strokes. Charlot is not smiling, and his eyes have been set in very dark shadows, the pupils peering out as if from a cave. It is as if Charlot had gone back to the smiling image after July and painted a new one to fit his current mood. Similarly, he did a Cubistic, full-face self-portrait after his return from the war that expressed the sufferings he had undergone. Although born in Russia, Henri had been reared in Germany and spoke the language like a native: he had been educated in Germany. He was born in Russia, in Moscow, and much of his education had happened in Germany. I don’t know the details myself, but I know, of course, that he spoke Russian and German and French equally well. (Interview November 18, 1970) John Charlot: Chapter 5: Henri—La Gilde draft 7/10/17 !2 Henri’s German education had been funded by his Russian father, and Charlot had not learned much about that period of Henri’s life “because I knew that my father didn’t especially want me to.” Henri also had important business dealings in Germany, and his German colleagues had dined at the family home: The export-import had to do with China, and my father represented those German firms in France. It was a little unusual, I would say, because he spoke perfect German, just like a German, and we used to receive at home quite a number of those German people or German families when they came to Paris, so that we knew Germans. But those people were really businessmen, and I had very little to do with them as a child, and I’d had no relationship with them as a child. (November 18, 1970) Henri, who wanted his children to be as international as he was, seems to have encouraged them to take an interest in Germany. In August 1914, Odette was visiting Bavaria with several girlfriends and having an outing with young German officers in charge of ballooning; some Germans aloft in a balloon had sent down to the girls a military message sheet filled with gallant notes in German and French.3 The international situation was tense after the assassination of the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, but Henri felt no need to postpone his month-long trip, which had probably been planned for some time. Many business people, aware of the strong commercial connections among the European nations involved, found it difficult to believe that war was a serious possibility. Indeed, most people thought the situation would be handled diplomatically. The July trip to Freiburg-im-Bresgau, a small, famously picturesque city in the Black Forest of southwestern Germany, had been planned as part business trip and part holiday for Henri and his son. The trip started well enough. Charlot took a typically touristic picture of his father in front of the Freiburger Münster ‘minster’ (a postcard of the church can also be found in the JCC). Charlot had characteristically brought along a small sketchbook with tear-off sheets, and the two surviving sketches are of a typical Black Forest landscape with a farmhouse and outbuildings and of a peasant woman.4 The woman is dressed in her regular clothes, not her formal costume, but Charlot describes them carefully with particular attention to her head gear, an interest seen in his earlier peasant subjects. Color notations suggest that he was planning to use his sketches later for a larger work. The political situation, however, was moving quickly towards disaster. In late July, the Austro- Hungarian Empire began to mobilize. On July 28, the Empire declared war on Serbia and bombarded Belgrade. On July 30, Russia ordered mobilization. On the 31st, Germany sent its ultimatum to Russia and France, and on August 1, mobilized and declared war on Russia. France then mobilized. On August 1, German troops were sent against Luxemburg, and on August 3, Germany declared war on France. That night, Germany invaded Belgium, and on August 4, Great Britain declared war on Germany. The inconceivable was indeed happening. Charlot described briefly the trip to Freiburg and their escape: Well, of course, I was only sixteen when I went with my father—it was before the war —and I went to Freiburg-in-Bresgau, which was a student town. Father, of course, John Charlot: Chapter 5: Henri—La Gilde draft 7/10/17 !3 could merge with the people, speaking perfect German. My German wasn’t that perfect, but we arrived there in July, I think, or the end of June, and the declaration of war between—what was it?—Serbia and Austria happened soon after. And of course, I couldn’t realize that that meant war between Germany and France also. It was too complicated. But everybody around us knew it. And there was a bigger boy in the family where I was, and he started cleaning his gun and so on. The poor guy probably was called to the wars as soon as they were declared. There were big movements of German troops towards the French border, and father and I actually took the last train that ran between Germany and France. If it hadn’t been for taking that train, we probably would have been put in a sort of a prisoner camp for civilians for the duration of the war. Of course I liked very much what I saw of Germany… (Interview, October 22, 1970) Charlot’s feeling of the unreality of the situation can be seen in two sketches he made of the enthusiastic reception of the war news in Freiburg, Fat German on Horse and Manifestation Guerrière, which Charlot described: man on horse manifestation guerrière done at Freib-i-Br. War had just been declared in Serbia, and because it was a student town, there was lots of enthusiasm. Going to pass month in Germany, but cut short. Took last train out that passed the French frontier.5 The German officer obviously piqued Charlot’s French humor: the gray-coated, helmeted form—obese enough to be as wide as the hindquarters of the horse he wobbles on—is no martial vision. The gaily colored students parading in front of the gray medieval buildings seem more festive than aggressive with a happy red balloon floating among them. Such were the enthusiastic university students—a tiny portion of the population and the intellectual future of Germany—who were soon rushed almost untrained into battle, shoulder-to-shoulder against the finest riflemen in the world, the British regulars, in what became known as the Kindermord ‘the murder of the children’ (Greenhalgh 2014: 52). Henri—who had earlier ordered Odette to learn a manual trade to fall back on in case of a catastrophe—knew only too well that a war was coming and that he would be ruined by it. Charlot made a remarkable photograph of his father boarding the train to France. Beside the dark train platform, the compartments form a steeply diminishing perspective. Henri stands on the steps of the car, his body facing towards his son, but his face turning away to his left and staring into space.