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Updated: June 16, 2025
Mrs Weston, with her bath-chair in the aisle and Tommy Luton to hand her hymn-book and prayer-book as she required, looked sideways at Mrs Quantock, and thought how strange it was that Daisy, so few hours ago, had been racing round a solitary chair with Georgie's finger on the gramophone, while Georgie, singing tenor by Colonel Boucher's ample side, saw with keen annoyance that there was a stain of tarnished silver on his forefinger, accounted for by the fact that after breakfast he had been cleaning the frame which held the photograph of Olga Bracely and had been astonished to hear the church-bells beginning.
'Not at work, sure enough, said he, with a short, grim laugh. 'Not at what you call work. I were at the Committee, till I were sickened out wi' trying to make fools hear reason. I were fetched to Boucher's wife afore seven this morning. She's bed-fast, but she were raving and raging to know where her dunder-headed brute of a chap was, as if I'd to keep him as if he were fit to be ruled by me.
"It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy.
Why have you destroyed our fort?" "Call him off, Grant! Call him off, or it's all up!" I begged, seeing the parley go from bad to worse; but Grant was busy with the Bois-Brulés and did not hear. "Wretch!" Governor Semple exclaimed in a loud voice. "Dare you to speak so to me!" and he caught Boucher's bridle, throwing the horse back on its haunches. Boucher, agile as a cat, slipped to the ground.
He bent equally low in return, and then closed the door after her. As she hurried to Mrs. Boucher's, she heard the clang, and it seemed to fill up the measure of her mortification. He too was annoyed to find her there.
They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid 20,200 francs for them in 1855. But it must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great painter.
Watteau, Fragonard Fragonard especially, the exquisite and impudent are as gay, as spontaneous, as careless, as vivacious as Boldini. Boucher's goddesses and cherubs, disporting themselves in graceful abandonment on happily disposed clouds, outlined in cumulus masses against unvarying azure, are as unrestrained and independent of prescription as Monticelli's figures.
She had a great and glorious reward. Colonel Boucher's face grew absolutely blank in the moonlight with sheer astonishment. "Well, you surprise me," he said. "Surely a fine woman, though lame, wouldn't look at a needle-woman well, leave it at that." He stamped his feet and put his hands in his pockets. "It's growing a bit chilly," he said.
Now there's only one thing that can happen to Mrs Weston and the Colonel. They must marry each other too. Then Atkinson can continue to be Colonel Boucher's man and Elizabeth the parlour-maid, unless she is busy with what made you blush. Then they can get help in; you will lend them Foljambe, for instance. It's time you began to be of some good in your wicked selfish life. So that's settled.
At any rate there is enough in the figures to prevent any sickly prettiness, although I think if you removed the figures the landscape would not be tolerable. But the followers of Watteau seized upon the prettiness and gradually got out of touch with the character, and if you compare Boucher's heads, particularly his men's heads, with Watteau's you may see how much has been lost.
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