Besides, I am quite ready to admit the attractiveness
of the little Japanese children; some of them are
most fascinating. But how is it that their charm
vanishes so rapidly and is so quickly replaced by the
elderly grimace, the smiling ugliness, the monkeyish
face?
My mother-in-law Madame Renoncule’s small garden
is, without exception, one of the most melancholy
spots I have seen during all my peregrinations through
the world.
Oh, the slow, enervating, dull hours spent in idle
and diffuse conversation in the dimly lighted verandah!
Oh, the horrid peppered jam in the microscopic pots!
In the middle of the town, enclosed by four walls,
is this park of five yards square, with little lakes,
little mountains, and little rocks, where all wears
an antiquated appearance, and everything is covered
with a greenish moldiness from want of sun.
Nevertheless a true feeling for nature has inspired
this tiny representation of a wild spot. The
rocks are well placed, the dwarf cedars, no taller
than cabbages, stretch their gnarled boughs over the
valleys in the attitude of giants wearied by the weight
of centuries; and their look of big trees perplexes
one and falsifies the perspective. When from
the dark recesses of the apartment one perceives at
a certain distance this diminutive landscape dimly
lighted up, the wonder is whether it is all artificial,
or whether one is not oneself the victim of some morbid
illusion; and if it is not indeed a real country view
seen through a distorted vision out of focus, or through
the wrong end of a telescope.
To any one familiar with Japanese life my mother-in-law’s
house in itself reveals a refined nature,—complete
nudity, two or three screens placed here and there,
a teapot, a vase full of lotus-flowers, and nothing
more. Woodwork devoid of paint or varnish, but
carved in most elaborate and capricious openwork,
the whiteness of the pinewood being kept up by constant
scrubbings of soap and water. The posts and beams
of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste:
some are cut in precise geometrical forms; others
artificially twisted, imitating trunks of old trees
covered with tropical creepers. Everywhere little
hiding-places, little nooks, little closets concealed
in the most ingenious and unexpected manner under the
immaculate uniformity of the white paper panels.
I cannot help smiling when I think of some of the
so-called Japanese drawing-rooms, overcrowded
with knick-knacks and curios and hung with coarse
gold embroideries on exported satins, of our Parisian
fine ladies. I would advise those persons to
come and look at the houses of people of taste out
here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces
at Yeddo. In France we have works of art in order
to enjoy them; here they possess them merely to ticket
them and lock them up carefully in a kind of mysterious
underground room shut in by iron gratings called a
godoun. On rare occasions, only to honor
some visitor of distinction, do they open this impenetrable
depositary. The true Japanese manner of understanding
luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost
excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork;
an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible
nicety in the most infinitesimal details.
