himself, he converses
well, but very sparingly. He assures us, indeed, that the [22] "new
style" is in truth a thing of old days, of his own old days here in
Valenciennes, when, working long hours as a mason's boy, he in fancy
reclothed the walls of this or that house he was employed in, with this
fairy arrangement--itself like a piece of "chamber-music," methinks,
part answering to part; while no too trenchant note is allowed to break
through the delicate harmony of white and pale red and little golden
touches. Yet it is all very comfortable also, it must be confessed;
with an elegant open place for the fire, instead of the big old stove
of brown tiles. The ancient, heavy furniture of our grandparents goes
up, with difficulty, into the garrets, much against my father's
inclination. To reconcile him to the change, Antony is painting his
portrait in a vast perruque, and with more vigorous massing of light
and shadow than he is wont to permit himself.

June 1714.

He has completed the ovals:--The Four Seasons. Oh! the summerlike
grace, the freedom and softness, of the "Summer"--a hayfield such as we
visited to-day, but boundless, and with touches of level Italian
architecture in the hot, white, elusive distance, and wreaths of
flowers, fairy hayrakes and the like, suspended from tree to tree, with
that wonderful lightness which is one of the charms of his [23] work.
I can understand through this, at last, what it is he enjoys, what he
selects by preference, from all that various world we pass our lives
in. I am struck by the purity of the room he has re-fashioned for
us--a sort of moral purity; yet, in the forms and colours of things.
Is the actual life of Paris, to which he will soon return, equally
pure, that it relishes this kind of thing so strongly? Only, methinks
'tis a pity to incorporate so much of his work, of himself, with
objects of use, which must perish by use, or disappear, like our own
old furniture, with mere change of fashion.

July 1714.

On the last day of Antony Watteau's visit we made a party to Cambrai.
We entered the cathedral church: it was the hour of Vespers, and it
happened that Monseigneur le Prince de Cambrai, the author of
Telemaque, was in his place in the choir. He appears to be of great
age, assists but rarely at the offices of religion, and is never to be
seen in Paris; and Antony had much desired to behold him. Certainly it
was worth while to have come so far only to see him,