y "stopped the
way." It required some skillful manoeuvring on the part of the old
chairmen (shoemakers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan,
dressed up in a strange old livery--long greatcoats with small capes,
coeval with the sedan and similar to the dress of the class in
Hogarth's pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and
finally to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker's front
door. Then we heard their pit-a-pat along the quiet little street, as
we put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering
about us with offers of help, which if she had not remembered her
former occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much
more pressing.

THEOPHILE GAUTIER

(1811-1872)

BY ROBERT SANDERSON

[Illustration: THEOPHILE GAUTIER]

Theophile Gautier was born in Tarbes (Department of the
Hautes-Pyrenees) in Southern France, August 31st, 1811. Like all
French boys, he was sent to the lycee (academy), where he promised to
be a brilliant scholar; but his father was really his tutor, and to
him Gautier attributed his instruction. Young Theophile showed marked
preference for the so-called authors of the Decadence--Claudianus,
Martial, Petronius, and others; also for the old French writers,
especially Villon and Rabelais, whom he says he knew by heart. This is
significant, in view of the young man's strong tendencies, later on,
towards the new romantic school. The artistic temperament was very
strong in him; and while still carrying on his studies at college he
entered the painter Rioult's studio. His introduction to Victor Hugo
in 1830 may be considered the decisive point in Gautier's career: from
that day he gave up painting and became a fanatic admirer of the
romantic leader.

A short time afterwards, the first representation of 'Hernani' took
place (February 25th, 1830), an important date in the life of Gautier.
It was on this occasion that he put on for the only time that famous
red waistcoat, which, with his long black mane streaming down his
back, so horrified the staid Parisian bourgeois. This red waistcoat
turns out, after all, not to have been a waistcoat at all, but a
doublet; nor was it red, but pink. No truer is the legend, according
to Gautier, that on this memorable occasion, armed with his two
formidable fists, he felled right and left the terrified bourgeois. He
says that he was at that time rather delicate, and had not yet
developed that pr