critical discoverer, was
forced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to the
artist as C.G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guys
in a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his bold
sketches in the _Illustrated London News_, the fiery little man
resented the praise as an outrage. Nor was this humility a pose. His
life long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as was Cezanne; but
he was neither half mad, like the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as was
the painter of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did Guys.
To employ the phrase of Turgenieff, life, like grass, grew over his
head. In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London
parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seen
and an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob.
Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restless
wanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long life
he still drew, as did Hokusai.

Who was he? Where did he receive his artistic training? Baudelaire did
not tell, nor Theophile Gautier. He went through the Crimean campaign;
he lived in the East, in London and Paris. Not so long ago the art
critic Roger Marx, while stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered his
baptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Ernestus Adolphus Hyacinthus
Constantinus Guys, born at Flushing December 3, 1805, of Elizabeth
Betin and Francois Lazare Guys, Commissary of the French Marine." The
baptism occurred January 26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he had
for godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position. Guys told his
friends that his full family name was Guys de Sainte-Helene--which may
have been an amiable weakness of the same order as that of Barbey
d'Aurevilly and of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both of whom boasted noble
parentage. However, Guys was little given to talk of any sort. He was
loquacious only with his pencil, and from being absolutely forgotten
after the downfall of the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his work
is being collected, even fought for, by French and German collectors.
Yet when the Nadar collection was dispersed, June, 1909, in Paris, his
aquarelles went for a few francs. Felix Feneon and several others now
own complete sets. In New York there are a few specimens in the
possession of private collectors, though the Lenox Library, as a rule
rich in such prints, has only reproductions to show.

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