Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1899-02-09


tive and quick. with eyes that saw
everything and hair cut short like a
boys. She had been christened Marie
Rosa. and she was the motherless daugh-
ter of gifted but poor and struggling
artist named Raymond Bonheur. Rosa
was the eldest of four, and her father
sent her to school daily He supposed
she went
Instead Of going to school. however,
the girl played truant day after day. She
ran at viii through the paths of the
Bois, plucking flowers and chasing birds
and butterflies. Again she would lie for
hours upon the grass listening to the
birds and gazing into the shining. blue
sky, wondering how far away it was
and what the birds said
Sometimes she wondered, too, if her
father or anybody else could paint Just
as they were the color of the sky and
trees. the bright. soft eyes and shining
coats of the horses and sheep that passed
the wood. The little girl grew strong
lunged and strong limbed thus running
wild in the Bois de Boulogne, but it
must be confessed she was very idle.
Atlength came a day when her truant
playing was discovered. "Fie. fel
Mile Rosa, you shocking child. you
must learn something useful and that
at once. if you viii not study r.
She was apprenticed to dressmaker
Fancy Rosa Bonheur, needle and scis-
sors in hand. cutting and shipping
waist hningsl
She endured it fortnight, then her
face grew pale and her short little nose
became sharp and pinched. Plainly this
would never do. So to school the girl
went again-another school, where her
father taught drawing to pay for her
education She took no interest in her
lessons except the drawing class her IA
ther taught. Here she was easily first
But she would not study. 1t was hope
less. She played so many pranks on
teachers and schoolmates that she was
a most inconvenient pupil
Once she made set of caricatures of
the whole school, from the principal
down, and hung them from the ceiling
of the schoolroom. She was discovered
and sentenced to solitary confinement
on bread and water for time. But the
caricatures were so good that the prin-
cipal, whose sense of humor had not
been wholly crushed ont by years of
schoolteaching, preserved them and
made merry over them with her friends
Other difficulties arose. Girls and wo-
men are too often cruel to each other
and the other pupils snubbed Rosa and
looked down upon her because she was
poor. Think of that again-Rosa Bon
heur snubbed and not thought fit COM
pany for the daughters of rich trades
meni She must have remembered that
in after years when the empress of
France tripped into her studio one day
and, all stained with paints and oils as
the artist garments were. threw her
arms about her neck, kissed her and
pinned upon her breast the cross and
ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
But no visions of that time came to
comfort the sad heart of the child wom
an who was snubbed by her schoolmates
because she was poor. 1t cut her to the
soul. and the merry hearted. wild little
maid who had run about the Boulogne
wood became morose and soured and
stunned the society of all What could
be sadder for schoolgirl, all because
of the cruelty of girls who were richer ?
At length Raymond Bonheur took his
daughter home and vowed she should
be tormented with school no more She
had all along shown a decided artistic
bent. and her father now decided to let
her follow it. Himself would be her in
structor Two brothers and a sister of
Rosa Bonheur distinguished themselves
also in art, and it is the boast of the
whole family that they never had any
teacher but their father.
Rosa was born at Bordeaux March
%. 1922, but her father came to Paris
when his four children were small. At
the time Rosa left school his first wife
was dead, and he was married a second
time to lady who was faithful
mother to the young Bonheurs
And now at last Rosa found her
calling. She wrought at it early and
late. When it became too dark to dis
singuish colors. she modelled in clay BY