Vie De Boheme Part 2

"Nathan offre un image de la jeunesse litteraire d'aujourd'hui, de ses fausses grandeurs et de ses miseres reelles; il la represente avec ses beautes incorrectes et ses chutes profondes, sa vie a cascades bouillonnantes, a revers soudains, a triomphes inesperes.

C'est bien l'enfant de ce siecle devore de jalousie ... qui veut la fortune sans le travail, la gloire sans le talent et le succes sans peine, mais qu'apres bien des rebellions, bien des escarmouches, ses vices amenent a emarger le budget sous le bon plaisir du Pouvoir."

Balzac, we all know, was a little too ready to believe in the depravity of human nature, particularly when men of letters were in question.

Moreover, he was profoundly antagonistic to the creed of the _Bousingots_. His portrait of Nathan is distinctly ill-natured, but it bears out the profound remark of Baudelaire, that if the Restoration had developed in glory Romanticism would never have separated from it. In another extravagant tirade (in "Beatrix") Balzac complains that the Revolution of 1830 opened the flood-gates of petty ambition, and the result of modern "equality" was that everybody did his utmost to become conspicuous. This complaint was very largely true, but as far as the _Bousingots_ are concerned Baudelaire puts the facts in a truer light.

The policy of _juste-milieu_ inevitably caused revolt among the over-excited young men of the day. The _Bousingots_ were part of this revolt, but the best of them had no thought of self-advancement. On the contrary, the testimony of contemporaries goes to show that the saving virtue of the Romantic Bohemia, _Bousingot_ and _Jeune-France_ alike, was disinterestedness. Baudelaire says in extenuation of Petrus Borel himself: "He loved letters ferociously, and to-day we are enc.u.mbered with pretty, supple writers ready to sell the muse for the potter's field." a.s.selineau avers that if there was much of the ridiculous in their excesses, there was nothing sordid. "They never talked of money, or business, or position." The artist Jean Gigoux,[8] in regretting the past, says that the _rapin_ of his later years, if better dressed, knew less than those of his young days, and was greedy of honours and money, things which the _rapins_ of old sincerely despised. Indeed, it is impossible to read much about the Romantics of 1830, high or low, aristocratic or Bohemian, without coming to the conclusion that they were neither jealous nor mercenary. So the _Bousingots_--though some rolled their eyes and knitted their brows "as if they would bully the whole universe," others "fixed their dark glances on the ground in fearful meditation," others, "gloomily leaning against a statue or tree," threw "such terrific meaning into their looks as might be naturally interpreted into the language of the witches in 'Macbeth'"[9]--did these things in all sincerity, with an ambition, not to "get on," but to "do something."

We cannot, then, judge the cla.s.sic _vie de Boheme_ in a true light without taking into account this _mal du siecle_ which with its various symptoms infected the greater part, certainly the more intelligent part, of the younger generation. Many outlived the fever and smiled at its remembrance; but at its height it was powerful. It was a healthy fever in so far as it implied devotion to an ideal, _the_ ideal of true art, which was then born again. Moreover, the ideal consumed in its fire many pettinesses of the artistic soul, the commercialism of some, the haughty vanity of others. Balzac's Lucien de Rubempre was not a true son of 1830 when he sold his independence to corrupt journalism, and Victor Hugo was not only intriguing when he intoxicated young poets by flattering letters. There was a true fellows.h.i.+p of art such as has not existed since. The poet or artist whose name was in everyone's mouth did not for that reason deny his friends.h.i.+p to one who had never published a line or exhibited a picture. If a man had talent he was greeted as brother by all his fellow-craftsmen, high or low. This common brotherhood inspired by one ideal of art suffused and welded together Bohemia with a radiant heat. Only when the radiance became dim did the ma.s.s grow cold and crumble in pieces which retained but the semblance of a spark. Bohemia, to change the metaphor, was not then a block of model dwellings, with nothing in common but steel girders and a stone staircase, but it was a corporation fed by common hopes and warmed at a common hearth. Its more ridiculous defects--its vanities and morbid excitability, its violent defiance of social convention, its pa.s.sion for the exotic and the vivid, its fits of melancholy and its uproarious rejoicings--were not individual vices, but marks of a generation. Its grandeur and its follies are traceable to a common source. Its greatest fault was not extravagance, for that is a venial folly, but ignorance, which even youth cannot wholly excuse. The seed of dissolution really lurking in Bohemia was what Philibert Audebrand has truly called its _enfantillage de l'esprit_.[10] In the flush of Romanticism the zealots neglected those studies which give firmness to the mind. They rejected history and philosophy; being young, they were not well read and they did not care to become so. Foreign literature was a closed book to them, in spite of their professed admiration for Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Byron; even of their own literature their knowledge was sadly defective. "Tout bien vu," says M. Audebrand with a shake of the head, "ils n'avaient pas d'autre docteur que la Blague." This cap will not fit all the heads, but it has an undeniable texture of truth. When the first ebullition was over, and the Bohemians of 1830 had departed from their joyful college to spread its doctrines in a workaday world, they left nothing but a tradition behind them. Their house had been built upon a light soil, and the time had come to make new and solid foundations. But the tradition did not include such wholesome industry, and Murger's generation, denied the excitement and warmth of building, were content to sit down in the hasty edifice to enjoy only the pastimes of their predecessors, stopping up the ever-widening crevices, that let in a cold blast of public opinion, with the unsatisfactory makes.h.i.+ft of _la blague_.

IV

PARISIAN SOCIETY--LE TOUT PARIS

The events of the time, the spiritual exaltation of young France, and the _eclat_ of the Romantic struggle gave to Bohemia a definite position. This position was accentuated by the smallness of Parisian society. The diversity and complexity of life in a great modern city are such that, even if all other obstacles were swept away, this alone would still make it impossible for Bohemia to rise again. Bohemians must live where rents are low--on the outer circ.u.mference, that is, of a city. In the larger capitals of Europe the inner circle, which contains the commerce and luxury, the hurry and bustle, has extended enormously in the last fifty years or so. The increase of middle-cla.s.s prosperity has thrown far back the alleys and mean houses, to give place to "residential" districts; the easiness of modern travel has brought vast hotels and a constant foreign population; shops and theatres fill immeasurably more s.p.a.ce. Bohemia is driven to the extremities of the spider's web, so that, in Plato's phrase, it is no longer one, but many.

It would be absurd to imagine a solid cohort formed from Hampstead, Chelsea, and Camden Town, to say nothing of Wimbledon or Hampton Court, for the purpose of forcing some "Hernani" upon the London public (or its newspaper critics). Public opinion can hardly be corrected when the agents of correction are forced to disperse in the last motor omnibus.

Moreover, this extension of the inner circle has made its inhabitants less susceptible to sudden a.s.saults. Unconventional demonstrations have upon it no more effect than the poke of a finger upon an india-rubber ball. The interests of Bohemia, even if this circle be not entirely indifferent to them, are only a fraction of its mult.i.tudinous preoccupations, which include the fluctuations of the money market, the results of athletic contests in all parts of the globe, the progress of foreign wars, the crimes and railway accidents of the week, the development of aviation, and the safest method of crossing the street.

Bohemia can no longer be pointed to and felt by society as part of itself, and when this is the case the name is nothing but a metaphor.

Speaking of the year 1841, Baudelaire in "L'Art Romantique" says:

"Paris was not then what it is to-day, a hurly-burly, a Babel inhabited by fools and futilities, with little delicacy as to how they kill time. At that time _tout Paris_ was composed of that choice body of people who were responsible for forming the opinion of the others."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Les Champs Elysees]

The glory of Bohemia rests partly on this fact. During Louis Philippe's reign this state of society, comparable in some respects with the ideal polity of the Attic philosophers, was, it is true, being disrupted from within. The balance of power between wealth of gold and fecundity of ideas was gradually changing--a change of which Balzac is the immortal epic poet. Yet, though the power of a Nucingen was increasing, and Paris was about to start on its new prosperity as the pleasure-ground of Europe, this precious _tout Paris_ lasted till the reign was over. Paris was small, in extent, in population, in the number of those who formed its opinion. Of its actual compactness as a city I shall speak in a later chapter; suffice it now to say that the boulevards of Montmartre and Montparna.s.se bounded it on the north and south, that the Champs Elysees was still a wilderness, and that outside the fortifications lay open country. The population about 1835 was only 714,000; railways were hardly beginning, factories only tentatively being erected. The working cla.s.ses were chiefly engaged in commerce or _pet.i.ts metiers_, and the heights of Menilmontant smiled as green and as free from slums as the Champs Elysees were free from luxurious hotels.

The pa.s.sing foreign population, though there was a certain number of English attracted by cheap living, was almost negligible. Brazilians and Argentines, Germans and Americans were hardly to be seen; even French provincials walked delicately instead of forming, as they do now, the chief _clientele_ of the Parisian theatres. _Le tout Paris_ was, therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments--the middle cla.s.s, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia.

The middle cla.s.s, though the most numerous, was only potentially important at the time. Politics and money-making were its only preoccupations. It was divided, of course, into an infinity of grades, all of which may be ill.u.s.trated from characters in Balzac's "Comedie Humaine." There were the bankers and usurers from the Du Tillets down to the Samanons, the successful merchants like Birotteau, the world of officials so accurately described in "Les Employes," the judges like old Popinot, and all the men of law from a Desroches down to his youngest clerk. Some were as sordid and bourgeois as the Thuilliers, others luxurious debauchees like the Camusots and Matifats, others, like the Rabourdins, fringed upon the _beau monde_. The sons of men enriched and decorated by Napoleon formed perhaps the cream of the middle cla.s.s, and of these Balzac has given his opinion in describing Baron Hulot's son, who plays so large a part in "Cousine Bette":

"M. Hulot junior was just the type of young man fas.h.i.+oned by the Revolution of 1830, with a mind engrossed by politics, respectful towards his hopes, suppressing them beneath a false gravity, very envious of reputations, uttering phrases instead of incisive _mots_--those diamonds of French conversation--but with plenty of att.i.tude and mistaking haughtiness for dignity. These people are the walking coffins which contain the Frenchman of former times; the Frenchman gets agitated at moments and knocks against his English envelope; but ambition holds him back, and he consents to suffocate inside it. This coffin is always dressed in black cloth."

This sombre portion of the background need, therefore, trouble us no further. It dominated politics and was ignored by _tout Paris_.

The aristocracy of the Faubourg St.-Germain is almost equally negligible. Being legitimists, they sulked after 1830, either living on their country estates or shutting themselves gloomily within the gaunt walls of their _hotels_ in the Faubourg. This retirement, too, was not wholly due to _bouderie_, for many of them, like Balzac's Princesse de Cadignan, suffered heavy financial losses by the Revolution. Their self-denying ordinance caused a great diminution in the general gaiety of Paris for some years. Legitimist drawing-rooms, where a brilliant host of guests had been wont to gather, were hushed and dark while the dowagers gravely discussed the latest news of the d.u.c.h.esse de Berry. The few official _fetes_ were severely boycotted, and even the entertainments of foreign amba.s.sadors suffered. It was an irksome business for the younger members, particularly the ladies of the aristocracy, who eventually gathered courage to break out into small entertainments, and in 1835 there was the first of a series of legitimist b.a.l.l.s, the subscriptions for which went to recompense those whose civil list pensions had been suppressed in 1830. After this the Faubourg St.-Germain became more lively, and certain houses were opened to a wider circle of guests. Eugene Sue, for instance, till he became impossible, was to be found in many legitimist drawing-rooms.

Nevertheless, the Faubourg St.-Germain avoided attracting the public eye by any conspicuous festivities, and this had two effects. In the first place, it brought the more joyous festivities of _tout Paris_ and the riotous celebrations of Bohemia into greater relief; and, in the second, the men of the aristocracy, like the Duc d'Aulnis, were driven to find distraction and amus.e.m.e.nt in a gayer world into which their own womankind was debarred from penetrating. It was they who formed a certain section of _tout Paris_; they were the _viveurs_, the _dandies_, the young bloods of the newly founded Jockey Club, the members of the _pet.i.t cercle_ in the Cafe de Paris, who joined hands with what may be called _la haute Boheme_.

There was, however, a certain amount of neutral ground between the aristocracy of birth and that of wit to be found in the literary _salons_ of the day, which, if not quite so ill.u.s.trious as they had once been, shone with a considerable amount of brilliance. Among the legitimists these were, of course, not to be found, but the aristocracy of Napoleon was represented by the _salons_ of the d.u.c.h.esse de Duras and the d.u.c.h.esse d'Abrantes. The latter, widow of Napoleon's marshal Junot, was a particular friend of Balzac, who was the most notable figure to be found at her house. She was always dreadfully in debt, and after being sold up she died in a hospital in 1838. The _salon_ of the Princess Belgiojoso in the Rue Montparna.s.se attracted particular attention because, with an aristocratic hostess, it had all the _entrain_ of more purely artistic gatherings. Till troubles in Italy called them back to their estates the Prince and Princess Belgiojoso were among the gayest of the gay. The Prince with his boon companion, Alfred de Musset, ruffled it merrily on the boulevard, while the Princess, who had many of the most brilliant men of the day for her lovers, filled her apartments with poets, artists, writers, and, above all, musicians. One who frequented her drawing-room hung with black velvet, spangled with silver stars, says she had a "fierte glaciale, mais curiosite suraigue." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame Ancelot and Madame Recamier were a striking contrast. The former was composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Recamier acted as priestess to the adoration of the aging Chateaubriand. The _salons_ of the pure Romantics made no pretence of splendour and were entirely free from the atmosphere of officialdom. The chief of them were those of Madame Hugo, of Madame Gay (who was succeeded by her daughter, Delphine de Girardin), and of Charles Nodier, the genial librarian of the a.r.s.enal. In all of these, as in the _salon_ of the Princess Belgiojoso, _tout Paris_ was to be found in force. The gatherings round Victor Hugo were a little too much flavoured by the fumes of the censer, but those of the Girardins and of Nodier were of the most charming gaiety. Balzac, in a humorous article, drew a malicious sketch of the exaggerated enthusiasms of Nodier's guests when a poem was read before them. "Cathedrale!" "Ogive!"

"Pyramide d'Egypte!" were the approved exclamations of ecstatic approbation. Madame Ancelot[11] confesses that she found the conversation very amusing, but very strange. "There was never a serious word," she says, "never anything profound, sensible, or simple; every word was meant to cause laughter, to make an effect. The more a thing was unexpected--that is, the less it was natural--the more prodigious was its success." She, no doubt, was prejudiced, and the fact remains that every guest who wrote in after years of Nodier's _salon_, its merry conversation followed inevitably by dancing, did so with most grateful praise, for Nodier died in 1846, leaving his Romantic friends to write regretful reminiscences. The _salon_ of Sophie Gay and her daughter was equally infected by high spirits, but it was less purely literary.

Liszt, Thalberg, and Berlioz made music here; Roger de Beauvoir met Lamartine, and the Marquis de Custine sat by Balzac or Alphonse Karr.

The de Vignys also had a _salon_, and Theodore de Banville speaks most warmly of their kindly hospitality; but there was a certain aloofness about the creator of "Eloa," and another of his guests found that in his house colouring seemed absent, so that "the regular guests seemed to come and go in the moonlight."[12]

To speak at greater length about the _salons_ of the Romantic period would here be beside the mark. Bohemians, no doubt, were often to be found at Victor Hugo's or Nodier's, but on those occasions they were consciously straying outside their own boundaries. Neither the stately house in the Place Royale nor the librarian's dwelling at the a.r.s.enal was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parna.s.siens" might have claimed the _salons_ of Nina de Kallias and Madame Ricard, for parts of their ordinary existence. The case, however, is different with the relations between _le tout Paris_ and Bohemia. _Le tout Paris_ was, as I have said, a nucleus, but a nucleus of disparate and constantly s.h.i.+fting particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite place of a.s.sembly, but so far as it could be identified with any particular locality it may be said to have congregated on the boulevard.

The Boulevard des Italiens--_the_ boulevard--was the chosen spot for the saunterings of the chosen few, a fact which by itself is a proof of the smallness and privacy of Paris compared with the present day, when this same boulevard is flooded from morning till night by a hurrying stream of indistinguishable humanity. In the days of Louis Philippe n.o.body, except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve in the afternoon without some semblance of a t.i.tle. The t.i.tle may have been so small as a peculiarly elegant waistcoat, a capacity for drinking, or a happy invention for practical jokes, or it may have been the reputation for a ready wit and a trenchant pen; but whosoever dared to show himself in this select society was sure to have some particular justification for making himself conspicuous, otherwise he was certain to be quizzed out of existence. The newcomer, if he survived a short but swift scrutiny, entered an informal though exclusive club of which every member was known to the others--he was known, that is, to "all Paris."

All Paris, in a sense, it truly was, not because the greatest poets and statesmen belonged to it--for they had better things to do than to waste so much time--but because it served as the central intelligence department or, I might almost say, as the brain of Paris. A word uttered there was round the town in two hours; there a poet was made or a play d.a.m.ned--in the twinkling of an eye. One day of its activity furnished all the wit of the next day's newspapers, which is hardly surprising when so many of its members were journalists. _Le tout Paris_ was not hide-bound in its requirements; it admitted high birth as one qualification for members.h.i.+p, wealth if accompanied by good manners as another, but a certain way to its heart was by a brilliant handling of the pen. In spite of the exaggeration of the Parisian scenes in "Illusions Perdues," there is no unreality in Balzac's picture of Lucien's sudden rise from impoverished obscurity to fame and money.

Lucien, the provincial poet, after his disappointing elopement with Madame de Bargeton, retires discomfited to a garret in the Quartier Latin. The door of rich protectors is shut in his face, no publisher will read his poems or accept his novels. The serpent arrives in the shape of Lousteau, who shows him the devilish power of journalism. By a lucky chance Lucien is asked to write a dramatic criticism for a new paper. He succeeds brilliantly, and he has Paris at his feet. The publisher cringes before his power and publishes all that he had formerly rejected; with money, fine clothes, and a reputation, he can answer stare for stare and return the impertinences of Rastignac and de Marsay; even Madame de Bargeton in the Faubourg St.-Germain cowers from his revengeful epigrams. So long as he remains a power in the Press he is flattered and caressed and plumes himself, a b.u.t.terfly only just emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day.

The moral of Lucien de Rubempre, so far as we are immediately concerned, is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an open pa.s.sage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did a.r.s.ene Houssaye, Ourliac, the dramatist, and several others. There were also men who seemed to spend their time between the two, like the elder Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, and Alfred de Musset, who combined the extravagance of Bohemia with the luxury of the boulevards in different proportions, without ever being entire Bohemians or complete _viveurs_, and who maintained such a continuous communication between the more literary sections of _le tout Paris_ and the finer talents of Bohemia that it would be in some cases difficult to say where one left off and the other began. It is therefore impossible to write of the _vie de Boheme_ without entering into this larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute Boheme_. Not only was it the sound-board from which in a lucky moment the struggling whisperer on the left bank might hear his utterances booming forth to a mult.i.tude eager for novelty, not only was it an unofficial academy to which every Bohemian might aspire to belong as soon as he had made his mark, but it was also, during the years following 1830, animated by such a spirit of revelry and reckless amus.e.m.e.nt that the riots of true Bohemia were as pale ghosts before its more notable orgies. There were strong reasons for the merging of the two Bohemias, and the only precise distinction was the possession or want of money. Bohemia proper has no money except what it can make by its art, and as its inhabitants are young that is little enough. _La haute Boheme_, with a less strict limitation of years, makes money and spends it recklessly. Instead of pleading youth as the excuse of its folly, it claims the indulgence due to artistic achievement. However, so far as the generation of 1830 were concerned, this distinction was not absolute, for the Bohemians of 1830 were not invariably so dest.i.tute as their successors, so that they were enabled to mix to some extent in the gayer life of the artistic _boulevardiers_.

The most universal word--which I shall adopt--applicable to this _haute Boheme_ is the contemporary name for them, _les viveurs_. They were a particular product of the time, and no words of mine can describe them better than a pa.s.sage from Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." The period of the novel is some years before 1830, but this particular description is far more applicable to the years that followed the second Revolution. I quote it in French, because it is impossible to do it justice in a translation:

"A cette epoque florissait une societe de jeunes gens, riches et pauvres, tous desuvres, appeles _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrepides mangeurs, buveurs plus intrepides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et melant les plus rudes plaisanteries a cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragee, ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilite, faisaient gloire de leurs mefaits, contenus neanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il etait impossible de ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait cond.a.m.ne la jeunesse. Les jeunes gens, qui ne savaient a quoi employer leurs forces, ne les jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, dans la litterature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les plus etranges exces, tant il y'avait de seve et de luxuriantes puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des tresors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses pa.s.sions; de toute maniere elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle part."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Viveur]

Balzac gives his own character, Rastignac, as an instance of the typical _viveur_, but Rastignac had a purpose in his heart, while some of the most prominent among the _viveurs_ had none but to amuse themselves.

These I name first, for, having no other preoccupations, they set the tone of the whole society. They were chiefly members of the aristocracy who found no place for their energies in a _bourgeois_ State which sought no military glory. One of their leaders, the Duc d'Aulnis, who settled down afterwards to serve the State worthily, gives in his memoirs the reason why so many young men of good family gave themselves up to riotous living, as he did under his _nom de plaisir_ of Alton-Shee. He and other young legitimists resigned their commissions in 1831 on finding that Louis Philippe, _le roi des barricades_, sided with the insurrectionists, so that, as he says, "the cla.s.s of idlers was increased by a large number of legitimists who had resigned their commissions and by a contingent of refugees belonging to the Italian, Polish, and Spanish aristocracies. To distract their minds from the thoughts of so many broken careers, so many hopes disappointed, they dashed with an irresistible rush into the pursuit of enjoyment and sought to appease their generous aspirations in an unbridled love of pleasure."

These were the young men who spent all their time in imitating Brummell or the Comte d'Orsay, paying minute attention to every curve of their voluminous frock-coats, the patterns of their waistcoats, and the folding of their cravats; who drove and rode irreproachable horses imported from England, and founded the French Jockey Club under the auspices of Lord Seymour; who dined copiously at the Cafe de Paris and adjourned to lounge at the Opera in the _loge infernale_, where the cream of Parisian dandyism paraded with its _lorgnette_ for the edification of the public. In racing and gambling they found their excitement; their consolation was the venal love of a ballet dancer.

For no moment of the day did they pursue a worthy ambition, and their only excuse was that, being idle perforce, they attained a certain exquisiteness even in pleasure. Sadly the Duc d'Aulnis sums them up:

"Our generation had the love of liberty, pa.s.sion, gaiety, an artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of amus.e.m.e.nt, the habit of smoking which fills the intervals, the taste for intoxication, that fugitive poetry of vulgar enjoyments, and every prodigality to satisfy our desires. If one considers what we leave behind us, our baggage is light: the folly of the carnival, the invention of the cancan, the generalization of the cigar, the acclimatization of clubs and races, will be merits of small value in the eyes of posterity.... Of these joyous _enfants du siecle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped from their embarra.s.sments by suicide, others found death or promotion in Africa, others shared their names with rich heiresses; others, persevering at all hazards, swallowing affronts and braving humiliations, lived on the precarious resources of gambling, borrowing, toadying, and parasitism; the most wretched of all fell step by step into the depths of infamy; only a very small number tried to save themselves by hard work."

These men set the pace among the _viveurs_: they were seconded by the more ambitious young men of whom Balzac's Rastignac is the type, who were determined to succeed and uttered in their hearts his famous threat to Paris by the grave of old Goriot, "Maintenant c'est entre nous." These men became _viveurs_, not as a pastime, but as a means.

Rastignac, shocked to see that virtuous devotion would not save Pere Goriot from a broken heart, and sick of the Maison Vauquer's squalor, determines to play society at its own game and make profit out of its corruption. He becomes the lover of Madame de Nucingen, one of Goriot's ungrateful daughters, and by allowing himself to become a tool in the crafty Baron Nucingen's third liquidation lays the foundation of his own fortunes. Such a man could not live in seclusion--he was forced into the ranks of the _viveurs_, in order to become a conspicuous figure. A smart tilbury and clothes from a first-cla.s.s tailor were part of his stock-in-trade; he could not afford to run the risk of humiliation before his lady by laying himself open to affront by a more exquisite "dandy" than himself. A Rastignac had to s.h.i.+ne to compa.s.s his ends, and he shone most brilliantly as a _viveur_, playing at idleness and debauch to cloak his subtle schemes, and drowning the shame of his parasitism in a pa.s.sionate self-indulgence. Thanks to a strong will he is entirely successful, and out of the wreck of his illusions and his generous impulses builds himself a career as a politician.

Rastignac is one of the most wonderful characters created by Balzac's penetrating pessimism; that he had a special place in his creator's heart is proved, I think, by his frequent appearance on the stage.

Those who delight in the fascinating pastime of following Balzac's characters through the whole extent of the "Comedie Humaine" will know that it is impossible to understand Rastignac without reading "La Maison Nucingen," a story which, for pure virtuosity, is second to none of Balzac's masterpieces. They will remember that the scene is set in the year 1836 in a private room at Very's restaurant, where the impersonal narrator, by overhearing the conversation in the adjoining room, is entertained by the thrilling account of how Rastignac profited by Baron Nucingen's third fraudulent liquidation. The shady financial proceedings of the astute Alsatian--as exciting as a das.h.i.+ng campaign--are related in a marvellous series of _boutades_ by Balzac's favourite grotesque, Bixiou, the own brother of Panurge. Now Bixiou and the three friends with whom he is dining are Balzac's examples of the third party among the _viveurs_, that party to which the t.i.tle _la haute Boheme_ is most peculiarly applicable. They were neither aristocratic and wealthy, like a Duc d'Aulnis, nor aristocratic and poor, like a Rastignac, but men of obscure origin and unusual intelligence. They joined the ranks of the _viveurs_ neither to banish the _ennui_ of enforced idleness, nor out of cold calculation for a diplomatic end--for they were inevitably debarred from attaining any position in the _beau monde_--but simply as a distraction from their pursuit of worldly success as journalists, artists, speculators, and general exploiters of society. They were not single-hearted warriors for an ambition; their aim in life was not purely diversion, it was merely to obtain the maximum of selfish enjoyments, which included a satisfied vanity, a full purse, good food, rare wine, and a pretty mistress. Of them Barbey d'Aurevilly's remark was true: "Qui dit journalistes dit femmes entretenues. Cela veut souper."

They had been pure Bohemians, most of them, in their earlier youth, with higher ideals and more restricted enjoyments; but their gorge, too, had risen at the squalor of their Maison Vauquer, and they had parleyed with the devil. Discovering in themselves some talent for making money, they had exploited it to the exclusion of all others. They traded either in their own art or in that of others. On the boulevard they held their own by their engaging sallies of malicious gossip, by their prodigal extravagance, and, above all, by the fear which their power as journalists, critics, caricaturists, or newspaper proprietors inspired.

They were Bohemians at heart, carrying the more pardonable disorders of Bohemia into less exacting circ.u.mstances, spending their gifts and their money without a thought, luxurious, venal, insatiable. Their type is to be found to-day in the rich mercantile, especially Jewish, society of all large cities; but in Paris of the thirties and forties they were more powerful and more conspicuous. Though they could never hope to enter the Jockey Club, they were hail-fellow-well-met with the _viveurs_ of blue blood; they served the Rastignacs when it was worth their while, and they were so near to the true Bohemia that their example was at once its temptation and its despair. Balzac himself sums up the four friends, Bixiou, Finot, Blondet, and Couture, in a pa.s.sage which, having myself said so much, I quote in the original:

"C'etait quatre des plus hardis cormorans eclos dans l'ec.u.me qui couronne les flots incessamment renouveles de la generation presente; aimables garcons dont l'existence est problematique, a qui l'on connait ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces spirituels _condottieri_ de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquietudes a leurs creanciers, gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur costume. D'ailleurs, braves a fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare sur un baril de poudre, peut-etre pour ne pas faillir a leur role; plus moqueurs que les pet.i.ts journaux, moqueurs a se moquer d'eux-memes, perspicaces et incredules, fureteurs d'affaires, avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-memes; profonds politiques par saillies, a.n.a.lysant tout, devinant tout, ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde ou ils voudraient se produire."

Andoche Finot had risen by his acute perception of the commercial future of journalism. We meet him in his early days in "Cesar Birotteau,"

abandoning the puffing of actresses and writing of articles to less perspicuous journalists, and devoting himself to what is now grandly called "publicity." It was he who helped the worthy young Anselme Popinot to push the _huile cephalique_ which repaired Birotteau's shattered fortunes. In "Illusions Perdues" we find him again, first proprietor of a small paper, then spending his profits and straining his credit in buying a larger one--one of the spiders into whose web poor Lucien fell. By 1836 he is a lord of the Press, a fict.i.tious counterpart of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mezeray, another _viveur_, made a fortune by selling _La Presse_ at half the price of other newspapers.

Couture is a very minor character, a financial speculator, who only hung on the fringe of the _viveurs_. Blondet and Bixiou are more important.

The former had many counterparts in Paris of the day. He was "a newspaper editor, a man of much intelligence, but slipshod, brilliant, capable, lazy, knowing, but allowing himself to be exploited, equally faithless and good-natured by caprice; one of those men one likes, but does not respect. Sharp as a stage _soubrette_, incapable of refusing his pen to anyone who asked for it or his heart to anyone who would borrow it."

Bixiou is no longer young in 1836. Balzac gives an earlier portrait of him in "Les Employes," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Boheme_. But, says Balzac, "he is no longer the Bixiou of 1825, but that of 1836, the misanthropical buffoon whose fun is known to have the most sparkle and the most acidity, a wretch enraged at having spent so much wit at a pure loss, furious at not having picked up his bit of flotsam in the last revolution, giving everyone a kick like a true Pierrot at the play, having his period and its scandalous stories at his fingers' ends, decorating them with his droll inventions, jumping on everybody's shoulders like a clown, and trying to leave a mark on them like an executioner."

Such, in general, were the _viveurs_ who postured in the front of the Parisian stage--equally at home on the steps of Tortoni's or in the Cafe de Paris, in the Princess Belgiojoso's drawing-room or the luxurious boudoir of a Coralie or Florine, making the talk and spreading the gossip, blowing up the reputations and blasting the characters of the town. To know their habits and eccentricities places those of the true Bohemia in a proper light. In drawing a composite picture of them I have drawn upon fiction, but in another chapter I will justify these generalizations by introducing some of the real heroes of _le tout Paris_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fas.h.i.+onables]

V

LES VIVEURS

The most exalted section among the _viveurs_, the members of which were farthest removed from any suspicion of Bohemianism, was formed of young men from n.o.ble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may be found in the list of those who started the _pet.i.t cercle_ of the Cafe de Paris. This was an exclusive dining club founded by a set of gay livers who dreaded the political discussions of the one or two regular clubs then existing, but wished to have a place where they could dine together without disturbance by casual strangers. They hired, therefore, some rooms from Alexandre, the proprietor of the restaurant, and continued there till the club broke up in 1848. Little need be said of them as a body, except that they were the arbiters of Parisian elegance.

As such, their chief effort was to curb the luxuriance of Parisian taste within the limits of English correctness. Anglomania was all the rage.

Every dandy--a word then definitely adopted by the French--had his tilbury or phaeton and his tiny English "tiger," smoked his cigar, suffered from his "spleen," and tried to face life with an insolent air of imperturbability--a crowning proof of good taste when the effort was at all successful. This Anglomania was not entirely confined to the boulevard; it was partly an effect of Romanticism. Lady Morgan[13]