Vie De Boheme Part 3

laughs at it, giving a most amusing account of a performance of "Rochester" at the Porte St.-Martin. The character that created the greatest sensation, she says, was the Watchman, "who was dressed like an alguazil, with a child's rattle in his hand." Whenever he appeared there was a general murmur of "Ha! C'est le vatchman."--"Regarde donc, ma fille, c'est le vatchman; ton papa t'a souvent parle des vatchmen."--"Ah, c'est le vatchman."--"Oui, c'est le vatchman." Great play, too, was made with tea. Rochester entertained his merry companions with tea; Mr. Wilkes poisoned his wife in it. This latter incident gave the highest pleasure:

"Dieu, que c'est anglois! Toujours le the et la jalousie a Londres!"

The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amus.e.m.e.nt to Lord Seymour, one of the few Englishmen who were conspicuous among the aristocratic _viveurs_. He was the illegitimate son of Lady Yarmouth, daughter-in-law of the notorious Lord Hertford. He lived entirely in Paris, where, being extremely rich, he kept a fine house at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the boulevard. Here he cultivated cigar-smoking and physical exercise with great a.s.siduity. He was a splendid boxer and fencer, and all the finest bruisers and blades, amateur and professional, were to be met in his _salle d'armes_. He took great pride in his strength, which was abnormal, in his skill as a whip and his success on the race-course. French sport owes him a permanent debt for his successful starting of the Jockey Club, but he can hardly have been a very popular member of a society, for he was cold and brutal, a man who took a defeat rancorously and one who had a cynical delight in causing suffering to his hangers-on. His misanthropy was the reason of his gradually dropping out of society after 1842, and it would have been beside the point to mention him here had it not been for the quite undeserved notoriety which he acquired in Paris during the thirties as the baccha.n.a.lian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange case of mistaken ident.i.ty which persisted for many years in spite of categorical denials. The more aristocratic of the _viveurs_ were not, as I have said, Bohemians; but during the carnival, which was celebrated by all the population with extraordinary licence, some of the more youthful let themselves go and became revellers with the rest. For the last three days of the carnival the streets of Paris, by day and by night, were given up to an orgy. Crowds of masqueraders filled the pavements, the restaurants, and the theatres, where fancy-dress b.a.l.l.s were held. The richer masks had carriages drawn by postilions, in which they drove among the crowd, scattering confetti and sweetmeats and even money, indulging in every kind of quaint antic and gallantry, and inciting the vulgar to engage them in a wordy warfare in which volleys of the coa.r.s.est expletives were fired on both sides. Riot reached its culmination on the night of Shrove Tuesday, when the revellers, after an orgy of feasting and dancing at the Barriere de la Courtille, on the north-east of Paris, ended by descending the steep hill towards the city in a state of bacchic frenzy. This was the famous _descente de la Courtille_, at which, as at all the other revels, a certain carriage, drawn by six horses and filled by a motley party of young men, was the central object of admiration. No challenger ever worsted the leader of this gang at a bout of blackguarding, no costumes equalled his in originality, no mask so tormented and excited the crowd as he with his harangues, his missiles, and his largesse. This was the man known to all the populace of Paris as "Milord Arsouille," which, as all Paris would have told you, was simply the _nom de guerre_ of Lord Seymour. But it was not so. The real "Milord Arsouille" was a certain Charles de la Battut, son of an English chemist and a French _emigree_. His father, unwilling to compromise his position in England by recognizing him, paid for his adoption by the ruined Breton Count de la Battut. He was educated in Paris, where, even in his youth, he showed a most dissolute character. He delighted to frequent the lowest haunts, and there learnt that mastery of slang and that skill as a boxer which were his pride.

The death of his real father gave him a large fortune, which he proceeded to dissipate with the utmost extravagance and bad taste. His house in the Boulevard des Capucines and his personal attire were equally flamboyant. During his short period of glory he was on certain terms of intimacy with the more rowdy among the young bloods of good family, who in after years looked back, like the Duc d'Aulnis, with shame to some of their exploits in his company. His most notable achievement was to introduce the _cancan_ into the fas.h.i.+onable fancy-dress ball at the Varietes in 1832, and his perpetual grief was that all his eccentricities were attributed to Lord Seymour, in spite of his utmost efforts to proclaim the difference of ident.i.ty. In 1835 he died, a shattered _roue_, at Naples.

The only other English name deserving comment in the _pet.i.t cercle_ of the Cafe de Paris is that of Major Fraser, whose personality was an enigma. He was one of the most popular characters on the boulevard, and an honoured friend of the most exclusive diners at the Cafe Anglais or the Cafe de Paris, yet nothing was known of his personal history. He spoke English perfectly, but was not an Englishman; he never alluded to his parents, and lived as a bachelor in an _entresol_ at the corner of the Rue Lafitte. He was never short of money, but the source of his income was a mystery; and when he died no letters were found, but only a file of receipts, including a receipt from an undertaker for his funeral expenses, and a direction that his clothes and furniture were to be sold for the benefit of the poor. In spite of the mystery surrounding him he was a prominent figure among the _viveurs_. His tight blue frock-coat and his grey trousers were models for the most fastidious dandies; his kindness and gentleness to everyone except professional politicians was extreme; he quoted Horace freely and had a complete knowledge of political history with a prodigious memory. Major Fraser's story could be paralleled by the head waiter of many a London club. While he lived he was a favourite; when he died he simply vanished.[14]

There are only two other members of the _pet.i.t cercle_ whom I wish to mention--Alfred de Musset and Roger de Beauvoir--because they form a link between the exclusiveness of that society and the hurly-burly existence of _la haute Boheme_, to which both more properly belonged. In the early Romantic days Alfred de Musset, with his beautiful, bored face set off by the fair curls that fell over his eyes, was the petted darling of Paris, its perfect dandy wafting the triple essence of _bouquet de Romantisme_. Nevertheless, Alfred de Musset, though his name was on the lips of all dandies and his poetry set a fas.h.i.+on in Bohemia, never took among men the place that seemed to be his due. He might have been a true Bohemian of 1830, but he disavowed his Romantic companions of letters for the greater splendour of fas.h.i.+onable life; while among the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that impa.s.sive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were inexorably demanded. His nature was far too pa.s.sionate to make him for long together a comfortable companion for men, and his personal history, apart from his poetry, is a chapter of relations with women, of whom George Sand is the most notable. The ashes of his career have been raked over with most scrupulous care since his death, but it is no purpose of mine to take part in the scavenging. To have omitted Alfred de Musset's name would have been impossible, but having mentioned him, I can leave him. Though he hymned Musette and drank deeply with Prince Belgiojoso, he had as little place in Bohemia, high or low, as Lamartine or Victor Hugo. Their throne was the study, his the boudoir.

There are no such reservations to be made for Roger de Beauvoir, whom Madame de Girardin called "Alfred de Musset aux cheveux noirs." He was the arch-_viveur_, with one exquisitely shod foot on the boulevard, the other in Bohemia, the gayest of all those who supped, the insatiable quaffer of champagne, the inexhaustible fountain of epigram, the king of _la haute Boheme_, the very incarnation of the _Noctambule_ in Charpentier's delightful opera, "Louise." His family was the good Norman family of de Bully, and he took the name of Beauvoir from one of the two estates which were his heritage. Those who were responsible for his early guidance clearly intended that he should make his way in diplomacy--a career in which his good looks, sympathetic voice, and charming manners would have greatly helped his pioneering--for he was sent to be Polignac's secretary when that unfortunate minister occupied the emba.s.sy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any a.s.sociation with politics was incompatible with gilded ease, abandoned all attempts to play the game of a Rastignac, and pursued his fantasies in airy independence. The Romanticism of the _Jeune-France_ party attracted at once the enthusiasm of a young man, just in his majority by 1830, who was naturally a lover of brilliant colouring. He became a fanatical medievalist, who displayed with pride a Gothic cabinet panelled in carved oak, hung with black velvet, and lit by stained-gla.s.s windows.

The ceiling was covered with coats-of-arms; the chief decorations were a panoply of armour and an old _prie-dieu_ on which a missal of 1350 opened its illuminated pages. Even in 1842, when Maxime du Camp first met him, he still dreamt of reviving the age of chivalry, having just created a sensation by waltzing at a ball in full armour, fainting and falling with the clatter of innumerable stove-pipes. Undeterred by this mishap, he proposed to form a company, to be called the "Societe des champs clos de France," which was to buy land for a tilting-ground, Arab steeds, and armour for the purpose of holding weekly tourneys. The shares were to be 1000 francs each, but as Maxime du Camp's guardian prohibited the purchase of any by his enthusiastic ward, the project was dropped. Like every true Romantic he wrote a medieval novel, but his novel, "L'ecolier de Cluny," unlike those of the majority, was published and brought him considerable fame. After its publication in 1832, he became in some sort a man of letters, but he never added to his reputation, being far too bent upon the pursuit of pleasure to bear the restrictions of any profession. Having failed as a writer of vaudevilles, he found his true vocation as the leader of a band of revellers and a composer of wicked epigrams in verse. His epigrams, always written _impromptu_ upon the pages of a notebook, were a real addition to the gaiety of Paris. Here is one composed when Ancelot--literary husband of a literary wife--was elected to the Academy:

_Le menage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_ _Devait a ce fauteuil arriver en tout cas,_ _Car la femme accouchait toujours de quelque chose,_ _Quand le mari n'engendrait pas._

His dress was of the highest elegance in a day when men were not confined to a funereal black. His blue frock-coat, tight-waisted with amply curving skirts, broad velvet _revers_, and gilt b.u.t.tons, fitted as neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and s.h.i.+niest to be seen.

In his own apartment he tempered the shadows of his Gothic furniture by wearing a green silk dressing-gown and red cashmere trousers. So long as their fortunes lasted he and his companions bade dull care begone. At midday they left the softest of beds, and, after a serious hour of dressing, met for dejeuner at the Cafe Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the Cafe Hardi. By four they were to be seen in force upon the boulevard, displaying their waistcoats and quizzing the ladies upon the marble steps of Tortoni's. Before dinner they would visit a drawing-room or two, buy a picture or bargain for some _bibelot_--a Toledo blade or a Turkish narghile--with a dealer in curiosities. The evening programme was a set of variations upon the ground ba.s.s of dinner, opera, supper.

Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge infernale_ at the Opera, and it is needless to say that their attention was devoted more to the ballet than to the music, for they were all connoisseurs in ch.o.r.eography and had a personal acquaintance with the dancers, which developed in most cases into something more than Platonic affection. The _foyer des artistes_ was the enchanted garden of _la haute Boheme_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the true Bohemians did at the Chaumiere or the Closerie des Lilas.

The science of practical joking was sedulously cultivated by Roger and his friends, who rejoiced to bring off successful "mystifications." One of Roger's best was played upon Duponchel, the director of the Opera.

One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hea.r.s.e and fifty carriages, with Roger and his friend Cabanon occupying the first carriage as chief mourners; the head of the procession drew up at Duponchel's door, to his great indignation. The joke up to this point was of no especial originality, but Roger gave it a turn of his own. The Romantic fas.h.i.+on dictated that every chapter in a novel should be headed by an epigraph, as extravagant as possible, from the work of some Romantic author. Roger therefore headed a chapter in his novel "Pulchinella," which was just appearing, "Feu Duponchel (Histoire contemporaine)." Even after he was hopelessly in debt he remained a joker. Being saddled with a thin and dirty bailiff, he gave him ten francs a day, washed him, dressed him as a Turk, and gave an evening party in honour of his Pasha, who could only talk in signs. The supreme _mystificateurs_, however, were Romieu and Monnier. Romieu was reputed to be the most amusing man in Paris, and so firmly founded was his reputation that n.o.body ever took him seriously. When he became prefect of Quimperle--an easy post which enabled him to take many a holiday upon the boulevard--he was faced with the problem of dealing with a plague of c.o.c.kchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead c.o.c.kchafers. The Bretons were grateful enough, but all Paris was in a roar. Here was the crowning farce of which only its lost joker would have been capable, and it supplied the smaller comic papers with copy for several days. Romieu made Monnier's acquaintance in an appropriate way. About eleven o'clock one night the artist heard a knock at his door, which he opened to a stranger, who came in and entered into a polite conversation without a word of introduction. Monnier made no comment, but replied with equal affability. After an hour or so, as the stranger remained, he ransacked his sideboard and entertained his guest with an impromptu supper. Time pa.s.sed, the small hours struck, and still the stranger made no sign of going. Monnier therefore announced that he was ready for bed and that his sofa was at his guest's disposition. So they parted for the night, and next morning when they met Monnier's first words were "You are Romieu," a compliment returned by "You are Monnier."

Monnier, says Champfleury in his memoir, belonged to Bohemia till the end of his life; but it is clear that this Bohemia was that of the boulevards and cafes. He was no real Romantic, and far too fond of a good time to stay in the Bohemia which Champfleury himself knew so well.

As a writer of short stories and dialogues, an actor, and an artist he had a huge success in the thirties, and he followed the pleasures of life with inexhaustible zest. Balzac drew him as Bixiou in "Les Employes." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but unjust:

"Intrepide cha.s.seur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dineur et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allee des Veuves, il etonnait autant a table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve a minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-meme, comme la plupart des grands comiques. Lance dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, des ecrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune est aleatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, jouait a Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment profond, mais par eclairs, se balancait dans la vie comme sur une escarpolette, sans s'inquieter du moment ou la corde ca.s.serait."

Innumerable stories are told of his practical jokes. Being an expert ventriloquist, he was wont to enter an omnibus and without moving a muscle utter in a feminine voice: "Je vous aime, monsieur le conducteur," at which there would be tremendous consternation among the petticoats. The dames swept the company with searching glares of outraged decency, the _demoiselles_ blushed, and the embarra.s.sed conductor looked in vain for his temptress. One evening he was burdened with a bore in some illuminated public garden. To escape the tedium of conversation he pretended to be greatly interested in some matter which necessitated his walking carefully all round the garden and gazing intently at all the gas-lamps. After half an hour of these mysterious peregrinations the bore, who had been forced to keep silence, asked with impatience what was the matter. "I bet you five francs," said Monnier, "that there are here seventy-nine _becs de gaz_ (gas-jets)." The bore accepted the challenge with delight, and another half-hour was spent in silent perambulation and calculation. At length he announced triumphantly that he only counted seventy-eight. "Ah," said Monnier as he made his escape, and pointing to the orchestra, "vous avez oublie le bec de la clarinette."

Monnier, the great artist, the disappointed actor, was at the other end of the scale to Lord Seymour and his friends. They had a position without activity: his activity made his position. No great artist remains long in Bohemia. Some work their way out on foot: he rose from it, one might say, in a balloon, by which, after disporting himself for some years above the mists, he was landed for his later days in the obscurity of a province. Such a man, at home in all society, is restricted by none. As he was not the perfect Bohemian, so he was not the whole-hearted _viveur_, for whose complete picture I must return to Roger de Beauvoir and his set, some of whom are described in Roger's own little book, "Soupeurs de mon Temps." It is a melancholy epitaph of a brilliant company. The sparkling wit of their gatherings has vanished with the bubbles of the champagne they drank, and little is left on record but the capacity of their stomachs. They took an immense pride in their consumption of champagne. Briffaut, a clever journalist and a particular friend of Roger's, was the king of topers. To him was due the invention of "ingurgitation," which consisted in pouring a bottle of champagne into a bell-shaped gla.s.s cover, such as was used to protect cheese, and swallowing it at a draught. He once challenged a noted English toper and gave him a gla.s.s a bottle; the victory was easily his, for he disposed of a dozen. Among other champions who helped to make Veuve Clicquot's fortune were Armand Malitourne, a singularly gifted man, a journalist, and at one time secretary to the minister Montalivet; Bequet, whose good taste Roger himself extolled; and Bouffe, the director of the Vaudeville. Then there was Emile Cabanon, who lives in Romantic annals as the author of the extravagant "Roman pour les Cuisinieres." Champfleury,[15] on the authority of Camille Rogier, the artist, says that he appeared one day upon the boulevard and won himself forthwith a place by his gifts as a story-teller, becoming a favourite with all from Prince Belgiojoso downwards. He is one of the reputed originals--there are two or three--of Balzac's Comte de la Palferine (in "Un Prince de la Boheme"), who, being struck with the appearance of a lady pa.s.sing along the street, at once attached himself to her: in vain she tried to get rid of the importunate by saying she was going to visit a friend, for her cavalier came too and mixed with all urbanity in the conversation, rising to take his leave at the same time as the object of his sudden pa.s.sion. This a.s.siduity so captivated the besieged one's heart that she struck her colours. It is _a propos_ of Cabanon that Champfleury refers with some contempt to "les gentilshommes de lettres du boulevard de Gand, qui nageaient comme des poissons dans le fleuve de la dette, se fiaient plus sur leurs relations que sur leur plume, depensaient de l'esprit comptant en veux-tu en voila." Alfred Tattet,[16] the rich son of an _agent de change_, who was introduced to the _viveurs_ by Felix Arvers, the poet of one sonnet, was another of the crew. Alfred de Musset, Roger de Beauvoir, Romieu, and others made merry at his sumptuous entertainments till he varied the monotony by running over the frontier with a married woman, leaving Arvers to look after his affairs. In 1843 he returned to settle down at Fontainebleau with the wife of a German in Frankfort. Another young man, with the promising name of Chaudesaigues--a corruption of the Latin for "hot water"--came to Paris in 1835 with a fortune of 30,000 francs, which he squandered in a few years, and then struggled on as a journalist till he died of apoplexy.

I should wrong the _viveurs_ if I allowed it to be implied that they were all purely pleasure-seekers. Some of them were successful business men besides. Lautour-Mezeray, for instance, who was distinguished by the white camellia in his b.u.t.tonhole, laid the foundations of his fortune by starting a paper called _Le Voleur_, which was entirely composed of cuttings from other papers. Like Andoche Finot, he went on from small to great, founding _La Mode_ and _Le Journal des Enfants_, the first children's paper. He helped to start _La Presse_ with Emile de Girardin, who was another of the more solid among the _viveurs_. Doctor Veron, stout and self-important, his face half hidden in a huge cravat, held an important place among them. He began life as a medical pract.i.tioner, but made a fortune by exploiting a certain Pate Regnault and took to political journalism. Between 1831 and 1835 he was an extremely successful director of the Opera, and in 1838 bought _Le Const.i.tutionnel_, which he sold fourteen years later for two million francs. To him, it is said, is due the invention of the _tournedos_.

Certainly, he was a prominent gastronome, and the terror of head waiters, for he was no mere swiller of champagne, but one who insisted on perfect vintages combined with perfect cooking. In the thirties, when "Robert le Diable" was filling the Opera and his own pocket, he was a constant diner at the restaurants, but in later years he never dined except at his own house, where Sophie, his cook and majordomo, alone preserved the proper traditions of gastronomy. Maecenas-like, he made a certain literary set free of his table. Their places were always laid, they helped themselves, and they remained as long as they pleased, whether their host left them or no. Theodore de Banville and many others have celebrated the excellent "cuisine" and its accompaniment of wit, but a reader of Veron's "Souvenirs d'un bourgeois de Paris" will be inclined to suspect that the doctor himself was rather a prosy humbug, who only supplied the appropriate stimulus for the wit of his guests.

The chief of these, another celebrated _viveur_, was Nestor Roqueplan, whose toilette was unsurpa.s.sed and whose wit inexhaustible. He was a Parisian to the marrow; a day from Paris was to him a day out of Paradise. Like most of his generation, he began as a journalist, but diverged to become a director of theatres. The Pantheon, Nouveautes, Saint-Antoine, Varietes, Opera, Opera Comique, and Chatelet pa.s.sed successively under his sway, and he lost money at them all except at the Varietes, during his management of which he wrote those sparkling "Nouvelles a la main" which are perhaps the freshest examples of purely ephemeral contemporary wit.

The Revolution of 1848 dispersed the _viveurs_ for ever. It was not that Paris diminished in gaiety during the Second Empire nor that the _cafes_ ceased to be invaded by merry bands of _fetards_, but simply that Paris became too gay, too large, and too cosmopolitan. The boulevard was no longer to be kept sacred for a chosen few, and a new generation was rising, which found other channels for its energies than ingurgitatory wit-combats. Under the new _regime_ there was a court and a more exciting foreign policy. The aristocracy threw off its sulks, the prosperous industrial conquered his diffidence, the pleasure-loving stranger found that all railways led to Paris. The old guard was overwhelmed, or rather would have been overwhelmed if not already well-nigh crumbled away. Men with clear heads and practical aims, who had only devoted their leisure to enjoyment, like Veron, Roqueplan, de Girardin, survived to retire with all the honours of war, forming small _coteries_ for the cultivation of wit and good cheer, but shunning, instead of affronting, the public eye. But the rest, the _viveurs_ of every hour, where were they? Dead, worn-out, shattered in health, paying the dismal reckoning for the dissipation of their heyday, poor, neglected, forgotten. Misfortune overtook the gay Roger from the moment he married Mademoiselle Doze, the actress. For six years he was pestered with lawsuits for separation, till a divorce was finally procured. He had drunk, as he said, 150,000 francs worth of champagne and written 300 songs. The francs were gone, the songs lost, and nothing was left but the gout.

_Jadis j'etais des plus ingambes,_ _Mais helas! destins inhumains,_ _Le papier que j'avais aux mains,_ _A present je le porte aux jambes._

He could jest to the last, but in his last days he was a pathetic sight, fat, prematurely old, infirm, confined to a wretched chamber, and denied even the champagne which could charm away his regrets. The dapper figure that had once filled a frock-coat so jauntily was now a shapeless corpulence hidden in the loose folds of a greasy dressing-gown. He died of gout, as Alfred de Musset died of drink. Malitourne, after sinking lower and lower in drunkenness, died mad; apoplexy carried off Chaudesaigues and Charles Froment; Arvers died of spinal paralysis; Bequet ended in a hospital; gout killed Cabanon and Tattet; while Briffaut expired in a mad-house. The mental p.r.o.nouncement of their funeral orations I leave to any moralist who chooses, bidding him remember that if they failed as individuals to fulfil the highest destinies of mankind they were victims of a strange fever in common with all the generation of 1830.

Of that generation they were a part, perhaps the most conspicuous part at the time. I might almost liken them to the set of "swells" in some public school, privileged themselves yet censorious of others, always in the eye of their small world, influential in their smallest acts, embodying conspicuously the current fas.h.i.+on and expressing the prevailing tone, s.h.i.+ning inevitably as a pattern, envied by most, respected, outwardly, by all. In Louis Philippe's time Parisian society was as limited a corporation as a school. Its "swells" attained their position, as all "swells" do, by excelling in a pursuit in which excellence is universally admired. They excelled in tinging their life with a medieval splendour of colouring, they had some prowess in poetry and letters, they performed miracles of wit in the new spirit of busy, ever-bubbling, _bruyant_ fun. As the "swells" of Romanticism they justified their position so long as the conditions allowed. Bohemia, in some respects, was like a "house" in the same school, with a smaller corporate life of its own, yet influenced by the powers outside it, the more so because some of its members had risen themselves to the company of "swells." In this not very exalted, but true, simile is my reason for devoting s.p.a.ce to the _viveurs_. They were not Bohemians for the most part, but many Bohemians hoped to be _viveurs_ as Etonians hope to be in "Pop." On them rested the high lights of the picture, but we can now peer into the background and discern the true Bohemia of 1830.

VI

LA BOHeME ROMANTIQUE

MIL HUIT CENT TRENTE! _Aurore_ _Qui m'eblouis encore,_ _Promesse du destin,_ _Riant matin!_

_Aube ou le soleil plonge!_ _Quelquefois un beau songe_ _Me rend l'eclat vermeil_ _De ton reveil._

_Jetant ta pourpre rose_ _En notre ciel morose,_ _Tu parais, et la nuit_ _Soudain s'enfuit._

THeODORE DE BANVILLE

The Romantic Bohemia has been the theme of so many French writers, from the time when the first reminiscences appeared to the present day, when a Leon Seche and a Philibert Audebrand, following the lead of Charles a.s.selineau, the pious _chiffonnier_ of Romanticism, industriously collect the very last sc.r.a.ps of authentic information, that a foreigner with all a foreigner's limitations may well hesitate to mar the pretty edifice erected to the memory of 1830 by some clumsy addition of his own. Yet I take heart from the consideration that even in France there is, at least to my knowledge, no complete account of this Bohemia. Those who would follow its annals in their original tongue must do so in a mult.i.tude of books, published at different times, some of which are rarities only to be found in museums and the largest libraries.

Moreover, the French chronicler writes from a point of view which a foreigner cannot adopt, and makes a.s.sumptions which a foreigner cannot grant. All the historical and literary a.s.sociations on which I have touched in a former chapter make it a subject which even to-day excites pa.s.sionate enthusiasm and equally pa.s.sionate reprobation across the Channel. The foreigner can approach in a cooler temper, though I postulate in my readers a general sympathy for Gautier's scarlet _pourpoint_ and all that it symbolized. In this cooler temper, then, not seeing red, but with a tendency, at least, to see rosy, a foreigner may glance at a life, so essentially limited by its period and its nationality, without challenging unfavourable comparisons.

The Romantic Bohemia was part of Parisian society, a fact of which I have already tried to point out the implications. It might add to the general picture to know how society judged Bohemia. Contemporary record is scarce, not only because Bohemia itself so largely supplied the personal element in the journalism of its time, but also because the conception--indeed, the name--was so new. There is, however, something to be picked up from allusions here and there which is of some service in the definition of boundaries. Nestor Roqueplan, for instance, in his little book, "La Vie Parisienne," defines Bohemia as comprehending "all those in Paris who dine rarely and never go to bed." He distinguishes sloth and debt as the salient faults in the general disorder of its life, and he is not too appreciative of its abilities, though he admits that there is an inner Bohemia, "intelligente et spirituelle," composed of a certain number of young men with the makings of excellent ministers, irreproachable officials, and daring men of business. In conclusion he a.s.serts the great truth that "Bohemia must be young; it must be continually renewed. If the Bohemian were more than thirty, he might be confused with the rogue." This is excellent testimony from a man who, himself no real Bohemian, had extensive relations with Bohemia as one on whom its young playwrights inflicted the reading of their plays. Balzac is the next witness, though it is remarkable that his only specific reference to Bohemia is in the short story, "Un Prince de la Boheme," which tells how the young Comte de la Palferine, a penniless son of a general who died after Wagram, satisfied his vanity in the person of his mistress, Madame du Bruel. He was debarred by his position from having a wife worthy of his aristocratic pride, but that at least his mistress might be worthy, Madame du Bruel, an actress married to a writer of _vaudevilles_, worries her husband into the acquisition of riches, political power, and a peerage. At the beginning of this story--one of Balzac's most curious--he gives a general definition of Bohemia:

"Bohemia, which ought to be called the wisdom of the Boulevard des Italiens, is composed of young men all over twenty, and under thirty, years of age, all men of genius in their manner, still little known, but destined to make themselves known and then to be very distinguished; they are already distinguished in the days of the carnival, during which they discharge the plethora of their wit, which is confined during the rest of the year, in more or less comic inventions. In what an age do we live! What absurd authority allows immense forces thus to be dissipated! In Bohemia there are diplomats capable of upsetting the plans of Russia, if they felt themselves supported by the power of France. One meets in it writers, administrators, soldiers, journalists, artists! In a word, all kinds of capacity and intellect are represented in it. It is a microcosm. If the Emperor of Russia were to buy Bohemia for some twenty millions, supposing it willing to quit the asphalt of the boulevards, and were to deport it to Odessa, in a year Odessa would be Paris. There it is, the useless, withering flower of that admirable youth of France which Napoleon and Louis XIV cherished, and which has been neglected for thirty years by that gerontocracy under which all things in France are drooping.... Bohemia has nothing and lives on that which it has. Hope is its religion, self-confidence is its code, charity pa.s.ses for its budget. All these young men are greater than their misfortunes--below fortune, but above destiny."

The narrator of the story, the witty Nathan, goes on to give some particular _traits_ of La Palferine, who would be King of Bohemia, if Bohemia could suffer a king. Some of these are rather vulgar pleasantries which display the bluntness of Balzac's sense of humour rather than La Palferine's wit, as when the Bohemian, angrily accosted by a _bourgeois_ in whose face he had thrown the end of his cigar, calmly replied: "You have sustained your adversary's fire; the seconds declare that honour is satisfied." La Palferine was never solvent: once, when he owed his tailor a thousand francs, the latter's head clerk, sent to collect the debt, found the debtor in a wretched sixth-floor attic on the outskirts of Paris, furnished with a miserable bed and a rickety table; to the request for payment the count replied with a gesture worthy of Mirabeau: "Go tell your master of the state in which you have found me!" In affairs of love, though he was impetuous as a besieger, he was proud as a conqueror. After having pa.s.sed a fortnight of unmixed happiness with a certain Antonia, he found that, as Balzac puts it, she was treating him with a want of frankness. He therefore wrote to her the following letter, which made her famous:

"MADAME,--Your conduct astonishes as much as it afflicts me. Not content with rending my heart by your disdain, you have the indelicacy to keep my tooth-brush, which my means do not allow me to replace, my estates being mortgaged beyond their value.

Farewell, too lovely and too ungrateful friend!

May we meet again in a better world!"

Balzac's account is obviously tinged with literary exaggeration, though the stories of La Palferine were no doubt gleaned among the gossips of the boulevard. He shall be balanced by an adverse witness, one M.

Challamel, who, after a severe attack of _le mal romantique_ which caused him to run away from his father's shop, settled down to be a staid librarian. In his "Souvenirs d'un Hugolatre" he says:

"In the wake of the freelances of the pen the _Bohemians_ abounded, affecting the profoundest disdain for all that the bourgeois call 'rules of conduct,' posing as successors to Francois Villon, playing the part of literary art-students, frequenters of _cabarets_, often of disreputable houses, breaking with the usages of polite society, and believing, in fine, that everything is permitted to people of intelligence.... By the side of these sham romantic Byrons there existed some good fellows who fell into the excess of the literary revolution, and who paraded the active immorality of debauch. Sceptics, materialists, loaded with debt, they raised poverty to a system and laughed at their voluntary insolvency. Some shook off early their Diogenes' cloak ... others succ.u.mbed prematurely ... all had imitators who ended by forming numerous groups and by founding a school. The spirit of Bohemia became infectious, and engendered the spirit of mockery (_la blague_)."

I conclude this general testimony with some lines from Alfred de Musset's "Dupont et Durand," which is an imaginary conversation between two old school-fellows, one of whom has become a prosperous citizen, the other has failed as a Bohemian. The Bohemian says:

_J'ai flane dans les rues,_ _J'ai marche devant moi, bayant aux grues;_ _Mal nourri, peu vetu, couchant dans un grenier,_ _Dont je demenageais des qu'il fallait payer;_ _De taudis en taudis colportant ma misere,_ _Ruminant de Fourier le reve humanitaire,_ _Empruntant ca et la le plus que je pouvais,_ _Depensant un ecu sitot que je l'avais,_ _Delayant de grands mots en phrases insipides,_ _Sans chemise et sans bas, et les poches si vides,_ _Qu'il n'est que mon esprit au monde d'aussi creux,_ _Tel je vecus, rape, sycophante, envieux._

With the aid of these lights we may descry some general features of the Romantic Bohemian. He must be young; on this both Roqueplan and Balzac are agreed, placing his proper age between twenty and thirty. The Bohemians of 1830 were, as a matter of fact, nearer to the earlier than the later limit. Most of them were born at the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, so that 1830 found them in, or not long past, their twentieth year, a happy state of things which a.r.s.ene Houssaye celebrated in his poem "Vingt Ans." We Englishmen can hardly understand the magic of this joyous phrase, _vingt ans_; through French prose and poetry it sounds again and again like a tinkling silver bell calling those who have lived and loved in youth to hark back for a moment in pa.s.sionate regret, in an ecstasy of remembrance. To think of Bohemia without that silver tinkle in one's ears is to do it a grave injustice, for Bohemia throbbed with it then as with a tocsin, as with a summoning bell to a joyous refectory in some transcendant Abbaye de Theleme. It may be well for us that at twenty we are still hobbledehoys whom serious persons are only too glad to get rid of for half the year in universities as peacefully unmoved by our turmoil as their Gothic buildings by the storms of winter; but these frenzied medievalists had no Gothic university to be engulfed in save their own dear Paris, at a time when the university of their own dear Paris was trying its hardest to withstand the new ideas with which they were aflame. If juvenile excesses and absurdities can be tolerated with easy smiles at Oxford and Cambridge, how much more can those of the Romantic Bohemia be excused when its denizens were Frenchmen, hardly more than schoolboys, yet already victorious as champions of a revolution, with their livelihood to gain, with no kind parents to pay their bills and no kind Dean to regulate their mischief! As the college porter says, "Young gentlemen will be young gentlemen," a proverb which condones the excesses of tender, as it reprobates those of riper, years. Bohemia, in Roqueplan's words, must be continually renewed, for the old Bohemian is nothing but a legitimate object for ardent social reformers. So the Bohemians of 1830, some of whom made their names, while others remained obscure, were all youthful n.o.bodies in the eyes of the world, perching in their attics like a colony of singing birds upon the topmost branches.

This youth of theirs, once it is properly grasped, explains a good many of their qualities, amiable and otherwise. Poverty, for instance, was a tradition of Bohemia. "They dine rarely," "the Bohemian has nothing and lives on what he has," "they raised their poverty into a system and laughed at their voluntary insolvency": so say Roqueplan, Balzac, and Challamel. Most young men in this world are poor, in the sense they have nothing of their own. So long as they follow the careers laid down for them, or earn the prescribed salaries in the prescribed professions, they are not without means indeed, but if they take a contradictory line of their own which is not lucrative, especially if they dare to set up as poets, it is considered better for them to knock their heads against the hard corners of life without much extraneous a.s.sistance. On the whole this is a wise point of view, and one can hardly follow some of the less talented Romantics in making it an indictment against society that superior soup-kitchens are not provided for the sustenance of all who choose to embrace the arts. There were, of course, degrees of poverty in Bohemia, just as there were degrees of economic adaptability.

Some were really, others only comparatively, dest.i.tute: some girded their loins daily in search of pence, others waited for pence to drop from heaven. Still, in spite of all degrees and differences, poverty was very real. The market for art and letters was still extremely restricted, processes were costly, the science of distribution still in its infancy; a few celebrities took all the cream of the demand, leaving only the thinnest trickle to satisfy the rest.

The Bohemians knew, or very soon found out, their prospects. Those who were not scared back to their homes made up their minds that at best a moderate income might be theirs in the future, while the present entailed considerable privations to be endured cheerfully for the glory of art. Poverty being their economic condition, it is not to be supposed that the young men who _did_ happen to be rich in their own right migrated to Bohemia for the mere pleasure of its society. It is easy enough to find food for laughter in unavoidable discomforts and delight in the makes.h.i.+fts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither discomfort nor makes.h.i.+fts are necessary, the point of view inevitably changes, and irritation takes the place of laughter. It is quite contrary to human nature that a man with money to spare for regular meals, decent clothes, and a comfortable room should enjoy hunger, rags, and a bare garret. Between adversity cheerfully borne and a masquerade of scanty means there is a gulf which no imagination is able to span. A rich man, I admit, may stint himself in order to spend all his means on a hobby or a philanthropic object, but in the Bohemian there was no trace of this voluntary asceticism, which would have been entirely contrary to the Romantic creed. A rich Bohemian was a paradox, for the moment a Bohemian had any money he spent it in forgetting the sorrows of Bohemia, a moral pointed by Murger's amusing chapter "Les Flots du Pactole," where Rodolphe, having received a gift of 20, promptly agrees with Marcel to live a regular life. He will work, he says, seriously, sheltered from the material worries of life. "I renounce Bohemia, I shall dress like the rest, I shall have a black coat and appear in drawing-rooms." Unfortunately the preliminaries are so costly that the sum is exhausted in a fortnight, the _coup de grace_ being given to it when the new servant pays without authorization the arrears of rent.

"Where shall we dine to-night?" says Rodolphe, once more a Bohemian. "We shall know to-morrow," replies Marcel. Rodolphe and Marcel, and their predecessors just as much, would have regarded a Bohemian with an income as a madman or a monstrosity. With all the will in the world such a man would have found it impossible to live in such a society without being on its economic level. Its joys and pleasures would not have been his, its amus.e.m.e.nts would have seemed paltry. To have shown his money would have made him shunned by the proud and courted by the sycophants, in any case a stranger. He could only have been a Bohemian at the price of dissipating all his capital, and that he could more easily do among the _viveurs_ upon the boulevard.

Bohemia, then, was poor, which had the one excellent result of banis.h.i.+ng from it all mercenary spirit. When there was so little money to be had in any case and there were so many other more glorious things to think about, there was no point in financial preoccupations. If one had a few coins one spent them in common with those who had none; if one's pockets were empty one went without and accepted the hospitality of others.

Money-grubbing was left to the virtuous _bourgeois_ beloved of a _bourgeois_ king, to unscrupulous Nucingens and adventurous de Girardins. And Bohemia never went to bed, because it was young and poor, not from viciousness or an artistic pleasure in the sunrise. They were incorrigible talkers, those young men--perhaps this was one of their graver faults--they not only talked, but they shouted for hours together, mixing declamations of Victor Hugo with extravagant tirades in the Romantic fas.h.i.+on. It was not in them to disperse quietly after "Hernani" or "Antony" had lashed them into fury. They had a plethora of matter to discharge from their souls, but they had no comfortable little Chelsea studio in which to perform this function. A cold attic, a straw mattress, a fuelless stove, a dearth of chairs, which was all the majority could boast of, was a poor setting for impa.s.sioned conversation compared with the warmth of even a humble _cabaret_. The good M.

Challamel, of course, is justified in his strictures. Their morals were lax, they were extravagant, they did not pay their bills. This was partly due to what a humorous undergraduate once called the "generosity of youth," and partly to the example of the "swells" upon the boulevard.

The Bohemian naturally yearned to enjoy himself, with his acute capacity for enjoyment, as he saw his more fortunate fellow-men enjoying themselves. They were luxurious at all times; it was impossible for him to restrain occasionally the impulse to luxury, indulging in a superb orgy at the Rocher de Caucale or the Trois Freres Provencaux, ordering clothes which he _meant_ to pay for, and forgetting all the while the just claims of a landlord. His vices, at any rate, were inseparable from the conditions of his existence, and if he was disreputable, it was more outwardly than within.

The talents of Bohemia were as diverse as the physiognomies of its citizens. Genius, it might be said with truth, was not more common there than in other walks of life. Real genius is a law and a life to itself; it is no more Bohemian than it is aristocratic, democratic, liberal or conservative. Social labels imply cla.s.ses to bear them, and cla.s.ses imply a common factor of intelligence. Genius, being an uncommon factor, is always severely individual. Moreover, so far as Bohemia is concerned, genius, being one kind of wealth, unsuited its possessor for Bohemian citizens.h.i.+p as much as a comfortable income. The trivialities and futilities of some, the extravagant idleness of others, would have estranged genius or forced it to pretend an acquiescence in much that was repugnant to its nature. With the possible exception of Gautier, the Bohemia of 1830 could really claim none of the greatest names of Romanticism. Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the other divinities of its wors.h.i.+p were, apart from all further possibilities, too old. Balzac was a far too busy man to pay it more than momentary visits; Berlioz, before he went to Rome, was too occupied in writing music which irritated Cherubini; Delacroix, the acknowledged king of Romantic painters, is revealed in his letters as the austerest of hard workers, scarcely leaving his studio but for a walk when the shadows began to fall. Yet, if Bohemia was denied genius, it was not denied a very high average of ability, which was enhanced by its burning and disinterested enthusiasm for art. Like all other societies, it had its fools, its knaves, its dunces, and its awkward squad. The Romantic revolution had attracted many scatterbrained fanatics to Paris, with as little artistic apt.i.tude as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first disappointments were fas.h.i.+oned failures like Alfred de Musset's unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "rape, sycophante, envieux." Probably, too, an impartial observer, listening to the nocturnal conversations of a Bohemian group, would often have found the ecstatic admiration of the listeners disproportionate to the turgid periods of the speaker, for to every real artist in Bohemia there was a wind-bag or two. Nevertheless there was a good deal of truth in Balzac's eulogy. Bohemia numbered within its gates a good proportion of the best among the younger generation. They were indeed an "immense force," which might have been better utilized. Every kind of talent was represented there abundantly, because the field of letters seemed to be the only battlefield then left open to willing and eager soldiers. This very fact gave the Romantic Bohemia its imperishable distinction, for after 1848, when young blood again found other outlets, what had been a little world was left no more than a decadent province.

The republic of Bohemia in general had all the follies and virtues, the amiability and brutality of youth. It was generous, noisy, more often hungry than drunk, often on the verge of despair, and always fantastically clothed. It sprang up in Paris as rapidly as the iron shanties of a Canadian towns.h.i.+p round a proposed extension of the railway. The settlers, self-a.s.sured, fervid, rise on a tide of increasing prosperity till some supreme moment when their venture, its markets humming, its saloons crowded, its new town hall nearly built, seems the very embodiment of all their hopes. But if the railway, after all, take another route, the glory gradually dwindles, the workers throw down the tools, and the host of speculators melts away, till only that population is left which the soil will actually support, and what was for a day a city resumes the existence of an ordinary village. Bohemia's history is of a less commercial texture, but of a like pattern, as I have already said. Its rise was swift, it had a brilliant apogee, its decline was gradual. In a posthumous poem by Philothee O'Neddy, whose place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said: