Paris and the Social Revolution Part 6

In the meetings, the numerous stanzas of the _Carmagnole_ and the _Internationale_ are generally delivered as a solo from the platform by a _camarade_ who is blessed with a good memory and exceptional lung power, the audiences leaping into the choruses. The effect is invariably inspiriting, whatever the personality of the soloist or the quality of his voice, and whatever the composition and the voices of the audience.

Indeed, these two _chansons_ seem to belong to that rare sort of music which cannot be spoiled by bad, if it be not half-hearted, execution. So that there is conviction behind it, it carries,-the music in which sincerity and fervour atone for all defects of pitch, key, and voice.

In the open air, the more familiar stanzas are sung in unison just as is the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, just as are the songs of the students, and just as are, for that matter, all the songs of the people in France,-a method by which a great deal more is gained in lilt and concentration (where only the primal emotions are concerned) than is lost in charm. And I defy any one who has a drop of red blood in him to be at the centre of several thousand excited people who are shouting the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, the _Internationale_, or the _Carmagnole_, and not join in, even though his every instinct and belief be anti-revolutionary and he has neither voice nor ear. He who has not shared the surging and chanting of an angry Paris mob has only half experienced the popular thrill, and can have only half an idea what solidarity of emotion means.

The _Internationale_ is as much the rallying cry of the opening of the twentieth century as the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ was of the opening of the eighteenth; and it would not be surprising if its author, Eugene Pottier, who is already called by the faithful "the Tyrtaeus of the Social Revolution," should win ultimately the same sort of an apotheosis as Rouget de Lisle won by the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_.

Poor Pottier, who died in 1887 at seventy-one years of age, saw only the beginning of the phenomenal vogue of his masterpiece as a revolutionary slogan.

Pottier was one of the few who dared to speak his mind freely during the Second Empire, and was a prominent figure on the barricades of both 1848 and 1871. He was proscribed for his partic.i.p.ation in the Commune, but escaped to America, where he remained till amnesty was declared. Unable to work steadily at his trade after his return, because his natural employers resented the part he had taken in the organisation of his craft, as well as his share in the Commune, and systematically neglected as a poet and song-writer by the bourgeois press, his poverty was terrible at times,-so terrible that it is no hyperbole to say that many of his best pieces were written with his heart's blood. They were real cries of real anguish. His boundless love and pity for the poor and his incessant struggle for the emanc.i.p.ation of the oppressed turned his life-like that of the n.o.ble Communard, Blanqui, to whom he dedicated a marvellous sonnet-into an uninterrupted series of self-sacrifices; and he stands side by side with Blanqui among the finest modern revolutionist types. Many of his _chansons_ besides the _Internationale_ have survived him. He left also a quant.i.ty of far from despicable poems.

They are legion, the men of the people whom anarchy has inspired of late years to sing; but the majority of them are unknown to the general public and even to other anarchistic groups than their own. A few, however, have a Parisian reputation for their abilities or eccentricities.

Paul Paillette, a quaint, picturesque personality, inhabits a correspondingly quaint and picturesque lodging, which he calls his "_grenier de philosophe_" (philosopher's garret) on the summit of Montmartre. He was originally a jeweller; but of late years he has supported himself by rendering his own productions and those of Bruant and Xanrof in the salons of the bourgeois, who gladly pay him for ridiculing and abusing them. He is also a favourite feature of the union meetings and _soirees familiales_ in several quarters of the city.

Paul Paillette can be bitter, caustic, and violent when he chooses; but his dominant note is gentle, hopeful, idyllic, and ideal, as the following _chanson_ from his princ.i.p.al volume, _Les Tablettes d'un Lezard_, testifies:-

HEUREUX TEMPS

Air: _Le Temps des Cerises._

I

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les humains joyeux auront un gros cur Et legere panse.

Heureux, on saura, sainte recompense, Dans l'amour d'autrui doubler son bonheur!

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les humains joyeux auront un gros cur._

II

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, On ne verra plus d'etres ayant faim Aupres d'autres ivres: Sobres nous serons et riches en vivres; Des maux engendres ce sera la fin.

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Tous satisferont sainement leur faim._

III

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Le travail sera recreation Au lieu d'etre peine.

Le corps sera libre, et l'ame sereine, En paix, fera son evolution.

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Le travail sera recreation._

IV

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les pet.i.ts bebes auront au berceau Les baisers des meres.

Tous seront choyes, tous egaux, tous freres; Ainsi grandira ce monde nouveau.

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les bebes auront un meme berceau._

V

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les vieillards aimes, poetes-pasteurs, Benissant la terre, S'eteindront, beats, sous le ciel mystere, Ayant bien vecu, loin de ces hauteurs.

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Les vieillards seront de bien doux pasteurs._

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LA RENOMMeE DES POMMES-DE-TERRE FRITES

_Fried potatoes sold at one sou the package_]

VI

_Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Nature sera paradis d'amour; Femme souveraine, Esclave aujourd'hui, demain notre reine, Nous rechercherons tes ordres du jour!

Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie, Nature sera paradis d'amour._

VII

_Il semble encore loin, ce temps d'anarchie; Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons; Une foi profonde Nous fait entrevoir ce bienheureux monde Qu'helas! notre esprit dessine a tatons.

Il semble encore loin, ce temps d'anarchie; Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons!_

Brunel, a cafe garcon by profession, author of _Le Chant des Peinards_, has been a.s.sociated with Paul Paillette in organising _soupes-conferences_ and _dejeuners vegetariens_.

Achille Leroy calls himself "author, publisher, and international book-seller," and his invariable response to the simple salutation, "_Comment ca va?_" (How goes it?) is:-"_L'idee marche_" (The idea moves). He earns his living by selling his own and other iconoclastic works at the doors of revolutionary gatherings,[10]-anarchist gatherings preferred,-scrupulously devoting to the cause whatever he may gain beyond the bare necessities. Though an honest, harmless body, if ever there was one, he is so addicted to the spots where trouble is going on or brewing that he has been arrested many times; for instance, on the day of the 1899 _Grand Prix_ for having cried, "_A bas les Sergots!_" Achille wrote a letter of self-defence at that time which was printed in certain of the newspapers and in the _Almanach de la Question Sociale_. He was also defended in the _Journal du Peuple_ by M. Lucien Perrin, as follows:-

"Among the condemnations which evoked violent murmurs from the listeners was that of our worthy _camarade_, Achille Leroy, the revolutionary publisher. He had bravely cried, '_Vive la Liberte!_' when he was seized by the police and maltreated, as only these brutes know how. As he was unarmed, and had committed no violence, the police officers accused him of having cried, '_A bas les Sergots!_' (what a crime!) The ruse succeeded, and our friend was condemned to a month of prison without reprieve."

Auguste Valette, a roving vagabond character, sometimes attached to a Paris _caveau_ (concert-cellar) or _cafe-concert_ and sometimes to a strolling show, gained some little notoriety at the time of the trial of Salsou for his attempt against the Shah of Persia, and came near being indicted with Salsou as an accomplice because two violent anarchist poems by him, dedicated to Salsou, were found among the latter's papers.

Other singers of anarchy are Olivier Souetre, author of _Marianne_ and _La Crosse en l'Air_, two _chansons_ that enjoy and deserve high favour; H. Luss, author of _La Defense du Chiffonnier_ and _La Greve de Cholet_; Felix Pagaud, author of _Les Tueurs_; Daubre, to whom is attributed the last stanza of _Pere d.u.c.h.ene_; Hippolyte Raullot, Jacques Gueux, Martinet de Troyes, Pierre Niton, and Jean la Plebs, who style themselves "_poetes plebeiens_"; Theodore Jean, Luc, Marquisat, Doublier, etc. It is useless to go on naming them, as their names mean nothing outside of the revolutionary circles of Paris.

They are all most striking individualities, however, ranging all the way from freaks to heroes; and it is the individuality which they lavish on the rendering of their _chansons_ that const.i.tutes their drawing power.

You must hear a Brunel, a Valette, a Paul Paillette, sing his own _chansons_ to comprehend the influence they exert, since, in simple print, the most of these productions seem decidedly flat.

Pere La Purge, the jovial-faced cobbler of the narrow, dark, and tortuous rue de la Parcheminerie in the Latin Quarter, calls for a special word here, because he perpetuates worthily the revolutionary tradition of the cobbler.

Pere La Purge is a perfect modern counterpart of the cobblers who secreted intended victims of the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew under the refuse of their shops; who, under Richelieu, managed to get letters to prisoners in the Bastille by sewing them between the soles of the prisoners' shoes; who were among the first shop-keepers to set the tricolor c.o.c.kade over their shops, and made themselves otherwise remarked for their zeal in the Revolution; and who, under the Restoration, played an important revolutionary role by placarding the walls of their shops with caricatures and _Pasquinades_ (Pasquino, it should not be forgotten, was a cobbler) and by secretly circulating seditious pamphlets and _chansons_.

The invasion of machinery to do heeling and soling "while you wait"

(_ressemelage Americain_) is driving out of Paris the old-time cobblers who made their shops rendezvous of the opposition and nurseries of revolt. But a few of these cobblers still persist; and of these Pere La Purge is the best known, if not the most talented or most dangerous, example. His _Chansons du Gars_, which are issued with a superb cover design by Ibels, display a great deal of shrewdness and aptness of phrase,-

"_I 'a d' la malice!

Oui, foi d' Bap'tiss!_"

but his most popular work is the lurid and penny-dreadful _Chanson du Pere La Purge_, which has given him his name.

LA CHANSON DU PeRE LA PURGE