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diff --git a/40293-0.txt b/40293-0.txt index 58b7f56..fddb154 100644 --- a/40293-0.txt +++ b/40293-0.txt @@ -1,26 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vie de Bohème, by Orlo Williams - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Vie de Bohème - A Patch of Romantic Paris - -Author: Orlo Williams - -Release Date: July 21, 2012 [EBook #40293] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40293 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -7717,366 +7695,4 @@ Garde Nationale were confined. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Vie de Bohème - A Patch of Romantic Paris - -Author: Orlo Williams - -Release Date: July 21, 2012 [EBook #40293] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME - -[Illustration: La Cydalise.] - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME -A PATCH OF ROMANTIC PARIS - -BY ORLO -WILLIAMS - -[Illustration: colophon, ARTI et VERITATI] - -RICHARD G. BADGER -THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON - -_First Published 1913_ - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON - -TO -MY WIFE - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAP. PAGE - -I. LA VRAIE BOHÈME 1 - -II. A FRINGE OF HISTORY 21 - -III. LE MAL DU SIÈCLE 35 - -IV. PARISIAN SOCIETY 65 - -V. LES VIVEURS 87 - -VI. LA BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE 109 - -VII. THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" 126 - -VIII. LA BOHÈME GALANTE 158 - -IX. SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY 194 - -X. MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS 219 - -XI. AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA 252 - -XII. THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA 282 - -INDEX 303 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - _To face - page_ - -LA CYDALISE. _By Camille Rogier_ _Frontispiece_ - -THE SPIRIT OF ROMANTICISM 44 -(From the cover of a Romantic periodical) - -BOUSINGOTS. _By Frances Trollope_ 56 -(From "Paris and the Parisians in 1835") - -LES CHAMPS ELYSÉES. _By Eugène Lami_ 67 - -A VIVEUR. _By Gavarni_ 78 - -FASHIONABLES. _By Gavarni_ 86 - -PÉTRUS BOREL. _By Louis Boulanger_ 138 -(After an etching by Célestus Nanteuil) - -CÉLESTIN NANTEUIL. _By Himself_ 142 - -A FESTIVITY IN THE IMPASSE DU DOYENNÉ 168 -(From "Les Confessions" by Arsène Houssaye) - -GÉRARD DE NERVAL 190 - -A GRISETTE. _By Gavarni_ 216 - -A BAL MASQUÉ AT THE OPÉRA. _By Eugène Lami_ 274 - -THE GALOP INFERNAL. _By Gavarni_ 276 - -A GUINGETTE 278 - -THE RUE ST.-DENIS 294 - -THE RUE DE LA TIXANDERIE. _By Méryon_ 295 - -THE RUE PIROUETTE. _By Méryon_ 297 - - - - -I - -LA VRAIE BOHÈME - - _La Bohème, c'est le stage de la vie artistique; c'est la préface - de l'Académie, de l'Hôtel-Dieu ou de la Morgue._ - - MURGER: "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." - - -If there is one reason for which the growth of newspapers during the -last century may be looked at askance, it is the journalist's -persistency in perpetuating phrases. Phrases and catchwords at the -moment of invention are works of a peculiar genius, of which some men -have an abnormal share, though it may crop out suddenly in the most -unlikely places; but a good catchword, that crystallization of a drop of -some elusive current that is momentarily passing through public opinion, -that apt naming of some newly formed group of men or ideas, never comes -out of an inkpot: it is essentially, as the French finely recognize, a -_mot_, a pearl of speech. It darts out in some happy moment of human -intercourse, often almost unconsciously, when the words on a man's lips -are less than usual rebellious to the expression of his thoughts, or -when the exhilaration of some public utterance has charged the air so -that the little telling point, hitherto cold and dormant, flashes -suddenly into incandescence. Such a phrase, born on the lips of one, can -only be nurtured on the lips of many: its success implies continued -utterance. It becomes a heaven-sent convenience to save human -circumlocution, a new topic for the dullards, a new toy for the -_blasés_. In these communicative days, indeed, journalism increases a -thousand-fold the possibilities of its radiation, but a good catchword -has always made its way without the help of print. There has never -existed a human society, at any developed stage of civilization, that -has not been perfectly capable of hitting off a new idea or a new group -in some telling phrase or name without the intervention of a scribe. At -the same time, conversational man, left to himself, is no less quick to -forget than to invent. A new phrase properly fades as soon as the -novelty of that which inspired it, but once it has appeared upon a -single written page it has been given an artificial life of varying but -incalculable duration. This artificial existence has been infinitely -increased by the newspaper. The journalist, who has little time to -think, is naturally loth to let a convenient label go, so that, long -after its original parcel of ideas or beings has passed away, he will -keep tagging it on to other parcels with a certain show of relevance -which effectually conceals the fact that it ought long ago to have been -filed for the etymological dictionary. - -A phrase which has thus lingered artificially in common use is the word -"Bohemian." Nobody can deny that it is a useful label, simply because it -is so vague, conveying as it does the sense of some deliberate -divergence from the usages of polite society, without being in the least -embarrassingly clear as to the degree or direction of that divergence. -It is a term, so apparently specific, so really loose, equally capable -of carrying blame and admiration, which people will go on applying to -men and women, their lives and their clothes, without inquiring whether -there is in fact any answering reality. It would be easy enough to -confuse its simple users by a few question. They might be asked, for -instance, what a Bohemian is, when they would probably reply, in the -slipshod phraseology of to-day, that he is an odd person who wears funny -clothes and does quaint things. But then, it might be pointed out, a -docker from Limehouse is equally odd and quaint from their point of -view, though they do not call him a Bohemian; on which they will rather -pettishly explain that they mean artists and musicians and so on, people -who don't "work." To help them out on this point, in fine, they mean -people who potentially rank with the members of learned professions, but -who choose to live a less respectable life, in which paying calls, -dressing for dinner, and attending to the dictates of social morality -are considered of small importance, though the exact degree of social -unorthodoxy is left as undefined as the qualifying degree of artistic -performance. The same lady will comprehend in the term the middle-aged -civil servant who haunts studios of an evening, wears pale tweeds, but -is otherwise a pearl of inartistic chivalry, and the scaramouch of a -painter, whom she calls "charming" because he is clever, and whose -absorption in art has entirely ruined him as a social being. I propose -another question. Why are Bohemians so called? The answer seems -easy--because they live in Bohemia. And Bohemia? Again the label -produces a difficulty. To pursue any geographical inquiries concerning -Bohemia in a Socratic spirit would quickly produce exasperation in any -catechumen, and I will presume the result without the method. The -answers would generally amount to this: that it seems agreed, simply -since the word is used, that there is a Bohemia, but its latitude and -longitude are indefinable. It is not confined to Chelsea or St. John's -Wood, or even, of course, to England; apparently it transcends the -ordinary differences of nationality, existing always and everywhere. The -possibility of its having existed once and somewhere--I give away freely -at this early stage the foundation of this book--never occurs, for -labels have a tremendous potency of suggestion. Bohemia is commonly -assumed to exist now in the midst of this commercial day. It is -generally accepted--with more or less warmth according to individual -tastes--as an institution not, perhaps, entirely desirable for itself, -but a necessary patch in the motley dress of civilization. It is -proclaimed gleefully or admitted under constraint, as the case may be, -that clever, artistic men and women, wisely or perversely, choose to -gather there, and that certain epithets, such as quaint, amusing, -unconventional--the ethical implications of the adjectives differing -with their user--are applicable to it. But _la vie de Bohème_, once so -vivid a reality, has now no tangible substance: it wanders about, the -palest ghost of a legend, formless and indistinct. The young may look -forward to it and the old pretend to look back on it, but young and old, -in either case, are turning their mind's eye upon a mere abstraction. -The word "Bohemian" has become as conventional as "gentleman," with less -content for all its greater glamour. - -The glamour of Bohemia, too, is projected from a paradox. On the -assumption that it exists, those who wish to live in Bohemia idealize -it; those who have lived in it boast of it; and those who might have -lived in it, but did not, pretend that they did. Yet those who wish to -live in it know nothing of it, and those who lived in it, for all their -boasting, have left it. It seems to take shape, like a mirage, only in -prospect or retrospect. There are witnesses to the distant glint of its -magic towers in the rosy mists of sunrise or the golden haze of sunset, -but of the light and shade within its streets there are none, for those -who might be supposed to be passing through its gates are strangely -reticent, and seem mysteriously to lose the sense of their glorious -nationality. A man may say with a thrill, "I will be a Bohemian," or -with a glow, "I was a Bohemian," but of him who said, "I am a Bohemian," -the only proper view would be one of deepest suspicion. He would -certainly be a masquerader. - -Yet many people, at least in England, do so masquerade--people who -affect Chelsea, slouch hats, and ill-cut garments, who haunt Soho -restaurants, talk and smoke cigarettes in half a dozen studios, toady -sham genius, flutter in emancipatory "movements," and generally do -nothing on quite enough a year. Not long ago a distinguished artist, -genially inspired by dinner at a club of Bohemian traditions and most -respectable membership, gave utterance to the view that, though the -velvet coat had disappeared before evening dress, the Bohemian still -existed. Upon that a writer in an evening paper made the wise comment: - - "There are people, it is true, who indulge in mild - unconventionality; they feed in Soho, and talk of cabarets. But - these people are seldom artists and never Bohemian. The - unconventionality of these people is a mere outward pose, which - compels any artist who wishes to preserve his individuality and - good name to pay careful attention to the external forms. - Bohemianism, such as it was, sprang up in Paris, and that is - sufficiently good reason for its failure in England." - -The journalist has here risen above the temptation of the label, and his -words are just. The gist of the matter lies, perhaps, in his last -sentence, but that point must wait its turn. There is no doubt that -there exists in London, not to speak of other cities, a large body of -people of varying ages, occupations, beliefs, and principles who keep up -a masquerade of Bohemianism. As a body they are worthy citizens enough, -whose intelligence on some subjects is above the average, but they are -masqueraders none the less if they wish to pass as _enfants de Bohème_. -A reason for this masquerade may be found partly in the very human love -of "dressing up" which is never to be discouraged, partly in the -glorification of Bohemia in which writers of novels and reminiscences -are prone to indulge. Probably George du Maurier's "Trilby" has been -responsible for more misconceptions on this matter than any other single -book, on account of its very charm, a charm that needs no further praise -at this date. The author himself, who wrote about that which he knew, -made no extravagant claims to have drawn Bohemia in the early part of -"Trilby," but it is that which in the eyes of most of his readers he is -unavoidably represented as doing. So far as Taffy, the Laird, and Little -Billie are concerned, they are simply transplanted Britons of the -Victorian era, art students with means enough to pursue their studies -without pot-boiling and to keep open house for a collection of other -joyous young people, of whom Svengali was alone the complete Bohemian, -while Trilby herself with perfect propriety mended their socks. Trilby's -part in this studio life is a sentimental idyll which nobody would wish -to destroy, but it is none the less true, in spite of her creator's plea -for her _quia multum amavit_ in a delightful page of circumlocution, -that he has effectually distilled out of her any essence of Bohemianism -which she is dimly represented as possessing. George du Maurier knew -Paris when Bohemia was no more, but even he must have known the rougher, -wilder, less comfortable side of the Quartier Latin. Yet that he glossed -it over is perfectly comprehensible. Even those who lived to write about -the Bohemia that once was could not help tinging their memories with the -romantic yearning of middle age. In a life where hardship and happiness -kaleidoscopically alternate, pain--especially in the shape of material -want or the sense of unjust neglect--obscures in the moment of struggle -the more brightly coloured glasses of health and joy which more often -than not surround it. In retrospect, by a merciful dispensation, the -sombre lines almost entirely disappear, only to be recalled by an -unnatural effort of memory. What stood out in retrospect, in the special -case of _la vie de Bohème_, was the happiness of youth that would never -return, its _insouciance_, its untrammelled companionships, the poetry -of its first love, its gaiety and irresponsible humour, its courage, its -ready makeshifts in adversity. The ex-Bohemian had, what the Bohemian -had not, a contrast by which to measure his regrets--the cares of -domesticity, the wearisome demands of society upon its members, the -responsibilities and cares of an assured position, howsoever humble, the -dulling of pleasure's edge, joints stiffening, hair bleaching. The snows -of yesteryear were falling upon others now; and that the young rogues -might not be too uplifted, he must write his _militavi non sine gloria_, -hinting the while that the special glory of Bohemia paled at the precise -moment of his exodus. George du Maurier poured over "Trilby" some of -this romantic recollection, and other less gifted novelists have done -the same for certain _coteries_ that have lived in London. To them is -due much of the glamour still implied in the phrase "Bohemian," a -glamour which is seldom corrected by a reading of George Gissing's "New -Grub Street." Yet no conception of Bohemia into which the sombre details -of that book will not naturally fit can possibly approach the truth. - -This last sentence, I am aware, may be used to challenge my acquaintance -with the truth since I assume its existence. To any such challenge the -whole of this book is an answer, and its reader will at the end, it is -hoped, be in possession of at least as much truth as its author, if not -the little more which criticism supplies. In the case of a subject so -little complicated an elaborate initial summary of aims and processes -and steps of proof will be unnecessary. Those who wish to do so will -have little difficulty in following a study, which provided no little -entertainment to the student, of the life that was truly to be called -Bohemian. I have been so far concerned to hint that I do not deal in any -heterogeneous parcels which have come to pass under an old label. The -label was applied at a particular time to a particular parcel, and the -one and only original parcel is the _vie de Bohème_ which in this book I -attempt to unwrap. - -It might be supposed from the commonness of allusions to Bohemia and -Bohemianism that the terms were contemporary, at least, with the -intrusion of artists and men of letters into society, and that before -the existence of the Bohemia whose capital is Prague the name of some -other nation was, in the same way, taken in vain. However, this is not -the case. The _groeculus esuriens_ to whom the Roman poet so -scornfully refers had no doubt many Bohemian qualities, but the emphasis -of the taunt is laid on his foreign nationality, not upon his mode of -existence. Even after the Bohemia of the atlas came into being it knew -for many centuries no usurper of its name. Will Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, -and the merry company of the "Mermaid" tavern neither called themselves -nor were called Bohemians. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other less -distinguished inhabitants of Grub Street suffered many verbal -indignities, but not that. Coleridge and Charles Lamb might be alluded -to as Bohemians now, but in their day the term had even yet not been -invented. Murger's preface to "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" proves that -so late as 1846 a universal understanding of his title could not be -taken for granted, since he begins by carefully distinguishing the -geographical Bohemia from the artistic. The modern sense of the term -originated, in fact, in Paris at the time of the Romantic movement, -being only an extension of the meaning of "gipsy" or "vagabond" long -attached to the word _bohémien_ in France. Our "Bohemian" was introduced -into the English language by Thackeray, who learnt it during his -student-period in Paris. - -This piece of etymology, nugatory as it may appear, is, in fact, very -important. It is the first real delimitation of our inquiry. _La vie de -Bohème_ is essentially a French term, and it is therefore fitting that -we should examine its implications in that language. Murger in his -preface is contradictory, but his very contradiction is pregnant and -valuable. At the outset he applies the term _bohémien_ to the literary -and artistic vagabonds of all ages. "La Bohème dont il s'agit dans ce -livre n'est point une race née aujourd'hui, elle a existé de tous temps -et partout, et peut revendiquer d'illustres origines." Homer, he says, -was the first Bohemian of Greek antiquity, and his tradition was carried -on by the medieval minstrels and troubadours; Pierre Gringoire and -François Villon, Clément Marot and Mathurin Regnier, Molière and -Shakespeare, Rousseau and D'Alembert were the leading citizens of their -contemporary Bohemias. This brings Murger to his own day, of which he -says: "Aujourd'hui comme autrefois, tout homme qui entre dans les arts, -sans autre moyen d'existence que l'art lui-même, sera forcé de passer -par les sentiers de la Bohème." If Chelsea were here to make a -triumphant interruption, it would have spoken too soon, for he proceeds -to give the definition which serves as an epigraph to this chapter, and, -without a word of warning, contradicts what he has said before in the -sentence: "Nous ajouterons que la Bohème n'existe et n'est possible qu'à -Paris." This is a highly serious matter. It leaves old Homer nothing but -a Greek poet, and Chelsea--well--little more than Chelsea. However, I -cannot imagine Homer objecting, and Chelsea must forgive me, if I accept -Murger's statement in the strictest possible way. Further, the Paris -implied is the Paris of Murger's own day. That this was so may appear -more clearly in the sequel, but for the present it must suffice to say -that the Paris of the Romantic period, which gave birth to Bohemia, was -unlike the Paris of earlier days in many respects, and no Romantic had -any conception of the cosmopolitan Paris of to-day. _La vie de Bohème_, -far from being a vague label, was a phrase packed with intimate meaning, -meaning which at the time was not at all so fully manifest as under -criticism and comparison it may now appear. It depended for its peculiar -qualities upon the social and material conditions of Louis Philippe's -Paris, which have long since passed away. - -We go, therefore, beyond Murger and strike out Villon, Gringoire, and -Marot from the roll of Bohemia. At most they were only potentially -enrolled and lived, like Socrates, in a state of unconscious grace. -Whether or no Bohemia can be said to exist to-day or to have existed in -the Middle Ages, at least it can only be by analogy from the very -definite and localized _Bohème_ which was part of Paris between 1830 and -1848. Though Louis Philippe, the _bourgeois_ king, the admirer of the -_juste milieu_, was her ruler, the life of Paris never beat with a -quicker pulse than in those days; never was she more gay, more witty, -more intellectually scintillating, more paradoxical, in fact more -absolutely Parisian than when Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de -Musset, the Princess Belgiojoso, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, -Nestor Roqueplan, and Baudelaire were among her citizens, when Roger de -Beauvoir was dazzling upon a truly brilliant boulevard, when the dandies -gracefully lounged and quizzed upon the steps of Tortoni's, when -Alexandre Dumas gave his famous fancy-dress ball which drew all Paris, -when Marie Dorval shone beside Mademoiselle Mars, when Fanny Elssler and -Taglioni danced while Duprez and Grisi and Rubini sang, when Gavarni and -Daumier drew their caricatures, when Musard conducted his furious -quadrilles, when there were still _salons_ in which men and women still -knew how to talk, when life was still an artistic achievement in an -artistic setting. Memoirs and reminiscences abound of this enchanted -city in the time when her intense inner light had not paled before the -glare of commercialism and cosmopolitanism, but such sketches and -side-views must yield to the all-comprehending picture contained in the -works of Balzac, that magnificent magician. Through him the Paris of -Louis Philippe shines doubly brilliant, for its world of flesh and blood -was not more wonderful than the fictitious world with which he peopled -it, a world of high and low, rich and poor, squalor and splendour, vice -and virtue, wit and stupidity--miraculous issue from one poor mortal -brain. The Princesse de Cadignan, Madame D'Espard, Madame Firmiani, and -Mademoiselle des Touches were its higher, Coralie, Esther, Jenny Cadine, -Florine, and Madame Schontz its lower, divinities, and their worshippers -were de Marsay, the engaging Lucien de Rubempré, the remarkable -Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, La Palférine, and all the corrupted crew -of Crevels, Malifats, and Camusots; in it the greasy, dirty Maison -Vauquer contrasted with the splendid boudoir of a Delphine de Nucingen, -the illuminated poverty of a D'Arthez with the vicious luxury of the -Nathans and Finots, the huge _coups_ of a Nucingen with the petty usury -of a Père Samanon, the simplicity of a Cousin Pons with the malignity -of a Cousine Bette. Into this world of feverish movement and poignant -contrasts fits _la Bohème_, lighted by its double facets of fact and -fiction. As the actual Bohemians from Pétrus Borel and Théophile Gautier -to Baudelaire and Murger play their part in the world of fact, so the -fictitious Bohemians from Raphael de Valentin and D'Arthez down to -Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard play theirs in the world of fiction. -They are all part of that pageant which, though it took eighteen years -to pass and declined in bravery towards its close, may conveniently be -called the pageant of 1830. - -To disentangle the Bohemian contingent from its accompaniment of press -and bustle is my aim in this book, which was suggested, I may frankly -say, by some meditations on a second reading of Murger's "Scènes de la -Vie de Bohème," a work of perennial delight that deserves a better -acquaintance in England. In spite of the vivid light thrown by Murger on -the life which he is describing, his stories are apt to be misleading -unless read in the light of certain knowledge--knowledge which he could -presume in his contemporaries and which it is the aim of this book, with -all humility, to revive. Murger's little volume, after it has produced -its first flush of pleasure and amusement, raises many disconcerting -questions to a thoughtful reader. The scene it paints, for instance, is -remarkably different from the two sides of literary life depicted in -Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." Neither the brotherhood of the Rue des -Quatre Vents nor the fast set into which Lousteau introduces Lucien are -connected by an obvious link with Rodolphe and his friends. Then there -is the question whether Rastignac in his days at the squalid Maison -Vauquer was in any sense a Bohemian. Or, again, it may be asked how far -fiction agrees with fact. Did Murger himself lead the same kind of life -as a Schaunard or Marcel, and if he did, was the same to be said of -other writers and artists, of Théophile Gautier or Gérard de Nerval? How -did Bohemia arise, and how far was it, as Murger asserts, a necessary -stage in the artistic life? These are some of the obvious inquiries to -which it has been my part to attempt an answer, and I would crave the -reader's indulgence if, at the outset, I seem to shrink from plunging at -once into _la vie de Bohème_. The external details of a way of life -cannot be seen in a true light if the social conditions and, still more, -the state of mind of which it was an expression are not first made -clear. For that reason a little "fringe of history" makes its appearance -and leads to a short consideration of what French writers have called -_le mal romantique_. Nevertheless, I have tried to keep the main subject -always in view, and not to be led away into discussing aspects of the -Romantic period which are not relevant. This is not, I claim with all -deference, a concoction of all the old legends and Romantic love -affairs. George Sand, for instance, and Alfred de Musset only poke -their heads in; Alfred de Vigny and Marie Dorval, Sainte-Beuve and -Madame Hugo play no part. Bohemia alone is our concern, a theme which is -displayed for what it is worth without any distracting embroideries. - -If, then--to return to the train of thought with which I began--Bohemia -turns out to be something definite, with a beginning, a development, and -an end, some negative criteria, at all events, will be supplied by which -to judge the applicability of the label "Bohemian" to any set of -conditions existing to-day, and to decide whether the disappearance of -certain special implications and unique circumstances does not drain the -term of all definite meaning except as applied, in retrospect, to the -very persons, manners, and ideas which it originally described. By -analogy from that meaning, there is no harm in saying that there have -always been, and always will be, Bohemian individuals with a Bohemian -state of mind. Richard Steele was a Bohemian; Lamb, perhaps, was a -little too staidly settled at the India House, but his friends, George -Dyer, George Burnett and, above all, Coleridge, were certainly Bohemian -individuals. They were of that ultra-Bohemian type which never grows out -of its Bohemianism, men who remain permanently in what should only be a -"stage" till they pass the age when, as Nestor Roqueplan said, the -"bohémien" risks being confounded with the "filou." Such men as -Coleridge and Dyer would be called eccentrics even in the true Bohemia; -like poor Gérard de Nerval, they were not entirely sane, and the -Bohemian _type_ had essentially perfect sanity. It is for this very -reason that _la Bohème_, at its proper time, could exist, and why before -and after that time it did not exist. Sane young men, no matter what -their fads, fancies, and enthusiasms may be, have no need and no -possibility of making to-day that particular demonstration which -resulted in Bohemia. The social forces drive them in other directions. -It has long been admitted in France that Bohemia is dead, and that it -has been or ever will be revived in England is a delusion resting upon -the unintelligent use of a word. Even young Englishmen, as we now -consider youth, are too old, far too old, to live the life of which they -flatter themselves they are preserving the tradition. The boy who has -submitted to discipline for over a dozen years, learned to honour his -neighbour on the cricket and football field and to respect society as -embodied in the unwritten laws of school life--what has he in common -with the youth in France, a bachelor of letters at eighteen, bursting -with his own individuality, passionate in pursuit of his own ideas, -revelling in his new liberty, dreaming, as only a Frenchman can dream, -of glory and love, who could attach no meaning to such a phrase as -"playing the game," wayward, capricious, uproarious, and completely -unbalanced? Yet it was such who made the traditions of _la vie de -Bohème_. To those who are impelled to break away and lead joyous, -untrammelled young lives of privation and artistic striving all sympathy -is due, but by masquerading under a tattered banner they do not revive -its glory nor increase their own. Paris once had room for Bohemia, but -London never. Chelsea and Soho, Highgate and St. John's Wood are to-day -no more Bohemian, in the true sense of the word, than Piccadilly or -Grosvenor Square. In the lapse of years a few accidental attributes of -the real Bohemia have come to be regarded as the essentials of the -false. We are fond of labels and catchwords, lightly casting away their -implications. So it has come to pass that Bohemia--that dirty, hungry, -lazy, noisy vale of youthful laughter and tears, so enchanting in -prospect or retrospect, so uncompromising in actuality, which many had -to pass through and most would have avoided--is looked on as the -pleasant home of more or less artistic natures, that men of stable -occupations, regular means, and fastidious temperaments may choose for a -dwelling-place, just as they may choose a garden city. - -Well, let them masquerade, yet Bohemia is dead, and more honour may be -done to its memory by recalling how it walked and lived than by casting -lots for its old-fashioned garments. Its virtues and its faults were -balanced as equally as its good and bad fortunes, but if it were to be -revived, the resurrection should begin with that which was its chief -glory, the intense artistic enthusiasm that was its charter. "Nous -étions ivres du beau," wrote Théophile Gautier. London, indeed, would be -the better for the infusion of a more Dionysiac spirit into her æsthetic -appreciations and ideals. But that is not of the times. At the end of -his charming book, "Les Enfants Perdus du Romantisme," M. Henri -Lardanchet quotes a speech made by the president of some university -society to the effect that the youth of to-day, preoccupied with -extremely definite problems, has no longer the poetic enthusiasm of the -past generation, whereon he is moved to exclaim: - - "Ah! ne vous glorifiez pas de l'avoir chassé, cet enthousiasme! Il - était à la fois la rose et la chanson au bord de vos vingt ans - désolés; il était l'opulence orgueilleuse de votre âge, il était - votre grâce, votre génie, votre fierté, ô jeunesse!--toute votre - jeunesse...." - -Let us take this for the epitaph of _La Bohème_. - - - - -II - -A FRINGE OF HISTORY: THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 - - -In the first chapter of Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," Marcel, -the painter, requires his _concierge_, in return for a tip of five -francs, to tell him every morning the day of the week, the date, the -quarter of the moon, the state of the weather, and the form of -government under which they are living. A hasty generalization from this -episode might conclude that the more noteworthy vicissitudes of society, -which we call history, were of singularly small importance to those -concerned with Bohemia. The main current of events, it would seem, -rolled on, leaving the stagnant backwater undisturbed, where, in the -easy garment of "art for art's sake," a few geniuses and many -_dilettanti_ lolled the day through in unpatriotic apathy. Such a -conclusion from Murger's picture of Bohemia is, in fact, inevitable, but -it is a wrong one, and the fault lies only with Murger. The French -people, at any rate the Parisians, are extremely susceptible to the -impressions of passing events, political, artistic, or social. They are -more excitable, as we say, than ourselves. We only become agitated in -response to orders from Fleet Street, whereas they are apt to ferment -spontaneously, their natural liveliness of mind acting as the yeast. It -is this quality of interest in passing events, fostered by their -fondness for discussion, which renders their criticism so trenchant and -their partisanship so ardent. So that we can scarcely believe Bohemia, -eclectic as it was, to have been unmoved or, at least, uninfluenced by -the objects of contemporary comment or debate. For this reason our -picture would be seen in a false light without some reference to -history. Moreover, I have been rash enough to impose upon myself the -limitation of dates, which are dangerous things in themselves, always -requiring justification. I put the classic period of _la vie de Bohème_ -between 1830 and 1848, the exact period of Louis Philippe's reign. At -first sight the reign of this _bourgeois_ prince would seem to have -little enough connexion with the florescence and decadence of the very -antitype of _bourgeoisie_, but this is only a further reason for not -neglecting history. The Revolution of 1830 was of the highest importance -for France: it was the inevitable explosion of dissatisfaction, both -political and artistic, with the powers that ruled. What I wish to make -clear is that, whereas before this date Bohemia, if it existed, was but -an unconsidered fringe on the ancient student life of the Quartier -Latin, after 1830 it not only received a population but became a force. -For a few years it was an integral part of the larger Paris, a -considerable element in public opinion and, to some extent, in social -life, a factor that could not be ignored. Disturbance, however, yielded -to peace, and the interests of the public shifted. The living spirit of -Bohemia gradually hardened into a dead tradition. By 1848 independence -and individual liberty, the watchwords of Bohemia, were replaced in the -mind of citizens by thoughts of social reform which culminated in the -Republic of 1848. Art, for the time, fell from her place of glory, and -Bohemia relapsed for ever into obscurity. - -The battle of Waterloo seemed to have undone all the good of the -Revolution of 1789. The Bourbons came back to power, with Louis XVIII, a -lazy man, on the throne, and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, leading a -band of ultra-Royalists behind him. The ultra-Royalists, exasperated by -the "hundred days," were breathing fire and slaughter, full of zeal to -destroy the liberty and philosophy of the Revolution and to replace it -with absolutism and priest-rule. Against them was arrayed the party of -"Independents" with Béranger, their poet, and between the two were the -"doctrinaires" or moderate Royalists. The "Ultras," whose violence began -by damaging their own cause, were put into power by the assassination of -the Duc de Berry in 1820, and Villèle was their minister. The succession -of Charles X only strengthened the forces of reaction, till in 1828 -Villèle was defeated and gave place to a Liberal, Martignac. But -Martignac's party were not strong enough to support him long, and in -1829 he was succeeded by Polignac and a Royalist ministry. The Liberals -now prepared for stubborn resistance. Societies were formed, with -branches throughout the provinces, which were joined by all shades of -Liberal opinion, and their hero was Lafayette. The blindness of Charles -X precipitated events. Exasperated by the adverse result of the -elections of 1830, he suspended the constitution by his famous -ordinances on July 26. Paris rose at once, and four days later all was -over. Louis of Orleans was in Paris by the 30th, and took the oath as -King in August. This is only a bald statement of facts, but they are -facts that can be seen by the eye of imagination. By 1830 Paris was a -boiling cauldron of passionate enthusiasm. Revolution was aflame once -more. Barricades--the mere word is a trumpet-call to Frenchmen--had been -erected once more in the streets, and once more blood had flowed in -their defence. Paris for years had smouldered with indignation, and now -her young men glowed with triumph. The people should come to its own -again, and they should be its champions. The eyes of France were on -them, and they knew that their comrades in the provinces, intoxicated by -the songs of Béranger, enraged by the petty vexations of Royalist -officials, were envying them their opportunity and eagerly looking for -any chance that would bring them to the city that so nobly stood for -liberty. - -The Revolution of 1830 was not only political, it was also artistic, and -the artistic results were really the more permanent. This artistic -revolution is generally known as the Romantic movement, about which so -much has been written that I need not refer to it at length. Just as the -Liberal spirit smouldered for many years against the Royalist -oppression, so the Romantic spirit smouldered against the restraints of -the dead classic tradition of the eighteenth century. The process of -combustion, beginning as it did with Rousseau, was a slow one, and, as -it has been said, Romanticism only potentially existed, as a movement, -before 1820. In that year Victor Hugo founded his journal, the -_Conservateur Littéraire_, gathering round him a brilliant company of -writers. For ten years the movement grew in intensity, fostered by the -institution of _cénacles_ and the only too successful proselytism of -Victor Hugo, who disdained no recruit whom he could by flattery enlist. -It is not too much to say that the youth of all France was fired by the -revolt against classicism in poetry and drama. Every schoolboy wrote -verses and every ardent soul longed to enter the very arena in Paris, -where the _perruques_ of the Institute were so signally defied. Paris -became doubly desirable as the field on which political and artistic -liberty were being won. The triumph came in 1830 with the performance of -"Hernani." That victory of the Romantic army is now a commonplace, but -in 1830 it was magnificently new, and it was, moreover, the public -manifestation of _la Bohème_. The effect of this double excitement was -overwhelming. It literally tore the more intelligent among the young men -of France from the roots of all their attachments and interests. To -establish liberty, to revolutionize literature, these were their dreams, -in comparison with which all ordinary professional prospects seemed -dreary and unworthy. So the year 1830 saw Paris harbouring in her -garrets a host of enthusiasts, most of them very young, burning with -ideals and flushed with apparently glorious victories. They felt -themselves incorporated in one great brotherhood of defiance to -established authority, so that those who mocked their poverty and -lawlessness in the name "Bohemian" were unconsciously justified, for a -corporate name is the sign of a corporate existence. _La Bohème_ in 1830 -was not a haphazard collection of _dilettanti_ and artistic eccentrics; -it was a fellowship inspired by similar enthusiasms and bound together -by the struggle against similar misfortunes. - -Misfortunes, indeed, were not slow to come. Society is wonderfully quick -to repair the breaches in its walls made by gallant assaulters, and the -heroes who have been foremost in the attack find that their bravely made -passage has closed behind them, and that they are left to be broken and -starved into submission. So it was after 1830. Louis Philippe was at -heart a Royalist who had little understanding of the Revolution. His -great achievement was to keep on his throne for eighteen years by -encouraging the moneyed middle class, thus laying the foundation of -French industrial prosperity. _Enrichissez-vous_ was the order of the -day, an order ironically unsuitable to the reformers of Bohemia. Those -among them whose ideals were political rather than literary became -uncompromising Republicans, formed secret societies, carried on a -violent Press campaign of articles and caricatures against Louis -Philippe and his ministers, and plotted further armed risings in Paris, -the most serious of which was the ill-fated insurrection of the Cloître -Saint-Merri in 1832. They were to find that they had presumed too far -upon their strength. In spite of the Legitimist risings in La Vendée, -labour troubles at Lyons, and disaffection in Paris, Louis Philippe's -government was powerful enough to meet all emergencies. Press laws were -made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures -were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. -Above all, the _bourgeoisie_ held firm. They were tasting prosperity and -power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with -their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political -excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who -had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and -repression. Their bright dreams faded away into grey reality; they found -themselves suspects and outcasts, with the problem of subsistence, -instead of being miraculously solved, only rendered more acute. They had -no outlet for their energies, and those whom neither the barricades nor -the cholera of 1832 carried off saw the fellowship of assault followed -by the isolation of retreat. They drifted away in little bands to join -the societies of social reformers like Saint Simon, Fourier, or Père -Enfantin. Consumption, starvation, and suicide were the ends of many of -them, and their traces gradually faded from Bohemia, which became -identified purely with the lives of its literary and artistic -inhabitants. - -The poets and artists of Bohemia survived longer, not only as -individuals, but as a united brotherhood, mainly because artistic -rebellion cannot be put down, as it does not manifest itself, by force, -and also because the campaign in which "Hernani" was the central -engagement really culminated in a lasting victory. For some years after -1830 there was plenty for the young band to do in reducing block-houses -and chasing the persistent critics of the old school, who conducted a -most robust guerilla warfare. Yet hardship and misfortune dogged their -footsteps also. The Romantic victory of 1830 was won by an army; its -spoils were shared by the few leaders--Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, de -Vigny--who, as M. Henri Lardanchet has rather unkindly said,[1] "without -a word of farewell or a motion of gratitude abandoned their army to -famine." To tell the truth, many of the devoted enthusiasts were young -men of mediocre talents at a day when the standard was very high. Verses -were a drug in the market, and he was a lucky man who could earn a few -francs by filling a column or two in a little fashion paper boasting a -few hundred subscribers. Journalism was not yet a commercially -flourishing business, expenses were high, subscribers few, and Press -laws menacing. The starveling poets and dramatists of Bohemia fell upon -lean years, in which the weaker and more utterly destitute were -destroyed by their privations, like Elisa Mercoeur and Hégésippe -Moreau. Nevertheless, the Romantics were not crushed out of existence. -The stout hearts of those who held out still beat to a common measure, -and maintained artistic fellowship in an ideal as an essential element -of _la vie de Bohème_. - -Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been -since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was -glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. -Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the -extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular -army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. _Épater -le bourgeois_ was a legitimate war-cry when the _bourgeois_ stood for -all that was reactionary in art. To scare the grocer with a slouch hat -and a medieval oath was not only a youthful ebullition, it was a -symbolic act. The sombrero defied artistic convention as typified in the -top hat; the medieval oath, in its contrast with the paler expletives of -modernity, symbolized the return to life and colour in art after a -century of grey abstraction. It was with the decline of Romanticism that -Bohemia lost its living spirit. Unlike Republicanism, that gathered -unseen strength in failure to blossom for a more worthy generation, -Romanticism lost its vitality through its very success. It may be -likened to some conflux of waters which to force from its way the inert -mass of an obstacle rises to a mighty head: the obstacle is swept away, -and the seething waters resolve themselves into a workaday river humbly -serving the sea. So the Romantic movement has served literature for many -decades now, and it was quietly flowing between the banks before Louis -Philippe lost his throne. Success, it might be said, came to it too -soon, especially as success in that day meant money. The dangers of -Republicanism were staved off for the moment by force; the dangers of -Romanticism were for ever discounted by payment. Authorship was made to -serve a commercial end, and all was over. In 1836 Emile de Girardin -founded _La Presse_, which was sold at a far lower price than any other -paper. The inevitable followed. Circulation went up by leaps and bounds, -contributors were paid respectable prices, expenses were defrayed by the -profits of advertisement, and journalism in France was at once on a -commercial footing, for other papers were not slow to follow. -Literature, from being purely an art, quickly became a trade. The -struggle for a new artistic ideal gave way to the struggle for loaves -and fishes, which is contemporary with mankind. A man's artistic creed -went for nothing, when all the public asked was that he should make -himself conspicuous before they gave him their countenance. Once -artistic success became a matter of royalties it was an easy prey to -_bourgeois_ conditions, which were that art and literature should either -be merely entertaining or point a respectable moral. Only a few -Romantics were proof against this insidious influence. To those -recalcitrants we owe the motto "Art for art's sake." - -The effect of this change upon Bohemia is not difficult to imagine. _La -vie de Bohème_ implies youth, so that its generations change as rapidly -as those of a university. The generation of 1830 had either disappeared -or become famous--that is, potentially rich--in a few years. The -struggle which had convulsed all Paris was a thing of the past, and -Romanticism was so far accepted, swallowed, and digested that by 1843 -the necessity was felt for reverting to the classical tradition again, -for a change, with the so-called _école de bon sens_. There was no -longer any trumpet-call to which Bohemia could respond as a brotherhood, -as Victor Hugo learned when, on wishing to enlist a fresh army to go -into battle for "Les Burgraves," he was told "il n'y a plus de jeunes -gens." The swaggering heroes of 1830 were now writers of successful -novels and comedies, or safely chained, as critics, to the careers of -remunerative journals. Rebellion was impossible, for there was nothing -to rebel against. Success depended more upon individual enterprise than -common enthusiasm. There was nothing left, therefore, for the new -generations of Bohemia but to fall back upon tradition. If there was no -more certainty in ideals there was at least something definite in slouch -hats and medieval oaths, in defying conventions of dress and accepted -table manners. So the symbols of Romanticism became the realities of -Bohemia after all that they symbolized was as lifeless as a cancelled -bank-note. Further, the population of Bohemia lost that great asset in -life, personal pride. Their predecessors of 1830 were arrogant, no -doubt, but with the arrogance of an advance-guard in a desperate -venture. There was no desperate venture now toward, and advance meant, -not progress, but prosperity. The poorer brethren of art who peopled -Bohemia were now, inasmuch as they were not prosperous, failures. They -had no sense of intellectual achievement to keep up their courage, when -such achievement was measured in gold. It was inevitable that their -_moral_ should be affected; the recklessness, which was formerly that of -bravado, became that of despair, and a less reputable atmosphere grew -up round Bohemia which has never been dispelled from its tradition. - -Nevertheless, dead as the spirit was, the tradition of 1830 remained -very strong, being kept alive not only by oral transmission, as all -traditions are, but also by the art of the sturdy few who remained -faithful to the uncompromising standard of disinterestedness in art -which it implied. Gautier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, the de Goncourts, and a -few others stood out unflinchingly against commercialism on the one hand -and prosy doctrinairism on the other. Their struggle was not wholly -effectual, but, so far as Bohemia is concerned, was important. After -1848, when everything had to have a social "purpose" and art for its own -sake seemed dead, they sat down, like the Psalmist, by the rivers of -Babylon and remembered Zion. From their regrets the legend of _la sainte -Bohème_ arose idealized and purified, and it was made immortal in pages -of prose by Gautier and in de Banville's "Ballade de ses regrets pour -l'an 1830." This legend, tinged as it already was with sentiment, spread -to the public, by whom it was resentimentalized, a fact of which other -authors, Murger included, were not slow to take advantage. - - "Ils savaient tirer parti des ressemblances réelles entre la vie de - Bohème et la vie de l'étudiant bourgeois au 'Pays latin' pour - établir une confusion avantageuse, confusion qui est déjà manifeste - dans les 'Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.' Chanter ainsi la Bohème - c'était un peu chanter la jeunesse bourgeoise."[2] - -If this be true, then Bohemia after 1848, when the public interest was -purely absorbed in Socialistic reforms, lapsed once more into being a -mere fringe on the student life, and, as such, equally negligible. Its -classic days were over, never to return, for the society of Paris grew -too large to be again convulsed by a purely artistic conflict. The -leaders of the new _Parnasse_ made a considerable sensation, but they -founded, not a new Bohemia, but only another _cénacle_. History -establishes the florescence and decline of the classic _vie de Bohème_ -beyond much doubt, for it went with the florescence and decline of a -common spirit. - - - - -III - -LE MAL DU SIÈCLE - - -I have identified the classic period of Bohemia with the time of the -Romantic victory. It was not then lighted by dim lanterns hung outside -the door of every artistic idiosyncrasy, but reflected flamboyantly a -general state of mind. I disclaim once for all the intention of adding -another to the many studies of the Romantic movement, but in my aim of -explaining the living reality out of which grew the tradition of _la vie -de Bohème_ I am compelled to dwell upon the turgid mental content of the -early nineteenth century. The eccentricities of Bohemia were then but -slight exaggerations of a universal spiritual ferment, though, after the -good wine was made, a later and decadent Bohemia artificially reproduced -the symptoms of a process that was formerly natural and necessary. _Le -mal romantique_, _le mal du siècle_, are common phrases upon the lips of -French critics, who to-day affect to treat with contempt what was, after -all, a new Renaissance. Without adopting their attitude, it must be -admitted that, inestimable as were its results, it was an alarming -convulsion. The English took it in a milder and earlier form. Its most -extreme manifestation, Byron and the "Satanic" school, was a thing of -the past before 1830. But the French were thoroughly and virulently -affected, and exhibited all the most violent symptoms. - -We may best begin, perhaps, by looking at a particular "subject," to use -a medical phrase, in the correspondence of J.-J. Ampère, son of the -great scientist. The younger Ampère, after a violent adoration of Madame -Récamier, who was old enough to be his mother, settled down into a most -respectable and successful man of letters, and he was never in any sense -a Bohemian. He was a well-educated and perfectly normal man, so that the -ravages of _le mal du siècle_ may be well judged when he writes to his -friend, Jules Bastide, in 1820: - - "My dear Jules, last week the feeling of malediction was upon me, - round me, within me. I owe this to Lord Byron; I read through twice - at a sitting the English 'Manfred.' Never, never in my life has - anything I have read overwhelmed me as that did; it has made me - ill. On Sunday I went to see the sunset upon the Place de - l'Esplanade; it was as threatening as the fires of hell. I went - into the church, where the faithful were peacefully chanting the - Hallelujah of the Resurrection. Leaning against a column, I looked - at them with disdain and envy." - -Two months later Jules Bastide delivered his soul in a similar strain: - - "I feel that the slightest emotions might send me mad or kill me. - The evening of our parting I opened at random a volume of Madame - de Staël and read the dream of Jean Paul. When I came to that - terrible line, 'Christ, nous n'avons point de père,' a shudder - seized me. An hour later I had a fever; it lasted a fortnight." - -Another friend wrote to Ampère in 1824: - - "All my ideas turn towards Africa.... Is it solitude that I seek in - Africa? Yes, but it is not only that; it is the desert, the - palm-tree, the musk-rose, the Arab! A romanesque and _barbaresque_ - future is what ravishes me." - -In 1825 Ampère, then twenty-five years old, wrote to Madame Récamier: - - "Return, for my life is no longer tolerable without you; my spirit - is wholly employed in trying to _support_ the emptiness of my - days." - -In these delirious passages are contained the most marked symptoms of -the time, the satanic gloom that drew its inspiration from Byron, the -nervous sensibility imitated from the heroes of Madame de Staël, -Châteaubriand, and Sénancour, and the longing for a life of Oriental -colour which found a later expression in Victor Hugo's poems. However, -it would be unfair to put down this spiritual _bouleversement_ to the -influence of "René," "Obermann," "Werther's Leiden," or "Manfred." They -became, indeed, the breviaries of the afflicted, but the cause of the -affliction lay deeper in the reaction of the French nation after the -Napoleonic wars. Napoleon's victorious campaigns drained France of its -best blood and its best energies, leaving an inheritance of anæmia and -neurasthenia to the next generation, without diminishing that feverish -desire for glory, that determination to work one's will upon a passive -world, which was the spirit of Napoleon's armies. Older and more settled -people were content to reap the rewards of peace, but the young men, -exalted by the exploits of their fathers, looked in vain for some -channel in which to discharge their superfluous electricity. Under the -restored Bourbons there was none. The fathers had had free play upon -historic battlefields, the sons were cribbed and confined in the narrow -bounds of everyday life. Moreover, the revolutionary wars had revealed -vast, unexplored pastures to the French mind. New countries, languages, -and literatures were brought into its view. The gorgeous East, in -particular, seized upon the French imagination. The desert was vast and -untrodden, the Arab was dignified and free, and under unclouded skies -the primitive nobility of mankind revealed itself in splendour and -space. - -Here, then, is the root of _le mal du siècle_ from which the divers -symptoms sprang. Of these, perhaps, the most marked and most general was -an exaggerated sensibility, a kind of melancholy madness. Young Henri -Dubois, who at any other epoch would have been content to learn his -trade behind the counter of Dubois and Dupont, cloth merchants, and to -settle down into a peaceful home with Mademoiselle Dupont, now plied -the yard measure with disgust and yearned for an existence more worthy -of his "complicated state of mind." He was a perfect magazine of pent-up -emotions, ready to expire in a delirium of joy or an ecstasy of despair -after the manner of René and Werther. He was quite willing to love -Mademoiselle Dupont on the condition that she would lend herself to a -tempestuous passion, allow her hands to be bathed in tears for hours -together by her prostrate cavalier, receive folios of hysterical ravings -by the post, and dread the fatal dagger if she had smiled from her desk -at a customer. She was urged daily to fly to a brighter destiny upon -distant shores, and nightly trembled that the coming morning would find -Henri transfixed by his own poniard. It was impossible to be reasonable; -only a clod, dead to all beauty, could be so brutal. M. Louis Maigron, -who in his book, "Le Romantisme et les Moeurs," gives some very -remarkable instances of these aberrations in actual correspondence, says -very truly: "Une foule de 'cratères' ont alors superbement fumé au nez -des bourgeois." The Romantic ideal supposed a sensibility always -stretched to its utmost, _des âmes excessives_, as M. Bourget says,[3] -capable of constant renewal, and a consumption of emotional energy which -is irreconcilable with the laws of any organism. If a young man failed -for a moment to find food for melancholy broodings in the shortcomings -of society, he could always fall back for a good groan upon his own -insufficiencies of sensibility. Now, of course, the "feelings of -malediction" which afflicted the Henri Dubois are of small moment in -themselves. Time comfortably settled them down. It was the young men of -real sensibility and imagination, the coming poets and artists, in whom -the ravages of _le mal du siècle_ were more than a passing phase. The -boundless yearnings that found expression in such lines as these: - - _Amour, enthousiasme, étude, poésie!_ - _C'est là qu'en votre extase, océan d'ambroisie_ - _Se noîraient nos âmes de feu!_ - _C'est là que je saurais, fort d'un génie étrange,_ - _Dans la création d'un bonheur sans mélange_ - _Être plus artiste que Dieu_[4]-- - -could not but lead to a profound dissatisfaction with existence, which -Maxime du Camp in his reminiscences very happily describes: - - "It was not only a fashion [he says], as might be believed; it was - a kind of general prostration which made our hearts sad, darkened - our thoughts, and caused us to see a deliverance in the glimpse of - death. You would have thought that life held in chains souls that - had caught sight of something superior to terrestrial existence. We - did not aspire to the felicities of paradise: we dreamed of taking - possession of the infinite, and we were tortured by a vague - pantheism of which the formula was never found.... The artistic and - literary generation which preceded me and that to which I belonged - had a youth of lamentable sadness, sadness without cause and - without object, abstract sadness, inherent in the individual or in - the period.... - - "Nobody was allowed to be without an _âme incomprise_; it was the - custom and we conformed to it. We were 'fatal' and 'accursed'; - without even having tasted life, we tumbled to the bottom of the - abyss of disillusionment. Children of eighteen years, repeating - phrases gathered from some novel or other, would say: 'J'ai le - coeur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie,' and one of - Pétrus Borel's heroes went to the executioner to say to him: 'I - should like you to guillotine me!' This did not prevent us from - laughing, singing, or committing the honest follies of youth; that - was also a way of being desperate; we imagined that we had a - satanic laugh, while we really possessed the fair joy of spring." - -These exquisite sensibilities, when they were not turned back upon -themselves in black despair, roamed far and wide in search of new -sensations upon which to exercise themselves. This _exotisme_, as the -French have called it, is another of the most marked symptoms of -Romanticism. The time was ripe for its satisfaction. The French mind, -shut for so long in the formalism of the eighteenth century, now found -that there were innumerable new ways to _rêver la rêve de la vie_. The -men of learning who followed in Napoleon's wake renewed the interest in -archæology by their discoveries; the historical novels of Scott and the -history of Michelet revealed the full and generous life of earlier ages; -the forged poems of Ossian caused a perfect rage for Celtic mysticism; -and the bold lawless life of the East, with its tyrannous Ali Pashas and -its Greek patriots, shone out with a new splendour. An unsatisfied -longing for another age and another clime animated every young breast. -Societies even were formed in provincial towns in which subscriptions -were pooled, and the winner of the lucky number drew the money to take a -voyage in Italy. The glories of Greece and the grandeurs of Rome, as -savouring of the classical, appealed only to a few; other eclectics fed -upon German mysticism and the fantastic weirdness of Hoffmann's -supernatural tales. A far greater number became Celts in imagination; -dressed in the dignity of outlawry and the garb of an Irish bard or a -Scotch chieftain, they defied the haughty English. Maxime du Camp, for -instance, wrote a poem in his school-days called "Wistibrock -l'Irlandais." "When I am depressed," he says in his reminiscences, "I -read it again, and there is no vexation that resists it." Anybody who -wishes to gain some idea of the _genre frénétique_, as Nodier called it, -in its Celtic dress will derive considerable entertainment from Pétrus -Borel's "Madame Putiphar." It is full of murders and intrigues and -tirades which foam at the mouth. The hero, Patrick FitzWhyte, falls in -love with Deborah Cockermouth, daughter of Lord and Lady Cockermouth, -the opening dialogue of whom upon the battlements is magnificent. My -lord, who is described as "one of those gigantic fungous and spongy -zoophytes indigenous to Great Britain," permits himself to address my -lady as "Saint-hearted milk soup!" After a good deal of clandestine -philandering and interminable translations of imaginary Irish ballads -the young couple elope to Paris, where Madame Putiphar (Madame de -Pompadour) seduces the heroine, and the hero after a series of dreadful -adventures is imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon in the Bastille, the -taking of which by the people of Paris is described with quite -astonishing force. - -[Illustration: The Spirit of Romanticism] - -Wild adventures, horrors and tragedies in any age were fondly dwelt upon -in comparison with the insupportable monotony of contemporary life; but -the Middle Ages made a stronger appeal than any. There was a perfect -mania for medievalism. Nothing pleased overwrought imaginations more -than to picture existence amid all the riot and magnificence of those -more spacious days. How they would have rattled a sword and clanked a -spur, how defiantly tilted their plume, how breathlessly loved and how -destructively fought! Why did they not live in the joyous time when -every minute brought an adventure instead of spilling one more drop from -the cup of _ennui_, and when a man shaped his own ends according to his -passions, throwing a curse to the poor and a madrigal to the fair? Then, -all their life was not grey. Splendour of colour with ample grace of -form decked out existence like a picture by Veronese. Costly satin vied -with magnificent brocade; all was a riot of velvet and purple dyes, fur -and old lace; drinking cups, worthy of giants, chiselled by a Cellini, -offered wine worthy of the gods; swords were masterpieces of the finest -Toledo; jewelled harness caparisoned fleet Arab horses; feasts were -Gargantuan, jests more than Rabelaisian; and all this wonderful wealth -of glittering colour was thrown into magnificent relief against the -solemnity of antique battlements and the sombre shadows of Gothic -architecture. This, apart from all innovations of dramatic form, was the -secret of the delirious popularity of "Hernani," "Lucrèce Borgia," "Le -Roi s'amuse," and the "Tour de Nesle," and of the craze for historical -novels, verses in baroque metres, slouch hats _à la Buridan_, velvet -pourpoints, daggers, mysterious draperies and massive chests, drinking -cups made out of skulls, and illuminated breviaries of which Gautier -makes such fun in "Les Jeunes France." To it we owe Balzac's splendid -"Contes Drolatiques," Lassailly's "Roueries de Trialph," and Roger de -Beauvoir's "L'Écolier de Cluny." Gautier in his early poems was as -romanesque as any of his "Jeune France," as those who know his early -poems must admit. "Débauche" is a frank orgy, and "Albertus" is a gem of -the Gothic, with its supernatural setting, the "fatality" of its hero, -the horror of its _dénouement_, the wild fantasy of its witches' -chamber, and its amorous wealth of descriptive detail in which old -fabrics, old furniture, swords, daggers, and hangings abound. Victor -Hugo, above all, was the chosen bard of the Gothic and the romanesque. -Besides his dramas, his "Odes et Ballades" were in the mouth of every -child who could pay four halfpence for an hour's luxury in the _cabinet -de lecture_; and schoolboys would declaim for hours in antiphon such -passages as the invocation of "La Bande Noire": - - _O murs! ô créneaux! ô tourelles!_ - _Remparts! fossés aux ponts mouvants!_ - _Lourds faisceaux de colonnes frêles!_ - _Fiers châteaux! modestes couvents!_ - _Cloîtres poudreux, salles antiques,_ - _Où gémissaient les saints cantiques,_ - _Où riaient les rires joyeux!_ - _Églises où priaient nos mères,_ - _Tours où combattaient nos aïeux!_ - -or the frenzied descriptions of the witches' dance in "La Ronde du -Sabbat," or lines from "La Chasse du Burgrave"--which even Hugo called -"un peu trop Gothique de forme"--or with a - - _Çà, qu'on selle,_ - _Ecuyer,_ - _Mon fidèle_ - _Destrier._ - _Mon coeur ploie_ - _Sous la joie_ - _Quand je broie_ - _L'étrier_ - -proclaimed their attendance at the "Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean." - -The star of the Gothic and the medieval was indeed high in the heavens, -but it paled before the full sun of Araby and the East. Napoleon had -dreamed of a Mohammedan empire, and before his dream could fade Navarino -and Missolonghi fired men's minds again. Victor Hugo was also the -champion of Oriental rhapsody. Even in 1824 he had seen the -possibilities of Oriental colour in French verse, when he wrote "La Fée -et la Péri," a poem in which the Peri, who stands for romanticism, says: - - _J'ai de vastes cités qu'en tous lieux on admire,_ - _Lahore aux champs fleuris, Golconde, Cachemire,_ - _La guerrière Damas, la royale Ispahan,_ - _Bagdad que ses remparts couvrent comme une armure,_ - _Alep dont l'immense murmure_ - _Semble au pâtre lointain le bruit d'un océan._ - -His collection of poems entitled "Les Orientales" was published in 1829 -and took Paris by storm, provoking passionate enthusiasm and equally -passionate protest. In the preface he asserts that Orientalism is a -general preoccupation. "The colours of the East have come, as if -spontaneously, to impress themselves upon all his [the poet's] thoughts -and all his musings; his musings and his thoughts have become, in turn, -and almost without his willing it, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, -Arabic, even Spanish, for Spain, too, is the East." There are fine poems -in "Les Orientales"--"Les Djinns," for instance, will always be -famous--but it is impossible to read the volume through to-day without -considerable amusement, so very full-blooded are they. There are lofty -apostrophes to Byron and the Greeks, followed by dreadful tales of -Turkish cruelty, gruesome ballads like "La Voile," in which four -brothers kill their sister, epigraphs like "O horror! horror! horror!" -valiant Klephtes, houris, scimitars, and all the catalogue which the -poet himself gives in "Novembre": - - _Sultans et sultanes,_ - _Pyramides, palmiers, galères capitanes,_ - _Et le tigre vorace et le chameau frugal;_ - _Djinns au vol furieux, danses des bayadères,_ - _L'Arabe qui se penche au cou des dromadaires,_ - _Et la fauve girafe au galop inégale._ - _Alors éléphants blancs chargés de femmes brunes,_ - _Cités aux dômes d'or où les mois sont des lunes,_ - _Imams de Mahomet, mages, prêtres de Bel ..._ - -Then, as if Victor Hugo did not whip the passions enough, Alfred de -Musset lent a hand in the hurly-burly with his "Contes d'Espagne et -d'Italie," which made the young maniacs frantically demand: - - _Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone_ - _Une Andalouse au sein bruni?_ - _Pâle comme un beau soir d'automne!_ - _C'est ma maîtresse, ma lionne!_ - _La marquesa d'Amaëgui._ - -Delacroix, too, was sending the critics into ecstasies of rage with his -vivid Eastern scenes and the horrors of his "Massacre of Scio." The -ideas of the young men with inflamed sensibilities seethed in turbulent -disorder. To be in the movement they had to have at least a poniard and -a narghile, a medieval cloak and an Oriental divan. Those with money to -spare decorated their rooms like sombre Gothic manors, those with no -money enriched their conversations with a wealth of medieval diction. No -make-believe was too ridiculous to shut out the actual place and time in -which they lived. Balzac's novel "La Peau de Chagrin," which has won a -celebrity far beyond its merits, is most unmistakably marked with the -frenzies of 1830. His revelling in the supernatural, the massed effects -of careful detail in the description of the curiosity shop where the -wild-ass skin hangs, the wild riot of the orgy, the terrific excesses in -which Valentin ruins his life, the duel and the horrible end, are just -as much the _genre frénétique_ as anything by Pétrus Borel. The hero, -Valentin, is simply a type of his time, and his tirade on taking the -supernatural skin is hardly an exaggeration: - - "Je veux que la débauche en délire et rugissante nous emporte, dans - son char à quatre chevaux, par delà les bornes du monde, pour nous - verser sur des plages inconnues! Que les âmes montent dans les - cieux ou se plongent dans la boue, je ne sais si alors elles - s'élèvent ou s'abaissent, peu m'importe! Donc, je commande à ce - pouvoir sinistre de me fondre toutes les joies dans une joie. Oui, - j'ai besoin d'embrasser les plaisirs du ciel et de la terre dans - une dernière étreinte, pour en mourir. Aussi souhaité-je et des - priapées antiques après boire, et des chants à réveiller les morts, - et de triples baisers, des baisers sans fin dont la clameur passe - sur Paris comme un craquement d'incendie, y réveille les époux et - les inspire une ardeur cuisante qui les rajeunissent tous, même les - septuagénaires!" - -As for the "orgy," it was so much a fashion that Gautier in his "Les -Jeune France" scores a delightful hit with the story of a society of -young men who combine for a colossal feast, in which various sections -follow out in exact detail the descriptions of orgies given by their -favourite novelists and the end is a farcical confusion. - -Building castles in Spain is a fascinating pastime, but the ingenuities -of imagination cannot entirely shut out the individual from his -surroundings. From 1820 to 1830 the young man of France was continually -running against the sharp corners of the world and receiving the elbow -prods of his fellow-men. Exalted by his excited sensibility, he -conceived at once a contempt and a hatred for the insensibility of -society, which produced in him a feeling of moral superiority and -solitude. This abnormal vanity, shown in the deification of "l'homme -supérieur" and a proud contemplation of his social outlawry, is a third -marked symptom of _le mal du siècle_.[5] It broke out in several -different forms. One was a romantic worship of energy and strong will, -as typified by the career of Napoleon. Given these qualities, a man -could rise from the lowest depths to impose his wishes on the world. -However, self-styled supermen have invariably found their theories -rebellious to practical application, and Henri Dubois, if he started -upon a Napoleonic path, soon discovered that society selects its "homme -supérieur" when it wants him, and that uncalled-for aspirants receive -the point of its toe. He reserved his superiority, therefore, more -usually, for less material manifestations and conflicts. His rare -spirit, susceptible to all "the finer shades," stood mournfully but -prudently on high, scorning the base, unfeeling throng below it, and -calling out through space for kindred spirits to cherish. "My friend, -take care of yourself," writes young Ampère to his friend. "Obermann -cries to us, 'Keep close together, ye simple men who feel the beauty of -natural things.' Let us help one another, all of us who suffer." So -Henri Dubois and his friends suffered and helped one another, shedding -pints of tears and being just as ridiculous as they could be. - -Solitary suffering makes men philosophers or poets. Philosophy requiring -some intellectual capacity and mental preparation, Henri Dubois often -took the further step from crying in the wilderness to enshrining his -laments in metre, being encouraged in this by the certain fact that -young men and true poets were indeed striking the Romantic harp to a new -and surprising tune. The poet was the real "homme supérieur" of the -time, not only in fancy but in fact. Henri accordingly proceeded another -stage towards sublimity by way of the faulty syllogism: "The poet has an -exquisite soul; I have an exquisite soul; therefore I am a poet." The -Romantics conceived the poet as a God-sent prophet. This was the -attitude, above all, of de Vigny; Lamartine and Sainte-Beuve adopted it -in their early days, and certain passages of Victor Hugo--for instance: - - _O poètes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes,_ - _Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes,_ - _Sur les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons,_ - _Sur les déserts pieux où l'esprit se recueille,_ - _Sur les bois que l'automne emporte feuille à feuille,_ - _Sur les lacs endormis dans l'ombre des vallons!_ - ---show that he was not averse to it. So every youth who could rhyme -"âme" with "flamme" put on the aureole of a "poète échevelé," revelled -in the ecstasies of solitary contemplation, and sneered magnificently at -all who attended to business as soulless _épiciers_. This was a harmless -enough delusion, but it became less harmless when combined with the idea -that for the sake of experience the poet should abandon himself entirely -to his passions. The great artist, indeed, has his own morality, but -Victor Hugo's "Mazeppa" or Lamartine's stanza - - _Mais nous, pour embraser les âmes,_ - _Il faut brûler, il faut ravir_ - _Au ciel jaloux ses triples flammes:_ - _Pour tout peindre, il faut tout sentir._ - _Foyers brûlants de la lumière,_ - _Nos coeurs de la nature entière_ - _Doivent concentrer les rayons,_ - _Et l'on accuse notre vie!_ - _Mais ce flambeau qu'on nous envie_ - _S'allume au feu des passions_ - -were dangerous matchboxes in the hands of children. It was a fatality, -too, that several poets of some merit died during these years of want or -neglect. Gilbert, the satirist, expired in hospital, breathing piteous -plaints, and Hégésippe Moreau, the poet of "La Voulzie," was equally -unfortunate. Society can hardly be blamed for not supporting all its -lyrically inclined members, but it was natural that the "poète échevelé" -should smoulder with indignation at such disasters, and cheer the -sentiments of de Vigny's drama "Chatterton" till his lungs gave out. It -was still more of a fatality that certain other poets attained a -momentary celebrity by committing suicide, leaving rhymed farewells to a -stony-hearted society and a tedious life. To win fame by a pathetic -death in a pauper's hospital, or to bid defiance to the world with a -superb gesture of self-destruction, was a far too common ambition. -Sainte-Beuve himself observed that "la manie et la gageure de tous les -René, de tous les Chatterton de notre temps, c'était d'être grand poète -et de mourir." A perfect epidemic of suicide was due to _le mal du -siècle_, as M. Louis Maigron shows in his work that I have already -cited. Among other strange stories he gives at length the confession of -an old man who in his youth was president of a suicide club, formed in a -provincial town by a set of romantic schoolboys as late as 1846. Happily -the club was short-lived, but it resulted in the self-destruction of one -of its most gifted members. In the letter with which he announced his -coming death from Lucerne he wrote: - - " ...I have no precise reason to have done with life except the - insurmountable disgust with which it inspires me. Chance of birth - gave me a certain fortune; I am not denied an intelligence perhaps - slightly above the common level; it would have been in my power to - marry an adorable child: so many conditions of happiness, in the - eyes of the vulgar. But my poor soul, alas, cannot content itself - with them. Nothing can charm my heart any longer, 'mon coeur - lassé de tout, même de l'espérance'; it will be closed, without - ever having been opened." - -He left his little library to the club, specially reserving for the -president "Werther," "René," "Obermann," "Jacques," and the works of -Rabbe. They were his breviaries, he said, covered as they were with -notes that revealed all his soul. - -The pose of pathetic despair was not, however, the only one in which the -feeling of moral solitude showed itself. Another very common attitude -was that of revolt against society, an aping of Mephistopheles, the -fallen angel doomed to everlasting unhappiness, strong only in his -disillusionment and his clear vision of the canker in the heart of every -bud. The word "satanism" summed up this attitude: its breviaries were -"Manfred" and Dumas' violent tragedy, "Antony." It rejoiced in the cult -of the horrible, in Hoffmannesque dabblings in the supernatural, in -pessimistic poetry like Gautier's "Tête de Mort," and such lines in his -early sonnets as: - - _Mais toute cette joie est comme le lierre_ - _Qui d'une vieille tour, guirlande irregulière,_ - _Embrasse en les cachant les pans démantelés,_ - _Au dehors on ne voit que riante verdure,_ - _Au dedans, que poussière infecte et noire ordure,_ - _Et qu'ossements jaunis aux décombres mêlés._ - -Its effects, in society, were chiefly obtained by the satanic laugh. -Gautier soon grew out of his satanic mood, Dumas was never anything more -than a fine romancer, while Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Vigny were -too lofty poets to indulge in such artificialities; but satanism -deserves mention because it was a traditional business with one party in -the romantic Bohemia--the party of the _Bousingots_. - -[Illustration: Bousingots] - -The origin of the term _Bousingot_ has been a matter of dispute among -French writers. Philibert Audebrand in his memoir of Léon Gozlan says it -was invented by that brilliant journalist to satirize the young -republican enthusiasts of 1832 in the _Figaro_. Charles Asselineau in -his "Bibliographie Romantique" says that after some hilarious souls had -been arrested for singing too loudly in the streets "Nous avons fait du -bousingo"--_bousingo_ being the slang for "noise"--it became a popular -designation for the more furious Romantics. The matter seems to be -settled more or less in Asselineau's manner by a passage in the letter -written by Philothée O'Neddy to Asselineau after the publication of the -"Bibliographie Romantique" to give a more correct account of the second -_cénacle_. He asserts that there never were any self-styled -_Bousingots_, but that after the arrest of the hilarious revellers the -affair got into the newspapers and the term remained as a _bourgeois_ -hit at the Romantics. The proper spelling of the word was _bouzingo_, -and Gautier exclaimed one day: "These asses of _bourgeois_ don't even -know how _bouzingo_ is spelt! To teach them a little orthography several -of us ought to publish a volume of stories which we will bravely call -'Contes du Bouzingo.'" The suggestion was thought a happy one, and the -book was even advertised as imminent, but it was never written. -Gautier's promise of a contribution was afterwards redeemed in "Le -Capitaine Fracasse," but Jules Vabre's famous treatise "Sur -l'incommodité des commodes" did not progress beyond the title. In common -parlance, however, the name remained _Bousingots_, and its general -meaning was quite clear. Just as the Gothic frenzy made the party of -_Jeune-France_, who were the Christian-Royalist section of the -Romantics, so the political agitation, combined with the feeling of -antagonism to society, made the _Bousingots_. The meaning became -subsequently enlarged to express all the extravagances of the Romantics, -their idealization of the artist and their disorderly ways; but this -extension was illegitimate. Literature and poetry were, it is true, the -preoccupation of the more prominent _Bousingots_, but their distinctive -mark was a profession of ultra-democratic views and manners. The leader -of them all was the mysterious Pétrus Borel,[6] whom I have already -mentioned as the author of "Madame Putiphar." His other chief work was a -volume of poems entitled "Rhapsodies." The young men of 1830 worshipped -him as the coming champion before whom the star of Victor Hugo was -ingloriously to wane. They were grievously disappointed. After the first -crisis of _le mal du siècle_ his inspiration faded away, and he died an -obscure officiai in Algeria. Baudelaire, in "L'Art Romantique," says of -him: - - "Without Pétrus Borel, there would have been a lacuna in - Romanticism. In the first phase of our literary revolution the - poet's imagination turned especially to the past.... Later on its - melancholy took a more decided, more savage, and more earthy tone. - A misanthropical republicanism allied itself with the new school, - and Pétrus Borel was the most extravagant and paradoxical - expression of the spirit of the _Bousingots_.... This spirit, both - literary and republican, as opposed to the democratic and bourgeois - passion which subsequently oppressed us so cruelly, was moved both - by an aristocratic hate, without limit, without restriction, - without pity, for kings and the bourgeoisie, and by a general - sympathy for all that in art represented excess in colour and form, - for all that was at once intense, pessimistic, and Byronic; it was - dilettantism of a singular nature, only to be explained by the - hateful circumstances in which our bored and turbulent youth was - enclosed. If the Restoration had regularly developed in glory, - Romanticism would have never separated from the throne; and this - new sect, which professed an equal disdain for the moderate party - of the political opposition, for the painting of Delaroche or the - poetry of Delavigne, and for the king who presided over the - development of le _juste-milieu_, would have had no reason for - existing." - -Charles Asselineau fills up the picture. The _Bousingot_, he says, was -as rough and cynical as the _Jeune-France_ was dandified and exquisite, -and showed genius in discovering at once the _plastique_ of his idea. In -contrast to the extravagant luxury affected by the medievalists, he -adopted the manners of the people in habits and dress, smoking clay -pipes and drinking the "petit bleu" of low pot-houses. Instead of raving -about cathedrals, he spent his ingenuity in devising bitter satires -against the king and his officers or fresh settings in caricature for -Louis' famous _tête de poire_. "The fusillade of St.-Merry and the laws -of September were the _Bousingot's_ Waterloo. From the moment he was -forbidden to protest in a visible manner, and was deprived of his -insignia, his waistcoat, his stick, and his pipe with a pear-shaped -bowl, the _Bousingot_ had to retire. He became serious, an economist or -a humanitarian philosopher, and showed his revolt against society and -power by writing novels 'in which the idea predominated over the form.' -The novel with a tendency, that literary monstrosity, is the only legacy -left by the _Bousingot_ to the literature of the nineteenth century."[7] - -In Balzac's wonderful gallery of portraits there is a picture of a -_Bousingot_. Raoul Nathan, the author, appears frequently in his -Parisian scenes, but his outlines are only elaborated in the little-read -"Une Fille d'Eve." There was something great and fantastic in his -appearance, as if he had fought with angels or demons. He was strongly -built, with a pocked face and a tanned complexion. His long hair was -always untidy, but his eyes were Napoleonic and his mouth charming. His -clothes always looked old and worn, his cravat was askew, his long, -pointed beard untended. The grease from his hair stained his -coat-collar, and he never used a nail-brush. His movements were -grotesque, his conversation caustic and full of surprises. His talent, -great but disorderly, had shown itself in three novels and a book of -poetry: he was critic, dramatist, vaudevillist. Jealous ambition led him -to embrace politics. Beginning at the extreme of opposition, he went -from Saint Simonism to republicanism and through all the stages to -ministerialism, being rewarded by a government appointment. - - "Nathan offre un image de la jeunesse littéraire d'aujourd'hui, de - ses fausses grandeurs et de ses misères réelles; il la représente - avec ses beautés incorrectes et ses chutes profondes, sa vie à - cascades bouillonnantes, à revers soudains, à triomphes inespérés. - C'est bien l'enfant de ce siècle dévoré de jalousie ... qui veut la - fortune sans le travail, la gloire sans le talent et le succès sans - peine, mais qu'après bien des rébellions, bien des escarmouches, - ses vices amènent à émarger 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 "Béatrix") 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 Pétrus Borel -himself: "He loved letters ferociously, and to-day we are encumbered -with pretty, supple writers ready to sell the muse for the potter's -field." Asselineau 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 classic _vie de Bohème_ in a true light -without taking into account this _mal du siècle_ 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 Rubempré 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 fellowship 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 friendship 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 mass 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 passion 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 makeshift of _la blague_. - - - - -IV - -PARISIAN SOCIETY--LE TOUT PARIS - - -The events of the time, the spiritual exaltation of young France, and -the _éclat_ 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 circumference, 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-class 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 space. 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 assaults. 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 multitudinous -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." - -[Illustration: Les Champs Elysées] - -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 Montparnasse bounded it on the north and -south, that the Champs Elysées 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 classes were chiefly engaged in commerce or -_petits métiers_, and the heights of Ménilmontant smiled as green and as -free from slums as the Champs Elysées were free from luxurious hotels. -The passing 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 _clientèle_ of the Parisian theatres. _Le tout Paris_ was, -therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments--the middle -class, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia. - -The middle class, 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 illustrated from characters in Balzac's "Comédie -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 Employés," 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 class, 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 fashioned 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 - attitude 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 _hôtels_ 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 Duchesse de Berry. The -few official _fêtes_ were severely boycotted, and even the -entertainments of foreign ambassadors 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 balls, 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. Eugène 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 amusement 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 -_petit cercle_ in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be -called _la haute Bohème_. - -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 illustrious 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 Duchesse de Duras -and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. 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 Montparnasse 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 "fierté glaciale, -mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, -and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame -Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was -composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at -L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of -the aging Châteaubriand. 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 Arsenal. 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. "Cathédrale!" "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 Théodore 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 Arsenal -was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would -have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" 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 shifting -particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite -place of assembly, 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 nobody, -except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve -in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title 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 -damned--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 membership, 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 butterfly only just -emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day. - -The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, -is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an -open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by -not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène 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 Bohème_ without entering into this -larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute -Bohème_. 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 multitude 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 -amusement 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 Bohème_, 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 destitute 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 -Bohème_ 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 passage 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 époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et - pauvres, tous désoeuvrés, appelés _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en - effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs - plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus - rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée, - ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de - leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit - le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de - ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement - l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les - jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les - jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, - dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les - plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes - puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse - voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des - trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière - elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle - part." - -[Illustration: 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 class 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 Café de Paris and -adjourned to lounge at the Opéra 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, passion, gaiety, an - artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to - appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of - amusement, 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 siècle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped - from their embarrassments 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 Père -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-class 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 shine to compass 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 passionate 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 "Comédie 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 Véry'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 dashing 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 title _la haute Bohème_ 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'Aurévilly'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 circumstances, 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 passage which, having myself -said so much, I quote in the original: - - "C'était quatre des plus hardis cormorans éclos dans l'écume qui - couronne les flots incessamment renouvelés de la génération - présente; aimables garçons dont l'existence est problématique, à - qui l'on connaît ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces - spirituels _condottieri_ de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus - cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquiétudes à leurs créanciers, - gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur - costume. D'ailleurs, braves à fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare - sur un baril de poudre, peut-être pour ne pas faillir à leur rôle; - plus moqueurs que les petits journaux, moqueurs à se moquer - d'eux-mêmes, perspicaces et incrédules, fureteurs d'affaires, - avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-mêmes; - profonds politiques par saillies, analysant tout, devinant tout, - ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde où 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 "César 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 céphalique_ 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 fictitious counterpart -of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, 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 Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and -journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Bohème_. 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 Café -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_. - -[Illustration: Fashionables] - - - - -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 noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may -be found in the list of those who started the _petit cercle_ of the Café -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] -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 parlé 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 thé et la jalousie à - Londres!" - -The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, -pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement 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 assiduity. 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 bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange -case of mistaken identity 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 balls 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 -coarsest 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 Barrière 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 _émigrée_. 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 fashionable -fancy-dress ball at the Variétés 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 identity. In 1835 he -died, a shattered _roué_, at Naples. - -The only other English name deserving comment in the _petit cercle_ of -the Café 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 Café Anglais or -the Café 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 _petit 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 Bohème_, 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 fashion 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 fashionable life; while among -the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that -impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were -inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate 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 Bohème_, 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 embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of -July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association 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-glass 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 "Société 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'Écolier 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 ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_ - _Devait à 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 buttons, fitted as -neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey -trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest 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 déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the -Café 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 bass of dinner, opera, supper. -Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge -infernale_ at the Opéra, 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 choreography 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 Bohème_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the -true Bohemians did at the Chaumière 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 Opéra. -One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the -appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse -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 fashion 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 nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect -of Quimperlé--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 -cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly -successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead -cockchafers. 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 passed, 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 cafés. 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 -Employés." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but -unjust: - - "Intrépide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dîneur - et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien - dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allée des Veuves, - il étonnait autant à table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve - à minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du - lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-même, comme la plupart des - grands comiques. Lancé dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, - des écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune - est aléatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, - jouait à Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment - profond, mais par éclairs, se balançait dans la vie comme sur une - escarpolette, sans s'inquiéter du moment où la corde casserait." - -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 embarrassed -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 oublié 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 glass 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 glass 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; -Béquet, whose good taste Roger himself extolled; and Bouffé, the -director of the Vaudeville. Then there was Emile Cabanon, who lives in -Romantic annals as the author of the extravagant "Roman pour les -Cuisinières." 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 Palférine (in -"Un Prince de la Bohème"), who, being struck with the appearance of a -lady passing 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 passion. This assiduity so captivated the besieged one's -heart that she struck her colours. It is _à 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, -dépensaient de l'esprit comptant en veux-tu en voilà." Alfred -Tattet,[16] the rich son of an _agent de change_, who was introduced to -the _viveurs_ by Félix 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-Mézéray, for instance, who was distinguished by the -white camellia in his buttonhole, 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 Véron, -stout and self-important, his face half hidden in a huge cravat, held an -important place among them. He began life as a medical practitioner, but -made a fortune by exploiting a certain Pâte Regnault and took to -political journalism. Between 1831 and 1835 he was an extremely -successful director of the Opéra, and in 1838 bought _Le -Constitutionnel_, 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 Opéra 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. Mæcenas-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. Théodore de Banville and many others -have celebrated the excellent "cuisine" and its accompaniment of wit, -but a reader of Véron'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 unsurpassed 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 Panthéon, Nouveautés, -Saint-Antoine, Variétés, Opéra, Opéra Comique, and Châtelet passed -successively under his sway, and he lost money at them all except at -the Variétés, during his management of which he wrote those sparkling -"Nouvelles à 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 _cafés_ -ceased to be invaded by merry bands of _fêtards_, 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 _régime_ 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 Véron, 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'étais des plus ingambes,_ - _Mais hélas! destins inhumains,_ - _Le papier que j'avais aux mains,_ - _A présent 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; -Béquet ended in a hospital; gout killed Cabanon and Tattet; while -Briffaut expired in a mad-house. The mental pronouncement 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 fashion and expressing the -prevailing tone, shining 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 space 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 BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE - - MIL HUIT CENT TRENTE! _Aurore_ - _Qui m'éblouis encore,_ - _Promesse du destin,_ - _Riant matin!_ - - _Aube où le soleil plonge!_ - _Quelquefois un beau songe_ - _Me rend l'éclat vermeil_ - _De ton réveil._ - - _Jetant ta pourpre rose_ - _En notre ciel morose,_ - _Tu parais, et la nuit_ - _Soudain s'enfuit._ - - THÉODORE 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 Léon Séché and a Philibert Audebrand, following the lead of Charles -Asselineau, the pious _chiffonnier_ of Romanticism, industriously -collect the very last scraps 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 -multitude 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 assumptions which a foreigner cannot -grant. All the historical and literary associations on which I have -touched in a former chapter make it a subject which even to-day excites -passionate enthusiasm and equally passionate 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 asserts 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 -Bohème," which tells how the young Comte de la Palfèrine, 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 passes 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 Palférine, 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 Palférine'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 Palférine 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 passed 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 Palférine 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 Hugolâtre" 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 François 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 - succumbed 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 flâné dans les rues,_ - _J'ai marché devant moi, bayant aux grues;_ - _Mal nourri, peu vêtu, couchant dans un grenier,_ - _Dont je déménageais dès qu'il fallait payer;_ - _De taudis en taudis colportant ma misère,_ - _Ruminant de Fourier le rêve humanitaire,_ - _Empruntant çà et là le plus que je pouvais,_ - _Dépensant un écu sitôt que je l'avais,_ - _Délayant 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 vécus, râpé, 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 Arsène 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 -passionate 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 Thélème. 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 nobodies 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 assistance. 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, destitute: 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 makeshifts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither -discomfort nor makeshifts 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 grâce_ 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 amusements 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 banishing -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 fashion. 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 impassioned 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 Frères Provençaux, 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 classes to bear them, and classes -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 -citizenship 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 -worship 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 aptitude -as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first -disappointments were fashioned failures like Alfred de Musset's -unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "râpé, 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 township round a proposed extension of the -railway. The settlers, self-assured, 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 Philothée O'Neddy, whose -place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said: - - _Il est depuis longtemps avéré que nous sommes,_ - _Dans le siècle, six milles jeunes hommes_ - _Qui du démon de l'Art nous croyant tourmentés,_ - _Dépensons notre vie en excentricités;_ - _Qui, du fatal Byron copiant des allures,_ - _De solennels manteaux drapons nos encolures._ - -These six thousand copies of the "Fatal Byron," if they ever existed, -have, for the most part, died without leaving their names to posterity. -The historian can deal only with a few individuals, who embodied the -salient qualities of Bohemia. - - - - -VII - -THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" - - -"People always forget," said Théophile Gautier in his old age, "that we -were the first Schaunards and Collines, a quarter of a century before -Murger. Only," he added with a smile, "we had talent and did not write -invertebrate verses like those of that feeble appendage to Alfred de -Musset." This saying, reported by his son-in-law, was made on a festive -occasion, so that it is unnecessary to regard with concern the -discrepancy between this view of Murger and the one which Gautier has -expressed in print. That kindest-hearted of writers would never -wittingly have hurt the reputation or memory of the humblest among his -fellows, and I only quote the passage because, when the malice is -discounted as largely as the "quarter of a century," it remains a true -reference to the origins of Bohemia by one who was, so to speak, one of -its pilgrim fathers. The first Schaunards and Collines, Rodolphes and -Marcels, the unknown poets and artists who first raised the standard of -common enthusiasm against a common enemy, the _bourgeois_, were the -young and lusty friends of a young and lusty Gautier. They were members -of a _cénacle_, albeit a less beatific _cénacle_ than the brotherhood -drawn in Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." In the _cénacle_ of the Rue des -Quatre Vents he evolved by sheer imagination a compensating mirage of -virtue to be contrasted with all the real depravity of society which his -eye so unerringly saw, just as Eugénie Grandet shines out impossibly -beside her miserly father, and Madame Firmiani in the corrupt circle of -his _femmes du monde_. Nevertheless there is a certain sublimity in the -_cénacle_ to which attention cannot be denied. It was Balzac's picture -of an ideal Bohemia in which alone such a nature as his could have found -a home. It is of little moment that he dates the action of "Illusions -Perdues" a few years before 1830, for the _cénacle_ itself is a timeless -creation, only limited by the fact that one of its members died in the -insurrection of 1832. The young men who composed the _cénacle_ bore upon -their brow the "seal of special genius." Daniel d'Arthez, upon whom -since the death of their leader, the great mystic, Louis Lambert, the -mantle had fallen, was a monarchist of noble family, destined to become -the greatest writer of the future; Horace Bianchon, the flower of -doctors, a materialist of perfect charity and profound science; Léon -Giraud, a humanitarian philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a great painter with -"the line of Rome and the colour of Venice"; Fulgence Ridal, a sceptic, -a cynic, and the wittiest playwright of his time; Meyraux, a scientist; -and Michel Chrestien, a red republican who was killed in the Cloître -Saint-Merri. They were not ascetics by profession: d'Arthez, for -instance, was the last lover of the Diane, the Princesse de Cadignan, in -the days of his later glory; Bridau's art was affected by his love -affairs; Chrestien was "plein d'illusions et d'amour." They were like -the "saints" of the early Christian Church, each going his own way, but -true helpers one of another, true champions and honest critics. They -were without vanity or envy, having a profound esteem for one another, -with a consciousness of their own worth. "Their great external misery -and the splendour of their intellectual wealth produced a singular -contrast. In their society nobody thought of the realities of life -except as subjects for friendly pleasantries.... The sufferings of -poverty, when they made themselves felt, were so gaily borne, accepted -with such ardour by all, that they did nothing to alter the particular -serenity which marks the faces of young men free from grave faults, who -have not lost part of themselves in any of those low traffickings which -are forced upon men by poverty ill supported, by the desire to get on -without any choice of means, and by the facile complacency with which -men of letters welcome or pardon betrayals.... These young men were sure -of themselves: the enemy of one became the enemy of all, and they would -have abandoned their most urgent interests to obey the sacred solidarity -of their hearts. All incapable of a mean action, they could oppose a -formidable 'no' to every accusation, and defend one another with -security. Equally high-minded and equally matched in matters of -sensibility, they could think and speak all their mind in the domain of -science and intelligence; thence came the innocence of their -intercourse, the gaiety of their talk. Sure of mutual understanding, -their minds digressed at their ease; and they stood on no ceremony among -themselves, confided in each other their sorrows and their joys, -pondered and suffered with open hearts." I need speak no further of this -imaginary _cénacle_, for "Illusions Perdues" is widely known. It is one -of those wonderful fantasies that one feels were lovingly cherished by -Balzac, at once his darling dreams and his disappointments. He had a -passionate desire to express the beautiful, and he was denied that gift. -The lights dance before his eyes, and his very language becomes confused -and turgid when he deserts reality. It may safely be said that in the -real _Bohème_ there was no such goodly company of industrious, gifted, -morally austere, intellectually gay, unselfish young men, and that there -never will be in any society till the coming of the Coquecigrues. - -The Bohemia of artistic tradition began in what Théophile Gautier named -the "second _cénacle_." The first _cénacle_, as all the world knows, was -that of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the brothers Deschamps, who met -regularly at the _cabaret_ of Mère Saguet on Montparnasse in the days -when Hugo was still hatching the plot of the literary revolution. To -trace to them the origins of Bohemia would be an error, for they never -had any part or lot in Bohemianism. They were young, it is true, and -depended upon their art for a living, but the fact that they were -nothing but a small _coterie_ of earnest poets, more akin to the band of -d'Arthez than the friends of Rodolphe, depends upon two things, their -time and their outlook. The first _cénacle_ came into existence about -1822, when the throne of the Bourbons seemed solid and royalism went -hand in hand with classicism. No standard of insurrection, civic or -literary, had yet been raised; the victory was yet to come, and it would -have been madness, before the campaign was fully planned or the army -gathered, for the chiefs to have aped the style of victors. The -merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without -support as they were. Defiance of the _bourgeois_, an absolute essential -of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first -_cénacle_, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while -secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by -which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense -moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, -was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made -itself conspicuous. To strike a more human note in poetry was their -chief aim: they were concerned with art rather than with life itself; -and though Hugo, in the privacy of his room, doffed with relief that -_bourgeois_ symbol, the high linen collar, he was like a general in his -tent drawing up that transcendental plan of operations, the preface to -"Cromwell," which was to inspire his troops in their pioneering and -shooting, in their whole bodily attack on the classic tradition. As the -classic tradition was embodied not only in literature, in contemporary -journalism, in professional lectures, but in the social life of all -staid citizens as well, the Romantic troops, passionate and fundamental -as their literary enthusiasm was, were forced to make social life the -field of their assault, all the more because, being poor, young, and -unknown, they were unable to inflict such palpable wounds with pen or -brush as they could by making a violent protest in every detail of the -ordinary way of living. By outraging the accepted standards of decency -in dress, in speech, and in demeanour, they made their presence daily -felt, and where their presence was felt their ideals were made -ostensible. Their tactics, after the event, may be blamed, the effect -they produced was, no doubt, smaller than they imagined, but the fact -remains that la _vie de Bohème_ began neither as a retreat for higher -souls nor as a means for reckless self-indulgence, but as a definite -method of drawing attention to a new and important artistic creed. For -the greater exponents of this creed, a Hugo or a Delacroix, such a -material protest would have been out of place; it would have detracted -even from the effect produced by their great works of art. Only the rank -and file, to whom supreme personal achievement was impossible, collected -and commonly inspired, as I have already pointed out, under special -historical and social conditions, were justified in adopting the -measures that were best suited to their purpose. Their purpose was as -temporary as their conditions; their device, _épater le bourgeois_, has -now become a hollow phrase, but it meant then the rousing of every -shopkeeper, every _garçon de café_, as well as the cultured reader of -current literature, to the sense that art was alive again. This was the -aim of the second _cénacle_, the first Bohemians. They were successful, -and they were necessary. - -The second _cénacle_ was not a formal organization, so that no definite -date can be fixed for its institution. Its members probably came -together in the same haphazard way as the small bands of friends at a -public school or university, crystallizing so imperceptibly that the -moment of incorporation baffles memory, and often so firmly that death -alone is their solvent. Théophile Gautier, in his fragmentary "Histoire -du Romantisme," has given the fullest details of the _cénacle's_ -existence, yet neither he nor his biographer, Maxime du Camp, make it -clear whether it was formed prior or posterior to the famous first night -of "Hernani" in February of 1830. Gautier, no doubt, had forgotten, but -it seems fairly safe to assume that if preliminary acquaintance was -already made between some of its members before that time, the stormy -nights of February strengthened the bond and made the association -compact. The story of "Hernani," with the red waistcoat, _vieil as de -pique_, and other trimmings, has so often been told, even in English, -that it may seem unnecessary to traverse such well-trodden ground; but a -historian has no business to take anything for granted, so that -"Hernani" can be no more justly omitted here than Waterloo from any work -upon Napoleon. It was part of Victor Hugo's agreement with the Théâtre -Français that a number of seats should be at his disposal each night, -and that the holders of the tickets should be admitted some time before -the ordinary public. These were the trenches into which his army of -young men were thrown. Minor officers were entrusted with the task of -bringing the men to the rendezvous, Jules Vabre, an architect, being -responsible for a hundred and fifty men, and Célestin Nanteuil for -almost as large a number. Gérard de Nerval, whose translation of -Goethe's "Faust," published in 1828 (when he was only nineteen), had -brought him considerable fame in Romantic circles, had known Gautier, -who was two years his junior, at the Collège Charlemagne. This amiable -essayist, whom Gautier likened more than once to a swallow, flitting -always in and out among his friends, was not forgetful of his young -friend in the days of recruiting. Gautier was at that time studying -painting in the studio of Rioult, whither Gérard de Nerval made one day -a swallow-like dart and produced six tickets marked with the single but -thrilling word _Hierro_, the Spanish for "iron." According to Maxime du -Camp he gave these to Gautier with the words: - -"Tu réponds de tes hommes?" - -To him replied Gautier: "Par le crâne dans lequel Byron buvait à -l'Abbaye de Newstead, j'en réponds. N'est-ce pas, vous autres?" - -"Mort aux perruques!" resounded in answer through the studio, and Gérard -flitted away content. - -Gautier, who was a little better provided with worldly goods than some -of the Romantic army, then set about devising a costume that should -strike death into the heart of the _perruques_. With extreme care he cut -out a pattern of a medieval _pourpoint_--a buttonless waistcoat coming -right up to the collar-bone, and fastening with laces behind like the -uniform of Saint-Simon's disciples, which symbolized mutual assistance, -because no Saint-Simonian could truss his own points. His Gascon -tailor's professional objections were overruled, even though the -material chosen was a gorgeous silk coloured a Chinese vermilion, and -the garment was made as desired: to it were added a pair of light -greenish-grey trousers with a broad stripe of black down each seam, a -black coat with ample _revers_ of velvet, and a flowing cravat. It was -indeed a devastating sight, and one that deservedly became famous. In -this fervent spirit was the battle waged over "Hernani"; for thirty -consecutive performances the trenches were manfully filled and a -fusillade of cheers poured forth at every touch of romantic colour, -every bold _enjambement_, every defiance of classic circumlocution, and, -above all, every sign of disapprobation on the part of those they rudely -styled "wigs" and "bald pates." The battlefield was often a pandemonium, -but the result was victory. The Théâtre Français, the very home of -Molière, was successfully carried by the Romantic assault. Gautier had -magnificently won his spurs, and shortly afterwards he was introduced by -Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel to the great hero himself, an ordeal -which caused him so much trepidation that he sat for over an hour on the -stairs with his two sponsors before he could pluck up courage to -proceed. His fears, however, soon vanished after a cordial reception, -and as his parents were then living next door to Hugo in the splendid -old Place Royale, he soon became the most constant page and attendant of -the poet, for whom he preserved a lifelong devotion. - -These were the days of the second _cénacle_, for "Hernani" was the -Hegira of _la vie de Bohème_. During the long waits in the empty -theatre, the passionate mornings of preparation, the fiery reunions -after the curtain had fallen, a set of the most ardent Hugo-worshippers -had found their affinities. They did not indeed live together--some -were dutifully under the parental roof, some had hardly a roof to their -heads, one at least was supporting a mother and sister by daily work in -a government office--but they formed the habit of meeting and spending -many hours of the day and night together and the meeting-place was -either the studio of a young sculptor, Jehan du Seigneur, or the sanded -parlour of the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, in the _rond-point_ of the Arc de -Triomphe. Their names were Pétrus Borel, Joseph Bouchardy, Philothée -O'Neddy, Alphonse Brot, Augustus Mackeat, Jules Vabre, Napoléon Thom, -Jehan du Seigneur, Léon Clopet, Célestin Nanteuil, Théophile Gautier, -and Gérard de Nerval. It is almost needless to say that some of the -names are Gothic transformations in the Romantic fashion. Pétrus Borel -was, of course, christened Pierre, as du Seigneur was christened Jean by -his parents; while Philothée O'Neddy and Augustus Mackeat conceal the -persons of Théophile Dondey and Auguste Maquet. But names in _-us_ or -Celtic patronymics were all the rage, and even Gautier was called -Albertus after his poem of that name published in 1832. A curious -feature about the group was that, though it existed to champion the -cause of Romantic poetry, the only pure man of letters was Gérard de -Nerval. Of the rest, Borel, formerly an architect, was learning to draw -in Dévéria's studio, Thom and Nanteuil were artists, Gautier and -Bouchardy studying art, du Seigneur a sculptor, Clopet and Vabre -architects; O'Neddy and Brot, indeed, were professed poets, but in no -less an embryonic stage than some of the others who afterwards found in -the pen their most successful tool. "This mixture of art in poetry," -says Gautier, "was and has remained one of the characteristic signs of -the new school, and makes it clear why the first adepts were recruited -rather among the artists than among the men of letters. A multitude of -objects, images, and comparisons which were thought to be irreducible to -the written word were introduced into the language and have stayed -there."[17] - -[Illustration: Pétrus Borel] - -The one whom Gautier called the _individualité pivotale_ of the group, -though Philothée O'Neddy in after years denied that he had more -influence than Gautier, Gérard, or Bouchardy, was Pétrus Borel, Le -Lycanthrope as he subsequently named himself. His full name was Pierre -Borel d'Hauterive, and he was born in Lyons in 1809. His father, -captured by the revolutionaries in 1792 and then liberated, fled to -Switzerland, whence he returned to Paris, a ruined man, to earn what he -could by keeping a shop. At the age of fifteen Pierre was apprenticed to -an architect, and in 1829 he set up on his own account without much -success. He and Jules Vabre became associated, and so poor were they -that they used to use the cellars of the houses on which they were -engaged as their dwelling-place. Gautier recalled visiting them once in -the cellar of a house in the Rue Fontaine-du-Roi, where they were -preparing their frugal meal of potatoes baked in the ashes. "Ah," said -Vabre with pride, "but we have salt on Sundays." Borel's ideas were too -Gothically fantastic for his _bourgeois_ clients, and, after a violent -dispute over his fourth commission, he ordered the half-finished -building to be demolished, and gave up for ever an ungrateful -profession,[18] betaking himself for a season to the study of painting, -and writing the while those poems animated by a haughty bitterness which -were published under the title of "Rhapsodies." They are dedicated and -addressed to the members of the second _cénacle_, among whom he enjoyed -an enormous reputation. He was for them the poet of the future, before -whom Hugo would crumble to dust. Alas! for youthful predictions; thirty -years later Gautier, the most loyal of Romantics, was forced to exclaim: -"Dire que j'ai cru à Pétrus!"[19] He exercised over the group, in fact, -a kind of unconscious hypnotism. His slightly superior age, his strange, -rough, paradoxical eloquence, and, above all, his picturesque appearance -imposed on them all. Their ideal was to have an _allure fatale_, a -sombre complexion and haughty, Byronic mien. Borel realized it. He -looked like a Castilian nobleman out of a Velasquez picture, says -Gautier, with his "young and serious face, of perfect regularity, an -olive skin gilded with light shades of amber, lit up by great, shining -eyes, sad as those of Abencerrages thinking of Granada," his bright red -lip which shone under his moustache, "one spark of life in that mask of -Oriental immobility," and his fine, full, silky beard perfumed and -tended like that of a sultan, at a time when to wear a beard in Paris -was an outrage to public decency. He was clothed in black, wearing a -high Robespierre waistcoat and draping a long black cloak around him -with an air of studied mystery. How could the younger men, whose beards -refused to grow, not believe in such a perfect symbol, so magnificently -scornful, so profoundly fatal? He was the most republican, too, of them -all, the typical _Bousingot_ of the _bourgeois_ Press, though fanatical -republicanism was not, as Philothée O'Neddy afterwards protested in a -letter to Charles Asselineau, their representative opinion. Gérard had -no political opinions at all, Gautier was obstinately _Jeune-France_, -and the others only dreamt of a social Utopia in which æstheticism -should replace religion, or of some humanitarian millennium after the -manner of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Borel, however, held society in -complete disgust, as he showed when he left the gathering at Jehan du -Seigneur's, and proceeded one summer to live with some followers on the -slopes of Montmartre, all naked as savages, till the landlord drove them -out at the price of his porter's lodge, which they burnt down in -revenge. - -None of the others were quite so remarkably individual as Pétrus Borel, -whose character may be described as Jules Claretie describes his book of -extravagant stories, "Champavert": "doubt, negation, bitterness, anger, -something at the same time furious and comic." Vabre, his partner in -architecture, had fair hair and moustaches, without any extravagance in -his bearing, but his face twinkled all over with malice and his -conversation was madly Rabelaisian. He projected a famous book that was -never written, "Sur l'Incommodité des Commodes." An intense love for -Shakespeare was his chief Romantic asset. According to Gautier he gave -up his later life to studying our language in England that he might make -the perfect translation, a task which was never completed. Joseph -Bouchardy, who afterwards became a very successful writer of melodrama, -was then learning engraving. He, too, was dark, so dark that with the -soft, sparse beard that just fringed his face he looked an Indian, and -was nicknamed the Maharajah of Lahore. He was less poetry-mad than the -rest, but eternally occupied with dramatic scenarios in which all the -secret passages, trap-doors, and sliding panels of a novel by Mrs. -Radcliffe were brought into play. Jehan du Seigneur, who made medallions -of all his friends, was a gentle, modest youth with a very -pink-and-white complexion which was his everlasting despair. To atone -for this unavoidable defection from Romantic ideals, he wore a black -velvet _pourpoint_, a black jacket with broad velvet _revers_, and a -voluminous necktie, so that not a speck of white linen was shown, a -"suprème élégance romantique," as Gautier remarks. Augustus Mackeat was -chiefly conspicuous for the happy transformation of his name, though he -returned to the orthodox Maquet when he became a successful playwright. -His disguise, however, was nothing to the tremendous anagram which -turned Théophile Dondey into Philothée O'Neddy. He, says Gautier, was -dark as a mulatto with fair, curly hair. Though he was helping to -support a mother and sister by working in a government office, this -Philistine occupation did not prevent him from being one of the most -frenzied of the gang, a "paroxyst" _ruisselant d'inouïsme_. In 1833 he -published a collection of ultra-romantic poems called "Feu et Flamme," -which reek with passion, despair, scorn, suicide, and contempt for -Christianity. Yet he lived till 1872, and though he published nothing -more, he left a collection of posthumous poems all of which breathe an -extreme melancholy. In the letter written to Asselineau ten years before -his death he admitted that in the days of the _cénacle_ he had "une -bonne grosse somme d'extravagance et de mauvais goût," but protested -warmly against the application to them of the epithet "ridiculous." -"Risible" they might have been, but only the _bourgeois_ were -"ridiculous." Célestin Nanteuil was big, fair, gentle, and so perfectly -medieval that Gautier caricatured him as Elie Wildman-stadius, the hero -of one of his _Jeune-France_ stories, who lived in a Gothic manor on -medieval fare, read nothing but medieval illuminated manuscripts, and -was killed when the Gothic cathedral, his sole external joy, was struck -by lightning. Gautier describes him personally as having the appearance -of "one of those long angels bearing censers or playing sambucs that -live in the gables of cathedrals, who has come down into the city in the -midst of the busy burgesses, keeping his nimbus all the while at the -back of his head like a hat, but without the least suspicion that it is -not natural to wear one's aureole in the street." He was a furious -Hernanist in 1830 (he was then only seventeen), and called "the -Captain," for leading the army to the fray. In 1843, when he was asked -to bring three hundred young men to support "Les Burgraves" in the same -manner, he sadly said: "Tell the master there are no more young men." He -might, says Maxime du Camp, have been a great painter, but he was -compelled to live by illustrating. Whenever he had made a little money -in this way he returned to his colours and his easel till it was -exhausted. He ended in the obscurity of Dijon, becoming the director of -its school of art. - -[Illustration: Célestin Nanteuil] - -Maxime du Camp compares Nanteuil's fate to that of Gautier, who was -forced by circumstances to waste so much of his talent in mere -journalism; but in 1830 Gautier, a young man of nineteen, who made long -hair serve instead of a beard, was still free as air. In that year he -brought out a little volume of poems, and a year or two later produced -the fantastic "Albertus," which he followed with "Les Jeune-France." His -art studies had soon ceased because he discovered that he suffered from -short sight, and we may regard him in the days of the _cénacle_ as a -poet pure and simple. One figure remains to be filled in, the most -pathetic of all the Romantic band, Gérard de Nerval. He was born in -1808, the son of a Doctor Labrunie--the family name of de Nerval was -only assumed by him when he began to write. His youth was spent in the -pleasant country of the Valois, and he received a very careful education -from his father, who taught him not only Latin and Greek, but German, -Italian, and the rudiments of Arabic and Persian. Even in his early days -he was an eager reader of mystics and utopists, which gave that first -fantastical turn to his brain which ended later in complete madness. His -development was normal at first. At the Collège Charlemagne he was the -snapper-up of every prize, and produced some quite worthless poetry in -praise of Napoleon that won high approval from his professors. He -followed this by a satire on the Academy, which appeared in 1826, and in -1828 he produced an ode to Béranger of a style to which his Romantic -friends could only have applied the new epithet _poncif_. The -translation of "Faust," which earned a very high compliment from the -great Goethe himself, turned him into his appropriate path and gave him -a serious literary reputation which he never lost. He translated other -fragments of German poetry, and wrote for the _Mercure de France_, of -which Pierre Lacroix, the "Bibliophile Jacob," was then the editor. His -adoption of a literary career was a grave disappointment to his father, -who had hoped to make a good official of him, and it is probable that -parental coldness first caused him to find a congenial asylum in the new -Bohemia, of which he was never a typical inhabitant. When he came of age -he inherited his mother's dowry, which made the actual earning of money -immaterial to him. His success with "Faust" had brought him into touch -with Hugo, so that after the days of "Hernani" he held in the _cénacle_ -the most distinguished, if not the most influential, position as a -lieutenant of their demi-god, with notable achievements in the field of -letters already to his credit. - -Gérard threw in his lot with the _cénacle_, but, though he even wrote -some revolutionary poems in 1830, for which he was imprisoned in Sainte -Pélagie, he was never quite at ease with Borel and the _Bousingot_ -faction. The flamboyant side of Romanticism and its noisy gatherings had -little appeal for him. He was an eccentric and a solitary by nature, as -his writings, with their strong reminiscence of Heine, show. In the time -of the _cénacle_ he was, according to Gautier, a gentle and modest young -man, who blushed like a girl, with a pink-and-white complexion and -soft, grey eyes. Under his fine, light golden hair his forehead, -beautifully shaped, shone like polished ivory. He was usually dressed in -a black frock-coat with enormous pockets, in which, like Murger's -Colline, he buried a whole library of books picked up on the _quais_, -five or six notebooks, and a large collection of scraps of paper on -which he wrote down the ideas that occurred to him on his long walks. He -was the perfect peripatetic: as he once said, he would have liked to -walk through life unrolling an endless roll of paper on which he could -jot his reflections. He lived at this time with Camille Rogier, the -artist, in the Rue des Beaux Arts, but his friends could never be sure -where to find him. For him no hour was sacred to rest. He wandered about -Paris at all times of the day and night, dropping in on a friend for an -hour or two, ready to ride a hobby-horse with him in any direction, then -darting off again, his thoughts in the clouds, nobody knew whither, and -returning in the small hours, only to flit from his bed at the dawn. Of -all the gay companions of Bohemia he was the best loved, for his -childlike simplicity and his gentle manners won all hearts. He went -through life to his terrible death with complete unworldliness, almost -like a ghost, unconscious of the material side of existence, directing -his feet only by the light of his spirit. Gautier, writing after his -death, protested vehemently that his was no ordinary tragedy of -neglected genius; he had money enough, but money was nothing to him, so -he spent it without a thought; his work was always accepted by editors, -and his plays, though not successful, were all produced. But success was -the last of his preoccupations. He was a wanderer living in a world of -his own fantasies. As he will appear again in these pages, we may bid -him farewell for the moment, with the conviction that it would be -pleasant to be transported for a season back to that turbulent _vie de -Bohème_ if only to find the kindly Gérard's arm passed through one's own -and to hear his gentle murmur: "Tu as une fantaisie; je la promènerai -avec toi." - -I ought, perhaps, to apologize for allowing the persons of the _cénacle_ -to take up so much space before coming to their life, yet I imagine, on -the whole, that I have said too little rather than too much. To go back -to a past of which one has no experience is a matter of such extreme -difficulty that a historian must often despair at the impossibility of -reproducing the whole congeries of scattered detail from which alone his -own mental picture could have taken shape. The first Bohemia, that of -the second _cénacle_, was less a common life than a common recreation. -It was an incomplete _vie de Bohème_ in so far as its members were -united, not by a desire to share all the joys and difficulties of life, -but by a particular artistic enthusiasm. There is no record that any of -them worked or dwelt together, that they took part in joint expeditions -of amusement, or that the mutual acquaintance of those female -divinities for whom they plied so "fatally" their emotional bellows is -to be presumed--and these are marked characteristics of Murger's _vie de -Bohème_. When they ate together it was at the obscure _cabaret_ kept by -the Neapolitan Graziano for the needs of his compatriots who worked in -Paris. Here, in a plain whitewashed room with a sanded floor, a dresser -covered with violently coloured faience and plain wooden benches, they -were initiated by their host--a man of senatorial presence, with an -immense but perfectly correct nose and big black beard, who seemed to -dream all the while of his beloved Italy--into the delights of -_spaghetti_, _stufato_, _tagliarini_, and _gnocchi_. They were delicious -meals, seasoned with good spirits, and--to use the delightful French -phrase--"bedewed" with sound wine of Argenteuil or Suresnes christened -magnificently with the names of the most exclusive vineyards in Médoc or -Burgundy. Still, they were felt at times to be a trifle wanting in -Romantic glamour. It was all very well, the grumblers remarked, to be -enjoying incomparable macaroni, but when all was said and done there was -little that an impartial observer could descry in these banquets to -differentiate them from the prosaic meals of a Joseph Prudhomme. -Something was wanting, some tincture of the Newstead spirit, some -infernal joy in the food, some shudder in the drinking. The macaroni -remained obstinately matter-of-fact, but a brilliant idea was mooted -that would give a charnel flavour to the wine. Graziano's glasses were -only glasses of quite modern exiguousness; the true brotherhood should -drink out of a skull. A skull was accordingly procured by Gérard from -his father, the doctor, and ingeniously mounted by Gautier, who screwed -to its side an old brass handle from a chest of drawers. In truth it was -a noble bowl, and the pious company drank from it with bravado, each -concealing with more or less ill-success his natural repugnance. -Familiarity, however, bred contempt, till one uncompromising youth -surprised his companions by noisily commanding the waiter to fill with -sea-water. - -"Why sea-water?" exclaimed a simple soul. - -"Why sea-water! Because the master in 'Hans d'Islande' says 'he drank -the water of the sea from the skulls of the dead.' It is my desire to do -the same." - -Yes, the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, for all its good cheer and its -death's-head mounted with a drawer-handle, was too workaday for these -eclectics. They reached their true glory only in the gatherings which -took place in Jehan du Seigneur's studio. It was a room over a little -fruiterer's shop that the _cénacle_ sanctified as their conventicle. "In -a little chamber," wrote an older Gautier, "which had not seats enough -for all its occupants, gathered the young men, really young and -different in that respect from the _young_ men of to-day, who are all -more or less quinquagenarians. The hammock in which the master of the -dwelling took his siesta, the narrow couchlet in which the dawn often -surprised him at the last page of a book of verses, eked out the -insufficiency of conveniences for conversation. One really talked better -standing up, and the gestures of the orator or declaimer only gained a -more ample scope. Still, it was extremely unwise to make too free with -your arms for fear of knocking your knuckles against the sloping -ceiling." It was a poor man's room, but not without ornament, for it -contained sketches by the two Dévérias, a head after Titian or Giorgione -by Boulanger, two earthenware vases full of flowers on the chimneypiece, -the inevitable death's-head instead of a clock, a looking-glass, and a -small shelf of books. On either side of the glass and in the embrasures -of the windows were hung the portrait medallions which Jehan made of his -friends. They had no money to get them cast in bronze, so the world has -lost in them a valuable appendix to the well-known busts of his -contemporaries executed by the more distinguished Romantic sculptor, -David d'Angers. Here they would all gather of an evening: Gérard if he -happened to be passing in his amiable wanderings, Bouchardy the -Maharajah, Gautier--not yet the burly critic of _La Presse_, but a thin -youth of nineteen--Nanteuil with his Gothic nimbus, Vabre bursting with -some new joke, Borel swinging off his long cloak with a scowl, O'Neddy -shedding Dondey in the street, Mackeat and the rest, each bursting with -eloquence or roaring the "Chasse du Burgrave" at the top of his voice. -When Maxime du Camp once asked Gautier what they talked about, he -answered: "About everything, but I haven't the least idea what they -said, because everybody talked at once." However, a very good idea of a -typical evening in the _cénacle_ is given in Philothée O'Neddy's "Feu et -Flamme," the first poem in which, called "Pandæmonium," is a gorgeous -description of their cave of harmony. It is freely decorated with "local -colour," which on a Romantic's lips meant the borrowing of all he could -carry away from the medieval stage-property room, but it was drawn from -life with all seriousness and sincerity. The poem opens by depicting -them all seated round the punch-bowl--punch, it must be stated, was the -only really respectable drink for a thorough-paced Romantic. He mixed it -in a large bowl and set light to the fumes, as the students are supposed -to do in the first act of the "Contes d'Hoffmann," and derived enormous -satisfaction from sitting in an obscurity only lit by this bluish flame. -Thus to recall the witches' cauldron and the fires of the Inferno had an -unfailing success as a stimulant to eloquence. The scene, then, opens -thus powerfully: - - _Au centre de la salle, autour d'une urne en fer,_ - _Digne émule en largeur des coupes d'enfer,_ - _Dans laquelle un beau punch, aux prismatiques flammes,_ - _Semble un lac sulfureux qui fait houler ses lames,_ - _Vingt jeunes hommes, tous artistes dans le coeur,_ - _La pipe ou le cigare aux lèvres, l'oeil moqueur,_ - _Le temporal orné du bonnet de Phrygie,_ - _En barbe Jeune-France, en costume d'orgie,_ - _Sont pachalesquement jetés sur un amas_ - _De coussins dont maint siècle a troué le damas,_ - _Et le sombre atelier n'a point d'éclairage_ - _Que la gerbe du punch, spiritueux mirage._ - -Smoking, it would be well to add, was considered part of the whole duty -of a Romantic man. The cigar, being Byronic, was affected by the -"fatally" inclined; the pipe came, not from England, but from Germany; -it was Faust-like, Hoffmannesque; it was also Flemish, of course, and -the Flemish painters, like Steen and Teniers, were in high repute. A -pipe signified a more jolly potatory spirit than a cigar, but it was -always possible for the irreconcilable satanics to regard the breathing -out of smoke from either as symbolically demoniac. The cigarette was not -despised, but its popularity was due also to its picturesque -associations. Spain was the home of the cigarette, the _papelito_ as -Borel and his friends fondly called it. When they rolled their fragrant -Maryland lovingly in the _papel_ they assumed a Spanish _allure_, -Granada rose before their eyes, and invisible guitars played "Avez-vous -vu dans Barcelone?" However, cigarettes would have been out of place in -the prismatic flames of the punch-bowl. Their Spanish nonchalance suited -better the light of day: evening shadows were consecrated to gloom and -frenzy, Northern spirits. Hence it is not surprising to hear that all -the company had - - _De haine virulente et de pitié morose_ - _Contre la bourgeoisie et le Code et la prose;_ - _Des coeurs ne dépensant leur exultation_ - _Que pour deux vérités, l'art et la passion!_ - -The conversation is compared with some aptitude to a Spanish town -devastated by an earthquake, which confounds in one ruin palaces and -huts, churches and houses of ill-fame. So in their talk the ideal and -the grotesque, poetry and cynical jesting are confounded pell-mell. -Silence is made while a passage from Victor Hugo is declaimed, after -which four discourses are pronounced. Three are by Borel, Clopet, and -Bouchardy respectively, concealed in the names of Reblo, Noel, and Don -José, and the second discourse is delivered by the swarthy O'Neddy -himself, who, - - _Faisant osciller son regard de maudit_ - _Sur le conventicule,_ - -pours out a passionate complaint that poets have too long been under the -yoke of governments and codes of law. The evening closes with a violent -tumult. The punch has done its work, and the _cénacle_ is a-screaming -with the ecstasy of energumens. - - _Ce fut un long chaos de jurons, de boutades,_ - _De hurrahs, de tollés et de rhodomontades._ - -They danced and sang like the demon crew in the master's "Ronde du -Sabbat," - - _Et jusques au matin les damnés Jeune-Frances_ - _Nagèrent dans un flux d'indicibles démences._ - -It is to be hoped that the worthy fruiterer was sleeping quietly in -another part of Paris, and only the potatoes were kept awake and sleep -banished from the pears. - -If at this point our reader feels inclined to throw up his hands and -exclaim "How disgusting!" he will be well advised to put down the book. -One cannot approach Bohemia without a certain sympathy for youthful -excesses, howsoever opposed they may be to one's personal predilections. -If the _cénacle_ indulged in occasional orgies--which, even allowing a -good deal for "local colour" in O'Neddy's "Pandæmonium," they certainly -did--they had a great many compensating virtues, such as complete -disinterestedness and a consuming love of art, which were not -conspicuous in Paris at the time. Maxime du Camp in his memoir on -Gautier sets the extreme limit to which reasonable criticism of them -can go when, after remarking on the promise given by a violent youth for -a fruitful middle age, he says: - - "From that should we conclude that the young men who composed the - _cénacle_ were all destined to become great men? Certainly not; - there were among them dreamers with illusions about themselves, - sterile dupes of the comedy that they played, failures in whose - case the brilliant future which they promised themselves fell - naturally into obscurity. To more than one of them the saying of - Rivarol could have been applied: 'It is a terrible advantage never - to have done anything, but it should not be abused.' In short, only - one of them has made a name that will not perish: Théophile - Gautier. Gérard de Nerval, by whom he had been distanced at the - beginning of his life, never passed a very moderate level, did not - push his way in the crowd, and came early to grief. On the other - hand, most of them were celebrated in the group, I might say in the - _coterie_, to which they belonged, but their reputation never went - beyond the circle in which they lived." - -Maxime du Camp takes a very superior point of view which is less than -just. The members of the _cénacle_, it may be admitted, overrated one -another's talents and were ready, in some instances, to take posturing -for performance; but Bohemia is not to be blamed because all her -children were not great men any more than Eton because all her _alumni_ -are not scholars. As a matter of fact, in this first Bohemia of the -_cénacle_ there were very few of whom it could be said that their lives -were ruined. Gérard died a violent death, but he was afflicted with -mental disease. Apart from his eccentricity he was a scholar and a -gentleman whose attainments equalled those of Gautier himself, though he -could not bring himself to exploit them. Pétrus Borel was the one real -failure, the _poseur_ who inevitably came to grief. His Bohemian career -reached its apogee at his masked ball in 1832--a caricature of Dumas' -own famous ball--held at his lodgings in the Rue d'Enfer, an appropriate -address. He left Paris shortly afterwards, and, after earning for some -years a precarious livelihood and publishing "Madame Putiphar," he -became an inspector of Mostaganem, in Algeria, in which country he died -wretchedly. The rest, though they did not quite achieve their proud -dreams, continued, most of them, in the paths of art with rectitude and -some success, Bouchardy and Maquet as dramatists, du Seigneur as a -sculptor, Nanteuil as an artist. O'Neddy, once the _cénacle_ dissolved, -as it did towards 1833, found poetry a resource in solitude, and poor -Vabre, if he made no figure in the world, at least set himself the -highest of ideals in devoting his life to the study of Shakespeare. - -The first Bohemia, for what that is worth, was singularly respectable in -its results. Even had they been far worse, sufficient praise to stifle -carping would be found in the indelibly beautiful memory which it left -on the minds of its members. In 1857 Bouchardy wrote of it to Gautier in -these words: - - "It was a holy and beautiful comradeship, my dear Théo, in which - each was the loving brother, the devoted friend, the - fellow-traveller who makes his friend forget the length and the - fatigue of the road. It was a more beautiful comradeship than one - can say, in which all wished the success of all without insensate - exaggeration and without collective vanity, in which each of us - offered to lend his shoulder to the foot of him who wished to climb - and to reach his goal.... It was a happy time, dear Théophile, of - which we ought to be proud, for when one has traversed this life so - often saddened by so much bitterness, we ought to be proud of - having found in it some hours of joy, we ought to boast of having - been happy!" - -Even Maxime du Camp admits that the effect of the _cénacle_ on Gautier -was incalculable: its disinterested friendship and its enthusiasm made -his individuality. All his life he remained "the mystic companion of -Victor Hugo's first disciples." Weighed down in after years by the -irksome tasks of journalism, the slave who remembered his years of -freedom with regret, he responded to Bouchardy with tender melancholy -from beside the rivers of Babylon: - - "No doubt such joy could not last. To be young and intelligent, to - love one another, to understand and commune in every realm of - art--a more beautiful manner of life could not be conceived, and - from the eyes of all those who followed it its dazzling splendour - has never been obliterated." - -At another time he wrote to Sainte-Beuve: "Nous étions ivres du beau, -nous avons eu la sublime folie de l'art." - -These words, issuing from a soul ever animated during its days on earth -by a Bohemian spirit, cast a protecting spell round the memory of the -first Bohemian brotherhood through which no Philistine anathemas can -break. - - - - -VIII - -LA BOHÈME GALANTE - - _O le beau temps passé! Nous avions la science,_ - _La science de vivre avec insouciance;_ - _La gaieté rayonnait en nos esprits moqueurs,_ - _Et l'Amour écrivait des livres dans nos coeurs!_ - - ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE - - -The _cénacle_ broke up towards 1833 and its members scattered. All -Bohemian _coteries_ must be short-lived, but this one was specially -doomed to a quick dissolution. It was, I will not say too romantic, but -too romantically ritualistic, too much concerned with the vestments and -incense and celebrations incident to the profession of "Hugolâtry." It -is not hard to imagine how the too mystic significance given to its -gatherings, its feasts, and even its individual actions became to some -of the brethren, now that Romanticism was firmly established, either -unreal or merely tiresome: divergences of taste and opinion began to -creep in till, in the end, this attempted Bohemia became a deserted -shrine. But the Bohemian spirit could not thus be quenched; indeed, it -was only then fully kindled. The deacons and acolytes, whom the mere -symbolism had mainly attracted, were gone; paid off the Swiss Guard -whom the return of peace called back to civil life. Those who remained, -the most advanced of the initiated, saw that the time had come for the -casting away of symbols and the cessation of noisy worship. Bohemia had -originated in a literary creed, but in its consummation it was to pass -beyond the letter and take hold of human life. This consummation came -with extraordinary rapidity; there were no feeble tentatives, no -half-successes. A new community arose in Paris, almost out of the ashes -of the _cénacle_, vastly different though it was from the obscure group -in Jehan du Seigneur's humble studio. It was animated by all that was -best in Romanticism--its disregard for academic convention, its colour, -its joyousness, its warmth of feeling, and its sympathy with all human -passions; but, unlike the _cénacle_, it did not trammel itself with -Romantic convention, it set creation above imitation, and--greatest of -all differences--it was no society meeting at intervals for spiritual -and corporeal refreshment, but a genuine life in common lived just for -the sake of living by a set of high-spirited, joyous young men, most of -them true artists, neither maniacs, nor ne'er-do-wells, nor idlers. The -_cénacle_ was dead, but _la vie de Bohème_ was born, and its golden age -came first. The brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné was, in A. -Delvau's words, "une Bohème dorée, avec laquelle celle de Schaunard n'a -que des rapports très éloignés."[20] Delvau, who was of Murger's -generation, knew well how quickly the glory departed. Yet at least -Murger's Bohemians had this connexion with what Gérard de Nerval named -_la Bohème galante_ that they could look back to it as the Romans to the -reign of Saturn. It was constituted informally, even fortuitously; it -existed without self-advertisement, but it remained, in the phrase of -another French writer, "la patrie de toutes les Bohèmes littéraires." - -In 1832 another Bohemian of the golden age had come to Paris, a brave -and merry soul called Arsène Houssaye, who had only breathed this -terrestrial atmosphere for seventeen years. It was not to champion a -cause that he came, but he was called thither by the poet within him to -take his part in infusing a new vitality into life and letters. Like -Gautier, he was a natural _enfant de Bohème_, yet did not at first find -the brotherhood which he was to hymn in prose and verse; it was still -only a potentiality. For a few months he lived in an odd little Bohemia -of his own with a friend called Van dell Hell in a _hôtel garni_. They -wrote songs for a living, wore the red hats by which the more violent -students of the Quartier Latin proclaimed their republicanism, and -consoled themselves for the rebuffs of editors with the smiles of a -certain "Nini yeux noirs." Houssaye in those amusing volumes which he -called "Les Confessions" bears witness to the deplorable state of the -literary market at the time. Novels and plays could not be sold, poetry -was not wanted as a gift, and the newspapers regarded mere men of -letters as too frivolous for employment. Poverty among the struggling -writers was acute, but nobody cared a fig about money when all cared so -much about art--a merciful dispensation of Providence. Yet, if -commercialism did not affect art, the same can hardly be said of -politics. Far too many of the young poets and artists, who would have -scorned to drive a mercenary bargain at the expense of their art, -exulted in defiling their artistic convictions with the reddest and most -insensate republicanism, not seeing that if art does not need to regard -gold pieces, neither does it need to trouble itself whether a king's -head or a cap of liberty is their stamp. Arsène Houssaye, careless -wretch, nearly missed the glory of Bohemia entirely by mixing himself up -in the insurrection of the Cloître Saint-Merri. He was arrested, but a -friendly commissary of police saved him from trial and imprisonment by -sending him home to his wealthy, loyal, and scandalized family. The -ungrateful lad, instead of settling down to some solid profession, -simply bided his time till the disturbance was over, and returned to -Paris, only so far profiting by his warning that he left politics -henceforth to look after themselves. Houssaye's father, worthy man, felt -that money would be thrown away on such a ruffian, so Arsène was left to -his own resources, which, if they were meagre in early days, kept him -alive for another sixty-three years. - -Bohemia was not to be baulked a second time. The elements were present, -and all that remained to do was for somebody to give them a slight push, -such as Lucretius gave to his atoms. The push occurred at the Salon of -1833, if Houssaye is to be believed--a condition not inevitably -fulfilled. There, one fine day, he met Théophile Gautier and Nestor -Roqueplan, the former of whom was certainly a stranger to him. A genial -conversation on the merits of the pictures ensued, in which Arsène -Houssaye made, as he was destined to do, a very good impression upon his -senior. Gautier was not a man to leave hazard any further part after -such a promising beginning, and he accordingly proffered an invitation -to _déjeuner_ next day in the words: "Je te surinvite à venir déjeuner -invraisemblablement demain chez les auteurs de mes jours." Houssaye -turned up next day at No. 8 Place Royale, where the irrepressible Théo -introduced his father as "le respectable bonhomme qui me donna l'être." -The other guest at this _déjeuner_ was Gérard de Nerval, whom with true -instinct Gautier had brought to test and to embrace the newly found -brother. The wit and gaiety, the range and the emphasis of their -postprandial conversation can be imagined. At last Théo blurted out -frankly: "Tu sais que je ne te connais pas: dis-moi huit vers de toi, je -le dirai qui tu es." It was not a test which the future author of -"Vingt Ans" feared. Gautier found himself able to give an enthusiastic -account of the new brother; the two truest Bohemians in Paris were at -once bosom friends, and the most wayward of geniuses was a friend of -both. - -So far the credit had been with Gautier, but Bohemia was still without a -dwelling-place, and in this matter Gérard de Nerval deserved pious -mention in the Bohemian bidding prayer, for it was owing to him that _la -Bohème galante_ found a home suitable to the golden age, a unique -setting which posterity could remember but never reproduce. It was a -rare opportunity, and it might almost be supposed that fortune, -approving of Théo's first amiable push, advanced willingly another step, -making peripatetic Gérard her tool. In the course of his wanderings he -had become acquainted with one of the most singular regions in all -Paris, no sign of which remains to-day. Hardly a visitor to Paris omits -a look into the Louvre, but very few know that as they walk from the -statue of Gambetta to the entrance of the galleries they are crossing -the site that Bohemia in its florescence made memorable. On that spot -there stood in 1833 part of an older Paris, which in intention had long -been cleared away, but in fact remained another twenty years. Those who -have read Balzac's "Cousine Bette" have made its acquaintance, though I -should wager that the majority of them have taken it for granted with -other of Balzac's topographical details. Let me recall to them the -sinister quarter where Cousine Bette, at the opening of the story, -cherishes the young sculptor Steinbock and makes the acquaintance of the -infamous Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. With his practised touch for -tragic effect Balzac describes it thus: - - "The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the - old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to - make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the - grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... - Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket - leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of - houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never - repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course - of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. - The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this - sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably - phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried - already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped - in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the - Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The - darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the - ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. - When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and - one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes - one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must - happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of - cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of - night, flourish at their height." - -This can hardly be called an engaging description, and even Bohemians, -it might be supposed, would shrink from such a dreadful slum. But Balzac -was writing in 1847, more than ten years after Bohemia had left it, and -he was making a protest against the continued existence of this quarter, -which had probably deteriorated since the days when he sent there -himself to offer Gautier work on the _Chronique de Paris_. However, -whether Balzac was right in making the Rue du Doyenné an inferno or was -only touching it up with livid tones appropriate to Cousine Bette and -the Marneffes, it was certainly a more smiling spot in 1833. True, it -was tumbling down, and lay below the level of the Place du Carrousel, in -the midst of mournful débris, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, -which Napoleon had meant to join after sweeping it away; the houses, as -Gautier says,[21] were old and dark, repairs to them were forbidden, and -they had the air of regretting the days when respectable canons and -advocates were their inhabitants. Yet it was not a den of thieves by any -means. Gérard[22] records that many _attachés_ and Government officials -lived in the quarter, and that by the Place du Carrousel there was a -collection of temporary wooden shops let out to curiosity dealers and -print-sellers. It was enlivened, too, by the presence of a little Dutch -beer-house served by a Flemish maid of considerable attractions. The -view from the upper windows included, naturally, the heaps of stones, -the rubbish, with the nettles and the dock-leaves by which Nature tries -to cover such deformities at once; but it also included a good many -trees, and the ruins of a delightful old priory, with one arch, two or -three pillars, and the end of a colonnade still standing. This was the -Priory of Doyenné, the dome of which, according to Gérard, fell one day -in the seventeenth century upon eleven luckless canons who were -celebrating the office. Its ruins stood out gracefully against the -trees, and of a summer morning or evening, when, amid the peaceful -silence of this forgotten corner, the bright rays of the Parisian sun -lit up the lichen on its stones and a fresh breeze from the neighbouring -Seine gently swayed the branches of its framing trees, it must have been -well to be a-leaning out of a window. - -However, Gérard de Nerval did more than find a quiet, romantic corner -hidden away in the busy heart of Paris with a ruined priory to give -distinction to its prospect; he also found an appropriate dwelling. In -one of the old houses of the Impasse du Doyenné there was a set of rooms -remarkable for its _salon_. It was a huge room, decorated in the -old-fashioned Pompadour style with grooved panellings, pier-glasses, -and a fantastically moulded ceiling. This decoration had for a long time -been the despair of its owner and had driven away all prospective -tenants, the taste for curiosities being at that time undeveloped. In -vain had the landlord parcelled it out with party walls; it was still -mouldering on his hands when Gérard came thither on one of his -swallow-flights. He at once persuaded the good-natured Camille Rogier to -transfer his household gods from the Rue des Beaux-Arts, the party walls -were knocked down, and Bohemia entered on its ideal home. Gérard had -still some of his patrimony left, and chose to expend it upon his one -hobby, the collection of pictures and furniture. It was a golden time -for the collector. Society had as yet not learned to appreciate old -works of art, dealers were not too well informed, and the depredations -of the Bande Noire, that, under the Restoration, had sacked so many -ancient ecclesiastical foundations, had brought a large quantity of -precious old furniture, tapestries, and fabrics into the curiosity shops -of Paris. Gérard had acquired a wonderful canopied Renaissance bed -ornamented with salamanders, a Médicis console, a sideboard decorated -with nymphs and satyrs, three of each, and oval paintings on its doors, -a tapestry delineating the four seasons, some medieval chairs and Gothic -stools, a Ribeira--a death of Saint Joseph--and two superb panels by -Fragonard, "L'Escarpolette" and "Colin Maillard," which last he had -bought for fifty francs the pair. It was a magnificent studio, worthy of -_la Bohème galante_. There was no question of bare attics on a sixth -story, their tiny windows looking on a dreary sea of roofs, of rickety -chairs and peeling wall-paper. In spite of its bare floors, its faded -colours, its chipped corners, and the incongruous presence of plain -easels among its ancient splendours, its riches were princely. Bohemian -disorder might reign among paints and palette-knives, ends of paper -inscribed with scraps of verse might dot its unswept floor, the _débris_ -of eating and drinking might litter the seats on which fastidious -cavaliers once delicately sat, but no realities of a careless existence -could spoil its romantic atmosphere. Without its merry clan of -inhabitants, no doubt, it would have seemed odd and ghostly; yet if they -brought back to it the necessary colour of youth, it tinged, in turn, -their life with a patina of old gold that never faded from their -reminiscences. - -[Illustration: A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné] - -Camille Rogier was the real lessee, and Gérard his sub-tenant. Gautier -had a couple of rooms in the Rue du Doyenné, which cut the Impasse -crosswise. These at first were the only permanent inhabitants of the new -colony, but the great _salon_ where Rogier and Gautier worked soon -became a meeting-place for a number of friends. Work was stopped at five -o'clock, when Arsène Houssaye was certain to appear, Roger de Beauvoir, -then in his most brilliant day, half Bohemian, half _viveur_, and -Edmond Ourliac, the future dramatist. One evening Houssaye, Roger de -Beauvoir, and Ourliac stayed talking till dawn; Roger departed then to -his more sumptuous apartments, Ourliac to his parents' house in the Rue -Saint Roch, but Arsène Houssaye stayed, on Rogier's invitation, to -complete the inner conclave of Bohemia. His camp-bed was sent for next -day, and he became Rogier's second tenant, paying him indeed no money, -but spending, in revenge, chance gifts from home on luxurious feasts at -the Frères Provençaux. - -Such a society in such a setting could not long remain unknown. With its -circle of guests widening it grew in importance, for in this golden age -Bohemia could be important without losing its quality. Gavarni, the -inimitable portrayer of Parisian types, Nanteuil, Châtillon, Marilhat, -even Delacroix, were among the artists who found the gaiety of the -Impasse du Doyenné to their taste; Pétrus Borel looked haggardly in -occasionally; the great Dumas would rush in and out like a storm; the -Roqueplans, Camille and Nestor, showed there in moments spared from -their more elegant wanderings; and the effervescent Roger de Beauvoir as -gaily composed there his witty rhymes as at a supper in the Café de -Paris. It was no hole-and-corner Bohemia at which the superior person -could affect to turn up his nose; it was a truly artistic centre in -Paris and, at the same time, a _coterie_ admission to which was -jealously enough guarded to exclude the half-baked dilettante who is the -ruin of most artistic sets and the very negation of Bohemia. For a -reason which will be obvious in the sequel, ladies with leanings to -artistic society--another impossibility in Bohemia--were equally -debarred from appearing. It was a more or less closely knit society of -young and gifted men, lovers of the beautiful, despisers of convention -without _gasconnade_, neither rich nor desperately poor, avid of -pleasure, and fashioning their conduct easily upon the standards of the -day, yet crowning all their hours, even the most wanton, with a graceful -and light-hearted idealism that shields these pagan heroes of a golden -age from any but an æsthetic judgment, a judgment which, in the case of -their own countrymen, they confronted with serene self-confidence. - -In all, the group was fairly large: its membership radiated dimly as far -as the "dandies" on the boulevard and into the obscurer depths of the -Quartier Latin. But radiation was from a central nucleus--the original -Bohemian brethren whose home was in the Impasse du Doyenné: Camille -Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Edmond -Ourliac. The rest were visitors, but they alone were the true dwellers -in _la Bohème galante_. Of their brotherhood and its life Gautier, -Gérard, and Houssaye have all given glimpses, which compose a picture -apt for pleasing and, occasionally, envious contemplation. Arsène -Houssaye in his "Confessions" is the fullest source of reminiscence, and -his words are delightfully illustrated by the poem, originally entitled -"Vingt Ans," but in his complete works "La Bohème de Doyenné." The poem, -addressed to Gautier, begins: - - _Théo, te souviens-tu de ces vertes saisons_ - _Qui s'effeuillaient si vite en ces vieilles maisons_ - _Dont le front s'abritait sous une aile du Louvre?_ - _Levons avec Rogier le voile qui les couvre,_ - _Reprenons dans nos coeurs les trésors enfouis,_ - _Plongeons dans le passé nos regards éblouis._ - - _Chimères aux cils noirs, Espérances fanées,_ - _Amis toujours chantants, Amantes profanées,_ - _Songes venus du ciel, flottantes Visions,_ - _Sortez de vos tombeaux, jeunes Illusions!_ - _Et nous rebâtirons ce château périssable_ - _Que les destins changeants ont jeté sur le sable:_ - - _Replaçons le sofa sous les tableaux flamands;_ - _Dispersons à nos pieds gazettes et romans;_ - _Ornons le vieux bahut de vieilles porcelaines,_ - _Et faisons refleurir roses et marjolaines;_ - _Qu'un rideau de damas ombrage encore ces lits_ - _Où nos jeunes amours se sont ensevelis._ - -Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word -must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as -Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. -Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was -earning a living by his art--even more than a living, for was he not -rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was -his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years -painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused -the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush -he was a very agreeable singer of _chansons_ and ballads. Ourliac did -not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue -Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants -Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on -his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way -home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines, - - _gai convive, arrivait en chantant_ - _Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,_ - -was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, -ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible _raconteur_ of inimitable -dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German -philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work -which made his name heard in the world of literature. - -It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but -rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the -morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all -four would set to their work, while the Pompadour _salon_ was hardly yet -awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found -lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to -write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de -Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, -and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating -Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse." - - "L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, - tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, - couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et - venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent - pas."[23] - -Gérard, his part in the foundation of _la Bohème galante_ performed, -felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, -indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered -ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave -before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task -was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as -Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was -also an actress. In the days of the _cénacle_ Gérard had fallen -desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress -of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very -roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic -mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, -and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful -Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that -Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was -always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other -parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an -occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by -straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome -of his life--a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. -His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar -heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to -accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on -Arsène Houssaye's stanza: - - _"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?_ - _Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique_ - _S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,_ - _Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,_ - _Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"_[24] - _Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"_ - -wrote: - - "La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait - alors--et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des - Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce - grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore - garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François - Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se - jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas - plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image - tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve - idéal et divin." - -The question was to secure her _début_ at the Opéra, and for that -purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de -Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to -compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly -engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the -Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to -maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps -because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de -Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and -the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème -Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which -he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing -themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had -an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could -not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the -room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for -another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of -the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked -till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other -masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an -early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The -revellers set off joyously, Gérard's _belle désolée_ opposing only a -feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on -his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the -lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his -disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. -And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his -fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme -toujours!" - -Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his -whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted -Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly. -Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for -Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a -Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but -when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art -criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his -mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of -bouillon for his _déjeuner_. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over -and the visitors gone--Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the -Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret--Rogier, Gautier, -and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy -city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling -along the Seine. They dined--they were not too poor for that--in the -Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night -where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some -romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch -would be indispensable; now they would invade the _Chaumière_ or some -other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,[25] -the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to -choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and -Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille -which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life--the -siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another -evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent, -Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold _salon_ with Rogier, -who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their -knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish _cabaret_ hard -by, served by the young _tavernière_ - - _Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière._ - _Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel oeil attrayant!_ - _Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant._ - - _Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,_ - _Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,_ - _Jetant à tout venant son coeur et sa vertu,_ - _Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,_ - _Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;_ - _Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle._ - -So sang of her Houssaye, whose souvenirs of Bohemia at the magic age of -_vingt ans_ are deeply tinged with amorous memories. In fact, _la -Bohème galante_, as its name implies, was not a monastery, and its life -was not shared, but illuminated by a number of divinities whose aureoles -had been over more than one windmill. The chief of these was "la -Cydalise," - - _Respirant un lilas qui jouait dans sa main_ - _Et pressentant déjà le triste lendemain._ - -She was treasure-trove of Camille Rogier's, a beautiful woman, and -titular mistress of the Bohemian encampment. They were all jealous of -Rogier's good fortune, for, since he was twenty-five, they considered -him a patriarch, and Théo could not understand how Cydalise could put up -with such an old man. She lived quite happily in the Impasse, making the -afternoon tea, sitting as a model, and inflaming all their hearts. -Théo's passion was of a frantic heat. He besieged Cydalise with long and -violent apostrophes, swearing to kill the senile tyrant who kept her in -his power, threats for which Rogier, ever smiling, did not care a -button. Poor Cydalise, she was a butterfly whose day was short. To -Rogier's great grief consumption seized her. For some weeks he enlivened -her sick-bed by singing her songs and drawing pictures for her -amusement; but the day came when her ears no longer heard and her lovely -eyes were closed. Gérard, Gautier, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac went -to her funeral, and Bohemia lost its official mistress. Yet there were -others. Gérard draws a picture of Gautier, on a Gothic stool, reading -his verses while Cydalise or Lorry or Victorine swung herself carelessly -in the hammock of Sarah _la blonde_, and Arsène Houssaye at the end of -"Vingt Ans" recalls them in the lines: - - _Judith oublie Arthur, Franz, Rogier et le reste,_ - _En donnant à son coeur la solitude agreste;_ - _Rosine à Chantilly caresse un jeune enfant_ - _Plus joli qu'un Amour et plus joueur qu'un faon._ - - * * * * * - - _Ninon au Jockey Club vend chacun de ses jours;_ - _Charlotte danse encore--et dansera toujours._ - _Alice?--il faut la plaindre et prier Dieu pour elle,_ - _Elle est dans les chiffons, la pauvre Chanterelle;_ - _Armande?--Un prince russe épris de sa beauté_ - _Travaille à lui refaire une virginité._ - _Olympe?--un mauvais livre ouvert à chaque page--_ - _Ce matin je l'ai vue en galant équipage...._ - -The loves of Doyenné were true _enfants de Bohème_, neither great -passions nor elective affinities, but pastimes leaving regrets for -inspiration; not devouring flames, but pleasantly crackling experimental -fires, drawn chiefly from those great hearths, the stage and the _corps -de ballet_. How much fantasy went to their burning is illustrated in a -story told by Houssaye of Gérard, who, on one occasion, to the despair -of his friends, became obsessed with a mad desire to set out that -instant for Cythera and revive the gods of Greece. Prompt measures were -necessary, and Houssaye devoted himself to the rescue by professing to -enter into the scheme with joy, only remarking that it would be well to -have lunch first. This seemed to Gérard a reasonable preliminary, so -they adjourned to the Café d'Orsay, where over the first bottle Gérard -developed his scheme with growing eloquence. But the first stage on the -way to Cythera lasted for several bottles, and at the commencement of -the next Gérard met a provisional goddess in the shape of an attractive -_grisette_. Houssaye, convinced that his companionship was now no longer -necessary, abandoned the voyage, and left Gérard to continue it up -several flights of stairs. The end of this ascent marked his farthest -point; after a halt of two days he descended and turned his footsteps -back to Bohemia. The loves of Bohemia which gambol so trippingly in the -tongue of France are ill at ease in our austerer medium, for our -Northern spirit has ever refused to admit, as the French do with -engaging candour, that man, particularly the artist-man, is naturally -polygamous. Lorry, Victorine, Armande, and the rest were the only -appropriate feminine attachments of Bohemia, even of the golden age, the -pagan loves of pagan heroes, who were greedy of their caresses without -hungering for their souls, grew jealous at their eyes' wayward glances, -but took no umbrage at the inward abstraction of their minds, and were -content with the homage of their play-hours without seeking to rival the -ideals of their artistic contemplations. But the mark of the golden age -was that they played for love and not for money: they would dance the -heels off their slippers in the barren land of Doyenné when all the -millions of a dull prince would have moved their agile toes only to the -most significant of kicks. It was a mad little world, but good because -Mammon had not corrupted its natural spontaneity. True, it was deficient -in some virtues, but some virtues are frankly middle-aged, to be put on -with a less tricksy cut of the clothes. Bohemia was young; it loved and -feasted and, being poor, made debts. There is not much to be said for -getting into debt, in spite of Panurge's ingenious discourse, except -that it is an unavoidable corollary of certain conjunctions of -temperament and circumstance. It is difficult, anyhow, not to pardon -Gérard for dissipating his capital and running up bills on account of -his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture -dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns -les autres," which affected the dun to tears. - -"We had no money, but we lived _en grands seigneurs_," wrote Arsène -Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have -pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the Opéra -for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were -not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard -more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the -landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an -occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless, -dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch _la -Bohème galante_ had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic -entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835. -The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his -frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the -first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was -a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of -it: a _bal costumé_ alone could produce a gathering that would not clash -with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances -were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia, -required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who -are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the -superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too -little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than -give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the -eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings -by their friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could -indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be -undying. - -The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had -done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day, -including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he -narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared -to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that -his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand -bottles of wine. _La Bohème galante_, though younger and less known -artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal. -Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and -the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination. -They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes, -singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind -their ears--a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a -general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal -usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling -through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque -scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a -tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden -hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned with -ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service, -Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing -Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two -narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might -lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the -acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in -and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white -chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of -this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few _louis -d'or_ for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a -millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet -regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the -_salon_ of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which -the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating -festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its -freshness. - -The _fête_ was gorgeous. True, the landlord's wife had refused their -invitation--a severe blow. But the hosts with some consideration, -knowing that their revels would make sleep impossible in the quarter, -invited all their bachelor neighbours on the condition that they brought -with them _femmes du monde_ protected, if they pleased, by masks and -dominoes. The wonderful evening began with the pantomime of "Le Diable -Boiteux," in which many actresses from the boulevard took part. Then -there were two little farces in which Ourliac covered himself with glory -as the _buffo_. The first was "Le Courrier de Naples," and the second, -written by Ourliac himself, "La Jeunesse du Temps et le Temps de la -Jeunesse," was introduced by a prologue by Gautier, read from behind the -curtain. Ourliac was buried in bouquets, and the noisy orchestra brought -in from a _guingette_ struck up. The ruined quarter woke to life again, -as in some ghost story; the desert streets resounded with songs and -laughter; Turks and _débardeurs_ affronted the frown of the staid old -Louvre, and only the landlords and _concierges_, tossing sleeplessly, -consigned Bohemians to everlasting flames. The dance, sustained only by -good spirits, never flagged, till in the final galop every mask with his -partner rushed pell-mell from the room, leaped wildly down the rickety -stairs, dashed up the Impasse, and came to rest under the moonlit ruins -of the old priory, where a little _cabaret_ had opened, and only the -late dawn of winter drove Bohemia to its bed, to dream of the Pompadour -salon, of Ourliac's satirical buffoonery, and of Roger de Beauvoir's -magnificent Venetian costume of apple-green velvet with silver -embroidery, and his inexhaustible wit, for once born of no champagne. - -It is melancholy to go back to a deserted ballroom, and we may spare -ourselves the pain. That joyous evening, little as it may have seemed -to do so, marked the passing of the golden age. Bohemia's sun henceforth -descended the skies. The next year saw marked changes. The landlord of -the old house in the Impasse du Doyenné saw with relief--Gérard says he -gave them notice to quit--the departure of his turbulent tenants. If -Rogier had not gone to Constantinople it is possible that, even if the -band had been compelled to change its quarters, some reconstruction of -_la Bohème galante_ might have been possible. With him, the stable, the -earner of money, absent, there was no hope. The heroes of Bohemia had to -leave their enchanted garden for the ordinarily circumscribed dwelling -of impecunious mortals, and, like the heroes of Valhalla when Freia is -snatched from them, a certain wanness came over the complexion of their -lives. Joy and beauty and work and love were left, but the magic bloom -had just faded. With smaller resources and in a colder light the -resettlement of Bohemia was a work of compromise, not spontaneous -achievement. Rogier was gone; Ourliac, who produced "Suzanne" with -success, married before long, grew serious, and ended his days in the -fullest odour of piety; Roger de Beauvoir found the boulevard more to -his taste than any less brilliant Bohemia. Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye -were left, a trio of markedly divergent tastes. They made one attempt at -a common life in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which seems to have -lasted a year or two. The details of it given by Gautier[26] and -Houssaye[27] differ considerably. According to Gautier they did their -own cooking: Arsène Houssaye was perfect in the _panade_, Gautier -prepared the macaroni, no doubt remembering Graziano, while Gérard -"went, with perfect self-possession, to buy galantines, sausages, or -fresh pork cutlets with gherkins at the neighbouring cook-shop." -Houssaye, on the other hand, says that they had a rascally valet and a -cook called Margot, and that they broke up because they were at variance -on the degree of luxury to be maintained, Gérard, whom anything -satisfied, departing to a bare _hôtel garni_, Gautier to a sumptuous -apartment in the Rue de Navarin, and Houssaye sharing rooms in the Rue -du Bac, on the left bank, with Jules Sandeau. I do not trouble to -reconcile these two accounts, for the memories of Bohemia are invariably -picturesque. The fact remains that the old days could not come back. The -first Bohemians were growing older, and the world was beginning to claim -its once youthful defiers as servitors. Though Gérard's bed remained -with Gautier as a memory of freer days, he knew too well that the gates -of the prison were closing upon him. For a year or so he might pretend -to mock destiny by producing another book of verses and a novel, or by -making a voyage in Belgium accompanied by Gérard: but he was a doomed -man. About 1838 he became the dramatic critic of _La Presse_, entering -the mill in which he was to grind for over thirty years. Well might he -say in 1867, in an autobiographical notice: "Là finit ma vie heureuse, -indépendante et prime-sautière." Houssaye kept up the pretence a little -longer. Life in the Rue du Bac was gay; there were suppers with Jules -Janin and Sandeau at which Gautier and Ourliac sometimes appeared; there -was dancing; there were the bright eyes of a certain Ninon, who inspired -some pretty stanzas. But these were the last echoes of _la première -Bohème_, as he had to admit. When they died away he completed the -chapter of his youth, as Gautier had done, by travelling. - -[Illustration: Gérard de Nerval] - -Gérard alone escaped the inevitable superannuation of Bohemia, because -he was too ethereal to become amenable to the ordinary dynamic laws of -society. An attempt was made to catch him in the machinery by making him -Gautier's assistant as dramatic critic of _La Presse_. The sprite within -him would not submit to the drudgery, and in a little while he gave it -up. He preferred, as ever, to wander at his will and at his own hours, -or to sit reading at the dead of night by the light of a brass -chandelier balanced on his head. It is not part of this book's plan to -give complete biographies of those who appear in its pages, but an -exception shall be made in the case of Gérard de Nerval. Between 1837 -and 1839 he stayed in Paris, writing a comic opera, "Piquillo," with -Dumas, in which Jenny Colon appeared, several plays, with a certain -number of articles and reviews. His way of life was always eccentric, -but he had his first definite attack of madness in 1839 or 1840, and was -placed in the famous establishment of Doctor Blanche. He came out in -1841 and resumed a career of wider vagabondage than ever, now with -money, now without, but caring little in any case and ready to go to the -ends of the earth with a whim and without a coin. In 1841 he joined -Camille Rogier in Constantinople, and wandered subsequently in other -parts of the East--an experience which gave rise to some of his best -descriptive work. He returned to Paris again, where his spirit dwelt in -the clouds and his body anywhere, though he often allowed it to rest -with one of his many friends, with whom he would leave a shirt to be -washed against his next coming. He continued to write not very -successful plays between 1846 and 1850, when he again went completely -mad and retired to Dr. Blanche's house. His second stay here was longer, -but as he soon became perfectly reasonable his friends were allowed to -take him out for the day occasionally. Once more apparently cured he -came out, but though he made one or two voyages his faculties remained -permanently clouded. Of this he himself was perfectly conscious, but he -bore his afflictions with perfect cheerfulness. His money was all gone, -and the flashes of sanity too rare for him to earn much; he was -homeless, but not friendless, for he never appealed to his friends in -vain. He came for crumbs like a bird in winter, but like a bird he would -not stay. He would have been an appropriate guest at some strange -_Nachtasil_ such as Maxim Gorki describes so powerfully. Who knows, too, -in what haunts he was not a familiar? His comrades of older days could -do no more than greet him and tend him when they saw him, and his -equanimity was too great to drive them to forcible detention. As Paul de -Saint-Victor wrote after his death: - - "In vain his friends tried to follow him with their hearts and - eyes; he was lost to sight for weeks, months, years. Then, one fine - day, one found him by chance in a foreign city, a provincial town, - or more often still in the country, thinking aloud, dreaming with - open eyes, his attention fixed on the fall of a leaf, the flight of - an insect or a bird, the form of a cloud, the dart of a ray, on all - those vague and ravishing beauties that pass in the air. Never man - saw a gentler madness, a tenderer folly, a more inoffensive and - more friendly eccentricity. If he woke from his slumber, it was to - recognize his friends, to love them and serve them, to double the - warmth of his devotion and welcome as if he wished to make up to - them for his long absences by an extra amount of tenderness." - -It was with a profound shock, therefore, that Paris heard, one morning -in 1857, that Gérard had been found in the small hours, hanged to an -iron railing by a woman's apron-string, in one of the lowest and most -ill-famed streets in Paris, the Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne. The mystery -of his death has never been cleared up. The inquest brought little -light, save that the inmates of a filthy little drink-shop probably knew -more than they would tell. What Gérard was doing in that foul haunt will -never be known. It is possible that he may have been murdered, but, as -he had no money and was the gentlest of men, it is more probable that -with some dreadful cloud upon his brain he destroyed himself. Yet his -very gentleness had made such an end unexpected, for he seemed to be -under the protection of the children's guardian angel. Some sudden -impulse brought him a death alien to the character of his whole life. -"II est mort," said Paul de Saint-Victor, "de la nostalgie du monde -invisible. Paix à cette âme en peine de l'idéal!" - -From Gérard's death, which Gustave Doré made more hideous in a ghoulish -picture, it is a long cry back to the Impasse du Doyenné and the -Pompadour _salon_ of which he was the discoverer. Yet I will end this -chapter, as it was begun, with this once festive haunt. Not long did it -outlive its Bohemian colony. The landlord, explosively wrathful at the -sight of the wall paintings, at once covered the mess, as he no doubt -called it, with a coating of distemper. The treasures might, even then, -have been saved in part, had anyone but Gérard de Nerval bought from the -demolishers Corot's panels, the pictures by Wattier, Chassériau, and -Châtillon, and Rogier's portraits of Cydalise and Théophile Gautier. His -hand was one to baulk destiny only for a little. This moonstruck captain -of a rickety craft let his cargo fall needlessly into the seas while he -contemplated the stars and allowed the waves to swing the rudder. So -passed _la Bohème galante_, leaving only a gilded legend. - - - - -IX - -SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY - - _La Bohème carottière et geignarde d'Henry Murger_ ... - - LEPELLETIER: "Verlaine" - - -To follow the heroes into exile would be depressing as well as -unprofitable. It is better to stand respectfully aside from the -_Götterdämmerung_ and wait till Bohemia emerges again from the mists, -when a lapse of years has wrought some patent changes, for it is easier -to contemplate a result than to trace a process. By leaping forward some -ten years from the dispersal of the brotherhood that sanctified by its -presence the Impasse du Doyenné it is possible to steal a march on Time -and anticipate with a rapid glance his changing hand. Yet to catch this -later view it is necessary for the nonce to abandon the world of flesh -and blood and to turn from the acts and reminiscences of actual mortals -to the imaginary scenes and fictitious characters of a book of stories. -The tide of life was too strong upon Théophile Gautier and Arsène -Houssaye for them to pause and stamp out firmly the features of those -precious days in _la Bohème galante_; they only caught fugitive -impressions in retrospect. Henry Murger, less prodigal because less -endowed, crystallized as it passed a moment of Bohemia, the Bohemia of -common mortality, in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." As a confectioner -encloses a fresh grape in a transparent coat of candied sugar, so he, -even while he tasted, sour and sweet, the fruit of his days, caught -stray berries in a light film of art and presented them as dessert to -the readers of the _Corsaire_, a small but amusing journal. Sharp and -savoury as they were, Time would have destroyed them, as he destroyed -the ambrosial lusciousness of the Doyenné feasts, but for that light -film. Nobody remembers reminiscences, but a well-told story preserves -even the most trivial events. - -Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" is a book which has now lived for -nearly seventy years and does not seem likely as yet to pass into the -lumber-room. At the same time, it is to be wished that more people in -England knew it, if only because the presupposition of such knowledge -would make this chapter easier to write. It is not, of course, difficult -to criticize the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème"; many of Murger's -countrymen, indeed, have done so. Its ethics, its humour, and its style -have been attacked. M. Boucher, an estimable civil servant interested in -literature, in his "Souvenirs d'un Parisien" calls it an effort to -depict the life of low-class students, accuses Murger of insipidity and -repetition, and denies any wit to his "étudiants demi-escrocs, -demi-canailles." M. Pelloquet, who was good enough to pronounce a -discourse over Murger's grave, said: "It is an unhealthy book, in which -vice grimaces, youth paints its cheeks like a superannuated coquette, -and a fictitious _insouciance_ conceals, not a laziness that is -sometimes poetic, but the cowardly indolence of men without courage and -without talent." He was also rash enough to predict that it would not -live. Jules Janin, the critic, in a wiser appreciation, asserted that -with a little more art and a little more poetry Murger might have -created more pardonable heroes and no less charming heroines. Gautier's -dictum about the invertebrate verses of "that feeble appendage to Alfred -de Musset" has already been quoted, and the opinion of Verlaine's -biographer appears at the head of this chapter. Murger's gravest fault, -however, in the eyes of French people is that he wrote bad French. To -them the mishandling of that difficult, elusive, and withal limited -tongue is a crime of which we can hardly comprehend the enormity. It is -perfectly true that Murger was culpable in this respect; he was -deficient in scholarship and in rhythmic sense, so that his poems are -weak and his prose, even where he tried to give it an air of -respectability, betrays its imperfections no less manifestly than M. -Jourdain betrayed his birth. We in England, fastidious as our critics -are in the matter of language, have not our ears tuned to this painful -degree of precision. So long as a style effectively harmonizes with its -environment we are content to let it stand: the Gothic grandeur of -English can suffer without disfigurement the intrusion of the quaint. To -sympathies so trained Murger's style in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -should make a particular appeal, since in that book, for the most part, -he makes no attempt to ape the academician, but writes in the -extravagant jargon of the very Bohemians he is describing--a language -full of comic inversions, extravagances, and lapses from grammar, which -are an essential part of the book's gaiety and charm. Though his matter -is unmistakably Parisian, his humour is, in some respects, remarkably -English, delighting in broad and bustling effects rather than subtle -strokes and sudden flashes. As for the life and the characters that he -depicts, criticism of them will be implicit in the remainder of this -chapter; of the book as a whole no more need be said than that it has -survived when all the rest of Murger's work has been forgotten. It is -not a book to be placed unwarily in the hands of the young and tender; -parts of it are exaggerated, parts may be wished away, but, when all has -been said, it remains, not the picture of _la vie de Bohème_ at its best -and brightest, but the classic expression of the Bohemian spirit--a -frank confession, not the pseudo-pathetic souvenir of a prosperous -greybeard. Its pages are among those rare ones in the world's library -that have caught and held for a moment the intangible freshness, the -poetry, and the gaiety of youth. For this alone it deserves never to -grow old. - -Murger's Bohemia is described in a series of scenes taken from the life -of four young men, a quartet as fascinating to read of as Dumas' -Musketeers, though possibly less comfortable companions. They were -Rodolphe, the sentimental poet; Marcel, the painter; Colline, the -peripatetic philosopher and bookworm; and Schaunard, painter and -musician, incomparable rogue whose masterpiece was a symphony "Sur -l'influence du bleu dans la musique"--a sly hit at debased Romanticism. -Chance brought them together. Schaunard, unable to pay his arrears of -rent, was forced to leave his lodging with his furniture in pawn. A -day's peregrination in search of a loan brought him three francs in -cash, which he spent in dinner, together with the less tangible benefit -of Colline's and Rodolphe's acquaintance. He swore brotherhood with -Colline over a dish of stewed rabbit in a little eating-house, and the -pair collected Rodolphe in the Café Momus, where, at Colline's expense, -they passed the rest of a not too abstemious evening. Meanwhile Marcel, -the painter, who had taken Schaunard's room unfurnished in advance, -though having no furniture of his own but a second-hand scenic interior -from the stock of a bankrupt theatre, had been persuaded to take the -lodging furnished with Schaunard's furniture, and had duly moved in. -Late in the evening, when a sharp shower of rain was falling, -Schaunard, in bacchic absence of mind, offered asylum to his two new -comrades. Hastily buying the elements of a supper, they gaily invaded -the apartment of Marcel. Explanations were difficult, but were -accomplished during supper, and next day Marcel and Schaunard agreed to -live together. A dinner and a magnificent supper inaugurated the -foundation of the new clan, which was united, so long as their Bohemian -days continued, by an unbroken bond of friendship. It is these young men -whom Murger's readers follow through their straits and shifts, their -love affairs, their extravagances, their boisterous jokes, and their -naïve pleasures--the poet, the artist, the savant, and the musician, -characters drawn from Murger himself and his living friends, whose coats -were ragged and whose pockets almost always empty, who were the bane of -respectable _concierges_ and proprietors of _cafés_, who bore short -commons with cheerful bravado and succumbed to innocent gluttony in -times of unexpected prosperity, who were really funny even if they were -sometimes vulgar, whose expedients for catching the elusive _pièce de -cent sous_ were as amazing as their puns, who made life, even in a -garret, a sentimental poem and a rollicking ballad, and who had the -sense to become prosaic before the sentiment grew threadbare or the -ballad grew stale. It is a great temptation to follow some of their -adventures in greater detail from the day when Marcel went out to dine -in the sugar-merchant's coat while Schaunard painted the latter's -portrait in his own colour-stained dressing-gown, to the day when -Rodolphe by composing a didactic poem at fifteen sous a dozen lines for -a celebrated dentist, Marcel by painting the portraits of eighteen -grenadiers at six francs a head, and Schaunard by playing the same scale -all day and every day for a month to revenge a rich Englishman on an -actress's parrot, earned enough to give their mistresses new dresses and -take them for a holiday in the fields of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Yet the -impulse to discursive commentary must be checked, for plucking flowers -is a distraction from comparative botany. Murger, after all, tells his -own story infinitely better than any translator could do, and the -purpose which is proper to the present book is to inquire what kind of a -Bohemia appears in Murger's light-hearted pages. - -So far as Bohemia was concerned, the generation of 1830 had entirely -passed away by 1846, when Murger's sketches actually appeared, and the -young men of whom Bohemia was composed were formed under less violent -influences. The last flashes of Napoleon's glory had not illuminated -their early days, they knew little of the stifling reign of Charles X, -and the Revolution of 1830 took place when they had only a little while -outgrown the nursery. By the time they grew up the complexion of affairs -in Paris wore a more even tone. Assisted by Guizot, Louis Philippe had -found the _juste-milieu_ to his people's satisfaction, revolutionary -tendencies had been checked or diverted into harmless channels of -humanitarian reform, the _bourgeois_ had firmly grasped his power and -built up an already solid bulwark of commercial interest. In the -artistic world, too, things were quieter. "Hernani," once a scandal, had -become a classic, and there was no further need of red waistcoats and -furious _claques_. Romanticism, indeed, had become so workaday that a -successful little excitement was aroused by a reaction against it in -what was called "l'école de bon sens," whose chief poet, Ponsard, gained -quite a celebrity for a short time with his classic drama "Lucrèce." -Beyond the gadfly of artistic impulse and the natural fermentation of -the adolescent mind, there was little to rouse a young man's passions or -send his blood coursing faster through his veins; there was no -particular idol to worship, no hobby-horse to ride, as a Gautier or a -Borel had worshipped Hugo and mounted the gallant steed called Middle -Ages. The creed of Romanticism was so thoroughly established that there -was nothing left to make any fuss about, with the natural consequence -that its early extravagances had fallen out of fashion and there was no -further need to be satanic or profess excessive sensibility. Literature -was feeling its way to the austerer Romanticism of Flaubert and the -Goncourts, as painting towards the "realism" of Courbet, but the growth -was still below ground and the surface as yet seemed undisturbed. The -generation of Rodolphe and Schaunard found, therefore, in Paris no eager -band to whom they could ally themselves and to whose educative influence -they could submit. Driven by their impulses towards the arts, with souls -naturally romantic, as most young men's souls are, they found no cause -which they could immediately embrace in the manner of the second -_cénacle_. They missed that valuable education which is the idolization -of a great man, and were confined instead to fighting their own battle, -a very much less distinguished affair, which allowed many little -dishonourable compromises with indolence and in which victory meant no -more than individual success. This explains, to some extent, the absence -of intellectual fecundity in Murger's heroes, which even their most -devoted admirers cannot deny. Rodolphe's poems are indeed only pale -imitations of Alfred de Musset, who was an almost inevitable model for -any lyric youngster of the day; his more serious effort, a drama called -"Le Vengeur," good enough to burn for warmth in a draughty garret, is -not vouchsafed to us in quotation by Rodolphe's creator. Marcel was -obviously not a very gifted painter, in spite of his famous _Passage de -la Mer Rouge_, which was sent up in a different guise to each Salon and -inevitably rejected, and when this great work was sold to become a -shop-sign the artist's pride was not in the least revolted. Schaunard -never gives any signs of musical inspiration till at the close he -publishes a successful album of songs, and Colline, polyglot philosopher -as he is dubbed, abandoned his career before anything tangible had been -achieved to make an advantageous marriage and give musical evenings. It -would, of course, be pedantic to insist upon these considerations in the -case of a book of short stories which aims chiefly at amusing, but it is -impossible not to be struck in reading the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -by the absence from the conversation of the characters of any indication -of their artistic ideals. Save when Schaunard tells the sugar-merchant -that he was a pupil of Horace Vernet, murmuring to himself, "Horreur, je -renie mes dieux," and Marcel makes a scornful allusion to the "école de -bon sens," the only proof that they are true artists lies in their -creator's own assertion, of which he is not entirely mindful in the -_dénouement_. The worst sinner of all is Colline, for this mine of -knowledge, throughout the book, is made chiefly remarkable for the -composition of dreadful puns. This may be partly due to that want of "a -little more art and a little more poetry" of which Janin accused Murger, -but the fault was not only personal. The second _cénacle_ and the -brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné were, without doubt, just as -commonplace in their ordinary conversation, but what lifted them off the -ground was the enthusiasm of a hotly waged artistic struggle, which by -Murger's day had died down. His four heroes are Romantics in general, -but in no sense champions of any cause. - -Another unmistakable fact about Rodolphe and his friends is that they -were inconspicuous. True, they made the Café Momus unbearable to its -more peaceful customers, and were not unknown at the Chaumière, but the -Café Momus was in a back street, and the Chaumière was certainly not the -Bal de l'Opéra. They were miles away from the _viveurs_ upon the -boulevard, and their connexion with the prominent writers and artists of -the day was extremely remote. They made no public appearance, they were -not a force to be reckoned with. They kept up the form of defying -convention, but it was now no more than a convenient form for the -impecunious. Art and the _bourgeoisie_ were beginning to play into one -another's hands; the former had gained its liberty to a great degree, -while the latter by the gilded pill of commercial success had purged -artistic demonstration of its crudities. The time when eccentricity was -a symbol had passed; now it was only a skin to be sloughed, as Marcel -saw when in a very sensible lecture delivered to Rodolphe he said: - - "Poetry does not exist only in a disordered life, in improvised - happiness, in love affairs that only last as long as a candle, in - more or less eccentric rebellions against the prejudices which will - for ever be the sovereigns of the world: a dynasty is more easily - overturned than a custom, even a ridiculous one. To have talent it - is not sufficient to put on a summer overcoat in May; one can be a - true poet or artist and yet keep one's feet warm and have one's - three meals a day." - -Their Bohemia, in fact, was a kind of undergraduate existence, in which -all sorts of disorder and youthful folly might be excused on the plea -that youth must be served, but which could in no sense be regarded as a -part of civic life, much less as the best part, the most truly -disinterested and artistic. This is a significant change of attitude -from the days of _la Bohème galante_, which was one of the centres of -Paris. That, indeed, was transitory and presupposed youth, but it was -not obscure and its inhabitants had no misgivings. It was not they who -gave it up as the writer of Ecclesiastes put away childish things, for -they gloried in it all their days as the best part of their life; it was -that the world claimed them for its business in spite of themselves. In -their disinterested love of art they had made themselves valuable, and -when the command went forth "Come and be paid" they were forced to go. -To guard against any accusation of misunderstanding Murger, it may be -admitted that he calls his heroes only a small section of Bohemia--they -moved, to use his phrase, in the _troisièmes dessous_ of literature and -art--but there is no indication that Murger conceived a Bohemia which -had its part in any higher sphere. When Rodolphe gets a lucky present of -five hundred francs the determination he avows is not to suffuse his -little corner of Bohemia with a more worthy splendour, but to become, -like every other successful man, a _bourgeois_. "These are my projects," -he cries to an astonished Marcel. "Sheltered from the material -embarrassments of life, I am going to work seriously; I shall finish my -great work, and gain a settled place in public opinion. To begin with, I -renounce Bohemia, I shall dress like everybody else, I shall have a -black coat, and I shall frequent drawing-rooms." Such a speech would -have fallen like a thunderbolt in Camille Rogier's Pompadour _salon_, -and its author considered charitably to be in the first stages of -lunacy. Marcel, however, falls in at once with the ambitious scheme, and -they are only saved by their Bohemianism being stronger than their -resolution. Both in the stories and the preface to the "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--where Murger speaks with a picturesque seriousness--there is -no sign of that former joy in Bohemian life as the life which was alone -worth living by poets and artists. Throughout he regards it as a -necessity conditioned by the artistic impulse combined with poverty, to -be borne with the courage and gaiety of youth, to be regretted "perhaps" -from the vantage-point of subsequent prosperity. The true Bohemia--as -distinct from the Bohemia of mere idealists, incapables, and -amateurs--he regards as a narrow, stony path leading up the sides of an -arduous mountain, beset by the chasms of doubt and misery, but making -for a possible goal, the goal of a sufficient income. Divested of all -its _agréments_--resourcefulness, humour, courage, extravagance, which -are properly attributes of youth, the real illuminant--Murger's Bohemia -is laid bare as a merely economic state. The true Bohemians, he says, -are known upon the literary and artistic market-place, where their wares -are saleable, but at moderate prices; "their existence each day is a -work of genius"--"preceded by a pack of ruses, poaching in all the -industries connected with the arts, they hunt from morn till eve that -ferocious animal which is called the five-franc piece." To Murger, who -wrote of what he knew, the man who had the means to live a stable -existence, howsoever retired, was a fool if he remained in Bohemia: to -the inhabitants of _la Bohème galante_ it was the not being entirely -destitute which made their life peculiarly worth living. If Colline ever -speculated with any profundity he may have seen that his friends and he -lived really in a prison of which poverty, prodigality, and idleness -were warders. The Bohemia of Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Houssaye had -all the glory of a voluntary protest, a passionate assertion of liberty, -a revivifying of life in accordance with new artistic ideas. - -The difference is not simply one of degree. The brotherhood of the -Impasse du Doyenné were less destitute and more talented than Rodolphe -and his friends, but that is not a point that at this moment requires -stress. The important fact is that in a few years Bohemia had undergone -a great change; that, whereas a few years after 1830 young men with a -little money and some talent deliberately chose to make their life more -picturesque than that of ordinary citizens and to escape from the -suffocating atmosphere of commerce and officialdom, a few years after -1840 the ideal of struggling artists was to become as soon as possible -successful merchants and to escape from the possibility of that -picturesqueness which they welcomed as an alleviation of a state of -transitory discomfort. It would be quite beside the mark to regard -Bohemia as guilty in this of self-degradation; so far, indeed, as the -change was conscious, the majority of mankind must logically find it -praiseworthy, for all human effort is judged by its tendency to -well-being. The change, however, was none of Bohemia's doing, but was -due mainly to the fact that art was beginning, in the modern sense, to -pay. The beginnings were small, but they were quite evident, especially -in the increased profits from journalism and illustration. The old -Bohemia of the golden age rested on the supposition that the artist -worked primarily to please himself, and that money, source of enjoyment -as it was, remained a secondary consideration. The supposition, in the -first forward rush of commercial prosperity, was bound to become -untenable. Writers and artists of obvious talent were too valuable -commercial assets to be left to their careless selves; they had to be -tempted into the cage--an easy task, for, if money be regarded as a -means of more enjoyment, why should a Bohemian resist it? It was -unimportant if individuals held out, or were too uncompromising to suit -the market; the fact remained that there _was_ a market and a list of -quotations, and this fact was the disruption of Bohemia. Whereas it had -been a true fraternity in which art was all-important and individual -celebrity a thing of so little moment that there was complete equality -of intercourse, it now included the last two sections of a trisected -world of artists--the well-paid, the ill-paid, and the not paid at -all--and where money intervenes all equality ceases. The majority of the -well-paid were kept too busy even to see they had lost the old freedom; -they were tempted to live as other people in decent rooms and decent -coats, and as their vanity kept them from complaining, the ill-paid and -the not paid at all naturally envied their state, striving and jostling -for an equally happy captivity, or at least intending to do so as soon -as their irrepressible blood took a staider course through their veins. -The charm of Murger's merry crew is that their blood was too strong for -their business instincts; the Bohemian spirit snatched them along in -spite of Mammon, for Mammon, incomplete as his hold has always been over -youth, was in those days but just learning his strength. Where youth -and art combine the Bohemian spirit is always there; only the -possibilities of Bohemia have in the course of time been crowded out. -But in Murger's Paris Bohemia, shorn of earthly glory as it was, without -lot in the brilliance of the boulevard, cut off from the more thriving -traders in the artistic market-place, was still a possibility because -the Bohemian tradition was still fairly strong, and because Paris was -still a small city, its life little disturbed by a floating population -of aliens and its interests completely self-centred. - -The Bohemia described by Murger certainly corresponded in one respect -with the general conception of Bohemianism to-day in that it was devoid -of any material splendour. Neither Rodolphe nor Marcel indicates any -desire for the old furniture, damasks, and other decorations which so -glittered in the eyes of the early Romantics, but at any rate such -things would have been beyond the capacity of their purses. They were -unequivocally poor. When Rodolphe was in funds he could afford a hundred -francs a year for a garret in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; when -Providence was less kind he lived "in the Avenue de Saint-Cloud, on the -fifth branch of the third tree on the left as you leave the Bois de -Boulogne." As for entertainments, they came a long way behind the -costume ball of the Impasse du Doyenné. At Rodolphe's Wednesdays in the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, it was said, one could only sit down morally -and was forced to drink badly filtered water in eclectic earthenware. -Even the grand _soirée_ given by Rodolphe and Marcel, which began with a -literary and musical entertainment and ended with a dance prolonged till -sunrise, only cost the hosts fifteen francs--miraculously acquired at -the last moment--in addition to a set of chairs which fed the stove from -midnight onwards, though, as these belonged to a neighbour, they were -probably not paid for. Their wardrobes were not conspicuous for any -particularly Romantic or medieval effect, but simply, except in times of -exceptional windfalls, for extreme dilapidation. Schaunard's chief -garment was an overcoat worn to a state of utter baldness; Colline's -ulster, crammed with books and papers, had the surface of a file; -Marcel's coat was called "Mathusalem," but he must have acquired it -subsequent to the sugar-merchant's momentous visit, for at that time, -after an hour's search to discover a costume fit to dine out in, the net -results were a pair of plaid trousers, a grey hat, a red tie, a (once) -white glove and a black glove. To dine sufficiently at a small -restaurant was for them no ordinary luxury, and as for entering the -_Rocher de Caucale_, they might as well have aspired to membership of -the Jockey Club. Why, Schaunard had never seen a lobster till the old -Jew gave them all a feast after buying Marcel's _Passage de la Mer -Rouge_. Some days they dispensed with dining altogether, on others the -staple dish was pickled herrings; so it is hardly surprising that on the -proceeds of Marcel's picture they remained at table for five days, the -room filled with a Pantagruelic atmosphere and a whole bed of -oyster-shells covering the floor. It was not that they took up any -quixotic attitude of art for art's sake, like the society called _Les -Buveurs d'Eau_, whom Murger describes in one of his stories and whose -principle was not to make the slightest concession to necessity. They -were imperfect journeymen, indolent, careless, too easily distracted, -but they were among those who were ill-paid rather than those who never -tried to be paid. Rodolphe edited a small fashion paper, _L'Écharpe -d'Iris_; Marcel painted ruined manors for a Jew dealer and portraits of -the lowliest possessor of a few spare francs; Colline gave lessons in -the same range of subjects as Pico di Mirandola professed to discuss; -and Schaunard, besides exhibiting a special ability as a borrower, put -music to bad poetry for hard-hearted music-publishers. - -In comparing this Bohemia with that of Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, it -is easy to see the justification of Lepelletier's epithet "carottière." -The graceful adjuncts and by no means contemptible achievements of a -former day had vanished as completely as its enthusiasms. The presence -of Roger de Beauvoir and Nestor Roqueplan in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne is as difficult to imagine as the composition of -"Mademoiselle de Maupin." Yet Rodolphe and his friends were at least as -well off in one respect, that is, in their affairs of the heart, if, -indeed, they had not some advantage. The divinities of the Impasse du -Doyenné, Cydalise excepted, seem to have had their home in the _corps de -ballet_, a body not notable for the tenderness or constancy of their -attachments. Murger, who, like his Rodolphe, was an amorous -sentimentalist, gave some poetic value, if not as much as he intended, -to the figures of Mimi and Musette, the idols of Rodolphe and Marcel, -who play such a prominent part in the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," that -it would be an affectation not to speak of them, although an Englishman -must always do so with some reserve. In spite of all that may be said -against them--indeed, _is_ said by their very creator--there is a charm -about Mimi and Musette which must always hold the reader of these -stories, a charm which includes Francine, who died holding the muff -bought for her by her lover, and the vulgar Phémie Teinturière, who -shared the lot of a no more refined Schaunard. Without sympathizing, at -least temporarily, with all the blend of mystery and frankness which a -Frenchman breathes into the word "amour," it is useless to read French -literature. To him love is the highest emotional value--emotion being in -its turn the highest value in life--so that a union, whether it be -celebrated in the Madeleine or in the _mairie_ of the notorious -thirteenth _arrondissement_, is equally sacred and equally interesting. -We in England look at love differently and, as we naturally think, -better, but we are not hindered, nevertheless, from abandoning our view -occasionally. We do so implicitly when we shed tears over "La Dame aux -Camélias," over "Madame Butterfly," and over Mimi herself in Puccini's -"La Bohème." To be honest, then, we must accept Murger's view, if we -enjoy his book, as there is very little doubt that we do. We applaud -Musette when she surreptitiously waters the flowers whose duration is to -measure that of her love for Marcel; we forgive her fickleness because -she follows her fancy without calculation, even though on leaving the -rich young nobleman to visit Marcel she takes six days on the road; we -warm to Mimi because Rodolphe really loved her and she him, though his -jealousy and her love of luxury made their days a burden and their -rupture certain; and if we join heartily in Marcel's ironical tirade -against Mimi the fine lady, we cannot restrain our sadness at Mimi -returning to her old love to die. The life of the Impasse du Doyenné was -so joyous, strong, and full that its _amours passagers_ can be taken for -granted, happy fantasies without regrets; but Murger's Bohemia, with its -frequent moments of despondency and hardship, was forced to rely upon -its heart to supply that relieving colour which its surroundings could -not give. Mimi and Musette, Phémie and Francine, even the little -_giletière_ who corrected Colline's proofs and never appeared, meant so -much more than Lorry or Victorine. So long as their attachment lasted -they made a home out of the barest garret, doing for their men those -thousand little things which men are too lazy or preoccupied to do for -themselves. Besides, they opened a field for the exercise of -unselfishness--a valuable service in itself. In this connexion I need -only cite one delightful little story, to which I have already referred, -entitled "La Toilette des Grâces," an idyll which no afterthought can -spoil. It tells how Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard, having earned a -little money by making their respective arts serve the humblest of -commercial purposes, decided to surprise their mistresses by giving them -new dresses. One fine morning Mimi, Musette, and Phémie were awakened by -the entry of a procession headed by Schaunard, in a new coat of golden -nankeen, playing a horn, and close behind him a shopman bringing -samples. They nearly went mad with joy. Mimi jumped like a young kid, -waving a pretty scarf; Musette, with each hand in a little green boot, -threw her arms round Marcel's neck and clapped the boots like cymbals; -as for Phémie, she could only sob "Ah, mon Alexandre, mon Alexandre!" -The choice was made, the bills discharged, and it was announced to the -dames that they must have their new dresses ready for a day in the -country on the morrow. That was a trifle; for sixteen hours they cut and -stitched, and when next day the Angelus sounded from the neighbouring -church they were already taking their last look into the looking-glass. -Only Phémie had a little sorrow. "I like the green grass and the little -birds," she said, "but one meets nobody in the country. Suppose we made -our excursion on the boulevard." But they went to Fontenay-aux-Roses -instead, and when they returned late at night there were only six francs -left. "What shall we do with it?" asked Marcel. "Invest it in the -funds," said Schaunard. - -There are, doubtless, artistic _coteries_ to-day in whose existence -parallels may be found to the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but -reproduction is impossible, for Murger's Bohemia, no less than _la -Bohème galante_, was conditioned by its time. The conditions include a -Paris of provincial narrowness, greater simplicity together with less -conspicuous uniformity in ordinary life, less elaborate amusements, no -Montmartre _cafés_, no swamping proletariat beside whose _moeurs -d'Apaches_ the eccentricities of Bohemia seem mild and unimportant, a -tiny fraction of the present opportunities for advertisement and -publicity, and a lower standard, perhaps, of general education. To these -one other condition may be added--the existence of Musette and Mimi, who -were the last of the _grisettes_. Murger himself, in a passage which I -cannot do better than quote in the original, points out clearly their -transitoriness: - - "Ces jolies filles moitié abeilles, moitié cigales, qui - travaillaient en chantant toute la semaine, ne demandaient à - Dieu qu'un peu de soleil le dimanche, faisaient vulgairement - l'amour avec le coeur, et se jetaient quelquefois par la fenêtre. - Race disparue maintenant, grâce à la génération actuelle des jeunes - gens: génération corrompue et corruptrice, mais par-dessus tout - vaniteuse, sotte et brutale. Pour le plaisir de faire de méchants - paradoxes, ils ont raillé ces pauvres filles à propos de leurs - mains mutilées par les saintes cicatrices du travail, et elles - n'ont bientôt plus gagné assez pour s'acheter de la pâte d'amandes. - Peu à peu ils sont parvenus à leur inoculer leur vanité et leur - sottise, et c'est alors que la grisette a disparu. C'est alors que - naquit la lorette." - -[Illustration: A Grisette] - -The _grisette_ made love for love: like a wild rose, she had to be -plucked, and when men came to prefer buying bouquets in shops, she -naturally died away. Money already tainted Bohemia, even here, in its -heart. The opportunity of luxury tempted both Mimi and Musette to be -unfaithful, but since caprice was ever stronger with them than -self-interest they were not undeserving to be called the last of the -_grisettes_. They were necessary adjuncts to Bohemia, and satisfactory -adjuncts, in spite of their caprices, for the last thing which Bohemian -man required was the Bohemian or--to use an obsolete phrase--the -"emancipated" woman. Too ignorant to meet their lovers, even had they -wished, upon their own ground, they held their place by keeping to their -natural advantage, the woman's desire to please. So they passed through -life, making the feast more festive and the fast less desolate, filling -a void and mending a sorrow as light-heartedly as they darned a sock or -patched a ragged coat. Mimi and Musette were the true counterparts of -Rodolphe and Marcel, and it is with regret that we see them disappear -into an epilogue of prosperity and propriety. Yet it was all they could -do, for what I have called the Bohemia of common mortality became -dangerous long before the age of thirty years. Rodolphe could not have -written in middle age to Marcel as Bouchardy did to Théophile Gautier; -only hypocritically could he have said "nous étions ivres du beau." -Murger escapes any false effect of that kind in his conclusion: - - "'We are done for, old fellow,' says Marcel, 'we are dead and - buried. Youth only comes once! Where are you dining to-night?' - - "'If you like,' answered Rodolphe, 'we will go and dine for twelve - sous at our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where the plates are - of village earthenware, and where we were always so hungry when we - had finished eating.' - - "'Good heavens, no. I don't mind looking back at the past, but it - shall be across a bottle of decent wine and seated in a good - arm-chair. It is no use, I'm corrupted. I only care now for what is - good!'" - - - - -X - -MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS - -_Si on excepte quelques natures fortement trempées qui se tirèrent des -impasses de la Bohème, le reste fut condamné à vivre difficilement en -face d'un idéal borné et sans avenir. Ni études, ni loisirs, ni aisances -ne permettaient à ces aspirants à l'art de s'élever et de conquérir un -nom._ - - CHAMPFLEURY: - -"Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse" - - -In order to catch at a glance the result of a lapse of years I lingered -in the last chapter over Rodolphe, Mimi, and their friends, figures -drawn from the moving scene of contemporary life, yet snatched from the -changes of time as permanently as those on Keats's Grecian urn. The -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" show, as it seems to me, more clearly than -any other kind of record, the decadence of Bohemia, regarding the degree -of its approach to an ideal of complete artistic existence, since the -great days that followed 1830. This might, indeed, be a warrant for not -returning to more documentary facts at all, but there are always those -to be considered who view Fiction as a sprite so far divorced from -actuality that they are unable to place any trust in her indications. -The teller of stories, in their apprehension, is always on the look-out -for a good effect, to which end he will minimize the essential and -magnify the unessential, distorting sober fact at the call of his -individual imagination. They are the people who read novels, as they -say, for relaxation, while finding wisdom alone in biographies and -memoirs bristling with dates and packed with quotations. The question, -"What, after all, is sober fact?" is sufficient to put them into -confusion, but to propound that ancient problem would be here beside the -mark, for in a book that honestly professes to be as sober in fact as -any it would be unbecoming unduly to press the point on behalf of -fiction. The warrant, therefore, will be allowed to pass, and we return -to those tales which men have told about themselves and their friends -under the names which they bore at baptism, duly signed and dated. Such -information as they give concerning the later years of Bohemia is, at -best, fragmentary, but the fragments have some appearance of falling -together in the light of Murger's picture. A more diligent research -might have produced a more detailed record, but it may be questioned -whether the total effect would have been any clearer. There were scores -of obscure persons in Bohemia, but their daily uprising and lying-down -were not so very widely different. At least this may be asserted, that -after a certain number of facts it is safer to use the imagination for -the rest. - -Murger and his friends were the legitimate successors of _la Bohème -galante_, and in view of their fictitious counterparts already -introduced the main interest of this chapter lies with them. Yet before -they appear there are some byways of Bohemia that call for inspection as -an illustration and a contrast. Bohemia was, of course, always bordered -on one side by the student life of the Quartier Latin, the freedom and -licence of which were both different and older in origin, going back to -the days of the schoolmen, when indigent scholars of all nations filled -the great university cities of Europe, forming in each a picturesque but -turbulent community. Even in most prosaic days the students of Paris -have kept up the medieval tradition, but particular manifestations would -naturally be influenced by the manners of the day. It is, therefore, not -surprising that the student quarter was profoundly affected by the -Romantic movement, and reflected its battles and its extravagances with -a hilarious distortion. The motley world of the Quartier Latin and those -who, though no longer students, remained attached to it had their "local -colour," their Gothic enthusiasms, and their orgies. They had dining -clubs with fantastic names, such as "Les 45 jolis cochons," which -indulged in something very like bump-suppers, with loud singing in the -streets, window-breaking, and practical joking to follow. The campaign -of "Hernani" was imitated in the Salle Chanteraine--a theatre for -amateurs--where there was nightly a _fracas_ with fisticuffs between -the various factions. Elaborate farces were organized to mystify the -good people of Paris, of which Maxime du Camp gives a good example in -his "Souvenirs Littéraires." It was called "La grande chevauchée de la -côtelette aux cornichons." Thirty young men, dressed in velvet -waistcoats and nankeen jackets, with long hair and beards, headed by a -certain young teacher of history waving a stick, marched solemnly in -serried single file with a halting step, dangling their arms at the same -time, from the Place Pigalle over the Pont Royal, crying in unison, "Une -deux, une deux, le choléra, le choléra!" At the end of the Pont Royal -they turned round in a body and shouted, "Connaissez-vous le thermomètre -de l'ingénieur Chevalier?" Solemnly facing about again, they proceeded -as before to Sainte-Mandé, where they lunched off pork cutlets. - -The special home of the wildest jokers and most desperate caricatures of -the new spirit was a certain tumble-down barrack, No. 9 Rue Childebert, -a street on the south side of that beautiful old church -Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and now merged in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. -This house, familiarly called "La Childebert," was five or six stories -high and thoroughly decayed, for its owner, a Madame Legendre, refused -to carry out any repairs. She was justified in this attitude to some -extent by the fact that few of her tenants paid any rent. Indeed, -according to one witness, no man in his senses would have paid any rent -for a room upon the top floor from 1837 onwards. One student, however, -an ingenious fellow called Lepierre, who both lived on the top floor and -paid his rent, succeeded in forcing the stingy lady to repair the roof. -Having been drenched one night during a hard storm, he took his revenge -by removing a portion of his flooring, and hiring all the peripatetic -water-carriers that could be found to pour water down the hole. The -_concierge_ remonstrated, but in vain, and Madame Legendre was sent for -in hot haste. When she arrived in a cab she was gaily serenaded by the -inhabitants, and on proceeding to the flooded room she was horrified to -find Lepierre in the costume of Adam before the Fall, who claimed a -right, he said, to have a bath at his _own_ convenience. Madame Legendre -fled, but the roof was repaired. The gay desperadoes of La Childebert -were capable of carrying through any _charge_, howsoever lurid. One of -the most successful was known as "le nez de Bouginier." Bouginier was an -artist, the size of whose nose inspired his friend Fourreau with the -idea of an exaggerated caricature in which this feature was made -enormous. A stencil was cut and copied, and for many days Bouginier's -nose appeared on all the walls in Paris. It is even alleged that two -parties of students, about to travel in the East and wishing to meet on -the voyage, hit on the simple plan of following Bouginier's nose. The -party starting first took a stencil with them, so that the second -party, leaving a fortnight later, were able to track them to -Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, and Suez. In a certain medallion in the -Passage du Caire, just south of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, -Bouginier's nose is still immortalized. La Childebert was always "up to" -something, but a certain fancy-dress _conversazione_ completely -convulsed the neighbourhood. The schools of art and poetry dressed -according to their views, and by universal consent the Romantics, for -all they could do in pourpoints, doublets, and general local colour, -were easily beaten by the Classicists. Romulus and Remus with their wolf -and Hercules with the Nemean lion created a _furore_; so great was the -real consternation of the district at the apparition of these wild -beasts that the commissary of police had to intervene. The wolf and the -lion suffered themselves to be led with great docility to his office, -where they turned out to be a great Dane and a mastiff respectively, -painted and padded with diabolical cleverness. - -La Childebert was strongly represented in a revellers' club called "Les -Badouillards," that flourished between 1835 and 1838. In "Paris -Anecdote" Privat d'Anglemont, who is the chief authority on the -Childebertian doings, describes the qualifications of a perfect -Badouillard. He had to pass a regular test before entering the bacchic -brotherhood; he had to be strong and agile, a clever and ready boxer, -fencer, and wrestler, he must have proved his courage in several -encounters, shown a fine taste in choreographic fantasy at the -Chaumière and an ability to engage in a duel of slang with any chance -person, and have sworn eternal feud against the sleep and peace of mind -of all _bourgeois_. The initiation was a solemn and trying ceremony. It -began with a copious dinner, followed by a ceaseless absorption of -various liquors till the time came for going to the ball. Here the -candidate stayed all night, behaving as outrageously as possible. He -then adjourned without sleep to breakfast, and passed the rest of the -day in the _cafés_ of the Quartier Latin, drinking, playing billiards, -and flirting. At night the programme was repeated, and if by the third -night he had accepted every challenge, never fallen asleep, nor tumbled -under any table, he was allowed to seek his bed a perfect Badouillard. - -For all its light-hearted absurdities La Childebert was not Bohemia, for -its existence belonged rather to that of irresponsible students than of -artists. I only mention it by way of contrast, as I now mention again -Privat d'Anglemont, the author of "Paris Inconnu" and "Paris Anecdote," -legendary as a Bohemian, but of a very different type. These two curious -and valuable books are a complete study of the seamy side of Paris -during the latter part of Louis Philippe's reign. The life of the -porters in the Halles, the _chiffonniers_, and all the pliers of obscure -trades, with their customs, their dwellings, and their manners, is most -faithfully reproduced in them in a manner which could only have been -made possible by a complete identification of the author with the -subjects of his observation. Such, in fact, was the lifework of Privat -d'Anglemont, a Creole born in Guadeloupe. He became the legendary -_noctambule_ of Paris, realizing, as Charles Monselet says in his -preface to "Paris Anecdote," the popular idea of a Bohemian--that is, -simply an eccentric vagabond. In the sense of the word as used in this -book, he was not a Bohemian at all, for, though he wrote articles and -books upon his experiences, he was in no sense an artist, nor was he -striving to make his life conformable to artistic liberty. He was -animated simply by a gipsy passion for roaming, combined with a taste -for mystery and romancing. Faithful as his books were, he hardly ever -_spoke_ the truth: twenty times he told Théodore de Banville the history -of his life, and each time it was different. Still, he merits a word -here on account of his reputation as the complete Bohemian, a reputation -increased by his being an easy peg on which to hang any fantastic story -that came into a journalist's brain. Théodore de Banville, who first met -him in 1841 and, according to Monselet, idealized him absurdly, gives -some curious recollections of him in "Mes Souvenirs." He was a handsome -man, dark, tall, and slender, rather resembling the elder Dumas. He -passed most of his life wandering about the low quarters of Paris in -complete poverty, often begging a meal from one of the _cabaretiers_ of -the Halles, who all loved him. Yet, de Banville avers, he was not -really unprovided for, since at irregular intervals a relative used to -send him about £200 from America in gold pieces. But Privat d'Anglemont -preferred to live without money, so that he never hesitated in getting -rid of this burden as soon as possible by standing a dinner to all the -poor and hungry women he could find in the tiny inn called the "Boeuf -Enragé," at the bottom of the Rue de la Harpe. Like Gérard de Nerval, he -would set out on a voyage at a moment's notice and without a moment's -preparation, and such was his charm that he had affectionate friends in -the lower quarters of many a French town. Once during his nightly -wanderings he was stopped by some robbers. "But I'm Privat," he said, -roaring with laughter. At which the robbers joined in the laugh, and -invited him to supper. By a ruined hut they sat down to drink the best -champagne in the light of the stars, to smoke, and to tell stories. -Privat delighted his hosts, who invited him to meet them again; but he -shook his head, saying, "N'engageons pas l'avenir." - -Privat d'Anglemont, who eventually died of consumption, did little more -than carry on the traditions of the "noctambules," less mischievously -than their founder, Rétif de la Bretonne, less modestly and artistically -than Gérard de Nerval, but so much more seriously than either of his -predecessors that he left little scope for a new departure to his own -successor, Alfred Delvau. He was not, in the truest sense, a Bohemian, -though he led an existence ever bordering on the confines of Bohemia. -The same may be said, in a more transitory sense, of Flaubert, the great -renovator and refiner of Romanticism. Most of his life was spent in the -country, but there was a short period when he came to study law in -Paris, which, if it were not mentioned, might justify a challenge from -readers familiar with "L'Education Sentimentale" or Maxime du Camp's -"Souvenirs Littéraires." So far as the first of these books is -concerned, little time need here be spent in finding relevant points of -comparison. The last thing which Flaubert desired to portray in that -depressing picture was an existence in any sense artistic. His hero is a -provincial youth who, during his student days in Paris, drifts aimlessly -and indolently through a variety of second-rate experiences in company -with second-rate friends. Flaubert's own experiences are, no doubt, -frequently worked into the material, but "L'Education Sentimentale" is -nothing so cheap as autobiography served in a thin sauce of fiction. It -is a novel in which the author has with the highest exercise of -penetrative imagination treated what Mr. Henry James would call the -"germ"--the dreary wastefulness, that is, of such a life in case of such -a young man as Frédéric Moreau, who with Madame Bovary is Flaubert's -contribution to the pathology of _le mal romantique_. Flaubert himself, -with all his excitability and extravagance, was of a much stronger -stamp; the strength of his artistic conviction saved him from all such -flabbiness. He came to Paris to study law, but, having failed to pass -his examination, returned to his home in 1843. If he had stayed he might -easily have become one of the leading figures, certainly a powerful -influence, in that Bohemia which Murger knew. Maxime du Camp, who made -his acquaintance early in 1843, shows him as a young man living always -at a high pitch with the flamboyant vitality that would have done no -dishonour to the Impasse du Doyenné, so far was he from being the victim -of Frédéric's weak-kneed desolation. He passed his days in an -alternation of prodigality and poverty, spending fifty francs on his -dinner one day and feeding on a crust and a slab of chocolate the next. -He lived in a kind of intellectual tornado, both frantic and noisy. He -went into ecstasies over mediocre works in which he perceived beauties -hidden from the rest of the world, but which he loved to point out -stridently to his friends, intoning the prose, roaring the verse at the -top of his voice, repeating incessantly any word which took his -passionate fancy, and filling all the neighbourhood with his din. He -would wake up a friend without compunction at three in the morning to -show him a moonlight effect on the Seine; one moment he would be -inventing sauces to make brill appetizing, and the next he would be -plotting to smack Gustave Planche's face for having spoken slightingly -of Victor Hugo. The _cénacle_ composed of Louis de Cormenin, Le -Poitevin, Du Camp, and himself often dined at Dagneaux's, one of the -better restaurants of the Quartier Latin, and stayed talking ceaselessly -till the doors were closed. Their ambitions were as wild as their -conversation; Flaubert and Du Camp seriously determined to learn -everything between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to produce great -works till forty, and then to retire into the country. Except for the -fact that, according to his friend, Flaubert disdained the women whom -his beauty attracted, this was a promising beginning for Bohemia. As the -world knows, fate decreed otherwise, and he retired to develop in that -close intellectual atmosphere with Louis Bouilhet and Du Camp, of which -the latter says: "Living as we did, in solitude, we exchanged only the -same set of ideas apart from all criticism, so that things in general -lost their right proportion in our minds." - -Flaubert's life in the Rue de l'Est was, at best, only a tentative -pathway in Bohemia, like one of those tracks in a suburb that give hope -of leading somewhere, but change their mind _en route_. It is too small -a digression to be distracting, and I entered upon it, among other -reasons, because its little adventure coincides in date with those -movements in the central market-place yet to be touched on. One more -alley, however, must be taken on the way, for it is, indeed, only just -off the market-place. The name upon its wall is that of Charles -Baudelaire, a well-known figure whose exact relation to Bohemia is, -nevertheless, not so easy to determine. He began very much in the manner -of Flaubert, coming as a student to the Quartier Latin and residing at a -not very strictly kept _pension_ near the Panthéon between 1839 and -1841, his eighteenth and his twentieth years. I need not repeat the -distinction made between student life--_das Burschenleben_--and -out-and-out Bohemianism. Baudelaire filled his days to their fullest -extent, mixing together indiscriminately the enjoyments of student, -dandy, and _viveur_, so far as his means allowed. It was only at the end -of this time that his determination to take up literature scandalized -his stepfather and caused his enforced sea voyage. When he returned in -1842 he had come of age and possessed a capital of 75,000 francs. He set -about spending this money with a gusto and in a manner not unworthy of -the golden age of Bohemia. He had various lodgings till he settled for -two years in a beautiful apartment in the old Hôtel Pimodan on the Île -St.-Louis, where his comrade was the painter Boissard, a good artist -who, as Gautier said, exhausted himself in enthusiasms, and in whose -wonderful Louis XIV salon the society of _hachischiens_ met. Had -Baudelaire been a true Bohemian at heart he might have instituted a -second _Bohème galante_, but he was wanting in that simplicity and -goodfellowship which are signal qualities in the Bohemian character. He -wished to make his life, like his art, a study in exquisite intensity, -so that in the days of his splendour his mode of living was rather that -of a "dandy" than anything else. He dressed with immense care, but in a -bygone fashion; he pursued every kind of sensation, frequented every -kind of society, and became the leader of a set who carefully cultivated -eccentricity for its own sake, an eccentricity too _posé_ to serve as a -type of Bohemian manners. To make himself a subject of astonishment was -his chief amusement, to which end his devices--such as entering a -restaurant with a friend and feigning to begin a story with the loud -exordium: "After I had murdered my poor father----"--were innumerable. -So much may be said with a certain pity or amusement, but it must also -be admitted that a certain refinement, both social and intellectual, -kept him from associating himself entirely with the not -over-discriminating Bohemia of his generation. It is all the more fair -to say this because after 1844, when his stepfather got a guardian -appointed to take charge of his remaining capital and he was reduced to -eking out a reduced income by journalism, with all its attendant -disappointments and hardships, he chose with some discrimination the -extent to which he would throw in his lot with the Bohemian life for -which he had by that time every qualification. He became a friend of -Murger and many other complete Bohemians, and there is a story of his -asking the original of Schaunard to dine and giving him a piece of Brie -cheese and two bottles of claret, asking him to imagine that he was -enjoying the dessert after a good dinner. Yet his real intimates were a -band of young men, Théodore de Banville, Charles Monselet, Villiers de -l'Isle Adam, and Leconte de l'Isle, who chose to maintain a certain -amount of order in the midst of eccentricity and found boisterous -joviality less to their taste than the more delicate affectations of -wit. Here again I hold no brief for the complete Bohemians. They had -their compensating virtues, but it is hardly doubtful that Baudelaire -and his friends were the better educated and the more truly artistic set -of the two. This, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy of Bohemia's -decline, that its spiritual distinction faded with its material -well-being. At any rate, for a combination of reasons, laudable and the -reverse, Baudelaire's set was not Bohemia, and if, as I leave them, I -may insist particularly on one of the less laudable reasons, it is that -pose, which is another form of convention, must by the very conception -of Bohemia be excluded from its characteristics. Nadar hits the -difference when, in his curious little book on Baudelaire, which is -written in an idiom describable as a French version of that elliptical -quaintness associated with our own _Pink 'Un_, he writes: "Avec ces -épileptiques, combien loin du sans façon tout bonhomme, de la simplesse -à la bonne franquette de mon autre bande de Bohème, 'la bande de Murger' -et de notre 'Société des buveurs d'eau.' ..." - -We return, then, to the author of "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" at the -end of a rather circuitous route. In speaking of the Bohemia which he -immortalized I have called it, in distinction from certain modifications -or superficial resemblances, the central market-place, but no more need -be sought in that phrase than an effort to represent it by a handy image -as exhibiting the main civic qualities and manners implied in the -generic name. Compared with earlier days, a far less proud and bustling -burgherdom trod its rather muddy paving-stones, for it had suffered as -some agricultural centre when railways were beginning. Yet any pride of -succession which they may have had was legitimately theirs, for, if they -were less materially and intellectually endowed, if the peculiarly happy -circumstances of their civic foundation had passed to make their -ultimate disruption certain under the changed conditions of all that is -included in social development, they still preserved the Bohemian -character, with its simplicity, gaiety, humour, and courage. To labour -the point further is unnecessary, for if it is not already clear, the -fault is too remote to be here corrected. In the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème" all the daily comedy and tragedy of this Bohemia of common -mortality finds expression: the life there described so intimately and -humorously stands or falls by its artistic truth, to which no amount of -possible documentary corroboration adds an iota. Nevertheless, the -professed concession to a desire for ascertainable "facts" with which -this chapter opened must be made, at the risk of seeming to expose the -vanity of the researcher as the real object of indulgence. Since, in the -garrulous world of to-day, nobody can make the least incursion into the -public eye, much less produce a successful book or picture, without the -appearance of a crop of "personal notes," so Murger's picture may be -taken for granted, and what follows may appear in the light of "personal -notes," claiming no more connexion than a general relation to the -picture. - -Murger[28] was no son of a landed proprietor nor even sprung from a -middle-class family, as most Bohemians naturally were, for the whole -life of Bohemia presupposes a more or less literary education seldom -vouchsafed to the children of lower social order. His father was a -German tailor in the Rue des Trois Frères, who wished, not without -reason, that his son should succeed him in his trade. Murger's early -education was therefore confined to the rudiments, and his deficiencies -in that respect were a burden upon him all his life. The career of a -tailor, for all that, aroused his utmost aversion; through his two -friends, Emile and Pierre Bisson, who became clerks, he acquired a -violent taste for poetry, with the composition of which he judged the -shears incompatible. His father took the rebellion hardly, but got him a -place, since he liked pens and paper so much, as errand-boy to an -_avoué_, an occupation in which he continued to cultivate his poetic -inclinations. When seventeen years old, in 1839, through the interest of -M. de Jouy, a critic and member of the Academy, he was appointed -secretary to a Russian diplomat, M. de Tolstoi. His salary was only 40 -francs a month, out of which he had to pay a small _pension_ to his -father for board and lodging; still, he was happy. His duties were very -light, and his employer, who also had a literary turn, took a certain -amount of interest in him and gave him occasional presents of money. -During the next two years he made the acquaintance of that group of -friends on which he drew for his stories of Bohemia, and experienced two -love affairs. The first object of his affections was "la cousine -Angèle," the heroine of a chapter in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," in -which Rodolphe in his draughty garret, by dint of burning his great -tragedy in the stove, warms himself sufficiently to write the -commemorative poem for the tombstone of a defunct _bourgeois_, buying -with the proceeds a bunch of white violets for his disdainful cousin. -The second was a certain Marie, who eventually ran away with one of his -friends--a tragedy which he relates in "Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse." -By this time he had become a thoroughly developed Bohemian, intolerant -of all restraint. He left his father's home, and even for a time gave up -his post with M. de Tolstoi. - -It was then that Henry Murger's Bohemia was definitely formed, a society -described by one of them as "ce demi-quarteron de poètes à l'outrance, -mais absolument inédits, réunis dans un tas, sans vestes ni semelles, ne -doutant de rien, ni de leur lendemain, ni de leur génie, ni du génie de -leur voisin, ni de l'éditeur à venir, ni du succès, ni des belles dames, -ni de la fortune--de rien, si ce n'est de leur dîner du soir, trop -convaincus, d'ailleurs, quant à la question de leur déjeuner du matin." -Their names were the brothers Bisson, Lelioux, Noel, Nadar, Guilbert, -Vastine, the brothers Desbrosses, Cabot, Villain, Tabar, Chintreuil, -Pottier, Karol, Schann, and Vernet. They called themselves the "Société -des Buveurs d'Eau," but they were by no means so quixotic as Murger -draws that society in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was simply a -union for mutual help, the rules of which did not bar any commercial -occupation. The members lived as they pleased or as they could, and -water was only a compulsory beverage at the official monthly meetings, -when they all submitted their work to the criticism of their brethren. -Their ordinary occupations were various enough. Noel gave drawing -lessons; another was a judicial stenographer; Jacques Desbrosses, -nicknamed Christ--the original of "Jacques D----" in "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--and Cabot drew designs for monumental masons; the other -Desbrosses, called Gothique, earned a little money by painting -door-signs for midwives; Schann, the original of Schaunard, was a -musician, and Wallon, Murger's Colline, who joined the society later, -eked out his barren philosophy by giving lessons; Chintreuil, afterwards -to become a well-known artist, was then a bookseller's assistant, with -Champfleury for his colleague; and Nadar, otherwise F. Tournachon, whom -Alphonse Karr describes as "a kind of giant with immense legs, long -arms, a long body with a shaggy head of red hair above it, and staring, -intelligent, flashing eyes," was the poet and journalist who became a -celebrated balloonist and an immensely successful photographer. His -caricature hangs in the section of the Musée Carnavalet devoted to early -aeronautics in Paris. - -We may take it from Murger that the shortcomings of fortune were borne -with humorous fortitude on the credit of her occasional smiles, but -there was no illusion about the privations. Nadar, Champfleury, and -Delvau all agree that a bitter wind blew upon them. It was not so bad, -in Nadar's opinion, so long as they lived more or less together, and -this they did for a short time in an old house by the Barrière d'Enfer, -which looked like a farm with a farmyard inhabited by hens. Champfleury -made their acquaintance at this time in a little dairy where they -sometimes took their meals. It was a strange society. Some wore blouses, -others Phrygian caps, while the brothers Desbrosses had large sky-blue -overcoats, turned back with pink satin and fastened by huge -mother-of-pearl buttons. These two brothers were the originators of the -colony at the Barrière d'Enfer, and its chiefs "surtout par leur -misère." They harboured some of the others, who found a resting-place -for the night in two hammocks slung in their small room. Murger was -among them, the art of painting being for the moment his preoccupation. -Fine days were spent lounging on the roof and contemplating the then -rural surroundings. Anybody arriving with five francs in his pocket -would have been regarded as a millionaire; indeed, they were happy -enough when they could afford a few fried potatoes for dinner. Yet they -would not have exchanged their hovel for the Garden of Eden, and they -fed upon their dreams with inexhaustible confidence. Privation was still -worse when the society broke up. One Bohemian lived a whole week on raw -potatoes brought by his poor mother from the country; another went three -days without food; another passed a winter shirtless in a calico blouse -and a lasting waistcoat; another, as a device to keep himself warm, used -to carry a log of wood up to his high garret, drop it over the -banisters, and run down to fetch it again; an older Bohemian who heard -of this manoeuvre exclaimed: "Spendthrift, why the log?" - -Henry Murger himself, who had abandoned painting and definitely adopted -the vocation of a sentimental poet, went to live with his friend -Lelioux, first in the Rue Montholon and then in that garret at £4 a year -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne where Rodolphe's friends "drank badly -filtered water out of eclectic earthenware" at his Wednesday receptions. -He had resumed his employment with M. de Tolstoi, but he was too -improvident to keep out of misery for many days together. More than once -he became so ill with purpura, an eruptive disease due in his case to -the abuse of coffee, that he had to go to the hospital. Some extracts -from his letters during these years will give an idea of his -destitution. On December 14, 1841, he writes: - - "Les Desbrosses passent la moitié de la journée à ne pas manger et - l'autre à crever de froid. Les chats se méfient d'eux, et, en fait - de chéminée, ils ne possèdent que leurs pipes--bien des fois sans - tabac." - -March 6, 1842: - - "Sans le Christ, qui m'a donné à dîner et à déjeuner quatre fois la - semaine, je ne sais pas ce que je serais devenu. Ce garçon n'a pas - volé son surnom." - -April 25, 1843: - - "Nous crevons de faim; nous sommes au bout du rouleau. Il faut - décidément se faire un trou quelque part ou se faire sauter la - cervelle." - -March 17, 1844: - - "De Charybde en Sylla, mon cher ami! La misère est plus horrible - que jamais chez moi et autour de moi. Ma place au _Commerce_ n'a - pas eu de suite; je suis de nouveau sur le pavé. C'est horrible! - Aussi le découragement m'a-t-il pris et tout à fait submergé. - Encore quelques jours de cette position et je me fais sauter la - cervelle ou je m'engage dans la marine.--Pardonne-moi ces plaintes! - C'est le cri de la _fin_." - -Like Colline, he punned even in his misery. - -Letters of this doleful nature do not throw a very gay light upon the -Bohemian market-place, where there was high competition for a small -custom and prices ruled low. They contain a truth which no consideration -of Bohemia can omit, but it was not the whole truth, as Murger himself -testifies in his stories. It was a life of good days as well as bad, -even in the leanest years, or "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" could never -have been written. Murger himself had already begun to hand some small -wares over his counter. Rodolphe, the poet, it will be remembered, did -not disdain to edit a small fashion paper called _L'Écharpe d'Iris_, in -which, to Colline's extravagant delight, he inserted the philosopher's -articles on metaphysics. This was a direct touch from life, for Bohemia -in more than one instance lent its pen to trade. There was a certain -Charles Vincent who edited two papers of the leather trade, _Le -Moniteur de la Cordonnerie_ and the _Halle aux Cuirs_. In his editorial -capacity he retained all the new pairs of boots and shoes sent in by -advertisers, and with these he often paid his contributors. Murger in -1843 edited _Le Moniteur de la Chapellerie_, the industrial fruits of -which were, no doubt, less profitable, but even a few hats and a few -francs a month were of considerable value in Bohemia. They were, of -course, nothing like the editorial profits of to-day. Receipts were -extremely precarious, when, even on a well-written literary paper like -_L'Artiste_, the application of a contributor for payment caused a -considerable rummaging in tills and pockets before twenty-five francs -could be found _dans la boutique_.[29] Yet small change was enough to -stand a Bohemian holiday, and Murger's gloomy letters must be discounted -by balancing them against Rodolphe's expedition to Versailles with -Mademoiselle Laure after he had ransacked Paris for the five francs -necessary to do that expedition in sufficient style. It would be absurd -to suppose that Murger, with Nadar, Schann, and a _grisette_ or two, did -not sometimes invade the Chaumière in a joyous band or wake from sleep -the serious inhabitants of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne. - -At the same time, howsoever the balance of pleasure and pain be struck, -it is clear that happy memories of this Bohemia could only remain to -those for whom it was only a necessary stage in life and not a -death-trap. This tendency to poetic melancholy and the painful slowness -with which he worked might have caused Henry Murger to sink for ever -like many of his friends. He was saved, in the first instance, by -Champfleury, who, when he was finally sold up in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne, took him to live in the Rue de Vaugirard and induced him to -abandon poetry for prose. Jules Husson-Fleury, who was born at Laon in -1821 and became a well-known writer under the name of Champfleury, a -great collector of prints and porcelain, on which he wrote some valuable -monographs, and finally the director of the Sèvres manufactory, passed -through Bohemia during the same years as Murger, and in his "Souvenirs -et Portraits de Jeunesse" records many lively experiences. He first came -to Paris as shop-boy and assistant in a bookseller's shop where, as I -have already said, the future painter Chintreuil was in the same -service. Champfleury lost his place for reading the books on his errands -instead of delivering them to the customers, but during this year 1839 -he saw something of Murger and the colony of the brothers Desbrosses. He -then left Paris for a year or two, and returned when Murger was living -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, though the acquaintance was not at -once renewed. It was approximately in 1845 that they went to live -together in the Rue de Vaugirard, after Champfleury had met Murger -again in the hospital. They did not by any means leave Bohemia; in fact, -there is reason to suppose that to some extent the character of Marcel -was drawn from Champfleury. They wrote a vaudeville together which was -never accepted, and attacked the difficult art of writing stories. -Murger was able to place some of his work in _L'Artiste_, the editor of -which was Arsène Houssaye, and in 1846 the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -began to come out in _Le Corsaire_. They were poorly enough paid at the -time, but their dramatisation by Barrière in 1849 proved a huge success, -and from that time onwards Murger settled down to more serious work and -a less disorderly life. - -But I am anticipating Champfleury's memories of the last days of -Bohemia. In his view, at any rate so far as Murger and he were -concerned, the indolence of Bohemia has been much exaggerated. "In -reality," he says, "work was the basis of our life." They had a joint -library, to which Murger supplied the poets and Champfleury the -prose-writers. The latter read voraciously to educate himself, but -Murger chiefly thumbed the pages of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset; he -took regular doses of Shakespeare in a French translation, traces of -which appear in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but he had little -knowledge of other classic authors. He worked with extraordinary -difficulty; a page of prose cost him a night's work and intense -intellectual labour, for "Murger n'était plein que de son coeur." -Champfleury, for all his friendship, was a shrewd critic when he -observed that his whole vision was introspective: "He swept the same -chimney so often that in the end the plaster came off and the bricks -fell down"; or again: "Besides his little library, his belongings -consisted of worn white gloves, a velvet mask, and a withered bouquet -hung on the walls. All Murger's work lies in his memories--some faded -flowers, a meeting at the Bal de l'Opéra, a heart-ache." - -Certain disorders of Bohemia are not excused by Champfleury, -particularly that of not paying debts. His friend Fauchéry, an engraver -who afterwards went to seek his fortune in Australia, induced him at -first to accept the Bohemian code, which was: - -1. Never to pay one's rent. - -2. To conduct one's removals by the window. - -3. To consider all bootmakers, tailors, hatters, and restaurant-keepers -as members of Mr. Credit's family. - -Some went so far as to maintain that after a clandestine removal through -the window no piece of furniture which had passed the gutter in the -middle of the street could be reclaimed by the proprietor. This less -creditable attitude of Bohemia, which is sufficiently prominent in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," was repudiated with some shame in after -years by many of Murger's friends. In the book Rodolphe pays his debts -when he settles down, and we have it on the authority of Delvau that -Schann (Schaunard), who eventually kept a respectable toy-shop, and the -original of Musette, who married a chemist, took in their later days a -more usual view of money matters. Champfleury confesses that he himself -was saved by an amiable girl, who for a time became the divinity of his -garret. Unlike Mimi and Musette, she had a horror of debt and -vagabondage and inspired him with a pleasure in his own humble hearth, -so that he gradually detached himself from his comrades, who were for -the most part so ill provided for in the matter of lodging that their -chief workroom was a _café_, where they arrived at nine in the morning, -to leave at midnight. They read the newspapers, played at dominoes or -_tric-trac_, and occasionally did a little work. Fauchéry, in -particular, caused considerable surprise among the regular customers by -bringing his whole engraving apparatus and solemnly setting to work. -Some respect certainly is due to the proprietors of these little -eating-houses who so gallantly put up with and gave credit to this noisy -and not very profitable _clientèle_, who were capable of perpetrating -all the outrages committed by Rodolphe and the rest in their constant -asylum, the Café Momus. - -Champfleury says little of the amiable goddess who rescued him from -vagabondage except that she left him, like Mimi, because she grew tired -of cheap muslin, but in another chapter he gives some account of two -other idols of Bohemia whom he calls Mademoiselle M. and Mademoiselle P. -Mademoiselle M. was dark and merry, a thorough coquette who laughed at -wounded hearts; Mademoiselle P. was fair and melancholy, always in tears -for the last lover who had left her. A generation of Bohemians were -their lovers, poets and painters especially. As the generation grew up -the divinities grew wiser, and Mademoiselle M. was the first to do a -little mental arithmetic. For her own friends who had a future the days -of idleness were over; there was no future for her either among the -stranded remainder or in a new generation. Accordingly she departed to -more profitable spheres. Mademoiselle P. stayed a little longer, still -loving her poets, and weeping _toutes les larmes de son corps_ to find -that she had a too formidable rival in the desire for fame which watched -at the door of her lovers' hearts, till finally she found a worthy man -who was no poet to love her and eventually to marry her. Mademoiselle -M., meanwhile, had made by her conquests quite a respectable capital, -with which one fine day she set sail for Algiers. Unhappily she left -Marseilles in a steamer which sank with all hands, so that she and her -gold came to rest at the bottom of the sea--a sad story from which -Champfleury in an unworthy moment makes some show of drawing a moral. -Neither of these young women can be identified with Murger's heroines. -Musette, as I have said, married a chemist; Phémie Teinturière, -Schaunard's choice, was according to Delvau, a not over-respectable -person resembling a heroine of Paul de Kock; as for Mimi, Delvau -asserts that Murger loved her while he wrote the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème," and that her life and wretched death are matters of fact. -However, that we may not be too lugubrious let me add that I have read -in the French equivalent of "Notes and Queries" a statement that she -cheerfully lived to keep a stall in the market. - -One more bead in this string of scattered "facts," and the hungerers for -documentary evidence must go away satisfied. The disorder of Bohemia -requires no emphasis, but it is curious to note that the persons in whom -its more orderly elements were incarnated were Champfleury himself and -the original of that odd figure, Carolus Barbemuche, the solemn young -tutor who in Murger's story glances so enviously at the _cénacle_ of -Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel in the Café Momus, who saves them from -disaster by paying for their reckless Christmas Eve supper, who demands -so humbly the privilege of being admitted to the clan, who serves so -long and expensive an apprenticeship and gives such a splendid festival -on his reception, even to the length of lending all his own presentable -clothes to his guests for the occasion. Carolus Barbemuche was drawn, -much to his disgust, from Charles Barbara, an obscure writer of -fantastic stories, who joined Murger's Bohemia after acting as tutor to -two boys. He had a face like a sphinx, rarely smiled, and seemed to be -afraid of the wild jokes of his friends. Unlike the rest, he lived -almost a hermit's life, receiving nobody in his garret, and retiring -there every night neither to read nor to write, but to think, a queer -occupation for a Bohemian. Of him Champfleury writes: - - "He and I represented order in a group doomed to disorder; we were - the _bourgeois_ of Bohemia, as much by our ambitions as our manner - of living. The details of one day of our life, which continued in - the same way for ten years, will show the succession of our studies - and our labours. Rising very early, dashing from my bed to my - table, I used to write till nine o'clock. An hour sufficed me for - breakfast and a walk to the library, where I worked till twelve; - there I used to meet Barbara, whom I took to the public lectures at - the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, or the Jardin des Plantes. Two - lectures, an hour each, exhausted our attention, and, resuming our - walk, we arrived at Schann's temple of music, exclusively - consecrated to quartets. Two hours of music every day, without - counting piano trios three times a week at another house, made us - able to read all the chamber music of the German masters.... - Barbara was the finest instrumentalist in our band; son and brother - of distinguished musicians, he had received in early youth - excellent violin lessons, the fruit of which was not lost later, - and he brought to the leading of a quartet a restrained emotion - which is to be found in some pages of his writings." - -It is an unexpectedly pretty glimpse into a part of Bohemia where Murger -was not at home. When the quartets took place in a little square of the -Quartier Latin, students and _grisettes_ came to listen before the open -window, and workpeople on every story put out their heads to watch for -the arrival of the musicians. Murger's disreputable Schaunard, with his -symphony on _L'influence du bleu dans la musique_, was always, I must -confess, my favourite; but to discover that he played the quartets of -Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn for two hours a day -with Barbemuche and Marcel--well, it was an intoxicating vision. -Schaunard, who had a passion for lobsters, the composer (in his fleshly -form of Schann) of a famous drinking song, as second violin in a -Beethoven quartet--oh pleasant, pleasant fellow, who truly deserved to -come into the comfortable harbour of a toy-shop! - -Marcel, so far as he was Champfleury, found a haven too, and lived till -1889. Colline retired to found a new religion in Switzerland, and -Rodolphe-Murger, though he lingered for some years in the band of -artists and writers who haunted the _brasserie_ where Courbet raised the -temple of realism, finally turned his back on dissipation and settled at -Marlotte, even now a charming village near Fontainebleau. His chief -recreation there was hunting, an occupation quite innocuous to the game, -if it be true that a certain hare survived his attentions for a whole -season, and when an unwary keeper shot it one misty afternoon, he -exclaimed with genuine compunction, "Tiens, c'est le lièvre de M. -Murger!" In 1861 he came to die in Paris of arteritis, and all the -literary world visited his bedside. He died two days after his admission -to the hospital, exclaiming, "Pas de musique! Pas de bruit! Pas de -Bohème!" Bohemia, indeed, had long been dead, and in his last moments he -may have recognized that it was well. There was no longer room for it in -a busier, a better-swept world. In its golden age Bohemia did no more -than share the imperfections of all human institutions. It had virtues, -a liberty, a pride, and an ideal of its own. Murger had seen the beauty -become a slattern, pretty no doubt beneath her smuts, gay in the midst -of her sorrows, but free by tolerance, not by protest, her pride almost -in the dust and her ideals in the possession of others. In the words -which Théodore Pelloquet spoke over his grave, Murger belonged to an -evil generation: - - "Il appartenait à une mauvaise génération, à une génération - vieillie avant l'heure, et, malgré sa vieillesse prématurée, sans - expérience, sans enthousiasme et sans colère, ayant de la vanité et - pas du tout d'orgueil, une vanité niaise, puérile, qui se manifeste - surtout par l'affectation d'une ironie mesquine, en face de tous - les enthousiasmes et de toutes les grandes causes; à une - génération, en un mot, qui laissa périr dans ses mains le - magnifique héritage que lui avaient légué les hommes de 1830." - - - - -XI - -AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA - - -The pageant of 1830 has passed, and our gaze has been directed to its -Bohemian ingredients with the purpose of noting the particular marks and -qualities which distinguished Bohemia, and how their particular -manifestations were conditioned and varied by the progress of the years. -Looking out of the window of the present, we have been unable at any -moment to call a halt, lest we should lose a comprehensive view of the -main development. Now that this view has been gained it will do no harm -to send the procession once more before the mind's eye, that we may fix -at leisure any less important details which may seem in themselves -attractive. One of the most happy qualities of the Bohemian nature is -its capacity for amusing itself. Real boredom and lackadaisical idleness -do not come into the list of its shortcomings. The passionate Romantics, -indeed, fashionably suffered from "spleen" and "ennui," they proclaimed -a "coeur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie," but the Bohemian, -so far as he indulged in these peculiarities, was amusing himself. To -him "spleen" and "ennui" were part of the game which he embraced with -enthusiasm and in which he desired to excel; yet they were parts to -which, as a general rule, he did not pay too much attention, preferring -the more positive and assertive sides of Romanticism. Neither Gautier -nor Gérard de Nerval nor Rodolphe nor Schaunard presents himself to the -imagination as suffering from boredom. An unfailing capacity for amusing -oneself and finding amusement in one's fellow-men is an essential -Bohemian _trait_. The preceding chapters have not been wholly devoid of -indications as to the way in which these talents were exercised by the -Bohemian clans, but it was necessary to insist rather on the diversions -which characterized the _particular_ spirit of each brotherhood than on -the general opportunities which they all enjoyed with slight variation. -The field is now open without restriction, and it will not be amiss to -take a glimpse here and there at the Bohemian enjoying his leisure, if -only to add a few vivid touches that will enliven the background of the -picture. The work of Bohemia can always be taken for granted; artistic -endeavour, whether actively or indolently pursued, varies but little in -external feature; the change, the colour, the tragedy and comedy are -only to be found within the artist's mind; but the amusement of Bohemia, -so far from being hidden, courts publicity. It takes its colour, too, so -largely from the changing world around that there is great pictorial -value in its easily observable vicissitudes. For that reason I devote -this chapter to the subject of its title without further apology, but -only with the caution that here the accidents rather than the essentials -of Bohemia are regarded. The privilege of amusement is open to -everybody, but to see what Bohemia made of its privileges in that -respect is, perhaps, to quicken it for the imagination by an extra -spark. - -Precisians might say that dress hardly comes under the head of -amusements and that on certain views it is more properly included in the -category of necessities or of nuisances. Yet there is no doubt that for -all women--and for more men than would admit it--to be well dressed is -an enjoyment, a term only differing from amusement by a smaller -suggestion of possible frivolity. It is quite a sufficient warrant, at -all events, for giving dress a small part in this chapter; besides, the -costume of any individual or society is both a sure indicator of -qualities and an apt focus for judgment. In England, the very home of -illustrated books and papers, it is not necessary to say much in evoking -the costume of a past age, so that the subject may be treated quite -shortly, especially as regards the men of Bohemia, whose dress was too -often a deplorable tragedy. When Marcel went to Musette's party with -"Mathusalem" buttoned up to the neck over a blue shirt dotted with the -figures of a boar-hunt he was, as Murger says, "dressed in the worst -taste possible." In such a case there is no more to be said; his -appearance would vary little from age to age. To the Bohemian in his -lean days, certainly, it would be an insult to impute enjoyment of his -tattered wardrobe. Those who most enjoyed dressing, without a doubt, -were the Bohemian generation who cheered "Hernani" with such frenzy, for -they made their _pourpoints_, felt sombreros, Robespierre waistcoats, -and Phrygian caps effective details in the general Romantic -demonstration and, as such, matters of intense pleasure. But these -extravagances have already caught our attention; they were part of that -frantic desire for novelty and colour which was a symptom of _le mal -romantique_; their proper complement was that rage for fancy-dress balls -which broke out shortly after 1830 and laid every nationality and period -under contribution for picturesque costumes. So far as the men are -concerned, it need only be pointed out that the general dress of the -time--against which Bohemia stood out at first and into which it -gradually faded--was that of tight pantaloons with straps, long coats -with full skirts and accentuated waists, full cravats, lavish jewellery, -and high hats in a bewildering variety of shapes, cylindrical, conical, -inverted conical, curly, straight, with broad brims and with scarce a -brim at all--the civilian uniform, in fact, of our own late Georgian and -early Victorian era. It was a dress that only a few could wear with -distinction; on the rest it wrinkled and puffed in inevitable ugliness. -A Roger de Beauvoir could look immaculately moulded, but one has only -to glance at the caricatures of Traviés, Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni -to see how unequivocally hideous were the clothes of an average man. To -be out at elbows in this exacting fashion was indeed to be a sorry -sight, and one can well imagine poor Lucien de Rubempré to have been in -his provincial attire fair game for the sneers of Rastignac and de -Marsay. Still, even the Bohemian had a new suit at times, and it lights -the memory of Arsène Houssaye, Camille Rogier, Murger, Champfleury, and -the rest to recall that it was not for comfortable lounge suits and -flannels that they got into debt, but for correct suits of "tails," -flowery waistcoats, top-hats, and patent leather boots. It gives a -quaint touch of decorum to the picture of their wildest excesses. - -Women entered Bohemia as guests rather than as inhabitants, and to the -fair visitors conformity to fashion was anything but a trifle. To deck -themselves fittingly was their constant amusement, and one in which they -took good care that their swains should be sharers. The female dress of -the time is well known to us from early pictures of Queen Victoria and -the paintings of Winterhalter; there are few, too, who at one time or -another have not seen some of Gavarni's beautiful fashion plates. The -Empire style had entirely disappeared, and the accent was in 1830 laid -chiefly on the waist. The shoulders were sloping and wide, the sleeves -so voluminous that by 1836 they were like miniature balloons, the skirt -very wide and full, ending above the ankles. The waist and head were -made to seem very small in proportion, so that two loaves placed one on -top of the other would have made a very good caricature of a woman's -figure at any time during the golden age of Bohemia. The hair was -elaborately done to frame a pretty face daintily under a large -poke-bonnet. It was pre-eminently the day of "fragile" women: nothing in -their costume seemed made for hard wear. Cydalise or Victorine, as she -swung in the hammock among the gallants of the Impasse du Doyenné, would -have kicked a little cross-laced foot out from ethereal folds of -flowered muslin, and gathered a gauzy scarf enticingly round bare -shoulders. Fashions were indeed expensive for a fond lover's pocket, but -at least he was never at a loss what to buy for his mistress, so many -were the little accessories to the Graces' toilet. He was never wrong, -for instance, in offering a piece of gay ribbon, for there were bows -everywhere, on the bosom, on the sleeves, and, with long dazzling -streamers, round the waist. There was no end to their variety and -combination of colours, brilliant and pale; even the crudest Scottish -tartans were not considered amiss, as a certain dress in the London -Museum will show the incredulous. If ribbon was too paltry, a man in a -really generous mood would present a cashmere shawl, an expensive and -much appreciated luxury. The manipulation of shawls on frail, rounded -little persons, who, in England at least, still fainted at will and -indulged in the vapours, was a matter of some art. Balzac, in one of his -short stories, asserts that a _femme du monde_ could be distinguished -from the actress or the _grisette_ by the handling of her _cachemire_ -alone. There was only one great change in woman's dress between the -earlier and later days of Bohemia, and that was in the sleeves, which -dwindled suddenly as if the balloons had been pricked, and became either -closely fitting or almost disappeared into two little frilly bands. In -fact, during the forties, before skirts began to be exaggerated on -horse-hair paddings and verge upon the crinoline, female costume was as -nearly natural as it can be if corsets be granted. Nothing can be more -charming than the appearance of the Queen of the Belgians in her -portrait by Winterhalter which hangs in the gallery at Versailles. She -wears a red velvet dress, cut simply as to the _corsage_, with the skirt -reaching the ground in full, stately folds: there is no extravagance of -bows and frills, only a little lace at the bosom and sleeves. So, if we -would picture Mimi or Musette, as they were dressed for that memorable -day at Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the new muslin frocks made by their own -hands, we must imagine dainty little women, looking as if a breath would -blow them away, their pretty cheeks showing between two bewitching -clusters of ringlets, straw bonnets with not too large brims upon their -heads, tied with a coquettish ribbon, gowns of flowered muslin, light, -simple, and flowing, and scarfs pinned round their sloping shoulders or -held in place by mittened hands. Gavarin drew them to the life time and -time again, and they were considerably more attractive than any would-be -_Bohémiennes_ of our time in their rough, untidy tweeds or amorphous -"rational" dress. - -From the amusement of clothing the body it is an easy transition to that -of refreshing it. Eating and drinking, like dress, may from a certain -point of view come under the head of necessities, but indulgence in good -cheer when possible is a habit of young people of which a Bohemian was -by no means contemptuous. A word, therefore, about his particular haunts -among the thousand _cafés_ and restaurants of Paris will not be out of -season. After 1830 the great houses in the Palais Royal had fallen out -of fashion, and the four leading restaurants of Paris were on the -boulevard. Bohemians, it is true, were not often to be found within -them, but in the golden age, when Bohemia was nearer to the dandies and -_viveurs_, it would at least have been possible that in a moment of -extravagance some Bohemian friend should have accompanied Roger de -Beauvoir into the Café de Paris, the Café Riche, the Café Hardy, or the -Café Anglais. The Café de Paris was opposite Tortoni's, which stood at -the end of the Rue Taitbout. Besides being the home of the aristocratic -_petit cercle_, it was renowned for its witty conversation and its -general air of luxury. Since it was favoured by the aspirants to -smartness, as well as the perfect examples, its society was less select -than that of the Café Riche, at the corner of the Rue Lepeletier, or the -Café Anglais, which still remains in its old position. There was a quiet -solidity about the Café Anglais, in particular, which gave it a peculiar -air of distinction, though its company was gay enough at supper-time. It -was especially famous for its roast meat and its grills, though in these -matters the Café Hardy, at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, ran it close. -Hardy was an English cook who invented the _déjeuner à la fourchette_, -and popularized it by setting up the first silver grill in Paris. -Customers chose their own cutlet or steak and saw it cooked before their -eyes. At all these four the prices were very high, and with regard to -two of them it was said: "On doit être riche pour dîner au Café Hardy, -et hardi pour dîner au Café Riche." However, the chief haunt for -Bohemians with money to spend was the Rocher de Cancale, where it was -easier to be uproarious without offending the proprieties. This famous -restaurant still stands in the dirty, provincial Rue Montorgueil, in the -midst of small shops whose wares overflow on to the pavement. The -stately ornamentation of dark painted wood is still visible on its upper -stories, but the specimens of edibles in its ground-floor windows tell -too plainly to what depths it has sunk. It is no longer a possible home -for Rastignac and his boon companions, nor would it tempt Arsène -Houssaye to entertain there the brethren of _la Bohème galante_, for it -merely plies the trade of the convenient _marchand de vin_ in a rather -squalid quarter. The Rocher de Cancale had declined already during the -later days of Bohemia, and in Murger's day they repaired on _jours de -liesse_ to the Café de l'Odéon, Hill's Tavern in the Boulevard des -Capucines, or the Cabaret Dinochan at the corner of the Rue de Navarin. -The first of these was, in particular, the haunt of Baudelaire and his -friends, where the unfortunate Hégésippe Moreau made his brief -acquaintance with the main stream of Bohemia towards the end of his -days, which had been mainly passed in a backwater. Hill's Tavern was one -of the many chop-houses in the English style that flourished in Louis -Philippe's Paris--only the Petit Lucas, a charming place for a quiet -dinner, remains to-day--to cater for the down-at-elbows Englishmen, -jockeys, and trainers, of whom there was always a certain number. At -supper-time, however, it was invaded by Bohemia, and was often so full -that its doors had to be closed. One of its peculiarities was that its -private rooms were named after Shakespeare, Byron, and other great -poets. The Café Dinochan, according to Delvau,[30] was the ground on -which a great many small papers of the day were started. Monselet, -Nadar, Fauchéry, and Champfleury were among its customers, and Murger -died in debt to its proprietor for twelve hundred francs, for it was -said of this worthy creditor: "On dîne très-bien chez lui quand on a -quarante sous dans une poche--et dix francs dans l'autre." Yet the full -apparatus of a restaurant was not necessary to the gaiety of Bohemian -suppers, for in scanty days they made just as merry in the shops of one -or two bakeries on rolls and warm milk. The Boulangerie Cretaine in the -Quartier Latin was famous for its milk rolls and for the brilliant -conversation of Privat d'Anglemont, who, though it was against his -principle to get into debt, ran up a bill there for halfpenny rolls of -six hundred francs. The other famous baker was the _pâtissier_ Pitou, by -the Porte Montmartre, where a crowd of Bohemians used to congregate -after the midnight closing of the _cafés_. In the back shop was a table -running round three sides of the square, and at this "piano," as it was -called, the quaint figure of Guichardet presided. Guichardet, whose "nez -vermeil et digne" was celebrated in one of Banville's triolets, was a -Bohemian of the type of Balzac's Comte de la Palférine, one who had -voluntarily dropped out of the race of life while preserving all his -dignity and pride. He passed his days in amiable vagabondage, but -preserved "a perfume of exquisite politeness and witty impertinence -which made him the most delightful companion in the world." So says -Delvau, according to whom he was the only man left in France who really -knew how to say "Femme charmante!" - -So far I have mainly mentioned the haunts of Bohemians with the means -and inclination for a certain amount of self-indulgence. But in Bohemia -occasions preponderated when indulgence in anything beyond bare -necessities was an impossibility. The left bank swarmed with cheap -refuges for those who had hearty appetites and only a few pence. There -was Viot's for the poorest of the poor; Dagneaux's or Magny's in the Rue -Contrescarpe-Dauphine--rather superior houses where it was possible to -procure a semblance of good cheer; and the Cabaret of Mère Cadet outside -the Barrière Montparnasse, where Schaunard had his first meeting with -Colline over the stewed rabbit with two heads. This last had a garden -which ran along the Montparnasse cemetery, and under the shade of its -dusty shrubs not only literary Bohemians but nearly all the young actors -and actresses of the Théâtre Montparnasse and the Théâtre du Luxembourg -made their scanty meals. You might as well have asked for sphinx there -as chicken, says Delvau, the staple dishes being stewed rabbit and -_choucroute garnie_. To give a longer catalogue of such places would be -neither instructive nor amusing, and their types are easily enough found -in the Paris of to-day. There are two, however, that call for special -mention, for fiction has carried their fame beyond the days of their -material existence. No reader of Balzac's "Illusions Perdues" can have -forgotten the description of the cheap eating-house at the corner of the -Place de la Sorbonne and the Rue Neuve de Richelieu, with the small -panes of glass of its front window, its comforting announcement of _pain -à discrétion_, its long tables like those of a monastic refectory, its -varieties of cow's flesh and veal, and the hurried air of its diners, -who came there to eat and not to loiter. This famous house, where a -dinner of three dishes with a _carafon_ of wine or a bottle of beer cost -ninepence, where Lucien de Rubempré met Lousteau and made the -acquaintance of d'Arthez and his virtuous friends, was the restaurant of -Flicoteaux, no product of Balzac's imagination, but a name known to all -the strugglers for fame and fortune. It was a sure ground on which to -observe Bohemia, not indeed in its greatest indigence, but on the days -when there was at least no margin. Thackeray mentions it in his "Paris -Sketch-Book," and there is a passage in Lytton Bulwer's "France" which -vividly gives the impression produced by Flicoteaux on an English eye: - - "Enter [he says] between three and four o'clock, and take your seat - at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already - occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long hair, - falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the - eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the midnight vigil; - his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the - wrists; his trousers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty - black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his - thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is a - native of the South, pale and swarthy: his long black locks, parted - from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed - with a slight moustache, and the semblance of a beard gives to his - meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round - the room, with their thin, meagre portions of meat and bread, their - pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth - of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or - science." - -Flicoteaux has long been swept away, and buildings of the Sorbonne now -occupy its site. Gone, too, these many years, is the Café Momus, which -stood in a back street by the old church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, -the hostelry celebrated by so many exploits of Murger's four heroes in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was here that Schaunard and Colline -collected Rodolphe for the Bohemian brotherhood, and it became their -home, not so much for meals, though it was the scene of their reckless -Christmas Eve supper which introduced the saviour Barbemuche, but rather -for the lighter _consommations_ over which, by the French custom, they -could spend unlimited hours--a precious privilege when a cold garret was -the only alternative. There was nothing fictitious about the Café -Momus; it was a real establishment serving some respectable shopkeepers -of the quarter, when by some mischance, from the good M. Momus' point of -view, it attracted the Bohemian horde of Murger, Champfleury, Nadar, -Schann, Wallon, and many of the other "Buveurs d'Eau." Even on Murger's -testimony, they must be admitted to have abused their privileges without -shedding any very great glory in return, and we may take as fairly true -the list of grievances which was drawn up by the proprietor against -Rodolphe and his friends, from which it appears that they spent the -whole day there from morning to midnight, making a desert round them -with their strident voices and extravagant conversation; that Rodolphe -carried off all the papers in the morning and complained if their bands -were broken, and that by shouting every quarter of an hour for _Le -Castor_, a journal of the hat trade edited by Rodolphe, the companions -had forced a subscription on the proprietor; that Colline and Rodolphe -played _tric-trac_ all day, refusing to give up the table to other -people; that Marcel set up his easel in the _café_, and even went so far -as to invite models of both sexes; that Schaunard had expressed his -intention of bringing his piano there, and that Phémie Teinturière never -wore a bonnet when she came to meet him; that, not content with ordering -very little, the four friends presumed to make their own coffee on the -premises; and that the waiter, corrupted by their influence, had seen -fit to address an amatory poem to the _dame du comptoir_. Murger puts a -touch of exaggeration into this complaint, but it is to be feared, -nevertheless, that no trifling _dossier_ of misdemeanours could have -been compiled against the originals of Rodolphe, Marcel, and the rest. -We have it on Delvau's authority, at all events, that the profit of -their custom was quite disproportionate to its assiduity, when he tells -of their stratagem for obtaining asylum at small cost. The smallest -possible order was a _demi-tasse_, which consisted of a small cup of -coffee, four lumps of sugar, and a thimbleful of cognac; this cost five -sous, a sum of importance in Bohemia. The practice, therefore, was that -a certain student, Joannis Guigard, who was of the band, went in first, -ordered a _demi-tasse_, and went upstairs to consume it. Murger would -then arrive, ask if Guigard were upstairs, and run up. The rest followed -in succession with the same question till the _cénacle_ was complete and -in a position to have a sip of coffee and some hours of warmth for -nothing. After a short while Momus grew tired of these troublesome -customers and formally gave them notice to quit. They accepted the -intimation, but vowed revenge. Accordingly, a few days later, one of the -band turned up with six wet-nurses in his train, while another brought -six funeral mutes. The rest of the band then arrived, and the Bohemian -spokesman, probably Schann, delivered a flowery discourse upon the -affinity of life and death, with allusions to their guests' professions. -He wound up by telling the mutes to bury the Café Momus and take the -nurses as a reward. To make matters worse, he directed that the milk and -beer which had been ordered should be warmed as a mixture. The mutes and -nurses, furious at being thus deceived and insulted, broke into angry -expostulations, and, aided by the jests of the Bohemians, the -proceedings ended in a tremendous disturbance. Schann and two others -were arrested, and the next day Momus sold his business. - -The extent to which Bohemia, at its different phases, shared in the -various pastimes of Paris cannot be determined with any accuracy, so -much depended on individual taste and individual wealth. It is certain, -however, that after 1837 gambling was not a Bohemian distraction, for in -that year the public gaming-houses were closed. Before that time they -were such a popular institution that the early Bohemia cannot be -conceived to have entirely eschewed it. At the beginning of "La Peau de -Chagrin" Balzac draws a powerful picture of the wretched crowd that -haunted the Palais Royal, where Raphael de Valentin lost his last gold -coin at a single coup. There were no less than four gaming-houses in the -Palais Royal, Nos. 9, 113, 124, and 129, where the minimum stake was two -francs for roulette and five francs for trente-et-un. Besides the -Palais Royal, there were Paphos, Frascati, and the select Cercle des -Étrangers. The popularity of gambling can be judged from the fact that -the Treasury profited annually by it to the extent of five and a half -million francs. Yet there is no record that the truly artistic members -of Bohemia, like Gautier or Houssaye, so wasted time or money, while -Murger and his friends were spared the temptation. In music, too, -Bohemia played no very great part, in spite of the devotion of -Champfleury, Barbara, and Schann to Beethoven's quartets. There was -plenty of fine music to be heard in Paris during the time: Habeneck was -introducing Beethoven's symphonies, Berlioz was revolutionizing -orchestration, while Liszt, Chopin, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, and de Bériot -were among the soloists. Certainly those Bohemians of the golden age who -had access to the _salons_ of the Princess Belgiojoso or Madame de -Girardin must often have heard these great artists, but it is not to be -supposed that they were great supporters of concerts, unless it were of -the Concerts Musard. These concerts, which won great fame through the -personality of Musard, the conductor, began in 1833 in the Salle -Saint-Honoré;[31] their programmes were excellent and the prices low -enough to attract the least well off. Musard had a genius for making -_pot-pourris_ of operatic tunes and for introducing new effects, -especially into dance music. His electric style of conducting made the -Bals Musard far more popular than the great balls at the Opéra. He -contrived a wonderful quadrille, for instance, out of "Les Huguenots," -during which red lights were lit, tocsins pealed, tom-toms boomed, -screams resounded, and the whole illusion of a massacre was thrillingly -kept up. He also composed a _contre-danse_ in the finale of which he -broke a chair, and his triumph was a certain galop in which he -discharged a pistol. This was thoroughly in keeping with the Romantic -spirit, and after its first performance he was publicly chaired round -the hall by the excited dancers. So far as pure music was concerned, -however, it appealed most to Parisians in the form of opera. Meyerbeer's -"Robert le Diable" and "Les Huguenots" produced frenzies of enthusiasm: -no Romantic, consequently no Bohemian of Gautier's day, could afford not -to have listened to them. Rossini's great vogue began at the same time, -while Donizetti and Auber shared the honours of light opera till -Offenbach appeared to carry all before him. Musical Bohemia was well -educated, if not in composition, at least in execution, when it was -possible to hear Duprez, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, Grisi, Mario, -Persiani, and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. The ballet, too, with Carlotta -Grisi, Taglioni, and Fanny Elssler, was an additional attraction at the -Opéra. The devotion of _la Bohème galante_ to the _corps de ballet_ has -appeared in an earlier chapter, and it was a devotion shared by most -masculine society. Murger's Bohemia flourished after the greatest -operatic enthusiasms, which its more classically inclined members -probably despised; but their exchequers were not of the sort to allow -for tickets at the grand opera, though they turned up in force at the -light operas of the Théâtre Bobino. At this little theatre, more -properly called the Théâtre du Luxembourg, there was a continuous uproar -made by Bohemians and students. When this grew too unbearable the -manager would appear in his dressing-gown and protest that the police -would arrive if the respectable inhabitants of the quarter were -disturbed; whereupon the whole audience struck up as one man Grétry's -air "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de la famille?" accompanied by the -wheezy orchestra and conducted by the manager himself. At such a scene -Schaunard and Marcel must often have assisted. - -Nevertheless, in the eyes of Bohemia, the glory of the opera paled -entirely before that of the drama. There was not one Bohemian with any -literary talent who did not try to write a play--nay, many -plays--tragedies in alexandrines, comedies, or vaudevilles; and when -they were not writing plays they were haunting the theatres as dramatic -critics, selling their articles simply for the sake of a free entry, -unless, like Lucien's immoral set, they added the profits of blackmail. -From the second _cénacle_ to the end of Murger's Bohemia there was no -end so generally pursued as dramatic composition. Bouchardy and -Augustus Mackeat were dramatists, so were Ourliac, Arsène Houssaye, and -Gérard de Nerval; Gautier was a dramatic critic; Murger and Champfleury -failed as vaudevillists; and it is quite likely that Rodolphe's -magnificent drama, "Le Vengeur," had its counterpart in reality. The -"poète échevelé" and the humble _conteur_ alike turned their eyes -continuously towards the stage, besieging luckless managers without -cease. The reason of this was partly, as may be supposed, that a -successful play, then as to-day, gave far quicker and more splendid -pecuniary returns for labour than any other form of literary -composition. A concrete instance of that is the case of Murger himself, -who was set on his legs entirely by the sudden vogue of the dramatized -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." But there was another reason at least as -strong, far deeper, and more honourable. The stage, as I have already -pointed out, was the battlefield of the Romantic struggle. "Hernani" -brought home the new truths to the public far more vividly than any -novel or poem could have done; every night they were declaimed before -compelled attention. It is not surprising, then, that the stage played -so great a part in the amusements of Bohemia. It was, with one other, -the chief of their pastimes. For them to listen to "Chatterton," the -"Tour de Nesle," or "Antony" was not only a distraction, it was a -frantic excitement which made their blood seethe almost painfully and -sent geysers of hot eloquence from their lips as they munched the hot -rolls of the Boulangerie Cretaine. These young enthusiasts were not -stinted of good fare. Mademoiselle Mars, Marie Dorval, Rachel and Judith -appeared at the Français during these eighteen years; at the -Folies-Dramatique Frédéric Lemaître created with enormous success the -part of Robert Macaire; while at the Funambules Gaspard Deburau was -winning eternal fame as the incomparable Pierrot. There were a host of -other theatres besides, the Variétés, Porte Saint-Martin, Odéon, not to -mention smaller ones, managed for the most part by men of taste, -supplied with plays by men with some pretension to talent, and -criticized by unsparing critics, from Jules Janin downwards, who knew -what they wanted and did not hesitate to speak when they did not get it. -In the stage Bohemia found not only amusement and inspiration but part -of its livelihood: it lived next door to that special world composed of -actors and actresses. Yet, though Bohemians went to supper with -Mademoiselle Mars, Dumas was very much at home with Marie Dorval, Roger -de Beauvoir played pranks with Bache, and Rodolphe had a love affair -with Mademoiselle Sidonie, the two worlds were definitely separated. In -fact, the life of dramatic artists, whatsoever Bohemian flavouring it -may have, has always had a mysterious taste of its own, incapable of -mixture with any other blend of artistic life, so that, interesting as -it may have been in Paris during these years, its omission from these -pages has been intentional. - -[Illustration: Bal Masqué à l'Opéra] - -The one other amusement--a pure pastime involving no material -profit--which was particularly popular in Bohemia was dancing. In this -respect Bohemia was no exception from the rest of Parisian society, for -in all classes there was an inextinguishable passion for the dance. But -the Bohemian, obeying only his own laws of social propriety, was in a -more favourable position for taking full advantage of all public -opportunities for this exercise and of all the _agréments_ in the way of -casual intercourse with both sexes which it implied. All the year round -there were public balls given in Paris, at which the Bohemian was in his -element, giving rein to his inventive humour, his high spirits, and his -gift of seductive gallantry. During the first few years after 1830, the -golden age of Bohemia, the balls at the Opéra were the most frequented, -especially in the days of the carnival. There masks and dominoes covered -dancers of every rank in society, for even the _femme du monde_ slipped -in unbeknown to her husband. This scene of utmost gaiety and brilliance, -of which Balzac gives a picture at the opening of "Splendeurs et Misères -des Courtisanes," was closely rivalled by the ball at the Variétés, at -which a still more feverish excitement reigned. Or if the Bohemian -preferred to make sure of a _grisette_ as a partner he went to the -Prado, the site of which was opposite the Palais de Justice, where, -under Pilodo, the famous conductor, he could join Louise la Balocheuse, -Angelina l'Anglaise, or Ernestine Confortable in the giddy whirl. The -waltz was recognized at this period, but the quadrille easily held the -place of honour, especially as it lent itself more freely to individual -invention, such as Ourliac's magnificent variation depicting the -grandeur and fall of Napoleon. It was through this licence in the -figures of the quadrille that the _chahut_ and the _cancan_ were -introduced by the rakish set among the _viveurs_ which included Charles -de la Battut, Alton-Shee, Monnier, and the famous Chicard--a -leather-merchant who made a name by his grotesque costumes and wild -dances, the term _chicard_, which degenerated into _chic_, becoming a -general denomination for his imitators. I have not been able to arrive -at the difference between the _chahut_ and the _cancan_, but both were -originally primitive dances indulged in by the lowest classes, quaint, -but in all probability perfectly decent. The rage for extravagance -during the early thirties changed them into formidable pantomimes of -violence, if not always of indecency, which every complete reveller -rendered with his own individual touch. Heine, in the course of one of -his articles in the _Augsburg Gazette_, said of the _cancan_: - - "It must be regarded simply as a pantomime of Robert Macairedom. - Anybody who has a general idea of the latter will understand those - indescribable dances, expressions of _persiflage_ in dance, which - not only mock sexual relations, but civic relations too, all, in - fact, that is good and beautiful, every kind of enthusiasm, - patriotism, uprightness, faith, family feeling, heroism, divinity." - -Heine's view is rather too Teutonic, for the popularity of the _cancan_ -was due to the high spirits of the Romantic enthusiasm, and its degree -of morality or immorality depended upon the individual dancer. Not much -harm can be imagined to have dwelt in the dance-_persiflage_ of the -Impasse du Doyenné, whatever a Chicard or a Milord Arsouille may have -made of it. The feature of public balls, however, was certainly a -Dionysiac exaltation which culminated in the final _galop infernal_, as -it was called, into which Musard particularly infused a special fury. It -was less a dance than a stampede of maniacs, who rushed round the room, -men and women, clutching one another anyhow, wigs flying, tresses -waving, dresses rent from fair shoulders, all shrieking and shouting, -brandishing arms, kicking legs, and stamping heedlessly on those who -were unlucky enough to fall. - -[Illustration: The Galop Infernal] - -The balls of the Opéra declined in attraction and became dull about -1836, but they were revived with still greater splendour two years -later, when Musard was made conductor and members of the ballet were -drafted in to enliven the company. Such balls, however, became too -much public functions to suit the less splendid Bohemia of a later day, -which found diversion more suited to its pocket and its manners at the -Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas on the left bank. It was at such -places as these that Rodolphe and Marcel disported themselves, and -Schaunard was arrested for "chorégraphie trop macabre." The Chaumière -was a large garden on the Boulevard Montparnasse, a miniature edition of -Cremorne or Vauxhall, with a primitive shooting gallery, a skittle -alley, and switchback. It was open all day for students to promenade -after lectures and make their addresses to the _grisettes_ working under -the trees. Its dances were very simple affairs; a few lamps and Chinese -lanterns, a small orchestra, a bar for lemonade and _galette_ were all -that the management supplied, the fun, of which they had enough and to -spare, being the dancers' contribution. - -The Closerie des Lilas, though less generally popular than the -Chaumière, was more particularly associated with Bohemia than the -latter, for Murger, Vitu, Fauchéry, Théodore de Banville, and one or two -others of that set frequented it regularly, as a French writer[32] says, -"avec quelques comparses sans importance," among whom, no doubt, were -Mimi and Musette. This little dancing-hall began in 1838 as La -Chartreuse, being so called because it was on the site of the old -Carthusian monastery in the Rue d'Enfer. It was in some sort the -trial-ground for those of the fair sex who aspired to become stars of -the Prado and the Chaumière. Privat d'Anglemont has described it in a -rare pamphlet as it was in its early days under its extraordinary -manager, Carnaud. As La Chartreuse it was the most primitive kind of -_guingette_, the dancing-place being a large marquee, into which one -descended by a steep flight of steps. On the left were an orchestra and -_café_, and the only ornaments were nine plaster statues representing -the Muses, which were handily adapted for supporting petroleum lamps on -their arms. "There," says Privat d'Anglemont, "decent dress was not _de -rigueur_; one came as one liked, or rather as one could--the women in -bonnets or, in default of other adornments, covered simply by their -hair, and the men in blouses. It certainly was the most original bar in -Paris. It had a physiognomy of its own, strange, quaint, even a little -burlesque, but it existed. Its population was to be seen nowhere else; -it seemed to exist only at the Chartreuse and for the Chartreuse. Since -this ball disappeared its population has completely vanished." - -[Illustration: La Guinguette] - -Everything about the Chartreuse was original, not only the dancers and -the dances but the orchestra, the music, and the manager. Every kind of -"percussion" was added to the usual instruments, the noise of -money-bags, pistol shots, rows of explosive caps, resounding anvils, and -sheets of metal struck to represent the roaring of lions and tigers. All -the music was composed by Carnaud himself, who was conductor, first -violin, _restaurateur_, composer, and advertisement-writer in one. At -every special _fête_ he invented a new quadrille and a new exotic word -to describe it, such as "la fête des vendanges, quadrille -déchirancochicandard," or "l'hôtel des haricots,[33] avec accompaniments -de chaînes et de bruits de clefs, grand quadrille -exhilarandéliranchocnosophe." - -Carnaud was succeeded by the famous Bullier, who altered the name to the -Closerie des Lilas and replaced the simple marquee by an Oriental palace -with a garden, Moorish pavilions, billiard tables, swings, and a -pistol-shooting gallery. A decent orchestra was installed and four -admirable waiters. With these improvements the balls, held every Sunday, -Monday, and Thursday, began to attract the _beau monde_ of the Quartier -Latin, and several of the dancers gained the coveted honour of a -_sobriquet_. There were Jeanne la Juive, for instance, Maria les Yeux -Bleus, Joséphine Pochardinette, and the literary Clémentine Pomponnette, -who used to show her admirers a farce she had written "dans les loisirs -que lui laissait l'amour." This transformation took place about 1847, -and it was then that one of the Moorish pavilions was especially -consecrated to Murger's Bohemian set. It is needless to say that the -name of Bullier still remains in the Bal Bullier of to-day. - -One other popular ball must be mentioned, the Bal Mabille, which for so -long was one of the sights of Paris. This public ball was instituted by -Mabille, a dancing-master, in the Champs Elysées. The price of entrance -at first was fifty centimes, with an extra fee for each quadrille, and -in 1843 the whole of the dances were included in an initial sum of two -francs. The fame of the Bal Mabille was due first to its polkas, a dance -which became the rage at the time, and secondly to the most celebrated -of polka-dancers, Elise Sergent, known as La Reine Pomaré. Her dancing -was a revelation of fire and passion which won her recognition on the -very first evening of her appearance. Crowds came to see her dance, -articles were devoted to her by the journalists of the day, and Privat -d'Anglemont wrote a sonnet to her. Paris, in fact, went mad about her, -and she had many lovers, among whom, it is said, was Alphonse Karr, -which brings her into some kind of connexion with Bohemia. But Reine -Pomaré and her rival, Céleste Mogador, who also made her _début_ at -Mabille, were too much on the plane of _grandes cocottes_ for any real -relation with the Bohemia of their day. They might have danced for love -at the Impasse du Doyenné, but Schaunard and Marcel had nothing to -offer them to compare with the splendour of the _viveurs_ which was laid -at their feet. Bohemia found its pleasure at less expense and with less -restraint in the company of Mimi and Musette in a Moorish pavilion at -the Closerie des Lilas, where Colline's bad puns found appreciative -listeners and Schaunard's _pas de fascination_ were greeted with -rapturous applause. - - - - -XII - -THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA - - _Paris sombre et fumeux,_ - _Où déjà, points brillants au front de maison ternes,_ - _Luisent comme des yeux des milliers de lanternes;_ - _Paris avec ses toits déchiquetés, ses tours_ - _Qui ressemblent de loin à des cous de vautours,_ - _Et ses clochers aigus à flèche dentelée,_ - _Comme un peigne mordant la nue échevelée._ - - THÉOPHILE GAUTIER - - -The last chapter was devoted to certain accidental adjuncts of _la vie -de Bohème_ by way of general illustration, though they consisted of -simple amusements common not only to the Parisians of the day but to -civilized society of most epochs. The present chapter, which I have -reserved till the last, might logically have claimed an earlier place, -for its subject, as I have already pointed out, is distinctive of the -society in which Bohemia played an important part. Bohemia, of course, -neither monopolized Paris nor even a portion of it, but the Paris of -Bohemia's florescence and decline was a unique background for these -events, a necessary condition, though temporary in itself, which it -would pass the bounds of human possibility to reconstruct. Interesting -as it is to imagine correctly the dress of the Bohemian and his -mistress, the places where they dined, or the gardens where they danced, -the re-presentation of the city where they lived, so small, so -sensitively vibrant, so congested, so hopelessly out of date, except for -a few new patches, so dirty, so noisy, and so picturesque, ranks far -higher in importance. Yet, though I might have put this chapter first, I -choose to put it last because I cannot hope that it will be appreciated -by any but those who have already some memory of Paris and on whom the -spell of its fascination has, at least, been lightly cast. The general -description of Bohemian life may provide some entertainment to those who -know not Paris; for their sake I have sought not to break the general -interest. My story is now told, and I am free to call those who have -breathed, even for a moment, the quick breeze off the Seine or seen the -sunshine strike through the trees in the Tuileries Gardens, to stay with -me for a last look back upon that city of beauty and adventure which -calls, like the East, to those who love it. To have gained even a -superficial view of modern Paris, to have caught some of her accents and -contrasts--the radiance of the Bois de Boulogne, the vivacity of the -boulevards, the _cafés_ overflowing on to the pavements, the view from -her bridges, the differences between the two banks, the mean alleys -lurking mischievously at the back of splendid thoroughfares, the -broadest omnibuses comically invading the narrowest streets--is to have -formed some general notion with which an earlier Paris can be compared. -And with a reader who has penetrated deeper, whose nostrils yearn for -her indescribably subtle perfume, who knows the different aspects of her -streets from days of diligent tramping, who has seen her river blending -with her sky in a hundred harmonies, who has felt her moods and her -humours, finding like a true lover her blemishes as adorable as her -perfections, who has recognized her past in her present, and who, though -a stranger, has divined in ecstasy the wild throb of her romantic -heart--with him my task is easier still. Such a one will already have -guessed the intoxication of the air which a Roger de Beauvoir delicately -breathed, when Paris, her spirit newly quickened with the exhilaration -of a potent elixir, was yet unspoiled by modern cosmopolitan vulgarity, -and her inner soul shone out, through all her deformities and -incongruities, with a gay and unmasked confidence. - -She did not shine before an unseeing generation, for the Parisians of -the Romantic age adored their city, dandies, Bohemians, and _bourgeois_ -alike, all passionately conscious of their privileged citizenship, -though they could admit with Maxime du Camp that under Louis Philippe -she was "one of the dirtiest, the most tortuous, and the most unhealthy" -in the world. As they lived in her, so they wrote of her--with pride. -Victor Hugo did her great homage in "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Les -Misérables," Eugène Sue in "Les Mystères de Paris," and Paul de Kock in -all his work, but these achievements appear as slight and partial -sketches beside the wonderful and penetrating picture which Balzac drew -of Paris--at once the background and the protagonist--in his greatest -novels. Balzac, besides giving us a world, gave us a great city. Minute -as were the studies he made of the provinces, they are nothing to the -picture that he drew of the city which he regarded as the brain of the -whole world, the leader of its civilization. He gloated over Paris as a -scientist gloats over an interesting organism that he has first observed -and then skilfully dissected. He had dissected Paris even on the -threshold of his career. In some of his early stories, like a brilliant -young surgeon fresh from his researches, he overweights the matter in -hand with the results of the laboratory. "Ferragus" begins with a long -comparison of the streets of Paris; "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" with a -marvellous tirade on the restless race for money and pleasure that is -run by all classes, a tirade which, probing as it does all the strata of -society, is an epitome, in some sort, of all his work. Paris, that small -_enceinte_ which was enclosed within what is now the second line of -_boulevards_, still innocent of the reforming hand of Haussmann, -becoming rich, but hardly yet industrial, not yet the pleasure-ground -of all the world, destitute of railways, squalid, ill-kept, nevertheless -was transformed by his wonderful imagination into the type of all great -cities, which will ever remain true. To him she was "le plus délicieux -des monstres," as he says in "Ferragus." "Mais, ô Paris," he cries, "qui -n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes échappées de lumière, tes -culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures, -entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne connaît encore rien de ta vraie -poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes. Il est un petit nombre -de gens ... qui dégustent leur Paris.... Pour ceux-là Paris est triste -ou gai, laid ou beau, vivant ou mort; pour eux Paris est une créature; -chaque homme, chaque fraction de maison est un lobe du tissu cellulaire -de cette grande courtisane de laquelle ils connaissent parfaitement la -tête, le coeur et les moeurs fantasques. Aussi ceux-là sont les -amants de Paris...." - -There are a happy few to whom it would be enough to say that the Paris -of Bohemia was the Paris of Balzac--such devotees, I mean, as have -thought it worth while to pay attention to that accurate topography in -which Balzac took so great a pride, following it in a contemporary map -so that, in their walks about the modern city, streets and houses -incessantly recall his characters and his scenes. But life is short for -such agreeable exercises, so this chapter must inadequately proceed. I -have already touched on the social implications of Louis Philippe's -Paris, its smallness and its diminutive population, and my present aim -is simply to present more fully its external aspect, which changed so -quickly after 1848. The rapidity of the change may well be judged by a -passage in Théophile Gautier's article[34] on Paul de Kock, published in -1870. No apology is necessary for transcribing it: - - "Those [he says] who were born after the Revolution of February 24, - 1848, or a little before, cannot imagine what the Paris was like in - which the heroes and heroines of Paul de Kock move; it resembled - Paris of to-day so little that I sometimes ask myself, on seeing - these broad streets, these great boulevards, these vast squares, - these interminable lines of monumental houses, these splendid - quarters which have replaced the market-gardens, if it is really - the city in which I passed my childhood. Paris, which is on the way - to become the metropolis of the world, was then only the capital of - France. One met French people, even Parisians, in its streets. No - doubt foreigners came there, as always, to find pleasure and - instruction; but the means of transport were difficult, the ideal - of rapidity did not rise above the classic mail-coach, and the - locomotive, even in the form of a chimera, was not yet taking shape - in the mists of the future. The physiognomy of the population had - not therefore sensibly changed. - - "The provinces stayed at home much more than now, only coming to - Paris on urgent business. One could hear French spoken on that - boulevard which was then called the Boulevard de Gand and which is - now called the Boulevard des Italiens. One frequently saw a type - which is becoming rare and which, for me, is the pure Parisian - type--white skin, pink cheeks, brown hair, light grey eyes, a - well-shaped figure of moderate stature, and, in the women, a - delicate plumpness hiding small bones. Olive complexions and black - hair were rare; the South had not yet invaded us with its - passionately pale tints and its furious gesticulations. The general - aspect of faces was therefore rosy and smiling, with an air of - health and good humour. Complexions now considered _distingués_ - would at that time have caused suspicions of illness. - - "The city was relatively very small, or at least its activity was - restricted within certain limits that were seldom passed. The - plaster elephant in which Gavroche found shelter raised its - enormous silhouette on the Place de la Bastille, and seemed to - forbid passers-by to go any further. The Champs Elysées, as soon as - night fell, became more dangerous than the plain of Marathon; the - most adventurous stopped at the Place de la Concorde. The quarter - of Notre Dame de Lorette only included vague plots of ground or - wooden fences. The church was not built, and one could see from the - boulevard the Butte Montmartre, with its windmills and its - semaphore waving its arms on the top of the old tower. The Faubourg - Saint-Germain went early to bed, and its solitude was but rarely - disturbed by a tumult of students over a play at the Odéon. - Journeys from one quarter to another were less frequent; omnibuses - did not exist, and there were sensible differences of feature, - costume, and accent between a native of the Rue du Temple and an - inhabitant of the Rue Montmartre." - -Gautier is referring in this passage to the Paris of his childhood, in -the second decade of the nineteenth century, but, though by his Bohemian -days the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette had been built, omnibuses had -been instituted, and railway stations were about to break out on the -face of Paris, his picture would have remained substantially true of -Paris during the whole of Louis Philippe's reign. There was a certain -amount of change during the time: the Palais Royal declined in -popularity, ceasing to be "a scene of extravagance, dissipation, and -debauchery not to be equalled in the world," as Coghlan's "Guide to -Paris" put it; a few old houses were pulled down here and there, and the -desert patches on the outskirts began to be filled by a straggling -population, but, in general, Louis Philippe's Paris can be considered as -a stable whole. Most visitors to Paris do not, of course, realize the -boundaries of the large circle which now forms the city, for they enjoy -themselves at the centre, though they may, perhaps, remember how far -from the terminus a train passes the fortifications. In Louis Philippe's -day the outer line of boulevards, on which stood the fortifications and -_barrières_, was that second ring of to-day which even visitors reach at -times; a _barrière_ existed at the Arc de Triomphe, at the Place -Pigalle, where the amusements of Montmartre only just begin, at the -cemeteries of Père Lachaise and Montparnasse. The actual diameter of the -city was then about three miles, but for all practical purposes it was -little more than two, for the outskirts were still occupied by large -market-gardens, plots of land acquired for future use by speculators, -with here and there some mushroom rows of houses, half finished and -nearly empty, the work of a bankrupt who had too far anticipated the -coming boom, farmyards, chicken-runs, cow-stalls, grass, odd weeds, and -all the disfigurements of a landscape over which the impending march of -a city has thrown a blight. Only on the northern heights were there -still windmills and vineyards. These outskirts had only a scanty -population, for there were no thousands of workpeople to spread over the -heights of Belleville or Ménilmontant, or southwards over Montrouge, so -that it was easy for a starveling company of Bohemians, headed by the -Desbrosses and Murger, to find shelter in an old farm by the Barrière -d'Enfer--now the busy Place Denfert-Rochereau--or for Balzac's Colonel -Chabert to live in a tumble-down cottage well inside the boundaries. The -fact was, as the dramatist Victorien Sardou has said in a passage of -reminiscence,[35] that under Louis Philippe one-third of the total -surface of Paris was not built on. There were gardens everywhere, except -in the very centre of the city, and on the left bank, especially, -houses were only dotted in the midst of orchards, kitchen-gardens, -farmyards, and parks. It was this fact that made Paris, however quick -the flame that burnt at her heart, in most respects a provincial city. -Only in such a city could Bohemia perfectly have realized itself; an -industrial metropolis would have swallowed it or brushed it -contemptuously aside. - -Paris, then, compared with herself of to-day, would have been almost -unrecognizable. There was no sign of the rich and luxurious quarter -which has grown up round the Champs Elysées, with its magnificent hotels -and fine mansions. The Champs Elysées were used during the daytime for -riding or driving, but there was hardly a house to be seen except two or -three wretched _cafés_. After sunset it was madness to go past the -_rond-point_, for beyond was the home of thieves and cut-throats, the -Bois de Boulogne, needless to say, being in a much more wild state than -to-day. The Parc Monceau was practically in the country, and even the -Quartier du Roule, by the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes, was all -market-gardens when Rosa Bonheur lived there as a child. As for the -Batignolles, that Kensington of modern Paris, its repute was as -unsavoury as that of the London fields now respectably covered by Sloane -Square and Sloane Street. The quarter chosen by wealth, as opposed to -blue blood, which lived in dreary _hôtels_ surrounded by high walls in -the Faubourg Saint-Germain, lay in the neighbourhood of the present -Saint-Lazare terminus. The favourite street was the Rue de la Pépinière, -continued by the Rue Saint-Lazare. Only a small part of the Rue de la -Pépinière is now left, most of it being called the Rue La Boëtie, but it -retains its old name between the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Rue -Saint-Lazare. Another fashionable street was the Rue de Provence, which -runs parallel to the south of the Rue Saint-Lazare. In the former was -the famous house inhabited successively by seven of Balzac's -courtesans,[36] in the latter the charming house of Baron Nucingen. -Every Englishman knows the clamour and smell and garish shops of the Rue -Saint-Lazare to-day, and the Rue de Provence is just a plain _bourgeois_ -thoroughfare of shops, _cafés_, flats, and a post-office. - -The fashionable boulevards have already appeared in a previous chapter, -but a word must be said of the difference between the then and now of -that brilliant corner of Paris which most Europeans and Americans see -once before they die. To-day, without a doubt, the Boulevard des -Capucines, which stretches from the Madeleine to the Opéra, has the most -distinguished and luxurious appearance. The Boulevard des Italiens -beyond the Opéra is dowdier and more workaday. In the days of Bohemia -the Boulevard des Capucines had no social existence. It had as yet not -been levelled with the Rue Basse du Rempart, which, some fifteen feet -below it, followed the course of the ancient moat; it was flanked by -plots of land on which new houses were being erected, and its only -traffic was the omnibus which jogged between the Madeleine and the -Bastille. The present Opera-house and Place de l'Opéra were not -existent, for the Opéra stood just off the Boulevard des Italiens, -beyond Tortoni's, while the Rue de la Paix came quietly into the -boulevard at a sharp angle, instead of arriving in that busy open space, -with Cook's office as its centre, over which traffic plies in all -directions with bewildering activity. The Avenue de l'Opéra, also, was -not known to Bohemia. At that day a pedestrian who wished to go direct -from the top of the Rue de la Paix to the Louvre had to thread a maze of -narrow streets--an example of which remains in the Rue des Petits -Champs--which became meaner and more sinister as he neared the Louvre. -The Louvre quarter, so close to brilliance and luxury, was a squalid -plague-spot, that has since been thoroughly cleansed. The brotherhood of -the Impasse du Doyenné, I suspect, were careful to have a companion when -they ascended the Rue Froidmanteau or the Rue Traversière after dark. If -one crosses the Avenue de l'Opéra between the entrance of the Rue de -l'Echelle on one side and the Rue Molière on the other, one will have -exactly traversed the site of the infamous Rue de Langlade where in -"Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes" Vautrin found Esther la -Torpille on the verge of death, _à propos_ of which Balzac has a lurid -passage on the thick shadows, the flickering lights, the phantom forms, -and disquieting sounds which characterized at nightfall this _lacis de -petites rues_. - -[Illustration: The Rue St. Denis] - -On the north-east and the east of the Louvre lay the most unregenerate -portion of Paris, a district as tortuous, narrow, and unhealthy as in -the Middle Ages, yet the centre of Parisian commerce. Even to-day the -visitor may wonder that such a district can exist in a capital city, -when he ventures into the Rue Quincampoix, the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, -and the other alleys which cut them at right angles. But at least this -quarter has been cleared by the thorough reorganization of the Halles -and by the construction of some large arteries, the Boulevard de -Sébastopol, the Rue Rambuteau, the Rue Etienne Marcel, and the Rue de -Turbigo. It is sufficient to glance at a map of Louis Philippe's Paris, -such as Dulaure's, to see what a maze it was then. Save for the two -narrow thoroughfares, the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, -going from north to south, it had hardly a single continuous street. A -stroll in the region of the old church of Saint-Merri will show many of -these streets in their original dimensions; there is the Rue des -Lombards, for instance, where Balzac's Matifat presided over the -wholesale drug market, and the Rue Aubry le Boucher, formerly the Rue -des Cinq Diamants, where in the virtuous Anselme Popinot's shop the -first measures were taken for the reconstruction of César Birotteau's -shattered fortunes. The darkness and insalubrity of this quarter are -specially commented on at the beginning of Balzac's "Une Double -Famille," where he says that a pedestrian coming from the Marais quarter -to the quays near the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de l'Homme Armé and -other streets--practically the route of the present Rue des Archives -down to the Place Lobau--would think he was walking in underground -cellars. This unsavoury network in the day of Bohemia continued right on -to the quays, which have now been cleared by the construction of the -Théâtre and Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the Place de -l'Hôtel de Ville, and the Place Lobau with its barracks. But in Louis -Philippe's reign the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, where poor Gérard de -Nerval was found hanged, occupied the site of the stage of the Théâtre -Sarah Bernhardt, and instead of the Place Lobau the Rue de la Tixanderie -and the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean forked at the back of the Hôtel de -Ville. The house described in "Une Double Famille" stood in the Rue du -Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, which was only five feet wide at its broadest and -only cleaned when flooded by a shower. The inhabitants lit their lamps -at five in June and never put them out in winter. - -[Illustration: Rue de la Tixeranderie] - -Another typical specimen of the Paris I am describing is to be seen in -that curious confluence of three narrow streets, the Rues de la Lune, -Beauregard, and de Cléry, just off the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. The Rue -de la Lune is dominated by the forbidding portals of a gloomy church, -and its cobble-stones are quite deserted even when the activity of the -neighbouring boulevard is at its height. No flight of imagination is -needed to realize its appropriateness as the scene of that tragic close -to "Illusions Perdues," where in a garret Lucien writes drinking songs -over the corpse of his wretched Coralie to pay the expenses of her -burial. This street and the two others, which meet at an extraordinarily -acute angled building, diverge into the squalor of the Rue Montorgueil. -It is easier to see the conditions in which _la vie de Bohème_ was -passed in such spots as these than in the regions towards Montmartre. -The Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne still exists, but to search there for the -garret of Murger and Champfleury is disappointing. One ascends the -cheerful Rue des Martyrs from Notre Dame de Lorette, with its prospect -of the Sacré Coeur standing out against the open heavens, and on -turning along the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne one is confronted by a -respectable, clean, sleepy street that might grace any neat provincial -town in France. All suggestion of Bohemianism is remarkably absent, even -on the top floors. In Murger's day this quarter was far less civilized, -as may be seen from a water-colour sketch by Victor Hugo which hangs -in the Carnavalet Museum. This represents the view southwards from the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne--a wild foreground of uncultivated land with -sombre trees and dilapidated fences, and in the distance all Paris -spread out in panorama. - -[Illustration: Rue Pirouette] - -The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter -of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where -old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have -been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to -Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left -him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in -the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with -its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of -youth and love. In particular, this part of Paris was cleared and aired -by the construction of those two very important thoroughfares, the -Boulevard Saint-Germain, which broke through a host of little streets, -including the rampageous Rue Childebert, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, -which replaced and widened the straggling old Rue de la Harpe. Before -these were made, the Quartier Latin had not a single main street, though -it was not quite so uncivilized as the Halles quarter, nor so large. -Southwards by the gardens of the Luxembourg it soon became comparatively -_bourgeois_ and spacious with pleasant houses and gardens, built -originally for rich nobles and prelates, but relinquished at the -dictation of fashion to prosperous tradespeople and officials like the -Phellions and Thuilliers of Balzac's "Les Petits Bourgeois." Searches -for vestiges of Bohemia in general on either side of the Boulevard -Saint-Germain are fruitful enough; many an _hôtel garni_ recalls that in -which Lucien first hid his diminished head, or the early home of Arsène -Houssaye, when Nini Yeux Noirs was his divinity and revolution his -creed. Specific quests, however, are apt to be disappointing. The Rue -des Quatre Vents, the headquarters of d'Arthez' _cénacle_, in Balzac's -time "one of the most horrible streets in Paris," remains blamelessly -near Saint-Sulpice as dull and decent as the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; -and the Rue Vaugirard, where the second _cénacle_, headed by Pétrus -Borel, held its frantic orgies round the punch-bowl and where Murger -wrote his "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," is devoid of any spark of -romance. On the other hand, a visit to the delightful Cour de Rohan, -just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, will land you _en pleine Bohème_, -as will certain streets leading up towards the Church of Saint-Etienne -du Mont, or the narrow passages by the Church of Saint-Séverin. It is -just too late to see another unmistakable relic of Balzac's Paris, for -the Maison Vauquer of "Père Goriot" has just been pulled down. Yet to -make a pilgrimage to its site gives a very good impression of the -gloominess which Bohemian high spirits had usually to combat. The -Maison Vauquer stood near the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue -Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, now the Rue Lhomond, and the Rue Tournefort, -south of the Panthéon. I have walked down the Rue Lhomond at three on a -sunny autumn afternoon, yet I met no soul in this dingy street, which -seemed to catch not a ray of the sun's illumination. It is crossed by -two sinister little lanes, the Rue Amyot, at the corner of which -Cérizet, in "Les Petits Bourgeois," carried on the business of a small -usurer in a loathsome, grimy house, and the Rue du Pot de Fer, before -coming to which one passes a high, dark barrack, heavy iron bars -shielding its dirty lower windows, the "Institution Lhomond pour -l'éducation des jeunes filles"--poor _jeunes filles_! When the Rue -Tournefort meets the Rue Lhomond there is a very steep descent, -accurately described by Balzac, into the Rue de l'Arbalète. Almost any -of the mournful dwellings with weedy gardens on this slope might have -been the hideous _pension_ where Goriot died, while at the corner of the -Rue de l'Arbalète there is a veritable dungeon, only two tiny windows in -cracked frames piercing its high, blank wall. If you proceed into the -narrow Rue Mouffetard, one long, smelly vegetable market, you will then -realize the general state of all but the best of Louis Philippe's Paris. - -It was part of the old world, unconscious of its impending reformation -in the light of the new ideals of comfort and sanitation which were to -become the accented notes of modernity. It was a provincial city of -small compass with no industrial suburbs, no railways--let alone trams -or river steamboats--and a population of considerably less than a -million concentrated for the most part in its overcrowded quarters by -the river banks, where the excitement of its spiritual life made up for -the deficiencies of its material well-being. There were few public -buildings of recent construction; the Louvre was still disfigured by the -_débris_ of the Place du Carrousel; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, and -the Palais de Justice were hemmed in by crabbed streets and thickly -clustering old houses. Private gardens were many, but public squares -were few. Except for the boulevards the streets had medieval paving with -central gutters, from which all and sundry were liberally splashed, so -that for well-dressed persons to venture in them on foot was an -impossibility. An American writing in 1835 says of them: "They are paved -with cubical stones of eight or ten inches, convex on the upper surface -like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where -not bounded by stores they are as dark as they were under King Pepin. -Some seem to be watertight."[37] They were seldom swept, never flushed, -and primitively lit. The noise, too, except on the boulevards, was -deafening and incessant. Not only did the eternal rumbling of wheels -over cobblestones and the sharp clatter of stumbling hoofs assail the -ear, but also the ringing of bells, the rattle of water-carriers' -buckets, the din of barrel-organs and itinerant singers, and all those -street cries of fish-sellers, clothes-merchants, rag and bone men, -glaziers, umbrella menders, and fruit-vendors so picturesque in isolated -survival, but so unbearable in the _ensemble_ of their heyday. It would -be a mistake, however, to imagine this Paris as sleepy, stagnant, or -unpricked by the progressive spirit; on the contrary, she was -exceedingly wide-awake. But, whereas the Englishman at once translates -his progressive idea into mechanism, the Frenchman prefers to let the -first thorough ferment take place in his mind alone, allowing it, if -need be, to inspire in him the primitive actions of attack and defence, -but leaving more complicated handiwork to a later date, when the logic -of change has been worked out, according to which he then acts -rigorously. In this light the Paris of Bohemia must be -regarded--picturesquely stagnant externally, seething inwardly--and of -this condition Bohemia was the type. Its extravagant or tattered dress, -its Rabelaisian speech and self-indulgence, the antiquated splendours of -the Impasse du Doyenné and the equally antiquated hovels and garrets of -its poverty, its disregard of public convenience and its real antagonism -to democracy, were externals voluntarily or of necessity adopted from -an earlier age; they were the old bottles which served for a moment to -hold and to flavour with a distinctive tang the new wine of the Romantic -vintage. Other vintages of equal potency have quickened men's hearts -since then, and every new age, whether its ideals be artistic or social, -will have its particular ferment that will find its appropriate vessels, -but the past can never return any more than the first delirious -headiness can be restored to an old wine that now charms with its -matured delicacy. Bohemia is a thing of the past with that irrevocable -Paris with its tortuous, noisy streets, its high gables, its wide skirts -and embroidered waistcoats, its - - _Fashionables musqués, gueux à mine incongrue,_ - _Grisettes au pied leste, au sourire agaçant,_ - _Beaux tilburys dorés comme l'éclair passant--_ - -the Paris of Balzac, the Paris of Roger de Beauvoir and Alfred de -Musset, the Paris of Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, the Paris -of Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel, the Paris, in fine, which was the -only home of _les vrais Bohémiens de la vraie Bohème_. - - - - -INDEX - - -Names of characters in fiction are printed in italics. - -A - -ABRANTÈS, Duchesse d', 71 - -Alton-Shee, _see_ Aulnis, Duc d' - -Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 36, 37, 51 - -Amusements of _Bohème_, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - -Ancelot, Madame, 71, 72, 95 - -Anglemont, Privat d', 224-228, 262, 278, 279, 280 - -Anglomania in Paris, 87, 88 - -Arsouille, Milord, _see_ Battut, Charles de la - -_Arthez, Daniel d'_, 14, 15, 127-129, 298 - -Artois, Comte d', 23 - -Arvers, Félix, 102 - -Asselineau, Charles, 56, 58, 59, 61, 109 - -Aulnis, Duc d', 70, 78, 79, 80, 91, 275 - - -B - -BADOUILLARDS, LES, 224, 225 - -Bal Bullier, 279, 280 - Mabille, 280 - -Bal Musard, 270, 276 - -Balzac, Honoré de, 44, 45, 67, 71, 72, 73, 78, 81, 99, 129, 164, 165, - 258, 285, 286, 302 - characters in the novels of, 14, 15, 16, 49, 59-61, 62, 67-69, 75, 76, - 78, 80-86, 99, 102, 111-114, 127-129, 163-165, 256, 261, 262, 264, 268, - 271, 274, 290, 292, 294, 295, 296, 298, 299 - -Banville, Théodore de, 33, 73, 104, 109, 226, 227, 233, 277 - -Barbara, Charles, 248-250, 265, 269 - -_Barbemuche, Carolus_, _see_ Barbara, Charles - -Barrière d'Enfer, Bohemian colony at the, 239-243 - -Barrière, Théodore, 244 - -Bastide, Jules, 36, 37 - -Battut, Charles de la, 90, 91, 275, 276 - -Baudelaire, Charles, 13, 15, 33, 57, 61, 66, 230-233, 261 - -Beauvoir, Roger de, 13, 44, 73, 76, 93-97, 101, 102, 106, 168, - 169, 177, 186, 187, 212, 255, 256, 259, 273, 284, 302 - -Belgiojoso, Prince, 71, 93, 102 - Princess, 13, 71, 86 - -Béquet, 101, 106 - -Béranger, 23, 24 - -Berlioz, Hector, 73, 122, 269 - -Berry, assassination of the Duc de, 23 - -Bisson, the brothers, 236, 237 - -_Bixiou_, 82, 84-86, 99 - -Blanche, Doctor, 190 - -Boeuf Enragé, Cabaret du, 227 - -Bohème, La, meaning of the term, 1-12 - its place and period, 12-20 - rise and fall, 1830-1848, 21-34 - general characteristics of, 111-129 - Romanticism of, 25, 26, 29-31, 40-50, 56-64, 131-159, 200-204, 272 - its place in Parisian society, 65-68, 73, 76, 77, 110 - amusements of, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - drama in, 132-136, 140, 141, 175, 176, 272-274 - life of, 126-251 - love in, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - music in, 249, 250 - -Bohème, La, the Paris of, 282-302 - smoking in, 151, 152 _See also_ Cénacle, the Second: Bohème Galante; - Buveurs d'Eau; Gautier; Murger, &c. - Galante, La, 158-193, 194, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 221 - _see_ Doyenné, Impasse du - -Boissard, 231 - -Borel, Pétrus, 15, 41, 43, 57, 58, 61, 133, 135, 136-140, 144, 149-155, - 169, 177, 201, 298 - -Bouchardy, Joseph, 136, 140, 152, 155, 156, 218, 272 - -Bouffé, 101 - -Bouginier's nose, 223, 224 - -Bouilhet, Louis, 230 - -Boulevard des Italiens, 74, 112, 121, 288, 292, 293 - -"Bousingots," 55, 62, 144 - -Briffaut, 101, 106 - -Brot, Alphonse, 136, 137 - -Bullier, 279 - Bal, 279, 280 - -Burnett, George, 17 - -Buveurs d'Eau, Société des, 212, 233-242, 266-268 - -Byron, Lord, influence of on Bohème, 35-37, 64, 125, 134, 151 - - -C - -CABANON, Emile, 97, 101, 102, 106 - -Cabaret du Boeuf Enragé, 227 - -Cabaret Dinochan, 261, 262 - of Mère Cadet, 263 - of Mère Saguet, 129, 130 - -Cabot, 237, 238 - -Cadet, Cabaret of Mère, 263 - -Café Anglais, 91, 96, 259, 260 - Hardy, 96, 259, 260 - Momus, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - de l'Odéon, 261 - d'Orsay, 181 - de Paris, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - Riche, 259, 260 - Tortoni, 13, 86, 259 - -Camp, Maxime du, 40-42, 94, 95, 132, 134, 142, 150, 153, 154, 156, 222, - 228-230, 284 - -Cancan, The, 80, 91, 275, 276 - -Carnaud, 278, 279 - -Carnival, 80, 89-91, 274-276 - -Cénacle, the first, 129-132 - the second, 126-157, 158, 159, 203, 271, 272, 298 - of the Rue des Quatre Vents, 127-129 - -Cercle des Étrangers, 269 - -Chahut, The, 275 - -Champfleury, 98, 99, 101, 102, 219, 235, 238, 243-250, 256, 262, 266-268, 272, - 296, 297 - -Chanteraine, Salle, 221, 222 - -Charles X, 23, 24, 200 - -Chartreuse, La, _see_ Closerie des Lilas - -Chassériau, 185, 193 - -Châteaubriand, Duc de, 37, 71 - -Châtillon, 169, 185, 193 - -Chaudesaigues, 103 - -Chaumière, La, 97, 177, 204, 225, 242, 277, 278 - -Chicard, 275, 276 - -Chintreuil, 237, 238, 243 - -Childebert, La, 222-225 - -Cloître Saint-Merri, insurrection of the, 27, 59, 128, 161 - -Clopet, Léon, 136, 137, 152 - -Closerie des Lilas, La, 97, 277-281 - -Coleridge, S. T., 10, 17, 18 - -_Colline_, 126, 198-218, 238, 241, 250, 263, 265-267, 281 - -Colon, Jenny, 174-176, 190 - -Cormenin, Louis de, 230 - -Corot, 185, 193 - -Courbet, 201, 250 - -Courtille, Descente de la, 90 - -Cretaine, Boulangerie, 262, 273 - -Cydalise, 179, 180, 193, 213, 257 - - -D - -DAGNEAUX'S Restaurant, 230, 263 - -Dancing, 80, 91, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - -Delacroix, 48, 122, 169, 184 - -Delvau, Alfred, 159, 160, 227, 235, 238, 245, 247, 248, 261-263, 267, 268 - -Desbrosses, the brothers, 237-241, 243, 290 - -Dinochan, Cabaret, 261, 262 - -Dondey, Théopile, _see_ O'Neddy, Philothée - -Doré, Gustave, 192 - -Dorval, Marie, 13, 273 - -Doyenné, Impasse du, Bohemian brotherhood in, 158-193, 203, 206, - 210, 213, 214, - 229, 257, 276, 301 - Priory of, 166 - Rue du, 164, 165, 168 - -Doze, Mademoiselle, 106 - -Drama in Bohème, 140, 141, 175, 176, 221, 222, 272-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - -Dress of the Romantic period, 92, 96, 131, 139, 141, 145, 151, 239, 234-259 - -Dumas, Alexandre, 13, 55, 76, 155, 184, 190, 198, 226 - -Duponchel, 97 - -Duras, Duchesse de, 71 - -Dyer, George, 17 - - -E - -"ÉCOLE de bon sens," 201, 203 - - -F - -FAUBOURG Saint-Germain, 69, 70, 297 - -Fauchéry, 245, 246, 262, 277 - -Flaubert, Gustave, 33, 201, 228-230 - -Flicoteaux's Restaurant, 264, 265 - -Fontenay-aux-Roses, 200, 216 - -Frascati, 269 - -Fraser, Major, 91, 92 - - -G - -GAMBLING, _see_ Paris - -Gautier, Théophile, 13, 15, 16, 20, 33, 44, 45, 50, 55, 56, 76, 110, - 122, 126, 129, 132-157, 160, 162, 164-173, 177-180, 183-189, - 193, 194, 201, 207, 212, 218, 253, 269, 272, 282, 287-289, 302 - -Gavarni, 13, 169, 256, 259 - -Gay, Delphine, 72, 73, 93 - Sophie, 72, 73 - -Gigoux, Jean, 61 - -Gilbert, 53 - -Girardin, Delphine de, _see_ Gay, Delphine - Emile de, 30, 103 - -Goncourt, the brothers de, 201 - -Graziano's Restaurant, 136, 147, 148 - -Grisettes, 216-218, 250, 258-259, 274, 277-280 - -Guichardet, 262, 263 - -Guigard, Joannis, 267 - -Guilbert, 237 - -Guizot, 200 - - -H - -HABENECK, 269 - -Hardy, Café, 95, 259, 260 - -Haricots, Hôtel des, 279 - -Heine, Heinrich, 275 - -"Hernani," performance of in 1830, 25, 26, 28, 132-136, 201, 221, 255, 272 - -Hill's Tavern, 261 - -Houssaye, Arsène, 76, 116, 158, 160-163, 168-175, 177-189, 194, - 207, 244, 256, 261, 269, 272, 298 - -Hugo, Madame, 72 - Victor, 13, 25, 28, 31, 32, 45-48, 55, 62, 72, 73, 122, 129-132, - 144, 201, 285, 297 - worshipped in Bohème, 25, 45-48, 52, 122, 132-136, 148, - 152, 153, 156, 158, - 184, 201, 244 - - -I - -IMPASSE du Doyenné, _see_ Doyenné - - -J - -JANIN, Jules, 189, 196, 203, 273 - -"Jeune-France" section of Romanticists, the, 45, 57, 58, 61, 94, 95, 139, 142, 150-153 - -Johnson, Samuel, 10 - -Jonson, Ben, 10 - -Jouy, de, 236 - - -K - -KARR, Alphonse, 238, 280 - -Kock, Paul de, 285, 287 - - -L - -LAFAYETTE, 24 - -Lamartine, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Lamb, Charles, 11, 17, 173, 174 - -Lassailly, 44 - -Lautour-Mézéray, 103 - -Leconte de l'Isle, 233 - -Legendre, Madame, 222, 223 - -Leleux, Adolphe, 184 - -Lelioux, 235, 240 - -Le Poitevin, 230 - -Louis, XVIII, 23 - -Louis Philippe, 13, 22, 24, 26, 27, 59, 79, 200, 201 - -Love in Bohème, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - -Lucas, Le Petit, 261 - - -M - -MABILLE, Bal, 280 - -Mackeat, Augustus, 136, 141, 155, 272 - -Magny's Restaurant, 263 - -Maison d'Or, La, 96 - -"Mal du Siècle," Le, 35-64, 252, 253, 255 - -"Mal Romantique," _see_ "Mal du Siècle" - -Malitourne, Armand, 101, 106 - -Maquet, Augustus, _see_ Mackeat - -_Marcel_, 15, 16, 21, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 244, 248, 250, - 254, 265-267, 271, 277, 280, 282 - -Marilhat, 169, 185 - -Maurier, George Du, 7-9 - -Mediævalism, worship of by French Romantics, 43-46, 94, 95, - 134, 141, 142, 150-153, 201, 210, 211, 221, 224 - -Mercoeur, Elisa, 29 - -Meyerbeer, 175, 176, 270 - -_Mimi_, 213-218, 246-248, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Mogador, Céleste, 280 - -Momus, Café, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - -Monnier, Henri, 97-101, 275 - -Monselet, Charles, 226, 233, 262 - -Montmartre, 67, 216, 288-290, 296, 297 - -Moreau, Hégésippe, 29, 53, 261 - -Murger, Henry, 15, 16, 33, 194-197, 232-251, 256, - 261, 262, 266-268, 269, 272, 277, 280, 290, 296, 298 - "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," 1, 11, 12, 15, 16, 21, 33, - 34, 119, 120, 126, 147, 159, 160, 194-218, 219, 237, - 238, 241-249, 254, 263, 265-267, 272, 273, 277, 298 - Bohemian generation of, 64, 200-251, 263, 266-268, 270, - 271, 277-281 - -Musard, 14, 269, 270, 276 - Bal, 270, 276 - -_Musette_, 213-218, 246, 247, 254, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Music in Bohème, 249, 250 - in Paris, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - -Musset, Alfred de, 13, 17, 48, 71, 76, 92, 93, 102, 106, 115, 184, 202, 244, 302 - - -N - -NADAR, 233, 235, 237, 238, 242, 262, 266-268 - -Nanteuil, Célestin, 133, 136, 141, 142, 149, 155, 169, 184 - -Nerval, Gérard de, 13, 16, 18, 133-136, 143-146, 148, 149, - 154, 155, 160, 162-193, 207, 212, 227, 253, 272, 295, 302 - -Nodier, 42, 72, 73 - -Noel, 235, 237, 238 - - -O - -O'NEDDY, Philothée, 40, 56, 124, 125, 136, 137, 141, 150-153, 155 - -Opéra, 79, 96, 97, 104, 270, 271, 293 - Bal de l', 204, 245, 274, 276 - -Ourliac, Edmond, 76, 169-172, 177, 186, 187, 272, 275 - - -P - -PALAIS Royal, 268, 289 - -_Palfèrine, Comte de la_, 14, 102, 111-114, 262 - -Paphos, 269 - -Paris, 11, 12-15, 24, 27, 66, 67, 105, 116, 282-302 - balls in, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - Café de, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - drama in, 221, 222, 271-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - gambling in, 268, 269 - literary _salons_ in, 70-73 - music in, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - restaurants, &c., in, 121, 129, 130, 136, 147, 148, 169, - 177, 181, 198, 204, 211, 225, 227, 230, 246, 248, - 259-268; _and see_ Cabaret; Café - Society in, 65-86, 107, 108 - student life in, 221-225, 231; _and see under_ Bohème - -Pelloquet, Théodore, 197, 251 - -Petit Lucas, Le, _see_ Lucas - Moulin Rouge, _see_ Graziano - -_Phèmie Teinturière_, 213-217, 247, 266 - -Pilodo, 275 - -Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - -Piton, le _pâtissier_, 262 - -Planche, Gustave, 229 - -Pomaré, Reine, 280 - -Ponsard, 201 - -Pottier, 237 - -Prado, 275 - -Privat d'Anglemont, _see_ Anglemont - -Punch, a Romantic drink, 150 - - -Q - -QUARTIER Latin, the, 8, 22, 75, 160, 170, - 221-227, 231-233, 249, 250, 262-265, 276-280, 297-299 - - -R - -_Rastignac_, 14, 75, 78, 80-82, 256, 261 - -Récamier, Madame, 36, 37, 71 - -Restaurants, _see under_ Paris - -Revolution of 1830, the, 22, 24-34, 200 - -Rocher de Cancale, Le, 121, 211, 260, 261 - -_Rodolphe_, 15, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 236, - 237, 241, 242, 244, 248, 253, 265-267, 273, 277, 302 - -Rogier, Camille, 101, 102, 145, 167-172, 177-180, - 184, 187, 193, 256 - -Romantic Period in France, the, 12, 16, 20 - _salons_ of, 70-73 - -Romanticism, 25, 26, 28-32, 35-64, 129-159, 201-203, - 221-224, 252, 253, 255, 284, 301, 302 - -Romieu, 97, 98, 102 - -Roqueplan, Camille, 169 - Nestor, 13, 17, 104, 105, 111, 162, 169, 212 - -Rousseau, 185 - -_Rubempré, Lucien de_, 14, 16, 62, 75, 76, 85, 256, 264, 271 - -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, 210-212, 240, 242, 243, 296, 297 - de la Vieille Lanterne, 192, 295 - Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bohemian colony in, 187, 188 - - -S - -SAGUET, Cabaret of Mère, 129, 130 - -Sainte-Beuve, 13, 17, 28, 52, 53, 122, 129-132, 157 - -Saint-Victor, Paul de, 191, 192 - -Sand, George, 16, 17, 93 - -Sandeau, Jules, 188, 189 - -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," _see under_ Murger - -Schann, 232, 237, 238, 242, 245, 248, 249, 266-268, 269 - -_Schaunard_, 15, 16, 126, 159, 198-218, 232, 238, 248, 250, - 253, 263, 265-268, 271, 280, 281, 302 - -Seigneur, Jehan du, 136, 137, 139-141, 148-153, 155 - -Sénancour, 37 - -Seymour, Lord, 79, 88-90 - -Shakespeare, 10 - -Smoking in Bohème, 151, 152 - -Staël, Madame de, 37 - -Steele, Richard, 17 - -Students, life of Parisian, 221-225, 231 - -Sue, Eugène, 70, 285 - - -T - -TABAR, 237 - -Tattet, Alfred, 102, 103, 106 - -Thackeray, 264 - -Théâtre Bobino, 263, 271 - Français, 133-136 - du Luxembourg, _see_ Théâtre Bobino - Montparnasse, 263 - des Variétés, ball at, 274 - -Thom, Napoléon, 136 - -Tolstoi, Monsieur de, 236, 240 - -Tortoni's Café, 13, 86, 259 - -Tournachon, F., _see_ Nadar - -"Tout Paris," Le, 73-76 - -"Trilby," 7, 8 - -Trois Frères Provençaux, Les, 121, 169 - - -V - -VABRE, Jules, 56, 133, 136-138, 140, 155 - -Vastine, 237 - -Vauquer, La Maison, 14, 16, 81, 298, 299 - -Vernet, Horace, 203 - -Véron, Doctor, 103, 104 - -Vigny, Alfred de, 17, 28, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Villain, 237 - -Villiers de l'Isle Adam, 233 - -Vincent, Charles, 241, 242 - -Viot's Restaurant, 263 - -Vitu, 277 - -"Viveurs," Les, 70, 76-108, 204, 231, 275, 276 - - -W - -WALLON, Jean, 238, 250, 266-268 - -Wattier, 185, 193 - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON ENGLAND - - * * * * * - -The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext -transcriber: - -Célestin Nauteuil=>Célestin Nanteuil {8} - -Les Champs Elisées=>Les Champs Elysées - -Gerard de Nerval=>Gérard de Nerval - -"Les Jeune France."=>"Les Jeunes France." - -Elie Wildmannstadius=>Elie Wildman-stadius - -decorated thus because a lew _louis d'or_=>decorated thus because a few -_louis d'or_ - -nor ne'er-do-weels=>nor ne'er-do-wells - -Charles Mouselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote,"=>Charles -Monselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote," - -Pimodan, Hotel, 231=>Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] "Les Enfants Perdus de Romantisme." - -[2] A. Cassagne: "La Théorie de l'art pour l'art en France chez les -derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes." - -[3] "Essais de Psychologie contemporaine," the chapter on Flaubert. - -[4] Philothée O'Neddy: "Feu et Flamme." - -[5] See René Canat: "Du Sentiment de la Solitude morale chez les -romantiques et les parnassiens." - -[6] See Chapter VII. - -[7] Asselineau: "Bibliographie Romantique." - -[8] "Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps." - -[9] Mrs. Trollope: "Paris and the Parisians in 1835." - -[10] "Derniers Jours de Bohème." - -[11] "Les Salons de Paris." - -[12] Challamel: "Souvenirs d'un Hugolâtre." - -[13] "Paris in 1829 and 1830." - -[14] Major Fraser's name appears in many memoirs of the time, but I owe -the above account to "An Englishman in Paris," by A. D. Vandam. - -[15] "Vignettes Romantiques." - -[16] Léon Séché tells his story in "La Jeunesse Dorée sous Louis -Philippe." - -[17] "Histoire du Romantisme." - -[18] Jules Claretie: "Pétrus Borel." - -[19] Maxime du Camp: "Théophile Gautier." - -[20] "Gérard de Nerval." - -[21] "Portraits contemporains." The article on the artist Marilhat. - -[22] "La Bohème Galante." - -[23] Arsène Houssaye: "Les Confessions." - -[24] Gérard, to be precise, quotes an earlier and more cruel version: - - _...La_ reine du Sabbat - _Qui, depuis deux hivers, dans vos bras se débat,_ - _Vous échapperait-elle ainsi qu'une chimère..._ - - -[25] See Chapter xi for a further account of Bohemia's amusements. - -[26] In a preface to Gérard de Nerval's "OEuvres." - -[27] "Les Confessions." - -[28] The following account combines much of the information given in -three books: Champfleury's "Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse"; "Henri -Murger et la Bohème," by A. Delvau; and the curious little "Histoire de -Murger pour servir à l'histoire de la Vraie Bohème," par trois Buveurs -d'Eau, the anonymous authors of which are known to be his friends, -Lelioux, Nadar, and Noel. It is in the last named that some of Murger's -letters are given. There is a certain amount of conflict between the -dates given in these different books, but since they are all equally -likely to be inaccurate, I have chosen to ignore the discrepancies, -which are not very important. - -[29] This appears in Charles Monselet's diary printed in the memoir by -A. Monselet. - -[30] "Histoire anecdotique des Cafés et Cabarets de Paris." - -[31] In the summer they took place in the Champs Elysées. - -[32] M. Henri d'Alméras in "La Vie Parisienne sous Louis Philippe," from -whose book other details of these balls are taken. - -[33] The popular term for the prison in which refractory members of the -Garde Nationale were confined. - -[34] Now printed in his "Portraits Contemporains." - -[35] The preface to George Cain's "Coins de Paris." - -[36] See "Les Comédiens sans le savoir." - -[37] Sanderson: "Paris in 1835." - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vie de Bohème, by Orlo Williams - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - -***** This file should be named 40293-8.txt or 40293-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/2/9/40293/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Vie de Bohème - A Patch of Romantic Paris - -Author: Orlo Williams - -Release Date: July 21, 2012 [EBook #40293] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME - -[Illustration: La Cydalise.] - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME -A PATCH OF ROMANTIC PARIS - -BY ORLO -WILLIAMS - -[Illustration: colophon, ARTI et VERITATI] - -RICHARD G. BADGER -THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON - -_First Published 1913_ - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON - -TO -MY WIFE - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAP. PAGE - -I. LA VRAIE BOHÈME 1 - -II. A FRINGE OF HISTORY 21 - -III. LE MAL DU SIÈCLE 35 - -IV. PARISIAN SOCIETY 65 - -V. LES VIVEURS 87 - -VI. LA BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE 109 - -VII. THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" 126 - -VIII. LA BOHÈME GALANTE 158 - -IX. SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY 194 - -X. MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS 219 - -XI. AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA 252 - -XII. THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA 282 - -INDEX 303 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - _To face - page_ - -LA CYDALISE. _By Camille Rogier_ _Frontispiece_ - -THE SPIRIT OF ROMANTICISM 44 -(From the cover of a Romantic periodical) - -BOUSINGOTS. _By Frances Trollope_ 56 -(From "Paris and the Parisians in 1835") - -LES CHAMPS ELYSÉES. _By Eugène Lami_ 67 - -A VIVEUR. _By Gavarni_ 78 - -FASHIONABLES. _By Gavarni_ 86 - -PÉTRUS BOREL. _By Louis Boulanger_ 138 -(After an etching by Célestus Nanteuil) - -CÉLESTIN NANTEUIL. _By Himself_ 142 - -A FESTIVITY IN THE IMPASSE DU DOYENNÉ 168 -(From "Les Confessions" by Arsène Houssaye) - -GÉRARD DE NERVAL 190 - -A GRISETTE. _By Gavarni_ 216 - -A BAL MASQUÉ AT THE OPÉRA. _By Eugène Lami_ 274 - -THE GALOP INFERNAL. _By Gavarni_ 276 - -A GUINGETTE 278 - -THE RUE ST.-DENIS 294 - -THE RUE DE LA TIXANDERIE. _By Méryon_ 295 - -THE RUE PIROUETTE. _By Méryon_ 297 - - - - -I - -LA VRAIE BOHÈME - - _La Bohème, c'est le stage de la vie artistique; c'est la préface - de l'Académie, de l'Hôtel-Dieu ou de la Morgue._ - - MURGER: "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." - - -If there is one reason for which the growth of newspapers during the -last century may be looked at askance, it is the journalist's -persistency in perpetuating phrases. Phrases and catchwords at the -moment of invention are works of a peculiar genius, of which some men -have an abnormal share, though it may crop out suddenly in the most -unlikely places; but a good catchword, that crystallization of a drop of -some elusive current that is momentarily passing through public opinion, -that apt naming of some newly formed group of men or ideas, never comes -out of an inkpot: it is essentially, as the French finely recognize, a -_mot_, a pearl of speech. It darts out in some happy moment of human -intercourse, often almost unconsciously, when the words on a man's lips -are less than usual rebellious to the expression of his thoughts, or -when the exhilaration of some public utterance has charged the air so -that the little telling point, hitherto cold and dormant, flashes -suddenly into incandescence. Such a phrase, born on the lips of one, can -only be nurtured on the lips of many: its success implies continued -utterance. It becomes a heaven-sent convenience to save human -circumlocution, a new topic for the dullards, a new toy for the -_blasés_. In these communicative days, indeed, journalism increases a -thousand-fold the possibilities of its radiation, but a good catchword -has always made its way without the help of print. There has never -existed a human society, at any developed stage of civilization, that -has not been perfectly capable of hitting off a new idea or a new group -in some telling phrase or name without the intervention of a scribe. At -the same time, conversational man, left to himself, is no less quick to -forget than to invent. A new phrase properly fades as soon as the -novelty of that which inspired it, but once it has appeared upon a -single written page it has been given an artificial life of varying but -incalculable duration. This artificial existence has been infinitely -increased by the newspaper. The journalist, who has little time to -think, is naturally loth to let a convenient label go, so that, long -after its original parcel of ideas or beings has passed away, he will -keep tagging it on to other parcels with a certain show of relevance -which effectually conceals the fact that it ought long ago to have been -filed for the etymological dictionary. - -A phrase which has thus lingered artificially in common use is the word -"Bohemian." Nobody can deny that it is a useful label, simply because it -is so vague, conveying as it does the sense of some deliberate -divergence from the usages of polite society, without being in the least -embarrassingly clear as to the degree or direction of that divergence. -It is a term, so apparently specific, so really loose, equally capable -of carrying blame and admiration, which people will go on applying to -men and women, their lives and their clothes, without inquiring whether -there is in fact any answering reality. It would be easy enough to -confuse its simple users by a few question. They might be asked, for -instance, what a Bohemian is, when they would probably reply, in the -slipshod phraseology of to-day, that he is an odd person who wears funny -clothes and does quaint things. But then, it might be pointed out, a -docker from Limehouse is equally odd and quaint from their point of -view, though they do not call him a Bohemian; on which they will rather -pettishly explain that they mean artists and musicians and so on, people -who don't "work." To help them out on this point, in fine, they mean -people who potentially rank with the members of learned professions, but -who choose to live a less respectable life, in which paying calls, -dressing for dinner, and attending to the dictates of social morality -are considered of small importance, though the exact degree of social -unorthodoxy is left as undefined as the qualifying degree of artistic -performance. The same lady will comprehend in the term the middle-aged -civil servant who haunts studios of an evening, wears pale tweeds, but -is otherwise a pearl of inartistic chivalry, and the scaramouch of a -painter, whom she calls "charming" because he is clever, and whose -absorption in art has entirely ruined him as a social being. I propose -another question. Why are Bohemians so called? The answer seems -easy--because they live in Bohemia. And Bohemia? Again the label -produces a difficulty. To pursue any geographical inquiries concerning -Bohemia in a Socratic spirit would quickly produce exasperation in any -catechumen, and I will presume the result without the method. The -answers would generally amount to this: that it seems agreed, simply -since the word is used, that there is a Bohemia, but its latitude and -longitude are indefinable. It is not confined to Chelsea or St. John's -Wood, or even, of course, to England; apparently it transcends the -ordinary differences of nationality, existing always and everywhere. The -possibility of its having existed once and somewhere--I give away freely -at this early stage the foundation of this book--never occurs, for -labels have a tremendous potency of suggestion. Bohemia is commonly -assumed to exist now in the midst of this commercial day. It is -generally accepted--with more or less warmth according to individual -tastes--as an institution not, perhaps, entirely desirable for itself, -but a necessary patch in the motley dress of civilization. It is -proclaimed gleefully or admitted under constraint, as the case may be, -that clever, artistic men and women, wisely or perversely, choose to -gather there, and that certain epithets, such as quaint, amusing, -unconventional--the ethical implications of the adjectives differing -with their user--are applicable to it. But _la vie de Bohème_, once so -vivid a reality, has now no tangible substance: it wanders about, the -palest ghost of a legend, formless and indistinct. The young may look -forward to it and the old pretend to look back on it, but young and old, -in either case, are turning their mind's eye upon a mere abstraction. -The word "Bohemian" has become as conventional as "gentleman," with less -content for all its greater glamour. - -The glamour of Bohemia, too, is projected from a paradox. On the -assumption that it exists, those who wish to live in Bohemia idealize -it; those who have lived in it boast of it; and those who might have -lived in it, but did not, pretend that they did. Yet those who wish to -live in it know nothing of it, and those who lived in it, for all their -boasting, have left it. It seems to take shape, like a mirage, only in -prospect or retrospect. There are witnesses to the distant glint of its -magic towers in the rosy mists of sunrise or the golden haze of sunset, -but of the light and shade within its streets there are none, for those -who might be supposed to be passing through its gates are strangely -reticent, and seem mysteriously to lose the sense of their glorious -nationality. A man may say with a thrill, "I will be a Bohemian," or -with a glow, "I was a Bohemian," but of him who said, "I am a Bohemian," -the only proper view would be one of deepest suspicion. He would -certainly be a masquerader. - -Yet many people, at least in England, do so masquerade--people who -affect Chelsea, slouch hats, and ill-cut garments, who haunt Soho -restaurants, talk and smoke cigarettes in half a dozen studios, toady -sham genius, flutter in emancipatory "movements," and generally do -nothing on quite enough a year. Not long ago a distinguished artist, -genially inspired by dinner at a club of Bohemian traditions and most -respectable membership, gave utterance to the view that, though the -velvet coat had disappeared before evening dress, the Bohemian still -existed. Upon that a writer in an evening paper made the wise comment: - - "There are people, it is true, who indulge in mild - unconventionality; they feed in Soho, and talk of cabarets. But - these people are seldom artists and never Bohemian. The - unconventionality of these people is a mere outward pose, which - compels any artist who wishes to preserve his individuality and - good name to pay careful attention to the external forms. - Bohemianism, such as it was, sprang up in Paris, and that is - sufficiently good reason for its failure in England." - -The journalist has here risen above the temptation of the label, and his -words are just. The gist of the matter lies, perhaps, in his last -sentence, but that point must wait its turn. There is no doubt that -there exists in London, not to speak of other cities, a large body of -people of varying ages, occupations, beliefs, and principles who keep up -a masquerade of Bohemianism. As a body they are worthy citizens enough, -whose intelligence on some subjects is above the average, but they are -masqueraders none the less if they wish to pass as _enfants de Bohème_. -A reason for this masquerade may be found partly in the very human love -of "dressing up" which is never to be discouraged, partly in the -glorification of Bohemia in which writers of novels and reminiscences -are prone to indulge. Probably George du Maurier's "Trilby" has been -responsible for more misconceptions on this matter than any other single -book, on account of its very charm, a charm that needs no further praise -at this date. The author himself, who wrote about that which he knew, -made no extravagant claims to have drawn Bohemia in the early part of -"Trilby," but it is that which in the eyes of most of his readers he is -unavoidably represented as doing. So far as Taffy, the Laird, and Little -Billie are concerned, they are simply transplanted Britons of the -Victorian era, art students with means enough to pursue their studies -without pot-boiling and to keep open house for a collection of other -joyous young people, of whom Svengali was alone the complete Bohemian, -while Trilby herself with perfect propriety mended their socks. Trilby's -part in this studio life is a sentimental idyll which nobody would wish -to destroy, but it is none the less true, in spite of her creator's plea -for her _quia multum amavit_ in a delightful page of circumlocution, -that he has effectually distilled out of her any essence of Bohemianism -which she is dimly represented as possessing. George du Maurier knew -Paris when Bohemia was no more, but even he must have known the rougher, -wilder, less comfortable side of the Quartier Latin. Yet that he glossed -it over is perfectly comprehensible. Even those who lived to write about -the Bohemia that once was could not help tinging their memories with the -romantic yearning of middle age. In a life where hardship and happiness -kaleidoscopically alternate, pain--especially in the shape of material -want or the sense of unjust neglect--obscures in the moment of struggle -the more brightly coloured glasses of health and joy which more often -than not surround it. In retrospect, by a merciful dispensation, the -sombre lines almost entirely disappear, only to be recalled by an -unnatural effort of memory. What stood out in retrospect, in the special -case of _la vie de Bohème_, was the happiness of youth that would never -return, its _insouciance_, its untrammelled companionships, the poetry -of its first love, its gaiety and irresponsible humour, its courage, its -ready makeshifts in adversity. The ex-Bohemian had, what the Bohemian -had not, a contrast by which to measure his regrets--the cares of -domesticity, the wearisome demands of society upon its members, the -responsibilities and cares of an assured position, howsoever humble, the -dulling of pleasure's edge, joints stiffening, hair bleaching. The snows -of yesteryear were falling upon others now; and that the young rogues -might not be too uplifted, he must write his _militavi non sine gloria_, -hinting the while that the special glory of Bohemia paled at the precise -moment of his exodus. George du Maurier poured over "Trilby" some of -this romantic recollection, and other less gifted novelists have done -the same for certain _coteries_ that have lived in London. To them is -due much of the glamour still implied in the phrase "Bohemian," a -glamour which is seldom corrected by a reading of George Gissing's "New -Grub Street." Yet no conception of Bohemia into which the sombre details -of that book will not naturally fit can possibly approach the truth. - -This last sentence, I am aware, may be used to challenge my acquaintance -with the truth since I assume its existence. To any such challenge the -whole of this book is an answer, and its reader will at the end, it is -hoped, be in possession of at least as much truth as its author, if not -the little more which criticism supplies. In the case of a subject so -little complicated an elaborate initial summary of aims and processes -and steps of proof will be unnecessary. Those who wish to do so will -have little difficulty in following a study, which provided no little -entertainment to the student, of the life that was truly to be called -Bohemian. I have been so far concerned to hint that I do not deal in any -heterogeneous parcels which have come to pass under an old label. The -label was applied at a particular time to a particular parcel, and the -one and only original parcel is the _vie de Bohème_ which in this book I -attempt to unwrap. - -It might be supposed from the commonness of allusions to Bohemia and -Bohemianism that the terms were contemporary, at least, with the -intrusion of artists and men of letters into society, and that before -the existence of the Bohemia whose capital is Prague the name of some -other nation was, in the same way, taken in vain. However, this is not -the case. The _grÅ“culus esuriens_ to whom the Roman poet so -scornfully refers had no doubt many Bohemian qualities, but the emphasis -of the taunt is laid on his foreign nationality, not upon his mode of -existence. Even after the Bohemia of the atlas came into being it knew -for many centuries no usurper of its name. Will Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, -and the merry company of the "Mermaid" tavern neither called themselves -nor were called Bohemians. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other less -distinguished inhabitants of Grub Street suffered many verbal -indignities, but not that. Coleridge and Charles Lamb might be alluded -to as Bohemians now, but in their day the term had even yet not been -invented. Murger's preface to "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" proves that -so late as 1846 a universal understanding of his title could not be -taken for granted, since he begins by carefully distinguishing the -geographical Bohemia from the artistic. The modern sense of the term -originated, in fact, in Paris at the time of the Romantic movement, -being only an extension of the meaning of "gipsy" or "vagabond" long -attached to the word _bohémien_ in France. Our "Bohemian" was introduced -into the English language by Thackeray, who learnt it during his -student-period in Paris. - -This piece of etymology, nugatory as it may appear, is, in fact, very -important. It is the first real delimitation of our inquiry. _La vie de -Bohème_ is essentially a French term, and it is therefore fitting that -we should examine its implications in that language. Murger in his -preface is contradictory, but his very contradiction is pregnant and -valuable. At the outset he applies the term _bohémien_ to the literary -and artistic vagabonds of all ages. "La Bohème dont il s'agit dans ce -livre n'est point une race née aujourd'hui, elle a existé de tous temps -et partout, et peut revendiquer d'illustres origines." Homer, he says, -was the first Bohemian of Greek antiquity, and his tradition was carried -on by the medieval minstrels and troubadours; Pierre Gringoire and -François Villon, Clément Marot and Mathurin Regnier, Molière and -Shakespeare, Rousseau and D'Alembert were the leading citizens of their -contemporary Bohemias. This brings Murger to his own day, of which he -says: "Aujourd'hui comme autrefois, tout homme qui entre dans les arts, -sans autre moyen d'existence que l'art lui-même, sera forcé de passer -par les sentiers de la Bohème." If Chelsea were here to make a -triumphant interruption, it would have spoken too soon, for he proceeds -to give the definition which serves as an epigraph to this chapter, and, -without a word of warning, contradicts what he has said before in the -sentence: "Nous ajouterons que la Bohème n'existe et n'est possible qu'à -Paris." This is a highly serious matter. It leaves old Homer nothing but -a Greek poet, and Chelsea--well--little more than Chelsea. However, I -cannot imagine Homer objecting, and Chelsea must forgive me, if I accept -Murger's statement in the strictest possible way. Further, the Paris -implied is the Paris of Murger's own day. That this was so may appear -more clearly in the sequel, but for the present it must suffice to say -that the Paris of the Romantic period, which gave birth to Bohemia, was -unlike the Paris of earlier days in many respects, and no Romantic had -any conception of the cosmopolitan Paris of to-day. _La vie de Bohème_, -far from being a vague label, was a phrase packed with intimate meaning, -meaning which at the time was not at all so fully manifest as under -criticism and comparison it may now appear. It depended for its peculiar -qualities upon the social and material conditions of Louis Philippe's -Paris, which have long since passed away. - -We go, therefore, beyond Murger and strike out Villon, Gringoire, and -Marot from the roll of Bohemia. At most they were only potentially -enrolled and lived, like Socrates, in a state of unconscious grace. -Whether or no Bohemia can be said to exist to-day or to have existed in -the Middle Ages, at least it can only be by analogy from the very -definite and localized _Bohème_ which was part of Paris between 1830 and -1848. Though Louis Philippe, the _bourgeois_ king, the admirer of the -_juste milieu_, was her ruler, the life of Paris never beat with a -quicker pulse than in those days; never was she more gay, more witty, -more intellectually scintillating, more paradoxical, in fact more -absolutely Parisian than when Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de -Musset, the Princess Belgiojoso, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, -Nestor Roqueplan, and Baudelaire were among her citizens, when Roger de -Beauvoir was dazzling upon a truly brilliant boulevard, when the dandies -gracefully lounged and quizzed upon the steps of Tortoni's, when -Alexandre Dumas gave his famous fancy-dress ball which drew all Paris, -when Marie Dorval shone beside Mademoiselle Mars, when Fanny Elssler and -Taglioni danced while Duprez and Grisi and Rubini sang, when Gavarni and -Daumier drew their caricatures, when Musard conducted his furious -quadrilles, when there were still _salons_ in which men and women still -knew how to talk, when life was still an artistic achievement in an -artistic setting. Memoirs and reminiscences abound of this enchanted -city in the time when her intense inner light had not paled before the -glare of commercialism and cosmopolitanism, but such sketches and -side-views must yield to the all-comprehending picture contained in the -works of Balzac, that magnificent magician. Through him the Paris of -Louis Philippe shines doubly brilliant, for its world of flesh and blood -was not more wonderful than the fictitious world with which he peopled -it, a world of high and low, rich and poor, squalor and splendour, vice -and virtue, wit and stupidity--miraculous issue from one poor mortal -brain. The Princesse de Cadignan, Madame D'Espard, Madame Firmiani, and -Mademoiselle des Touches were its higher, Coralie, Esther, Jenny Cadine, -Florine, and Madame Schontz its lower, divinities, and their worshippers -were de Marsay, the engaging Lucien de Rubempré, the remarkable -Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, La Palférine, and all the corrupted crew -of Crevels, Malifats, and Camusots; in it the greasy, dirty Maison -Vauquer contrasted with the splendid boudoir of a Delphine de Nucingen, -the illuminated poverty of a D'Arthez with the vicious luxury of the -Nathans and Finots, the huge _coups_ of a Nucingen with the petty usury -of a Père Samanon, the simplicity of a Cousin Pons with the malignity -of a Cousine Bette. Into this world of feverish movement and poignant -contrasts fits _la Bohème_, lighted by its double facets of fact and -fiction. As the actual Bohemians from Pétrus Borel and Théophile Gautier -to Baudelaire and Murger play their part in the world of fact, so the -fictitious Bohemians from Raphael de Valentin and D'Arthez down to -Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard play theirs in the world of fiction. -They are all part of that pageant which, though it took eighteen years -to pass and declined in bravery towards its close, may conveniently be -called the pageant of 1830. - -To disentangle the Bohemian contingent from its accompaniment of press -and bustle is my aim in this book, which was suggested, I may frankly -say, by some meditations on a second reading of Murger's "Scènes de la -Vie de Bohème," a work of perennial delight that deserves a better -acquaintance in England. In spite of the vivid light thrown by Murger on -the life which he is describing, his stories are apt to be misleading -unless read in the light of certain knowledge--knowledge which he could -presume in his contemporaries and which it is the aim of this book, with -all humility, to revive. Murger's little volume, after it has produced -its first flush of pleasure and amusement, raises many disconcerting -questions to a thoughtful reader. The scene it paints, for instance, is -remarkably different from the two sides of literary life depicted in -Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." Neither the brotherhood of the Rue des -Quatre Vents nor the fast set into which Lousteau introduces Lucien are -connected by an obvious link with Rodolphe and his friends. Then there -is the question whether Rastignac in his days at the squalid Maison -Vauquer was in any sense a Bohemian. Or, again, it may be asked how far -fiction agrees with fact. Did Murger himself lead the same kind of life -as a Schaunard or Marcel, and if he did, was the same to be said of -other writers and artists, of Théophile Gautier or Gérard de Nerval? How -did Bohemia arise, and how far was it, as Murger asserts, a necessary -stage in the artistic life? These are some of the obvious inquiries to -which it has been my part to attempt an answer, and I would crave the -reader's indulgence if, at the outset, I seem to shrink from plunging at -once into _la vie de Bohème_. The external details of a way of life -cannot be seen in a true light if the social conditions and, still more, -the state of mind of which it was an expression are not first made -clear. For that reason a little "fringe of history" makes its appearance -and leads to a short consideration of what French writers have called -_le mal romantique_. Nevertheless, I have tried to keep the main subject -always in view, and not to be led away into discussing aspects of the -Romantic period which are not relevant. This is not, I claim with all -deference, a concoction of all the old legends and Romantic love -affairs. George Sand, for instance, and Alfred de Musset only poke -their heads in; Alfred de Vigny and Marie Dorval, Sainte-Beuve and -Madame Hugo play no part. Bohemia alone is our concern, a theme which is -displayed for what it is worth without any distracting embroideries. - -If, then--to return to the train of thought with which I began--Bohemia -turns out to be something definite, with a beginning, a development, and -an end, some negative criteria, at all events, will be supplied by which -to judge the applicability of the label "Bohemian" to any set of -conditions existing to-day, and to decide whether the disappearance of -certain special implications and unique circumstances does not drain the -term of all definite meaning except as applied, in retrospect, to the -very persons, manners, and ideas which it originally described. By -analogy from that meaning, there is no harm in saying that there have -always been, and always will be, Bohemian individuals with a Bohemian -state of mind. Richard Steele was a Bohemian; Lamb, perhaps, was a -little too staidly settled at the India House, but his friends, George -Dyer, George Burnett and, above all, Coleridge, were certainly Bohemian -individuals. They were of that ultra-Bohemian type which never grows out -of its Bohemianism, men who remain permanently in what should only be a -"stage" till they pass the age when, as Nestor Roqueplan said, the -"bohémien" risks being confounded with the "filou." Such men as -Coleridge and Dyer would be called eccentrics even in the true Bohemia; -like poor Gérard de Nerval, they were not entirely sane, and the -Bohemian _type_ had essentially perfect sanity. It is for this very -reason that _la Bohème_, at its proper time, could exist, and why before -and after that time it did not exist. Sane young men, no matter what -their fads, fancies, and enthusiasms may be, have no need and no -possibility of making to-day that particular demonstration which -resulted in Bohemia. The social forces drive them in other directions. -It has long been admitted in France that Bohemia is dead, and that it -has been or ever will be revived in England is a delusion resting upon -the unintelligent use of a word. Even young Englishmen, as we now -consider youth, are too old, far too old, to live the life of which they -flatter themselves they are preserving the tradition. The boy who has -submitted to discipline for over a dozen years, learned to honour his -neighbour on the cricket and football field and to respect society as -embodied in the unwritten laws of school life--what has he in common -with the youth in France, a bachelor of letters at eighteen, bursting -with his own individuality, passionate in pursuit of his own ideas, -revelling in his new liberty, dreaming, as only a Frenchman can dream, -of glory and love, who could attach no meaning to such a phrase as -"playing the game," wayward, capricious, uproarious, and completely -unbalanced? Yet it was such who made the traditions of _la vie de -Bohème_. To those who are impelled to break away and lead joyous, -untrammelled young lives of privation and artistic striving all sympathy -is due, but by masquerading under a tattered banner they do not revive -its glory nor increase their own. Paris once had room for Bohemia, but -London never. Chelsea and Soho, Highgate and St. John's Wood are to-day -no more Bohemian, in the true sense of the word, than Piccadilly or -Grosvenor Square. In the lapse of years a few accidental attributes of -the real Bohemia have come to be regarded as the essentials of the -false. We are fond of labels and catchwords, lightly casting away their -implications. So it has come to pass that Bohemia--that dirty, hungry, -lazy, noisy vale of youthful laughter and tears, so enchanting in -prospect or retrospect, so uncompromising in actuality, which many had -to pass through and most would have avoided--is looked on as the -pleasant home of more or less artistic natures, that men of stable -occupations, regular means, and fastidious temperaments may choose for a -dwelling-place, just as they may choose a garden city. - -Well, let them masquerade, yet Bohemia is dead, and more honour may be -done to its memory by recalling how it walked and lived than by casting -lots for its old-fashioned garments. Its virtues and its faults were -balanced as equally as its good and bad fortunes, but if it were to be -revived, the resurrection should begin with that which was its chief -glory, the intense artistic enthusiasm that was its charter. "Nous -étions ivres du beau," wrote Théophile Gautier. London, indeed, would be -the better for the infusion of a more Dionysiac spirit into her æsthetic -appreciations and ideals. But that is not of the times. At the end of -his charming book, "Les Enfants Perdus du Romantisme," M. Henri -Lardanchet quotes a speech made by the president of some university -society to the effect that the youth of to-day, preoccupied with -extremely definite problems, has no longer the poetic enthusiasm of the -past generation, whereon he is moved to exclaim: - - "Ah! ne vous glorifiez pas de l'avoir chassé, cet enthousiasme! Il - était à la fois la rose et la chanson au bord de vos vingt ans - désolés; il était l'opulence orgueilleuse de votre âge, il était - votre grâce, votre génie, votre fierté, ô jeunesse!--toute votre - jeunesse...." - -Let us take this for the epitaph of _La Bohème_. - - - - -II - -A FRINGE OF HISTORY: THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 - - -In the first chapter of Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," Marcel, -the painter, requires his _concierge_, in return for a tip of five -francs, to tell him every morning the day of the week, the date, the -quarter of the moon, the state of the weather, and the form of -government under which they are living. A hasty generalization from this -episode might conclude that the more noteworthy vicissitudes of society, -which we call history, were of singularly small importance to those -concerned with Bohemia. The main current of events, it would seem, -rolled on, leaving the stagnant backwater undisturbed, where, in the -easy garment of "art for art's sake," a few geniuses and many -_dilettanti_ lolled the day through in unpatriotic apathy. Such a -conclusion from Murger's picture of Bohemia is, in fact, inevitable, but -it is a wrong one, and the fault lies only with Murger. The French -people, at any rate the Parisians, are extremely susceptible to the -impressions of passing events, political, artistic, or social. They are -more excitable, as we say, than ourselves. We only become agitated in -response to orders from Fleet Street, whereas they are apt to ferment -spontaneously, their natural liveliness of mind acting as the yeast. It -is this quality of interest in passing events, fostered by their -fondness for discussion, which renders their criticism so trenchant and -their partisanship so ardent. So that we can scarcely believe Bohemia, -eclectic as it was, to have been unmoved or, at least, uninfluenced by -the objects of contemporary comment or debate. For this reason our -picture would be seen in a false light without some reference to -history. Moreover, I have been rash enough to impose upon myself the -limitation of dates, which are dangerous things in themselves, always -requiring justification. I put the classic period of _la vie de Bohème_ -between 1830 and 1848, the exact period of Louis Philippe's reign. At -first sight the reign of this _bourgeois_ prince would seem to have -little enough connexion with the florescence and decadence of the very -antitype of _bourgeoisie_, but this is only a further reason for not -neglecting history. The Revolution of 1830 was of the highest importance -for France: it was the inevitable explosion of dissatisfaction, both -political and artistic, with the powers that ruled. What I wish to make -clear is that, whereas before this date Bohemia, if it existed, was but -an unconsidered fringe on the ancient student life of the Quartier -Latin, after 1830 it not only received a population but became a force. -For a few years it was an integral part of the larger Paris, a -considerable element in public opinion and, to some extent, in social -life, a factor that could not be ignored. Disturbance, however, yielded -to peace, and the interests of the public shifted. The living spirit of -Bohemia gradually hardened into a dead tradition. By 1848 independence -and individual liberty, the watchwords of Bohemia, were replaced in the -mind of citizens by thoughts of social reform which culminated in the -Republic of 1848. Art, for the time, fell from her place of glory, and -Bohemia relapsed for ever into obscurity. - -The battle of Waterloo seemed to have undone all the good of the -Revolution of 1789. The Bourbons came back to power, with Louis XVIII, a -lazy man, on the throne, and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, leading a -band of ultra-Royalists behind him. The ultra-Royalists, exasperated by -the "hundred days," were breathing fire and slaughter, full of zeal to -destroy the liberty and philosophy of the Revolution and to replace it -with absolutism and priest-rule. Against them was arrayed the party of -"Independents" with Béranger, their poet, and between the two were the -"doctrinaires" or moderate Royalists. The "Ultras," whose violence began -by damaging their own cause, were put into power by the assassination of -the Duc de Berry in 1820, and Villèle was their minister. The succession -of Charles X only strengthened the forces of reaction, till in 1828 -Villèle was defeated and gave place to a Liberal, Martignac. But -Martignac's party were not strong enough to support him long, and in -1829 he was succeeded by Polignac and a Royalist ministry. The Liberals -now prepared for stubborn resistance. Societies were formed, with -branches throughout the provinces, which were joined by all shades of -Liberal opinion, and their hero was Lafayette. The blindness of Charles -X precipitated events. Exasperated by the adverse result of the -elections of 1830, he suspended the constitution by his famous -ordinances on July 26. Paris rose at once, and four days later all was -over. Louis of Orleans was in Paris by the 30th, and took the oath as -King in August. This is only a bald statement of facts, but they are -facts that can be seen by the eye of imagination. By 1830 Paris was a -boiling cauldron of passionate enthusiasm. Revolution was aflame once -more. Barricades--the mere word is a trumpet-call to Frenchmen--had been -erected once more in the streets, and once more blood had flowed in -their defence. Paris for years had smouldered with indignation, and now -her young men glowed with triumph. The people should come to its own -again, and they should be its champions. The eyes of France were on -them, and they knew that their comrades in the provinces, intoxicated by -the songs of Béranger, enraged by the petty vexations of Royalist -officials, were envying them their opportunity and eagerly looking for -any chance that would bring them to the city that so nobly stood for -liberty. - -The Revolution of 1830 was not only political, it was also artistic, and -the artistic results were really the more permanent. This artistic -revolution is generally known as the Romantic movement, about which so -much has been written that I need not refer to it at length. Just as the -Liberal spirit smouldered for many years against the Royalist -oppression, so the Romantic spirit smouldered against the restraints of -the dead classic tradition of the eighteenth century. The process of -combustion, beginning as it did with Rousseau, was a slow one, and, as -it has been said, Romanticism only potentially existed, as a movement, -before 1820. In that year Victor Hugo founded his journal, the -_Conservateur Littéraire_, gathering round him a brilliant company of -writers. For ten years the movement grew in intensity, fostered by the -institution of _cénacles_ and the only too successful proselytism of -Victor Hugo, who disdained no recruit whom he could by flattery enlist. -It is not too much to say that the youth of all France was fired by the -revolt against classicism in poetry and drama. Every schoolboy wrote -verses and every ardent soul longed to enter the very arena in Paris, -where the _perruques_ of the Institute were so signally defied. Paris -became doubly desirable as the field on which political and artistic -liberty were being won. The triumph came in 1830 with the performance of -"Hernani." That victory of the Romantic army is now a commonplace, but -in 1830 it was magnificently new, and it was, moreover, the public -manifestation of _la Bohème_. The effect of this double excitement was -overwhelming. It literally tore the more intelligent among the young men -of France from the roots of all their attachments and interests. To -establish liberty, to revolutionize literature, these were their dreams, -in comparison with which all ordinary professional prospects seemed -dreary and unworthy. So the year 1830 saw Paris harbouring in her -garrets a host of enthusiasts, most of them very young, burning with -ideals and flushed with apparently glorious victories. They felt -themselves incorporated in one great brotherhood of defiance to -established authority, so that those who mocked their poverty and -lawlessness in the name "Bohemian" were unconsciously justified, for a -corporate name is the sign of a corporate existence. _La Bohème_ in 1830 -was not a haphazard collection of _dilettanti_ and artistic eccentrics; -it was a fellowship inspired by similar enthusiasms and bound together -by the struggle against similar misfortunes. - -Misfortunes, indeed, were not slow to come. Society is wonderfully quick -to repair the breaches in its walls made by gallant assaulters, and the -heroes who have been foremost in the attack find that their bravely made -passage has closed behind them, and that they are left to be broken and -starved into submission. So it was after 1830. Louis Philippe was at -heart a Royalist who had little understanding of the Revolution. His -great achievement was to keep on his throne for eighteen years by -encouraging the moneyed middle class, thus laying the foundation of -French industrial prosperity. _Enrichissez-vous_ was the order of the -day, an order ironically unsuitable to the reformers of Bohemia. Those -among them whose ideals were political rather than literary became -uncompromising Republicans, formed secret societies, carried on a -violent Press campaign of articles and caricatures against Louis -Philippe and his ministers, and plotted further armed risings in Paris, -the most serious of which was the ill-fated insurrection of the Cloître -Saint-Merri in 1832. They were to find that they had presumed too far -upon their strength. In spite of the Legitimist risings in La Vendée, -labour troubles at Lyons, and disaffection in Paris, Louis Philippe's -government was powerful enough to meet all emergencies. Press laws were -made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures -were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. -Above all, the _bourgeoisie_ held firm. They were tasting prosperity and -power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with -their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political -excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who -had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and -repression. Their bright dreams faded away into grey reality; they found -themselves suspects and outcasts, with the problem of subsistence, -instead of being miraculously solved, only rendered more acute. They had -no outlet for their energies, and those whom neither the barricades nor -the cholera of 1832 carried off saw the fellowship of assault followed -by the isolation of retreat. They drifted away in little bands to join -the societies of social reformers like Saint Simon, Fourier, or Père -Enfantin. Consumption, starvation, and suicide were the ends of many of -them, and their traces gradually faded from Bohemia, which became -identified purely with the lives of its literary and artistic -inhabitants. - -The poets and artists of Bohemia survived longer, not only as -individuals, but as a united brotherhood, mainly because artistic -rebellion cannot be put down, as it does not manifest itself, by force, -and also because the campaign in which "Hernani" was the central -engagement really culminated in a lasting victory. For some years after -1830 there was plenty for the young band to do in reducing block-houses -and chasing the persistent critics of the old school, who conducted a -most robust guerilla warfare. Yet hardship and misfortune dogged their -footsteps also. The Romantic victory of 1830 was won by an army; its -spoils were shared by the few leaders--Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, de -Vigny--who, as M. Henri Lardanchet has rather unkindly said,[1] "without -a word of farewell or a motion of gratitude abandoned their army to -famine." To tell the truth, many of the devoted enthusiasts were young -men of mediocre talents at a day when the standard was very high. Verses -were a drug in the market, and he was a lucky man who could earn a few -francs by filling a column or two in a little fashion paper boasting a -few hundred subscribers. Journalism was not yet a commercially -flourishing business, expenses were high, subscribers few, and Press -laws menacing. The starveling poets and dramatists of Bohemia fell upon -lean years, in which the weaker and more utterly destitute were -destroyed by their privations, like Elisa MercÅ“ur and Hégésippe -Moreau. Nevertheless, the Romantics were not crushed out of existence. -The stout hearts of those who held out still beat to a common measure, -and maintained artistic fellowship in an ideal as an essential element -of _la vie de Bohème_. - -Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been -since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was -glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. -Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the -extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular -army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. _Épater -le bourgeois_ was a legitimate war-cry when the _bourgeois_ stood for -all that was reactionary in art. To scare the grocer with a slouch hat -and a medieval oath was not only a youthful ebullition, it was a -symbolic act. The sombrero defied artistic convention as typified in the -top hat; the medieval oath, in its contrast with the paler expletives of -modernity, symbolized the return to life and colour in art after a -century of grey abstraction. It was with the decline of Romanticism that -Bohemia lost its living spirit. Unlike Republicanism, that gathered -unseen strength in failure to blossom for a more worthy generation, -Romanticism lost its vitality through its very success. It may be -likened to some conflux of waters which to force from its way the inert -mass of an obstacle rises to a mighty head: the obstacle is swept away, -and the seething waters resolve themselves into a workaday river humbly -serving the sea. So the Romantic movement has served literature for many -decades now, and it was quietly flowing between the banks before Louis -Philippe lost his throne. Success, it might be said, came to it too -soon, especially as success in that day meant money. The dangers of -Republicanism were staved off for the moment by force; the dangers of -Romanticism were for ever discounted by payment. Authorship was made to -serve a commercial end, and all was over. In 1836 Emile de Girardin -founded _La Presse_, which was sold at a far lower price than any other -paper. The inevitable followed. Circulation went up by leaps and bounds, -contributors were paid respectable prices, expenses were defrayed by the -profits of advertisement, and journalism in France was at once on a -commercial footing, for other papers were not slow to follow. -Literature, from being purely an art, quickly became a trade. The -struggle for a new artistic ideal gave way to the struggle for loaves -and fishes, which is contemporary with mankind. A man's artistic creed -went for nothing, when all the public asked was that he should make -himself conspicuous before they gave him their countenance. Once -artistic success became a matter of royalties it was an easy prey to -_bourgeois_ conditions, which were that art and literature should either -be merely entertaining or point a respectable moral. Only a few -Romantics were proof against this insidious influence. To those -recalcitrants we owe the motto "Art for art's sake." - -The effect of this change upon Bohemia is not difficult to imagine. _La -vie de Bohème_ implies youth, so that its generations change as rapidly -as those of a university. The generation of 1830 had either disappeared -or become famous--that is, potentially rich--in a few years. The -struggle which had convulsed all Paris was a thing of the past, and -Romanticism was so far accepted, swallowed, and digested that by 1843 -the necessity was felt for reverting to the classical tradition again, -for a change, with the so-called _école de bon sens_. There was no -longer any trumpet-call to which Bohemia could respond as a brotherhood, -as Victor Hugo learned when, on wishing to enlist a fresh army to go -into battle for "Les Burgraves," he was told "il n'y a plus de jeunes -gens." The swaggering heroes of 1830 were now writers of successful -novels and comedies, or safely chained, as critics, to the careers of -remunerative journals. Rebellion was impossible, for there was nothing -to rebel against. Success depended more upon individual enterprise than -common enthusiasm. There was nothing left, therefore, for the new -generations of Bohemia but to fall back upon tradition. If there was no -more certainty in ideals there was at least something definite in slouch -hats and medieval oaths, in defying conventions of dress and accepted -table manners. So the symbols of Romanticism became the realities of -Bohemia after all that they symbolized was as lifeless as a cancelled -bank-note. Further, the population of Bohemia lost that great asset in -life, personal pride. Their predecessors of 1830 were arrogant, no -doubt, but with the arrogance of an advance-guard in a desperate -venture. There was no desperate venture now toward, and advance meant, -not progress, but prosperity. The poorer brethren of art who peopled -Bohemia were now, inasmuch as they were not prosperous, failures. They -had no sense of intellectual achievement to keep up their courage, when -such achievement was measured in gold. It was inevitable that their -_moral_ should be affected; the recklessness, which was formerly that of -bravado, became that of despair, and a less reputable atmosphere grew -up round Bohemia which has never been dispelled from its tradition. - -Nevertheless, dead as the spirit was, the tradition of 1830 remained -very strong, being kept alive not only by oral transmission, as all -traditions are, but also by the art of the sturdy few who remained -faithful to the uncompromising standard of disinterestedness in art -which it implied. Gautier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, the de Goncourts, and a -few others stood out unflinchingly against commercialism on the one hand -and prosy doctrinairism on the other. Their struggle was not wholly -effectual, but, so far as Bohemia is concerned, was important. After -1848, when everything had to have a social "purpose" and art for its own -sake seemed dead, they sat down, like the Psalmist, by the rivers of -Babylon and remembered Zion. From their regrets the legend of _la sainte -Bohème_ arose idealized and purified, and it was made immortal in pages -of prose by Gautier and in de Banville's "Ballade de ses regrets pour -l'an 1830." This legend, tinged as it already was with sentiment, spread -to the public, by whom it was resentimentalized, a fact of which other -authors, Murger included, were not slow to take advantage. - - "Ils savaient tirer parti des ressemblances réelles entre la vie de - Bohème et la vie de l'étudiant bourgeois au 'Pays latin' pour - établir une confusion avantageuse, confusion qui est déjà manifeste - dans les 'Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.' Chanter ainsi la Bohème - c'était un peu chanter la jeunesse bourgeoise."[2] - -If this be true, then Bohemia after 1848, when the public interest was -purely absorbed in Socialistic reforms, lapsed once more into being a -mere fringe on the student life, and, as such, equally negligible. Its -classic days were over, never to return, for the society of Paris grew -too large to be again convulsed by a purely artistic conflict. The -leaders of the new _Parnasse_ made a considerable sensation, but they -founded, not a new Bohemia, but only another _cénacle_. History -establishes the florescence and decline of the classic _vie de Bohème_ -beyond much doubt, for it went with the florescence and decline of a -common spirit. - - - - -III - -LE MAL DU SIÈCLE - - -I have identified the classic period of Bohemia with the time of the -Romantic victory. It was not then lighted by dim lanterns hung outside -the door of every artistic idiosyncrasy, but reflected flamboyantly a -general state of mind. I disclaim once for all the intention of adding -another to the many studies of the Romantic movement, but in my aim of -explaining the living reality out of which grew the tradition of _la vie -de Bohème_ I am compelled to dwell upon the turgid mental content of the -early nineteenth century. The eccentricities of Bohemia were then but -slight exaggerations of a universal spiritual ferment, though, after the -good wine was made, a later and decadent Bohemia artificially reproduced -the symptoms of a process that was formerly natural and necessary. _Le -mal romantique_, _le mal du siècle_, are common phrases upon the lips of -French critics, who to-day affect to treat with contempt what was, after -all, a new Renaissance. Without adopting their attitude, it must be -admitted that, inestimable as were its results, it was an alarming -convulsion. The English took it in a milder and earlier form. Its most -extreme manifestation, Byron and the "Satanic" school, was a thing of -the past before 1830. But the French were thoroughly and virulently -affected, and exhibited all the most violent symptoms. - -We may best begin, perhaps, by looking at a particular "subject," to use -a medical phrase, in the correspondence of J.-J. Ampère, son of the -great scientist. The younger Ampère, after a violent adoration of Madame -Récamier, who was old enough to be his mother, settled down into a most -respectable and successful man of letters, and he was never in any sense -a Bohemian. He was a well-educated and perfectly normal man, so that the -ravages of _le mal du siècle_ may be well judged when he writes to his -friend, Jules Bastide, in 1820: - - "My dear Jules, last week the feeling of malediction was upon me, - round me, within me. I owe this to Lord Byron; I read through twice - at a sitting the English 'Manfred.' Never, never in my life has - anything I have read overwhelmed me as that did; it has made me - ill. On Sunday I went to see the sunset upon the Place de - l'Esplanade; it was as threatening as the fires of hell. I went - into the church, where the faithful were peacefully chanting the - Hallelujah of the Resurrection. Leaning against a column, I looked - at them with disdain and envy." - -Two months later Jules Bastide delivered his soul in a similar strain: - - "I feel that the slightest emotions might send me mad or kill me. - The evening of our parting I opened at random a volume of Madame - de Staël and read the dream of Jean Paul. When I came to that - terrible line, 'Christ, nous n'avons point de père,' a shudder - seized me. An hour later I had a fever; it lasted a fortnight." - -Another friend wrote to Ampère in 1824: - - "All my ideas turn towards Africa.... Is it solitude that I seek in - Africa? Yes, but it is not only that; it is the desert, the - palm-tree, the musk-rose, the Arab! A romanesque and _barbaresque_ - future is what ravishes me." - -In 1825 Ampère, then twenty-five years old, wrote to Madame Récamier: - - "Return, for my life is no longer tolerable without you; my spirit - is wholly employed in trying to _support_ the emptiness of my - days." - -In these delirious passages are contained the most marked symptoms of -the time, the satanic gloom that drew its inspiration from Byron, the -nervous sensibility imitated from the heroes of Madame de Staël, -Châteaubriand, and Sénancour, and the longing for a life of Oriental -colour which found a later expression in Victor Hugo's poems. However, -it would be unfair to put down this spiritual _bouleversement_ to the -influence of "René," "Obermann," "Werther's Leiden," or "Manfred." They -became, indeed, the breviaries of the afflicted, but the cause of the -affliction lay deeper in the reaction of the French nation after the -Napoleonic wars. Napoleon's victorious campaigns drained France of its -best blood and its best energies, leaving an inheritance of anæmia and -neurasthenia to the next generation, without diminishing that feverish -desire for glory, that determination to work one's will upon a passive -world, which was the spirit of Napoleon's armies. Older and more settled -people were content to reap the rewards of peace, but the young men, -exalted by the exploits of their fathers, looked in vain for some -channel in which to discharge their superfluous electricity. Under the -restored Bourbons there was none. The fathers had had free play upon -historic battlefields, the sons were cribbed and confined in the narrow -bounds of everyday life. Moreover, the revolutionary wars had revealed -vast, unexplored pastures to the French mind. New countries, languages, -and literatures were brought into its view. The gorgeous East, in -particular, seized upon the French imagination. The desert was vast and -untrodden, the Arab was dignified and free, and under unclouded skies -the primitive nobility of mankind revealed itself in splendour and -space. - -Here, then, is the root of _le mal du siècle_ from which the divers -symptoms sprang. Of these, perhaps, the most marked and most general was -an exaggerated sensibility, a kind of melancholy madness. Young Henri -Dubois, who at any other epoch would have been content to learn his -trade behind the counter of Dubois and Dupont, cloth merchants, and to -settle down into a peaceful home with Mademoiselle Dupont, now plied -the yard measure with disgust and yearned for an existence more worthy -of his "complicated state of mind." He was a perfect magazine of pent-up -emotions, ready to expire in a delirium of joy or an ecstasy of despair -after the manner of René and Werther. He was quite willing to love -Mademoiselle Dupont on the condition that she would lend herself to a -tempestuous passion, allow her hands to be bathed in tears for hours -together by her prostrate cavalier, receive folios of hysterical ravings -by the post, and dread the fatal dagger if she had smiled from her desk -at a customer. She was urged daily to fly to a brighter destiny upon -distant shores, and nightly trembled that the coming morning would find -Henri transfixed by his own poniard. It was impossible to be reasonable; -only a clod, dead to all beauty, could be so brutal. M. Louis Maigron, -who in his book, "Le Romantisme et les MÅ“urs," gives some very -remarkable instances of these aberrations in actual correspondence, says -very truly: "Une foule de 'cratères' ont alors superbement fumé au nez -des bourgeois." The Romantic ideal supposed a sensibility always -stretched to its utmost, _des âmes excessives_, as M. Bourget says,[3] -capable of constant renewal, and a consumption of emotional energy which -is irreconcilable with the laws of any organism. If a young man failed -for a moment to find food for melancholy broodings in the shortcomings -of society, he could always fall back for a good groan upon his own -insufficiencies of sensibility. Now, of course, the "feelings of -malediction" which afflicted the Henri Dubois are of small moment in -themselves. Time comfortably settled them down. It was the young men of -real sensibility and imagination, the coming poets and artists, in whom -the ravages of _le mal du siècle_ were more than a passing phase. The -boundless yearnings that found expression in such lines as these: - - _Amour, enthousiasme, étude, poésie!_ - _C'est là qu'en votre extase, océan d'ambroisie_ - _Se noîraient nos âmes de feu!_ - _C'est là que je saurais, fort d'un génie étrange,_ - _Dans la création d'un bonheur sans mélange_ - _Être plus artiste que Dieu_[4]-- - -could not but lead to a profound dissatisfaction with existence, which -Maxime du Camp in his reminiscences very happily describes: - - "It was not only a fashion [he says], as might be believed; it was - a kind of general prostration which made our hearts sad, darkened - our thoughts, and caused us to see a deliverance in the glimpse of - death. You would have thought that life held in chains souls that - had caught sight of something superior to terrestrial existence. We - did not aspire to the felicities of paradise: we dreamed of taking - possession of the infinite, and we were tortured by a vague - pantheism of which the formula was never found.... The artistic and - literary generation which preceded me and that to which I belonged - had a youth of lamentable sadness, sadness without cause and - without object, abstract sadness, inherent in the individual or in - the period.... - - "Nobody was allowed to be without an _âme incomprise_; it was the - custom and we conformed to it. We were 'fatal' and 'accursed'; - without even having tasted life, we tumbled to the bottom of the - abyss of disillusionment. Children of eighteen years, repeating - phrases gathered from some novel or other, would say: 'J'ai le - cÅ“ur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie,' and one of - Pétrus Borel's heroes went to the executioner to say to him: 'I - should like you to guillotine me!' This did not prevent us from - laughing, singing, or committing the honest follies of youth; that - was also a way of being desperate; we imagined that we had a - satanic laugh, while we really possessed the fair joy of spring." - -These exquisite sensibilities, when they were not turned back upon -themselves in black despair, roamed far and wide in search of new -sensations upon which to exercise themselves. This _exotisme_, as the -French have called it, is another of the most marked symptoms of -Romanticism. The time was ripe for its satisfaction. The French mind, -shut for so long in the formalism of the eighteenth century, now found -that there were innumerable new ways to _rêver la rêve de la vie_. The -men of learning who followed in Napoleon's wake renewed the interest in -archæology by their discoveries; the historical novels of Scott and the -history of Michelet revealed the full and generous life of earlier ages; -the forged poems of Ossian caused a perfect rage for Celtic mysticism; -and the bold lawless life of the East, with its tyrannous Ali Pashas and -its Greek patriots, shone out with a new splendour. An unsatisfied -longing for another age and another clime animated every young breast. -Societies even were formed in provincial towns in which subscriptions -were pooled, and the winner of the lucky number drew the money to take a -voyage in Italy. The glories of Greece and the grandeurs of Rome, as -savouring of the classical, appealed only to a few; other eclectics fed -upon German mysticism and the fantastic weirdness of Hoffmann's -supernatural tales. A far greater number became Celts in imagination; -dressed in the dignity of outlawry and the garb of an Irish bard or a -Scotch chieftain, they defied the haughty English. Maxime du Camp, for -instance, wrote a poem in his school-days called "Wistibrock -l'Irlandais." "When I am depressed," he says in his reminiscences, "I -read it again, and there is no vexation that resists it." Anybody who -wishes to gain some idea of the _genre frénétique_, as Nodier called it, -in its Celtic dress will derive considerable entertainment from Pétrus -Borel's "Madame Putiphar." It is full of murders and intrigues and -tirades which foam at the mouth. The hero, Patrick FitzWhyte, falls in -love with Deborah Cockermouth, daughter of Lord and Lady Cockermouth, -the opening dialogue of whom upon the battlements is magnificent. My -lord, who is described as "one of those gigantic fungous and spongy -zoophytes indigenous to Great Britain," permits himself to address my -lady as "Saint-hearted milk soup!" After a good deal of clandestine -philandering and interminable translations of imaginary Irish ballads -the young couple elope to Paris, where Madame Putiphar (Madame de -Pompadour) seduces the heroine, and the hero after a series of dreadful -adventures is imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon in the Bastille, the -taking of which by the people of Paris is described with quite -astonishing force. - -[Illustration: The Spirit of Romanticism] - -Wild adventures, horrors and tragedies in any age were fondly dwelt upon -in comparison with the insupportable monotony of contemporary life; but -the Middle Ages made a stronger appeal than any. There was a perfect -mania for medievalism. Nothing pleased overwrought imaginations more -than to picture existence amid all the riot and magnificence of those -more spacious days. How they would have rattled a sword and clanked a -spur, how defiantly tilted their plume, how breathlessly loved and how -destructively fought! Why did they not live in the joyous time when -every minute brought an adventure instead of spilling one more drop from -the cup of _ennui_, and when a man shaped his own ends according to his -passions, throwing a curse to the poor and a madrigal to the fair? Then, -all their life was not grey. Splendour of colour with ample grace of -form decked out existence like a picture by Veronese. Costly satin vied -with magnificent brocade; all was a riot of velvet and purple dyes, fur -and old lace; drinking cups, worthy of giants, chiselled by a Cellini, -offered wine worthy of the gods; swords were masterpieces of the finest -Toledo; jewelled harness caparisoned fleet Arab horses; feasts were -Gargantuan, jests more than Rabelaisian; and all this wonderful wealth -of glittering colour was thrown into magnificent relief against the -solemnity of antique battlements and the sombre shadows of Gothic -architecture. This, apart from all innovations of dramatic form, was the -secret of the delirious popularity of "Hernani," "Lucrèce Borgia," "Le -Roi s'amuse," and the "Tour de Nesle," and of the craze for historical -novels, verses in baroque metres, slouch hats _à la Buridan_, velvet -pourpoints, daggers, mysterious draperies and massive chests, drinking -cups made out of skulls, and illuminated breviaries of which Gautier -makes such fun in "Les Jeunes France." To it we owe Balzac's splendid -"Contes Drolatiques," Lassailly's "Roueries de Trialph," and Roger de -Beauvoir's "L'Écolier de Cluny." Gautier in his early poems was as -romanesque as any of his "Jeune France," as those who know his early -poems must admit. "Débauche" is a frank orgy, and "Albertus" is a gem of -the Gothic, with its supernatural setting, the "fatality" of its hero, -the horror of its _dénouement_, the wild fantasy of its witches' -chamber, and its amorous wealth of descriptive detail in which old -fabrics, old furniture, swords, daggers, and hangings abound. Victor -Hugo, above all, was the chosen bard of the Gothic and the romanesque. -Besides his dramas, his "Odes et Ballades" were in the mouth of every -child who could pay four halfpence for an hour's luxury in the _cabinet -de lecture_; and schoolboys would declaim for hours in antiphon such -passages as the invocation of "La Bande Noire": - - _O murs! ô créneaux! ô tourelles!_ - _Remparts! fossés aux ponts mouvants!_ - _Lourds faisceaux de colonnes frêles!_ - _Fiers châteaux! modestes couvents!_ - _Cloîtres poudreux, salles antiques,_ - _Où gémissaient les saints cantiques,_ - _Où riaient les rires joyeux!_ - _Églises où priaient nos mères,_ - _Tours où combattaient nos aïeux!_ - -or the frenzied descriptions of the witches' dance in "La Ronde du -Sabbat," or lines from "La Chasse du Burgrave"--which even Hugo called -"un peu trop Gothique de forme"--or with a - - _Çà , qu'on selle,_ - _Ecuyer,_ - _Mon fidèle_ - _Destrier._ - _Mon cÅ“ur ploie_ - _Sous la joie_ - _Quand je broie_ - _L'étrier_ - -proclaimed their attendance at the "Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean." - -The star of the Gothic and the medieval was indeed high in the heavens, -but it paled before the full sun of Araby and the East. Napoleon had -dreamed of a Mohammedan empire, and before his dream could fade Navarino -and Missolonghi fired men's minds again. Victor Hugo was also the -champion of Oriental rhapsody. Even in 1824 he had seen the -possibilities of Oriental colour in French verse, when he wrote "La Fée -et la Péri," a poem in which the Peri, who stands for romanticism, says: - - _J'ai de vastes cités qu'en tous lieux on admire,_ - _Lahore aux champs fleuris, Golconde, Cachemire,_ - _La guerrière Damas, la royale Ispahan,_ - _Bagdad que ses remparts couvrent comme une armure,_ - _Alep dont l'immense murmure_ - _Semble au pâtre lointain le bruit d'un océan._ - -His collection of poems entitled "Les Orientales" was published in 1829 -and took Paris by storm, provoking passionate enthusiasm and equally -passionate protest. In the preface he asserts that Orientalism is a -general preoccupation. "The colours of the East have come, as if -spontaneously, to impress themselves upon all his [the poet's] thoughts -and all his musings; his musings and his thoughts have become, in turn, -and almost without his willing it, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, -Arabic, even Spanish, for Spain, too, is the East." There are fine poems -in "Les Orientales"--"Les Djinns," for instance, will always be -famous--but it is impossible to read the volume through to-day without -considerable amusement, so very full-blooded are they. There are lofty -apostrophes to Byron and the Greeks, followed by dreadful tales of -Turkish cruelty, gruesome ballads like "La Voile," in which four -brothers kill their sister, epigraphs like "O horror! horror! horror!" -valiant Klephtes, houris, scimitars, and all the catalogue which the -poet himself gives in "Novembre": - - _Sultans et sultanes,_ - _Pyramides, palmiers, galères capitanes,_ - _Et le tigre vorace et le chameau frugal;_ - _Djinns au vol furieux, danses des bayadères,_ - _L'Arabe qui se penche au cou des dromadaires,_ - _Et la fauve girafe au galop inégale._ - _Alors éléphants blancs chargés de femmes brunes,_ - _Cités aux dômes d'or où les mois sont des lunes,_ - _Imams de Mahomet, mages, prêtres de Bel ..._ - -Then, as if Victor Hugo did not whip the passions enough, Alfred de -Musset lent a hand in the hurly-burly with his "Contes d'Espagne et -d'Italie," which made the young maniacs frantically demand: - - _Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone_ - _Une Andalouse au sein bruni?_ - _Pâle comme un beau soir d'automne!_ - _C'est ma maîtresse, ma lionne!_ - _La marquesa d'Amaëgui._ - -Delacroix, too, was sending the critics into ecstasies of rage with his -vivid Eastern scenes and the horrors of his "Massacre of Scio." The -ideas of the young men with inflamed sensibilities seethed in turbulent -disorder. To be in the movement they had to have at least a poniard and -a narghile, a medieval cloak and an Oriental divan. Those with money to -spare decorated their rooms like sombre Gothic manors, those with no -money enriched their conversations with a wealth of medieval diction. No -make-believe was too ridiculous to shut out the actual place and time in -which they lived. Balzac's novel "La Peau de Chagrin," which has won a -celebrity far beyond its merits, is most unmistakably marked with the -frenzies of 1830. His revelling in the supernatural, the massed effects -of careful detail in the description of the curiosity shop where the -wild-ass skin hangs, the wild riot of the orgy, the terrific excesses in -which Valentin ruins his life, the duel and the horrible end, are just -as much the _genre frénétique_ as anything by Pétrus Borel. The hero, -Valentin, is simply a type of his time, and his tirade on taking the -supernatural skin is hardly an exaggeration: - - "Je veux que la débauche en délire et rugissante nous emporte, dans - son char à quatre chevaux, par delà les bornes du monde, pour nous - verser sur des plages inconnues! Que les âmes montent dans les - cieux ou se plongent dans la boue, je ne sais si alors elles - s'élèvent ou s'abaissent, peu m'importe! Donc, je commande à ce - pouvoir sinistre de me fondre toutes les joies dans une joie. Oui, - j'ai besoin d'embrasser les plaisirs du ciel et de la terre dans - une dernière étreinte, pour en mourir. Aussi souhaité-je et des - priapées antiques après boire, et des chants à réveiller les morts, - et de triples baisers, des baisers sans fin dont la clameur passe - sur Paris comme un craquement d'incendie, y réveille les époux et - les inspire une ardeur cuisante qui les rajeunissent tous, même les - septuagénaires!" - -As for the "orgy," it was so much a fashion that Gautier in his "Les -Jeune France" scores a delightful hit with the story of a society of -young men who combine for a colossal feast, in which various sections -follow out in exact detail the descriptions of orgies given by their -favourite novelists and the end is a farcical confusion. - -Building castles in Spain is a fascinating pastime, but the ingenuities -of imagination cannot entirely shut out the individual from his -surroundings. From 1820 to 1830 the young man of France was continually -running against the sharp corners of the world and receiving the elbow -prods of his fellow-men. Exalted by his excited sensibility, he -conceived at once a contempt and a hatred for the insensibility of -society, which produced in him a feeling of moral superiority and -solitude. This abnormal vanity, shown in the deification of "l'homme -supérieur" and a proud contemplation of his social outlawry, is a third -marked symptom of _le mal du siècle_.[5] It broke out in several -different forms. One was a romantic worship of energy and strong will, -as typified by the career of Napoleon. Given these qualities, a man -could rise from the lowest depths to impose his wishes on the world. -However, self-styled supermen have invariably found their theories -rebellious to practical application, and Henri Dubois, if he started -upon a Napoleonic path, soon discovered that society selects its "homme -supérieur" when it wants him, and that uncalled-for aspirants receive -the point of its toe. He reserved his superiority, therefore, more -usually, for less material manifestations and conflicts. His rare -spirit, susceptible to all "the finer shades," stood mournfully but -prudently on high, scorning the base, unfeeling throng below it, and -calling out through space for kindred spirits to cherish. "My friend, -take care of yourself," writes young Ampère to his friend. "Obermann -cries to us, 'Keep close together, ye simple men who feel the beauty of -natural things.' Let us help one another, all of us who suffer." So -Henri Dubois and his friends suffered and helped one another, shedding -pints of tears and being just as ridiculous as they could be. - -Solitary suffering makes men philosophers or poets. Philosophy requiring -some intellectual capacity and mental preparation, Henri Dubois often -took the further step from crying in the wilderness to enshrining his -laments in metre, being encouraged in this by the certain fact that -young men and true poets were indeed striking the Romantic harp to a new -and surprising tune. The poet was the real "homme supérieur" of the -time, not only in fancy but in fact. Henri accordingly proceeded another -stage towards sublimity by way of the faulty syllogism: "The poet has an -exquisite soul; I have an exquisite soul; therefore I am a poet." The -Romantics conceived the poet as a God-sent prophet. This was the -attitude, above all, of de Vigny; Lamartine and Sainte-Beuve adopted it -in their early days, and certain passages of Victor Hugo--for instance: - - _O poètes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes,_ - _Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes,_ - _Sur les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons,_ - _Sur les déserts pieux où l'esprit se recueille,_ - _Sur les bois que l'automne emporte feuille à feuille,_ - _Sur les lacs endormis dans l'ombre des vallons!_ - ---show that he was not averse to it. So every youth who could rhyme -"âme" with "flamme" put on the aureole of a "poète échevelé," revelled -in the ecstasies of solitary contemplation, and sneered magnificently at -all who attended to business as soulless _épiciers_. This was a harmless -enough delusion, but it became less harmless when combined with the idea -that for the sake of experience the poet should abandon himself entirely -to his passions. The great artist, indeed, has his own morality, but -Victor Hugo's "Mazeppa" or Lamartine's stanza - - _Mais nous, pour embraser les âmes,_ - _Il faut brûler, il faut ravir_ - _Au ciel jaloux ses triples flammes:_ - _Pour tout peindre, il faut tout sentir._ - _Foyers brûlants de la lumière,_ - _Nos cÅ“urs de la nature entière_ - _Doivent concentrer les rayons,_ - _Et l'on accuse notre vie!_ - _Mais ce flambeau qu'on nous envie_ - _S'allume au feu des passions_ - -were dangerous matchboxes in the hands of children. It was a fatality, -too, that several poets of some merit died during these years of want or -neglect. Gilbert, the satirist, expired in hospital, breathing piteous -plaints, and Hégésippe Moreau, the poet of "La Voulzie," was equally -unfortunate. Society can hardly be blamed for not supporting all its -lyrically inclined members, but it was natural that the "poète échevelé" -should smoulder with indignation at such disasters, and cheer the -sentiments of de Vigny's drama "Chatterton" till his lungs gave out. It -was still more of a fatality that certain other poets attained a -momentary celebrity by committing suicide, leaving rhymed farewells to a -stony-hearted society and a tedious life. To win fame by a pathetic -death in a pauper's hospital, or to bid defiance to the world with a -superb gesture of self-destruction, was a far too common ambition. -Sainte-Beuve himself observed that "la manie et la gageure de tous les -René, de tous les Chatterton de notre temps, c'était d'être grand poète -et de mourir." A perfect epidemic of suicide was due to _le mal du -siècle_, as M. Louis Maigron shows in his work that I have already -cited. Among other strange stories he gives at length the confession of -an old man who in his youth was president of a suicide club, formed in a -provincial town by a set of romantic schoolboys as late as 1846. Happily -the club was short-lived, but it resulted in the self-destruction of one -of its most gifted members. In the letter with which he announced his -coming death from Lucerne he wrote: - - " ...I have no precise reason to have done with life except the - insurmountable disgust with which it inspires me. Chance of birth - gave me a certain fortune; I am not denied an intelligence perhaps - slightly above the common level; it would have been in my power to - marry an adorable child: so many conditions of happiness, in the - eyes of the vulgar. But my poor soul, alas, cannot content itself - with them. Nothing can charm my heart any longer, 'mon cÅ“ur - lassé de tout, même de l'espérance'; it will be closed, without - ever having been opened." - -He left his little library to the club, specially reserving for the -president "Werther," "René," "Obermann," "Jacques," and the works of -Rabbe. They were his breviaries, he said, covered as they were with -notes that revealed all his soul. - -The pose of pathetic despair was not, however, the only one in which the -feeling of moral solitude showed itself. Another very common attitude -was that of revolt against society, an aping of Mephistopheles, the -fallen angel doomed to everlasting unhappiness, strong only in his -disillusionment and his clear vision of the canker in the heart of every -bud. The word "satanism" summed up this attitude: its breviaries were -"Manfred" and Dumas' violent tragedy, "Antony." It rejoiced in the cult -of the horrible, in Hoffmannesque dabblings in the supernatural, in -pessimistic poetry like Gautier's "Tête de Mort," and such lines in his -early sonnets as: - - _Mais toute cette joie est comme le lierre_ - _Qui d'une vieille tour, guirlande irregulière,_ - _Embrasse en les cachant les pans démantelés,_ - _Au dehors on ne voit que riante verdure,_ - _Au dedans, que poussière infecte et noire ordure,_ - _Et qu'ossements jaunis aux décombres mêlés._ - -Its effects, in society, were chiefly obtained by the satanic laugh. -Gautier soon grew out of his satanic mood, Dumas was never anything more -than a fine romancer, while Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Vigny were -too lofty poets to indulge in such artificialities; but satanism -deserves mention because it was a traditional business with one party in -the romantic Bohemia--the party of the _Bousingots_. - -[Illustration: Bousingots] - -The origin of the term _Bousingot_ has been a matter of dispute among -French writers. Philibert Audebrand in his memoir of Léon Gozlan says it -was invented by that brilliant journalist to satirize the young -republican enthusiasts of 1832 in the _Figaro_. Charles Asselineau in -his "Bibliographie Romantique" says that after some hilarious souls had -been arrested for singing too loudly in the streets "Nous avons fait du -bousingo"--_bousingo_ being the slang for "noise"--it became a popular -designation for the more furious Romantics. The matter seems to be -settled more or less in Asselineau's manner by a passage in the letter -written by Philothée O'Neddy to Asselineau after the publication of the -"Bibliographie Romantique" to give a more correct account of the second -_cénacle_. He asserts that there never were any self-styled -_Bousingots_, but that after the arrest of the hilarious revellers the -affair got into the newspapers and the term remained as a _bourgeois_ -hit at the Romantics. The proper spelling of the word was _bouzingo_, -and Gautier exclaimed one day: "These asses of _bourgeois_ don't even -know how _bouzingo_ is spelt! To teach them a little orthography several -of us ought to publish a volume of stories which we will bravely call -'Contes du Bouzingo.'" The suggestion was thought a happy one, and the -book was even advertised as imminent, but it was never written. -Gautier's promise of a contribution was afterwards redeemed in "Le -Capitaine Fracasse," but Jules Vabre's famous treatise "Sur -l'incommodité des commodes" did not progress beyond the title. In common -parlance, however, the name remained _Bousingots_, and its general -meaning was quite clear. Just as the Gothic frenzy made the party of -_Jeune-France_, who were the Christian-Royalist section of the -Romantics, so the political agitation, combined with the feeling of -antagonism to society, made the _Bousingots_. The meaning became -subsequently enlarged to express all the extravagances of the Romantics, -their idealization of the artist and their disorderly ways; but this -extension was illegitimate. Literature and poetry were, it is true, the -preoccupation of the more prominent _Bousingots_, but their distinctive -mark was a profession of ultra-democratic views and manners. The leader -of them all was the mysterious Pétrus Borel,[6] whom I have already -mentioned as the author of "Madame Putiphar." His other chief work was a -volume of poems entitled "Rhapsodies." The young men of 1830 worshipped -him as the coming champion before whom the star of Victor Hugo was -ingloriously to wane. They were grievously disappointed. After the first -crisis of _le mal du siècle_ his inspiration faded away, and he died an -obscure officiai in Algeria. Baudelaire, in "L'Art Romantique," says of -him: - - "Without Pétrus Borel, there would have been a lacuna in - Romanticism. In the first phase of our literary revolution the - poet's imagination turned especially to the past.... Later on its - melancholy took a more decided, more savage, and more earthy tone. - A misanthropical republicanism allied itself with the new school, - and Pétrus Borel was the most extravagant and paradoxical - expression of the spirit of the _Bousingots_.... This spirit, both - literary and republican, as opposed to the democratic and bourgeois - passion which subsequently oppressed us so cruelly, was moved both - by an aristocratic hate, without limit, without restriction, - without pity, for kings and the bourgeoisie, and by a general - sympathy for all that in art represented excess in colour and form, - for all that was at once intense, pessimistic, and Byronic; it was - dilettantism of a singular nature, only to be explained by the - hateful circumstances in which our bored and turbulent youth was - enclosed. If the Restoration had regularly developed in glory, - Romanticism would have never separated from the throne; and this - new sect, which professed an equal disdain for the moderate party - of the political opposition, for the painting of Delaroche or the - poetry of Delavigne, and for the king who presided over the - development of le _juste-milieu_, would have had no reason for - existing." - -Charles Asselineau fills up the picture. The _Bousingot_, he says, was -as rough and cynical as the _Jeune-France_ was dandified and exquisite, -and showed genius in discovering at once the _plastique_ of his idea. In -contrast to the extravagant luxury affected by the medievalists, he -adopted the manners of the people in habits and dress, smoking clay -pipes and drinking the "petit bleu" of low pot-houses. Instead of raving -about cathedrals, he spent his ingenuity in devising bitter satires -against the king and his officers or fresh settings in caricature for -Louis' famous _tête de poire_. "The fusillade of St.-Merry and the laws -of September were the _Bousingot's_ Waterloo. From the moment he was -forbidden to protest in a visible manner, and was deprived of his -insignia, his waistcoat, his stick, and his pipe with a pear-shaped -bowl, the _Bousingot_ had to retire. He became serious, an economist or -a humanitarian philosopher, and showed his revolt against society and -power by writing novels 'in which the idea predominated over the form.' -The novel with a tendency, that literary monstrosity, is the only legacy -left by the _Bousingot_ to the literature of the nineteenth century."[7] - -In Balzac's wonderful gallery of portraits there is a picture of a -_Bousingot_. Raoul Nathan, the author, appears frequently in his -Parisian scenes, but his outlines are only elaborated in the little-read -"Une Fille d'Eve." There was something great and fantastic in his -appearance, as if he had fought with angels or demons. He was strongly -built, with a pocked face and a tanned complexion. His long hair was -always untidy, but his eyes were Napoleonic and his mouth charming. His -clothes always looked old and worn, his cravat was askew, his long, -pointed beard untended. The grease from his hair stained his -coat-collar, and he never used a nail-brush. His movements were -grotesque, his conversation caustic and full of surprises. His talent, -great but disorderly, had shown itself in three novels and a book of -poetry: he was critic, dramatist, vaudevillist. Jealous ambition led him -to embrace politics. Beginning at the extreme of opposition, he went -from Saint Simonism to republicanism and through all the stages to -ministerialism, being rewarded by a government appointment. - - "Nathan offre un image de la jeunesse littéraire d'aujourd'hui, de - ses fausses grandeurs et de ses misères réelles; il la représente - avec ses beautés incorrectes et ses chutes profondes, sa vie à - cascades bouillonnantes, à revers soudains, à triomphes inespérés. - C'est bien l'enfant de ce siècle dévoré de jalousie ... qui veut la - fortune sans le travail, la gloire sans le talent et le succès sans - peine, mais qu'après bien des rébellions, bien des escarmouches, - ses vices amènent à émarger 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 "Béatrix") 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 Pétrus Borel -himself: "He loved letters ferociously, and to-day we are encumbered -with pretty, supple writers ready to sell the muse for the potter's -field." Asselineau 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 classic _vie de Bohème_ in a true light -without taking into account this _mal du siècle_ 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 Rubempré 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 fellowship 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 friendship 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 mass 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 passion 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 makeshift of _la blague_. - - - - -IV - -PARISIAN SOCIETY--LE TOUT PARIS - - -The events of the time, the spiritual exaltation of young France, and -the _éclat_ 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 circumference, 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-class 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 space. 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 assaults. 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 multitudinous -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." - -[Illustration: Les Champs Elysées] - -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 Montparnasse bounded it on the north and -south, that the Champs Elysées 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 classes were chiefly engaged in commerce or -_petits métiers_, and the heights of Ménilmontant smiled as green and as -free from slums as the Champs Elysées were free from luxurious hotels. -The passing 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 _clientèle_ of the Parisian theatres. _Le tout Paris_ was, -therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments--the middle -class, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia. - -The middle class, 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 illustrated from characters in Balzac's "Comédie -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 Employés," 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 class, 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 fashioned 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 - attitude 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 _hôtels_ 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 Duchesse de Berry. The -few official _fêtes_ were severely boycotted, and even the -entertainments of foreign ambassadors 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 balls, 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. Eugène 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 amusement 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 -_petit cercle_ in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be -called _la haute Bohème_. - -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 illustrious 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 Duchesse de Duras -and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. 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 Montparnasse 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 "fierté glaciale, -mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, -and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame -Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was -composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at -L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of -the aging Châteaubriand. 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 Arsenal. 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. "Cathédrale!" "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 Théodore 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 Arsenal -was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would -have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" 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 shifting -particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite -place of assembly, 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 nobody, -except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve -in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title 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 -damned--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 membership, 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 butterfly only just -emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day. - -The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, -is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an -open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by -not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène 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 Bohème_ without entering into this -larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute -Bohème_. 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 multitude 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 -amusement 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 Bohème_, 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 destitute 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 -Bohème_ 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 passage 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 époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et - pauvres, tous désÅ“uvrés, appelés _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en - effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs - plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus - rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée, - ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de - leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit - le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de - ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement - l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les - jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les - jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, - dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les - plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes - puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse - voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des - trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière - elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle - part." - -[Illustration: 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 class 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 Café de Paris and -adjourned to lounge at the Opéra 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, passion, gaiety, an - artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to - appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of - amusement, 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 siècle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped - from their embarrassments 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 Père -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-class 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 shine to compass 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 passionate 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 "Comédie 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 Véry'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 dashing 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 title _la haute Bohème_ 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'Aurévilly'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 circumstances, 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 passage which, having myself -said so much, I quote in the original: - - "C'était quatre des plus hardis cormorans éclos dans l'écume qui - couronne les flots incessamment renouvelés de la génération - présente; aimables garçons dont l'existence est problématique, à - qui l'on connaît ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces - spirituels _condottieri_ de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus - cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquiétudes à leurs créanciers, - gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur - costume. D'ailleurs, braves à fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare - sur un baril de poudre, peut-être pour ne pas faillir à leur rôle; - plus moqueurs que les petits journaux, moqueurs à se moquer - d'eux-mêmes, perspicaces et incrédules, fureteurs d'affaires, - avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-mêmes; - profonds politiques par saillies, analysant tout, devinant tout, - ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde où 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 "César 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 céphalique_ 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 fictitious counterpart -of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, 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 Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and -journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Bohème_. 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 Café -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_. - -[Illustration: Fashionables] - - - - -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 noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may -be found in the list of those who started the _petit cercle_ of the Café -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] -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 parlé 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 thé et la jalousie à - Londres!" - -The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, -pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement 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 assiduity. 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 bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange -case of mistaken identity 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 balls 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 -coarsest 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 Barrière 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 _émigrée_. 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 fashionable -fancy-dress ball at the Variétés 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 identity. In 1835 he -died, a shattered _roué_, at Naples. - -The only other English name deserving comment in the _petit cercle_ of -the Café 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 Café Anglais or -the Café 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 _petit 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 Bohème_, 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 fashion 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 fashionable life; while among -the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that -impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were -inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate 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 Bohème_, 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 embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of -July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association 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-glass 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 "Société 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'Écolier 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 ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_ - _Devait à 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 buttons, fitted as -neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey -trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest 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 déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the -Café 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 bass of dinner, opera, supper. -Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge -infernale_ at the Opéra, 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 choreography 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 Bohème_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the -true Bohemians did at the Chaumière 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 Opéra. -One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the -appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse -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 fashion 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 nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect -of Quimperlé--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 -cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly -successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead -cockchafers. 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 passed, 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 cafés. 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 -Employés." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but -unjust: - - "Intrépide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dîneur - et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien - dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allée des Veuves, - il étonnait autant à table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve - à minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du - lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-même, comme la plupart des - grands comiques. Lancé dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, - des écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune - est aléatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, - jouait à Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment - profond, mais par éclairs, se balançait dans la vie comme sur une - escarpolette, sans s'inquiéter du moment où la corde casserait." - -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 embarrassed -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 oublié 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 glass 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 glass 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; -Béquet, whose good taste Roger himself extolled; and Bouffé, the -director of the Vaudeville. Then there was Emile Cabanon, who lives in -Romantic annals as the author of the extravagant "Roman pour les -Cuisinières." 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 Palférine (in -"Un Prince de la Bohème"), who, being struck with the appearance of a -lady passing 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 passion. This assiduity so captivated the besieged one's -heart that she struck her colours. It is _à 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, -dépensaient de l'esprit comptant en veux-tu en voilà ." Alfred -Tattet,[16] the rich son of an _agent de change_, who was introduced to -the _viveurs_ by Félix 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-Mézéray, for instance, who was distinguished by the -white camellia in his buttonhole, 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 Véron, -stout and self-important, his face half hidden in a huge cravat, held an -important place among them. He began life as a medical practitioner, but -made a fortune by exploiting a certain Pâte Regnault and took to -political journalism. Between 1831 and 1835 he was an extremely -successful director of the Opéra, and in 1838 bought _Le -Constitutionnel_, 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 Opéra 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. Mæcenas-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. Théodore de Banville and many others -have celebrated the excellent "cuisine" and its accompaniment of wit, -but a reader of Véron'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 unsurpassed 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 Panthéon, Nouveautés, -Saint-Antoine, Variétés, Opéra, Opéra Comique, and Châtelet passed -successively under his sway, and he lost money at them all except at -the Variétés, during his management of which he wrote those sparkling -"Nouvelles à 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 _cafés_ -ceased to be invaded by merry bands of _fêtards_, 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 _régime_ 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 Véron, 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'étais des plus ingambes,_ - _Mais hélas! destins inhumains,_ - _Le papier que j'avais aux mains,_ - _A présent 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; -Béquet ended in a hospital; gout killed Cabanon and Tattet; while -Briffaut expired in a mad-house. The mental pronouncement 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 fashion and expressing the -prevailing tone, shining 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 space 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 BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE - - MIL HUIT CENT TRENTE! _Aurore_ - _Qui m'éblouis encore,_ - _Promesse du destin,_ - _Riant matin!_ - - _Aube où le soleil plonge!_ - _Quelquefois un beau songe_ - _Me rend l'éclat vermeil_ - _De ton réveil._ - - _Jetant ta pourpre rose_ - _En notre ciel morose,_ - _Tu parais, et la nuit_ - _Soudain s'enfuit._ - - THÉODORE 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 Léon Séché and a Philibert Audebrand, following the lead of Charles -Asselineau, the pious _chiffonnier_ of Romanticism, industriously -collect the very last scraps 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 -multitude 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 assumptions which a foreigner cannot -grant. All the historical and literary associations on which I have -touched in a former chapter make it a subject which even to-day excites -passionate enthusiasm and equally passionate 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 asserts 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 -Bohème," which tells how the young Comte de la Palfèrine, 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 passes 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 Palférine, 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 Palférine'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 Palférine 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 passed 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 Palférine 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 Hugolâtre" 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 François 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 - succumbed 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 flâné dans les rues,_ - _J'ai marché devant moi, bayant aux grues;_ - _Mal nourri, peu vêtu, couchant dans un grenier,_ - _Dont je déménageais dès qu'il fallait payer;_ - _De taudis en taudis colportant ma misère,_ - _Ruminant de Fourier le rêve humanitaire,_ - _Empruntant çà et là le plus que je pouvais,_ - _Dépensant un écu sitôt que je l'avais,_ - _Délayant 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 vécus, râpé, 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 Arsène 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 -passionate 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 Thélème. 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 nobodies 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 assistance. 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, destitute: 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 makeshifts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither -discomfort nor makeshifts 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 grâce_ 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 amusements 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 banishing -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 fashion. 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 impassioned 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 Frères Provençaux, 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 classes to bear them, and classes -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 -citizenship 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 -worship 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 aptitude -as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first -disappointments were fashioned failures like Alfred de Musset's -unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "râpé, 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 township round a proposed extension of the -railway. The settlers, self-assured, 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 Philothée O'Neddy, whose -place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said: - - _Il est depuis longtemps avéré que nous sommes,_ - _Dans le siècle, six milles jeunes hommes_ - _Qui du démon de l'Art nous croyant tourmentés,_ - _Dépensons notre vie en excentricités;_ - _Qui, du fatal Byron copiant des allures,_ - _De solennels manteaux drapons nos encolures._ - -These six thousand copies of the "Fatal Byron," if they ever existed, -have, for the most part, died without leaving their names to posterity. -The historian can deal only with a few individuals, who embodied the -salient qualities of Bohemia. - - - - -VII - -THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" - - -"People always forget," said Théophile Gautier in his old age, "that we -were the first Schaunards and Collines, a quarter of a century before -Murger. Only," he added with a smile, "we had talent and did not write -invertebrate verses like those of that feeble appendage to Alfred de -Musset." This saying, reported by his son-in-law, was made on a festive -occasion, so that it is unnecessary to regard with concern the -discrepancy between this view of Murger and the one which Gautier has -expressed in print. That kindest-hearted of writers would never -wittingly have hurt the reputation or memory of the humblest among his -fellows, and I only quote the passage because, when the malice is -discounted as largely as the "quarter of a century," it remains a true -reference to the origins of Bohemia by one who was, so to speak, one of -its pilgrim fathers. The first Schaunards and Collines, Rodolphes and -Marcels, the unknown poets and artists who first raised the standard of -common enthusiasm against a common enemy, the _bourgeois_, were the -young and lusty friends of a young and lusty Gautier. They were members -of a _cénacle_, albeit a less beatific _cénacle_ than the brotherhood -drawn in Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." In the _cénacle_ of the Rue des -Quatre Vents he evolved by sheer imagination a compensating mirage of -virtue to be contrasted with all the real depravity of society which his -eye so unerringly saw, just as Eugénie Grandet shines out impossibly -beside her miserly father, and Madame Firmiani in the corrupt circle of -his _femmes du monde_. Nevertheless there is a certain sublimity in the -_cénacle_ to which attention cannot be denied. It was Balzac's picture -of an ideal Bohemia in which alone such a nature as his could have found -a home. It is of little moment that he dates the action of "Illusions -Perdues" a few years before 1830, for the _cénacle_ itself is a timeless -creation, only limited by the fact that one of its members died in the -insurrection of 1832. The young men who composed the _cénacle_ bore upon -their brow the "seal of special genius." Daniel d'Arthez, upon whom -since the death of their leader, the great mystic, Louis Lambert, the -mantle had fallen, was a monarchist of noble family, destined to become -the greatest writer of the future; Horace Bianchon, the flower of -doctors, a materialist of perfect charity and profound science; Léon -Giraud, a humanitarian philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a great painter with -"the line of Rome and the colour of Venice"; Fulgence Ridal, a sceptic, -a cynic, and the wittiest playwright of his time; Meyraux, a scientist; -and Michel Chrestien, a red republican who was killed in the Cloître -Saint-Merri. They were not ascetics by profession: d'Arthez, for -instance, was the last lover of the Diane, the Princesse de Cadignan, in -the days of his later glory; Bridau's art was affected by his love -affairs; Chrestien was "plein d'illusions et d'amour." They were like -the "saints" of the early Christian Church, each going his own way, but -true helpers one of another, true champions and honest critics. They -were without vanity or envy, having a profound esteem for one another, -with a consciousness of their own worth. "Their great external misery -and the splendour of their intellectual wealth produced a singular -contrast. In their society nobody thought of the realities of life -except as subjects for friendly pleasantries.... The sufferings of -poverty, when they made themselves felt, were so gaily borne, accepted -with such ardour by all, that they did nothing to alter the particular -serenity which marks the faces of young men free from grave faults, who -have not lost part of themselves in any of those low traffickings which -are forced upon men by poverty ill supported, by the desire to get on -without any choice of means, and by the facile complacency with which -men of letters welcome or pardon betrayals.... These young men were sure -of themselves: the enemy of one became the enemy of all, and they would -have abandoned their most urgent interests to obey the sacred solidarity -of their hearts. All incapable of a mean action, they could oppose a -formidable 'no' to every accusation, and defend one another with -security. Equally high-minded and equally matched in matters of -sensibility, they could think and speak all their mind in the domain of -science and intelligence; thence came the innocence of their -intercourse, the gaiety of their talk. Sure of mutual understanding, -their minds digressed at their ease; and they stood on no ceremony among -themselves, confided in each other their sorrows and their joys, -pondered and suffered with open hearts." I need speak no further of this -imaginary _cénacle_, for "Illusions Perdues" is widely known. It is one -of those wonderful fantasies that one feels were lovingly cherished by -Balzac, at once his darling dreams and his disappointments. He had a -passionate desire to express the beautiful, and he was denied that gift. -The lights dance before his eyes, and his very language becomes confused -and turgid when he deserts reality. It may safely be said that in the -real _Bohème_ there was no such goodly company of industrious, gifted, -morally austere, intellectually gay, unselfish young men, and that there -never will be in any society till the coming of the Coquecigrues. - -The Bohemia of artistic tradition began in what Théophile Gautier named -the "second _cénacle_." The first _cénacle_, as all the world knows, was -that of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the brothers Deschamps, who met -regularly at the _cabaret_ of Mère Saguet on Montparnasse in the days -when Hugo was still hatching the plot of the literary revolution. To -trace to them the origins of Bohemia would be an error, for they never -had any part or lot in Bohemianism. They were young, it is true, and -depended upon their art for a living, but the fact that they were -nothing but a small _coterie_ of earnest poets, more akin to the band of -d'Arthez than the friends of Rodolphe, depends upon two things, their -time and their outlook. The first _cénacle_ came into existence about -1822, when the throne of the Bourbons seemed solid and royalism went -hand in hand with classicism. No standard of insurrection, civic or -literary, had yet been raised; the victory was yet to come, and it would -have been madness, before the campaign was fully planned or the army -gathered, for the chiefs to have aped the style of victors. The -merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without -support as they were. Defiance of the _bourgeois_, an absolute essential -of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first -_cénacle_, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while -secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by -which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense -moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, -was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made -itself conspicuous. To strike a more human note in poetry was their -chief aim: they were concerned with art rather than with life itself; -and though Hugo, in the privacy of his room, doffed with relief that -_bourgeois_ symbol, the high linen collar, he was like a general in his -tent drawing up that transcendental plan of operations, the preface to -"Cromwell," which was to inspire his troops in their pioneering and -shooting, in their whole bodily attack on the classic tradition. As the -classic tradition was embodied not only in literature, in contemporary -journalism, in professional lectures, but in the social life of all -staid citizens as well, the Romantic troops, passionate and fundamental -as their literary enthusiasm was, were forced to make social life the -field of their assault, all the more because, being poor, young, and -unknown, they were unable to inflict such palpable wounds with pen or -brush as they could by making a violent protest in every detail of the -ordinary way of living. By outraging the accepted standards of decency -in dress, in speech, and in demeanour, they made their presence daily -felt, and where their presence was felt their ideals were made -ostensible. Their tactics, after the event, may be blamed, the effect -they produced was, no doubt, smaller than they imagined, but the fact -remains that la _vie de Bohème_ began neither as a retreat for higher -souls nor as a means for reckless self-indulgence, but as a definite -method of drawing attention to a new and important artistic creed. For -the greater exponents of this creed, a Hugo or a Delacroix, such a -material protest would have been out of place; it would have detracted -even from the effect produced by their great works of art. Only the rank -and file, to whom supreme personal achievement was impossible, collected -and commonly inspired, as I have already pointed out, under special -historical and social conditions, were justified in adopting the -measures that were best suited to their purpose. Their purpose was as -temporary as their conditions; their device, _épater le bourgeois_, has -now become a hollow phrase, but it meant then the rousing of every -shopkeeper, every _garçon de café_, as well as the cultured reader of -current literature, to the sense that art was alive again. This was the -aim of the second _cénacle_, the first Bohemians. They were successful, -and they were necessary. - -The second _cénacle_ was not a formal organization, so that no definite -date can be fixed for its institution. Its members probably came -together in the same haphazard way as the small bands of friends at a -public school or university, crystallizing so imperceptibly that the -moment of incorporation baffles memory, and often so firmly that death -alone is their solvent. Théophile Gautier, in his fragmentary "Histoire -du Romantisme," has given the fullest details of the _cénacle's_ -existence, yet neither he nor his biographer, Maxime du Camp, make it -clear whether it was formed prior or posterior to the famous first night -of "Hernani" in February of 1830. Gautier, no doubt, had forgotten, but -it seems fairly safe to assume that if preliminary acquaintance was -already made between some of its members before that time, the stormy -nights of February strengthened the bond and made the association -compact. The story of "Hernani," with the red waistcoat, _vieil as de -pique_, and other trimmings, has so often been told, even in English, -that it may seem unnecessary to traverse such well-trodden ground; but a -historian has no business to take anything for granted, so that -"Hernani" can be no more justly omitted here than Waterloo from any work -upon Napoleon. It was part of Victor Hugo's agreement with the Théâtre -Français that a number of seats should be at his disposal each night, -and that the holders of the tickets should be admitted some time before -the ordinary public. These were the trenches into which his army of -young men were thrown. Minor officers were entrusted with the task of -bringing the men to the rendezvous, Jules Vabre, an architect, being -responsible for a hundred and fifty men, and Célestin Nanteuil for -almost as large a number. Gérard de Nerval, whose translation of -Goethe's "Faust," published in 1828 (when he was only nineteen), had -brought him considerable fame in Romantic circles, had known Gautier, -who was two years his junior, at the Collège Charlemagne. This amiable -essayist, whom Gautier likened more than once to a swallow, flitting -always in and out among his friends, was not forgetful of his young -friend in the days of recruiting. Gautier was at that time studying -painting in the studio of Rioult, whither Gérard de Nerval made one day -a swallow-like dart and produced six tickets marked with the single but -thrilling word _Hierro_, the Spanish for "iron." According to Maxime du -Camp he gave these to Gautier with the words: - -"Tu réponds de tes hommes?" - -To him replied Gautier: "Par le crâne dans lequel Byron buvait à -l'Abbaye de Newstead, j'en réponds. N'est-ce pas, vous autres?" - -"Mort aux perruques!" resounded in answer through the studio, and Gérard -flitted away content. - -Gautier, who was a little better provided with worldly goods than some -of the Romantic army, then set about devising a costume that should -strike death into the heart of the _perruques_. With extreme care he cut -out a pattern of a medieval _pourpoint_--a buttonless waistcoat coming -right up to the collar-bone, and fastening with laces behind like the -uniform of Saint-Simon's disciples, which symbolized mutual assistance, -because no Saint-Simonian could truss his own points. His Gascon -tailor's professional objections were overruled, even though the -material chosen was a gorgeous silk coloured a Chinese vermilion, and -the garment was made as desired: to it were added a pair of light -greenish-grey trousers with a broad stripe of black down each seam, a -black coat with ample _revers_ of velvet, and a flowing cravat. It was -indeed a devastating sight, and one that deservedly became famous. In -this fervent spirit was the battle waged over "Hernani"; for thirty -consecutive performances the trenches were manfully filled and a -fusillade of cheers poured forth at every touch of romantic colour, -every bold _enjambement_, every defiance of classic circumlocution, and, -above all, every sign of disapprobation on the part of those they rudely -styled "wigs" and "bald pates." The battlefield was often a pandemonium, -but the result was victory. The Théâtre Français, the very home of -Molière, was successfully carried by the Romantic assault. Gautier had -magnificently won his spurs, and shortly afterwards he was introduced by -Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel to the great hero himself, an ordeal -which caused him so much trepidation that he sat for over an hour on the -stairs with his two sponsors before he could pluck up courage to -proceed. His fears, however, soon vanished after a cordial reception, -and as his parents were then living next door to Hugo in the splendid -old Place Royale, he soon became the most constant page and attendant of -the poet, for whom he preserved a lifelong devotion. - -These were the days of the second _cénacle_, for "Hernani" was the -Hegira of _la vie de Bohème_. During the long waits in the empty -theatre, the passionate mornings of preparation, the fiery reunions -after the curtain had fallen, a set of the most ardent Hugo-worshippers -had found their affinities. They did not indeed live together--some -were dutifully under the parental roof, some had hardly a roof to their -heads, one at least was supporting a mother and sister by daily work in -a government office--but they formed the habit of meeting and spending -many hours of the day and night together and the meeting-place was -either the studio of a young sculptor, Jehan du Seigneur, or the sanded -parlour of the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, in the _rond-point_ of the Arc de -Triomphe. Their names were Pétrus Borel, Joseph Bouchardy, Philothée -O'Neddy, Alphonse Brot, Augustus Mackeat, Jules Vabre, Napoléon Thom, -Jehan du Seigneur, Léon Clopet, Célestin Nanteuil, Théophile Gautier, -and Gérard de Nerval. It is almost needless to say that some of the -names are Gothic transformations in the Romantic fashion. Pétrus Borel -was, of course, christened Pierre, as du Seigneur was christened Jean by -his parents; while Philothée O'Neddy and Augustus Mackeat conceal the -persons of Théophile Dondey and Auguste Maquet. But names in _-us_ or -Celtic patronymics were all the rage, and even Gautier was called -Albertus after his poem of that name published in 1832. A curious -feature about the group was that, though it existed to champion the -cause of Romantic poetry, the only pure man of letters was Gérard de -Nerval. Of the rest, Borel, formerly an architect, was learning to draw -in Dévéria's studio, Thom and Nanteuil were artists, Gautier and -Bouchardy studying art, du Seigneur a sculptor, Clopet and Vabre -architects; O'Neddy and Brot, indeed, were professed poets, but in no -less an embryonic stage than some of the others who afterwards found in -the pen their most successful tool. "This mixture of art in poetry," -says Gautier, "was and has remained one of the characteristic signs of -the new school, and makes it clear why the first adepts were recruited -rather among the artists than among the men of letters. A multitude of -objects, images, and comparisons which were thought to be irreducible to -the written word were introduced into the language and have stayed -there."[17] - -[Illustration: Pétrus Borel] - -The one whom Gautier called the _individualité pivotale_ of the group, -though Philothée O'Neddy in after years denied that he had more -influence than Gautier, Gérard, or Bouchardy, was Pétrus Borel, Le -Lycanthrope as he subsequently named himself. His full name was Pierre -Borel d'Hauterive, and he was born in Lyons in 1809. His father, -captured by the revolutionaries in 1792 and then liberated, fled to -Switzerland, whence he returned to Paris, a ruined man, to earn what he -could by keeping a shop. At the age of fifteen Pierre was apprenticed to -an architect, and in 1829 he set up on his own account without much -success. He and Jules Vabre became associated, and so poor were they -that they used to use the cellars of the houses on which they were -engaged as their dwelling-place. Gautier recalled visiting them once in -the cellar of a house in the Rue Fontaine-du-Roi, where they were -preparing their frugal meal of potatoes baked in the ashes. "Ah," said -Vabre with pride, "but we have salt on Sundays." Borel's ideas were too -Gothically fantastic for his _bourgeois_ clients, and, after a violent -dispute over his fourth commission, he ordered the half-finished -building to be demolished, and gave up for ever an ungrateful -profession,[18] betaking himself for a season to the study of painting, -and writing the while those poems animated by a haughty bitterness which -were published under the title of "Rhapsodies." They are dedicated and -addressed to the members of the second _cénacle_, among whom he enjoyed -an enormous reputation. He was for them the poet of the future, before -whom Hugo would crumble to dust. Alas! for youthful predictions; thirty -years later Gautier, the most loyal of Romantics, was forced to exclaim: -"Dire que j'ai cru à Pétrus!"[19] He exercised over the group, in fact, -a kind of unconscious hypnotism. His slightly superior age, his strange, -rough, paradoxical eloquence, and, above all, his picturesque appearance -imposed on them all. Their ideal was to have an _allure fatale_, a -sombre complexion and haughty, Byronic mien. Borel realized it. He -looked like a Castilian nobleman out of a Velasquez picture, says -Gautier, with his "young and serious face, of perfect regularity, an -olive skin gilded with light shades of amber, lit up by great, shining -eyes, sad as those of Abencerrages thinking of Granada," his bright red -lip which shone under his moustache, "one spark of life in that mask of -Oriental immobility," and his fine, full, silky beard perfumed and -tended like that of a sultan, at a time when to wear a beard in Paris -was an outrage to public decency. He was clothed in black, wearing a -high Robespierre waistcoat and draping a long black cloak around him -with an air of studied mystery. How could the younger men, whose beards -refused to grow, not believe in such a perfect symbol, so magnificently -scornful, so profoundly fatal? He was the most republican, too, of them -all, the typical _Bousingot_ of the _bourgeois_ Press, though fanatical -republicanism was not, as Philothée O'Neddy afterwards protested in a -letter to Charles Asselineau, their representative opinion. Gérard had -no political opinions at all, Gautier was obstinately _Jeune-France_, -and the others only dreamt of a social Utopia in which æstheticism -should replace religion, or of some humanitarian millennium after the -manner of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Borel, however, held society in -complete disgust, as he showed when he left the gathering at Jehan du -Seigneur's, and proceeded one summer to live with some followers on the -slopes of Montmartre, all naked as savages, till the landlord drove them -out at the price of his porter's lodge, which they burnt down in -revenge. - -None of the others were quite so remarkably individual as Pétrus Borel, -whose character may be described as Jules Claretie describes his book of -extravagant stories, "Champavert": "doubt, negation, bitterness, anger, -something at the same time furious and comic." Vabre, his partner in -architecture, had fair hair and moustaches, without any extravagance in -his bearing, but his face twinkled all over with malice and his -conversation was madly Rabelaisian. He projected a famous book that was -never written, "Sur l'Incommodité des Commodes." An intense love for -Shakespeare was his chief Romantic asset. According to Gautier he gave -up his later life to studying our language in England that he might make -the perfect translation, a task which was never completed. Joseph -Bouchardy, who afterwards became a very successful writer of melodrama, -was then learning engraving. He, too, was dark, so dark that with the -soft, sparse beard that just fringed his face he looked an Indian, and -was nicknamed the Maharajah of Lahore. He was less poetry-mad than the -rest, but eternally occupied with dramatic scenarios in which all the -secret passages, trap-doors, and sliding panels of a novel by Mrs. -Radcliffe were brought into play. Jehan du Seigneur, who made medallions -of all his friends, was a gentle, modest youth with a very -pink-and-white complexion which was his everlasting despair. To atone -for this unavoidable defection from Romantic ideals, he wore a black -velvet _pourpoint_, a black jacket with broad velvet _revers_, and a -voluminous necktie, so that not a speck of white linen was shown, a -"suprème élégance romantique," as Gautier remarks. Augustus Mackeat was -chiefly conspicuous for the happy transformation of his name, though he -returned to the orthodox Maquet when he became a successful playwright. -His disguise, however, was nothing to the tremendous anagram which -turned Théophile Dondey into Philothée O'Neddy. He, says Gautier, was -dark as a mulatto with fair, curly hair. Though he was helping to -support a mother and sister by working in a government office, this -Philistine occupation did not prevent him from being one of the most -frenzied of the gang, a "paroxyst" _ruisselant d'inouïsme_. In 1833 he -published a collection of ultra-romantic poems called "Feu et Flamme," -which reek with passion, despair, scorn, suicide, and contempt for -Christianity. Yet he lived till 1872, and though he published nothing -more, he left a collection of posthumous poems all of which breathe an -extreme melancholy. In the letter written to Asselineau ten years before -his death he admitted that in the days of the _cénacle_ he had "une -bonne grosse somme d'extravagance et de mauvais goût," but protested -warmly against the application to them of the epithet "ridiculous." -"Risible" they might have been, but only the _bourgeois_ were -"ridiculous." Célestin Nanteuil was big, fair, gentle, and so perfectly -medieval that Gautier caricatured him as Elie Wildman-stadius, the hero -of one of his _Jeune-France_ stories, who lived in a Gothic manor on -medieval fare, read nothing but medieval illuminated manuscripts, and -was killed when the Gothic cathedral, his sole external joy, was struck -by lightning. Gautier describes him personally as having the appearance -of "one of those long angels bearing censers or playing sambucs that -live in the gables of cathedrals, who has come down into the city in the -midst of the busy burgesses, keeping his nimbus all the while at the -back of his head like a hat, but without the least suspicion that it is -not natural to wear one's aureole in the street." He was a furious -Hernanist in 1830 (he was then only seventeen), and called "the -Captain," for leading the army to the fray. In 1843, when he was asked -to bring three hundred young men to support "Les Burgraves" in the same -manner, he sadly said: "Tell the master there are no more young men." He -might, says Maxime du Camp, have been a great painter, but he was -compelled to live by illustrating. Whenever he had made a little money -in this way he returned to his colours and his easel till it was -exhausted. He ended in the obscurity of Dijon, becoming the director of -its school of art. - -[Illustration: Célestin Nanteuil] - -Maxime du Camp compares Nanteuil's fate to that of Gautier, who was -forced by circumstances to waste so much of his talent in mere -journalism; but in 1830 Gautier, a young man of nineteen, who made long -hair serve instead of a beard, was still free as air. In that year he -brought out a little volume of poems, and a year or two later produced -the fantastic "Albertus," which he followed with "Les Jeune-France." His -art studies had soon ceased because he discovered that he suffered from -short sight, and we may regard him in the days of the _cénacle_ as a -poet pure and simple. One figure remains to be filled in, the most -pathetic of all the Romantic band, Gérard de Nerval. He was born in -1808, the son of a Doctor Labrunie--the family name of de Nerval was -only assumed by him when he began to write. His youth was spent in the -pleasant country of the Valois, and he received a very careful education -from his father, who taught him not only Latin and Greek, but German, -Italian, and the rudiments of Arabic and Persian. Even in his early days -he was an eager reader of mystics and utopists, which gave that first -fantastical turn to his brain which ended later in complete madness. His -development was normal at first. At the Collège Charlemagne he was the -snapper-up of every prize, and produced some quite worthless poetry in -praise of Napoleon that won high approval from his professors. He -followed this by a satire on the Academy, which appeared in 1826, and in -1828 he produced an ode to Béranger of a style to which his Romantic -friends could only have applied the new epithet _poncif_. The -translation of "Faust," which earned a very high compliment from the -great Goethe himself, turned him into his appropriate path and gave him -a serious literary reputation which he never lost. He translated other -fragments of German poetry, and wrote for the _Mercure de France_, of -which Pierre Lacroix, the "Bibliophile Jacob," was then the editor. His -adoption of a literary career was a grave disappointment to his father, -who had hoped to make a good official of him, and it is probable that -parental coldness first caused him to find a congenial asylum in the new -Bohemia, of which he was never a typical inhabitant. When he came of age -he inherited his mother's dowry, which made the actual earning of money -immaterial to him. His success with "Faust" had brought him into touch -with Hugo, so that after the days of "Hernani" he held in the _cénacle_ -the most distinguished, if not the most influential, position as a -lieutenant of their demi-god, with notable achievements in the field of -letters already to his credit. - -Gérard threw in his lot with the _cénacle_, but, though he even wrote -some revolutionary poems in 1830, for which he was imprisoned in Sainte -Pélagie, he was never quite at ease with Borel and the _Bousingot_ -faction. The flamboyant side of Romanticism and its noisy gatherings had -little appeal for him. He was an eccentric and a solitary by nature, as -his writings, with their strong reminiscence of Heine, show. In the time -of the _cénacle_ he was, according to Gautier, a gentle and modest young -man, who blushed like a girl, with a pink-and-white complexion and -soft, grey eyes. Under his fine, light golden hair his forehead, -beautifully shaped, shone like polished ivory. He was usually dressed in -a black frock-coat with enormous pockets, in which, like Murger's -Colline, he buried a whole library of books picked up on the _quais_, -five or six notebooks, and a large collection of scraps of paper on -which he wrote down the ideas that occurred to him on his long walks. He -was the perfect peripatetic: as he once said, he would have liked to -walk through life unrolling an endless roll of paper on which he could -jot his reflections. He lived at this time with Camille Rogier, the -artist, in the Rue des Beaux Arts, but his friends could never be sure -where to find him. For him no hour was sacred to rest. He wandered about -Paris at all times of the day and night, dropping in on a friend for an -hour or two, ready to ride a hobby-horse with him in any direction, then -darting off again, his thoughts in the clouds, nobody knew whither, and -returning in the small hours, only to flit from his bed at the dawn. Of -all the gay companions of Bohemia he was the best loved, for his -childlike simplicity and his gentle manners won all hearts. He went -through life to his terrible death with complete unworldliness, almost -like a ghost, unconscious of the material side of existence, directing -his feet only by the light of his spirit. Gautier, writing after his -death, protested vehemently that his was no ordinary tragedy of -neglected genius; he had money enough, but money was nothing to him, so -he spent it without a thought; his work was always accepted by editors, -and his plays, though not successful, were all produced. But success was -the last of his preoccupations. He was a wanderer living in a world of -his own fantasies. As he will appear again in these pages, we may bid -him farewell for the moment, with the conviction that it would be -pleasant to be transported for a season back to that turbulent _vie de -Bohème_ if only to find the kindly Gérard's arm passed through one's own -and to hear his gentle murmur: "Tu as une fantaisie; je la promènerai -avec toi." - -I ought, perhaps, to apologize for allowing the persons of the _cénacle_ -to take up so much space before coming to their life, yet I imagine, on -the whole, that I have said too little rather than too much. To go back -to a past of which one has no experience is a matter of such extreme -difficulty that a historian must often despair at the impossibility of -reproducing the whole congeries of scattered detail from which alone his -own mental picture could have taken shape. The first Bohemia, that of -the second _cénacle_, was less a common life than a common recreation. -It was an incomplete _vie de Bohème_ in so far as its members were -united, not by a desire to share all the joys and difficulties of life, -but by a particular artistic enthusiasm. There is no record that any of -them worked or dwelt together, that they took part in joint expeditions -of amusement, or that the mutual acquaintance of those female -divinities for whom they plied so "fatally" their emotional bellows is -to be presumed--and these are marked characteristics of Murger's _vie de -Bohème_. When they ate together it was at the obscure _cabaret_ kept by -the Neapolitan Graziano for the needs of his compatriots who worked in -Paris. Here, in a plain whitewashed room with a sanded floor, a dresser -covered with violently coloured faience and plain wooden benches, they -were initiated by their host--a man of senatorial presence, with an -immense but perfectly correct nose and big black beard, who seemed to -dream all the while of his beloved Italy--into the delights of -_spaghetti_, _stufato_, _tagliarini_, and _gnocchi_. They were delicious -meals, seasoned with good spirits, and--to use the delightful French -phrase--"bedewed" with sound wine of Argenteuil or Suresnes christened -magnificently with the names of the most exclusive vineyards in Médoc or -Burgundy. Still, they were felt at times to be a trifle wanting in -Romantic glamour. It was all very well, the grumblers remarked, to be -enjoying incomparable macaroni, but when all was said and done there was -little that an impartial observer could descry in these banquets to -differentiate them from the prosaic meals of a Joseph Prudhomme. -Something was wanting, some tincture of the Newstead spirit, some -infernal joy in the food, some shudder in the drinking. The macaroni -remained obstinately matter-of-fact, but a brilliant idea was mooted -that would give a charnel flavour to the wine. Graziano's glasses were -only glasses of quite modern exiguousness; the true brotherhood should -drink out of a skull. A skull was accordingly procured by Gérard from -his father, the doctor, and ingeniously mounted by Gautier, who screwed -to its side an old brass handle from a chest of drawers. In truth it was -a noble bowl, and the pious company drank from it with bravado, each -concealing with more or less ill-success his natural repugnance. -Familiarity, however, bred contempt, till one uncompromising youth -surprised his companions by noisily commanding the waiter to fill with -sea-water. - -"Why sea-water?" exclaimed a simple soul. - -"Why sea-water! Because the master in 'Hans d'Islande' says 'he drank -the water of the sea from the skulls of the dead.' It is my desire to do -the same." - -Yes, the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, for all its good cheer and its -death's-head mounted with a drawer-handle, was too workaday for these -eclectics. They reached their true glory only in the gatherings which -took place in Jehan du Seigneur's studio. It was a room over a little -fruiterer's shop that the _cénacle_ sanctified as their conventicle. "In -a little chamber," wrote an older Gautier, "which had not seats enough -for all its occupants, gathered the young men, really young and -different in that respect from the _young_ men of to-day, who are all -more or less quinquagenarians. The hammock in which the master of the -dwelling took his siesta, the narrow couchlet in which the dawn often -surprised him at the last page of a book of verses, eked out the -insufficiency of conveniences for conversation. One really talked better -standing up, and the gestures of the orator or declaimer only gained a -more ample scope. Still, it was extremely unwise to make too free with -your arms for fear of knocking your knuckles against the sloping -ceiling." It was a poor man's room, but not without ornament, for it -contained sketches by the two Dévérias, a head after Titian or Giorgione -by Boulanger, two earthenware vases full of flowers on the chimneypiece, -the inevitable death's-head instead of a clock, a looking-glass, and a -small shelf of books. On either side of the glass and in the embrasures -of the windows were hung the portrait medallions which Jehan made of his -friends. They had no money to get them cast in bronze, so the world has -lost in them a valuable appendix to the well-known busts of his -contemporaries executed by the more distinguished Romantic sculptor, -David d'Angers. Here they would all gather of an evening: Gérard if he -happened to be passing in his amiable wanderings, Bouchardy the -Maharajah, Gautier--not yet the burly critic of _La Presse_, but a thin -youth of nineteen--Nanteuil with his Gothic nimbus, Vabre bursting with -some new joke, Borel swinging off his long cloak with a scowl, O'Neddy -shedding Dondey in the street, Mackeat and the rest, each bursting with -eloquence or roaring the "Chasse du Burgrave" at the top of his voice. -When Maxime du Camp once asked Gautier what they talked about, he -answered: "About everything, but I haven't the least idea what they -said, because everybody talked at once." However, a very good idea of a -typical evening in the _cénacle_ is given in Philothée O'Neddy's "Feu et -Flamme," the first poem in which, called "Pandæmonium," is a gorgeous -description of their cave of harmony. It is freely decorated with "local -colour," which on a Romantic's lips meant the borrowing of all he could -carry away from the medieval stage-property room, but it was drawn from -life with all seriousness and sincerity. The poem opens by depicting -them all seated round the punch-bowl--punch, it must be stated, was the -only really respectable drink for a thorough-paced Romantic. He mixed it -in a large bowl and set light to the fumes, as the students are supposed -to do in the first act of the "Contes d'Hoffmann," and derived enormous -satisfaction from sitting in an obscurity only lit by this bluish flame. -Thus to recall the witches' cauldron and the fires of the Inferno had an -unfailing success as a stimulant to eloquence. The scene, then, opens -thus powerfully: - - _Au centre de la salle, autour d'une urne en fer,_ - _Digne émule en largeur des coupes d'enfer,_ - _Dans laquelle un beau punch, aux prismatiques flammes,_ - _Semble un lac sulfureux qui fait houler ses lames,_ - _Vingt jeunes hommes, tous artistes dans le cÅ“ur,_ - _La pipe ou le cigare aux lèvres, l'Å“il moqueur,_ - _Le temporal orné du bonnet de Phrygie,_ - _En barbe Jeune-France, en costume d'orgie,_ - _Sont pachalesquement jetés sur un amas_ - _De coussins dont maint siècle a troué le damas,_ - _Et le sombre atelier n'a point d'éclairage_ - _Que la gerbe du punch, spiritueux mirage._ - -Smoking, it would be well to add, was considered part of the whole duty -of a Romantic man. The cigar, being Byronic, was affected by the -"fatally" inclined; the pipe came, not from England, but from Germany; -it was Faust-like, Hoffmannesque; it was also Flemish, of course, and -the Flemish painters, like Steen and Teniers, were in high repute. A -pipe signified a more jolly potatory spirit than a cigar, but it was -always possible for the irreconcilable satanics to regard the breathing -out of smoke from either as symbolically demoniac. The cigarette was not -despised, but its popularity was due also to its picturesque -associations. Spain was the home of the cigarette, the _papelito_ as -Borel and his friends fondly called it. When they rolled their fragrant -Maryland lovingly in the _papel_ they assumed a Spanish _allure_, -Granada rose before their eyes, and invisible guitars played "Avez-vous -vu dans Barcelone?" However, cigarettes would have been out of place in -the prismatic flames of the punch-bowl. Their Spanish nonchalance suited -better the light of day: evening shadows were consecrated to gloom and -frenzy, Northern spirits. Hence it is not surprising to hear that all -the company had - - _De haine virulente et de pitié morose_ - _Contre la bourgeoisie et le Code et la prose;_ - _Des cÅ“urs ne dépensant leur exultation_ - _Que pour deux vérités, l'art et la passion!_ - -The conversation is compared with some aptitude to a Spanish town -devastated by an earthquake, which confounds in one ruin palaces and -huts, churches and houses of ill-fame. So in their talk the ideal and -the grotesque, poetry and cynical jesting are confounded pell-mell. -Silence is made while a passage from Victor Hugo is declaimed, after -which four discourses are pronounced. Three are by Borel, Clopet, and -Bouchardy respectively, concealed in the names of Reblo, Noel, and Don -José, and the second discourse is delivered by the swarthy O'Neddy -himself, who, - - _Faisant osciller son regard de maudit_ - _Sur le conventicule,_ - -pours out a passionate complaint that poets have too long been under the -yoke of governments and codes of law. The evening closes with a violent -tumult. The punch has done its work, and the _cénacle_ is a-screaming -with the ecstasy of energumens. - - _Ce fut un long chaos de jurons, de boutades,_ - _De hurrahs, de tollés et de rhodomontades._ - -They danced and sang like the demon crew in the master's "Ronde du -Sabbat," - - _Et jusques au matin les damnés Jeune-Frances_ - _Nagèrent dans un flux d'indicibles démences._ - -It is to be hoped that the worthy fruiterer was sleeping quietly in -another part of Paris, and only the potatoes were kept awake and sleep -banished from the pears. - -If at this point our reader feels inclined to throw up his hands and -exclaim "How disgusting!" he will be well advised to put down the book. -One cannot approach Bohemia without a certain sympathy for youthful -excesses, howsoever opposed they may be to one's personal predilections. -If the _cénacle_ indulged in occasional orgies--which, even allowing a -good deal for "local colour" in O'Neddy's "Pandæmonium," they certainly -did--they had a great many compensating virtues, such as complete -disinterestedness and a consuming love of art, which were not -conspicuous in Paris at the time. Maxime du Camp in his memoir on -Gautier sets the extreme limit to which reasonable criticism of them -can go when, after remarking on the promise given by a violent youth for -a fruitful middle age, he says: - - "From that should we conclude that the young men who composed the - _cénacle_ were all destined to become great men? Certainly not; - there were among them dreamers with illusions about themselves, - sterile dupes of the comedy that they played, failures in whose - case the brilliant future which they promised themselves fell - naturally into obscurity. To more than one of them the saying of - Rivarol could have been applied: 'It is a terrible advantage never - to have done anything, but it should not be abused.' In short, only - one of them has made a name that will not perish: Théophile - Gautier. Gérard de Nerval, by whom he had been distanced at the - beginning of his life, never passed a very moderate level, did not - push his way in the crowd, and came early to grief. On the other - hand, most of them were celebrated in the group, I might say in the - _coterie_, to which they belonged, but their reputation never went - beyond the circle in which they lived." - -Maxime du Camp takes a very superior point of view which is less than -just. The members of the _cénacle_, it may be admitted, overrated one -another's talents and were ready, in some instances, to take posturing -for performance; but Bohemia is not to be blamed because all her -children were not great men any more than Eton because all her _alumni_ -are not scholars. As a matter of fact, in this first Bohemia of the -_cénacle_ there were very few of whom it could be said that their lives -were ruined. Gérard died a violent death, but he was afflicted with -mental disease. Apart from his eccentricity he was a scholar and a -gentleman whose attainments equalled those of Gautier himself, though he -could not bring himself to exploit them. Pétrus Borel was the one real -failure, the _poseur_ who inevitably came to grief. His Bohemian career -reached its apogee at his masked ball in 1832--a caricature of Dumas' -own famous ball--held at his lodgings in the Rue d'Enfer, an appropriate -address. He left Paris shortly afterwards, and, after earning for some -years a precarious livelihood and publishing "Madame Putiphar," he -became an inspector of Mostaganem, in Algeria, in which country he died -wretchedly. The rest, though they did not quite achieve their proud -dreams, continued, most of them, in the paths of art with rectitude and -some success, Bouchardy and Maquet as dramatists, du Seigneur as a -sculptor, Nanteuil as an artist. O'Neddy, once the _cénacle_ dissolved, -as it did towards 1833, found poetry a resource in solitude, and poor -Vabre, if he made no figure in the world, at least set himself the -highest of ideals in devoting his life to the study of Shakespeare. - -The first Bohemia, for what that is worth, was singularly respectable in -its results. Even had they been far worse, sufficient praise to stifle -carping would be found in the indelibly beautiful memory which it left -on the minds of its members. In 1857 Bouchardy wrote of it to Gautier in -these words: - - "It was a holy and beautiful comradeship, my dear Théo, in which - each was the loving brother, the devoted friend, the - fellow-traveller who makes his friend forget the length and the - fatigue of the road. It was a more beautiful comradeship than one - can say, in which all wished the success of all without insensate - exaggeration and without collective vanity, in which each of us - offered to lend his shoulder to the foot of him who wished to climb - and to reach his goal.... It was a happy time, dear Théophile, of - which we ought to be proud, for when one has traversed this life so - often saddened by so much bitterness, we ought to be proud of - having found in it some hours of joy, we ought to boast of having - been happy!" - -Even Maxime du Camp admits that the effect of the _cénacle_ on Gautier -was incalculable: its disinterested friendship and its enthusiasm made -his individuality. All his life he remained "the mystic companion of -Victor Hugo's first disciples." Weighed down in after years by the -irksome tasks of journalism, the slave who remembered his years of -freedom with regret, he responded to Bouchardy with tender melancholy -from beside the rivers of Babylon: - - "No doubt such joy could not last. To be young and intelligent, to - love one another, to understand and commune in every realm of - art--a more beautiful manner of life could not be conceived, and - from the eyes of all those who followed it its dazzling splendour - has never been obliterated." - -At another time he wrote to Sainte-Beuve: "Nous étions ivres du beau, -nous avons eu la sublime folie de l'art." - -These words, issuing from a soul ever animated during its days on earth -by a Bohemian spirit, cast a protecting spell round the memory of the -first Bohemian brotherhood through which no Philistine anathemas can -break. - - - - -VIII - -LA BOHÈME GALANTE - - _O le beau temps passé! Nous avions la science,_ - _La science de vivre avec insouciance;_ - _La gaieté rayonnait en nos esprits moqueurs,_ - _Et l'Amour écrivait des livres dans nos cÅ“urs!_ - - ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE - - -The _cénacle_ broke up towards 1833 and its members scattered. All -Bohemian _coteries_ must be short-lived, but this one was specially -doomed to a quick dissolution. It was, I will not say too romantic, but -too romantically ritualistic, too much concerned with the vestments and -incense and celebrations incident to the profession of "Hugolâtry." It -is not hard to imagine how the too mystic significance given to its -gatherings, its feasts, and even its individual actions became to some -of the brethren, now that Romanticism was firmly established, either -unreal or merely tiresome: divergences of taste and opinion began to -creep in till, in the end, this attempted Bohemia became a deserted -shrine. But the Bohemian spirit could not thus be quenched; indeed, it -was only then fully kindled. The deacons and acolytes, whom the mere -symbolism had mainly attracted, were gone; paid off the Swiss Guard -whom the return of peace called back to civil life. Those who remained, -the most advanced of the initiated, saw that the time had come for the -casting away of symbols and the cessation of noisy worship. Bohemia had -originated in a literary creed, but in its consummation it was to pass -beyond the letter and take hold of human life. This consummation came -with extraordinary rapidity; there were no feeble tentatives, no -half-successes. A new community arose in Paris, almost out of the ashes -of the _cénacle_, vastly different though it was from the obscure group -in Jehan du Seigneur's humble studio. It was animated by all that was -best in Romanticism--its disregard for academic convention, its colour, -its joyousness, its warmth of feeling, and its sympathy with all human -passions; but, unlike the _cénacle_, it did not trammel itself with -Romantic convention, it set creation above imitation, and--greatest of -all differences--it was no society meeting at intervals for spiritual -and corporeal refreshment, but a genuine life in common lived just for -the sake of living by a set of high-spirited, joyous young men, most of -them true artists, neither maniacs, nor ne'er-do-wells, nor idlers. The -_cénacle_ was dead, but _la vie de Bohème_ was born, and its golden age -came first. The brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné was, in A. -Delvau's words, "une Bohème dorée, avec laquelle celle de Schaunard n'a -que des rapports très éloignés."[20] Delvau, who was of Murger's -generation, knew well how quickly the glory departed. Yet at least -Murger's Bohemians had this connexion with what Gérard de Nerval named -_la Bohème galante_ that they could look back to it as the Romans to the -reign of Saturn. It was constituted informally, even fortuitously; it -existed without self-advertisement, but it remained, in the phrase of -another French writer, "la patrie de toutes les Bohèmes littéraires." - -In 1832 another Bohemian of the golden age had come to Paris, a brave -and merry soul called Arsène Houssaye, who had only breathed this -terrestrial atmosphere for seventeen years. It was not to champion a -cause that he came, but he was called thither by the poet within him to -take his part in infusing a new vitality into life and letters. Like -Gautier, he was a natural _enfant de Bohème_, yet did not at first find -the brotherhood which he was to hymn in prose and verse; it was still -only a potentiality. For a few months he lived in an odd little Bohemia -of his own with a friend called Van dell Hell in a _hôtel garni_. They -wrote songs for a living, wore the red hats by which the more violent -students of the Quartier Latin proclaimed their republicanism, and -consoled themselves for the rebuffs of editors with the smiles of a -certain "Nini yeux noirs." Houssaye in those amusing volumes which he -called "Les Confessions" bears witness to the deplorable state of the -literary market at the time. Novels and plays could not be sold, poetry -was not wanted as a gift, and the newspapers regarded mere men of -letters as too frivolous for employment. Poverty among the struggling -writers was acute, but nobody cared a fig about money when all cared so -much about art--a merciful dispensation of Providence. Yet, if -commercialism did not affect art, the same can hardly be said of -politics. Far too many of the young poets and artists, who would have -scorned to drive a mercenary bargain at the expense of their art, -exulted in defiling their artistic convictions with the reddest and most -insensate republicanism, not seeing that if art does not need to regard -gold pieces, neither does it need to trouble itself whether a king's -head or a cap of liberty is their stamp. Arsène Houssaye, careless -wretch, nearly missed the glory of Bohemia entirely by mixing himself up -in the insurrection of the Cloître Saint-Merri. He was arrested, but a -friendly commissary of police saved him from trial and imprisonment by -sending him home to his wealthy, loyal, and scandalized family. The -ungrateful lad, instead of settling down to some solid profession, -simply bided his time till the disturbance was over, and returned to -Paris, only so far profiting by his warning that he left politics -henceforth to look after themselves. Houssaye's father, worthy man, felt -that money would be thrown away on such a ruffian, so Arsène was left to -his own resources, which, if they were meagre in early days, kept him -alive for another sixty-three years. - -Bohemia was not to be baulked a second time. The elements were present, -and all that remained to do was for somebody to give them a slight push, -such as Lucretius gave to his atoms. The push occurred at the Salon of -1833, if Houssaye is to be believed--a condition not inevitably -fulfilled. There, one fine day, he met Théophile Gautier and Nestor -Roqueplan, the former of whom was certainly a stranger to him. A genial -conversation on the merits of the pictures ensued, in which Arsène -Houssaye made, as he was destined to do, a very good impression upon his -senior. Gautier was not a man to leave hazard any further part after -such a promising beginning, and he accordingly proffered an invitation -to _déjeuner_ next day in the words: "Je te surinvite à venir déjeuner -invraisemblablement demain chez les auteurs de mes jours." Houssaye -turned up next day at No. 8 Place Royale, where the irrepressible Théo -introduced his father as "le respectable bonhomme qui me donna l'être." -The other guest at this _déjeuner_ was Gérard de Nerval, whom with true -instinct Gautier had brought to test and to embrace the newly found -brother. The wit and gaiety, the range and the emphasis of their -postprandial conversation can be imagined. At last Théo blurted out -frankly: "Tu sais que je ne te connais pas: dis-moi huit vers de toi, je -le dirai qui tu es." It was not a test which the future author of -"Vingt Ans" feared. Gautier found himself able to give an enthusiastic -account of the new brother; the two truest Bohemians in Paris were at -once bosom friends, and the most wayward of geniuses was a friend of -both. - -So far the credit had been with Gautier, but Bohemia was still without a -dwelling-place, and in this matter Gérard de Nerval deserved pious -mention in the Bohemian bidding prayer, for it was owing to him that _la -Bohème galante_ found a home suitable to the golden age, a unique -setting which posterity could remember but never reproduce. It was a -rare opportunity, and it might almost be supposed that fortune, -approving of Théo's first amiable push, advanced willingly another step, -making peripatetic Gérard her tool. In the course of his wanderings he -had become acquainted with one of the most singular regions in all -Paris, no sign of which remains to-day. Hardly a visitor to Paris omits -a look into the Louvre, but very few know that as they walk from the -statue of Gambetta to the entrance of the galleries they are crossing -the site that Bohemia in its florescence made memorable. On that spot -there stood in 1833 part of an older Paris, which in intention had long -been cleared away, but in fact remained another twenty years. Those who -have read Balzac's "Cousine Bette" have made its acquaintance, though I -should wager that the majority of them have taken it for granted with -other of Balzac's topographical details. Let me recall to them the -sinister quarter where Cousine Bette, at the opening of the story, -cherishes the young sculptor Steinbock and makes the acquaintance of the -infamous Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. With his practised touch for -tragic effect Balzac describes it thus: - - "The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the - old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to - make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the - grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... - Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket - leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of - houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never - repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course - of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. - The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this - sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably - phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried - already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped - in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the - Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The - darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the - ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. - When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and - one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes - one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must - happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of - cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of - night, flourish at their height." - -This can hardly be called an engaging description, and even Bohemians, -it might be supposed, would shrink from such a dreadful slum. But Balzac -was writing in 1847, more than ten years after Bohemia had left it, and -he was making a protest against the continued existence of this quarter, -which had probably deteriorated since the days when he sent there -himself to offer Gautier work on the _Chronique de Paris_. However, -whether Balzac was right in making the Rue du Doyenné an inferno or was -only touching it up with livid tones appropriate to Cousine Bette and -the Marneffes, it was certainly a more smiling spot in 1833. True, it -was tumbling down, and lay below the level of the Place du Carrousel, in -the midst of mournful débris, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, -which Napoleon had meant to join after sweeping it away; the houses, as -Gautier says,[21] were old and dark, repairs to them were forbidden, and -they had the air of regretting the days when respectable canons and -advocates were their inhabitants. Yet it was not a den of thieves by any -means. Gérard[22] records that many _attachés_ and Government officials -lived in the quarter, and that by the Place du Carrousel there was a -collection of temporary wooden shops let out to curiosity dealers and -print-sellers. It was enlivened, too, by the presence of a little Dutch -beer-house served by a Flemish maid of considerable attractions. The -view from the upper windows included, naturally, the heaps of stones, -the rubbish, with the nettles and the dock-leaves by which Nature tries -to cover such deformities at once; but it also included a good many -trees, and the ruins of a delightful old priory, with one arch, two or -three pillars, and the end of a colonnade still standing. This was the -Priory of Doyenné, the dome of which, according to Gérard, fell one day -in the seventeenth century upon eleven luckless canons who were -celebrating the office. Its ruins stood out gracefully against the -trees, and of a summer morning or evening, when, amid the peaceful -silence of this forgotten corner, the bright rays of the Parisian sun -lit up the lichen on its stones and a fresh breeze from the neighbouring -Seine gently swayed the branches of its framing trees, it must have been -well to be a-leaning out of a window. - -However, Gérard de Nerval did more than find a quiet, romantic corner -hidden away in the busy heart of Paris with a ruined priory to give -distinction to its prospect; he also found an appropriate dwelling. In -one of the old houses of the Impasse du Doyenné there was a set of rooms -remarkable for its _salon_. It was a huge room, decorated in the -old-fashioned Pompadour style with grooved panellings, pier-glasses, -and a fantastically moulded ceiling. This decoration had for a long time -been the despair of its owner and had driven away all prospective -tenants, the taste for curiosities being at that time undeveloped. In -vain had the landlord parcelled it out with party walls; it was still -mouldering on his hands when Gérard came thither on one of his -swallow-flights. He at once persuaded the good-natured Camille Rogier to -transfer his household gods from the Rue des Beaux-Arts, the party walls -were knocked down, and Bohemia entered on its ideal home. Gérard had -still some of his patrimony left, and chose to expend it upon his one -hobby, the collection of pictures and furniture. It was a golden time -for the collector. Society had as yet not learned to appreciate old -works of art, dealers were not too well informed, and the depredations -of the Bande Noire, that, under the Restoration, had sacked so many -ancient ecclesiastical foundations, had brought a large quantity of -precious old furniture, tapestries, and fabrics into the curiosity shops -of Paris. Gérard had acquired a wonderful canopied Renaissance bed -ornamented with salamanders, a Médicis console, a sideboard decorated -with nymphs and satyrs, three of each, and oval paintings on its doors, -a tapestry delineating the four seasons, some medieval chairs and Gothic -stools, a Ribeira--a death of Saint Joseph--and two superb panels by -Fragonard, "L'Escarpolette" and "Colin Maillard," which last he had -bought for fifty francs the pair. It was a magnificent studio, worthy of -_la Bohème galante_. There was no question of bare attics on a sixth -story, their tiny windows looking on a dreary sea of roofs, of rickety -chairs and peeling wall-paper. In spite of its bare floors, its faded -colours, its chipped corners, and the incongruous presence of plain -easels among its ancient splendours, its riches were princely. Bohemian -disorder might reign among paints and palette-knives, ends of paper -inscribed with scraps of verse might dot its unswept floor, the _débris_ -of eating and drinking might litter the seats on which fastidious -cavaliers once delicately sat, but no realities of a careless existence -could spoil its romantic atmosphere. Without its merry clan of -inhabitants, no doubt, it would have seemed odd and ghostly; yet if they -brought back to it the necessary colour of youth, it tinged, in turn, -their life with a patina of old gold that never faded from their -reminiscences. - -[Illustration: A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné] - -Camille Rogier was the real lessee, and Gérard his sub-tenant. Gautier -had a couple of rooms in the Rue du Doyenné, which cut the Impasse -crosswise. These at first were the only permanent inhabitants of the new -colony, but the great _salon_ where Rogier and Gautier worked soon -became a meeting-place for a number of friends. Work was stopped at five -o'clock, when Arsène Houssaye was certain to appear, Roger de Beauvoir, -then in his most brilliant day, half Bohemian, half _viveur_, and -Edmond Ourliac, the future dramatist. One evening Houssaye, Roger de -Beauvoir, and Ourliac stayed talking till dawn; Roger departed then to -his more sumptuous apartments, Ourliac to his parents' house in the Rue -Saint Roch, but Arsène Houssaye stayed, on Rogier's invitation, to -complete the inner conclave of Bohemia. His camp-bed was sent for next -day, and he became Rogier's second tenant, paying him indeed no money, -but spending, in revenge, chance gifts from home on luxurious feasts at -the Frères Provençaux. - -Such a society in such a setting could not long remain unknown. With its -circle of guests widening it grew in importance, for in this golden age -Bohemia could be important without losing its quality. Gavarni, the -inimitable portrayer of Parisian types, Nanteuil, Châtillon, Marilhat, -even Delacroix, were among the artists who found the gaiety of the -Impasse du Doyenné to their taste; Pétrus Borel looked haggardly in -occasionally; the great Dumas would rush in and out like a storm; the -Roqueplans, Camille and Nestor, showed there in moments spared from -their more elegant wanderings; and the effervescent Roger de Beauvoir as -gaily composed there his witty rhymes as at a supper in the Café de -Paris. It was no hole-and-corner Bohemia at which the superior person -could affect to turn up his nose; it was a truly artistic centre in -Paris and, at the same time, a _coterie_ admission to which was -jealously enough guarded to exclude the half-baked dilettante who is the -ruin of most artistic sets and the very negation of Bohemia. For a -reason which will be obvious in the sequel, ladies with leanings to -artistic society--another impossibility in Bohemia--were equally -debarred from appearing. It was a more or less closely knit society of -young and gifted men, lovers of the beautiful, despisers of convention -without _gasconnade_, neither rich nor desperately poor, avid of -pleasure, and fashioning their conduct easily upon the standards of the -day, yet crowning all their hours, even the most wanton, with a graceful -and light-hearted idealism that shields these pagan heroes of a golden -age from any but an æsthetic judgment, a judgment which, in the case of -their own countrymen, they confronted with serene self-confidence. - -In all, the group was fairly large: its membership radiated dimly as far -as the "dandies" on the boulevard and into the obscurer depths of the -Quartier Latin. But radiation was from a central nucleus--the original -Bohemian brethren whose home was in the Impasse du Doyenné: Camille -Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Edmond -Ourliac. The rest were visitors, but they alone were the true dwellers -in _la Bohème galante_. Of their brotherhood and its life Gautier, -Gérard, and Houssaye have all given glimpses, which compose a picture -apt for pleasing and, occasionally, envious contemplation. Arsène -Houssaye in his "Confessions" is the fullest source of reminiscence, and -his words are delightfully illustrated by the poem, originally entitled -"Vingt Ans," but in his complete works "La Bohème de Doyenné." The poem, -addressed to Gautier, begins: - - _Théo, te souviens-tu de ces vertes saisons_ - _Qui s'effeuillaient si vite en ces vieilles maisons_ - _Dont le front s'abritait sous une aile du Louvre?_ - _Levons avec Rogier le voile qui les couvre,_ - _Reprenons dans nos cÅ“urs les trésors enfouis,_ - _Plongeons dans le passé nos regards éblouis._ - - _Chimères aux cils noirs, Espérances fanées,_ - _Amis toujours chantants, Amantes profanées,_ - _Songes venus du ciel, flottantes Visions,_ - _Sortez de vos tombeaux, jeunes Illusions!_ - _Et nous rebâtirons ce château périssable_ - _Que les destins changeants ont jeté sur le sable:_ - - _Replaçons le sofa sous les tableaux flamands;_ - _Dispersons à nos pieds gazettes et romans;_ - _Ornons le vieux bahut de vieilles porcelaines,_ - _Et faisons refleurir roses et marjolaines;_ - _Qu'un rideau de damas ombrage encore ces lits_ - _Où nos jeunes amours se sont ensevelis._ - -Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word -must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as -Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. -Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was -earning a living by his art--even more than a living, for was he not -rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was -his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years -painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused -the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush -he was a very agreeable singer of _chansons_ and ballads. Ourliac did -not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue -Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants -Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on -his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way -home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines, - - _gai convive, arrivait en chantant_ - _Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,_ - -was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, -ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible _raconteur_ of inimitable -dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German -philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work -which made his name heard in the world of literature. - -It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but -rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the -morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all -four would set to their work, while the Pompadour _salon_ was hardly yet -awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found -lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to -write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de -Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, -and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating -Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse." - - "L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, - tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, - couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et - venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent - pas."[23] - -Gérard, his part in the foundation of _la Bohème galante_ performed, -felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, -indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered -ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave -before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task -was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as -Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was -also an actress. In the days of the _cénacle_ Gérard had fallen -desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress -of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very -roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic -mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, -and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful -Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that -Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was -always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other -parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an -occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by -straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome -of his life--a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. -His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar -heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to -accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on -Arsène Houssaye's stanza: - - _"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?_ - _Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique_ - _S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,_ - _Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,_ - _Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"_[24] - _Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"_ - -wrote: - - "La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait - alors--et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des - Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce - grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore - garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François - Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se - jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas - plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image - tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve - idéal et divin." - -The question was to secure her _début_ at the Opéra, and for that -purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de -Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to -compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly -engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the -Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to -maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps -because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de -Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and -the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème -Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which -he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing -themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had -an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could -not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the -room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for -another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of -the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked -till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other -masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an -early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The -revellers set off joyously, Gérard's _belle désolée_ opposing only a -feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on -his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the -lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his -disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. -And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his -fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme -toujours!" - -Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his -whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted -Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly. -Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for -Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a -Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but -when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art -criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his -mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of -bouillon for his _déjeuner_. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over -and the visitors gone--Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the -Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret--Rogier, Gautier, -and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy -city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling -along the Seine. They dined--they were not too poor for that--in the -Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night -where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some -romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch -would be indispensable; now they would invade the _Chaumière_ or some -other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,[25] -the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to -choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and -Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille -which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life--the -siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another -evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent, -Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold _salon_ with Rogier, -who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their -knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish _cabaret_ hard -by, served by the young _tavernière_ - - _Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière._ - _Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel Å“il attrayant!_ - _Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant._ - - _Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,_ - _Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,_ - _Jetant à tout venant son cÅ“ur et sa vertu,_ - _Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,_ - _Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;_ - _Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle._ - -So sang of her Houssaye, whose souvenirs of Bohemia at the magic age of -_vingt ans_ are deeply tinged with amorous memories. In fact, _la -Bohème galante_, as its name implies, was not a monastery, and its life -was not shared, but illuminated by a number of divinities whose aureoles -had been over more than one windmill. The chief of these was "la -Cydalise," - - _Respirant un lilas qui jouait dans sa main_ - _Et pressentant déjà le triste lendemain._ - -She was treasure-trove of Camille Rogier's, a beautiful woman, and -titular mistress of the Bohemian encampment. They were all jealous of -Rogier's good fortune, for, since he was twenty-five, they considered -him a patriarch, and Théo could not understand how Cydalise could put up -with such an old man. She lived quite happily in the Impasse, making the -afternoon tea, sitting as a model, and inflaming all their hearts. -Théo's passion was of a frantic heat. He besieged Cydalise with long and -violent apostrophes, swearing to kill the senile tyrant who kept her in -his power, threats for which Rogier, ever smiling, did not care a -button. Poor Cydalise, she was a butterfly whose day was short. To -Rogier's great grief consumption seized her. For some weeks he enlivened -her sick-bed by singing her songs and drawing pictures for her -amusement; but the day came when her ears no longer heard and her lovely -eyes were closed. Gérard, Gautier, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac went -to her funeral, and Bohemia lost its official mistress. Yet there were -others. Gérard draws a picture of Gautier, on a Gothic stool, reading -his verses while Cydalise or Lorry or Victorine swung herself carelessly -in the hammock of Sarah _la blonde_, and Arsène Houssaye at the end of -"Vingt Ans" recalls them in the lines: - - _Judith oublie Arthur, Franz, Rogier et le reste,_ - _En donnant à son cÅ“ur la solitude agreste;_ - _Rosine à Chantilly caresse un jeune enfant_ - _Plus joli qu'un Amour et plus joueur qu'un faon._ - - * * * * * - - _Ninon au Jockey Club vend chacun de ses jours;_ - _Charlotte danse encore--et dansera toujours._ - _Alice?--il faut la plaindre et prier Dieu pour elle,_ - _Elle est dans les chiffons, la pauvre Chanterelle;_ - _Armande?--Un prince russe épris de sa beauté_ - _Travaille à lui refaire une virginité._ - _Olympe?--un mauvais livre ouvert à chaque page--_ - _Ce matin je l'ai vue en galant équipage...._ - -The loves of Doyenné were true _enfants de Bohème_, neither great -passions nor elective affinities, but pastimes leaving regrets for -inspiration; not devouring flames, but pleasantly crackling experimental -fires, drawn chiefly from those great hearths, the stage and the _corps -de ballet_. How much fantasy went to their burning is illustrated in a -story told by Houssaye of Gérard, who, on one occasion, to the despair -of his friends, became obsessed with a mad desire to set out that -instant for Cythera and revive the gods of Greece. Prompt measures were -necessary, and Houssaye devoted himself to the rescue by professing to -enter into the scheme with joy, only remarking that it would be well to -have lunch first. This seemed to Gérard a reasonable preliminary, so -they adjourned to the Café d'Orsay, where over the first bottle Gérard -developed his scheme with growing eloquence. But the first stage on the -way to Cythera lasted for several bottles, and at the commencement of -the next Gérard met a provisional goddess in the shape of an attractive -_grisette_. Houssaye, convinced that his companionship was now no longer -necessary, abandoned the voyage, and left Gérard to continue it up -several flights of stairs. The end of this ascent marked his farthest -point; after a halt of two days he descended and turned his footsteps -back to Bohemia. The loves of Bohemia which gambol so trippingly in the -tongue of France are ill at ease in our austerer medium, for our -Northern spirit has ever refused to admit, as the French do with -engaging candour, that man, particularly the artist-man, is naturally -polygamous. Lorry, Victorine, Armande, and the rest were the only -appropriate feminine attachments of Bohemia, even of the golden age, the -pagan loves of pagan heroes, who were greedy of their caresses without -hungering for their souls, grew jealous at their eyes' wayward glances, -but took no umbrage at the inward abstraction of their minds, and were -content with the homage of their play-hours without seeking to rival the -ideals of their artistic contemplations. But the mark of the golden age -was that they played for love and not for money: they would dance the -heels off their slippers in the barren land of Doyenné when all the -millions of a dull prince would have moved their agile toes only to the -most significant of kicks. It was a mad little world, but good because -Mammon had not corrupted its natural spontaneity. True, it was deficient -in some virtues, but some virtues are frankly middle-aged, to be put on -with a less tricksy cut of the clothes. Bohemia was young; it loved and -feasted and, being poor, made debts. There is not much to be said for -getting into debt, in spite of Panurge's ingenious discourse, except -that it is an unavoidable corollary of certain conjunctions of -temperament and circumstance. It is difficult, anyhow, not to pardon -Gérard for dissipating his capital and running up bills on account of -his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture -dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns -les autres," which affected the dun to tears. - -"We had no money, but we lived _en grands seigneurs_," wrote Arsène -Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have -pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the Opéra -for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were -not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard -more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the -landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an -occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless, -dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch _la -Bohème galante_ had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic -entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835. -The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his -frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the -first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was -a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of -it: a _bal costumé_ alone could produce a gathering that would not clash -with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances -were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia, -required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who -are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the -superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too -little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than -give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the -eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings -by their friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could -indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be -undying. - -The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had -done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day, -including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he -narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared -to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that -his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand -bottles of wine. _La Bohème galante_, though younger and less known -artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal. -Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and -the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination. -They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes, -singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind -their ears--a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a -general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal -usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling -through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque -scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a -tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden -hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned with -ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service, -Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing -Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two -narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might -lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the -acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in -and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white -chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of -this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few _louis -d'or_ for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a -millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet -regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the -_salon_ of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which -the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating -festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its -freshness. - -The _fête_ was gorgeous. True, the landlord's wife had refused their -invitation--a severe blow. But the hosts with some consideration, -knowing that their revels would make sleep impossible in the quarter, -invited all their bachelor neighbours on the condition that they brought -with them _femmes du monde_ protected, if they pleased, by masks and -dominoes. The wonderful evening began with the pantomime of "Le Diable -Boiteux," in which many actresses from the boulevard took part. Then -there were two little farces in which Ourliac covered himself with glory -as the _buffo_. The first was "Le Courrier de Naples," and the second, -written by Ourliac himself, "La Jeunesse du Temps et le Temps de la -Jeunesse," was introduced by a prologue by Gautier, read from behind the -curtain. Ourliac was buried in bouquets, and the noisy orchestra brought -in from a _guingette_ struck up. The ruined quarter woke to life again, -as in some ghost story; the desert streets resounded with songs and -laughter; Turks and _débardeurs_ affronted the frown of the staid old -Louvre, and only the landlords and _concierges_, tossing sleeplessly, -consigned Bohemians to everlasting flames. The dance, sustained only by -good spirits, never flagged, till in the final galop every mask with his -partner rushed pell-mell from the room, leaped wildly down the rickety -stairs, dashed up the Impasse, and came to rest under the moonlit ruins -of the old priory, where a little _cabaret_ had opened, and only the -late dawn of winter drove Bohemia to its bed, to dream of the Pompadour -salon, of Ourliac's satirical buffoonery, and of Roger de Beauvoir's -magnificent Venetian costume of apple-green velvet with silver -embroidery, and his inexhaustible wit, for once born of no champagne. - -It is melancholy to go back to a deserted ballroom, and we may spare -ourselves the pain. That joyous evening, little as it may have seemed -to do so, marked the passing of the golden age. Bohemia's sun henceforth -descended the skies. The next year saw marked changes. The landlord of -the old house in the Impasse du Doyenné saw with relief--Gérard says he -gave them notice to quit--the departure of his turbulent tenants. If -Rogier had not gone to Constantinople it is possible that, even if the -band had been compelled to change its quarters, some reconstruction of -_la Bohème galante_ might have been possible. With him, the stable, the -earner of money, absent, there was no hope. The heroes of Bohemia had to -leave their enchanted garden for the ordinarily circumscribed dwelling -of impecunious mortals, and, like the heroes of Valhalla when Freia is -snatched from them, a certain wanness came over the complexion of their -lives. Joy and beauty and work and love were left, but the magic bloom -had just faded. With smaller resources and in a colder light the -resettlement of Bohemia was a work of compromise, not spontaneous -achievement. Rogier was gone; Ourliac, who produced "Suzanne" with -success, married before long, grew serious, and ended his days in the -fullest odour of piety; Roger de Beauvoir found the boulevard more to -his taste than any less brilliant Bohemia. Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye -were left, a trio of markedly divergent tastes. They made one attempt at -a common life in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which seems to have -lasted a year or two. The details of it given by Gautier[26] and -Houssaye[27] differ considerably. According to Gautier they did their -own cooking: Arsène Houssaye was perfect in the _panade_, Gautier -prepared the macaroni, no doubt remembering Graziano, while Gérard -"went, with perfect self-possession, to buy galantines, sausages, or -fresh pork cutlets with gherkins at the neighbouring cook-shop." -Houssaye, on the other hand, says that they had a rascally valet and a -cook called Margot, and that they broke up because they were at variance -on the degree of luxury to be maintained, Gérard, whom anything -satisfied, departing to a bare _hôtel garni_, Gautier to a sumptuous -apartment in the Rue de Navarin, and Houssaye sharing rooms in the Rue -du Bac, on the left bank, with Jules Sandeau. I do not trouble to -reconcile these two accounts, for the memories of Bohemia are invariably -picturesque. The fact remains that the old days could not come back. The -first Bohemians were growing older, and the world was beginning to claim -its once youthful defiers as servitors. Though Gérard's bed remained -with Gautier as a memory of freer days, he knew too well that the gates -of the prison were closing upon him. For a year or so he might pretend -to mock destiny by producing another book of verses and a novel, or by -making a voyage in Belgium accompanied by Gérard: but he was a doomed -man. About 1838 he became the dramatic critic of _La Presse_, entering -the mill in which he was to grind for over thirty years. Well might he -say in 1867, in an autobiographical notice: "Là finit ma vie heureuse, -indépendante et prime-sautière." Houssaye kept up the pretence a little -longer. Life in the Rue du Bac was gay; there were suppers with Jules -Janin and Sandeau at which Gautier and Ourliac sometimes appeared; there -was dancing; there were the bright eyes of a certain Ninon, who inspired -some pretty stanzas. But these were the last echoes of _la première -Bohème_, as he had to admit. When they died away he completed the -chapter of his youth, as Gautier had done, by travelling. - -[Illustration: Gérard de Nerval] - -Gérard alone escaped the inevitable superannuation of Bohemia, because -he was too ethereal to become amenable to the ordinary dynamic laws of -society. An attempt was made to catch him in the machinery by making him -Gautier's assistant as dramatic critic of _La Presse_. The sprite within -him would not submit to the drudgery, and in a little while he gave it -up. He preferred, as ever, to wander at his will and at his own hours, -or to sit reading at the dead of night by the light of a brass -chandelier balanced on his head. It is not part of this book's plan to -give complete biographies of those who appear in its pages, but an -exception shall be made in the case of Gérard de Nerval. Between 1837 -and 1839 he stayed in Paris, writing a comic opera, "Piquillo," with -Dumas, in which Jenny Colon appeared, several plays, with a certain -number of articles and reviews. His way of life was always eccentric, -but he had his first definite attack of madness in 1839 or 1840, and was -placed in the famous establishment of Doctor Blanche. He came out in -1841 and resumed a career of wider vagabondage than ever, now with -money, now without, but caring little in any case and ready to go to the -ends of the earth with a whim and without a coin. In 1841 he joined -Camille Rogier in Constantinople, and wandered subsequently in other -parts of the East--an experience which gave rise to some of his best -descriptive work. He returned to Paris again, where his spirit dwelt in -the clouds and his body anywhere, though he often allowed it to rest -with one of his many friends, with whom he would leave a shirt to be -washed against his next coming. He continued to write not very -successful plays between 1846 and 1850, when he again went completely -mad and retired to Dr. Blanche's house. His second stay here was longer, -but as he soon became perfectly reasonable his friends were allowed to -take him out for the day occasionally. Once more apparently cured he -came out, but though he made one or two voyages his faculties remained -permanently clouded. Of this he himself was perfectly conscious, but he -bore his afflictions with perfect cheerfulness. His money was all gone, -and the flashes of sanity too rare for him to earn much; he was -homeless, but not friendless, for he never appealed to his friends in -vain. He came for crumbs like a bird in winter, but like a bird he would -not stay. He would have been an appropriate guest at some strange -_Nachtasil_ such as Maxim Gorki describes so powerfully. Who knows, too, -in what haunts he was not a familiar? His comrades of older days could -do no more than greet him and tend him when they saw him, and his -equanimity was too great to drive them to forcible detention. As Paul de -Saint-Victor wrote after his death: - - "In vain his friends tried to follow him with their hearts and - eyes; he was lost to sight for weeks, months, years. Then, one fine - day, one found him by chance in a foreign city, a provincial town, - or more often still in the country, thinking aloud, dreaming with - open eyes, his attention fixed on the fall of a leaf, the flight of - an insect or a bird, the form of a cloud, the dart of a ray, on all - those vague and ravishing beauties that pass in the air. Never man - saw a gentler madness, a tenderer folly, a more inoffensive and - more friendly eccentricity. If he woke from his slumber, it was to - recognize his friends, to love them and serve them, to double the - warmth of his devotion and welcome as if he wished to make up to - them for his long absences by an extra amount of tenderness." - -It was with a profound shock, therefore, that Paris heard, one morning -in 1857, that Gérard had been found in the small hours, hanged to an -iron railing by a woman's apron-string, in one of the lowest and most -ill-famed streets in Paris, the Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne. The mystery -of his death has never been cleared up. The inquest brought little -light, save that the inmates of a filthy little drink-shop probably knew -more than they would tell. What Gérard was doing in that foul haunt will -never be known. It is possible that he may have been murdered, but, as -he had no money and was the gentlest of men, it is more probable that -with some dreadful cloud upon his brain he destroyed himself. Yet his -very gentleness had made such an end unexpected, for he seemed to be -under the protection of the children's guardian angel. Some sudden -impulse brought him a death alien to the character of his whole life. -"II est mort," said Paul de Saint-Victor, "de la nostalgie du monde -invisible. Paix à cette âme en peine de l'idéal!" - -From Gérard's death, which Gustave Doré made more hideous in a ghoulish -picture, it is a long cry back to the Impasse du Doyenné and the -Pompadour _salon_ of which he was the discoverer. Yet I will end this -chapter, as it was begun, with this once festive haunt. Not long did it -outlive its Bohemian colony. The landlord, explosively wrathful at the -sight of the wall paintings, at once covered the mess, as he no doubt -called it, with a coating of distemper. The treasures might, even then, -have been saved in part, had anyone but Gérard de Nerval bought from the -demolishers Corot's panels, the pictures by Wattier, Chassériau, and -Châtillon, and Rogier's portraits of Cydalise and Théophile Gautier. His -hand was one to baulk destiny only for a little. This moonstruck captain -of a rickety craft let his cargo fall needlessly into the seas while he -contemplated the stars and allowed the waves to swing the rudder. So -passed _la Bohème galante_, leaving only a gilded legend. - - - - -IX - -SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY - - _La Bohème carottière et geignarde d'Henry Murger_ ... - - LEPELLETIER: "Verlaine" - - -To follow the heroes into exile would be depressing as well as -unprofitable. It is better to stand respectfully aside from the -_Götterdämmerung_ and wait till Bohemia emerges again from the mists, -when a lapse of years has wrought some patent changes, for it is easier -to contemplate a result than to trace a process. By leaping forward some -ten years from the dispersal of the brotherhood that sanctified by its -presence the Impasse du Doyenné it is possible to steal a march on Time -and anticipate with a rapid glance his changing hand. Yet to catch this -later view it is necessary for the nonce to abandon the world of flesh -and blood and to turn from the acts and reminiscences of actual mortals -to the imaginary scenes and fictitious characters of a book of stories. -The tide of life was too strong upon Théophile Gautier and Arsène -Houssaye for them to pause and stamp out firmly the features of those -precious days in _la Bohème galante_; they only caught fugitive -impressions in retrospect. Henry Murger, less prodigal because less -endowed, crystallized as it passed a moment of Bohemia, the Bohemia of -common mortality, in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." As a confectioner -encloses a fresh grape in a transparent coat of candied sugar, so he, -even while he tasted, sour and sweet, the fruit of his days, caught -stray berries in a light film of art and presented them as dessert to -the readers of the _Corsaire_, a small but amusing journal. Sharp and -savoury as they were, Time would have destroyed them, as he destroyed -the ambrosial lusciousness of the Doyenné feasts, but for that light -film. Nobody remembers reminiscences, but a well-told story preserves -even the most trivial events. - -Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" is a book which has now lived for -nearly seventy years and does not seem likely as yet to pass into the -lumber-room. At the same time, it is to be wished that more people in -England knew it, if only because the presupposition of such knowledge -would make this chapter easier to write. It is not, of course, difficult -to criticize the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème"; many of Murger's -countrymen, indeed, have done so. Its ethics, its humour, and its style -have been attacked. M. Boucher, an estimable civil servant interested in -literature, in his "Souvenirs d'un Parisien" calls it an effort to -depict the life of low-class students, accuses Murger of insipidity and -repetition, and denies any wit to his "étudiants demi-escrocs, -demi-canailles." M. Pelloquet, who was good enough to pronounce a -discourse over Murger's grave, said: "It is an unhealthy book, in which -vice grimaces, youth paints its cheeks like a superannuated coquette, -and a fictitious _insouciance_ conceals, not a laziness that is -sometimes poetic, but the cowardly indolence of men without courage and -without talent." He was also rash enough to predict that it would not -live. Jules Janin, the critic, in a wiser appreciation, asserted that -with a little more art and a little more poetry Murger might have -created more pardonable heroes and no less charming heroines. Gautier's -dictum about the invertebrate verses of "that feeble appendage to Alfred -de Musset" has already been quoted, and the opinion of Verlaine's -biographer appears at the head of this chapter. Murger's gravest fault, -however, in the eyes of French people is that he wrote bad French. To -them the mishandling of that difficult, elusive, and withal limited -tongue is a crime of which we can hardly comprehend the enormity. It is -perfectly true that Murger was culpable in this respect; he was -deficient in scholarship and in rhythmic sense, so that his poems are -weak and his prose, even where he tried to give it an air of -respectability, betrays its imperfections no less manifestly than M. -Jourdain betrayed his birth. We in England, fastidious as our critics -are in the matter of language, have not our ears tuned to this painful -degree of precision. So long as a style effectively harmonizes with its -environment we are content to let it stand: the Gothic grandeur of -English can suffer without disfigurement the intrusion of the quaint. To -sympathies so trained Murger's style in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -should make a particular appeal, since in that book, for the most part, -he makes no attempt to ape the academician, but writes in the -extravagant jargon of the very Bohemians he is describing--a language -full of comic inversions, extravagances, and lapses from grammar, which -are an essential part of the book's gaiety and charm. Though his matter -is unmistakably Parisian, his humour is, in some respects, remarkably -English, delighting in broad and bustling effects rather than subtle -strokes and sudden flashes. As for the life and the characters that he -depicts, criticism of them will be implicit in the remainder of this -chapter; of the book as a whole no more need be said than that it has -survived when all the rest of Murger's work has been forgotten. It is -not a book to be placed unwarily in the hands of the young and tender; -parts of it are exaggerated, parts may be wished away, but, when all has -been said, it remains, not the picture of _la vie de Bohème_ at its best -and brightest, but the classic expression of the Bohemian spirit--a -frank confession, not the pseudo-pathetic souvenir of a prosperous -greybeard. Its pages are among those rare ones in the world's library -that have caught and held for a moment the intangible freshness, the -poetry, and the gaiety of youth. For this alone it deserves never to -grow old. - -Murger's Bohemia is described in a series of scenes taken from the life -of four young men, a quartet as fascinating to read of as Dumas' -Musketeers, though possibly less comfortable companions. They were -Rodolphe, the sentimental poet; Marcel, the painter; Colline, the -peripatetic philosopher and bookworm; and Schaunard, painter and -musician, incomparable rogue whose masterpiece was a symphony "Sur -l'influence du bleu dans la musique"--a sly hit at debased Romanticism. -Chance brought them together. Schaunard, unable to pay his arrears of -rent, was forced to leave his lodging with his furniture in pawn. A -day's peregrination in search of a loan brought him three francs in -cash, which he spent in dinner, together with the less tangible benefit -of Colline's and Rodolphe's acquaintance. He swore brotherhood with -Colline over a dish of stewed rabbit in a little eating-house, and the -pair collected Rodolphe in the Café Momus, where, at Colline's expense, -they passed the rest of a not too abstemious evening. Meanwhile Marcel, -the painter, who had taken Schaunard's room unfurnished in advance, -though having no furniture of his own but a second-hand scenic interior -from the stock of a bankrupt theatre, had been persuaded to take the -lodging furnished with Schaunard's furniture, and had duly moved in. -Late in the evening, when a sharp shower of rain was falling, -Schaunard, in bacchic absence of mind, offered asylum to his two new -comrades. Hastily buying the elements of a supper, they gaily invaded -the apartment of Marcel. Explanations were difficult, but were -accomplished during supper, and next day Marcel and Schaunard agreed to -live together. A dinner and a magnificent supper inaugurated the -foundation of the new clan, which was united, so long as their Bohemian -days continued, by an unbroken bond of friendship. It is these young men -whom Murger's readers follow through their straits and shifts, their -love affairs, their extravagances, their boisterous jokes, and their -naïve pleasures--the poet, the artist, the savant, and the musician, -characters drawn from Murger himself and his living friends, whose coats -were ragged and whose pockets almost always empty, who were the bane of -respectable _concierges_ and proprietors of _cafés_, who bore short -commons with cheerful bravado and succumbed to innocent gluttony in -times of unexpected prosperity, who were really funny even if they were -sometimes vulgar, whose expedients for catching the elusive _pièce de -cent sous_ were as amazing as their puns, who made life, even in a -garret, a sentimental poem and a rollicking ballad, and who had the -sense to become prosaic before the sentiment grew threadbare or the -ballad grew stale. It is a great temptation to follow some of their -adventures in greater detail from the day when Marcel went out to dine -in the sugar-merchant's coat while Schaunard painted the latter's -portrait in his own colour-stained dressing-gown, to the day when -Rodolphe by composing a didactic poem at fifteen sous a dozen lines for -a celebrated dentist, Marcel by painting the portraits of eighteen -grenadiers at six francs a head, and Schaunard by playing the same scale -all day and every day for a month to revenge a rich Englishman on an -actress's parrot, earned enough to give their mistresses new dresses and -take them for a holiday in the fields of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Yet the -impulse to discursive commentary must be checked, for plucking flowers -is a distraction from comparative botany. Murger, after all, tells his -own story infinitely better than any translator could do, and the -purpose which is proper to the present book is to inquire what kind of a -Bohemia appears in Murger's light-hearted pages. - -So far as Bohemia was concerned, the generation of 1830 had entirely -passed away by 1846, when Murger's sketches actually appeared, and the -young men of whom Bohemia was composed were formed under less violent -influences. The last flashes of Napoleon's glory had not illuminated -their early days, they knew little of the stifling reign of Charles X, -and the Revolution of 1830 took place when they had only a little while -outgrown the nursery. By the time they grew up the complexion of affairs -in Paris wore a more even tone. Assisted by Guizot, Louis Philippe had -found the _juste-milieu_ to his people's satisfaction, revolutionary -tendencies had been checked or diverted into harmless channels of -humanitarian reform, the _bourgeois_ had firmly grasped his power and -built up an already solid bulwark of commercial interest. In the -artistic world, too, things were quieter. "Hernani," once a scandal, had -become a classic, and there was no further need of red waistcoats and -furious _claques_. Romanticism, indeed, had become so workaday that a -successful little excitement was aroused by a reaction against it in -what was called "l'école de bon sens," whose chief poet, Ponsard, gained -quite a celebrity for a short time with his classic drama "Lucrèce." -Beyond the gadfly of artistic impulse and the natural fermentation of -the adolescent mind, there was little to rouse a young man's passions or -send his blood coursing faster through his veins; there was no -particular idol to worship, no hobby-horse to ride, as a Gautier or a -Borel had worshipped Hugo and mounted the gallant steed called Middle -Ages. The creed of Romanticism was so thoroughly established that there -was nothing left to make any fuss about, with the natural consequence -that its early extravagances had fallen out of fashion and there was no -further need to be satanic or profess excessive sensibility. Literature -was feeling its way to the austerer Romanticism of Flaubert and the -Goncourts, as painting towards the "realism" of Courbet, but the growth -was still below ground and the surface as yet seemed undisturbed. The -generation of Rodolphe and Schaunard found, therefore, in Paris no eager -band to whom they could ally themselves and to whose educative influence -they could submit. Driven by their impulses towards the arts, with souls -naturally romantic, as most young men's souls are, they found no cause -which they could immediately embrace in the manner of the second -_cénacle_. They missed that valuable education which is the idolization -of a great man, and were confined instead to fighting their own battle, -a very much less distinguished affair, which allowed many little -dishonourable compromises with indolence and in which victory meant no -more than individual success. This explains, to some extent, the absence -of intellectual fecundity in Murger's heroes, which even their most -devoted admirers cannot deny. Rodolphe's poems are indeed only pale -imitations of Alfred de Musset, who was an almost inevitable model for -any lyric youngster of the day; his more serious effort, a drama called -"Le Vengeur," good enough to burn for warmth in a draughty garret, is -not vouchsafed to us in quotation by Rodolphe's creator. Marcel was -obviously not a very gifted painter, in spite of his famous _Passage de -la Mer Rouge_, which was sent up in a different guise to each Salon and -inevitably rejected, and when this great work was sold to become a -shop-sign the artist's pride was not in the least revolted. Schaunard -never gives any signs of musical inspiration till at the close he -publishes a successful album of songs, and Colline, polyglot philosopher -as he is dubbed, abandoned his career before anything tangible had been -achieved to make an advantageous marriage and give musical evenings. It -would, of course, be pedantic to insist upon these considerations in the -case of a book of short stories which aims chiefly at amusing, but it is -impossible not to be struck in reading the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -by the absence from the conversation of the characters of any indication -of their artistic ideals. Save when Schaunard tells the sugar-merchant -that he was a pupil of Horace Vernet, murmuring to himself, "Horreur, je -renie mes dieux," and Marcel makes a scornful allusion to the "école de -bon sens," the only proof that they are true artists lies in their -creator's own assertion, of which he is not entirely mindful in the -_dénouement_. The worst sinner of all is Colline, for this mine of -knowledge, throughout the book, is made chiefly remarkable for the -composition of dreadful puns. This may be partly due to that want of "a -little more art and a little more poetry" of which Janin accused Murger, -but the fault was not only personal. The second _cénacle_ and the -brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné were, without doubt, just as -commonplace in their ordinary conversation, but what lifted them off the -ground was the enthusiasm of a hotly waged artistic struggle, which by -Murger's day had died down. His four heroes are Romantics in general, -but in no sense champions of any cause. - -Another unmistakable fact about Rodolphe and his friends is that they -were inconspicuous. True, they made the Café Momus unbearable to its -more peaceful customers, and were not unknown at the Chaumière, but the -Café Momus was in a back street, and the Chaumière was certainly not the -Bal de l'Opéra. They were miles away from the _viveurs_ upon the -boulevard, and their connexion with the prominent writers and artists of -the day was extremely remote. They made no public appearance, they were -not a force to be reckoned with. They kept up the form of defying -convention, but it was now no more than a convenient form for the -impecunious. Art and the _bourgeoisie_ were beginning to play into one -another's hands; the former had gained its liberty to a great degree, -while the latter by the gilded pill of commercial success had purged -artistic demonstration of its crudities. The time when eccentricity was -a symbol had passed; now it was only a skin to be sloughed, as Marcel -saw when in a very sensible lecture delivered to Rodolphe he said: - - "Poetry does not exist only in a disordered life, in improvised - happiness, in love affairs that only last as long as a candle, in - more or less eccentric rebellions against the prejudices which will - for ever be the sovereigns of the world: a dynasty is more easily - overturned than a custom, even a ridiculous one. To have talent it - is not sufficient to put on a summer overcoat in May; one can be a - true poet or artist and yet keep one's feet warm and have one's - three meals a day." - -Their Bohemia, in fact, was a kind of undergraduate existence, in which -all sorts of disorder and youthful folly might be excused on the plea -that youth must be served, but which could in no sense be regarded as a -part of civic life, much less as the best part, the most truly -disinterested and artistic. This is a significant change of attitude -from the days of _la Bohème galante_, which was one of the centres of -Paris. That, indeed, was transitory and presupposed youth, but it was -not obscure and its inhabitants had no misgivings. It was not they who -gave it up as the writer of Ecclesiastes put away childish things, for -they gloried in it all their days as the best part of their life; it was -that the world claimed them for its business in spite of themselves. In -their disinterested love of art they had made themselves valuable, and -when the command went forth "Come and be paid" they were forced to go. -To guard against any accusation of misunderstanding Murger, it may be -admitted that he calls his heroes only a small section of Bohemia--they -moved, to use his phrase, in the _troisièmes dessous_ of literature and -art--but there is no indication that Murger conceived a Bohemia which -had its part in any higher sphere. When Rodolphe gets a lucky present of -five hundred francs the determination he avows is not to suffuse his -little corner of Bohemia with a more worthy splendour, but to become, -like every other successful man, a _bourgeois_. "These are my projects," -he cries to an astonished Marcel. "Sheltered from the material -embarrassments of life, I am going to work seriously; I shall finish my -great work, and gain a settled place in public opinion. To begin with, I -renounce Bohemia, I shall dress like everybody else, I shall have a -black coat, and I shall frequent drawing-rooms." Such a speech would -have fallen like a thunderbolt in Camille Rogier's Pompadour _salon_, -and its author considered charitably to be in the first stages of -lunacy. Marcel, however, falls in at once with the ambitious scheme, and -they are only saved by their Bohemianism being stronger than their -resolution. Both in the stories and the preface to the "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--where Murger speaks with a picturesque seriousness--there is -no sign of that former joy in Bohemian life as the life which was alone -worth living by poets and artists. Throughout he regards it as a -necessity conditioned by the artistic impulse combined with poverty, to -be borne with the courage and gaiety of youth, to be regretted "perhaps" -from the vantage-point of subsequent prosperity. The true Bohemia--as -distinct from the Bohemia of mere idealists, incapables, and -amateurs--he regards as a narrow, stony path leading up the sides of an -arduous mountain, beset by the chasms of doubt and misery, but making -for a possible goal, the goal of a sufficient income. Divested of all -its _agréments_--resourcefulness, humour, courage, extravagance, which -are properly attributes of youth, the real illuminant--Murger's Bohemia -is laid bare as a merely economic state. The true Bohemians, he says, -are known upon the literary and artistic market-place, where their wares -are saleable, but at moderate prices; "their existence each day is a -work of genius"--"preceded by a pack of ruses, poaching in all the -industries connected with the arts, they hunt from morn till eve that -ferocious animal which is called the five-franc piece." To Murger, who -wrote of what he knew, the man who had the means to live a stable -existence, howsoever retired, was a fool if he remained in Bohemia: to -the inhabitants of _la Bohème galante_ it was the not being entirely -destitute which made their life peculiarly worth living. If Colline ever -speculated with any profundity he may have seen that his friends and he -lived really in a prison of which poverty, prodigality, and idleness -were warders. The Bohemia of Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Houssaye had -all the glory of a voluntary protest, a passionate assertion of liberty, -a revivifying of life in accordance with new artistic ideas. - -The difference is not simply one of degree. The brotherhood of the -Impasse du Doyenné were less destitute and more talented than Rodolphe -and his friends, but that is not a point that at this moment requires -stress. The important fact is that in a few years Bohemia had undergone -a great change; that, whereas a few years after 1830 young men with a -little money and some talent deliberately chose to make their life more -picturesque than that of ordinary citizens and to escape from the -suffocating atmosphere of commerce and officialdom, a few years after -1840 the ideal of struggling artists was to become as soon as possible -successful merchants and to escape from the possibility of that -picturesqueness which they welcomed as an alleviation of a state of -transitory discomfort. It would be quite beside the mark to regard -Bohemia as guilty in this of self-degradation; so far, indeed, as the -change was conscious, the majority of mankind must logically find it -praiseworthy, for all human effort is judged by its tendency to -well-being. The change, however, was none of Bohemia's doing, but was -due mainly to the fact that art was beginning, in the modern sense, to -pay. The beginnings were small, but they were quite evident, especially -in the increased profits from journalism and illustration. The old -Bohemia of the golden age rested on the supposition that the artist -worked primarily to please himself, and that money, source of enjoyment -as it was, remained a secondary consideration. The supposition, in the -first forward rush of commercial prosperity, was bound to become -untenable. Writers and artists of obvious talent were too valuable -commercial assets to be left to their careless selves; they had to be -tempted into the cage--an easy task, for, if money be regarded as a -means of more enjoyment, why should a Bohemian resist it? It was -unimportant if individuals held out, or were too uncompromising to suit -the market; the fact remained that there _was_ a market and a list of -quotations, and this fact was the disruption of Bohemia. Whereas it had -been a true fraternity in which art was all-important and individual -celebrity a thing of so little moment that there was complete equality -of intercourse, it now included the last two sections of a trisected -world of artists--the well-paid, the ill-paid, and the not paid at -all--and where money intervenes all equality ceases. The majority of the -well-paid were kept too busy even to see they had lost the old freedom; -they were tempted to live as other people in decent rooms and decent -coats, and as their vanity kept them from complaining, the ill-paid and -the not paid at all naturally envied their state, striving and jostling -for an equally happy captivity, or at least intending to do so as soon -as their irrepressible blood took a staider course through their veins. -The charm of Murger's merry crew is that their blood was too strong for -their business instincts; the Bohemian spirit snatched them along in -spite of Mammon, for Mammon, incomplete as his hold has always been over -youth, was in those days but just learning his strength. Where youth -and art combine the Bohemian spirit is always there; only the -possibilities of Bohemia have in the course of time been crowded out. -But in Murger's Paris Bohemia, shorn of earthly glory as it was, without -lot in the brilliance of the boulevard, cut off from the more thriving -traders in the artistic market-place, was still a possibility because -the Bohemian tradition was still fairly strong, and because Paris was -still a small city, its life little disturbed by a floating population -of aliens and its interests completely self-centred. - -The Bohemia described by Murger certainly corresponded in one respect -with the general conception of Bohemianism to-day in that it was devoid -of any material splendour. Neither Rodolphe nor Marcel indicates any -desire for the old furniture, damasks, and other decorations which so -glittered in the eyes of the early Romantics, but at any rate such -things would have been beyond the capacity of their purses. They were -unequivocally poor. When Rodolphe was in funds he could afford a hundred -francs a year for a garret in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; when -Providence was less kind he lived "in the Avenue de Saint-Cloud, on the -fifth branch of the third tree on the left as you leave the Bois de -Boulogne." As for entertainments, they came a long way behind the -costume ball of the Impasse du Doyenné. At Rodolphe's Wednesdays in the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, it was said, one could only sit down morally -and was forced to drink badly filtered water in eclectic earthenware. -Even the grand _soirée_ given by Rodolphe and Marcel, which began with a -literary and musical entertainment and ended with a dance prolonged till -sunrise, only cost the hosts fifteen francs--miraculously acquired at -the last moment--in addition to a set of chairs which fed the stove from -midnight onwards, though, as these belonged to a neighbour, they were -probably not paid for. Their wardrobes were not conspicuous for any -particularly Romantic or medieval effect, but simply, except in times of -exceptional windfalls, for extreme dilapidation. Schaunard's chief -garment was an overcoat worn to a state of utter baldness; Colline's -ulster, crammed with books and papers, had the surface of a file; -Marcel's coat was called "Mathusalem," but he must have acquired it -subsequent to the sugar-merchant's momentous visit, for at that time, -after an hour's search to discover a costume fit to dine out in, the net -results were a pair of plaid trousers, a grey hat, a red tie, a (once) -white glove and a black glove. To dine sufficiently at a small -restaurant was for them no ordinary luxury, and as for entering the -_Rocher de Caucale_, they might as well have aspired to membership of -the Jockey Club. Why, Schaunard had never seen a lobster till the old -Jew gave them all a feast after buying Marcel's _Passage de la Mer -Rouge_. Some days they dispensed with dining altogether, on others the -staple dish was pickled herrings; so it is hardly surprising that on the -proceeds of Marcel's picture they remained at table for five days, the -room filled with a Pantagruelic atmosphere and a whole bed of -oyster-shells covering the floor. It was not that they took up any -quixotic attitude of art for art's sake, like the society called _Les -Buveurs d'Eau_, whom Murger describes in one of his stories and whose -principle was not to make the slightest concession to necessity. They -were imperfect journeymen, indolent, careless, too easily distracted, -but they were among those who were ill-paid rather than those who never -tried to be paid. Rodolphe edited a small fashion paper, _L'Écharpe -d'Iris_; Marcel painted ruined manors for a Jew dealer and portraits of -the lowliest possessor of a few spare francs; Colline gave lessons in -the same range of subjects as Pico di Mirandola professed to discuss; -and Schaunard, besides exhibiting a special ability as a borrower, put -music to bad poetry for hard-hearted music-publishers. - -In comparing this Bohemia with that of Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, it -is easy to see the justification of Lepelletier's epithet "carottière." -The graceful adjuncts and by no means contemptible achievements of a -former day had vanished as completely as its enthusiasms. The presence -of Roger de Beauvoir and Nestor Roqueplan in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne is as difficult to imagine as the composition of -"Mademoiselle de Maupin." Yet Rodolphe and his friends were at least as -well off in one respect, that is, in their affairs of the heart, if, -indeed, they had not some advantage. The divinities of the Impasse du -Doyenné, Cydalise excepted, seem to have had their home in the _corps de -ballet_, a body not notable for the tenderness or constancy of their -attachments. Murger, who, like his Rodolphe, was an amorous -sentimentalist, gave some poetic value, if not as much as he intended, -to the figures of Mimi and Musette, the idols of Rodolphe and Marcel, -who play such a prominent part in the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," that -it would be an affectation not to speak of them, although an Englishman -must always do so with some reserve. In spite of all that may be said -against them--indeed, _is_ said by their very creator--there is a charm -about Mimi and Musette which must always hold the reader of these -stories, a charm which includes Francine, who died holding the muff -bought for her by her lover, and the vulgar Phémie Teinturière, who -shared the lot of a no more refined Schaunard. Without sympathizing, at -least temporarily, with all the blend of mystery and frankness which a -Frenchman breathes into the word "amour," it is useless to read French -literature. To him love is the highest emotional value--emotion being in -its turn the highest value in life--so that a union, whether it be -celebrated in the Madeleine or in the _mairie_ of the notorious -thirteenth _arrondissement_, is equally sacred and equally interesting. -We in England look at love differently and, as we naturally think, -better, but we are not hindered, nevertheless, from abandoning our view -occasionally. We do so implicitly when we shed tears over "La Dame aux -Camélias," over "Madame Butterfly," and over Mimi herself in Puccini's -"La Bohème." To be honest, then, we must accept Murger's view, if we -enjoy his book, as there is very little doubt that we do. We applaud -Musette when she surreptitiously waters the flowers whose duration is to -measure that of her love for Marcel; we forgive her fickleness because -she follows her fancy without calculation, even though on leaving the -rich young nobleman to visit Marcel she takes six days on the road; we -warm to Mimi because Rodolphe really loved her and she him, though his -jealousy and her love of luxury made their days a burden and their -rupture certain; and if we join heartily in Marcel's ironical tirade -against Mimi the fine lady, we cannot restrain our sadness at Mimi -returning to her old love to die. The life of the Impasse du Doyenné was -so joyous, strong, and full that its _amours passagers_ can be taken for -granted, happy fantasies without regrets; but Murger's Bohemia, with its -frequent moments of despondency and hardship, was forced to rely upon -its heart to supply that relieving colour which its surroundings could -not give. Mimi and Musette, Phémie and Francine, even the little -_giletière_ who corrected Colline's proofs and never appeared, meant so -much more than Lorry or Victorine. So long as their attachment lasted -they made a home out of the barest garret, doing for their men those -thousand little things which men are too lazy or preoccupied to do for -themselves. Besides, they opened a field for the exercise of -unselfishness--a valuable service in itself. In this connexion I need -only cite one delightful little story, to which I have already referred, -entitled "La Toilette des Grâces," an idyll which no afterthought can -spoil. It tells how Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard, having earned a -little money by making their respective arts serve the humblest of -commercial purposes, decided to surprise their mistresses by giving them -new dresses. One fine morning Mimi, Musette, and Phémie were awakened by -the entry of a procession headed by Schaunard, in a new coat of golden -nankeen, playing a horn, and close behind him a shopman bringing -samples. They nearly went mad with joy. Mimi jumped like a young kid, -waving a pretty scarf; Musette, with each hand in a little green boot, -threw her arms round Marcel's neck and clapped the boots like cymbals; -as for Phémie, she could only sob "Ah, mon Alexandre, mon Alexandre!" -The choice was made, the bills discharged, and it was announced to the -dames that they must have their new dresses ready for a day in the -country on the morrow. That was a trifle; for sixteen hours they cut and -stitched, and when next day the Angelus sounded from the neighbouring -church they were already taking their last look into the looking-glass. -Only Phémie had a little sorrow. "I like the green grass and the little -birds," she said, "but one meets nobody in the country. Suppose we made -our excursion on the boulevard." But they went to Fontenay-aux-Roses -instead, and when they returned late at night there were only six francs -left. "What shall we do with it?" asked Marcel. "Invest it in the -funds," said Schaunard. - -There are, doubtless, artistic _coteries_ to-day in whose existence -parallels may be found to the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but -reproduction is impossible, for Murger's Bohemia, no less than _la -Bohème galante_, was conditioned by its time. The conditions include a -Paris of provincial narrowness, greater simplicity together with less -conspicuous uniformity in ordinary life, less elaborate amusements, no -Montmartre _cafés_, no swamping proletariat beside whose _mÅ“urs -d'Apaches_ the eccentricities of Bohemia seem mild and unimportant, a -tiny fraction of the present opportunities for advertisement and -publicity, and a lower standard, perhaps, of general education. To these -one other condition may be added--the existence of Musette and Mimi, who -were the last of the _grisettes_. Murger himself, in a passage which I -cannot do better than quote in the original, points out clearly their -transitoriness: - - "Ces jolies filles moitié abeilles, moitié cigales, qui - travaillaient en chantant toute la semaine, ne demandaient à - Dieu qu'un peu de soleil le dimanche, faisaient vulgairement - l'amour avec le cÅ“ur, et se jetaient quelquefois par la fenêtre. - Race disparue maintenant, grâce à la génération actuelle des jeunes - gens: génération corrompue et corruptrice, mais par-dessus tout - vaniteuse, sotte et brutale. Pour le plaisir de faire de méchants - paradoxes, ils ont raillé ces pauvres filles à propos de leurs - mains mutilées par les saintes cicatrices du travail, et elles - n'ont bientôt plus gagné assez pour s'acheter de la pâte d'amandes. - Peu à peu ils sont parvenus à leur inoculer leur vanité et leur - sottise, et c'est alors que la grisette a disparu. C'est alors que - naquit la lorette." - -[Illustration: A Grisette] - -The _grisette_ made love for love: like a wild rose, she had to be -plucked, and when men came to prefer buying bouquets in shops, she -naturally died away. Money already tainted Bohemia, even here, in its -heart. The opportunity of luxury tempted both Mimi and Musette to be -unfaithful, but since caprice was ever stronger with them than -self-interest they were not undeserving to be called the last of the -_grisettes_. They were necessary adjuncts to Bohemia, and satisfactory -adjuncts, in spite of their caprices, for the last thing which Bohemian -man required was the Bohemian or--to use an obsolete phrase--the -"emancipated" woman. Too ignorant to meet their lovers, even had they -wished, upon their own ground, they held their place by keeping to their -natural advantage, the woman's desire to please. So they passed through -life, making the feast more festive and the fast less desolate, filling -a void and mending a sorrow as light-heartedly as they darned a sock or -patched a ragged coat. Mimi and Musette were the true counterparts of -Rodolphe and Marcel, and it is with regret that we see them disappear -into an epilogue of prosperity and propriety. Yet it was all they could -do, for what I have called the Bohemia of common mortality became -dangerous long before the age of thirty years. Rodolphe could not have -written in middle age to Marcel as Bouchardy did to Théophile Gautier; -only hypocritically could he have said "nous étions ivres du beau." -Murger escapes any false effect of that kind in his conclusion: - - "'We are done for, old fellow,' says Marcel, 'we are dead and - buried. Youth only comes once! Where are you dining to-night?' - - "'If you like,' answered Rodolphe, 'we will go and dine for twelve - sous at our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where the plates are - of village earthenware, and where we were always so hungry when we - had finished eating.' - - "'Good heavens, no. I don't mind looking back at the past, but it - shall be across a bottle of decent wine and seated in a good - arm-chair. It is no use, I'm corrupted. I only care now for what is - good!'" - - - - -X - -MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS - -_Si on excepte quelques natures fortement trempées qui se tirèrent des -impasses de la Bohème, le reste fut condamné à vivre difficilement en -face d'un idéal borné et sans avenir. Ni études, ni loisirs, ni aisances -ne permettaient à ces aspirants à l'art de s'élever et de conquérir un -nom._ - - CHAMPFLEURY: - -"Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse" - - -In order to catch at a glance the result of a lapse of years I lingered -in the last chapter over Rodolphe, Mimi, and their friends, figures -drawn from the moving scene of contemporary life, yet snatched from the -changes of time as permanently as those on Keats's Grecian urn. The -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" show, as it seems to me, more clearly than -any other kind of record, the decadence of Bohemia, regarding the degree -of its approach to an ideal of complete artistic existence, since the -great days that followed 1830. This might, indeed, be a warrant for not -returning to more documentary facts at all, but there are always those -to be considered who view Fiction as a sprite so far divorced from -actuality that they are unable to place any trust in her indications. -The teller of stories, in their apprehension, is always on the look-out -for a good effect, to which end he will minimize the essential and -magnify the unessential, distorting sober fact at the call of his -individual imagination. They are the people who read novels, as they -say, for relaxation, while finding wisdom alone in biographies and -memoirs bristling with dates and packed with quotations. The question, -"What, after all, is sober fact?" is sufficient to put them into -confusion, but to propound that ancient problem would be here beside the -mark, for in a book that honestly professes to be as sober in fact as -any it would be unbecoming unduly to press the point on behalf of -fiction. The warrant, therefore, will be allowed to pass, and we return -to those tales which men have told about themselves and their friends -under the names which they bore at baptism, duly signed and dated. Such -information as they give concerning the later years of Bohemia is, at -best, fragmentary, but the fragments have some appearance of falling -together in the light of Murger's picture. A more diligent research -might have produced a more detailed record, but it may be questioned -whether the total effect would have been any clearer. There were scores -of obscure persons in Bohemia, but their daily uprising and lying-down -were not so very widely different. At least this may be asserted, that -after a certain number of facts it is safer to use the imagination for -the rest. - -Murger and his friends were the legitimate successors of _la Bohème -galante_, and in view of their fictitious counterparts already -introduced the main interest of this chapter lies with them. Yet before -they appear there are some byways of Bohemia that call for inspection as -an illustration and a contrast. Bohemia was, of course, always bordered -on one side by the student life of the Quartier Latin, the freedom and -licence of which were both different and older in origin, going back to -the days of the schoolmen, when indigent scholars of all nations filled -the great university cities of Europe, forming in each a picturesque but -turbulent community. Even in most prosaic days the students of Paris -have kept up the medieval tradition, but particular manifestations would -naturally be influenced by the manners of the day. It is, therefore, not -surprising that the student quarter was profoundly affected by the -Romantic movement, and reflected its battles and its extravagances with -a hilarious distortion. The motley world of the Quartier Latin and those -who, though no longer students, remained attached to it had their "local -colour," their Gothic enthusiasms, and their orgies. They had dining -clubs with fantastic names, such as "Les 45 jolis cochons," which -indulged in something very like bump-suppers, with loud singing in the -streets, window-breaking, and practical joking to follow. The campaign -of "Hernani" was imitated in the Salle Chanteraine--a theatre for -amateurs--where there was nightly a _fracas_ with fisticuffs between -the various factions. Elaborate farces were organized to mystify the -good people of Paris, of which Maxime du Camp gives a good example in -his "Souvenirs Littéraires." It was called "La grande chevauchée de la -côtelette aux cornichons." Thirty young men, dressed in velvet -waistcoats and nankeen jackets, with long hair and beards, headed by a -certain young teacher of history waving a stick, marched solemnly in -serried single file with a halting step, dangling their arms at the same -time, from the Place Pigalle over the Pont Royal, crying in unison, "Une -deux, une deux, le choléra, le choléra!" At the end of the Pont Royal -they turned round in a body and shouted, "Connaissez-vous le thermomètre -de l'ingénieur Chevalier?" Solemnly facing about again, they proceeded -as before to Sainte-Mandé, where they lunched off pork cutlets. - -The special home of the wildest jokers and most desperate caricatures of -the new spirit was a certain tumble-down barrack, No. 9 Rue Childebert, -a street on the south side of that beautiful old church -Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and now merged in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. -This house, familiarly called "La Childebert," was five or six stories -high and thoroughly decayed, for its owner, a Madame Legendre, refused -to carry out any repairs. She was justified in this attitude to some -extent by the fact that few of her tenants paid any rent. Indeed, -according to one witness, no man in his senses would have paid any rent -for a room upon the top floor from 1837 onwards. One student, however, -an ingenious fellow called Lepierre, who both lived on the top floor and -paid his rent, succeeded in forcing the stingy lady to repair the roof. -Having been drenched one night during a hard storm, he took his revenge -by removing a portion of his flooring, and hiring all the peripatetic -water-carriers that could be found to pour water down the hole. The -_concierge_ remonstrated, but in vain, and Madame Legendre was sent for -in hot haste. When she arrived in a cab she was gaily serenaded by the -inhabitants, and on proceeding to the flooded room she was horrified to -find Lepierre in the costume of Adam before the Fall, who claimed a -right, he said, to have a bath at his _own_ convenience. Madame Legendre -fled, but the roof was repaired. The gay desperadoes of La Childebert -were capable of carrying through any _charge_, howsoever lurid. One of -the most successful was known as "le nez de Bouginier." Bouginier was an -artist, the size of whose nose inspired his friend Fourreau with the -idea of an exaggerated caricature in which this feature was made -enormous. A stencil was cut and copied, and for many days Bouginier's -nose appeared on all the walls in Paris. It is even alleged that two -parties of students, about to travel in the East and wishing to meet on -the voyage, hit on the simple plan of following Bouginier's nose. The -party starting first took a stencil with them, so that the second -party, leaving a fortnight later, were able to track them to -Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, and Suez. In a certain medallion in the -Passage du Caire, just south of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, -Bouginier's nose is still immortalized. La Childebert was always "up to" -something, but a certain fancy-dress _conversazione_ completely -convulsed the neighbourhood. The schools of art and poetry dressed -according to their views, and by universal consent the Romantics, for -all they could do in pourpoints, doublets, and general local colour, -were easily beaten by the Classicists. Romulus and Remus with their wolf -and Hercules with the Nemean lion created a _furore_; so great was the -real consternation of the district at the apparition of these wild -beasts that the commissary of police had to intervene. The wolf and the -lion suffered themselves to be led with great docility to his office, -where they turned out to be a great Dane and a mastiff respectively, -painted and padded with diabolical cleverness. - -La Childebert was strongly represented in a revellers' club called "Les -Badouillards," that flourished between 1835 and 1838. In "Paris -Anecdote" Privat d'Anglemont, who is the chief authority on the -Childebertian doings, describes the qualifications of a perfect -Badouillard. He had to pass a regular test before entering the bacchic -brotherhood; he had to be strong and agile, a clever and ready boxer, -fencer, and wrestler, he must have proved his courage in several -encounters, shown a fine taste in choreographic fantasy at the -Chaumière and an ability to engage in a duel of slang with any chance -person, and have sworn eternal feud against the sleep and peace of mind -of all _bourgeois_. The initiation was a solemn and trying ceremony. It -began with a copious dinner, followed by a ceaseless absorption of -various liquors till the time came for going to the ball. Here the -candidate stayed all night, behaving as outrageously as possible. He -then adjourned without sleep to breakfast, and passed the rest of the -day in the _cafés_ of the Quartier Latin, drinking, playing billiards, -and flirting. At night the programme was repeated, and if by the third -night he had accepted every challenge, never fallen asleep, nor tumbled -under any table, he was allowed to seek his bed a perfect Badouillard. - -For all its light-hearted absurdities La Childebert was not Bohemia, for -its existence belonged rather to that of irresponsible students than of -artists. I only mention it by way of contrast, as I now mention again -Privat d'Anglemont, the author of "Paris Inconnu" and "Paris Anecdote," -legendary as a Bohemian, but of a very different type. These two curious -and valuable books are a complete study of the seamy side of Paris -during the latter part of Louis Philippe's reign. The life of the -porters in the Halles, the _chiffonniers_, and all the pliers of obscure -trades, with their customs, their dwellings, and their manners, is most -faithfully reproduced in them in a manner which could only have been -made possible by a complete identification of the author with the -subjects of his observation. Such, in fact, was the lifework of Privat -d'Anglemont, a Creole born in Guadeloupe. He became the legendary -_noctambule_ of Paris, realizing, as Charles Monselet says in his -preface to "Paris Anecdote," the popular idea of a Bohemian--that is, -simply an eccentric vagabond. In the sense of the word as used in this -book, he was not a Bohemian at all, for, though he wrote articles and -books upon his experiences, he was in no sense an artist, nor was he -striving to make his life conformable to artistic liberty. He was -animated simply by a gipsy passion for roaming, combined with a taste -for mystery and romancing. Faithful as his books were, he hardly ever -_spoke_ the truth: twenty times he told Théodore de Banville the history -of his life, and each time it was different. Still, he merits a word -here on account of his reputation as the complete Bohemian, a reputation -increased by his being an easy peg on which to hang any fantastic story -that came into a journalist's brain. Théodore de Banville, who first met -him in 1841 and, according to Monselet, idealized him absurdly, gives -some curious recollections of him in "Mes Souvenirs." He was a handsome -man, dark, tall, and slender, rather resembling the elder Dumas. He -passed most of his life wandering about the low quarters of Paris in -complete poverty, often begging a meal from one of the _cabaretiers_ of -the Halles, who all loved him. Yet, de Banville avers, he was not -really unprovided for, since at irregular intervals a relative used to -send him about £200 from America in gold pieces. But Privat d'Anglemont -preferred to live without money, so that he never hesitated in getting -rid of this burden as soon as possible by standing a dinner to all the -poor and hungry women he could find in the tiny inn called the "BÅ“uf -Enragé," at the bottom of the Rue de la Harpe. Like Gérard de Nerval, he -would set out on a voyage at a moment's notice and without a moment's -preparation, and such was his charm that he had affectionate friends in -the lower quarters of many a French town. Once during his nightly -wanderings he was stopped by some robbers. "But I'm Privat," he said, -roaring with laughter. At which the robbers joined in the laugh, and -invited him to supper. By a ruined hut they sat down to drink the best -champagne in the light of the stars, to smoke, and to tell stories. -Privat delighted his hosts, who invited him to meet them again; but he -shook his head, saying, "N'engageons pas l'avenir." - -Privat d'Anglemont, who eventually died of consumption, did little more -than carry on the traditions of the "noctambules," less mischievously -than their founder, Rétif de la Bretonne, less modestly and artistically -than Gérard de Nerval, but so much more seriously than either of his -predecessors that he left little scope for a new departure to his own -successor, Alfred Delvau. He was not, in the truest sense, a Bohemian, -though he led an existence ever bordering on the confines of Bohemia. -The same may be said, in a more transitory sense, of Flaubert, the great -renovator and refiner of Romanticism. Most of his life was spent in the -country, but there was a short period when he came to study law in -Paris, which, if it were not mentioned, might justify a challenge from -readers familiar with "L'Education Sentimentale" or Maxime du Camp's -"Souvenirs Littéraires." So far as the first of these books is -concerned, little time need here be spent in finding relevant points of -comparison. The last thing which Flaubert desired to portray in that -depressing picture was an existence in any sense artistic. His hero is a -provincial youth who, during his student days in Paris, drifts aimlessly -and indolently through a variety of second-rate experiences in company -with second-rate friends. Flaubert's own experiences are, no doubt, -frequently worked into the material, but "L'Education Sentimentale" is -nothing so cheap as autobiography served in a thin sauce of fiction. It -is a novel in which the author has with the highest exercise of -penetrative imagination treated what Mr. Henry James would call the -"germ"--the dreary wastefulness, that is, of such a life in case of such -a young man as Frédéric Moreau, who with Madame Bovary is Flaubert's -contribution to the pathology of _le mal romantique_. Flaubert himself, -with all his excitability and extravagance, was of a much stronger -stamp; the strength of his artistic conviction saved him from all such -flabbiness. He came to Paris to study law, but, having failed to pass -his examination, returned to his home in 1843. If he had stayed he might -easily have become one of the leading figures, certainly a powerful -influence, in that Bohemia which Murger knew. Maxime du Camp, who made -his acquaintance early in 1843, shows him as a young man living always -at a high pitch with the flamboyant vitality that would have done no -dishonour to the Impasse du Doyenné, so far was he from being the victim -of Frédéric's weak-kneed desolation. He passed his days in an -alternation of prodigality and poverty, spending fifty francs on his -dinner one day and feeding on a crust and a slab of chocolate the next. -He lived in a kind of intellectual tornado, both frantic and noisy. He -went into ecstasies over mediocre works in which he perceived beauties -hidden from the rest of the world, but which he loved to point out -stridently to his friends, intoning the prose, roaring the verse at the -top of his voice, repeating incessantly any word which took his -passionate fancy, and filling all the neighbourhood with his din. He -would wake up a friend without compunction at three in the morning to -show him a moonlight effect on the Seine; one moment he would be -inventing sauces to make brill appetizing, and the next he would be -plotting to smack Gustave Planche's face for having spoken slightingly -of Victor Hugo. The _cénacle_ composed of Louis de Cormenin, Le -Poitevin, Du Camp, and himself often dined at Dagneaux's, one of the -better restaurants of the Quartier Latin, and stayed talking ceaselessly -till the doors were closed. Their ambitions were as wild as their -conversation; Flaubert and Du Camp seriously determined to learn -everything between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to produce great -works till forty, and then to retire into the country. Except for the -fact that, according to his friend, Flaubert disdained the women whom -his beauty attracted, this was a promising beginning for Bohemia. As the -world knows, fate decreed otherwise, and he retired to develop in that -close intellectual atmosphere with Louis Bouilhet and Du Camp, of which -the latter says: "Living as we did, in solitude, we exchanged only the -same set of ideas apart from all criticism, so that things in general -lost their right proportion in our minds." - -Flaubert's life in the Rue de l'Est was, at best, only a tentative -pathway in Bohemia, like one of those tracks in a suburb that give hope -of leading somewhere, but change their mind _en route_. It is too small -a digression to be distracting, and I entered upon it, among other -reasons, because its little adventure coincides in date with those -movements in the central market-place yet to be touched on. One more -alley, however, must be taken on the way, for it is, indeed, only just -off the market-place. The name upon its wall is that of Charles -Baudelaire, a well-known figure whose exact relation to Bohemia is, -nevertheless, not so easy to determine. He began very much in the manner -of Flaubert, coming as a student to the Quartier Latin and residing at a -not very strictly kept _pension_ near the Panthéon between 1839 and -1841, his eighteenth and his twentieth years. I need not repeat the -distinction made between student life--_das Burschenleben_--and -out-and-out Bohemianism. Baudelaire filled his days to their fullest -extent, mixing together indiscriminately the enjoyments of student, -dandy, and _viveur_, so far as his means allowed. It was only at the end -of this time that his determination to take up literature scandalized -his stepfather and caused his enforced sea voyage. When he returned in -1842 he had come of age and possessed a capital of 75,000 francs. He set -about spending this money with a gusto and in a manner not unworthy of -the golden age of Bohemia. He had various lodgings till he settled for -two years in a beautiful apartment in the old Hôtel Pimodan on the ÃŽle -St.-Louis, where his comrade was the painter Boissard, a good artist -who, as Gautier said, exhausted himself in enthusiasms, and in whose -wonderful Louis XIV salon the society of _hachischiens_ met. Had -Baudelaire been a true Bohemian at heart he might have instituted a -second _Bohème galante_, but he was wanting in that simplicity and -goodfellowship which are signal qualities in the Bohemian character. He -wished to make his life, like his art, a study in exquisite intensity, -so that in the days of his splendour his mode of living was rather that -of a "dandy" than anything else. He dressed with immense care, but in a -bygone fashion; he pursued every kind of sensation, frequented every -kind of society, and became the leader of a set who carefully cultivated -eccentricity for its own sake, an eccentricity too _posé_ to serve as a -type of Bohemian manners. To make himself a subject of astonishment was -his chief amusement, to which end his devices--such as entering a -restaurant with a friend and feigning to begin a story with the loud -exordium: "After I had murdered my poor father----"--were innumerable. -So much may be said with a certain pity or amusement, but it must also -be admitted that a certain refinement, both social and intellectual, -kept him from associating himself entirely with the not -over-discriminating Bohemia of his generation. It is all the more fair -to say this because after 1844, when his stepfather got a guardian -appointed to take charge of his remaining capital and he was reduced to -eking out a reduced income by journalism, with all its attendant -disappointments and hardships, he chose with some discrimination the -extent to which he would throw in his lot with the Bohemian life for -which he had by that time every qualification. He became a friend of -Murger and many other complete Bohemians, and there is a story of his -asking the original of Schaunard to dine and giving him a piece of Brie -cheese and two bottles of claret, asking him to imagine that he was -enjoying the dessert after a good dinner. Yet his real intimates were a -band of young men, Théodore de Banville, Charles Monselet, Villiers de -l'Isle Adam, and Leconte de l'Isle, who chose to maintain a certain -amount of order in the midst of eccentricity and found boisterous -joviality less to their taste than the more delicate affectations of -wit. Here again I hold no brief for the complete Bohemians. They had -their compensating virtues, but it is hardly doubtful that Baudelaire -and his friends were the better educated and the more truly artistic set -of the two. This, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy of Bohemia's -decline, that its spiritual distinction faded with its material -well-being. At any rate, for a combination of reasons, laudable and the -reverse, Baudelaire's set was not Bohemia, and if, as I leave them, I -may insist particularly on one of the less laudable reasons, it is that -pose, which is another form of convention, must by the very conception -of Bohemia be excluded from its characteristics. Nadar hits the -difference when, in his curious little book on Baudelaire, which is -written in an idiom describable as a French version of that elliptical -quaintness associated with our own _Pink 'Un_, he writes: "Avec ces -épileptiques, combien loin du sans façon tout bonhomme, de la simplesse -à la bonne franquette de mon autre bande de Bohème, 'la bande de Murger' -et de notre 'Société des buveurs d'eau.' ..." - -We return, then, to the author of "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" at the -end of a rather circuitous route. In speaking of the Bohemia which he -immortalized I have called it, in distinction from certain modifications -or superficial resemblances, the central market-place, but no more need -be sought in that phrase than an effort to represent it by a handy image -as exhibiting the main civic qualities and manners implied in the -generic name. Compared with earlier days, a far less proud and bustling -burgherdom trod its rather muddy paving-stones, for it had suffered as -some agricultural centre when railways were beginning. Yet any pride of -succession which they may have had was legitimately theirs, for, if they -were less materially and intellectually endowed, if the peculiarly happy -circumstances of their civic foundation had passed to make their -ultimate disruption certain under the changed conditions of all that is -included in social development, they still preserved the Bohemian -character, with its simplicity, gaiety, humour, and courage. To labour -the point further is unnecessary, for if it is not already clear, the -fault is too remote to be here corrected. In the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème" all the daily comedy and tragedy of this Bohemia of common -mortality finds expression: the life there described so intimately and -humorously stands or falls by its artistic truth, to which no amount of -possible documentary corroboration adds an iota. Nevertheless, the -professed concession to a desire for ascertainable "facts" with which -this chapter opened must be made, at the risk of seeming to expose the -vanity of the researcher as the real object of indulgence. Since, in the -garrulous world of to-day, nobody can make the least incursion into the -public eye, much less produce a successful book or picture, without the -appearance of a crop of "personal notes," so Murger's picture may be -taken for granted, and what follows may appear in the light of "personal -notes," claiming no more connexion than a general relation to the -picture. - -Murger[28] was no son of a landed proprietor nor even sprung from a -middle-class family, as most Bohemians naturally were, for the whole -life of Bohemia presupposes a more or less literary education seldom -vouchsafed to the children of lower social order. His father was a -German tailor in the Rue des Trois Frères, who wished, not without -reason, that his son should succeed him in his trade. Murger's early -education was therefore confined to the rudiments, and his deficiencies -in that respect were a burden upon him all his life. The career of a -tailor, for all that, aroused his utmost aversion; through his two -friends, Emile and Pierre Bisson, who became clerks, he acquired a -violent taste for poetry, with the composition of which he judged the -shears incompatible. His father took the rebellion hardly, but got him a -place, since he liked pens and paper so much, as errand-boy to an -_avoué_, an occupation in which he continued to cultivate his poetic -inclinations. When seventeen years old, in 1839, through the interest of -M. de Jouy, a critic and member of the Academy, he was appointed -secretary to a Russian diplomat, M. de Tolstoi. His salary was only 40 -francs a month, out of which he had to pay a small _pension_ to his -father for board and lodging; still, he was happy. His duties were very -light, and his employer, who also had a literary turn, took a certain -amount of interest in him and gave him occasional presents of money. -During the next two years he made the acquaintance of that group of -friends on which he drew for his stories of Bohemia, and experienced two -love affairs. The first object of his affections was "la cousine -Angèle," the heroine of a chapter in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," in -which Rodolphe in his draughty garret, by dint of burning his great -tragedy in the stove, warms himself sufficiently to write the -commemorative poem for the tombstone of a defunct _bourgeois_, buying -with the proceeds a bunch of white violets for his disdainful cousin. -The second was a certain Marie, who eventually ran away with one of his -friends--a tragedy which he relates in "Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse." -By this time he had become a thoroughly developed Bohemian, intolerant -of all restraint. He left his father's home, and even for a time gave up -his post with M. de Tolstoi. - -It was then that Henry Murger's Bohemia was definitely formed, a society -described by one of them as "ce demi-quarteron de poètes à l'outrance, -mais absolument inédits, réunis dans un tas, sans vestes ni semelles, ne -doutant de rien, ni de leur lendemain, ni de leur génie, ni du génie de -leur voisin, ni de l'éditeur à venir, ni du succès, ni des belles dames, -ni de la fortune--de rien, si ce n'est de leur dîner du soir, trop -convaincus, d'ailleurs, quant à la question de leur déjeuner du matin." -Their names were the brothers Bisson, Lelioux, Noel, Nadar, Guilbert, -Vastine, the brothers Desbrosses, Cabot, Villain, Tabar, Chintreuil, -Pottier, Karol, Schann, and Vernet. They called themselves the "Société -des Buveurs d'Eau," but they were by no means so quixotic as Murger -draws that society in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was simply a -union for mutual help, the rules of which did not bar any commercial -occupation. The members lived as they pleased or as they could, and -water was only a compulsory beverage at the official monthly meetings, -when they all submitted their work to the criticism of their brethren. -Their ordinary occupations were various enough. Noel gave drawing -lessons; another was a judicial stenographer; Jacques Desbrosses, -nicknamed Christ--the original of "Jacques D----" in "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--and Cabot drew designs for monumental masons; the other -Desbrosses, called Gothique, earned a little money by painting -door-signs for midwives; Schann, the original of Schaunard, was a -musician, and Wallon, Murger's Colline, who joined the society later, -eked out his barren philosophy by giving lessons; Chintreuil, afterwards -to become a well-known artist, was then a bookseller's assistant, with -Champfleury for his colleague; and Nadar, otherwise F. Tournachon, whom -Alphonse Karr describes as "a kind of giant with immense legs, long -arms, a long body with a shaggy head of red hair above it, and staring, -intelligent, flashing eyes," was the poet and journalist who became a -celebrated balloonist and an immensely successful photographer. His -caricature hangs in the section of the Musée Carnavalet devoted to early -aeronautics in Paris. - -We may take it from Murger that the shortcomings of fortune were borne -with humorous fortitude on the credit of her occasional smiles, but -there was no illusion about the privations. Nadar, Champfleury, and -Delvau all agree that a bitter wind blew upon them. It was not so bad, -in Nadar's opinion, so long as they lived more or less together, and -this they did for a short time in an old house by the Barrière d'Enfer, -which looked like a farm with a farmyard inhabited by hens. Champfleury -made their acquaintance at this time in a little dairy where they -sometimes took their meals. It was a strange society. Some wore blouses, -others Phrygian caps, while the brothers Desbrosses had large sky-blue -overcoats, turned back with pink satin and fastened by huge -mother-of-pearl buttons. These two brothers were the originators of the -colony at the Barrière d'Enfer, and its chiefs "surtout par leur -misère." They harboured some of the others, who found a resting-place -for the night in two hammocks slung in their small room. Murger was -among them, the art of painting being for the moment his preoccupation. -Fine days were spent lounging on the roof and contemplating the then -rural surroundings. Anybody arriving with five francs in his pocket -would have been regarded as a millionaire; indeed, they were happy -enough when they could afford a few fried potatoes for dinner. Yet they -would not have exchanged their hovel for the Garden of Eden, and they -fed upon their dreams with inexhaustible confidence. Privation was still -worse when the society broke up. One Bohemian lived a whole week on raw -potatoes brought by his poor mother from the country; another went three -days without food; another passed a winter shirtless in a calico blouse -and a lasting waistcoat; another, as a device to keep himself warm, used -to carry a log of wood up to his high garret, drop it over the -banisters, and run down to fetch it again; an older Bohemian who heard -of this manÅ“uvre exclaimed: "Spendthrift, why the log?" - -Henry Murger himself, who had abandoned painting and definitely adopted -the vocation of a sentimental poet, went to live with his friend -Lelioux, first in the Rue Montholon and then in that garret at £4 a year -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne where Rodolphe's friends "drank badly -filtered water out of eclectic earthenware" at his Wednesday receptions. -He had resumed his employment with M. de Tolstoi, but he was too -improvident to keep out of misery for many days together. More than once -he became so ill with purpura, an eruptive disease due in his case to -the abuse of coffee, that he had to go to the hospital. Some extracts -from his letters during these years will give an idea of his -destitution. On December 14, 1841, he writes: - - "Les Desbrosses passent la moitié de la journée à ne pas manger et - l'autre à crever de froid. Les chats se méfient d'eux, et, en fait - de chéminée, ils ne possèdent que leurs pipes--bien des fois sans - tabac." - -March 6, 1842: - - "Sans le Christ, qui m'a donné à dîner et à déjeuner quatre fois la - semaine, je ne sais pas ce que je serais devenu. Ce garçon n'a pas - volé son surnom." - -April 25, 1843: - - "Nous crevons de faim; nous sommes au bout du rouleau. Il faut - décidément se faire un trou quelque part ou se faire sauter la - cervelle." - -March 17, 1844: - - "De Charybde en Sylla, mon cher ami! La misère est plus horrible - que jamais chez moi et autour de moi. Ma place au _Commerce_ n'a - pas eu de suite; je suis de nouveau sur le pavé. C'est horrible! - Aussi le découragement m'a-t-il pris et tout à fait submergé. - Encore quelques jours de cette position et je me fais sauter la - cervelle ou je m'engage dans la marine.--Pardonne-moi ces plaintes! - C'est le cri de la _fin_." - -Like Colline, he punned even in his misery. - -Letters of this doleful nature do not throw a very gay light upon the -Bohemian market-place, where there was high competition for a small -custom and prices ruled low. They contain a truth which no consideration -of Bohemia can omit, but it was not the whole truth, as Murger himself -testifies in his stories. It was a life of good days as well as bad, -even in the leanest years, or "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" could never -have been written. Murger himself had already begun to hand some small -wares over his counter. Rodolphe, the poet, it will be remembered, did -not disdain to edit a small fashion paper called _L'Écharpe d'Iris_, in -which, to Colline's extravagant delight, he inserted the philosopher's -articles on metaphysics. This was a direct touch from life, for Bohemia -in more than one instance lent its pen to trade. There was a certain -Charles Vincent who edited two papers of the leather trade, _Le -Moniteur de la Cordonnerie_ and the _Halle aux Cuirs_. In his editorial -capacity he retained all the new pairs of boots and shoes sent in by -advertisers, and with these he often paid his contributors. Murger in -1843 edited _Le Moniteur de la Chapellerie_, the industrial fruits of -which were, no doubt, less profitable, but even a few hats and a few -francs a month were of considerable value in Bohemia. They were, of -course, nothing like the editorial profits of to-day. Receipts were -extremely precarious, when, even on a well-written literary paper like -_L'Artiste_, the application of a contributor for payment caused a -considerable rummaging in tills and pockets before twenty-five francs -could be found _dans la boutique_.[29] Yet small change was enough to -stand a Bohemian holiday, and Murger's gloomy letters must be discounted -by balancing them against Rodolphe's expedition to Versailles with -Mademoiselle Laure after he had ransacked Paris for the five francs -necessary to do that expedition in sufficient style. It would be absurd -to suppose that Murger, with Nadar, Schann, and a _grisette_ or two, did -not sometimes invade the Chaumière in a joyous band or wake from sleep -the serious inhabitants of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne. - -At the same time, howsoever the balance of pleasure and pain be struck, -it is clear that happy memories of this Bohemia could only remain to -those for whom it was only a necessary stage in life and not a -death-trap. This tendency to poetic melancholy and the painful slowness -with which he worked might have caused Henry Murger to sink for ever -like many of his friends. He was saved, in the first instance, by -Champfleury, who, when he was finally sold up in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne, took him to live in the Rue de Vaugirard and induced him to -abandon poetry for prose. Jules Husson-Fleury, who was born at Laon in -1821 and became a well-known writer under the name of Champfleury, a -great collector of prints and porcelain, on which he wrote some valuable -monographs, and finally the director of the Sèvres manufactory, passed -through Bohemia during the same years as Murger, and in his "Souvenirs -et Portraits de Jeunesse" records many lively experiences. He first came -to Paris as shop-boy and assistant in a bookseller's shop where, as I -have already said, the future painter Chintreuil was in the same -service. Champfleury lost his place for reading the books on his errands -instead of delivering them to the customers, but during this year 1839 -he saw something of Murger and the colony of the brothers Desbrosses. He -then left Paris for a year or two, and returned when Murger was living -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, though the acquaintance was not at -once renewed. It was approximately in 1845 that they went to live -together in the Rue de Vaugirard, after Champfleury had met Murger -again in the hospital. They did not by any means leave Bohemia; in fact, -there is reason to suppose that to some extent the character of Marcel -was drawn from Champfleury. They wrote a vaudeville together which was -never accepted, and attacked the difficult art of writing stories. -Murger was able to place some of his work in _L'Artiste_, the editor of -which was Arsène Houssaye, and in 1846 the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -began to come out in _Le Corsaire_. They were poorly enough paid at the -time, but their dramatisation by Barrière in 1849 proved a huge success, -and from that time onwards Murger settled down to more serious work and -a less disorderly life. - -But I am anticipating Champfleury's memories of the last days of -Bohemia. In his view, at any rate so far as Murger and he were -concerned, the indolence of Bohemia has been much exaggerated. "In -reality," he says, "work was the basis of our life." They had a joint -library, to which Murger supplied the poets and Champfleury the -prose-writers. The latter read voraciously to educate himself, but -Murger chiefly thumbed the pages of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset; he -took regular doses of Shakespeare in a French translation, traces of -which appear in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but he had little -knowledge of other classic authors. He worked with extraordinary -difficulty; a page of prose cost him a night's work and intense -intellectual labour, for "Murger n'était plein que de son cÅ“ur." -Champfleury, for all his friendship, was a shrewd critic when he -observed that his whole vision was introspective: "He swept the same -chimney so often that in the end the plaster came off and the bricks -fell down"; or again: "Besides his little library, his belongings -consisted of worn white gloves, a velvet mask, and a withered bouquet -hung on the walls. All Murger's work lies in his memories--some faded -flowers, a meeting at the Bal de l'Opéra, a heart-ache." - -Certain disorders of Bohemia are not excused by Champfleury, -particularly that of not paying debts. His friend Fauchéry, an engraver -who afterwards went to seek his fortune in Australia, induced him at -first to accept the Bohemian code, which was: - -1. Never to pay one's rent. - -2. To conduct one's removals by the window. - -3. To consider all bootmakers, tailors, hatters, and restaurant-keepers -as members of Mr. Credit's family. - -Some went so far as to maintain that after a clandestine removal through -the window no piece of furniture which had passed the gutter in the -middle of the street could be reclaimed by the proprietor. This less -creditable attitude of Bohemia, which is sufficiently prominent in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," was repudiated with some shame in after -years by many of Murger's friends. In the book Rodolphe pays his debts -when he settles down, and we have it on the authority of Delvau that -Schann (Schaunard), who eventually kept a respectable toy-shop, and the -original of Musette, who married a chemist, took in their later days a -more usual view of money matters. Champfleury confesses that he himself -was saved by an amiable girl, who for a time became the divinity of his -garret. Unlike Mimi and Musette, she had a horror of debt and -vagabondage and inspired him with a pleasure in his own humble hearth, -so that he gradually detached himself from his comrades, who were for -the most part so ill provided for in the matter of lodging that their -chief workroom was a _café_, where they arrived at nine in the morning, -to leave at midnight. They read the newspapers, played at dominoes or -_tric-trac_, and occasionally did a little work. Fauchéry, in -particular, caused considerable surprise among the regular customers by -bringing his whole engraving apparatus and solemnly setting to work. -Some respect certainly is due to the proprietors of these little -eating-houses who so gallantly put up with and gave credit to this noisy -and not very profitable _clientèle_, who were capable of perpetrating -all the outrages committed by Rodolphe and the rest in their constant -asylum, the Café Momus. - -Champfleury says little of the amiable goddess who rescued him from -vagabondage except that she left him, like Mimi, because she grew tired -of cheap muslin, but in another chapter he gives some account of two -other idols of Bohemia whom he calls Mademoiselle M. and Mademoiselle P. -Mademoiselle M. was dark and merry, a thorough coquette who laughed at -wounded hearts; Mademoiselle P. was fair and melancholy, always in tears -for the last lover who had left her. A generation of Bohemians were -their lovers, poets and painters especially. As the generation grew up -the divinities grew wiser, and Mademoiselle M. was the first to do a -little mental arithmetic. For her own friends who had a future the days -of idleness were over; there was no future for her either among the -stranded remainder or in a new generation. Accordingly she departed to -more profitable spheres. Mademoiselle P. stayed a little longer, still -loving her poets, and weeping _toutes les larmes de son corps_ to find -that she had a too formidable rival in the desire for fame which watched -at the door of her lovers' hearts, till finally she found a worthy man -who was no poet to love her and eventually to marry her. Mademoiselle -M., meanwhile, had made by her conquests quite a respectable capital, -with which one fine day she set sail for Algiers. Unhappily she left -Marseilles in a steamer which sank with all hands, so that she and her -gold came to rest at the bottom of the sea--a sad story from which -Champfleury in an unworthy moment makes some show of drawing a moral. -Neither of these young women can be identified with Murger's heroines. -Musette, as I have said, married a chemist; Phémie Teinturière, -Schaunard's choice, was according to Delvau, a not over-respectable -person resembling a heroine of Paul de Kock; as for Mimi, Delvau -asserts that Murger loved her while he wrote the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème," and that her life and wretched death are matters of fact. -However, that we may not be too lugubrious let me add that I have read -in the French equivalent of "Notes and Queries" a statement that she -cheerfully lived to keep a stall in the market. - -One more bead in this string of scattered "facts," and the hungerers for -documentary evidence must go away satisfied. The disorder of Bohemia -requires no emphasis, but it is curious to note that the persons in whom -its more orderly elements were incarnated were Champfleury himself and -the original of that odd figure, Carolus Barbemuche, the solemn young -tutor who in Murger's story glances so enviously at the _cénacle_ of -Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel in the Café Momus, who saves them from -disaster by paying for their reckless Christmas Eve supper, who demands -so humbly the privilege of being admitted to the clan, who serves so -long and expensive an apprenticeship and gives such a splendid festival -on his reception, even to the length of lending all his own presentable -clothes to his guests for the occasion. Carolus Barbemuche was drawn, -much to his disgust, from Charles Barbara, an obscure writer of -fantastic stories, who joined Murger's Bohemia after acting as tutor to -two boys. He had a face like a sphinx, rarely smiled, and seemed to be -afraid of the wild jokes of his friends. Unlike the rest, he lived -almost a hermit's life, receiving nobody in his garret, and retiring -there every night neither to read nor to write, but to think, a queer -occupation for a Bohemian. Of him Champfleury writes: - - "He and I represented order in a group doomed to disorder; we were - the _bourgeois_ of Bohemia, as much by our ambitions as our manner - of living. The details of one day of our life, which continued in - the same way for ten years, will show the succession of our studies - and our labours. Rising very early, dashing from my bed to my - table, I used to write till nine o'clock. An hour sufficed me for - breakfast and a walk to the library, where I worked till twelve; - there I used to meet Barbara, whom I took to the public lectures at - the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, or the Jardin des Plantes. Two - lectures, an hour each, exhausted our attention, and, resuming our - walk, we arrived at Schann's temple of music, exclusively - consecrated to quartets. Two hours of music every day, without - counting piano trios three times a week at another house, made us - able to read all the chamber music of the German masters.... - Barbara was the finest instrumentalist in our band; son and brother - of distinguished musicians, he had received in early youth - excellent violin lessons, the fruit of which was not lost later, - and he brought to the leading of a quartet a restrained emotion - which is to be found in some pages of his writings." - -It is an unexpectedly pretty glimpse into a part of Bohemia where Murger -was not at home. When the quartets took place in a little square of the -Quartier Latin, students and _grisettes_ came to listen before the open -window, and workpeople on every story put out their heads to watch for -the arrival of the musicians. Murger's disreputable Schaunard, with his -symphony on _L'influence du bleu dans la musique_, was always, I must -confess, my favourite; but to discover that he played the quartets of -Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn for two hours a day -with Barbemuche and Marcel--well, it was an intoxicating vision. -Schaunard, who had a passion for lobsters, the composer (in his fleshly -form of Schann) of a famous drinking song, as second violin in a -Beethoven quartet--oh pleasant, pleasant fellow, who truly deserved to -come into the comfortable harbour of a toy-shop! - -Marcel, so far as he was Champfleury, found a haven too, and lived till -1889. Colline retired to found a new religion in Switzerland, and -Rodolphe-Murger, though he lingered for some years in the band of -artists and writers who haunted the _brasserie_ where Courbet raised the -temple of realism, finally turned his back on dissipation and settled at -Marlotte, even now a charming village near Fontainebleau. His chief -recreation there was hunting, an occupation quite innocuous to the game, -if it be true that a certain hare survived his attentions for a whole -season, and when an unwary keeper shot it one misty afternoon, he -exclaimed with genuine compunction, "Tiens, c'est le lièvre de M. -Murger!" In 1861 he came to die in Paris of arteritis, and all the -literary world visited his bedside. He died two days after his admission -to the hospital, exclaiming, "Pas de musique! Pas de bruit! Pas de -Bohème!" Bohemia, indeed, had long been dead, and in his last moments he -may have recognized that it was well. There was no longer room for it in -a busier, a better-swept world. In its golden age Bohemia did no more -than share the imperfections of all human institutions. It had virtues, -a liberty, a pride, and an ideal of its own. Murger had seen the beauty -become a slattern, pretty no doubt beneath her smuts, gay in the midst -of her sorrows, but free by tolerance, not by protest, her pride almost -in the dust and her ideals in the possession of others. In the words -which Théodore Pelloquet spoke over his grave, Murger belonged to an -evil generation: - - "Il appartenait à une mauvaise génération, à une génération - vieillie avant l'heure, et, malgré sa vieillesse prématurée, sans - expérience, sans enthousiasme et sans colère, ayant de la vanité et - pas du tout d'orgueil, une vanité niaise, puérile, qui se manifeste - surtout par l'affectation d'une ironie mesquine, en face de tous - les enthousiasmes et de toutes les grandes causes; à une - génération, en un mot, qui laissa périr dans ses mains le - magnifique héritage que lui avaient légué les hommes de 1830." - - - - -XI - -AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA - - -The pageant of 1830 has passed, and our gaze has been directed to its -Bohemian ingredients with the purpose of noting the particular marks and -qualities which distinguished Bohemia, and how their particular -manifestations were conditioned and varied by the progress of the years. -Looking out of the window of the present, we have been unable at any -moment to call a halt, lest we should lose a comprehensive view of the -main development. Now that this view has been gained it will do no harm -to send the procession once more before the mind's eye, that we may fix -at leisure any less important details which may seem in themselves -attractive. One of the most happy qualities of the Bohemian nature is -its capacity for amusing itself. Real boredom and lackadaisical idleness -do not come into the list of its shortcomings. The passionate Romantics, -indeed, fashionably suffered from "spleen" and "ennui," they proclaimed -a "cÅ“ur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie," but the Bohemian, -so far as he indulged in these peculiarities, was amusing himself. To -him "spleen" and "ennui" were part of the game which he embraced with -enthusiasm and in which he desired to excel; yet they were parts to -which, as a general rule, he did not pay too much attention, preferring -the more positive and assertive sides of Romanticism. Neither Gautier -nor Gérard de Nerval nor Rodolphe nor Schaunard presents himself to the -imagination as suffering from boredom. An unfailing capacity for amusing -oneself and finding amusement in one's fellow-men is an essential -Bohemian _trait_. The preceding chapters have not been wholly devoid of -indications as to the way in which these talents were exercised by the -Bohemian clans, but it was necessary to insist rather on the diversions -which characterized the _particular_ spirit of each brotherhood than on -the general opportunities which they all enjoyed with slight variation. -The field is now open without restriction, and it will not be amiss to -take a glimpse here and there at the Bohemian enjoying his leisure, if -only to add a few vivid touches that will enliven the background of the -picture. The work of Bohemia can always be taken for granted; artistic -endeavour, whether actively or indolently pursued, varies but little in -external feature; the change, the colour, the tragedy and comedy are -only to be found within the artist's mind; but the amusement of Bohemia, -so far from being hidden, courts publicity. It takes its colour, too, so -largely from the changing world around that there is great pictorial -value in its easily observable vicissitudes. For that reason I devote -this chapter to the subject of its title without further apology, but -only with the caution that here the accidents rather than the essentials -of Bohemia are regarded. The privilege of amusement is open to -everybody, but to see what Bohemia made of its privileges in that -respect is, perhaps, to quicken it for the imagination by an extra -spark. - -Precisians might say that dress hardly comes under the head of -amusements and that on certain views it is more properly included in the -category of necessities or of nuisances. Yet there is no doubt that for -all women--and for more men than would admit it--to be well dressed is -an enjoyment, a term only differing from amusement by a smaller -suggestion of possible frivolity. It is quite a sufficient warrant, at -all events, for giving dress a small part in this chapter; besides, the -costume of any individual or society is both a sure indicator of -qualities and an apt focus for judgment. In England, the very home of -illustrated books and papers, it is not necessary to say much in evoking -the costume of a past age, so that the subject may be treated quite -shortly, especially as regards the men of Bohemia, whose dress was too -often a deplorable tragedy. When Marcel went to Musette's party with -"Mathusalem" buttoned up to the neck over a blue shirt dotted with the -figures of a boar-hunt he was, as Murger says, "dressed in the worst -taste possible." In such a case there is no more to be said; his -appearance would vary little from age to age. To the Bohemian in his -lean days, certainly, it would be an insult to impute enjoyment of his -tattered wardrobe. Those who most enjoyed dressing, without a doubt, -were the Bohemian generation who cheered "Hernani" with such frenzy, for -they made their _pourpoints_, felt sombreros, Robespierre waistcoats, -and Phrygian caps effective details in the general Romantic -demonstration and, as such, matters of intense pleasure. But these -extravagances have already caught our attention; they were part of that -frantic desire for novelty and colour which was a symptom of _le mal -romantique_; their proper complement was that rage for fancy-dress balls -which broke out shortly after 1830 and laid every nationality and period -under contribution for picturesque costumes. So far as the men are -concerned, it need only be pointed out that the general dress of the -time--against which Bohemia stood out at first and into which it -gradually faded--was that of tight pantaloons with straps, long coats -with full skirts and accentuated waists, full cravats, lavish jewellery, -and high hats in a bewildering variety of shapes, cylindrical, conical, -inverted conical, curly, straight, with broad brims and with scarce a -brim at all--the civilian uniform, in fact, of our own late Georgian and -early Victorian era. It was a dress that only a few could wear with -distinction; on the rest it wrinkled and puffed in inevitable ugliness. -A Roger de Beauvoir could look immaculately moulded, but one has only -to glance at the caricatures of Traviés, Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni -to see how unequivocally hideous were the clothes of an average man. To -be out at elbows in this exacting fashion was indeed to be a sorry -sight, and one can well imagine poor Lucien de Rubempré to have been in -his provincial attire fair game for the sneers of Rastignac and de -Marsay. Still, even the Bohemian had a new suit at times, and it lights -the memory of Arsène Houssaye, Camille Rogier, Murger, Champfleury, and -the rest to recall that it was not for comfortable lounge suits and -flannels that they got into debt, but for correct suits of "tails," -flowery waistcoats, top-hats, and patent leather boots. It gives a -quaint touch of decorum to the picture of their wildest excesses. - -Women entered Bohemia as guests rather than as inhabitants, and to the -fair visitors conformity to fashion was anything but a trifle. To deck -themselves fittingly was their constant amusement, and one in which they -took good care that their swains should be sharers. The female dress of -the time is well known to us from early pictures of Queen Victoria and -the paintings of Winterhalter; there are few, too, who at one time or -another have not seen some of Gavarni's beautiful fashion plates. The -Empire style had entirely disappeared, and the accent was in 1830 laid -chiefly on the waist. The shoulders were sloping and wide, the sleeves -so voluminous that by 1836 they were like miniature balloons, the skirt -very wide and full, ending above the ankles. The waist and head were -made to seem very small in proportion, so that two loaves placed one on -top of the other would have made a very good caricature of a woman's -figure at any time during the golden age of Bohemia. The hair was -elaborately done to frame a pretty face daintily under a large -poke-bonnet. It was pre-eminently the day of "fragile" women: nothing in -their costume seemed made for hard wear. Cydalise or Victorine, as she -swung in the hammock among the gallants of the Impasse du Doyenné, would -have kicked a little cross-laced foot out from ethereal folds of -flowered muslin, and gathered a gauzy scarf enticingly round bare -shoulders. Fashions were indeed expensive for a fond lover's pocket, but -at least he was never at a loss what to buy for his mistress, so many -were the little accessories to the Graces' toilet. He was never wrong, -for instance, in offering a piece of gay ribbon, for there were bows -everywhere, on the bosom, on the sleeves, and, with long dazzling -streamers, round the waist. There was no end to their variety and -combination of colours, brilliant and pale; even the crudest Scottish -tartans were not considered amiss, as a certain dress in the London -Museum will show the incredulous. If ribbon was too paltry, a man in a -really generous mood would present a cashmere shawl, an expensive and -much appreciated luxury. The manipulation of shawls on frail, rounded -little persons, who, in England at least, still fainted at will and -indulged in the vapours, was a matter of some art. Balzac, in one of his -short stories, asserts that a _femme du monde_ could be distinguished -from the actress or the _grisette_ by the handling of her _cachemire_ -alone. There was only one great change in woman's dress between the -earlier and later days of Bohemia, and that was in the sleeves, which -dwindled suddenly as if the balloons had been pricked, and became either -closely fitting or almost disappeared into two little frilly bands. In -fact, during the forties, before skirts began to be exaggerated on -horse-hair paddings and verge upon the crinoline, female costume was as -nearly natural as it can be if corsets be granted. Nothing can be more -charming than the appearance of the Queen of the Belgians in her -portrait by Winterhalter which hangs in the gallery at Versailles. She -wears a red velvet dress, cut simply as to the _corsage_, with the skirt -reaching the ground in full, stately folds: there is no extravagance of -bows and frills, only a little lace at the bosom and sleeves. So, if we -would picture Mimi or Musette, as they were dressed for that memorable -day at Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the new muslin frocks made by their own -hands, we must imagine dainty little women, looking as if a breath would -blow them away, their pretty cheeks showing between two bewitching -clusters of ringlets, straw bonnets with not too large brims upon their -heads, tied with a coquettish ribbon, gowns of flowered muslin, light, -simple, and flowing, and scarfs pinned round their sloping shoulders or -held in place by mittened hands. Gavarin drew them to the life time and -time again, and they were considerably more attractive than any would-be -_Bohémiennes_ of our time in their rough, untidy tweeds or amorphous -"rational" dress. - -From the amusement of clothing the body it is an easy transition to that -of refreshing it. Eating and drinking, like dress, may from a certain -point of view come under the head of necessities, but indulgence in good -cheer when possible is a habit of young people of which a Bohemian was -by no means contemptuous. A word, therefore, about his particular haunts -among the thousand _cafés_ and restaurants of Paris will not be out of -season. After 1830 the great houses in the Palais Royal had fallen out -of fashion, and the four leading restaurants of Paris were on the -boulevard. Bohemians, it is true, were not often to be found within -them, but in the golden age, when Bohemia was nearer to the dandies and -_viveurs_, it would at least have been possible that in a moment of -extravagance some Bohemian friend should have accompanied Roger de -Beauvoir into the Café de Paris, the Café Riche, the Café Hardy, or the -Café Anglais. The Café de Paris was opposite Tortoni's, which stood at -the end of the Rue Taitbout. Besides being the home of the aristocratic -_petit cercle_, it was renowned for its witty conversation and its -general air of luxury. Since it was favoured by the aspirants to -smartness, as well as the perfect examples, its society was less select -than that of the Café Riche, at the corner of the Rue Lepeletier, or the -Café Anglais, which still remains in its old position. There was a quiet -solidity about the Café Anglais, in particular, which gave it a peculiar -air of distinction, though its company was gay enough at supper-time. It -was especially famous for its roast meat and its grills, though in these -matters the Café Hardy, at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, ran it close. -Hardy was an English cook who invented the _déjeuner à la fourchette_, -and popularized it by setting up the first silver grill in Paris. -Customers chose their own cutlet or steak and saw it cooked before their -eyes. At all these four the prices were very high, and with regard to -two of them it was said: "On doit être riche pour dîner au Café Hardy, -et hardi pour dîner au Café Riche." However, the chief haunt for -Bohemians with money to spend was the Rocher de Cancale, where it was -easier to be uproarious without offending the proprieties. This famous -restaurant still stands in the dirty, provincial Rue Montorgueil, in the -midst of small shops whose wares overflow on to the pavement. The -stately ornamentation of dark painted wood is still visible on its upper -stories, but the specimens of edibles in its ground-floor windows tell -too plainly to what depths it has sunk. It is no longer a possible home -for Rastignac and his boon companions, nor would it tempt Arsène -Houssaye to entertain there the brethren of _la Bohème galante_, for it -merely plies the trade of the convenient _marchand de vin_ in a rather -squalid quarter. The Rocher de Cancale had declined already during the -later days of Bohemia, and in Murger's day they repaired on _jours de -liesse_ to the Café de l'Odéon, Hill's Tavern in the Boulevard des -Capucines, or the Cabaret Dinochan at the corner of the Rue de Navarin. -The first of these was, in particular, the haunt of Baudelaire and his -friends, where the unfortunate Hégésippe Moreau made his brief -acquaintance with the main stream of Bohemia towards the end of his -days, which had been mainly passed in a backwater. Hill's Tavern was one -of the many chop-houses in the English style that flourished in Louis -Philippe's Paris--only the Petit Lucas, a charming place for a quiet -dinner, remains to-day--to cater for the down-at-elbows Englishmen, -jockeys, and trainers, of whom there was always a certain number. At -supper-time, however, it was invaded by Bohemia, and was often so full -that its doors had to be closed. One of its peculiarities was that its -private rooms were named after Shakespeare, Byron, and other great -poets. The Café Dinochan, according to Delvau,[30] was the ground on -which a great many small papers of the day were started. Monselet, -Nadar, Fauchéry, and Champfleury were among its customers, and Murger -died in debt to its proprietor for twelve hundred francs, for it was -said of this worthy creditor: "On dîne très-bien chez lui quand on a -quarante sous dans une poche--et dix francs dans l'autre." Yet the full -apparatus of a restaurant was not necessary to the gaiety of Bohemian -suppers, for in scanty days they made just as merry in the shops of one -or two bakeries on rolls and warm milk. The Boulangerie Cretaine in the -Quartier Latin was famous for its milk rolls and for the brilliant -conversation of Privat d'Anglemont, who, though it was against his -principle to get into debt, ran up a bill there for halfpenny rolls of -six hundred francs. The other famous baker was the _pâtissier_ Pitou, by -the Porte Montmartre, where a crowd of Bohemians used to congregate -after the midnight closing of the _cafés_. In the back shop was a table -running round three sides of the square, and at this "piano," as it was -called, the quaint figure of Guichardet presided. Guichardet, whose "nez -vermeil et digne" was celebrated in one of Banville's triolets, was a -Bohemian of the type of Balzac's Comte de la Palférine, one who had -voluntarily dropped out of the race of life while preserving all his -dignity and pride. He passed his days in amiable vagabondage, but -preserved "a perfume of exquisite politeness and witty impertinence -which made him the most delightful companion in the world." So says -Delvau, according to whom he was the only man left in France who really -knew how to say "Femme charmante!" - -So far I have mainly mentioned the haunts of Bohemians with the means -and inclination for a certain amount of self-indulgence. But in Bohemia -occasions preponderated when indulgence in anything beyond bare -necessities was an impossibility. The left bank swarmed with cheap -refuges for those who had hearty appetites and only a few pence. There -was Viot's for the poorest of the poor; Dagneaux's or Magny's in the Rue -Contrescarpe-Dauphine--rather superior houses where it was possible to -procure a semblance of good cheer; and the Cabaret of Mère Cadet outside -the Barrière Montparnasse, where Schaunard had his first meeting with -Colline over the stewed rabbit with two heads. This last had a garden -which ran along the Montparnasse cemetery, and under the shade of its -dusty shrubs not only literary Bohemians but nearly all the young actors -and actresses of the Théâtre Montparnasse and the Théâtre du Luxembourg -made their scanty meals. You might as well have asked for sphinx there -as chicken, says Delvau, the staple dishes being stewed rabbit and -_choucroute garnie_. To give a longer catalogue of such places would be -neither instructive nor amusing, and their types are easily enough found -in the Paris of to-day. There are two, however, that call for special -mention, for fiction has carried their fame beyond the days of their -material existence. No reader of Balzac's "Illusions Perdues" can have -forgotten the description of the cheap eating-house at the corner of the -Place de la Sorbonne and the Rue Neuve de Richelieu, with the small -panes of glass of its front window, its comforting announcement of _pain -à discrétion_, its long tables like those of a monastic refectory, its -varieties of cow's flesh and veal, and the hurried air of its diners, -who came there to eat and not to loiter. This famous house, where a -dinner of three dishes with a _carafon_ of wine or a bottle of beer cost -ninepence, where Lucien de Rubempré met Lousteau and made the -acquaintance of d'Arthez and his virtuous friends, was the restaurant of -Flicoteaux, no product of Balzac's imagination, but a name known to all -the strugglers for fame and fortune. It was a sure ground on which to -observe Bohemia, not indeed in its greatest indigence, but on the days -when there was at least no margin. Thackeray mentions it in his "Paris -Sketch-Book," and there is a passage in Lytton Bulwer's "France" which -vividly gives the impression produced by Flicoteaux on an English eye: - - "Enter [he says] between three and four o'clock, and take your seat - at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already - occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long hair, - falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the - eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the midnight vigil; - his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the - wrists; his trousers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty - black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his - thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is a - native of the South, pale and swarthy: his long black locks, parted - from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed - with a slight moustache, and the semblance of a beard gives to his - meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round - the room, with their thin, meagre portions of meat and bread, their - pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth - of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or - science." - -Flicoteaux has long been swept away, and buildings of the Sorbonne now -occupy its site. Gone, too, these many years, is the Café Momus, which -stood in a back street by the old church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, -the hostelry celebrated by so many exploits of Murger's four heroes in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was here that Schaunard and Colline -collected Rodolphe for the Bohemian brotherhood, and it became their -home, not so much for meals, though it was the scene of their reckless -Christmas Eve supper which introduced the saviour Barbemuche, but rather -for the lighter _consommations_ over which, by the French custom, they -could spend unlimited hours--a precious privilege when a cold garret was -the only alternative. There was nothing fictitious about the Café -Momus; it was a real establishment serving some respectable shopkeepers -of the quarter, when by some mischance, from the good M. Momus' point of -view, it attracted the Bohemian horde of Murger, Champfleury, Nadar, -Schann, Wallon, and many of the other "Buveurs d'Eau." Even on Murger's -testimony, they must be admitted to have abused their privileges without -shedding any very great glory in return, and we may take as fairly true -the list of grievances which was drawn up by the proprietor against -Rodolphe and his friends, from which it appears that they spent the -whole day there from morning to midnight, making a desert round them -with their strident voices and extravagant conversation; that Rodolphe -carried off all the papers in the morning and complained if their bands -were broken, and that by shouting every quarter of an hour for _Le -Castor_, a journal of the hat trade edited by Rodolphe, the companions -had forced a subscription on the proprietor; that Colline and Rodolphe -played _tric-trac_ all day, refusing to give up the table to other -people; that Marcel set up his easel in the _café_, and even went so far -as to invite models of both sexes; that Schaunard had expressed his -intention of bringing his piano there, and that Phémie Teinturière never -wore a bonnet when she came to meet him; that, not content with ordering -very little, the four friends presumed to make their own coffee on the -premises; and that the waiter, corrupted by their influence, had seen -fit to address an amatory poem to the _dame du comptoir_. Murger puts a -touch of exaggeration into this complaint, but it is to be feared, -nevertheless, that no trifling _dossier_ of misdemeanours could have -been compiled against the originals of Rodolphe, Marcel, and the rest. -We have it on Delvau's authority, at all events, that the profit of -their custom was quite disproportionate to its assiduity, when he tells -of their stratagem for obtaining asylum at small cost. The smallest -possible order was a _demi-tasse_, which consisted of a small cup of -coffee, four lumps of sugar, and a thimbleful of cognac; this cost five -sous, a sum of importance in Bohemia. The practice, therefore, was that -a certain student, Joannis Guigard, who was of the band, went in first, -ordered a _demi-tasse_, and went upstairs to consume it. Murger would -then arrive, ask if Guigard were upstairs, and run up. The rest followed -in succession with the same question till the _cénacle_ was complete and -in a position to have a sip of coffee and some hours of warmth for -nothing. After a short while Momus grew tired of these troublesome -customers and formally gave them notice to quit. They accepted the -intimation, but vowed revenge. Accordingly, a few days later, one of the -band turned up with six wet-nurses in his train, while another brought -six funeral mutes. The rest of the band then arrived, and the Bohemian -spokesman, probably Schann, delivered a flowery discourse upon the -affinity of life and death, with allusions to their guests' professions. -He wound up by telling the mutes to bury the Café Momus and take the -nurses as a reward. To make matters worse, he directed that the milk and -beer which had been ordered should be warmed as a mixture. The mutes and -nurses, furious at being thus deceived and insulted, broke into angry -expostulations, and, aided by the jests of the Bohemians, the -proceedings ended in a tremendous disturbance. Schann and two others -were arrested, and the next day Momus sold his business. - -The extent to which Bohemia, at its different phases, shared in the -various pastimes of Paris cannot be determined with any accuracy, so -much depended on individual taste and individual wealth. It is certain, -however, that after 1837 gambling was not a Bohemian distraction, for in -that year the public gaming-houses were closed. Before that time they -were such a popular institution that the early Bohemia cannot be -conceived to have entirely eschewed it. At the beginning of "La Peau de -Chagrin" Balzac draws a powerful picture of the wretched crowd that -haunted the Palais Royal, where Raphael de Valentin lost his last gold -coin at a single coup. There were no less than four gaming-houses in the -Palais Royal, Nos. 9, 113, 124, and 129, where the minimum stake was two -francs for roulette and five francs for trente-et-un. Besides the -Palais Royal, there were Paphos, Frascati, and the select Cercle des -Étrangers. The popularity of gambling can be judged from the fact that -the Treasury profited annually by it to the extent of five and a half -million francs. Yet there is no record that the truly artistic members -of Bohemia, like Gautier or Houssaye, so wasted time or money, while -Murger and his friends were spared the temptation. In music, too, -Bohemia played no very great part, in spite of the devotion of -Champfleury, Barbara, and Schann to Beethoven's quartets. There was -plenty of fine music to be heard in Paris during the time: Habeneck was -introducing Beethoven's symphonies, Berlioz was revolutionizing -orchestration, while Liszt, Chopin, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, and de Bériot -were among the soloists. Certainly those Bohemians of the golden age who -had access to the _salons_ of the Princess Belgiojoso or Madame de -Girardin must often have heard these great artists, but it is not to be -supposed that they were great supporters of concerts, unless it were of -the Concerts Musard. These concerts, which won great fame through the -personality of Musard, the conductor, began in 1833 in the Salle -Saint-Honoré;[31] their programmes were excellent and the prices low -enough to attract the least well off. Musard had a genius for making -_pot-pourris_ of operatic tunes and for introducing new effects, -especially into dance music. His electric style of conducting made the -Bals Musard far more popular than the great balls at the Opéra. He -contrived a wonderful quadrille, for instance, out of "Les Huguenots," -during which red lights were lit, tocsins pealed, tom-toms boomed, -screams resounded, and the whole illusion of a massacre was thrillingly -kept up. He also composed a _contre-danse_ in the finale of which he -broke a chair, and his triumph was a certain galop in which he -discharged a pistol. This was thoroughly in keeping with the Romantic -spirit, and after its first performance he was publicly chaired round -the hall by the excited dancers. So far as pure music was concerned, -however, it appealed most to Parisians in the form of opera. Meyerbeer's -"Robert le Diable" and "Les Huguenots" produced frenzies of enthusiasm: -no Romantic, consequently no Bohemian of Gautier's day, could afford not -to have listened to them. Rossini's great vogue began at the same time, -while Donizetti and Auber shared the honours of light opera till -Offenbach appeared to carry all before him. Musical Bohemia was well -educated, if not in composition, at least in execution, when it was -possible to hear Duprez, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, Grisi, Mario, -Persiani, and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. The ballet, too, with Carlotta -Grisi, Taglioni, and Fanny Elssler, was an additional attraction at the -Opéra. The devotion of _la Bohème galante_ to the _corps de ballet_ has -appeared in an earlier chapter, and it was a devotion shared by most -masculine society. Murger's Bohemia flourished after the greatest -operatic enthusiasms, which its more classically inclined members -probably despised; but their exchequers were not of the sort to allow -for tickets at the grand opera, though they turned up in force at the -light operas of the Théâtre Bobino. At this little theatre, more -properly called the Théâtre du Luxembourg, there was a continuous uproar -made by Bohemians and students. When this grew too unbearable the -manager would appear in his dressing-gown and protest that the police -would arrive if the respectable inhabitants of the quarter were -disturbed; whereupon the whole audience struck up as one man Grétry's -air "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de la famille?" accompanied by the -wheezy orchestra and conducted by the manager himself. At such a scene -Schaunard and Marcel must often have assisted. - -Nevertheless, in the eyes of Bohemia, the glory of the opera paled -entirely before that of the drama. There was not one Bohemian with any -literary talent who did not try to write a play--nay, many -plays--tragedies in alexandrines, comedies, or vaudevilles; and when -they were not writing plays they were haunting the theatres as dramatic -critics, selling their articles simply for the sake of a free entry, -unless, like Lucien's immoral set, they added the profits of blackmail. -From the second _cénacle_ to the end of Murger's Bohemia there was no -end so generally pursued as dramatic composition. Bouchardy and -Augustus Mackeat were dramatists, so were Ourliac, Arsène Houssaye, and -Gérard de Nerval; Gautier was a dramatic critic; Murger and Champfleury -failed as vaudevillists; and it is quite likely that Rodolphe's -magnificent drama, "Le Vengeur," had its counterpart in reality. The -"poète échevelé" and the humble _conteur_ alike turned their eyes -continuously towards the stage, besieging luckless managers without -cease. The reason of this was partly, as may be supposed, that a -successful play, then as to-day, gave far quicker and more splendid -pecuniary returns for labour than any other form of literary -composition. A concrete instance of that is the case of Murger himself, -who was set on his legs entirely by the sudden vogue of the dramatized -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." But there was another reason at least as -strong, far deeper, and more honourable. The stage, as I have already -pointed out, was the battlefield of the Romantic struggle. "Hernani" -brought home the new truths to the public far more vividly than any -novel or poem could have done; every night they were declaimed before -compelled attention. It is not surprising, then, that the stage played -so great a part in the amusements of Bohemia. It was, with one other, -the chief of their pastimes. For them to listen to "Chatterton," the -"Tour de Nesle," or "Antony" was not only a distraction, it was a -frantic excitement which made their blood seethe almost painfully and -sent geysers of hot eloquence from their lips as they munched the hot -rolls of the Boulangerie Cretaine. These young enthusiasts were not -stinted of good fare. Mademoiselle Mars, Marie Dorval, Rachel and Judith -appeared at the Français during these eighteen years; at the -Folies-Dramatique Frédéric Lemaître created with enormous success the -part of Robert Macaire; while at the Funambules Gaspard Deburau was -winning eternal fame as the incomparable Pierrot. There were a host of -other theatres besides, the Variétés, Porte Saint-Martin, Odéon, not to -mention smaller ones, managed for the most part by men of taste, -supplied with plays by men with some pretension to talent, and -criticized by unsparing critics, from Jules Janin downwards, who knew -what they wanted and did not hesitate to speak when they did not get it. -In the stage Bohemia found not only amusement and inspiration but part -of its livelihood: it lived next door to that special world composed of -actors and actresses. Yet, though Bohemians went to supper with -Mademoiselle Mars, Dumas was very much at home with Marie Dorval, Roger -de Beauvoir played pranks with Bache, and Rodolphe had a love affair -with Mademoiselle Sidonie, the two worlds were definitely separated. In -fact, the life of dramatic artists, whatsoever Bohemian flavouring it -may have, has always had a mysterious taste of its own, incapable of -mixture with any other blend of artistic life, so that, interesting as -it may have been in Paris during these years, its omission from these -pages has been intentional. - -[Illustration: Bal Masqué à l'Opéra] - -The one other amusement--a pure pastime involving no material -profit--which was particularly popular in Bohemia was dancing. In this -respect Bohemia was no exception from the rest of Parisian society, for -in all classes there was an inextinguishable passion for the dance. But -the Bohemian, obeying only his own laws of social propriety, was in a -more favourable position for taking full advantage of all public -opportunities for this exercise and of all the _agréments_ in the way of -casual intercourse with both sexes which it implied. All the year round -there were public balls given in Paris, at which the Bohemian was in his -element, giving rein to his inventive humour, his high spirits, and his -gift of seductive gallantry. During the first few years after 1830, the -golden age of Bohemia, the balls at the Opéra were the most frequented, -especially in the days of the carnival. There masks and dominoes covered -dancers of every rank in society, for even the _femme du monde_ slipped -in unbeknown to her husband. This scene of utmost gaiety and brilliance, -of which Balzac gives a picture at the opening of "Splendeurs et Misères -des Courtisanes," was closely rivalled by the ball at the Variétés, at -which a still more feverish excitement reigned. Or if the Bohemian -preferred to make sure of a _grisette_ as a partner he went to the -Prado, the site of which was opposite the Palais de Justice, where, -under Pilodo, the famous conductor, he could join Louise la Balocheuse, -Angelina l'Anglaise, or Ernestine Confortable in the giddy whirl. The -waltz was recognized at this period, but the quadrille easily held the -place of honour, especially as it lent itself more freely to individual -invention, such as Ourliac's magnificent variation depicting the -grandeur and fall of Napoleon. It was through this licence in the -figures of the quadrille that the _chahut_ and the _cancan_ were -introduced by the rakish set among the _viveurs_ which included Charles -de la Battut, Alton-Shee, Monnier, and the famous Chicard--a -leather-merchant who made a name by his grotesque costumes and wild -dances, the term _chicard_, which degenerated into _chic_, becoming a -general denomination for his imitators. I have not been able to arrive -at the difference between the _chahut_ and the _cancan_, but both were -originally primitive dances indulged in by the lowest classes, quaint, -but in all probability perfectly decent. The rage for extravagance -during the early thirties changed them into formidable pantomimes of -violence, if not always of indecency, which every complete reveller -rendered with his own individual touch. Heine, in the course of one of -his articles in the _Augsburg Gazette_, said of the _cancan_: - - "It must be regarded simply as a pantomime of Robert Macairedom. - Anybody who has a general idea of the latter will understand those - indescribable dances, expressions of _persiflage_ in dance, which - not only mock sexual relations, but civic relations too, all, in - fact, that is good and beautiful, every kind of enthusiasm, - patriotism, uprightness, faith, family feeling, heroism, divinity." - -Heine's view is rather too Teutonic, for the popularity of the _cancan_ -was due to the high spirits of the Romantic enthusiasm, and its degree -of morality or immorality depended upon the individual dancer. Not much -harm can be imagined to have dwelt in the dance-_persiflage_ of the -Impasse du Doyenné, whatever a Chicard or a Milord Arsouille may have -made of it. The feature of public balls, however, was certainly a -Dionysiac exaltation which culminated in the final _galop infernal_, as -it was called, into which Musard particularly infused a special fury. It -was less a dance than a stampede of maniacs, who rushed round the room, -men and women, clutching one another anyhow, wigs flying, tresses -waving, dresses rent from fair shoulders, all shrieking and shouting, -brandishing arms, kicking legs, and stamping heedlessly on those who -were unlucky enough to fall. - -[Illustration: The Galop Infernal] - -The balls of the Opéra declined in attraction and became dull about -1836, but they were revived with still greater splendour two years -later, when Musard was made conductor and members of the ballet were -drafted in to enliven the company. Such balls, however, became too -much public functions to suit the less splendid Bohemia of a later day, -which found diversion more suited to its pocket and its manners at the -Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas on the left bank. It was at such -places as these that Rodolphe and Marcel disported themselves, and -Schaunard was arrested for "chorégraphie trop macabre." The Chaumière -was a large garden on the Boulevard Montparnasse, a miniature edition of -Cremorne or Vauxhall, with a primitive shooting gallery, a skittle -alley, and switchback. It was open all day for students to promenade -after lectures and make their addresses to the _grisettes_ working under -the trees. Its dances were very simple affairs; a few lamps and Chinese -lanterns, a small orchestra, a bar for lemonade and _galette_ were all -that the management supplied, the fun, of which they had enough and to -spare, being the dancers' contribution. - -The Closerie des Lilas, though less generally popular than the -Chaumière, was more particularly associated with Bohemia than the -latter, for Murger, Vitu, Fauchéry, Théodore de Banville, and one or two -others of that set frequented it regularly, as a French writer[32] says, -"avec quelques comparses sans importance," among whom, no doubt, were -Mimi and Musette. This little dancing-hall began in 1838 as La -Chartreuse, being so called because it was on the site of the old -Carthusian monastery in the Rue d'Enfer. It was in some sort the -trial-ground for those of the fair sex who aspired to become stars of -the Prado and the Chaumière. Privat d'Anglemont has described it in a -rare pamphlet as it was in its early days under its extraordinary -manager, Carnaud. As La Chartreuse it was the most primitive kind of -_guingette_, the dancing-place being a large marquee, into which one -descended by a steep flight of steps. On the left were an orchestra and -_café_, and the only ornaments were nine plaster statues representing -the Muses, which were handily adapted for supporting petroleum lamps on -their arms. "There," says Privat d'Anglemont, "decent dress was not _de -rigueur_; one came as one liked, or rather as one could--the women in -bonnets or, in default of other adornments, covered simply by their -hair, and the men in blouses. It certainly was the most original bar in -Paris. It had a physiognomy of its own, strange, quaint, even a little -burlesque, but it existed. Its population was to be seen nowhere else; -it seemed to exist only at the Chartreuse and for the Chartreuse. Since -this ball disappeared its population has completely vanished." - -[Illustration: La Guinguette] - -Everything about the Chartreuse was original, not only the dancers and -the dances but the orchestra, the music, and the manager. Every kind of -"percussion" was added to the usual instruments, the noise of -money-bags, pistol shots, rows of explosive caps, resounding anvils, and -sheets of metal struck to represent the roaring of lions and tigers. All -the music was composed by Carnaud himself, who was conductor, first -violin, _restaurateur_, composer, and advertisement-writer in one. At -every special _fête_ he invented a new quadrille and a new exotic word -to describe it, such as "la fête des vendanges, quadrille -déchirancochicandard," or "l'hôtel des haricots,[33] avec accompaniments -de chaînes et de bruits de clefs, grand quadrille -exhilarandéliranchocnosophe." - -Carnaud was succeeded by the famous Bullier, who altered the name to the -Closerie des Lilas and replaced the simple marquee by an Oriental palace -with a garden, Moorish pavilions, billiard tables, swings, and a -pistol-shooting gallery. A decent orchestra was installed and four -admirable waiters. With these improvements the balls, held every Sunday, -Monday, and Thursday, began to attract the _beau monde_ of the Quartier -Latin, and several of the dancers gained the coveted honour of a -_sobriquet_. There were Jeanne la Juive, for instance, Maria les Yeux -Bleus, Joséphine Pochardinette, and the literary Clémentine Pomponnette, -who used to show her admirers a farce she had written "dans les loisirs -que lui laissait l'amour." This transformation took place about 1847, -and it was then that one of the Moorish pavilions was especially -consecrated to Murger's Bohemian set. It is needless to say that the -name of Bullier still remains in the Bal Bullier of to-day. - -One other popular ball must be mentioned, the Bal Mabille, which for so -long was one of the sights of Paris. This public ball was instituted by -Mabille, a dancing-master, in the Champs Elysées. The price of entrance -at first was fifty centimes, with an extra fee for each quadrille, and -in 1843 the whole of the dances were included in an initial sum of two -francs. The fame of the Bal Mabille was due first to its polkas, a dance -which became the rage at the time, and secondly to the most celebrated -of polka-dancers, Elise Sergent, known as La Reine Pomaré. Her dancing -was a revelation of fire and passion which won her recognition on the -very first evening of her appearance. Crowds came to see her dance, -articles were devoted to her by the journalists of the day, and Privat -d'Anglemont wrote a sonnet to her. Paris, in fact, went mad about her, -and she had many lovers, among whom, it is said, was Alphonse Karr, -which brings her into some kind of connexion with Bohemia. But Reine -Pomaré and her rival, Céleste Mogador, who also made her _début_ at -Mabille, were too much on the plane of _grandes cocottes_ for any real -relation with the Bohemia of their day. They might have danced for love -at the Impasse du Doyenné, but Schaunard and Marcel had nothing to -offer them to compare with the splendour of the _viveurs_ which was laid -at their feet. Bohemia found its pleasure at less expense and with less -restraint in the company of Mimi and Musette in a Moorish pavilion at -the Closerie des Lilas, where Colline's bad puns found appreciative -listeners and Schaunard's _pas de fascination_ were greeted with -rapturous applause. - - - - -XII - -THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA - - _Paris sombre et fumeux,_ - _Où déjà , points brillants au front de maison ternes,_ - _Luisent comme des yeux des milliers de lanternes;_ - _Paris avec ses toits déchiquetés, ses tours_ - _Qui ressemblent de loin à des cous de vautours,_ - _Et ses clochers aigus à flèche dentelée,_ - _Comme un peigne mordant la nue échevelée._ - - THÉOPHILE GAUTIER - - -The last chapter was devoted to certain accidental adjuncts of _la vie -de Bohème_ by way of general illustration, though they consisted of -simple amusements common not only to the Parisians of the day but to -civilized society of most epochs. The present chapter, which I have -reserved till the last, might logically have claimed an earlier place, -for its subject, as I have already pointed out, is distinctive of the -society in which Bohemia played an important part. Bohemia, of course, -neither monopolized Paris nor even a portion of it, but the Paris of -Bohemia's florescence and decline was a unique background for these -events, a necessary condition, though temporary in itself, which it -would pass the bounds of human possibility to reconstruct. Interesting -as it is to imagine correctly the dress of the Bohemian and his -mistress, the places where they dined, or the gardens where they danced, -the re-presentation of the city where they lived, so small, so -sensitively vibrant, so congested, so hopelessly out of date, except for -a few new patches, so dirty, so noisy, and so picturesque, ranks far -higher in importance. Yet, though I might have put this chapter first, I -choose to put it last because I cannot hope that it will be appreciated -by any but those who have already some memory of Paris and on whom the -spell of its fascination has, at least, been lightly cast. The general -description of Bohemian life may provide some entertainment to those who -know not Paris; for their sake I have sought not to break the general -interest. My story is now told, and I am free to call those who have -breathed, even for a moment, the quick breeze off the Seine or seen the -sunshine strike through the trees in the Tuileries Gardens, to stay with -me for a last look back upon that city of beauty and adventure which -calls, like the East, to those who love it. To have gained even a -superficial view of modern Paris, to have caught some of her accents and -contrasts--the radiance of the Bois de Boulogne, the vivacity of the -boulevards, the _cafés_ overflowing on to the pavements, the view from -her bridges, the differences between the two banks, the mean alleys -lurking mischievously at the back of splendid thoroughfares, the -broadest omnibuses comically invading the narrowest streets--is to have -formed some general notion with which an earlier Paris can be compared. -And with a reader who has penetrated deeper, whose nostrils yearn for -her indescribably subtle perfume, who knows the different aspects of her -streets from days of diligent tramping, who has seen her river blending -with her sky in a hundred harmonies, who has felt her moods and her -humours, finding like a true lover her blemishes as adorable as her -perfections, who has recognized her past in her present, and who, though -a stranger, has divined in ecstasy the wild throb of her romantic -heart--with him my task is easier still. Such a one will already have -guessed the intoxication of the air which a Roger de Beauvoir delicately -breathed, when Paris, her spirit newly quickened with the exhilaration -of a potent elixir, was yet unspoiled by modern cosmopolitan vulgarity, -and her inner soul shone out, through all her deformities and -incongruities, with a gay and unmasked confidence. - -She did not shine before an unseeing generation, for the Parisians of -the Romantic age adored their city, dandies, Bohemians, and _bourgeois_ -alike, all passionately conscious of their privileged citizenship, -though they could admit with Maxime du Camp that under Louis Philippe -she was "one of the dirtiest, the most tortuous, and the most unhealthy" -in the world. As they lived in her, so they wrote of her--with pride. -Victor Hugo did her great homage in "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Les -Misérables," Eugène Sue in "Les Mystères de Paris," and Paul de Kock in -all his work, but these achievements appear as slight and partial -sketches beside the wonderful and penetrating picture which Balzac drew -of Paris--at once the background and the protagonist--in his greatest -novels. Balzac, besides giving us a world, gave us a great city. Minute -as were the studies he made of the provinces, they are nothing to the -picture that he drew of the city which he regarded as the brain of the -whole world, the leader of its civilization. He gloated over Paris as a -scientist gloats over an interesting organism that he has first observed -and then skilfully dissected. He had dissected Paris even on the -threshold of his career. In some of his early stories, like a brilliant -young surgeon fresh from his researches, he overweights the matter in -hand with the results of the laboratory. "Ferragus" begins with a long -comparison of the streets of Paris; "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" with a -marvellous tirade on the restless race for money and pleasure that is -run by all classes, a tirade which, probing as it does all the strata of -society, is an epitome, in some sort, of all his work. Paris, that small -_enceinte_ which was enclosed within what is now the second line of -_boulevards_, still innocent of the reforming hand of Haussmann, -becoming rich, but hardly yet industrial, not yet the pleasure-ground -of all the world, destitute of railways, squalid, ill-kept, nevertheless -was transformed by his wonderful imagination into the type of all great -cities, which will ever remain true. To him she was "le plus délicieux -des monstres," as he says in "Ferragus." "Mais, ô Paris," he cries, "qui -n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes échappées de lumière, tes -culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures, -entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne connaît encore rien de ta vraie -poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes. Il est un petit nombre -de gens ... qui dégustent leur Paris.... Pour ceux-là Paris est triste -ou gai, laid ou beau, vivant ou mort; pour eux Paris est une créature; -chaque homme, chaque fraction de maison est un lobe du tissu cellulaire -de cette grande courtisane de laquelle ils connaissent parfaitement la -tête, le cÅ“ur et les mÅ“urs fantasques. Aussi ceux-là sont les -amants de Paris...." - -There are a happy few to whom it would be enough to say that the Paris -of Bohemia was the Paris of Balzac--such devotees, I mean, as have -thought it worth while to pay attention to that accurate topography in -which Balzac took so great a pride, following it in a contemporary map -so that, in their walks about the modern city, streets and houses -incessantly recall his characters and his scenes. But life is short for -such agreeable exercises, so this chapter must inadequately proceed. I -have already touched on the social implications of Louis Philippe's -Paris, its smallness and its diminutive population, and my present aim -is simply to present more fully its external aspect, which changed so -quickly after 1848. The rapidity of the change may well be judged by a -passage in Théophile Gautier's article[34] on Paul de Kock, published in -1870. No apology is necessary for transcribing it: - - "Those [he says] who were born after the Revolution of February 24, - 1848, or a little before, cannot imagine what the Paris was like in - which the heroes and heroines of Paul de Kock move; it resembled - Paris of to-day so little that I sometimes ask myself, on seeing - these broad streets, these great boulevards, these vast squares, - these interminable lines of monumental houses, these splendid - quarters which have replaced the market-gardens, if it is really - the city in which I passed my childhood. Paris, which is on the way - to become the metropolis of the world, was then only the capital of - France. One met French people, even Parisians, in its streets. No - doubt foreigners came there, as always, to find pleasure and - instruction; but the means of transport were difficult, the ideal - of rapidity did not rise above the classic mail-coach, and the - locomotive, even in the form of a chimera, was not yet taking shape - in the mists of the future. The physiognomy of the population had - not therefore sensibly changed. - - "The provinces stayed at home much more than now, only coming to - Paris on urgent business. One could hear French spoken on that - boulevard which was then called the Boulevard de Gand and which is - now called the Boulevard des Italiens. One frequently saw a type - which is becoming rare and which, for me, is the pure Parisian - type--white skin, pink cheeks, brown hair, light grey eyes, a - well-shaped figure of moderate stature, and, in the women, a - delicate plumpness hiding small bones. Olive complexions and black - hair were rare; the South had not yet invaded us with its - passionately pale tints and its furious gesticulations. The general - aspect of faces was therefore rosy and smiling, with an air of - health and good humour. Complexions now considered _distingués_ - would at that time have caused suspicions of illness. - - "The city was relatively very small, or at least its activity was - restricted within certain limits that were seldom passed. The - plaster elephant in which Gavroche found shelter raised its - enormous silhouette on the Place de la Bastille, and seemed to - forbid passers-by to go any further. The Champs Elysées, as soon as - night fell, became more dangerous than the plain of Marathon; the - most adventurous stopped at the Place de la Concorde. The quarter - of Notre Dame de Lorette only included vague plots of ground or - wooden fences. The church was not built, and one could see from the - boulevard the Butte Montmartre, with its windmills and its - semaphore waving its arms on the top of the old tower. The Faubourg - Saint-Germain went early to bed, and its solitude was but rarely - disturbed by a tumult of students over a play at the Odéon. - Journeys from one quarter to another were less frequent; omnibuses - did not exist, and there were sensible differences of feature, - costume, and accent between a native of the Rue du Temple and an - inhabitant of the Rue Montmartre." - -Gautier is referring in this passage to the Paris of his childhood, in -the second decade of the nineteenth century, but, though by his Bohemian -days the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette had been built, omnibuses had -been instituted, and railway stations were about to break out on the -face of Paris, his picture would have remained substantially true of -Paris during the whole of Louis Philippe's reign. There was a certain -amount of change during the time: the Palais Royal declined in -popularity, ceasing to be "a scene of extravagance, dissipation, and -debauchery not to be equalled in the world," as Coghlan's "Guide to -Paris" put it; a few old houses were pulled down here and there, and the -desert patches on the outskirts began to be filled by a straggling -population, but, in general, Louis Philippe's Paris can be considered as -a stable whole. Most visitors to Paris do not, of course, realize the -boundaries of the large circle which now forms the city, for they enjoy -themselves at the centre, though they may, perhaps, remember how far -from the terminus a train passes the fortifications. In Louis Philippe's -day the outer line of boulevards, on which stood the fortifications and -_barrières_, was that second ring of to-day which even visitors reach at -times; a _barrière_ existed at the Arc de Triomphe, at the Place -Pigalle, where the amusements of Montmartre only just begin, at the -cemeteries of Père Lachaise and Montparnasse. The actual diameter of the -city was then about three miles, but for all practical purposes it was -little more than two, for the outskirts were still occupied by large -market-gardens, plots of land acquired for future use by speculators, -with here and there some mushroom rows of houses, half finished and -nearly empty, the work of a bankrupt who had too far anticipated the -coming boom, farmyards, chicken-runs, cow-stalls, grass, odd weeds, and -all the disfigurements of a landscape over which the impending march of -a city has thrown a blight. Only on the northern heights were there -still windmills and vineyards. These outskirts had only a scanty -population, for there were no thousands of workpeople to spread over the -heights of Belleville or Ménilmontant, or southwards over Montrouge, so -that it was easy for a starveling company of Bohemians, headed by the -Desbrosses and Murger, to find shelter in an old farm by the Barrière -d'Enfer--now the busy Place Denfert-Rochereau--or for Balzac's Colonel -Chabert to live in a tumble-down cottage well inside the boundaries. The -fact was, as the dramatist Victorien Sardou has said in a passage of -reminiscence,[35] that under Louis Philippe one-third of the total -surface of Paris was not built on. There were gardens everywhere, except -in the very centre of the city, and on the left bank, especially, -houses were only dotted in the midst of orchards, kitchen-gardens, -farmyards, and parks. It was this fact that made Paris, however quick -the flame that burnt at her heart, in most respects a provincial city. -Only in such a city could Bohemia perfectly have realized itself; an -industrial metropolis would have swallowed it or brushed it -contemptuously aside. - -Paris, then, compared with herself of to-day, would have been almost -unrecognizable. There was no sign of the rich and luxurious quarter -which has grown up round the Champs Elysées, with its magnificent hotels -and fine mansions. The Champs Elysées were used during the daytime for -riding or driving, but there was hardly a house to be seen except two or -three wretched _cafés_. After sunset it was madness to go past the -_rond-point_, for beyond was the home of thieves and cut-throats, the -Bois de Boulogne, needless to say, being in a much more wild state than -to-day. The Parc Monceau was practically in the country, and even the -Quartier du Roule, by the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes, was all -market-gardens when Rosa Bonheur lived there as a child. As for the -Batignolles, that Kensington of modern Paris, its repute was as -unsavoury as that of the London fields now respectably covered by Sloane -Square and Sloane Street. The quarter chosen by wealth, as opposed to -blue blood, which lived in dreary _hôtels_ surrounded by high walls in -the Faubourg Saint-Germain, lay in the neighbourhood of the present -Saint-Lazare terminus. The favourite street was the Rue de la Pépinière, -continued by the Rue Saint-Lazare. Only a small part of the Rue de la -Pépinière is now left, most of it being called the Rue La Boëtie, but it -retains its old name between the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Rue -Saint-Lazare. Another fashionable street was the Rue de Provence, which -runs parallel to the south of the Rue Saint-Lazare. In the former was -the famous house inhabited successively by seven of Balzac's -courtesans,[36] in the latter the charming house of Baron Nucingen. -Every Englishman knows the clamour and smell and garish shops of the Rue -Saint-Lazare to-day, and the Rue de Provence is just a plain _bourgeois_ -thoroughfare of shops, _cafés_, flats, and a post-office. - -The fashionable boulevards have already appeared in a previous chapter, -but a word must be said of the difference between the then and now of -that brilliant corner of Paris which most Europeans and Americans see -once before they die. To-day, without a doubt, the Boulevard des -Capucines, which stretches from the Madeleine to the Opéra, has the most -distinguished and luxurious appearance. The Boulevard des Italiens -beyond the Opéra is dowdier and more workaday. In the days of Bohemia -the Boulevard des Capucines had no social existence. It had as yet not -been levelled with the Rue Basse du Rempart, which, some fifteen feet -below it, followed the course of the ancient moat; it was flanked by -plots of land on which new houses were being erected, and its only -traffic was the omnibus which jogged between the Madeleine and the -Bastille. The present Opera-house and Place de l'Opéra were not -existent, for the Opéra stood just off the Boulevard des Italiens, -beyond Tortoni's, while the Rue de la Paix came quietly into the -boulevard at a sharp angle, instead of arriving in that busy open space, -with Cook's office as its centre, over which traffic plies in all -directions with bewildering activity. The Avenue de l'Opéra, also, was -not known to Bohemia. At that day a pedestrian who wished to go direct -from the top of the Rue de la Paix to the Louvre had to thread a maze of -narrow streets--an example of which remains in the Rue des Petits -Champs--which became meaner and more sinister as he neared the Louvre. -The Louvre quarter, so close to brilliance and luxury, was a squalid -plague-spot, that has since been thoroughly cleansed. The brotherhood of -the Impasse du Doyenné, I suspect, were careful to have a companion when -they ascended the Rue Froidmanteau or the Rue Traversière after dark. If -one crosses the Avenue de l'Opéra between the entrance of the Rue de -l'Echelle on one side and the Rue Molière on the other, one will have -exactly traversed the site of the infamous Rue de Langlade where in -"Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes" Vautrin found Esther la -Torpille on the verge of death, _à propos_ of which Balzac has a lurid -passage on the thick shadows, the flickering lights, the phantom forms, -and disquieting sounds which characterized at nightfall this _lacis de -petites rues_. - -[Illustration: The Rue St. Denis] - -On the north-east and the east of the Louvre lay the most unregenerate -portion of Paris, a district as tortuous, narrow, and unhealthy as in -the Middle Ages, yet the centre of Parisian commerce. Even to-day the -visitor may wonder that such a district can exist in a capital city, -when he ventures into the Rue Quincampoix, the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, -and the other alleys which cut them at right angles. But at least this -quarter has been cleared by the thorough reorganization of the Halles -and by the construction of some large arteries, the Boulevard de -Sébastopol, the Rue Rambuteau, the Rue Etienne Marcel, and the Rue de -Turbigo. It is sufficient to glance at a map of Louis Philippe's Paris, -such as Dulaure's, to see what a maze it was then. Save for the two -narrow thoroughfares, the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, -going from north to south, it had hardly a single continuous street. A -stroll in the region of the old church of Saint-Merri will show many of -these streets in their original dimensions; there is the Rue des -Lombards, for instance, where Balzac's Matifat presided over the -wholesale drug market, and the Rue Aubry le Boucher, formerly the Rue -des Cinq Diamants, where in the virtuous Anselme Popinot's shop the -first measures were taken for the reconstruction of César Birotteau's -shattered fortunes. The darkness and insalubrity of this quarter are -specially commented on at the beginning of Balzac's "Une Double -Famille," where he says that a pedestrian coming from the Marais quarter -to the quays near the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de l'Homme Armé and -other streets--practically the route of the present Rue des Archives -down to the Place Lobau--would think he was walking in underground -cellars. This unsavoury network in the day of Bohemia continued right on -to the quays, which have now been cleared by the construction of the -Théâtre and Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the Place de -l'Hôtel de Ville, and the Place Lobau with its barracks. But in Louis -Philippe's reign the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, where poor Gérard de -Nerval was found hanged, occupied the site of the stage of the Théâtre -Sarah Bernhardt, and instead of the Place Lobau the Rue de la Tixanderie -and the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean forked at the back of the Hôtel de -Ville. The house described in "Une Double Famille" stood in the Rue du -Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, which was only five feet wide at its broadest and -only cleaned when flooded by a shower. The inhabitants lit their lamps -at five in June and never put them out in winter. - -[Illustration: Rue de la Tixeranderie] - -Another typical specimen of the Paris I am describing is to be seen in -that curious confluence of three narrow streets, the Rues de la Lune, -Beauregard, and de Cléry, just off the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. The Rue -de la Lune is dominated by the forbidding portals of a gloomy church, -and its cobble-stones are quite deserted even when the activity of the -neighbouring boulevard is at its height. No flight of imagination is -needed to realize its appropriateness as the scene of that tragic close -to "Illusions Perdues," where in a garret Lucien writes drinking songs -over the corpse of his wretched Coralie to pay the expenses of her -burial. This street and the two others, which meet at an extraordinarily -acute angled building, diverge into the squalor of the Rue Montorgueil. -It is easier to see the conditions in which _la vie de Bohème_ was -passed in such spots as these than in the regions towards Montmartre. -The Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne still exists, but to search there for the -garret of Murger and Champfleury is disappointing. One ascends the -cheerful Rue des Martyrs from Notre Dame de Lorette, with its prospect -of the Sacré CÅ“ur standing out against the open heavens, and on -turning along the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne one is confronted by a -respectable, clean, sleepy street that might grace any neat provincial -town in France. All suggestion of Bohemianism is remarkably absent, even -on the top floors. In Murger's day this quarter was far less civilized, -as may be seen from a water-colour sketch by Victor Hugo which hangs -in the Carnavalet Museum. This represents the view southwards from the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne--a wild foreground of uncultivated land with -sombre trees and dilapidated fences, and in the distance all Paris -spread out in panorama. - -[Illustration: Rue Pirouette] - -The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter -of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where -old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have -been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to -Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left -him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in -the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with -its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of -youth and love. In particular, this part of Paris was cleared and aired -by the construction of those two very important thoroughfares, the -Boulevard Saint-Germain, which broke through a host of little streets, -including the rampageous Rue Childebert, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, -which replaced and widened the straggling old Rue de la Harpe. Before -these were made, the Quartier Latin had not a single main street, though -it was not quite so uncivilized as the Halles quarter, nor so large. -Southwards by the gardens of the Luxembourg it soon became comparatively -_bourgeois_ and spacious with pleasant houses and gardens, built -originally for rich nobles and prelates, but relinquished at the -dictation of fashion to prosperous tradespeople and officials like the -Phellions and Thuilliers of Balzac's "Les Petits Bourgeois." Searches -for vestiges of Bohemia in general on either side of the Boulevard -Saint-Germain are fruitful enough; many an _hôtel garni_ recalls that in -which Lucien first hid his diminished head, or the early home of Arsène -Houssaye, when Nini Yeux Noirs was his divinity and revolution his -creed. Specific quests, however, are apt to be disappointing. The Rue -des Quatre Vents, the headquarters of d'Arthez' _cénacle_, in Balzac's -time "one of the most horrible streets in Paris," remains blamelessly -near Saint-Sulpice as dull and decent as the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; -and the Rue Vaugirard, where the second _cénacle_, headed by Pétrus -Borel, held its frantic orgies round the punch-bowl and where Murger -wrote his "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," is devoid of any spark of -romance. On the other hand, a visit to the delightful Cour de Rohan, -just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, will land you _en pleine Bohème_, -as will certain streets leading up towards the Church of Saint-Etienne -du Mont, or the narrow passages by the Church of Saint-Séverin. It is -just too late to see another unmistakable relic of Balzac's Paris, for -the Maison Vauquer of "Père Goriot" has just been pulled down. Yet to -make a pilgrimage to its site gives a very good impression of the -gloominess which Bohemian high spirits had usually to combat. The -Maison Vauquer stood near the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue -Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, now the Rue Lhomond, and the Rue Tournefort, -south of the Panthéon. I have walked down the Rue Lhomond at three on a -sunny autumn afternoon, yet I met no soul in this dingy street, which -seemed to catch not a ray of the sun's illumination. It is crossed by -two sinister little lanes, the Rue Amyot, at the corner of which -Cérizet, in "Les Petits Bourgeois," carried on the business of a small -usurer in a loathsome, grimy house, and the Rue du Pot de Fer, before -coming to which one passes a high, dark barrack, heavy iron bars -shielding its dirty lower windows, the "Institution Lhomond pour -l'éducation des jeunes filles"--poor _jeunes filles_! When the Rue -Tournefort meets the Rue Lhomond there is a very steep descent, -accurately described by Balzac, into the Rue de l'Arbalète. Almost any -of the mournful dwellings with weedy gardens on this slope might have -been the hideous _pension_ where Goriot died, while at the corner of the -Rue de l'Arbalète there is a veritable dungeon, only two tiny windows in -cracked frames piercing its high, blank wall. If you proceed into the -narrow Rue Mouffetard, one long, smelly vegetable market, you will then -realize the general state of all but the best of Louis Philippe's Paris. - -It was part of the old world, unconscious of its impending reformation -in the light of the new ideals of comfort and sanitation which were to -become the accented notes of modernity. It was a provincial city of -small compass with no industrial suburbs, no railways--let alone trams -or river steamboats--and a population of considerably less than a -million concentrated for the most part in its overcrowded quarters by -the river banks, where the excitement of its spiritual life made up for -the deficiencies of its material well-being. There were few public -buildings of recent construction; the Louvre was still disfigured by the -_débris_ of the Place du Carrousel; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, and -the Palais de Justice were hemmed in by crabbed streets and thickly -clustering old houses. Private gardens were many, but public squares -were few. Except for the boulevards the streets had medieval paving with -central gutters, from which all and sundry were liberally splashed, so -that for well-dressed persons to venture in them on foot was an -impossibility. An American writing in 1835 says of them: "They are paved -with cubical stones of eight or ten inches, convex on the upper surface -like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where -not bounded by stores they are as dark as they were under King Pepin. -Some seem to be watertight."[37] They were seldom swept, never flushed, -and primitively lit. The noise, too, except on the boulevards, was -deafening and incessant. Not only did the eternal rumbling of wheels -over cobblestones and the sharp clatter of stumbling hoofs assail the -ear, but also the ringing of bells, the rattle of water-carriers' -buckets, the din of barrel-organs and itinerant singers, and all those -street cries of fish-sellers, clothes-merchants, rag and bone men, -glaziers, umbrella menders, and fruit-vendors so picturesque in isolated -survival, but so unbearable in the _ensemble_ of their heyday. It would -be a mistake, however, to imagine this Paris as sleepy, stagnant, or -unpricked by the progressive spirit; on the contrary, she was -exceedingly wide-awake. But, whereas the Englishman at once translates -his progressive idea into mechanism, the Frenchman prefers to let the -first thorough ferment take place in his mind alone, allowing it, if -need be, to inspire in him the primitive actions of attack and defence, -but leaving more complicated handiwork to a later date, when the logic -of change has been worked out, according to which he then acts -rigorously. In this light the Paris of Bohemia must be -regarded--picturesquely stagnant externally, seething inwardly--and of -this condition Bohemia was the type. Its extravagant or tattered dress, -its Rabelaisian speech and self-indulgence, the antiquated splendours of -the Impasse du Doyenné and the equally antiquated hovels and garrets of -its poverty, its disregard of public convenience and its real antagonism -to democracy, were externals voluntarily or of necessity adopted from -an earlier age; they were the old bottles which served for a moment to -hold and to flavour with a distinctive tang the new wine of the Romantic -vintage. Other vintages of equal potency have quickened men's hearts -since then, and every new age, whether its ideals be artistic or social, -will have its particular ferment that will find its appropriate vessels, -but the past can never return any more than the first delirious -headiness can be restored to an old wine that now charms with its -matured delicacy. Bohemia is a thing of the past with that irrevocable -Paris with its tortuous, noisy streets, its high gables, its wide skirts -and embroidered waistcoats, its - - _Fashionables musqués, gueux à mine incongrue,_ - _Grisettes au pied leste, au sourire agaçant,_ - _Beaux tilburys dorés comme l'éclair passant--_ - -the Paris of Balzac, the Paris of Roger de Beauvoir and Alfred de -Musset, the Paris of Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, the Paris -of Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel, the Paris, in fine, which was the -only home of _les vrais Bohémiens de la vraie Bohème_. - - - - -INDEX - - -Names of characters in fiction are printed in italics. - -A - -ABRANTÈS, Duchesse d', 71 - -Alton-Shee, _see_ Aulnis, Duc d' - -Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 36, 37, 51 - -Amusements of _Bohème_, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - -Ancelot, Madame, 71, 72, 95 - -Anglemont, Privat d', 224-228, 262, 278, 279, 280 - -Anglomania in Paris, 87, 88 - -Arsouille, Milord, _see_ Battut, Charles de la - -_Arthez, Daniel d'_, 14, 15, 127-129, 298 - -Artois, Comte d', 23 - -Arvers, Félix, 102 - -Asselineau, Charles, 56, 58, 59, 61, 109 - -Aulnis, Duc d', 70, 78, 79, 80, 91, 275 - - -B - -BADOUILLARDS, LES, 224, 225 - -Bal Bullier, 279, 280 - Mabille, 280 - -Bal Musard, 270, 276 - -Balzac, Honoré de, 44, 45, 67, 71, 72, 73, 78, 81, 99, 129, 164, 165, - 258, 285, 286, 302 - characters in the novels of, 14, 15, 16, 49, 59-61, 62, 67-69, 75, 76, - 78, 80-86, 99, 102, 111-114, 127-129, 163-165, 256, 261, 262, 264, 268, - 271, 274, 290, 292, 294, 295, 296, 298, 299 - -Banville, Théodore de, 33, 73, 104, 109, 226, 227, 233, 277 - -Barbara, Charles, 248-250, 265, 269 - -_Barbemuche, Carolus_, _see_ Barbara, Charles - -Barrière d'Enfer, Bohemian colony at the, 239-243 - -Barrière, Théodore, 244 - -Bastide, Jules, 36, 37 - -Battut, Charles de la, 90, 91, 275, 276 - -Baudelaire, Charles, 13, 15, 33, 57, 61, 66, 230-233, 261 - -Beauvoir, Roger de, 13, 44, 73, 76, 93-97, 101, 102, 106, 168, - 169, 177, 186, 187, 212, 255, 256, 259, 273, 284, 302 - -Belgiojoso, Prince, 71, 93, 102 - Princess, 13, 71, 86 - -Béquet, 101, 106 - -Béranger, 23, 24 - -Berlioz, Hector, 73, 122, 269 - -Berry, assassination of the Duc de, 23 - -Bisson, the brothers, 236, 237 - -_Bixiou_, 82, 84-86, 99 - -Blanche, Doctor, 190 - -BÅ“uf Enragé, Cabaret du, 227 - -Bohème, La, meaning of the term, 1-12 - its place and period, 12-20 - rise and fall, 1830-1848, 21-34 - general characteristics of, 111-129 - Romanticism of, 25, 26, 29-31, 40-50, 56-64, 131-159, 200-204, 272 - its place in Parisian society, 65-68, 73, 76, 77, 110 - amusements of, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - drama in, 132-136, 140, 141, 175, 176, 272-274 - life of, 126-251 - love in, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - music in, 249, 250 - -Bohème, La, the Paris of, 282-302 - smoking in, 151, 152 _See also_ Cénacle, the Second: Bohème Galante; - Buveurs d'Eau; Gautier; Murger, &c. - Galante, La, 158-193, 194, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 221 - _see_ Doyenné, Impasse du - -Boissard, 231 - -Borel, Pétrus, 15, 41, 43, 57, 58, 61, 133, 135, 136-140, 144, 149-155, - 169, 177, 201, 298 - -Bouchardy, Joseph, 136, 140, 152, 155, 156, 218, 272 - -Bouffé, 101 - -Bouginier's nose, 223, 224 - -Bouilhet, Louis, 230 - -Boulevard des Italiens, 74, 112, 121, 288, 292, 293 - -"Bousingots," 55, 62, 144 - -Briffaut, 101, 106 - -Brot, Alphonse, 136, 137 - -Bullier, 279 - Bal, 279, 280 - -Burnett, George, 17 - -Buveurs d'Eau, Société des, 212, 233-242, 266-268 - -Byron, Lord, influence of on Bohème, 35-37, 64, 125, 134, 151 - - -C - -CABANON, Emile, 97, 101, 102, 106 - -Cabaret du BÅ“uf Enragé, 227 - -Cabaret Dinochan, 261, 262 - of Mère Cadet, 263 - of Mère Saguet, 129, 130 - -Cabot, 237, 238 - -Cadet, Cabaret of Mère, 263 - -Café Anglais, 91, 96, 259, 260 - Hardy, 96, 259, 260 - Momus, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - de l'Odéon, 261 - d'Orsay, 181 - de Paris, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - Riche, 259, 260 - Tortoni, 13, 86, 259 - -Camp, Maxime du, 40-42, 94, 95, 132, 134, 142, 150, 153, 154, 156, 222, - 228-230, 284 - -Cancan, The, 80, 91, 275, 276 - -Carnaud, 278, 279 - -Carnival, 80, 89-91, 274-276 - -Cénacle, the first, 129-132 - the second, 126-157, 158, 159, 203, 271, 272, 298 - of the Rue des Quatre Vents, 127-129 - -Cercle des Étrangers, 269 - -Chahut, The, 275 - -Champfleury, 98, 99, 101, 102, 219, 235, 238, 243-250, 256, 262, 266-268, 272, - 296, 297 - -Chanteraine, Salle, 221, 222 - -Charles X, 23, 24, 200 - -Chartreuse, La, _see_ Closerie des Lilas - -Chassériau, 185, 193 - -Châteaubriand, Duc de, 37, 71 - -Châtillon, 169, 185, 193 - -Chaudesaigues, 103 - -Chaumière, La, 97, 177, 204, 225, 242, 277, 278 - -Chicard, 275, 276 - -Chintreuil, 237, 238, 243 - -Childebert, La, 222-225 - -Cloître Saint-Merri, insurrection of the, 27, 59, 128, 161 - -Clopet, Léon, 136, 137, 152 - -Closerie des Lilas, La, 97, 277-281 - -Coleridge, S. T., 10, 17, 18 - -_Colline_, 126, 198-218, 238, 241, 250, 263, 265-267, 281 - -Colon, Jenny, 174-176, 190 - -Cormenin, Louis de, 230 - -Corot, 185, 193 - -Courbet, 201, 250 - -Courtille, Descente de la, 90 - -Cretaine, Boulangerie, 262, 273 - -Cydalise, 179, 180, 193, 213, 257 - - -D - -DAGNEAUX'S Restaurant, 230, 263 - -Dancing, 80, 91, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - -Delacroix, 48, 122, 169, 184 - -Delvau, Alfred, 159, 160, 227, 235, 238, 245, 247, 248, 261-263, 267, 268 - -Desbrosses, the brothers, 237-241, 243, 290 - -Dinochan, Cabaret, 261, 262 - -Dondey, Théopile, _see_ O'Neddy, Philothée - -Doré, Gustave, 192 - -Dorval, Marie, 13, 273 - -Doyenné, Impasse du, Bohemian brotherhood in, 158-193, 203, 206, - 210, 213, 214, - 229, 257, 276, 301 - Priory of, 166 - Rue du, 164, 165, 168 - -Doze, Mademoiselle, 106 - -Drama in Bohème, 140, 141, 175, 176, 221, 222, 272-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - -Dress of the Romantic period, 92, 96, 131, 139, 141, 145, 151, 239, 234-259 - -Dumas, Alexandre, 13, 55, 76, 155, 184, 190, 198, 226 - -Duponchel, 97 - -Duras, Duchesse de, 71 - -Dyer, George, 17 - - -E - -"ÉCOLE de bon sens," 201, 203 - - -F - -FAUBOURG Saint-Germain, 69, 70, 297 - -Fauchéry, 245, 246, 262, 277 - -Flaubert, Gustave, 33, 201, 228-230 - -Flicoteaux's Restaurant, 264, 265 - -Fontenay-aux-Roses, 200, 216 - -Frascati, 269 - -Fraser, Major, 91, 92 - - -G - -GAMBLING, _see_ Paris - -Gautier, Théophile, 13, 15, 16, 20, 33, 44, 45, 50, 55, 56, 76, 110, - 122, 126, 129, 132-157, 160, 162, 164-173, 177-180, 183-189, - 193, 194, 201, 207, 212, 218, 253, 269, 272, 282, 287-289, 302 - -Gavarni, 13, 169, 256, 259 - -Gay, Delphine, 72, 73, 93 - Sophie, 72, 73 - -Gigoux, Jean, 61 - -Gilbert, 53 - -Girardin, Delphine de, _see_ Gay, Delphine - Emile de, 30, 103 - -Goncourt, the brothers de, 201 - -Graziano's Restaurant, 136, 147, 148 - -Grisettes, 216-218, 250, 258-259, 274, 277-280 - -Guichardet, 262, 263 - -Guigard, Joannis, 267 - -Guilbert, 237 - -Guizot, 200 - - -H - -HABENECK, 269 - -Hardy, Café, 95, 259, 260 - -Haricots, Hôtel des, 279 - -Heine, Heinrich, 275 - -"Hernani," performance of in 1830, 25, 26, 28, 132-136, 201, 221, 255, 272 - -Hill's Tavern, 261 - -Houssaye, Arsène, 76, 116, 158, 160-163, 168-175, 177-189, 194, - 207, 244, 256, 261, 269, 272, 298 - -Hugo, Madame, 72 - Victor, 13, 25, 28, 31, 32, 45-48, 55, 62, 72, 73, 122, 129-132, - 144, 201, 285, 297 - worshipped in Bohème, 25, 45-48, 52, 122, 132-136, 148, - 152, 153, 156, 158, - 184, 201, 244 - - -I - -IMPASSE du Doyenné, _see_ Doyenné - - -J - -JANIN, Jules, 189, 196, 203, 273 - -"Jeune-France" section of Romanticists, the, 45, 57, 58, 61, 94, 95, 139, 142, 150-153 - -Johnson, Samuel, 10 - -Jonson, Ben, 10 - -Jouy, de, 236 - - -K - -KARR, Alphonse, 238, 280 - -Kock, Paul de, 285, 287 - - -L - -LAFAYETTE, 24 - -Lamartine, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Lamb, Charles, 11, 17, 173, 174 - -Lassailly, 44 - -Lautour-Mézéray, 103 - -Leconte de l'Isle, 233 - -Legendre, Madame, 222, 223 - -Leleux, Adolphe, 184 - -Lelioux, 235, 240 - -Le Poitevin, 230 - -Louis, XVIII, 23 - -Louis Philippe, 13, 22, 24, 26, 27, 59, 79, 200, 201 - -Love in Bohème, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - -Lucas, Le Petit, 261 - - -M - -MABILLE, Bal, 280 - -Mackeat, Augustus, 136, 141, 155, 272 - -Magny's Restaurant, 263 - -Maison d'Or, La, 96 - -"Mal du Siècle," Le, 35-64, 252, 253, 255 - -"Mal Romantique," _see_ "Mal du Siècle" - -Malitourne, Armand, 101, 106 - -Maquet, Augustus, _see_ Mackeat - -_Marcel_, 15, 16, 21, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 244, 248, 250, - 254, 265-267, 271, 277, 280, 282 - -Marilhat, 169, 185 - -Maurier, George Du, 7-9 - -Mediævalism, worship of by French Romantics, 43-46, 94, 95, - 134, 141, 142, 150-153, 201, 210, 211, 221, 224 - -MercÅ“ur, Elisa, 29 - -Meyerbeer, 175, 176, 270 - -_Mimi_, 213-218, 246-248, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Mogador, Céleste, 280 - -Momus, Café, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - -Monnier, Henri, 97-101, 275 - -Monselet, Charles, 226, 233, 262 - -Montmartre, 67, 216, 288-290, 296, 297 - -Moreau, Hégésippe, 29, 53, 261 - -Murger, Henry, 15, 16, 33, 194-197, 232-251, 256, - 261, 262, 266-268, 269, 272, 277, 280, 290, 296, 298 - "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," 1, 11, 12, 15, 16, 21, 33, - 34, 119, 120, 126, 147, 159, 160, 194-218, 219, 237, - 238, 241-249, 254, 263, 265-267, 272, 273, 277, 298 - Bohemian generation of, 64, 200-251, 263, 266-268, 270, - 271, 277-281 - -Musard, 14, 269, 270, 276 - Bal, 270, 276 - -_Musette_, 213-218, 246, 247, 254, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Music in Bohème, 249, 250 - in Paris, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - -Musset, Alfred de, 13, 17, 48, 71, 76, 92, 93, 102, 106, 115, 184, 202, 244, 302 - - -N - -NADAR, 233, 235, 237, 238, 242, 262, 266-268 - -Nanteuil, Célestin, 133, 136, 141, 142, 149, 155, 169, 184 - -Nerval, Gérard de, 13, 16, 18, 133-136, 143-146, 148, 149, - 154, 155, 160, 162-193, 207, 212, 227, 253, 272, 295, 302 - -Nodier, 42, 72, 73 - -Noel, 235, 237, 238 - - -O - -O'NEDDY, Philothée, 40, 56, 124, 125, 136, 137, 141, 150-153, 155 - -Opéra, 79, 96, 97, 104, 270, 271, 293 - Bal de l', 204, 245, 274, 276 - -Ourliac, Edmond, 76, 169-172, 177, 186, 187, 272, 275 - - -P - -PALAIS Royal, 268, 289 - -_Palfèrine, Comte de la_, 14, 102, 111-114, 262 - -Paphos, 269 - -Paris, 11, 12-15, 24, 27, 66, 67, 105, 116, 282-302 - balls in, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - Café de, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - drama in, 221, 222, 271-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - gambling in, 268, 269 - literary _salons_ in, 70-73 - music in, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - restaurants, &c., in, 121, 129, 130, 136, 147, 148, 169, - 177, 181, 198, 204, 211, 225, 227, 230, 246, 248, - 259-268; _and see_ Cabaret; Café - Society in, 65-86, 107, 108 - student life in, 221-225, 231; _and see under_ Bohème - -Pelloquet, Théodore, 197, 251 - -Petit Lucas, Le, _see_ Lucas - Moulin Rouge, _see_ Graziano - -_Phèmie Teinturière_, 213-217, 247, 266 - -Pilodo, 275 - -Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - -Piton, le _pâtissier_, 262 - -Planche, Gustave, 229 - -Pomaré, Reine, 280 - -Ponsard, 201 - -Pottier, 237 - -Prado, 275 - -Privat d'Anglemont, _see_ Anglemont - -Punch, a Romantic drink, 150 - - -Q - -QUARTIER Latin, the, 8, 22, 75, 160, 170, - 221-227, 231-233, 249, 250, 262-265, 276-280, 297-299 - - -R - -_Rastignac_, 14, 75, 78, 80-82, 256, 261 - -Récamier, Madame, 36, 37, 71 - -Restaurants, _see under_ Paris - -Revolution of 1830, the, 22, 24-34, 200 - -Rocher de Cancale, Le, 121, 211, 260, 261 - -_Rodolphe_, 15, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 236, - 237, 241, 242, 244, 248, 253, 265-267, 273, 277, 302 - -Rogier, Camille, 101, 102, 145, 167-172, 177-180, - 184, 187, 193, 256 - -Romantic Period in France, the, 12, 16, 20 - _salons_ of, 70-73 - -Romanticism, 25, 26, 28-32, 35-64, 129-159, 201-203, - 221-224, 252, 253, 255, 284, 301, 302 - -Romieu, 97, 98, 102 - -Roqueplan, Camille, 169 - Nestor, 13, 17, 104, 105, 111, 162, 169, 212 - -Rousseau, 185 - -_Rubempré, Lucien de_, 14, 16, 62, 75, 76, 85, 256, 264, 271 - -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, 210-212, 240, 242, 243, 296, 297 - de la Vieille Lanterne, 192, 295 - Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bohemian colony in, 187, 188 - - -S - -SAGUET, Cabaret of Mère, 129, 130 - -Sainte-Beuve, 13, 17, 28, 52, 53, 122, 129-132, 157 - -Saint-Victor, Paul de, 191, 192 - -Sand, George, 16, 17, 93 - -Sandeau, Jules, 188, 189 - -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," _see under_ Murger - -Schann, 232, 237, 238, 242, 245, 248, 249, 266-268, 269 - -_Schaunard_, 15, 16, 126, 159, 198-218, 232, 238, 248, 250, - 253, 263, 265-268, 271, 280, 281, 302 - -Seigneur, Jehan du, 136, 137, 139-141, 148-153, 155 - -Sénancour, 37 - -Seymour, Lord, 79, 88-90 - -Shakespeare, 10 - -Smoking in Bohème, 151, 152 - -Staël, Madame de, 37 - -Steele, Richard, 17 - -Students, life of Parisian, 221-225, 231 - -Sue, Eugène, 70, 285 - - -T - -TABAR, 237 - -Tattet, Alfred, 102, 103, 106 - -Thackeray, 264 - -Théâtre Bobino, 263, 271 - Français, 133-136 - du Luxembourg, _see_ Théâtre Bobino - Montparnasse, 263 - des Variétés, ball at, 274 - -Thom, Napoléon, 136 - -Tolstoi, Monsieur de, 236, 240 - -Tortoni's Café, 13, 86, 259 - -Tournachon, F., _see_ Nadar - -"Tout Paris," Le, 73-76 - -"Trilby," 7, 8 - -Trois Frères Provençaux, Les, 121, 169 - - -V - -VABRE, Jules, 56, 133, 136-138, 140, 155 - -Vastine, 237 - -Vauquer, La Maison, 14, 16, 81, 298, 299 - -Vernet, Horace, 203 - -Véron, Doctor, 103, 104 - -Vigny, Alfred de, 17, 28, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Villain, 237 - -Villiers de l'Isle Adam, 233 - -Vincent, Charles, 241, 242 - -Viot's Restaurant, 263 - -Vitu, 277 - -"Viveurs," Les, 70, 76-108, 204, 231, 275, 276 - - -W - -WALLON, Jean, 238, 250, 266-268 - -Wattier, 185, 193 - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON ENGLAND - - * * * * * - -The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext -transcriber: - -Célestin Nauteuil=>Célestin Nanteuil {8} - -Les Champs Elisées=>Les Champs Elysées - -Gerard de Nerval=>Gérard de Nerval - -"Les Jeune France."=>"Les Jeunes France." - -Elie Wildmannstadius=>Elie Wildman-stadius - -decorated thus because a lew _louis d'or_=>decorated thus because a few -_louis d'or_ - -nor ne'er-do-weels=>nor ne'er-do-wells - -Charles Mouselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote,"=>Charles -Monselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote," - -Pimodan, Hotel, 231=>Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] "Les Enfants Perdus de Romantisme." - -[2] A. Cassagne: "La Théorie de l'art pour l'art en France chez les -derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes." - -[3] "Essais de Psychologie contemporaine," the chapter on Flaubert. - -[4] Philothée O'Neddy: "Feu et Flamme." - -[5] See René Canat: "Du Sentiment de la Solitude morale chez les -romantiques et les parnassiens." - -[6] See Chapter VII. - -[7] Asselineau: "Bibliographie Romantique." - -[8] "Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps." - -[9] Mrs. Trollope: "Paris and the Parisians in 1835." - -[10] "Derniers Jours de Bohème." - -[11] "Les Salons de Paris." - -[12] Challamel: "Souvenirs d'un Hugolâtre." - -[13] "Paris in 1829 and 1830." - -[14] Major Fraser's name appears in many memoirs of the time, but I owe -the above account to "An Englishman in Paris," by A. D. Vandam. - -[15] "Vignettes Romantiques." - -[16] Léon Séché tells his story in "La Jeunesse Dorée sous Louis -Philippe." - -[17] "Histoire du Romantisme." - -[18] Jules Claretie: "Pétrus Borel." - -[19] Maxime du Camp: "Théophile Gautier." - -[20] "Gérard de Nerval." - -[21] "Portraits contemporains." The article on the artist Marilhat. - -[22] "La Bohème Galante." - -[23] Arsène Houssaye: "Les Confessions." - -[24] Gérard, to be precise, quotes an earlier and more cruel version: - - _...La_ reine du Sabbat - _Qui, depuis deux hivers, dans vos bras se débat,_ - _Vous échapperait-elle ainsi qu'une chimère..._ - - -[25] See Chapter xi for a further account of Bohemia's amusements. - -[26] In a preface to Gérard de Nerval's "Å’uvres." - -[27] "Les Confessions." - -[28] The following account combines much of the information given in -three books: Champfleury's "Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse"; "Henri -Murger et la Bohème," by A. Delvau; and the curious little "Histoire de -Murger pour servir à l'histoire de la Vraie Bohème," par trois Buveurs -d'Eau, the anonymous authors of which are known to be his friends, -Lelioux, Nadar, and Noel. It is in the last named that some of Murger's -letters are given. There is a certain amount of conflict between the -dates given in these different books, but since they are all equally -likely to be inaccurate, I have chosen to ignore the discrepancies, -which are not very important. - -[29] This appears in Charles Monselet's diary printed in the memoir by -A. Monselet. - -[30] "Histoire anecdotique des Cafés et Cabarets de Paris." - -[31] In the summer they took place in the Champs Elysées. - -[32] M. Henri d'Alméras in "La Vie Parisienne sous Louis Philippe," from -whose book other details of these balls are taken. - -[33] The popular term for the prison in which refractory members of the -Garde Nationale were confined. - -[34] Now printed in his "Portraits Contemporains." - -[35] The preface to George Cain's "Coins de Paris." - -[36] See "Les Comédiens sans le savoir." - -[37] Sanderson: "Paris in 1835." - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vie de Bohème, by Orlo Williams - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - -***** This file should be named 40293-0.txt or 40293-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/2/9/40293/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Vie de Bohème - A Patch of Romantic Paris - -Author: Orlo Williams - -Release Date: July 21, 2012 [EBook #40293] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME - -[Illustration: La Cydalise.] - - - - -VIE DE BOHÈME -A PATCH OF ROMANTIC PARIS - -BY ORLO -WILLIAMS - -[Illustration: colophon, ARTI et VERITATI] - -RICHARD G. BADGER -THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON - -_First Published 1913_ - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON - -TO -MY WIFE - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAP. PAGE - -I. LA VRAIE BOHÈME 1 - -II. A FRINGE OF HISTORY 21 - -III. LE MAL DU SIÈCLE 35 - -IV. PARISIAN SOCIETY 65 - -V. LES VIVEURS 87 - -VI. LA BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE 109 - -VII. THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" 126 - -VIII. LA BOHÈME GALANTE 158 - -IX. SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY 194 - -X. MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS 219 - -XI. AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA 252 - -XII. THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA 282 - -INDEX 303 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - _To face - page_ - -LA CYDALISE. _By Camille Rogier_ _Frontispiece_ - -THE SPIRIT OF ROMANTICISM 44 -(From the cover of a Romantic periodical) - -BOUSINGOTS. _By Frances Trollope_ 56 -(From "Paris and the Parisians in 1835") - -LES CHAMPS ELYSÉES. _By Eugène Lami_ 67 - -A VIVEUR. _By Gavarni_ 78 - -FASHIONABLES. _By Gavarni_ 86 - -PÉTRUS BOREL. _By Louis Boulanger_ 138 -(After an etching by Célestus Nanteuil) - -CÉLESTIN NANTEUIL. _By Himself_ 142 - -A FESTIVITY IN THE IMPASSE DU DOYENNÉ 168 -(From "Les Confessions" by Arsène Houssaye) - -GÉRARD DE NERVAL 190 - -A GRISETTE. _By Gavarni_ 216 - -A BAL MASQUÉ AT THE OPÉRA. _By Eugène Lami_ 274 - -THE GALOP INFERNAL. _By Gavarni_ 276 - -A GUINGETTE 278 - -THE RUE ST.-DENIS 294 - -THE RUE DE LA TIXANDERIE. _By Méryon_ 295 - -THE RUE PIROUETTE. _By Méryon_ 297 - - - - -I - -LA VRAIE BOHÈME - - _La Bohème, c'est le stage de la vie artistique; c'est la préface - de l'Académie, de l'Hôtel-Dieu ou de la Morgue._ - - MURGER: "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." - - -If there is one reason for which the growth of newspapers during the -last century may be looked at askance, it is the journalist's -persistency in perpetuating phrases. Phrases and catchwords at the -moment of invention are works of a peculiar genius, of which some men -have an abnormal share, though it may crop out suddenly in the most -unlikely places; but a good catchword, that crystallization of a drop of -some elusive current that is momentarily passing through public opinion, -that apt naming of some newly formed group of men or ideas, never comes -out of an inkpot: it is essentially, as the French finely recognize, a -_mot_, a pearl of speech. It darts out in some happy moment of human -intercourse, often almost unconsciously, when the words on a man's lips -are less than usual rebellious to the expression of his thoughts, or -when the exhilaration of some public utterance has charged the air so -that the little telling point, hitherto cold and dormant, flashes -suddenly into incandescence. Such a phrase, born on the lips of one, can -only be nurtured on the lips of many: its success implies continued -utterance. It becomes a heaven-sent convenience to save human -circumlocution, a new topic for the dullards, a new toy for the -_blasés_. In these communicative days, indeed, journalism increases a -thousand-fold the possibilities of its radiation, but a good catchword -has always made its way without the help of print. There has never -existed a human society, at any developed stage of civilization, that -has not been perfectly capable of hitting off a new idea or a new group -in some telling phrase or name without the intervention of a scribe. At -the same time, conversational man, left to himself, is no less quick to -forget than to invent. A new phrase properly fades as soon as the -novelty of that which inspired it, but once it has appeared upon a -single written page it has been given an artificial life of varying but -incalculable duration. This artificial existence has been infinitely -increased by the newspaper. The journalist, who has little time to -think, is naturally loth to let a convenient label go, so that, long -after its original parcel of ideas or beings has passed away, he will -keep tagging it on to other parcels with a certain show of relevance -which effectually conceals the fact that it ought long ago to have been -filed for the etymological dictionary. - -A phrase which has thus lingered artificially in common use is the word -"Bohemian." Nobody can deny that it is a useful label, simply because it -is so vague, conveying as it does the sense of some deliberate -divergence from the usages of polite society, without being in the least -embarrassingly clear as to the degree or direction of that divergence. -It is a term, so apparently specific, so really loose, equally capable -of carrying blame and admiration, which people will go on applying to -men and women, their lives and their clothes, without inquiring whether -there is in fact any answering reality. It would be easy enough to -confuse its simple users by a few question. They might be asked, for -instance, what a Bohemian is, when they would probably reply, in the -slipshod phraseology of to-day, that he is an odd person who wears funny -clothes and does quaint things. But then, it might be pointed out, a -docker from Limehouse is equally odd and quaint from their point of -view, though they do not call him a Bohemian; on which they will rather -pettishly explain that they mean artists and musicians and so on, people -who don't "work." To help them out on this point, in fine, they mean -people who potentially rank with the members of learned professions, but -who choose to live a less respectable life, in which paying calls, -dressing for dinner, and attending to the dictates of social morality -are considered of small importance, though the exact degree of social -unorthodoxy is left as undefined as the qualifying degree of artistic -performance. The same lady will comprehend in the term the middle-aged -civil servant who haunts studios of an evening, wears pale tweeds, but -is otherwise a pearl of inartistic chivalry, and the scaramouch of a -painter, whom she calls "charming" because he is clever, and whose -absorption in art has entirely ruined him as a social being. I propose -another question. Why are Bohemians so called? The answer seems -easy--because they live in Bohemia. And Bohemia? Again the label -produces a difficulty. To pursue any geographical inquiries concerning -Bohemia in a Socratic spirit would quickly produce exasperation in any -catechumen, and I will presume the result without the method. The -answers would generally amount to this: that it seems agreed, simply -since the word is used, that there is a Bohemia, but its latitude and -longitude are indefinable. It is not confined to Chelsea or St. John's -Wood, or even, of course, to England; apparently it transcends the -ordinary differences of nationality, existing always and everywhere. The -possibility of its having existed once and somewhere--I give away freely -at this early stage the foundation of this book--never occurs, for -labels have a tremendous potency of suggestion. Bohemia is commonly -assumed to exist now in the midst of this commercial day. It is -generally accepted--with more or less warmth according to individual -tastes--as an institution not, perhaps, entirely desirable for itself, -but a necessary patch in the motley dress of civilization. It is -proclaimed gleefully or admitted under constraint, as the case may be, -that clever, artistic men and women, wisely or perversely, choose to -gather there, and that certain epithets, such as quaint, amusing, -unconventional--the ethical implications of the adjectives differing -with their user--are applicable to it. But _la vie de Bohème_, once so -vivid a reality, has now no tangible substance: it wanders about, the -palest ghost of a legend, formless and indistinct. The young may look -forward to it and the old pretend to look back on it, but young and old, -in either case, are turning their mind's eye upon a mere abstraction. -The word "Bohemian" has become as conventional as "gentleman," with less -content for all its greater glamour. - -The glamour of Bohemia, too, is projected from a paradox. On the -assumption that it exists, those who wish to live in Bohemia idealize -it; those who have lived in it boast of it; and those who might have -lived in it, but did not, pretend that they did. Yet those who wish to -live in it know nothing of it, and those who lived in it, for all their -boasting, have left it. It seems to take shape, like a mirage, only in -prospect or retrospect. There are witnesses to the distant glint of its -magic towers in the rosy mists of sunrise or the golden haze of sunset, -but of the light and shade within its streets there are none, for those -who might be supposed to be passing through its gates are strangely -reticent, and seem mysteriously to lose the sense of their glorious -nationality. A man may say with a thrill, "I will be a Bohemian," or -with a glow, "I was a Bohemian," but of him who said, "I am a Bohemian," -the only proper view would be one of deepest suspicion. He would -certainly be a masquerader. - -Yet many people, at least in England, do so masquerade--people who -affect Chelsea, slouch hats, and ill-cut garments, who haunt Soho -restaurants, talk and smoke cigarettes in half a dozen studios, toady -sham genius, flutter in emancipatory "movements," and generally do -nothing on quite enough a year. Not long ago a distinguished artist, -genially inspired by dinner at a club of Bohemian traditions and most -respectable membership, gave utterance to the view that, though the -velvet coat had disappeared before evening dress, the Bohemian still -existed. Upon that a writer in an evening paper made the wise comment: - - "There are people, it is true, who indulge in mild - unconventionality; they feed in Soho, and talk of cabarets. But - these people are seldom artists and never Bohemian. The - unconventionality of these people is a mere outward pose, which - compels any artist who wishes to preserve his individuality and - good name to pay careful attention to the external forms. - Bohemianism, such as it was, sprang up in Paris, and that is - sufficiently good reason for its failure in England." - -The journalist has here risen above the temptation of the label, and his -words are just. The gist of the matter lies, perhaps, in his last -sentence, but that point must wait its turn. There is no doubt that -there exists in London, not to speak of other cities, a large body of -people of varying ages, occupations, beliefs, and principles who keep up -a masquerade of Bohemianism. As a body they are worthy citizens enough, -whose intelligence on some subjects is above the average, but they are -masqueraders none the less if they wish to pass as _enfants de Bohème_. -A reason for this masquerade may be found partly in the very human love -of "dressing up" which is never to be discouraged, partly in the -glorification of Bohemia in which writers of novels and reminiscences -are prone to indulge. Probably George du Maurier's "Trilby" has been -responsible for more misconceptions on this matter than any other single -book, on account of its very charm, a charm that needs no further praise -at this date. The author himself, who wrote about that which he knew, -made no extravagant claims to have drawn Bohemia in the early part of -"Trilby," but it is that which in the eyes of most of his readers he is -unavoidably represented as doing. So far as Taffy, the Laird, and Little -Billie are concerned, they are simply transplanted Britons of the -Victorian era, art students with means enough to pursue their studies -without pot-boiling and to keep open house for a collection of other -joyous young people, of whom Svengali was alone the complete Bohemian, -while Trilby herself with perfect propriety mended their socks. Trilby's -part in this studio life is a sentimental idyll which nobody would wish -to destroy, but it is none the less true, in spite of her creator's plea -for her _quia multum amavit_ in a delightful page of circumlocution, -that he has effectually distilled out of her any essence of Bohemianism -which she is dimly represented as possessing. George du Maurier knew -Paris when Bohemia was no more, but even he must have known the rougher, -wilder, less comfortable side of the Quartier Latin. Yet that he glossed -it over is perfectly comprehensible. Even those who lived to write about -the Bohemia that once was could not help tinging their memories with the -romantic yearning of middle age. In a life where hardship and happiness -kaleidoscopically alternate, pain--especially in the shape of material -want or the sense of unjust neglect--obscures in the moment of struggle -the more brightly coloured glasses of health and joy which more often -than not surround it. In retrospect, by a merciful dispensation, the -sombre lines almost entirely disappear, only to be recalled by an -unnatural effort of memory. What stood out in retrospect, in the special -case of _la vie de Bohème_, was the happiness of youth that would never -return, its _insouciance_, its untrammelled companionships, the poetry -of its first love, its gaiety and irresponsible humour, its courage, its -ready makeshifts in adversity. The ex-Bohemian had, what the Bohemian -had not, a contrast by which to measure his regrets--the cares of -domesticity, the wearisome demands of society upon its members, the -responsibilities and cares of an assured position, howsoever humble, the -dulling of pleasure's edge, joints stiffening, hair bleaching. The snows -of yesteryear were falling upon others now; and that the young rogues -might not be too uplifted, he must write his _militavi non sine gloria_, -hinting the while that the special glory of Bohemia paled at the precise -moment of his exodus. George du Maurier poured over "Trilby" some of -this romantic recollection, and other less gifted novelists have done -the same for certain _coteries_ that have lived in London. To them is -due much of the glamour still implied in the phrase "Bohemian," a -glamour which is seldom corrected by a reading of George Gissing's "New -Grub Street." Yet no conception of Bohemia into which the sombre details -of that book will not naturally fit can possibly approach the truth. - -This last sentence, I am aware, may be used to challenge my acquaintance -with the truth since I assume its existence. To any such challenge the -whole of this book is an answer, and its reader will at the end, it is -hoped, be in possession of at least as much truth as its author, if not -the little more which criticism supplies. In the case of a subject so -little complicated an elaborate initial summary of aims and processes -and steps of proof will be unnecessary. Those who wish to do so will -have little difficulty in following a study, which provided no little -entertainment to the student, of the life that was truly to be called -Bohemian. I have been so far concerned to hint that I do not deal in any -heterogeneous parcels which have come to pass under an old label. The -label was applied at a particular time to a particular parcel, and the -one and only original parcel is the _vie de Bohème_ which in this book I -attempt to unwrap. - -It might be supposed from the commonness of allusions to Bohemia and -Bohemianism that the terms were contemporary, at least, with the -intrusion of artists and men of letters into society, and that before -the existence of the Bohemia whose capital is Prague the name of some -other nation was, in the same way, taken in vain. However, this is not -the case. The _groeculus esuriens_ to whom the Roman poet so -scornfully refers had no doubt many Bohemian qualities, but the emphasis -of the taunt is laid on his foreign nationality, not upon his mode of -existence. Even after the Bohemia of the atlas came into being it knew -for many centuries no usurper of its name. Will Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, -and the merry company of the "Mermaid" tavern neither called themselves -nor were called Bohemians. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other less -distinguished inhabitants of Grub Street suffered many verbal -indignities, but not that. Coleridge and Charles Lamb might be alluded -to as Bohemians now, but in their day the term had even yet not been -invented. Murger's preface to "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" proves that -so late as 1846 a universal understanding of his title could not be -taken for granted, since he begins by carefully distinguishing the -geographical Bohemia from the artistic. The modern sense of the term -originated, in fact, in Paris at the time of the Romantic movement, -being only an extension of the meaning of "gipsy" or "vagabond" long -attached to the word _bohémien_ in France. Our "Bohemian" was introduced -into the English language by Thackeray, who learnt it during his -student-period in Paris. - -This piece of etymology, nugatory as it may appear, is, in fact, very -important. It is the first real delimitation of our inquiry. _La vie de -Bohème_ is essentially a French term, and it is therefore fitting that -we should examine its implications in that language. Murger in his -preface is contradictory, but his very contradiction is pregnant and -valuable. At the outset he applies the term _bohémien_ to the literary -and artistic vagabonds of all ages. "La Bohème dont il s'agit dans ce -livre n'est point une race née aujourd'hui, elle a existé de tous temps -et partout, et peut revendiquer d'illustres origines." Homer, he says, -was the first Bohemian of Greek antiquity, and his tradition was carried -on by the medieval minstrels and troubadours; Pierre Gringoire and -François Villon, Clément Marot and Mathurin Regnier, Molière and -Shakespeare, Rousseau and D'Alembert were the leading citizens of their -contemporary Bohemias. This brings Murger to his own day, of which he -says: "Aujourd'hui comme autrefois, tout homme qui entre dans les arts, -sans autre moyen d'existence que l'art lui-même, sera forcé de passer -par les sentiers de la Bohème." If Chelsea were here to make a -triumphant interruption, it would have spoken too soon, for he proceeds -to give the definition which serves as an epigraph to this chapter, and, -without a word of warning, contradicts what he has said before in the -sentence: "Nous ajouterons que la Bohème n'existe et n'est possible qu'à -Paris." This is a highly serious matter. It leaves old Homer nothing but -a Greek poet, and Chelsea--well--little more than Chelsea. However, I -cannot imagine Homer objecting, and Chelsea must forgive me, if I accept -Murger's statement in the strictest possible way. Further, the Paris -implied is the Paris of Murger's own day. That this was so may appear -more clearly in the sequel, but for the present it must suffice to say -that the Paris of the Romantic period, which gave birth to Bohemia, was -unlike the Paris of earlier days in many respects, and no Romantic had -any conception of the cosmopolitan Paris of to-day. _La vie de Bohème_, -far from being a vague label, was a phrase packed with intimate meaning, -meaning which at the time was not at all so fully manifest as under -criticism and comparison it may now appear. It depended for its peculiar -qualities upon the social and material conditions of Louis Philippe's -Paris, which have long since passed away. - -We go, therefore, beyond Murger and strike out Villon, Gringoire, and -Marot from the roll of Bohemia. At most they were only potentially -enrolled and lived, like Socrates, in a state of unconscious grace. -Whether or no Bohemia can be said to exist to-day or to have existed in -the Middle Ages, at least it can only be by analogy from the very -definite and localized _Bohème_ which was part of Paris between 1830 and -1848. Though Louis Philippe, the _bourgeois_ king, the admirer of the -_juste milieu_, was her ruler, the life of Paris never beat with a -quicker pulse than in those days; never was she more gay, more witty, -more intellectually scintillating, more paradoxical, in fact more -absolutely Parisian than when Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de -Musset, the Princess Belgiojoso, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, -Nestor Roqueplan, and Baudelaire were among her citizens, when Roger de -Beauvoir was dazzling upon a truly brilliant boulevard, when the dandies -gracefully lounged and quizzed upon the steps of Tortoni's, when -Alexandre Dumas gave his famous fancy-dress ball which drew all Paris, -when Marie Dorval shone beside Mademoiselle Mars, when Fanny Elssler and -Taglioni danced while Duprez and Grisi and Rubini sang, when Gavarni and -Daumier drew their caricatures, when Musard conducted his furious -quadrilles, when there were still _salons_ in which men and women still -knew how to talk, when life was still an artistic achievement in an -artistic setting. Memoirs and reminiscences abound of this enchanted -city in the time when her intense inner light had not paled before the -glare of commercialism and cosmopolitanism, but such sketches and -side-views must yield to the all-comprehending picture contained in the -works of Balzac, that magnificent magician. Through him the Paris of -Louis Philippe shines doubly brilliant, for its world of flesh and blood -was not more wonderful than the fictitious world with which he peopled -it, a world of high and low, rich and poor, squalor and splendour, vice -and virtue, wit and stupidity--miraculous issue from one poor mortal -brain. The Princesse de Cadignan, Madame D'Espard, Madame Firmiani, and -Mademoiselle des Touches were its higher, Coralie, Esther, Jenny Cadine, -Florine, and Madame Schontz its lower, divinities, and their worshippers -were de Marsay, the engaging Lucien de Rubempré, the remarkable -Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, La Palférine, and all the corrupted crew -of Crevels, Malifats, and Camusots; in it the greasy, dirty Maison -Vauquer contrasted with the splendid boudoir of a Delphine de Nucingen, -the illuminated poverty of a D'Arthez with the vicious luxury of the -Nathans and Finots, the huge _coups_ of a Nucingen with the petty usury -of a Père Samanon, the simplicity of a Cousin Pons with the malignity -of a Cousine Bette. Into this world of feverish movement and poignant -contrasts fits _la Bohème_, lighted by its double facets of fact and -fiction. As the actual Bohemians from Pétrus Borel and Théophile Gautier -to Baudelaire and Murger play their part in the world of fact, so the -fictitious Bohemians from Raphael de Valentin and D'Arthez down to -Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard play theirs in the world of fiction. -They are all part of that pageant which, though it took eighteen years -to pass and declined in bravery towards its close, may conveniently be -called the pageant of 1830. - -To disentangle the Bohemian contingent from its accompaniment of press -and bustle is my aim in this book, which was suggested, I may frankly -say, by some meditations on a second reading of Murger's "Scènes de la -Vie de Bohème," a work of perennial delight that deserves a better -acquaintance in England. In spite of the vivid light thrown by Murger on -the life which he is describing, his stories are apt to be misleading -unless read in the light of certain knowledge--knowledge which he could -presume in his contemporaries and which it is the aim of this book, with -all humility, to revive. Murger's little volume, after it has produced -its first flush of pleasure and amusement, raises many disconcerting -questions to a thoughtful reader. The scene it paints, for instance, is -remarkably different from the two sides of literary life depicted in -Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." Neither the brotherhood of the Rue des -Quatre Vents nor the fast set into which Lousteau introduces Lucien are -connected by an obvious link with Rodolphe and his friends. Then there -is the question whether Rastignac in his days at the squalid Maison -Vauquer was in any sense a Bohemian. Or, again, it may be asked how far -fiction agrees with fact. Did Murger himself lead the same kind of life -as a Schaunard or Marcel, and if he did, was the same to be said of -other writers and artists, of Théophile Gautier or Gérard de Nerval? How -did Bohemia arise, and how far was it, as Murger asserts, a necessary -stage in the artistic life? These are some of the obvious inquiries to -which it has been my part to attempt an answer, and I would crave the -reader's indulgence if, at the outset, I seem to shrink from plunging at -once into _la vie de Bohème_. The external details of a way of life -cannot be seen in a true light if the social conditions and, still more, -the state of mind of which it was an expression are not first made -clear. For that reason a little "fringe of history" makes its appearance -and leads to a short consideration of what French writers have called -_le mal romantique_. Nevertheless, I have tried to keep the main subject -always in view, and not to be led away into discussing aspects of the -Romantic period which are not relevant. This is not, I claim with all -deference, a concoction of all the old legends and Romantic love -affairs. George Sand, for instance, and Alfred de Musset only poke -their heads in; Alfred de Vigny and Marie Dorval, Sainte-Beuve and -Madame Hugo play no part. Bohemia alone is our concern, a theme which is -displayed for what it is worth without any distracting embroideries. - -If, then--to return to the train of thought with which I began--Bohemia -turns out to be something definite, with a beginning, a development, and -an end, some negative criteria, at all events, will be supplied by which -to judge the applicability of the label "Bohemian" to any set of -conditions existing to-day, and to decide whether the disappearance of -certain special implications and unique circumstances does not drain the -term of all definite meaning except as applied, in retrospect, to the -very persons, manners, and ideas which it originally described. By -analogy from that meaning, there is no harm in saying that there have -always been, and always will be, Bohemian individuals with a Bohemian -state of mind. Richard Steele was a Bohemian; Lamb, perhaps, was a -little too staidly settled at the India House, but his friends, George -Dyer, George Burnett and, above all, Coleridge, were certainly Bohemian -individuals. They were of that ultra-Bohemian type which never grows out -of its Bohemianism, men who remain permanently in what should only be a -"stage" till they pass the age when, as Nestor Roqueplan said, the -"bohémien" risks being confounded with the "filou." Such men as -Coleridge and Dyer would be called eccentrics even in the true Bohemia; -like poor Gérard de Nerval, they were not entirely sane, and the -Bohemian _type_ had essentially perfect sanity. It is for this very -reason that _la Bohème_, at its proper time, could exist, and why before -and after that time it did not exist. Sane young men, no matter what -their fads, fancies, and enthusiasms may be, have no need and no -possibility of making to-day that particular demonstration which -resulted in Bohemia. The social forces drive them in other directions. -It has long been admitted in France that Bohemia is dead, and that it -has been or ever will be revived in England is a delusion resting upon -the unintelligent use of a word. Even young Englishmen, as we now -consider youth, are too old, far too old, to live the life of which they -flatter themselves they are preserving the tradition. The boy who has -submitted to discipline for over a dozen years, learned to honour his -neighbour on the cricket and football field and to respect society as -embodied in the unwritten laws of school life--what has he in common -with the youth in France, a bachelor of letters at eighteen, bursting -with his own individuality, passionate in pursuit of his own ideas, -revelling in his new liberty, dreaming, as only a Frenchman can dream, -of glory and love, who could attach no meaning to such a phrase as -"playing the game," wayward, capricious, uproarious, and completely -unbalanced? Yet it was such who made the traditions of _la vie de -Bohème_. To those who are impelled to break away and lead joyous, -untrammelled young lives of privation and artistic striving all sympathy -is due, but by masquerading under a tattered banner they do not revive -its glory nor increase their own. Paris once had room for Bohemia, but -London never. Chelsea and Soho, Highgate and St. John's Wood are to-day -no more Bohemian, in the true sense of the word, than Piccadilly or -Grosvenor Square. In the lapse of years a few accidental attributes of -the real Bohemia have come to be regarded as the essentials of the -false. We are fond of labels and catchwords, lightly casting away their -implications. So it has come to pass that Bohemia--that dirty, hungry, -lazy, noisy vale of youthful laughter and tears, so enchanting in -prospect or retrospect, so uncompromising in actuality, which many had -to pass through and most would have avoided--is looked on as the -pleasant home of more or less artistic natures, that men of stable -occupations, regular means, and fastidious temperaments may choose for a -dwelling-place, just as they may choose a garden city. - -Well, let them masquerade, yet Bohemia is dead, and more honour may be -done to its memory by recalling how it walked and lived than by casting -lots for its old-fashioned garments. Its virtues and its faults were -balanced as equally as its good and bad fortunes, but if it were to be -revived, the resurrection should begin with that which was its chief -glory, the intense artistic enthusiasm that was its charter. "Nous -étions ivres du beau," wrote Théophile Gautier. London, indeed, would be -the better for the infusion of a more Dionysiac spirit into her æsthetic -appreciations and ideals. But that is not of the times. At the end of -his charming book, "Les Enfants Perdus du Romantisme," M. Henri -Lardanchet quotes a speech made by the president of some university -society to the effect that the youth of to-day, preoccupied with -extremely definite problems, has no longer the poetic enthusiasm of the -past generation, whereon he is moved to exclaim: - - "Ah! ne vous glorifiez pas de l'avoir chassé, cet enthousiasme! Il - était à la fois la rose et la chanson au bord de vos vingt ans - désolés; il était l'opulence orgueilleuse de votre âge, il était - votre grâce, votre génie, votre fierté, ô jeunesse!--toute votre - jeunesse...." - -Let us take this for the epitaph of _La Bohème_. - - - - -II - -A FRINGE OF HISTORY: THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 - - -In the first chapter of Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," Marcel, -the painter, requires his _concierge_, in return for a tip of five -francs, to tell him every morning the day of the week, the date, the -quarter of the moon, the state of the weather, and the form of -government under which they are living. A hasty generalization from this -episode might conclude that the more noteworthy vicissitudes of society, -which we call history, were of singularly small importance to those -concerned with Bohemia. The main current of events, it would seem, -rolled on, leaving the stagnant backwater undisturbed, where, in the -easy garment of "art for art's sake," a few geniuses and many -_dilettanti_ lolled the day through in unpatriotic apathy. Such a -conclusion from Murger's picture of Bohemia is, in fact, inevitable, but -it is a wrong one, and the fault lies only with Murger. The French -people, at any rate the Parisians, are extremely susceptible to the -impressions of passing events, political, artistic, or social. They are -more excitable, as we say, than ourselves. We only become agitated in -response to orders from Fleet Street, whereas they are apt to ferment -spontaneously, their natural liveliness of mind acting as the yeast. It -is this quality of interest in passing events, fostered by their -fondness for discussion, which renders their criticism so trenchant and -their partisanship so ardent. So that we can scarcely believe Bohemia, -eclectic as it was, to have been unmoved or, at least, uninfluenced by -the objects of contemporary comment or debate. For this reason our -picture would be seen in a false light without some reference to -history. Moreover, I have been rash enough to impose upon myself the -limitation of dates, which are dangerous things in themselves, always -requiring justification. I put the classic period of _la vie de Bohème_ -between 1830 and 1848, the exact period of Louis Philippe's reign. At -first sight the reign of this _bourgeois_ prince would seem to have -little enough connexion with the florescence and decadence of the very -antitype of _bourgeoisie_, but this is only a further reason for not -neglecting history. The Revolution of 1830 was of the highest importance -for France: it was the inevitable explosion of dissatisfaction, both -political and artistic, with the powers that ruled. What I wish to make -clear is that, whereas before this date Bohemia, if it existed, was but -an unconsidered fringe on the ancient student life of the Quartier -Latin, after 1830 it not only received a population but became a force. -For a few years it was an integral part of the larger Paris, a -considerable element in public opinion and, to some extent, in social -life, a factor that could not be ignored. Disturbance, however, yielded -to peace, and the interests of the public shifted. The living spirit of -Bohemia gradually hardened into a dead tradition. By 1848 independence -and individual liberty, the watchwords of Bohemia, were replaced in the -mind of citizens by thoughts of social reform which culminated in the -Republic of 1848. Art, for the time, fell from her place of glory, and -Bohemia relapsed for ever into obscurity. - -The battle of Waterloo seemed to have undone all the good of the -Revolution of 1789. The Bourbons came back to power, with Louis XVIII, a -lazy man, on the throne, and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, leading a -band of ultra-Royalists behind him. The ultra-Royalists, exasperated by -the "hundred days," were breathing fire and slaughter, full of zeal to -destroy the liberty and philosophy of the Revolution and to replace it -with absolutism and priest-rule. Against them was arrayed the party of -"Independents" with Béranger, their poet, and between the two were the -"doctrinaires" or moderate Royalists. The "Ultras," whose violence began -by damaging their own cause, were put into power by the assassination of -the Duc de Berry in 1820, and Villèle was their minister. The succession -of Charles X only strengthened the forces of reaction, till in 1828 -Villèle was defeated and gave place to a Liberal, Martignac. But -Martignac's party were not strong enough to support him long, and in -1829 he was succeeded by Polignac and a Royalist ministry. The Liberals -now prepared for stubborn resistance. Societies were formed, with -branches throughout the provinces, which were joined by all shades of -Liberal opinion, and their hero was Lafayette. The blindness of Charles -X precipitated events. Exasperated by the adverse result of the -elections of 1830, he suspended the constitution by his famous -ordinances on July 26. Paris rose at once, and four days later all was -over. Louis of Orleans was in Paris by the 30th, and took the oath as -King in August. This is only a bald statement of facts, but they are -facts that can be seen by the eye of imagination. By 1830 Paris was a -boiling cauldron of passionate enthusiasm. Revolution was aflame once -more. Barricades--the mere word is a trumpet-call to Frenchmen--had been -erected once more in the streets, and once more blood had flowed in -their defence. Paris for years had smouldered with indignation, and now -her young men glowed with triumph. The people should come to its own -again, and they should be its champions. The eyes of France were on -them, and they knew that their comrades in the provinces, intoxicated by -the songs of Béranger, enraged by the petty vexations of Royalist -officials, were envying them their opportunity and eagerly looking for -any chance that would bring them to the city that so nobly stood for -liberty. - -The Revolution of 1830 was not only political, it was also artistic, and -the artistic results were really the more permanent. This artistic -revolution is generally known as the Romantic movement, about which so -much has been written that I need not refer to it at length. Just as the -Liberal spirit smouldered for many years against the Royalist -oppression, so the Romantic spirit smouldered against the restraints of -the dead classic tradition of the eighteenth century. The process of -combustion, beginning as it did with Rousseau, was a slow one, and, as -it has been said, Romanticism only potentially existed, as a movement, -before 1820. In that year Victor Hugo founded his journal, the -_Conservateur Littéraire_, gathering round him a brilliant company of -writers. For ten years the movement grew in intensity, fostered by the -institution of _cénacles_ and the only too successful proselytism of -Victor Hugo, who disdained no recruit whom he could by flattery enlist. -It is not too much to say that the youth of all France was fired by the -revolt against classicism in poetry and drama. Every schoolboy wrote -verses and every ardent soul longed to enter the very arena in Paris, -where the _perruques_ of the Institute were so signally defied. Paris -became doubly desirable as the field on which political and artistic -liberty were being won. The triumph came in 1830 with the performance of -"Hernani." That victory of the Romantic army is now a commonplace, but -in 1830 it was magnificently new, and it was, moreover, the public -manifestation of _la Bohème_. The effect of this double excitement was -overwhelming. It literally tore the more intelligent among the young men -of France from the roots of all their attachments and interests. To -establish liberty, to revolutionize literature, these were their dreams, -in comparison with which all ordinary professional prospects seemed -dreary and unworthy. So the year 1830 saw Paris harbouring in her -garrets a host of enthusiasts, most of them very young, burning with -ideals and flushed with apparently glorious victories. They felt -themselves incorporated in one great brotherhood of defiance to -established authority, so that those who mocked their poverty and -lawlessness in the name "Bohemian" were unconsciously justified, for a -corporate name is the sign of a corporate existence. _La Bohème_ in 1830 -was not a haphazard collection of _dilettanti_ and artistic eccentrics; -it was a fellowship inspired by similar enthusiasms and bound together -by the struggle against similar misfortunes. - -Misfortunes, indeed, were not slow to come. Society is wonderfully quick -to repair the breaches in its walls made by gallant assaulters, and the -heroes who have been foremost in the attack find that their bravely made -passage has closed behind them, and that they are left to be broken and -starved into submission. So it was after 1830. Louis Philippe was at -heart a Royalist who had little understanding of the Revolution. His -great achievement was to keep on his throne for eighteen years by -encouraging the moneyed middle class, thus laying the foundation of -French industrial prosperity. _Enrichissez-vous_ was the order of the -day, an order ironically unsuitable to the reformers of Bohemia. Those -among them whose ideals were political rather than literary became -uncompromising Republicans, formed secret societies, carried on a -violent Press campaign of articles and caricatures against Louis -Philippe and his ministers, and plotted further armed risings in Paris, -the most serious of which was the ill-fated insurrection of the Cloître -Saint-Merri in 1832. They were to find that they had presumed too far -upon their strength. In spite of the Legitimist risings in La Vendée, -labour troubles at Lyons, and disaffection in Paris, Louis Philippe's -government was powerful enough to meet all emergencies. Press laws were -made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures -were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. -Above all, the _bourgeoisie_ held firm. They were tasting prosperity and -power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with -their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political -excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who -had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and -repression. Their bright dreams faded away into grey reality; they found -themselves suspects and outcasts, with the problem of subsistence, -instead of being miraculously solved, only rendered more acute. They had -no outlet for their energies, and those whom neither the barricades nor -the cholera of 1832 carried off saw the fellowship of assault followed -by the isolation of retreat. They drifted away in little bands to join -the societies of social reformers like Saint Simon, Fourier, or Père -Enfantin. Consumption, starvation, and suicide were the ends of many of -them, and their traces gradually faded from Bohemia, which became -identified purely with the lives of its literary and artistic -inhabitants. - -The poets and artists of Bohemia survived longer, not only as -individuals, but as a united brotherhood, mainly because artistic -rebellion cannot be put down, as it does not manifest itself, by force, -and also because the campaign in which "Hernani" was the central -engagement really culminated in a lasting victory. For some years after -1830 there was plenty for the young band to do in reducing block-houses -and chasing the persistent critics of the old school, who conducted a -most robust guerilla warfare. Yet hardship and misfortune dogged their -footsteps also. The Romantic victory of 1830 was won by an army; its -spoils were shared by the few leaders--Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, de -Vigny--who, as M. Henri Lardanchet has rather unkindly said,[1] "without -a word of farewell or a motion of gratitude abandoned their army to -famine." To tell the truth, many of the devoted enthusiasts were young -men of mediocre talents at a day when the standard was very high. Verses -were a drug in the market, and he was a lucky man who could earn a few -francs by filling a column or two in a little fashion paper boasting a -few hundred subscribers. Journalism was not yet a commercially -flourishing business, expenses were high, subscribers few, and Press -laws menacing. The starveling poets and dramatists of Bohemia fell upon -lean years, in which the weaker and more utterly destitute were -destroyed by their privations, like Elisa Mercoeur and Hégésippe -Moreau. Nevertheless, the Romantics were not crushed out of existence. -The stout hearts of those who held out still beat to a common measure, -and maintained artistic fellowship in an ideal as an essential element -of _la vie de Bohème_. - -Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been -since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was -glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. -Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the -extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular -army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. _Épater -le bourgeois_ was a legitimate war-cry when the _bourgeois_ stood for -all that was reactionary in art. To scare the grocer with a slouch hat -and a medieval oath was not only a youthful ebullition, it was a -symbolic act. The sombrero defied artistic convention as typified in the -top hat; the medieval oath, in its contrast with the paler expletives of -modernity, symbolized the return to life and colour in art after a -century of grey abstraction. It was with the decline of Romanticism that -Bohemia lost its living spirit. Unlike Republicanism, that gathered -unseen strength in failure to blossom for a more worthy generation, -Romanticism lost its vitality through its very success. It may be -likened to some conflux of waters which to force from its way the inert -mass of an obstacle rises to a mighty head: the obstacle is swept away, -and the seething waters resolve themselves into a workaday river humbly -serving the sea. So the Romantic movement has served literature for many -decades now, and it was quietly flowing between the banks before Louis -Philippe lost his throne. Success, it might be said, came to it too -soon, especially as success in that day meant money. The dangers of -Republicanism were staved off for the moment by force; the dangers of -Romanticism were for ever discounted by payment. Authorship was made to -serve a commercial end, and all was over. In 1836 Emile de Girardin -founded _La Presse_, which was sold at a far lower price than any other -paper. The inevitable followed. Circulation went up by leaps and bounds, -contributors were paid respectable prices, expenses were defrayed by the -profits of advertisement, and journalism in France was at once on a -commercial footing, for other papers were not slow to follow. -Literature, from being purely an art, quickly became a trade. The -struggle for a new artistic ideal gave way to the struggle for loaves -and fishes, which is contemporary with mankind. A man's artistic creed -went for nothing, when all the public asked was that he should make -himself conspicuous before they gave him their countenance. Once -artistic success became a matter of royalties it was an easy prey to -_bourgeois_ conditions, which were that art and literature should either -be merely entertaining or point a respectable moral. Only a few -Romantics were proof against this insidious influence. To those -recalcitrants we owe the motto "Art for art's sake." - -The effect of this change upon Bohemia is not difficult to imagine. _La -vie de Bohème_ implies youth, so that its generations change as rapidly -as those of a university. The generation of 1830 had either disappeared -or become famous--that is, potentially rich--in a few years. The -struggle which had convulsed all Paris was a thing of the past, and -Romanticism was so far accepted, swallowed, and digested that by 1843 -the necessity was felt for reverting to the classical tradition again, -for a change, with the so-called _école de bon sens_. There was no -longer any trumpet-call to which Bohemia could respond as a brotherhood, -as Victor Hugo learned when, on wishing to enlist a fresh army to go -into battle for "Les Burgraves," he was told "il n'y a plus de jeunes -gens." The swaggering heroes of 1830 were now writers of successful -novels and comedies, or safely chained, as critics, to the careers of -remunerative journals. Rebellion was impossible, for there was nothing -to rebel against. Success depended more upon individual enterprise than -common enthusiasm. There was nothing left, therefore, for the new -generations of Bohemia but to fall back upon tradition. If there was no -more certainty in ideals there was at least something definite in slouch -hats and medieval oaths, in defying conventions of dress and accepted -table manners. So the symbols of Romanticism became the realities of -Bohemia after all that they symbolized was as lifeless as a cancelled -bank-note. Further, the population of Bohemia lost that great asset in -life, personal pride. Their predecessors of 1830 were arrogant, no -doubt, but with the arrogance of an advance-guard in a desperate -venture. There was no desperate venture now toward, and advance meant, -not progress, but prosperity. The poorer brethren of art who peopled -Bohemia were now, inasmuch as they were not prosperous, failures. They -had no sense of intellectual achievement to keep up their courage, when -such achievement was measured in gold. It was inevitable that their -_moral_ should be affected; the recklessness, which was formerly that of -bravado, became that of despair, and a less reputable atmosphere grew -up round Bohemia which has never been dispelled from its tradition. - -Nevertheless, dead as the spirit was, the tradition of 1830 remained -very strong, being kept alive not only by oral transmission, as all -traditions are, but also by the art of the sturdy few who remained -faithful to the uncompromising standard of disinterestedness in art -which it implied. Gautier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, the de Goncourts, and a -few others stood out unflinchingly against commercialism on the one hand -and prosy doctrinairism on the other. Their struggle was not wholly -effectual, but, so far as Bohemia is concerned, was important. After -1848, when everything had to have a social "purpose" and art for its own -sake seemed dead, they sat down, like the Psalmist, by the rivers of -Babylon and remembered Zion. From their regrets the legend of _la sainte -Bohème_ arose idealized and purified, and it was made immortal in pages -of prose by Gautier and in de Banville's "Ballade de ses regrets pour -l'an 1830." This legend, tinged as it already was with sentiment, spread -to the public, by whom it was resentimentalized, a fact of which other -authors, Murger included, were not slow to take advantage. - - "Ils savaient tirer parti des ressemblances réelles entre la vie de - Bohème et la vie de l'étudiant bourgeois au 'Pays latin' pour - établir une confusion avantageuse, confusion qui est déjà manifeste - dans les 'Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.' Chanter ainsi la Bohème - c'était un peu chanter la jeunesse bourgeoise."[2] - -If this be true, then Bohemia after 1848, when the public interest was -purely absorbed in Socialistic reforms, lapsed once more into being a -mere fringe on the student life, and, as such, equally negligible. Its -classic days were over, never to return, for the society of Paris grew -too large to be again convulsed by a purely artistic conflict. The -leaders of the new _Parnasse_ made a considerable sensation, but they -founded, not a new Bohemia, but only another _cénacle_. History -establishes the florescence and decline of the classic _vie de Bohème_ -beyond much doubt, for it went with the florescence and decline of a -common spirit. - - - - -III - -LE MAL DU SIÈCLE - - -I have identified the classic period of Bohemia with the time of the -Romantic victory. It was not then lighted by dim lanterns hung outside -the door of every artistic idiosyncrasy, but reflected flamboyantly a -general state of mind. I disclaim once for all the intention of adding -another to the many studies of the Romantic movement, but in my aim of -explaining the living reality out of which grew the tradition of _la vie -de Bohème_ I am compelled to dwell upon the turgid mental content of the -early nineteenth century. The eccentricities of Bohemia were then but -slight exaggerations of a universal spiritual ferment, though, after the -good wine was made, a later and decadent Bohemia artificially reproduced -the symptoms of a process that was formerly natural and necessary. _Le -mal romantique_, _le mal du siècle_, are common phrases upon the lips of -French critics, who to-day affect to treat with contempt what was, after -all, a new Renaissance. Without adopting their attitude, it must be -admitted that, inestimable as were its results, it was an alarming -convulsion. The English took it in a milder and earlier form. Its most -extreme manifestation, Byron and the "Satanic" school, was a thing of -the past before 1830. But the French were thoroughly and virulently -affected, and exhibited all the most violent symptoms. - -We may best begin, perhaps, by looking at a particular "subject," to use -a medical phrase, in the correspondence of J.-J. Ampère, son of the -great scientist. The younger Ampère, after a violent adoration of Madame -Récamier, who was old enough to be his mother, settled down into a most -respectable and successful man of letters, and he was never in any sense -a Bohemian. He was a well-educated and perfectly normal man, so that the -ravages of _le mal du siècle_ may be well judged when he writes to his -friend, Jules Bastide, in 1820: - - "My dear Jules, last week the feeling of malediction was upon me, - round me, within me. I owe this to Lord Byron; I read through twice - at a sitting the English 'Manfred.' Never, never in my life has - anything I have read overwhelmed me as that did; it has made me - ill. On Sunday I went to see the sunset upon the Place de - l'Esplanade; it was as threatening as the fires of hell. I went - into the church, where the faithful were peacefully chanting the - Hallelujah of the Resurrection. Leaning against a column, I looked - at them with disdain and envy." - -Two months later Jules Bastide delivered his soul in a similar strain: - - "I feel that the slightest emotions might send me mad or kill me. - The evening of our parting I opened at random a volume of Madame - de Staël and read the dream of Jean Paul. When I came to that - terrible line, 'Christ, nous n'avons point de père,' a shudder - seized me. An hour later I had a fever; it lasted a fortnight." - -Another friend wrote to Ampère in 1824: - - "All my ideas turn towards Africa.... Is it solitude that I seek in - Africa? Yes, but it is not only that; it is the desert, the - palm-tree, the musk-rose, the Arab! A romanesque and _barbaresque_ - future is what ravishes me." - -In 1825 Ampère, then twenty-five years old, wrote to Madame Récamier: - - "Return, for my life is no longer tolerable without you; my spirit - is wholly employed in trying to _support_ the emptiness of my - days." - -In these delirious passages are contained the most marked symptoms of -the time, the satanic gloom that drew its inspiration from Byron, the -nervous sensibility imitated from the heroes of Madame de Staël, -Châteaubriand, and Sénancour, and the longing for a life of Oriental -colour which found a later expression in Victor Hugo's poems. However, -it would be unfair to put down this spiritual _bouleversement_ to the -influence of "René," "Obermann," "Werther's Leiden," or "Manfred." They -became, indeed, the breviaries of the afflicted, but the cause of the -affliction lay deeper in the reaction of the French nation after the -Napoleonic wars. Napoleon's victorious campaigns drained France of its -best blood and its best energies, leaving an inheritance of anæmia and -neurasthenia to the next generation, without diminishing that feverish -desire for glory, that determination to work one's will upon a passive -world, which was the spirit of Napoleon's armies. Older and more settled -people were content to reap the rewards of peace, but the young men, -exalted by the exploits of their fathers, looked in vain for some -channel in which to discharge their superfluous electricity. Under the -restored Bourbons there was none. The fathers had had free play upon -historic battlefields, the sons were cribbed and confined in the narrow -bounds of everyday life. Moreover, the revolutionary wars had revealed -vast, unexplored pastures to the French mind. New countries, languages, -and literatures were brought into its view. The gorgeous East, in -particular, seized upon the French imagination. The desert was vast and -untrodden, the Arab was dignified and free, and under unclouded skies -the primitive nobility of mankind revealed itself in splendour and -space. - -Here, then, is the root of _le mal du siècle_ from which the divers -symptoms sprang. Of these, perhaps, the most marked and most general was -an exaggerated sensibility, a kind of melancholy madness. Young Henri -Dubois, who at any other epoch would have been content to learn his -trade behind the counter of Dubois and Dupont, cloth merchants, and to -settle down into a peaceful home with Mademoiselle Dupont, now plied -the yard measure with disgust and yearned for an existence more worthy -of his "complicated state of mind." He was a perfect magazine of pent-up -emotions, ready to expire in a delirium of joy or an ecstasy of despair -after the manner of René and Werther. He was quite willing to love -Mademoiselle Dupont on the condition that she would lend herself to a -tempestuous passion, allow her hands to be bathed in tears for hours -together by her prostrate cavalier, receive folios of hysterical ravings -by the post, and dread the fatal dagger if she had smiled from her desk -at a customer. She was urged daily to fly to a brighter destiny upon -distant shores, and nightly trembled that the coming morning would find -Henri transfixed by his own poniard. It was impossible to be reasonable; -only a clod, dead to all beauty, could be so brutal. M. Louis Maigron, -who in his book, "Le Romantisme et les Moeurs," gives some very -remarkable instances of these aberrations in actual correspondence, says -very truly: "Une foule de 'cratères' ont alors superbement fumé au nez -des bourgeois." The Romantic ideal supposed a sensibility always -stretched to its utmost, _des âmes excessives_, as M. Bourget says,[3] -capable of constant renewal, and a consumption of emotional energy which -is irreconcilable with the laws of any organism. If a young man failed -for a moment to find food for melancholy broodings in the shortcomings -of society, he could always fall back for a good groan upon his own -insufficiencies of sensibility. Now, of course, the "feelings of -malediction" which afflicted the Henri Dubois are of small moment in -themselves. Time comfortably settled them down. It was the young men of -real sensibility and imagination, the coming poets and artists, in whom -the ravages of _le mal du siècle_ were more than a passing phase. The -boundless yearnings that found expression in such lines as these: - - _Amour, enthousiasme, étude, poésie!_ - _C'est là qu'en votre extase, océan d'ambroisie_ - _Se noîraient nos âmes de feu!_ - _C'est là que je saurais, fort d'un génie étrange,_ - _Dans la création d'un bonheur sans mélange_ - _Être plus artiste que Dieu_[4]-- - -could not but lead to a profound dissatisfaction with existence, which -Maxime du Camp in his reminiscences very happily describes: - - "It was not only a fashion [he says], as might be believed; it was - a kind of general prostration which made our hearts sad, darkened - our thoughts, and caused us to see a deliverance in the glimpse of - death. You would have thought that life held in chains souls that - had caught sight of something superior to terrestrial existence. We - did not aspire to the felicities of paradise: we dreamed of taking - possession of the infinite, and we were tortured by a vague - pantheism of which the formula was never found.... The artistic and - literary generation which preceded me and that to which I belonged - had a youth of lamentable sadness, sadness without cause and - without object, abstract sadness, inherent in the individual or in - the period.... - - "Nobody was allowed to be without an _âme incomprise_; it was the - custom and we conformed to it. We were 'fatal' and 'accursed'; - without even having tasted life, we tumbled to the bottom of the - abyss of disillusionment. Children of eighteen years, repeating - phrases gathered from some novel or other, would say: 'J'ai le - coeur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie,' and one of - Pétrus Borel's heroes went to the executioner to say to him: 'I - should like you to guillotine me!' This did not prevent us from - laughing, singing, or committing the honest follies of youth; that - was also a way of being desperate; we imagined that we had a - satanic laugh, while we really possessed the fair joy of spring." - -These exquisite sensibilities, when they were not turned back upon -themselves in black despair, roamed far and wide in search of new -sensations upon which to exercise themselves. This _exotisme_, as the -French have called it, is another of the most marked symptoms of -Romanticism. The time was ripe for its satisfaction. The French mind, -shut for so long in the formalism of the eighteenth century, now found -that there were innumerable new ways to _rêver la rêve de la vie_. The -men of learning who followed in Napoleon's wake renewed the interest in -archæology by their discoveries; the historical novels of Scott and the -history of Michelet revealed the full and generous life of earlier ages; -the forged poems of Ossian caused a perfect rage for Celtic mysticism; -and the bold lawless life of the East, with its tyrannous Ali Pashas and -its Greek patriots, shone out with a new splendour. An unsatisfied -longing for another age and another clime animated every young breast. -Societies even were formed in provincial towns in which subscriptions -were pooled, and the winner of the lucky number drew the money to take a -voyage in Italy. The glories of Greece and the grandeurs of Rome, as -savouring of the classical, appealed only to a few; other eclectics fed -upon German mysticism and the fantastic weirdness of Hoffmann's -supernatural tales. A far greater number became Celts in imagination; -dressed in the dignity of outlawry and the garb of an Irish bard or a -Scotch chieftain, they defied the haughty English. Maxime du Camp, for -instance, wrote a poem in his school-days called "Wistibrock -l'Irlandais." "When I am depressed," he says in his reminiscences, "I -read it again, and there is no vexation that resists it." Anybody who -wishes to gain some idea of the _genre frénétique_, as Nodier called it, -in its Celtic dress will derive considerable entertainment from Pétrus -Borel's "Madame Putiphar." It is full of murders and intrigues and -tirades which foam at the mouth. The hero, Patrick FitzWhyte, falls in -love with Deborah Cockermouth, daughter of Lord and Lady Cockermouth, -the opening dialogue of whom upon the battlements is magnificent. My -lord, who is described as "one of those gigantic fungous and spongy -zoophytes indigenous to Great Britain," permits himself to address my -lady as "Saint-hearted milk soup!" After a good deal of clandestine -philandering and interminable translations of imaginary Irish ballads -the young couple elope to Paris, where Madame Putiphar (Madame de -Pompadour) seduces the heroine, and the hero after a series of dreadful -adventures is imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon in the Bastille, the -taking of which by the people of Paris is described with quite -astonishing force. - -[Illustration: The Spirit of Romanticism] - -Wild adventures, horrors and tragedies in any age were fondly dwelt upon -in comparison with the insupportable monotony of contemporary life; but -the Middle Ages made a stronger appeal than any. There was a perfect -mania for medievalism. Nothing pleased overwrought imaginations more -than to picture existence amid all the riot and magnificence of those -more spacious days. How they would have rattled a sword and clanked a -spur, how defiantly tilted their plume, how breathlessly loved and how -destructively fought! Why did they not live in the joyous time when -every minute brought an adventure instead of spilling one more drop from -the cup of _ennui_, and when a man shaped his own ends according to his -passions, throwing a curse to the poor and a madrigal to the fair? Then, -all their life was not grey. Splendour of colour with ample grace of -form decked out existence like a picture by Veronese. Costly satin vied -with magnificent brocade; all was a riot of velvet and purple dyes, fur -and old lace; drinking cups, worthy of giants, chiselled by a Cellini, -offered wine worthy of the gods; swords were masterpieces of the finest -Toledo; jewelled harness caparisoned fleet Arab horses; feasts were -Gargantuan, jests more than Rabelaisian; and all this wonderful wealth -of glittering colour was thrown into magnificent relief against the -solemnity of antique battlements and the sombre shadows of Gothic -architecture. This, apart from all innovations of dramatic form, was the -secret of the delirious popularity of "Hernani," "Lucrèce Borgia," "Le -Roi s'amuse," and the "Tour de Nesle," and of the craze for historical -novels, verses in baroque metres, slouch hats _à la Buridan_, velvet -pourpoints, daggers, mysterious draperies and massive chests, drinking -cups made out of skulls, and illuminated breviaries of which Gautier -makes such fun in "Les Jeunes France." To it we owe Balzac's splendid -"Contes Drolatiques," Lassailly's "Roueries de Trialph," and Roger de -Beauvoir's "L'Écolier de Cluny." Gautier in his early poems was as -romanesque as any of his "Jeune France," as those who know his early -poems must admit. "Débauche" is a frank orgy, and "Albertus" is a gem of -the Gothic, with its supernatural setting, the "fatality" of its hero, -the horror of its _dénouement_, the wild fantasy of its witches' -chamber, and its amorous wealth of descriptive detail in which old -fabrics, old furniture, swords, daggers, and hangings abound. Victor -Hugo, above all, was the chosen bard of the Gothic and the romanesque. -Besides his dramas, his "Odes et Ballades" were in the mouth of every -child who could pay four halfpence for an hour's luxury in the _cabinet -de lecture_; and schoolboys would declaim for hours in antiphon such -passages as the invocation of "La Bande Noire": - - _O murs! ô créneaux! ô tourelles!_ - _Remparts! fossés aux ponts mouvants!_ - _Lourds faisceaux de colonnes frêles!_ - _Fiers châteaux! modestes couvents!_ - _Cloîtres poudreux, salles antiques,_ - _Où gémissaient les saints cantiques,_ - _Où riaient les rires joyeux!_ - _Églises où priaient nos mères,_ - _Tours où combattaient nos aïeux!_ - -or the frenzied descriptions of the witches' dance in "La Ronde du -Sabbat," or lines from "La Chasse du Burgrave"--which even Hugo called -"un peu trop Gothique de forme"--or with a - - _Çà, qu'on selle,_ - _Ecuyer,_ - _Mon fidèle_ - _Destrier._ - _Mon coeur ploie_ - _Sous la joie_ - _Quand je broie_ - _L'étrier_ - -proclaimed their attendance at the "Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean." - -The star of the Gothic and the medieval was indeed high in the heavens, -but it paled before the full sun of Araby and the East. Napoleon had -dreamed of a Mohammedan empire, and before his dream could fade Navarino -and Missolonghi fired men's minds again. Victor Hugo was also the -champion of Oriental rhapsody. Even in 1824 he had seen the -possibilities of Oriental colour in French verse, when he wrote "La Fée -et la Péri," a poem in which the Peri, who stands for romanticism, says: - - _J'ai de vastes cités qu'en tous lieux on admire,_ - _Lahore aux champs fleuris, Golconde, Cachemire,_ - _La guerrière Damas, la royale Ispahan,_ - _Bagdad que ses remparts couvrent comme une armure,_ - _Alep dont l'immense murmure_ - _Semble au pâtre lointain le bruit d'un océan._ - -His collection of poems entitled "Les Orientales" was published in 1829 -and took Paris by storm, provoking passionate enthusiasm and equally -passionate protest. In the preface he asserts that Orientalism is a -general preoccupation. "The colours of the East have come, as if -spontaneously, to impress themselves upon all his [the poet's] thoughts -and all his musings; his musings and his thoughts have become, in turn, -and almost without his willing it, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, -Arabic, even Spanish, for Spain, too, is the East." There are fine poems -in "Les Orientales"--"Les Djinns," for instance, will always be -famous--but it is impossible to read the volume through to-day without -considerable amusement, so very full-blooded are they. There are lofty -apostrophes to Byron and the Greeks, followed by dreadful tales of -Turkish cruelty, gruesome ballads like "La Voile," in which four -brothers kill their sister, epigraphs like "O horror! horror! horror!" -valiant Klephtes, houris, scimitars, and all the catalogue which the -poet himself gives in "Novembre": - - _Sultans et sultanes,_ - _Pyramides, palmiers, galères capitanes,_ - _Et le tigre vorace et le chameau frugal;_ - _Djinns au vol furieux, danses des bayadères,_ - _L'Arabe qui se penche au cou des dromadaires,_ - _Et la fauve girafe au galop inégale._ - _Alors éléphants blancs chargés de femmes brunes,_ - _Cités aux dômes d'or où les mois sont des lunes,_ - _Imams de Mahomet, mages, prêtres de Bel ..._ - -Then, as if Victor Hugo did not whip the passions enough, Alfred de -Musset lent a hand in the hurly-burly with his "Contes d'Espagne et -d'Italie," which made the young maniacs frantically demand: - - _Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone_ - _Une Andalouse au sein bruni?_ - _Pâle comme un beau soir d'automne!_ - _C'est ma maîtresse, ma lionne!_ - _La marquesa d'Amaëgui._ - -Delacroix, too, was sending the critics into ecstasies of rage with his -vivid Eastern scenes and the horrors of his "Massacre of Scio." The -ideas of the young men with inflamed sensibilities seethed in turbulent -disorder. To be in the movement they had to have at least a poniard and -a narghile, a medieval cloak and an Oriental divan. Those with money to -spare decorated their rooms like sombre Gothic manors, those with no -money enriched their conversations with a wealth of medieval diction. No -make-believe was too ridiculous to shut out the actual place and time in -which they lived. Balzac's novel "La Peau de Chagrin," which has won a -celebrity far beyond its merits, is most unmistakably marked with the -frenzies of 1830. His revelling in the supernatural, the massed effects -of careful detail in the description of the curiosity shop where the -wild-ass skin hangs, the wild riot of the orgy, the terrific excesses in -which Valentin ruins his life, the duel and the horrible end, are just -as much the _genre frénétique_ as anything by Pétrus Borel. The hero, -Valentin, is simply a type of his time, and his tirade on taking the -supernatural skin is hardly an exaggeration: - - "Je veux que la débauche en délire et rugissante nous emporte, dans - son char à quatre chevaux, par delà les bornes du monde, pour nous - verser sur des plages inconnues! Que les âmes montent dans les - cieux ou se plongent dans la boue, je ne sais si alors elles - s'élèvent ou s'abaissent, peu m'importe! Donc, je commande à ce - pouvoir sinistre de me fondre toutes les joies dans une joie. Oui, - j'ai besoin d'embrasser les plaisirs du ciel et de la terre dans - une dernière étreinte, pour en mourir. Aussi souhaité-je et des - priapées antiques après boire, et des chants à réveiller les morts, - et de triples baisers, des baisers sans fin dont la clameur passe - sur Paris comme un craquement d'incendie, y réveille les époux et - les inspire une ardeur cuisante qui les rajeunissent tous, même les - septuagénaires!" - -As for the "orgy," it was so much a fashion that Gautier in his "Les -Jeune France" scores a delightful hit with the story of a society of -young men who combine for a colossal feast, in which various sections -follow out in exact detail the descriptions of orgies given by their -favourite novelists and the end is a farcical confusion. - -Building castles in Spain is a fascinating pastime, but the ingenuities -of imagination cannot entirely shut out the individual from his -surroundings. From 1820 to 1830 the young man of France was continually -running against the sharp corners of the world and receiving the elbow -prods of his fellow-men. Exalted by his excited sensibility, he -conceived at once a contempt and a hatred for the insensibility of -society, which produced in him a feeling of moral superiority and -solitude. This abnormal vanity, shown in the deification of "l'homme -supérieur" and a proud contemplation of his social outlawry, is a third -marked symptom of _le mal du siècle_.[5] It broke out in several -different forms. One was a romantic worship of energy and strong will, -as typified by the career of Napoleon. Given these qualities, a man -could rise from the lowest depths to impose his wishes on the world. -However, self-styled supermen have invariably found their theories -rebellious to practical application, and Henri Dubois, if he started -upon a Napoleonic path, soon discovered that society selects its "homme -supérieur" when it wants him, and that uncalled-for aspirants receive -the point of its toe. He reserved his superiority, therefore, more -usually, for less material manifestations and conflicts. His rare -spirit, susceptible to all "the finer shades," stood mournfully but -prudently on high, scorning the base, unfeeling throng below it, and -calling out through space for kindred spirits to cherish. "My friend, -take care of yourself," writes young Ampère to his friend. "Obermann -cries to us, 'Keep close together, ye simple men who feel the beauty of -natural things.' Let us help one another, all of us who suffer." So -Henri Dubois and his friends suffered and helped one another, shedding -pints of tears and being just as ridiculous as they could be. - -Solitary suffering makes men philosophers or poets. Philosophy requiring -some intellectual capacity and mental preparation, Henri Dubois often -took the further step from crying in the wilderness to enshrining his -laments in metre, being encouraged in this by the certain fact that -young men and true poets were indeed striking the Romantic harp to a new -and surprising tune. The poet was the real "homme supérieur" of the -time, not only in fancy but in fact. Henri accordingly proceeded another -stage towards sublimity by way of the faulty syllogism: "The poet has an -exquisite soul; I have an exquisite soul; therefore I am a poet." The -Romantics conceived the poet as a God-sent prophet. This was the -attitude, above all, of de Vigny; Lamartine and Sainte-Beuve adopted it -in their early days, and certain passages of Victor Hugo--for instance: - - _O poètes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes,_ - _Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes,_ - _Sur les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons,_ - _Sur les déserts pieux où l'esprit se recueille,_ - _Sur les bois que l'automne emporte feuille à feuille,_ - _Sur les lacs endormis dans l'ombre des vallons!_ - ---show that he was not averse to it. So every youth who could rhyme -"âme" with "flamme" put on the aureole of a "poète échevelé," revelled -in the ecstasies of solitary contemplation, and sneered magnificently at -all who attended to business as soulless _épiciers_. This was a harmless -enough delusion, but it became less harmless when combined with the idea -that for the sake of experience the poet should abandon himself entirely -to his passions. The great artist, indeed, has his own morality, but -Victor Hugo's "Mazeppa" or Lamartine's stanza - - _Mais nous, pour embraser les âmes,_ - _Il faut brûler, il faut ravir_ - _Au ciel jaloux ses triples flammes:_ - _Pour tout peindre, il faut tout sentir._ - _Foyers brûlants de la lumière,_ - _Nos coeurs de la nature entière_ - _Doivent concentrer les rayons,_ - _Et l'on accuse notre vie!_ - _Mais ce flambeau qu'on nous envie_ - _S'allume au feu des passions_ - -were dangerous matchboxes in the hands of children. It was a fatality, -too, that several poets of some merit died during these years of want or -neglect. Gilbert, the satirist, expired in hospital, breathing piteous -plaints, and Hégésippe Moreau, the poet of "La Voulzie," was equally -unfortunate. Society can hardly be blamed for not supporting all its -lyrically inclined members, but it was natural that the "poète échevelé" -should smoulder with indignation at such disasters, and cheer the -sentiments of de Vigny's drama "Chatterton" till his lungs gave out. It -was still more of a fatality that certain other poets attained a -momentary celebrity by committing suicide, leaving rhymed farewells to a -stony-hearted society and a tedious life. To win fame by a pathetic -death in a pauper's hospital, or to bid defiance to the world with a -superb gesture of self-destruction, was a far too common ambition. -Sainte-Beuve himself observed that "la manie et la gageure de tous les -René, de tous les Chatterton de notre temps, c'était d'être grand poète -et de mourir." A perfect epidemic of suicide was due to _le mal du -siècle_, as M. Louis Maigron shows in his work that I have already -cited. Among other strange stories he gives at length the confession of -an old man who in his youth was president of a suicide club, formed in a -provincial town by a set of romantic schoolboys as late as 1846. Happily -the club was short-lived, but it resulted in the self-destruction of one -of its most gifted members. In the letter with which he announced his -coming death from Lucerne he wrote: - - " ...I have no precise reason to have done with life except the - insurmountable disgust with which it inspires me. Chance of birth - gave me a certain fortune; I am not denied an intelligence perhaps - slightly above the common level; it would have been in my power to - marry an adorable child: so many conditions of happiness, in the - eyes of the vulgar. But my poor soul, alas, cannot content itself - with them. Nothing can charm my heart any longer, 'mon coeur - lassé de tout, même de l'espérance'; it will be closed, without - ever having been opened." - -He left his little library to the club, specially reserving for the -president "Werther," "René," "Obermann," "Jacques," and the works of -Rabbe. They were his breviaries, he said, covered as they were with -notes that revealed all his soul. - -The pose of pathetic despair was not, however, the only one in which the -feeling of moral solitude showed itself. Another very common attitude -was that of revolt against society, an aping of Mephistopheles, the -fallen angel doomed to everlasting unhappiness, strong only in his -disillusionment and his clear vision of the canker in the heart of every -bud. The word "satanism" summed up this attitude: its breviaries were -"Manfred" and Dumas' violent tragedy, "Antony." It rejoiced in the cult -of the horrible, in Hoffmannesque dabblings in the supernatural, in -pessimistic poetry like Gautier's "Tête de Mort," and such lines in his -early sonnets as: - - _Mais toute cette joie est comme le lierre_ - _Qui d'une vieille tour, guirlande irregulière,_ - _Embrasse en les cachant les pans démantelés,_ - _Au dehors on ne voit que riante verdure,_ - _Au dedans, que poussière infecte et noire ordure,_ - _Et qu'ossements jaunis aux décombres mêlés._ - -Its effects, in society, were chiefly obtained by the satanic laugh. -Gautier soon grew out of his satanic mood, Dumas was never anything more -than a fine romancer, while Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Vigny were -too lofty poets to indulge in such artificialities; but satanism -deserves mention because it was a traditional business with one party in -the romantic Bohemia--the party of the _Bousingots_. - -[Illustration: Bousingots] - -The origin of the term _Bousingot_ has been a matter of dispute among -French writers. Philibert Audebrand in his memoir of Léon Gozlan says it -was invented by that brilliant journalist to satirize the young -republican enthusiasts of 1832 in the _Figaro_. Charles Asselineau in -his "Bibliographie Romantique" says that after some hilarious souls had -been arrested for singing too loudly in the streets "Nous avons fait du -bousingo"--_bousingo_ being the slang for "noise"--it became a popular -designation for the more furious Romantics. The matter seems to be -settled more or less in Asselineau's manner by a passage in the letter -written by Philothée O'Neddy to Asselineau after the publication of the -"Bibliographie Romantique" to give a more correct account of the second -_cénacle_. He asserts that there never were any self-styled -_Bousingots_, but that after the arrest of the hilarious revellers the -affair got into the newspapers and the term remained as a _bourgeois_ -hit at the Romantics. The proper spelling of the word was _bouzingo_, -and Gautier exclaimed one day: "These asses of _bourgeois_ don't even -know how _bouzingo_ is spelt! To teach them a little orthography several -of us ought to publish a volume of stories which we will bravely call -'Contes du Bouzingo.'" The suggestion was thought a happy one, and the -book was even advertised as imminent, but it was never written. -Gautier's promise of a contribution was afterwards redeemed in "Le -Capitaine Fracasse," but Jules Vabre's famous treatise "Sur -l'incommodité des commodes" did not progress beyond the title. In common -parlance, however, the name remained _Bousingots_, and its general -meaning was quite clear. Just as the Gothic frenzy made the party of -_Jeune-France_, who were the Christian-Royalist section of the -Romantics, so the political agitation, combined with the feeling of -antagonism to society, made the _Bousingots_. The meaning became -subsequently enlarged to express all the extravagances of the Romantics, -their idealization of the artist and their disorderly ways; but this -extension was illegitimate. Literature and poetry were, it is true, the -preoccupation of the more prominent _Bousingots_, but their distinctive -mark was a profession of ultra-democratic views and manners. The leader -of them all was the mysterious Pétrus Borel,[6] whom I have already -mentioned as the author of "Madame Putiphar." His other chief work was a -volume of poems entitled "Rhapsodies." The young men of 1830 worshipped -him as the coming champion before whom the star of Victor Hugo was -ingloriously to wane. They were grievously disappointed. After the first -crisis of _le mal du siècle_ his inspiration faded away, and he died an -obscure officiai in Algeria. Baudelaire, in "L'Art Romantique," says of -him: - - "Without Pétrus Borel, there would have been a lacuna in - Romanticism. In the first phase of our literary revolution the - poet's imagination turned especially to the past.... Later on its - melancholy took a more decided, more savage, and more earthy tone. - A misanthropical republicanism allied itself with the new school, - and Pétrus Borel was the most extravagant and paradoxical - expression of the spirit of the _Bousingots_.... This spirit, both - literary and republican, as opposed to the democratic and bourgeois - passion which subsequently oppressed us so cruelly, was moved both - by an aristocratic hate, without limit, without restriction, - without pity, for kings and the bourgeoisie, and by a general - sympathy for all that in art represented excess in colour and form, - for all that was at once intense, pessimistic, and Byronic; it was - dilettantism of a singular nature, only to be explained by the - hateful circumstances in which our bored and turbulent youth was - enclosed. If the Restoration had regularly developed in glory, - Romanticism would have never separated from the throne; and this - new sect, which professed an equal disdain for the moderate party - of the political opposition, for the painting of Delaroche or the - poetry of Delavigne, and for the king who presided over the - development of le _juste-milieu_, would have had no reason for - existing." - -Charles Asselineau fills up the picture. The _Bousingot_, he says, was -as rough and cynical as the _Jeune-France_ was dandified and exquisite, -and showed genius in discovering at once the _plastique_ of his idea. In -contrast to the extravagant luxury affected by the medievalists, he -adopted the manners of the people in habits and dress, smoking clay -pipes and drinking the "petit bleu" of low pot-houses. Instead of raving -about cathedrals, he spent his ingenuity in devising bitter satires -against the king and his officers or fresh settings in caricature for -Louis' famous _tête de poire_. "The fusillade of St.-Merry and the laws -of September were the _Bousingot's_ Waterloo. From the moment he was -forbidden to protest in a visible manner, and was deprived of his -insignia, his waistcoat, his stick, and his pipe with a pear-shaped -bowl, the _Bousingot_ had to retire. He became serious, an economist or -a humanitarian philosopher, and showed his revolt against society and -power by writing novels 'in which the idea predominated over the form.' -The novel with a tendency, that literary monstrosity, is the only legacy -left by the _Bousingot_ to the literature of the nineteenth century."[7] - -In Balzac's wonderful gallery of portraits there is a picture of a -_Bousingot_. Raoul Nathan, the author, appears frequently in his -Parisian scenes, but his outlines are only elaborated in the little-read -"Une Fille d'Eve." There was something great and fantastic in his -appearance, as if he had fought with angels or demons. He was strongly -built, with a pocked face and a tanned complexion. His long hair was -always untidy, but his eyes were Napoleonic and his mouth charming. His -clothes always looked old and worn, his cravat was askew, his long, -pointed beard untended. The grease from his hair stained his -coat-collar, and he never used a nail-brush. His movements were -grotesque, his conversation caustic and full of surprises. His talent, -great but disorderly, had shown itself in three novels and a book of -poetry: he was critic, dramatist, vaudevillist. Jealous ambition led him -to embrace politics. Beginning at the extreme of opposition, he went -from Saint Simonism to republicanism and through all the stages to -ministerialism, being rewarded by a government appointment. - - "Nathan offre un image de la jeunesse littéraire d'aujourd'hui, de - ses fausses grandeurs et de ses misères réelles; il la représente - avec ses beautés incorrectes et ses chutes profondes, sa vie à - cascades bouillonnantes, à revers soudains, à triomphes inespérés. - C'est bien l'enfant de ce siècle dévoré de jalousie ... qui veut la - fortune sans le travail, la gloire sans le talent et le succès sans - peine, mais qu'après bien des rébellions, bien des escarmouches, - ses vices amènent à émarger 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 "Béatrix") 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 Pétrus Borel -himself: "He loved letters ferociously, and to-day we are encumbered -with pretty, supple writers ready to sell the muse for the potter's -field." Asselineau 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 classic _vie de Bohème_ in a true light -without taking into account this _mal du siècle_ 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 Rubempré 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 fellowship 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 friendship 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 mass 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 passion 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 makeshift of _la blague_. - - - - -IV - -PARISIAN SOCIETY--LE TOUT PARIS - - -The events of the time, the spiritual exaltation of young France, and -the _éclat_ 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 circumference, 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-class 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 space. 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 assaults. 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 multitudinous -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." - -[Illustration: Les Champs Elysées] - -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 Montparnasse bounded it on the north and -south, that the Champs Elysées 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 classes were chiefly engaged in commerce or -_petits métiers_, and the heights of Ménilmontant smiled as green and as -free from slums as the Champs Elysées were free from luxurious hotels. -The passing 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 _clientèle_ of the Parisian theatres. _Le tout Paris_ was, -therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments--the middle -class, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia. - -The middle class, 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 illustrated from characters in Balzac's "Comédie -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 Employés," 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 class, 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 fashioned 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 - attitude 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 _hôtels_ 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 Duchesse de Berry. The -few official _fêtes_ were severely boycotted, and even the -entertainments of foreign ambassadors 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 balls, 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. Eugène 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 amusement 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 -_petit cercle_ in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be -called _la haute Bohème_. - -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 illustrious 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 Duchesse de Duras -and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. 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 Montparnasse 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 "fierté glaciale, -mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, -and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame -Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was -composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at -L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of -the aging Châteaubriand. 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 Arsenal. 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. "Cathédrale!" "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 Théodore 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 Arsenal -was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would -have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" 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 shifting -particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite -place of assembly, 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 nobody, -except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve -in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title 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 -damned--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 membership, 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 butterfly only just -emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day. - -The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, -is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an -open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by -not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène 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 Bohème_ without entering into this -larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute -Bohème_. 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 multitude 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 -amusement 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 Bohème_, 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 destitute 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 -Bohème_ 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 passage 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 époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et - pauvres, tous désoeuvrés, appelés _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en - effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs - plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus - rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée, - ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de - leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit - le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de - ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement - l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les - jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les - jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, - dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les - plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes - puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse - voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des - trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière - elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle - part." - -[Illustration: 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 class 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 Café de Paris and -adjourned to lounge at the Opéra 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, passion, gaiety, an - artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to - appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of - amusement, 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 siècle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped - from their embarrassments 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 Père -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-class 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 shine to compass 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 passionate 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 "Comédie 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 Véry'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 dashing 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 title _la haute Bohème_ 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'Aurévilly'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 circumstances, 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 passage which, having myself -said so much, I quote in the original: - - "C'était quatre des plus hardis cormorans éclos dans l'écume qui - couronne les flots incessamment renouvelés de la génération - présente; aimables garçons dont l'existence est problématique, à - qui l'on connaît ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces - spirituels _condottieri_ de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus - cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquiétudes à leurs créanciers, - gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur - costume. D'ailleurs, braves à fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare - sur un baril de poudre, peut-être pour ne pas faillir à leur rôle; - plus moqueurs que les petits journaux, moqueurs à se moquer - d'eux-mêmes, perspicaces et incrédules, fureteurs d'affaires, - avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-mêmes; - profonds politiques par saillies, analysant tout, devinant tout, - ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde où 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 "César 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 céphalique_ 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 fictitious counterpart -of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, 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 Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and -journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Bohème_. 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 Café -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_. - -[Illustration: Fashionables] - - - - -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 noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may -be found in the list of those who started the _petit cercle_ of the Café -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] -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 parlé 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 thé et la jalousie à - Londres!" - -The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, -pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement 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 assiduity. 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 bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange -case of mistaken identity 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 balls 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 -coarsest 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 Barrière 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 _émigrée_. 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 fashionable -fancy-dress ball at the Variétés 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 identity. In 1835 he -died, a shattered _roué_, at Naples. - -The only other English name deserving comment in the _petit cercle_ of -the Café 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 Café Anglais or -the Café 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 _petit 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 Bohème_, 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 fashion 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 fashionable life; while among -the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that -impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were -inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate 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 Bohème_, 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 embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of -July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association 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-glass 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 "Société 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'Écolier 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 ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_ - _Devait à 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 buttons, fitted as -neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey -trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest 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 déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the -Café 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 bass of dinner, opera, supper. -Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge -infernale_ at the Opéra, 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 choreography 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 Bohème_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the -true Bohemians did at the Chaumière 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 Opéra. -One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the -appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse -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 fashion 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 nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect -of Quimperlé--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 -cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly -successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead -cockchafers. 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 passed, 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 cafés. 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 -Employés." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but -unjust: - - "Intrépide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dîneur - et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien - dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allée des Veuves, - il étonnait autant à table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve - à minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du - lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-même, comme la plupart des - grands comiques. Lancé dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, - des écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune - est aléatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, - jouait à Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment - profond, mais par éclairs, se balançait dans la vie comme sur une - escarpolette, sans s'inquiéter du moment où la corde casserait." - -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 embarrassed -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 oublié 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 glass 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 glass 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; -Béquet, whose good taste Roger himself extolled; and Bouffé, the -director of the Vaudeville. Then there was Emile Cabanon, who lives in -Romantic annals as the author of the extravagant "Roman pour les -Cuisinières." 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 Palférine (in -"Un Prince de la Bohème"), who, being struck with the appearance of a -lady passing 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 passion. This assiduity so captivated the besieged one's -heart that she struck her colours. It is _à 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, -dépensaient de l'esprit comptant en veux-tu en voilà." Alfred -Tattet,[16] the rich son of an _agent de change_, who was introduced to -the _viveurs_ by Félix 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-Mézéray, for instance, who was distinguished by the -white camellia in his buttonhole, 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 Véron, -stout and self-important, his face half hidden in a huge cravat, held an -important place among them. He began life as a medical practitioner, but -made a fortune by exploiting a certain Pâte Regnault and took to -political journalism. Between 1831 and 1835 he was an extremely -successful director of the Opéra, and in 1838 bought _Le -Constitutionnel_, 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 Opéra 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. Mæcenas-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. Théodore de Banville and many others -have celebrated the excellent "cuisine" and its accompaniment of wit, -but a reader of Véron'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 unsurpassed 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 Panthéon, Nouveautés, -Saint-Antoine, Variétés, Opéra, Opéra Comique, and Châtelet passed -successively under his sway, and he lost money at them all except at -the Variétés, during his management of which he wrote those sparkling -"Nouvelles à 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 _cafés_ -ceased to be invaded by merry bands of _fêtards_, 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 _régime_ 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 Véron, 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'étais des plus ingambes,_ - _Mais hélas! destins inhumains,_ - _Le papier que j'avais aux mains,_ - _A présent 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; -Béquet ended in a hospital; gout killed Cabanon and Tattet; while -Briffaut expired in a mad-house. The mental pronouncement 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 fashion and expressing the -prevailing tone, shining 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 space 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 BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE - - MIL HUIT CENT TRENTE! _Aurore_ - _Qui m'éblouis encore,_ - _Promesse du destin,_ - _Riant matin!_ - - _Aube où le soleil plonge!_ - _Quelquefois un beau songe_ - _Me rend l'éclat vermeil_ - _De ton réveil._ - - _Jetant ta pourpre rose_ - _En notre ciel morose,_ - _Tu parais, et la nuit_ - _Soudain s'enfuit._ - - THÉODORE 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 Léon Séché and a Philibert Audebrand, following the lead of Charles -Asselineau, the pious _chiffonnier_ of Romanticism, industriously -collect the very last scraps 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 -multitude 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 assumptions which a foreigner cannot -grant. All the historical and literary associations on which I have -touched in a former chapter make it a subject which even to-day excites -passionate enthusiasm and equally passionate 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 asserts 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 -Bohème," which tells how the young Comte de la Palfèrine, 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 passes 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 Palférine, 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 Palférine'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 Palférine 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 passed 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 Palférine 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 Hugolâtre" 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 François 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 - succumbed 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 flâné dans les rues,_ - _J'ai marché devant moi, bayant aux grues;_ - _Mal nourri, peu vêtu, couchant dans un grenier,_ - _Dont je déménageais dès qu'il fallait payer;_ - _De taudis en taudis colportant ma misère,_ - _Ruminant de Fourier le rêve humanitaire,_ - _Empruntant çà et là le plus que je pouvais,_ - _Dépensant un écu sitôt que je l'avais,_ - _Délayant 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 vécus, râpé, 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 Arsène 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 -passionate 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 Thélème. 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 nobodies 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 assistance. 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, destitute: 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 makeshifts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither -discomfort nor makeshifts 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 grâce_ 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 amusements 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 banishing -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 fashion. 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 impassioned 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 Frères Provençaux, 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 classes to bear them, and classes -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 -citizenship 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 -worship 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 aptitude -as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first -disappointments were fashioned failures like Alfred de Musset's -unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "râpé, 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 township round a proposed extension of the -railway. The settlers, self-assured, 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 Philothée O'Neddy, whose -place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said: - - _Il est depuis longtemps avéré que nous sommes,_ - _Dans le siècle, six milles jeunes hommes_ - _Qui du démon de l'Art nous croyant tourmentés,_ - _Dépensons notre vie en excentricités;_ - _Qui, du fatal Byron copiant des allures,_ - _De solennels manteaux drapons nos encolures._ - -These six thousand copies of the "Fatal Byron," if they ever existed, -have, for the most part, died without leaving their names to posterity. -The historian can deal only with a few individuals, who embodied the -salient qualities of Bohemia. - - - - -VII - -THE SECOND "CÉNACLE" - - -"People always forget," said Théophile Gautier in his old age, "that we -were the first Schaunards and Collines, a quarter of a century before -Murger. Only," he added with a smile, "we had talent and did not write -invertebrate verses like those of that feeble appendage to Alfred de -Musset." This saying, reported by his son-in-law, was made on a festive -occasion, so that it is unnecessary to regard with concern the -discrepancy between this view of Murger and the one which Gautier has -expressed in print. That kindest-hearted of writers would never -wittingly have hurt the reputation or memory of the humblest among his -fellows, and I only quote the passage because, when the malice is -discounted as largely as the "quarter of a century," it remains a true -reference to the origins of Bohemia by one who was, so to speak, one of -its pilgrim fathers. The first Schaunards and Collines, Rodolphes and -Marcels, the unknown poets and artists who first raised the standard of -common enthusiasm against a common enemy, the _bourgeois_, were the -young and lusty friends of a young and lusty Gautier. They were members -of a _cénacle_, albeit a less beatific _cénacle_ than the brotherhood -drawn in Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." In the _cénacle_ of the Rue des -Quatre Vents he evolved by sheer imagination a compensating mirage of -virtue to be contrasted with all the real depravity of society which his -eye so unerringly saw, just as Eugénie Grandet shines out impossibly -beside her miserly father, and Madame Firmiani in the corrupt circle of -his _femmes du monde_. Nevertheless there is a certain sublimity in the -_cénacle_ to which attention cannot be denied. It was Balzac's picture -of an ideal Bohemia in which alone such a nature as his could have found -a home. It is of little moment that he dates the action of "Illusions -Perdues" a few years before 1830, for the _cénacle_ itself is a timeless -creation, only limited by the fact that one of its members died in the -insurrection of 1832. The young men who composed the _cénacle_ bore upon -their brow the "seal of special genius." Daniel d'Arthez, upon whom -since the death of their leader, the great mystic, Louis Lambert, the -mantle had fallen, was a monarchist of noble family, destined to become -the greatest writer of the future; Horace Bianchon, the flower of -doctors, a materialist of perfect charity and profound science; Léon -Giraud, a humanitarian philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a great painter with -"the line of Rome and the colour of Venice"; Fulgence Ridal, a sceptic, -a cynic, and the wittiest playwright of his time; Meyraux, a scientist; -and Michel Chrestien, a red republican who was killed in the Cloître -Saint-Merri. They were not ascetics by profession: d'Arthez, for -instance, was the last lover of the Diane, the Princesse de Cadignan, in -the days of his later glory; Bridau's art was affected by his love -affairs; Chrestien was "plein d'illusions et d'amour." They were like -the "saints" of the early Christian Church, each going his own way, but -true helpers one of another, true champions and honest critics. They -were without vanity or envy, having a profound esteem for one another, -with a consciousness of their own worth. "Their great external misery -and the splendour of their intellectual wealth produced a singular -contrast. In their society nobody thought of the realities of life -except as subjects for friendly pleasantries.... The sufferings of -poverty, when they made themselves felt, were so gaily borne, accepted -with such ardour by all, that they did nothing to alter the particular -serenity which marks the faces of young men free from grave faults, who -have not lost part of themselves in any of those low traffickings which -are forced upon men by poverty ill supported, by the desire to get on -without any choice of means, and by the facile complacency with which -men of letters welcome or pardon betrayals.... These young men were sure -of themselves: the enemy of one became the enemy of all, and they would -have abandoned their most urgent interests to obey the sacred solidarity -of their hearts. All incapable of a mean action, they could oppose a -formidable 'no' to every accusation, and defend one another with -security. Equally high-minded and equally matched in matters of -sensibility, they could think and speak all their mind in the domain of -science and intelligence; thence came the innocence of their -intercourse, the gaiety of their talk. Sure of mutual understanding, -their minds digressed at their ease; and they stood on no ceremony among -themselves, confided in each other their sorrows and their joys, -pondered and suffered with open hearts." I need speak no further of this -imaginary _cénacle_, for "Illusions Perdues" is widely known. It is one -of those wonderful fantasies that one feels were lovingly cherished by -Balzac, at once his darling dreams and his disappointments. He had a -passionate desire to express the beautiful, and he was denied that gift. -The lights dance before his eyes, and his very language becomes confused -and turgid when he deserts reality. It may safely be said that in the -real _Bohème_ there was no such goodly company of industrious, gifted, -morally austere, intellectually gay, unselfish young men, and that there -never will be in any society till the coming of the Coquecigrues. - -The Bohemia of artistic tradition began in what Théophile Gautier named -the "second _cénacle_." The first _cénacle_, as all the world knows, was -that of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the brothers Deschamps, who met -regularly at the _cabaret_ of Mère Saguet on Montparnasse in the days -when Hugo was still hatching the plot of the literary revolution. To -trace to them the origins of Bohemia would be an error, for they never -had any part or lot in Bohemianism. They were young, it is true, and -depended upon their art for a living, but the fact that they were -nothing but a small _coterie_ of earnest poets, more akin to the band of -d'Arthez than the friends of Rodolphe, depends upon two things, their -time and their outlook. The first _cénacle_ came into existence about -1822, when the throne of the Bourbons seemed solid and royalism went -hand in hand with classicism. No standard of insurrection, civic or -literary, had yet been raised; the victory was yet to come, and it would -have been madness, before the campaign was fully planned or the army -gathered, for the chiefs to have aped the style of victors. The -merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without -support as they were. Defiance of the _bourgeois_, an absolute essential -of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first -_cénacle_, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while -secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by -which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense -moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, -was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made -itself conspicuous. To strike a more human note in poetry was their -chief aim: they were concerned with art rather than with life itself; -and though Hugo, in the privacy of his room, doffed with relief that -_bourgeois_ symbol, the high linen collar, he was like a general in his -tent drawing up that transcendental plan of operations, the preface to -"Cromwell," which was to inspire his troops in their pioneering and -shooting, in their whole bodily attack on the classic tradition. As the -classic tradition was embodied not only in literature, in contemporary -journalism, in professional lectures, but in the social life of all -staid citizens as well, the Romantic troops, passionate and fundamental -as their literary enthusiasm was, were forced to make social life the -field of their assault, all the more because, being poor, young, and -unknown, they were unable to inflict such palpable wounds with pen or -brush as they could by making a violent protest in every detail of the -ordinary way of living. By outraging the accepted standards of decency -in dress, in speech, and in demeanour, they made their presence daily -felt, and where their presence was felt their ideals were made -ostensible. Their tactics, after the event, may be blamed, the effect -they produced was, no doubt, smaller than they imagined, but the fact -remains that la _vie de Bohème_ began neither as a retreat for higher -souls nor as a means for reckless self-indulgence, but as a definite -method of drawing attention to a new and important artistic creed. For -the greater exponents of this creed, a Hugo or a Delacroix, such a -material protest would have been out of place; it would have detracted -even from the effect produced by their great works of art. Only the rank -and file, to whom supreme personal achievement was impossible, collected -and commonly inspired, as I have already pointed out, under special -historical and social conditions, were justified in adopting the -measures that were best suited to their purpose. Their purpose was as -temporary as their conditions; their device, _épater le bourgeois_, has -now become a hollow phrase, but it meant then the rousing of every -shopkeeper, every _garçon de café_, as well as the cultured reader of -current literature, to the sense that art was alive again. This was the -aim of the second _cénacle_, the first Bohemians. They were successful, -and they were necessary. - -The second _cénacle_ was not a formal organization, so that no definite -date can be fixed for its institution. Its members probably came -together in the same haphazard way as the small bands of friends at a -public school or university, crystallizing so imperceptibly that the -moment of incorporation baffles memory, and often so firmly that death -alone is their solvent. Théophile Gautier, in his fragmentary "Histoire -du Romantisme," has given the fullest details of the _cénacle's_ -existence, yet neither he nor his biographer, Maxime du Camp, make it -clear whether it was formed prior or posterior to the famous first night -of "Hernani" in February of 1830. Gautier, no doubt, had forgotten, but -it seems fairly safe to assume that if preliminary acquaintance was -already made between some of its members before that time, the stormy -nights of February strengthened the bond and made the association -compact. The story of "Hernani," with the red waistcoat, _vieil as de -pique_, and other trimmings, has so often been told, even in English, -that it may seem unnecessary to traverse such well-trodden ground; but a -historian has no business to take anything for granted, so that -"Hernani" can be no more justly omitted here than Waterloo from any work -upon Napoleon. It was part of Victor Hugo's agreement with the Théâtre -Français that a number of seats should be at his disposal each night, -and that the holders of the tickets should be admitted some time before -the ordinary public. These were the trenches into which his army of -young men were thrown. Minor officers were entrusted with the task of -bringing the men to the rendezvous, Jules Vabre, an architect, being -responsible for a hundred and fifty men, and Célestin Nanteuil for -almost as large a number. Gérard de Nerval, whose translation of -Goethe's "Faust," published in 1828 (when he was only nineteen), had -brought him considerable fame in Romantic circles, had known Gautier, -who was two years his junior, at the Collège Charlemagne. This amiable -essayist, whom Gautier likened more than once to a swallow, flitting -always in and out among his friends, was not forgetful of his young -friend in the days of recruiting. Gautier was at that time studying -painting in the studio of Rioult, whither Gérard de Nerval made one day -a swallow-like dart and produced six tickets marked with the single but -thrilling word _Hierro_, the Spanish for "iron." According to Maxime du -Camp he gave these to Gautier with the words: - -"Tu réponds de tes hommes?" - -To him replied Gautier: "Par le crâne dans lequel Byron buvait à -l'Abbaye de Newstead, j'en réponds. N'est-ce pas, vous autres?" - -"Mort aux perruques!" resounded in answer through the studio, and Gérard -flitted away content. - -Gautier, who was a little better provided with worldly goods than some -of the Romantic army, then set about devising a costume that should -strike death into the heart of the _perruques_. With extreme care he cut -out a pattern of a medieval _pourpoint_--a buttonless waistcoat coming -right up to the collar-bone, and fastening with laces behind like the -uniform of Saint-Simon's disciples, which symbolized mutual assistance, -because no Saint-Simonian could truss his own points. His Gascon -tailor's professional objections were overruled, even though the -material chosen was a gorgeous silk coloured a Chinese vermilion, and -the garment was made as desired: to it were added a pair of light -greenish-grey trousers with a broad stripe of black down each seam, a -black coat with ample _revers_ of velvet, and a flowing cravat. It was -indeed a devastating sight, and one that deservedly became famous. In -this fervent spirit was the battle waged over "Hernani"; for thirty -consecutive performances the trenches were manfully filled and a -fusillade of cheers poured forth at every touch of romantic colour, -every bold _enjambement_, every defiance of classic circumlocution, and, -above all, every sign of disapprobation on the part of those they rudely -styled "wigs" and "bald pates." The battlefield was often a pandemonium, -but the result was victory. The Théâtre Français, the very home of -Molière, was successfully carried by the Romantic assault. Gautier had -magnificently won his spurs, and shortly afterwards he was introduced by -Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel to the great hero himself, an ordeal -which caused him so much trepidation that he sat for over an hour on the -stairs with his two sponsors before he could pluck up courage to -proceed. His fears, however, soon vanished after a cordial reception, -and as his parents were then living next door to Hugo in the splendid -old Place Royale, he soon became the most constant page and attendant of -the poet, for whom he preserved a lifelong devotion. - -These were the days of the second _cénacle_, for "Hernani" was the -Hegira of _la vie de Bohème_. During the long waits in the empty -theatre, the passionate mornings of preparation, the fiery reunions -after the curtain had fallen, a set of the most ardent Hugo-worshippers -had found their affinities. They did not indeed live together--some -were dutifully under the parental roof, some had hardly a roof to their -heads, one at least was supporting a mother and sister by daily work in -a government office--but they formed the habit of meeting and spending -many hours of the day and night together and the meeting-place was -either the studio of a young sculptor, Jehan du Seigneur, or the sanded -parlour of the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, in the _rond-point_ of the Arc de -Triomphe. Their names were Pétrus Borel, Joseph Bouchardy, Philothée -O'Neddy, Alphonse Brot, Augustus Mackeat, Jules Vabre, Napoléon Thom, -Jehan du Seigneur, Léon Clopet, Célestin Nanteuil, Théophile Gautier, -and Gérard de Nerval. It is almost needless to say that some of the -names are Gothic transformations in the Romantic fashion. Pétrus Borel -was, of course, christened Pierre, as du Seigneur was christened Jean by -his parents; while Philothée O'Neddy and Augustus Mackeat conceal the -persons of Théophile Dondey and Auguste Maquet. But names in _-us_ or -Celtic patronymics were all the rage, and even Gautier was called -Albertus after his poem of that name published in 1832. A curious -feature about the group was that, though it existed to champion the -cause of Romantic poetry, the only pure man of letters was Gérard de -Nerval. Of the rest, Borel, formerly an architect, was learning to draw -in Dévéria's studio, Thom and Nanteuil were artists, Gautier and -Bouchardy studying art, du Seigneur a sculptor, Clopet and Vabre -architects; O'Neddy and Brot, indeed, were professed poets, but in no -less an embryonic stage than some of the others who afterwards found in -the pen their most successful tool. "This mixture of art in poetry," -says Gautier, "was and has remained one of the characteristic signs of -the new school, and makes it clear why the first adepts were recruited -rather among the artists than among the men of letters. A multitude of -objects, images, and comparisons which were thought to be irreducible to -the written word were introduced into the language and have stayed -there."[17] - -[Illustration: Pétrus Borel] - -The one whom Gautier called the _individualité pivotale_ of the group, -though Philothée O'Neddy in after years denied that he had more -influence than Gautier, Gérard, or Bouchardy, was Pétrus Borel, Le -Lycanthrope as he subsequently named himself. His full name was Pierre -Borel d'Hauterive, and he was born in Lyons in 1809. His father, -captured by the revolutionaries in 1792 and then liberated, fled to -Switzerland, whence he returned to Paris, a ruined man, to earn what he -could by keeping a shop. At the age of fifteen Pierre was apprenticed to -an architect, and in 1829 he set up on his own account without much -success. He and Jules Vabre became associated, and so poor were they -that they used to use the cellars of the houses on which they were -engaged as their dwelling-place. Gautier recalled visiting them once in -the cellar of a house in the Rue Fontaine-du-Roi, where they were -preparing their frugal meal of potatoes baked in the ashes. "Ah," said -Vabre with pride, "but we have salt on Sundays." Borel's ideas were too -Gothically fantastic for his _bourgeois_ clients, and, after a violent -dispute over his fourth commission, he ordered the half-finished -building to be demolished, and gave up for ever an ungrateful -profession,[18] betaking himself for a season to the study of painting, -and writing the while those poems animated by a haughty bitterness which -were published under the title of "Rhapsodies." They are dedicated and -addressed to the members of the second _cénacle_, among whom he enjoyed -an enormous reputation. He was for them the poet of the future, before -whom Hugo would crumble to dust. Alas! for youthful predictions; thirty -years later Gautier, the most loyal of Romantics, was forced to exclaim: -"Dire que j'ai cru à Pétrus!"[19] He exercised over the group, in fact, -a kind of unconscious hypnotism. His slightly superior age, his strange, -rough, paradoxical eloquence, and, above all, his picturesque appearance -imposed on them all. Their ideal was to have an _allure fatale_, a -sombre complexion and haughty, Byronic mien. Borel realized it. He -looked like a Castilian nobleman out of a Velasquez picture, says -Gautier, with his "young and serious face, of perfect regularity, an -olive skin gilded with light shades of amber, lit up by great, shining -eyes, sad as those of Abencerrages thinking of Granada," his bright red -lip which shone under his moustache, "one spark of life in that mask of -Oriental immobility," and his fine, full, silky beard perfumed and -tended like that of a sultan, at a time when to wear a beard in Paris -was an outrage to public decency. He was clothed in black, wearing a -high Robespierre waistcoat and draping a long black cloak around him -with an air of studied mystery. How could the younger men, whose beards -refused to grow, not believe in such a perfect symbol, so magnificently -scornful, so profoundly fatal? He was the most republican, too, of them -all, the typical _Bousingot_ of the _bourgeois_ Press, though fanatical -republicanism was not, as Philothée O'Neddy afterwards protested in a -letter to Charles Asselineau, their representative opinion. Gérard had -no political opinions at all, Gautier was obstinately _Jeune-France_, -and the others only dreamt of a social Utopia in which æstheticism -should replace religion, or of some humanitarian millennium after the -manner of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Borel, however, held society in -complete disgust, as he showed when he left the gathering at Jehan du -Seigneur's, and proceeded one summer to live with some followers on the -slopes of Montmartre, all naked as savages, till the landlord drove them -out at the price of his porter's lodge, which they burnt down in -revenge. - -None of the others were quite so remarkably individual as Pétrus Borel, -whose character may be described as Jules Claretie describes his book of -extravagant stories, "Champavert": "doubt, negation, bitterness, anger, -something at the same time furious and comic." Vabre, his partner in -architecture, had fair hair and moustaches, without any extravagance in -his bearing, but his face twinkled all over with malice and his -conversation was madly Rabelaisian. He projected a famous book that was -never written, "Sur l'Incommodité des Commodes." An intense love for -Shakespeare was his chief Romantic asset. According to Gautier he gave -up his later life to studying our language in England that he might make -the perfect translation, a task which was never completed. Joseph -Bouchardy, who afterwards became a very successful writer of melodrama, -was then learning engraving. He, too, was dark, so dark that with the -soft, sparse beard that just fringed his face he looked an Indian, and -was nicknamed the Maharajah of Lahore. He was less poetry-mad than the -rest, but eternally occupied with dramatic scenarios in which all the -secret passages, trap-doors, and sliding panels of a novel by Mrs. -Radcliffe were brought into play. Jehan du Seigneur, who made medallions -of all his friends, was a gentle, modest youth with a very -pink-and-white complexion which was his everlasting despair. To atone -for this unavoidable defection from Romantic ideals, he wore a black -velvet _pourpoint_, a black jacket with broad velvet _revers_, and a -voluminous necktie, so that not a speck of white linen was shown, a -"suprème élégance romantique," as Gautier remarks. Augustus Mackeat was -chiefly conspicuous for the happy transformation of his name, though he -returned to the orthodox Maquet when he became a successful playwright. -His disguise, however, was nothing to the tremendous anagram which -turned Théophile Dondey into Philothée O'Neddy. He, says Gautier, was -dark as a mulatto with fair, curly hair. Though he was helping to -support a mother and sister by working in a government office, this -Philistine occupation did not prevent him from being one of the most -frenzied of the gang, a "paroxyst" _ruisselant d'inouïsme_. In 1833 he -published a collection of ultra-romantic poems called "Feu et Flamme," -which reek with passion, despair, scorn, suicide, and contempt for -Christianity. Yet he lived till 1872, and though he published nothing -more, he left a collection of posthumous poems all of which breathe an -extreme melancholy. In the letter written to Asselineau ten years before -his death he admitted that in the days of the _cénacle_ he had "une -bonne grosse somme d'extravagance et de mauvais goût," but protested -warmly against the application to them of the epithet "ridiculous." -"Risible" they might have been, but only the _bourgeois_ were -"ridiculous." Célestin Nanteuil was big, fair, gentle, and so perfectly -medieval that Gautier caricatured him as Elie Wildman-stadius, the hero -of one of his _Jeune-France_ stories, who lived in a Gothic manor on -medieval fare, read nothing but medieval illuminated manuscripts, and -was killed when the Gothic cathedral, his sole external joy, was struck -by lightning. Gautier describes him personally as having the appearance -of "one of those long angels bearing censers or playing sambucs that -live in the gables of cathedrals, who has come down into the city in the -midst of the busy burgesses, keeping his nimbus all the while at the -back of his head like a hat, but without the least suspicion that it is -not natural to wear one's aureole in the street." He was a furious -Hernanist in 1830 (he was then only seventeen), and called "the -Captain," for leading the army to the fray. In 1843, when he was asked -to bring three hundred young men to support "Les Burgraves" in the same -manner, he sadly said: "Tell the master there are no more young men." He -might, says Maxime du Camp, have been a great painter, but he was -compelled to live by illustrating. Whenever he had made a little money -in this way he returned to his colours and his easel till it was -exhausted. He ended in the obscurity of Dijon, becoming the director of -its school of art. - -[Illustration: Célestin Nanteuil] - -Maxime du Camp compares Nanteuil's fate to that of Gautier, who was -forced by circumstances to waste so much of his talent in mere -journalism; but in 1830 Gautier, a young man of nineteen, who made long -hair serve instead of a beard, was still free as air. In that year he -brought out a little volume of poems, and a year or two later produced -the fantastic "Albertus," which he followed with "Les Jeune-France." His -art studies had soon ceased because he discovered that he suffered from -short sight, and we may regard him in the days of the _cénacle_ as a -poet pure and simple. One figure remains to be filled in, the most -pathetic of all the Romantic band, Gérard de Nerval. He was born in -1808, the son of a Doctor Labrunie--the family name of de Nerval was -only assumed by him when he began to write. His youth was spent in the -pleasant country of the Valois, and he received a very careful education -from his father, who taught him not only Latin and Greek, but German, -Italian, and the rudiments of Arabic and Persian. Even in his early days -he was an eager reader of mystics and utopists, which gave that first -fantastical turn to his brain which ended later in complete madness. His -development was normal at first. At the Collège Charlemagne he was the -snapper-up of every prize, and produced some quite worthless poetry in -praise of Napoleon that won high approval from his professors. He -followed this by a satire on the Academy, which appeared in 1826, and in -1828 he produced an ode to Béranger of a style to which his Romantic -friends could only have applied the new epithet _poncif_. The -translation of "Faust," which earned a very high compliment from the -great Goethe himself, turned him into his appropriate path and gave him -a serious literary reputation which he never lost. He translated other -fragments of German poetry, and wrote for the _Mercure de France_, of -which Pierre Lacroix, the "Bibliophile Jacob," was then the editor. His -adoption of a literary career was a grave disappointment to his father, -who had hoped to make a good official of him, and it is probable that -parental coldness first caused him to find a congenial asylum in the new -Bohemia, of which he was never a typical inhabitant. When he came of age -he inherited his mother's dowry, which made the actual earning of money -immaterial to him. His success with "Faust" had brought him into touch -with Hugo, so that after the days of "Hernani" he held in the _cénacle_ -the most distinguished, if not the most influential, position as a -lieutenant of their demi-god, with notable achievements in the field of -letters already to his credit. - -Gérard threw in his lot with the _cénacle_, but, though he even wrote -some revolutionary poems in 1830, for which he was imprisoned in Sainte -Pélagie, he was never quite at ease with Borel and the _Bousingot_ -faction. The flamboyant side of Romanticism and its noisy gatherings had -little appeal for him. He was an eccentric and a solitary by nature, as -his writings, with their strong reminiscence of Heine, show. In the time -of the _cénacle_ he was, according to Gautier, a gentle and modest young -man, who blushed like a girl, with a pink-and-white complexion and -soft, grey eyes. Under his fine, light golden hair his forehead, -beautifully shaped, shone like polished ivory. He was usually dressed in -a black frock-coat with enormous pockets, in which, like Murger's -Colline, he buried a whole library of books picked up on the _quais_, -five or six notebooks, and a large collection of scraps of paper on -which he wrote down the ideas that occurred to him on his long walks. He -was the perfect peripatetic: as he once said, he would have liked to -walk through life unrolling an endless roll of paper on which he could -jot his reflections. He lived at this time with Camille Rogier, the -artist, in the Rue des Beaux Arts, but his friends could never be sure -where to find him. For him no hour was sacred to rest. He wandered about -Paris at all times of the day and night, dropping in on a friend for an -hour or two, ready to ride a hobby-horse with him in any direction, then -darting off again, his thoughts in the clouds, nobody knew whither, and -returning in the small hours, only to flit from his bed at the dawn. Of -all the gay companions of Bohemia he was the best loved, for his -childlike simplicity and his gentle manners won all hearts. He went -through life to his terrible death with complete unworldliness, almost -like a ghost, unconscious of the material side of existence, directing -his feet only by the light of his spirit. Gautier, writing after his -death, protested vehemently that his was no ordinary tragedy of -neglected genius; he had money enough, but money was nothing to him, so -he spent it without a thought; his work was always accepted by editors, -and his plays, though not successful, were all produced. But success was -the last of his preoccupations. He was a wanderer living in a world of -his own fantasies. As he will appear again in these pages, we may bid -him farewell for the moment, with the conviction that it would be -pleasant to be transported for a season back to that turbulent _vie de -Bohème_ if only to find the kindly Gérard's arm passed through one's own -and to hear his gentle murmur: "Tu as une fantaisie; je la promènerai -avec toi." - -I ought, perhaps, to apologize for allowing the persons of the _cénacle_ -to take up so much space before coming to their life, yet I imagine, on -the whole, that I have said too little rather than too much. To go back -to a past of which one has no experience is a matter of such extreme -difficulty that a historian must often despair at the impossibility of -reproducing the whole congeries of scattered detail from which alone his -own mental picture could have taken shape. The first Bohemia, that of -the second _cénacle_, was less a common life than a common recreation. -It was an incomplete _vie de Bohème_ in so far as its members were -united, not by a desire to share all the joys and difficulties of life, -but by a particular artistic enthusiasm. There is no record that any of -them worked or dwelt together, that they took part in joint expeditions -of amusement, or that the mutual acquaintance of those female -divinities for whom they plied so "fatally" their emotional bellows is -to be presumed--and these are marked characteristics of Murger's _vie de -Bohème_. When they ate together it was at the obscure _cabaret_ kept by -the Neapolitan Graziano for the needs of his compatriots who worked in -Paris. Here, in a plain whitewashed room with a sanded floor, a dresser -covered with violently coloured faience and plain wooden benches, they -were initiated by their host--a man of senatorial presence, with an -immense but perfectly correct nose and big black beard, who seemed to -dream all the while of his beloved Italy--into the delights of -_spaghetti_, _stufato_, _tagliarini_, and _gnocchi_. They were delicious -meals, seasoned with good spirits, and--to use the delightful French -phrase--"bedewed" with sound wine of Argenteuil or Suresnes christened -magnificently with the names of the most exclusive vineyards in Médoc or -Burgundy. Still, they were felt at times to be a trifle wanting in -Romantic glamour. It was all very well, the grumblers remarked, to be -enjoying incomparable macaroni, but when all was said and done there was -little that an impartial observer could descry in these banquets to -differentiate them from the prosaic meals of a Joseph Prudhomme. -Something was wanting, some tincture of the Newstead spirit, some -infernal joy in the food, some shudder in the drinking. The macaroni -remained obstinately matter-of-fact, but a brilliant idea was mooted -that would give a charnel flavour to the wine. Graziano's glasses were -only glasses of quite modern exiguousness; the true brotherhood should -drink out of a skull. A skull was accordingly procured by Gérard from -his father, the doctor, and ingeniously mounted by Gautier, who screwed -to its side an old brass handle from a chest of drawers. In truth it was -a noble bowl, and the pious company drank from it with bravado, each -concealing with more or less ill-success his natural repugnance. -Familiarity, however, bred contempt, till one uncompromising youth -surprised his companions by noisily commanding the waiter to fill with -sea-water. - -"Why sea-water?" exclaimed a simple soul. - -"Why sea-water! Because the master in 'Hans d'Islande' says 'he drank -the water of the sea from the skulls of the dead.' It is my desire to do -the same." - -Yes, the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, for all its good cheer and its -death's-head mounted with a drawer-handle, was too workaday for these -eclectics. They reached their true glory only in the gatherings which -took place in Jehan du Seigneur's studio. It was a room over a little -fruiterer's shop that the _cénacle_ sanctified as their conventicle. "In -a little chamber," wrote an older Gautier, "which had not seats enough -for all its occupants, gathered the young men, really young and -different in that respect from the _young_ men of to-day, who are all -more or less quinquagenarians. The hammock in which the master of the -dwelling took his siesta, the narrow couchlet in which the dawn often -surprised him at the last page of a book of verses, eked out the -insufficiency of conveniences for conversation. One really talked better -standing up, and the gestures of the orator or declaimer only gained a -more ample scope. Still, it was extremely unwise to make too free with -your arms for fear of knocking your knuckles against the sloping -ceiling." It was a poor man's room, but not without ornament, for it -contained sketches by the two Dévérias, a head after Titian or Giorgione -by Boulanger, two earthenware vases full of flowers on the chimneypiece, -the inevitable death's-head instead of a clock, a looking-glass, and a -small shelf of books. On either side of the glass and in the embrasures -of the windows were hung the portrait medallions which Jehan made of his -friends. They had no money to get them cast in bronze, so the world has -lost in them a valuable appendix to the well-known busts of his -contemporaries executed by the more distinguished Romantic sculptor, -David d'Angers. Here they would all gather of an evening: Gérard if he -happened to be passing in his amiable wanderings, Bouchardy the -Maharajah, Gautier--not yet the burly critic of _La Presse_, but a thin -youth of nineteen--Nanteuil with his Gothic nimbus, Vabre bursting with -some new joke, Borel swinging off his long cloak with a scowl, O'Neddy -shedding Dondey in the street, Mackeat and the rest, each bursting with -eloquence or roaring the "Chasse du Burgrave" at the top of his voice. -When Maxime du Camp once asked Gautier what they talked about, he -answered: "About everything, but I haven't the least idea what they -said, because everybody talked at once." However, a very good idea of a -typical evening in the _cénacle_ is given in Philothée O'Neddy's "Feu et -Flamme," the first poem in which, called "Pandæmonium," is a gorgeous -description of their cave of harmony. It is freely decorated with "local -colour," which on a Romantic's lips meant the borrowing of all he could -carry away from the medieval stage-property room, but it was drawn from -life with all seriousness and sincerity. The poem opens by depicting -them all seated round the punch-bowl--punch, it must be stated, was the -only really respectable drink for a thorough-paced Romantic. He mixed it -in a large bowl and set light to the fumes, as the students are supposed -to do in the first act of the "Contes d'Hoffmann," and derived enormous -satisfaction from sitting in an obscurity only lit by this bluish flame. -Thus to recall the witches' cauldron and the fires of the Inferno had an -unfailing success as a stimulant to eloquence. The scene, then, opens -thus powerfully: - - _Au centre de la salle, autour d'une urne en fer,_ - _Digne émule en largeur des coupes d'enfer,_ - _Dans laquelle un beau punch, aux prismatiques flammes,_ - _Semble un lac sulfureux qui fait houler ses lames,_ - _Vingt jeunes hommes, tous artistes dans le coeur,_ - _La pipe ou le cigare aux lèvres, l'oeil moqueur,_ - _Le temporal orné du bonnet de Phrygie,_ - _En barbe Jeune-France, en costume d'orgie,_ - _Sont pachalesquement jetés sur un amas_ - _De coussins dont maint siècle a troué le damas,_ - _Et le sombre atelier n'a point d'éclairage_ - _Que la gerbe du punch, spiritueux mirage._ - -Smoking, it would be well to add, was considered part of the whole duty -of a Romantic man. The cigar, being Byronic, was affected by the -"fatally" inclined; the pipe came, not from England, but from Germany; -it was Faust-like, Hoffmannesque; it was also Flemish, of course, and -the Flemish painters, like Steen and Teniers, were in high repute. A -pipe signified a more jolly potatory spirit than a cigar, but it was -always possible for the irreconcilable satanics to regard the breathing -out of smoke from either as symbolically demoniac. The cigarette was not -despised, but its popularity was due also to its picturesque -associations. Spain was the home of the cigarette, the _papelito_ as -Borel and his friends fondly called it. When they rolled their fragrant -Maryland lovingly in the _papel_ they assumed a Spanish _allure_, -Granada rose before their eyes, and invisible guitars played "Avez-vous -vu dans Barcelone?" However, cigarettes would have been out of place in -the prismatic flames of the punch-bowl. Their Spanish nonchalance suited -better the light of day: evening shadows were consecrated to gloom and -frenzy, Northern spirits. Hence it is not surprising to hear that all -the company had - - _De haine virulente et de pitié morose_ - _Contre la bourgeoisie et le Code et la prose;_ - _Des coeurs ne dépensant leur exultation_ - _Que pour deux vérités, l'art et la passion!_ - -The conversation is compared with some aptitude to a Spanish town -devastated by an earthquake, which confounds in one ruin palaces and -huts, churches and houses of ill-fame. So in their talk the ideal and -the grotesque, poetry and cynical jesting are confounded pell-mell. -Silence is made while a passage from Victor Hugo is declaimed, after -which four discourses are pronounced. Three are by Borel, Clopet, and -Bouchardy respectively, concealed in the names of Reblo, Noel, and Don -José, and the second discourse is delivered by the swarthy O'Neddy -himself, who, - - _Faisant osciller son regard de maudit_ - _Sur le conventicule,_ - -pours out a passionate complaint that poets have too long been under the -yoke of governments and codes of law. The evening closes with a violent -tumult. The punch has done its work, and the _cénacle_ is a-screaming -with the ecstasy of energumens. - - _Ce fut un long chaos de jurons, de boutades,_ - _De hurrahs, de tollés et de rhodomontades._ - -They danced and sang like the demon crew in the master's "Ronde du -Sabbat," - - _Et jusques au matin les damnés Jeune-Frances_ - _Nagèrent dans un flux d'indicibles démences._ - -It is to be hoped that the worthy fruiterer was sleeping quietly in -another part of Paris, and only the potatoes were kept awake and sleep -banished from the pears. - -If at this point our reader feels inclined to throw up his hands and -exclaim "How disgusting!" he will be well advised to put down the book. -One cannot approach Bohemia without a certain sympathy for youthful -excesses, howsoever opposed they may be to one's personal predilections. -If the _cénacle_ indulged in occasional orgies--which, even allowing a -good deal for "local colour" in O'Neddy's "Pandæmonium," they certainly -did--they had a great many compensating virtues, such as complete -disinterestedness and a consuming love of art, which were not -conspicuous in Paris at the time. Maxime du Camp in his memoir on -Gautier sets the extreme limit to which reasonable criticism of them -can go when, after remarking on the promise given by a violent youth for -a fruitful middle age, he says: - - "From that should we conclude that the young men who composed the - _cénacle_ were all destined to become great men? Certainly not; - there were among them dreamers with illusions about themselves, - sterile dupes of the comedy that they played, failures in whose - case the brilliant future which they promised themselves fell - naturally into obscurity. To more than one of them the saying of - Rivarol could have been applied: 'It is a terrible advantage never - to have done anything, but it should not be abused.' In short, only - one of them has made a name that will not perish: Théophile - Gautier. Gérard de Nerval, by whom he had been distanced at the - beginning of his life, never passed a very moderate level, did not - push his way in the crowd, and came early to grief. On the other - hand, most of them were celebrated in the group, I might say in the - _coterie_, to which they belonged, but their reputation never went - beyond the circle in which they lived." - -Maxime du Camp takes a very superior point of view which is less than -just. The members of the _cénacle_, it may be admitted, overrated one -another's talents and were ready, in some instances, to take posturing -for performance; but Bohemia is not to be blamed because all her -children were not great men any more than Eton because all her _alumni_ -are not scholars. As a matter of fact, in this first Bohemia of the -_cénacle_ there were very few of whom it could be said that their lives -were ruined. Gérard died a violent death, but he was afflicted with -mental disease. Apart from his eccentricity he was a scholar and a -gentleman whose attainments equalled those of Gautier himself, though he -could not bring himself to exploit them. Pétrus Borel was the one real -failure, the _poseur_ who inevitably came to grief. His Bohemian career -reached its apogee at his masked ball in 1832--a caricature of Dumas' -own famous ball--held at his lodgings in the Rue d'Enfer, an appropriate -address. He left Paris shortly afterwards, and, after earning for some -years a precarious livelihood and publishing "Madame Putiphar," he -became an inspector of Mostaganem, in Algeria, in which country he died -wretchedly. The rest, though they did not quite achieve their proud -dreams, continued, most of them, in the paths of art with rectitude and -some success, Bouchardy and Maquet as dramatists, du Seigneur as a -sculptor, Nanteuil as an artist. O'Neddy, once the _cénacle_ dissolved, -as it did towards 1833, found poetry a resource in solitude, and poor -Vabre, if he made no figure in the world, at least set himself the -highest of ideals in devoting his life to the study of Shakespeare. - -The first Bohemia, for what that is worth, was singularly respectable in -its results. Even had they been far worse, sufficient praise to stifle -carping would be found in the indelibly beautiful memory which it left -on the minds of its members. In 1857 Bouchardy wrote of it to Gautier in -these words: - - "It was a holy and beautiful comradeship, my dear Théo, in which - each was the loving brother, the devoted friend, the - fellow-traveller who makes his friend forget the length and the - fatigue of the road. It was a more beautiful comradeship than one - can say, in which all wished the success of all without insensate - exaggeration and without collective vanity, in which each of us - offered to lend his shoulder to the foot of him who wished to climb - and to reach his goal.... It was a happy time, dear Théophile, of - which we ought to be proud, for when one has traversed this life so - often saddened by so much bitterness, we ought to be proud of - having found in it some hours of joy, we ought to boast of having - been happy!" - -Even Maxime du Camp admits that the effect of the _cénacle_ on Gautier -was incalculable: its disinterested friendship and its enthusiasm made -his individuality. All his life he remained "the mystic companion of -Victor Hugo's first disciples." Weighed down in after years by the -irksome tasks of journalism, the slave who remembered his years of -freedom with regret, he responded to Bouchardy with tender melancholy -from beside the rivers of Babylon: - - "No doubt such joy could not last. To be young and intelligent, to - love one another, to understand and commune in every realm of - art--a more beautiful manner of life could not be conceived, and - from the eyes of all those who followed it its dazzling splendour - has never been obliterated." - -At another time he wrote to Sainte-Beuve: "Nous étions ivres du beau, -nous avons eu la sublime folie de l'art." - -These words, issuing from a soul ever animated during its days on earth -by a Bohemian spirit, cast a protecting spell round the memory of the -first Bohemian brotherhood through which no Philistine anathemas can -break. - - - - -VIII - -LA BOHÈME GALANTE - - _O le beau temps passé! Nous avions la science,_ - _La science de vivre avec insouciance;_ - _La gaieté rayonnait en nos esprits moqueurs,_ - _Et l'Amour écrivait des livres dans nos coeurs!_ - - ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE - - -The _cénacle_ broke up towards 1833 and its members scattered. All -Bohemian _coteries_ must be short-lived, but this one was specially -doomed to a quick dissolution. It was, I will not say too romantic, but -too romantically ritualistic, too much concerned with the vestments and -incense and celebrations incident to the profession of "Hugolâtry." It -is not hard to imagine how the too mystic significance given to its -gatherings, its feasts, and even its individual actions became to some -of the brethren, now that Romanticism was firmly established, either -unreal or merely tiresome: divergences of taste and opinion began to -creep in till, in the end, this attempted Bohemia became a deserted -shrine. But the Bohemian spirit could not thus be quenched; indeed, it -was only then fully kindled. The deacons and acolytes, whom the mere -symbolism had mainly attracted, were gone; paid off the Swiss Guard -whom the return of peace called back to civil life. Those who remained, -the most advanced of the initiated, saw that the time had come for the -casting away of symbols and the cessation of noisy worship. Bohemia had -originated in a literary creed, but in its consummation it was to pass -beyond the letter and take hold of human life. This consummation came -with extraordinary rapidity; there were no feeble tentatives, no -half-successes. A new community arose in Paris, almost out of the ashes -of the _cénacle_, vastly different though it was from the obscure group -in Jehan du Seigneur's humble studio. It was animated by all that was -best in Romanticism--its disregard for academic convention, its colour, -its joyousness, its warmth of feeling, and its sympathy with all human -passions; but, unlike the _cénacle_, it did not trammel itself with -Romantic convention, it set creation above imitation, and--greatest of -all differences--it was no society meeting at intervals for spiritual -and corporeal refreshment, but a genuine life in common lived just for -the sake of living by a set of high-spirited, joyous young men, most of -them true artists, neither maniacs, nor ne'er-do-wells, nor idlers. The -_cénacle_ was dead, but _la vie de Bohème_ was born, and its golden age -came first. The brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné was, in A. -Delvau's words, "une Bohème dorée, avec laquelle celle de Schaunard n'a -que des rapports très éloignés."[20] Delvau, who was of Murger's -generation, knew well how quickly the glory departed. Yet at least -Murger's Bohemians had this connexion with what Gérard de Nerval named -_la Bohème galante_ that they could look back to it as the Romans to the -reign of Saturn. It was constituted informally, even fortuitously; it -existed without self-advertisement, but it remained, in the phrase of -another French writer, "la patrie de toutes les Bohèmes littéraires." - -In 1832 another Bohemian of the golden age had come to Paris, a brave -and merry soul called Arsène Houssaye, who had only breathed this -terrestrial atmosphere for seventeen years. It was not to champion a -cause that he came, but he was called thither by the poet within him to -take his part in infusing a new vitality into life and letters. Like -Gautier, he was a natural _enfant de Bohème_, yet did not at first find -the brotherhood which he was to hymn in prose and verse; it was still -only a potentiality. For a few months he lived in an odd little Bohemia -of his own with a friend called Van dell Hell in a _hôtel garni_. They -wrote songs for a living, wore the red hats by which the more violent -students of the Quartier Latin proclaimed their republicanism, and -consoled themselves for the rebuffs of editors with the smiles of a -certain "Nini yeux noirs." Houssaye in those amusing volumes which he -called "Les Confessions" bears witness to the deplorable state of the -literary market at the time. Novels and plays could not be sold, poetry -was not wanted as a gift, and the newspapers regarded mere men of -letters as too frivolous for employment. Poverty among the struggling -writers was acute, but nobody cared a fig about money when all cared so -much about art--a merciful dispensation of Providence. Yet, if -commercialism did not affect art, the same can hardly be said of -politics. Far too many of the young poets and artists, who would have -scorned to drive a mercenary bargain at the expense of their art, -exulted in defiling their artistic convictions with the reddest and most -insensate republicanism, not seeing that if art does not need to regard -gold pieces, neither does it need to trouble itself whether a king's -head or a cap of liberty is their stamp. Arsène Houssaye, careless -wretch, nearly missed the glory of Bohemia entirely by mixing himself up -in the insurrection of the Cloître Saint-Merri. He was arrested, but a -friendly commissary of police saved him from trial and imprisonment by -sending him home to his wealthy, loyal, and scandalized family. The -ungrateful lad, instead of settling down to some solid profession, -simply bided his time till the disturbance was over, and returned to -Paris, only so far profiting by his warning that he left politics -henceforth to look after themselves. Houssaye's father, worthy man, felt -that money would be thrown away on such a ruffian, so Arsène was left to -his own resources, which, if they were meagre in early days, kept him -alive for another sixty-three years. - -Bohemia was not to be baulked a second time. The elements were present, -and all that remained to do was for somebody to give them a slight push, -such as Lucretius gave to his atoms. The push occurred at the Salon of -1833, if Houssaye is to be believed--a condition not inevitably -fulfilled. There, one fine day, he met Théophile Gautier and Nestor -Roqueplan, the former of whom was certainly a stranger to him. A genial -conversation on the merits of the pictures ensued, in which Arsène -Houssaye made, as he was destined to do, a very good impression upon his -senior. Gautier was not a man to leave hazard any further part after -such a promising beginning, and he accordingly proffered an invitation -to _déjeuner_ next day in the words: "Je te surinvite à venir déjeuner -invraisemblablement demain chez les auteurs de mes jours." Houssaye -turned up next day at No. 8 Place Royale, where the irrepressible Théo -introduced his father as "le respectable bonhomme qui me donna l'être." -The other guest at this _déjeuner_ was Gérard de Nerval, whom with true -instinct Gautier had brought to test and to embrace the newly found -brother. The wit and gaiety, the range and the emphasis of their -postprandial conversation can be imagined. At last Théo blurted out -frankly: "Tu sais que je ne te connais pas: dis-moi huit vers de toi, je -le dirai qui tu es." It was not a test which the future author of -"Vingt Ans" feared. Gautier found himself able to give an enthusiastic -account of the new brother; the two truest Bohemians in Paris were at -once bosom friends, and the most wayward of geniuses was a friend of -both. - -So far the credit had been with Gautier, but Bohemia was still without a -dwelling-place, and in this matter Gérard de Nerval deserved pious -mention in the Bohemian bidding prayer, for it was owing to him that _la -Bohème galante_ found a home suitable to the golden age, a unique -setting which posterity could remember but never reproduce. It was a -rare opportunity, and it might almost be supposed that fortune, -approving of Théo's first amiable push, advanced willingly another step, -making peripatetic Gérard her tool. In the course of his wanderings he -had become acquainted with one of the most singular regions in all -Paris, no sign of which remains to-day. Hardly a visitor to Paris omits -a look into the Louvre, but very few know that as they walk from the -statue of Gambetta to the entrance of the galleries they are crossing -the site that Bohemia in its florescence made memorable. On that spot -there stood in 1833 part of an older Paris, which in intention had long -been cleared away, but in fact remained another twenty years. Those who -have read Balzac's "Cousine Bette" have made its acquaintance, though I -should wager that the majority of them have taken it for granted with -other of Balzac's topographical details. Let me recall to them the -sinister quarter where Cousine Bette, at the opening of the story, -cherishes the young sculptor Steinbock and makes the acquaintance of the -infamous Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. With his practised touch for -tragic effect Balzac describes it thus: - - "The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the - old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to - make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the - grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... - Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket - leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of - houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never - repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course - of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. - The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this - sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably - phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried - already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped - in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the - Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The - darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the - ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. - When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and - one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes - one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must - happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of - cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of - night, flourish at their height." - -This can hardly be called an engaging description, and even Bohemians, -it might be supposed, would shrink from such a dreadful slum. But Balzac -was writing in 1847, more than ten years after Bohemia had left it, and -he was making a protest against the continued existence of this quarter, -which had probably deteriorated since the days when he sent there -himself to offer Gautier work on the _Chronique de Paris_. However, -whether Balzac was right in making the Rue du Doyenné an inferno or was -only touching it up with livid tones appropriate to Cousine Bette and -the Marneffes, it was certainly a more smiling spot in 1833. True, it -was tumbling down, and lay below the level of the Place du Carrousel, in -the midst of mournful débris, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, -which Napoleon had meant to join after sweeping it away; the houses, as -Gautier says,[21] were old and dark, repairs to them were forbidden, and -they had the air of regretting the days when respectable canons and -advocates were their inhabitants. Yet it was not a den of thieves by any -means. Gérard[22] records that many _attachés_ and Government officials -lived in the quarter, and that by the Place du Carrousel there was a -collection of temporary wooden shops let out to curiosity dealers and -print-sellers. It was enlivened, too, by the presence of a little Dutch -beer-house served by a Flemish maid of considerable attractions. The -view from the upper windows included, naturally, the heaps of stones, -the rubbish, with the nettles and the dock-leaves by which Nature tries -to cover such deformities at once; but it also included a good many -trees, and the ruins of a delightful old priory, with one arch, two or -three pillars, and the end of a colonnade still standing. This was the -Priory of Doyenné, the dome of which, according to Gérard, fell one day -in the seventeenth century upon eleven luckless canons who were -celebrating the office. Its ruins stood out gracefully against the -trees, and of a summer morning or evening, when, amid the peaceful -silence of this forgotten corner, the bright rays of the Parisian sun -lit up the lichen on its stones and a fresh breeze from the neighbouring -Seine gently swayed the branches of its framing trees, it must have been -well to be a-leaning out of a window. - -However, Gérard de Nerval did more than find a quiet, romantic corner -hidden away in the busy heart of Paris with a ruined priory to give -distinction to its prospect; he also found an appropriate dwelling. In -one of the old houses of the Impasse du Doyenné there was a set of rooms -remarkable for its _salon_. It was a huge room, decorated in the -old-fashioned Pompadour style with grooved panellings, pier-glasses, -and a fantastically moulded ceiling. This decoration had for a long time -been the despair of its owner and had driven away all prospective -tenants, the taste for curiosities being at that time undeveloped. In -vain had the landlord parcelled it out with party walls; it was still -mouldering on his hands when Gérard came thither on one of his -swallow-flights. He at once persuaded the good-natured Camille Rogier to -transfer his household gods from the Rue des Beaux-Arts, the party walls -were knocked down, and Bohemia entered on its ideal home. Gérard had -still some of his patrimony left, and chose to expend it upon his one -hobby, the collection of pictures and furniture. It was a golden time -for the collector. Society had as yet not learned to appreciate old -works of art, dealers were not too well informed, and the depredations -of the Bande Noire, that, under the Restoration, had sacked so many -ancient ecclesiastical foundations, had brought a large quantity of -precious old furniture, tapestries, and fabrics into the curiosity shops -of Paris. Gérard had acquired a wonderful canopied Renaissance bed -ornamented with salamanders, a Médicis console, a sideboard decorated -with nymphs and satyrs, three of each, and oval paintings on its doors, -a tapestry delineating the four seasons, some medieval chairs and Gothic -stools, a Ribeira--a death of Saint Joseph--and two superb panels by -Fragonard, "L'Escarpolette" and "Colin Maillard," which last he had -bought for fifty francs the pair. It was a magnificent studio, worthy of -_la Bohème galante_. There was no question of bare attics on a sixth -story, their tiny windows looking on a dreary sea of roofs, of rickety -chairs and peeling wall-paper. In spite of its bare floors, its faded -colours, its chipped corners, and the incongruous presence of plain -easels among its ancient splendours, its riches were princely. Bohemian -disorder might reign among paints and palette-knives, ends of paper -inscribed with scraps of verse might dot its unswept floor, the _débris_ -of eating and drinking might litter the seats on which fastidious -cavaliers once delicately sat, but no realities of a careless existence -could spoil its romantic atmosphere. Without its merry clan of -inhabitants, no doubt, it would have seemed odd and ghostly; yet if they -brought back to it the necessary colour of youth, it tinged, in turn, -their life with a patina of old gold that never faded from their -reminiscences. - -[Illustration: A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné] - -Camille Rogier was the real lessee, and Gérard his sub-tenant. Gautier -had a couple of rooms in the Rue du Doyenné, which cut the Impasse -crosswise. These at first were the only permanent inhabitants of the new -colony, but the great _salon_ where Rogier and Gautier worked soon -became a meeting-place for a number of friends. Work was stopped at five -o'clock, when Arsène Houssaye was certain to appear, Roger de Beauvoir, -then in his most brilliant day, half Bohemian, half _viveur_, and -Edmond Ourliac, the future dramatist. One evening Houssaye, Roger de -Beauvoir, and Ourliac stayed talking till dawn; Roger departed then to -his more sumptuous apartments, Ourliac to his parents' house in the Rue -Saint Roch, but Arsène Houssaye stayed, on Rogier's invitation, to -complete the inner conclave of Bohemia. His camp-bed was sent for next -day, and he became Rogier's second tenant, paying him indeed no money, -but spending, in revenge, chance gifts from home on luxurious feasts at -the Frères Provençaux. - -Such a society in such a setting could not long remain unknown. With its -circle of guests widening it grew in importance, for in this golden age -Bohemia could be important without losing its quality. Gavarni, the -inimitable portrayer of Parisian types, Nanteuil, Châtillon, Marilhat, -even Delacroix, were among the artists who found the gaiety of the -Impasse du Doyenné to their taste; Pétrus Borel looked haggardly in -occasionally; the great Dumas would rush in and out like a storm; the -Roqueplans, Camille and Nestor, showed there in moments spared from -their more elegant wanderings; and the effervescent Roger de Beauvoir as -gaily composed there his witty rhymes as at a supper in the Café de -Paris. It was no hole-and-corner Bohemia at which the superior person -could affect to turn up his nose; it was a truly artistic centre in -Paris and, at the same time, a _coterie_ admission to which was -jealously enough guarded to exclude the half-baked dilettante who is the -ruin of most artistic sets and the very negation of Bohemia. For a -reason which will be obvious in the sequel, ladies with leanings to -artistic society--another impossibility in Bohemia--were equally -debarred from appearing. It was a more or less closely knit society of -young and gifted men, lovers of the beautiful, despisers of convention -without _gasconnade_, neither rich nor desperately poor, avid of -pleasure, and fashioning their conduct easily upon the standards of the -day, yet crowning all their hours, even the most wanton, with a graceful -and light-hearted idealism that shields these pagan heroes of a golden -age from any but an æsthetic judgment, a judgment which, in the case of -their own countrymen, they confronted with serene self-confidence. - -In all, the group was fairly large: its membership radiated dimly as far -as the "dandies" on the boulevard and into the obscurer depths of the -Quartier Latin. But radiation was from a central nucleus--the original -Bohemian brethren whose home was in the Impasse du Doyenné: Camille -Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Edmond -Ourliac. The rest were visitors, but they alone were the true dwellers -in _la Bohème galante_. Of their brotherhood and its life Gautier, -Gérard, and Houssaye have all given glimpses, which compose a picture -apt for pleasing and, occasionally, envious contemplation. Arsène -Houssaye in his "Confessions" is the fullest source of reminiscence, and -his words are delightfully illustrated by the poem, originally entitled -"Vingt Ans," but in his complete works "La Bohème de Doyenné." The poem, -addressed to Gautier, begins: - - _Théo, te souviens-tu de ces vertes saisons_ - _Qui s'effeuillaient si vite en ces vieilles maisons_ - _Dont le front s'abritait sous une aile du Louvre?_ - _Levons avec Rogier le voile qui les couvre,_ - _Reprenons dans nos coeurs les trésors enfouis,_ - _Plongeons dans le passé nos regards éblouis._ - - _Chimères aux cils noirs, Espérances fanées,_ - _Amis toujours chantants, Amantes profanées,_ - _Songes venus du ciel, flottantes Visions,_ - _Sortez de vos tombeaux, jeunes Illusions!_ - _Et nous rebâtirons ce château périssable_ - _Que les destins changeants ont jeté sur le sable:_ - - _Replaçons le sofa sous les tableaux flamands;_ - _Dispersons à nos pieds gazettes et romans;_ - _Ornons le vieux bahut de vieilles porcelaines,_ - _Et faisons refleurir roses et marjolaines;_ - _Qu'un rideau de damas ombrage encore ces lits_ - _Où nos jeunes amours se sont ensevelis._ - -Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word -must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as -Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. -Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was -earning a living by his art--even more than a living, for was he not -rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was -his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years -painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused -the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush -he was a very agreeable singer of _chansons_ and ballads. Ourliac did -not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue -Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants -Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on -his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way -home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines, - - _gai convive, arrivait en chantant_ - _Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,_ - -was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, -ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible _raconteur_ of inimitable -dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German -philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work -which made his name heard in the world of literature. - -It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but -rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the -morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all -four would set to their work, while the Pompadour _salon_ was hardly yet -awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found -lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to -write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de -Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, -and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating -Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse." - - "L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, - tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, - couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et - venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent - pas."[23] - -Gérard, his part in the foundation of _la Bohème galante_ performed, -felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, -indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered -ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave -before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task -was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as -Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was -also an actress. In the days of the _cénacle_ Gérard had fallen -desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress -of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very -roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic -mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, -and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful -Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that -Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was -always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other -parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an -occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by -straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome -of his life--a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. -His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar -heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to -accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on -Arsène Houssaye's stanza: - - _"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?_ - _Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique_ - _S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,_ - _Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,_ - _Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"_[24] - _Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"_ - -wrote: - - "La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait - alors--et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des - Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce - grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore - garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François - Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se - jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas - plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image - tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve - idéal et divin." - -The question was to secure her _début_ at the Opéra, and for that -purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de -Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to -compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly -engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the -Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to -maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps -because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de -Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and -the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème -Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which -he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing -themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had -an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could -not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the -room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for -another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of -the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked -till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other -masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an -early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The -revellers set off joyously, Gérard's _belle désolée_ opposing only a -feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on -his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the -lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his -disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. -And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his -fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme -toujours!" - -Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his -whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted -Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly. -Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for -Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a -Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but -when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art -criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his -mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of -bouillon for his _déjeuner_. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over -and the visitors gone--Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the -Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret--Rogier, Gautier, -and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy -city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling -along the Seine. They dined--they were not too poor for that--in the -Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night -where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some -romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch -would be indispensable; now they would invade the _Chaumière_ or some -other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,[25] -the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to -choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and -Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille -which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life--the -siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another -evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent, -Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold _salon_ with Rogier, -who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their -knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish _cabaret_ hard -by, served by the young _tavernière_ - - _Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière._ - _Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel oeil attrayant!_ - _Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant._ - - _Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,_ - _Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,_ - _Jetant à tout venant son coeur et sa vertu,_ - _Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,_ - _Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;_ - _Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle._ - -So sang of her Houssaye, whose souvenirs of Bohemia at the magic age of -_vingt ans_ are deeply tinged with amorous memories. In fact, _la -Bohème galante_, as its name implies, was not a monastery, and its life -was not shared, but illuminated by a number of divinities whose aureoles -had been over more than one windmill. The chief of these was "la -Cydalise," - - _Respirant un lilas qui jouait dans sa main_ - _Et pressentant déjà le triste lendemain._ - -She was treasure-trove of Camille Rogier's, a beautiful woman, and -titular mistress of the Bohemian encampment. They were all jealous of -Rogier's good fortune, for, since he was twenty-five, they considered -him a patriarch, and Théo could not understand how Cydalise could put up -with such an old man. She lived quite happily in the Impasse, making the -afternoon tea, sitting as a model, and inflaming all their hearts. -Théo's passion was of a frantic heat. He besieged Cydalise with long and -violent apostrophes, swearing to kill the senile tyrant who kept her in -his power, threats for which Rogier, ever smiling, did not care a -button. Poor Cydalise, she was a butterfly whose day was short. To -Rogier's great grief consumption seized her. For some weeks he enlivened -her sick-bed by singing her songs and drawing pictures for her -amusement; but the day came when her ears no longer heard and her lovely -eyes were closed. Gérard, Gautier, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac went -to her funeral, and Bohemia lost its official mistress. Yet there were -others. Gérard draws a picture of Gautier, on a Gothic stool, reading -his verses while Cydalise or Lorry or Victorine swung herself carelessly -in the hammock of Sarah _la blonde_, and Arsène Houssaye at the end of -"Vingt Ans" recalls them in the lines: - - _Judith oublie Arthur, Franz, Rogier et le reste,_ - _En donnant à son coeur la solitude agreste;_ - _Rosine à Chantilly caresse un jeune enfant_ - _Plus joli qu'un Amour et plus joueur qu'un faon._ - - * * * * * - - _Ninon au Jockey Club vend chacun de ses jours;_ - _Charlotte danse encore--et dansera toujours._ - _Alice?--il faut la plaindre et prier Dieu pour elle,_ - _Elle est dans les chiffons, la pauvre Chanterelle;_ - _Armande?--Un prince russe épris de sa beauté_ - _Travaille à lui refaire une virginité._ - _Olympe?--un mauvais livre ouvert à chaque page--_ - _Ce matin je l'ai vue en galant équipage...._ - -The loves of Doyenné were true _enfants de Bohème_, neither great -passions nor elective affinities, but pastimes leaving regrets for -inspiration; not devouring flames, but pleasantly crackling experimental -fires, drawn chiefly from those great hearths, the stage and the _corps -de ballet_. How much fantasy went to their burning is illustrated in a -story told by Houssaye of Gérard, who, on one occasion, to the despair -of his friends, became obsessed with a mad desire to set out that -instant for Cythera and revive the gods of Greece. Prompt measures were -necessary, and Houssaye devoted himself to the rescue by professing to -enter into the scheme with joy, only remarking that it would be well to -have lunch first. This seemed to Gérard a reasonable preliminary, so -they adjourned to the Café d'Orsay, where over the first bottle Gérard -developed his scheme with growing eloquence. But the first stage on the -way to Cythera lasted for several bottles, and at the commencement of -the next Gérard met a provisional goddess in the shape of an attractive -_grisette_. Houssaye, convinced that his companionship was now no longer -necessary, abandoned the voyage, and left Gérard to continue it up -several flights of stairs. The end of this ascent marked his farthest -point; after a halt of two days he descended and turned his footsteps -back to Bohemia. The loves of Bohemia which gambol so trippingly in the -tongue of France are ill at ease in our austerer medium, for our -Northern spirit has ever refused to admit, as the French do with -engaging candour, that man, particularly the artist-man, is naturally -polygamous. Lorry, Victorine, Armande, and the rest were the only -appropriate feminine attachments of Bohemia, even of the golden age, the -pagan loves of pagan heroes, who were greedy of their caresses without -hungering for their souls, grew jealous at their eyes' wayward glances, -but took no umbrage at the inward abstraction of their minds, and were -content with the homage of their play-hours without seeking to rival the -ideals of their artistic contemplations. But the mark of the golden age -was that they played for love and not for money: they would dance the -heels off their slippers in the barren land of Doyenné when all the -millions of a dull prince would have moved their agile toes only to the -most significant of kicks. It was a mad little world, but good because -Mammon had not corrupted its natural spontaneity. True, it was deficient -in some virtues, but some virtues are frankly middle-aged, to be put on -with a less tricksy cut of the clothes. Bohemia was young; it loved and -feasted and, being poor, made debts. There is not much to be said for -getting into debt, in spite of Panurge's ingenious discourse, except -that it is an unavoidable corollary of certain conjunctions of -temperament and circumstance. It is difficult, anyhow, not to pardon -Gérard for dissipating his capital and running up bills on account of -his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture -dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns -les autres," which affected the dun to tears. - -"We had no money, but we lived _en grands seigneurs_," wrote Arsène -Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have -pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the Opéra -for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were -not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard -more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the -landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an -occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless, -dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch _la -Bohème galante_ had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic -entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835. -The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his -frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the -first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was -a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of -it: a _bal costumé_ alone could produce a gathering that would not clash -with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances -were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia, -required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who -are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the -superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too -little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than -give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the -eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings -by their friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could -indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be -undying. - -The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had -done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day, -including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he -narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared -to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that -his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand -bottles of wine. _La Bohème galante_, though younger and less known -artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal. -Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and -the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination. -They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes, -singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind -their ears--a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a -general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal -usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling -through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque -scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a -tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden -hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned with -ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service, -Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing -Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two -narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might -lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the -acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in -and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white -chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of -this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few _louis -d'or_ for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a -millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet -regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the -_salon_ of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which -the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating -festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its -freshness. - -The _fête_ was gorgeous. True, the landlord's wife had refused their -invitation--a severe blow. But the hosts with some consideration, -knowing that their revels would make sleep impossible in the quarter, -invited all their bachelor neighbours on the condition that they brought -with them _femmes du monde_ protected, if they pleased, by masks and -dominoes. The wonderful evening began with the pantomime of "Le Diable -Boiteux," in which many actresses from the boulevard took part. Then -there were two little farces in which Ourliac covered himself with glory -as the _buffo_. The first was "Le Courrier de Naples," and the second, -written by Ourliac himself, "La Jeunesse du Temps et le Temps de la -Jeunesse," was introduced by a prologue by Gautier, read from behind the -curtain. Ourliac was buried in bouquets, and the noisy orchestra brought -in from a _guingette_ struck up. The ruined quarter woke to life again, -as in some ghost story; the desert streets resounded with songs and -laughter; Turks and _débardeurs_ affronted the frown of the staid old -Louvre, and only the landlords and _concierges_, tossing sleeplessly, -consigned Bohemians to everlasting flames. The dance, sustained only by -good spirits, never flagged, till in the final galop every mask with his -partner rushed pell-mell from the room, leaped wildly down the rickety -stairs, dashed up the Impasse, and came to rest under the moonlit ruins -of the old priory, where a little _cabaret_ had opened, and only the -late dawn of winter drove Bohemia to its bed, to dream of the Pompadour -salon, of Ourliac's satirical buffoonery, and of Roger de Beauvoir's -magnificent Venetian costume of apple-green velvet with silver -embroidery, and his inexhaustible wit, for once born of no champagne. - -It is melancholy to go back to a deserted ballroom, and we may spare -ourselves the pain. That joyous evening, little as it may have seemed -to do so, marked the passing of the golden age. Bohemia's sun henceforth -descended the skies. The next year saw marked changes. The landlord of -the old house in the Impasse du Doyenné saw with relief--Gérard says he -gave them notice to quit--the departure of his turbulent tenants. If -Rogier had not gone to Constantinople it is possible that, even if the -band had been compelled to change its quarters, some reconstruction of -_la Bohème galante_ might have been possible. With him, the stable, the -earner of money, absent, there was no hope. The heroes of Bohemia had to -leave their enchanted garden for the ordinarily circumscribed dwelling -of impecunious mortals, and, like the heroes of Valhalla when Freia is -snatched from them, a certain wanness came over the complexion of their -lives. Joy and beauty and work and love were left, but the magic bloom -had just faded. With smaller resources and in a colder light the -resettlement of Bohemia was a work of compromise, not spontaneous -achievement. Rogier was gone; Ourliac, who produced "Suzanne" with -success, married before long, grew serious, and ended his days in the -fullest odour of piety; Roger de Beauvoir found the boulevard more to -his taste than any less brilliant Bohemia. Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye -were left, a trio of markedly divergent tastes. They made one attempt at -a common life in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which seems to have -lasted a year or two. The details of it given by Gautier[26] and -Houssaye[27] differ considerably. According to Gautier they did their -own cooking: Arsène Houssaye was perfect in the _panade_, Gautier -prepared the macaroni, no doubt remembering Graziano, while Gérard -"went, with perfect self-possession, to buy galantines, sausages, or -fresh pork cutlets with gherkins at the neighbouring cook-shop." -Houssaye, on the other hand, says that they had a rascally valet and a -cook called Margot, and that they broke up because they were at variance -on the degree of luxury to be maintained, Gérard, whom anything -satisfied, departing to a bare _hôtel garni_, Gautier to a sumptuous -apartment in the Rue de Navarin, and Houssaye sharing rooms in the Rue -du Bac, on the left bank, with Jules Sandeau. I do not trouble to -reconcile these two accounts, for the memories of Bohemia are invariably -picturesque. The fact remains that the old days could not come back. The -first Bohemians were growing older, and the world was beginning to claim -its once youthful defiers as servitors. Though Gérard's bed remained -with Gautier as a memory of freer days, he knew too well that the gates -of the prison were closing upon him. For a year or so he might pretend -to mock destiny by producing another book of verses and a novel, or by -making a voyage in Belgium accompanied by Gérard: but he was a doomed -man. About 1838 he became the dramatic critic of _La Presse_, entering -the mill in which he was to grind for over thirty years. Well might he -say in 1867, in an autobiographical notice: "Là finit ma vie heureuse, -indépendante et prime-sautière." Houssaye kept up the pretence a little -longer. Life in the Rue du Bac was gay; there were suppers with Jules -Janin and Sandeau at which Gautier and Ourliac sometimes appeared; there -was dancing; there were the bright eyes of a certain Ninon, who inspired -some pretty stanzas. But these were the last echoes of _la première -Bohème_, as he had to admit. When they died away he completed the -chapter of his youth, as Gautier had done, by travelling. - -[Illustration: Gérard de Nerval] - -Gérard alone escaped the inevitable superannuation of Bohemia, because -he was too ethereal to become amenable to the ordinary dynamic laws of -society. An attempt was made to catch him in the machinery by making him -Gautier's assistant as dramatic critic of _La Presse_. The sprite within -him would not submit to the drudgery, and in a little while he gave it -up. He preferred, as ever, to wander at his will and at his own hours, -or to sit reading at the dead of night by the light of a brass -chandelier balanced on his head. It is not part of this book's plan to -give complete biographies of those who appear in its pages, but an -exception shall be made in the case of Gérard de Nerval. Between 1837 -and 1839 he stayed in Paris, writing a comic opera, "Piquillo," with -Dumas, in which Jenny Colon appeared, several plays, with a certain -number of articles and reviews. His way of life was always eccentric, -but he had his first definite attack of madness in 1839 or 1840, and was -placed in the famous establishment of Doctor Blanche. He came out in -1841 and resumed a career of wider vagabondage than ever, now with -money, now without, but caring little in any case and ready to go to the -ends of the earth with a whim and without a coin. In 1841 he joined -Camille Rogier in Constantinople, and wandered subsequently in other -parts of the East--an experience which gave rise to some of his best -descriptive work. He returned to Paris again, where his spirit dwelt in -the clouds and his body anywhere, though he often allowed it to rest -with one of his many friends, with whom he would leave a shirt to be -washed against his next coming. He continued to write not very -successful plays between 1846 and 1850, when he again went completely -mad and retired to Dr. Blanche's house. His second stay here was longer, -but as he soon became perfectly reasonable his friends were allowed to -take him out for the day occasionally. Once more apparently cured he -came out, but though he made one or two voyages his faculties remained -permanently clouded. Of this he himself was perfectly conscious, but he -bore his afflictions with perfect cheerfulness. His money was all gone, -and the flashes of sanity too rare for him to earn much; he was -homeless, but not friendless, for he never appealed to his friends in -vain. He came for crumbs like a bird in winter, but like a bird he would -not stay. He would have been an appropriate guest at some strange -_Nachtasil_ such as Maxim Gorki describes so powerfully. Who knows, too, -in what haunts he was not a familiar? His comrades of older days could -do no more than greet him and tend him when they saw him, and his -equanimity was too great to drive them to forcible detention. As Paul de -Saint-Victor wrote after his death: - - "In vain his friends tried to follow him with their hearts and - eyes; he was lost to sight for weeks, months, years. Then, one fine - day, one found him by chance in a foreign city, a provincial town, - or more often still in the country, thinking aloud, dreaming with - open eyes, his attention fixed on the fall of a leaf, the flight of - an insect or a bird, the form of a cloud, the dart of a ray, on all - those vague and ravishing beauties that pass in the air. Never man - saw a gentler madness, a tenderer folly, a more inoffensive and - more friendly eccentricity. If he woke from his slumber, it was to - recognize his friends, to love them and serve them, to double the - warmth of his devotion and welcome as if he wished to make up to - them for his long absences by an extra amount of tenderness." - -It was with a profound shock, therefore, that Paris heard, one morning -in 1857, that Gérard had been found in the small hours, hanged to an -iron railing by a woman's apron-string, in one of the lowest and most -ill-famed streets in Paris, the Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne. The mystery -of his death has never been cleared up. The inquest brought little -light, save that the inmates of a filthy little drink-shop probably knew -more than they would tell. What Gérard was doing in that foul haunt will -never be known. It is possible that he may have been murdered, but, as -he had no money and was the gentlest of men, it is more probable that -with some dreadful cloud upon his brain he destroyed himself. Yet his -very gentleness had made such an end unexpected, for he seemed to be -under the protection of the children's guardian angel. Some sudden -impulse brought him a death alien to the character of his whole life. -"II est mort," said Paul de Saint-Victor, "de la nostalgie du monde -invisible. Paix à cette âme en peine de l'idéal!" - -From Gérard's death, which Gustave Doré made more hideous in a ghoulish -picture, it is a long cry back to the Impasse du Doyenné and the -Pompadour _salon_ of which he was the discoverer. Yet I will end this -chapter, as it was begun, with this once festive haunt. Not long did it -outlive its Bohemian colony. The landlord, explosively wrathful at the -sight of the wall paintings, at once covered the mess, as he no doubt -called it, with a coating of distemper. The treasures might, even then, -have been saved in part, had anyone but Gérard de Nerval bought from the -demolishers Corot's panels, the pictures by Wattier, Chassériau, and -Châtillon, and Rogier's portraits of Cydalise and Théophile Gautier. His -hand was one to baulk destiny only for a little. This moonstruck captain -of a rickety craft let his cargo fall needlessly into the seas while he -contemplated the stars and allowed the waves to swing the rudder. So -passed _la Bohème galante_, leaving only a gilded legend. - - - - -IX - -SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY - - _La Bohème carottière et geignarde d'Henry Murger_ ... - - LEPELLETIER: "Verlaine" - - -To follow the heroes into exile would be depressing as well as -unprofitable. It is better to stand respectfully aside from the -_Götterdämmerung_ and wait till Bohemia emerges again from the mists, -when a lapse of years has wrought some patent changes, for it is easier -to contemplate a result than to trace a process. By leaping forward some -ten years from the dispersal of the brotherhood that sanctified by its -presence the Impasse du Doyenné it is possible to steal a march on Time -and anticipate with a rapid glance his changing hand. Yet to catch this -later view it is necessary for the nonce to abandon the world of flesh -and blood and to turn from the acts and reminiscences of actual mortals -to the imaginary scenes and fictitious characters of a book of stories. -The tide of life was too strong upon Théophile Gautier and Arsène -Houssaye for them to pause and stamp out firmly the features of those -precious days in _la Bohème galante_; they only caught fugitive -impressions in retrospect. Henry Murger, less prodigal because less -endowed, crystallized as it passed a moment of Bohemia, the Bohemia of -common mortality, in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." As a confectioner -encloses a fresh grape in a transparent coat of candied sugar, so he, -even while he tasted, sour and sweet, the fruit of his days, caught -stray berries in a light film of art and presented them as dessert to -the readers of the _Corsaire_, a small but amusing journal. Sharp and -savoury as they were, Time would have destroyed them, as he destroyed -the ambrosial lusciousness of the Doyenné feasts, but for that light -film. Nobody remembers reminiscences, but a well-told story preserves -even the most trivial events. - -Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" is a book which has now lived for -nearly seventy years and does not seem likely as yet to pass into the -lumber-room. At the same time, it is to be wished that more people in -England knew it, if only because the presupposition of such knowledge -would make this chapter easier to write. It is not, of course, difficult -to criticize the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème"; many of Murger's -countrymen, indeed, have done so. Its ethics, its humour, and its style -have been attacked. M. Boucher, an estimable civil servant interested in -literature, in his "Souvenirs d'un Parisien" calls it an effort to -depict the life of low-class students, accuses Murger of insipidity and -repetition, and denies any wit to his "étudiants demi-escrocs, -demi-canailles." M. Pelloquet, who was good enough to pronounce a -discourse over Murger's grave, said: "It is an unhealthy book, in which -vice grimaces, youth paints its cheeks like a superannuated coquette, -and a fictitious _insouciance_ conceals, not a laziness that is -sometimes poetic, but the cowardly indolence of men without courage and -without talent." He was also rash enough to predict that it would not -live. Jules Janin, the critic, in a wiser appreciation, asserted that -with a little more art and a little more poetry Murger might have -created more pardonable heroes and no less charming heroines. Gautier's -dictum about the invertebrate verses of "that feeble appendage to Alfred -de Musset" has already been quoted, and the opinion of Verlaine's -biographer appears at the head of this chapter. Murger's gravest fault, -however, in the eyes of French people is that he wrote bad French. To -them the mishandling of that difficult, elusive, and withal limited -tongue is a crime of which we can hardly comprehend the enormity. It is -perfectly true that Murger was culpable in this respect; he was -deficient in scholarship and in rhythmic sense, so that his poems are -weak and his prose, even where he tried to give it an air of -respectability, betrays its imperfections no less manifestly than M. -Jourdain betrayed his birth. We in England, fastidious as our critics -are in the matter of language, have not our ears tuned to this painful -degree of precision. So long as a style effectively harmonizes with its -environment we are content to let it stand: the Gothic grandeur of -English can suffer without disfigurement the intrusion of the quaint. To -sympathies so trained Murger's style in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -should make a particular appeal, since in that book, for the most part, -he makes no attempt to ape the academician, but writes in the -extravagant jargon of the very Bohemians he is describing--a language -full of comic inversions, extravagances, and lapses from grammar, which -are an essential part of the book's gaiety and charm. Though his matter -is unmistakably Parisian, his humour is, in some respects, remarkably -English, delighting in broad and bustling effects rather than subtle -strokes and sudden flashes. As for the life and the characters that he -depicts, criticism of them will be implicit in the remainder of this -chapter; of the book as a whole no more need be said than that it has -survived when all the rest of Murger's work has been forgotten. It is -not a book to be placed unwarily in the hands of the young and tender; -parts of it are exaggerated, parts may be wished away, but, when all has -been said, it remains, not the picture of _la vie de Bohème_ at its best -and brightest, but the classic expression of the Bohemian spirit--a -frank confession, not the pseudo-pathetic souvenir of a prosperous -greybeard. Its pages are among those rare ones in the world's library -that have caught and held for a moment the intangible freshness, the -poetry, and the gaiety of youth. For this alone it deserves never to -grow old. - -Murger's Bohemia is described in a series of scenes taken from the life -of four young men, a quartet as fascinating to read of as Dumas' -Musketeers, though possibly less comfortable companions. They were -Rodolphe, the sentimental poet; Marcel, the painter; Colline, the -peripatetic philosopher and bookworm; and Schaunard, painter and -musician, incomparable rogue whose masterpiece was a symphony "Sur -l'influence du bleu dans la musique"--a sly hit at debased Romanticism. -Chance brought them together. Schaunard, unable to pay his arrears of -rent, was forced to leave his lodging with his furniture in pawn. A -day's peregrination in search of a loan brought him three francs in -cash, which he spent in dinner, together with the less tangible benefit -of Colline's and Rodolphe's acquaintance. He swore brotherhood with -Colline over a dish of stewed rabbit in a little eating-house, and the -pair collected Rodolphe in the Café Momus, where, at Colline's expense, -they passed the rest of a not too abstemious evening. Meanwhile Marcel, -the painter, who had taken Schaunard's room unfurnished in advance, -though having no furniture of his own but a second-hand scenic interior -from the stock of a bankrupt theatre, had been persuaded to take the -lodging furnished with Schaunard's furniture, and had duly moved in. -Late in the evening, when a sharp shower of rain was falling, -Schaunard, in bacchic absence of mind, offered asylum to his two new -comrades. Hastily buying the elements of a supper, they gaily invaded -the apartment of Marcel. Explanations were difficult, but were -accomplished during supper, and next day Marcel and Schaunard agreed to -live together. A dinner and a magnificent supper inaugurated the -foundation of the new clan, which was united, so long as their Bohemian -days continued, by an unbroken bond of friendship. It is these young men -whom Murger's readers follow through their straits and shifts, their -love affairs, their extravagances, their boisterous jokes, and their -naïve pleasures--the poet, the artist, the savant, and the musician, -characters drawn from Murger himself and his living friends, whose coats -were ragged and whose pockets almost always empty, who were the bane of -respectable _concierges_ and proprietors of _cafés_, who bore short -commons with cheerful bravado and succumbed to innocent gluttony in -times of unexpected prosperity, who were really funny even if they were -sometimes vulgar, whose expedients for catching the elusive _pièce de -cent sous_ were as amazing as their puns, who made life, even in a -garret, a sentimental poem and a rollicking ballad, and who had the -sense to become prosaic before the sentiment grew threadbare or the -ballad grew stale. It is a great temptation to follow some of their -adventures in greater detail from the day when Marcel went out to dine -in the sugar-merchant's coat while Schaunard painted the latter's -portrait in his own colour-stained dressing-gown, to the day when -Rodolphe by composing a didactic poem at fifteen sous a dozen lines for -a celebrated dentist, Marcel by painting the portraits of eighteen -grenadiers at six francs a head, and Schaunard by playing the same scale -all day and every day for a month to revenge a rich Englishman on an -actress's parrot, earned enough to give their mistresses new dresses and -take them for a holiday in the fields of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Yet the -impulse to discursive commentary must be checked, for plucking flowers -is a distraction from comparative botany. Murger, after all, tells his -own story infinitely better than any translator could do, and the -purpose which is proper to the present book is to inquire what kind of a -Bohemia appears in Murger's light-hearted pages. - -So far as Bohemia was concerned, the generation of 1830 had entirely -passed away by 1846, when Murger's sketches actually appeared, and the -young men of whom Bohemia was composed were formed under less violent -influences. The last flashes of Napoleon's glory had not illuminated -their early days, they knew little of the stifling reign of Charles X, -and the Revolution of 1830 took place when they had only a little while -outgrown the nursery. By the time they grew up the complexion of affairs -in Paris wore a more even tone. Assisted by Guizot, Louis Philippe had -found the _juste-milieu_ to his people's satisfaction, revolutionary -tendencies had been checked or diverted into harmless channels of -humanitarian reform, the _bourgeois_ had firmly grasped his power and -built up an already solid bulwark of commercial interest. In the -artistic world, too, things were quieter. "Hernani," once a scandal, had -become a classic, and there was no further need of red waistcoats and -furious _claques_. Romanticism, indeed, had become so workaday that a -successful little excitement was aroused by a reaction against it in -what was called "l'école de bon sens," whose chief poet, Ponsard, gained -quite a celebrity for a short time with his classic drama "Lucrèce." -Beyond the gadfly of artistic impulse and the natural fermentation of -the adolescent mind, there was little to rouse a young man's passions or -send his blood coursing faster through his veins; there was no -particular idol to worship, no hobby-horse to ride, as a Gautier or a -Borel had worshipped Hugo and mounted the gallant steed called Middle -Ages. The creed of Romanticism was so thoroughly established that there -was nothing left to make any fuss about, with the natural consequence -that its early extravagances had fallen out of fashion and there was no -further need to be satanic or profess excessive sensibility. Literature -was feeling its way to the austerer Romanticism of Flaubert and the -Goncourts, as painting towards the "realism" of Courbet, but the growth -was still below ground and the surface as yet seemed undisturbed. The -generation of Rodolphe and Schaunard found, therefore, in Paris no eager -band to whom they could ally themselves and to whose educative influence -they could submit. Driven by their impulses towards the arts, with souls -naturally romantic, as most young men's souls are, they found no cause -which they could immediately embrace in the manner of the second -_cénacle_. They missed that valuable education which is the idolization -of a great man, and were confined instead to fighting their own battle, -a very much less distinguished affair, which allowed many little -dishonourable compromises with indolence and in which victory meant no -more than individual success. This explains, to some extent, the absence -of intellectual fecundity in Murger's heroes, which even their most -devoted admirers cannot deny. Rodolphe's poems are indeed only pale -imitations of Alfred de Musset, who was an almost inevitable model for -any lyric youngster of the day; his more serious effort, a drama called -"Le Vengeur," good enough to burn for warmth in a draughty garret, is -not vouchsafed to us in quotation by Rodolphe's creator. Marcel was -obviously not a very gifted painter, in spite of his famous _Passage de -la Mer Rouge_, which was sent up in a different guise to each Salon and -inevitably rejected, and when this great work was sold to become a -shop-sign the artist's pride was not in the least revolted. Schaunard -never gives any signs of musical inspiration till at the close he -publishes a successful album of songs, and Colline, polyglot philosopher -as he is dubbed, abandoned his career before anything tangible had been -achieved to make an advantageous marriage and give musical evenings. It -would, of course, be pedantic to insist upon these considerations in the -case of a book of short stories which aims chiefly at amusing, but it is -impossible not to be struck in reading the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -by the absence from the conversation of the characters of any indication -of their artistic ideals. Save when Schaunard tells the sugar-merchant -that he was a pupil of Horace Vernet, murmuring to himself, "Horreur, je -renie mes dieux," and Marcel makes a scornful allusion to the "école de -bon sens," the only proof that they are true artists lies in their -creator's own assertion, of which he is not entirely mindful in the -_dénouement_. The worst sinner of all is Colline, for this mine of -knowledge, throughout the book, is made chiefly remarkable for the -composition of dreadful puns. This may be partly due to that want of "a -little more art and a little more poetry" of which Janin accused Murger, -but the fault was not only personal. The second _cénacle_ and the -brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné were, without doubt, just as -commonplace in their ordinary conversation, but what lifted them off the -ground was the enthusiasm of a hotly waged artistic struggle, which by -Murger's day had died down. His four heroes are Romantics in general, -but in no sense champions of any cause. - -Another unmistakable fact about Rodolphe and his friends is that they -were inconspicuous. True, they made the Café Momus unbearable to its -more peaceful customers, and were not unknown at the Chaumière, but the -Café Momus was in a back street, and the Chaumière was certainly not the -Bal de l'Opéra. They were miles away from the _viveurs_ upon the -boulevard, and their connexion with the prominent writers and artists of -the day was extremely remote. They made no public appearance, they were -not a force to be reckoned with. They kept up the form of defying -convention, but it was now no more than a convenient form for the -impecunious. Art and the _bourgeoisie_ were beginning to play into one -another's hands; the former had gained its liberty to a great degree, -while the latter by the gilded pill of commercial success had purged -artistic demonstration of its crudities. The time when eccentricity was -a symbol had passed; now it was only a skin to be sloughed, as Marcel -saw when in a very sensible lecture delivered to Rodolphe he said: - - "Poetry does not exist only in a disordered life, in improvised - happiness, in love affairs that only last as long as a candle, in - more or less eccentric rebellions against the prejudices which will - for ever be the sovereigns of the world: a dynasty is more easily - overturned than a custom, even a ridiculous one. To have talent it - is not sufficient to put on a summer overcoat in May; one can be a - true poet or artist and yet keep one's feet warm and have one's - three meals a day." - -Their Bohemia, in fact, was a kind of undergraduate existence, in which -all sorts of disorder and youthful folly might be excused on the plea -that youth must be served, but which could in no sense be regarded as a -part of civic life, much less as the best part, the most truly -disinterested and artistic. This is a significant change of attitude -from the days of _la Bohème galante_, which was one of the centres of -Paris. That, indeed, was transitory and presupposed youth, but it was -not obscure and its inhabitants had no misgivings. It was not they who -gave it up as the writer of Ecclesiastes put away childish things, for -they gloried in it all their days as the best part of their life; it was -that the world claimed them for its business in spite of themselves. In -their disinterested love of art they had made themselves valuable, and -when the command went forth "Come and be paid" they were forced to go. -To guard against any accusation of misunderstanding Murger, it may be -admitted that he calls his heroes only a small section of Bohemia--they -moved, to use his phrase, in the _troisièmes dessous_ of literature and -art--but there is no indication that Murger conceived a Bohemia which -had its part in any higher sphere. When Rodolphe gets a lucky present of -five hundred francs the determination he avows is not to suffuse his -little corner of Bohemia with a more worthy splendour, but to become, -like every other successful man, a _bourgeois_. "These are my projects," -he cries to an astonished Marcel. "Sheltered from the material -embarrassments of life, I am going to work seriously; I shall finish my -great work, and gain a settled place in public opinion. To begin with, I -renounce Bohemia, I shall dress like everybody else, I shall have a -black coat, and I shall frequent drawing-rooms." Such a speech would -have fallen like a thunderbolt in Camille Rogier's Pompadour _salon_, -and its author considered charitably to be in the first stages of -lunacy. Marcel, however, falls in at once with the ambitious scheme, and -they are only saved by their Bohemianism being stronger than their -resolution. Both in the stories and the preface to the "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--where Murger speaks with a picturesque seriousness--there is -no sign of that former joy in Bohemian life as the life which was alone -worth living by poets and artists. Throughout he regards it as a -necessity conditioned by the artistic impulse combined with poverty, to -be borne with the courage and gaiety of youth, to be regretted "perhaps" -from the vantage-point of subsequent prosperity. The true Bohemia--as -distinct from the Bohemia of mere idealists, incapables, and -amateurs--he regards as a narrow, stony path leading up the sides of an -arduous mountain, beset by the chasms of doubt and misery, but making -for a possible goal, the goal of a sufficient income. Divested of all -its _agréments_--resourcefulness, humour, courage, extravagance, which -are properly attributes of youth, the real illuminant--Murger's Bohemia -is laid bare as a merely economic state. The true Bohemians, he says, -are known upon the literary and artistic market-place, where their wares -are saleable, but at moderate prices; "their existence each day is a -work of genius"--"preceded by a pack of ruses, poaching in all the -industries connected with the arts, they hunt from morn till eve that -ferocious animal which is called the five-franc piece." To Murger, who -wrote of what he knew, the man who had the means to live a stable -existence, howsoever retired, was a fool if he remained in Bohemia: to -the inhabitants of _la Bohème galante_ it was the not being entirely -destitute which made their life peculiarly worth living. If Colline ever -speculated with any profundity he may have seen that his friends and he -lived really in a prison of which poverty, prodigality, and idleness -were warders. The Bohemia of Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Houssaye had -all the glory of a voluntary protest, a passionate assertion of liberty, -a revivifying of life in accordance with new artistic ideas. - -The difference is not simply one of degree. The brotherhood of the -Impasse du Doyenné were less destitute and more talented than Rodolphe -and his friends, but that is not a point that at this moment requires -stress. The important fact is that in a few years Bohemia had undergone -a great change; that, whereas a few years after 1830 young men with a -little money and some talent deliberately chose to make their life more -picturesque than that of ordinary citizens and to escape from the -suffocating atmosphere of commerce and officialdom, a few years after -1840 the ideal of struggling artists was to become as soon as possible -successful merchants and to escape from the possibility of that -picturesqueness which they welcomed as an alleviation of a state of -transitory discomfort. It would be quite beside the mark to regard -Bohemia as guilty in this of self-degradation; so far, indeed, as the -change was conscious, the majority of mankind must logically find it -praiseworthy, for all human effort is judged by its tendency to -well-being. The change, however, was none of Bohemia's doing, but was -due mainly to the fact that art was beginning, in the modern sense, to -pay. The beginnings were small, but they were quite evident, especially -in the increased profits from journalism and illustration. The old -Bohemia of the golden age rested on the supposition that the artist -worked primarily to please himself, and that money, source of enjoyment -as it was, remained a secondary consideration. The supposition, in the -first forward rush of commercial prosperity, was bound to become -untenable. Writers and artists of obvious talent were too valuable -commercial assets to be left to their careless selves; they had to be -tempted into the cage--an easy task, for, if money be regarded as a -means of more enjoyment, why should a Bohemian resist it? It was -unimportant if individuals held out, or were too uncompromising to suit -the market; the fact remained that there _was_ a market and a list of -quotations, and this fact was the disruption of Bohemia. Whereas it had -been a true fraternity in which art was all-important and individual -celebrity a thing of so little moment that there was complete equality -of intercourse, it now included the last two sections of a trisected -world of artists--the well-paid, the ill-paid, and the not paid at -all--and where money intervenes all equality ceases. The majority of the -well-paid were kept too busy even to see they had lost the old freedom; -they were tempted to live as other people in decent rooms and decent -coats, and as their vanity kept them from complaining, the ill-paid and -the not paid at all naturally envied their state, striving and jostling -for an equally happy captivity, or at least intending to do so as soon -as their irrepressible blood took a staider course through their veins. -The charm of Murger's merry crew is that their blood was too strong for -their business instincts; the Bohemian spirit snatched them along in -spite of Mammon, for Mammon, incomplete as his hold has always been over -youth, was in those days but just learning his strength. Where youth -and art combine the Bohemian spirit is always there; only the -possibilities of Bohemia have in the course of time been crowded out. -But in Murger's Paris Bohemia, shorn of earthly glory as it was, without -lot in the brilliance of the boulevard, cut off from the more thriving -traders in the artistic market-place, was still a possibility because -the Bohemian tradition was still fairly strong, and because Paris was -still a small city, its life little disturbed by a floating population -of aliens and its interests completely self-centred. - -The Bohemia described by Murger certainly corresponded in one respect -with the general conception of Bohemianism to-day in that it was devoid -of any material splendour. Neither Rodolphe nor Marcel indicates any -desire for the old furniture, damasks, and other decorations which so -glittered in the eyes of the early Romantics, but at any rate such -things would have been beyond the capacity of their purses. They were -unequivocally poor. When Rodolphe was in funds he could afford a hundred -francs a year for a garret in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; when -Providence was less kind he lived "in the Avenue de Saint-Cloud, on the -fifth branch of the third tree on the left as you leave the Bois de -Boulogne." As for entertainments, they came a long way behind the -costume ball of the Impasse du Doyenné. At Rodolphe's Wednesdays in the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, it was said, one could only sit down morally -and was forced to drink badly filtered water in eclectic earthenware. -Even the grand _soirée_ given by Rodolphe and Marcel, which began with a -literary and musical entertainment and ended with a dance prolonged till -sunrise, only cost the hosts fifteen francs--miraculously acquired at -the last moment--in addition to a set of chairs which fed the stove from -midnight onwards, though, as these belonged to a neighbour, they were -probably not paid for. Their wardrobes were not conspicuous for any -particularly Romantic or medieval effect, but simply, except in times of -exceptional windfalls, for extreme dilapidation. Schaunard's chief -garment was an overcoat worn to a state of utter baldness; Colline's -ulster, crammed with books and papers, had the surface of a file; -Marcel's coat was called "Mathusalem," but he must have acquired it -subsequent to the sugar-merchant's momentous visit, for at that time, -after an hour's search to discover a costume fit to dine out in, the net -results were a pair of plaid trousers, a grey hat, a red tie, a (once) -white glove and a black glove. To dine sufficiently at a small -restaurant was for them no ordinary luxury, and as for entering the -_Rocher de Caucale_, they might as well have aspired to membership of -the Jockey Club. Why, Schaunard had never seen a lobster till the old -Jew gave them all a feast after buying Marcel's _Passage de la Mer -Rouge_. Some days they dispensed with dining altogether, on others the -staple dish was pickled herrings; so it is hardly surprising that on the -proceeds of Marcel's picture they remained at table for five days, the -room filled with a Pantagruelic atmosphere and a whole bed of -oyster-shells covering the floor. It was not that they took up any -quixotic attitude of art for art's sake, like the society called _Les -Buveurs d'Eau_, whom Murger describes in one of his stories and whose -principle was not to make the slightest concession to necessity. They -were imperfect journeymen, indolent, careless, too easily distracted, -but they were among those who were ill-paid rather than those who never -tried to be paid. Rodolphe edited a small fashion paper, _L'Écharpe -d'Iris_; Marcel painted ruined manors for a Jew dealer and portraits of -the lowliest possessor of a few spare francs; Colline gave lessons in -the same range of subjects as Pico di Mirandola professed to discuss; -and Schaunard, besides exhibiting a special ability as a borrower, put -music to bad poetry for hard-hearted music-publishers. - -In comparing this Bohemia with that of Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, it -is easy to see the justification of Lepelletier's epithet "carottière." -The graceful adjuncts and by no means contemptible achievements of a -former day had vanished as completely as its enthusiasms. The presence -of Roger de Beauvoir and Nestor Roqueplan in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne is as difficult to imagine as the composition of -"Mademoiselle de Maupin." Yet Rodolphe and his friends were at least as -well off in one respect, that is, in their affairs of the heart, if, -indeed, they had not some advantage. The divinities of the Impasse du -Doyenné, Cydalise excepted, seem to have had their home in the _corps de -ballet_, a body not notable for the tenderness or constancy of their -attachments. Murger, who, like his Rodolphe, was an amorous -sentimentalist, gave some poetic value, if not as much as he intended, -to the figures of Mimi and Musette, the idols of Rodolphe and Marcel, -who play such a prominent part in the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," that -it would be an affectation not to speak of them, although an Englishman -must always do so with some reserve. In spite of all that may be said -against them--indeed, _is_ said by their very creator--there is a charm -about Mimi and Musette which must always hold the reader of these -stories, a charm which includes Francine, who died holding the muff -bought for her by her lover, and the vulgar Phémie Teinturière, who -shared the lot of a no more refined Schaunard. Without sympathizing, at -least temporarily, with all the blend of mystery and frankness which a -Frenchman breathes into the word "amour," it is useless to read French -literature. To him love is the highest emotional value--emotion being in -its turn the highest value in life--so that a union, whether it be -celebrated in the Madeleine or in the _mairie_ of the notorious -thirteenth _arrondissement_, is equally sacred and equally interesting. -We in England look at love differently and, as we naturally think, -better, but we are not hindered, nevertheless, from abandoning our view -occasionally. We do so implicitly when we shed tears over "La Dame aux -Camélias," over "Madame Butterfly," and over Mimi herself in Puccini's -"La Bohème." To be honest, then, we must accept Murger's view, if we -enjoy his book, as there is very little doubt that we do. We applaud -Musette when she surreptitiously waters the flowers whose duration is to -measure that of her love for Marcel; we forgive her fickleness because -she follows her fancy without calculation, even though on leaving the -rich young nobleman to visit Marcel she takes six days on the road; we -warm to Mimi because Rodolphe really loved her and she him, though his -jealousy and her love of luxury made their days a burden and their -rupture certain; and if we join heartily in Marcel's ironical tirade -against Mimi the fine lady, we cannot restrain our sadness at Mimi -returning to her old love to die. The life of the Impasse du Doyenné was -so joyous, strong, and full that its _amours passagers_ can be taken for -granted, happy fantasies without regrets; but Murger's Bohemia, with its -frequent moments of despondency and hardship, was forced to rely upon -its heart to supply that relieving colour which its surroundings could -not give. Mimi and Musette, Phémie and Francine, even the little -_giletière_ who corrected Colline's proofs and never appeared, meant so -much more than Lorry or Victorine. So long as their attachment lasted -they made a home out of the barest garret, doing for their men those -thousand little things which men are too lazy or preoccupied to do for -themselves. Besides, they opened a field for the exercise of -unselfishness--a valuable service in itself. In this connexion I need -only cite one delightful little story, to which I have already referred, -entitled "La Toilette des Grâces," an idyll which no afterthought can -spoil. It tells how Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard, having earned a -little money by making their respective arts serve the humblest of -commercial purposes, decided to surprise their mistresses by giving them -new dresses. One fine morning Mimi, Musette, and Phémie were awakened by -the entry of a procession headed by Schaunard, in a new coat of golden -nankeen, playing a horn, and close behind him a shopman bringing -samples. They nearly went mad with joy. Mimi jumped like a young kid, -waving a pretty scarf; Musette, with each hand in a little green boot, -threw her arms round Marcel's neck and clapped the boots like cymbals; -as for Phémie, she could only sob "Ah, mon Alexandre, mon Alexandre!" -The choice was made, the bills discharged, and it was announced to the -dames that they must have their new dresses ready for a day in the -country on the morrow. That was a trifle; for sixteen hours they cut and -stitched, and when next day the Angelus sounded from the neighbouring -church they were already taking their last look into the looking-glass. -Only Phémie had a little sorrow. "I like the green grass and the little -birds," she said, "but one meets nobody in the country. Suppose we made -our excursion on the boulevard." But they went to Fontenay-aux-Roses -instead, and when they returned late at night there were only six francs -left. "What shall we do with it?" asked Marcel. "Invest it in the -funds," said Schaunard. - -There are, doubtless, artistic _coteries_ to-day in whose existence -parallels may be found to the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but -reproduction is impossible, for Murger's Bohemia, no less than _la -Bohème galante_, was conditioned by its time. The conditions include a -Paris of provincial narrowness, greater simplicity together with less -conspicuous uniformity in ordinary life, less elaborate amusements, no -Montmartre _cafés_, no swamping proletariat beside whose _moeurs -d'Apaches_ the eccentricities of Bohemia seem mild and unimportant, a -tiny fraction of the present opportunities for advertisement and -publicity, and a lower standard, perhaps, of general education. To these -one other condition may be added--the existence of Musette and Mimi, who -were the last of the _grisettes_. Murger himself, in a passage which I -cannot do better than quote in the original, points out clearly their -transitoriness: - - "Ces jolies filles moitié abeilles, moitié cigales, qui - travaillaient en chantant toute la semaine, ne demandaient à - Dieu qu'un peu de soleil le dimanche, faisaient vulgairement - l'amour avec le coeur, et se jetaient quelquefois par la fenêtre. - Race disparue maintenant, grâce à la génération actuelle des jeunes - gens: génération corrompue et corruptrice, mais par-dessus tout - vaniteuse, sotte et brutale. Pour le plaisir de faire de méchants - paradoxes, ils ont raillé ces pauvres filles à propos de leurs - mains mutilées par les saintes cicatrices du travail, et elles - n'ont bientôt plus gagné assez pour s'acheter de la pâte d'amandes. - Peu à peu ils sont parvenus à leur inoculer leur vanité et leur - sottise, et c'est alors que la grisette a disparu. C'est alors que - naquit la lorette." - -[Illustration: A Grisette] - -The _grisette_ made love for love: like a wild rose, she had to be -plucked, and when men came to prefer buying bouquets in shops, she -naturally died away. Money already tainted Bohemia, even here, in its -heart. The opportunity of luxury tempted both Mimi and Musette to be -unfaithful, but since caprice was ever stronger with them than -self-interest they were not undeserving to be called the last of the -_grisettes_. They were necessary adjuncts to Bohemia, and satisfactory -adjuncts, in spite of their caprices, for the last thing which Bohemian -man required was the Bohemian or--to use an obsolete phrase--the -"emancipated" woman. Too ignorant to meet their lovers, even had they -wished, upon their own ground, they held their place by keeping to their -natural advantage, the woman's desire to please. So they passed through -life, making the feast more festive and the fast less desolate, filling -a void and mending a sorrow as light-heartedly as they darned a sock or -patched a ragged coat. Mimi and Musette were the true counterparts of -Rodolphe and Marcel, and it is with regret that we see them disappear -into an epilogue of prosperity and propriety. Yet it was all they could -do, for what I have called the Bohemia of common mortality became -dangerous long before the age of thirty years. Rodolphe could not have -written in middle age to Marcel as Bouchardy did to Théophile Gautier; -only hypocritically could he have said "nous étions ivres du beau." -Murger escapes any false effect of that kind in his conclusion: - - "'We are done for, old fellow,' says Marcel, 'we are dead and - buried. Youth only comes once! Where are you dining to-night?' - - "'If you like,' answered Rodolphe, 'we will go and dine for twelve - sous at our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where the plates are - of village earthenware, and where we were always so hungry when we - had finished eating.' - - "'Good heavens, no. I don't mind looking back at the past, but it - shall be across a bottle of decent wine and seated in a good - arm-chair. It is no use, I'm corrupted. I only care now for what is - good!'" - - - - -X - -MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS - -_Si on excepte quelques natures fortement trempées qui se tirèrent des -impasses de la Bohème, le reste fut condamné à vivre difficilement en -face d'un idéal borné et sans avenir. Ni études, ni loisirs, ni aisances -ne permettaient à ces aspirants à l'art de s'élever et de conquérir un -nom._ - - CHAMPFLEURY: - -"Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse" - - -In order to catch at a glance the result of a lapse of years I lingered -in the last chapter over Rodolphe, Mimi, and their friends, figures -drawn from the moving scene of contemporary life, yet snatched from the -changes of time as permanently as those on Keats's Grecian urn. The -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" show, as it seems to me, more clearly than -any other kind of record, the decadence of Bohemia, regarding the degree -of its approach to an ideal of complete artistic existence, since the -great days that followed 1830. This might, indeed, be a warrant for not -returning to more documentary facts at all, but there are always those -to be considered who view Fiction as a sprite so far divorced from -actuality that they are unable to place any trust in her indications. -The teller of stories, in their apprehension, is always on the look-out -for a good effect, to which end he will minimize the essential and -magnify the unessential, distorting sober fact at the call of his -individual imagination. They are the people who read novels, as they -say, for relaxation, while finding wisdom alone in biographies and -memoirs bristling with dates and packed with quotations. The question, -"What, after all, is sober fact?" is sufficient to put them into -confusion, but to propound that ancient problem would be here beside the -mark, for in a book that honestly professes to be as sober in fact as -any it would be unbecoming unduly to press the point on behalf of -fiction. The warrant, therefore, will be allowed to pass, and we return -to those tales which men have told about themselves and their friends -under the names which they bore at baptism, duly signed and dated. Such -information as they give concerning the later years of Bohemia is, at -best, fragmentary, but the fragments have some appearance of falling -together in the light of Murger's picture. A more diligent research -might have produced a more detailed record, but it may be questioned -whether the total effect would have been any clearer. There were scores -of obscure persons in Bohemia, but their daily uprising and lying-down -were not so very widely different. At least this may be asserted, that -after a certain number of facts it is safer to use the imagination for -the rest. - -Murger and his friends were the legitimate successors of _la Bohème -galante_, and in view of their fictitious counterparts already -introduced the main interest of this chapter lies with them. Yet before -they appear there are some byways of Bohemia that call for inspection as -an illustration and a contrast. Bohemia was, of course, always bordered -on one side by the student life of the Quartier Latin, the freedom and -licence of which were both different and older in origin, going back to -the days of the schoolmen, when indigent scholars of all nations filled -the great university cities of Europe, forming in each a picturesque but -turbulent community. Even in most prosaic days the students of Paris -have kept up the medieval tradition, but particular manifestations would -naturally be influenced by the manners of the day. It is, therefore, not -surprising that the student quarter was profoundly affected by the -Romantic movement, and reflected its battles and its extravagances with -a hilarious distortion. The motley world of the Quartier Latin and those -who, though no longer students, remained attached to it had their "local -colour," their Gothic enthusiasms, and their orgies. They had dining -clubs with fantastic names, such as "Les 45 jolis cochons," which -indulged in something very like bump-suppers, with loud singing in the -streets, window-breaking, and practical joking to follow. The campaign -of "Hernani" was imitated in the Salle Chanteraine--a theatre for -amateurs--where there was nightly a _fracas_ with fisticuffs between -the various factions. Elaborate farces were organized to mystify the -good people of Paris, of which Maxime du Camp gives a good example in -his "Souvenirs Littéraires." It was called "La grande chevauchée de la -côtelette aux cornichons." Thirty young men, dressed in velvet -waistcoats and nankeen jackets, with long hair and beards, headed by a -certain young teacher of history waving a stick, marched solemnly in -serried single file with a halting step, dangling their arms at the same -time, from the Place Pigalle over the Pont Royal, crying in unison, "Une -deux, une deux, le choléra, le choléra!" At the end of the Pont Royal -they turned round in a body and shouted, "Connaissez-vous le thermomètre -de l'ingénieur Chevalier?" Solemnly facing about again, they proceeded -as before to Sainte-Mandé, where they lunched off pork cutlets. - -The special home of the wildest jokers and most desperate caricatures of -the new spirit was a certain tumble-down barrack, No. 9 Rue Childebert, -a street on the south side of that beautiful old church -Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and now merged in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. -This house, familiarly called "La Childebert," was five or six stories -high and thoroughly decayed, for its owner, a Madame Legendre, refused -to carry out any repairs. She was justified in this attitude to some -extent by the fact that few of her tenants paid any rent. Indeed, -according to one witness, no man in his senses would have paid any rent -for a room upon the top floor from 1837 onwards. One student, however, -an ingenious fellow called Lepierre, who both lived on the top floor and -paid his rent, succeeded in forcing the stingy lady to repair the roof. -Having been drenched one night during a hard storm, he took his revenge -by removing a portion of his flooring, and hiring all the peripatetic -water-carriers that could be found to pour water down the hole. The -_concierge_ remonstrated, but in vain, and Madame Legendre was sent for -in hot haste. When she arrived in a cab she was gaily serenaded by the -inhabitants, and on proceeding to the flooded room she was horrified to -find Lepierre in the costume of Adam before the Fall, who claimed a -right, he said, to have a bath at his _own_ convenience. Madame Legendre -fled, but the roof was repaired. The gay desperadoes of La Childebert -were capable of carrying through any _charge_, howsoever lurid. One of -the most successful was known as "le nez de Bouginier." Bouginier was an -artist, the size of whose nose inspired his friend Fourreau with the -idea of an exaggerated caricature in which this feature was made -enormous. A stencil was cut and copied, and for many days Bouginier's -nose appeared on all the walls in Paris. It is even alleged that two -parties of students, about to travel in the East and wishing to meet on -the voyage, hit on the simple plan of following Bouginier's nose. The -party starting first took a stencil with them, so that the second -party, leaving a fortnight later, were able to track them to -Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, and Suez. In a certain medallion in the -Passage du Caire, just south of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, -Bouginier's nose is still immortalized. La Childebert was always "up to" -something, but a certain fancy-dress _conversazione_ completely -convulsed the neighbourhood. The schools of art and poetry dressed -according to their views, and by universal consent the Romantics, for -all they could do in pourpoints, doublets, and general local colour, -were easily beaten by the Classicists. Romulus and Remus with their wolf -and Hercules with the Nemean lion created a _furore_; so great was the -real consternation of the district at the apparition of these wild -beasts that the commissary of police had to intervene. The wolf and the -lion suffered themselves to be led with great docility to his office, -where they turned out to be a great Dane and a mastiff respectively, -painted and padded with diabolical cleverness. - -La Childebert was strongly represented in a revellers' club called "Les -Badouillards," that flourished between 1835 and 1838. In "Paris -Anecdote" Privat d'Anglemont, who is the chief authority on the -Childebertian doings, describes the qualifications of a perfect -Badouillard. He had to pass a regular test before entering the bacchic -brotherhood; he had to be strong and agile, a clever and ready boxer, -fencer, and wrestler, he must have proved his courage in several -encounters, shown a fine taste in choreographic fantasy at the -Chaumière and an ability to engage in a duel of slang with any chance -person, and have sworn eternal feud against the sleep and peace of mind -of all _bourgeois_. The initiation was a solemn and trying ceremony. It -began with a copious dinner, followed by a ceaseless absorption of -various liquors till the time came for going to the ball. Here the -candidate stayed all night, behaving as outrageously as possible. He -then adjourned without sleep to breakfast, and passed the rest of the -day in the _cafés_ of the Quartier Latin, drinking, playing billiards, -and flirting. At night the programme was repeated, and if by the third -night he had accepted every challenge, never fallen asleep, nor tumbled -under any table, he was allowed to seek his bed a perfect Badouillard. - -For all its light-hearted absurdities La Childebert was not Bohemia, for -its existence belonged rather to that of irresponsible students than of -artists. I only mention it by way of contrast, as I now mention again -Privat d'Anglemont, the author of "Paris Inconnu" and "Paris Anecdote," -legendary as a Bohemian, but of a very different type. These two curious -and valuable books are a complete study of the seamy side of Paris -during the latter part of Louis Philippe's reign. The life of the -porters in the Halles, the _chiffonniers_, and all the pliers of obscure -trades, with their customs, their dwellings, and their manners, is most -faithfully reproduced in them in a manner which could only have been -made possible by a complete identification of the author with the -subjects of his observation. Such, in fact, was the lifework of Privat -d'Anglemont, a Creole born in Guadeloupe. He became the legendary -_noctambule_ of Paris, realizing, as Charles Monselet says in his -preface to "Paris Anecdote," the popular idea of a Bohemian--that is, -simply an eccentric vagabond. In the sense of the word as used in this -book, he was not a Bohemian at all, for, though he wrote articles and -books upon his experiences, he was in no sense an artist, nor was he -striving to make his life conformable to artistic liberty. He was -animated simply by a gipsy passion for roaming, combined with a taste -for mystery and romancing. Faithful as his books were, he hardly ever -_spoke_ the truth: twenty times he told Théodore de Banville the history -of his life, and each time it was different. Still, he merits a word -here on account of his reputation as the complete Bohemian, a reputation -increased by his being an easy peg on which to hang any fantastic story -that came into a journalist's brain. Théodore de Banville, who first met -him in 1841 and, according to Monselet, idealized him absurdly, gives -some curious recollections of him in "Mes Souvenirs." He was a handsome -man, dark, tall, and slender, rather resembling the elder Dumas. He -passed most of his life wandering about the low quarters of Paris in -complete poverty, often begging a meal from one of the _cabaretiers_ of -the Halles, who all loved him. Yet, de Banville avers, he was not -really unprovided for, since at irregular intervals a relative used to -send him about £200 from America in gold pieces. But Privat d'Anglemont -preferred to live without money, so that he never hesitated in getting -rid of this burden as soon as possible by standing a dinner to all the -poor and hungry women he could find in the tiny inn called the "Boeuf -Enragé," at the bottom of the Rue de la Harpe. Like Gérard de Nerval, he -would set out on a voyage at a moment's notice and without a moment's -preparation, and such was his charm that he had affectionate friends in -the lower quarters of many a French town. Once during his nightly -wanderings he was stopped by some robbers. "But I'm Privat," he said, -roaring with laughter. At which the robbers joined in the laugh, and -invited him to supper. By a ruined hut they sat down to drink the best -champagne in the light of the stars, to smoke, and to tell stories. -Privat delighted his hosts, who invited him to meet them again; but he -shook his head, saying, "N'engageons pas l'avenir." - -Privat d'Anglemont, who eventually died of consumption, did little more -than carry on the traditions of the "noctambules," less mischievously -than their founder, Rétif de la Bretonne, less modestly and artistically -than Gérard de Nerval, but so much more seriously than either of his -predecessors that he left little scope for a new departure to his own -successor, Alfred Delvau. He was not, in the truest sense, a Bohemian, -though he led an existence ever bordering on the confines of Bohemia. -The same may be said, in a more transitory sense, of Flaubert, the great -renovator and refiner of Romanticism. Most of his life was spent in the -country, but there was a short period when he came to study law in -Paris, which, if it were not mentioned, might justify a challenge from -readers familiar with "L'Education Sentimentale" or Maxime du Camp's -"Souvenirs Littéraires." So far as the first of these books is -concerned, little time need here be spent in finding relevant points of -comparison. The last thing which Flaubert desired to portray in that -depressing picture was an existence in any sense artistic. His hero is a -provincial youth who, during his student days in Paris, drifts aimlessly -and indolently through a variety of second-rate experiences in company -with second-rate friends. Flaubert's own experiences are, no doubt, -frequently worked into the material, but "L'Education Sentimentale" is -nothing so cheap as autobiography served in a thin sauce of fiction. It -is a novel in which the author has with the highest exercise of -penetrative imagination treated what Mr. Henry James would call the -"germ"--the dreary wastefulness, that is, of such a life in case of such -a young man as Frédéric Moreau, who with Madame Bovary is Flaubert's -contribution to the pathology of _le mal romantique_. Flaubert himself, -with all his excitability and extravagance, was of a much stronger -stamp; the strength of his artistic conviction saved him from all such -flabbiness. He came to Paris to study law, but, having failed to pass -his examination, returned to his home in 1843. If he had stayed he might -easily have become one of the leading figures, certainly a powerful -influence, in that Bohemia which Murger knew. Maxime du Camp, who made -his acquaintance early in 1843, shows him as a young man living always -at a high pitch with the flamboyant vitality that would have done no -dishonour to the Impasse du Doyenné, so far was he from being the victim -of Frédéric's weak-kneed desolation. He passed his days in an -alternation of prodigality and poverty, spending fifty francs on his -dinner one day and feeding on a crust and a slab of chocolate the next. -He lived in a kind of intellectual tornado, both frantic and noisy. He -went into ecstasies over mediocre works in which he perceived beauties -hidden from the rest of the world, but which he loved to point out -stridently to his friends, intoning the prose, roaring the verse at the -top of his voice, repeating incessantly any word which took his -passionate fancy, and filling all the neighbourhood with his din. He -would wake up a friend without compunction at three in the morning to -show him a moonlight effect on the Seine; one moment he would be -inventing sauces to make brill appetizing, and the next he would be -plotting to smack Gustave Planche's face for having spoken slightingly -of Victor Hugo. The _cénacle_ composed of Louis de Cormenin, Le -Poitevin, Du Camp, and himself often dined at Dagneaux's, one of the -better restaurants of the Quartier Latin, and stayed talking ceaselessly -till the doors were closed. Their ambitions were as wild as their -conversation; Flaubert and Du Camp seriously determined to learn -everything between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to produce great -works till forty, and then to retire into the country. Except for the -fact that, according to his friend, Flaubert disdained the women whom -his beauty attracted, this was a promising beginning for Bohemia. As the -world knows, fate decreed otherwise, and he retired to develop in that -close intellectual atmosphere with Louis Bouilhet and Du Camp, of which -the latter says: "Living as we did, in solitude, we exchanged only the -same set of ideas apart from all criticism, so that things in general -lost their right proportion in our minds." - -Flaubert's life in the Rue de l'Est was, at best, only a tentative -pathway in Bohemia, like one of those tracks in a suburb that give hope -of leading somewhere, but change their mind _en route_. It is too small -a digression to be distracting, and I entered upon it, among other -reasons, because its little adventure coincides in date with those -movements in the central market-place yet to be touched on. One more -alley, however, must be taken on the way, for it is, indeed, only just -off the market-place. The name upon its wall is that of Charles -Baudelaire, a well-known figure whose exact relation to Bohemia is, -nevertheless, not so easy to determine. He began very much in the manner -of Flaubert, coming as a student to the Quartier Latin and residing at a -not very strictly kept _pension_ near the Panthéon between 1839 and -1841, his eighteenth and his twentieth years. I need not repeat the -distinction made between student life--_das Burschenleben_--and -out-and-out Bohemianism. Baudelaire filled his days to their fullest -extent, mixing together indiscriminately the enjoyments of student, -dandy, and _viveur_, so far as his means allowed. It was only at the end -of this time that his determination to take up literature scandalized -his stepfather and caused his enforced sea voyage. When he returned in -1842 he had come of age and possessed a capital of 75,000 francs. He set -about spending this money with a gusto and in a manner not unworthy of -the golden age of Bohemia. He had various lodgings till he settled for -two years in a beautiful apartment in the old Hôtel Pimodan on the Île -St.-Louis, where his comrade was the painter Boissard, a good artist -who, as Gautier said, exhausted himself in enthusiasms, and in whose -wonderful Louis XIV salon the society of _hachischiens_ met. Had -Baudelaire been a true Bohemian at heart he might have instituted a -second _Bohème galante_, but he was wanting in that simplicity and -goodfellowship which are signal qualities in the Bohemian character. He -wished to make his life, like his art, a study in exquisite intensity, -so that in the days of his splendour his mode of living was rather that -of a "dandy" than anything else. He dressed with immense care, but in a -bygone fashion; he pursued every kind of sensation, frequented every -kind of society, and became the leader of a set who carefully cultivated -eccentricity for its own sake, an eccentricity too _posé_ to serve as a -type of Bohemian manners. To make himself a subject of astonishment was -his chief amusement, to which end his devices--such as entering a -restaurant with a friend and feigning to begin a story with the loud -exordium: "After I had murdered my poor father----"--were innumerable. -So much may be said with a certain pity or amusement, but it must also -be admitted that a certain refinement, both social and intellectual, -kept him from associating himself entirely with the not -over-discriminating Bohemia of his generation. It is all the more fair -to say this because after 1844, when his stepfather got a guardian -appointed to take charge of his remaining capital and he was reduced to -eking out a reduced income by journalism, with all its attendant -disappointments and hardships, he chose with some discrimination the -extent to which he would throw in his lot with the Bohemian life for -which he had by that time every qualification. He became a friend of -Murger and many other complete Bohemians, and there is a story of his -asking the original of Schaunard to dine and giving him a piece of Brie -cheese and two bottles of claret, asking him to imagine that he was -enjoying the dessert after a good dinner. Yet his real intimates were a -band of young men, Théodore de Banville, Charles Monselet, Villiers de -l'Isle Adam, and Leconte de l'Isle, who chose to maintain a certain -amount of order in the midst of eccentricity and found boisterous -joviality less to their taste than the more delicate affectations of -wit. Here again I hold no brief for the complete Bohemians. They had -their compensating virtues, but it is hardly doubtful that Baudelaire -and his friends were the better educated and the more truly artistic set -of the two. This, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy of Bohemia's -decline, that its spiritual distinction faded with its material -well-being. At any rate, for a combination of reasons, laudable and the -reverse, Baudelaire's set was not Bohemia, and if, as I leave them, I -may insist particularly on one of the less laudable reasons, it is that -pose, which is another form of convention, must by the very conception -of Bohemia be excluded from its characteristics. Nadar hits the -difference when, in his curious little book on Baudelaire, which is -written in an idiom describable as a French version of that elliptical -quaintness associated with our own _Pink 'Un_, he writes: "Avec ces -épileptiques, combien loin du sans façon tout bonhomme, de la simplesse -à la bonne franquette de mon autre bande de Bohème, 'la bande de Murger' -et de notre 'Société des buveurs d'eau.' ..." - -We return, then, to the author of "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" at the -end of a rather circuitous route. In speaking of the Bohemia which he -immortalized I have called it, in distinction from certain modifications -or superficial resemblances, the central market-place, but no more need -be sought in that phrase than an effort to represent it by a handy image -as exhibiting the main civic qualities and manners implied in the -generic name. Compared with earlier days, a far less proud and bustling -burgherdom trod its rather muddy paving-stones, for it had suffered as -some agricultural centre when railways were beginning. Yet any pride of -succession which they may have had was legitimately theirs, for, if they -were less materially and intellectually endowed, if the peculiarly happy -circumstances of their civic foundation had passed to make their -ultimate disruption certain under the changed conditions of all that is -included in social development, they still preserved the Bohemian -character, with its simplicity, gaiety, humour, and courage. To labour -the point further is unnecessary, for if it is not already clear, the -fault is too remote to be here corrected. In the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème" all the daily comedy and tragedy of this Bohemia of common -mortality finds expression: the life there described so intimately and -humorously stands or falls by its artistic truth, to which no amount of -possible documentary corroboration adds an iota. Nevertheless, the -professed concession to a desire for ascertainable "facts" with which -this chapter opened must be made, at the risk of seeming to expose the -vanity of the researcher as the real object of indulgence. Since, in the -garrulous world of to-day, nobody can make the least incursion into the -public eye, much less produce a successful book or picture, without the -appearance of a crop of "personal notes," so Murger's picture may be -taken for granted, and what follows may appear in the light of "personal -notes," claiming no more connexion than a general relation to the -picture. - -Murger[28] was no son of a landed proprietor nor even sprung from a -middle-class family, as most Bohemians naturally were, for the whole -life of Bohemia presupposes a more or less literary education seldom -vouchsafed to the children of lower social order. His father was a -German tailor in the Rue des Trois Frères, who wished, not without -reason, that his son should succeed him in his trade. Murger's early -education was therefore confined to the rudiments, and his deficiencies -in that respect were a burden upon him all his life. The career of a -tailor, for all that, aroused his utmost aversion; through his two -friends, Emile and Pierre Bisson, who became clerks, he acquired a -violent taste for poetry, with the composition of which he judged the -shears incompatible. His father took the rebellion hardly, but got him a -place, since he liked pens and paper so much, as errand-boy to an -_avoué_, an occupation in which he continued to cultivate his poetic -inclinations. When seventeen years old, in 1839, through the interest of -M. de Jouy, a critic and member of the Academy, he was appointed -secretary to a Russian diplomat, M. de Tolstoi. His salary was only 40 -francs a month, out of which he had to pay a small _pension_ to his -father for board and lodging; still, he was happy. His duties were very -light, and his employer, who also had a literary turn, took a certain -amount of interest in him and gave him occasional presents of money. -During the next two years he made the acquaintance of that group of -friends on which he drew for his stories of Bohemia, and experienced two -love affairs. The first object of his affections was "la cousine -Angèle," the heroine of a chapter in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," in -which Rodolphe in his draughty garret, by dint of burning his great -tragedy in the stove, warms himself sufficiently to write the -commemorative poem for the tombstone of a defunct _bourgeois_, buying -with the proceeds a bunch of white violets for his disdainful cousin. -The second was a certain Marie, who eventually ran away with one of his -friends--a tragedy which he relates in "Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse." -By this time he had become a thoroughly developed Bohemian, intolerant -of all restraint. He left his father's home, and even for a time gave up -his post with M. de Tolstoi. - -It was then that Henry Murger's Bohemia was definitely formed, a society -described by one of them as "ce demi-quarteron de poètes à l'outrance, -mais absolument inédits, réunis dans un tas, sans vestes ni semelles, ne -doutant de rien, ni de leur lendemain, ni de leur génie, ni du génie de -leur voisin, ni de l'éditeur à venir, ni du succès, ni des belles dames, -ni de la fortune--de rien, si ce n'est de leur dîner du soir, trop -convaincus, d'ailleurs, quant à la question de leur déjeuner du matin." -Their names were the brothers Bisson, Lelioux, Noel, Nadar, Guilbert, -Vastine, the brothers Desbrosses, Cabot, Villain, Tabar, Chintreuil, -Pottier, Karol, Schann, and Vernet. They called themselves the "Société -des Buveurs d'Eau," but they were by no means so quixotic as Murger -draws that society in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was simply a -union for mutual help, the rules of which did not bar any commercial -occupation. The members lived as they pleased or as they could, and -water was only a compulsory beverage at the official monthly meetings, -when they all submitted their work to the criticism of their brethren. -Their ordinary occupations were various enough. Noel gave drawing -lessons; another was a judicial stenographer; Jacques Desbrosses, -nicknamed Christ--the original of "Jacques D----" in "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"--and Cabot drew designs for monumental masons; the other -Desbrosses, called Gothique, earned a little money by painting -door-signs for midwives; Schann, the original of Schaunard, was a -musician, and Wallon, Murger's Colline, who joined the society later, -eked out his barren philosophy by giving lessons; Chintreuil, afterwards -to become a well-known artist, was then a bookseller's assistant, with -Champfleury for his colleague; and Nadar, otherwise F. Tournachon, whom -Alphonse Karr describes as "a kind of giant with immense legs, long -arms, a long body with a shaggy head of red hair above it, and staring, -intelligent, flashing eyes," was the poet and journalist who became a -celebrated balloonist and an immensely successful photographer. His -caricature hangs in the section of the Musée Carnavalet devoted to early -aeronautics in Paris. - -We may take it from Murger that the shortcomings of fortune were borne -with humorous fortitude on the credit of her occasional smiles, but -there was no illusion about the privations. Nadar, Champfleury, and -Delvau all agree that a bitter wind blew upon them. It was not so bad, -in Nadar's opinion, so long as they lived more or less together, and -this they did for a short time in an old house by the Barrière d'Enfer, -which looked like a farm with a farmyard inhabited by hens. Champfleury -made their acquaintance at this time in a little dairy where they -sometimes took their meals. It was a strange society. Some wore blouses, -others Phrygian caps, while the brothers Desbrosses had large sky-blue -overcoats, turned back with pink satin and fastened by huge -mother-of-pearl buttons. These two brothers were the originators of the -colony at the Barrière d'Enfer, and its chiefs "surtout par leur -misère." They harboured some of the others, who found a resting-place -for the night in two hammocks slung in their small room. Murger was -among them, the art of painting being for the moment his preoccupation. -Fine days were spent lounging on the roof and contemplating the then -rural surroundings. Anybody arriving with five francs in his pocket -would have been regarded as a millionaire; indeed, they were happy -enough when they could afford a few fried potatoes for dinner. Yet they -would not have exchanged their hovel for the Garden of Eden, and they -fed upon their dreams with inexhaustible confidence. Privation was still -worse when the society broke up. One Bohemian lived a whole week on raw -potatoes brought by his poor mother from the country; another went three -days without food; another passed a winter shirtless in a calico blouse -and a lasting waistcoat; another, as a device to keep himself warm, used -to carry a log of wood up to his high garret, drop it over the -banisters, and run down to fetch it again; an older Bohemian who heard -of this manoeuvre exclaimed: "Spendthrift, why the log?" - -Henry Murger himself, who had abandoned painting and definitely adopted -the vocation of a sentimental poet, went to live with his friend -Lelioux, first in the Rue Montholon and then in that garret at £4 a year -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne where Rodolphe's friends "drank badly -filtered water out of eclectic earthenware" at his Wednesday receptions. -He had resumed his employment with M. de Tolstoi, but he was too -improvident to keep out of misery for many days together. More than once -he became so ill with purpura, an eruptive disease due in his case to -the abuse of coffee, that he had to go to the hospital. Some extracts -from his letters during these years will give an idea of his -destitution. On December 14, 1841, he writes: - - "Les Desbrosses passent la moitié de la journée à ne pas manger et - l'autre à crever de froid. Les chats se méfient d'eux, et, en fait - de chéminée, ils ne possèdent que leurs pipes--bien des fois sans - tabac." - -March 6, 1842: - - "Sans le Christ, qui m'a donné à dîner et à déjeuner quatre fois la - semaine, je ne sais pas ce que je serais devenu. Ce garçon n'a pas - volé son surnom." - -April 25, 1843: - - "Nous crevons de faim; nous sommes au bout du rouleau. Il faut - décidément se faire un trou quelque part ou se faire sauter la - cervelle." - -March 17, 1844: - - "De Charybde en Sylla, mon cher ami! La misère est plus horrible - que jamais chez moi et autour de moi. Ma place au _Commerce_ n'a - pas eu de suite; je suis de nouveau sur le pavé. C'est horrible! - Aussi le découragement m'a-t-il pris et tout à fait submergé. - Encore quelques jours de cette position et je me fais sauter la - cervelle ou je m'engage dans la marine.--Pardonne-moi ces plaintes! - C'est le cri de la _fin_." - -Like Colline, he punned even in his misery. - -Letters of this doleful nature do not throw a very gay light upon the -Bohemian market-place, where there was high competition for a small -custom and prices ruled low. They contain a truth which no consideration -of Bohemia can omit, but it was not the whole truth, as Murger himself -testifies in his stories. It was a life of good days as well as bad, -even in the leanest years, or "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" could never -have been written. Murger himself had already begun to hand some small -wares over his counter. Rodolphe, the poet, it will be remembered, did -not disdain to edit a small fashion paper called _L'Écharpe d'Iris_, in -which, to Colline's extravagant delight, he inserted the philosopher's -articles on metaphysics. This was a direct touch from life, for Bohemia -in more than one instance lent its pen to trade. There was a certain -Charles Vincent who edited two papers of the leather trade, _Le -Moniteur de la Cordonnerie_ and the _Halle aux Cuirs_. In his editorial -capacity he retained all the new pairs of boots and shoes sent in by -advertisers, and with these he often paid his contributors. Murger in -1843 edited _Le Moniteur de la Chapellerie_, the industrial fruits of -which were, no doubt, less profitable, but even a few hats and a few -francs a month were of considerable value in Bohemia. They were, of -course, nothing like the editorial profits of to-day. Receipts were -extremely precarious, when, even on a well-written literary paper like -_L'Artiste_, the application of a contributor for payment caused a -considerable rummaging in tills and pockets before twenty-five francs -could be found _dans la boutique_.[29] Yet small change was enough to -stand a Bohemian holiday, and Murger's gloomy letters must be discounted -by balancing them against Rodolphe's expedition to Versailles with -Mademoiselle Laure after he had ransacked Paris for the five francs -necessary to do that expedition in sufficient style. It would be absurd -to suppose that Murger, with Nadar, Schann, and a _grisette_ or two, did -not sometimes invade the Chaumière in a joyous band or wake from sleep -the serious inhabitants of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne. - -At the same time, howsoever the balance of pleasure and pain be struck, -it is clear that happy memories of this Bohemia could only remain to -those for whom it was only a necessary stage in life and not a -death-trap. This tendency to poetic melancholy and the painful slowness -with which he worked might have caused Henry Murger to sink for ever -like many of his friends. He was saved, in the first instance, by -Champfleury, who, when he was finally sold up in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne, took him to live in the Rue de Vaugirard and induced him to -abandon poetry for prose. Jules Husson-Fleury, who was born at Laon in -1821 and became a well-known writer under the name of Champfleury, a -great collector of prints and porcelain, on which he wrote some valuable -monographs, and finally the director of the Sèvres manufactory, passed -through Bohemia during the same years as Murger, and in his "Souvenirs -et Portraits de Jeunesse" records many lively experiences. He first came -to Paris as shop-boy and assistant in a bookseller's shop where, as I -have already said, the future painter Chintreuil was in the same -service. Champfleury lost his place for reading the books on his errands -instead of delivering them to the customers, but during this year 1839 -he saw something of Murger and the colony of the brothers Desbrosses. He -then left Paris for a year or two, and returned when Murger was living -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, though the acquaintance was not at -once renewed. It was approximately in 1845 that they went to live -together in the Rue de Vaugirard, after Champfleury had met Murger -again in the hospital. They did not by any means leave Bohemia; in fact, -there is reason to suppose that to some extent the character of Marcel -was drawn from Champfleury. They wrote a vaudeville together which was -never accepted, and attacked the difficult art of writing stories. -Murger was able to place some of his work in _L'Artiste_, the editor of -which was Arsène Houssaye, and in 1846 the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -began to come out in _Le Corsaire_. They were poorly enough paid at the -time, but their dramatisation by Barrière in 1849 proved a huge success, -and from that time onwards Murger settled down to more serious work and -a less disorderly life. - -But I am anticipating Champfleury's memories of the last days of -Bohemia. In his view, at any rate so far as Murger and he were -concerned, the indolence of Bohemia has been much exaggerated. "In -reality," he says, "work was the basis of our life." They had a joint -library, to which Murger supplied the poets and Champfleury the -prose-writers. The latter read voraciously to educate himself, but -Murger chiefly thumbed the pages of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset; he -took regular doses of Shakespeare in a French translation, traces of -which appear in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but he had little -knowledge of other classic authors. He worked with extraordinary -difficulty; a page of prose cost him a night's work and intense -intellectual labour, for "Murger n'était plein que de son coeur." -Champfleury, for all his friendship, was a shrewd critic when he -observed that his whole vision was introspective: "He swept the same -chimney so often that in the end the plaster came off and the bricks -fell down"; or again: "Besides his little library, his belongings -consisted of worn white gloves, a velvet mask, and a withered bouquet -hung on the walls. All Murger's work lies in his memories--some faded -flowers, a meeting at the Bal de l'Opéra, a heart-ache." - -Certain disorders of Bohemia are not excused by Champfleury, -particularly that of not paying debts. His friend Fauchéry, an engraver -who afterwards went to seek his fortune in Australia, induced him at -first to accept the Bohemian code, which was: - -1. Never to pay one's rent. - -2. To conduct one's removals by the window. - -3. To consider all bootmakers, tailors, hatters, and restaurant-keepers -as members of Mr. Credit's family. - -Some went so far as to maintain that after a clandestine removal through -the window no piece of furniture which had passed the gutter in the -middle of the street could be reclaimed by the proprietor. This less -creditable attitude of Bohemia, which is sufficiently prominent in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," was repudiated with some shame in after -years by many of Murger's friends. In the book Rodolphe pays his debts -when he settles down, and we have it on the authority of Delvau that -Schann (Schaunard), who eventually kept a respectable toy-shop, and the -original of Musette, who married a chemist, took in their later days a -more usual view of money matters. Champfleury confesses that he himself -was saved by an amiable girl, who for a time became the divinity of his -garret. Unlike Mimi and Musette, she had a horror of debt and -vagabondage and inspired him with a pleasure in his own humble hearth, -so that he gradually detached himself from his comrades, who were for -the most part so ill provided for in the matter of lodging that their -chief workroom was a _café_, where they arrived at nine in the morning, -to leave at midnight. They read the newspapers, played at dominoes or -_tric-trac_, and occasionally did a little work. Fauchéry, in -particular, caused considerable surprise among the regular customers by -bringing his whole engraving apparatus and solemnly setting to work. -Some respect certainly is due to the proprietors of these little -eating-houses who so gallantly put up with and gave credit to this noisy -and not very profitable _clientèle_, who were capable of perpetrating -all the outrages committed by Rodolphe and the rest in their constant -asylum, the Café Momus. - -Champfleury says little of the amiable goddess who rescued him from -vagabondage except that she left him, like Mimi, because she grew tired -of cheap muslin, but in another chapter he gives some account of two -other idols of Bohemia whom he calls Mademoiselle M. and Mademoiselle P. -Mademoiselle M. was dark and merry, a thorough coquette who laughed at -wounded hearts; Mademoiselle P. was fair and melancholy, always in tears -for the last lover who had left her. A generation of Bohemians were -their lovers, poets and painters especially. As the generation grew up -the divinities grew wiser, and Mademoiselle M. was the first to do a -little mental arithmetic. For her own friends who had a future the days -of idleness were over; there was no future for her either among the -stranded remainder or in a new generation. Accordingly she departed to -more profitable spheres. Mademoiselle P. stayed a little longer, still -loving her poets, and weeping _toutes les larmes de son corps_ to find -that she had a too formidable rival in the desire for fame which watched -at the door of her lovers' hearts, till finally she found a worthy man -who was no poet to love her and eventually to marry her. Mademoiselle -M., meanwhile, had made by her conquests quite a respectable capital, -with which one fine day she set sail for Algiers. Unhappily she left -Marseilles in a steamer which sank with all hands, so that she and her -gold came to rest at the bottom of the sea--a sad story from which -Champfleury in an unworthy moment makes some show of drawing a moral. -Neither of these young women can be identified with Murger's heroines. -Musette, as I have said, married a chemist; Phémie Teinturière, -Schaunard's choice, was according to Delvau, a not over-respectable -person resembling a heroine of Paul de Kock; as for Mimi, Delvau -asserts that Murger loved her while he wrote the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème," and that her life and wretched death are matters of fact. -However, that we may not be too lugubrious let me add that I have read -in the French equivalent of "Notes and Queries" a statement that she -cheerfully lived to keep a stall in the market. - -One more bead in this string of scattered "facts," and the hungerers for -documentary evidence must go away satisfied. The disorder of Bohemia -requires no emphasis, but it is curious to note that the persons in whom -its more orderly elements were incarnated were Champfleury himself and -the original of that odd figure, Carolus Barbemuche, the solemn young -tutor who in Murger's story glances so enviously at the _cénacle_ of -Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel in the Café Momus, who saves them from -disaster by paying for their reckless Christmas Eve supper, who demands -so humbly the privilege of being admitted to the clan, who serves so -long and expensive an apprenticeship and gives such a splendid festival -on his reception, even to the length of lending all his own presentable -clothes to his guests for the occasion. Carolus Barbemuche was drawn, -much to his disgust, from Charles Barbara, an obscure writer of -fantastic stories, who joined Murger's Bohemia after acting as tutor to -two boys. He had a face like a sphinx, rarely smiled, and seemed to be -afraid of the wild jokes of his friends. Unlike the rest, he lived -almost a hermit's life, receiving nobody in his garret, and retiring -there every night neither to read nor to write, but to think, a queer -occupation for a Bohemian. Of him Champfleury writes: - - "He and I represented order in a group doomed to disorder; we were - the _bourgeois_ of Bohemia, as much by our ambitions as our manner - of living. The details of one day of our life, which continued in - the same way for ten years, will show the succession of our studies - and our labours. Rising very early, dashing from my bed to my - table, I used to write till nine o'clock. An hour sufficed me for - breakfast and a walk to the library, where I worked till twelve; - there I used to meet Barbara, whom I took to the public lectures at - the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, or the Jardin des Plantes. Two - lectures, an hour each, exhausted our attention, and, resuming our - walk, we arrived at Schann's temple of music, exclusively - consecrated to quartets. Two hours of music every day, without - counting piano trios three times a week at another house, made us - able to read all the chamber music of the German masters.... - Barbara was the finest instrumentalist in our band; son and brother - of distinguished musicians, he had received in early youth - excellent violin lessons, the fruit of which was not lost later, - and he brought to the leading of a quartet a restrained emotion - which is to be found in some pages of his writings." - -It is an unexpectedly pretty glimpse into a part of Bohemia where Murger -was not at home. When the quartets took place in a little square of the -Quartier Latin, students and _grisettes_ came to listen before the open -window, and workpeople on every story put out their heads to watch for -the arrival of the musicians. Murger's disreputable Schaunard, with his -symphony on _L'influence du bleu dans la musique_, was always, I must -confess, my favourite; but to discover that he played the quartets of -Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn for two hours a day -with Barbemuche and Marcel--well, it was an intoxicating vision. -Schaunard, who had a passion for lobsters, the composer (in his fleshly -form of Schann) of a famous drinking song, as second violin in a -Beethoven quartet--oh pleasant, pleasant fellow, who truly deserved to -come into the comfortable harbour of a toy-shop! - -Marcel, so far as he was Champfleury, found a haven too, and lived till -1889. Colline retired to found a new religion in Switzerland, and -Rodolphe-Murger, though he lingered for some years in the band of -artists and writers who haunted the _brasserie_ where Courbet raised the -temple of realism, finally turned his back on dissipation and settled at -Marlotte, even now a charming village near Fontainebleau. His chief -recreation there was hunting, an occupation quite innocuous to the game, -if it be true that a certain hare survived his attentions for a whole -season, and when an unwary keeper shot it one misty afternoon, he -exclaimed with genuine compunction, "Tiens, c'est le lièvre de M. -Murger!" In 1861 he came to die in Paris of arteritis, and all the -literary world visited his bedside. He died two days after his admission -to the hospital, exclaiming, "Pas de musique! Pas de bruit! Pas de -Bohème!" Bohemia, indeed, had long been dead, and in his last moments he -may have recognized that it was well. There was no longer room for it in -a busier, a better-swept world. In its golden age Bohemia did no more -than share the imperfections of all human institutions. It had virtues, -a liberty, a pride, and an ideal of its own. Murger had seen the beauty -become a slattern, pretty no doubt beneath her smuts, gay in the midst -of her sorrows, but free by tolerance, not by protest, her pride almost -in the dust and her ideals in the possession of others. In the words -which Théodore Pelloquet spoke over his grave, Murger belonged to an -evil generation: - - "Il appartenait à une mauvaise génération, à une génération - vieillie avant l'heure, et, malgré sa vieillesse prématurée, sans - expérience, sans enthousiasme et sans colère, ayant de la vanité et - pas du tout d'orgueil, une vanité niaise, puérile, qui se manifeste - surtout par l'affectation d'une ironie mesquine, en face de tous - les enthousiasmes et de toutes les grandes causes; à une - génération, en un mot, qui laissa périr dans ses mains le - magnifique héritage que lui avaient légué les hommes de 1830." - - - - -XI - -AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA - - -The pageant of 1830 has passed, and our gaze has been directed to its -Bohemian ingredients with the purpose of noting the particular marks and -qualities which distinguished Bohemia, and how their particular -manifestations were conditioned and varied by the progress of the years. -Looking out of the window of the present, we have been unable at any -moment to call a halt, lest we should lose a comprehensive view of the -main development. Now that this view has been gained it will do no harm -to send the procession once more before the mind's eye, that we may fix -at leisure any less important details which may seem in themselves -attractive. One of the most happy qualities of the Bohemian nature is -its capacity for amusing itself. Real boredom and lackadaisical idleness -do not come into the list of its shortcomings. The passionate Romantics, -indeed, fashionably suffered from "spleen" and "ennui," they proclaimed -a "coeur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie," but the Bohemian, -so far as he indulged in these peculiarities, was amusing himself. To -him "spleen" and "ennui" were part of the game which he embraced with -enthusiasm and in which he desired to excel; yet they were parts to -which, as a general rule, he did not pay too much attention, preferring -the more positive and assertive sides of Romanticism. Neither Gautier -nor Gérard de Nerval nor Rodolphe nor Schaunard presents himself to the -imagination as suffering from boredom. An unfailing capacity for amusing -oneself and finding amusement in one's fellow-men is an essential -Bohemian _trait_. The preceding chapters have not been wholly devoid of -indications as to the way in which these talents were exercised by the -Bohemian clans, but it was necessary to insist rather on the diversions -which characterized the _particular_ spirit of each brotherhood than on -the general opportunities which they all enjoyed with slight variation. -The field is now open without restriction, and it will not be amiss to -take a glimpse here and there at the Bohemian enjoying his leisure, if -only to add a few vivid touches that will enliven the background of the -picture. The work of Bohemia can always be taken for granted; artistic -endeavour, whether actively or indolently pursued, varies but little in -external feature; the change, the colour, the tragedy and comedy are -only to be found within the artist's mind; but the amusement of Bohemia, -so far from being hidden, courts publicity. It takes its colour, too, so -largely from the changing world around that there is great pictorial -value in its easily observable vicissitudes. For that reason I devote -this chapter to the subject of its title without further apology, but -only with the caution that here the accidents rather than the essentials -of Bohemia are regarded. The privilege of amusement is open to -everybody, but to see what Bohemia made of its privileges in that -respect is, perhaps, to quicken it for the imagination by an extra -spark. - -Precisians might say that dress hardly comes under the head of -amusements and that on certain views it is more properly included in the -category of necessities or of nuisances. Yet there is no doubt that for -all women--and for more men than would admit it--to be well dressed is -an enjoyment, a term only differing from amusement by a smaller -suggestion of possible frivolity. It is quite a sufficient warrant, at -all events, for giving dress a small part in this chapter; besides, the -costume of any individual or society is both a sure indicator of -qualities and an apt focus for judgment. In England, the very home of -illustrated books and papers, it is not necessary to say much in evoking -the costume of a past age, so that the subject may be treated quite -shortly, especially as regards the men of Bohemia, whose dress was too -often a deplorable tragedy. When Marcel went to Musette's party with -"Mathusalem" buttoned up to the neck over a blue shirt dotted with the -figures of a boar-hunt he was, as Murger says, "dressed in the worst -taste possible." In such a case there is no more to be said; his -appearance would vary little from age to age. To the Bohemian in his -lean days, certainly, it would be an insult to impute enjoyment of his -tattered wardrobe. Those who most enjoyed dressing, without a doubt, -were the Bohemian generation who cheered "Hernani" with such frenzy, for -they made their _pourpoints_, felt sombreros, Robespierre waistcoats, -and Phrygian caps effective details in the general Romantic -demonstration and, as such, matters of intense pleasure. But these -extravagances have already caught our attention; they were part of that -frantic desire for novelty and colour which was a symptom of _le mal -romantique_; their proper complement was that rage for fancy-dress balls -which broke out shortly after 1830 and laid every nationality and period -under contribution for picturesque costumes. So far as the men are -concerned, it need only be pointed out that the general dress of the -time--against which Bohemia stood out at first and into which it -gradually faded--was that of tight pantaloons with straps, long coats -with full skirts and accentuated waists, full cravats, lavish jewellery, -and high hats in a bewildering variety of shapes, cylindrical, conical, -inverted conical, curly, straight, with broad brims and with scarce a -brim at all--the civilian uniform, in fact, of our own late Georgian and -early Victorian era. It was a dress that only a few could wear with -distinction; on the rest it wrinkled and puffed in inevitable ugliness. -A Roger de Beauvoir could look immaculately moulded, but one has only -to glance at the caricatures of Traviés, Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni -to see how unequivocally hideous were the clothes of an average man. To -be out at elbows in this exacting fashion was indeed to be a sorry -sight, and one can well imagine poor Lucien de Rubempré to have been in -his provincial attire fair game for the sneers of Rastignac and de -Marsay. Still, even the Bohemian had a new suit at times, and it lights -the memory of Arsène Houssaye, Camille Rogier, Murger, Champfleury, and -the rest to recall that it was not for comfortable lounge suits and -flannels that they got into debt, but for correct suits of "tails," -flowery waistcoats, top-hats, and patent leather boots. It gives a -quaint touch of decorum to the picture of their wildest excesses. - -Women entered Bohemia as guests rather than as inhabitants, and to the -fair visitors conformity to fashion was anything but a trifle. To deck -themselves fittingly was their constant amusement, and one in which they -took good care that their swains should be sharers. The female dress of -the time is well known to us from early pictures of Queen Victoria and -the paintings of Winterhalter; there are few, too, who at one time or -another have not seen some of Gavarni's beautiful fashion plates. The -Empire style had entirely disappeared, and the accent was in 1830 laid -chiefly on the waist. The shoulders were sloping and wide, the sleeves -so voluminous that by 1836 they were like miniature balloons, the skirt -very wide and full, ending above the ankles. The waist and head were -made to seem very small in proportion, so that two loaves placed one on -top of the other would have made a very good caricature of a woman's -figure at any time during the golden age of Bohemia. The hair was -elaborately done to frame a pretty face daintily under a large -poke-bonnet. It was pre-eminently the day of "fragile" women: nothing in -their costume seemed made for hard wear. Cydalise or Victorine, as she -swung in the hammock among the gallants of the Impasse du Doyenné, would -have kicked a little cross-laced foot out from ethereal folds of -flowered muslin, and gathered a gauzy scarf enticingly round bare -shoulders. Fashions were indeed expensive for a fond lover's pocket, but -at least he was never at a loss what to buy for his mistress, so many -were the little accessories to the Graces' toilet. He was never wrong, -for instance, in offering a piece of gay ribbon, for there were bows -everywhere, on the bosom, on the sleeves, and, with long dazzling -streamers, round the waist. There was no end to their variety and -combination of colours, brilliant and pale; even the crudest Scottish -tartans were not considered amiss, as a certain dress in the London -Museum will show the incredulous. If ribbon was too paltry, a man in a -really generous mood would present a cashmere shawl, an expensive and -much appreciated luxury. The manipulation of shawls on frail, rounded -little persons, who, in England at least, still fainted at will and -indulged in the vapours, was a matter of some art. Balzac, in one of his -short stories, asserts that a _femme du monde_ could be distinguished -from the actress or the _grisette_ by the handling of her _cachemire_ -alone. There was only one great change in woman's dress between the -earlier and later days of Bohemia, and that was in the sleeves, which -dwindled suddenly as if the balloons had been pricked, and became either -closely fitting or almost disappeared into two little frilly bands. In -fact, during the forties, before skirts began to be exaggerated on -horse-hair paddings and verge upon the crinoline, female costume was as -nearly natural as it can be if corsets be granted. Nothing can be more -charming than the appearance of the Queen of the Belgians in her -portrait by Winterhalter which hangs in the gallery at Versailles. She -wears a red velvet dress, cut simply as to the _corsage_, with the skirt -reaching the ground in full, stately folds: there is no extravagance of -bows and frills, only a little lace at the bosom and sleeves. So, if we -would picture Mimi or Musette, as they were dressed for that memorable -day at Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the new muslin frocks made by their own -hands, we must imagine dainty little women, looking as if a breath would -blow them away, their pretty cheeks showing between two bewitching -clusters of ringlets, straw bonnets with not too large brims upon their -heads, tied with a coquettish ribbon, gowns of flowered muslin, light, -simple, and flowing, and scarfs pinned round their sloping shoulders or -held in place by mittened hands. Gavarin drew them to the life time and -time again, and they were considerably more attractive than any would-be -_Bohémiennes_ of our time in their rough, untidy tweeds or amorphous -"rational" dress. - -From the amusement of clothing the body it is an easy transition to that -of refreshing it. Eating and drinking, like dress, may from a certain -point of view come under the head of necessities, but indulgence in good -cheer when possible is a habit of young people of which a Bohemian was -by no means contemptuous. A word, therefore, about his particular haunts -among the thousand _cafés_ and restaurants of Paris will not be out of -season. After 1830 the great houses in the Palais Royal had fallen out -of fashion, and the four leading restaurants of Paris were on the -boulevard. Bohemians, it is true, were not often to be found within -them, but in the golden age, when Bohemia was nearer to the dandies and -_viveurs_, it would at least have been possible that in a moment of -extravagance some Bohemian friend should have accompanied Roger de -Beauvoir into the Café de Paris, the Café Riche, the Café Hardy, or the -Café Anglais. The Café de Paris was opposite Tortoni's, which stood at -the end of the Rue Taitbout. Besides being the home of the aristocratic -_petit cercle_, it was renowned for its witty conversation and its -general air of luxury. Since it was favoured by the aspirants to -smartness, as well as the perfect examples, its society was less select -than that of the Café Riche, at the corner of the Rue Lepeletier, or the -Café Anglais, which still remains in its old position. There was a quiet -solidity about the Café Anglais, in particular, which gave it a peculiar -air of distinction, though its company was gay enough at supper-time. It -was especially famous for its roast meat and its grills, though in these -matters the Café Hardy, at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, ran it close. -Hardy was an English cook who invented the _déjeuner à la fourchette_, -and popularized it by setting up the first silver grill in Paris. -Customers chose their own cutlet or steak and saw it cooked before their -eyes. At all these four the prices were very high, and with regard to -two of them it was said: "On doit être riche pour dîner au Café Hardy, -et hardi pour dîner au Café Riche." However, the chief haunt for -Bohemians with money to spend was the Rocher de Cancale, where it was -easier to be uproarious without offending the proprieties. This famous -restaurant still stands in the dirty, provincial Rue Montorgueil, in the -midst of small shops whose wares overflow on to the pavement. The -stately ornamentation of dark painted wood is still visible on its upper -stories, but the specimens of edibles in its ground-floor windows tell -too plainly to what depths it has sunk. It is no longer a possible home -for Rastignac and his boon companions, nor would it tempt Arsène -Houssaye to entertain there the brethren of _la Bohème galante_, for it -merely plies the trade of the convenient _marchand de vin_ in a rather -squalid quarter. The Rocher de Cancale had declined already during the -later days of Bohemia, and in Murger's day they repaired on _jours de -liesse_ to the Café de l'Odéon, Hill's Tavern in the Boulevard des -Capucines, or the Cabaret Dinochan at the corner of the Rue de Navarin. -The first of these was, in particular, the haunt of Baudelaire and his -friends, where the unfortunate Hégésippe Moreau made his brief -acquaintance with the main stream of Bohemia towards the end of his -days, which had been mainly passed in a backwater. Hill's Tavern was one -of the many chop-houses in the English style that flourished in Louis -Philippe's Paris--only the Petit Lucas, a charming place for a quiet -dinner, remains to-day--to cater for the down-at-elbows Englishmen, -jockeys, and trainers, of whom there was always a certain number. At -supper-time, however, it was invaded by Bohemia, and was often so full -that its doors had to be closed. One of its peculiarities was that its -private rooms were named after Shakespeare, Byron, and other great -poets. The Café Dinochan, according to Delvau,[30] was the ground on -which a great many small papers of the day were started. Monselet, -Nadar, Fauchéry, and Champfleury were among its customers, and Murger -died in debt to its proprietor for twelve hundred francs, for it was -said of this worthy creditor: "On dîne très-bien chez lui quand on a -quarante sous dans une poche--et dix francs dans l'autre." Yet the full -apparatus of a restaurant was not necessary to the gaiety of Bohemian -suppers, for in scanty days they made just as merry in the shops of one -or two bakeries on rolls and warm milk. The Boulangerie Cretaine in the -Quartier Latin was famous for its milk rolls and for the brilliant -conversation of Privat d'Anglemont, who, though it was against his -principle to get into debt, ran up a bill there for halfpenny rolls of -six hundred francs. The other famous baker was the _pâtissier_ Pitou, by -the Porte Montmartre, where a crowd of Bohemians used to congregate -after the midnight closing of the _cafés_. In the back shop was a table -running round three sides of the square, and at this "piano," as it was -called, the quaint figure of Guichardet presided. Guichardet, whose "nez -vermeil et digne" was celebrated in one of Banville's triolets, was a -Bohemian of the type of Balzac's Comte de la Palférine, one who had -voluntarily dropped out of the race of life while preserving all his -dignity and pride. He passed his days in amiable vagabondage, but -preserved "a perfume of exquisite politeness and witty impertinence -which made him the most delightful companion in the world." So says -Delvau, according to whom he was the only man left in France who really -knew how to say "Femme charmante!" - -So far I have mainly mentioned the haunts of Bohemians with the means -and inclination for a certain amount of self-indulgence. But in Bohemia -occasions preponderated when indulgence in anything beyond bare -necessities was an impossibility. The left bank swarmed with cheap -refuges for those who had hearty appetites and only a few pence. There -was Viot's for the poorest of the poor; Dagneaux's or Magny's in the Rue -Contrescarpe-Dauphine--rather superior houses where it was possible to -procure a semblance of good cheer; and the Cabaret of Mère Cadet outside -the Barrière Montparnasse, where Schaunard had his first meeting with -Colline over the stewed rabbit with two heads. This last had a garden -which ran along the Montparnasse cemetery, and under the shade of its -dusty shrubs not only literary Bohemians but nearly all the young actors -and actresses of the Théâtre Montparnasse and the Théâtre du Luxembourg -made their scanty meals. You might as well have asked for sphinx there -as chicken, says Delvau, the staple dishes being stewed rabbit and -_choucroute garnie_. To give a longer catalogue of such places would be -neither instructive nor amusing, and their types are easily enough found -in the Paris of to-day. There are two, however, that call for special -mention, for fiction has carried their fame beyond the days of their -material existence. No reader of Balzac's "Illusions Perdues" can have -forgotten the description of the cheap eating-house at the corner of the -Place de la Sorbonne and the Rue Neuve de Richelieu, with the small -panes of glass of its front window, its comforting announcement of _pain -à discrétion_, its long tables like those of a monastic refectory, its -varieties of cow's flesh and veal, and the hurried air of its diners, -who came there to eat and not to loiter. This famous house, where a -dinner of three dishes with a _carafon_ of wine or a bottle of beer cost -ninepence, where Lucien de Rubempré met Lousteau and made the -acquaintance of d'Arthez and his virtuous friends, was the restaurant of -Flicoteaux, no product of Balzac's imagination, but a name known to all -the strugglers for fame and fortune. It was a sure ground on which to -observe Bohemia, not indeed in its greatest indigence, but on the days -when there was at least no margin. Thackeray mentions it in his "Paris -Sketch-Book," and there is a passage in Lytton Bulwer's "France" which -vividly gives the impression produced by Flicoteaux on an English eye: - - "Enter [he says] between three and four o'clock, and take your seat - at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already - occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long hair, - falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the - eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the midnight vigil; - his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the - wrists; his trousers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty - black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his - thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is a - native of the South, pale and swarthy: his long black locks, parted - from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed - with a slight moustache, and the semblance of a beard gives to his - meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round - the room, with their thin, meagre portions of meat and bread, their - pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth - of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or - science." - -Flicoteaux has long been swept away, and buildings of the Sorbonne now -occupy its site. Gone, too, these many years, is the Café Momus, which -stood in a back street by the old church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, -the hostelry celebrated by so many exploits of Murger's four heroes in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was here that Schaunard and Colline -collected Rodolphe for the Bohemian brotherhood, and it became their -home, not so much for meals, though it was the scene of their reckless -Christmas Eve supper which introduced the saviour Barbemuche, but rather -for the lighter _consommations_ over which, by the French custom, they -could spend unlimited hours--a precious privilege when a cold garret was -the only alternative. There was nothing fictitious about the Café -Momus; it was a real establishment serving some respectable shopkeepers -of the quarter, when by some mischance, from the good M. Momus' point of -view, it attracted the Bohemian horde of Murger, Champfleury, Nadar, -Schann, Wallon, and many of the other "Buveurs d'Eau." Even on Murger's -testimony, they must be admitted to have abused their privileges without -shedding any very great glory in return, and we may take as fairly true -the list of grievances which was drawn up by the proprietor against -Rodolphe and his friends, from which it appears that they spent the -whole day there from morning to midnight, making a desert round them -with their strident voices and extravagant conversation; that Rodolphe -carried off all the papers in the morning and complained if their bands -were broken, and that by shouting every quarter of an hour for _Le -Castor_, a journal of the hat trade edited by Rodolphe, the companions -had forced a subscription on the proprietor; that Colline and Rodolphe -played _tric-trac_ all day, refusing to give up the table to other -people; that Marcel set up his easel in the _café_, and even went so far -as to invite models of both sexes; that Schaunard had expressed his -intention of bringing his piano there, and that Phémie Teinturière never -wore a bonnet when she came to meet him; that, not content with ordering -very little, the four friends presumed to make their own coffee on the -premises; and that the waiter, corrupted by their influence, had seen -fit to address an amatory poem to the _dame du comptoir_. Murger puts a -touch of exaggeration into this complaint, but it is to be feared, -nevertheless, that no trifling _dossier_ of misdemeanours could have -been compiled against the originals of Rodolphe, Marcel, and the rest. -We have it on Delvau's authority, at all events, that the profit of -their custom was quite disproportionate to its assiduity, when he tells -of their stratagem for obtaining asylum at small cost. The smallest -possible order was a _demi-tasse_, which consisted of a small cup of -coffee, four lumps of sugar, and a thimbleful of cognac; this cost five -sous, a sum of importance in Bohemia. The practice, therefore, was that -a certain student, Joannis Guigard, who was of the band, went in first, -ordered a _demi-tasse_, and went upstairs to consume it. Murger would -then arrive, ask if Guigard were upstairs, and run up. The rest followed -in succession with the same question till the _cénacle_ was complete and -in a position to have a sip of coffee and some hours of warmth for -nothing. After a short while Momus grew tired of these troublesome -customers and formally gave them notice to quit. They accepted the -intimation, but vowed revenge. Accordingly, a few days later, one of the -band turned up with six wet-nurses in his train, while another brought -six funeral mutes. The rest of the band then arrived, and the Bohemian -spokesman, probably Schann, delivered a flowery discourse upon the -affinity of life and death, with allusions to their guests' professions. -He wound up by telling the mutes to bury the Café Momus and take the -nurses as a reward. To make matters worse, he directed that the milk and -beer which had been ordered should be warmed as a mixture. The mutes and -nurses, furious at being thus deceived and insulted, broke into angry -expostulations, and, aided by the jests of the Bohemians, the -proceedings ended in a tremendous disturbance. Schann and two others -were arrested, and the next day Momus sold his business. - -The extent to which Bohemia, at its different phases, shared in the -various pastimes of Paris cannot be determined with any accuracy, so -much depended on individual taste and individual wealth. It is certain, -however, that after 1837 gambling was not a Bohemian distraction, for in -that year the public gaming-houses were closed. Before that time they -were such a popular institution that the early Bohemia cannot be -conceived to have entirely eschewed it. At the beginning of "La Peau de -Chagrin" Balzac draws a powerful picture of the wretched crowd that -haunted the Palais Royal, where Raphael de Valentin lost his last gold -coin at a single coup. There were no less than four gaming-houses in the -Palais Royal, Nos. 9, 113, 124, and 129, where the minimum stake was two -francs for roulette and five francs for trente-et-un. Besides the -Palais Royal, there were Paphos, Frascati, and the select Cercle des -Étrangers. The popularity of gambling can be judged from the fact that -the Treasury profited annually by it to the extent of five and a half -million francs. Yet there is no record that the truly artistic members -of Bohemia, like Gautier or Houssaye, so wasted time or money, while -Murger and his friends were spared the temptation. In music, too, -Bohemia played no very great part, in spite of the devotion of -Champfleury, Barbara, and Schann to Beethoven's quartets. There was -plenty of fine music to be heard in Paris during the time: Habeneck was -introducing Beethoven's symphonies, Berlioz was revolutionizing -orchestration, while Liszt, Chopin, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, and de Bériot -were among the soloists. Certainly those Bohemians of the golden age who -had access to the _salons_ of the Princess Belgiojoso or Madame de -Girardin must often have heard these great artists, but it is not to be -supposed that they were great supporters of concerts, unless it were of -the Concerts Musard. These concerts, which won great fame through the -personality of Musard, the conductor, began in 1833 in the Salle -Saint-Honoré;[31] their programmes were excellent and the prices low -enough to attract the least well off. Musard had a genius for making -_pot-pourris_ of operatic tunes and for introducing new effects, -especially into dance music. His electric style of conducting made the -Bals Musard far more popular than the great balls at the Opéra. He -contrived a wonderful quadrille, for instance, out of "Les Huguenots," -during which red lights were lit, tocsins pealed, tom-toms boomed, -screams resounded, and the whole illusion of a massacre was thrillingly -kept up. He also composed a _contre-danse_ in the finale of which he -broke a chair, and his triumph was a certain galop in which he -discharged a pistol. This was thoroughly in keeping with the Romantic -spirit, and after its first performance he was publicly chaired round -the hall by the excited dancers. So far as pure music was concerned, -however, it appealed most to Parisians in the form of opera. Meyerbeer's -"Robert le Diable" and "Les Huguenots" produced frenzies of enthusiasm: -no Romantic, consequently no Bohemian of Gautier's day, could afford not -to have listened to them. Rossini's great vogue began at the same time, -while Donizetti and Auber shared the honours of light opera till -Offenbach appeared to carry all before him. Musical Bohemia was well -educated, if not in composition, at least in execution, when it was -possible to hear Duprez, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, Grisi, Mario, -Persiani, and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. The ballet, too, with Carlotta -Grisi, Taglioni, and Fanny Elssler, was an additional attraction at the -Opéra. The devotion of _la Bohème galante_ to the _corps de ballet_ has -appeared in an earlier chapter, and it was a devotion shared by most -masculine society. Murger's Bohemia flourished after the greatest -operatic enthusiasms, which its more classically inclined members -probably despised; but their exchequers were not of the sort to allow -for tickets at the grand opera, though they turned up in force at the -light operas of the Théâtre Bobino. At this little theatre, more -properly called the Théâtre du Luxembourg, there was a continuous uproar -made by Bohemians and students. When this grew too unbearable the -manager would appear in his dressing-gown and protest that the police -would arrive if the respectable inhabitants of the quarter were -disturbed; whereupon the whole audience struck up as one man Grétry's -air "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de la famille?" accompanied by the -wheezy orchestra and conducted by the manager himself. At such a scene -Schaunard and Marcel must often have assisted. - -Nevertheless, in the eyes of Bohemia, the glory of the opera paled -entirely before that of the drama. There was not one Bohemian with any -literary talent who did not try to write a play--nay, many -plays--tragedies in alexandrines, comedies, or vaudevilles; and when -they were not writing plays they were haunting the theatres as dramatic -critics, selling their articles simply for the sake of a free entry, -unless, like Lucien's immoral set, they added the profits of blackmail. -From the second _cénacle_ to the end of Murger's Bohemia there was no -end so generally pursued as dramatic composition. Bouchardy and -Augustus Mackeat were dramatists, so were Ourliac, Arsène Houssaye, and -Gérard de Nerval; Gautier was a dramatic critic; Murger and Champfleury -failed as vaudevillists; and it is quite likely that Rodolphe's -magnificent drama, "Le Vengeur," had its counterpart in reality. The -"poète échevelé" and the humble _conteur_ alike turned their eyes -continuously towards the stage, besieging luckless managers without -cease. The reason of this was partly, as may be supposed, that a -successful play, then as to-day, gave far quicker and more splendid -pecuniary returns for labour than any other form of literary -composition. A concrete instance of that is the case of Murger himself, -who was set on his legs entirely by the sudden vogue of the dramatized -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." But there was another reason at least as -strong, far deeper, and more honourable. The stage, as I have already -pointed out, was the battlefield of the Romantic struggle. "Hernani" -brought home the new truths to the public far more vividly than any -novel or poem could have done; every night they were declaimed before -compelled attention. It is not surprising, then, that the stage played -so great a part in the amusements of Bohemia. It was, with one other, -the chief of their pastimes. For them to listen to "Chatterton," the -"Tour de Nesle," or "Antony" was not only a distraction, it was a -frantic excitement which made their blood seethe almost painfully and -sent geysers of hot eloquence from their lips as they munched the hot -rolls of the Boulangerie Cretaine. These young enthusiasts were not -stinted of good fare. Mademoiselle Mars, Marie Dorval, Rachel and Judith -appeared at the Français during these eighteen years; at the -Folies-Dramatique Frédéric Lemaître created with enormous success the -part of Robert Macaire; while at the Funambules Gaspard Deburau was -winning eternal fame as the incomparable Pierrot. There were a host of -other theatres besides, the Variétés, Porte Saint-Martin, Odéon, not to -mention smaller ones, managed for the most part by men of taste, -supplied with plays by men with some pretension to talent, and -criticized by unsparing critics, from Jules Janin downwards, who knew -what they wanted and did not hesitate to speak when they did not get it. -In the stage Bohemia found not only amusement and inspiration but part -of its livelihood: it lived next door to that special world composed of -actors and actresses. Yet, though Bohemians went to supper with -Mademoiselle Mars, Dumas was very much at home with Marie Dorval, Roger -de Beauvoir played pranks with Bache, and Rodolphe had a love affair -with Mademoiselle Sidonie, the two worlds were definitely separated. In -fact, the life of dramatic artists, whatsoever Bohemian flavouring it -may have, has always had a mysterious taste of its own, incapable of -mixture with any other blend of artistic life, so that, interesting as -it may have been in Paris during these years, its omission from these -pages has been intentional. - -[Illustration: Bal Masqué à l'Opéra] - -The one other amusement--a pure pastime involving no material -profit--which was particularly popular in Bohemia was dancing. In this -respect Bohemia was no exception from the rest of Parisian society, for -in all classes there was an inextinguishable passion for the dance. But -the Bohemian, obeying only his own laws of social propriety, was in a -more favourable position for taking full advantage of all public -opportunities for this exercise and of all the _agréments_ in the way of -casual intercourse with both sexes which it implied. All the year round -there were public balls given in Paris, at which the Bohemian was in his -element, giving rein to his inventive humour, his high spirits, and his -gift of seductive gallantry. During the first few years after 1830, the -golden age of Bohemia, the balls at the Opéra were the most frequented, -especially in the days of the carnival. There masks and dominoes covered -dancers of every rank in society, for even the _femme du monde_ slipped -in unbeknown to her husband. This scene of utmost gaiety and brilliance, -of which Balzac gives a picture at the opening of "Splendeurs et Misères -des Courtisanes," was closely rivalled by the ball at the Variétés, at -which a still more feverish excitement reigned. Or if the Bohemian -preferred to make sure of a _grisette_ as a partner he went to the -Prado, the site of which was opposite the Palais de Justice, where, -under Pilodo, the famous conductor, he could join Louise la Balocheuse, -Angelina l'Anglaise, or Ernestine Confortable in the giddy whirl. The -waltz was recognized at this period, but the quadrille easily held the -place of honour, especially as it lent itself more freely to individual -invention, such as Ourliac's magnificent variation depicting the -grandeur and fall of Napoleon. It was through this licence in the -figures of the quadrille that the _chahut_ and the _cancan_ were -introduced by the rakish set among the _viveurs_ which included Charles -de la Battut, Alton-Shee, Monnier, and the famous Chicard--a -leather-merchant who made a name by his grotesque costumes and wild -dances, the term _chicard_, which degenerated into _chic_, becoming a -general denomination for his imitators. I have not been able to arrive -at the difference between the _chahut_ and the _cancan_, but both were -originally primitive dances indulged in by the lowest classes, quaint, -but in all probability perfectly decent. The rage for extravagance -during the early thirties changed them into formidable pantomimes of -violence, if not always of indecency, which every complete reveller -rendered with his own individual touch. Heine, in the course of one of -his articles in the _Augsburg Gazette_, said of the _cancan_: - - "It must be regarded simply as a pantomime of Robert Macairedom. - Anybody who has a general idea of the latter will understand those - indescribable dances, expressions of _persiflage_ in dance, which - not only mock sexual relations, but civic relations too, all, in - fact, that is good and beautiful, every kind of enthusiasm, - patriotism, uprightness, faith, family feeling, heroism, divinity." - -Heine's view is rather too Teutonic, for the popularity of the _cancan_ -was due to the high spirits of the Romantic enthusiasm, and its degree -of morality or immorality depended upon the individual dancer. Not much -harm can be imagined to have dwelt in the dance-_persiflage_ of the -Impasse du Doyenné, whatever a Chicard or a Milord Arsouille may have -made of it. The feature of public balls, however, was certainly a -Dionysiac exaltation which culminated in the final _galop infernal_, as -it was called, into which Musard particularly infused a special fury. It -was less a dance than a stampede of maniacs, who rushed round the room, -men and women, clutching one another anyhow, wigs flying, tresses -waving, dresses rent from fair shoulders, all shrieking and shouting, -brandishing arms, kicking legs, and stamping heedlessly on those who -were unlucky enough to fall. - -[Illustration: The Galop Infernal] - -The balls of the Opéra declined in attraction and became dull about -1836, but they were revived with still greater splendour two years -later, when Musard was made conductor and members of the ballet were -drafted in to enliven the company. Such balls, however, became too -much public functions to suit the less splendid Bohemia of a later day, -which found diversion more suited to its pocket and its manners at the -Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas on the left bank. It was at such -places as these that Rodolphe and Marcel disported themselves, and -Schaunard was arrested for "chorégraphie trop macabre." The Chaumière -was a large garden on the Boulevard Montparnasse, a miniature edition of -Cremorne or Vauxhall, with a primitive shooting gallery, a skittle -alley, and switchback. It was open all day for students to promenade -after lectures and make their addresses to the _grisettes_ working under -the trees. Its dances were very simple affairs; a few lamps and Chinese -lanterns, a small orchestra, a bar for lemonade and _galette_ were all -that the management supplied, the fun, of which they had enough and to -spare, being the dancers' contribution. - -The Closerie des Lilas, though less generally popular than the -Chaumière, was more particularly associated with Bohemia than the -latter, for Murger, Vitu, Fauchéry, Théodore de Banville, and one or two -others of that set frequented it regularly, as a French writer[32] says, -"avec quelques comparses sans importance," among whom, no doubt, were -Mimi and Musette. This little dancing-hall began in 1838 as La -Chartreuse, being so called because it was on the site of the old -Carthusian monastery in the Rue d'Enfer. It was in some sort the -trial-ground for those of the fair sex who aspired to become stars of -the Prado and the Chaumière. Privat d'Anglemont has described it in a -rare pamphlet as it was in its early days under its extraordinary -manager, Carnaud. As La Chartreuse it was the most primitive kind of -_guingette_, the dancing-place being a large marquee, into which one -descended by a steep flight of steps. On the left were an orchestra and -_café_, and the only ornaments were nine plaster statues representing -the Muses, which were handily adapted for supporting petroleum lamps on -their arms. "There," says Privat d'Anglemont, "decent dress was not _de -rigueur_; one came as one liked, or rather as one could--the women in -bonnets or, in default of other adornments, covered simply by their -hair, and the men in blouses. It certainly was the most original bar in -Paris. It had a physiognomy of its own, strange, quaint, even a little -burlesque, but it existed. Its population was to be seen nowhere else; -it seemed to exist only at the Chartreuse and for the Chartreuse. Since -this ball disappeared its population has completely vanished." - -[Illustration: La Guinguette] - -Everything about the Chartreuse was original, not only the dancers and -the dances but the orchestra, the music, and the manager. Every kind of -"percussion" was added to the usual instruments, the noise of -money-bags, pistol shots, rows of explosive caps, resounding anvils, and -sheets of metal struck to represent the roaring of lions and tigers. All -the music was composed by Carnaud himself, who was conductor, first -violin, _restaurateur_, composer, and advertisement-writer in one. At -every special _fête_ he invented a new quadrille and a new exotic word -to describe it, such as "la fête des vendanges, quadrille -déchirancochicandard," or "l'hôtel des haricots,[33] avec accompaniments -de chaînes et de bruits de clefs, grand quadrille -exhilarandéliranchocnosophe." - -Carnaud was succeeded by the famous Bullier, who altered the name to the -Closerie des Lilas and replaced the simple marquee by an Oriental palace -with a garden, Moorish pavilions, billiard tables, swings, and a -pistol-shooting gallery. A decent orchestra was installed and four -admirable waiters. With these improvements the balls, held every Sunday, -Monday, and Thursday, began to attract the _beau monde_ of the Quartier -Latin, and several of the dancers gained the coveted honour of a -_sobriquet_. There were Jeanne la Juive, for instance, Maria les Yeux -Bleus, Joséphine Pochardinette, and the literary Clémentine Pomponnette, -who used to show her admirers a farce she had written "dans les loisirs -que lui laissait l'amour." This transformation took place about 1847, -and it was then that one of the Moorish pavilions was especially -consecrated to Murger's Bohemian set. It is needless to say that the -name of Bullier still remains in the Bal Bullier of to-day. - -One other popular ball must be mentioned, the Bal Mabille, which for so -long was one of the sights of Paris. This public ball was instituted by -Mabille, a dancing-master, in the Champs Elysées. The price of entrance -at first was fifty centimes, with an extra fee for each quadrille, and -in 1843 the whole of the dances were included in an initial sum of two -francs. The fame of the Bal Mabille was due first to its polkas, a dance -which became the rage at the time, and secondly to the most celebrated -of polka-dancers, Elise Sergent, known as La Reine Pomaré. Her dancing -was a revelation of fire and passion which won her recognition on the -very first evening of her appearance. Crowds came to see her dance, -articles were devoted to her by the journalists of the day, and Privat -d'Anglemont wrote a sonnet to her. Paris, in fact, went mad about her, -and she had many lovers, among whom, it is said, was Alphonse Karr, -which brings her into some kind of connexion with Bohemia. But Reine -Pomaré and her rival, Céleste Mogador, who also made her _début_ at -Mabille, were too much on the plane of _grandes cocottes_ for any real -relation with the Bohemia of their day. They might have danced for love -at the Impasse du Doyenné, but Schaunard and Marcel had nothing to -offer them to compare with the splendour of the _viveurs_ which was laid -at their feet. Bohemia found its pleasure at less expense and with less -restraint in the company of Mimi and Musette in a Moorish pavilion at -the Closerie des Lilas, where Colline's bad puns found appreciative -listeners and Schaunard's _pas de fascination_ were greeted with -rapturous applause. - - - - -XII - -THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA - - _Paris sombre et fumeux,_ - _Où déjà, points brillants au front de maison ternes,_ - _Luisent comme des yeux des milliers de lanternes;_ - _Paris avec ses toits déchiquetés, ses tours_ - _Qui ressemblent de loin à des cous de vautours,_ - _Et ses clochers aigus à flèche dentelée,_ - _Comme un peigne mordant la nue échevelée._ - - THÉOPHILE GAUTIER - - -The last chapter was devoted to certain accidental adjuncts of _la vie -de Bohème_ by way of general illustration, though they consisted of -simple amusements common not only to the Parisians of the day but to -civilized society of most epochs. The present chapter, which I have -reserved till the last, might logically have claimed an earlier place, -for its subject, as I have already pointed out, is distinctive of the -society in which Bohemia played an important part. Bohemia, of course, -neither monopolized Paris nor even a portion of it, but the Paris of -Bohemia's florescence and decline was a unique background for these -events, a necessary condition, though temporary in itself, which it -would pass the bounds of human possibility to reconstruct. Interesting -as it is to imagine correctly the dress of the Bohemian and his -mistress, the places where they dined, or the gardens where they danced, -the re-presentation of the city where they lived, so small, so -sensitively vibrant, so congested, so hopelessly out of date, except for -a few new patches, so dirty, so noisy, and so picturesque, ranks far -higher in importance. Yet, though I might have put this chapter first, I -choose to put it last because I cannot hope that it will be appreciated -by any but those who have already some memory of Paris and on whom the -spell of its fascination has, at least, been lightly cast. The general -description of Bohemian life may provide some entertainment to those who -know not Paris; for their sake I have sought not to break the general -interest. My story is now told, and I am free to call those who have -breathed, even for a moment, the quick breeze off the Seine or seen the -sunshine strike through the trees in the Tuileries Gardens, to stay with -me for a last look back upon that city of beauty and adventure which -calls, like the East, to those who love it. To have gained even a -superficial view of modern Paris, to have caught some of her accents and -contrasts--the radiance of the Bois de Boulogne, the vivacity of the -boulevards, the _cafés_ overflowing on to the pavements, the view from -her bridges, the differences between the two banks, the mean alleys -lurking mischievously at the back of splendid thoroughfares, the -broadest omnibuses comically invading the narrowest streets--is to have -formed some general notion with which an earlier Paris can be compared. -And with a reader who has penetrated deeper, whose nostrils yearn for -her indescribably subtle perfume, who knows the different aspects of her -streets from days of diligent tramping, who has seen her river blending -with her sky in a hundred harmonies, who has felt her moods and her -humours, finding like a true lover her blemishes as adorable as her -perfections, who has recognized her past in her present, and who, though -a stranger, has divined in ecstasy the wild throb of her romantic -heart--with him my task is easier still. Such a one will already have -guessed the intoxication of the air which a Roger de Beauvoir delicately -breathed, when Paris, her spirit newly quickened with the exhilaration -of a potent elixir, was yet unspoiled by modern cosmopolitan vulgarity, -and her inner soul shone out, through all her deformities and -incongruities, with a gay and unmasked confidence. - -She did not shine before an unseeing generation, for the Parisians of -the Romantic age adored their city, dandies, Bohemians, and _bourgeois_ -alike, all passionately conscious of their privileged citizenship, -though they could admit with Maxime du Camp that under Louis Philippe -she was "one of the dirtiest, the most tortuous, and the most unhealthy" -in the world. As they lived in her, so they wrote of her--with pride. -Victor Hugo did her great homage in "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Les -Misérables," Eugène Sue in "Les Mystères de Paris," and Paul de Kock in -all his work, but these achievements appear as slight and partial -sketches beside the wonderful and penetrating picture which Balzac drew -of Paris--at once the background and the protagonist--in his greatest -novels. Balzac, besides giving us a world, gave us a great city. Minute -as were the studies he made of the provinces, they are nothing to the -picture that he drew of the city which he regarded as the brain of the -whole world, the leader of its civilization. He gloated over Paris as a -scientist gloats over an interesting organism that he has first observed -and then skilfully dissected. He had dissected Paris even on the -threshold of his career. In some of his early stories, like a brilliant -young surgeon fresh from his researches, he overweights the matter in -hand with the results of the laboratory. "Ferragus" begins with a long -comparison of the streets of Paris; "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" with a -marvellous tirade on the restless race for money and pleasure that is -run by all classes, a tirade which, probing as it does all the strata of -society, is an epitome, in some sort, of all his work. Paris, that small -_enceinte_ which was enclosed within what is now the second line of -_boulevards_, still innocent of the reforming hand of Haussmann, -becoming rich, but hardly yet industrial, not yet the pleasure-ground -of all the world, destitute of railways, squalid, ill-kept, nevertheless -was transformed by his wonderful imagination into the type of all great -cities, which will ever remain true. To him she was "le plus délicieux -des monstres," as he says in "Ferragus." "Mais, ô Paris," he cries, "qui -n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes échappées de lumière, tes -culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures, -entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne connaît encore rien de ta vraie -poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes. Il est un petit nombre -de gens ... qui dégustent leur Paris.... Pour ceux-là Paris est triste -ou gai, laid ou beau, vivant ou mort; pour eux Paris est une créature; -chaque homme, chaque fraction de maison est un lobe du tissu cellulaire -de cette grande courtisane de laquelle ils connaissent parfaitement la -tête, le coeur et les moeurs fantasques. Aussi ceux-là sont les -amants de Paris...." - -There are a happy few to whom it would be enough to say that the Paris -of Bohemia was the Paris of Balzac--such devotees, I mean, as have -thought it worth while to pay attention to that accurate topography in -which Balzac took so great a pride, following it in a contemporary map -so that, in their walks about the modern city, streets and houses -incessantly recall his characters and his scenes. But life is short for -such agreeable exercises, so this chapter must inadequately proceed. I -have already touched on the social implications of Louis Philippe's -Paris, its smallness and its diminutive population, and my present aim -is simply to present more fully its external aspect, which changed so -quickly after 1848. The rapidity of the change may well be judged by a -passage in Théophile Gautier's article[34] on Paul de Kock, published in -1870. No apology is necessary for transcribing it: - - "Those [he says] who were born after the Revolution of February 24, - 1848, or a little before, cannot imagine what the Paris was like in - which the heroes and heroines of Paul de Kock move; it resembled - Paris of to-day so little that I sometimes ask myself, on seeing - these broad streets, these great boulevards, these vast squares, - these interminable lines of monumental houses, these splendid - quarters which have replaced the market-gardens, if it is really - the city in which I passed my childhood. Paris, which is on the way - to become the metropolis of the world, was then only the capital of - France. One met French people, even Parisians, in its streets. No - doubt foreigners came there, as always, to find pleasure and - instruction; but the means of transport were difficult, the ideal - of rapidity did not rise above the classic mail-coach, and the - locomotive, even in the form of a chimera, was not yet taking shape - in the mists of the future. The physiognomy of the population had - not therefore sensibly changed. - - "The provinces stayed at home much more than now, only coming to - Paris on urgent business. One could hear French spoken on that - boulevard which was then called the Boulevard de Gand and which is - now called the Boulevard des Italiens. One frequently saw a type - which is becoming rare and which, for me, is the pure Parisian - type--white skin, pink cheeks, brown hair, light grey eyes, a - well-shaped figure of moderate stature, and, in the women, a - delicate plumpness hiding small bones. Olive complexions and black - hair were rare; the South had not yet invaded us with its - passionately pale tints and its furious gesticulations. The general - aspect of faces was therefore rosy and smiling, with an air of - health and good humour. Complexions now considered _distingués_ - would at that time have caused suspicions of illness. - - "The city was relatively very small, or at least its activity was - restricted within certain limits that were seldom passed. The - plaster elephant in which Gavroche found shelter raised its - enormous silhouette on the Place de la Bastille, and seemed to - forbid passers-by to go any further. The Champs Elysées, as soon as - night fell, became more dangerous than the plain of Marathon; the - most adventurous stopped at the Place de la Concorde. The quarter - of Notre Dame de Lorette only included vague plots of ground or - wooden fences. The church was not built, and one could see from the - boulevard the Butte Montmartre, with its windmills and its - semaphore waving its arms on the top of the old tower. The Faubourg - Saint-Germain went early to bed, and its solitude was but rarely - disturbed by a tumult of students over a play at the Odéon. - Journeys from one quarter to another were less frequent; omnibuses - did not exist, and there were sensible differences of feature, - costume, and accent between a native of the Rue du Temple and an - inhabitant of the Rue Montmartre." - -Gautier is referring in this passage to the Paris of his childhood, in -the second decade of the nineteenth century, but, though by his Bohemian -days the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette had been built, omnibuses had -been instituted, and railway stations were about to break out on the -face of Paris, his picture would have remained substantially true of -Paris during the whole of Louis Philippe's reign. There was a certain -amount of change during the time: the Palais Royal declined in -popularity, ceasing to be "a scene of extravagance, dissipation, and -debauchery not to be equalled in the world," as Coghlan's "Guide to -Paris" put it; a few old houses were pulled down here and there, and the -desert patches on the outskirts began to be filled by a straggling -population, but, in general, Louis Philippe's Paris can be considered as -a stable whole. Most visitors to Paris do not, of course, realize the -boundaries of the large circle which now forms the city, for they enjoy -themselves at the centre, though they may, perhaps, remember how far -from the terminus a train passes the fortifications. In Louis Philippe's -day the outer line of boulevards, on which stood the fortifications and -_barrières_, was that second ring of to-day which even visitors reach at -times; a _barrière_ existed at the Arc de Triomphe, at the Place -Pigalle, where the amusements of Montmartre only just begin, at the -cemeteries of Père Lachaise and Montparnasse. The actual diameter of the -city was then about three miles, but for all practical purposes it was -little more than two, for the outskirts were still occupied by large -market-gardens, plots of land acquired for future use by speculators, -with here and there some mushroom rows of houses, half finished and -nearly empty, the work of a bankrupt who had too far anticipated the -coming boom, farmyards, chicken-runs, cow-stalls, grass, odd weeds, and -all the disfigurements of a landscape over which the impending march of -a city has thrown a blight. Only on the northern heights were there -still windmills and vineyards. These outskirts had only a scanty -population, for there were no thousands of workpeople to spread over the -heights of Belleville or Ménilmontant, or southwards over Montrouge, so -that it was easy for a starveling company of Bohemians, headed by the -Desbrosses and Murger, to find shelter in an old farm by the Barrière -d'Enfer--now the busy Place Denfert-Rochereau--or for Balzac's Colonel -Chabert to live in a tumble-down cottage well inside the boundaries. The -fact was, as the dramatist Victorien Sardou has said in a passage of -reminiscence,[35] that under Louis Philippe one-third of the total -surface of Paris was not built on. There were gardens everywhere, except -in the very centre of the city, and on the left bank, especially, -houses were only dotted in the midst of orchards, kitchen-gardens, -farmyards, and parks. It was this fact that made Paris, however quick -the flame that burnt at her heart, in most respects a provincial city. -Only in such a city could Bohemia perfectly have realized itself; an -industrial metropolis would have swallowed it or brushed it -contemptuously aside. - -Paris, then, compared with herself of to-day, would have been almost -unrecognizable. There was no sign of the rich and luxurious quarter -which has grown up round the Champs Elysées, with its magnificent hotels -and fine mansions. The Champs Elysées were used during the daytime for -riding or driving, but there was hardly a house to be seen except two or -three wretched _cafés_. After sunset it was madness to go past the -_rond-point_, for beyond was the home of thieves and cut-throats, the -Bois de Boulogne, needless to say, being in a much more wild state than -to-day. The Parc Monceau was practically in the country, and even the -Quartier du Roule, by the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes, was all -market-gardens when Rosa Bonheur lived there as a child. As for the -Batignolles, that Kensington of modern Paris, its repute was as -unsavoury as that of the London fields now respectably covered by Sloane -Square and Sloane Street. The quarter chosen by wealth, as opposed to -blue blood, which lived in dreary _hôtels_ surrounded by high walls in -the Faubourg Saint-Germain, lay in the neighbourhood of the present -Saint-Lazare terminus. The favourite street was the Rue de la Pépinière, -continued by the Rue Saint-Lazare. Only a small part of the Rue de la -Pépinière is now left, most of it being called the Rue La Boëtie, but it -retains its old name between the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Rue -Saint-Lazare. Another fashionable street was the Rue de Provence, which -runs parallel to the south of the Rue Saint-Lazare. In the former was -the famous house inhabited successively by seven of Balzac's -courtesans,[36] in the latter the charming house of Baron Nucingen. -Every Englishman knows the clamour and smell and garish shops of the Rue -Saint-Lazare to-day, and the Rue de Provence is just a plain _bourgeois_ -thoroughfare of shops, _cafés_, flats, and a post-office. - -The fashionable boulevards have already appeared in a previous chapter, -but a word must be said of the difference between the then and now of -that brilliant corner of Paris which most Europeans and Americans see -once before they die. To-day, without a doubt, the Boulevard des -Capucines, which stretches from the Madeleine to the Opéra, has the most -distinguished and luxurious appearance. The Boulevard des Italiens -beyond the Opéra is dowdier and more workaday. In the days of Bohemia -the Boulevard des Capucines had no social existence. It had as yet not -been levelled with the Rue Basse du Rempart, which, some fifteen feet -below it, followed the course of the ancient moat; it was flanked by -plots of land on which new houses were being erected, and its only -traffic was the omnibus which jogged between the Madeleine and the -Bastille. The present Opera-house and Place de l'Opéra were not -existent, for the Opéra stood just off the Boulevard des Italiens, -beyond Tortoni's, while the Rue de la Paix came quietly into the -boulevard at a sharp angle, instead of arriving in that busy open space, -with Cook's office as its centre, over which traffic plies in all -directions with bewildering activity. The Avenue de l'Opéra, also, was -not known to Bohemia. At that day a pedestrian who wished to go direct -from the top of the Rue de la Paix to the Louvre had to thread a maze of -narrow streets--an example of which remains in the Rue des Petits -Champs--which became meaner and more sinister as he neared the Louvre. -The Louvre quarter, so close to brilliance and luxury, was a squalid -plague-spot, that has since been thoroughly cleansed. The brotherhood of -the Impasse du Doyenné, I suspect, were careful to have a companion when -they ascended the Rue Froidmanteau or the Rue Traversière after dark. If -one crosses the Avenue de l'Opéra between the entrance of the Rue de -l'Echelle on one side and the Rue Molière on the other, one will have -exactly traversed the site of the infamous Rue de Langlade where in -"Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes" Vautrin found Esther la -Torpille on the verge of death, _à propos_ of which Balzac has a lurid -passage on the thick shadows, the flickering lights, the phantom forms, -and disquieting sounds which characterized at nightfall this _lacis de -petites rues_. - -[Illustration: The Rue St. Denis] - -On the north-east and the east of the Louvre lay the most unregenerate -portion of Paris, a district as tortuous, narrow, and unhealthy as in -the Middle Ages, yet the centre of Parisian commerce. Even to-day the -visitor may wonder that such a district can exist in a capital city, -when he ventures into the Rue Quincampoix, the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, -and the other alleys which cut them at right angles. But at least this -quarter has been cleared by the thorough reorganization of the Halles -and by the construction of some large arteries, the Boulevard de -Sébastopol, the Rue Rambuteau, the Rue Etienne Marcel, and the Rue de -Turbigo. It is sufficient to glance at a map of Louis Philippe's Paris, -such as Dulaure's, to see what a maze it was then. Save for the two -narrow thoroughfares, the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, -going from north to south, it had hardly a single continuous street. A -stroll in the region of the old church of Saint-Merri will show many of -these streets in their original dimensions; there is the Rue des -Lombards, for instance, where Balzac's Matifat presided over the -wholesale drug market, and the Rue Aubry le Boucher, formerly the Rue -des Cinq Diamants, where in the virtuous Anselme Popinot's shop the -first measures were taken for the reconstruction of César Birotteau's -shattered fortunes. The darkness and insalubrity of this quarter are -specially commented on at the beginning of Balzac's "Une Double -Famille," where he says that a pedestrian coming from the Marais quarter -to the quays near the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de l'Homme Armé and -other streets--practically the route of the present Rue des Archives -down to the Place Lobau--would think he was walking in underground -cellars. This unsavoury network in the day of Bohemia continued right on -to the quays, which have now been cleared by the construction of the -Théâtre and Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the Place de -l'Hôtel de Ville, and the Place Lobau with its barracks. But in Louis -Philippe's reign the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, where poor Gérard de -Nerval was found hanged, occupied the site of the stage of the Théâtre -Sarah Bernhardt, and instead of the Place Lobau the Rue de la Tixanderie -and the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean forked at the back of the Hôtel de -Ville. The house described in "Une Double Famille" stood in the Rue du -Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, which was only five feet wide at its broadest and -only cleaned when flooded by a shower. The inhabitants lit their lamps -at five in June and never put them out in winter. - -[Illustration: Rue de la Tixeranderie] - -Another typical specimen of the Paris I am describing is to be seen in -that curious confluence of three narrow streets, the Rues de la Lune, -Beauregard, and de Cléry, just off the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. The Rue -de la Lune is dominated by the forbidding portals of a gloomy church, -and its cobble-stones are quite deserted even when the activity of the -neighbouring boulevard is at its height. No flight of imagination is -needed to realize its appropriateness as the scene of that tragic close -to "Illusions Perdues," where in a garret Lucien writes drinking songs -over the corpse of his wretched Coralie to pay the expenses of her -burial. This street and the two others, which meet at an extraordinarily -acute angled building, diverge into the squalor of the Rue Montorgueil. -It is easier to see the conditions in which _la vie de Bohème_ was -passed in such spots as these than in the regions towards Montmartre. -The Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne still exists, but to search there for the -garret of Murger and Champfleury is disappointing. One ascends the -cheerful Rue des Martyrs from Notre Dame de Lorette, with its prospect -of the Sacré Coeur standing out against the open heavens, and on -turning along the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne one is confronted by a -respectable, clean, sleepy street that might grace any neat provincial -town in France. All suggestion of Bohemianism is remarkably absent, even -on the top floors. In Murger's day this quarter was far less civilized, -as may be seen from a water-colour sketch by Victor Hugo which hangs -in the Carnavalet Museum. This represents the view southwards from the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne--a wild foreground of uncultivated land with -sombre trees and dilapidated fences, and in the distance all Paris -spread out in panorama. - -[Illustration: Rue Pirouette] - -The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter -of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where -old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have -been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to -Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left -him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in -the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with -its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of -youth and love. In particular, this part of Paris was cleared and aired -by the construction of those two very important thoroughfares, the -Boulevard Saint-Germain, which broke through a host of little streets, -including the rampageous Rue Childebert, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, -which replaced and widened the straggling old Rue de la Harpe. Before -these were made, the Quartier Latin had not a single main street, though -it was not quite so uncivilized as the Halles quarter, nor so large. -Southwards by the gardens of the Luxembourg it soon became comparatively -_bourgeois_ and spacious with pleasant houses and gardens, built -originally for rich nobles and prelates, but relinquished at the -dictation of fashion to prosperous tradespeople and officials like the -Phellions and Thuilliers of Balzac's "Les Petits Bourgeois." Searches -for vestiges of Bohemia in general on either side of the Boulevard -Saint-Germain are fruitful enough; many an _hôtel garni_ recalls that in -which Lucien first hid his diminished head, or the early home of Arsène -Houssaye, when Nini Yeux Noirs was his divinity and revolution his -creed. Specific quests, however, are apt to be disappointing. The Rue -des Quatre Vents, the headquarters of d'Arthez' _cénacle_, in Balzac's -time "one of the most horrible streets in Paris," remains blamelessly -near Saint-Sulpice as dull and decent as the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; -and the Rue Vaugirard, where the second _cénacle_, headed by Pétrus -Borel, held its frantic orgies round the punch-bowl and where Murger -wrote his "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," is devoid of any spark of -romance. On the other hand, a visit to the delightful Cour de Rohan, -just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, will land you _en pleine Bohème_, -as will certain streets leading up towards the Church of Saint-Etienne -du Mont, or the narrow passages by the Church of Saint-Séverin. It is -just too late to see another unmistakable relic of Balzac's Paris, for -the Maison Vauquer of "Père Goriot" has just been pulled down. Yet to -make a pilgrimage to its site gives a very good impression of the -gloominess which Bohemian high spirits had usually to combat. The -Maison Vauquer stood near the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue -Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, now the Rue Lhomond, and the Rue Tournefort, -south of the Panthéon. I have walked down the Rue Lhomond at three on a -sunny autumn afternoon, yet I met no soul in this dingy street, which -seemed to catch not a ray of the sun's illumination. It is crossed by -two sinister little lanes, the Rue Amyot, at the corner of which -Cérizet, in "Les Petits Bourgeois," carried on the business of a small -usurer in a loathsome, grimy house, and the Rue du Pot de Fer, before -coming to which one passes a high, dark barrack, heavy iron bars -shielding its dirty lower windows, the "Institution Lhomond pour -l'éducation des jeunes filles"--poor _jeunes filles_! When the Rue -Tournefort meets the Rue Lhomond there is a very steep descent, -accurately described by Balzac, into the Rue de l'Arbalète. Almost any -of the mournful dwellings with weedy gardens on this slope might have -been the hideous _pension_ where Goriot died, while at the corner of the -Rue de l'Arbalète there is a veritable dungeon, only two tiny windows in -cracked frames piercing its high, blank wall. If you proceed into the -narrow Rue Mouffetard, one long, smelly vegetable market, you will then -realize the general state of all but the best of Louis Philippe's Paris. - -It was part of the old world, unconscious of its impending reformation -in the light of the new ideals of comfort and sanitation which were to -become the accented notes of modernity. It was a provincial city of -small compass with no industrial suburbs, no railways--let alone trams -or river steamboats--and a population of considerably less than a -million concentrated for the most part in its overcrowded quarters by -the river banks, where the excitement of its spiritual life made up for -the deficiencies of its material well-being. There were few public -buildings of recent construction; the Louvre was still disfigured by the -_débris_ of the Place du Carrousel; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, and -the Palais de Justice were hemmed in by crabbed streets and thickly -clustering old houses. Private gardens were many, but public squares -were few. Except for the boulevards the streets had medieval paving with -central gutters, from which all and sundry were liberally splashed, so -that for well-dressed persons to venture in them on foot was an -impossibility. An American writing in 1835 says of them: "They are paved -with cubical stones of eight or ten inches, convex on the upper surface -like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where -not bounded by stores they are as dark as they were under King Pepin. -Some seem to be watertight."[37] They were seldom swept, never flushed, -and primitively lit. The noise, too, except on the boulevards, was -deafening and incessant. Not only did the eternal rumbling of wheels -over cobblestones and the sharp clatter of stumbling hoofs assail the -ear, but also the ringing of bells, the rattle of water-carriers' -buckets, the din of barrel-organs and itinerant singers, and all those -street cries of fish-sellers, clothes-merchants, rag and bone men, -glaziers, umbrella menders, and fruit-vendors so picturesque in isolated -survival, but so unbearable in the _ensemble_ of their heyday. It would -be a mistake, however, to imagine this Paris as sleepy, stagnant, or -unpricked by the progressive spirit; on the contrary, she was -exceedingly wide-awake. But, whereas the Englishman at once translates -his progressive idea into mechanism, the Frenchman prefers to let the -first thorough ferment take place in his mind alone, allowing it, if -need be, to inspire in him the primitive actions of attack and defence, -but leaving more complicated handiwork to a later date, when the logic -of change has been worked out, according to which he then acts -rigorously. In this light the Paris of Bohemia must be -regarded--picturesquely stagnant externally, seething inwardly--and of -this condition Bohemia was the type. Its extravagant or tattered dress, -its Rabelaisian speech and self-indulgence, the antiquated splendours of -the Impasse du Doyenné and the equally antiquated hovels and garrets of -its poverty, its disregard of public convenience and its real antagonism -to democracy, were externals voluntarily or of necessity adopted from -an earlier age; they were the old bottles which served for a moment to -hold and to flavour with a distinctive tang the new wine of the Romantic -vintage. Other vintages of equal potency have quickened men's hearts -since then, and every new age, whether its ideals be artistic or social, -will have its particular ferment that will find its appropriate vessels, -but the past can never return any more than the first delirious -headiness can be restored to an old wine that now charms with its -matured delicacy. Bohemia is a thing of the past with that irrevocable -Paris with its tortuous, noisy streets, its high gables, its wide skirts -and embroidered waistcoats, its - - _Fashionables musqués, gueux à mine incongrue,_ - _Grisettes au pied leste, au sourire agaçant,_ - _Beaux tilburys dorés comme l'éclair passant--_ - -the Paris of Balzac, the Paris of Roger de Beauvoir and Alfred de -Musset, the Paris of Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, the Paris -of Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel, the Paris, in fine, which was the -only home of _les vrais Bohémiens de la vraie Bohème_. - - - - -INDEX - - -Names of characters in fiction are printed in italics. - -A - -ABRANTÈS, Duchesse d', 71 - -Alton-Shee, _see_ Aulnis, Duc d' - -Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 36, 37, 51 - -Amusements of _Bohème_, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - -Ancelot, Madame, 71, 72, 95 - -Anglemont, Privat d', 224-228, 262, 278, 279, 280 - -Anglomania in Paris, 87, 88 - -Arsouille, Milord, _see_ Battut, Charles de la - -_Arthez, Daniel d'_, 14, 15, 127-129, 298 - -Artois, Comte d', 23 - -Arvers, Félix, 102 - -Asselineau, Charles, 56, 58, 59, 61, 109 - -Aulnis, Duc d', 70, 78, 79, 80, 91, 275 - - -B - -BADOUILLARDS, LES, 224, 225 - -Bal Bullier, 279, 280 - Mabille, 280 - -Bal Musard, 270, 276 - -Balzac, Honoré de, 44, 45, 67, 71, 72, 73, 78, 81, 99, 129, 164, 165, - 258, 285, 286, 302 - characters in the novels of, 14, 15, 16, 49, 59-61, 62, 67-69, 75, 76, - 78, 80-86, 99, 102, 111-114, 127-129, 163-165, 256, 261, 262, 264, 268, - 271, 274, 290, 292, 294, 295, 296, 298, 299 - -Banville, Théodore de, 33, 73, 104, 109, 226, 227, 233, 277 - -Barbara, Charles, 248-250, 265, 269 - -_Barbemuche, Carolus_, _see_ Barbara, Charles - -Barrière d'Enfer, Bohemian colony at the, 239-243 - -Barrière, Théodore, 244 - -Bastide, Jules, 36, 37 - -Battut, Charles de la, 90, 91, 275, 276 - -Baudelaire, Charles, 13, 15, 33, 57, 61, 66, 230-233, 261 - -Beauvoir, Roger de, 13, 44, 73, 76, 93-97, 101, 102, 106, 168, - 169, 177, 186, 187, 212, 255, 256, 259, 273, 284, 302 - -Belgiojoso, Prince, 71, 93, 102 - Princess, 13, 71, 86 - -Béquet, 101, 106 - -Béranger, 23, 24 - -Berlioz, Hector, 73, 122, 269 - -Berry, assassination of the Duc de, 23 - -Bisson, the brothers, 236, 237 - -_Bixiou_, 82, 84-86, 99 - -Blanche, Doctor, 190 - -Boeuf Enragé, Cabaret du, 227 - -Bohème, La, meaning of the term, 1-12 - its place and period, 12-20 - rise and fall, 1830-1848, 21-34 - general characteristics of, 111-129 - Romanticism of, 25, 26, 29-31, 40-50, 56-64, 131-159, 200-204, 272 - its place in Parisian society, 65-68, 73, 76, 77, 110 - amusements of, 176-178, 182-186, 198-200, 214, 215, 252-281 - drama in, 132-136, 140, 141, 175, 176, 272-274 - life of, 126-251 - love in, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - music in, 249, 250 - -Bohème, La, the Paris of, 282-302 - smoking in, 151, 152 _See also_ Cénacle, the Second: Bohème Galante; - Buveurs d'Eau; Gautier; Murger, &c. - Galante, La, 158-193, 194, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 221 - _see_ Doyenné, Impasse du - -Boissard, 231 - -Borel, Pétrus, 15, 41, 43, 57, 58, 61, 133, 135, 136-140, 144, 149-155, - 169, 177, 201, 298 - -Bouchardy, Joseph, 136, 140, 152, 155, 156, 218, 272 - -Bouffé, 101 - -Bouginier's nose, 223, 224 - -Bouilhet, Louis, 230 - -Boulevard des Italiens, 74, 112, 121, 288, 292, 293 - -"Bousingots," 55, 62, 144 - -Briffaut, 101, 106 - -Brot, Alphonse, 136, 137 - -Bullier, 279 - Bal, 279, 280 - -Burnett, George, 17 - -Buveurs d'Eau, Société des, 212, 233-242, 266-268 - -Byron, Lord, influence of on Bohème, 35-37, 64, 125, 134, 151 - - -C - -CABANON, Emile, 97, 101, 102, 106 - -Cabaret du Boeuf Enragé, 227 - -Cabaret Dinochan, 261, 262 - of Mère Cadet, 263 - of Mère Saguet, 129, 130 - -Cabot, 237, 238 - -Cadet, Cabaret of Mère, 263 - -Café Anglais, 91, 96, 259, 260 - Hardy, 96, 259, 260 - Momus, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - de l'Odéon, 261 - d'Orsay, 181 - de Paris, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - Riche, 259, 260 - Tortoni, 13, 86, 259 - -Camp, Maxime du, 40-42, 94, 95, 132, 134, 142, 150, 153, 154, 156, 222, - 228-230, 284 - -Cancan, The, 80, 91, 275, 276 - -Carnaud, 278, 279 - -Carnival, 80, 89-91, 274-276 - -Cénacle, the first, 129-132 - the second, 126-157, 158, 159, 203, 271, 272, 298 - of the Rue des Quatre Vents, 127-129 - -Cercle des Étrangers, 269 - -Chahut, The, 275 - -Champfleury, 98, 99, 101, 102, 219, 235, 238, 243-250, 256, 262, 266-268, 272, - 296, 297 - -Chanteraine, Salle, 221, 222 - -Charles X, 23, 24, 200 - -Chartreuse, La, _see_ Closerie des Lilas - -Chassériau, 185, 193 - -Châteaubriand, Duc de, 37, 71 - -Châtillon, 169, 185, 193 - -Chaudesaigues, 103 - -Chaumière, La, 97, 177, 204, 225, 242, 277, 278 - -Chicard, 275, 276 - -Chintreuil, 237, 238, 243 - -Childebert, La, 222-225 - -Cloître Saint-Merri, insurrection of the, 27, 59, 128, 161 - -Clopet, Léon, 136, 137, 152 - -Closerie des Lilas, La, 97, 277-281 - -Coleridge, S. T., 10, 17, 18 - -_Colline_, 126, 198-218, 238, 241, 250, 263, 265-267, 281 - -Colon, Jenny, 174-176, 190 - -Cormenin, Louis de, 230 - -Corot, 185, 193 - -Courbet, 201, 250 - -Courtille, Descente de la, 90 - -Cretaine, Boulangerie, 262, 273 - -Cydalise, 179, 180, 193, 213, 257 - - -D - -DAGNEAUX'S Restaurant, 230, 263 - -Dancing, 80, 91, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - -Delacroix, 48, 122, 169, 184 - -Delvau, Alfred, 159, 160, 227, 235, 238, 245, 247, 248, 261-263, 267, 268 - -Desbrosses, the brothers, 237-241, 243, 290 - -Dinochan, Cabaret, 261, 262 - -Dondey, Théopile, _see_ O'Neddy, Philothée - -Doré, Gustave, 192 - -Dorval, Marie, 13, 273 - -Doyenné, Impasse du, Bohemian brotherhood in, 158-193, 203, 206, - 210, 213, 214, - 229, 257, 276, 301 - Priory of, 166 - Rue du, 164, 165, 168 - -Doze, Mademoiselle, 106 - -Drama in Bohème, 140, 141, 175, 176, 221, 222, 272-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - -Dress of the Romantic period, 92, 96, 131, 139, 141, 145, 151, 239, 234-259 - -Dumas, Alexandre, 13, 55, 76, 155, 184, 190, 198, 226 - -Duponchel, 97 - -Duras, Duchesse de, 71 - -Dyer, George, 17 - - -E - -"ÉCOLE de bon sens," 201, 203 - - -F - -FAUBOURG Saint-Germain, 69, 70, 297 - -Fauchéry, 245, 246, 262, 277 - -Flaubert, Gustave, 33, 201, 228-230 - -Flicoteaux's Restaurant, 264, 265 - -Fontenay-aux-Roses, 200, 216 - -Frascati, 269 - -Fraser, Major, 91, 92 - - -G - -GAMBLING, _see_ Paris - -Gautier, Théophile, 13, 15, 16, 20, 33, 44, 45, 50, 55, 56, 76, 110, - 122, 126, 129, 132-157, 160, 162, 164-173, 177-180, 183-189, - 193, 194, 201, 207, 212, 218, 253, 269, 272, 282, 287-289, 302 - -Gavarni, 13, 169, 256, 259 - -Gay, Delphine, 72, 73, 93 - Sophie, 72, 73 - -Gigoux, Jean, 61 - -Gilbert, 53 - -Girardin, Delphine de, _see_ Gay, Delphine - Emile de, 30, 103 - -Goncourt, the brothers de, 201 - -Graziano's Restaurant, 136, 147, 148 - -Grisettes, 216-218, 250, 258-259, 274, 277-280 - -Guichardet, 262, 263 - -Guigard, Joannis, 267 - -Guilbert, 237 - -Guizot, 200 - - -H - -HABENECK, 269 - -Hardy, Café, 95, 259, 260 - -Haricots, Hôtel des, 279 - -Heine, Heinrich, 275 - -"Hernani," performance of in 1830, 25, 26, 28, 132-136, 201, 221, 255, 272 - -Hill's Tavern, 261 - -Houssaye, Arsène, 76, 116, 158, 160-163, 168-175, 177-189, 194, - 207, 244, 256, 261, 269, 272, 298 - -Hugo, Madame, 72 - Victor, 13, 25, 28, 31, 32, 45-48, 55, 62, 72, 73, 122, 129-132, - 144, 201, 285, 297 - worshipped in Bohème, 25, 45-48, 52, 122, 132-136, 148, - 152, 153, 156, 158, - 184, 201, 244 - - -I - -IMPASSE du Doyenné, _see_ Doyenné - - -J - -JANIN, Jules, 189, 196, 203, 273 - -"Jeune-France" section of Romanticists, the, 45, 57, 58, 61, 94, 95, 139, 142, 150-153 - -Johnson, Samuel, 10 - -Jonson, Ben, 10 - -Jouy, de, 236 - - -K - -KARR, Alphonse, 238, 280 - -Kock, Paul de, 285, 287 - - -L - -LAFAYETTE, 24 - -Lamartine, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Lamb, Charles, 11, 17, 173, 174 - -Lassailly, 44 - -Lautour-Mézéray, 103 - -Leconte de l'Isle, 233 - -Legendre, Madame, 222, 223 - -Leleux, Adolphe, 184 - -Lelioux, 235, 240 - -Le Poitevin, 230 - -Louis, XVIII, 23 - -Louis Philippe, 13, 22, 24, 26, 27, 59, 79, 200, 201 - -Love in Bohème, 173-176, 178-182, 213-218, 246-248 - -Lucas, Le Petit, 261 - - -M - -MABILLE, Bal, 280 - -Mackeat, Augustus, 136, 141, 155, 272 - -Magny's Restaurant, 263 - -Maison d'Or, La, 96 - -"Mal du Siècle," Le, 35-64, 252, 253, 255 - -"Mal Romantique," _see_ "Mal du Siècle" - -Malitourne, Armand, 101, 106 - -Maquet, Augustus, _see_ Mackeat - -_Marcel_, 15, 16, 21, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 244, 248, 250, - 254, 265-267, 271, 277, 280, 282 - -Marilhat, 169, 185 - -Maurier, George Du, 7-9 - -Mediævalism, worship of by French Romantics, 43-46, 94, 95, - 134, 141, 142, 150-153, 201, 210, 211, 221, 224 - -Mercoeur, Elisa, 29 - -Meyerbeer, 175, 176, 270 - -_Mimi_, 213-218, 246-248, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Mogador, Céleste, 280 - -Momus, Café, 198, 204, 246, 248, 265-268 - -Monnier, Henri, 97-101, 275 - -Monselet, Charles, 226, 233, 262 - -Montmartre, 67, 216, 288-290, 296, 297 - -Moreau, Hégésippe, 29, 53, 261 - -Murger, Henry, 15, 16, 33, 194-197, 232-251, 256, - 261, 262, 266-268, 269, 272, 277, 280, 290, 296, 298 - "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," 1, 11, 12, 15, 16, 21, 33, - 34, 119, 120, 126, 147, 159, 160, 194-218, 219, 237, - 238, 241-249, 254, 263, 265-267, 272, 273, 277, 298 - Bohemian generation of, 64, 200-251, 263, 266-268, 270, - 271, 277-281 - -Musard, 14, 269, 270, 276 - Bal, 270, 276 - -_Musette_, 213-218, 246, 247, 254, 258, 259, 277, 281 - -Music in Bohème, 249, 250 - in Paris, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - -Musset, Alfred de, 13, 17, 48, 71, 76, 92, 93, 102, 106, 115, 184, 202, 244, 302 - - -N - -NADAR, 233, 235, 237, 238, 242, 262, 266-268 - -Nanteuil, Célestin, 133, 136, 141, 142, 149, 155, 169, 184 - -Nerval, Gérard de, 13, 16, 18, 133-136, 143-146, 148, 149, - 154, 155, 160, 162-193, 207, 212, 227, 253, 272, 295, 302 - -Nodier, 42, 72, 73 - -Noel, 235, 237, 238 - - -O - -O'NEDDY, Philothée, 40, 56, 124, 125, 136, 137, 141, 150-153, 155 - -Opéra, 79, 96, 97, 104, 270, 271, 293 - Bal de l', 204, 245, 274, 276 - -Ourliac, Edmond, 76, 169-172, 177, 186, 187, 272, 275 - - -P - -PALAIS Royal, 268, 289 - -_Palfèrine, Comte de la_, 14, 102, 111-114, 262 - -Paphos, 269 - -Paris, 11, 12-15, 24, 27, 66, 67, 105, 116, 282-302 - balls in, 155, 177, 178, 181-185, 204, 225, 270, 274-281 - Café de, 79, 86, 87, 91, 169, 259, 260 - drama in, 221, 222, 271-274; _and see_ "Hernani" - gambling in, 268, 269 - literary _salons_ in, 70-73 - music in, 13, 14, 71, 73, 269-271 - restaurants, &c., in, 121, 129, 130, 136, 147, 148, 169, - 177, 181, 198, 204, 211, 225, 227, 230, 246, 248, - 259-268; _and see_ Cabaret; Café - Society in, 65-86, 107, 108 - student life in, 221-225, 231; _and see under_ Bohème - -Pelloquet, Théodore, 197, 251 - -Petit Lucas, Le, _see_ Lucas - Moulin Rouge, _see_ Graziano - -_Phèmie Teinturière_, 213-217, 247, 266 - -Pilodo, 275 - -Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - -Piton, le _pâtissier_, 262 - -Planche, Gustave, 229 - -Pomaré, Reine, 280 - -Ponsard, 201 - -Pottier, 237 - -Prado, 275 - -Privat d'Anglemont, _see_ Anglemont - -Punch, a Romantic drink, 150 - - -Q - -QUARTIER Latin, the, 8, 22, 75, 160, 170, - 221-227, 231-233, 249, 250, 262-265, 276-280, 297-299 - - -R - -_Rastignac_, 14, 75, 78, 80-82, 256, 261 - -Récamier, Madame, 36, 37, 71 - -Restaurants, _see under_ Paris - -Revolution of 1830, the, 22, 24-34, 200 - -Rocher de Cancale, Le, 121, 211, 260, 261 - -_Rodolphe_, 15, 119, 120, 126, 198-218, 236, - 237, 241, 242, 244, 248, 253, 265-267, 273, 277, 302 - -Rogier, Camille, 101, 102, 145, 167-172, 177-180, - 184, 187, 193, 256 - -Romantic Period in France, the, 12, 16, 20 - _salons_ of, 70-73 - -Romanticism, 25, 26, 28-32, 35-64, 129-159, 201-203, - 221-224, 252, 253, 255, 284, 301, 302 - -Romieu, 97, 98, 102 - -Roqueplan, Camille, 169 - Nestor, 13, 17, 104, 105, 111, 162, 169, 212 - -Rousseau, 185 - -_Rubempré, Lucien de_, 14, 16, 62, 75, 76, 85, 256, 264, 271 - -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, 210-212, 240, 242, 243, 296, 297 - de la Vieille Lanterne, 192, 295 - Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bohemian colony in, 187, 188 - - -S - -SAGUET, Cabaret of Mère, 129, 130 - -Sainte-Beuve, 13, 17, 28, 52, 53, 122, 129-132, 157 - -Saint-Victor, Paul de, 191, 192 - -Sand, George, 16, 17, 93 - -Sandeau, Jules, 188, 189 - -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," _see under_ Murger - -Schann, 232, 237, 238, 242, 245, 248, 249, 266-268, 269 - -_Schaunard_, 15, 16, 126, 159, 198-218, 232, 238, 248, 250, - 253, 263, 265-268, 271, 280, 281, 302 - -Seigneur, Jehan du, 136, 137, 139-141, 148-153, 155 - -Sénancour, 37 - -Seymour, Lord, 79, 88-90 - -Shakespeare, 10 - -Smoking in Bohème, 151, 152 - -Staël, Madame de, 37 - -Steele, Richard, 17 - -Students, life of Parisian, 221-225, 231 - -Sue, Eugène, 70, 285 - - -T - -TABAR, 237 - -Tattet, Alfred, 102, 103, 106 - -Thackeray, 264 - -Théâtre Bobino, 263, 271 - Français, 133-136 - du Luxembourg, _see_ Théâtre Bobino - Montparnasse, 263 - des Variétés, ball at, 274 - -Thom, Napoléon, 136 - -Tolstoi, Monsieur de, 236, 240 - -Tortoni's Café, 13, 86, 259 - -Tournachon, F., _see_ Nadar - -"Tout Paris," Le, 73-76 - -"Trilby," 7, 8 - -Trois Frères Provençaux, Les, 121, 169 - - -V - -VABRE, Jules, 56, 133, 136-138, 140, 155 - -Vastine, 237 - -Vauquer, La Maison, 14, 16, 81, 298, 299 - -Vernet, Horace, 203 - -Véron, Doctor, 103, 104 - -Vigny, Alfred de, 17, 28, 52, 53, 55, 73 - -Villain, 237 - -Villiers de l'Isle Adam, 233 - -Vincent, Charles, 241, 242 - -Viot's Restaurant, 263 - -Vitu, 277 - -"Viveurs," Les, 70, 76-108, 204, 231, 275, 276 - - -W - -WALLON, Jean, 238, 250, 266-268 - -Wattier, 185, 193 - -PRINTED AT -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS -LONDON ENGLAND - - * * * * * - -The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext -transcriber: - -Célestin Nauteuil=>Célestin Nanteuil {8} - -Les Champs Elisées=>Les Champs Elysées - -Gerard de Nerval=>Gérard de Nerval - -"Les Jeune France."=>"Les Jeunes France." - -Elie Wildmannstadius=>Elie Wildman-stadius - -decorated thus because a lew _louis d'or_=>decorated thus because a few -_louis d'or_ - -nor ne'er-do-weels=>nor ne'er-do-wells - -Charles Mouselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote,"=>Charles -Monselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote," - -Pimodan, Hotel, 231=>Pimodan, Hôtel, 231 - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] "Les Enfants Perdus de Romantisme." - -[2] A. Cassagne: "La Théorie de l'art pour l'art en France chez les -derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes." - -[3] "Essais de Psychologie contemporaine," the chapter on Flaubert. - -[4] Philothée O'Neddy: "Feu et Flamme." - -[5] See René Canat: "Du Sentiment de la Solitude morale chez les -romantiques et les parnassiens." - -[6] See Chapter VII. - -[7] Asselineau: "Bibliographie Romantique." - -[8] "Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps." - -[9] Mrs. Trollope: "Paris and the Parisians in 1835." - -[10] "Derniers Jours de Bohème." - -[11] "Les Salons de Paris." - -[12] Challamel: "Souvenirs d'un Hugolâtre." - -[13] "Paris in 1829 and 1830." - -[14] Major Fraser's name appears in many memoirs of the time, but I owe -the above account to "An Englishman in Paris," by A. D. Vandam. - -[15] "Vignettes Romantiques." - -[16] Léon Séché tells his story in "La Jeunesse Dorée sous Louis -Philippe." - -[17] "Histoire du Romantisme." - -[18] Jules Claretie: "Pétrus Borel." - -[19] Maxime du Camp: "Théophile Gautier." - -[20] "Gérard de Nerval." - -[21] "Portraits contemporains." The article on the artist Marilhat. - -[22] "La Bohème Galante." - -[23] Arsène Houssaye: "Les Confessions." - -[24] Gérard, to be precise, quotes an earlier and more cruel version: - - _...La_ reine du Sabbat - _Qui, depuis deux hivers, dans vos bras se débat,_ - _Vous échapperait-elle ainsi qu'une chimère..._ - - -[25] See Chapter xi for a further account of Bohemia's amusements. - -[26] In a preface to Gérard de Nerval's "OEuvres." - -[27] "Les Confessions." - -[28] The following account combines much of the information given in -three books: Champfleury's "Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse"; "Henri -Murger et la Bohème," by A. Delvau; and the curious little "Histoire de -Murger pour servir à l'histoire de la Vraie Bohème," par trois Buveurs -d'Eau, the anonymous authors of which are known to be his friends, -Lelioux, Nadar, and Noel. It is in the last named that some of Murger's -letters are given. There is a certain amount of conflict between the -dates given in these different books, but since they are all equally -likely to be inaccurate, I have chosen to ignore the discrepancies, -which are not very important. - -[29] This appears in Charles Monselet's diary printed in the memoir by -A. Monselet. - -[30] "Histoire anecdotique des Cafés et Cabarets de Paris." - -[31] In the summer they took place in the Champs Elysées. - -[32] M. Henri d'Alméras in "La Vie Parisienne sous Louis Philippe," from -whose book other details of these balls are taken. - -[33] The popular term for the prison in which refractory members of the -Garde Nationale were confined. - -[34] Now printed in his "Portraits Contemporains." - -[35] The preface to George Cain's "Coins de Paris." - -[36] See "Les Comédiens sans le savoir." - -[37] Sanderson: "Paris in 1835." - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vie de Bohème, by Orlo Williams - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - -***** This file should be named 40293-8.txt or 40293-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/2/9/40293/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Vie de Bohème - A Patch of Romantic Paris - -Author: Orlo Williams - -Release Date: July 21, 2012 [EBook #40293] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="337" height="550" alt="image of the book's cover" title="image of the book's cover" /></a> -</p> - -<h1>VIE DE BOHÈME</h1> - -<p><a name="FRONT" id="FRONT"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/frontispiece_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/frontispiece_sml.jpg" width="546" height="550" alt="La Cydalise." title="La Cydalise." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">La Cydalise.</span> -</p> - -<h1>VIE DE BOHÈME<br /> -<small><small>A P A T C H O F R O M A N T I C P A R I S</small></small></h1> - -<p class="cb">BY ORLO<br /> -WILLIAMS<br /><br /> -<img src="images/colophon.png" height="192" width="150" -alt="colophon" -/> -<br /> -RICHARD G. BADGER<br /> -THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON<br /> -<br /> -<small><i>First Published 1913</i></small><br /> -<br /> -<small>PRINTED AT<br /> -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS<br /> -LONDON</small></p> - -<p class="cb"> <br /> -TO<br /> -MY WIFE<br /> <br /> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="CONTENTS" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> -<tbody><tr><td align="right"><small>CHAP.</small></td><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#I">I.</a></td><td> LA VRAIE BOHÈME</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#II">II.</a></td><td> A FRINGE OF HISTORY</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_021">21</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#III">III.</a></td><td> LE MAL DU SIÈCLE</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_035">35</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td><td> PARISIAN SOCIETY</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_065">65</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#V">V.</a></td><td> LES VIVEURS</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_087">87</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#VI">VI.</a></td><td> LA BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_109">109</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#VII">VII.</a></td><td> THE SECOND "CÉNACLE"</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></td><td> LA BOHÈME GALANTE</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_158">158</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#IX">IX.</a></td><td> SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_194">194</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#X">X.</a></td><td> MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_219">219</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#XI">XI.</a></td><td> AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_252">252</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#XII">XII.</a></td><td> THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_282">282</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td> </td><td><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_303">303</a></td></tr> -</tbody></table> - -<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS<br /><br /> -<small>[some illustrations have been moved slighty to be out of paragraphs -to facilitate reading (etext transcriber)]</small></h2> - -<table summary="" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> - -<tbody><tr><td colspan="2" align="right"><small><i>To face<br /> -page</i></small></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">La Cydalise.</span> <i>By Camille Rogier</i></td><td align="left"><a href="#FRONT"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Spirit of Romanticism</span> </td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_044">44</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(From the cover of a Romantic periodical)</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Bousingots.</span> <i>By Frances Trollope</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_056">56</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(From "Paris and the Parisians in 1835")</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Les Champs Elysées.</span> <i>By Eugène Lami</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_067">67</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Viveur.</span> <i>By Gavarni</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_078">78</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Fashionables.</span> <i>By Gavarni</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_086">86</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pétrus Borel.</span> <i>By Louis Boulanger</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(After an etching by Célestus Nanteuil)</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Célestin Nanteuil.</span> <i>By Himself</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné </span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(From "Les Confessions" by Arsène Houssaye)</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Gérard de Nerval</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_190">190</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Grisette.</span> <i>By Gavarni</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_216">216</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Bal Masqué at the Opéra.</span> <i>By Eugène Lami</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_274">274</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Galop Infernal.</span> <i>By Gavarni</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_276">276</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Guingette</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_278">278</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Rue St.-Denis</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_294">294</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Rue de la Tixanderie.</span> <i>By Méryon</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_295">295</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Rue Pirouette.</span> <i>By Méryon</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_297">297</a></td></tr> -</tbody></table> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br /><br /> -LA VRAIE BOHÈME</h2> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind"><i>La Bohème, c'est le stage de la vie artistique; c'est la préface -de l'Académie, de l'Hôtel-Dieu ou de la Morgue.</i></p> - -<p>M<small>URGER</small>: "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">I<small>F</small> there is one reason for which the growth of newspapers during the -last century may be looked at askance, it is the journalist's -persistency in perpetuating phrases. Phrases and catchwords at the -moment of invention are works of a peculiar genius, of which some men -have an abnormal share, though it may crop out suddenly in the most -unlikely places; but a good catchword, that crystallization of a drop of -some elusive current that is momentarily passing through public opinion, -that apt naming of some newly formed group of men or ideas, never comes -out of an inkpot: it is essentially, as the French finely recognize, a -<i>mot</i>, a pearl of speech. It darts out in some happy moment of human -intercourse, often almost unconsciously, when the words on a man's lips -are less than usual rebellious to the expression of his thoughts, or -when the exhilaration of some public utterance has charged the air so -that the little telling point, hitherto cold and dormant,<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> flashes -suddenly into incandescence. Such a phrase, born on the lips of one, can -only be nurtured on the lips of many: its success implies continued -utterance. It becomes a heaven-sent convenience to save human -circumlocution, a new topic for the dullards, a new toy for the -<i>blasés</i>. In these communicative days, indeed, journalism increases a -thousand-fold the possibilities of its radiation, but a good catchword -has always made its way without the help of print. There has never -existed a human society, at any developed stage of civilization, that -has not been perfectly capable of hitting off a new idea or a new group -in some telling phrase or name without the intervention of a scribe. At -the same time, conversational man, left to himself, is no less quick to -forget than to invent. A new phrase properly fades as soon as the -novelty of that which inspired it, but once it has appeared upon a -single written page it has been given an artificial life of varying but -incalculable duration. This artificial existence has been infinitely -increased by the newspaper. The journalist, who has little time to -think, is naturally loth to let a convenient label go, so that, long -after its original parcel of ideas or beings has passed away, he will -keep tagging it on to other parcels with a certain show of relevance -which effectually conceals the fact that it ought long ago to have been -filed for the etymological dictionary.</p> - -<p>A phrase which has thus lingered artificially in<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> common use is the word -"Bohemian." Nobody can deny that it is a useful label, simply because it -is so vague, conveying as it does the sense of some deliberate -divergence from the usages of polite society, without being in the least -embarrassingly clear as to the degree or direction of that divergence. -It is a term, so apparently specific, so really loose, equally capable -of carrying blame and admiration, which people will go on applying to -men and women, their lives and their clothes, without inquiring whether -there is in fact any answering reality. It would be easy enough to -confuse its simple users by a few question. They might be asked, for -instance, what a Bohemian is, when they would probably reply, in the -slipshod phraseology of to-day, that he is an odd person who wears funny -clothes and does quaint things. But then, it might be pointed out, a -docker from Limehouse is equally odd and quaint from their point of -view, though they do not call him a Bohemian; on which they will rather -pettishly explain that they mean artists and musicians and so on, people -who don't "work." To help them out on this point, in fine, they mean -people who potentially rank with the members of learned professions, but -who choose to live a less respectable life, in which paying calls, -dressing for dinner, and attending to the dictates of social morality -are considered of small importance, though the exact degree of social -unorthodoxy is left as undefined as the qualifying degree of artistic -performance.<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> The same lady will comprehend in the term the middle-aged -civil servant who haunts studios of an evening, wears pale tweeds, but -is otherwise a pearl of inartistic chivalry, and the scaramouch of a -painter, whom she calls "charming" because he is clever, and whose -absorption in art has entirely ruined him as a social being. I propose -another question. Why are Bohemians so called? The answer seems -easy—because they live in Bohemia. And Bohemia? Again the label -produces a difficulty. To pursue any geographical inquiries concerning -Bohemia in a Socratic spirit would quickly produce exasperation in any -catechumen, and I will presume the result without the method. The -answers would generally amount to this: that it seems agreed, simply -since the word is used, that there is a Bohemia, but its latitude and -longitude are indefinable. It is not confined to Chelsea or St. John's -Wood, or even, of course, to England; apparently it transcends the -ordinary differences of nationality, existing always and everywhere. The -possibility of its having existed once and somewhere—I give away freely -at this early stage the foundation of this book—never occurs, for -labels have a tremendous potency of suggestion. Bohemia is commonly -assumed to exist now in the midst of this commercial day. It is -generally accepted—with more or less warmth according to individual -tastes—as an institution not, perhaps, entirely desirable for itself, -but a necessary<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> patch in the motley dress of civilization. It is -proclaimed gleefully or admitted under constraint, as the case may be, -that clever, artistic men and women, wisely or perversely, choose to -gather there, and that certain epithets, such as quaint, amusing, -unconventional—the ethical implications of the adjectives differing -with their user—are applicable to it. But <i>la vie de Bohème</i>, once so -vivid a reality, has now no tangible substance: it wanders about, the -palest ghost of a legend, formless and indistinct. The young may look -forward to it and the old pretend to look back on it, but young and old, -in either case, are turning their mind's eye upon a mere abstraction. -The word "Bohemian" has become as conventional as "gentleman," with less -content for all its greater glamour.</p> - -<p>The glamour of Bohemia, too, is projected from a paradox. On the -assumption that it exists, those who wish to live in Bohemia idealize -it; those who have lived in it boast of it; and those who might have -lived in it, but did not, pretend that they did. Yet those who wish to -live in it know nothing of it, and those who lived in it, for all their -boasting, have left it. It seems to take shape, like a mirage, only in -prospect or retrospect. There are witnesses to the distant glint of its -magic towers in the rosy mists of sunrise or the golden haze of sunset, -but of the light and shade within its streets there are none, for those -who might be supposed to be<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> passing through its gates are strangely -reticent, and seem mysteriously to lose the sense of their glorious -nationality. A man may say with a thrill, "I will be a Bohemian," or -with a glow, "I was a Bohemian," but of him who said, "I am a Bohemian," -the only proper view would be one of deepest suspicion. He would -certainly be a masquerader.</p> - -<p>Yet many people, at least in England, do so masquerade—people who -affect Chelsea, slouch hats, and ill-cut garments, who haunt Soho -restaurants, talk and smoke cigarettes in half a dozen studios, toady -sham genius, flutter in emancipatory "movements," and generally do -nothing on quite enough a year. Not long ago a distinguished artist, -genially inspired by dinner at a club of Bohemian traditions and most -respectable membership, gave utterance to the view that, though the -velvet coat had disappeared before evening dress, the Bohemian still -existed. Upon that a writer in an evening paper made the wise comment:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"There are people, it is true, who indulge in mild -unconventionality; they feed in Soho, and talk of cabarets. But -these people are seldom artists and never Bohemian. The -unconventionality of these people is a mere outward pose, which -compels any artist who wishes to preserve his individuality and -good name to pay careful attention to the external forms. -Bohemianism, such as it was, sprang up in Paris, and that is -sufficiently good reason for its failure in England."</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p> - -<p>The journalist has here risen above the temptation of the label, and his -words are just. The gist of the matter lies, perhaps, in his last -sentence, but that point must wait its turn. There is no doubt that -there exists in London, not to speak of other cities, a large body of -people of varying ages, occupations, beliefs, and principles who keep up -a masquerade of Bohemianism. As a body they are worthy citizens enough, -whose intelligence on some subjects is above the average, but they are -masqueraders none the less if they wish to pass as <i>enfants de Bohème</i>. -A reason for this masquerade may be found partly in the very human love -of "dressing up" which is never to be discouraged, partly in the -glorification of Bohemia in which writers of novels and reminiscences -are prone to indulge. Probably George du Maurier's "Trilby" has been -responsible for more misconceptions on this matter than any other single -book, on account of its very charm, a charm that needs no further praise -at this date. The author himself, who wrote about that which he knew, -made no extravagant claims to have drawn Bohemia in the early part of -"Trilby," but it is that which in the eyes of most of his readers he is -unavoidably represented as doing. So far as Taffy, the Laird, and Little -Billie are concerned, they are simply transplanted Britons of the -Victorian era, art students with means enough to pursue their studies -without pot-boiling and to keep open house for a collection of other -joyous<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> young people, of whom Svengali was alone the complete Bohemian, -while Trilby herself with perfect propriety mended their socks. Trilby's -part in this studio life is a sentimental idyll which nobody would wish -to destroy, but it is none the less true, in spite of her creator's plea -for her <i>quia multum amavit</i> in a delightful page of circumlocution, -that he has effectually distilled out of her any essence of Bohemianism -which she is dimly represented as possessing. George du Maurier knew -Paris when Bohemia was no more, but even he must have known the rougher, -wilder, less comfortable side of the Quartier Latin. Yet that he glossed -it over is perfectly comprehensible. Even those who lived to write about -the Bohemia that once was could not help tinging their memories with the -romantic yearning of middle age. In a life where hardship and happiness -kaleidoscopically alternate, pain—especially in the shape of material -want or the sense of unjust neglect—obscures in the moment of struggle -the more brightly coloured glasses of health and joy which more often -than not surround it. In retrospect, by a merciful dispensation, the -sombre lines almost entirely disappear, only to be recalled by an -unnatural effort of memory. What stood out in retrospect, in the special -case of <i>la vie de Bohème</i>, was the happiness of youth that would never -return, its <i>insouciance</i>, its untrammelled companionships, the poetry -of its first love, its gaiety and irresponsible humour, its courage, its -ready makeshifts<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> in adversity. The ex-Bohemian had, what the Bohemian -had not, a contrast by which to measure his regrets—the cares of -domesticity, the wearisome demands of society upon its members, the -responsibilities and cares of an assured position, howsoever humble, the -dulling of pleasure's edge, joints stiffening, hair bleaching. The snows -of yesteryear were falling upon others now; and that the young rogues -might not be too uplifted, he must write his <i>militavi non sine gloria</i>, -hinting the while that the special glory of Bohemia paled at the precise -moment of his exodus. George du Maurier poured over "Trilby" some of -this romantic recollection, and other less gifted novelists have done -the same for certain <i>coteries</i> that have lived in London. To them is -due much of the glamour still implied in the phrase "Bohemian," a -glamour which is seldom corrected by a reading of George Gissing's "New -Grub Street." Yet no conception of Bohemia into which the sombre details -of that book will not naturally fit can possibly approach the truth.</p> - -<p>This last sentence, I am aware, may be used to challenge my acquaintance -with the truth since I assume its existence. To any such challenge the -whole of this book is an answer, and its reader will at the end, it is -hoped, be in possession of at least as much truth as its author, if not -the little more which criticism supplies. In the case of a subject so -little complicated an elaborate initial summary of aims and processes<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> -and steps of proof will be unnecessary. Those who wish to do so will -have little difficulty in following a study, which provided no little -entertainment to the student, of the life that was truly to be called -Bohemian. I have been so far concerned to hint that I do not deal in any -heterogeneous parcels which have come to pass under an old label. The -label was applied at a particular time to a particular parcel, and the -one and only original parcel is the <i>vie de Bohème</i> which in this book I -attempt to unwrap.</p> - -<p>It might be supposed from the commonness of allusions to Bohemia and -Bohemianism that the terms were contemporary, at least, with the -intrusion of artists and men of letters into society, and that before -the existence of the Bohemia whose capital is Prague the name of some -other nation was, in the same way, taken in vain. However, this is not -the case. The <i>grÅ“culus esuriens</i> to whom the Roman poet so -scornfully refers had no doubt many Bohemian qualities, but the emphasis -of the taunt is laid on his foreign nationality, not upon his mode of -existence. Even after the Bohemia of the atlas came into being it knew -for many centuries no usurper of its name. Will Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, -and the merry company of the "Mermaid" tavern neither called themselves -nor were called Bohemians. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other less -distinguished inhabitants of Grub Street suffered many verbal -indignities, but not that. Coleridge and<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> Charles Lamb might be alluded -to as Bohemians now, but in their day the term had even yet not been -invented. Murger's preface to "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" proves that -so late as 1846 a universal understanding of his title could not be -taken for granted, since he begins by carefully distinguishing the -geographical Bohemia from the artistic. The modern sense of the term -originated, in fact, in Paris at the time of the Romantic movement, -being only an extension of the meaning of "gipsy" or "vagabond" long -attached to the word <i>bohémien</i> in France. Our "Bohemian" was introduced -into the English language by Thackeray, who learnt it during his -student-period in Paris.</p> - -<p>This piece of etymology, nugatory as it may appear, is, in fact, very -important. It is the first real delimitation of our inquiry. <i>La vie de -Bohème</i> is essentially a French term, and it is therefore fitting that -we should examine its implications in that language. Murger in his -preface is contradictory, but his very contradiction is pregnant and -valuable. At the outset he applies the term <i>bohémien</i> to the literary -and artistic vagabonds of all ages. "La Bohème dont il s'agit dans ce -livre n'est point une race née aujourd'hui, elle a existé de tous temps -et partout, et peut revendiquer d'illustres origines." Homer, he says, -was the first Bohemian of Greek antiquity, and his tradition was carried -on by the medieval minstrels and troubadours; Pierre<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> Gringoire and -François Villon, Clément Marot and Mathurin Regnier, Molière and -Shakespeare, Rousseau and D'Alembert were the leading citizens of their -contemporary Bohemias. This brings Murger to his own day, of which he -says: "Aujourd'hui comme autrefois, tout homme qui entre dans les arts, -sans autre moyen d'existence que l'art lui-même, sera forcé de passer -par les sentiers de la Bohème." If Chelsea were here to make a -triumphant interruption, it would have spoken too soon, for he proceeds -to give the definition which serves as an epigraph to this chapter, and, -without a word of warning, contradicts what he has said before in the -sentence: "Nous ajouterons que la Bohème n'existe et n'est possible qu'à -Paris." This is a highly serious matter. It leaves old Homer nothing but -a Greek poet, and Chelsea—well—little more than Chelsea. However, I -cannot imagine Homer objecting, and Chelsea must forgive me, if I accept -Murger's statement in the strictest possible way. Further, the Paris -implied is the Paris of Murger's own day. That this was so may appear -more clearly in the sequel, but for the present it must suffice to say -that the Paris of the Romantic period, which gave birth to Bohemia, was -unlike the Paris of earlier days in many respects, and no Romantic had -any conception of the cosmopolitan Paris of to-day. <i>La vie de Bohème</i>, -far from being a vague label, was a phrase packed with intimate meaning, -meaning which at the time was not at all so fully manifest<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> as under -criticism and comparison it may now appear. It depended for its peculiar -qualities upon the social and material conditions of Louis Philippe's -Paris, which have long since passed away.</p> - -<p>We go, therefore, beyond Murger and strike out Villon, Gringoire, and -Marot from the roll of Bohemia. At most they were only potentially -enrolled and lived, like Socrates, in a state of unconscious grace. -Whether or no Bohemia can be said to exist to-day or to have existed in -the Middle Ages, at least it can only be by analogy from the very -definite and localized <i>Bohème</i> which was part of Paris between 1830 and -1848. Though Louis Philippe, the <i>bourgeois</i> king, the admirer of the -<i>juste milieu</i>, was her ruler, the life of Paris never beat with a -quicker pulse than in those days; never was she more gay, more witty, -more intellectually scintillating, more paradoxical, in fact more -absolutely Parisian than when Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de -Musset, the Princess Belgiojoso, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, -Nestor Roqueplan, and Baudelaire were among her citizens, when Roger de -Beauvoir was dazzling upon a truly brilliant boulevard, when the dandies -gracefully lounged and quizzed upon the steps of Tortoni's, when -Alexandre Dumas gave his famous fancy-dress ball which drew all Paris, -when Marie Dorval shone beside Mademoiselle Mars, when Fanny Elssler and -Taglioni danced while Duprez and Grisi and Rubini sang, when Gavarni and -Daumier drew their<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> caricatures, when Musard conducted his furious -quadrilles, when there were still <i>salons</i> in which men and women still -knew how to talk, when life was still an artistic achievement in an -artistic setting. Memoirs and reminiscences abound of this enchanted -city in the time when her intense inner light had not paled before the -glare of commercialism and cosmopolitanism, but such sketches and -side-views must yield to the all-comprehending picture contained in the -works of Balzac, that magnificent magician. Through him the Paris of -Louis Philippe shines doubly brilliant, for its world of flesh and blood -was not more wonderful than the fictitious world with which he peopled -it, a world of high and low, rich and poor, squalor and splendour, vice -and virtue, wit and stupidity—miraculous issue from one poor mortal -brain. The Princesse de Cadignan, Madame D'Espard, Madame Firmiani, and -Mademoiselle des Touches were its higher, Coralie, Esther, Jenny Cadine, -Florine, and Madame Schontz its lower, divinities, and their worshippers -were de Marsay, the engaging Lucien de Rubempré, the remarkable -Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, La Palférine, and all the corrupted crew -of Crevels, Malifats, and Camusots; in it the greasy, dirty Maison -Vauquer contrasted with the splendid boudoir of a Delphine de Nucingen, -the illuminated poverty of a D'Arthez with the vicious luxury of the -Nathans and Finots, the huge <i>coups</i> of a Nucingen with the petty usury -of a Père Samanon,<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> the simplicity of a Cousin Pons with the malignity -of a Cousine Bette. Into this world of feverish movement and poignant -contrasts fits <i>la Bohème</i>, lighted by its double facets of fact and -fiction. As the actual Bohemians from Pétrus Borel and Théophile Gautier -to Baudelaire and Murger play their part in the world of fact, so the -fictitious Bohemians from Raphael de Valentin and D'Arthez down to -Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard play theirs in the world of fiction. -They are all part of that pageant which, though it took eighteen years -to pass and declined in bravery towards its close, may conveniently be -called the pageant of 1830.</p> - -<p>To disentangle the Bohemian contingent from its accompaniment of press -and bustle is my aim in this book, which was suggested, I may frankly -say, by some meditations on a second reading of Murger's "Scènes de la -Vie de Bohème," a work of perennial delight that deserves a better -acquaintance in England. In spite of the vivid light thrown by Murger on -the life which he is describing, his stories are apt to be misleading -unless read in the light of certain knowledge—knowledge which he could -presume in his contemporaries and which it is the aim of this book, with -all humility, to revive. Murger's little volume, after it has produced -its first flush of pleasure and amusement, raises many disconcerting -questions to a thoughtful reader. The scene it paints, for instance, is -remarkably different from the two sides of literary life depicted in -Balzac's<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> "Illusions Perdues." Neither the brotherhood of the Rue des -Quatre Vents nor the fast set into which Lousteau introduces Lucien are -connected by an obvious link with Rodolphe and his friends. Then there -is the question whether Rastignac in his days at the squalid Maison -Vauquer was in any sense a Bohemian. Or, again, it may be asked how far -fiction agrees with fact. Did Murger himself lead the same kind of life -as a Schaunard or Marcel, and if he did, was the same to be said of -other writers and artists, of Théophile Gautier or Gérard de Nerval? How -did Bohemia arise, and how far was it, as Murger asserts, a necessary -stage in the artistic life? These are some of the obvious inquiries to -which it has been my part to attempt an answer, and I would crave the -reader's indulgence if, at the outset, I seem to shrink from plunging at -once into <i>la vie de Bohème</i>. The external details of a way of life -cannot be seen in a true light if the social conditions and, still more, -the state of mind of which it was an expression are not first made -clear. For that reason a little "fringe of history" makes its appearance -and leads to a short consideration of what French writers have called -<i>le mal romantique</i>. Nevertheless, I have tried to keep the main subject -always in view, and not to be led away into discussing aspects of the -Romantic period which are not relevant. This is not, I claim with all -deference, a concoction of all the old legends and Romantic love -affairs. George Sand, for instance,<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> and Alfred de Musset only poke -their heads in; Alfred de Vigny and Marie Dorval, Sainte-Beuve and -Madame Hugo play no part. Bohemia alone is our concern, a theme which is -displayed for what it is worth without any distracting embroideries.</p> - -<p>If, then—to return to the train of thought with which I began—Bohemia -turns out to be something definite, with a beginning, a development, and -an end, some negative criteria, at all events, will be supplied by which -to judge the applicability of the label "Bohemian" to any set of -conditions existing to-day, and to decide whether the disappearance of -certain special implications and unique circumstances does not drain the -term of all definite meaning except as applied, in retrospect, to the -very persons, manners, and ideas which it originally described. By -analogy from that meaning, there is no harm in saying that there have -always been, and always will be, Bohemian individuals with a Bohemian -state of mind. Richard Steele was a Bohemian; Lamb, perhaps, was a -little too staidly settled at the India House, but his friends, George -Dyer, George Burnett and, above all, Coleridge, were certainly Bohemian -individuals. They were of that ultra-Bohemian type which never grows out -of its Bohemianism, men who remain permanently in what should only be a -"stage" till they pass the age when, as Nestor Roqueplan said, the -"bohémien" risks being confounded with the "filou." Such men as -Coleridge<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> and Dyer would be called eccentrics even in the true Bohemia; -like poor Gérard de Nerval, they were not entirely sane, and the -Bohemian <i>type</i> had essentially perfect sanity. It is for this very -reason that <i>la Bohème</i>, at its proper time, could exist, and why before -and after that time it did not exist. Sane young men, no matter what -their fads, fancies, and enthusiasms may be, have no need and no -possibility of making to-day that particular demonstration which -resulted in Bohemia. The social forces drive them in other directions. -It has long been admitted in France that Bohemia is dead, and that it -has been or ever will be revived in England is a delusion resting upon -the unintelligent use of a word. Even young Englishmen, as we now -consider youth, are too old, far too old, to live the life of which they -flatter themselves they are preserving the tradition. The boy who has -submitted to discipline for over a dozen years, learned to honour his -neighbour on the cricket and football field and to respect society as -embodied in the unwritten laws of school life—what has he in common -with the youth in France, a bachelor of letters at eighteen, bursting -with his own individuality, passionate in pursuit of his own ideas, -revelling in his new liberty, dreaming, as only a Frenchman can dream, -of glory and love, who could attach no meaning to such a phrase as -"playing the game," wayward, capricious, uproarious, and completely -unbalanced? Yet it was such who made<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> the traditions of <i>la vie de -Bohème</i>. To those who are impelled to break away and lead joyous, -untrammelled young lives of privation and artistic striving all sympathy -is due, but by masquerading under a tattered banner they do not revive -its glory nor increase their own. Paris once had room for Bohemia, but -London never. Chelsea and Soho, Highgate and St. John's Wood are to-day -no more Bohemian, in the true sense of the word, than Piccadilly or -Grosvenor Square. In the lapse of years a few accidental attributes of -the real Bohemia have come to be regarded as the essentials of the -false. We are fond of labels and catchwords, lightly casting away their -implications. So it has come to pass that Bohemia—that dirty, hungry, -lazy, noisy vale of youthful laughter and tears, so enchanting in -prospect or retrospect, so uncompromising in actuality, which many had -to pass through and most would have avoided—is looked on as the -pleasant home of more or less artistic natures, that men of stable -occupations, regular means, and fastidious temperaments may choose for a -dwelling-place, just as they may choose a garden city.</p> - -<p>Well, let them masquerade, yet Bohemia is dead, and more honour may be -done to its memory by recalling how it walked and lived than by casting -lots for its old-fashioned garments. Its virtues and its faults were -balanced as equally as its good and bad fortunes, but if it were to be -revived, the resurrection<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> should begin with that which was its chief -glory, the intense artistic enthusiasm that was its charter. "Nous -étions ivres du beau," wrote Théophile Gautier. London, indeed, would be -the better for the infusion of a more Dionysiac spirit into her æsthetic -appreciations and ideals. But that is not of the times. At the end of -his charming book, "Les Enfants Perdus du Romantisme," M. Henri -Lardanchet quotes a speech made by the president of some university -society to the effect that the youth of to-day, preoccupied with -extremely definite problems, has no longer the poetic enthusiasm of the -past generation, whereon he is moved to exclaim:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ah! ne vous glorifiez pas de l'avoir chassé, cet enthousiasme! Il -était à la fois la rose et la chanson au bord de vos vingt ans -désolés; il était l'opulence orgueilleuse de votre âge, il était -votre grâce, votre génie, votre fierté, ô jeunesse!—toute votre -jeunesse...."</p></div> - -<p>Let us take this for the epitaph of <i>La Bohème</i>.<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br /><br /> -A FRINGE OF HISTORY: THE REVOLUTION OF 1830</h2> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> the first chapter of Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," Marcel, -the painter, requires his <i>concierge</i>, in return for a tip of five -francs, to tell him every morning the day of the week, the date, the -quarter of the moon, the state of the weather, and the form of -government under which they are living. A hasty generalization from this -episode might conclude that the more noteworthy vicissitudes of society, -which we call history, were of singularly small importance to those -concerned with Bohemia. The main current of events, it would seem, -rolled on, leaving the stagnant backwater undisturbed, where, in the -easy garment of "art for art's sake," a few geniuses and many -<i>dilettanti</i> lolled the day through in unpatriotic apathy. Such a -conclusion from Murger's picture of Bohemia is, in fact, inevitable, but -it is a wrong one, and the fault lies only with Murger. The French -people, at any rate the Parisians, are extremely susceptible to the -impressions of passing events, political, artistic, or social. They are -more excitable, as we say, than ourselves. We only become agitated in -response to orders from Fleet Street,<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> whereas they are apt to ferment -spontaneously, their natural liveliness of mind acting as the yeast. It -is this quality of interest in passing events, fostered by their -fondness for discussion, which renders their criticism so trenchant and -their partisanship so ardent. So that we can scarcely believe Bohemia, -eclectic as it was, to have been unmoved or, at least, uninfluenced by -the objects of contemporary comment or debate. For this reason our -picture would be seen in a false light without some reference to -history. Moreover, I have been rash enough to impose upon myself the -limitation of dates, which are dangerous things in themselves, always -requiring justification. I put the classic period of <i>la vie de Bohème</i> -between 1830 and 1848, the exact period of Louis Philippe's reign. At -first sight the reign of this <i>bourgeois</i> prince would seem to have -little enough connexion with the florescence and decadence of the very -antitype of <i>bourgeoisie</i>, but this is only a further reason for not -neglecting history. The Revolution of 1830 was of the highest importance -for France: it was the inevitable explosion of dissatisfaction, both -political and artistic, with the powers that ruled. What I wish to make -clear is that, whereas before this date Bohemia, if it existed, was but -an unconsidered fringe on the ancient student life of the Quartier -Latin, after 1830 it not only received a population but became a force. -For a few years it was an integral part of the larger Paris, a -considerable element in public opinion<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> and, to some extent, in social -life, a factor that could not be ignored. Disturbance, however, yielded -to peace, and the interests of the public shifted. The living spirit of -Bohemia gradually hardened into a dead tradition. By 1848 independence -and individual liberty, the watchwords of Bohemia, were replaced in the -mind of citizens by thoughts of social reform which culminated in the -Republic of 1848. Art, for the time, fell from her place of glory, and -Bohemia relapsed for ever into obscurity.</p> - -<p>The battle of Waterloo seemed to have undone all the good of the -Revolution of 1789. The Bourbons came back to power, with Louis XVIII, a -lazy man, on the throne, and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, leading a -band of ultra-Royalists behind him. The ultra-Royalists, exasperated by -the "hundred days," were breathing fire and slaughter, full of zeal to -destroy the liberty and philosophy of the Revolution and to replace it -with absolutism and priest-rule. Against them was arrayed the party of -"Independents" with Béranger, their poet, and between the two were the -"doctrinaires" or moderate Royalists. The "Ultras," whose violence began -by damaging their own cause, were put into power by the assassination of -the Duc de Berry in 1820, and Villèle was their minister. The succession -of Charles X only strengthened the forces of reaction, till in 1828 -Villèle was defeated and gave place to a Liberal, Martignac.<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> But -Martignac's party were not strong enough to support him long, and in -1829 he was succeeded by Polignac and a Royalist ministry. The Liberals -now prepared for stubborn resistance. Societies were formed, with -branches throughout the provinces, which were joined by all shades of -Liberal opinion, and their hero was Lafayette. The blindness of Charles -X precipitated events. Exasperated by the adverse result of the -elections of 1830, he suspended the constitution by his famous -ordinances on July 26. Paris rose at once, and four days later all was -over. Louis of Orleans was in Paris by the 30th, and took the oath as -King in August. This is only a bald statement of facts, but they are -facts that can be seen by the eye of imagination. By 1830 Paris was a -boiling cauldron of passionate enthusiasm. Revolution was aflame once -more. Barricades—the mere word is a trumpet-call to Frenchmen—had been -erected once more in the streets, and once more blood had flowed in -their defence. Paris for years had smouldered with indignation, and now -her young men glowed with triumph. The people should come to its own -again, and they should be its champions. The eyes of France were on -them, and they knew that their comrades in the provinces, intoxicated by -the songs of Béranger, enraged by the petty vexations of Royalist -officials, were envying them their opportunity and eagerly looking for -any chance that would bring them to the city that so nobly stood for -liberty.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a></p> - -<p>The Revolution of 1830 was not only political, it was also artistic, and -the artistic results were really the more permanent. This artistic -revolution is generally known as the Romantic movement, about which so -much has been written that I need not refer to it at length. Just as the -Liberal spirit smouldered for many years against the Royalist -oppression, so the Romantic spirit smouldered against the restraints of -the dead classic tradition of the eighteenth century. The process of -combustion, beginning as it did with Rousseau, was a slow one, and, as -it has been said, Romanticism only potentially existed, as a movement, -before 1820. In that year Victor Hugo founded his journal, the -<i>Conservateur Littéraire</i>, gathering round him a brilliant company of -writers. For ten years the movement grew in intensity, fostered by the -institution of <i>cénacles</i> and the only too successful proselytism of -Victor Hugo, who disdained no recruit whom he could by flattery enlist. -It is not too much to say that the youth of all France was fired by the -revolt against classicism in poetry and drama. Every schoolboy wrote -verses and every ardent soul longed to enter the very arena in Paris, -where the <i>perruques</i> of the Institute were so signally defied. Paris -became doubly desirable as the field on which political and artistic -liberty were being won. The triumph came in 1830 with the performance of -"Hernani." That victory of the Romantic army is now a commonplace, but -in 1830 it was magnificently new, and<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> it was, moreover, the public -manifestation of <i>la Bohème</i>. The effect of this double excitement was -overwhelming. It literally tore the more intelligent among the young men -of France from the roots of all their attachments and interests. To -establish liberty, to revolutionize literature, these were their dreams, -in comparison with which all ordinary professional prospects seemed -dreary and unworthy. So the year 1830 saw Paris harbouring in her -garrets a host of enthusiasts, most of them very young, burning with -ideals and flushed with apparently glorious victories. They felt -themselves incorporated in one great brotherhood of defiance to -established authority, so that those who mocked their poverty and -lawlessness in the name "Bohemian" were unconsciously justified, for a -corporate name is the sign of a corporate existence. <i>La Bohème</i> in 1830 -was not a haphazard collection of <i>dilettanti</i> and artistic eccentrics; -it was a fellowship inspired by similar enthusiasms and bound together -by the struggle against similar misfortunes.</p> - -<p>Misfortunes, indeed, were not slow to come. Society is wonderfully quick -to repair the breaches in its walls made by gallant assaulters, and the -heroes who have been foremost in the attack find that their bravely made -passage has closed behind them, and that they are left to be broken and -starved into submission. So it was after 1830. Louis Philippe was at -heart a Royalist who had little understanding of the Revolution. His<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> -great achievement was to keep on his throne for eighteen years by -encouraging the moneyed middle class, thus laying the foundation of -French industrial prosperity. <i>Enrichissez-vous</i> was the order of the -day, an order ironically unsuitable to the reformers of Bohemia. Those -among them whose ideals were political rather than literary became -uncompromising Republicans, formed secret societies, carried on a -violent Press campaign of articles and caricatures against Louis -Philippe and his ministers, and plotted further armed risings in Paris, -the most serious of which was the ill-fated insurrection of the Cloître -Saint-Merri in 1832. They were to find that they had presumed too far -upon their strength. In spite of the Legitimist risings in La Vendée, -labour troubles at Lyons, and disaffection in Paris, Louis Philippe's -government was powerful enough to meet all emergencies. Press laws were -made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures -were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. -Above all, the <i>bourgeoisie</i> held firm. They were tasting prosperity and -power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with -their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political -excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who -had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and -repression. Their bright dreams faded away into grey reality; they found -themselves suspects<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> and outcasts, with the problem of subsistence, -instead of being miraculously solved, only rendered more acute. They had -no outlet for their energies, and those whom neither the barricades nor -the cholera of 1832 carried off saw the fellowship of assault followed -by the isolation of retreat. They drifted away in little bands to join -the societies of social reformers like Saint Simon, Fourier, or Père -Enfantin. Consumption, starvation, and suicide were the ends of many of -them, and their traces gradually faded from Bohemia, which became -identified purely with the lives of its literary and artistic -inhabitants.</p> - -<p>The poets and artists of Bohemia survived longer, not only as -individuals, but as a united brotherhood, mainly because artistic -rebellion cannot be put down, as it does not manifest itself, by force, -and also because the campaign in which "Hernani" was the central -engagement really culminated in a lasting victory. For some years after -1830 there was plenty for the young band to do in reducing block-houses -and chasing the persistent critics of the old school, who conducted a -most robust guerilla warfare. Yet hardship and misfortune dogged their -footsteps also. The Romantic victory of 1830 was won by an army; its -spoils were shared by the few leaders—Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, de -Vigny—who, as M. Henri Lardanchet has rather unkindly said,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> "without -a word of farewell or a motion of gratitude abandoned<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> their army to -famine." To tell the truth, many of the devoted enthusiasts were young -men of mediocre talents at a day when the standard was very high. Verses -were a drug in the market, and he was a lucky man who could earn a few -francs by filling a column or two in a little fashion paper boasting a -few hundred subscribers. Journalism was not yet a commercially -flourishing business, expenses were high, subscribers few, and Press -laws menacing. The starveling poets and dramatists of Bohemia fell upon -lean years, in which the weaker and more utterly destitute were -destroyed by their privations, like Elisa MercÅ“ur and Hégésippe -Moreau. Nevertheless, the Romantics were not crushed out of existence. -The stout hearts of those who held out still beat to a common measure, -and maintained artistic fellowship in an ideal as an essential element -of <i>la vie de Bohème</i>.</p> - -<p>Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been -since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was -glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. -Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the -extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular -army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. <i>Épater -le bourgeois</i> was a legitimate war-cry when the <i>bourgeois</i> stood for -all that was reactionary in art. To scare the grocer with a slouch hat -and a medieval oath was not only a youthful<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> ebullition, it was a -symbolic act. The sombrero defied artistic convention as typified in the -top hat; the medieval oath, in its contrast with the paler expletives of -modernity, symbolized the return to life and colour in art after a -century of grey abstraction. It was with the decline of Romanticism that -Bohemia lost its living spirit. Unlike Republicanism, that gathered -unseen strength in failure to blossom for a more worthy generation, -Romanticism lost its vitality through its very success. It may be -likened to some conflux of waters which to force from its way the inert -mass of an obstacle rises to a mighty head: the obstacle is swept away, -and the seething waters resolve themselves into a workaday river humbly -serving the sea. So the Romantic movement has served literature for many -decades now, and it was quietly flowing between the banks before Louis -Philippe lost his throne. Success, it might be said, came to it too -soon, especially as success in that day meant money. The dangers of -Republicanism were staved off for the moment by force; the dangers of -Romanticism were for ever discounted by payment. Authorship was made to -serve a commercial end, and all was over. In 1836 Emile de Girardin -founded <i>La Presse</i>, which was sold at a far lower price than any other -paper. The inevitable followed. Circulation went up by leaps and bounds, -contributors were paid respectable prices, expenses were defrayed by the -profits of advertisement, and<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> journalism in France was at once on a -commercial footing, for other papers were not slow to follow. -Literature, from being purely an art, quickly became a trade. The -struggle for a new artistic ideal gave way to the struggle for loaves -and fishes, which is contemporary with mankind. A man's artistic creed -went for nothing, when all the public asked was that he should make -himself conspicuous before they gave him their countenance. Once -artistic success became a matter of royalties it was an easy prey to -<i>bourgeois</i> conditions, which were that art and literature should either -be merely entertaining or point a respectable moral. Only a few -Romantics were proof against this insidious influence. To those -recalcitrants we owe the motto "Art for art's sake."</p> - -<p>The effect of this change upon Bohemia is not difficult to imagine. <i>La -vie de Bohème</i> implies youth, so that its generations change as rapidly -as those of a university. The generation of 1830 had either disappeared -or become famous—that is, potentially rich—in a few years. The -struggle which had convulsed all Paris was a thing of the past, and -Romanticism was so far accepted, swallowed, and digested that by 1843 -the necessity was felt for reverting to the classical tradition again, -for a change, with the so-called <i>école de bon sens</i>. There was no -longer any trumpet-call to which Bohemia could respond as a brotherhood, -as Victor Hugo learned when, on wishing to enlist a fresh<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> army to go -into battle for "Les Burgraves," he was told "il n'y a plus de jeunes -gens." The swaggering heroes of 1830 were now writers of successful -novels and comedies, or safely chained, as critics, to the careers of -remunerative journals. Rebellion was impossible, for there was nothing -to rebel against. Success depended more upon individual enterprise than -common enthusiasm. There was nothing left, therefore, for the new -generations of Bohemia but to fall back upon tradition. If there was no -more certainty in ideals there was at least something definite in slouch -hats and medieval oaths, in defying conventions of dress and accepted -table manners. So the symbols of Romanticism became the realities of -Bohemia after all that they symbolized was as lifeless as a cancelled -bank-note. Further, the population of Bohemia lost that great asset in -life, personal pride. Their predecessors of 1830 were arrogant, no -doubt, but with the arrogance of an advance-guard in a desperate -venture. There was no desperate venture now toward, and advance meant, -not progress, but prosperity. The poorer brethren of art who peopled -Bohemia were now, inasmuch as they were not prosperous, failures. They -had no sense of intellectual achievement to keep up their courage, when -such achievement was measured in gold. It was inevitable that their -<i>moral</i> should be affected; the recklessness, which was formerly that of -bravado, became that of despair, and a less reputable atmosphere<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> grew -up round Bohemia which has never been dispelled from its tradition.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, dead as the spirit was, the tradition of 1830 remained -very strong, being kept alive not only by oral transmission, as all -traditions are, but also by the art of the sturdy few who remained -faithful to the uncompromising standard of disinterestedness in art -which it implied. Gautier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, the de Goncourts, and a -few others stood out unflinchingly against commercialism on the one hand -and prosy doctrinairism on the other. Their struggle was not wholly -effectual, but, so far as Bohemia is concerned, was important. After -1848, when everything had to have a social "purpose" and art for its own -sake seemed dead, they sat down, like the Psalmist, by the rivers of -Babylon and remembered Zion. From their regrets the legend of <i>la sainte -Bohème</i> arose idealized and purified, and it was made immortal in pages -of prose by Gautier and in de Banville's "Ballade de ses regrets pour -l'an 1830." This legend, tinged as it already was with sentiment, spread -to the public, by whom it was resentimentalized, a fact of which other -authors, Murger included, were not slow to take advantage.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ils savaient tirer parti des ressemblances réelles entre la vie de -Bohème et la vie de l'étudiant bourgeois au 'Pays latin' pour -établir une confusion avantageuse, confusion qui est déjà manifeste -dans les 'Scènes de<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> la Vie de Bohème.' Chanter ainsi la Bohème -c'était un peu chanter la jeunesse bourgeoise."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p></div> - -<p>If this be true, then Bohemia after 1848, when the public interest was -purely absorbed in Socialistic reforms, lapsed once more into being a -mere fringe on the student life, and, as such, equally negligible. Its -classic days were over, never to return, for the society of Paris grew -too large to be again convulsed by a purely artistic conflict. The -leaders of the new <i>Parnasse</i> made a considerable sensation, but they -founded, not a new Bohemia, but only another <i>cénacle</i>. History -establishes the florescence and decline of the classic <i>vie de Bohème</i> -beyond much doubt, for it went with the florescence and decline of a -common spirit.<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br /><br /> -LE MAL DU SIÈCLE</h2> - -<p class="nind">I <small>HAVE</small> identified the classic period of Bohemia with the time of the -Romantic victory. It was not then lighted by dim lanterns hung outside -the door of every artistic idiosyncrasy, but reflected flamboyantly a -general state of mind. I disclaim once for all the intention of adding -another to the many studies of the Romantic movement, but in my aim of -explaining the living reality out of which grew the tradition of <i>la vie -de Bohème</i> I am compelled to dwell upon the turgid mental content of the -early nineteenth century. The eccentricities of Bohemia were then but -slight exaggerations of a universal spiritual ferment, though, after the -good wine was made, a later and decadent Bohemia artificially reproduced -the symptoms of a process that was formerly natural and necessary. <i>Le -mal romantique</i>, <i>le mal du siècle</i>, are common phrases upon the lips of -French critics, who to-day affect to treat with contempt what was, after -all, a new Renaissance. Without adopting their attitude, it must be -admitted that, inestimable as were its results, it was an alarming -convulsion. The English took it in a milder and earlier form. Its most -extreme manifestation, Byron and the<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> "Satanic" school, was a thing of -the past before 1830. But the French were thoroughly and virulently -affected, and exhibited all the most violent symptoms.</p> - -<p>We may best begin, perhaps, by looking at a particular "subject," to use -a medical phrase, in the correspondence of J.-J. Ampère, son of the -great scientist. The younger Ampère, after a violent adoration of Madame -Récamier, who was old enough to be his mother, settled down into a most -respectable and successful man of letters, and he was never in any sense -a Bohemian. He was a well-educated and perfectly normal man, so that the -ravages of <i>le mal du siècle</i> may be well judged when he writes to his -friend, Jules Bastide, in 1820:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"My dear Jules, last week the feeling of malediction was upon me, -round me, within me. I owe this to Lord Byron; I read through twice -at a sitting the English 'Manfred.' Never, never in my life has -anything I have read overwhelmed me as that did; it has made me -ill. On Sunday I went to see the sunset upon the Place de -l'Esplanade; it was as threatening as the fires of hell. I went -into the church, where the faithful were peacefully chanting the -Hallelujah of the Resurrection. Leaning against a column, I looked -at them with disdain and envy."</p></div> - -<p>Two months later Jules Bastide delivered his soul in a similar strain:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"I feel that the slightest emotions might send me mad or kill me. -The evening of our parting I opened<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> at random a volume of Madame -de Staël and read the dream of Jean Paul. When I came to that -terrible line, 'Christ, nous n'avons point de père,' a shudder -seized me. An hour later I had a fever; it lasted a fortnight."</p></div> - -<p>Another friend wrote to Ampère in 1824:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"All my ideas turn towards Africa.... Is it solitude that I seek in -Africa? Yes, but it is not only that; it is the desert, the -palm-tree, the musk-rose, the Arab! A romanesque and <i>barbaresque</i> -future is what ravishes me."</p></div> - -<p>In 1825 Ampère, then twenty-five years old, wrote to Madame Récamier:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Return, for my life is no longer tolerable without you; my spirit -is wholly employed in trying to <i>support</i> the emptiness of my -days."</p></div> - -<p>In these delirious passages are contained the most marked symptoms of -the time, the satanic gloom that drew its inspiration from Byron, the -nervous sensibility imitated from the heroes of Madame de Staël, -Châteaubriand, and Sénancour, and the longing for a life of Oriental -colour which found a later expression in Victor Hugo's poems. However, -it would be unfair to put down this spiritual <i>bouleversement</i> to the -influence of "René," "Obermann," "Werther's Leiden," or "Manfred." They -became, indeed, the breviaries of the afflicted, but the cause of the -affliction lay deeper in the reaction of the French nation after the -Napoleonic wars. Napoleon's victorious campaigns drained France<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> of its -best blood and its best energies, leaving an inheritance of anæmia and -neurasthenia to the next generation, without diminishing that feverish -desire for glory, that determination to work one's will upon a passive -world, which was the spirit of Napoleon's armies. Older and more settled -people were content to reap the rewards of peace, but the young men, -exalted by the exploits of their fathers, looked in vain for some -channel in which to discharge their superfluous electricity. Under the -restored Bourbons there was none. The fathers had had free play upon -historic battlefields, the sons were cribbed and confined in the narrow -bounds of everyday life. Moreover, the revolutionary wars had revealed -vast, unexplored pastures to the French mind. New countries, languages, -and literatures were brought into its view. The gorgeous East, in -particular, seized upon the French imagination. The desert was vast and -untrodden, the Arab was dignified and free, and under unclouded skies -the primitive nobility of mankind revealed itself in splendour and -space.</p> - -<p>Here, then, is the root of <i>le mal du siècle</i> from which the divers -symptoms sprang. Of these, perhaps, the most marked and most general was -an exaggerated sensibility, a kind of melancholy madness. Young Henri -Dubois, who at any other epoch would have been content to learn his -trade behind the counter of Dubois and Dupont, cloth merchants, and to -settle<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> down into a peaceful home with Mademoiselle Dupont, now plied -the yard measure with disgust and yearned for an existence more worthy -of his "complicated state of mind." He was a perfect magazine of pent-up -emotions, ready to expire in a delirium of joy or an ecstasy of despair -after the manner of René and Werther. He was quite willing to love -Mademoiselle Dupont on the condition that she would lend herself to a -tempestuous passion, allow her hands to be bathed in tears for hours -together by her prostrate cavalier, receive folios of hysterical ravings -by the post, and dread the fatal dagger if she had smiled from her desk -at a customer. She was urged daily to fly to a brighter destiny upon -distant shores, and nightly trembled that the coming morning would find -Henri transfixed by his own poniard. It was impossible to be reasonable; -only a clod, dead to all beauty, could be so brutal. M. Louis Maigron, -who in his book, "Le Romantisme et les MÅ“urs," gives some very -remarkable instances of these aberrations in actual correspondence, says -very truly: "Une foule de 'cratères' ont alors superbement fumé au nez -des bourgeois." The Romantic ideal supposed a sensibility always -stretched to its utmost, <i>des âmes excessives</i>, as M. Bourget says,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> -capable of constant renewal, and a consumption of emotional energy which -is irreconcilable with the laws of any organism. If a young<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> man failed -for a moment to find food for melancholy broodings in the shortcomings -of society, he could always fall back for a good groan upon his own -insufficiencies of sensibility. Now, of course, the "feelings of -malediction" which afflicted the Henri Dubois are of small moment in -themselves. Time comfortably settled them down. It was the young men of -real sensibility and imagination, the coming poets and artists, in whom -the ravages of <i>le mal du siècle</i> were more than a passing phase. The -boundless yearnings that found expression in such lines as these:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Amour, enthousiasme, étude, poésie!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>C'est là qu'en votre extase, océan d'ambroisie</i><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>Se noîraient nos âmes de feu!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>C'est là que je saurais, fort d'un génie étrange,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dans la création d'un bonheur sans mélange</i><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>Être plus artiste que Dieu</i><a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>—<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">could not but lead to a profound dissatisfaction with existence, which -Maxime du Camp in his reminiscences very happily describes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was not only a fashion [he says], as might be believed; it was -a kind of general prostration which made our hearts sad, darkened -our thoughts, and caused us to see a deliverance in the glimpse of -death. You<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> would have thought that life held in chains souls that -had caught sight of something superior to terrestrial existence. We -did not aspire to the felicities of paradise: we dreamed of taking -possession of the infinite, and we were tortured by a vague -pantheism of which the formula was never found.... The artistic and -literary generation which preceded me and that to which I belonged -had a youth of lamentable sadness, sadness without cause and -without object, abstract sadness, inherent in the individual or in -the period....</p> - -<p>"Nobody was allowed to be without an <i>âme incomprise</i>; it was the -custom and we conformed to it. We were 'fatal' and 'accursed'; -without even having tasted life, we tumbled to the bottom of the -abyss of disillusionment. Children of eighteen years, repeating -phrases gathered from some novel or other, would say: 'J'ai le -cÅ“ur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie,' and one of -Pétrus Borel's heroes went to the executioner to say to him: 'I -should like you to guillotine me!' This did not prevent us from -laughing, singing, or committing the honest follies of youth; that -was also a way of being desperate; we imagined that we had a -satanic laugh, while we really possessed the fair joy of spring."</p></div> - -<p>These exquisite sensibilities, when they were not turned back upon -themselves in black despair, roamed far and wide in search of new -sensations upon which to exercise themselves. This <i>exotisme</i>, as the -French have called it, is another of the most marked symptoms of -Romanticism. The time was ripe for its satisfaction.<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> The French mind, -shut for so long in the formalism of the eighteenth century, now found -that there were innumerable new ways to <i>rêver la rêve de la vie</i>. The -men of learning who followed in Napoleon's wake renewed the interest in -archæology by their discoveries; the historical novels of Scott and the -history of Michelet revealed the full and generous life of earlier ages; -the forged poems of Ossian caused a perfect rage for Celtic mysticism; -and the bold lawless life of the East, with its tyrannous Ali Pashas and -its Greek patriots, shone out with a new splendour. An unsatisfied -longing for another age and another clime animated every young breast. -Societies even were formed in provincial towns in which subscriptions -were pooled, and the winner of the lucky number drew the money to take a -voyage in Italy. The glories of Greece and the grandeurs of Rome, as -savouring of the classical, appealed only to a few; other eclectics fed -upon German mysticism and the fantastic weirdness of Hoffmann's -supernatural tales. A far greater number became Celts in imagination; -dressed in the dignity of outlawry and the garb of an Irish bard or a -Scotch chieftain, they defied the haughty English. Maxime du Camp, for -instance, wrote a poem in his school-days called "Wistibrock -l'Irlandais." "When I am depressed," he says in his reminiscences, "I -read it again, and there is no vexation that resists it." Anybody who -wishes to gain some idea of the <i>genre frénétique</i>, as Nodier called it, -in its Celtic dress<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> will derive considerable entertainment from Pétrus -Borel's "Madame Putiphar." It is full of murders and intrigues and -tirades which foam at the mouth. The hero, Patrick FitzWhyte, falls in -love with Deborah Cockermouth, daughter of Lord and Lady Cockermouth, -the opening dialogue of whom upon the battlements is magnificent. My -lord, who is described as "one of those gigantic fungous and spongy -zoophytes indigenous to Great Britain," permits himself to address my -lady as "Saint-hearted milk soup!" After a good deal of clandestine -philandering and interminable translations of imaginary Irish ballads -the young couple elope to Paris, where Madame Putiphar (Madame de -Pompadour) seduces the heroine, and the hero after a series of dreadful -adventures is imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon in the Bastille, the -taking of which by the people of Paris is described with quite -astonishing force.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_044_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_044_sml.jpg" width="391" height="550" alt="The Spirit of Romanticism" title="The Spirit of Romanticism" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">The Spirit of Romanticism</span> -</p> - -<p>Wild adventures, horrors and tragedies in any age were fondly dwelt upon -in comparison with the insupportable monotony of contemporary life; but -the Middle Ages made a stronger appeal than any. There was a perfect -mania for medievalism. Nothing pleased overwrought imaginations more -than to picture existence amid all the riot and magnificence of those -more spacious days. How they would have rattled a sword and clanked a -spur, how defiantly tilted their plume, how breathlessly loved and how -destructively fought!<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> Why did they not live in the joyous time when -every minute brought an adventure instead of spilling one more drop from -the cup of <i>ennui</i>, and when a man shaped his own ends according to his -passions, throwing a curse to the poor and a madrigal to the fair? Then, -all their life was not grey. Splendour of colour with ample grace of -form decked out existence like a picture by Veronese. Costly satin vied -with magnificent brocade; all was a riot of velvet and purple dyes, fur -and old lace; drinking cups, worthy of giants, chiselled by a Cellini, -offered wine worthy of the gods; swords were masterpieces of the finest -Toledo; jewelled harness caparisoned fleet Arab horses; feasts were -Gargantuan, jests more than Rabelaisian; and all this wonderful wealth -of glittering colour was thrown into magnificent relief against the -solemnity of antique battlements and the sombre shadows of Gothic -architecture. This, apart from all innovations of dramatic form, was the -secret of the delirious popularity of "Hernani," "Lucrèce Borgia," "Le -Roi s'amuse," and the "Tour de Nesle," and of the craze for historical -novels, verses in baroque metres, slouch hats <i>à la Buridan</i>, velvet -pourpoints, daggers, mysterious draperies and massive chests, drinking -cups made out of skulls, and illuminated breviaries of which Gautier -makes such fun in "Les Jeunes France." To it we owe Balzac's splendid -"Contes Drolatiques," Lassailly's "Roueries de Trialph," and Roger de -Beauvoir's "L'Écolier de<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> Cluny." Gautier in his early poems was as -romanesque as any of his "Jeune France," as those who know his early -poems must admit. "Débauche" is a frank orgy, and "Albertus" is a gem of -the Gothic, with its supernatural setting, the "fatality" of its hero, -the horror of its <i>dénouement</i>, the wild fantasy of its witches' -chamber, and its amorous wealth of descriptive detail in which old -fabrics, old furniture, swords, daggers, and hangings abound. Victor -Hugo, above all, was the chosen bard of the Gothic and the romanesque. -Besides his dramas, his "Odes et Ballades" were in the mouth of every -child who could pay four halfpence for an hour's luxury in the <i>cabinet -de lecture</i>; and schoolboys would declaim for hours in antiphon such -passages as the invocation of "La Bande Noire":</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>O murs! ô créneaux! ô tourelles!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Remparts! fossés aux ponts mouvants!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Lourds faisceaux de colonnes frêles!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Fiers châteaux! modestes couvents!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Cloîtres poudreux, salles antiques,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Où gémissaient les saints cantiques,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Où riaient les rires joyeux!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Églises où priaient nos mères,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Tours où combattaient nos aïeux!</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">or the frenzied descriptions of the witches' dance in "La Ronde du -Sabbat," or lines from "La Chasse<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> du Burgrave"—which even Hugo called -"un peu trop Gothique de forme"—or with a</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Çà , qu'on selle,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ecuyer,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Mon fidèle</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Destrier.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Mon cÅ“ur ploie</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sous la joie</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Quand je broie</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>L'étrier</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">proclaimed their attendance at the "Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean."</p> - -<p>The star of the Gothic and the medieval was indeed high in the heavens, -but it paled before the full sun of Araby and the East. Napoleon had -dreamed of a Mohammedan empire, and before his dream could fade Navarino -and Missolonghi fired men's minds again. Victor Hugo was also the -champion of Oriental rhapsody. Even in 1824 he had seen the -possibilities of Oriental colour in French verse, when he wrote "La Fée -et la Péri," a poem in which the Peri, who stands for romanticism, says:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>J'ai de vastes cités qu'en tous lieux on admire,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Lahore aux champs fleuris, Golconde, Cachemire,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>La guerrière Damas, la royale Ispahan,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Bagdad que ses remparts couvrent comme une armure,</i><a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>Alep dont l'immense murmure</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Semble au pâtre lointain le bruit d'un océan.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>His collection of poems entitled "Les Orientales" was published in 1829 -and took Paris by storm, provoking passionate enthusiasm and equally -passionate protest. In the preface he asserts that Orientalism is a -general preoccupation. "The colours of the East have come, as if -spontaneously, to impress themselves upon all his [the poet's] thoughts -and all his musings; his musings and his thoughts have become, in turn, -and almost without his willing it, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, -Arabic, even Spanish, for Spain, too, is the East." There are fine poems -in "Les Orientales"—"Les Djinns," for instance, will always be -famous—but it is impossible to read the volume through to-day without -considerable amusement, so very full-blooded are they. There are lofty -apostrophes to Byron and the Greeks, followed by dreadful tales of -Turkish cruelty, gruesome ballads like "La Voile," in which four -brothers kill their sister, epigraphs like "O horror! horror! horror!" -valiant Klephtes, houris, scimitars, and all the catalogue which the -poet himself gives in "Novembre":</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i8"><i>Sultans et sultanes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Pyramides, palmiers, galères capitanes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et le tigre vorace et le chameau frugal;</i><a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Djinns au vol furieux, danses des bayadères,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>L'Arabe qui se penche au cou des dromadaires,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et la fauve girafe au galop inégale.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Alors éléphants blancs chargés de femmes brunes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Cités aux dômes d'or où les mois sont des lunes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Imams de Mahomet, mages, prêtres de Bel ...</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Then, as if Victor Hugo did not whip the passions enough, Alfred de -Musset lent a hand in the hurly-burly with his "Contes d'Espagne et -d'Italie," which made the young maniacs frantically demand:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Une Andalouse au sein bruni?</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Pâle comme un beau soir d'automne!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>C'est ma maîtresse, ma lionne!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>La marquesa d'Amaëgui.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Delacroix, too, was sending the critics into ecstasies of rage with his -vivid Eastern scenes and the horrors of his "Massacre of Scio." The -ideas of the young men with inflamed sensibilities seethed in turbulent -disorder. To be in the movement they had to have at least a poniard and -a narghile, a medieval cloak and an Oriental divan. Those with money to -spare decorated their rooms like sombre Gothic manors, those with no -money enriched their conversations with a wealth of medieval diction. No -make-believe was too ridiculous to shut out the actual place and time in -which<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> they lived. Balzac's novel "La Peau de Chagrin," which has won a -celebrity far beyond its merits, is most unmistakably marked with the -frenzies of 1830. His revelling in the supernatural, the massed effects -of careful detail in the description of the curiosity shop where the -wild-ass skin hangs, the wild riot of the orgy, the terrific excesses in -which Valentin ruins his life, the duel and the horrible end, are just -as much the <i>genre frénétique</i> as anything by Pétrus Borel. The hero, -Valentin, is simply a type of his time, and his tirade on taking the -supernatural skin is hardly an exaggeration:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Je veux que la débauche en délire et rugissante nous emporte, dans -son char à quatre chevaux, par delà les bornes du monde, pour nous -verser sur des plages inconnues! Que les âmes montent dans les -cieux ou se plongent dans la boue, je ne sais si alors elles -s'élèvent ou s'abaissent, peu m'importe! Donc, je commande à ce -pouvoir sinistre de me fondre toutes les joies dans une joie. Oui, -j'ai besoin d'embrasser les plaisirs du ciel et de la terre dans -une dernière étreinte, pour en mourir. Aussi souhaité-je et des -priapées antiques après boire, et des chants à réveiller les morts, -et de triples baisers, des baisers sans fin dont la clameur passe -sur Paris comme un craquement d'incendie, y réveille les époux et -les inspire une ardeur cuisante qui les rajeunissent tous, même les -septuagénaires!"</p></div> - -<p>As for the "orgy," it was so much a fashion that<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> Gautier in his "Les -Jeune France" scores a delightful hit with the story of a society of -young men who combine for a colossal feast, in which various sections -follow out in exact detail the descriptions of orgies given by their -favourite novelists and the end is a farcical confusion.</p> - -<p>Building castles in Spain is a fascinating pastime, but the ingenuities -of imagination cannot entirely shut out the individual from his -surroundings. From 1820 to 1830 the young man of France was continually -running against the sharp corners of the world and receiving the elbow -prods of his fellow-men. Exalted by his excited sensibility, he -conceived at once a contempt and a hatred for the insensibility of -society, which produced in him a feeling of moral superiority and -solitude. This abnormal vanity, shown in the deification of "l'homme -supérieur" and a proud contemplation of his social outlawry, is a third -marked symptom of <i>le mal du siècle</i>.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> It broke out in several -different forms. One was a romantic worship of energy and strong will, -as typified by the career of Napoleon. Given these qualities, a man -could rise from the lowest depths to impose his wishes on the world. -However, self-styled supermen have invariably found their theories -rebellious to practical application, and Henri Dubois, if he started -upon a Napoleonic path, soon<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> discovered that society selects its "homme -supérieur" when it wants him, and that uncalled-for aspirants receive -the point of its toe. He reserved his superiority, therefore, more -usually, for less material manifestations and conflicts. His rare -spirit, susceptible to all "the finer shades," stood mournfully but -prudently on high, scorning the base, unfeeling throng below it, and -calling out through space for kindred spirits to cherish. "My friend, -take care of yourself," writes young Ampère to his friend. "Obermann -cries to us, 'Keep close together, ye simple men who feel the beauty of -natural things.' Let us help one another, all of us who suffer." So -Henri Dubois and his friends suffered and helped one another, shedding -pints of tears and being just as ridiculous as they could be.</p> - -<p>Solitary suffering makes men philosophers or poets. Philosophy requiring -some intellectual capacity and mental preparation, Henri Dubois often -took the further step from crying in the wilderness to enshrining his -laments in metre, being encouraged in this by the certain fact that -young men and true poets were indeed striking the Romantic harp to a new -and surprising tune. The poet was the real "homme supérieur" of the -time, not only in fancy but in fact. Henri accordingly proceeded another -stage towards sublimity by way of the faulty syllogism: "The poet has an -exquisite soul; I have an exquisite soul; therefore I am a poet." The -Romantics conceived<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> the poet as a God-sent prophet. This was the -attitude, above all, of de Vigny; Lamartine and Sainte-Beuve adopted it -in their early days, and certain passages of Victor Hugo—for instance:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>O poètes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sur les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sur les déserts pieux où l'esprit se recueille,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sur les bois que l'automne emporte feuille à feuille,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sur les lacs endormis dans l'ombre des vallons!</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">—show that he was not averse to it. So every youth who could rhyme -"âme" with "flamme" put on the aureole of a "poète échevelé," revelled -in the ecstasies of solitary contemplation, and sneered magnificently at -all who attended to business as soulless <i>épiciers</i>. This was a harmless -enough delusion, but it became less harmless when combined with the idea -that for the sake of experience the poet should abandon himself entirely -to his passions. The great artist, indeed, has his own morality, but -Victor Hugo's "Mazeppa" or Lamartine's stanza</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Mais nous, pour embraser les âmes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Il faut brûler, il faut ravir</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Au ciel jaloux ses triples flammes:</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Pour tout peindre, il faut tout sentir.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Foyers brûlants de la lumière,</i><a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Nos cÅ“urs de la nature entière</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Doivent concentrer les rayons,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et l'on accuse notre vie!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Mais ce flambeau qu'on nous envie</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>S'allume au feu des passions</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">were dangerous matchboxes in the hands of children. It was a fatality, -too, that several poets of some merit died during these years of want or -neglect. Gilbert, the satirist, expired in hospital, breathing piteous -plaints, and Hégésippe Moreau, the poet of "La Voulzie," was equally -unfortunate. Society can hardly be blamed for not supporting all its -lyrically inclined members, but it was natural that the "poète échevelé" -should smoulder with indignation at such disasters, and cheer the -sentiments of de Vigny's drama "Chatterton" till his lungs gave out. It -was still more of a fatality that certain other poets attained a -momentary celebrity by committing suicide, leaving rhymed farewells to a -stony-hearted society and a tedious life. To win fame by a pathetic -death in a pauper's hospital, or to bid defiance to the world with a -superb gesture of self-destruction, was a far too common ambition. -Sainte-Beuve himself observed that "la manie et la gageure de tous les -René, de tous les Chatterton de notre temps, c'était d'être grand poète -et de mourir." A perfect epidemic of suicide was due to <i>le mal du -siècle</i>, as M. Louis Maigron shows in his<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> work that I have already -cited. Among other strange stories he gives at length the confession of -an old man who in his youth was president of a suicide club, formed in a -provincial town by a set of romantic schoolboys as late as 1846. Happily -the club was short-lived, but it resulted in the self-destruction of one -of its most gifted members. In the letter with which he announced his -coming death from Lucerne he wrote:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>" ...I have no precise reason to have done with life except the -insurmountable disgust with which it inspires me. Chance of birth -gave me a certain fortune; I am not denied an intelligence perhaps -slightly above the common level; it would have been in my power to -marry an adorable child: so many conditions of happiness, in the -eyes of the vulgar. But my poor soul, alas, cannot content itself -with them. Nothing can charm my heart any longer, 'mon cÅ“ur -lassé de tout, même de l'espérance'; it will be closed, without -ever having been opened."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">He left his little library to the club, specially reserving for the -president "Werther," "René," "Obermann," "Jacques," and the works of -Rabbe. They were his breviaries, he said, covered as they were with -notes that revealed all his soul.</p> - -<p>The pose of pathetic despair was not, however, the only one in which the -feeling of moral solitude showed itself. Another very common attitude -was that of revolt against society, an aping of Mephistopheles,<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> the -fallen angel doomed to everlasting unhappiness, strong only in his -disillusionment and his clear vision of the canker in the heart of every -bud. The word "satanism" summed up this attitude: its breviaries were -"Manfred" and Dumas' violent tragedy, "Antony." It rejoiced in the cult -of the horrible, in Hoffmannesque dabblings in the supernatural, in -pessimistic poetry like Gautier's "Tête de Mort," and such lines in his -early sonnets as:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Mais toute cette joie est comme le lierre</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui d'une vieille tour, guirlande irregulière,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Embrasse en les cachant les pans démantelés,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Au dehors on ne voit que riante verdure,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Au dedans, que poussière infecte et noire ordure,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et qu'ossements jaunis aux décombres mêlés.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Its effects, in society, were chiefly obtained by the satanic laugh. -Gautier soon grew out of his satanic mood, Dumas was never anything more -than a fine romancer, while Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Vigny were -too lofty poets to indulge in such artificialities; but satanism -deserves mention because it was a traditional business with one party in -the romantic Bohemia—the party of the <i>Bousingots</i>.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_056_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_056_sml.jpg" width="369" height="550" alt="Bousingots" title="Bousingots" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Bousingots</span> -</p> - -<p>The origin of the term <i>Bousingot</i> has been a matter of dispute among -French writers. Philibert Audebrand in his memoir of Léon Gozlan says it -was invented by<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> that brilliant journalist to satirize the young -republican enthusiasts of 1832 in the <i>Figaro</i>. Charles Asselineau in -his "Bibliographie Romantique" says that after some hilarious souls had -been arrested for singing too loudly in the streets "Nous avons fait du -bousingo"—<i>bousingo</i> being the slang for "noise"—it became a popular -designation for the more furious Romantics. The matter seems to be -settled more or less in Asselineau's manner by a passage in the letter -written by Philothée O'Neddy to Asselineau after the publication of the -"Bibliographie Romantique" to give a more correct account of the second -<i>cénacle</i>. He asserts that there never were any self-styled -<i>Bousingots</i>, but that after the arrest of the hilarious revellers the -affair got into the newspapers and the term remained as a <i>bourgeois</i> -hit at the Romantics. The proper spelling of the word was <i>bouzingo</i>, -and Gautier exclaimed one day: "These asses of <i>bourgeois</i> don't even -know how <i>bouzingo</i> is spelt! To teach them a little orthography several -of us ought to publish a volume of stories which we will bravely call -'Contes du Bouzingo.'" The suggestion was thought a happy one, and the -book was even advertised as imminent, but it was never written. -Gautier's promise of a contribution was afterwards redeemed in "Le -Capitaine Fracasse," but Jules Vabre's famous treatise "Sur -l'incommodité des commodes" did not progress beyond the title. In common -parlance, however, the name remained <i>Bousingots</i>, and its general -meaning was quite<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> clear. Just as the Gothic frenzy made the party of -<i>Jeune-France</i>, who were the Christian-Royalist section of the -Romantics, so the political agitation, combined with the feeling of -antagonism to society, made the <i>Bousingots</i>. The meaning became -subsequently enlarged to express all the extravagances of the Romantics, -their idealization of the artist and their disorderly ways; but this -extension was illegitimate. Literature and poetry were, it is true, the -preoccupation of the more prominent <i>Bousingots</i>, but their distinctive -mark was a profession of ultra-democratic views and manners. The leader -of them all was the mysterious Pétrus Borel,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> whom I have already -mentioned as the author of "Madame Putiphar." His other chief work was a -volume of poems entitled "Rhapsodies." The young men of 1830 worshipped -him as the coming champion before whom the star of Victor Hugo was -ingloriously to wane. They were grievously disappointed. After the first -crisis of <i>le mal du siècle</i> his inspiration faded away, and he died an -obscure officiai in Algeria. Baudelaire, in "L'Art Romantique," says of -him:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Without Pétrus Borel, there would have been a lacuna in -Romanticism. In the first phase of our literary revolution the -poet's imagination turned especially to the past.... Later on its -melancholy took a more decided, more savage, and more earthy<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> tone. -A misanthropical republicanism allied itself with the new school, -and Pétrus Borel was the most extravagant and paradoxical -expression of the spirit of the <i>Bousingots</i>.... This spirit, both -literary and republican, as opposed to the democratic and bourgeois -passion which subsequently oppressed us so cruelly, was moved both -by an aristocratic hate, without limit, without restriction, -without pity, for kings and the bourgeoisie, and by a general -sympathy for all that in art represented excess in colour and form, -for all that was at once intense, pessimistic, and Byronic; it was -dilettantism of a singular nature, only to be explained by the -hateful circumstances in which our bored and turbulent youth was -enclosed. If the Restoration had regularly developed in glory, -Romanticism would have never separated from the throne; and this -new sect, which professed an equal disdain for the moderate party -of the political opposition, for the painting of Delaroche or the -poetry of Delavigne, and for the king who presided over the -development of le <i>juste-milieu</i>, would have had no reason for -existing."</p></div> - -<p>Charles Asselineau fills up the picture. The <i>Bousingot</i>, he says, was -as rough and cynical as the <i>Jeune-France</i> was dandified and exquisite, -and showed genius in discovering at once the <i>plastique</i> of his idea. In -contrast to the extravagant luxury affected by the medievalists, he -adopted the manners of the people in habits and dress, smoking clay -pipes and drinking the "petit bleu" of low pot-houses. Instead of raving -about cathedrals, he spent his ingenuity in devising<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> bitter satires -against the king and his officers or fresh settings in caricature for -Louis' famous <i>tête de poire</i>. "The fusillade of St.-Merry and the laws -of September were the <i>Bousingot's</i> Waterloo. From the moment he was -forbidden to protest in a visible manner, and was deprived of his -insignia, his waistcoat, his stick, and his pipe with a pear-shaped -bowl, the <i>Bousingot</i> had to retire. He became serious, an economist or -a humanitarian philosopher, and showed his revolt against society and -power by writing novels 'in which the idea predominated over the form.' -The novel with a tendency, that literary monstrosity, is the only legacy -left by the <i>Bousingot</i> to the literature of the nineteenth century."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> - -<p class="nind">In Balzac's wonderful gallery of portraits there is a picture of a -<i>Bousingot</i>. Raoul Nathan, the author, appears frequently in his -Parisian scenes, but his outlines are only elaborated in the little-read -"Une Fille d'Eve." There was something great and fantastic in his -appearance, as if he had fought with angels or demons. He was strongly -built, with a pocked face and a tanned complexion. His long hair was -always untidy, but his eyes were Napoleonic and his mouth charming. His -clothes always looked old and worn, his cravat was askew, his long, -pointed beard untended. The grease from his hair stained his -coat-collar, and he never used a nail-brush. His movements were<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> -grotesque, his conversation caustic and full of surprises. His talent, -great but disorderly, had shown itself in three novels and a book of -poetry: he was critic, dramatist, vaudevillist. Jealous ambition led him -to embrace politics. Beginning at the extreme of opposition, he went -from Saint Simonism to republicanism and through all the stages to -ministerialism, being rewarded by a government appointment.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nathan offre un image de la jeunesse littéraire d'aujourd'hui, de -ses fausses grandeurs et de ses misères réelles; il la représente -avec ses beautés incorrectes et ses chutes profondes, sa vie à -cascades bouillonnantes, à revers soudains, à triomphes inespérés. -C'est bien l'enfant de ce siècle dévoré de jalousie ... qui veut la -fortune sans le travail, la gloire sans le talent et le succès sans -peine, mais qu'après bien des rébellions, bien des escarmouches, -ses vices amènent à émarger le budget sous le bon plaisir du -Pouvoir."</p></div> - -<p>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 -<i>Bousingots</i>. 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 "Béatrix") Balzac complains that the -Revolution of 1830 opened the flood-gates<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> 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 -<i>Bousingots</i> are concerned Baudelaire puts the facts in a truer light. -The policy of <i>juste-milieu</i> inevitably caused revolt among the -over-excited young men of the day. The <i>Bousingots</i> 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, <i>Bousingot</i> and <i>Jeune-France</i> alike, -was disinterestedness. Baudelaire says in extenuation of Pétrus Borel -himself: "He loved letters ferociously, and to-day we are encumbered -with pretty, supple writers ready to sell the muse for the potter's -field." Asselineau 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,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> in regretting the -past, says that the <i>rapin</i> 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 <i>rapins</i> 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 <i>Bousingots</i><a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>—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'"<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>—did these things in all sincerity, with an ambition, not -to "get on," but to "do something."</p> - -<p>We cannot, then, judge the classic <i>vie de Bohème</i> in a true light -without taking into account this <i>mal du siècle</i> 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, <i>the</i> 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 Rubempré 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 fellowship 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 friendship<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> 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 mass 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 passion 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 <i>enfantillage -de l'esprit</i>.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> 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<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> 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 makeshift of <i>la blague</i>.<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br /><br /> -PARISIAN SOCIETY—LE TOUT PARIS</h2> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> events of the time, the spiritual exaltation of young France, and -the <i>éclat</i> 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 circumference, 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-class 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 space. 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<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> 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 assaults. 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 multitudinous -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.</p> - -<p>Speaking of the year 1841, Baudelaire in "L'Art Romantique" says:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"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 <i>tout Paris</i> was composed of that -choice body of people who were responsible for forming the opinion -of the others."</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_067_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_067_sml.jpg" width="550" height="329" alt="Les Champs Elysées" title="Les Champs Elysées" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Les Champs Elysées</span> -</p> - -<p>The glory of Bohemia rests partly on this fact. During Louis Philippe's -reign this state of society,<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> 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 <i>tout Paris</i> 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 Montparnasse bounded it on the north and -south, that the Champs Elysées 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 classes were chiefly engaged in commerce or -<i>petits métiers</i>, and the heights of Ménilmontant smiled as green and as -free from slums as the Champs Elysées were free from luxurious hotels. -The passing 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 <i>clientèle</i> of the Parisian theatres. <i>Le tout<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> Paris</i> was, -therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments—the middle -class, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia.</p> - -<p>The middle class, 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 illustrated from characters in Balzac's "Comédie -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 Employés," 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 <i>beau monde</i>. The sons of men enriched and -decorated by Napoleon formed perhaps the cream of the middle class, and -of these Balzac has given his opinion in describing Baron Hulot's son, -who plays so large a part in "Cousine Bette":</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"M. Hulot junior was just the type of young man fashioned 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 -<i>mots</i>—those diamonds of French conversation—but<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> with plenty of -attitude 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."</p></div> - -<p>This sombre portion of the background need, therefore, trouble us no -further. It dominated politics and was ignored by <i>tout Paris</i>.</p> - -<p>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 <i>hôtels</i> in the Faubourg. This retirement, too, was not -wholly due to <i>bouderie</i>, 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 Duchesse de Berry. The -few official <i>fêtes</i> were severely boycotted, and even the -entertainments of foreign ambassadors 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,<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> and in 1835 there was the first of a series of -legitimist balls, 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. Eugène 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 <i>tout Paris</i> 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 amusement in a gayer world into which their own -womankind was debarred from penetrating. It was they who formed a -certain section of <i>tout Paris</i>; they were the <i>viveurs</i>, the <i>dandies</i>, -the young bloods of the newly founded Jockey Club, the members of the -<i>petit cercle</i> in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be -called <i>la haute Bohème</i>.</p> - -<p>There was, however, a certain amount of neutral ground between the -aristocracy of birth and that of wit to be found in the literary -<i>salons</i> of the day, which, if not quite so illustrious 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 <i>salons</i><a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> of the Duchesse de Duras -and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. 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 <i>salon</i> of the -Princess Belgiojoso in the Rue Montparnasse attracted particular -attention because, with an aristocratic hostess, it had all the -<i>entrain</i> 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 "fierté glaciale, -mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, -and her concerts were magnificent. To this the <i>salons</i> of Madame -Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was -composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at -L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of -the aging Châteaubriand. The <i>salons</i> of the pure Romantics made no -pretence of splendour and were entirely free from the atmosphere of -officialdom. The chief of them<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> 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 Arsenal. In all of these, as -in the <i>salon</i> of the Princess Belgiojoso, <i>tout Paris</i> 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. "Cathédrale!" "Ogive!" -"Pyramide d'Egypte!" were the approved exclamations of ecstatic -approbation. Madame Ancelot<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> 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 <i>salon</i>, 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 <i>salon</i> of Sophie Gay and her daughter was -equally infected by high spirits, but it was less purely literary.<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> -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 <i>salon</i>, and Théodore 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."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> - -<p>To speak at greater length about the <i>salons</i> 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 Arsenal -was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would -have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" might have -claimed the <i>salons</i> of Nina de Kallias and Madame Ricard, for parts of -their ordinary existence. The case, however, is different with the -relations between <i>le tout Paris</i> and Bohemia. <i>Le tout Paris</i> was, as I -have said, a nucleus, but a nucleus of disparate and constantly shifting -particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite -place of assembly, but so far as it could be identified<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> with any -particular locality it may be said to have congregated on the boulevard. -The Boulevard des Italiens—<i>the</i> 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 nobody, -except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve -in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title 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<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> play -damned—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. <i>Le tout Paris</i> was not -hide-bound in its requirements; it admitted high birth as one -qualification for membership, 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<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> and plumes himself, a butterfly only just -emerged, in the glittering <i>tout Paris</i> of his day.</p> - -<p>The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, -is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an -open passage between Bohemia and <i>le tout Paris</i> which was crossed by -not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène 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 <i>viveurs</i>, and who maintained such a -continuous communication between the more literary sections of <i>le tout -Paris</i> 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 <i>vie de Bohème</i> without entering into this -larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called <i>la haute -Bohème</i>. 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 multitude 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<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> reckless -amusement 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. <i>La -haute Bohème</i>, 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 destitute as -their successors, so that they were enabled to mix to some extent in the -gayer life of the artistic <i>boulevardiers</i>.</p> - -<p>The most universal word—which I shall adopt—applicable to this <i>haute -Bohème</i> is the contemporary name for them, <i>les viveurs</i>. They were a -particular product of the time, and no words of mine can describe them -better than a passage 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:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"A cette époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et -pauvres, tous désÅ“uvrés, appelés <i>viveurs</i>, et<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> qui vivaient en -effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs -plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus -rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée, -ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de -leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit -le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de -ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement -l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les -jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les -jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, -dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les -plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes -puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse -voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des -trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière -elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle -part."</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_078_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_078_sml.jpg" width="339" height="550" alt="A Viveur" title="A Viveur" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">A Viveur</span> -</p> - -<p>Balzac gives his own character, Rastignac, as an instance of the typical -<i>viveur</i>, but Rastignac had a purpose in his heart, while some of the -most prominent among the <i>viveurs</i> 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 <i>bourgeois</i> State which -sought no military glory. One of their leaders, the Duc d'Aulnis, who -settled down afterwards to serve the State worthily,<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> 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 <i>nom de plaisir</i> of -Alton-Shee. He and other young legitimists resigned their commissions in -1831 on finding that Louis Philippe, <i>le roi des barricades</i>, sided with -the insurrectionists, so that, as he says, "the class 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."</p> - -<p>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 Café de Paris and -adjourned to lounge at the Opéra in the <i>loge infernale</i>, where the -cream of Parisian dandyism paraded with its <i>lorgnette</i> 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<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> 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:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our generation had the love of liberty, passion, gaiety, an -artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to -appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of -amusement, 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 <i>enfants -du siècle</i> brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped -from their embarrassments 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."</p></div> - -<p>These men set the pace among the <i>viveurs</i>: 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<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> famous -threat to Paris by the grave of old Goriot, "Maintenant c'est entre -nous." These men became <i>viveurs</i>, not as a pastime, but as a means. -Rastignac, shocked to see that virtuous devotion would not save Père -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 <i>viveurs</i>, in order to become a conspicuous figure. A smart -tilbury and clothes from a first-class 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 shine to compass his ends, and -he shone most brilliantly as a <i>viveur</i>, playing at idleness and debauch -to cloak his subtle schemes, and drowning the shame of his parasitism in -a passionate 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.</p> - -<p>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<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> 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 "Comédie 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 Véry'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 dashing campaign—are related -in a marvellous series of <i>boutades</i> 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 <i>viveurs</i>, that party to which the title <i>la haute Bohème</i> 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 -<i>viveurs</i> neither to banish the <i>ennui</i> of enforced idleness, nor out of -cold calculation for a diplomatic end—for they were inevitably debarred -from attaining any position in the <i>beau monde</i>—but simply as a -distraction from their pursuit of worldly<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> 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'Aurévilly's remark -was true: "Qui dit journalistes dit femmes entretenues. Cela veut -souper."</p> - -<p>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 circumstances, 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<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> they could never hope to -enter the Jockey Club, they were hail-fellow-well-met with the <i>viveurs</i> -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 passage which, having myself -said so much, I quote in the original:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"C'était quatre des plus hardis cormorans éclos dans l'écume qui -couronne les flots incessamment renouvelés de la génération -présente; aimables garçons dont l'existence est problématique, à -qui l'on connaît ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces -spirituels <i>condottieri</i> de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus -cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquiétudes à leurs créanciers, -gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur -costume. D'ailleurs, braves à fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare -sur un baril de poudre, peut-être pour ne pas faillir à leur rôle; -plus moqueurs que les petits journaux, moqueurs à se moquer -d'eux-mêmes, perspicaces et incrédules, fureteurs d'affaires, -avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-mêmes; -profonds politiques par saillies, analysant tout, devinant tout, -ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde où ils -voudraient se produire."</p></div> - -<p>Andoche Finot had risen by his acute perception of the commercial future -of journalism. We meet him in his early days in "César Birotteau," -abandoning the puffing of actresses and writing of articles to less<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> -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 <i>huile céphalique</i> 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 fictitious counterpart -of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, another <i>viveur</i>, made a -fortune by selling <i>La Presse</i> at half the price of other newspapers. -Couture is a very minor character, a financial speculator, who only hung -on the fringe of the <i>viveurs</i>. 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 <i>soubrette</i>, incapable of refusing -his pen to anyone who asked for it or his heart to anyone who would -borrow it."</p> - -<p>Bixiou is no longer young in 1836. Balzac gives an earlier portrait of -him in "Les Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and -journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of <i>la vie de Bohème</i>. But, -says Balzac, "he is no longer the Bixiou of 1825, but that of 1836, the -misanthropical buffoon whose fun is known<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> 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."</p> - -<p>Such, in general, were the <i>viveurs</i> who postured in the front of the -Parisian stage—equally at home on the steps of Tortoni's or in the Café -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 <i>le tout -Paris</i>.<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_086_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_086_sml.jpg" width="423" height="550" alt="Fashionables" title="Fashionables" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Fashionables</span> -</p> - -<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br /><br /> -LES VIVEURS</h2> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> most exalted section among the <i>viveurs</i>, the members of which were -farthest removed from any suspicion of Bohemianism, was formed of young -men from noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may -be found in the list of those who started the <i>petit cercle</i> of the Café -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<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> 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<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> -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 parlé 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:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dieu, que c'est anglois! Toujours le thé et la jalousie à -Londres!"</p></div> - -<p>The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, -pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement to Lord -Seymour, one of the few Englishmen who were conspicuous among the -aristocratic <i>viveurs</i>. 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<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> -of the Rue Taitbout and the boulevard. Here he cultivated cigar-smoking -and physical exercise with great assiduity. He was a splendid boxer and -fencer, and all the finest bruisers and blades, amateur and -professional, were to be met in his <i>salle d'armes</i>. 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 bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange -case of mistaken identity which persisted for many years in spite of -categorical denials. The more aristocratic of the <i>viveurs</i> 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<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> theatres, where fancy-dress balls 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 -coarsest 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 Barrière 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 <i>descente de la -Courtille</i>, 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 <i>nom de guerre</i> 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 <i>émigrée</i>. 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,<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> 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 <i>cancan</i> into the fashionable -fancy-dress ball at the Variétés 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 identity. In 1835 he -died, a shattered <i>roué</i>, at Naples.</p> - -<p>The only other English name deserving comment in the <i>petit cercle</i> of -the Café 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 Café Anglais or -the Café 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 <i>entresol</i> at the corner of -the Rue Lafitte. He was never short<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> 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 <i>viveurs</i>. 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.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> - -<p>There are only two other members of the <i>petit cercle</i> 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 <i>la haute Bohème</i>, 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 -<i>bouquet de Romantisme</i>. Nevertheless, Alfred de Musset, though his name -was on the lips of all dandies and his<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> poetry set a fashion 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 fashionable life; while among -the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that -impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were -inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate 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.</p> - -<p>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-<i>viveur</i>, 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 -<i>la haute Bohème</i>, the<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> very incarnation of the <i>Noctambule</i> 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 embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of -July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association 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 <i>Jeune-France</i> 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-glass windows. -The ceiling was covered with coats-of-arms; the chief decorations were a -panoply of armour and an old <i>prie-dieu</i> 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<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> 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 "Société 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'Écolier 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 <i>impromptu</i> 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:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Le ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Devait à ce fauteuil arriver en tout cas,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Car la femme accouchait toujours de quelque chose,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Quand le mari n'engendrait pas.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a></p> - -<p class="nind">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 <i>revers</i>, and gilt buttons, fitted as -neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey -trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest 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 déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the -Café 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 <i>bibelot</i>—a Toledo blade or a -Turkish narghile—with a dealer in curiosities. The evening programme -was a set of variations upon the ground bass of dinner, opera, supper. -Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous <i>loge -infernale</i> at the Opéra, 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 choreography and had a personal acquaintance with the -dancers, which developed in most cases into something more than Platonic -affection. The <i>foyer des<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> artistes</i> was the enchanted garden of <i>la -haute Bohème</i>, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the -true Bohemians did at the Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas.</p> - -<p>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 Opéra. -One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the -appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse -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 fashion 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 -<i>mystificateurs</i>, however, were Romieu and Monnier. Romieu was reputed -to be the most amusing<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> man in Paris, and so firmly founded was his -reputation that nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect -of Quimperlé—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 -cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly -successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead -cockchafers. 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 passed, 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."</p> - -<p>Monnier, says Champfleury in his memoir, belonged<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> to Bohemia till the -end of his life; but it is clear that this Bohemia was that of the -boulevards and cafés. 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 -Employés." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but -unjust:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Intrépide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dîneur -et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien -dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allée des Veuves, -il étonnait autant à table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve -à minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du -lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-même, comme la plupart des -grands comiques. Lancé dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, -des écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune -est aléatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, -jouait à Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment -profond, mais par éclairs, se balançait dans la vie comme sur une -escarpolette, sans s'inquiéter du moment où la corde casserait."</p></div> - -<p>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,"<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> at which there would be tremendous consternation among the -petticoats. The dames swept the company with searching glares of -outraged decency, the <i>demoiselles</i> blushed, and the embarrassed -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 <i>becs de gaz</i> (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 oublié le -bec de la clarinette."</p> - -<p>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.<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> 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 <i>viveur</i>, 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 glass 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 glass 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; -Béquet, whose good taste Roger himself extolled; and Bouffé, the -director of the Vaudeville. Then there was Emile Cabanon, who lives in -Romantic annals as the author of the extravagant "Roman pour les -Cuisinières." Champfleury,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> on the authority of Camille<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> 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 Palférine (in -"Un Prince de la Bohème"), who, being struck with the appearance of a -lady passing 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 passion. This assiduity so captivated the besieged one's -heart that she struck her colours. It is <i>à propos</i> 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, -dépensaient de l'esprit comptant en veux-tu en voilà ." Alfred -Tattet,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> the rich son of an <i>agent de change</i>, who was introduced to -the <i>viveurs</i> by Félix 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<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> 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.</p> - -<p>I should wrong the <i>viveurs</i> if I allowed it to be implied that they -were all purely pleasure-seekers. Some of them were successful business -men besides. Lautour-Mézéray, for instance, who was distinguished by the -white camellia in his buttonhole, laid the foundations of his fortune by -starting a paper called <i>Le Voleur</i>, which was entirely composed of -cuttings from other papers. Like Andoche Finot, he went on from small to -great, founding <i>La Mode</i> and <i>Le Journal des Enfants</i>, the first -children's paper. He helped to start <i>La Presse</i> with Emile de Girardin, -who was another of the more solid among the <i>viveurs</i>. Doctor Véron, -stout and self-important, his face half hidden in a huge cravat, held an -important place among them. He began life as a medical practitioner, but -made a fortune by exploiting a certain Pâte Regnault and took to -political journalism. Between 1831 and 1835 he was an extremely -successful director of the Opéra, and in 1838 bought <i>Le -Constitutionnel</i>, which he sold fourteen years later for two million -francs. To him, it is said, is due the invention<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> of the <i>tournedos</i>. -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 Opéra 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. Mæcenas-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. Théodore de Banville and many others -have celebrated the excellent "cuisine" and its accompaniment of wit, -but a reader of Véron'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 <i>viveur</i>, was Nestor Roqueplan, -whose toilette was unsurpassed 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 Panthéon, Nouveautés, -Saint-Antoine, Variétés, Opéra, Opéra Comique, and Châtelet passed -successively under his sway, and he lost money at them all except<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> at -the Variétés, during his management of which he wrote those sparkling -"Nouvelles à la main" which are perhaps the freshest examples of purely -ephemeral contemporary wit.</p> - -<p>The Revolution of 1848 dispersed the <i>viveurs</i> for ever. It was not that -Paris diminished in gaiety during the Second Empire nor that the <i>cafés</i> -ceased to be invaded by merry bands of <i>fêtards</i>, 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 <i>régime</i> 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 Véron, Roqueplan, de -Girardin, survived to retire with all the honours of war, forming small -<i>coteries</i> for the cultivation of wit and good cheer, but shunning, -instead of affronting, the public eye. But the rest, the <i>viveurs</i> 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<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> 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.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Jadis j'étais des plus ingambes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Mais hélas! destins inhumains,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Le papier que j'avais aux mains,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>A présent je le porte aux jambes.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">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; -Béquet ended in a hospital; gout killed Cabanon and Tattet; while -Briffaut expired in a mad-house. The mental pronouncement of their -funeral orations I leave to any moralist who chooses, bidding him -remember that if they failed as individuals<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> to fulfil the highest -destinies of mankind they were victims of a strange fever in common with -all the generation of 1830.</p> - -<p>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 fashion and expressing the -prevailing tone, shining 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, <i>bruyant</i> 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 space to the <i>viveurs</i>. They were not Bohemians for the most<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> -part, but many Bohemians hoped to be <i>viveurs</i> 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.<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI<br /><br /> -LA BOHÈME ROMANTIQUE</h2> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">M<small>IL</small> H<small>UIT</small> C<small>ENT</small> T<small>RENTE</small>! <i>Aurore</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui m'éblouis encore,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Promesse du destin,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>Riant matin!</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Aube où le soleil plonge!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Quelquefois un beau songe</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Me rend l'éclat vermeil</i><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>De ton réveil.</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Jetant ta pourpre rose</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>En notre ciel morose,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Tu parais, et la nuit</i><br /></span> -<span class="i1"><i>Soudain s'enfuit.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i5">T<small>HÉODORE DE</small> B<small>ANVILLE</small><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> 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 Léon Séché and a Philibert Audebrand, following the lead of Charles -Asselineau, the pious <i>chiffonnier</i> of Romanticism, industriously -collect the very last scraps of authentic information, that a foreigner -with all a<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></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 -multitude 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 assumptions which a foreigner cannot -grant. All the historical and literary associations on which I have -touched in a former chapter make it a subject which even to-day excites -passionate enthusiasm and equally passionate 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 -<i>pourpoint</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> 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 asserts 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 -Bohème," which tells how the young Comte de la Palfèrine, 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<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> -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 <i>vaudevilles</i>, 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:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"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<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> 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 passes for its budget. All -these young men are greater than their misfortunes—below fortune, -but above destiny."</p></div> - -<p>The narrator of the story, the witty Nathan, goes on to give some -particular <i>traits</i> of La Palférine, 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 Palférine's wit, as when the Bohemian, angrily accosted -by a <i>bourgeois</i> 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 Palférine 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 passed 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<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> therefore wrote to her -the following letter, which made her famous:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"M<small>ADAME</small>,—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.</p> - -<p>Farewell, too lovely and too ungrateful friend!</p> - -<p>May we meet again in a better world!"</p></div> - -<p>Balzac's account is obviously tinged with literary exaggeration, though -the stories of La Palférine 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 <i>le mal romantique</i> which -caused him to run away from his father's shop, settled down to be a -staid librarian. In his "Souvenirs d'un Hugolâtre" he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the wake of the freelances of the pen the <i>Bohemians</i> abounded, -affecting the profoundest disdain for all that the bourgeois call -'rules of conduct,' posing as successors to François Villon, -playing the part of literary art-students, frequenters of -<i>cabarets</i>, 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<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> poverty to a system and laughed at their voluntary -insolvency. Some shook off early their Diogenes' cloak ... others -succumbed 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 (<i>la -blague</i>)."</p></div> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i8"><i>J'ai flâné dans les rues,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>J'ai marché devant moi, bayant aux grues;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Mal nourri, peu vêtu, couchant dans un grenier,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dont je déménageais dès qu'il fallait payer;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>De taudis en taudis colportant ma misère,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ruminant de Fourier le rêve humanitaire,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Empruntant çà et là le plus que je pouvais,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dépensant un écu sitôt que je l'avais,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Délayant de grands mots en phrases insipides,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sans chemise et sans bas, et les poches si vides,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qu'il n'est que mon esprit au monde d'aussi creux,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Tel je vécus, râpé, sycophante, envieux.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>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<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> 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 Arsène Houssaye -celebrated in his poem "Vingt Ans." We Englishmen can hardly understand -the magic of this joyous phrase, <i>vingt ans</i>; 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 -passionate 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 Thélème. 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<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> 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 nobodies in the eyes of the world, perching in their attics -like a colony of singing birds upon the topmost branches.</p> - -<p>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<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></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 assistance. 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, destitute: 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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>did</i> happen to be rich in their own<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> 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 makeshifts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither -discomfort nor makeshifts 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 <i>coup de grâce</i> being given to it -when the new servant pays<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> 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 amusements 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 -<i>viveurs</i> upon the boulevard.</p> - -<p>Bohemia, then, was poor, which had the one excellent result of banishing -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 <i>bourgeois</i> beloved of a -<i>bourgeois</i> 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<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> 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 fashion. 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 impassioned conversation -compared with the warmth of even a humble <i>cabaret</i>. 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 Frères Provençaux, ordering -clothes which he <i>meant</i> to pay for, and forgetting all the while the -just claims of a landlord. His vices, at any rate, were inseparable -from<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> the conditions of his existence, and if he was disreputable, it -was more outwardly than within.</p> - -<p>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 classes to bear them, and classes -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 -citizenship 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 -worship 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<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> 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 aptitude -as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first -disappointments were fashioned failures like Alfred de Musset's -unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "râpé, 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.<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a></p> - -<p>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 township round a proposed extension of the -railway. The settlers, self-assured, 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 Philothée O'Neddy, whose -place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Il est depuis longtemps avéré que nous sommes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dans le siècle, six milles jeunes hommes</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui du démon de l'Art nous croyant tourmentés,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dépensons notre vie en excentricités;</i><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui, du fatal Byron copiant des allures,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>De solennels manteaux drapons nos encolures.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>These six thousand copies of the "Fatal Byron," if they ever existed, -have, for the most part, died without leaving their names to posterity. -The historian can deal only with a few individuals, who embodied the -salient qualities of Bohemia.<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII<br /><br /> -THE SECOND "CÉNACLE"</h2> - -<p class="nind">"P<small>EOPLE</small> always forget," said Théophile Gautier in his old age, "that we -were the first Schaunards and Collines, a quarter of a century before -Murger. Only," he added with a smile, "we had talent and did not write -invertebrate verses like those of that feeble appendage to Alfred de -Musset." This saying, reported by his son-in-law, was made on a festive -occasion, so that it is unnecessary to regard with concern the -discrepancy between this view of Murger and the one which Gautier has -expressed in print. That kindest-hearted of writers would never -wittingly have hurt the reputation or memory of the humblest among his -fellows, and I only quote the passage because, when the malice is -discounted as largely as the "quarter of a century," it remains a true -reference to the origins of Bohemia by one who was, so to speak, one of -its pilgrim fathers. The first Schaunards and Collines, Rodolphes and -Marcels, the unknown poets and artists who first raised the standard of -common enthusiasm against a common enemy, the <i>bourgeois</i>, were the -young and lusty friends of a young and lusty Gautier. They were members -of a <i>cénacle</i>, albeit a less beatific <i>cénacle</i><a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> than the brotherhood -drawn in Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." In the <i>cénacle</i> of the Rue des -Quatre Vents he evolved by sheer imagination a compensating mirage of -virtue to be contrasted with all the real depravity of society which his -eye so unerringly saw, just as Eugénie Grandet shines out impossibly -beside her miserly father, and Madame Firmiani in the corrupt circle of -his <i>femmes du monde</i>. Nevertheless there is a certain sublimity in the -<i>cénacle</i> to which attention cannot be denied. It was Balzac's picture -of an ideal Bohemia in which alone such a nature as his could have found -a home. It is of little moment that he dates the action of "Illusions -Perdues" a few years before 1830, for the <i>cénacle</i> itself is a timeless -creation, only limited by the fact that one of its members died in the -insurrection of 1832. The young men who composed the <i>cénacle</i> bore upon -their brow the "seal of special genius." Daniel d'Arthez, upon whom -since the death of their leader, the great mystic, Louis Lambert, the -mantle had fallen, was a monarchist of noble family, destined to become -the greatest writer of the future; Horace Bianchon, the flower of -doctors, a materialist of perfect charity and profound science; Léon -Giraud, a humanitarian philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a great painter with -"the line of Rome and the colour of Venice"; Fulgence Ridal, a sceptic, -a cynic, and the wittiest playwright of his time; Meyraux, a scientist; -and Michel Chrestien, a red republican who<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> was killed in the Cloître -Saint-Merri. They were not ascetics by profession: d'Arthez, for -instance, was the last lover of the Diane, the Princesse de Cadignan, in -the days of his later glory; Bridau's art was affected by his love -affairs; Chrestien was "plein d'illusions et d'amour." They were like -the "saints" of the early Christian Church, each going his own way, but -true helpers one of another, true champions and honest critics. They -were without vanity or envy, having a profound esteem for one another, -with a consciousness of their own worth. "Their great external misery -and the splendour of their intellectual wealth produced a singular -contrast. In their society nobody thought of the realities of life -except as subjects for friendly pleasantries.... The sufferings of -poverty, when they made themselves felt, were so gaily borne, accepted -with such ardour by all, that they did nothing to alter the particular -serenity which marks the faces of young men free from grave faults, who -have not lost part of themselves in any of those low traffickings which -are forced upon men by poverty ill supported, by the desire to get on -without any choice of means, and by the facile complacency with which -men of letters welcome or pardon betrayals.... These young men were sure -of themselves: the enemy of one became the enemy of all, and they would -have abandoned their most urgent interests to obey the sacred solidarity -of their hearts. All incapable of a mean action, they<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> could oppose a -formidable 'no' to every accusation, and defend one another with -security. Equally high-minded and equally matched in matters of -sensibility, they could think and speak all their mind in the domain of -science and intelligence; thence came the innocence of their -intercourse, the gaiety of their talk. Sure of mutual understanding, -their minds digressed at their ease; and they stood on no ceremony among -themselves, confided in each other their sorrows and their joys, -pondered and suffered with open hearts." I need speak no further of this -imaginary <i>cénacle</i>, for "Illusions Perdues" is widely known. It is one -of those wonderful fantasies that one feels were lovingly cherished by -Balzac, at once his darling dreams and his disappointments. He had a -passionate desire to express the beautiful, and he was denied that gift. -The lights dance before his eyes, and his very language becomes confused -and turgid when he deserts reality. It may safely be said that in the -real <i>Bohème</i> there was no such goodly company of industrious, gifted, -morally austere, intellectually gay, unselfish young men, and that there -never will be in any society till the coming of the Coquecigrues.</p> - -<p>The Bohemia of artistic tradition began in what Théophile Gautier named -the "second <i>cénacle</i>." The first <i>cénacle</i>, as all the world knows, was -that of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the brothers Deschamps, who met -regularly at the <i>cabaret</i> of Mère Saguet on Montparnasse<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> in the days -when Hugo was still hatching the plot of the literary revolution. To -trace to them the origins of Bohemia would be an error, for they never -had any part or lot in Bohemianism. They were young, it is true, and -depended upon their art for a living, but the fact that they were -nothing but a small <i>coterie</i> of earnest poets, more akin to the band of -d'Arthez than the friends of Rodolphe, depends upon two things, their -time and their outlook. The first <i>cénacle</i> came into existence about -1822, when the throne of the Bourbons seemed solid and royalism went -hand in hand with classicism. No standard of insurrection, civic or -literary, had yet been raised; the victory was yet to come, and it would -have been madness, before the campaign was fully planned or the army -gathered, for the chiefs to have aped the style of victors. The -merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without -support as they were. Defiance of the <i>bourgeois</i>, an absolute essential -of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first -<i>cénacle</i>, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while -secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by -which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense -moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, -was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made -itself conspicuous. To strike a more human note in poetry was their -chief<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> aim: they were concerned with art rather than with life itself; -and though Hugo, in the privacy of his room, doffed with relief that -<i>bourgeois</i> symbol, the high linen collar, he was like a general in his -tent drawing up that transcendental plan of operations, the preface to -"Cromwell," which was to inspire his troops in their pioneering and -shooting, in their whole bodily attack on the classic tradition. As the -classic tradition was embodied not only in literature, in contemporary -journalism, in professional lectures, but in the social life of all -staid citizens as well, the Romantic troops, passionate and fundamental -as their literary enthusiasm was, were forced to make social life the -field of their assault, all the more because, being poor, young, and -unknown, they were unable to inflict such palpable wounds with pen or -brush as they could by making a violent protest in every detail of the -ordinary way of living. By outraging the accepted standards of decency -in dress, in speech, and in demeanour, they made their presence daily -felt, and where their presence was felt their ideals were made -ostensible. Their tactics, after the event, may be blamed, the effect -they produced was, no doubt, smaller than they imagined, but the fact -remains that la <i>vie de Bohème</i> began neither as a retreat for higher -souls nor as a means for reckless self-indulgence, but as a definite -method of drawing attention to a new and important artistic creed. For -the greater exponents of this creed,<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> a Hugo or a Delacroix, such a -material protest would have been out of place; it would have detracted -even from the effect produced by their great works of art. Only the rank -and file, to whom supreme personal achievement was impossible, collected -and commonly inspired, as I have already pointed out, under special -historical and social conditions, were justified in adopting the -measures that were best suited to their purpose. Their purpose was as -temporary as their conditions; their device, <i>épater le bourgeois</i>, has -now become a hollow phrase, but it meant then the rousing of every -shopkeeper, every <i>garçon de café</i>, as well as the cultured reader of -current literature, to the sense that art was alive again. This was the -aim of the second <i>cénacle</i>, the first Bohemians. They were successful, -and they were necessary.</p> - -<p>The second <i>cénacle</i> was not a formal organization, so that no definite -date can be fixed for its institution. Its members probably came -together in the same haphazard way as the small bands of friends at a -public school or university, crystallizing so imperceptibly that the -moment of incorporation baffles memory, and often so firmly that death -alone is their solvent. Théophile Gautier, in his fragmentary "Histoire -du Romantisme," has given the fullest details of the <i>cénacle's</i> -existence, yet neither he nor his biographer, Maxime du Camp, make it -clear whether it was formed prior or posterior to the famous first night -of "Hernani" in February of<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> 1830. Gautier, no doubt, had forgotten, but -it seems fairly safe to assume that if preliminary acquaintance was -already made between some of its members before that time, the stormy -nights of February strengthened the bond and made the association -compact. The story of "Hernani," with the red waistcoat, <i>vieil as de -pique</i>, and other trimmings, has so often been told, even in English, -that it may seem unnecessary to traverse such well-trodden ground; but a -historian has no business to take anything for granted, so that -"Hernani" can be no more justly omitted here than Waterloo from any work -upon Napoleon. It was part of Victor Hugo's agreement with the Théâtre -Français that a number of seats should be at his disposal each night, -and that the holders of the tickets should be admitted some time before -the ordinary public. These were the trenches into which his army of -young men were thrown. Minor officers were entrusted with the task of -bringing the men to the rendezvous, Jules Vabre, an architect, being -responsible for a hundred and fifty men, and Célestin Nanteuil for -almost as large a number. Gérard de Nerval, whose translation of -Goethe's "Faust," published in 1828 (when he was only nineteen), had -brought him considerable fame in Romantic circles, had known Gautier, -who was two years his junior, at the Collège Charlemagne. This amiable -essayist, whom Gautier likened more than once to a swallow, flitting -always in and out among his friends, was not forgetful<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> of his young -friend in the days of recruiting. Gautier was at that time studying -painting in the studio of Rioult, whither Gérard de Nerval made one day -a swallow-like dart and produced six tickets marked with the single but -thrilling word <i>Hierro</i>, the Spanish for "iron." According to Maxime du -Camp he gave these to Gautier with the words:</p> - -<p>"Tu réponds de tes hommes?"</p> - -<p>To him replied Gautier: "Par le crâne dans lequel Byron buvait à -l'Abbaye de Newstead, j'en réponds. N'est-ce pas, vous autres?"</p> - -<p>"Mort aux perruques!" resounded in answer through the studio, and Gérard -flitted away content.</p> - -<p>Gautier, who was a little better provided with worldly goods than some -of the Romantic army, then set about devising a costume that should -strike death into the heart of the <i>perruques</i>. With extreme care he cut -out a pattern of a medieval <i>pourpoint</i>—a buttonless waistcoat coming -right up to the collar-bone, and fastening with laces behind like the -uniform of Saint-Simon's disciples, which symbolized mutual assistance, -because no Saint-Simonian could truss his own points. His Gascon -tailor's professional objections were overruled, even though the -material chosen was a gorgeous silk coloured a Chinese vermilion, and -the garment was made as desired: to it were added a pair of light -greenish-grey trousers with a broad stripe of black down each seam, a -black coat with ample <i>revers</i> of velvet, and a flowing<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> cravat. It was -indeed a devastating sight, and one that deservedly became famous. In -this fervent spirit was the battle waged over "Hernani"; for thirty -consecutive performances the trenches were manfully filled and a -fusillade of cheers poured forth at every touch of romantic colour, -every bold <i>enjambement</i>, every defiance of classic circumlocution, and, -above all, every sign of disapprobation on the part of those they rudely -styled "wigs" and "bald pates." The battlefield was often a pandemonium, -but the result was victory. The Théâtre Français, the very home of -Molière, was successfully carried by the Romantic assault. Gautier had -magnificently won his spurs, and shortly afterwards he was introduced by -Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel to the great hero himself, an ordeal -which caused him so much trepidation that he sat for over an hour on the -stairs with his two sponsors before he could pluck up courage to -proceed. His fears, however, soon vanished after a cordial reception, -and as his parents were then living next door to Hugo in the splendid -old Place Royale, he soon became the most constant page and attendant of -the poet, for whom he preserved a lifelong devotion.</p> - -<p>These were the days of the second <i>cénacle</i>, for "Hernani" was the -Hegira of <i>la vie de Bohème</i>. During the long waits in the empty -theatre, the passionate mornings of preparation, the fiery reunions -after the curtain had fallen, a set of the most ardent Hugo-worshippers -had<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> found their affinities. They did not indeed live together—some -were dutifully under the parental roof, some had hardly a roof to their -heads, one at least was supporting a mother and sister by daily work in -a government office—but they formed the habit of meeting and spending -many hours of the day and night together and the meeting-place was -either the studio of a young sculptor, Jehan du Seigneur, or the sanded -parlour of the <i>Petit Moulin Rouge</i>, in the <i>rond-point</i> of the Arc de -Triomphe. Their names were Pétrus Borel, Joseph Bouchardy, Philothée -O'Neddy, Alphonse Brot, Augustus Mackeat, Jules Vabre, Napoléon Thom, -Jehan du Seigneur, Léon Clopet, Célestin Nanteuil, Théophile Gautier, -and Gérard de Nerval. It is almost needless to say that some of the -names are Gothic transformations in the Romantic fashion. Pétrus Borel -was, of course, christened Pierre, as du Seigneur was christened Jean by -his parents; while Philothée O'Neddy and Augustus Mackeat conceal the -persons of Théophile Dondey and Auguste Maquet. But names in <i>-us</i> or -Celtic patronymics were all the rage, and even Gautier was called -Albertus after his poem of that name published in 1832. A curious -feature about the group was that, though it existed to champion the -cause of Romantic poetry, the only pure man of letters was Gérard de -Nerval. Of the rest, Borel, formerly an architect, was learning to draw -in Dévéria's studio, Thom and Nanteuil were artists, Gautier and -Bouchardy<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> studying art, du Seigneur a sculptor, Clopet and Vabre -architects; O'Neddy and Brot, indeed, were professed poets, but in no -less an embryonic stage than some of the others who afterwards found in -the pen their most successful tool. "This mixture of art in poetry," -says Gautier, "was and has remained one of the characteristic signs of -the new school, and makes it clear why the first adepts were recruited -rather among the artists than among the men of letters. A multitude of -objects, images, and comparisons which were thought to be irreducible to -the written word were introduced into the language and have stayed -there."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_138_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_138_sml.jpg" width="357" height="550" alt="Pétrus Borel" title="Pétrus Borel" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Pétrus Borel</span> -</p> - -<p>The one whom Gautier called the <i>individualité pivotale</i> of the group, -though Philothée O'Neddy in after years denied that he had more -influence than Gautier, Gérard, or Bouchardy, was Pétrus Borel, Le -Lycanthrope as he subsequently named himself. His full name was Pierre -Borel d'Hauterive, and he was born in Lyons in 1809. His father, -captured by the revolutionaries in 1792 and then liberated, fled to -Switzerland, whence he returned to Paris, a ruined man, to earn what he -could by keeping a shop. At the age of fifteen Pierre was apprenticed to -an architect, and in 1829 he set up on his own account without much -success. He and Jules Vabre became associated, and so poor were they -that they used to use the cellars of the houses on which they were -engaged as their dwelling-place. Gautier<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> recalled visiting them once in -the cellar of a house in the Rue Fontaine-du-Roi, where they were -preparing their frugal meal of potatoes baked in the ashes. "Ah," said -Vabre with pride, "but we have salt on Sundays." Borel's ideas were too -Gothically fantastic for his <i>bourgeois</i> clients, and, after a violent -dispute over his fourth commission, he ordered the half-finished -building to be demolished, and gave up for ever an ungrateful -profession,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> betaking himself for a season to the study of painting, -and writing the while those poems animated by a haughty bitterness which -were published under the title of "Rhapsodies." They are dedicated and -addressed to the members of the second <i>cénacle</i>, among whom he enjoyed -an enormous reputation. He was for them the poet of the future, before -whom Hugo would crumble to dust. Alas! for youthful predictions; thirty -years later Gautier, the most loyal of Romantics, was forced to exclaim: -"Dire que j'ai cru à Pétrus!"<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> He exercised over the group, in fact, -a kind of unconscious hypnotism. His slightly superior age, his strange, -rough, paradoxical eloquence, and, above all, his picturesque appearance -imposed on them all. Their ideal was to have an <i>allure fatale</i>, a -sombre complexion and haughty, Byronic mien. Borel realized it. He -looked like a Castilian nobleman out of a Velasquez picture, says -Gautier, with his "young and serious face,<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> of perfect regularity, an -olive skin gilded with light shades of amber, lit up by great, shining -eyes, sad as those of Abencerrages thinking of Granada," his bright red -lip which shone under his moustache, "one spark of life in that mask of -Oriental immobility," and his fine, full, silky beard perfumed and -tended like that of a sultan, at a time when to wear a beard in Paris -was an outrage to public decency. He was clothed in black, wearing a -high Robespierre waistcoat and draping a long black cloak around him -with an air of studied mystery. How could the younger men, whose beards -refused to grow, not believe in such a perfect symbol, so magnificently -scornful, so profoundly fatal? He was the most republican, too, of them -all, the typical <i>Bousingot</i> of the <i>bourgeois</i> Press, though fanatical -republicanism was not, as Philothée O'Neddy afterwards protested in a -letter to Charles Asselineau, their representative opinion. Gérard had -no political opinions at all, Gautier was obstinately <i>Jeune-France</i>, -and the others only dreamt of a social Utopia in which æstheticism -should replace religion, or of some humanitarian millennium after the -manner of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Borel, however, held society in -complete disgust, as he showed when he left the gathering at Jehan du -Seigneur's, and proceeded one summer to live with some followers on the -slopes of Montmartre, all naked as savages, till the landlord drove them -out at the price of his porter's lodge, which they burnt down in -revenge.<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a></p> - -<p>None of the others were quite so remarkably individual as Pétrus Borel, -whose character may be described as Jules Claretie describes his book of -extravagant stories, "Champavert": "doubt, negation, bitterness, anger, -something at the same time furious and comic." Vabre, his partner in -architecture, had fair hair and moustaches, without any extravagance in -his bearing, but his face twinkled all over with malice and his -conversation was madly Rabelaisian. He projected a famous book that was -never written, "Sur l'Incommodité des Commodes." An intense love for -Shakespeare was his chief Romantic asset. According to Gautier he gave -up his later life to studying our language in England that he might make -the perfect translation, a task which was never completed. Joseph -Bouchardy, who afterwards became a very successful writer of melodrama, -was then learning engraving. He, too, was dark, so dark that with the -soft, sparse beard that just fringed his face he looked an Indian, and -was nicknamed the Maharajah of Lahore. He was less poetry-mad than the -rest, but eternally occupied with dramatic scenarios in which all the -secret passages, trap-doors, and sliding panels of a novel by Mrs. -Radcliffe were brought into play. Jehan du Seigneur, who made medallions -of all his friends, was a gentle, modest youth with a very -pink-and-white complexion which was his everlasting despair. To atone -for this unavoidable defection from Romantic<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> ideals, he wore a black -velvet <i>pourpoint</i>, a black jacket with broad velvet <i>revers</i>, and a -voluminous necktie, so that not a speck of white linen was shown, a -"suprème élégance romantique," as Gautier remarks. Augustus Mackeat was -chiefly conspicuous for the happy transformation of his name, though he -returned to the orthodox Maquet when he became a successful playwright. -His disguise, however, was nothing to the tremendous anagram which -turned Théophile Dondey into Philothée O'Neddy. He, says Gautier, was -dark as a mulatto with fair, curly hair. Though he was helping to -support a mother and sister by working in a government office, this -Philistine occupation did not prevent him from being one of the most -frenzied of the gang, a "paroxyst" <i>ruisselant d'inouïsme</i>. In 1833 he -published a collection of ultra-romantic poems called "Feu et Flamme," -which reek with passion, despair, scorn, suicide, and contempt for -Christianity. Yet he lived till 1872, and though he published nothing -more, he left a collection of posthumous poems all of which breathe an -extreme melancholy. In the letter written to Asselineau ten years before -his death he admitted that in the days of the <i>cénacle</i> he had "une -bonne grosse somme d'extravagance et de mauvais goût," but protested -warmly against the application to them of the epithet "ridiculous." -"Risible" they might have been, but only the <i>bourgeois</i> were -"ridiculous." Célestin Nanteuil was big, fair, gentle, and so perfectly<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> -medieval that Gautier caricatured him as Elie Wildman-stadius, the hero -of one of his <i>Jeune-France</i> stories, who lived in a Gothic manor on -medieval fare, read nothing but medieval illuminated manuscripts, and -was killed when the Gothic cathedral, his sole external joy, was struck -by lightning. Gautier describes him personally as having the appearance -of "one of those long angels bearing censers or playing sambucs that -live in the gables of cathedrals, who has come down into the city in the -midst of the busy burgesses, keeping his nimbus all the while at the -back of his head like a hat, but without the least suspicion that it is -not natural to wear one's aureole in the street." He was a furious -Hernanist in 1830 (he was then only seventeen), and called "the -Captain," for leading the army to the fray. In 1843, when he was asked -to bring three hundred young men to support "Les Burgraves" in the same -manner, he sadly said: "Tell the master there are no more young men." He -might, says Maxime du Camp, have been a great painter, but he was -compelled to live by illustrating. Whenever he had made a little money -in this way he returned to his colours and his easel till it was -exhausted. He ended in the obscurity of Dijon, becoming the director of -its school of art.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_142_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_142_sml.jpg" width="458" height="550" alt="Célestin Nanteuil" title="Célestin Nanteuil" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Célestin Nanteuil</span> -</p> - -<p>Maxime du Camp compares Nanteuil's fate to that of Gautier, who was -forced by circumstances to waste so much of his talent in mere -journalism; but in 1830 Gautier, a young man of nineteen, who made long -hair<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> serve instead of a beard, was still free as air. In that year he -brought out a little volume of poems, and a year or two later produced -the fantastic "Albertus," which he followed with "Les Jeune-France." His -art studies had soon ceased because he discovered that he suffered from -short sight, and we may regard him in the days of the <i>cénacle</i> as a -poet pure and simple. One figure remains to be filled in, the most -pathetic of all the Romantic band, Gérard de Nerval. He was born in -1808, the son of a Doctor Labrunie—the family name of de Nerval was -only assumed by him when he began to write. His youth was spent in the -pleasant country of the Valois, and he received a very careful education -from his father, who taught him not only Latin and Greek, but German, -Italian, and the rudiments of Arabic and Persian. Even in his early days -he was an eager reader of mystics and utopists, which gave that first -fantastical turn to his brain which ended later in complete madness. His -development was normal at first. At the Collège Charlemagne he was the -snapper-up of every prize, and produced some quite worthless poetry in -praise of Napoleon that won high approval from his professors. He -followed this by a satire on the Academy, which appeared in 1826, and in -1828 he produced an ode to Béranger of a style to which his Romantic -friends could only have applied the new epithet <i>poncif</i>. The -translation of "Faust," which earned a very high compliment from the -great Goethe<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> himself, turned him into his appropriate path and gave him -a serious literary reputation which he never lost. He translated other -fragments of German poetry, and wrote for the <i>Mercure de France</i>, of -which Pierre Lacroix, the "Bibliophile Jacob," was then the editor. His -adoption of a literary career was a grave disappointment to his father, -who had hoped to make a good official of him, and it is probable that -parental coldness first caused him to find a congenial asylum in the new -Bohemia, of which he was never a typical inhabitant. When he came of age -he inherited his mother's dowry, which made the actual earning of money -immaterial to him. His success with "Faust" had brought him into touch -with Hugo, so that after the days of "Hernani" he held in the <i>cénacle</i> -the most distinguished, if not the most influential, position as a -lieutenant of their demi-god, with notable achievements in the field of -letters already to his credit.</p> - -<p>Gérard threw in his lot with the <i>cénacle</i>, but, though he even wrote -some revolutionary poems in 1830, for which he was imprisoned in Sainte -Pélagie, he was never quite at ease with Borel and the <i>Bousingot</i> -faction. The flamboyant side of Romanticism and its noisy gatherings had -little appeal for him. He was an eccentric and a solitary by nature, as -his writings, with their strong reminiscence of Heine, show. In the time -of the <i>cénacle</i> he was, according to Gautier, a gentle and modest young -man, who blushed like a girl, with a <a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a>pink-and-white complexion and -soft, grey eyes. Under his fine, light golden hair his forehead, -beautifully shaped, shone like polished ivory. He was usually dressed in -a black frock-coat with enormous pockets, in which, like Murger's -Colline, he buried a whole library of books picked up on the <i>quais</i>, -five or six notebooks, and a large collection of scraps of paper on -which he wrote down the ideas that occurred to him on his long walks. He -was the perfect peripatetic: as he once said, he would have liked to -walk through life unrolling an endless roll of paper on which he could -jot his reflections. He lived at this time with Camille Rogier, the -artist, in the Rue des Beaux Arts, but his friends could never be sure -where to find him. For him no hour was sacred to rest. He wandered about -Paris at all times of the day and night, dropping in on a friend for an -hour or two, ready to ride a hobby-horse with him in any direction, then -darting off again, his thoughts in the clouds, nobody knew whither, and -returning in the small hours, only to flit from his bed at the dawn. Of -all the gay companions of Bohemia he was the best loved, for his -childlike simplicity and his gentle manners won all hearts. He went -through life to his terrible death with complete unworldliness, almost -like a ghost, unconscious of the material side of existence, directing -his feet only by the light of his spirit. Gautier, writing after his -death, protested vehemently that his was no ordinary tragedy of -neglected genius; he had money<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> enough, but money was nothing to him, so -he spent it without a thought; his work was always accepted by editors, -and his plays, though not successful, were all produced. But success was -the last of his preoccupations. He was a wanderer living in a world of -his own fantasies. As he will appear again in these pages, we may bid -him farewell for the moment, with the conviction that it would be -pleasant to be transported for a season back to that turbulent <i>vie de -Bohème</i> if only to find the kindly Gérard's arm passed through one's own -and to hear his gentle murmur: "Tu as une fantaisie; je la promènerai -avec toi."</p> - -<p>I ought, perhaps, to apologize for allowing the persons of the <i>cénacle</i> -to take up so much space before coming to their life, yet I imagine, on -the whole, that I have said too little rather than too much. To go back -to a past of which one has no experience is a matter of such extreme -difficulty that a historian must often despair at the impossibility of -reproducing the whole congeries of scattered detail from which alone his -own mental picture could have taken shape. The first Bohemia, that of -the second <i>cénacle</i>, was less a common life than a common recreation. -It was an incomplete <i>vie de Bohème</i> in so far as its members were -united, not by a desire to share all the joys and difficulties of life, -but by a particular artistic enthusiasm. There is no record that any of -them worked or dwelt together, that they took part in joint expeditions -of<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a> amusement, or that the mutual acquaintance of those female -divinities for whom they plied so "fatally" their emotional bellows is -to be presumed—and these are marked characteristics of Murger's <i>vie de -Bohème</i>. When they ate together it was at the obscure <i>cabaret</i> kept by -the Neapolitan Graziano for the needs of his compatriots who worked in -Paris. Here, in a plain whitewashed room with a sanded floor, a dresser -covered with violently coloured faience and plain wooden benches, they -were initiated by their host—a man of senatorial presence, with an -immense but perfectly correct nose and big black beard, who seemed to -dream all the while of his beloved Italy—into the delights of -<i>spaghetti</i>, <i>stufato</i>, <i>tagliarini</i>, and <i>gnocchi</i>. They were delicious -meals, seasoned with good spirits, and—to use the delightful French -phrase—"bedewed" with sound wine of Argenteuil or Suresnes christened -magnificently with the names of the most exclusive vineyards in Médoc or -Burgundy. Still, they were felt at times to be a trifle wanting in -Romantic glamour. It was all very well, the grumblers remarked, to be -enjoying incomparable macaroni, but when all was said and done there was -little that an impartial observer could descry in these banquets to -differentiate them from the prosaic meals of a Joseph Prudhomme. -Something was wanting, some tincture of the Newstead spirit, some -infernal joy in the food, some shudder in the drinking. The macaroni -remained obstinately<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> matter-of-fact, but a brilliant idea was mooted -that would give a charnel flavour to the wine. Graziano's glasses were -only glasses of quite modern exiguousness; the true brotherhood should -drink out of a skull. A skull was accordingly procured by Gérard from -his father, the doctor, and ingeniously mounted by Gautier, who screwed -to its side an old brass handle from a chest of drawers. In truth it was -a noble bowl, and the pious company drank from it with bravado, each -concealing with more or less ill-success his natural repugnance. -Familiarity, however, bred contempt, till one uncompromising youth -surprised his companions by noisily commanding the waiter to fill with -sea-water.</p> - -<p>"Why sea-water?" exclaimed a simple soul.</p> - -<p>"Why sea-water! Because the master in 'Hans d'Islande' says 'he drank -the water of the sea from the skulls of the dead.' It is my desire to do -the same."</p> - -<p>Yes, the <i>Petit Moulin Rouge</i>, for all its good cheer and its -death's-head mounted with a drawer-handle, was too workaday for these -eclectics. They reached their true glory only in the gatherings which -took place in Jehan du Seigneur's studio. It was a room over a little -fruiterer's shop that the <i>cénacle</i> sanctified as their conventicle. "In -a little chamber," wrote an older Gautier, "which had not seats enough -for all its occupants, gathered the young men, really young and -different in that respect from the <i>young</i> men of to-day,<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> who are all -more or less quinquagenarians. The hammock in which the master of the -dwelling took his siesta, the narrow couchlet in which the dawn often -surprised him at the last page of a book of verses, eked out the -insufficiency of conveniences for conversation. One really talked better -standing up, and the gestures of the orator or declaimer only gained a -more ample scope. Still, it was extremely unwise to make too free with -your arms for fear of knocking your knuckles against the sloping -ceiling." It was a poor man's room, but not without ornament, for it -contained sketches by the two Dévérias, a head after Titian or Giorgione -by Boulanger, two earthenware vases full of flowers on the chimneypiece, -the inevitable death's-head instead of a clock, a looking-glass, and a -small shelf of books. On either side of the glass and in the embrasures -of the windows were hung the portrait medallions which Jehan made of his -friends. They had no money to get them cast in bronze, so the world has -lost in them a valuable appendix to the well-known busts of his -contemporaries executed by the more distinguished Romantic sculptor, -David d'Angers. Here they would all gather of an evening: Gérard if he -happened to be passing in his amiable wanderings, Bouchardy the -Maharajah, Gautier—not yet the burly critic of <i>La Presse</i>, but a thin -youth of nineteen—Nanteuil with his Gothic nimbus, Vabre bursting with -some new joke, Borel swinging off his long cloak with a<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> scowl, O'Neddy -shedding Dondey in the street, Mackeat and the rest, each bursting with -eloquence or roaring the "Chasse du Burgrave" at the top of his voice. -When Maxime du Camp once asked Gautier what they talked about, he -answered: "About everything, but I haven't the least idea what they -said, because everybody talked at once." However, a very good idea of a -typical evening in the <i>cénacle</i> is given in Philothée O'Neddy's "Feu et -Flamme," the first poem in which, called "Pandæmonium," is a gorgeous -description of their cave of harmony. It is freely decorated with "local -colour," which on a Romantic's lips meant the borrowing of all he could -carry away from the medieval stage-property room, but it was drawn from -life with all seriousness and sincerity. The poem opens by depicting -them all seated round the punch-bowl—punch, it must be stated, was the -only really respectable drink for a thorough-paced Romantic. He mixed it -in a large bowl and set light to the fumes, as the students are supposed -to do in the first act of the "Contes d'Hoffmann," and derived enormous -satisfaction from sitting in an obscurity only lit by this bluish flame. -Thus to recall the witches' cauldron and the fires of the Inferno had an -unfailing success as a stimulant to eloquence. The scene, then, opens -thus powerfully:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Au centre de la salle, autour d'une urne en fer,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Digne émule en largeur des coupes d'enfer,</i><a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dans laquelle un beau punch, aux prismatiques flammes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Semble un lac sulfureux qui fait houler ses lames,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Vingt jeunes hommes, tous artistes dans le cÅ“ur,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>La pipe ou le cigare aux lèvres, l'Å“il moqueur,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Le temporal orné du bonnet de Phrygie,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>En barbe Jeune-France, en costume d'orgie,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sont pachalesquement jetés sur un amas</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>De coussins dont maint siècle a troué le damas,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et le sombre atelier n'a point d'éclairage</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Que la gerbe du punch, spiritueux mirage.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Smoking, it would be well to add, was considered part of the whole duty -of a Romantic man. The cigar, being Byronic, was affected by the -"fatally" inclined; the pipe came, not from England, but from Germany; -it was Faust-like, Hoffmannesque; it was also Flemish, of course, and -the Flemish painters, like Steen and Teniers, were in high repute. A -pipe signified a more jolly potatory spirit than a cigar, but it was -always possible for the irreconcilable satanics to regard the breathing -out of smoke from either as symbolically demoniac. The cigarette was not -despised, but its popularity was due also to its picturesque -associations. Spain was the home of the cigarette, the <i>papelito</i> as -Borel and his friends fondly called it. When they rolled their fragrant -Maryland lovingly in the <i>papel</i> they assumed a Spanish <i>allure</i>, -Granada rose before their eyes, and invisible guitars played "Avez-vous -vu dans<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> Barcelone?" However, cigarettes would have been out of place in -the prismatic flames of the punch-bowl. Their Spanish nonchalance suited -better the light of day: evening shadows were consecrated to gloom and -frenzy, Northern spirits. Hence it is not surprising to hear that all -the company had</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>De haine virulente et de pitié morose</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Contre la bourgeoisie et le Code et la prose;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Des cÅ“urs ne dépensant leur exultation</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Que pour deux vérités, l'art et la passion!</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">The conversation is compared with some aptitude to a Spanish town -devastated by an earthquake, which confounds in one ruin palaces and -huts, churches and houses of ill-fame. So in their talk the ideal and -the grotesque, poetry and cynical jesting are confounded pell-mell. -Silence is made while a passage from Victor Hugo is declaimed, after -which four discourses are pronounced. Three are by Borel, Clopet, and -Bouchardy respectively, concealed in the names of Reblo, Noel, and Don -José, and the second discourse is delivered by the swarthy O'Neddy -himself, who,</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2"><i>Faisant osciller son regard de maudit</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sur le conventicule,</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">pours out a passionate complaint that poets have too long been under the -yoke of governments and codes of<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> law. The evening closes with a violent -tumult. The punch has done its work, and the <i>cénacle</i> is a-screaming -with the ecstasy of energumens.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Ce fut un long chaos de jurons, de boutades,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>De hurrahs, de tollés et de rhodomontades.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">They danced and sang like the demon crew in the master's "Ronde du -Sabbat,"</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Et jusques au matin les damnés Jeune-Frances</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Nagèrent dans un flux d'indicibles démences.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">It is to be hoped that the worthy fruiterer was sleeping quietly in -another part of Paris, and only the potatoes were kept awake and sleep -banished from the pears.</p> - -<p>If at this point our reader feels inclined to throw up his hands and -exclaim "How disgusting!" he will be well advised to put down the book. -One cannot approach Bohemia without a certain sympathy for youthful -excesses, howsoever opposed they may be to one's personal predilections. -If the <i>cénacle</i> indulged in occasional orgies—which, even allowing a -good deal for "local colour" in O'Neddy's "Pandæmonium," they certainly -did—they had a great many compensating virtues, such as complete -disinterestedness and a consuming love of art, which were not -conspicuous in Paris at the time. Maxime du Camp in his memoir on -Gautier sets the extreme limit to which reasonable criticism<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> of them -can go when, after remarking on the promise given by a violent youth for -a fruitful middle age, he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"From that should we conclude that the young men who composed the -<i>cénacle</i> were all destined to become great men? Certainly not; -there were among them dreamers with illusions about themselves, -sterile dupes of the comedy that they played, failures in whose -case the brilliant future which they promised themselves fell -naturally into obscurity. To more than one of them the saying of -Rivarol could have been applied: 'It is a terrible advantage never -to have done anything, but it should not be abused.' In short, only -one of them has made a name that will not perish: Théophile -Gautier. Gérard de Nerval, by whom he had been distanced at the -beginning of his life, never passed a very moderate level, did not -push his way in the crowd, and came early to grief. On the other -hand, most of them were celebrated in the group, I might say in the -<i>coterie</i>, to which they belonged, but their reputation never went -beyond the circle in which they lived."</p></div> - -<p>Maxime du Camp takes a very superior point of view which is less than -just. The members of the <i>cénacle</i>, it may be admitted, overrated one -another's talents and were ready, in some instances, to take posturing -for performance; but Bohemia is not to be blamed because all her -children were not great men any more than Eton because all her <i>alumni</i> -are not scholars. As a matter of fact, in this first Bohemia of<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> the -<i>cénacle</i> there were very few of whom it could be said that their lives -were ruined. Gérard died a violent death, but he was afflicted with -mental disease. Apart from his eccentricity he was a scholar and a -gentleman whose attainments equalled those of Gautier himself, though he -could not bring himself to exploit them. Pétrus Borel was the one real -failure, the <i>poseur</i> who inevitably came to grief. His Bohemian career -reached its apogee at his masked ball in 1832—a caricature of Dumas' -own famous ball—held at his lodgings in the Rue d'Enfer, an appropriate -address. He left Paris shortly afterwards, and, after earning for some -years a precarious livelihood and publishing "Madame Putiphar," he -became an inspector of Mostaganem, in Algeria, in which country he died -wretchedly. The rest, though they did not quite achieve their proud -dreams, continued, most of them, in the paths of art with rectitude and -some success, Bouchardy and Maquet as dramatists, du Seigneur as a -sculptor, Nanteuil as an artist. O'Neddy, once the <i>cénacle</i> dissolved, -as it did towards 1833, found poetry a resource in solitude, and poor -Vabre, if he made no figure in the world, at least set himself the -highest of ideals in devoting his life to the study of Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>The first Bohemia, for what that is worth, was singularly respectable in -its results. Even had they been far worse, sufficient praise to stifle -carping would be found in the indelibly beautiful memory which it<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> left -on the minds of its members. In 1857 Bouchardy wrote of it to Gautier in -these words:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was a holy and beautiful comradeship, my dear Théo, in which -each was the loving brother, the devoted friend, the -fellow-traveller who makes his friend forget the length and the -fatigue of the road. It was a more beautiful comradeship than one -can say, in which all wished the success of all without insensate -exaggeration and without collective vanity, in which each of us -offered to lend his shoulder to the foot of him who wished to climb -and to reach his goal.... It was a happy time, dear Théophile, of -which we ought to be proud, for when one has traversed this life so -often saddened by so much bitterness, we ought to be proud of -having found in it some hours of joy, we ought to boast of having -been happy!"</p></div> - -<p>Even Maxime du Camp admits that the effect of the <i>cénacle</i> on Gautier -was incalculable: its disinterested friendship and its enthusiasm made -his individuality. All his life he remained "the mystic companion of -Victor Hugo's first disciples." Weighed down in after years by the -irksome tasks of journalism, the slave who remembered his years of -freedom with regret, he responded to Bouchardy with tender melancholy -from beside the rivers of Babylon:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"No doubt such joy could not last. To be young and intelligent, to -love one another, to understand and commune in every realm of -art—a more beautiful manner of life could not be conceived, and -from the<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> eyes of all those who followed it its dazzling splendour -has never been obliterated."</p></div> - -<p>At another time he wrote to Sainte-Beuve: "Nous étions ivres du beau, -nous avons eu la sublime folie de l'art."</p> - -<p>These words, issuing from a soul ever animated during its days on earth -by a Bohemian spirit, cast a protecting spell round the memory of the -first Bohemian brotherhood through which no Philistine anathemas can -break.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII<br /><br /> -LA BOHÈME GALANTE</h2> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>O le beau temps passé! Nous avions la science,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>La science de vivre avec insouciance;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>La gaieté rayonnait en nos esprits moqueurs,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et l'Amour écrivait des livres dans nos cÅ“urs!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i12">A<small>RSÈNE</small> H<small>OUSSAYE</small><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> <i>cénacle</i> broke up towards 1833 and its members scattered. All -Bohemian <i>coteries</i> must be short-lived, but this one was specially -doomed to a quick dissolution. It was, I will not say too romantic, but -too romantically ritualistic, too much concerned with the vestments and -incense and celebrations incident to the profession of "Hugolâtry." It -is not hard to imagine how the too mystic significance given to its -gatherings, its feasts, and even its individual actions became to some -of the brethren, now that Romanticism was firmly established, either -unreal or merely tiresome: divergences of taste and opinion began to -creep in till, in the end, this attempted Bohemia became a deserted -shrine. But the Bohemian spirit could not thus be quenched; indeed, it -was only then fully kindled. The deacons and acolytes, whom the mere -symbolism had mainly attracted, were gone; paid off the Swiss Guard -whom<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> the return of peace called back to civil life. Those who remained, -the most advanced of the initiated, saw that the time had come for the -casting away of symbols and the cessation of noisy worship. Bohemia had -originated in a literary creed, but in its consummation it was to pass -beyond the letter and take hold of human life. This consummation came -with extraordinary rapidity; there were no feeble tentatives, no -half-successes. A new community arose in Paris, almost out of the ashes -of the <i>cénacle</i>, vastly different though it was from the obscure group -in Jehan du Seigneur's humble studio. It was animated by all that was -best in Romanticism—its disregard for academic convention, its colour, -its joyousness, its warmth of feeling, and its sympathy with all human -passions; but, unlike the <i>cénacle</i>, it did not trammel itself with -Romantic convention, it set creation above imitation, and—greatest of -all differences—it was no society meeting at intervals for spiritual -and corporeal refreshment, but a genuine life in common lived just for -the sake of living by a set of high-spirited, joyous young men, most of -them true artists, neither maniacs, nor ne'er-do-wells, nor idlers. The -<i>cénacle</i> was dead, but <i>la vie de Bohème</i> was born, and its golden age -came first. The brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné was, in A. -Delvau's words, "une Bohème dorée, avec laquelle celle de Schaunard n'a -que des rapports très éloignés."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Delvau, who<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> was of Murger's -generation, knew well how quickly the glory departed. Yet at least -Murger's Bohemians had this connexion with what Gérard de Nerval named -<i>la Bohème galante</i> that they could look back to it as the Romans to the -reign of Saturn. It was constituted informally, even fortuitously; it -existed without self-advertisement, but it remained, in the phrase of -another French writer, "la patrie de toutes les Bohèmes littéraires."</p> - -<p>In 1832 another Bohemian of the golden age had come to Paris, a brave -and merry soul called Arsène Houssaye, who had only breathed this -terrestrial atmosphere for seventeen years. It was not to champion a -cause that he came, but he was called thither by the poet within him to -take his part in infusing a new vitality into life and letters. Like -Gautier, he was a natural <i>enfant de Bohème</i>, yet did not at first find -the brotherhood which he was to hymn in prose and verse; it was still -only a potentiality. For a few months he lived in an odd little Bohemia -of his own with a friend called Van dell Hell in a <i>hôtel garni</i>. They -wrote songs for a living, wore the red hats by which the more violent -students of the Quartier Latin proclaimed their republicanism, and -consoled themselves for the rebuffs of editors with the smiles of a -certain "Nini yeux noirs." Houssaye in those amusing volumes which he -called "Les Confessions" bears witness to the deplorable state of the -literary<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> market at the time. Novels and plays could not be sold, poetry -was not wanted as a gift, and the newspapers regarded mere men of -letters as too frivolous for employment. Poverty among the struggling -writers was acute, but nobody cared a fig about money when all cared so -much about art—a merciful dispensation of Providence. Yet, if -commercialism did not affect art, the same can hardly be said of -politics. Far too many of the young poets and artists, who would have -scorned to drive a mercenary bargain at the expense of their art, -exulted in defiling their artistic convictions with the reddest and most -insensate republicanism, not seeing that if art does not need to regard -gold pieces, neither does it need to trouble itself whether a king's -head or a cap of liberty is their stamp. Arsène Houssaye, careless -wretch, nearly missed the glory of Bohemia entirely by mixing himself up -in the insurrection of the Cloître Saint-Merri. He was arrested, but a -friendly commissary of police saved him from trial and imprisonment by -sending him home to his wealthy, loyal, and scandalized family. The -ungrateful lad, instead of settling down to some solid profession, -simply bided his time till the disturbance was over, and returned to -Paris, only so far profiting by his warning that he left politics -henceforth to look after themselves. Houssaye's father, worthy man, felt -that money would be thrown away on such a ruffian, so Arsène was left to -his own resources, which, if they were meagre in<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> early days, kept him -alive for another sixty-three years.</p> - -<p>Bohemia was not to be baulked a second time. The elements were present, -and all that remained to do was for somebody to give them a slight push, -such as Lucretius gave to his atoms. The push occurred at the Salon of -1833, if Houssaye is to be believed—a condition not inevitably -fulfilled. There, one fine day, he met Théophile Gautier and Nestor -Roqueplan, the former of whom was certainly a stranger to him. A genial -conversation on the merits of the pictures ensued, in which Arsène -Houssaye made, as he was destined to do, a very good impression upon his -senior. Gautier was not a man to leave hazard any further part after -such a promising beginning, and he accordingly proffered an invitation -to <i>déjeuner</i> next day in the words: "Je te surinvite à venir déjeuner -invraisemblablement demain chez les auteurs de mes jours." Houssaye -turned up next day at No. 8 Place Royale, where the irrepressible Théo -introduced his father as "le respectable bonhomme qui me donna l'être." -The other guest at this <i>déjeuner</i> was Gérard de Nerval, whom with true -instinct Gautier had brought to test and to embrace the newly found -brother. The wit and gaiety, the range and the emphasis of their -postprandial conversation can be imagined. At last Théo blurted out -frankly: "Tu sais que je ne te connais pas: dis-moi huit vers de toi, je -le dirai qui tu es." It was not<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> a test which the future author of -"Vingt Ans" feared. Gautier found himself able to give an enthusiastic -account of the new brother; the two truest Bohemians in Paris were at -once bosom friends, and the most wayward of geniuses was a friend of -both.</p> - -<p>So far the credit had been with Gautier, but Bohemia was still without a -dwelling-place, and in this matter Gérard de Nerval deserved pious -mention in the Bohemian bidding prayer, for it was owing to him that <i>la -Bohème galante</i> found a home suitable to the golden age, a unique -setting which posterity could remember but never reproduce. It was a -rare opportunity, and it might almost be supposed that fortune, -approving of Théo's first amiable push, advanced willingly another step, -making peripatetic Gérard her tool. In the course of his wanderings he -had become acquainted with one of the most singular regions in all -Paris, no sign of which remains to-day. Hardly a visitor to Paris omits -a look into the Louvre, but very few know that as they walk from the -statue of Gambetta to the entrance of the galleries they are crossing -the site that Bohemia in its florescence made memorable. On that spot -there stood in 1833 part of an older Paris, which in intention had long -been cleared away, but in fact remained another twenty years. Those who -have read Balzac's "Cousine Bette" have made its acquaintance, though I -should wager that the majority of them have taken it for granted with -other of Balzac's topographical<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> details. Let me recall to them the -sinister quarter where Cousine Bette, at the opening of the story, -cherishes the young sculptor Steinbock and makes the acquaintance of the -infamous Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. With his practised touch for -tragic effect Balzac describes it thus:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the -old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to -make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the -grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... -Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket -leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of -houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never -repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course -of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. -The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this -sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably -phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried -already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped -in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the -Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The -darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the -ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. -When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and -one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes -one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> -happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of -cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of -night, flourish at their height."</p></div> - -<p>This can hardly be called an engaging description, and even Bohemians, -it might be supposed, would shrink from such a dreadful slum. But Balzac -was writing in 1847, more than ten years after Bohemia had left it, and -he was making a protest against the continued existence of this quarter, -which had probably deteriorated since the days when he sent there -himself to offer Gautier work on the <i>Chronique de Paris</i>. However, -whether Balzac was right in making the Rue du Doyenné an inferno or was -only touching it up with livid tones appropriate to Cousine Bette and -the Marneffes, it was certainly a more smiling spot in 1833. True, it -was tumbling down, and lay below the level of the Place du Carrousel, in -the midst of mournful débris, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, -which Napoleon had meant to join after sweeping it away; the houses, as -Gautier says,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> were old and dark, repairs to them were forbidden, and -they had the air of regretting the days when respectable canons and -advocates were their inhabitants. Yet it was not a den of thieves by any -means. Gérard<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> records that many <i>attachés</i> and Government officials -lived in the quarter, and that by the<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> Place du Carrousel there was a -collection of temporary wooden shops let out to curiosity dealers and -print-sellers. It was enlivened, too, by the presence of a little Dutch -beer-house served by a Flemish maid of considerable attractions. The -view from the upper windows included, naturally, the heaps of stones, -the rubbish, with the nettles and the dock-leaves by which Nature tries -to cover such deformities at once; but it also included a good many -trees, and the ruins of a delightful old priory, with one arch, two or -three pillars, and the end of a colonnade still standing. This was the -Priory of Doyenné, the dome of which, according to Gérard, fell one day -in the seventeenth century upon eleven luckless canons who were -celebrating the office. Its ruins stood out gracefully against the -trees, and of a summer morning or evening, when, amid the peaceful -silence of this forgotten corner, the bright rays of the Parisian sun -lit up the lichen on its stones and a fresh breeze from the neighbouring -Seine gently swayed the branches of its framing trees, it must have been -well to be a-leaning out of a window.</p> - -<p>However, Gérard de Nerval did more than find a quiet, romantic corner -hidden away in the busy heart of Paris with a ruined priory to give -distinction to its prospect; he also found an appropriate dwelling. In -one of the old houses of the Impasse du Doyenné there was a set of rooms -remarkable for its <i>salon</i>. It was a huge room, decorated in the -old-fashioned Pompadour<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> style with grooved panellings, pier-glasses, -and a fantastically moulded ceiling. This decoration had for a long time -been the despair of its owner and had driven away all prospective -tenants, the taste for curiosities being at that time undeveloped. In -vain had the landlord parcelled it out with party walls; it was still -mouldering on his hands when Gérard came thither on one of his -swallow-flights. He at once persuaded the good-natured Camille Rogier to -transfer his household gods from the Rue des Beaux-Arts, the party walls -were knocked down, and Bohemia entered on its ideal home. Gérard had -still some of his patrimony left, and chose to expend it upon his one -hobby, the collection of pictures and furniture. It was a golden time -for the collector. Society had as yet not learned to appreciate old -works of art, dealers were not too well informed, and the depredations -of the Bande Noire, that, under the Restoration, had sacked so many -ancient ecclesiastical foundations, had brought a large quantity of -precious old furniture, tapestries, and fabrics into the curiosity shops -of Paris. Gérard had acquired a wonderful canopied Renaissance bed -ornamented with salamanders, a Médicis console, a sideboard decorated -with nymphs and satyrs, three of each, and oval paintings on its doors, -a tapestry delineating the four seasons, some medieval chairs and Gothic -stools, a Ribeira—a death of Saint Joseph—and two superb panels by -Fragonard, "L'Escarpolette" and "Colin Maillard," which last he<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> had -bought for fifty francs the pair. It was a magnificent studio, worthy of -<i>la Bohème galante</i>. There was no question of bare attics on a sixth -story, their tiny windows looking on a dreary sea of roofs, of rickety -chairs and peeling wall-paper. In spite of its bare floors, its faded -colours, its chipped corners, and the incongruous presence of plain -easels among its ancient splendours, its riches were princely. Bohemian -disorder might reign among paints and palette-knives, ends of paper -inscribed with scraps of verse might dot its unswept floor, the <i>débris</i> -of eating and drinking might litter the seats on which fastidious -cavaliers once delicately sat, but no realities of a careless existence -could spoil its romantic atmosphere. Without its merry clan of -inhabitants, no doubt, it would have seemed odd and ghostly; yet if they -brought back to it the necessary colour of youth, it tinged, in turn, -their life with a patina of old gold that never faded from their -reminiscences.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_168_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_168_sml.jpg" width="550" height="366" alt="A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné" title="A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">A Festivity in the Impasse du Doyenné</span> -</p> - -<p>Camille Rogier was the real lessee, and Gérard his sub-tenant. Gautier -had a couple of rooms in the Rue du Doyenné, which cut the Impasse -crosswise. These at first were the only permanent inhabitants of the new -colony, but the great <i>salon</i> where Rogier and Gautier worked soon -became a meeting-place for a number of friends. Work was stopped at five -o'clock, when Arsène Houssaye was certain to appear, Roger de Beauvoir, -then in his most brilliant day, half<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> Bohemian, half <i>viveur</i>, and -Edmond Ourliac, the future dramatist. One evening Houssaye, Roger de -Beauvoir, and Ourliac stayed talking till dawn; Roger departed then to -his more sumptuous apartments, Ourliac to his parents' house in the Rue -Saint Roch, but Arsène Houssaye stayed, on Rogier's invitation, to -complete the inner conclave of Bohemia. His camp-bed was sent for next -day, and he became Rogier's second tenant, paying him indeed no money, -but spending, in revenge, chance gifts from home on luxurious feasts at -the Frères Provençaux.</p> - -<p>Such a society in such a setting could not long remain unknown. With its -circle of guests widening it grew in importance, for in this golden age -Bohemia could be important without losing its quality. Gavarni, the -inimitable portrayer of Parisian types, Nanteuil, Châtillon, Marilhat, -even Delacroix, were among the artists who found the gaiety of the -Impasse du Doyenné to their taste; Pétrus Borel looked haggardly in -occasionally; the great Dumas would rush in and out like a storm; the -Roqueplans, Camille and Nestor, showed there in moments spared from -their more elegant wanderings; and the effervescent Roger de Beauvoir as -gaily composed there his witty rhymes as at a supper in the Café de -Paris. It was no hole-and-corner Bohemia at which the superior person -could affect to turn up his nose; it was a truly artistic centre in -Paris and, at the same time, a <i>coterie</i> admission to which was<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> -jealously enough guarded to exclude the half-baked dilettante who is the -ruin of most artistic sets and the very negation of Bohemia. For a -reason which will be obvious in the sequel, ladies with leanings to -artistic society—another impossibility in Bohemia—were equally -debarred from appearing. It was a more or less closely knit society of -young and gifted men, lovers of the beautiful, despisers of convention -without <i>gasconnade</i>, neither rich nor desperately poor, avid of -pleasure, and fashioning their conduct easily upon the standards of the -day, yet crowning all their hours, even the most wanton, with a graceful -and light-hearted idealism that shields these pagan heroes of a golden -age from any but an æsthetic judgment, a judgment which, in the case of -their own countrymen, they confronted with serene self-confidence.</p> - -<p>In all, the group was fairly large: its membership radiated dimly as far -as the "dandies" on the boulevard and into the obscurer depths of the -Quartier Latin. But radiation was from a central nucleus—the original -Bohemian brethren whose home was in the Impasse du Doyenné: Camille -Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Edmond -Ourliac. The rest were visitors, but they alone were the true dwellers -in <i>la Bohème galante</i>. Of their brotherhood and its life Gautier, -Gérard, and Houssaye have all given glimpses, which compose a picture -apt for pleasing and, occasionally, envious contemplation.<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> Arsène -Houssaye in his "Confessions" is the fullest source of reminiscence, and -his words are delightfully illustrated by the poem, originally entitled -"Vingt Ans," but in his complete works "La Bohème de Doyenné." The poem, -addressed to Gautier, begins:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Théo, te souviens-tu de ces vertes saisons</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui s'effeuillaient si vite en ces vieilles maisons</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dont le front s'abritait sous une aile du Louvre?</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Levons avec Rogier le voile qui les couvre,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Reprenons dans nos cÅ“urs les trésors enfouis,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Plongeons dans le passé nos regards éblouis.</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Chimères aux cils noirs, Espérances fanées,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Amis toujours chantants, Amantes profanées,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Songes venus du ciel, flottantes Visions,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Sortez de vos tombeaux, jeunes Illusions!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et nous rebâtirons ce château périssable</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Que les destins changeants ont jeté sur le sable:</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Replaçons le sofa sous les tableaux flamands;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Dispersons à nos pieds gazettes et romans;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ornons le vieux bahut de vieilles porcelaines,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et faisons refleurir roses et marjolaines;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qu'un rideau de damas ombrage encore ces lits</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Où nos jeunes amours se sont ensevelis.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word -must be said of the other two.<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> Camille Rogier, who was as old as -Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. -Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was -earning a living by his art—even more than a living, for was he not -rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was -his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years -painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused -the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush -he was a very agreeable singer of <i>chansons</i> and ballads. Ourliac did -not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue -Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants -Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on -his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way -home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines,</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i7"><i>gai convive, arrivait en chantant</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, -ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible <i>raconteur</i> of inimitable -dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German -philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work -which made his name heard in the world of literature.<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p> - -<p>It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but -rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the -morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all -four would set to their work, while the Pompadour <i>salon</i> was hardly yet -awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found -lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to -write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de -Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, -and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating -Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse."</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, -tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, -couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et -venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent -pas."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p></div> - -<p>Gérard, his part in the foundation of <i>la Bohème galante</i> performed, -felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, -indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered -ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave -before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task -was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as -Charles<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was -also an actress. In the days of the <i>cénacle</i> Gérard had fallen -desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress -of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very -roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic -mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, -and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful -Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that -Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was -always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other -parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an -occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by -straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome -of his life—a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. -His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar -heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to -accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on -Arsène Houssaye's stanza:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,</i><a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"</i><a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">wrote:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait -alors—et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des -Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce -grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore -garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François -I<sup>er</sup> me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se -jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas -plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image -tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve -idéal et divin."</p></div> - -<p>The question was to secure her <i>début</i> at the Opéra, and for that -purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de -Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to -compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly -engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the -Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to -maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> -because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de -Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and -the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème -Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which -he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing -themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had -an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could -not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the -room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for -another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of -the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked -till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other -masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an -early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The -revellers set off joyously, Gérard's <i>belle désolée</i> opposing only a -feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on -his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the -lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his -disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. -And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his -<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme -toujours!"</p> - -<p>Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his -whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted -Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly. -Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for -Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a -Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but -when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art -criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his -mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of -bouillon for his <i>déjeuner</i>. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over -and the visitors gone—Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the -Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret—Rogier, Gautier, -and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy -city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling -along the Seine. They dined—they were not too poor for that—in the -Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night -where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some -romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch -would be indispensable; now they would invade the <i>Chaumière</i> or some -other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a><a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> -the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to -choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and -Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille -which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life—the -siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another -evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent, -Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold <i>salon</i> with Rogier, -who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their -knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish <i>cabaret</i> hard -by, served by the young <i>tavernière</i></p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel Å“il attrayant!</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant.</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Jetant à tout venant son cÅ“ur et sa vertu,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">So sang of her Houssaye, whose souvenirs of Bohemia at the magic age of -<i>vingt ans</i> are deeply tinged with<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> amorous memories. In fact, <i>la -Bohème galante</i>, as its name implies, was not a monastery, and its life -was not shared, but illuminated by a number of divinities whose aureoles -had been over more than one windmill. The chief of these was "la -Cydalise,"</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Respirant un lilas qui jouait dans sa main</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et pressentant déjà le triste lendemain.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">She was treasure-trove of Camille Rogier's, a beautiful woman, and -titular mistress of the Bohemian encampment. They were all jealous of -Rogier's good fortune, for, since he was twenty-five, they considered -him a patriarch, and Théo could not understand how Cydalise could put up -with such an old man. She lived quite happily in the Impasse, making the -afternoon tea, sitting as a model, and inflaming all their hearts. -Théo's passion was of a frantic heat. He besieged Cydalise with long and -violent apostrophes, swearing to kill the senile tyrant who kept her in -his power, threats for which Rogier, ever smiling, did not care a -button. Poor Cydalise, she was a butterfly whose day was short. To -Rogier's great grief consumption seized her. For some weeks he enlivened -her sick-bed by singing her songs and drawing pictures for her -amusement; but the day came when her ears no longer heard and her lovely -eyes were closed. Gérard, Gautier, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac went -to her funeral, and Bohemia<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> lost its official mistress. Yet there were -others. Gérard draws a picture of Gautier, on a Gothic stool, reading -his verses while Cydalise or Lorry or Victorine swung herself carelessly -in the hammock of Sarah <i>la blonde</i>, and Arsène Houssaye at the end of -"Vingt Ans" recalls them in the lines:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Judith oublie Arthur, Franz, Rogier et le reste,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>En donnant à son cÅ“ur la solitude agreste;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Rosine à Chantilly caresse un jeune enfant</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Plus joli qu'un Amour et plus joueur qu'un faon.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i5">. . . . .<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ninon au Jockey Club vend chacun de ses jours;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Charlotte danse encore—et dansera toujours.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Alice?—il faut la plaindre et prier Dieu pour elle,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Elle est dans les chiffons, la pauvre Chanterelle;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Armande?—Un prince russe épris de sa beauté</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Travaille à lui refaire une virginité.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Olympe?—un mauvais livre ouvert à chaque page—</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Ce matin je l'ai vue en galant équipage....</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>The loves of Doyenné were true <i>enfants de Bohème</i>, neither great -passions nor elective affinities, but pastimes leaving regrets for -inspiration; not devouring flames, but pleasantly crackling experimental -fires, drawn chiefly from those great hearths, the stage and the <i>corps -de ballet</i>. How much fantasy went to their burning is illustrated in a -story told by Houssaye of<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> Gérard, who, on one occasion, to the despair -of his friends, became obsessed with a mad desire to set out that -instant for Cythera and revive the gods of Greece. Prompt measures were -necessary, and Houssaye devoted himself to the rescue by professing to -enter into the scheme with joy, only remarking that it would be well to -have lunch first. This seemed to Gérard a reasonable preliminary, so -they adjourned to the Café d'Orsay, where over the first bottle Gérard -developed his scheme with growing eloquence. But the first stage on the -way to Cythera lasted for several bottles, and at the commencement of -the next Gérard met a provisional goddess in the shape of an attractive -<i>grisette</i>. Houssaye, convinced that his companionship was now no longer -necessary, abandoned the voyage, and left Gérard to continue it up -several flights of stairs. The end of this ascent marked his farthest -point; after a halt of two days he descended and turned his footsteps -back to Bohemia. The loves of Bohemia which gambol so trippingly in the -tongue of France are ill at ease in our austerer medium, for our -Northern spirit has ever refused to admit, as the French do with -engaging candour, that man, particularly the artist-man, is naturally -polygamous. Lorry, Victorine, Armande, and the rest were the only -appropriate feminine attachments of Bohemia, even of the golden age, the -pagan loves of pagan heroes, who were greedy of their caresses without -hungering for their souls, grew jealous at their eyes'<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> wayward glances, -but took no umbrage at the inward abstraction of their minds, and were -content with the homage of their play-hours without seeking to rival the -ideals of their artistic contemplations. But the mark of the golden age -was that they played for love and not for money: they would dance the -heels off their slippers in the barren land of Doyenné when all the -millions of a dull prince would have moved their agile toes only to the -most significant of kicks. It was a mad little world, but good because -Mammon had not corrupted its natural spontaneity. True, it was deficient -in some virtues, but some virtues are frankly middle-aged, to be put on -with a less tricksy cut of the clothes. Bohemia was young; it loved and -feasted and, being poor, made debts. There is not much to be said for -getting into debt, in spite of Panurge's ingenious discourse, except -that it is an unavoidable corollary of certain conjunctions of -temperament and circumstance. It is difficult, anyhow, not to pardon -Gérard for dissipating his capital and running up bills on account of -his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture -dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns -les autres," which affected the dun to tears.</p> - -<p>"We had no money, but we lived <i>en grands seigneurs</i>," wrote Arsène -Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have -pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> Opéra -for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were -not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard -more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the -landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an -occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless, -dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch <i>la -Bohème galante</i> had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic -entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835. -The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his -frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the -first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was -a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of -it: a <i>bal costumé</i> alone could produce a gathering that would not clash -with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances -were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia, -required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who -are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the -superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too -little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than -give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the -eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings -by their<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could -indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be -undying.</p> - -<p>The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had -done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day, -including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he -narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared -to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that -his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand -bottles of wine. <i>La Bohème galante</i>, though younger and less known -artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal. -Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and -the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination. -They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes, -singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind -their ears—a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a -general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal -usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling -through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque -scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a -tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden -hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> with -ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service, -Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing -Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two -narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might -lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the -acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in -and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white -chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of -this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few <i>louis -d'or</i> for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a -millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet -regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the -<i>salon</i> of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which -the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating -festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its -freshness.</p> - -<p>The <i>fête</i> was gorgeous. True, the landlord's wife had refused their -invitation—a severe blow. But the hosts with some consideration, -knowing that their revels would make sleep impossible in the quarter, -invited all their bachelor neighbours on the condition that they brought -with them <i>femmes du monde</i> protected, if they pleased, by masks and -dominoes. The wonderful evening began with the pantomime of "Le Diable<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> -Boiteux," in which many actresses from the boulevard took part. Then -there were two little farces in which Ourliac covered himself with glory -as the <i>buffo</i>. The first was "Le Courrier de Naples," and the second, -written by Ourliac himself, "La Jeunesse du Temps et le Temps de la -Jeunesse," was introduced by a prologue by Gautier, read from behind the -curtain. Ourliac was buried in bouquets, and the noisy orchestra brought -in from a <i>guingette</i> struck up. The ruined quarter woke to life again, -as in some ghost story; the desert streets resounded with songs and -laughter; Turks and <i>débardeurs</i> affronted the frown of the staid old -Louvre, and only the landlords and <i>concierges</i>, tossing sleeplessly, -consigned Bohemians to everlasting flames. The dance, sustained only by -good spirits, never flagged, till in the final galop every mask with his -partner rushed pell-mell from the room, leaped wildly down the rickety -stairs, dashed up the Impasse, and came to rest under the moonlit ruins -of the old priory, where a little <i>cabaret</i> had opened, and only the -late dawn of winter drove Bohemia to its bed, to dream of the Pompadour -salon, of Ourliac's satirical buffoonery, and of Roger de Beauvoir's -magnificent Venetian costume of apple-green velvet with silver -embroidery, and his inexhaustible wit, for once born of no champagne.</p> - -<p>It is melancholy to go back to a deserted ballroom, and we may spare -ourselves the pain. That joyous<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> evening, little as it may have seemed -to do so, marked the passing of the golden age. Bohemia's sun henceforth -descended the skies. The next year saw marked changes. The landlord of -the old house in the Impasse du Doyenné saw with relief—Gérard says he -gave them notice to quit—the departure of his turbulent tenants. If -Rogier had not gone to Constantinople it is possible that, even if the -band had been compelled to change its quarters, some reconstruction of -<i>la Bohème galante</i> might have been possible. With him, the stable, the -earner of money, absent, there was no hope. The heroes of Bohemia had to -leave their enchanted garden for the ordinarily circumscribed dwelling -of impecunious mortals, and, like the heroes of Valhalla when Freia is -snatched from them, a certain wanness came over the complexion of their -lives. Joy and beauty and work and love were left, but the magic bloom -had just faded. With smaller resources and in a colder light the -resettlement of Bohemia was a work of compromise, not spontaneous -achievement. Rogier was gone; Ourliac, who produced "Suzanne" with -success, married before long, grew serious, and ended his days in the -fullest odour of piety; Roger de Beauvoir found the boulevard more to -his taste than any less brilliant Bohemia. Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye -were left, a trio of markedly divergent tastes. They made one attempt at -a common life in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which seems to have -lasted a year or two. The details<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> of it given by Gautier<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and -Houssaye<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> differ considerably. According to Gautier they did their -own cooking: Arsène Houssaye was perfect in the <i>panade</i>, Gautier -prepared the macaroni, no doubt remembering Graziano, while Gérard -"went, with perfect self-possession, to buy galantines, sausages, or -fresh pork cutlets with gherkins at the neighbouring cook-shop." -Houssaye, on the other hand, says that they had a rascally valet and a -cook called Margot, and that they broke up because they were at variance -on the degree of luxury to be maintained, Gérard, whom anything -satisfied, departing to a bare <i>hôtel garni</i>, Gautier to a sumptuous -apartment in the Rue de Navarin, and Houssaye sharing rooms in the Rue -du Bac, on the left bank, with Jules Sandeau. I do not trouble to -reconcile these two accounts, for the memories of Bohemia are invariably -picturesque. The fact remains that the old days could not come back. The -first Bohemians were growing older, and the world was beginning to claim -its once youthful defiers as servitors. Though Gérard's bed remained -with Gautier as a memory of freer days, he knew too well that the gates -of the prison were closing upon him. For a year or so he might pretend -to mock destiny by producing another book of verses and a novel, or by -making a voyage in Belgium accompanied by Gérard: but<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> he was a doomed -man. About 1838 he became the dramatic critic of <i>La Presse</i>, entering -the mill in which he was to grind for over thirty years. Well might he -say in 1867, in an autobiographical notice: "Là finit ma vie heureuse, -indépendante et prime-sautière." Houssaye kept up the pretence a little -longer. Life in the Rue du Bac was gay; there were suppers with Jules -Janin and Sandeau at which Gautier and Ourliac sometimes appeared; there -was dancing; there were the bright eyes of a certain Ninon, who inspired -some pretty stanzas. But these were the last echoes of <i>la première -Bohème</i>, as he had to admit. When they died away he completed the -chapter of his youth, as Gautier had done, by travelling.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_189_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_189_sml.jpg" width="468" height="550" alt="Gérard de Nerval" title="Gérard de Nerval" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Gérard de Nerval</span> -</p> - -<p>Gérard alone escaped the inevitable superannuation of Bohemia, because -he was too ethereal to become amenable to the ordinary dynamic laws of -society. An attempt was made to catch him in the machinery by making him -Gautier's assistant as dramatic critic of <i>La Presse</i>. The sprite within -him would not submit to the drudgery, and in a little while he gave it -up. He preferred, as ever, to wander at his will and at his own hours, -or to sit reading at the dead of night by the light of a brass -chandelier balanced on his head. It is not part of this book's plan to -give complete biographies of those who appear in its pages, but an -exception shall be made in the case of Gérard de Nerval. Between 1837 -and 1839 he stayed in Paris, writing a<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> comic opera, "Piquillo," with -Dumas, in which Jenny Colon appeared, several plays, with a certain -number of articles and reviews. His way of life was always eccentric, -but he had his first definite attack of madness in 1839 or 1840, and was -placed in the famous establishment of Doctor Blanche. He came out in -1841 and resumed a career of wider vagabondage than ever, now with -money, now without, but caring little in any case and ready to go to the -ends of the earth with a whim and without a coin. In 1841 he joined -Camille Rogier in Constantinople, and wandered subsequently in other -parts of the East—an experience which gave rise to some of his best -descriptive work. He returned to Paris again, where his spirit dwelt in -the clouds and his body anywhere, though he often allowed it to rest -with one of his many friends, with whom he would leave a shirt to be -washed against his next coming. He continued to write not very -successful plays between 1846 and 1850, when he again went completely -mad and retired to Dr. Blanche's house. His second stay here was longer, -but as he soon became perfectly reasonable his friends were allowed to -take him out for the day occasionally. Once more apparently cured he -came out, but though he made one or two voyages his faculties remained -permanently clouded. Of this he himself was perfectly conscious, but he -bore his afflictions with perfect cheerfulness. His money was all gone, -and the flashes of sanity too rare for him to<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> earn much; he was -homeless, but not friendless, for he never appealed to his friends in -vain. He came for crumbs like a bird in winter, but like a bird he would -not stay. He would have been an appropriate guest at some strange -<i>Nachtasil</i> such as Maxim Gorki describes so powerfully. Who knows, too, -in what haunts he was not a familiar? His comrades of older days could -do no more than greet him and tend him when they saw him, and his -equanimity was too great to drive them to forcible detention. As Paul de -Saint-Victor wrote after his death:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"In vain his friends tried to follow him with their hearts and -eyes; he was lost to sight for weeks, months, years. Then, one fine -day, one found him by chance in a foreign city, a provincial town, -or more often still in the country, thinking aloud, dreaming with -open eyes, his attention fixed on the fall of a leaf, the flight of -an insect or a bird, the form of a cloud, the dart of a ray, on all -those vague and ravishing beauties that pass in the air. Never man -saw a gentler madness, a tenderer folly, a more inoffensive and -more friendly eccentricity. If he woke from his slumber, it was to -recognize his friends, to love them and serve them, to double the -warmth of his devotion and welcome as if he wished to make up to -them for his long absences by an extra amount of tenderness."</p></div> - -<p>It was with a profound shock, therefore, that Paris heard, one morning -in 1857, that Gérard had been found in the small hours, hanged to an -iron railing by<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> a woman's apron-string, in one of the lowest and most -ill-famed streets in Paris, the Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne. The mystery -of his death has never been cleared up. The inquest brought little -light, save that the inmates of a filthy little drink-shop probably knew -more than they would tell. What Gérard was doing in that foul haunt will -never be known. It is possible that he may have been murdered, but, as -he had no money and was the gentlest of men, it is more probable that -with some dreadful cloud upon his brain he destroyed himself. Yet his -very gentleness had made such an end unexpected, for he seemed to be -under the protection of the children's guardian angel. Some sudden -impulse brought him a death alien to the character of his whole life. -"II est mort," said Paul de Saint-Victor, "de la nostalgie du monde -invisible. Paix à cette âme en peine de l'idéal!"</p> - -<p>From Gérard's death, which Gustave Doré made more hideous in a ghoulish -picture, it is a long cry back to the Impasse du Doyenné and the -Pompadour <i>salon</i> of which he was the discoverer. Yet I will end this -chapter, as it was begun, with this once festive haunt. Not long did it -outlive its Bohemian colony. The landlord, explosively wrathful at the -sight of the wall paintings, at once covered the mess, as he no doubt -called it, with a coating of distemper. The treasures might, even then, -have been saved in part, had anyone but Gérard de Nerval bought from the -demolishers<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> Corot's panels, the pictures by Wattier, Chassériau, and -Châtillon, and Rogier's portraits of Cydalise and Théophile Gautier. His -hand was one to baulk destiny only for a little. This moonstruck captain -of a rickety craft let his cargo fall needlessly into the seas while he -contemplated the stars and allowed the waves to swing the rudder. So -passed <i>la Bohème galante</i>, leaving only a gilded legend.<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX<br /><br /> -SCHAUNARD AND COMPANY</h2> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>La Bohème carottière et geignarde d'Henry Murger</i> ...<br /></span> -<span class="i12">L<small>EPELLETIER</small>: "Verlaine"<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">T<small>O</small> follow the heroes into exile would be depressing as well as -unprofitable. It is better to stand respectfully aside from the -<i>Götterdämmerung</i> and wait till Bohemia emerges again from the mists, -when a lapse of years has wrought some patent changes, for it is easier -to contemplate a result than to trace a process. By leaping forward some -ten years from the dispersal of the brotherhood that sanctified by its -presence the Impasse du Doyenné it is possible to steal a march on Time -and anticipate with a rapid glance his changing hand. Yet to catch this -later view it is necessary for the nonce to abandon the world of flesh -and blood and to turn from the acts and reminiscences of actual mortals -to the imaginary scenes and fictitious characters of a book of stories. -The tide of life was too strong upon Théophile Gautier and Arsène -Houssaye for them to pause and stamp out firmly the features of those -precious days in <i>la Bohème galante</i>; they only caught fugitive -impressions in retrospect. Henry Murger,<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> less prodigal because less -endowed, crystallized as it passed a moment of Bohemia, the Bohemia of -common mortality, in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." As a confectioner -encloses a fresh grape in a transparent coat of candied sugar, so he, -even while he tasted, sour and sweet, the fruit of his days, caught -stray berries in a light film of art and presented them as dessert to -the readers of the <i>Corsaire</i>, a small but amusing journal. Sharp and -savoury as they were, Time would have destroyed them, as he destroyed -the ambrosial lusciousness of the Doyenné feasts, but for that light -film. Nobody remembers reminiscences, but a well-told story preserves -even the most trivial events.</p> - -<p>Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" is a book which has now lived for -nearly seventy years and does not seem likely as yet to pass into the -lumber-room. At the same time, it is to be wished that more people in -England knew it, if only because the presupposition of such knowledge -would make this chapter easier to write. It is not, of course, difficult -to criticize the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème"; many of Murger's -countrymen, indeed, have done so. Its ethics, its humour, and its style -have been attacked. M. Boucher, an estimable civil servant interested in -literature, in his "Souvenirs d'un Parisien" calls it an effort to -depict the life of low-class students, accuses Murger of insipidity and -repetition, and denies any wit to his "étudiants demi-escrocs, -demi-canailles."<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> M. Pelloquet, who was good enough to pronounce a -discourse over Murger's grave, said: "It is an unhealthy book, in which -vice grimaces, youth paints its cheeks like a superannuated coquette, -and a fictitious <i>insouciance</i> conceals, not a laziness that is -sometimes poetic, but the cowardly indolence of men without courage and -without talent." He was also rash enough to predict that it would not -live. Jules Janin, the critic, in a wiser appreciation, asserted that -with a little more art and a little more poetry Murger might have -created more pardonable heroes and no less charming heroines. Gautier's -dictum about the invertebrate verses of "that feeble appendage to Alfred -de Musset" has already been quoted, and the opinion of Verlaine's -biographer appears at the head of this chapter. Murger's gravest fault, -however, in the eyes of French people is that he wrote bad French. To -them the mishandling of that difficult, elusive, and withal limited -tongue is a crime of which we can hardly comprehend the enormity. It is -perfectly true that Murger was culpable in this respect; he was -deficient in scholarship and in rhythmic sense, so that his poems are -weak and his prose, even where he tried to give it an air of -respectability, betrays its imperfections no less manifestly than M. -Jourdain betrayed his birth. We in England, fastidious as our critics -are in the matter of language, have not our ears tuned to this painful -degree of precision. So long as a style effectively<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> harmonizes with its -environment we are content to let it stand: the Gothic grandeur of -English can suffer without disfigurement the intrusion of the quaint. To -sympathies so trained Murger's style in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -should make a particular appeal, since in that book, for the most part, -he makes no attempt to ape the academician, but writes in the -extravagant jargon of the very Bohemians he is describing—a language -full of comic inversions, extravagances, and lapses from grammar, which -are an essential part of the book's gaiety and charm. Though his matter -is unmistakably Parisian, his humour is, in some respects, remarkably -English, delighting in broad and bustling effects rather than subtle -strokes and sudden flashes. As for the life and the characters that he -depicts, criticism of them will be implicit in the remainder of this -chapter; of the book as a whole no more need be said than that it has -survived when all the rest of Murger's work has been forgotten. It is -not a book to be placed unwarily in the hands of the young and tender; -parts of it are exaggerated, parts may be wished away, but, when all has -been said, it remains, not the picture of <i>la vie de Bohème</i> at its best -and brightest, but the classic expression of the Bohemian spirit—a -frank confession, not the pseudo-pathetic souvenir of a prosperous -greybeard. Its pages are among those rare ones in the world's library -that have caught and held for a moment the intangible freshness,<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> the -poetry, and the gaiety of youth. For this alone it deserves never to -grow old.</p> - -<p>Murger's Bohemia is described in a series of scenes taken from the life -of four young men, a quartet as fascinating to read of as Dumas' -Musketeers, though possibly less comfortable companions. They were -Rodolphe, the sentimental poet; Marcel, the painter; Colline, the -peripatetic philosopher and bookworm; and Schaunard, painter and -musician, incomparable rogue whose masterpiece was a symphony "Sur -l'influence du bleu dans la musique"—a sly hit at debased Romanticism. -Chance brought them together. Schaunard, unable to pay his arrears of -rent, was forced to leave his lodging with his furniture in pawn. A -day's peregrination in search of a loan brought him three francs in -cash, which he spent in dinner, together with the less tangible benefit -of Colline's and Rodolphe's acquaintance. He swore brotherhood with -Colline over a dish of stewed rabbit in a little eating-house, and the -pair collected Rodolphe in the Café Momus, where, at Colline's expense, -they passed the rest of a not too abstemious evening. Meanwhile Marcel, -the painter, who had taken Schaunard's room unfurnished in advance, -though having no furniture of his own but a second-hand scenic interior -from the stock of a bankrupt theatre, had been persuaded to take the -lodging furnished with Schaunard's furniture, and had duly moved in. -Late in the evening, when a sharp shower<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> of rain was falling, -Schaunard, in bacchic absence of mind, offered asylum to his two new -comrades. Hastily buying the elements of a supper, they gaily invaded -the apartment of Marcel. Explanations were difficult, but were -accomplished during supper, and next day Marcel and Schaunard agreed to -live together. A dinner and a magnificent supper inaugurated the -foundation of the new clan, which was united, so long as their Bohemian -days continued, by an unbroken bond of friendship. It is these young men -whom Murger's readers follow through their straits and shifts, their -love affairs, their extravagances, their boisterous jokes, and their -naïve pleasures—the poet, the artist, the savant, and the musician, -characters drawn from Murger himself and his living friends, whose coats -were ragged and whose pockets almost always empty, who were the bane of -respectable <i>concierges</i> and proprietors of <i>cafés</i>, who bore short -commons with cheerful bravado and succumbed to innocent gluttony in -times of unexpected prosperity, who were really funny even if they were -sometimes vulgar, whose expedients for catching the elusive <i>pièce de -cent sous</i> were as amazing as their puns, who made life, even in a -garret, a sentimental poem and a rollicking ballad, and who had the -sense to become prosaic before the sentiment grew threadbare or the -ballad grew stale. It is a great temptation to follow some of their -adventures in greater detail from the day when Marcel went out to dine -in the sugar-merchant's<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> coat while Schaunard painted the latter's -portrait in his own colour-stained dressing-gown, to the day when -Rodolphe by composing a didactic poem at fifteen sous a dozen lines for -a celebrated dentist, Marcel by painting the portraits of eighteen -grenadiers at six francs a head, and Schaunard by playing the same scale -all day and every day for a month to revenge a rich Englishman on an -actress's parrot, earned enough to give their mistresses new dresses and -take them for a holiday in the fields of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Yet the -impulse to discursive commentary must be checked, for plucking flowers -is a distraction from comparative botany. Murger, after all, tells his -own story infinitely better than any translator could do, and the -purpose which is proper to the present book is to inquire what kind of a -Bohemia appears in Murger's light-hearted pages.</p> - -<p>So far as Bohemia was concerned, the generation of 1830 had entirely -passed away by 1846, when Murger's sketches actually appeared, and the -young men of whom Bohemia was composed were formed under less violent -influences. The last flashes of Napoleon's glory had not illuminated -their early days, they knew little of the stifling reign of Charles X, -and the Revolution of 1830 took place when they had only a little while -outgrown the nursery. By the time they grew up the complexion of affairs -in Paris wore a more even tone. Assisted by Guizot, Louis Philippe had -found the <i>juste-milieu</i><a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> to his people's satisfaction, revolutionary -tendencies had been checked or diverted into harmless channels of -humanitarian reform, the <i>bourgeois</i> had firmly grasped his power and -built up an already solid bulwark of commercial interest. In the -artistic world, too, things were quieter. "Hernani," once a scandal, had -become a classic, and there was no further need of red waistcoats and -furious <i>claques</i>. Romanticism, indeed, had become so workaday that a -successful little excitement was aroused by a reaction against it in -what was called "l'école de bon sens," whose chief poet, Ponsard, gained -quite a celebrity for a short time with his classic drama "Lucrèce." -Beyond the gadfly of artistic impulse and the natural fermentation of -the adolescent mind, there was little to rouse a young man's passions or -send his blood coursing faster through his veins; there was no -particular idol to worship, no hobby-horse to ride, as a Gautier or a -Borel had worshipped Hugo and mounted the gallant steed called Middle -Ages. The creed of Romanticism was so thoroughly established that there -was nothing left to make any fuss about, with the natural consequence -that its early extravagances had fallen out of fashion and there was no -further need to be satanic or profess excessive sensibility. Literature -was feeling its way to the austerer Romanticism of Flaubert and the -Goncourts, as painting towards the "realism" of Courbet, but the growth -was still below ground and the surface<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> as yet seemed undisturbed. The -generation of Rodolphe and Schaunard found, therefore, in Paris no eager -band to whom they could ally themselves and to whose educative influence -they could submit. Driven by their impulses towards the arts, with souls -naturally romantic, as most young men's souls are, they found no cause -which they could immediately embrace in the manner of the second -<i>cénacle</i>. They missed that valuable education which is the idolization -of a great man, and were confined instead to fighting their own battle, -a very much less distinguished affair, which allowed many little -dishonourable compromises with indolence and in which victory meant no -more than individual success. This explains, to some extent, the absence -of intellectual fecundity in Murger's heroes, which even their most -devoted admirers cannot deny. Rodolphe's poems are indeed only pale -imitations of Alfred de Musset, who was an almost inevitable model for -any lyric youngster of the day; his more serious effort, a drama called -"Le Vengeur," good enough to burn for warmth in a draughty garret, is -not vouchsafed to us in quotation by Rodolphe's creator. Marcel was -obviously not a very gifted painter, in spite of his famous <i>Passage de -la Mer Rouge</i>, which was sent up in a different guise to each Salon and -inevitably rejected, and when this great work was sold to become a -shop-sign the artist's pride was not in the least revolted. Schaunard -never gives any signs of musical inspiration<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> till at the close he -publishes a successful album of songs, and Colline, polyglot philosopher -as he is dubbed, abandoned his career before anything tangible had been -achieved to make an advantageous marriage and give musical evenings. It -would, of course, be pedantic to insist upon these considerations in the -case of a book of short stories which aims chiefly at amusing, but it is -impossible not to be struck in reading the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -by the absence from the conversation of the characters of any indication -of their artistic ideals. Save when Schaunard tells the sugar-merchant -that he was a pupil of Horace Vernet, murmuring to himself, "Horreur, je -renie mes dieux," and Marcel makes a scornful allusion to the "école de -bon sens," the only proof that they are true artists lies in their -creator's own assertion, of which he is not entirely mindful in the -<i>dénouement</i>. The worst sinner of all is Colline, for this mine of -knowledge, throughout the book, is made chiefly remarkable for the -composition of dreadful puns. This may be partly due to that want of "a -little more art and a little more poetry" of which Janin accused Murger, -but the fault was not only personal. The second <i>cénacle</i> and the -brotherhood of the Impasse du Doyenné were, without doubt, just as -commonplace in their ordinary conversation, but what lifted them off the -ground was the enthusiasm of a hotly waged artistic struggle, which by -Murger's day had died down. His four heroes are<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> Romantics in general, -but in no sense champions of any cause.</p> - -<p>Another unmistakable fact about Rodolphe and his friends is that they -were inconspicuous. True, they made the Café Momus unbearable to its -more peaceful customers, and were not unknown at the Chaumière, but the -Café Momus was in a back street, and the Chaumière was certainly not the -Bal de l'Opéra. They were miles away from the <i>viveurs</i> upon the -boulevard, and their connexion with the prominent writers and artists of -the day was extremely remote. They made no public appearance, they were -not a force to be reckoned with. They kept up the form of defying -convention, but it was now no more than a convenient form for the -impecunious. Art and the <i>bourgeoisie</i> were beginning to play into one -another's hands; the former had gained its liberty to a great degree, -while the latter by the gilded pill of commercial success had purged -artistic demonstration of its crudities. The time when eccentricity was -a symbol had passed; now it was only a skin to be sloughed, as Marcel -saw when in a very sensible lecture delivered to Rodolphe he said:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Poetry does not exist only in a disordered life, in improvised -happiness, in love affairs that only last as long as a candle, in -more or less eccentric rebellions against the prejudices which will -for ever be the sovereigns of the world: a dynasty is more easily -overturned than a custom, even a ridiculous one. To<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> have talent it -is not sufficient to put on a summer overcoat in May; one can be a -true poet or artist and yet keep one's feet warm and have one's -three meals a day."</p></div> - -<p>Their Bohemia, in fact, was a kind of undergraduate existence, in which -all sorts of disorder and youthful folly might be excused on the plea -that youth must be served, but which could in no sense be regarded as a -part of civic life, much less as the best part, the most truly -disinterested and artistic. This is a significant change of attitude -from the days of <i>la Bohème galante</i>, which was one of the centres of -Paris. That, indeed, was transitory and presupposed youth, but it was -not obscure and its inhabitants had no misgivings. It was not they who -gave it up as the writer of Ecclesiastes put away childish things, for -they gloried in it all their days as the best part of their life; it was -that the world claimed them for its business in spite of themselves. In -their disinterested love of art they had made themselves valuable, and -when the command went forth "Come and be paid" they were forced to go. -To guard against any accusation of misunderstanding Murger, it may be -admitted that he calls his heroes only a small section of Bohemia—they -moved, to use his phrase, in the <i>troisièmes dessous</i> of literature and -art—but there is no indication that Murger conceived a Bohemia which -had its part in any higher sphere. When Rodolphe gets a lucky present of -five<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> hundred francs the determination he avows is not to suffuse his -little corner of Bohemia with a more worthy splendour, but to become, -like every other successful man, a <i>bourgeois</i>. "These are my projects," -he cries to an astonished Marcel. "Sheltered from the material -embarrassments of life, I am going to work seriously; I shall finish my -great work, and gain a settled place in public opinion. To begin with, I -renounce Bohemia, I shall dress like everybody else, I shall have a -black coat, and I shall frequent drawing-rooms." Such a speech would -have fallen like a thunderbolt in Camille Rogier's Pompadour <i>salon</i>, -and its author considered charitably to be in the first stages of -lunacy. Marcel, however, falls in at once with the ambitious scheme, and -they are only saved by their Bohemianism being stronger than their -resolution. Both in the stories and the preface to the "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"—where Murger speaks with a picturesque seriousness—there is -no sign of that former joy in Bohemian life as the life which was alone -worth living by poets and artists. Throughout he regards it as a -necessity conditioned by the artistic impulse combined with poverty, to -be borne with the courage and gaiety of youth, to be regretted "perhaps" -from the vantage-point of subsequent prosperity. The true Bohemia—as -distinct from the Bohemia of mere idealists, incapables, and -amateurs—he regards as a narrow, stony path leading up the sides of an -arduous mountain,<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> beset by the chasms of doubt and misery, but making -for a possible goal, the goal of a sufficient income. Divested of all -its <i>agréments</i>—resourcefulness, humour, courage, extravagance, which -are properly attributes of youth, the real illuminant—Murger's Bohemia -is laid bare as a merely economic state. The true Bohemians, he says, -are known upon the literary and artistic market-place, where their wares -are saleable, but at moderate prices; "their existence each day is a -work of genius"—"preceded by a pack of ruses, poaching in all the -industries connected with the arts, they hunt from morn till eve that -ferocious animal which is called the five-franc piece." To Murger, who -wrote of what he knew, the man who had the means to live a stable -existence, howsoever retired, was a fool if he remained in Bohemia: to -the inhabitants of <i>la Bohème galante</i> it was the not being entirely -destitute which made their life peculiarly worth living. If Colline ever -speculated with any profundity he may have seen that his friends and he -lived really in a prison of which poverty, prodigality, and idleness -were warders. The Bohemia of Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Houssaye had -all the glory of a voluntary protest, a passionate assertion of liberty, -a revivifying of life in accordance with new artistic ideas.</p> - -<p>The difference is not simply one of degree. The brotherhood of the -Impasse du Doyenné were less destitute and more talented than Rodolphe -and his<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> friends, but that is not a point that at this moment requires -stress. The important fact is that in a few years Bohemia had undergone -a great change; that, whereas a few years after 1830 young men with a -little money and some talent deliberately chose to make their life more -picturesque than that of ordinary citizens and to escape from the -suffocating atmosphere of commerce and officialdom, a few years after -1840 the ideal of struggling artists was to become as soon as possible -successful merchants and to escape from the possibility of that -picturesqueness which they welcomed as an alleviation of a state of -transitory discomfort. It would be quite beside the mark to regard -Bohemia as guilty in this of self-degradation; so far, indeed, as the -change was conscious, the majority of mankind must logically find it -praiseworthy, for all human effort is judged by its tendency to -well-being. The change, however, was none of Bohemia's doing, but was -due mainly to the fact that art was beginning, in the modern sense, to -pay. The beginnings were small, but they were quite evident, especially -in the increased profits from journalism and illustration. The old -Bohemia of the golden age rested on the supposition that the artist -worked primarily to please himself, and that money, source of enjoyment -as it was, remained a secondary consideration. The supposition, in the -first forward rush of commercial prosperity, was bound to become -untenable. Writers<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> and artists of obvious talent were too valuable -commercial assets to be left to their careless selves; they had to be -tempted into the cage—an easy task, for, if money be regarded as a -means of more enjoyment, why should a Bohemian resist it? It was -unimportant if individuals held out, or were too uncompromising to suit -the market; the fact remained that there <i>was</i> a market and a list of -quotations, and this fact was the disruption of Bohemia. Whereas it had -been a true fraternity in which art was all-important and individual -celebrity a thing of so little moment that there was complete equality -of intercourse, it now included the last two sections of a trisected -world of artists—the well-paid, the ill-paid, and the not paid at -all—and where money intervenes all equality ceases. The majority of the -well-paid were kept too busy even to see they had lost the old freedom; -they were tempted to live as other people in decent rooms and decent -coats, and as their vanity kept them from complaining, the ill-paid and -the not paid at all naturally envied their state, striving and jostling -for an equally happy captivity, or at least intending to do so as soon -as their irrepressible blood took a staider course through their veins. -The charm of Murger's merry crew is that their blood was too strong for -their business instincts; the Bohemian spirit snatched them along in -spite of Mammon, for Mammon, incomplete as his hold has always been over -youth, was in those days but just<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> learning his strength. Where youth -and art combine the Bohemian spirit is always there; only the -possibilities of Bohemia have in the course of time been crowded out. -But in Murger's Paris Bohemia, shorn of earthly glory as it was, without -lot in the brilliance of the boulevard, cut off from the more thriving -traders in the artistic market-place, was still a possibility because -the Bohemian tradition was still fairly strong, and because Paris was -still a small city, its life little disturbed by a floating population -of aliens and its interests completely self-centred.</p> - -<p>The Bohemia described by Murger certainly corresponded in one respect -with the general conception of Bohemianism to-day in that it was devoid -of any material splendour. Neither Rodolphe nor Marcel indicates any -desire for the old furniture, damasks, and other decorations which so -glittered in the eyes of the early Romantics, but at any rate such -things would have been beyond the capacity of their purses. They were -unequivocally poor. When Rodolphe was in funds he could afford a hundred -francs a year for a garret in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; when -Providence was less kind he lived "in the Avenue de Saint-Cloud, on the -fifth branch of the third tree on the left as you leave the Bois de -Boulogne." As for entertainments, they came a long way behind the -costume ball of the Impasse du Doyenné. At Rodolphe's Wednesdays in the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, it was<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> said, one could only sit down morally -and was forced to drink badly filtered water in eclectic earthenware. -Even the grand <i>soirée</i> given by Rodolphe and Marcel, which began with a -literary and musical entertainment and ended with a dance prolonged till -sunrise, only cost the hosts fifteen francs—miraculously acquired at -the last moment—in addition to a set of chairs which fed the stove from -midnight onwards, though, as these belonged to a neighbour, they were -probably not paid for. Their wardrobes were not conspicuous for any -particularly Romantic or medieval effect, but simply, except in times of -exceptional windfalls, for extreme dilapidation. Schaunard's chief -garment was an overcoat worn to a state of utter baldness; Colline's -ulster, crammed with books and papers, had the surface of a file; -Marcel's coat was called "Mathusalem," but he must have acquired it -subsequent to the sugar-merchant's momentous visit, for at that time, -after an hour's search to discover a costume fit to dine out in, the net -results were a pair of plaid trousers, a grey hat, a red tie, a (once) -white glove and a black glove. To dine sufficiently at a small -restaurant was for them no ordinary luxury, and as for entering the -<i>Rocher de Caucale</i>, they might as well have aspired to membership of -the Jockey Club. Why, Schaunard had never seen a lobster till the old -Jew gave them all a feast after buying Marcel's <i>Passage de la Mer -Rouge</i>. Some days they dispensed with dining altogether, on others<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> the -staple dish was pickled herrings; so it is hardly surprising that on the -proceeds of Marcel's picture they remained at table for five days, the -room filled with a Pantagruelic atmosphere and a whole bed of -oyster-shells covering the floor. It was not that they took up any -quixotic attitude of art for art's sake, like the society called <i>Les -Buveurs d'Eau</i>, whom Murger describes in one of his stories and whose -principle was not to make the slightest concession to necessity. They -were imperfect journeymen, indolent, careless, too easily distracted, -but they were among those who were ill-paid rather than those who never -tried to be paid. Rodolphe edited a small fashion paper, <i>L'Écharpe -d'Iris</i>; Marcel painted ruined manors for a Jew dealer and portraits of -the lowliest possessor of a few spare francs; Colline gave lessons in -the same range of subjects as Pico di Mirandola professed to discuss; -and Schaunard, besides exhibiting a special ability as a borrower, put -music to bad poetry for hard-hearted music-publishers.</p> - -<p>In comparing this Bohemia with that of Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, it -is easy to see the justification of Lepelletier's epithet "carottière." -The graceful adjuncts and by no means contemptible achievements of a -former day had vanished as completely as its enthusiasms. The presence -of Roger de Beauvoir and Nestor Roqueplan in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne is as difficult to imagine as the composition of -"Mademoiselle de Maupin." Yet Rodolphe and his friends<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> were at least as -well off in one respect, that is, in their affairs of the heart, if, -indeed, they had not some advantage. The divinities of the Impasse du -Doyenné, Cydalise excepted, seem to have had their home in the <i>corps de -ballet</i>, a body not notable for the tenderness or constancy of their -attachments. Murger, who, like his Rodolphe, was an amorous -sentimentalist, gave some poetic value, if not as much as he intended, -to the figures of Mimi and Musette, the idols of Rodolphe and Marcel, -who play such a prominent part in the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," that -it would be an affectation not to speak of them, although an Englishman -must always do so with some reserve. In spite of all that may be said -against them—indeed, <i>is</i> said by their very creator—there is a charm -about Mimi and Musette which must always hold the reader of these -stories, a charm which includes Francine, who died holding the muff -bought for her by her lover, and the vulgar Phémie Teinturière, who -shared the lot of a no more refined Schaunard. Without sympathizing, at -least temporarily, with all the blend of mystery and frankness which a -Frenchman breathes into the word "amour," it is useless to read French -literature. To him love is the highest emotional value—emotion being in -its turn the highest value in life—so that a union, whether it be -celebrated in the Madeleine or in the <i>mairie</i> of the notorious -thirteenth <i>arrondissement</i>, is equally sacred and equally interesting. -We in England look at<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> love differently and, as we naturally think, -better, but we are not hindered, nevertheless, from abandoning our view -occasionally. We do so implicitly when we shed tears over "La Dame aux -Camélias," over "Madame Butterfly," and over Mimi herself in Puccini's -"La Bohème." To be honest, then, we must accept Murger's view, if we -enjoy his book, as there is very little doubt that we do. We applaud -Musette when she surreptitiously waters the flowers whose duration is to -measure that of her love for Marcel; we forgive her fickleness because -she follows her fancy without calculation, even though on leaving the -rich young nobleman to visit Marcel she takes six days on the road; we -warm to Mimi because Rodolphe really loved her and she him, though his -jealousy and her love of luxury made their days a burden and their -rupture certain; and if we join heartily in Marcel's ironical tirade -against Mimi the fine lady, we cannot restrain our sadness at Mimi -returning to her old love to die. The life of the Impasse du Doyenné was -so joyous, strong, and full that its <i>amours passagers</i> can be taken for -granted, happy fantasies without regrets; but Murger's Bohemia, with its -frequent moments of despondency and hardship, was forced to rely upon -its heart to supply that relieving colour which its surroundings could -not give. Mimi and Musette, Phémie and Francine, even the little -<i>giletière</i> who corrected Colline's proofs and never appeared, meant so -much more than Lorry or Victorine.<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> So long as their attachment lasted -they made a home out of the barest garret, doing for their men those -thousand little things which men are too lazy or preoccupied to do for -themselves. Besides, they opened a field for the exercise of -unselfishness—a valuable service in itself. In this connexion I need -only cite one delightful little story, to which I have already referred, -entitled "La Toilette des Grâces," an idyll which no afterthought can -spoil. It tells how Rodolphe, Marcel, and Schaunard, having earned a -little money by making their respective arts serve the humblest of -commercial purposes, decided to surprise their mistresses by giving them -new dresses. One fine morning Mimi, Musette, and Phémie were awakened by -the entry of a procession headed by Schaunard, in a new coat of golden -nankeen, playing a horn, and close behind him a shopman bringing -samples. They nearly went mad with joy. Mimi jumped like a young kid, -waving a pretty scarf; Musette, with each hand in a little green boot, -threw her arms round Marcel's neck and clapped the boots like cymbals; -as for Phémie, she could only sob "Ah, mon Alexandre, mon Alexandre!" -The choice was made, the bills discharged, and it was announced to the -dames that they must have their new dresses ready for a day in the -country on the morrow. That was a trifle; for sixteen hours they cut and -stitched, and when next day the Angelus sounded from the neighbouring -church they were<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> already taking their last look into the looking-glass. -Only Phémie had a little sorrow. "I like the green grass and the little -birds," she said, "but one meets nobody in the country. Suppose we made -our excursion on the boulevard." But they went to Fontenay-aux-Roses -instead, and when they returned late at night there were only six francs -left. "What shall we do with it?" asked Marcel. "Invest it in the -funds," said Schaunard.</p> - -<p>There are, doubtless, artistic <i>coteries</i> to-day in whose existence -parallels may be found to the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but -reproduction is impossible, for Murger's Bohemia, no less than <i>la -Bohème galante</i>, was conditioned by its time. The conditions include a -Paris of provincial narrowness, greater simplicity together with less -conspicuous uniformity in ordinary life, less elaborate amusements, no -Montmartre <i>cafés</i>, no swamping proletariat beside whose <i>mÅ“urs -d'Apaches</i> the eccentricities of Bohemia seem mild and unimportant, a -tiny fraction of the present opportunities for advertisement and -publicity, and a lower standard, perhaps, of general education. To these -one other condition may be added—the existence of Musette and Mimi, who -were the last of the <i>grisettes</i>. Murger himself, in a passage which I -cannot do better than quote in the original, points out clearly their -transitoriness:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ces jolies filles moitié abeilles, moitié cigales, qui -travaillaient en chantant toute la semaine, ne demandaient<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> à -Dieu qu'un peu de soleil le dimanche, faisaient vulgairement -l'amour avec le cÅ“ur, et se jetaient quelquefois par la fenêtre. -Race disparue maintenant, grâce à la génération actuelle des jeunes -gens: génération corrompue et corruptrice, mais par-dessus tout -vaniteuse, sotte et brutale. Pour le plaisir de faire de méchants -paradoxes, ils ont raillé ces pauvres filles à propos de leurs -mains mutilées par les saintes cicatrices du travail, et elles -n'ont bientôt plus gagné assez pour s'acheter de la pâte d'amandes. -Peu à peu ils sont parvenus à leur inoculer leur vanité et leur -sottise, et c'est alors que la grisette a disparu. C'est alors que -naquit la lorette."</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_216_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_216_sml.jpg" width="348" height="550" alt="A Grisette" title="A Grisette" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">A Grisette</span> -</p> - -<p>The <i>grisette</i> made love for love: like a wild rose, she had to be -plucked, and when men came to prefer buying bouquets in shops, she -naturally died away. Money already tainted Bohemia, even here, in its -heart. The opportunity of luxury tempted both Mimi and Musette to be -unfaithful, but since caprice was ever stronger with them than -self-interest they were not undeserving to be called the last of the -<i>grisettes</i>. They were necessary adjuncts to Bohemia, and satisfactory -adjuncts, in spite of their caprices, for the last thing which Bohemian -man required was the Bohemian or—to use an obsolete phrase—the -"emancipated" woman. Too ignorant to meet their lovers, even had they -wished, upon their own ground, they held their place by keeping to their -natural advantage, the woman's desire to please. So they passed through -life, making the feast<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> more festive and the fast less desolate, filling -a void and mending a sorrow as light-heartedly as they darned a sock or -patched a ragged coat. Mimi and Musette were the true counterparts of -Rodolphe and Marcel, and it is with regret that we see them disappear -into an epilogue of prosperity and propriety. Yet it was all they could -do, for what I have called the Bohemia of common mortality became -dangerous long before the age of thirty years. Rodolphe could not have -written in middle age to Marcel as Bouchardy did to Théophile Gautier; -only hypocritically could he have said "nous étions ivres du beau." -Murger escapes any false effect of that kind in his conclusion:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"'We are done for, old fellow,' says Marcel, 'we are dead and -buried. Youth only comes once! Where are you dining to-night?'</p> - -<p>"'If you like,' answered Rodolphe, 'we will go and dine for twelve -sous at our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where the plates are -of village earthenware, and where we were always so hungry when we -had finished eating.'</p> - -<p>"'Good heavens, no. I don't mind looking back at the past, but it -shall be across a bottle of decent wine and seated in a good -arm-chair. It is no use, I'm corrupted. I only care now for what is -good!'"</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X<br /><br /> -MURGER AND HIS FRIENDS</h2> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Si on excepte quelques natures fortement trempées qui se tirèrent des -impasses de la Bohème, le reste fut condamné à vivre difficilement en -face d'un idéal borné et sans avenir. Ni études, ni loisirs, ni aisances -ne permettaient à ces aspirants à l'art de s'élever et de conquérir un -nom.</i></p> - -<p class="r"> -<span style="margin-right: 3em;">C<small>HAMPFLEURY</small>:</span><br /> -"Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse"</p> -</div> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> order to catch at a glance the result of a lapse of years I lingered -in the last chapter over Rodolphe, Mimi, and their friends, figures -drawn from the moving scene of contemporary life, yet snatched from the -changes of time as permanently as those on Keats's Grecian urn. The -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" show, as it seems to me, more clearly than -any other kind of record, the decadence of Bohemia, regarding the degree -of its approach to an ideal of complete artistic existence, since the -great days that followed 1830. This might, indeed, be a warrant for not -returning to more documentary facts at all, but there are always those -to be considered who view Fiction as a sprite so far divorced from -actuality that they are unable to place<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> any trust in her indications. -The teller of stories, in their apprehension, is always on the look-out -for a good effect, to which end he will minimize the essential and -magnify the unessential, distorting sober fact at the call of his -individual imagination. They are the people who read novels, as they -say, for relaxation, while finding wisdom alone in biographies and -memoirs bristling with dates and packed with quotations. The question, -"What, after all, is sober fact?" is sufficient to put them into -confusion, but to propound that ancient problem would be here beside the -mark, for in a book that honestly professes to be as sober in fact as -any it would be unbecoming unduly to press the point on behalf of -fiction. The warrant, therefore, will be allowed to pass, and we return -to those tales which men have told about themselves and their friends -under the names which they bore at baptism, duly signed and dated. Such -information as they give concerning the later years of Bohemia is, at -best, fragmentary, but the fragments have some appearance of falling -together in the light of Murger's picture. A more diligent research -might have produced a more detailed record, but it may be questioned -whether the total effect would have been any clearer. There were scores -of obscure persons in Bohemia, but their daily uprising and lying-down -were not so very widely different. At least this may be asserted, that -after a certain number of facts it is safer to use the imagination for -the rest.<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a></p> - -<p>Murger and his friends were the legitimate successors of <i>la Bohème -galante</i>, and in view of their fictitious counterparts already -introduced the main interest of this chapter lies with them. Yet before -they appear there are some byways of Bohemia that call for inspection as -an illustration and a contrast. Bohemia was, of course, always bordered -on one side by the student life of the Quartier Latin, the freedom and -licence of which were both different and older in origin, going back to -the days of the schoolmen, when indigent scholars of all nations filled -the great university cities of Europe, forming in each a picturesque but -turbulent community. Even in most prosaic days the students of Paris -have kept up the medieval tradition, but particular manifestations would -naturally be influenced by the manners of the day. It is, therefore, not -surprising that the student quarter was profoundly affected by the -Romantic movement, and reflected its battles and its extravagances with -a hilarious distortion. The motley world of the Quartier Latin and those -who, though no longer students, remained attached to it had their "local -colour," their Gothic enthusiasms, and their orgies. They had dining -clubs with fantastic names, such as "Les 45 jolis cochons," which -indulged in something very like bump-suppers, with loud singing in the -streets, window-breaking, and practical joking to follow. The campaign -of "Hernani" was imitated in the Salle Chanteraine—a theatre for -amateurs—where there was<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> nightly a <i>fracas</i> with fisticuffs between -the various factions. Elaborate farces were organized to mystify the -good people of Paris, of which Maxime du Camp gives a good example in -his "Souvenirs Littéraires." It was called "La grande chevauchée de la -côtelette aux cornichons." Thirty young men, dressed in velvet -waistcoats and nankeen jackets, with long hair and beards, headed by a -certain young teacher of history waving a stick, marched solemnly in -serried single file with a halting step, dangling their arms at the same -time, from the Place Pigalle over the Pont Royal, crying in unison, "Une -deux, une deux, le choléra, le choléra!" At the end of the Pont Royal -they turned round in a body and shouted, "Connaissez-vous le thermomètre -de l'ingénieur Chevalier?" Solemnly facing about again, they proceeded -as before to Sainte-Mandé, where they lunched off pork cutlets.</p> - -<p>The special home of the wildest jokers and most desperate caricatures of -the new spirit was a certain tumble-down barrack, No. 9 Rue Childebert, -a street on the south side of that beautiful old church -Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and now merged in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. -This house, familiarly called "La Childebert," was five or six stories -high and thoroughly decayed, for its owner, a Madame Legendre, refused -to carry out any repairs. She was justified in this attitude to some -extent by the fact that few of her tenants paid any rent. Indeed, -according to one witness, no man in<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> his senses would have paid any rent -for a room upon the top floor from 1837 onwards. One student, however, -an ingenious fellow called Lepierre, who both lived on the top floor and -paid his rent, succeeded in forcing the stingy lady to repair the roof. -Having been drenched one night during a hard storm, he took his revenge -by removing a portion of his flooring, and hiring all the peripatetic -water-carriers that could be found to pour water down the hole. The -<i>concierge</i> remonstrated, but in vain, and Madame Legendre was sent for -in hot haste. When she arrived in a cab she was gaily serenaded by the -inhabitants, and on proceeding to the flooded room she was horrified to -find Lepierre in the costume of Adam before the Fall, who claimed a -right, he said, to have a bath at his <i>own</i> convenience. Madame Legendre -fled, but the roof was repaired. The gay desperadoes of La Childebert -were capable of carrying through any <i>charge</i>, howsoever lurid. One of -the most successful was known as "le nez de Bouginier." Bouginier was an -artist, the size of whose nose inspired his friend Fourreau with the -idea of an exaggerated caricature in which this feature was made -enormous. A stencil was cut and copied, and for many days Bouginier's -nose appeared on all the walls in Paris. It is even alleged that two -parties of students, about to travel in the East and wishing to meet on -the voyage, hit on the simple plan of following Bouginier's nose. The -party starting first took a stencil with them, so that the second -party,<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> leaving a fortnight later, were able to track them to -Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, and Suez. In a certain medallion in the -Passage du Caire, just south of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, -Bouginier's nose is still immortalized. La Childebert was always "up to" -something, but a certain fancy-dress <i>conversazione</i> completely -convulsed the neighbourhood. The schools of art and poetry dressed -according to their views, and by universal consent the Romantics, for -all they could do in pourpoints, doublets, and general local colour, -were easily beaten by the Classicists. Romulus and Remus with their wolf -and Hercules with the Nemean lion created a <i>furore</i>; so great was the -real consternation of the district at the apparition of these wild -beasts that the commissary of police had to intervene. The wolf and the -lion suffered themselves to be led with great docility to his office, -where they turned out to be a great Dane and a mastiff respectively, -painted and padded with diabolical cleverness.</p> - -<p>La Childebert was strongly represented in a revellers' club called "Les -Badouillards," that flourished between 1835 and 1838. In "Paris -Anecdote" Privat d'Anglemont, who is the chief authority on the -Childebertian doings, describes the qualifications of a perfect -Badouillard. He had to pass a regular test before entering the bacchic -brotherhood; he had to be strong and agile, a clever and ready boxer, -fencer, and wrestler, he must have proved his courage in several -encounters,<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> shown a fine taste in choreographic fantasy at the -Chaumière and an ability to engage in a duel of slang with any chance -person, and have sworn eternal feud against the sleep and peace of mind -of all <i>bourgeois</i>. The initiation was a solemn and trying ceremony. It -began with a copious dinner, followed by a ceaseless absorption of -various liquors till the time came for going to the ball. Here the -candidate stayed all night, behaving as outrageously as possible. He -then adjourned without sleep to breakfast, and passed the rest of the -day in the <i>cafés</i> of the Quartier Latin, drinking, playing billiards, -and flirting. At night the programme was repeated, and if by the third -night he had accepted every challenge, never fallen asleep, nor tumbled -under any table, he was allowed to seek his bed a perfect Badouillard.</p> - -<p>For all its light-hearted absurdities La Childebert was not Bohemia, for -its existence belonged rather to that of irresponsible students than of -artists. I only mention it by way of contrast, as I now mention again -Privat d'Anglemont, the author of "Paris Inconnu" and "Paris Anecdote," -legendary as a Bohemian, but of a very different type. These two curious -and valuable books are a complete study of the seamy side of Paris -during the latter part of Louis Philippe's reign. The life of the -porters in the Halles, the <i>chiffonniers</i>, and all the pliers of obscure -trades, with their customs, their dwellings, and their manners, is most -faithfully reproduced<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> in them in a manner which could only have been -made possible by a complete identification of the author with the -subjects of his observation. Such, in fact, was the lifework of Privat -d'Anglemont, a Creole born in Guadeloupe. He became the legendary -<i>noctambule</i> of Paris, realizing, as Charles Monselet says in his -preface to "Paris Anecdote," the popular idea of a Bohemian—that is, -simply an eccentric vagabond. In the sense of the word as used in this -book, he was not a Bohemian at all, for, though he wrote articles and -books upon his experiences, he was in no sense an artist, nor was he -striving to make his life conformable to artistic liberty. He was -animated simply by a gipsy passion for roaming, combined with a taste -for mystery and romancing. Faithful as his books were, he hardly ever -<i>spoke</i> the truth: twenty times he told Théodore de Banville the history -of his life, and each time it was different. Still, he merits a word -here on account of his reputation as the complete Bohemian, a reputation -increased by his being an easy peg on which to hang any fantastic story -that came into a journalist's brain. Théodore de Banville, who first met -him in 1841 and, according to Monselet, idealized him absurdly, gives -some curious recollections of him in "Mes Souvenirs." He was a handsome -man, dark, tall, and slender, rather resembling the elder Dumas. He -passed most of his life wandering about the low quarters of Paris in -complete poverty, often begging a meal from one of the <i>cabaretiers</i> of -the Halles,<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> who all loved him. Yet, de Banville avers, he was not -really unprovided for, since at irregular intervals a relative used to -send him about £200 from America in gold pieces. But Privat d'Anglemont -preferred to live without money, so that he never hesitated in getting -rid of this burden as soon as possible by standing a dinner to all the -poor and hungry women he could find in the tiny inn called the "BÅ“uf -Enragé," at the bottom of the Rue de la Harpe. Like Gérard de Nerval, he -would set out on a voyage at a moment's notice and without a moment's -preparation, and such was his charm that he had affectionate friends in -the lower quarters of many a French town. Once during his nightly -wanderings he was stopped by some robbers. "But I'm Privat," he said, -roaring with laughter. At which the robbers joined in the laugh, and -invited him to supper. By a ruined hut they sat down to drink the best -champagne in the light of the stars, to smoke, and to tell stories. -Privat delighted his hosts, who invited him to meet them again; but he -shook his head, saying, "N'engageons pas l'avenir."</p> - -<p>Privat d'Anglemont, who eventually died of consumption, did little more -than carry on the traditions of the "noctambules," less mischievously -than their founder, Rétif de la Bretonne, less modestly and artistically -than Gérard de Nerval, but so much more seriously than either of his -predecessors that he left little scope for a new departure to his own -successor, Alfred Delvau.<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> He was not, in the truest sense, a Bohemian, -though he led an existence ever bordering on the confines of Bohemia. -The same may be said, in a more transitory sense, of Flaubert, the great -renovator and refiner of Romanticism. Most of his life was spent in the -country, but there was a short period when he came to study law in -Paris, which, if it were not mentioned, might justify a challenge from -readers familiar with "L'Education Sentimentale" or Maxime du Camp's -"Souvenirs Littéraires." So far as the first of these books is -concerned, little time need here be spent in finding relevant points of -comparison. The last thing which Flaubert desired to portray in that -depressing picture was an existence in any sense artistic. His hero is a -provincial youth who, during his student days in Paris, drifts aimlessly -and indolently through a variety of second-rate experiences in company -with second-rate friends. Flaubert's own experiences are, no doubt, -frequently worked into the material, but "L'Education Sentimentale" is -nothing so cheap as autobiography served in a thin sauce of fiction. It -is a novel in which the author has with the highest exercise of -penetrative imagination treated what Mr. Henry James would call the -"germ"—the dreary wastefulness, that is, of such a life in case of such -a young man as Frédéric Moreau, who with Madame Bovary is Flaubert's -contribution to the pathology of <i>le mal romantique</i>. Flaubert himself, -with all his excitability and extravagance, was of a much<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> stronger -stamp; the strength of his artistic conviction saved him from all such -flabbiness. He came to Paris to study law, but, having failed to pass -his examination, returned to his home in 1843. If he had stayed he might -easily have become one of the leading figures, certainly a powerful -influence, in that Bohemia which Murger knew. Maxime du Camp, who made -his acquaintance early in 1843, shows him as a young man living always -at a high pitch with the flamboyant vitality that would have done no -dishonour to the Impasse du Doyenné, so far was he from being the victim -of Frédéric's weak-kneed desolation. He passed his days in an -alternation of prodigality and poverty, spending fifty francs on his -dinner one day and feeding on a crust and a slab of chocolate the next. -He lived in a kind of intellectual tornado, both frantic and noisy. He -went into ecstasies over mediocre works in which he perceived beauties -hidden from the rest of the world, but which he loved to point out -stridently to his friends, intoning the prose, roaring the verse at the -top of his voice, repeating incessantly any word which took his -passionate fancy, and filling all the neighbourhood with his din. He -would wake up a friend without compunction at three in the morning to -show him a moonlight effect on the Seine; one moment he would be -inventing sauces to make brill appetizing, and the next he would be -plotting to smack Gustave Planche's face for having spoken slightingly -of Victor Hugo. The<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> <i>cénacle</i> composed of Louis de Cormenin, Le -Poitevin, Du Camp, and himself often dined at Dagneaux's, one of the -better restaurants of the Quartier Latin, and stayed talking ceaselessly -till the doors were closed. Their ambitions were as wild as their -conversation; Flaubert and Du Camp seriously determined to learn -everything between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to produce great -works till forty, and then to retire into the country. Except for the -fact that, according to his friend, Flaubert disdained the women whom -his beauty attracted, this was a promising beginning for Bohemia. As the -world knows, fate decreed otherwise, and he retired to develop in that -close intellectual atmosphere with Louis Bouilhet and Du Camp, of which -the latter says: "Living as we did, in solitude, we exchanged only the -same set of ideas apart from all criticism, so that things in general -lost their right proportion in our minds."</p> - -<p>Flaubert's life in the Rue de l'Est was, at best, only a tentative -pathway in Bohemia, like one of those tracks in a suburb that give hope -of leading somewhere, but change their mind <i>en route</i>. It is too small -a digression to be distracting, and I entered upon it, among other -reasons, because its little adventure coincides in date with those -movements in the central market-place yet to be touched on. One more -alley, however, must be taken on the way, for it is, indeed, only just -off the market-place. The name upon its wall is that of Charles<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> -Baudelaire, a well-known figure whose exact relation to Bohemia is, -nevertheless, not so easy to determine. He began very much in the manner -of Flaubert, coming as a student to the Quartier Latin and residing at a -not very strictly kept <i>pension</i> near the Panthéon between 1839 and -1841, his eighteenth and his twentieth years. I need not repeat the -distinction made between student life—<i>das Burschenleben</i>—and -out-and-out Bohemianism. Baudelaire filled his days to their fullest -extent, mixing together indiscriminately the enjoyments of student, -dandy, and <i>viveur</i>, so far as his means allowed. It was only at the end -of this time that his determination to take up literature scandalized -his stepfather and caused his enforced sea voyage. When he returned in -1842 he had come of age and possessed a capital of 75,000 francs. He set -about spending this money with a gusto and in a manner not unworthy of -the golden age of Bohemia. He had various lodgings till he settled for -two years in a beautiful apartment in the old Hôtel Pimodan on the ÃŽle -St.-Louis, where his comrade was the painter Boissard, a good artist -who, as Gautier said, exhausted himself in enthusiasms, and in whose -wonderful Louis XIV salon the society of <i>hachischiens</i> met. Had -Baudelaire been a true Bohemian at heart he might have instituted a -second <i>Bohème galante</i>, but he was wanting in that simplicity and -goodfellowship which are signal qualities in the Bohemian character. He -wished to make his life, like his art, a study in exquisite intensity, -so that<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> in the days of his splendour his mode of living was rather that -of a "dandy" than anything else. He dressed with immense care, but in a -bygone fashion; he pursued every kind of sensation, frequented every -kind of society, and became the leader of a set who carefully cultivated -eccentricity for its own sake, an eccentricity too <i>posé</i> to serve as a -type of Bohemian manners. To make himself a subject of astonishment was -his chief amusement, to which end his devices—such as entering a -restaurant with a friend and feigning to begin a story with the loud -exordium: "After I had murdered my poor father——"—were innumerable. -So much may be said with a certain pity or amusement, but it must also -be admitted that a certain refinement, both social and intellectual, -kept him from associating himself entirely with the not -over-discriminating Bohemia of his generation. It is all the more fair -to say this because after 1844, when his stepfather got a guardian -appointed to take charge of his remaining capital and he was reduced to -eking out a reduced income by journalism, with all its attendant -disappointments and hardships, he chose with some discrimination the -extent to which he would throw in his lot with the Bohemian life for -which he had by that time every qualification. He became a friend of -Murger and many other complete Bohemians, and there is a story of his -asking the original of Schaunard to dine and giving him a piece of Brie -cheese and two bottles of claret, asking him to imagine<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> that he was -enjoying the dessert after a good dinner. Yet his real intimates were a -band of young men, Théodore de Banville, Charles Monselet, Villiers de -l'Isle Adam, and Leconte de l'Isle, who chose to maintain a certain -amount of order in the midst of eccentricity and found boisterous -joviality less to their taste than the more delicate affectations of -wit. Here again I hold no brief for the complete Bohemians. They had -their compensating virtues, but it is hardly doubtful that Baudelaire -and his friends were the better educated and the more truly artistic set -of the two. This, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy of Bohemia's -decline, that its spiritual distinction faded with its material -well-being. At any rate, for a combination of reasons, laudable and the -reverse, Baudelaire's set was not Bohemia, and if, as I leave them, I -may insist particularly on one of the less laudable reasons, it is that -pose, which is another form of convention, must by the very conception -of Bohemia be excluded from its characteristics. Nadar hits the -difference when, in his curious little book on Baudelaire, which is -written in an idiom describable as a French version of that elliptical -quaintness associated with our own <i>Pink 'Un</i>, he writes: "Avec ces -épileptiques, combien loin du sans façon tout bonhomme, de la simplesse -à la bonne franquette de mon autre bande de Bohème, 'la bande de Murger' -<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a>et de notre 'Société des buveurs d'eau.' ..."</p> - -<p>We return, then, to the author of "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" at the -end of a rather circuitous route. In speaking of the Bohemia which he -immortalized I have called it, in distinction from certain modifications -or superficial resemblances, the central market-place, but no more need -be sought in that phrase than an effort to represent it by a handy image -as exhibiting the main civic qualities and manners implied in the -generic name. Compared with earlier days, a far less proud and bustling -burgherdom trod its rather muddy paving-stones, for it had suffered as -some agricultural centre when railways were beginning. Yet any pride of -succession which they may have had was legitimately theirs, for, if they -were less materially and intellectually endowed, if the peculiarly happy -circumstances of their civic foundation had passed to make their -ultimate disruption certain under the changed conditions of all that is -included in social development, they still preserved the Bohemian -character, with its simplicity, gaiety, humour, and courage. To labour -the point further is unnecessary, for if it is not already clear, the -fault is too remote to be here corrected. In the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème" all the daily comedy and tragedy of this Bohemia of common -mortality finds expression: the life there described so intimately and -humorously stands or falls by its artistic truth, to which no amount of -possible documentary corroboration adds an iota. Nevertheless, the -professed concession<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> to a desire for ascertainable "facts" with which -this chapter opened must be made, at the risk of seeming to expose the -vanity of the researcher as the real object of indulgence. Since, in the -garrulous world of to-day, nobody can make the least incursion into the -public eye, much less produce a successful book or picture, without the -appearance of a crop of "personal notes," so Murger's picture may be -taken for granted, and what follows may appear in the light of "personal -notes," claiming no more connexion than a general relation to the -picture.</p> - -<p>Murger<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> was no son of a landed proprietor nor even sprung from a -middle-class family, as most Bohemians naturally were, for the whole -life of Bohemia presupposes a more or less literary education seldom -vouchsafed to the children of lower social order. His father was a -German tailor in the Rue des Trois Frères, who wished, not without -reason, that his son should succeed him in his trade. Murger's early -education was therefore<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> confined to the rudiments, and his deficiencies -in that respect were a burden upon him all his life. The career of a -tailor, for all that, aroused his utmost aversion; through his two -friends, Emile and Pierre Bisson, who became clerks, he acquired a -violent taste for poetry, with the composition of which he judged the -shears incompatible. His father took the rebellion hardly, but got him a -place, since he liked pens and paper so much, as errand-boy to an -<i>avoué</i>, an occupation in which he continued to cultivate his poetic -inclinations. When seventeen years old, in 1839, through the interest of -M. de Jouy, a critic and member of the Academy, he was appointed -secretary to a Russian diplomat, M. de Tolstoi. His salary was only 40 -francs a month, out of which he had to pay a small <i>pension</i> to his -father for board and lodging; still, he was happy. His duties were very -light, and his employer, who also had a literary turn, took a certain -amount of interest in him and gave him occasional presents of money. -During the next two years he made the acquaintance of that group of -friends on which he drew for his stories of Bohemia, and experienced two -love affairs. The first object of his affections was "la cousine -Angèle," the heroine of a chapter in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," in -which Rodolphe in his draughty garret, by dint of burning his great -tragedy in the stove, warms himself sufficiently to write the -commemorative poem for the tombstone of a defunct <i>bourgeois</i>, buying -with the<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> proceeds a bunch of white violets for his disdainful cousin. -The second was a certain Marie, who eventually ran away with one of his -friends—a tragedy which he relates in "Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse." -By this time he had become a thoroughly developed Bohemian, intolerant -of all restraint. He left his father's home, and even for a time gave up -his post with M. de Tolstoi.</p> - -<p>It was then that Henry Murger's Bohemia was definitely formed, a society -described by one of them as "ce demi-quarteron de poètes à l'outrance, -mais absolument inédits, réunis dans un tas, sans vestes ni semelles, ne -doutant de rien, ni de leur lendemain, ni de leur génie, ni du génie de -leur voisin, ni de l'éditeur à venir, ni du succès, ni des belles dames, -ni de la fortune—de rien, si ce n'est de leur dîner du soir, trop -convaincus, d'ailleurs, quant à la question de leur déjeuner du matin." -Their names were the brothers Bisson, Lelioux, Noel, Nadar, Guilbert, -Vastine, the brothers Desbrosses, Cabot, Villain, Tabar, Chintreuil, -Pottier, Karol, Schann, and Vernet. They called themselves the "Société -des Buveurs d'Eau," but they were by no means so quixotic as Murger -draws that society in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was simply a -union for mutual help, the rules of which did not bar any commercial -occupation. The members lived as they pleased or as they could, and -water was only a compulsory beverage at the official monthly meetings, -when they all submitted their work to the criticism<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> of their brethren. -Their ordinary occupations were various enough. Noel gave drawing -lessons; another was a judicial stenographer; Jacques Desbrosses, -nicknamed Christ—the original of "Jacques D——" in "Scènes de la Vie -de Bohème"—and Cabot drew designs for monumental masons; the other -Desbrosses, called Gothique, earned a little money by painting -door-signs for midwives; Schann, the original of Schaunard, was a -musician, and Wallon, Murger's Colline, who joined the society later, -eked out his barren philosophy by giving lessons; Chintreuil, afterwards -to become a well-known artist, was then a bookseller's assistant, with -Champfleury for his colleague; and Nadar, otherwise F. Tournachon, whom -Alphonse Karr describes as "a kind of giant with immense legs, long -arms, a long body with a shaggy head of red hair above it, and staring, -intelligent, flashing eyes," was the poet and journalist who became a -celebrated balloonist and an immensely successful photographer. His -caricature hangs in the section of the Musée Carnavalet devoted to early -aeronautics in Paris.</p> - -<p>We may take it from Murger that the shortcomings of fortune were borne -with humorous fortitude on the credit of her occasional smiles, but -there was no illusion about the privations. Nadar, Champfleury, and -Delvau all agree that a bitter wind blew upon them. It was not so bad, -in Nadar's opinion, so long as they lived more or less together, and -this they did for a short time in an<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> old house by the Barrière d'Enfer, -which looked like a farm with a farmyard inhabited by hens. Champfleury -made their acquaintance at this time in a little dairy where they -sometimes took their meals. It was a strange society. Some wore blouses, -others Phrygian caps, while the brothers Desbrosses had large sky-blue -overcoats, turned back with pink satin and fastened by huge -mother-of-pearl buttons. These two brothers were the originators of the -colony at the Barrière d'Enfer, and its chiefs "surtout par leur -misère." They harboured some of the others, who found a resting-place -for the night in two hammocks slung in their small room. Murger was -among them, the art of painting being for the moment his preoccupation. -Fine days were spent lounging on the roof and contemplating the then -rural surroundings. Anybody arriving with five francs in his pocket -would have been regarded as a millionaire; indeed, they were happy -enough when they could afford a few fried potatoes for dinner. Yet they -would not have exchanged their hovel for the Garden of Eden, and they -fed upon their dreams with inexhaustible confidence. Privation was still -worse when the society broke up. One Bohemian lived a whole week on raw -potatoes brought by his poor mother from the country; another went three -days without food; another passed a winter shirtless in a calico blouse -and a lasting waistcoat; another, as a device to keep himself warm, used -to carry a log of wood up to his high garret, drop it over the<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> -banisters, and run down to fetch it again; an older Bohemian who heard -of this manÅ“uvre exclaimed: "Spendthrift, why the log?"</p> - -<p>Henry Murger himself, who had abandoned painting and definitely adopted -the vocation of a sentimental poet, went to live with his friend -Lelioux, first in the Rue Montholon and then in that garret at £4 a year -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne where Rodolphe's friends "drank badly -filtered water out of eclectic earthenware" at his Wednesday receptions. -He had resumed his employment with M. de Tolstoi, but he was too -improvident to keep out of misery for many days together. More than once -he became so ill with purpura, an eruptive disease due in his case to -the abuse of coffee, that he had to go to the hospital. Some extracts -from his letters during these years will give an idea of his -destitution. On December 14, 1841, he writes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Les Desbrosses passent la moitié de la journée à ne pas manger et -l'autre à crever de froid. Les chats se méfient d'eux, et, en fait -de chéminée, ils ne possèdent que leurs pipes—bien des fois sans -tabac."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">March 6, 1842:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sans le Christ, qui m'a donné à dîner et à déjeuner quatre fois la -semaine, je ne sais pas ce que je serais devenu. Ce garçon n'a pas -volé son surnom."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">April 25, 1843:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nous crevons de faim; nous sommes au bout du<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> rouleau. Il faut -décidément se faire un trou quelque part ou se faire sauter la -cervelle."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">March 17, 1844:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"De Charybde en Sylla, mon cher ami! La misère est plus horrible -que jamais chez moi et autour de moi. Ma place au <i>Commerce</i> n'a -pas eu de suite; je suis de nouveau sur le pavé. C'est horrible! -Aussi le découragement m'a-t-il pris et tout à fait submergé. -Encore quelques jours de cette position et je me fais sauter la -cervelle ou je m'engage dans la marine.—Pardonne-moi ces plaintes! -C'est le cri de la <i>fin</i>."</p></div> - -<p>Like Colline, he punned even in his misery.</p> - -<p>Letters of this doleful nature do not throw a very gay light upon the -Bohemian market-place, where there was high competition for a small -custom and prices ruled low. They contain a truth which no consideration -of Bohemia can omit, but it was not the whole truth, as Murger himself -testifies in his stories. It was a life of good days as well as bad, -even in the leanest years, or "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" could never -have been written. Murger himself had already begun to hand some small -wares over his counter. Rodolphe, the poet, it will be remembered, did -not disdain to edit a small fashion paper called <i>L'Écharpe d'Iris</i>, in -which, to Colline's extravagant delight, he inserted the philosopher's -articles on metaphysics. This was a direct touch from life, for Bohemia -in more than one instance lent its pen to trade. There was a certain -Charles Vincent<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> who edited two papers of the leather trade, <i>Le -Moniteur de la Cordonnerie</i> and the <i>Halle aux Cuirs</i>. In his editorial -capacity he retained all the new pairs of boots and shoes sent in by -advertisers, and with these he often paid his contributors. Murger in -1843 edited <i>Le Moniteur de la Chapellerie</i>, the industrial fruits of -which were, no doubt, less profitable, but even a few hats and a few -francs a month were of considerable value in Bohemia. They were, of -course, nothing like the editorial profits of to-day. Receipts were -extremely precarious, when, even on a well-written literary paper like -<i>L'Artiste</i>, the application of a contributor for payment caused a -considerable rummaging in tills and pockets before twenty-five francs -could be found <i>dans la boutique</i>.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Yet small change was enough to -stand a Bohemian holiday, and Murger's gloomy letters must be discounted -by balancing them against Rodolphe's expedition to Versailles with -Mademoiselle Laure after he had ransacked Paris for the five francs -necessary to do that expedition in sufficient style. It would be absurd -to suppose that Murger, with Nadar, Schann, and a <i>grisette</i> or two, did -not sometimes invade the Chaumière in a joyous band or wake from sleep -the serious inhabitants of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne.</p> - -<p>At the same time, howsoever the balance of pleasure and pain be struck, -it is clear that happy memories<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> of this Bohemia could only remain to -those for whom it was only a necessary stage in life and not a -death-trap. This tendency to poetic melancholy and the painful slowness -with which he worked might have caused Henry Murger to sink for ever -like many of his friends. He was saved, in the first instance, by -Champfleury, who, when he was finally sold up in the Rue de la Tour -d'Auvergne, took him to live in the Rue de Vaugirard and induced him to -abandon poetry for prose. Jules Husson-Fleury, who was born at Laon in -1821 and became a well-known writer under the name of Champfleury, a -great collector of prints and porcelain, on which he wrote some valuable -monographs, and finally the director of the Sèvres manufactory, passed -through Bohemia during the same years as Murger, and in his "Souvenirs -et Portraits de Jeunesse" records many lively experiences. He first came -to Paris as shop-boy and assistant in a bookseller's shop where, as I -have already said, the future painter Chintreuil was in the same -service. Champfleury lost his place for reading the books on his errands -instead of delivering them to the customers, but during this year 1839 -he saw something of Murger and the colony of the brothers Desbrosses. He -then left Paris for a year or two, and returned when Murger was living -in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, though the acquaintance was not at -once renewed. It was approximately in 1845 that they went to live -together in the Rue de Vaugirard, after Champfleury<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> had met Murger -again in the hospital. They did not by any means leave Bohemia; in fact, -there is reason to suppose that to some extent the character of Marcel -was drawn from Champfleury. They wrote a vaudeville together which was -never accepted, and attacked the difficult art of writing stories. -Murger was able to place some of his work in <i>L'Artiste</i>, the editor of -which was Arsène Houssaye, and in 1846 the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" -began to come out in <i>Le Corsaire</i>. They were poorly enough paid at the -time, but their dramatisation by Barrière in 1849 proved a huge success, -and from that time onwards Murger settled down to more serious work and -a less disorderly life.</p> - -<p>But I am anticipating Champfleury's memories of the last days of -Bohemia. In his view, at any rate so far as Murger and he were -concerned, the indolence of Bohemia has been much exaggerated. "In -reality," he says, "work was the basis of our life." They had a joint -library, to which Murger supplied the poets and Champfleury the -prose-writers. The latter read voraciously to educate himself, but -Murger chiefly thumbed the pages of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset; he -took regular doses of Shakespeare in a French translation, traces of -which appear in "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," but he had little -knowledge of other classic authors. He worked with extraordinary -difficulty; a page of prose cost him a night's work and intense -intellectual labour, for "Murger n'était plein que de son<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> cÅ“ur." -Champfleury, for all his friendship, was a shrewd critic when he -observed that his whole vision was introspective: "He swept the same -chimney so often that in the end the plaster came off and the bricks -fell down"; or again: "Besides his little library, his belongings -consisted of worn white gloves, a velvet mask, and a withered bouquet -hung on the walls. All Murger's work lies in his memories—some faded -flowers, a meeting at the Bal de l'Opéra, a heart-ache."</p> - -<p>Certain disorders of Bohemia are not excused by Champfleury, -particularly that of not paying debts. His friend Fauchéry, an engraver -who afterwards went to seek his fortune in Australia, induced him at -first to accept the Bohemian code, which was:</p> - -<p>1. Never to pay one's rent.</p> - -<p>2. To conduct one's removals by the window.</p> - -<p>3. To consider all bootmakers, tailors, hatters, and restaurant-keepers -as members of Mr. Credit's family.</p> - -<p>Some went so far as to maintain that after a clandestine removal through -the window no piece of furniture which had passed the gutter in the -middle of the street could be reclaimed by the proprietor. This less -creditable attitude of Bohemia, which is sufficiently prominent in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," was repudiated with some shame in after -years by many of Murger's friends. In the book Rodolphe pays his debts -when he settles down, and we have it on the authority of Delvau that -Schann (Schaunard), who eventually kept a respectable<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> toy-shop, and the -original of Musette, who married a chemist, took in their later days a -more usual view of money matters. Champfleury confesses that he himself -was saved by an amiable girl, who for a time became the divinity of his -garret. Unlike Mimi and Musette, she had a horror of debt and -vagabondage and inspired him with a pleasure in his own humble hearth, -so that he gradually detached himself from his comrades, who were for -the most part so ill provided for in the matter of lodging that their -chief workroom was a <i>café</i>, where they arrived at nine in the morning, -to leave at midnight. They read the newspapers, played at dominoes or -<i>tric-trac</i>, and occasionally did a little work. Fauchéry, in -particular, caused considerable surprise among the regular customers by -bringing his whole engraving apparatus and solemnly setting to work. -Some respect certainly is due to the proprietors of these little -eating-houses who so gallantly put up with and gave credit to this noisy -and not very profitable <i>clientèle</i>, who were capable of perpetrating -all the outrages committed by Rodolphe and the rest in their constant -asylum, the Café Momus.</p> - -<p>Champfleury says little of the amiable goddess who rescued him from -vagabondage except that she left him, like Mimi, because she grew tired -of cheap muslin, but in another chapter he gives some account of two -other idols of Bohemia whom he calls Mademoiselle M. and Mademoiselle P. -Mademoiselle M. was dark and merry,<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> a thorough coquette who laughed at -wounded hearts; Mademoiselle P. was fair and melancholy, always in tears -for the last lover who had left her. A generation of Bohemians were -their lovers, poets and painters especially. As the generation grew up -the divinities grew wiser, and Mademoiselle M. was the first to do a -little mental arithmetic. For her own friends who had a future the days -of idleness were over; there was no future for her either among the -stranded remainder or in a new generation. Accordingly she departed to -more profitable spheres. Mademoiselle P. stayed a little longer, still -loving her poets, and weeping <i>toutes les larmes de son corps</i> to find -that she had a too formidable rival in the desire for fame which watched -at the door of her lovers' hearts, till finally she found a worthy man -who was no poet to love her and eventually to marry her. Mademoiselle -M., meanwhile, had made by her conquests quite a respectable capital, -with which one fine day she set sail for Algiers. Unhappily she left -Marseilles in a steamer which sank with all hands, so that she and her -gold came to rest at the bottom of the sea—a sad story from which -Champfleury in an unworthy moment makes some show of drawing a moral. -Neither of these young women can be identified with Murger's heroines. -Musette, as I have said, married a chemist; Phémie Teinturière, -Schaunard's choice, was according to Delvau, a not over-respectable -person resembling a heroine of Paul de Kock; as for Mimi,<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> Delvau -asserts that Murger loved her while he wrote the "Scènes de la Vie de -Bohème," and that her life and wretched death are matters of fact. -However, that we may not be too lugubrious let me add that I have read -in the French equivalent of "Notes and Queries" a statement that she -cheerfully lived to keep a stall in the market.</p> - -<p>One more bead in this string of scattered "facts," and the hungerers for -documentary evidence must go away satisfied. The disorder of Bohemia -requires no emphasis, but it is curious to note that the persons in whom -its more orderly elements were incarnated were Champfleury himself and -the original of that odd figure, Carolus Barbemuche, the solemn young -tutor who in Murger's story glances so enviously at the <i>cénacle</i> of -Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel in the Café Momus, who saves them from -disaster by paying for their reckless Christmas Eve supper, who demands -so humbly the privilege of being admitted to the clan, who serves so -long and expensive an apprenticeship and gives such a splendid festival -on his reception, even to the length of lending all his own presentable -clothes to his guests for the occasion. Carolus Barbemuche was drawn, -much to his disgust, from Charles Barbara, an obscure writer of -fantastic stories, who joined Murger's Bohemia after acting as tutor to -two boys. He had a face like a sphinx, rarely smiled, and seemed to be -afraid of the wild jokes of his friends. Unlike the rest, he lived -almost a hermit's<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> life, receiving nobody in his garret, and retiring -there every night neither to read nor to write, but to think, a queer -occupation for a Bohemian. Of him Champfleury writes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"He and I represented order in a group doomed to disorder; we were -the <i>bourgeois</i> of Bohemia, as much by our ambitions as our manner -of living. The details of one day of our life, which continued in -the same way for ten years, will show the succession of our studies -and our labours. Rising very early, dashing from my bed to my -table, I used to write till nine o'clock. An hour sufficed me for -breakfast and a walk to the library, where I worked till twelve; -there I used to meet Barbara, whom I took to the public lectures at -the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, or the Jardin des Plantes. Two -lectures, an hour each, exhausted our attention, and, resuming our -walk, we arrived at Schann's temple of music, exclusively -consecrated to quartets. Two hours of music every day, without -counting piano trios three times a week at another house, made us -able to read all the chamber music of the German masters.... -Barbara was the finest instrumentalist in our band; son and brother -of distinguished musicians, he had received in early youth -excellent violin lessons, the fruit of which was not lost later, -and he brought to the leading of a quartet a restrained emotion -which is to be found in some pages of his writings."</p></div> - -<p>It is an unexpectedly pretty glimpse into a part of Bohemia where Murger -was not at home. When the quartets took place in a little square of the -Quartier<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> Latin, students and <i>grisettes</i> came to listen before the open -window, and workpeople on every story put out their heads to watch for -the arrival of the musicians. Murger's disreputable Schaunard, with his -symphony on <i>L'influence du bleu dans la musique</i>, was always, I must -confess, my favourite; but to discover that he played the quartets of -Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn for two hours a day -with Barbemuche and Marcel—well, it was an intoxicating vision. -Schaunard, who had a passion for lobsters, the composer (in his fleshly -form of Schann) of a famous drinking song, as second violin in a -Beethoven quartet—oh pleasant, pleasant fellow, who truly deserved to -come into the comfortable harbour of a toy-shop!</p> - -<p>Marcel, so far as he was Champfleury, found a haven too, and lived till -1889. Colline retired to found a new religion in Switzerland, and -Rodolphe-Murger, though he lingered for some years in the band of -artists and writers who haunted the <i>brasserie</i> where Courbet raised the -temple of realism, finally turned his back on dissipation and settled at -Marlotte, even now a charming village near Fontainebleau. His chief -recreation there was hunting, an occupation quite innocuous to the game, -if it be true that a certain hare survived his attentions for a whole -season, and when an unwary keeper shot it one misty afternoon, he -exclaimed with genuine compunction, "Tiens, c'est le lièvre de M. -Murger!" In 1861 he came to die in Paris of arteritis,<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> and all the -literary world visited his bedside. He died two days after his admission -to the hospital, exclaiming, "Pas de musique! Pas de bruit! Pas de -Bohème!" Bohemia, indeed, had long been dead, and in his last moments he -may have recognized that it was well. There was no longer room for it in -a busier, a better-swept world. In its golden age Bohemia did no more -than share the imperfections of all human institutions. It had virtues, -a liberty, a pride, and an ideal of its own. Murger had seen the beauty -become a slattern, pretty no doubt beneath her smuts, gay in the midst -of her sorrows, but free by tolerance, not by protest, her pride almost -in the dust and her ideals in the possession of others. In the words -which Théodore Pelloquet spoke over his grave, Murger belonged to an -evil generation:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Il appartenait à une mauvaise génération, à une génération -vieillie avant l'heure, et, malgré sa vieillesse prématurée, sans -expérience, sans enthousiasme et sans colère, ayant de la vanité et -pas du tout d'orgueil, une vanité niaise, puérile, qui se manifeste -surtout par l'affectation d'une ironie mesquine, en face de tous -les enthousiasmes et de toutes les grandes causes; à une -génération, en un mot, qui laissa périr dans ses mains le -magnifique héritage que lui avaient légué les hommes de 1830."</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI<br /><br /> -AMUSEMENTS OF BOHEMIA</h2> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> pageant of 1830 has passed, and our gaze has been directed to its -Bohemian ingredients with the purpose of noting the particular marks and -qualities which distinguished Bohemia, and how their particular -manifestations were conditioned and varied by the progress of the years. -Looking out of the window of the present, we have been unable at any -moment to call a halt, lest we should lose a comprehensive view of the -main development. Now that this view has been gained it will do no harm -to send the procession once more before the mind's eye, that we may fix -at leisure any less important details which may seem in themselves -attractive. One of the most happy qualities of the Bohemian nature is -its capacity for amusing itself. Real boredom and lackadaisical idleness -do not come into the list of its shortcomings. The passionate Romantics, -indeed, fashionably suffered from "spleen" and "ennui," they proclaimed -a "cÅ“ur usé comme l'escalier d'une fille de joie," but the Bohemian, -so far as he indulged in these peculiarities, was amusing himself. To -him "spleen" and "ennui" were part of the game which he embraced with -enthusiasm<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> and in which he desired to excel; yet they were parts to -which, as a general rule, he did not pay too much attention, preferring -the more positive and assertive sides of Romanticism. Neither Gautier -nor Gérard de Nerval nor Rodolphe nor Schaunard presents himself to the -imagination as suffering from boredom. An unfailing capacity for amusing -oneself and finding amusement in one's fellow-men is an essential -Bohemian <i>trait</i>. The preceding chapters have not been wholly devoid of -indications as to the way in which these talents were exercised by the -Bohemian clans, but it was necessary to insist rather on the diversions -which characterized the <i>particular</i> spirit of each brotherhood than on -the general opportunities which they all enjoyed with slight variation. -The field is now open without restriction, and it will not be amiss to -take a glimpse here and there at the Bohemian enjoying his leisure, if -only to add a few vivid touches that will enliven the background of the -picture. The work of Bohemia can always be taken for granted; artistic -endeavour, whether actively or indolently pursued, varies but little in -external feature; the change, the colour, the tragedy and comedy are -only to be found within the artist's mind; but the amusement of Bohemia, -so far from being hidden, courts publicity. It takes its colour, too, so -largely from the changing world around that there is great pictorial -value in its easily observable vicissitudes.<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> For that reason I devote -this chapter to the subject of its title without further apology, but -only with the caution that here the accidents rather than the essentials -of Bohemia are regarded. The privilege of amusement is open to -everybody, but to see what Bohemia made of its privileges in that -respect is, perhaps, to quicken it for the imagination by an extra -spark.</p> - -<p>Precisians might say that dress hardly comes under the head of -amusements and that on certain views it is more properly included in the -category of necessities or of nuisances. Yet there is no doubt that for -all women—and for more men than would admit it—to be well dressed is -an enjoyment, a term only differing from amusement by a smaller -suggestion of possible frivolity. It is quite a sufficient warrant, at -all events, for giving dress a small part in this chapter; besides, the -costume of any individual or society is both a sure indicator of -qualities and an apt focus for judgment. In England, the very home of -illustrated books and papers, it is not necessary to say much in evoking -the costume of a past age, so that the subject may be treated quite -shortly, especially as regards the men of Bohemia, whose dress was too -often a deplorable tragedy. When Marcel went to Musette's party with -"Mathusalem" buttoned up to the neck over a blue shirt dotted with the -figures of a boar-hunt he was, as Murger says, "dressed in the worst -taste possible." In such a case there is no more to be said; his -appearance<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> would vary little from age to age. To the Bohemian in his -lean days, certainly, it would be an insult to impute enjoyment of his -tattered wardrobe. Those who most enjoyed dressing, without a doubt, -were the Bohemian generation who cheered "Hernani" with such frenzy, for -they made their <i>pourpoints</i>, felt sombreros, Robespierre waistcoats, -and Phrygian caps effective details in the general Romantic -demonstration and, as such, matters of intense pleasure. But these -extravagances have already caught our attention; they were part of that -frantic desire for novelty and colour which was a symptom of <i>le mal -romantique</i>; their proper complement was that rage for fancy-dress balls -which broke out shortly after 1830 and laid every nationality and period -under contribution for picturesque costumes. So far as the men are -concerned, it need only be pointed out that the general dress of the -time—against which Bohemia stood out at first and into which it -gradually faded—was that of tight pantaloons with straps, long coats -with full skirts and accentuated waists, full cravats, lavish jewellery, -and high hats in a bewildering variety of shapes, cylindrical, conical, -inverted conical, curly, straight, with broad brims and with scarce a -brim at all—the civilian uniform, in fact, of our own late Georgian and -early Victorian era. It was a dress that only a few could wear with -distinction; on the rest it wrinkled and puffed in inevitable ugliness. -A Roger de Beauvoir<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> could look immaculately moulded, but one has only -to glance at the caricatures of Traviés, Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni -to see how unequivocally hideous were the clothes of an average man. To -be out at elbows in this exacting fashion was indeed to be a sorry -sight, and one can well imagine poor Lucien de Rubempré to have been in -his provincial attire fair game for the sneers of Rastignac and de -Marsay. Still, even the Bohemian had a new suit at times, and it lights -the memory of Arsène Houssaye, Camille Rogier, Murger, Champfleury, and -the rest to recall that it was not for comfortable lounge suits and -flannels that they got into debt, but for correct suits of "tails," -flowery waistcoats, top-hats, and patent leather boots. It gives a -quaint touch of decorum to the picture of their wildest excesses.</p> - -<p>Women entered Bohemia as guests rather than as inhabitants, and to the -fair visitors conformity to fashion was anything but a trifle. To deck -themselves fittingly was their constant amusement, and one in which they -took good care that their swains should be sharers. The female dress of -the time is well known to us from early pictures of Queen Victoria and -the paintings of Winterhalter; there are few, too, who at one time or -another have not seen some of Gavarni's beautiful fashion plates. The -Empire style had entirely disappeared, and the accent was in 1830 laid -chiefly on the waist. The shoulders were sloping and wide,<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> the sleeves -so voluminous that by 1836 they were like miniature balloons, the skirt -very wide and full, ending above the ankles. The waist and head were -made to seem very small in proportion, so that two loaves placed one on -top of the other would have made a very good caricature of a woman's -figure at any time during the golden age of Bohemia. The hair was -elaborately done to frame a pretty face daintily under a large -poke-bonnet. It was pre-eminently the day of "fragile" women: nothing in -their costume seemed made for hard wear. Cydalise or Victorine, as she -swung in the hammock among the gallants of the Impasse du Doyenné, would -have kicked a little cross-laced foot out from ethereal folds of -flowered muslin, and gathered a gauzy scarf enticingly round bare -shoulders. Fashions were indeed expensive for a fond lover's pocket, but -at least he was never at a loss what to buy for his mistress, so many -were the little accessories to the Graces' toilet. He was never wrong, -for instance, in offering a piece of gay ribbon, for there were bows -everywhere, on the bosom, on the sleeves, and, with long dazzling -streamers, round the waist. There was no end to their variety and -combination of colours, brilliant and pale; even the crudest Scottish -tartans were not considered amiss, as a certain dress in the London -Museum will show the incredulous. If ribbon was too paltry, a man in a -really generous mood would present a cashmere shawl, an expensive and -much<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> appreciated luxury. The manipulation of shawls on frail, rounded -little persons, who, in England at least, still fainted at will and -indulged in the vapours, was a matter of some art. Balzac, in one of his -short stories, asserts that a <i>femme du monde</i> could be distinguished -from the actress or the <i>grisette</i> by the handling of her <i>cachemire</i> -alone. There was only one great change in woman's dress between the -earlier and later days of Bohemia, and that was in the sleeves, which -dwindled suddenly as if the balloons had been pricked, and became either -closely fitting or almost disappeared into two little frilly bands. In -fact, during the forties, before skirts began to be exaggerated on -horse-hair paddings and verge upon the crinoline, female costume was as -nearly natural as it can be if corsets be granted. Nothing can be more -charming than the appearance of the Queen of the Belgians in her -portrait by Winterhalter which hangs in the gallery at Versailles. She -wears a red velvet dress, cut simply as to the <i>corsage</i>, with the skirt -reaching the ground in full, stately folds: there is no extravagance of -bows and frills, only a little lace at the bosom and sleeves. So, if we -would picture Mimi or Musette, as they were dressed for that memorable -day at Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the new muslin frocks made by their own -hands, we must imagine dainty little women, looking as if a breath would -blow them away, their pretty cheeks showing between two bewitching -clusters of<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> ringlets, straw bonnets with not too large brims upon their -heads, tied with a coquettish ribbon, gowns of flowered muslin, light, -simple, and flowing, and scarfs pinned round their sloping shoulders or -held in place by mittened hands. Gavarin drew them to the life time and -time again, and they were considerably more attractive than any would-be -<i>Bohémiennes</i> of our time in their rough, untidy tweeds or amorphous -"rational" dress.</p> - -<p>From the amusement of clothing the body it is an easy transition to that -of refreshing it. Eating and drinking, like dress, may from a certain -point of view come under the head of necessities, but indulgence in good -cheer when possible is a habit of young people of which a Bohemian was -by no means contemptuous. A word, therefore, about his particular haunts -among the thousand <i>cafés</i> and restaurants of Paris will not be out of -season. After 1830 the great houses in the Palais Royal had fallen out -of fashion, and the four leading restaurants of Paris were on the -boulevard. Bohemians, it is true, were not often to be found within -them, but in the golden age, when Bohemia was nearer to the dandies and -<i>viveurs</i>, it would at least have been possible that in a moment of -extravagance some Bohemian friend should have accompanied Roger de -Beauvoir into the Café de Paris, the Café Riche, the Café Hardy, or the -Café Anglais. The Café de Paris was opposite Tortoni's, which stood at -the end of the Rue Taitbout. Besides being the home of the<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> aristocratic -<i>petit cercle</i>, it was renowned for its witty conversation and its -general air of luxury. Since it was favoured by the aspirants to -smartness, as well as the perfect examples, its society was less select -than that of the Café Riche, at the corner of the Rue Lepeletier, or the -Café Anglais, which still remains in its old position. There was a quiet -solidity about the Café Anglais, in particular, which gave it a peculiar -air of distinction, though its company was gay enough at supper-time. It -was especially famous for its roast meat and its grills, though in these -matters the Café Hardy, at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, ran it close. -Hardy was an English cook who invented the <i>déjeuner à la fourchette</i>, -and popularized it by setting up the first silver grill in Paris. -Customers chose their own cutlet or steak and saw it cooked before their -eyes. At all these four the prices were very high, and with regard to -two of them it was said: "On doit être riche pour dîner au Café Hardy, -et hardi pour dîner au Café Riche." However, the chief haunt for -Bohemians with money to spend was the Rocher de Cancale, where it was -easier to be uproarious without offending the proprieties. This famous -restaurant still stands in the dirty, provincial Rue Montorgueil, in the -midst of small shops whose wares overflow on to the pavement. The -stately ornamentation of dark painted wood is still visible on its upper -stories, but the specimens of edibles in its ground-floor windows tell -too plainly<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> to what depths it has sunk. It is no longer a possible home -for Rastignac and his boon companions, nor would it tempt Arsène -Houssaye to entertain there the brethren of <i>la Bohème galante</i>, for it -merely plies the trade of the convenient <i>marchand de vin</i> in a rather -squalid quarter. The Rocher de Cancale had declined already during the -later days of Bohemia, and in Murger's day they repaired on <i>jours de -liesse</i> to the Café de l'Odéon, Hill's Tavern in the Boulevard des -Capucines, or the Cabaret Dinochan at the corner of the Rue de Navarin. -The first of these was, in particular, the haunt of Baudelaire and his -friends, where the unfortunate Hégésippe Moreau made his brief -acquaintance with the main stream of Bohemia towards the end of his -days, which had been mainly passed in a backwater. Hill's Tavern was one -of the many chop-houses in the English style that flourished in Louis -Philippe's Paris—only the Petit Lucas, a charming place for a quiet -dinner, remains to-day—to cater for the down-at-elbows Englishmen, -jockeys, and trainers, of whom there was always a certain number. At -supper-time, however, it was invaded by Bohemia, and was often so full -that its doors had to be closed. One of its peculiarities was that its -private rooms were named after Shakespeare, Byron, and other great -poets. The Café Dinochan, according to Delvau,<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> was the ground on -which a great many<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> small papers of the day were started. Monselet, -Nadar, Fauchéry, and Champfleury were among its customers, and Murger -died in debt to its proprietor for twelve hundred francs, for it was -said of this worthy creditor: "On dîne très-bien chez lui quand on a -quarante sous dans une poche—et dix francs dans l'autre." Yet the full -apparatus of a restaurant was not necessary to the gaiety of Bohemian -suppers, for in scanty days they made just as merry in the shops of one -or two bakeries on rolls and warm milk. The Boulangerie Cretaine in the -Quartier Latin was famous for its milk rolls and for the brilliant -conversation of Privat d'Anglemont, who, though it was against his -principle to get into debt, ran up a bill there for halfpenny rolls of -six hundred francs. The other famous baker was the <i>pâtissier</i> Pitou, by -the Porte Montmartre, where a crowd of Bohemians used to congregate -after the midnight closing of the <i>cafés</i>. In the back shop was a table -running round three sides of the square, and at this "piano," as it was -called, the quaint figure of Guichardet presided. Guichardet, whose "nez -vermeil et digne" was celebrated in one of Banville's triolets, was a -Bohemian of the type of Balzac's Comte de la Palférine, one who had -voluntarily dropped out of the race of life while preserving all his -dignity and pride. He passed his days in amiable vagabondage, but -preserved "a perfume of exquisite politeness and witty impertinence -which made him the most delightful<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> companion in the world." So says -Delvau, according to whom he was the only man left in France who really -knew how to say "Femme charmante!"</p> - -<p>So far I have mainly mentioned the haunts of Bohemians with the means -and inclination for a certain amount of self-indulgence. But in Bohemia -occasions preponderated when indulgence in anything beyond bare -necessities was an impossibility. The left bank swarmed with cheap -refuges for those who had hearty appetites and only a few pence. There -was Viot's for the poorest of the poor; Dagneaux's or Magny's in the Rue -Contrescarpe-Dauphine—rather superior houses where it was possible to -procure a semblance of good cheer; and the Cabaret of Mère Cadet outside -the Barrière Montparnasse, where Schaunard had his first meeting with -Colline over the stewed rabbit with two heads. This last had a garden -which ran along the Montparnasse cemetery, and under the shade of its -dusty shrubs not only literary Bohemians but nearly all the young actors -and actresses of the Théâtre Montparnasse and the Théâtre du Luxembourg -made their scanty meals. You might as well have asked for sphinx there -as chicken, says Delvau, the staple dishes being stewed rabbit and -<i>choucroute garnie</i>. To give a longer catalogue of such places would be -neither instructive nor amusing, and their types are easily enough found -in the Paris of to-day. There are two, however, that call for special -mention, for fiction has<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> carried their fame beyond the days of their -material existence. No reader of Balzac's "Illusions Perdues" can have -forgotten the description of the cheap eating-house at the corner of the -Place de la Sorbonne and the Rue Neuve de Richelieu, with the small -panes of glass of its front window, its comforting announcement of <i>pain -à discrétion</i>, its long tables like those of a monastic refectory, its -varieties of cow's flesh and veal, and the hurried air of its diners, -who came there to eat and not to loiter. This famous house, where a -dinner of three dishes with a <i>carafon</i> of wine or a bottle of beer cost -ninepence, where Lucien de Rubempré met Lousteau and made the -acquaintance of d'Arthez and his virtuous friends, was the restaurant of -Flicoteaux, no product of Balzac's imagination, but a name known to all -the strugglers for fame and fortune. It was a sure ground on which to -observe Bohemia, not indeed in its greatest indigence, but on the days -when there was at least no margin. Thackeray mentions it in his "Paris -Sketch-Book," and there is a passage in Lytton Bulwer's "France" which -vividly gives the impression produced by Flicoteaux on an English eye:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Enter [he says] between three and four o'clock, and take your seat -at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already -occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long hair, -falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the -eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> midnight vigil; -his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the -wrists; his trousers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty -black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his -thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is a -native of the South, pale and swarthy: his long black locks, parted -from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed -with a slight moustache, and the semblance of a beard gives to his -meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round -the room, with their thin, meagre portions of meat and bread, their -pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth -of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or -science."</p></div> - -<p>Flicoteaux has long been swept away, and buildings of the Sorbonne now -occupy its site. Gone, too, these many years, is the Café Momus, which -stood in a back street by the old church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, -the hostelry celebrated by so many exploits of Murger's four heroes in -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." It was here that Schaunard and Colline -collected Rodolphe for the Bohemian brotherhood, and it became their -home, not so much for meals, though it was the scene of their reckless -Christmas Eve supper which introduced the saviour Barbemuche, but rather -for the lighter <i>consommations</i> over which, by the French custom, they -could spend unlimited hours—a precious privilege when a cold garret was -the only alternative.<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> There was nothing fictitious about the Café -Momus; it was a real establishment serving some respectable shopkeepers -of the quarter, when by some mischance, from the good M. Momus' point of -view, it attracted the Bohemian horde of Murger, Champfleury, Nadar, -Schann, Wallon, and many of the other "Buveurs d'Eau." Even on Murger's -testimony, they must be admitted to have abused their privileges without -shedding any very great glory in return, and we may take as fairly true -the list of grievances which was drawn up by the proprietor against -Rodolphe and his friends, from which it appears that they spent the -whole day there from morning to midnight, making a desert round them -with their strident voices and extravagant conversation; that Rodolphe -carried off all the papers in the morning and complained if their bands -were broken, and that by shouting every quarter of an hour for <i>Le -Castor</i>, a journal of the hat trade edited by Rodolphe, the companions -had forced a subscription on the proprietor; that Colline and Rodolphe -played <i>tric-trac</i> all day, refusing to give up the table to other -people; that Marcel set up his easel in the <i>café</i>, and even went so far -as to invite models of both sexes; that Schaunard had expressed his -intention of bringing his piano there, and that Phémie Teinturière never -wore a bonnet when she came to meet him; that, not content with ordering -very little, the four friends presumed to make their<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> own coffee on the -premises; and that the waiter, corrupted by their influence, had seen -fit to address an amatory poem to the <i>dame du comptoir</i>. Murger puts a -touch of exaggeration into this complaint, but it is to be feared, -nevertheless, that no trifling <i>dossier</i> of misdemeanours could have -been compiled against the originals of Rodolphe, Marcel, and the rest. -We have it on Delvau's authority, at all events, that the profit of -their custom was quite disproportionate to its assiduity, when he tells -of their stratagem for obtaining asylum at small cost. The smallest -possible order was a <i>demi-tasse</i>, which consisted of a small cup of -coffee, four lumps of sugar, and a thimbleful of cognac; this cost five -sous, a sum of importance in Bohemia. The practice, therefore, was that -a certain student, Joannis Guigard, who was of the band, went in first, -ordered a <i>demi-tasse</i>, and went upstairs to consume it. Murger would -then arrive, ask if Guigard were upstairs, and run up. The rest followed -in succession with the same question till the <i>cénacle</i> was complete and -in a position to have a sip of coffee and some hours of warmth for -nothing. After a short while Momus grew tired of these troublesome -customers and formally gave them notice to quit. They accepted the -intimation, but vowed revenge. Accordingly, a few days later, one of the -band turned up with six wet-nurses in his train, while another brought -six funeral mutes. The rest of the band then arrived, and the Bohemian -spokesman,<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> probably Schann, delivered a flowery discourse upon the -affinity of life and death, with allusions to their guests' professions. -He wound up by telling the mutes to bury the Café Momus and take the -nurses as a reward. To make matters worse, he directed that the milk and -beer which had been ordered should be warmed as a mixture. The mutes and -nurses, furious at being thus deceived and insulted, broke into angry -expostulations, and, aided by the jests of the Bohemians, the -proceedings ended in a tremendous disturbance. Schann and two others -were arrested, and the next day Momus sold his business.</p> - -<p>The extent to which Bohemia, at its different phases, shared in the -various pastimes of Paris cannot be determined with any accuracy, so -much depended on individual taste and individual wealth. It is certain, -however, that after 1837 gambling was not a Bohemian distraction, for in -that year the public gaming-houses were closed. Before that time they -were such a popular institution that the early Bohemia cannot be -conceived to have entirely eschewed it. At the beginning of "La Peau de -Chagrin" Balzac draws a powerful picture of the wretched crowd that -haunted the Palais Royal, where Raphael de Valentin lost his last gold -coin at a single coup. There were no less than four gaming-houses in the -Palais Royal, Nos. 9, 113, 124, and 129, where the minimum stake was two -francs for roulette and five francs for trente-et-un. Besides the<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> -Palais Royal, there were Paphos, Frascati, and the select Cercle des -Étrangers. The popularity of gambling can be judged from the fact that -the Treasury profited annually by it to the extent of five and a half -million francs. Yet there is no record that the truly artistic members -of Bohemia, like Gautier or Houssaye, so wasted time or money, while -Murger and his friends were spared the temptation. In music, too, -Bohemia played no very great part, in spite of the devotion of -Champfleury, Barbara, and Schann to Beethoven's quartets. There was -plenty of fine music to be heard in Paris during the time: Habeneck was -introducing Beethoven's symphonies, Berlioz was revolutionizing -orchestration, while Liszt, Chopin, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, and de Bériot -were among the soloists. Certainly those Bohemians of the golden age who -had access to the <i>salons</i> of the Princess Belgiojoso or Madame de -Girardin must often have heard these great artists, but it is not to be -supposed that they were great supporters of concerts, unless it were of -the Concerts Musard. These concerts, which won great fame through the -personality of Musard, the conductor, began in 1833 in the Salle -Saint-Honoré;<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> their programmes were excellent and the prices low -enough to attract the least well off. Musard had a genius for making -<i>pot-pourris</i> of operatic tunes and for introducing new effects, -especially into dance music. His electric style<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> of conducting made the -Bals Musard far more popular than the great balls at the Opéra. He -contrived a wonderful quadrille, for instance, out of "Les Huguenots," -during which red lights were lit, tocsins pealed, tom-toms boomed, -screams resounded, and the whole illusion of a massacre was thrillingly -kept up. He also composed a <i>contre-danse</i> in the finale of which he -broke a chair, and his triumph was a certain galop in which he -discharged a pistol. This was thoroughly in keeping with the Romantic -spirit, and after its first performance he was publicly chaired round -the hall by the excited dancers. So far as pure music was concerned, -however, it appealed most to Parisians in the form of opera. Meyerbeer's -"Robert le Diable" and "Les Huguenots" produced frenzies of enthusiasm: -no Romantic, consequently no Bohemian of Gautier's day, could afford not -to have listened to them. Rossini's great vogue began at the same time, -while Donizetti and Auber shared the honours of light opera till -Offenbach appeared to carry all before him. Musical Bohemia was well -educated, if not in composition, at least in execution, when it was -possible to hear Duprez, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, Grisi, Mario, -Persiani, and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. The ballet, too, with Carlotta -Grisi, Taglioni, and Fanny Elssler, was an additional attraction at the -Opéra. The devotion of <i>la Bohème galante</i> to the <i>corps de ballet</i> has -appeared in an earlier chapter, and it was a devotion shared by<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> most -masculine society. Murger's Bohemia flourished after the greatest -operatic enthusiasms, which its more classically inclined members -probably despised; but their exchequers were not of the sort to allow -for tickets at the grand opera, though they turned up in force at the -light operas of the Théâtre Bobino. At this little theatre, more -properly called the Théâtre du Luxembourg, there was a continuous uproar -made by Bohemians and students. When this grew too unbearable the -manager would appear in his dressing-gown and protest that the police -would arrive if the respectable inhabitants of the quarter were -disturbed; whereupon the whole audience struck up as one man Grétry's -air "Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de la famille?" accompanied by the -wheezy orchestra and conducted by the manager himself. At such a scene -Schaunard and Marcel must often have assisted.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, in the eyes of Bohemia, the glory of the opera paled -entirely before that of the drama. There was not one Bohemian with any -literary talent who did not try to write a play—nay, many -plays—tragedies in alexandrines, comedies, or vaudevilles; and when -they were not writing plays they were haunting the theatres as dramatic -critics, selling their articles simply for the sake of a free entry, -unless, like Lucien's immoral set, they added the profits of blackmail. -From the second <i>cénacle</i> to the end of Murger's Bohemia there was no -end so generally pursued<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> as dramatic composition. Bouchardy and -Augustus Mackeat were dramatists, so were Ourliac, Arsène Houssaye, and -Gérard de Nerval; Gautier was a dramatic critic; Murger and Champfleury -failed as vaudevillists; and it is quite likely that Rodolphe's -magnificent drama, "Le Vengeur," had its counterpart in reality. The -"poète échevelé" and the humble <i>conteur</i> alike turned their eyes -continuously towards the stage, besieging luckless managers without -cease. The reason of this was partly, as may be supposed, that a -successful play, then as to-day, gave far quicker and more splendid -pecuniary returns for labour than any other form of literary -composition. A concrete instance of that is the case of Murger himself, -who was set on his legs entirely by the sudden vogue of the dramatized -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème." But there was another reason at least as -strong, far deeper, and more honourable. The stage, as I have already -pointed out, was the battlefield of the Romantic struggle. "Hernani" -brought home the new truths to the public far more vividly than any -novel or poem could have done; every night they were declaimed before -compelled attention. It is not surprising, then, that the stage played -so great a part in the amusements of Bohemia. It was, with one other, -the chief of their pastimes. For them to listen to "Chatterton," the -"Tour de Nesle," or "Antony" was not only a distraction, it was a -frantic excitement which made their blood seethe<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> almost painfully and -sent geysers of hot eloquence from their lips as they munched the hot -rolls of the Boulangerie Cretaine. These young enthusiasts were not -stinted of good fare. Mademoiselle Mars, Marie Dorval, Rachel and Judith -appeared at the Français during these eighteen years; at the -Folies-Dramatique Frédéric Lemaître created with enormous success the -part of Robert Macaire; while at the Funambules Gaspard Deburau was -winning eternal fame as the incomparable Pierrot. There were a host of -other theatres besides, the Variétés, Porte Saint-Martin, Odéon, not to -mention smaller ones, managed for the most part by men of taste, -supplied with plays by men with some pretension to talent, and -criticized by unsparing critics, from Jules Janin downwards, who knew -what they wanted and did not hesitate to speak when they did not get it. -In the stage Bohemia found not only amusement and inspiration but part -of its livelihood: it lived next door to that special world composed of -actors and actresses. Yet, though Bohemians went to supper with -Mademoiselle Mars, Dumas was very much at home with Marie Dorval, Roger -de Beauvoir played pranks with Bache, and Rodolphe had a love affair -with Mademoiselle Sidonie, the two worlds were definitely separated. In -fact, the life of dramatic artists, whatsoever Bohemian flavouring it -may have, has always had a mysterious taste of its own, incapable of -mixture with any other blend of<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> artistic life, so that, interesting as -it may have been in Paris during these years, its omission from these -pages has been intentional.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_274_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_274_sml.jpg" width="550" height="324" alt="Bal Masqué à l'Opéra" title="Bal Masqué à l'Opéra" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Bal Masqué à l'Opéra</span> -</p> - -<p>The one other amusement—a pure pastime involving no material -profit—which was particularly popular in Bohemia was dancing. In this -respect Bohemia was no exception from the rest of Parisian society, for -in all classes there was an inextinguishable passion for the dance. But -the Bohemian, obeying only his own laws of social propriety, was in a -more favourable position for taking full advantage of all public -opportunities for this exercise and of all the <i>agréments</i> in the way of -casual intercourse with both sexes which it implied. All the year round -there were public balls given in Paris, at which the Bohemian was in his -element, giving rein to his inventive humour, his high spirits, and his -gift of seductive gallantry. During the first few years after 1830, the -golden age of Bohemia, the balls at the Opéra were the most frequented, -especially in the days of the carnival. There masks and dominoes covered -dancers of every rank in society, for even the <i>femme du monde</i> slipped -in unbeknown to her husband. This scene of utmost gaiety and brilliance, -of which Balzac gives a picture at the opening of "Splendeurs et Misères -des Courtisanes," was closely rivalled by the ball at the Variétés, at -which a still more feverish excitement reigned. Or if the Bohemian -preferred to make sure of a <i>grisette</i> as a partner he<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> went to the -Prado, the site of which was opposite the Palais de Justice, where, -under Pilodo, the famous conductor, he could join Louise la Balocheuse, -Angelina l'Anglaise, or Ernestine Confortable in the giddy whirl. The -waltz was recognized at this period, but the quadrille easily held the -place of honour, especially as it lent itself more freely to individual -invention, such as Ourliac's magnificent variation depicting the -grandeur and fall of Napoleon. It was through this licence in the -figures of the quadrille that the <i>chahut</i> and the <i>cancan</i> were -introduced by the rakish set among the <i>viveurs</i> which included Charles -de la Battut, Alton-Shee, Monnier, and the famous Chicard—a -leather-merchant who made a name by his grotesque costumes and wild -dances, the term <i>chicard</i>, which degenerated into <i>chic</i>, becoming a -general denomination for his imitators. I have not been able to arrive -at the difference between the <i>chahut</i> and the <i>cancan</i>, but both were -originally primitive dances indulged in by the lowest classes, quaint, -but in all probability perfectly decent. The rage for extravagance -during the early thirties changed them into formidable pantomimes of -violence, if not always of indecency, which every complete reveller -rendered with his own individual touch. Heine, in the course of one of -his articles in the <i>Augsburg Gazette</i>, said of the <i>cancan</i>:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"It must be regarded simply as a pantomime of Robert Macairedom. -Anybody who has a general idea<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> of the latter will understand those -indescribable dances, expressions of <i>persiflage</i> in dance, which -not only mock sexual relations, but civic relations too, all, in -fact, that is good and beautiful, every kind of enthusiasm, -patriotism, uprightness, faith, family feeling, heroism, divinity."</p></div> - -<p class="nind">Heine's view is rather too Teutonic, for the popularity of the <i>cancan</i> -was due to the high spirits of the Romantic enthusiasm, and its degree -of morality or immorality depended upon the individual dancer. Not much -harm can be imagined to have dwelt in the dance-<i>persiflage</i> of the -Impasse du Doyenné, whatever a Chicard or a Milord Arsouille may have -made of it. The feature of public balls, however, was certainly a -Dionysiac exaltation which culminated in the final <i>galop infernal</i>, as -it was called, into which Musard particularly infused a special fury. It -was less a dance than a stampede of maniacs, who rushed round the room, -men and women, clutching one another anyhow, wigs flying, tresses -waving, dresses rent from fair shoulders, all shrieking and shouting, -brandishing arms, kicking legs, and stamping heedlessly on those who -were unlucky enough to fall.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_276_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_276_sml.jpg" width="443" height="550" alt="The Galop Infernal" title="The Galop Infernal" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">The Galop Infernal</span> -</p> - -<p>The balls of the Opéra declined in attraction and became dull about -1836, but they were revived with still greater splendour two years -later, when Musard was made conductor and members of the ballet were -drafted in to enliven the company. Such balls, however,<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> became too -much public functions to suit the less splendid Bohemia of a later day, -which found diversion more suited to its pocket and its manners at the -Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas on the left bank. It was at such -places as these that Rodolphe and Marcel disported themselves, and -Schaunard was arrested for "chorégraphie trop macabre." The Chaumière -was a large garden on the Boulevard Montparnasse, a miniature edition of -Cremorne or Vauxhall, with a primitive shooting gallery, a skittle -alley, and switchback. It was open all day for students to promenade -after lectures and make their addresses to the <i>grisettes</i> working under -the trees. Its dances were very simple affairs; a few lamps and Chinese -lanterns, a small orchestra, a bar for lemonade and <i>galette</i> were all -that the management supplied, the fun, of which they had enough and to -spare, being the dancers' contribution.</p> - -<p>The Closerie des Lilas, though less generally popular than the -Chaumière, was more particularly associated with Bohemia than the -latter, for Murger, Vitu, Fauchéry, Théodore de Banville, and one or two -others of that set frequented it regularly, as a French writer<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> says, -"avec quelques comparses sans importance," among whom, no doubt, were -Mimi and Musette. This little dancing-hall began in 1838 as La -Chartreuse,<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> being so called because it was on the site of the old -Carthusian monastery in the Rue d'Enfer. It was in some sort the -trial-ground for those of the fair sex who aspired to become stars of -the Prado and the Chaumière. Privat d'Anglemont has described it in a -rare pamphlet as it was in its early days under its extraordinary -manager, Carnaud. As La Chartreuse it was the most primitive kind of -<i>guingette</i>, the dancing-place being a large marquee, into which one -descended by a steep flight of steps. On the left were an orchestra and -<i>café</i>, and the only ornaments were nine plaster statues representing -the Muses, which were handily adapted for supporting petroleum lamps on -their arms. "There," says Privat d'Anglemont, "decent dress was not <i>de -rigueur</i>; one came as one liked, or rather as one could—the women in -bonnets or, in default of other adornments, covered simply by their -hair, and the men in blouses. It certainly was the most original bar in -Paris. It had a physiognomy of its own, strange, quaint, even a little -burlesque, but it existed. Its population was to be seen nowhere else; -it seemed to exist only at the Chartreuse and for the Chartreuse. Since -this ball disappeared its population has completely vanished."</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_278_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_278_sml.jpg" width="550" height="348" alt="La Guinguette" title="La Guinguette" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">La Guinguette</span> -</p> - -<p>Everything about the Chartreuse was original, not only the dancers and -the dances but the orchestra, the music, and the manager. Every kind of -"percussion" was added to the usual instruments, the<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> noise of -money-bags, pistol shots, rows of explosive caps, resounding anvils, and -sheets of metal struck to represent the roaring of lions and tigers. All -the music was composed by Carnaud himself, who was conductor, first -violin, <i>restaurateur</i>, composer, and advertisement-writer in one. At -every special <i>fête</i> he invented a new quadrille and a new exotic word -to describe it, such as "la fête des vendanges, quadrille -déchirancochicandard," or "l'hôtel des haricots,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> avec accompaniments -de chaînes et de bruits de clefs, grand quadrille -exhilarandéliranchocnosophe."</p> - -<p>Carnaud was succeeded by the famous Bullier, who altered the name to the -Closerie des Lilas and replaced the simple marquee by an Oriental palace -with a garden, Moorish pavilions, billiard tables, swings, and a -pistol-shooting gallery. A decent orchestra was installed and four -admirable waiters. With these improvements the balls, held every Sunday, -Monday, and Thursday, began to attract the <i>beau monde</i> of the Quartier -Latin, and several of the dancers gained the coveted honour of a -<i>sobriquet</i>. There were Jeanne la Juive, for instance, Maria les Yeux -Bleus, Joséphine Pochardinette, and the literary Clémentine Pomponnette, -who used to show her admirers a farce she had written "dans les loisirs -que lui laissait l'amour." This transformation took place about 1847, -and it was then that one of<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> the Moorish pavilions was especially -consecrated to Murger's Bohemian set. It is needless to say that the -name of Bullier still remains in the Bal Bullier of to-day.</p> - -<p>One other popular ball must be mentioned, the Bal Mabille, which for so -long was one of the sights of Paris. This public ball was instituted by -Mabille, a dancing-master, in the Champs Elysées. The price of entrance -at first was fifty centimes, with an extra fee for each quadrille, and -in 1843 the whole of the dances were included in an initial sum of two -francs. The fame of the Bal Mabille was due first to its polkas, a dance -which became the rage at the time, and secondly to the most celebrated -of polka-dancers, Elise Sergent, known as La Reine Pomaré. Her dancing -was a revelation of fire and passion which won her recognition on the -very first evening of her appearance. Crowds came to see her dance, -articles were devoted to her by the journalists of the day, and Privat -d'Anglemont wrote a sonnet to her. Paris, in fact, went mad about her, -and she had many lovers, among whom, it is said, was Alphonse Karr, -which brings her into some kind of connexion with Bohemia. But Reine -Pomaré and her rival, Céleste Mogador, who also made her <i>début</i> at -Mabille, were too much on the plane of <i>grandes cocottes</i> for any real -relation with the Bohemia of their day. They might have danced for love -at the Impasse du Doyenné, but Schaunard and Marcel had nothing<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> to -offer them to compare with the splendour of the <i>viveurs</i> which was laid -at their feet. Bohemia found its pleasure at less expense and with less -restraint in the company of Mimi and Musette in a Moorish pavilion at -the Closerie des Lilas, where Colline's bad puns found appreciative -listeners and Schaunard's <i>pas de fascination</i> were greeted with -rapturous applause.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII<br /><br /> -THE PARIS OF BOHEMIA</h2> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i8"><i>Paris sombre et fumeux,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Où déjà , points brillants au front de maison ternes,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Luisent comme des yeux des milliers de lanternes;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Paris avec ses toits déchiquetés, ses tours</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui ressemblent de loin à des cous de vautours,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Et ses clochers aigus à flèche dentelée,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Comme un peigne mordant la nue échevelée.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i12">T<small>HÉOPHILE</small> G<small>AUTIER</small><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">The last chapter was devoted to certain accidental adjuncts of <i>la vie -de Bohème</i> by way of general illustration, though they consisted of -simple amusements common not only to the Parisians of the day but to -civilized society of most epochs. The present chapter, which I have -reserved till the last, might logically have claimed an earlier place, -for its subject, as I have already pointed out, is distinctive of the -society in which Bohemia played an important part. Bohemia, of course, -neither monopolized Paris nor even a portion of it, but the Paris of -Bohemia's florescence and decline was a unique background for these -events, a necessary condition, though temporary in itself, which<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> it -would pass the bounds of human possibility to reconstruct. Interesting -as it is to imagine correctly the dress of the Bohemian and his -mistress, the places where they dined, or the gardens where they danced, -the re-presentation of the city where they lived, so small, so -sensitively vibrant, so congested, so hopelessly out of date, except for -a few new patches, so dirty, so noisy, and so picturesque, ranks far -higher in importance. Yet, though I might have put this chapter first, I -choose to put it last because I cannot hope that it will be appreciated -by any but those who have already some memory of Paris and on whom the -spell of its fascination has, at least, been lightly cast. The general -description of Bohemian life may provide some entertainment to those who -know not Paris; for their sake I have sought not to break the general -interest. My story is now told, and I am free to call those who have -breathed, even for a moment, the quick breeze off the Seine or seen the -sunshine strike through the trees in the Tuileries Gardens, to stay with -me for a last look back upon that city of beauty and adventure which -calls, like the East, to those who love it. To have gained even a -superficial view of modern Paris, to have caught some of her accents and -contrasts—the radiance of the Bois de Boulogne, the vivacity of the -boulevards, the <i>cafés</i> overflowing on to the pavements, the view from -her bridges, the differences between the two banks, the mean alleys<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> -lurking mischievously at the back of splendid thoroughfares, the -broadest omnibuses comically invading the narrowest streets—is to have -formed some general notion with which an earlier Paris can be compared. -And with a reader who has penetrated deeper, whose nostrils yearn for -her indescribably subtle perfume, who knows the different aspects of her -streets from days of diligent tramping, who has seen her river blending -with her sky in a hundred harmonies, who has felt her moods and her -humours, finding like a true lover her blemishes as adorable as her -perfections, who has recognized her past in her present, and who, though -a stranger, has divined in ecstasy the wild throb of her romantic -heart—with him my task is easier still. Such a one will already have -guessed the intoxication of the air which a Roger de Beauvoir delicately -breathed, when Paris, her spirit newly quickened with the exhilaration -of a potent elixir, was yet unspoiled by modern cosmopolitan vulgarity, -and her inner soul shone out, through all her deformities and -incongruities, with a gay and unmasked confidence.</p> - -<p>She did not shine before an unseeing generation, for the Parisians of -the Romantic age adored their city, dandies, Bohemians, and <i>bourgeois</i> -alike, all passionately conscious of their privileged citizenship, -though they could admit with Maxime du Camp that under Louis Philippe -she was "one of the dirtiest, the most tortuous, and the most unhealthy" -in the world. As they lived<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> in her, so they wrote of her—with pride. -Victor Hugo did her great homage in "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Les -Misérables," Eugène Sue in "Les Mystères de Paris," and Paul de Kock in -all his work, but these achievements appear as slight and partial -sketches beside the wonderful and penetrating picture which Balzac drew -of Paris—at once the background and the protagonist—in his greatest -novels. Balzac, besides giving us a world, gave us a great city. Minute -as were the studies he made of the provinces, they are nothing to the -picture that he drew of the city which he regarded as the brain of the -whole world, the leader of its civilization. He gloated over Paris as a -scientist gloats over an interesting organism that he has first observed -and then skilfully dissected. He had dissected Paris even on the -threshold of his career. In some of his early stories, like a brilliant -young surgeon fresh from his researches, he overweights the matter in -hand with the results of the laboratory. "Ferragus" begins with a long -comparison of the streets of Paris; "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" with a -marvellous tirade on the restless race for money and pleasure that is -run by all classes, a tirade which, probing as it does all the strata of -society, is an epitome, in some sort, of all his work. Paris, that small -<i>enceinte</i> which was enclosed within what is now the second line of -<i>boulevards</i>, still innocent of the reforming hand of Haussmann, -becoming rich, but hardly yet industrial, not yet the pleasure-ground<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> -of all the world, destitute of railways, squalid, ill-kept, nevertheless -was transformed by his wonderful imagination into the type of all great -cities, which will ever remain true. To him she was "le plus délicieux -des monstres," as he says in "Ferragus." "Mais, ô Paris," he cries, "qui -n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes échappées de lumière, tes -culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures, -entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne connaît encore rien de ta vraie -poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes. Il est un petit nombre -de gens ... qui dégustent leur Paris.... Pour ceux-là Paris est triste -ou gai, laid ou beau, vivant ou mort; pour eux Paris est une créature; -chaque homme, chaque fraction de maison est un lobe du tissu cellulaire -de cette grande courtisane de laquelle ils connaissent parfaitement la -tête, le cÅ“ur et les mÅ“urs fantasques. Aussi ceux-là sont les -amants de Paris...."</p> - -<p>There are a happy few to whom it would be enough to say that the Paris -of Bohemia was the Paris of Balzac—such devotees, I mean, as have -thought it worth while to pay attention to that accurate topography in -which Balzac took so great a pride, following it in a contemporary map -so that, in their walks about the modern city, streets and houses -incessantly recall his characters and his scenes. But life is short for -such agreeable exercises, so this chapter must inadequately proceed. I -have already touched on the<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> social implications of Louis Philippe's -Paris, its smallness and its diminutive population, and my present aim -is simply to present more fully its external aspect, which changed so -quickly after 1848. The rapidity of the change may well be judged by a -passage in Théophile Gautier's article<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> on Paul de Kock, published in -1870. No apology is necessary for transcribing it:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>"Those [he says] who were born after the Revolution of February 24, -1848, or a little before, cannot imagine what the Paris was like in -which the heroes and heroines of Paul de Kock move; it resembled -Paris of to-day so little that I sometimes ask myself, on seeing -these broad streets, these great boulevards, these vast squares, -these interminable lines of monumental houses, these splendid -quarters which have replaced the market-gardens, if it is really -the city in which I passed my childhood. Paris, which is on the way -to become the metropolis of the world, was then only the capital of -France. One met French people, even Parisians, in its streets. No -doubt foreigners came there, as always, to find pleasure and -instruction; but the means of transport were difficult, the ideal -of rapidity did not rise above the classic mail-coach, and the -locomotive, even in the form of a chimera, was not yet taking shape -in the mists of the future. The physiognomy of the population had -not therefore sensibly changed.</p> - -<p>"The provinces stayed at home much more than now, only coming to -Paris on urgent business. One could hear French spoken on that -boulevard which<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> was then called the Boulevard de Gand and which is -now called the Boulevard des Italiens. One frequently saw a type -which is becoming rare and which, for me, is the pure Parisian -type—white skin, pink cheeks, brown hair, light grey eyes, a -well-shaped figure of moderate stature, and, in the women, a -delicate plumpness hiding small bones. Olive complexions and black -hair were rare; the South had not yet invaded us with its -passionately pale tints and its furious gesticulations. The general -aspect of faces was therefore rosy and smiling, with an air of -health and good humour. Complexions now considered <i>distingués</i> -would at that time have caused suspicions of illness.</p> - -<p>"The city was relatively very small, or at least its activity was -restricted within certain limits that were seldom passed. The -plaster elephant in which Gavroche found shelter raised its -enormous silhouette on the Place de la Bastille, and seemed to -forbid passers-by to go any further. The Champs Elysées, as soon as -night fell, became more dangerous than the plain of Marathon; the -most adventurous stopped at the Place de la Concorde. The quarter -of Notre Dame de Lorette only included vague plots of ground or -wooden fences. The church was not built, and one could see from the -boulevard the Butte Montmartre, with its windmills and its -semaphore waving its arms on the top of the old tower. The Faubourg -Saint-Germain went early to bed, and its solitude was but rarely -disturbed by a tumult of students over a play at the Odéon. -Journeys from one quarter to another were less frequent; omnibuses -did not exist, and there were sensible differences of feature, -costume, and accent between a native<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> of the Rue du Temple and an -inhabitant of the Rue Montmartre."</p></div> - -<p>Gautier is referring in this passage to the Paris of his childhood, in -the second decade of the nineteenth century, but, though by his Bohemian -days the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette had been built, omnibuses had -been instituted, and railway stations were about to break out on the -face of Paris, his picture would have remained substantially true of -Paris during the whole of Louis Philippe's reign. There was a certain -amount of change during the time: the Palais Royal declined in -popularity, ceasing to be "a scene of extravagance, dissipation, and -debauchery not to be equalled in the world," as Coghlan's "Guide to -Paris" put it; a few old houses were pulled down here and there, and the -desert patches on the outskirts began to be filled by a straggling -population, but, in general, Louis Philippe's Paris can be considered as -a stable whole. Most visitors to Paris do not, of course, realize the -boundaries of the large circle which now forms the city, for they enjoy -themselves at the centre, though they may, perhaps, remember how far -from the terminus a train passes the fortifications. In Louis Philippe's -day the outer line of boulevards, on which stood the fortifications and -<i>barrières</i>, was that second ring of to-day which even visitors reach at -times; a <i>barrière</i> existed at the Arc de Triomphe, at the Place<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> -Pigalle, where the amusements of Montmartre only just begin, at the -cemeteries of Père Lachaise and Montparnasse. The actual diameter of the -city was then about three miles, but for all practical purposes it was -little more than two, for the outskirts were still occupied by large -market-gardens, plots of land acquired for future use by speculators, -with here and there some mushroom rows of houses, half finished and -nearly empty, the work of a bankrupt who had too far anticipated the -coming boom, farmyards, chicken-runs, cow-stalls, grass, odd weeds, and -all the disfigurements of a landscape over which the impending march of -a city has thrown a blight. Only on the northern heights were there -still windmills and vineyards. These outskirts had only a scanty -population, for there were no thousands of workpeople to spread over the -heights of Belleville or Ménilmontant, or southwards over Montrouge, so -that it was easy for a starveling company of Bohemians, headed by the -Desbrosses and Murger, to find shelter in an old farm by the Barrière -d'Enfer—now the busy Place Denfert-Rochereau—or for Balzac's Colonel -Chabert to live in a tumble-down cottage well inside the boundaries. The -fact was, as the dramatist Victorien Sardou has said in a passage of -reminiscence,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> that under Louis Philippe one-third of the total -surface of Paris was not built on. There were gardens everywhere, except -in the very centre of the city, and on the<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> left bank, especially, -houses were only dotted in the midst of orchards, kitchen-gardens, -farmyards, and parks. It was this fact that made Paris, however quick -the flame that burnt at her heart, in most respects a provincial city. -Only in such a city could Bohemia perfectly have realized itself; an -industrial metropolis would have swallowed it or brushed it -contemptuously aside.</p> - -<p>Paris, then, compared with herself of to-day, would have been almost -unrecognizable. There was no sign of the rich and luxurious quarter -which has grown up round the Champs Elysées, with its magnificent hotels -and fine mansions. The Champs Elysées were used during the daytime for -riding or driving, but there was hardly a house to be seen except two or -three wretched <i>cafés</i>. After sunset it was madness to go past the -<i>rond-point</i>, for beyond was the home of thieves and cut-throats, the -Bois de Boulogne, needless to say, being in a much more wild state than -to-day. The Parc Monceau was practically in the country, and even the -Quartier du Roule, by the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes, was all -market-gardens when Rosa Bonheur lived there as a child. As for the -Batignolles, that Kensington of modern Paris, its repute was as -unsavoury as that of the London fields now respectably covered by Sloane -Square and Sloane Street. The quarter chosen by wealth, as opposed to -blue blood, which lived in dreary <i>hôtels</i> surrounded by high walls in -the Faubourg<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> Saint-Germain, lay in the neighbourhood of the present -Saint-Lazare terminus. The favourite street was the Rue de la Pépinière, -continued by the Rue Saint-Lazare. Only a small part of the Rue de la -Pépinière is now left, most of it being called the Rue La Boëtie, but it -retains its old name between the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Rue -Saint-Lazare. Another fashionable street was the Rue de Provence, which -runs parallel to the south of the Rue Saint-Lazare. In the former was -the famous house inhabited successively by seven of Balzac's -courtesans,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> in the latter the charming house of Baron Nucingen. -Every Englishman knows the clamour and smell and garish shops of the Rue -Saint-Lazare to-day, and the Rue de Provence is just a plain <i>bourgeois</i> -thoroughfare of shops, <i>cafés</i>, flats, and a post-office.</p> - -<p>The fashionable boulevards have already appeared in a previous chapter, -but a word must be said of the difference between the then and now of -that brilliant corner of Paris which most Europeans and Americans see -once before they die. To-day, without a doubt, the Boulevard des -Capucines, which stretches from the Madeleine to the Opéra, has the most -distinguished and luxurious appearance. The Boulevard des Italiens -beyond the Opéra is dowdier and more workaday. In the days of Bohemia -the Boulevard des Capucines had no social existence. It had as yet not -been levelled<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> with the Rue Basse du Rempart, which, some fifteen feet -below it, followed the course of the ancient moat; it was flanked by -plots of land on which new houses were being erected, and its only -traffic was the omnibus which jogged between the Madeleine and the -Bastille. The present Opera-house and Place de l'Opéra were not -existent, for the Opéra stood just off the Boulevard des Italiens, -beyond Tortoni's, while the Rue de la Paix came quietly into the -boulevard at a sharp angle, instead of arriving in that busy open space, -with Cook's office as its centre, over which traffic plies in all -directions with bewildering activity. The Avenue de l'Opéra, also, was -not known to Bohemia. At that day a pedestrian who wished to go direct -from the top of the Rue de la Paix to the Louvre had to thread a maze of -narrow streets—an example of which remains in the Rue des Petits -Champs—which became meaner and more sinister as he neared the Louvre. -The Louvre quarter, so close to brilliance and luxury, was a squalid -plague-spot, that has since been thoroughly cleansed. The brotherhood of -the Impasse du Doyenné, I suspect, were careful to have a companion when -they ascended the Rue Froidmanteau or the Rue Traversière after dark. If -one crosses the Avenue de l'Opéra between the entrance of the Rue de -l'Echelle on one side and the Rue Molière on the other, one will have -exactly traversed the site of the infamous Rue de Langlade where in -"Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes"<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> Vautrin found Esther la -Torpille on the verge of death, <i>à propos</i> of which Balzac has a lurid -passage on the thick shadows, the flickering lights, the phantom forms, -and disquieting sounds which characterized at nightfall this <i>lacis de -petites rues</i>.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_294a_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_294a_sml.jpg" width="360" height="550" alt="The Rue St. Denis" title="The Rue St. Denis" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">The Rue St. Denis</span> -</p> - -<p>On the north-east and the east of the Louvre lay the most unregenerate -portion of Paris, a district as tortuous, narrow, and unhealthy as in -the Middle Ages, yet the centre of Parisian commerce. Even to-day the -visitor may wonder that such a district can exist in a capital city, -when he ventures into the Rue Quincampoix, the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, -and the other alleys which cut them at right angles. But at least this -quarter has been cleared by the thorough reorganization of the Halles -and by the construction of some large arteries, the Boulevard de -Sébastopol, the Rue Rambuteau, the Rue Etienne Marcel, and the Rue de -Turbigo. It is sufficient to glance at a map of Louis Philippe's Paris, -such as Dulaure's, to see what a maze it was then. Save for the two -narrow thoroughfares, the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, -going from north to south, it had hardly a single continuous street. A -stroll in the region of the old church of Saint-Merri will show many of -these streets in their original dimensions; there is the Rue des -Lombards, for instance, where Balzac's Matifat presided over the -wholesale drug market, and the Rue Aubry le Boucher, formerly the Rue -des Cinq<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a> Diamants, where in the virtuous Anselme Popinot's shop the -first measures were taken for the reconstruction of César Birotteau's -shattered fortunes. The darkness and insalubrity of this quarter are -specially commented on at the beginning of Balzac's "Une Double -Famille," where he says that a pedestrian coming from the Marais quarter -to the quays near the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de l'Homme Armé and -other streets—practically the route of the present Rue des Archives -down to the Place Lobau—would think he was walking in underground -cellars. This unsavoury network in the day of Bohemia continued right on -to the quays, which have now been cleared by the construction of the -Théâtre and Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the Place de -l'Hôtel de Ville, and the Place Lobau with its barracks. But in Louis -Philippe's reign the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, where poor Gérard de -Nerval was found hanged, occupied the site of the stage of the Théâtre -Sarah Bernhardt, and instead of the Place Lobau the Rue de la Tixanderie -and the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean forked at the back of the Hôtel de -Ville. The house described in "Une Double Famille" stood in the Rue du -Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, which was only five feet wide at its broadest and -only cleaned when flooded by a shower. The inhabitants lit their lamps -at five in June and never put them out in winter.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_294b_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_294b_sml.jpg" width="293" height="550" alt="Rue de la Tixeranderie" title="Rue de la Tixeranderie" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Rue de la Tixeranderie</span> -</p> - -<p>Another typical specimen of the Paris I am describing<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> is to be seen in -that curious confluence of three narrow streets, the Rues de la Lune, -Beauregard, and de Cléry, just off the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. The Rue -de la Lune is dominated by the forbidding portals of a gloomy church, -and its cobble-stones are quite deserted even when the activity of the -neighbouring boulevard is at its height. No flight of imagination is -needed to realize its appropriateness as the scene of that tragic close -to "Illusions Perdues," where in a garret Lucien writes drinking songs -over the corpse of his wretched Coralie to pay the expenses of her -burial. This street and the two others, which meet at an extraordinarily -acute angled building, diverge into the squalor of the Rue Montorgueil. -It is easier to see the conditions in which <i>la vie de Bohème</i> was -passed in such spots as these than in the regions towards Montmartre. -The Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne still exists, but to search there for the -garret of Murger and Champfleury is disappointing. One ascends the -cheerful Rue des Martyrs from Notre Dame de Lorette, with its prospect -of the Sacré CÅ“ur standing out against the open heavens, and on -turning along the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne one is confronted by a -respectable, clean, sleepy street that might grace any neat provincial -town in France. All suggestion of Bohemianism is remarkably absent, even -on the top floors. In Murger's day this quarter was far less civilized, -as may be seen from a water-colour sketch<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> by Victor Hugo which hangs -in the Carnavalet Museum. This represents the view southwards from the -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne—a wild foreground of uncultivated land with -sombre trees and dilapidated fences, and in the distance all Paris -spread out in panorama.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_297_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_297_sml.jpg" width="417" height="550" alt="Rue Pirouette" title="Rue Pirouette" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">Rue Pirouette</span> -</p> - -<p>The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter -of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where -old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have -been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to -Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left -him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in -the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with -its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of -youth and love. In particular, this part of Paris was cleared and aired -by the construction of those two very important thoroughfares, the -Boulevard Saint-Germain, which broke through a host of little streets, -including the rampageous Rue Childebert, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, -which replaced and widened the straggling old Rue de la Harpe. Before -these were made, the Quartier Latin had not a single main street, though -it was not quite so uncivilized as the Halles quarter, nor so large. -Southwards by the gardens of the Luxembourg it soon became comparatively -<i>bourgeois</i> and spacious with pleasant houses and gardens, built<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> -originally for rich nobles and prelates, but relinquished at the -dictation of fashion to prosperous tradespeople and officials like the -Phellions and Thuilliers of Balzac's "Les Petits Bourgeois." Searches -for vestiges of Bohemia in general on either side of the Boulevard -Saint-Germain are fruitful enough; many an <i>hôtel garni</i> recalls that in -which Lucien first hid his diminished head, or the early home of Arsène -Houssaye, when Nini Yeux Noirs was his divinity and revolution his -creed. Specific quests, however, are apt to be disappointing. The Rue -des Quatre Vents, the headquarters of d'Arthez' <i>cénacle</i>, in Balzac's -time "one of the most horrible streets in Paris," remains blamelessly -near Saint-Sulpice as dull and decent as the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; -and the Rue Vaugirard, where the second <i>cénacle</i>, headed by Pétrus -Borel, held its frantic orgies round the punch-bowl and where Murger -wrote his "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," is devoid of any spark of -romance. On the other hand, a visit to the delightful Cour de Rohan, -just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, will land you <i>en pleine Bohème</i>, -as will certain streets leading up towards the Church of Saint-Etienne -du Mont, or the narrow passages by the Church of Saint-Séverin. It is -just too late to see another unmistakable relic of Balzac's Paris, for -the Maison Vauquer of "Père Goriot" has just been pulled down. Yet to -make a pilgrimage to its site gives a very good impression of the -gloominess which Bohemian high<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> spirits had usually to combat. The -Maison Vauquer stood near the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue -Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, now the Rue Lhomond, and the Rue Tournefort, -south of the Panthéon. I have walked down the Rue Lhomond at three on a -sunny autumn afternoon, yet I met no soul in this dingy street, which -seemed to catch not a ray of the sun's illumination. It is crossed by -two sinister little lanes, the Rue Amyot, at the corner of which -Cérizet, in "Les Petits Bourgeois," carried on the business of a small -usurer in a loathsome, grimy house, and the Rue du Pot de Fer, before -coming to which one passes a high, dark barrack, heavy iron bars -shielding its dirty lower windows, the "Institution Lhomond pour -l'éducation des jeunes filles"—poor <i>jeunes filles</i>! When the Rue -Tournefort meets the Rue Lhomond there is a very steep descent, -accurately described by Balzac, into the Rue de l'Arbalète. Almost any -of the mournful dwellings with weedy gardens on this slope might have -been the hideous <i>pension</i> where Goriot died, while at the corner of the -Rue de l'Arbalète there is a veritable dungeon, only two tiny windows in -cracked frames piercing its high, blank wall. If you proceed into the -narrow Rue Mouffetard, one long, smelly vegetable market, you will then -realize the general state of all but the best of Louis Philippe's Paris.</p> - -<p>It was part of the old world, unconscious of its<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> impending reformation -in the light of the new ideals of comfort and sanitation which were to -become the accented notes of modernity. It was a provincial city of -small compass with no industrial suburbs, no railways—let alone trams -or river steamboats—and a population of considerably less than a -million concentrated for the most part in its overcrowded quarters by -the river banks, where the excitement of its spiritual life made up for -the deficiencies of its material well-being. There were few public -buildings of recent construction; the Louvre was still disfigured by the -<i>débris</i> of the Place du Carrousel; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, and -the Palais de Justice were hemmed in by crabbed streets and thickly -clustering old houses. Private gardens were many, but public squares -were few. Except for the boulevards the streets had medieval paving with -central gutters, from which all and sundry were liberally splashed, so -that for well-dressed persons to venture in them on foot was an -impossibility. An American writing in 1835 says of them: "They are paved -with cubical stones of eight or ten inches, convex on the upper surface -like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where -not bounded by stores they are as dark as they were under King Pepin. -Some seem to be watertight."<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> They were seldom swept, never flushed, -and primitively lit. The noise, too, except on the boulevards,<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> was -deafening and incessant. Not only did the eternal rumbling of wheels -over cobblestones and the sharp clatter of stumbling hoofs assail the -ear, but also the ringing of bells, the rattle of water-carriers' -buckets, the din of barrel-organs and itinerant singers, and all those -street cries of fish-sellers, clothes-merchants, rag and bone men, -glaziers, umbrella menders, and fruit-vendors so picturesque in isolated -survival, but so unbearable in the <i>ensemble</i> of their heyday. It would -be a mistake, however, to imagine this Paris as sleepy, stagnant, or -unpricked by the progressive spirit; on the contrary, she was -exceedingly wide-awake. But, whereas the Englishman at once translates -his progressive idea into mechanism, the Frenchman prefers to let the -first thorough ferment take place in his mind alone, allowing it, if -need be, to inspire in him the primitive actions of attack and defence, -but leaving more complicated handiwork to a later date, when the logic -of change has been worked out, according to which he then acts -rigorously. In this light the Paris of Bohemia must be -regarded—picturesquely stagnant externally, seething inwardly—and of -this condition Bohemia was the type. Its extravagant or tattered dress, -its Rabelaisian speech and self-indulgence, the antiquated splendours of -the Impasse du Doyenné and the equally antiquated hovels and garrets of -its poverty, its disregard of public convenience and its real antagonism -to democracy,<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> were externals voluntarily or of necessity adopted from -an earlier age; they were the old bottles which served for a moment to -hold and to flavour with a distinctive tang the new wine of the Romantic -vintage. Other vintages of equal potency have quickened men's hearts -since then, and every new age, whether its ideals be artistic or social, -will have its particular ferment that will find its appropriate vessels, -but the past can never return any more than the first delirious -headiness can be restored to an old wine that now charms with its -matured delicacy. Bohemia is a thing of the past with that irrevocable -Paris with its tortuous, noisy streets, its high gables, its wide skirts -and embroidered waistcoats, its</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Fashionables musqués, gueux à mine incongrue,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Grisettes au pied leste, au sourire agaçant,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Beaux tilburys dorés comme l'éclair passant—</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">the Paris of Balzac, the Paris of Roger de Beauvoir and Alfred de -Musset, the Paris of Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, the Paris -of Rodolphe, Schaunard, and Marcel, the Paris, in fine, which was the -only home of <i>les vrais Bohémiens de la vraie Bohème</i>.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> - -<p class="c">Names of characters in fiction are printed in italics.</p> - -<p class="cb"><a href="#A">A</a>, -<a href="#B">B</a>, -<a href="#C">C</a>, -<a href="#D">D</a>, -<a href="#E">E</a>, -<a href="#F">F</a>, -<a href="#G">G</a>, -<a href="#H">H</a>, -<a href="#Ia">I</a>, -<a href="#J">J</a>, -<a href="#K">K</a>, -<a href="#L">L</a>, -<a href="#M">M</a>, -<a href="#N">N</a>, -<a href="#O">O</a>, -<a href="#P">P</a>, -<a href="#Q">Q</a>, -<a href="#R">R</a>, -<a href="#S">S</a>, -<a href="#T">T</a>, -<a href="#Va">V</a>, -<a href="#W">W</a>.</p> - -<p class="nind"> -<a name="A" id="A"></a><span class="letra">A</span><br /> -A<small>BRANTÈS</small>, Duchesse d', <a href="#page_071">71</a><br /> -Alton-Shee, <i>see</i> Aulnis, Duc d'<br /> -Ampère, Jean-Jacques, <a href="#page_036">36</a>, <a href="#page_037">37</a>, <a href="#page_051">51</a><br /> -Amusements of <i>Bohème</i>, <a href="#page_176">176-178</a>, <a href="#page_182">182-186</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-200</a>, <a href="#page_214">214</a>, <a href="#page_215">215</a>, <a href="#page_252">252-281</a><br /> -Ancelot, Madame, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_095">95</a><br /> -Anglemont, Privat d', <a href="#page_224">224-228</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_278">278</a>, <a href="#page_279">279</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -Anglomania in Paris, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_088">88</a><br /> -Arsouille, Milord, <i>see</i> Battut, Charles de la<br /> -<i>Arthez, Daniel d'</i>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_127">127-129</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a><br /> -Artois, Comte d', <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -Arvers, Félix, <a href="#page_102">102</a><br /> -Asselineau, Charles, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_059">59</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a><br /> -Aulnis, Duc d', <a href="#page_070">70</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_080">80</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -<br /><a name="B" id="B"></a><span class="letra">B</span><br /> -B<small>ADOUILLARDS</small>, L<small>ES</small>, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a><br /> -Bal Bullier, <a href="#page_279">279</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mabille, <a href="#page_280">280</a></span><br /> -Bal Musard, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -Balzac, Honoré de, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_045">45</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_081">81</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_129">129</a>, <a href="#page_164">164</a>, <a href="#page_165">165</a>, <a href="#page_258">258</a>, <a href="#page_285">285</a>, <a href="#page_286">286</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characters in the novels of, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_049">49</a>, <a href="#page_059">59-61</a>, <a href="#page_062">62</a>, <a href="#page_067">67-69</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_080">80-86</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_111">111-114</a>, <a href="#page_127">127-129</a>, <a href="#page_163">163-165</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_264">264</a>, <a href="#page_268">268</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_274">274</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>, <a href="#page_292">292</a>, <a href="#page_294">294</a>, <a href="#page_295">295</a>, <a href="#page_296">296</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a>, 2<a href="#page_099">99</a></span><br /> -Banville, Théodore de, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_226">226</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a><br /> -Barbara, Charles, <a href="#page_248">248-250</a>, <a href="#page_265">265</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -<i>Barbemuche, Carolus</i>, <i>see</i> Barbara, Charles<br /> -Barrière d'Enfer, Bohemian colony at the, <a href="#page_239">239-243</a><br /> -Barrière, Théodore, <a href="#page_244">244</a><br /> -Bastide, Jules, <a href="#page_036">36</a>, <a href="#page_037">37</a><br /> -Battut, Charles de la, <a href="#page_090">90</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -Baudelaire, Charles, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_066">66</a>, <a href="#page_230">230-233</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -Beauvoir, Roger de, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_093">93-97</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a>, <a href="#page_168">168</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_186">186</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>, <a href="#page_284">284</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Belgiojoso, Prince, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Princess, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a></span><br /> -Béquet, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Béranger, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a><br /> -Berlioz, Hector, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -Berry, assassination of the Duc de, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -Bisson, the brothers, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -<i>Bixiou</i>, <a href="#page_082">82</a>, <a href="#page_084">84-86</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -Blanche, Doctor, <a href="#page_190">190</a><br /> -BÅ“uf Enragé, Cabaret du, <a href="#page_227">227</a><br /> -Bohème, La, meaning of the term, <a href="#page_001">1-12</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its place and period, <a href="#page_012">12-20</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rise and fall, 1830-1848, <a href="#page_021">21-34</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">general characteristics of, <a href="#page_111">111-129</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Romanticism of, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_029">29-31</a>, <a href="#page_040">40-50</a>, <a href="#page_056">56-64</a>, <a href="#page_131">131-159</a>, <a href="#page_200">200-204</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its place in Parisian society, <a href="#page_065">65-68</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_077">77</a>, <a href="#page_110">110</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">amusements of, <a href="#page_176">176-178</a>, <a href="#page_182">182-186</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-200</a>, <a href="#page_214">214</a>, <a href="#page_215">215</a>, <a href="#page_252">252-281</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drama in, <a href="#page_132">132-136</a>, <a href="#page_140">140</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_176">176</a>, <a href="#page_272">272-274</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">life of, <a href="#page_126">126-251</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">love in, <a href="#page_173">173-176</a>, <a href="#page_178">178-182</a>, <a href="#page_213">213-218</a>, <a href="#page_246">246-248</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">music in, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a></span><br /> -Bohème, La, the Paris of, <a href="#page_282">282-302</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">smoking in, <a href="#page_151">151</a>, 152 <i>See also</i> Cénacle, the Second: Bohème Galante; Buveurs d'Eau; Gautier; Murger, &c.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Galante, La, <a href="#page_158">158-193</a>, <a href="#page_194">194</a>, <a href="#page_203">203</a>, <a href="#page_205">205</a>, <a href="#page_206">206</a>, <a href="#page_207">207</a>, <a href="#page_210">210</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>see</i> Doyenné, Impasse du</span><br /> -Boissard, <a href="#page_231">231</a><br /> -Borel, Pétrus, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_133">133</a>, <a href="#page_135">135</a>, <a href="#page_136">136-140</a>, <a href="#page_144">144</a>, <a href="#page_149">149-155</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a><br /> -Bouchardy, Joseph, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_140">140</a>, <a href="#page_152">152</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_156">156</a>, <a href="#page_218">218</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a><br /> -Bouffé, <a href="#page_101">101</a><br /> -Bouginier's nose, <a href="#page_223">223</a>, <a href="#page_224">224</a><br /> -Bouilhet, Louis, <a href="#page_230">230</a><br /> -Boulevard des Italiens, <a href="#page_074">74</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_288">288</a>, <a href="#page_292">292</a>, <a href="#page_293">293</a><br /> -"Bousingots," <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_062">62</a>, <a href="#page_144">144</a><br /> -Briffaut, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Brot, Alphonse, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_137">137</a><br /> -Bullier, <a href="#page_279">279</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bal, <a href="#page_279">279</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a></span><br /> -Burnett, George, <a href="#page_017">17</a><br /> -Buveurs d'Eau, Société des, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_233">233-242</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a><br /> -Byron, Lord, influence of on Bohème, <a href="#page_035">35-37</a>, <a href="#page_064">64</a>, <a href="#page_125">125</a>, <a href="#page_134">134</a>, <a href="#page_151">151</a><br /> -<br /><a name="C" id="C"></a><span class="letra">C</span><br /> -C<small>ABANON</small>, Emile, <a href="#page_097">97</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Cabaret du BÅ“uf Enragé, <a href="#page_227">227</a><br /> -Cabaret Dinochan, <a href="#page_261">261</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Mère Cadet, <a href="#page_263">263</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Mère Saguet, <a href="#page_129">129</a>, <a href="#page_130">130</a></span><br /> -Cabot, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a><br /> -Cadet, Cabaret of Mère, <a href="#page_263">263</a><br /> -Café Anglais, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_096">96</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hardy, <a href="#page_096">96</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Momus, <a href="#page_198">198</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-268</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">de l'Odéon, <a href="#page_261">261</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">d'Orsay, <a href="#page_181">181</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">de Paris, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Riche, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tortoni, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a></span><br /> -Camp, Maxime du, <a href="#page_040">40-42</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_095">95</a>, <a href="#page_132">132</a>, <a href="#page_134">134</a>, <a href="#page_142">142</a>, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_154">154</a>, <a href="#page_156">156</a>, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_228">228-230</a>, <a href="#page_284">284</a><br /> -Cancan, The, <a href="#page_080">80</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -Carnaud, <a href="#page_278">278</a>, <a href="#page_279">279</a><br /> -Carnival, <a href="#page_080">80</a>, <a href="#page_089">89-91</a>, <a href="#page_274">274-276</a><br /> -Cénacle, the first, <a href="#page_129">129-132</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the second, <a href="#page_126">126-157</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_203">203</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Rue des Quatre Vents, <a href="#page_127">127-129</a></span><br /> -Cercle des Étrangers, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -Chahut, The, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -Champfleury, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_243">243-250</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_296">296</a>, <a href="#page_297">297</a><br /> -Chanteraine, Salle, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_222">222</a><br /> -Charles X, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_200">200</a><br /> -Chartreuse, La, <i>see</i> Closerie des Lilas<br /> -Chassériau, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a><br /> -Châteaubriand, Duc de, <a href="#page_037">37</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a><br /> -Châtillon, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a><br /> -Chaudesaigues, <a href="#page_103">103</a><br /> -Chaumière, La, <a href="#page_097">97</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_278">278</a><br /> -Chicard, <a href="#page_275">275</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -Chintreuil, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a><br /> -Childebert, La, <a href="#page_222">222-225</a><br /> -Cloître Saint-Merri, insurrection of the, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_059">59</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_161">161</a><br /> -Clopet, Léon, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_137">137</a>, <a href="#page_152">152</a><br /> -Closerie des Lilas, La, <a href="#page_097">97</a>, <a href="#page_277">277-281</a><br /> -Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#page_010">10</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_018">18</a><br /> -<i>Colline</i>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-218</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_241">241</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-267</a>, <a href="#page_281">281</a><br /> -Colon, Jenny, <a href="#page_174">174-176</a>, <a href="#page_190">190</a><br /> -Cormenin, Louis de, <a href="#page_230">230</a><br /> -Corot, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a><br /> -Courbet, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a><br /> -Courtille, Descente de la, <a href="#page_090">90</a><br /> -Cretaine, Boulangerie, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a><br /> -Cydalise, <a href="#page_179">179</a>, <a href="#page_180">180</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>, <a href="#page_213">213</a>, <a href="#page_257">257</a><br /> -<br /><a name="D" id="D"></a><span class="letra">D</span><br /> -D<small>AGNEAUX'S</small> Restaurant, <a href="#page_230">230</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a><br /> -Dancing, <a href="#page_080">80</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_178">178</a>, <a href="#page_181">181-185</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_274">274-281</a><br /> -Delacroix, <a href="#page_048">48</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a><br /> -Delvau, Alfred, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_160">160</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_245">245</a>, <a href="#page_247">247</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_261">261-263</a>, <a href="#page_267">267</a>, <a href="#page_268">268</a><br /> -Desbrosses, the brothers, <a href="#page_237">237-241</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a><br /> -Dinochan, Cabaret, <a href="#page_261">261</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a><br /> -Dondey, Théopile, <i>see</i> O'Neddy, Philothée<br /> -Doré, Gustave, <a href="#page_192">192</a><br /> -Dorval, Marie, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a><br /> -Doyenné, Impasse du, Bohemian brotherhood in, <a href="#page_158">158-193</a>, <a href="#page_203">203</a>, <a href="#page_206">206</a>, <a href="#page_210">210</a>, <a href="#page_213">213</a>, <a href="#page_214">214</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_257">257</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a>, <a href="#page_301">301</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Priory of, <a href="#page_166">166</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rue du, <a href="#page_164">164</a>, <a href="#page_165">165</a>, <a href="#page_168">168</a></span><br /> -Doze, Mademoiselle, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Drama in Bohème, <a href="#page_140">140</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_176">176</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_272">272-274</a>; <i>and see</i> "Hernani"<br /> -Dress of the Romantic period, <a href="#page_092">92</a>, <a href="#page_096">96</a>, <a href="#page_131">131</a>, <a href="#page_139">139</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_145">145</a>, <a href="#page_151">151</a>, <a href="#page_239">239</a>, <a href="#page_234">234-259</a><br /> -Dumas, Alexandre, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a>, <a href="#page_190">190</a>, <a href="#page_198">198</a>, <a href="#page_226">226</a><br /> -Duponchel, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -Duras, Duchesse de, <a href="#page_071">71</a><br /> -Dyer, George, <a href="#page_017">17</a><br /> -<br /><a name="E" id="E"></a><span class="letra">E</span><br /> -"<span class="smcap">École</span> de bon sens," <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_203">203</a><br /> -<br /><a name="F" id="F"></a><span class="letra">F</span><br /> -F<small>AUBOURG</small> Saint-Germain, <a href="#page_069">69</a>, <a href="#page_070">70</a>, <a href="#page_297">297</a><br /> -Fauchéry, <a href="#page_245">245</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a><br /> -Flaubert, Gustave, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_228">228-230</a><br /> -Flicoteaux's Restaurant, <a href="#page_264">264</a>, <a href="#page_265">265</a><br /> -Fontenay-aux-Roses, <a href="#page_200">200</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a><br /> -Frascati, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -Fraser, Major, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_092">92</a><br /> -<br /><a name="G" id="G"></a><span class="letra">G</span><br /> -G<small>AMBLING</small>, <i>see</i> Paris<br /> -Gautier, Théophile, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_020">20</a>, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_045">45</a>, <a href="#page_050">50</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_110">110</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_129">129</a>, <a href="#page_132">132-157</a>, <a href="#page_160">160</a>, <a href="#page_162">162</a>, <a href="#page_164">164-173</a>, <a href="#page_177">177-180</a>, <a href="#page_183">183-189</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>, <a href="#page_194">194</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_207">207</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_218">218</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_282">282</a>, <a href="#page_287">287-289</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Gavarni, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a><br /> -Gay, Delphine, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sophie, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a></span><br /> -Gigoux, Jean, <a href="#page_061">61</a><br /> -Gilbert, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -Girardin, Delphine de, <i>see</i> Gay, Delphine<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Emile de, <a href="#page_030">30</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a></span><br /> -Goncourt, the brothers de, <a href="#page_201">201</a><br /> -Graziano's Restaurant, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_147">147</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a><br /> -Grisettes, <a href="#page_216">216-218</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_258">258-259</a>, <a href="#page_274">274</a>, <a href="#page_277">277-280</a><br /> -Guichardet, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a><br /> -Guigard, Joannis, <a href="#page_267">267</a><br /> -Guilbert, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -Guizot, <a href="#page_200">200</a><br /> -<br /><a name="H" id="H"></a><span class="letra">H</span><br /> -H<small>ABENECK</small>, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -Hardy, Café, <a href="#page_095">95</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a><br /> -Haricots, Hôtel des, <a href="#page_279">279</a><br /> -Heine, Heinrich, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -"Hernani," performance of in 1830, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a>, <a href="#page_132">132-136</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a><br /> -Hill's Tavern, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -Houssaye, Arsène, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_116">116</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_160">160-163</a>, <a href="#page_168">168-175</a>, <a href="#page_177">177-189</a>, <a href="#page_194">194</a>, <a href="#page_207">207</a>, <a href="#page_244">244</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a><br /> -Hugo, Madame, <a href="#page_072">72</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Victor, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a>, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_045">45-48</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_062">62</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_129">129-132</a>, <a href="#page_144">144</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_285">285</a>, <a href="#page_297">297</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">worshipped in Bohème, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_045">45-48</a>, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_132">132-136</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_152">152</a>, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_156">156</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_244">244</a></span><br /> -<br /> -<a name="Ia" id="Ia"></a><span class="letra">I</span><br /> -I<small>MPASSE</small> du Doyenné, <i>see</i> Doyenné<br /> -<br /><a name="J" id="J"></a><span class="letra">J</span><br /> -J<small>ANIN</small>, Jules, <a href="#page_189">189</a>, <a href="#page_196">196</a>, <a href="#page_203">203</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a><br /> -"Jeune-France" section of Romanticists, the, <a href="#page_045">45</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_095">95</a>, <a href="#page_139">139</a>, <a href="#page_142">142</a>, <a href="#page_150">150-153</a><br /> -Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#page_010">10</a><br /> -Jonson, Ben, <a href="#page_010">10</a><br /> -Jouy, de, <a href="#page_236">236</a><br /> -<br /><a name="K" id="K"></a><span class="letra">K</span><br /> -K<small>ARR</small>, Alphonse, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -Kock, Paul de, <a href="#page_285">285</a>, <a href="#page_287">287</a><br /> -<br /><a name="L" id="L"></a><span class="letra">L</span><br /> -L<small>AFAYETTE</small>, <a href="#page_024">24</a><br /> -Lamartine, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a><br /> -Lamb, Charles, <a href="#page_011">11</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_173">173</a>, <a href="#page_174">174</a><br /> -Lassailly, <a href="#page_044">44</a><br /> -Lautour-Mézéray, <a href="#page_103">103</a><br /> -Leconte de l'Isle, <a href="#page_233">233</a><br /> -Legendre, Madame, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_223">223</a><br /> -Leleux, Adolphe, <a href="#page_184">184</a><br /> -Lelioux, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a><br /> -Le Poitevin, <a href="#page_230">230</a><br /> -Louis, XVIII, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -Louis Philippe, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_059">59</a>, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_200">200</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a><br /> -Love in Bohème, <a href="#page_173">173-176</a>, <a href="#page_178">178-182</a>, <a href="#page_213">213-218</a>, <a href="#page_246">246-248</a><br /> -Lucas, Le Petit, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -<br /><a name="M" id="M"></a><span class="letra">M</span><br /> -M<small>ABILLE</small>, Bal, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -Mackeat, Augustus, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a><br /> -Magny's Restaurant, <a href="#page_263">263</a><br /> -Maison d'Or, La, <a href="#page_096">96</a><br /> -"Mal du Siècle," Le, <a href="#page_035">35-64</a>, <a href="#page_252">252</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a><br /> -"Mal Romantique," <i>see</i> "Mal du Siècle"<br /> -Malitourne, Armand, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Maquet, Augustus, <i>see</i> Mackeat<br /> -<i>Marcel</i>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_021">21</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-218</a>, <a href="#page_244">244</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_254">254</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-267</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a>, <a href="#page_282">282</a><br /> -Marilhat, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_185">185</a><br /> -Maurier, George Du, <a href="#page_007">7-9</a><br /> -Mediævalism, worship of by French Romantics, <a href="#page_043">43-46</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_095">95</a>, <a href="#page_134">134</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_142">142</a>, <a href="#page_150">150-153</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_210">210</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_224">224</a><br /> -MercÅ“ur, Elisa, <a href="#page_029">29</a><br /> -Meyerbeer, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_176">176</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a><br /> -<i>Mimi</i>, <a href="#page_213">213-218</a>, <a href="#page_246">246-248</a>, <a href="#page_258">258</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_281">281</a><br /> -Mogador, Céleste, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -Momus, Café, <a href="#page_198">198</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-268</a><br /> -Monnier, Henri, <a href="#page_097">97-101</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -Monselet, Charles, <a href="#page_226">226</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a><br /> -Montmartre, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a>, <a href="#page_288">288-290</a>, <a href="#page_296">296</a>, <a href="#page_297">297</a><br /> -Moreau, Hégésippe, <a href="#page_029">29</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -Murger, Henry, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_194">194-197</a>, <a href="#page_232">232-251</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>, <a href="#page_296">296</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," <a href="#page_001">1</a>, <a href="#page_011">11</a>, <a href="#page_012">12</a>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_021">21</a>, <a href="#page_033">33</a>, <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_147">147</a>, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_160">160</a>, <a href="#page_194">194-218</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_241">241-249</a>, <a href="#page_254">254</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-267</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bohemian generation of, <a href="#page_064">64</a>, <a href="#page_200">200-251</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_277">277-281</a></span><br /> -Musard, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bal, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a></span><br /> -<i>Musette</i>, <a href="#page_213">213-218</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_247">247</a>, <a href="#page_254">254</a>, <a href="#page_258">258</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_281">281</a><br /> -Music in Bohème, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Paris, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_269">269-271</a></span><br /> -Musset, Alfred de, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_048">48</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_092">92</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a>, <a href="#page_115">115</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a>, <a href="#page_202">202</a>, <a href="#page_244">244</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -<br /><a name="N" id="N"></a><span class="letra">N</span><br /> -N<small>ADAR</small>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a><br /> -Nanteuil, Célestin, <a href="#page_133">133</a>, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_142">142</a>, <a href="#page_149">149</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a><br /> -Nerval, Gérard de, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_018">18</a>, <a href="#page_133">133-136</a>, <a href="#page_143">143-146</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_149">149</a>, <a href="#page_154">154</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_160">160</a>, <a href="#page_162">162-193</a>, <a href="#page_207">207</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_295">295</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Nodier, <a href="#page_042">42</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a><br /> -Noel, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a><br /> -<br /><a name="O" id="O"></a><span class="letra">O</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">O'Neddy</span>, Philothée, <a href="#page_040">40</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a>, <a href="#page_125">125</a>, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_137">137</a>, <a href="#page_141">141</a>, <a href="#page_150">150-153</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a><br /> -Opéra, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_096">96</a>, <a href="#page_097">97</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_293">293</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bal de l', <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_245">245</a>, <a href="#page_274">274</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a></span><br /> -Ourliac, Edmond, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_169">169-172</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_186">186</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -<br /><a name="P" id="P"></a><span class="letra">P</span><br /> -P<small>ALAIS</small> Royal, <a href="#page_268">268</a>, <a href="#page_289">289</a><br /> -<i>Palfèrine, Comte de la</i>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_111">111-114</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a><br /> -Paphos, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -Paris, <a href="#page_011">11</a>, <a href="#page_012">12-15</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_066">66</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_105">105</a>, <a href="#page_116">116</a>, <a href="#page_282">282-302</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">balls in, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_178">178</a>, <a href="#page_181">181-185</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>, <a href="#page_274">274-281</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Café de, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drama in, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_271">271-274</a>; <i>and see</i> "Hernani"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">gambling in, <a href="#page_268">268</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">literary <i>salons</i> in, <a href="#page_070">70-73</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">music in, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_269">269-271</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">restaurants, &c., in, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_129">129</a>, <a href="#page_130">130</a>, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_147">147</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_177">177</a>, <a href="#page_181">181</a>, <a href="#page_198">198</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_230">230</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_259">259-268</a>; <i>and see</i> Cabaret; Café</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Society in, <a href="#page_065">65-86</a>, <a href="#page_107">107</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">student life in, <a href="#page_221">221-225</a>, <a href="#page_231">231</a>; <i>and see under</i> Bohème</span><br /> -Pelloquet, Théodore, <a href="#page_197">197</a>, <a href="#page_251">251</a><br /> -Petit Lucas, Le, <i>see</i> Lucas<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moulin Rouge, <i>see</i> Graziano</span><br /> -<i>Phèmie Teinturière</i>, <a href="#page_213">213-217</a>, <a href="#page_247">247</a>, <a href="#page_266">266</a><br /> -Pilodo, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -Pimodan, Hôtel, <a href="#page_231">231</a><br /> -Piton, le <i>pâtissier</i>, <a href="#page_262">262</a><br /> -Planche, Gustave, <a href="#page_229">229</a><br /> -Pomaré, Reine, <a href="#page_280">280</a><br /> -Ponsard, <a href="#page_201">201</a><br /> -Pottier, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -Prado, <a href="#page_275">275</a><br /> -Privat d'Anglemont, <i>see</i> Anglemont<br /> -Punch, a Romantic drink, <a href="#page_150">150</a><br /> -<br /><a name="Q" id="Q"></a><span class="letra">Q</span><br /> -Q<small>UARTIER</small> Latin, the, <a href="#page_008">8</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_160">160</a>, <a href="#page_170">170</a>, <a href="#page_221">221-227</a>, <a href="#page_231">231-233</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_262">262-265</a>, <a href="#page_276">276-280</a>, <a href="#page_297">297-299</a><br /> -<br /><a name="R" id="R"></a><span class="letra">R</span><br /> -<i>Rastignac</i>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_080">80-82</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -Récamier, Madame, <a href="#page_036">36</a>, <a href="#page_037">37</a>, <a href="#page_071">71</a><br /> -Restaurants, <i>see under</i> Paris<br /> -Revolution of 1830, the, <a href="#page_022">22</a>, <a href="#page_024">24-34</a>, <a href="#page_200">200</a><br /> -Rocher de Cancale, Le, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a><br /> -<i>Rodolphe</i>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-218</a>, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_241">241</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a>, <a href="#page_244">244</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-267</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>, <a href="#page_277">277</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Rogier, Camille, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_145">145</a>, <a href="#page_167">167-172</a>, <a href="#page_177">177-180</a>, <a href="#page_184">184</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a><br /> -Romantic Period in France, the, <a href="#page_012">12</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_020">20</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>salons</i> of, <a href="#page_070">70-73</a></span><br /> -Romanticism, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_028">28-32</a>, <a href="#page_035">35-64</a>, <a href="#page_129">129-159</a>, <a href="#page_201">201-203</a>, <a href="#page_221">221-224</a>, <a href="#page_252">252</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a>, <a href="#page_284">284</a>, <a href="#page_301">301</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Romieu, <a href="#page_097">97</a>, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a><br /> -Roqueplan, Camille, <a href="#page_169">169</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nestor, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_105">105</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_162">162</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a></span><br /> -Rousseau, <a href="#page_185">185</a><br /> -<i>Rubempré, Lucien de</i>, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_062">62</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_085">85</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_264">264</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a><br /> -Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, <a href="#page_210">210-212</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_296">296</a>, <a href="#page_297">297</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">de la Vieille Lanterne, <a href="#page_192">192</a>, <a href="#page_295">295</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bohemian colony in, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_188">188</a></span><br /> -<br /><a name="S" id="S"></a><span class="letra">S</span><br /> -S<small>AGUET</small>, Cabaret of Mère, <a href="#page_129">129</a>, <a href="#page_130">130</a><br /> -Sainte-Beuve, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a>, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_129">129-132</a>, <a href="#page_157">157</a><br /> -Saint-Victor, Paul de, <a href="#page_191">191</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a><br /> -Sand, George, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -Sandeau, Jules, <a href="#page_188">188</a>, <a href="#page_189">189</a><br /> -"Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," <i>see under</i> Murger<br /> -Schann, <a href="#page_232">232</a>, <a href="#page_237">237</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a>, <a href="#page_245">245</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a><br /> -<i>Schaunard</i>, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_198">198-218</a>, <a href="#page_232">232</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_265">265-268</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_280">280</a>, <a href="#page_281">281</a>, <a href="#page_302">302</a><br /> -Seigneur, Jehan du, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_137">137</a>, <a href="#page_139">139-141</a>, <a href="#page_148">148-153</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a><br /> -Sénancour, <a href="#page_037">37</a><br /> -Seymour, Lord, <a href="#page_079">79</a>, <a href="#page_088">88-90</a><br /> -Shakespeare, <a href="#page_010">10</a><br /> -Smoking in Bohème, <a href="#page_151">151</a>, <a href="#page_152">152</a><br /> -Staël, Madame de, <a href="#page_037">37</a><br /> -Steele, Richard, <a href="#page_017">17</a><br /> -Students, life of Parisian, <a href="#page_221">221-225</a>, <a href="#page_231">231</a><br /> -Sue, Eugène, <a href="#page_070">70</a>, <a href="#page_285">285</a><br /> -<br /><a name="T" id="T"></a><span class="letra">T</span><br /> -T<small>ABAR</small>, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -Tattet, Alfred, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Thackeray, <a href="#page_264">264</a><br /> -Théâtre Bobino, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Français, <a href="#page_133">133-136</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">du Luxembourg, <i>see</i> Théâtre Bobino</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Montparnasse, <a href="#page_263">263</a></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">des Variétés, ball at, <a href="#page_274">274</a></span><br /> -Thom, Napoléon, <a href="#page_136">136</a><br /> -Tolstoi, Monsieur de, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a><br /> -Tortoni's Café, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_259">259</a><br /> -Tournachon, F., <i>see</i> Nadar<br /> -"Tout Paris," Le, <a href="#page_073">73-76</a><br /> -"Trilby," <a href="#page_007">7</a>, <a href="#page_008">8</a><br /> -Trois Frères Provençaux, Les, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a><br /> -<br /><a name="Va" id="Va"></a><span class="letra">V</span><br /> -V<small>ABRE</small>, Jules, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_133">133</a>, <a href="#page_136">136-138</a>, <a href="#page_140">140</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a><br /> -Vastine, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -Vauquer, La Maison, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_081">81</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a>, <a href="#page_299">299</a><br /> -Vernet, Horace, <a href="#page_203">203</a><br /> -Véron, Doctor, <a href="#page_103">103</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a><br /> -Vigny, Alfred de, <a href="#page_017">17</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a>, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a><br /> -Villain, <a href="#page_237">237</a><br /> -Villiers de l'Isle Adam, <a href="#page_233">233</a><br /> -Vincent, Charles, <a href="#page_241">241</a>, <a href="#page_242">242</a><br /> -Viot's Restaurant, <a href="#page_263">263</a><br /> -Vitu, <a href="#page_277">277</a><br /> -"Viveurs," Les, <a href="#page_070">70</a>, <a href="#page_076">76-108</a>, <a href="#page_204">204</a>, <a href="#page_231">231</a>, <a href="#page_275">275</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a><br /> -<br /><a name="W" id="W"></a><span class="letra">W</span><br /> -W<small>ALLON</small>, Jean, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_266">266-268</a><br /> -Wattier, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a><br /> -</p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"> -PRINTED AT<br /> -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS<br /> -LONDON ENGLAND<br /> -</p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><th align="center">The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Célestin <span class="errata">Nauteuil</span>=>Célestin Nanteuil {8}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Les Champs <span class="errata">Elisées</span>=>Les Champs Elysées</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">Gerard</span> de Nerval=>Gérard de Nerval</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">"Les <span class="errata">Jeune</span> France."=>"Les Jeunes France."</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Elie Wildmannstadius=>Elie Wildman-stadius</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">decorated thus because a <span class="errata">lew</span> <i>louis d'or</i>=>decorated thus because a few <i>louis d'or</i></td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">nor <span class="errata">ne'er-do-weels</span>=>nor ne'er-do-wells</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Charles <span class="errata">Mouselet</span> says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote,"=>Charles Monselet says in his preface to "Paris Anecdote,"</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Pimodan, <span class="errata">Hotel</span>, 231=>Pimodan, Hôtel, 231</td></tr> -</table> - -<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "Les Enfants Perdus de Romantisme."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A. Cassagne: "La Théorie de l'art pour l'art en France chez -les derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> "Essais de Psychologie contemporaine," the chapter on -Flaubert.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Philothée O'Neddy: "Feu et Flamme."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See René Canat: "Du Sentiment de la Solitude morale chez -les romantiques et les parnassiens."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See Chapter VII.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Asselineau: "Bibliographie Romantique."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> "Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Mrs. Trollope: "Paris and the Parisians in 1835."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> "Derniers Jours de Bohème."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "Les Salons de Paris."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Challamel: "Souvenirs d'un Hugolâtre."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "Paris in 1829 and 1830."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Major Fraser's name appears in many memoirs of the time, -but I owe the above account to "An Englishman in Paris," by A. D. -Vandam.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "Vignettes Romantiques."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Léon Séché tells his story in "La Jeunesse Dorée sous -Louis Philippe."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> "Histoire du Romantisme."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Jules Claretie: "Pétrus Borel."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Maxime du Camp: "Théophile Gautier."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> "Gérard de Nerval."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> "Portraits contemporains." The article on the artist -Marilhat.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> "La Bohème Galante."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Arsène Houssaye: "Les Confessions."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Gérard, to be precise, quotes an earlier and more cruel -version: -</p> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i8"><i> ...La</i> reine du Sabbat<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Qui, depuis deux hivers, dans vos bras se débat,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Vous échapperait-elle ainsi qu'une chimère ...</i><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> See Chapter xi for a further account of Bohemia's -amusements.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> In a preface to Gérard de Nerval's "Å’uvres."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> "Les Confessions."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The following account combines much of the information -given in three books: Champfleury's "Souvenirs et Portraits de -Jeunesse"; "Henri Murger et la Bohème," by A. Delvau; and the curious -little "Histoire de Murger pour servir à l'histoire de la Vraie Bohème," -par trois Buveurs d'Eau, the anonymous authors of which are known to be -his friends, Lelioux, Nadar, and Noel. It is in the last named that some -of Murger's letters are given. There is a certain amount of conflict -between the dates given in these different books, but since they are all -equally likely to be inaccurate, I have chosen to ignore the -discrepancies, which are not very important.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> This appears in Charles Monselet's diary printed in the -memoir by A. Monselet.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> "Histoire anecdotique des Cafés et Cabarets de Paris."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> In the summer they took place in the Champs Elysées.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> M. Henri d'Alméras in "La Vie Parisienne sous Louis -Philippe," from whose book other details of these balls are taken.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The popular term for the prison in which refractory -members of the Garde Nationale were confined.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Now printed in his "Portraits Contemporains."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> The preface to George Cain's "Coins de Paris."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> See "Les Comédiens sans le savoir."</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Sanderson: "Paris in 1835."</p></div> - -</div> -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vie de Bohème, by Orlo Williams - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIE DE BOHÈME *** - -***** This file should be named 40293-h.htm or 40293-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/2/9/40293/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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