THE BOHEMIAN OF PARIS.
Béranger's Bohemians--Balzac's Definition--Two Generations--Henri Mürger.
Another extremely interesting type of character in Paris--likewise
of the vagrant nature--is the Bohemian. According to the definition
of a French lexicographer the Bohemian is "a gay and careless man
who laughingly endures the ills of life." Béranger has written a
charming poem upon the Bohemians of his day--describing the wandering
and eccentric life of bronzed-faced, brilliant-eyed men of athletic
stature, with their free amours and their romantic slumbers, during
summer nights, beneath the canopy of heaven. But Béranger did not dream
of any analogy between poets or artists in search of a supper and a
cheap bed, and those simple mendicants whose existence he idealised.
The comparison, however, soon began to assert itself. A new sense,
peculiar and fascinating, was given to the word Bohemian; and George
Sand, the first writer who seems to have applied it, finishes her
novel entitled "La Dernière Aldini" with the exclamation, "Vive la
Bohème!" Balzac, in his "Prince de la Bohème," presents an admirable
definition of the intellectual Bohemians. "They are young men," he
writes, "of any age over twenty, but not yet in their thirtieth year;
men of genius in their respective walks of life, little known hitherto,
but who will make themselves known and conquer fame. In this class
you may find diplomatists who could overthrow the projects of Russia
if supported by the power of France. Authors, too, administrators,
warriors, journalists, artists, belong to the order of Bohemians." A
less flattering notion, however, of the Bohemian is given by Xavier
de Montépin, who in his "Confessions d'une Bohême" describes the
adventurer thus: "A lost child of this great Paris, where all the vices
have temples and all the bad passions altars and priests, the Bohemian
cultivates, with dangerous skill, the worse side of human nature.
Sometimes he is really clever and succeeds in deceiving the whole
world, which for a moment accepts him. Then he is brilliant and proud,
delicately gloved and fastidiously shod; he has horses, mistresses,
gold. Of this lying edifice, so elaborately constructed, not one stone,
perhaps, will to-morrow rest upon another." It is to be hoped that
Montépin was, in this case, generalising from a few very bad specimens.
Like his counterpart in London, the Bohemian of Paris has usually
long to wait for his hour of triumph. He has to pass through years
of struggles and privations, to hunger and to thirst. He does not
surrender, however; for he has an ardent faith in himself, and never
loses the sheet-anchor of hope. The life he leads has, moreover, its
seductive side, without which the bravest soul could not support
it--hours of delightful illusion, the pleasures of study, the buoyant
companionship of others engaged in the same warfare, and a free vent
for the explosive gaieties of youth. Then there are the periods of
discouragement and anguish, the unkindnesses of friends, the physical
frame yielding even whilst the spirit defiantly holds out; then,
perhaps, despair or even death. Such things as these constitute the
chequered life of the Bohemian. The Bohemia of Paris, according to
Henri Mürger, is "the stage of artistic life; it is a preface to the
Academy, to the hospital, or to the Morgue." This inevitably reminds
an Englishman of the old Grub Street Bohemian, the man of talent or
genius who, in a few exceptional instances, struggled on, like Johnson,
to greatness, but who, as a rule, thought Fortune had smiled when he
could fill the vacuum in his stomach with four-pennyworth of shin of
beef; who, after months of toil in his garret, would take his work to
the bookseller's and return with a pocketful of guineas, only to be
penniless again on the morrow, to starve for another twelvemonth, and
perhaps to end his career, heartbroken and forgotten, in a pauper's
grave.
The present century has produced two generations of Paris Bohemians
who have left their mark upon the history of arts and letters. The
first had its cradle in a now demolished house of the Rue du Doyenné.
Nothing could have been more sombre or depressing than this street,
which was one of the ugliest in Paris. Yet the indomitable spirits who
made it their haunt lived within sight of all that the most artistic
and delicate imagination could desire. There were the remains of the
Hôtel Rambouillet, in which French literature had, in its infancy, been
nursed; the façade of the Musée, resplendent with sculptures of the
Renaissance; a cluster of trees, which might almost have been called a
wood, in the branches of which feathered Bohemians trilled their songs
of love and liberty. The walls of the house were old and bare; but
the inhabitants soon covered them with decorations of a magnificence
scarcely to be found in palaces. There Corot painted his Provence
landscapes and Chausserian his bacchants; and there the earliest novels
of Arsène Houssaye and the earliest poems of Théophile Gautier were
penned. No troop of gipsies, encamped beneath foliage in the midst
of a perfumed wood, ever led a more buoyant life. Comedy was played
within those artistic walls; masked balls were given; the landlord and
the scandalised citizens were defied. Years went by, and at last the
Bohemians of the Rue du Doyenné had constrained the public to accept
their ideals of art and literature. And now they were petted, fèted,
adored by those who had previously taken them for fools. Yet even whilst
Fortune was thus smiling, one famous member of the order--one who, in
the eyes of posterity, personifies the Bohemians of this period--threw
his fellows into mourning. The unhappy Gérard de Nerval--translator
of _Faust_, friend and collaborator of Heine--was found one morning
suspended from a street-lamp.
So much for the first generation of Paris Bohemians. The second
comprised, among others, Privat d'Anglemont, Auguste Vitu, Schanne,
Alfred Delvan, Champfleury, and, above all, Henri Mürger. Their haunt
was the Café Momus, in the Rue Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.
This café has, within the last few years, disappeared, and its site
is now occupied by a colour-merchant's warehouse and a pawnbroking
establishment. The place no longer resounds with the laughter, the
reckless gaiety, the folly of Bohemians such as those just named. At
the door of the little temple Death or Glory sometimes came and knocked,
to summon one or other of its inhabitants away. Privat d'Anglemont
entered the Municipal Maison-de-Santé and died there; Mürger, a few
months afterwards, breathed his last in the same retreat. He left behind
him a literary monument in the pictures, at once charming and grotesque,
of that strange life in which he played so important a part. Every
writer of distinction in Paris followed his bier to the grave; and the
tomb erected to his memory is worthy of the man who slumbers beneath
it. His companion, Privat d'Anglemont, lies near him; but without
even a stone to tell his admirers where to cast their wreaths. Of the
survivors, one--Schanne--became a toy-merchant in the Rue Saint-Denis
and is suspected of having, to the delight of children, invented certain
mechanical rabbits which beat a drum at every movement of the car to
which they were harnessed.
The first Bohemians of France must be looked for among her earliest
poets. François Villon, for instance, who was publicly whipped, and
the vagabond minstrels, one of whom in Victor Hugo's _Notre-Dame_ so
narrowly escapes hanging. But these lively, luckless bards were in the
position of the warriors who lived before the time of Homer, and whose
deeds were destined to remain unsung. The great student and chronicler
of Bohemian life (whose "Vie de Bohême," as translated into German,
was classed by a Leipzic bookseller under the head of ethnography)
was Henri Mürger, with his four literary and artistic personages and
their servant, himself a Bohemian, who lends small sums of money to
his masters out of the wages he does not receive, and who, in his love
of the picturesque, finds himself unable to interfere with the _beau
désordre_ in which they leave their rooms. Highly ingenious are these
four typical Bohemians in getting rid of their money when there are
funds in hand, and in making both ends meet when their purses are nearly
empty. Thus, one of them having obtained a certain sum from a confiding
relative, purchases for a young woman to whom he is attached a monkey
and a parrot; only to find, a few days afterwards, that the monkey has
eaten the parrot and died of indigestion. They have not even a suit of
dress-clothes among them; and on one occasion, when the musician wishes
to go to a ball, the painter induces a gentleman whose portrait he is
taking to divest himself of his evening coat that he may secretly lend
it to his pleasure-seeking friend. Varied and original are the devices
by which the attention of the puzzled sitter is diverted from his
missing garment. The Bohemian who has gone to the ball, and who puts on
a pair of white gloves with the view of disguising himself from possible
creditors, passes most of his time in the refreshment room; returning
to it, when for a moment he has been taken out by one of the dancers,
on the plea that if he were to stop away too long his absence would be
"remarked."
There are some Bohemians who seem to have a particular fancy for white
kids. In M. Ponsard's drama of _Honneur et Argent_ the romantic but
impecunious hero rushes forward at one critical moment to the front of
the stage, exclaiming: _Je porte des gants blancs, et je n'ai pas dîné!_
Hégésippe Moreau, Bohemian and true poet, who for want of a bed slept
at times in one of the trees of the Champs Elysées, went one evening
to a ministerial party, where, expecting to get something to eat, he
was driven to despair at finding nothing to relieve his hunger except
jellies and ices. It was probably in view of famished Bohemians that an
old French book on etiquette warned persons invited out to dinner not,
if the meal was long delayed, to exclaim: _On ne aîne jamais dans cette
maison_. A well-known Bohemian, on being asked by a wealthy friend to
take pot-luck with him at a certain hour, is said to have replied: "With
pleasure; and you will excuse me if I am rather punctual."
The Bohemian consoles himself by the thought that the greatest writers
have often in their youth been in almost as dire straits as himself. How
indeed, without such a reflection, could he from day to day exist? He
remembers that when, during the first performance of _Hernani_, Victor
Hugo was called out of the theatre by a bookseller and requested to
accept 6,000 francs for the right of publishing the play, he had not
more than forty francs in his actual possession. He may even, if he has
studied the literary history of a neighbouring country, recall the case
of Samuel Johnson, who for years had to live on fourpence a day.
Even in the depths of poverty Bohemians, if there is anything in them,
are sure (so Henri Mürger testifies) to make from time to time an
impression upon some rich man, who will invite them to dinner, partly
from sympathy and admiration, partly in order to have the opportunity
of reading to them some poem or drama that vanity has impelled him to
compose. On these occasions the Bohemian is said to revenge himself
for having been condemned to play the part of listener only--_auditor
tantùm_--by staying late and drinking profusely. Macaulay had such a
Bohemian in view when he described a member of this interesting class--a
guest at the time in the house of his patron--as "roaring for fresh
punch" at four in the morning.
[Illustration: THE BOULEVARD POISSONIÈRE.]
To be suspected, however, of a Bohemianism of which they are innocent is
sometimes the fate of eminent and well-conducted authors; and Macaulay's
roarer for punch reminds one of a certain fashionable Parisian novelist
who, as Grenville Murray relates, went once to stay at a country house
where the host and hostess had very romantic notions of the life usually
led by the knights of the pen. Towards twelve o'clock the eminent
littérateur, slightly fatigued by his journey, retired to his room, and
before long was in bed and fast asleep. In about a quarter of an hour
he was awakened by a continued tapping at the door, and, raising his
head, wondered for a moment whether the house could be on fire. Then,
recovering his presence of mind, he called out "Entrez"; on which two
sturdy footmen appeared, bearing between them an ice-pail with a bottle
of champagne in it. The novelist had some difficulty in prevailing upon
the wine bearers to retire with their well-intended burden. His host and
hostess had been under the impression that authors wrote habitually at
night, and were unable to get through their work unless well primed with
alcoholic liqueur.