avoiding the airy unrealities of old romance, without being bound down
to the skeleton facts of life, gradually became apparent. The discovery
that a writer could be true to experience and human nature without
necessarily reproducing actual events or photographing individual men
and women, was the outcome of many experiments and much failure, and was
at length hit upon in a half-blind and fortuitous way. It was only
little by little that the element of acknowledged fiction was allowed to
encroach upon the domain of truth; only little by little that people
began to understand that the art of fiction and the art of lying are not
one and the same, and that the boldest play of imagination in the
treatment of life is not always to be associated with the distortion of
reality. In the works of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Behn we see the English
novel stumbling painfully towards the comprehension of its own objects.
We have reached firm ground, and that is a great achievement; for only
when we move on firm ground is the novel possible. But the dead weight
of the actual is too heavy for us; we cannot synthesize the results of
experience; we gather observations, but we are unable to make artistic
productions out of them. Thus, we have a “New Atalantis” (and the book
is historically significant just for this reason) which is little more
than a jumble of personal scandal, filled in with occasional false
incidents and mendacious details; an “Oroonoko,” which is rather a
fanciful biography than a tale; we have a “Wife’s Resentment,” a “Fair
Jilt,” a “Lucky Mistake,”—stories all of which are based more or less
exclusively on historic occurrences or on events that had come under the
direct observation of the relaters.[19] Even where there is a lack of
truth, the appearance of truth is still carefully preserved. Things
which have not actually happened are nevertheless related as facts; real
characters are put through unreal incidents; the novel is supposed to
give history; fiction and falsehood are as yet confused.
Footnote 19:
Mrs. Manley, in her Dedication to Lady Lansdowne, says that her
stories have truth for their foundation—_i.e._, are based on fact.
Mrs. Behn calls her “Nun” a “true novel.”
-----
* * * * *
With this brief summary of the qualities and shortcomings of our two
women-novelists, this little paper might properly close. But it may be
interesting if, having carried our inquiry thus far, we add a paragraph
about the way in which the rigid reality of the works at which we have
been glancing grew gradually out into the genuine realism of the later
novel.
Properly to understand this tendency towards an equilibrium between fact
and imagination, we should turn aside to examine the profound influence
exerted over the fiction of the time of the “Tatler” and the
“Spectator.” But for our present purposes we shall find the movement
forward clearly enough exemplified in the work of one man—the author of
“Robinson Crusoe,” whose writings, therefore, we will take as our clue.
Beginning with the production of history, or semi-history, in which real
characters, slightly exaggerated, move through real scenes, or through
scenes to but small extent imaginary, Defoe proceeded little by little
to import more of fiction into his narrative, to the detriment of the
small substratum of truth still retained. By and by, he did no more than
preserve the mere frame-work of history—as in “The Journal of the Plague
Year” and the “Memoirs of a Cavalier,” in which most of the characters
and many of the incidents are purely fictitious. After this, the
remaining element of truth was gradually eliminated, and he reached the
production of narratives of fictitious characters in fictitious settings
and among fictitious scenes. “From writing biographies with real names
attached to them,” says Professor Minto, in his Life of Defoe, “it was
but a short step to writing biographies with fictitious names.” Even
when that short step was taken, the artifices resorted to by him to
preserve the apparent truthfulness of his narrations show us that he was
by no means satisfied that it would be desirable to let matters of fact
slip out of his work entirely. Though what he wrote was false, he still
tried to palm it off upon the world as true. This makes the writing of
Defoe more like lying than fiction, and goes far to explain the
extraordinary minuteness of the circumstantial method adopted by him.
But it marks, also, the transitional quality of his work. As Mr. Leslie
Stephen has neatly put it, “Defoe’s novels are simply history _minus_
the facts.” Only in his latest works do we find this pseudo-history
making way for fiction proper; and then we recognize in Defoe the
distinct forerunner of the great novelists of the eighteenth century.
But to follow this matter farther would take us beyond the due bounds,
already somewhat transgressed, of our present study. As we may now see,
the story of English fiction from the period of the Anglo-French romance
to the time of Fielding and Smollett, is a long one, and we have
undertaken to deal with only one chapter here—the chapter which tells of
Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manley, of what they did, and of what they failed to
do. That finished, our task is at an end.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Glimpse of Bohemia
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Glimpse of Bohemia
The Bohemia with which the following pages are concerned is not that
inland country of Europe which Greene and Shakspere, to the indignation
of all right-minded commentators, so generously endowed with a
sea-coast. We must at once dismiss from our minds all thought of Prague
and the Czechs; for the country into which we are about to offer a
personally conducted excursion finds no place on our maps and no mention
in our geographies. Our Bohemia is, in a word, none other than the
Bohemia of Paris.
The confines and landmarks of this strange country have, fortunately for
us, been authoritatively established. Bohemia, according to the painter
Marcel, of whom we shall hear more anon, and who certainly knew well
what he was talking about, is “bounded on the north by hope, work, and
gayety; on the south by necessity and courage; on the west and east by
calumny and the hospital.”[20] Yet it is just possible that these
cryptic phrases may fail to convey to some readers any very definite
geographical information; since even Rodolphe, to whom they were first
addressed, is reported to have shrugged his shoulders and responded with
a simple “Je ne comprends pas.” Hence, it may be well at the outset to
attempt to describe, as succinctly as possible, the limits of that
seductive land through which our road is now to lie.
Footnote 20:
“La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.
-----
This is far from being an easy task, however. Often as the word
_Bohemia_ is used, in the broad sense here attached to it, so many
writers have colored it with so many different shades of meaning, that,
though we may understand vaguely its general significance, it seems
well-nigh impossible to bring it satisfactorily within the terms of a
strict definition. “Vive la Bohème!” cries George Sand, at the end of
her novel, “La Dernière Aldini”; and “Vive la Bohème!” has found many an
echo and re-echo in the pages of French literature, down to the present
day, when it would seem that, as a free and independent country, Bohemia
is practically disappearing from the face of the earth. But each one of
the many explorers of this dark and mysterious corner of our modern
world, has brought back with him his own report of the territory and its
inhabitants; and these travellers’ stories by no means tally one with
another. To some it has seemed to be peopled by the lowest classes of
those who, as the phrase goes, live upon their wits; by beggars, petty
swindlers of all descriptions, and men and women who, through idleness
or misfortune, are unable to obtain a livelihood, we will not say in
honest ways, but in any way that society chooses to recognize as honest.
To others the population has appeared to be composed of those who follow
undignified and precarious careers, as cheap-jacks, circus-riders,
street-conjurers, acrobats, bear-trainers, sword-swallowers, and
itinerant mountebanks of kindred descriptions. A third class of writers
has made Bohemia a regular sink of society, the receptacle of all such
outcasts and human abominations as Eugène Sue and his followers loved to
depict; villains of the deepest dye—vitriol-throwers, house-breakers,
assassins. While to a fourth group this same domain has been the land of
literature and the arts, where philosophy and beer, music and debt,
painting and hunger, criticism and tobacco-smoke, combine to make life
picturesque and inspiring; a land the denizens of which either die of
penury in the streets or the hospital, uncared for, unknown, or, living,
at last take their rightful places in the front rank, among the
painters, composers, and writers of their time.
Wherein these various critics agree, is in describing Bohemia as a
country lying on the outskirts of ordinary society, and inhabited by
those who cannot, or will not, yield to that society’s conventions—the
failures or the incompatibles of decent modern civilization. It is
hardly worth while to try to decide as to what particular portion of
this vast and complex community has the best right to a name which has
thus been used with great elasticity of meaning. It will be sufficient
if we say at once that the phase of Bohemian life with which we here
purpose to deal is not that reflected in the romances of Xavier de
Montépin, Féval, or Sue. Our Bohemia is the Bohemia of art and letters;
and, as our guide through this romantic region, we will take the man who
has drawn its life for us with such marvellous power and vividness—Henri
Murger, himself the representative Bohemian, alike in the struggles and
lurid contradictions of his career, and alas! in his early and tragic
death.
“To-day, as of old, every man who devotes himself to art, with
no other means of subsistence than art itself, will be forced
to tread the pathways of Bohemia. The majority of our
contemporaries who display the most beautiful heraldry of art
have been Bohemians; and, in their calm and prosperous glory,
they often recall, sometimes perhaps with regret, the time
when, climbing the green slopes of youth, they had no other
fortune, in the sunshine of their twenty years, than courage,
which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the
fortune of the poor. For the uneasy reader, for the timorous
bourgeois, for all those who can never have too many dots on
the _i_’s of a definition, we will repeat in the form of an
axiom: Bohemia is the probation of artistic life; it is the
preface to the academy, the hospital, or the morgue.”
Thus writes Murger, in the preface to his immortal “Scènes de la Vie de
Bohème,” and the words will be found to furnish a startling commentary
about the kind of life with which his volume deals—a life made up of
extraordinary contrasts; of dazzling dreams and the most sordid of
realities; of hope alternating with despair; of high talents ruined by
reckless excesses; of splendid promises defeated by the Fates; of
brilliant careers cut short by premature death. “The true Bohemians,”
continues this writer, who, more than any other, speaks as their
accredited mouthpiece and historian, “are really the called of art, and
stand a chance of being also the chosen.” But the country of their
adoption literally “bristles with dangers. Chasms yawn on either
side—misery and doubt. Yet between these two chasms, there is at least a
road, leading to a goal, which the Bohemians can already reach with
their eyes, while awaiting the time when they shall touch it with their
hands.” But till such time shall come, even if it ever comes at all, the
young enthusiast must turn a brave face upon all the troubles, the
anxieties, the privations, the fears, the petty worries and
distractions, by which his self-chosen career will be everywhere begirt.
For those who have once set their feet in the alluring but perilous
pathway, which will lead to fame or misery, to immortality or death,
there must be no trembling, no hesitation, no looking backward with
regretful eyes to the safe, though humble, beaten tracks which they have
left below. They have dared to devote themselves, brain and soul, to
art, in a world which cannot understand their aims, which sneers at
their aspirations, which is very likely to leave them to starve, and
will at best yield them only a grudging and tardy welcome. Hence, every
day’s existence becomes for them “a work of genius, an ever-recurring
problem.”[21] Nor is it surprising that, in the haphazard life which
they are thus forced to lead, they should inevitably acquire those
habits of carelessness, that easy-going morality, and often enough that
want of settled purpose, which make them the black sheep of respectable
society.
“If a little good fortune falls into their hands, they
forthwith begin to pursue the most ruinous fancies ... not
finding windows enough to throw their money out of; and then,
when the last écu is dead and buried, they begin again to dine
at the table d’hôte of chance, where their cover is always
laid; and to chase, from morning till night, that ferocious
beast, the hundred-sous-piece.”[22]
Footnote 21:
“La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.
Footnote 22:
_Ibid._
-----
Such is the tenor of their way; certainly not a noiseless one, nor one
running through the cool, sequestered vale of life. Little wonder, then,
that with all the frivolities and uncertainties of their journey, with
all its physical hardships and moral perils, so few should survive their
pilgrimage through Bohemia, or, when they finally reach a quieter
resting-place, should have the heart to recount, with frankness and
simplicity, their varied experiences in the probationary land.
Yet the Bohemians are a great race, and may boast a proud extraction.
The founder of their illustrious family was none other than the great
father of Western song, who, “living by chance from day to day, wandered
about the fertile country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity, and
stopped at eventide to hang beside the hearth of hospitality, the
harmonious lyre that had chanted the loves of Helen and the fall of
Troy.”[23] Descending the centuries to modern times, the Bohemian
reckons his ancestors among the prominent figures of every great
literary epoch. In the middle ages, the great family tradition is
perpetuated among the minstrels and ballad-makers, the devotees of the
gay science, the whole tribe of the melodious vagabonds of Touraine;
while, as we pass from the days of chivalry to the dawn of the
Renaissance, we find “Bohemia still strolling about all the highways of
the kingdom, and already invading the streets of Paris itself.” Who does
not know of Pierre Gringoire, friend of vagrants and foe to fasting? Who
cannot picture him as “he beats the pavements of the town, nose in air,
like a dog’s, sniffing the odors of the kitchens and the cook-shops”;
and “jingling in imagination—alas, not in his pockets!—the ten crowns,
which the aldermen have promised him for the very pious and devout farce
he has written for their theatre in the hall of the Palais de Justice”?
Who, again, does not recall Master François Villon, “poet and vagabond,
_par excellence_,” whose ballads to-day may still make us forget the
ruffian, the vagabond, the debauchee? These are names with strange power
still over the imagination. And, when we come to the splendid outburst
of the Renaissance, is it not to find ourselves face to face with men in
whose veins the rich old blood was fierce and strong, with Clément
Marot, and the ill-starred Tasso, with Jean Goujon, Pierre Ronsard,
Mathurin Regnier, and who shall say how many more? Shakspere, and
Molière, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and d’Alembert—these, too, the historian
of Bohemia must include in his annals, to say nothing of the long line
of great writers in England (whom Murger does not even allude to), by
whom the name of Grub Street was made illustrious in the chronicles of
the eighteenth century.
Footnote 23:
In this slight historic sketch of Bohemianism, we simply follow,
without comment or criticism, Murger’s original preface to the “Scènes
de la Vie de Bohème.”
-----
Two groups of Bohemians in Paris—where perhaps alone to-day artistic
Bohemianism is still possible—have within more recent years made their
voices heard and their influence felt in the literature and art of their
time. The first was that which gathered about poor Gérard Labrunie,
better known as Gérard de Nerval, the unfortunate young writer whose
works have yet to reap their due appreciation, but whose translation of
“Faust,” as Goethe told Eckermann, made the great German proud “to find
such an interpreter.” That group was composed of such men as Corot,
Chesseriau, Arsène Houssaye, Théophile Gautier, Jules Janin, and
Stadler; the mere recital of whose names is enough. Shortly after this
band was broken up—some, like Nerval, dying tragically and long before
their time; others reaching high rank in the world of French
letters—another famous _cénacle_ arose, the central figure of which was
the prince of modern Bohemia, Henri Murger himself. Among those who
toiled and suffered with him, we may make passing mention of Auguste
Vitu, Schaune, and Alfred Delvau; but there were, of course, others,
whose names are less familiar to the reading public of to-day,
especially in this country. The romance of this second Bohemia has been
written for us by Murger in the “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème”; and it is
to the pages of this fascinating book that we purpose presently to turn.
But to understand these aright, to appreciate their pathos and their
comedy, to realize their intensity of meaning, we must first of all know
something of the writer’s personality and career. I do not mean that it
will be necessary for us to retell in detail the whole sad story of
Murger’s life. But so much of his character and experiences find
embodiment in this book of his, that we should miss half its charm and
more than half its significance, if we did not, to begin with, make
ourselves acquainted with at least the larger facts of his existence.
* * * * *
Henri Murger was born in 1822. His father, a Savoyard, moved to Paris
either just before or just after his son’s birth; obtained a situation
as janitor; and while attending to the demands of this position, carried
on at the same time his trade as a tailor. Murger _père_ was a hard,
severe, unsympathetic man, totally unable to understand his son’s
early-developed literary propensities, and with no higher ambition in
life than that of making a decent income by the exercise of his craft.
His intention from the beginning was to bring young Henri up as an adept
at shears and thimble, so that he might by-and-by turn out a
hard-working, thrifty ninth part of a man, like himself. But Henri
rebelled; and as his mother sided with him, having, as it would seem,
some faith in the child’s talents, or perhaps only a womanly yearning to
make a gentleman of him, the long struggle with paternal authority
finally closed, though not without the breeding of bitterness, in his
favor. The original scheme of training him to manual labor was
abandoned, and he received such education as his parents could afford,
which, after all, was poor enough.
While still a mere boy he entered the practical business of life through
the narrow and dingy portals of a lawyer’s office; but like many another
youth under similar conditions, the itch for verse was too strong for
him, and he relieved with the inditing of stanzas the dry technicalities
of the legal routine. Meanwhile, an academician, M. de Jouy, had taken a
fancy to him; and through his influence, at the age of sixteen, he
obtained an appointment as secretary to Count Tolstoï, a Russian
diplomatist then resident in Paris. Forty francs a month represented the
material advantages of this position; not a lordly remuneration,
certainly, but acceptable enough, none the less; more especially as the
duties, anything but cumbersome at the start, dwindled considerably with
lapse of time and presently became almost nominal. With a small definite
income to fall back upon, and plenty of leisure on his hands, Murger now
began to give free scope to his literary impulses, passing his hours in
the study of the poets, and making a humble start in his own productive
career. But his good fortune was destined to be of short duration; for
through a rather ludicrous misadventure his connection with Tolstoï was
after a while brought to a sudden close. At that time he was engaged to
furnish a certain amount of daily copy to one of the Parisian papers. It
so chanced that during the Revolution of 1848 Tolstoï found it necessary
to put his secretarial services once more into active requisition; and,
what with getting off his daily supply of matter for the press and
preparing dispatches for the Czar of all the Russias, the young man
unexpectedly found his energies taxed to the full. One memorable day the
functions of diplomatist and author unfortunately became entangled, and
in his hurry and excitement he sent off his _feuilleton_ to the Russian
Court and his dispatch to the “Corsaire.” With this ill-timed
performance, Murger’s political career ignominiously ended, and—what was
by far the most serious part of the matter—the monthly recompense of
forty francs, which had seemed to him a veritable Peruvian gold-mine,
ended also. Nor was this all. Ere this his mother had died, and with the
cessation of her mediatorial influence, the feud between himself and his
father had broken out afresh. Thus Murger was thrown entirely on his own
resources, with nothing but his pen to look to for the means of support.
His father peremptorily refused to have anything to do with him. “He
contents himself with giving me advice,” wrote Henri to a friend, in a
season of special tribulation, “and with insulting me whenever we meet.”
And it is well known that one cannot live on advice, while insults,
though more stimulating, are not a whit more nutritious.