philanthropic, young Englishmen brought him one winter to lecture and
the subject as announced was "Contemporary French Poetry," and through
all these years I have managed to preserve the small sheet of
announcement with Arthur Symons's name and "kind regards" written below,
a personal little document, for it was Symons who got up the show, and
he and Herbert P. Horne who sold the tickets. Instead of lecturing,
Verlaine read his verses to the scanty audience, all of whom knew each
other, in the dim light of Barnard's Inn Hall, and the music of their
rhythm was in his voice so that I was not conscious of the satyr-like
repulsiveness of his face and head so long as he was reading. When he
was not reading, the repulsiveness was to me overpowering and I shrank
from his very presence. Nor was the shrinking less when I talked with
him the night after his lecture, at a dinner where my place was next to
his. He was like a loathsome animal with his decadent face, his yellow
skin, and his little bestial eyes lighting up obscenely as he told me of
the two women who would fight for the money in his pockets when he got
back to Paris. Beyond this I have no recollection of his talk. The
prospect before him apparently absorbed his interest, was the only good
he had got out of his visit to London. The beauty of his own beautiful
poems, I felt in disgust, should have made such vicious sordidness
impossible. It revolted me that a man so degraded and hideous physically
could write the verse I had loved ever since his _Romances sans Paroles_
first fell into my hands, or, writing it, could be content to remain
what he was. To be sure, the genius is rare whom it is not a
disappointment to meet, and the hero-worshipper may be thankful when his
great man is guilty of nothing worse than the famous writer in
Tchekhof's play--so famous as to have his name daily in the papers and
his photograph in shop windows--whose crime was to condescend to fish
and to be pleased when he caught something.
VI
The Nineties would not let us off from another entertainment as
characteristic--as _fin-de-siècle_, the Englishman under the impression
that he knew his Paris would have classified it--nor did we want to be
let off, though it lured us indoors.
The big theatres had no attraction: to sit out a long play in a hot
playhouse was not our idea of what spring nights were made for. Neither
had the "Hells" and "Heavens," the fatuous, vulgar, indecent
performances with catchpenny names, run for the foreigner who went to
Paris so that he might for the rest of his life throw up hands of
horror and say what an immoral place it was.
Once or twice we tried the out-door _Café-Chantant_, and we heard Paulus
in the days when all Paris went to hear him, and Yvette Guilbert when
she was still slim and wore the V-shaped bodice and the long black
gloves, as you may see her in Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs.
Once or twice we tried the big stuffy music-halls, also adapted to
supply the travelling student of morals with the specimens he was in
search of, but not dropping all local character in the effort. We seemed
to owe it to the memory of Manet to go to the _Folies-Bergère_ which
cannot be forgotten so long as his extraordinary painting of the barmaid
in the ugly fashions of the late Seventies is saved to the world. That
natural desire of youth just to see and to know, that had carried us up
and down the _Boulevards_ of the _Rive Gauche_ in pursuit of its poets,
sent us to the _Casino de Paris_ and the _Moulin Rouge_. But a first
visit did not inspire us with a desire for a second, though I would not
have missed the _Casino_ if only for the imperishable memory of the most
solemn of our critics dancing there with a patroness of the house and
looking about as cheerful as a martyr at the stake, nor the _Moulin_
_Rouge_ for another memory as imperishable of the most socially
pretentious leaving his partner, after his dance, with the "thanks
awfully" of the provincial ball-room. I thought both dull places which
nothing save their reputation could have recommended, even to those
determined young decadents in London who were no prouder of their
friendship with Bibi and Verlaine than of their freedom of the French
music-halls, and who wrote of them with a pretence of profound knowledge
calculated to _épater le bourgeois_ at home, referring by name with easy
familiarity to the dancers in the _Quadrille Naturaliste_, as celebrated
in its way as Bibi in his, and explaining solemnly the _chahut_ and the
_grand écart_ and _le port d'armes_ and every evolution in that
unpleasant dance. How it brought it all back to me the other day when I
found in _The Gypsy_--the direct but belated offspring of _The Savoy_--a
poem to _Nini-patte-en-l'air_. And does anybody now know or care who
Nini-patte-en-l'air was? Or who _La Goulue_ and the rest? Would anybody
now go a step to see the _Quadrille_ were any graceless acrobats left to
dance it? These things belonged to the lightest of light fashions that
passed with the Nineties, and the _Moulin Rouge_ itself could burn down
to the ground a few months ago and hardly a voice be heard in lament or
reminiscence. Upon such rapidly shifting sands did the young would-be
revolutionaries of London build their House of Decadence.
The entertainment worth the exchange of the pure May night for a
smoke-laden, stuffy interior was in none of these places. Where we
looked for it--and found it--was in the little _café_ or _cabaret_--the
_cabaret artistique_ as it was then known in Paris--with a flair for the
genius the world is so long in discovering, where the young poet read
his verses, the young musician interpreted his music, the young artist
showed his work in any manner the chance was given him to, to say
nothing of the posters he sometimes designed for it and decorated Paris
with: theatre and performance and advertisement impossible in any other
town or any other atmosphere. London is too clumsy. Berlin is too
ponderous, New York has not the right material home-grown, and the
spirit of the original dies in the self-conscious imitation. Even in
Paris a Baedeker star is its death-blow, the private guide's attention
spells immediate ruin, nor can it survive more legitimate honours at
home when they come. Like most good things it has its times and its
seasons, and it was in the Nineties it gave forth its finest blossoms.
We knew it was a pleasure to be snatched this year, for next who could
say where it might be, and we set out to snatch it with the same
diligence we had devoted one spring to eating dinners and another to
playing in the suburbs, though we could make no pretence in a week to
exhaust it.
Night after night we dined, we drank our coffee at the nearest _café_,
we scrambled to the top of the big omnibus with the three white horses,
now as dead as the performance it was taking us to, we journeyed across
Paris to see or to hear the work of the young genius on the threshold of
fame or oblivion. And if in an access of conscientiousness we had felt
the need--as we never did--of a reason for our eagerness, we might have
had it in the way our evening's entertainment invariably turned out to
be the legitimate sequel of our day's work. For there wasn't a _cabaret_
of them all that did not reflect somehow the things we had been busy
studying and wrangling over ever since our arrival in Paris, the merit
they shared in common being their pre-occupation with the art and
literature of the day to which they belonged. The tiresome performance
known as a _Revue_, which is all the vogue just now in the London
music-halls, undertakes to do something of the same kind: to be, that
is, a reflection of the events and interests and popular excitements of
the day. But the wide gulf between the music-hall _Revue_ and the old
_Cabaret_ performance is that art and literature could not, by hook or
by crook, be dragged into the average Englishman's scheme of life.
If one night the end of the journey was the _Tréteau de Tabarin_--the
hot and uncomfortable little room rigged up as a theatre, with hard
rough wooden benches for the audience, and vague lights, and bare and
dingy stage where men and women whose names I have forgotten read and
recited and sang the _chansons rosses_ that "all Paris" flocked there to
hear--it was to have the argument from which we had freshly come
continued and settled by one of the inspired young poets. For my chief
remembrance is of the irreverent youth who summed up our daily dispute
over Rodin's great melodramatic Balzac, with frowning brows and goitrous
throat, wrapped in shapeless dressing-gown, that stood that spring in
the centre of the sculpture court at the New _Salon_, and the summing up
was in verse only a Frenchman could write, the satire the more bitter
because the wit was so fine.
A second night when we climbed the lumbering omnibus, we were bound for
the _Chat Noir_. It had already moved from its first primitive quarters
but had not yet degenerated into a regular show place, advertised in
Paris and taken by Salis on tour through the provinces. Here, our
justification was to find that everything, from the sign of the Black
Cat, then hanging at the door and now hanging, a national possession, in
the Carnavalet Museum, and the cat-decorations in the _café_ and the
drawings and paintings on the wall, to the performance in the big room
upstairs, was by the men over whose work we had been arguing all day at
the _Salon_ and buying in the reproductions at the bookstalls and
bookshops on the way back.
To see that performance upstairs we had each to pay five francs at the
door, and we paid them as willingly as if they did not represent
breakfast and dinner for the next day, and so many other people paid
them with equal willingness that the room was crowded, though the show
was of a kind that the same public in any town except Paris would have
paid twice that sum to stay away from. Imagine Poe attracting customers
for a New York saloon-keeper by reciting his poems! Imagine Keene or
Beardsley making the fortunes of a London public-house by decorating
its walls and showing his pictures on a screen! Or imagine the public of
to-day, debauched by the "movies" and the music-hall "sketch," knowing
that there is such a thing as poetry or art to listen to and look at!
But Salis,--the great Salis, inventor, proprietor, director of the _Chat
Noir_, dealt only in poetry and art and music, and this is sufficient to
give him a place in the history of the period, even if he were the mere
exploiter filling his pockets by pilfering other people's brains that he
was accused of being by his enemies. He crowded his _café_ by letting
poets whom nobody had heard of and whose destiny--some of them, Maurice
Donnay for one--as staid Academicians nobody could have foreseen, try
their verses for the first time in public; by giving the same splendid
opportunity to musicians as obscure then, whatever heights at least
two--Charpentier and Debussy--were afterwards to reach; and by allowing
the artist, while the poet was the interpreter in beautiful words and
the musician in beautiful sound, to show his wonderful little dramas in
black-and-white, the _Ombres Chinoises_ that were the crowning glory of
the night's performance. From days in the _Salons_, from the illustrated
papers and magazines and books we filled our bags with to take back to
London, we could not measure the full powers of men like Willette and
Caran d'Ache and Rivière and Louis Morin until we had seen also _The
Prodigal Son_, _The March of the Stars_, and all the stories they told
in those dramatic silhouettes--those marvellous little black figures,
cut in tin, only a few inches high, moving across a white space small in
due proportion, but so designed and posed and grouped by the artist as
to give the swing and the movement and the passing of great armies until
one could almost fancy one heard the drums beat and the trumpets call,
or to suggest the grandeur and solemnity of the desert, the vastness of
the sky, the mystery of the night. They have been imitated. Only a few
months ago I saw an imitation in a London music-hall, with all that late
inventions in photography and electric light could do for it. But no
touch of genius was in the little figures and the elaboration was no
more than clever stagecraft. The simplicity of the _Chat Noir_ was gone,
and gone the gaiety of the performers, and the pretence of gaiety is
sadder than tragedy. Salis knew how to catch his poet, his musician, his
artist, young,--that is where he scored.
It is possible that I was the more impressed by the beauty of the show
because it was not of that side of the _Chat Noir_ I had heard most. Its
British admirers or critics, when they got back to London, had far more
to say of it as a haunt of vice, if not as decadents to parade their
wide and experienced knowledge of Paris, then as students who had gone
there very likely to gather further confirmation of the popular British
belief in Paris as the headquarters of vice and frivolity. To this day
the hero or heroine of the British novel who is led astray is apt to
cross the Channel for the purpose. It was a delicate matter to
accomplish this in the Nineties when the novelist happened to be a
woman, for even the "New Woman" cry, if it armed her with her own
front-door key, could not draw all the bolts and bars of convention for
her. I can remember the plight of the highly correct Englishwoman, upon
whom British fiction depended for its respectability, who wanted to send
her young hero from the English provinces to the _Chat Noir_ in the
course of a rake's progress, and who avoided facing the contamination
herself by shifting to her husband the task of collecting the necessary
local colour on the spot. She did well, for had she gone she could not
have been so scandalized as the young Briton in her book was obliged to
be for the sake of the story. Those who had eyes and ears for it could
see and hear all the license they wanted, those who had eyes and ears
for the beauty could rest content with that, and as far as my impression
of the place goes, Salis, if he allowed license at the _Chat Noir_,
refused to put up with either the affectation or the advertisement of
it. I cannot forget the night when a young American woman took her
cigarette case from her pocket and lit a cigarette. It would not have
seemed a desperate deed in proper England where every other woman had
begun to smoke in public, probably more in public than in private, for
with many smoking was part of the "New Woman" crusade--"I never liked
smoking," an ardent leader in the cause told me once, "but I smoked
until we won the right to." France, or Salis, however, still drew a
rigid line that refused women the same right in France, and with the
American's first whiff he was bidding her good-night and politely, but
firmly, showing her the door.
A third night, and I do not know that it was not the most amusing, the
end of our journey was Bruant's _Cabaret du Mirliton_, in the remote
_Boulevard Rochechouart_. I daresay there was not one of us who did not
own a copy of Bruant's _Dans la Rue_, but we had bought it less because
of his verses--some of us had not read a line of them--than because of
Steinlen's illustrations, and I can still hear Harland upbraiding us for
our literary indifference and urging it as a duty that we should not
only read Bruant's songs, but go at once to hear him sing them. Harland
had the provoking talent of looking as if his stories were the last
thing he was bothering about, as if he was too busy enjoying the
spectacle of life to think of work, when he was really working as hard
as the hardest-working of us all. And as it was not very long after that
his _Mademoiselle Miss_ appeared, I have an idea that he hurried us off
to Bruant's not solely to improve our literary taste, but quite as much
to collect incidents for that gay little tale.
[Illustration: Poster by Toulouse-Lautrec
ARISTIDE BRUANT OF THE CABARET DU MIRLITON]
Bruant ran the _Mirliton_ on the principle that the less easily pleasure
is come by, the more it will be prized. There was no walking in as at
the ordinary _café_, no paying for admission as upstairs at the _Chat
Noir_. Instead, it amused him to keep people who wanted to get in
standing outside his door while he examined them through a little
grille, an amusement which, in our case, he prolonged until I was sure
he did not like our looks and would send us away, and that the reason
was the responsibility he laid upon us all for the frock coat and top
hat which the Architect could never manage to keep out of sight, skulk
as he might in the background. But, of course, Bruant had no intention
of sending us away and he kept up his little farce only to the point
where our disappointment was on the verge of turning into impatience. It
simply meant that he did not hold to the hail-fellow-well-met
free-and-easiness which was the pose of Salis at the _Chat Noir_, but,
at the _Mirliton_, was all for ceremony and dramatic effect. At the
psychological moment he opened the door himself, a splendid creature,
half brigand, half Breton peasant, in brown corduroy jacket and
knee-breeches, high boots, red silk handkerchief tied loosely round his
neck, big wide-brimmed hat on the back of his head, the passing pose of
a poet who, I am told, rejoiced to give it up for a costume fitted to
the more congenial pastime of raising potatoes. To have seen
Toulouse-Lautrec's poster of him and his _Cabaret_ was to recognize him
at a glance.
To the noise of a strident chorus in choice _argot_, which I was
told I should be thankful I did not understand, Bruant showed us
into his _café_. It was more like an amateur museum, with its big
Fifteenth Century fireplace, and its brasses and tapestries on the
walls, and if the huge _Mirliton_ hanging from the ceiling was not
remarkable as a work of art, it should now, as historic symbol of
the Nineties, have a place at the _Carnavalet_ by the side of the
sign of the _Chat Noir_. When we had time to look round, we saw that
the severe ordeal through which we had passed had admitted us into
the company of a few youths in the high stocks and long hair of the
_Quartier Latin_, a _petit piou-piou_ or so, two or three stray
workmen, women whom perhaps it would be more discreet not to attempt
to classify, all seated at little tables and harmlessly occupied in
drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The place was free from
tourists, we were the only foreigners, the handsome Aristide
evidently sang his songs for the pleasure of himself and the people.
It was after we had sat down at our little table and given the order
required of us that the incidents of the evening began to play so neatly
and effectively into Harland's plot. A scowl was on Bruant's handsome
face as he strode up and down his _café_-museum, for the striding, it
seemed, was only part of the regular performance. He should at the same
time have been singing the songs we had come to hear, and he could not
without the pianist who accompanied him, and the pianist had chosen
this night of all others to be late. The scowl deepened, I felt
something like a stir of uneasiness through the room, and I did not
wonder, for Bruant looked as if he had a temper it might be dangerous to
trifle with. And then the strange thing happened and, to our surprise
and his, our party whom he had met with such disdain saved the
situation. How we did it may be read, with the variations necessary to
fit his tale, in Harland's book. We had our own musician--her name was
not Mademoiselle Miss--and when she discovered what was the matter, and
why Bruant was scowling so abominably, she was moved by the sympathy of
one artist for another and offered her services. Bruant led her to the
piano, she accompanied him as best she could, the music being new to
her, he sang us his _St. Lazare_ and _La Soularde_, all the while
striding up and down with magnificent swagger, and was about to begin a
third of his most famous songs when the pianist arrived, his
unmistakable fright quickly lost in his bewilderment at being received
with an amiability he had not any right to expect, and allowed to slip
into his place at the piano unrebuked. Bruant, with the manners, the
courteous dignity, of a prince, led our Mademoiselle Miss back to us,
ordered bocks for her, for me--the only other woman at our table--and
for himself, touched his with his lips, bowed, was gone and singing
again before we could show that we had not yet learned to drain our
glasses in the fashion approved of at the _Mirliton_.
So far Harland used this little episode much as it happened and made the
most of it--I hope the curious who consult his story will be able to
distinguish between his realism and his romance. But being mere man he
missed the sequel which to the original of his Mademoiselle Miss and to
me was the most dramatic and disturbing event of the evening. Gradually,
as we sat at our table, watching Bruant and the company, it dawned upon
us that Bruant did not exhaust the formalities of his entertainment upon
the coming guest but reserved one for the parting guest which in our
judgment was scarcely so amusing. For to every woman who left his
_café_, Bruant's goodbye was a hearty kiss on both cheeks. We had the
sense to know that, as we had come to the _Mirliton_ of our own free
will, we had no more right to quarrel with its rules than to refuse to
show our press ticket at the _Salon_ turnstile, or to give up our
umbrellas at the door of the _Louvre_, or to question the regulations of
any other place in Paris we chose to go to. If we insisted upon being
made the exceptions to the farewell ceremony, and if Bruant would not
let us off, could we resent it? And if the men of our party resented it
for us, and if Bruant resented their resentment, how would that improve
matters?
It was about as unpleasant a predicament as I have ever found myself in.
We talked it over, but could see no way out of it, and in our discomfort
kept urging the men to stay for just one more song and then just one
more, greatly to their amazement, for they were accustomed to not
wanting to go and having to beg us to stay. The evil moment, however,
could not be put off indefinitely, and, with our hearts in our boots, we
at last got up from the table. We might have spared ourselves our agony.
Bruant, with the instinct and intelligence of the Frenchman, realized
our embarrassment and I hope I am right in thinking he had his laugh
over us all to himself, so much more than a laugh did we owe him. For
what he did when we got to the door was to shake hands with us
ceremoniously, each in turn, to repeat his thanks for our visit and his
gratitude to the musician for her services, to take off his wide-brimmed
hat--the only time that night--and to bow us out into the darkness of
the _Boulevard Rochechouart_.
Following the example of Mademoiselle Miss in the story, unless it was
she who was following ours, we finished the evening which had begun at
the _Mirliton_ by eating supper at the _Rat Mort_. It was an experience
I cared less to repeat even than the visits to the _Casino de Paris_ and
the _Moulin Rouge_. As light and satisfying a supper could have been
eaten in many other places, late as was the hour. Neither wit nor art
entered into the entertainment as at the _Chat Noir_ and Bruant's. Vice
was at no trouble to disguise itself. On the contrary, it made rather a
cynical display, I thought, and cynicism in vice is never agreeable. I
give my impressions. I may be wrong. I have not forgotten that the
harmless portrait by Degas of Desboutin at the _Nouvelle Athènes_
scandalized all London in the Nineties. Everything depends on the point
of view.