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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 _grœculus 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 Mercœur 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.