Revolution of 1830, with a mind engrossed by politics, respectful
towards his hopes, suppressing them beneath a false gravity, very
envious of reputations, uttering phrases instead of incisive
_mots_--those diamonds of French conversation--but with plenty of
attitude and mistaking haughtiness for dignity. These people are
the walking coffins which contain the Frenchman of former times;
the Frenchman gets agitated at moments and knocks against his
English envelope; but ambition holds him back, and he consents to
suffocate inside it. This coffin is always dressed in black cloth."
This sombre portion of the background need, therefore, trouble us no
further. It dominated politics and was ignored by _tout Paris_.
The aristocracy of the Faubourg St.-Germain is almost equally
negligible. Being legitimists, they sulked after 1830, either living on
their country estates or shutting themselves gloomily within the gaunt
walls of their _hôtels_ in the Faubourg. This retirement, too, was not
wholly due to _bouderie_, for many of them, like Balzac's Princesse de
Cadignan, suffered heavy financial losses by the Revolution. Their
self-denying ordinance caused a great diminution in the general gaiety
of Paris for some years. Legitimist drawing-rooms, where a brilliant
host of guests had been wont to gather, were hushed and dark while the
dowagers gravely discussed the latest news of the Duchesse de Berry. The
few official _fêtes_ were severely boycotted, and even the
entertainments of foreign ambassadors suffered. It was an irksome
business for the younger members, particularly the ladies of the
aristocracy, who eventually gathered courage to break out into small
entertainments, and in 1835 there was the first of a series of
legitimist balls, the subscriptions for which went to recompense those
whose civil list pensions had been suppressed in 1830. After this the
Faubourg St.-Germain became more lively, and certain houses were opened
to a wider circle of guests. Eugène Sue, for instance, till he became
impossible, was to be found in many legitimist drawing-rooms.
Nevertheless, the Faubourg St.-Germain avoided attracting the public eye
by any conspicuous festivities, and this had two effects. In the first
place, it brought the more joyous festivities of _tout Paris_ and the
riotous celebrations of Bohemia into greater relief; and, in the second,
the men of the aristocracy, like the Duc d'Aulnis, were driven to find
distraction and amusement in a gayer world into which their own
womankind was debarred from penetrating. It was they who formed a
certain section of _tout Paris_; they were the _viveurs_, the _dandies_,
the young bloods of the newly founded Jockey Club, the members of the
_petit cercle_ in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be
called _la haute Bohème_.
There was, however, a certain amount of neutral ground between the
aristocracy of birth and that of wit to be found in the literary
_salons_ of the day, which, if not quite so illustrious as they had once
been, shone with a considerable amount of brilliance. Among the
legitimists these were, of course, not to be found, but the aristocracy
of Napoleon was represented by the _salons_ of the Duchesse de Duras
and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. The latter, widow of Napoleon's marshal
Junot, was a particular friend of Balzac, who was the most notable
figure to be found at her house. She was always dreadfully in debt, and
after being sold up she died in a hospital in 1838. The _salon_ of the
Princess Belgiojoso in the Rue Montparnasse attracted particular
attention because, with an aristocratic hostess, it had all the
_entrain_ of more purely artistic gatherings. Till troubles in Italy
called them back to their estates the Prince and Princess Belgiojoso
were among the gayest of the gay. The Prince with his boon companion,
Alfred de Musset, ruffled it merrily on the boulevard, while the
Princess, who had many of the most brilliant men of the day for her
lovers, filled her apartments with poets, artists, writers, and, above
all, musicians. One who frequented her drawing-room hung with black
velvet, spangled with silver stars, says she had a "fierté glaciale,
mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal,
and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame
Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was
composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at
L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of
the aging Châteaubriand. The _salons_ of the pure Romantics made no
pretence of splendour and were entirely free from the atmosphere of
officialdom. The chief of them were those of Madame Hugo, of Madame Gay
(who was succeeded by her daughter, Delphine de Girardin), and of
Charles Nodier, the genial librarian of the Arsenal. In all of these, as
in the _salon_ of the Princess Belgiojoso, _tout Paris_ was to be found
in force. The gatherings round Victor Hugo were a little too much
flavoured by the fumes of the censer, but those of the Girardins and of
Nodier were of the most charming gaiety. Balzac, in a humorous article,
drew a malicious sketch of the exaggerated enthusiasms of Nodier's
guests when a poem was read before them. "Cathédrale!" "Ogive!"
"Pyramide d'Egypte!" were the approved exclamations of ecstatic
approbation. Madame Ancelot[11] confesses that she found the
conversation very amusing, but very strange. "There was never a serious
word," she says, "never anything profound, sensible, or simple; every
word was meant to cause laughter, to make an effect. The more a thing
was unexpected--that is, the less it was natural--the more prodigious
was its success." She, no doubt, was prejudiced, and the fact remains
that every guest who wrote in after years of Nodier's _salon_, its merry
conversation followed inevitably by dancing, did so with most grateful
praise, for Nodier died in 1846, leaving his Romantic friends to write
regretful reminiscences. The _salon_ of Sophie Gay and her daughter was
equally infected by high spirits, but it was less purely literary.
Liszt, Thalberg, and Berlioz made music here; Roger de Beauvoir met
Lamartine, and the Marquis de Custine sat by Balzac or Alphonse Karr.
The de Vignys also had a _salon_, and Théodore de Banville speaks most
warmly of their kindly hospitality; but there was a certain aloofness
about the creator of "Eloa," and another of his guests found that in his
house colouring seemed absent, so that "the regular guests seemed to
come and go in the moonlight."[12]
To speak at greater length about the _salons_ of the Romantic period
would here be beside the mark. Bohemians, no doubt, were often to be
found at Victor Hugo's or Nodier's, but on those occasions they were
consciously straying outside their own boundaries. Neither the stately
house in the Place Royale nor the librarian's dwelling at the Arsenal
was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would
have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" might have
claimed the _salons_ of Nina de Kallias and Madame Ricard, for parts of
their ordinary existence. The case, however, is different with the
relations between _le tout Paris_ and Bohemia. _Le tout Paris_ was, as I
have said, a nucleus, but a nucleus of disparate and constantly shifting
particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite
place of assembly, but so far as it could be identified with any
particular locality it may be said to have congregated on the boulevard.
The Boulevard des Italiens--_the_ boulevard--was the chosen spot for the
saunterings of the chosen few, a fact which by itself is a proof of the
smallness and privacy of Paris compared with the present day, when this
same boulevard is flooded from morning till night by a hurrying stream
of indistinguishable humanity. In the days of Louis Philippe nobody,
except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve
in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title may have
been so small as a peculiarly elegant waistcoat, a capacity for
drinking, or a happy invention for practical jokes, or it may have been
the reputation for a ready wit and a trenchant pen; but whosoever dared
to show himself in this select society was sure to have some particular
justification for making himself conspicuous, otherwise he was certain
to be quizzed out of existence. The newcomer, if he survived a short but
swift scrutiny, entered an informal though exclusive club of which every
member was known to the others--he was known, that is, to "all Paris."
All Paris, in a sense, it truly was, not because the greatest poets and
statesmen belonged to it--for they had better things to do than to waste
so much time--but because it served as the central intelligence
department or, I might almost say, as the brain of Paris. A word uttered
there was round the town in two hours; there a poet was made or a play
damned--in the twinkling of an eye. One day of its activity furnished
all the wit of the next day's newspapers, which is hardly surprising
when so many of its members were journalists. _Le tout Paris_ was not
hide-bound in its requirements; it admitted high birth as one
qualification for membership, wealth if accompanied by good manners as
another, but a certain way to its heart was by a brilliant handling of
the pen. In spite of the exaggeration of the Parisian scenes in
"Illusions Perdues," there is no unreality in Balzac's picture of
Lucien's sudden rise from impoverished obscurity to fame and money.
Lucien, the provincial poet, after his disappointing elopement with
Madame de Bargeton, retires discomfited to a garret in the Quartier
Latin. The door of rich protectors is shut in his face, no publisher
will read his poems or accept his novels. The serpent arrives in the
shape of Lousteau, who shows him the devilish power of journalism. By a
lucky chance Lucien is asked to write a dramatic criticism for a new
paper. He succeeds brilliantly, and he has Paris at his feet. The
publisher cringes before his power and publishes all that he had
formerly rejected; with money, fine clothes, and a reputation, he can
answer stare for stare and return the impertinences of Rastignac and de
Marsay; even Madame de Bargeton in the Faubourg St.-Germain cowers from
his revengeful epigrams. So long as he remains a power in the Press he
is flattered and caressed and plumes himself, a butterfly only just
emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day.
The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned,
is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an
open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by
not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène Houssaye, Ourliac, the
dramatist, and several others. There were also men who seemed to spend
their time between the two, like the elder Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, and
Alfred de Musset, who combined the extravagance of Bohemia with the
luxury of the boulevards in different proportions, without ever being
entire Bohemians or complete _viveurs_, and who maintained such a
continuous communication between the more literary sections of _le tout
Paris_ and the finer talents of Bohemia that it would be in some cases
difficult to say where one left off and the other began. It is therefore
impossible to write of the _vie de Bohème_ without entering into this
larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute
Bohème_. Not only was it the sound-board from which in a lucky moment
the struggling whisperer on the left bank might hear his utterances
booming forth to a multitude eager for novelty, not only was it an
unofficial academy to which every Bohemian might aspire to belong as
soon as he had made his mark, but it was also, during the years
following 1830, animated by such a spirit of revelry and reckless
amusement that the riots of true Bohemia were as pale ghosts before its
more notable orgies. There were strong reasons for the merging of the
two Bohemias, and the only precise distinction was the possession or
want of money. Bohemia proper has no money except what it can make by
its art, and as its inhabitants are young that is little enough. _La
haute Bohème_, with a less strict limitation of years, makes money and
spends it recklessly. Instead of pleading youth as the excuse of its
folly, it claims the indulgence due to artistic achievement. However, so
far as the generation of 1830 were concerned, this distinction was not
absolute, for the Bohemians of 1830 were not invariably so destitute as
their successors, so that they were enabled to mix to some extent in the
gayer life of the artistic _boulevardiers_.
The most universal word--which I shall adopt--applicable to this _haute
Bohème_ is the contemporary name for them, _les viveurs_. They were a
particular product of the time, and no words of mine can describe them
better than a passage from Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." The period of
the novel is some years before 1830, but this particular description is
far more applicable to the years that followed the second Revolution. I
quote it in French, because it is impossible to do it justice in a
translation:
"A cette époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et
pauvres, tous désœuvrés, appelés _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en
effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs
plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus
rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée,
ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de
leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit
le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de
ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement
l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les
jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les
jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations,
dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les
plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes
puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse
voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des
trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière
elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle
part."
[Illustration: A Viveur]
Balzac gives his own character, Rastignac, as an instance of the typical
_viveur_, but Rastignac had a purpose in his heart, while some of the
most prominent among the _viveurs_ had none but to amuse themselves.
These I name first, for, having no other preoccupations, they set the
tone of the whole society. They were chiefly members of the aristocracy
who found no place for their energies in a _bourgeois_ State which
sought no military glory. One of their leaders, the Duc d'Aulnis, who
settled down afterwards to serve the State worthily, gives in his
memoirs the reason why so many young men of good family gave themselves
up to riotous living, as he did under his _nom de plaisir_ of
Alton-Shee. He and other young legitimists resigned their commissions in
1831 on finding that Louis Philippe, _le roi des barricades_, sided with
the insurrectionists, so that, as he says, "the class of idlers was
increased by a large number of legitimists who had resigned their
commissions and by a contingent of refugees belonging to the Italian,
Polish, and Spanish aristocracies. To distract their minds from the
thoughts of so many broken careers, so many hopes disappointed, they
dashed with an irresistible rush into the pursuit of enjoyment and
sought to appease their generous aspirations in an unbridled love of
pleasure."
These were the young men who spent all their time in imitating Brummell
or the Comte d'Orsay, paying minute attention to every curve of their
voluminous frock-coats, the patterns of their waistcoats, and the
folding of their cravats; who drove and rode irreproachable horses
imported from England, and founded the French Jockey Club under the
auspices of Lord Seymour; who dined copiously at the Café de Paris and
adjourned to lounge at the Opéra in the _loge infernale_, where the
cream of Parisian dandyism paraded with its _lorgnette_ for the
edification of the public. In racing and gambling they found their
excitement; their consolation was the venal love of a ballet dancer.
For no moment of the day did they pursue a worthy ambition, and their
only excuse was that, being idle perforce, they attained a certain
exquisiteness even in pleasure. Sadly the Duc d'Aulnis sums them up:
"Our generation had the love of liberty, passion, gaiety, an
artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to
appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of
amusement, the habit of smoking which fills the intervals, the
taste for intoxication, that fugitive poetry of vulgar enjoyments,
and every prodigality to satisfy our desires. If one considers what
we leave behind us, our baggage is light: the folly of the
carnival, the invention of the cancan, the generalization of the
cigar, the acclimatization of clubs and races, will be merits of
small value in the eyes of posterity.... Of these joyous _enfants
du siècle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped
from their embarrassments by suicide, others found death or
promotion in Africa, others shared their names with rich heiresses;
others, persevering at all hazards, swallowing affronts and braving
humiliations, lived on the precarious resources of gambling,
borrowing, toadying, and parasitism; the most wretched of all fell
step by step into the depths of infamy; only a very small number
tried to save themselves by hard work."
These men set the pace among the _viveurs_: they were seconded by the
more ambitious young men of whom Balzac's Rastignac is the type, who
were determined to succeed and uttered in their hearts his famous
threat to Paris by the grave of old Goriot, "Maintenant c'est entre
nous." These men became _viveurs_, not as a pastime, but as a means.
Rastignac, shocked to see that virtuous devotion would not save Père
Goriot from a broken heart, and sick of the Maison Vauquer's squalor,
determines to play society at its own game and make profit out of its
corruption. He becomes the lover of Madame de Nucingen, one of Goriot's
ungrateful daughters, and by allowing himself to become a tool in the
crafty Baron Nucingen's third liquidation lays the foundation of his own
fortunes. Such a man could not live in seclusion--he was forced into the
ranks of the _viveurs_, in order to become a conspicuous figure. A smart
tilbury and clothes from a first-class tailor were part of his
stock-in-trade; he could not afford to run the risk of humiliation
before his lady by laying himself open to affront by a more exquisite
"dandy" than himself. A Rastignac had to shine to compass his ends, and
he shone most brilliantly as a _viveur_, playing at idleness and debauch
to cloak his subtle schemes, and drowning the shame of his parasitism in
a passionate self-indulgence. Thanks to a strong will he is entirely
successful, and out of the wreck of his illusions and his generous
impulses builds himself a career as a politician.
Rastignac is one of the most wonderful characters created by Balzac's
penetrating pessimism; that he had a special place in his creator's
heart is proved, I think, by his frequent appearance on the stage.
Those who delight in the fascinating pastime of following Balzac's
characters through the whole extent of the "Comédie Humaine" will know
that it is impossible to understand Rastignac without reading "La Maison
Nucingen," a story which, for pure virtuosity, is second to none of
Balzac's masterpieces. They will remember that the scene is set in the
year 1836 in a private room at Véry's restaurant, where the impersonal
narrator, by overhearing the conversation in the adjoining room, is
entertained by the thrilling account of how Rastignac profited by Baron
Nucingen's third fraudulent liquidation. The shady financial proceedings
of the astute Alsatian--as exciting as a dashing campaign--are related
in a marvellous series of _boutades_ by Balzac's favourite grotesque,
Bixiou, the own brother of Panurge. Now Bixiou and the three friends
with whom he is dining are Balzac's examples of the third party among
the _viveurs_, that party to which the title _la haute Bohème_ is most
peculiarly applicable. They were neither aristocratic and wealthy, like
a Duc d'Aulnis, nor aristocratic and poor, like a Rastignac, but men of
obscure origin and unusual intelligence. They joined the ranks of the
_viveurs_ neither to banish the _ennui_ of enforced idleness, nor out of
cold calculation for a diplomatic end--for they were inevitably debarred
from attaining any position in the _beau monde_--but simply as a
distraction from their pursuit of worldly success as journalists,
artists, speculators, and general exploiters of society. They were not
single-hearted warriors for an ambition; their aim in life was not
purely diversion, it was merely to obtain the maximum of selfish
enjoyments, which included a satisfied vanity, a full purse, good food,
rare wine, and a pretty mistress. Of them Barbey d'Aurévilly's remark
was true: "Qui dit journalistes dit femmes entretenues. Cela veut
souper."
They had been pure Bohemians, most of them, in their earlier youth, with
higher ideals and more restricted enjoyments; but their gorge, too, had
risen at the squalor of their Maison Vauquer, and they had parleyed with
the devil. Discovering in themselves some talent for making money, they
had exploited it to the exclusion of all others. They traded either in
their own art or in that of others. On the boulevard they held their own
by their engaging sallies of malicious gossip, by their prodigal
extravagance, and, above all, by the fear which their power as
journalists, critics, caricaturists, or newspaper proprietors inspired.
They were Bohemians at heart, carrying the more pardonable disorders of
Bohemia into less exacting circumstances, spending their gifts and their
money without a thought, luxurious, venal, insatiable. Their type is to
be found to-day in the rich mercantile, especially Jewish, society of
all large cities; but in Paris of the thirties and forties they were
more powerful and more conspicuous. Though they could never hope to
enter the Jockey Club, they were hail-fellow-well-met with the _viveurs_
of blue blood; they served the Rastignacs when it was worth their while,
and they were so near to the true Bohemia that their example was at once
its temptation and its despair. Balzac himself sums up the four friends,
Bixiou, Finot, Blondet, and Couture, in a passage which, having myself
said so much, I quote in the original:
"C'était quatre des plus hardis cormorans éclos dans l'écume qui
couronne les flots incessamment renouvelés de la génération
présente; aimables garçons dont l'existence est problématique, à
qui l'on connaît ni rentes ni domaines, et qui vivent bien. Ces
spirituels _condottieri_ de l'industrie moderne, devenue la plus
cruelle des guerres, laissent les inquiétudes à leurs créanciers,
gardent les plaisirs pour eux, et n'ont de souci que de leur
costume. D'ailleurs, braves à fumer, comme Jean Bart, leur agare
sur un baril de poudre, peut-être pour ne pas faillir à leur rôle;
plus moqueurs que les petits journaux, moqueurs à se moquer
d'eux-mêmes, perspicaces et incrédules, fureteurs d'affaires,
avides et prodigues, envieux d'autrui, mais contents d'eux-mêmes;
profonds politiques par saillies, analysant tout, devinant tout,
ils n'avaient pas encore pu se faire jour dans le monde où ils
voudraient se produire."