of journalism. We meet him in his early days in "César Birotteau,"
abandoning the puffing of actresses and writing of articles to less
perspicuous journalists, and devoting himself to what is now grandly
called "publicity." It was he who helped the worthy young Anselme
Popinot to push the _huile céphalique_ which repaired Birotteau's
shattered fortunes. In "Illusions Perdues" we find him again, first
proprietor of a small paper, then spending his profits and straining his
credit in buying a larger one--one of the spiders into whose web poor
Lucien fell. By 1836 he is a lord of the Press, a fictitious counterpart
of Emile de Girardin, who with Lautour-Mézéray, another _viveur_, made a
fortune by selling _La Presse_ at half the price of other newspapers.
Couture is a very minor character, a financial speculator, who only hung
on the fringe of the _viveurs_. Blondet and Bixiou are more important.
The former had many counterparts in Paris of the day. He was "a
newspaper editor, a man of much intelligence, but slipshod, brilliant,
capable, lazy, knowing, but allowing himself to be exploited, equally
faithless and good-natured by caprice; one of those men one likes, but
does not respect. Sharp as a stage _soubrette_, incapable of refusing
his pen to anyone who asked for it or his heart to anyone who would
borrow it."
Bixiou is no longer young in 1836. Balzac gives an earlier portrait of
him in "Les Employés," when he is a minor official, caricaturist and
journalist, poor, ambitious, a real liver of _la vie de Bohème_. But,
says Balzac, "he is no longer the Bixiou of 1825, but that of 1836, the
misanthropical buffoon whose fun is known to have the most sparkle and
the most acidity, a wretch enraged at having spent so much wit at a pure
loss, furious at not having picked up his bit of flotsam in the last
revolution, giving everyone a kick like a true Pierrot at the play,
having his period and its scandalous stories at his fingers' ends,
decorating them with his droll inventions, jumping on everybody's
shoulders like a clown, and trying to leave a mark on them like an
executioner."
Such, in general, were the _viveurs_ who postured in the front of the
Parisian stage--equally at home on the steps of Tortoni's or in the Café
de Paris, in the Princess Belgiojoso's drawing-room or the luxurious
boudoir of a Coralie or Florine, making the talk and spreading the
gossip, blowing up the reputations and blasting the characters of the
town. To know their habits and eccentricities places those of the true
Bohemia in a proper light. In drawing a composite picture of them I have
drawn upon fiction, but in another chapter I will justify these
generalizations by introducing some of the real heroes of _le tout
Paris_.
[Illustration: Fashionables]
V
LES VIVEURS
The most exalted section among the _viveurs_, the members of which were
farthest removed from any suspicion of Bohemianism, was formed of young
men from noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may
be found in the list of those who started the _petit cercle_ of the Café
de Paris. This was an exclusive dining club founded by a set of gay
livers who dreaded the political discussions of the one or two regular
clubs then existing, but wished to have a place where they could dine
together without disturbance by casual strangers. They hired, therefore,
some rooms from Alexandre, the proprietor of the restaurant, and
continued there till the club broke up in 1848. Little need be said of
them as a body, except that they were the arbiters of Parisian elegance.
As such, their chief effort was to curb the luxuriance of Parisian taste
within the limits of English correctness. Anglomania was all the rage.
Every dandy--a word then definitely adopted by the French--had his
tilbury or phaeton and his tiny English "tiger," smoked his cigar,
suffered from his "spleen," and tried to face life with an insolent air
of imperturbability--a crowning proof of good taste when the effort was
at all successful. This Anglomania was not entirely confined to the
boulevard; it was partly an effect of Romanticism. Lady Morgan[13]
laughs at it, giving a most amusing account of a performance of
"Rochester" at the Porte St.-Martin. The character that created the
greatest sensation, she says, was the Watchman, "who was dressed like an
alguazil, with a child's rattle in his hand." Whenever he appeared there
was a general murmur of "Ha! C'est le vatchman."--"Regarde donc, ma
fille, c'est le vatchman; ton papa t'a souvent parlé des
vatchmen."--"Ah, c'est le vatchman."--"Oui, c'est le vatchman." Great
play, too, was made with tea. Rochester entertained his merry companions
with tea; Mr. Wilkes poisoned his wife in it. This latter incident gave
the highest pleasure:
"Dieu, que c'est anglois! Toujours le thé et la jalousie à
Londres!"
The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt,
pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement to Lord
Seymour, one of the few Englishmen who were conspicuous among the
aristocratic _viveurs_. He was the illegitimate son of Lady Yarmouth,
daughter-in-law of the notorious Lord Hertford. He lived entirely in
Paris, where, being extremely rich, he kept a fine house at the corner
of the Rue Taitbout and the boulevard. Here he cultivated cigar-smoking
and physical exercise with great assiduity. He was a splendid boxer and
fencer, and all the finest bruisers and blades, amateur and
professional, were to be met in his _salle d'armes_. He took great pride
in his strength, which was abnormal, in his skill as a whip and his
success on the race-course. French sport owes him a permanent debt for
his successful starting of the Jockey Club, but he can hardly have been
a very popular member of a society, for he was cold and brutal, a man
who took a defeat rancorously and one who had a cynical delight in
causing suffering to his hangers-on. His misanthropy was the reason of
his gradually dropping out of society after 1842, and it would have been
beside the point to mention him here had it not been for the quite
undeserved notoriety which he acquired in Paris during the thirties as
the bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange
case of mistaken identity which persisted for many years in spite of
categorical denials. The more aristocratic of the _viveurs_ were not, as
I have said, Bohemians; but during the carnival, which was celebrated by
all the population with extraordinary licence, some of the more youthful
let themselves go and became revellers with the rest. For the last three
days of the carnival the streets of Paris, by day and by night, were
given up to an orgy. Crowds of masqueraders filled the pavements, the
restaurants, and the theatres, where fancy-dress balls were held. The
richer masks had carriages drawn by postilions, in which they drove
among the crowd, scattering confetti and sweetmeats and even money,
indulging in every kind of quaint antic and gallantry, and inciting the
vulgar to engage them in a wordy warfare in which volleys of the
coarsest expletives were fired on both sides. Riot reached its
culmination on the night of Shrove Tuesday, when the revellers, after an
orgy of feasting and dancing at the Barrière de la Courtille, on the
north-east of Paris, ended by descending the steep hill towards the city
in a state of bacchic frenzy. This was the famous _descente de la
Courtille_, at which, as at all the other revels, a certain carriage,
drawn by six horses and filled by a motley party of young men, was the
central object of admiration. No challenger ever worsted the leader of
this gang at a bout of blackguarding, no costumes equalled his in
originality, no mask so tormented and excited the crowd as he with his
harangues, his missiles, and his largesse. This was the man known to all
the populace of Paris as "Milord Arsouille," which, as all Paris would
have told you, was simply the _nom de guerre_ of Lord Seymour. But it
was not so. The real "Milord Arsouille" was a certain Charles de la
Battut, son of an English chemist and a French _émigrée_. His father,
unwilling to compromise his position in England by recognizing him, paid
for his adoption by the ruined Breton Count de la Battut. He was
educated in Paris, where, even in his youth, he showed a most dissolute
character. He delighted to frequent the lowest haunts, and there learnt
that mastery of slang and that skill as a boxer which were his pride.
The death of his real father gave him a large fortune, which he
proceeded to dissipate with the utmost extravagance and bad taste. His
house in the Boulevard des Capucines and his personal attire were
equally flamboyant. During his short period of glory he was on certain
terms of intimacy with the more rowdy among the young bloods of good
family, who in after years looked back, like the Duc d'Aulnis, with
shame to some of their exploits in his company. His most notable
achievement was to introduce the _cancan_ into the fashionable
fancy-dress ball at the Variétés in 1832, and his perpetual grief was
that all his eccentricities were attributed to Lord Seymour, in spite of
his utmost efforts to proclaim the difference of identity. In 1835 he
died, a shattered _roué_, at Naples.
The only other English name deserving comment in the _petit cercle_ of
the Café de Paris is that of Major Fraser, whose personality was an
enigma. He was one of the most popular characters on the boulevard, and
an honoured friend of the most exclusive diners at the Café Anglais or
the Café de Paris, yet nothing was known of his personal history. He
spoke English perfectly, but was not an Englishman; he never alluded to
his parents, and lived as a bachelor in an _entresol_ at the corner of
the Rue Lafitte. He was never short of money, but the source of his
income was a mystery; and when he died no letters were found, but only a
file of receipts, including a receipt from an undertaker for his funeral
expenses, and a direction that his clothes and furniture were to be sold
for the benefit of the poor. In spite of the mystery surrounding him he
was a prominent figure among the _viveurs_. His tight blue frock-coat
and his grey trousers were models for the most fastidious dandies; his
kindness and gentleness to everyone except professional politicians was
extreme; he quoted Horace freely and had a complete knowledge of
political history with a prodigious memory. Major Fraser's story could
be paralleled by the head waiter of many a London club. While he lived
he was a favourite; when he died he simply vanished.[14]
There are only two other members of the _petit cercle_ whom I wish to
mention--Alfred de Musset and Roger de Beauvoir--because they form a
link between the exclusiveness of that society and the hurly-burly
existence of _la haute Bohème_, to which both more properly belonged. In
the early Romantic days Alfred de Musset, with his beautiful, bored face
set off by the fair curls that fell over his eyes, was the petted
darling of Paris, its perfect dandy wafting the triple essence of
_bouquet de Romantisme_. Nevertheless, Alfred de Musset, though his name
was on the lips of all dandies and his poetry set a fashion in Bohemia,
never took among men the place that seemed to be his due. He might have
been a true Bohemian of 1830, but he disavowed his Romantic companions
of letters for the greater splendour of fashionable life; while among
the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that
impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were
inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate to make him for
long together a comfortable companion for men, and his personal history,
apart from his poetry, is a chapter of relations with women, of whom
George Sand is the most notable. The ashes of his career have been raked
over with most scrupulous care since his death, but it is no purpose of
mine to take part in the scavenging. To have omitted Alfred de Musset's
name would have been impossible, but having mentioned him, I can leave
him. Though he hymned Musette and drank deeply with Prince Belgiojoso,
he had as little place in Bohemia, high or low, as Lamartine or Victor
Hugo. Their throne was the study, his the boudoir.
There are no such reservations to be made for Roger de Beauvoir, whom
Madame de Girardin called "Alfred de Musset aux cheveux noirs." He was
the arch-_viveur_, with one exquisitely shod foot on the boulevard, the
other in Bohemia, the gayest of all those who supped, the insatiable
quaffer of champagne, the inexhaustible fountain of epigram, the king of
_la haute Bohème_, the very incarnation of the _Noctambule_ in
Charpentier's delightful opera, "Louise." His family was the good Norman
family of de Bully, and he took the name of Beauvoir from one of the two
estates which were his heritage. Those who were responsible for his
early guidance clearly intended that he should make his way in
diplomacy--a career in which his good looks, sympathetic voice, and
charming manners would have greatly helped his pioneering--for he was
sent to be Polignac's secretary when that unfortunate minister occupied
the embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of
July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association with
politics was incompatible with gilded ease, abandoned all attempts to
play the game of a Rastignac, and pursued his fantasies in airy
independence. The Romanticism of the _Jeune-France_ party attracted at
once the enthusiasm of a young man, just in his majority by 1830, who
was naturally a lover of brilliant colouring. He became a fanatical
medievalist, who displayed with pride a Gothic cabinet panelled in
carved oak, hung with black velvet, and lit by stained-glass windows.
The ceiling was covered with coats-of-arms; the chief decorations were a
panoply of armour and an old _prie-dieu_ on which a missal of 1350
opened its illuminated pages. Even in 1842, when Maxime du Camp first
met him, he still dreamt of reviving the age of chivalry, having just
created a sensation by waltzing at a ball in full armour, fainting and
falling with the clatter of innumerable stove-pipes. Undeterred by this
mishap, he proposed to form a company, to be called the "Société des
champs clos de France," which was to buy land for a tilting-ground, Arab
steeds, and armour for the purpose of holding weekly tourneys. The
shares were to be 1000 francs each, but as Maxime du Camp's guardian
prohibited the purchase of any by his enthusiastic ward, the project was
dropped. Like every true Romantic he wrote a medieval novel, but his
novel, "L'Écolier de Cluny," unlike those of the majority, was published
and brought him considerable fame. After its publication in 1832, he
became in some sort a man of letters, but he never added to his
reputation, being far too bent upon the pursuit of pleasure to bear the
restrictions of any profession. Having failed as a writer of
vaudevilles, he found his true vocation as the leader of a band of
revellers and a composer of wicked epigrams in verse. His epigrams,
always written _impromptu_ upon the pages of a notebook, were a real
addition to the gaiety of Paris. Here is one composed when
Ancelot--literary husband of a literary wife--was elected to the
Academy:
_Le ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_
_Devait à ce fauteuil arriver en tout cas,_
_Car la femme accouchait toujours de quelque chose,_
_Quand le mari n'engendrait pas._
His dress was of the highest elegance in a day when men were not
confined to a funereal black. His blue frock-coat, tight-waisted with
amply curving skirts, broad velvet _revers_, and gilt buttons, fitted as
neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey
trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest to be seen.
In his own apartment he tempered the shadows of his Gothic furniture by
wearing a green silk dressing-gown and red cashmere trousers. So long as
their fortunes lasted he and his companions bade dull care begone. At
midday they left the softest of beds, and, after a serious hour of
dressing, met for déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the
Café Hardi. By four they were to be seen in force upon the boulevard,
displaying their waistcoats and quizzing the ladies upon the marble
steps of Tortoni's. Before dinner they would visit a drawing-room or
two, buy a picture or bargain for some _bibelot_--a Toledo blade or a
Turkish narghile--with a dealer in curiosities. The evening programme
was a set of variations upon the ground bass of dinner, opera, supper.
Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge
infernale_ at the Opéra, and it is needless to say that their attention
was devoted more to the ballet than to the music, for they were all
connoisseurs in choreography and had a personal acquaintance with the
dancers, which developed in most cases into something more than Platonic
affection. The _foyer des artistes_ was the enchanted garden of _la
haute Bohème_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the
true Bohemians did at the Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas.
The science of practical joking was sedulously cultivated by Roger and
his friends, who rejoiced to bring off successful "mystifications." One
of Roger's best was played upon Duponchel, the director of the Opéra.
One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the
appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse
and fifty carriages, with Roger and his friend Cabanon occupying the
first carriage as chief mourners; the head of the procession drew up at
Duponchel's door, to his great indignation. The joke up to this point
was of no especial originality, but Roger gave it a turn of his own. The
Romantic fashion dictated that every chapter in a novel should be headed
by an epigraph, as extravagant as possible, from the work of some
Romantic author. Roger therefore headed a chapter in his novel
"Pulchinella," which was just appearing, "Feu Duponchel (Histoire
contemporaine)." Even after he was hopelessly in debt he remained a
joker. Being saddled with a thin and dirty bailiff, he gave him ten
francs a day, washed him, dressed him as a Turk, and gave an evening
party in honour of his Pasha, who could only talk in signs. The supreme
_mystificateurs_, however, were Romieu and Monnier. Romieu was reputed
to be the most amusing man in Paris, and so firmly founded was his
reputation that nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect
of Quimperlé--an easy post which enabled him to take many a holiday upon
the boulevard--he was faced with the problem of dealing with a plague of
cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly
successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead
cockchafers. The Bretons were grateful enough, but all Paris was in a
roar. Here was the crowning farce of which only its lost joker would
have been capable, and it supplied the smaller comic papers with copy
for several days. Romieu made Monnier's acquaintance in an appropriate
way. About eleven o'clock one night the artist heard a knock at his
door, which he opened to a stranger, who came in and entered into a
polite conversation without a word of introduction. Monnier made no
comment, but replied with equal affability. After an hour or so, as the
stranger remained, he ransacked his sideboard and entertained his guest
with an impromptu supper. Time passed, the small hours struck, and still
the stranger made no sign of going. Monnier therefore announced that he
was ready for bed and that his sofa was at his guest's disposition. So
they parted for the night, and next morning when they met Monnier's
first words were "You are Romieu," a compliment returned by "You are
Monnier."
Monnier, says Champfleury in his memoir, belonged to Bohemia till the
end of his life; but it is clear that this Bohemia was that of the
boulevards and cafés. He was no real Romantic, and far too fond of a
good time to stay in the Bohemia which Champfleury himself knew so well.
As a writer of short stories and dialogues, an actor, and an artist he
had a huge success in the thirties, and he followed the pleasures of
life with inexhaustible zest. Balzac drew him as Bixiou in "Les
Employés." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but
unjust:
"Intrépide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dîneur
et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien
dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allée des Veuves,
il étonnait autant à table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve
à minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du
lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-même, comme la plupart des
grands comiques. Lancé dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs,
des écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune
est aléatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer,
jouait à Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment
profond, mais par éclairs, se balançait dans la vie comme sur une
escarpolette, sans s'inquiéter du moment où la corde casserait."
Innumerable stories are told of his practical jokes. Being an expert
ventriloquist, he was wont to enter an omnibus and without moving a
muscle utter in a feminine voice: "Je vous aime, monsieur le
conducteur," at which there would be tremendous consternation among the
petticoats. The dames swept the company with searching glares of
outraged decency, the _demoiselles_ blushed, and the embarrassed
conductor looked in vain for his temptress. One evening he was burdened
with a bore in some illuminated public garden. To escape the tedium of
conversation he pretended to be greatly interested in some matter which
necessitated his walking carefully all round the garden and gazing
intently at all the gas-lamps. After half an hour of these mysterious
peregrinations the bore, who had been forced to keep silence, asked with
impatience what was the matter. "I bet you five francs," said Monnier,
"that there are here seventy-nine _becs de gaz_ (gas-jets)." The bore
accepted the challenge with delight, and another half-hour was spent in
silent perambulation and calculation. At length he announced
triumphantly that he only counted seventy-eight. "Ah," said Monnier as
he made his escape, and pointing to the orchestra, "vous avez oublié le
bec de la clarinette."