were not scared back to their homes made up their minds that at best a
moderate income might be theirs in the future, while the present
entailed considerable privations to be endured cheerfully for the glory
of art. Poverty being their economic condition, it is not to be supposed
that the young men who _did_ happen to be rich in their own right
migrated to Bohemia for the mere pleasure of its society. It is easy
enough to find food for laughter in unavoidable discomforts and delight
in the makeshifts by which misery is cheated, but, when neither
discomfort nor makeshifts are necessary, the point of view inevitably
changes, and irritation takes the place of laughter. It is quite
contrary to human nature that a man with money to spare for regular
meals, decent clothes, and a comfortable room should enjoy hunger, rags,
and a bare garret. Between adversity cheerfully borne and a masquerade
of scanty means there is a gulf which no imagination is able to span. A
rich man, I admit, may stint himself in order to spend all his means on
a hobby or a philanthropic object, but in the Bohemian there was no
trace of this voluntary asceticism, which would have been entirely
contrary to the Romantic creed. A rich Bohemian was a paradox, for the
moment a Bohemian had any money he spent it in forgetting the sorrows of
Bohemia, a moral pointed by Murger's amusing chapter "Les Flots du
Pactole," where Rodolphe, having received a gift of £20, promptly agrees
with Marcel to live a regular life. He will work, he says, seriously,
sheltered from the material worries of life. "I renounce Bohemia, I
shall dress like the rest, I shall have a black coat and appear in
drawing-rooms." Unfortunately the preliminaries are so costly that the
sum is exhausted in a fortnight, the _coup de grâce_ being given to it
when the new servant pays without authorization the arrears of rent.
"Where shall we dine to-night?" says Rodolphe, once more a Bohemian. "We
shall know to-morrow," replies Marcel. Rodolphe and Marcel, and their
predecessors just as much, would have regarded a Bohemian with an income
as a madman or a monstrosity. With all the will in the world such a man
would have found it impossible to live in such a society without being
on its economic level. Its joys and pleasures would not have been his,
its amusements would have seemed paltry. To have shown his money would
have made him shunned by the proud and courted by the sycophants, in any
case a stranger. He could only have been a Bohemian at the price of
dissipating all his capital, and that he could more easily do among the
_viveurs_ upon the boulevard.
Bohemia, then, was poor, which had the one excellent result of banishing
from it all mercenary spirit. When there was so little money to be had
in any case and there were so many other more glorious things to think
about, there was no point in financial preoccupations. If one had a few
coins one spent them in common with those who had none; if one's pockets
were empty one went without and accepted the hospitality of others.
Money-grubbing was left to the virtuous _bourgeois_ beloved of a
_bourgeois_ king, to unscrupulous Nucingens and adventurous de
Girardins. And Bohemia never went to bed, because it was young and poor,
not from viciousness or an artistic pleasure in the sunrise. They were
incorrigible talkers, those young men--perhaps this was one of their
graver faults--they not only talked, but they shouted for hours
together, mixing declamations of Victor Hugo with extravagant tirades in
the Romantic fashion. It was not in them to disperse quietly after
"Hernani" or "Antony" had lashed them into fury. They had a plethora of
matter to discharge from their souls, but they had no comfortable little
Chelsea studio in which to perform this function. A cold attic, a straw
mattress, a fuelless stove, a dearth of chairs, which was all the
majority could boast of, was a poor setting for impassioned conversation
compared with the warmth of even a humble _cabaret_. The good M.
Challamel, of course, is justified in his strictures. Their morals were
lax, they were extravagant, they did not pay their bills. This was
partly due to what a humorous undergraduate once called the "generosity
of youth," and partly to the example of the "swells" upon the boulevard.
The Bohemian naturally yearned to enjoy himself, with his acute capacity
for enjoyment, as he saw his more fortunate fellow-men enjoying
themselves. They were luxurious at all times; it was impossible for him
to restrain occasionally the impulse to luxury, indulging in a superb
orgy at the Rocher de Caucale or the Trois Frères Provençaux, ordering
clothes which he _meant_ to pay for, and forgetting all the while the
just claims of a landlord. His vices, at any rate, were inseparable
from the conditions of his existence, and if he was disreputable, it
was more outwardly than within.
The talents of Bohemia were as diverse as the physiognomies of its
citizens. Genius, it might be said with truth, was not more common there
than in other walks of life. Real genius is a law and a life to itself;
it is no more Bohemian than it is aristocratic, democratic, liberal or
conservative. Social labels imply classes to bear them, and classes
imply a common factor of intelligence. Genius, being an uncommon factor,
is always severely individual. Moreover, so far as Bohemia is concerned,
genius, being one kind of wealth, unsuited its possessor for Bohemian
citizenship as much as a comfortable income. The trivialities and
futilities of some, the extravagant idleness of others, would have
estranged genius or forced it to pretend an acquiescence in much that
was repugnant to its nature. With the possible exception of Gautier, the
Bohemia of 1830 could really claim none of the greatest names of
Romanticism. Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the other divinities of its
worship were, apart from all further possibilities, too old. Balzac was
a far too busy man to pay it more than momentary visits; Berlioz, before
he went to Rome, was too occupied in writing music which irritated
Cherubini; Delacroix, the acknowledged king of Romantic painters, is
revealed in his letters as the austerest of hard workers, scarcely
leaving his studio but for a walk when the shadows began to fall. Yet,
if Bohemia was denied genius, it was not denied a very high average of
ability, which was enhanced by its burning and disinterested enthusiasm
for art. Like all other societies, it had its fools, its knaves, its
dunces, and its awkward squad. The Romantic revolution had attracted
many scatterbrained fanatics to Paris, with as little artistic aptitude
as good sense in their heads. Out of those who survived the first
disappointments were fashioned failures like Alfred de Musset's
unfortunate in the verses quoted previously, "râpé, sycophante,
envieux." Probably, too, an impartial observer, listening to the
nocturnal conversations of a Bohemian group, would often have found the
ecstatic admiration of the listeners disproportionate to the turgid
periods of the speaker, for to every real artist in Bohemia there was a
wind-bag or two. Nevertheless there was a good deal of truth in Balzac's
eulogy. Bohemia numbered within its gates a good proportion of the best
among the younger generation. They were indeed an "immense force," which
might have been better utilized. Every kind of talent was represented
there abundantly, because the field of letters seemed to be the only
battlefield then left open to willing and eager soldiers. This very fact
gave the Romantic Bohemia its imperishable distinction, for after 1848,
when young blood again found other outlets, what had been a little world
was left no more than a decadent province.
The republic of Bohemia in general had all the follies and virtues, the
amiability and brutality of youth. It was generous, noisy, more often
hungry than drunk, often on the verge of despair, and always
fantastically clothed. It sprang up in Paris as rapidly as the iron
shanties of a Canadian township round a proposed extension of the
railway. The settlers, self-assured, fervid, rise on a tide of
increasing prosperity till some supreme moment when their venture, its
markets humming, its saloons crowded, its new town hall nearly built,
seems the very embodiment of all their hopes. But if the railway, after
all, take another route, the glory gradually dwindles, the workers throw
down the tools, and the host of speculators melts away, till only that
population is left which the soil will actually support, and what was
for a day a city resumes the existence of an ordinary village. Bohemia's
history is of a less commercial texture, but of a like pattern, as I
have already said. Its rise was swift, it had a brilliant apogee, its
decline was gradual. In a posthumous poem by Philothée O'Neddy, whose
place in the chronicles of Bohemia will be duly recorded, it is said:
_Il est depuis longtemps avéré que nous sommes,_
_Dans le siècle, six milles jeunes hommes_
_Qui du démon de l'Art nous croyant tourmentés,_
_Dépensons notre vie en excentricités;_
_Qui, du fatal Byron copiant des allures,_
_De solennels manteaux drapons nos encolures._
These six thousand copies of the "Fatal Byron," if they ever existed,
have, for the most part, died without leaving their names to posterity.
The historian can deal only with a few individuals, who embodied the
salient qualities of Bohemia.
VII
THE SECOND "CÉNACLE"
"People always forget," said Théophile Gautier in his old age, "that we
were the first Schaunards and Collines, a quarter of a century before
Murger. Only," he added with a smile, "we had talent and did not write
invertebrate verses like those of that feeble appendage to Alfred de
Musset." This saying, reported by his son-in-law, was made on a festive
occasion, so that it is unnecessary to regard with concern the
discrepancy between this view of Murger and the one which Gautier has
expressed in print. That kindest-hearted of writers would never
wittingly have hurt the reputation or memory of the humblest among his
fellows, and I only quote the passage because, when the malice is
discounted as largely as the "quarter of a century," it remains a true
reference to the origins of Bohemia by one who was, so to speak, one of
its pilgrim fathers. The first Schaunards and Collines, Rodolphes and
Marcels, the unknown poets and artists who first raised the standard of
common enthusiasm against a common enemy, the _bourgeois_, were the
young and lusty friends of a young and lusty Gautier. They were members
of a _cénacle_, albeit a less beatific _cénacle_ than the brotherhood
drawn in Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." In the _cénacle_ of the Rue des
Quatre Vents he evolved by sheer imagination a compensating mirage of
virtue to be contrasted with all the real depravity of society which his
eye so unerringly saw, just as Eugénie Grandet shines out impossibly
beside her miserly father, and Madame Firmiani in the corrupt circle of
his _femmes du monde_. Nevertheless there is a certain sublimity in the
_cénacle_ to which attention cannot be denied. It was Balzac's picture
of an ideal Bohemia in which alone such a nature as his could have found
a home. It is of little moment that he dates the action of "Illusions
Perdues" a few years before 1830, for the _cénacle_ itself is a timeless
creation, only limited by the fact that one of its members died in the
insurrection of 1832. The young men who composed the _cénacle_ bore upon
their brow the "seal of special genius." Daniel d'Arthez, upon whom
since the death of their leader, the great mystic, Louis Lambert, the
mantle had fallen, was a monarchist of noble family, destined to become
the greatest writer of the future; Horace Bianchon, the flower of
doctors, a materialist of perfect charity and profound science; Léon
Giraud, a humanitarian philosopher; Joseph Bridau, a great painter with
"the line of Rome and the colour of Venice"; Fulgence Ridal, a sceptic,
a cynic, and the wittiest playwright of his time; Meyraux, a scientist;
and Michel Chrestien, a red republican who was killed in the Cloître
Saint-Merri. They were not ascetics by profession: d'Arthez, for
instance, was the last lover of the Diane, the Princesse de Cadignan, in
the days of his later glory; Bridau's art was affected by his love
affairs; Chrestien was "plein d'illusions et d'amour." They were like
the "saints" of the early Christian Church, each going his own way, but
true helpers one of another, true champions and honest critics. They
were without vanity or envy, having a profound esteem for one another,
with a consciousness of their own worth. "Their great external misery
and the splendour of their intellectual wealth produced a singular
contrast. In their society nobody thought of the realities of life
except as subjects for friendly pleasantries.... The sufferings of
poverty, when they made themselves felt, were so gaily borne, accepted
with such ardour by all, that they did nothing to alter the particular
serenity which marks the faces of young men free from grave faults, who
have not lost part of themselves in any of those low traffickings which
are forced upon men by poverty ill supported, by the desire to get on
without any choice of means, and by the facile complacency with which
men of letters welcome or pardon betrayals.... These young men were sure
of themselves: the enemy of one became the enemy of all, and they would
have abandoned their most urgent interests to obey the sacred solidarity
of their hearts. All incapable of a mean action, they could oppose a
formidable 'no' to every accusation, and defend one another with
security. Equally high-minded and equally matched in matters of
sensibility, they could think and speak all their mind in the domain of
science and intelligence; thence came the innocence of their
intercourse, the gaiety of their talk. Sure of mutual understanding,
their minds digressed at their ease; and they stood on no ceremony among
themselves, confided in each other their sorrows and their joys,
pondered and suffered with open hearts." I need speak no further of this
imaginary _cénacle_, for "Illusions Perdues" is widely known. It is one
of those wonderful fantasies that one feels were lovingly cherished by
Balzac, at once his darling dreams and his disappointments. He had a
passionate desire to express the beautiful, and he was denied that gift.
The lights dance before his eyes, and his very language becomes confused
and turgid when he deserts reality. It may safely be said that in the
real _Bohème_ there was no such goodly company of industrious, gifted,
morally austere, intellectually gay, unselfish young men, and that there
never will be in any society till the coming of the Coquecigrues.
The Bohemia of artistic tradition began in what Théophile Gautier named
the "second _cénacle_." The first _cénacle_, as all the world knows, was
that of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and the brothers Deschamps, who met
regularly at the _cabaret_ of Mère Saguet on Montparnasse in the days
when Hugo was still hatching the plot of the literary revolution. To
trace to them the origins of Bohemia would be an error, for they never
had any part or lot in Bohemianism. They were young, it is true, and
depended upon their art for a living, but the fact that they were
nothing but a small _coterie_ of earnest poets, more akin to the band of
d'Arthez than the friends of Rodolphe, depends upon two things, their
time and their outlook. The first _cénacle_ came into existence about
1822, when the throne of the Bourbons seemed solid and royalism went
hand in hand with classicism. No standard of insurrection, civic or
literary, had yet been raised; the victory was yet to come, and it would
have been madness, before the campaign was fully planned or the army
gathered, for the chiefs to have aped the style of victors. The
merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without
support as they were. Defiance of the _bourgeois_, an absolute essential
of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first
_cénacle_, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while
secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by
which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense
moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place,
was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made
itself conspicuous. To strike a more human note in poetry was their
chief aim: they were concerned with art rather than with life itself;
and though Hugo, in the privacy of his room, doffed with relief that
_bourgeois_ symbol, the high linen collar, he was like a general in his
tent drawing up that transcendental plan of operations, the preface to
"Cromwell," which was to inspire his troops in their pioneering and
shooting, in their whole bodily attack on the classic tradition. As the
classic tradition was embodied not only in literature, in contemporary
journalism, in professional lectures, but in the social life of all
staid citizens as well, the Romantic troops, passionate and fundamental
as their literary enthusiasm was, were forced to make social life the
field of their assault, all the more because, being poor, young, and
unknown, they were unable to inflict such palpable wounds with pen or
brush as they could by making a violent protest in every detail of the
ordinary way of living. By outraging the accepted standards of decency
in dress, in speech, and in demeanour, they made their presence daily
felt, and where their presence was felt their ideals were made
ostensible. Their tactics, after the event, may be blamed, the effect
they produced was, no doubt, smaller than they imagined, but the fact
remains that la _vie de Bohème_ began neither as a retreat for higher
souls nor as a means for reckless self-indulgence, but as a definite
method of drawing attention to a new and important artistic creed. For
the greater exponents of this creed, a Hugo or a Delacroix, such a
material protest would have been out of place; it would have detracted
even from the effect produced by their great works of art. Only the rank
and file, to whom supreme personal achievement was impossible, collected
and commonly inspired, as I have already pointed out, under special
historical and social conditions, were justified in adopting the
measures that were best suited to their purpose. Their purpose was as
temporary as their conditions; their device, _épater le bourgeois_, has
now become a hollow phrase, but it meant then the rousing of every
shopkeeper, every _garçon de café_, as well as the cultured reader of
current literature, to the sense that art was alive again. This was the
aim of the second _cénacle_, the first Bohemians. They were successful,
and they were necessary.
The second _cénacle_ was not a formal organization, so that no definite
date can be fixed for its institution. Its members probably came
together in the same haphazard way as the small bands of friends at a
public school or university, crystallizing so imperceptibly that the
moment of incorporation baffles memory, and often so firmly that death
alone is their solvent. Théophile Gautier, in his fragmentary "Histoire
du Romantisme," has given the fullest details of the _cénacle's_
existence, yet neither he nor his biographer, Maxime du Camp, make it
clear whether it was formed prior or posterior to the famous first night
of "Hernani" in February of 1830. Gautier, no doubt, had forgotten, but
it seems fairly safe to assume that if preliminary acquaintance was
already made between some of its members before that time, the stormy
nights of February strengthened the bond and made the association
compact. The story of "Hernani," with the red waistcoat, _vieil as de
pique_, and other trimmings, has so often been told, even in English,
that it may seem unnecessary to traverse such well-trodden ground; but a
historian has no business to take anything for granted, so that
"Hernani" can be no more justly omitted here than Waterloo from any work
upon Napoleon. It was part of Victor Hugo's agreement with the Théâtre
Français that a number of seats should be at his disposal each night,
and that the holders of the tickets should be admitted some time before
the ordinary public. These were the trenches into which his army of
young men were thrown. Minor officers were entrusted with the task of
bringing the men to the rendezvous, Jules Vabre, an architect, being
responsible for a hundred and fifty men, and Célestin Nanteuil for
almost as large a number. Gérard de Nerval, whose translation of
Goethe's "Faust," published in 1828 (when he was only nineteen), had
brought him considerable fame in Romantic circles, had known Gautier,
who was two years his junior, at the Collège Charlemagne. This amiable
essayist, whom Gautier likened more than once to a swallow, flitting
always in and out among his friends, was not forgetful of his young
friend in the days of recruiting. Gautier was at that time studying
painting in the studio of Rioult, whither Gérard de Nerval made one day
a swallow-like dart and produced six tickets marked with the single but
thrilling word _Hierro_, the Spanish for "iron." According to Maxime du
Camp he gave these to Gautier with the words:
"Tu réponds de tes hommes?"
To him replied Gautier: "Par le crâne dans lequel Byron buvait à
l'Abbaye de Newstead, j'en réponds. N'est-ce pas, vous autres?"
"Mort aux perruques!" resounded in answer through the studio, and Gérard
flitted away content.
Gautier, who was a little better provided with worldly goods than some
of the Romantic army, then set about devising a costume that should
strike death into the heart of the _perruques_. With extreme care he cut
out a pattern of a medieval _pourpoint_--a buttonless waistcoat coming
right up to the collar-bone, and fastening with laces behind like the
uniform of Saint-Simon's disciples, which symbolized mutual assistance,
because no Saint-Simonian could truss his own points. His Gascon
tailor's professional objections were overruled, even though the
material chosen was a gorgeous silk coloured a Chinese vermilion, and
the garment was made as desired: to it were added a pair of light
greenish-grey trousers with a broad stripe of black down each seam, a
black coat with ample _revers_ of velvet, and a flowing cravat. It was
indeed a devastating sight, and one that deservedly became famous. In
this fervent spirit was the battle waged over "Hernani"; for thirty
consecutive performances the trenches were manfully filled and a
fusillade of cheers poured forth at every touch of romantic colour,
every bold _enjambement_, every defiance of classic circumlocution, and,
above all, every sign of disapprobation on the part of those they rudely
styled "wigs" and "bald pates." The battlefield was often a pandemonium,
but the result was victory. The Théâtre Français, the very home of
Molière, was successfully carried by the Romantic assault. Gautier had
magnificently won his spurs, and shortly afterwards he was introduced by
Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel to the great hero himself, an ordeal
which caused him so much trepidation that he sat for over an hour on the
stairs with his two sponsors before he could pluck up courage to
proceed. His fears, however, soon vanished after a cordial reception,
and as his parents were then living next door to Hugo in the splendid
old Place Royale, he soon became the most constant page and attendant of
the poet, for whom he preserved a lifelong devotion.
These were the days of the second _cénacle_, for "Hernani" was the
Hegira of _la vie de Bohème_. During the long waits in the empty
theatre, the passionate mornings of preparation, the fiery reunions
after the curtain had fallen, a set of the most ardent Hugo-worshippers
had found their affinities. They did not indeed live together--some
were dutifully under the parental roof, some had hardly a roof to their
heads, one at least was supporting a mother and sister by daily work in
a government office--but they formed the habit of meeting and spending
many hours of the day and night together and the meeting-place was
either the studio of a young sculptor, Jehan du Seigneur, or the sanded
parlour of the _Petit Moulin Rouge_, in the _rond-point_ of the Arc de
Triomphe. Their names were Pétrus Borel, Joseph Bouchardy, Philothée
O'Neddy, Alphonse Brot, Augustus Mackeat, Jules Vabre, Napoléon Thom,
Jehan du Seigneur, Léon Clopet, Célestin Nanteuil, Théophile Gautier,
and Gérard de Nerval. It is almost needless to say that some of the
names are Gothic transformations in the Romantic fashion. Pétrus Borel
was, of course, christened Pierre, as du Seigneur was christened Jean by
his parents; while Philothée O'Neddy and Augustus Mackeat conceal the
persons of Théophile Dondey and Auguste Maquet. But names in _-us_ or
Celtic patronymics were all the rage, and even Gautier was called
Albertus after his poem of that name published in 1832. A curious
feature about the group was that, though it existed to champion the
cause of Romantic poetry, the only pure man of letters was Gérard de
Nerval. Of the rest, Borel, formerly an architect, was learning to draw
in Dévéria's studio, Thom and Nanteuil were artists, Gautier and
Bouchardy studying art, du Seigneur a sculptor, Clopet and Vabre
architects; O'Neddy and Brot, indeed, were professed poets, but in no
less an embryonic stage than some of the others who afterwards found in
the pen their most successful tool. "This mixture of art in poetry,"
says Gautier, "was and has remained one of the characteristic signs of
the new school, and makes it clear why the first adepts were recruited
rather among the artists than among the men of letters. A multitude of
objects, images, and comparisons which were thought to be irreducible to
the written word were introduced into the language and have stayed
there."[17]
[Illustration: Pétrus Borel]