must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as
Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world.
Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was
earning a living by his art--even more than a living, for was he not
rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was
his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years
painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused
the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush
he was a very agreeable singer of _chansons_ and ballads. Ourliac did
not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue
Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants
Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on
his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way
home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines,
_gai convive, arrivait en chantant_
_Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,_
was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere,
ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible _raconteur_ of inimitable
dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German
philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work
which made his name heard in the world of literature.
It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but
rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the
morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all
four would set to their work, while the Pompadour _salon_ was hardly yet
awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found
lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to
write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de
Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60,
and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating
Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse."
"L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo,
tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres,
couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et
venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent
pas."[23]
Gérard, his part in the foundation of _la Bohème galante_ performed,
felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions,
indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered
ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave
before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task
was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as
Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was
also an actress. In the days of the _cénacle_ Gérard had fallen
desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress
of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very
roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic
mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day,
and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful
Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that
Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was
always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other
parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an
occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by
straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome
of his life--a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned.
His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar
heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to
accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on
Arsène Houssaye's stanza:
_"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?_
_Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique_
_S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,_
_Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,_
_Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"_[24]
_Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"_
wrote:
"La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait
alors--et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des
Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce
grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore
garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François
Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se
jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas
plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image
tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve
idéal et divin."
The question was to secure her _début_ at the Opéra, and for that
purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de
Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to
compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly
engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the
Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to
maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps
because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de
Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and
the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème
Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which
he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing
themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had
an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could
not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the
room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for
another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of
the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked
till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other
masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an
early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The
revellers set off joyously, Gérard's _belle désolée_ opposing only a
feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on
his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the
lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his
disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow.
And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his
fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme
toujours!"
Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his
whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted
Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly.
Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for
Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a
Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but
when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art
criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his
mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of
bouillon for his _déjeuner_. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over
and the visitors gone--Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the
Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret--Rogier, Gautier,
and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy
city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling
along the Seine. They dined--they were not too poor for that--in the
Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night
where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some
romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch
would be indispensable; now they would invade the _Chaumière_ or some
other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,[25]
the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to
choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and
Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille
which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life--the
siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another
evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent,
Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold _salon_ with Rogier,
who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their
knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish _cabaret_ hard
by, served by the young _tavernière_
_Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière._
_Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel œil attrayant!_
_Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant._
_Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,_
_Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,_
_Jetant à tout venant son cœur et sa vertu,_
_Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,_
_Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;_
_Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle._
So sang of her Houssaye, whose souvenirs of Bohemia at the magic age of
_vingt ans_ are deeply tinged with amorous memories. In fact, _la
Bohème galante_, as its name implies, was not a monastery, and its life
was not shared, but illuminated by a number of divinities whose aureoles
had been over more than one windmill. The chief of these was "la
Cydalise,"
_Respirant un lilas qui jouait dans sa main_
_Et pressentant déjà le triste lendemain._
She was treasure-trove of Camille Rogier's, a beautiful woman, and
titular mistress of the Bohemian encampment. They were all jealous of
Rogier's good fortune, for, since he was twenty-five, they considered
him a patriarch, and Théo could not understand how Cydalise could put up
with such an old man. She lived quite happily in the Impasse, making the
afternoon tea, sitting as a model, and inflaming all their hearts.
Théo's passion was of a frantic heat. He besieged Cydalise with long and
violent apostrophes, swearing to kill the senile tyrant who kept her in
his power, threats for which Rogier, ever smiling, did not care a
button. Poor Cydalise, she was a butterfly whose day was short. To
Rogier's great grief consumption seized her. For some weeks he enlivened
her sick-bed by singing her songs and drawing pictures for her
amusement; but the day came when her ears no longer heard and her lovely
eyes were closed. Gérard, Gautier, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac went
to her funeral, and Bohemia lost its official mistress. Yet there were
others. Gérard draws a picture of Gautier, on a Gothic stool, reading
his verses while Cydalise or Lorry or Victorine swung herself carelessly
in the hammock of Sarah _la blonde_, and Arsène Houssaye at the end of
"Vingt Ans" recalls them in the lines:
_Judith oublie Arthur, Franz, Rogier et le reste,_
_En donnant à son cœur la solitude agreste;_
_Rosine à Chantilly caresse un jeune enfant_
_Plus joli qu'un Amour et plus joueur qu'un faon._
* * * * *
_Ninon au Jockey Club vend chacun de ses jours;_
_Charlotte danse encore--et dansera toujours._
_Alice?--il faut la plaindre et prier Dieu pour elle,_
_Elle est dans les chiffons, la pauvre Chanterelle;_
_Armande?--Un prince russe épris de sa beauté_
_Travaille à lui refaire une virginité._
_Olympe?--un mauvais livre ouvert à chaque page--_
_Ce matin je l'ai vue en galant équipage...._
The loves of Doyenné were true _enfants de Bohème_, neither great
passions nor elective affinities, but pastimes leaving regrets for
inspiration; not devouring flames, but pleasantly crackling experimental
fires, drawn chiefly from those great hearths, the stage and the _corps
de ballet_. How much fantasy went to their burning is illustrated in a
story told by Houssaye of Gérard, who, on one occasion, to the despair
of his friends, became obsessed with a mad desire to set out that
instant for Cythera and revive the gods of Greece. Prompt measures were
necessary, and Houssaye devoted himself to the rescue by professing to
enter into the scheme with joy, only remarking that it would be well to
have lunch first. This seemed to Gérard a reasonable preliminary, so
they adjourned to the Café d'Orsay, where over the first bottle Gérard
developed his scheme with growing eloquence. But the first stage on the
way to Cythera lasted for several bottles, and at the commencement of
the next Gérard met a provisional goddess in the shape of an attractive
_grisette_. Houssaye, convinced that his companionship was now no longer
necessary, abandoned the voyage, and left Gérard to continue it up
several flights of stairs. The end of this ascent marked his farthest
point; after a halt of two days he descended and turned his footsteps
back to Bohemia. The loves of Bohemia which gambol so trippingly in the
tongue of France are ill at ease in our austerer medium, for our
Northern spirit has ever refused to admit, as the French do with
engaging candour, that man, particularly the artist-man, is naturally
polygamous. Lorry, Victorine, Armande, and the rest were the only
appropriate feminine attachments of Bohemia, even of the golden age, the
pagan loves of pagan heroes, who were greedy of their caresses without
hungering for their souls, grew jealous at their eyes' wayward glances,
but took no umbrage at the inward abstraction of their minds, and were
content with the homage of their play-hours without seeking to rival the
ideals of their artistic contemplations. But the mark of the golden age
was that they played for love and not for money: they would dance the
heels off their slippers in the barren land of Doyenné when all the
millions of a dull prince would have moved their agile toes only to the
most significant of kicks. It was a mad little world, but good because
Mammon had not corrupted its natural spontaneity. True, it was deficient
in some virtues, but some virtues are frankly middle-aged, to be put on
with a less tricksy cut of the clothes. Bohemia was young; it loved and
feasted and, being poor, made debts. There is not much to be said for
getting into debt, in spite of Panurge's ingenious discourse, except
that it is an unavoidable corollary of certain conjunctions of
temperament and circumstance. It is difficult, anyhow, not to pardon
Gérard for dissipating his capital and running up bills on account of
his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture
dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns
les autres," which affected the dun to tears.
"We had no money, but we lived _en grands seigneurs_," wrote Arsène
Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have
pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the Opéra
for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were
not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard
more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the
landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an
occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless,
dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch _la
Bohème galante_ had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic
entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835.
The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his
frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the
first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was
a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of
it: a _bal costumé_ alone could produce a gathering that would not clash
with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances
were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia,
required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who
are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the
superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too
little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than
give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the
eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings
by their friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could
indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be
undying.
The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had
done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day,
including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he
narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared
to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that
his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand
bottles of wine. _La Bohème galante_, though younger and less known
artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal.
Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and
the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination.
They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes,
singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind
their ears--a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a
general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal
usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling
through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque
scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a
tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden
hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned with
ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service,
Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing
Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two
narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might
lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the
acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in
and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white
chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of
this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few _louis
d'or_ for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a
millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet
regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the
_salon_ of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which
the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating
festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its
freshness.
The _fête_ was gorgeous. True, the landlord's wife had refused their
invitation--a severe blow. But the hosts with some consideration,
knowing that their revels would make sleep impossible in the quarter,
invited all their bachelor neighbours on the condition that they brought
with them _femmes du monde_ protected, if they pleased, by masks and
dominoes. The wonderful evening began with the pantomime of "Le Diable
Boiteux," in which many actresses from the boulevard took part. Then
there were two little farces in which Ourliac covered himself with glory
as the _buffo_. The first was "Le Courrier de Naples," and the second,
written by Ourliac himself, "La Jeunesse du Temps et le Temps de la
Jeunesse," was introduced by a prologue by Gautier, read from behind the
curtain. Ourliac was buried in bouquets, and the noisy orchestra brought
in from a _guingette_ struck up. The ruined quarter woke to life again,
as in some ghost story; the desert streets resounded with songs and
laughter; Turks and _débardeurs_ affronted the frown of the staid old
Louvre, and only the landlords and _concierges_, tossing sleeplessly,
consigned Bohemians to everlasting flames. The dance, sustained only by
good spirits, never flagged, till in the final galop every mask with his
partner rushed pell-mell from the room, leaped wildly down the rickety
stairs, dashed up the Impasse, and came to rest under the moonlit ruins
of the old priory, where a little _cabaret_ had opened, and only the
late dawn of winter drove Bohemia to its bed, to dream of the Pompadour
salon, of Ourliac's satirical buffoonery, and of Roger de Beauvoir's
magnificent Venetian costume of apple-green velvet with silver
embroidery, and his inexhaustible wit, for once born of no champagne.