NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Among the national institutions of France, the place of honour must
undoubtedly be given to the Académie Française; not because of its
utility, still less for the amount of respect and admiration it deserves.
My own opinion is, that a more fantastic and ridiculous institution was
never invented; and to-day it has no connexion between our democratic
times and the monstrous period in which it was founded. Why forty
respectable gentlemen who happen to have written books more or less good
(and by no means always such as to justify their election), composed
tolerable operas, written amusing or instructive plays, as the case may
be, should not have been content with the applause and pence of their
fellows, but must needs array themselves in an absurd uniform, with
triumphant green palm-leaves embroidered over a modern coat, and a toy
sword at their side, and play at immortality, is what I have never been
able to understand. As if the votes of his contemporaries can possibly
decide the question of a man’s immortality!
Read over the lists of academicians since Richelieu’s time, and see how
many among all those names you will ever have heard of. Intrigue and
prejudice frequently settle the question of a day’s immortality. But in
the case of a century’s fame it requires solid merit of a higher order
than that which is often necessary to secure the election of a candidate
to an armchair among the favoured Forty. Flaubert and Maupassant
assuredly hold very different places in French literature from those
occupied by the mild André Theuriet and the dull Paul Bourget; and it
is as difficult to explain the absence of Balzac from this literary
club half a century ago as it is to explain the presence there to-day
of M. Henri Lavedan. The mystified foreigner notes that Balzac created
the colossal _Comédie Humaine_, and that M. Lavedan wrote _Le Vieux
Marcheur_, and is apt to tell himself gleefully that the judgment of the
elect in France is no wiser, no more judicious, than that of the common
herd elsewhere. But of course the institution, with its pretentious
traditions, its mock air of the _ancien régime_, is only a club, whose
members choose their society upon other than intellectual grounds. There
is a great deal of wire-pulling, too, in the matter, chiefly done by
women. In fact, when the noble dames of the Faubourg decide to run a
candidate, he is pretty certain to be elected. Loti was run by those
ladies, and the first thing he did was to scare the club by breaking with
all its traditions and making a mockery of academic urbanity. Lavedan,
as a reactionary candidate, was naturally the protected of clericals,
aristocrats, and the flower of snobbery, and committed a still greater
breach of academic etiquette than Loti, by a veiled and sneering attack
upon the dead he was deputed to belaud.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH ACADEMY]
I was present at this extraordinary _séance_, and, although the Marquis
Costa de Beauregard is an academician whom posterity may in all safety be
reckoned on to ignore, it was impossible to withhold cordial recognition
of the justice and good taste of his sharp retort to the inexcusable
offender. Meilhac, whose empty chair M. Lavedan was elected to fill, may
or may not have been as black as his appointed eulogist painted him, but
the Academy was not the place to attack this character, and the occasion
chosen by M. Lavedan was as indelicate as if he had selected a man’s open
grave, with mourning relatives and friends around, for disrespectful
usage of his name. Stupefied, as was everyone else by this singular
proceeding, I questioned a friend whose privilege it is to wear the
palm-embroidered coat and mother-of-pearl sword, and was told that this
was M. Lavedan’s way of avenging the disapproval of the Academy of his
_Vieux Marcheur_, played only after his election. These nervous elderly
gentlemen, unacquainted with the literature of their new colleague, were
desperately alarmed when they were made aware of the nature of this
popular and shocking play. The sensations of the hen affrighted on the
edge of a pool where her duckling is disporting were nothing to theirs;
and so the author, at bay, took his revenge by endeavouring, with more
talent than taste, to prove to them that, if they did not relish the
_Vieux Marcheur_ (something in the style of “sad old rake”) out of their
doors, they could be extremely indulgent to the same type of gentleman
within those sacred precincts. At a more recent election, that of M.
Paul Hervieu, M. Brunetière, reversing the order of contumely, was
nothing loath to poke blame at the newly received Immortal because of
his social cynicism and the unkind pictures M. Hervieu has drawn of the
world of men and women M. Brunetière delights to honour. But we need not
penetrate beneath the surface to explain such an inhospitable fashion
of receiving a candidate into this classical club. M. Brunetière, the
discoverer of Bossuet, is a fervent reactionary. The Church, the Army,
Society,—behold his gods!—with the result that, in the deadly conflict
waged for two years round an unfortunate Jew, M. Brunetière went with
the unjust majority, while M. Hervieu, the author of that dramatic and
brilliant thesis on Feminism, _La Loi de l’Homme_, went with the just
and liberal minority. It needed nothing more to give him over as a meal
to the omnivorous editor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, whose virtuous
indignation against M. Hervieu’s generous cry for justice to women knew
no bounds.
In the present divided state of France, with anti-Semitism raging and
disaffection rife in all quarters, even a pacific academical reception
approaches the verbal war waged in the arena of politics conducted
with leisure and urbanity. The ceremonial is imposing and of a supreme
dulness. If you have a centre seat, the wise thing to do is to go early
and amuse yourself by watching the arrivals; or manage to arrive at the
last moment, and you will have the best seat of all, in the very middle
of the hall, literally at the feet of the Immortals. If you know all
Paris, you will enjoy yourself, for you will see and be seen of all
Paris, and the dresses are usually worth looking at. After that you have
the mild excitement of watching the Immortals enter, to your surprise not
in academical raiment, but in ordinary coats, wearing the air of ordinary
men. Only the godfathers of the newly elected, the perpetual secretary,
the chancellor, always the latest member, and the gentleman deputed to
receive the new Immortal wear the sword and palm-embroidered coat. There
are no arm-chairs, but wooden benches ill adapted to the ease of age.
The classical hall is about as squalid and uncomfortable a vestibule of
posterity as one could wish to see, and is so ill-ventilated that, when
it is full, as it always is, to excess, the spectators are frequently
threatened with apoplexy or syncope. Whenever I get away sound and alive
from beneath the celebrated cupola, I always feel that I have escaped
unharmed from actual peril.
Then the newly elected stands at a reading-desk and reads out the
eulogy of his predecessor, which a committee has already been convened
to consider, and when he terminates his “discourse,” his godfathers
warmly shake his hand, and he sits down. The academician who receives
him in the name of the august assembly replies, and reads his discourse
sitting, placed between the chancellor and secretary, at the centre
table, on a high daïs. When the speakers read their discourses as M.
Brunetière reads his, it is a pleasure, whether you agree with them or
not; but this is rare, for M. Brunetière was meant by nature to be a
preacher or an actor. His elocution is magnificent, his voice arresting;
whereas the average man is hard to follow and, in winter, is apt to
have a cold in his head. After the ceremony, greetings during the exit,
which is slow and precarious, and in the big courtyard proclaim you a
fashionable person, and reveal to you the utter vanity of the whole
affair. Then you understand why it is that women are supposed to be the
pillars of the institution. There is something essentially wrong about
fashionable women. They must, perforce, worship false gods. When they
admire a writer, or a musician, or a dramatist, they are not happy until
they see him in a false position. They must make a fool of him before
they can consent to worship him. He administers to their vanity, and
they administer to his. And so they go in a body to crown him; and not
to be present at the crowning is a confession of social inferiority.
Being more intelligent than the same class of women elsewhere, their
folly takes this form of rendering interesting men ridiculous. If I
thought them capable of humour and irony (which they are not), I might
regard this as the supreme vengeance of their sex, excluded by national
prejudice from all public honours. But, alas! no. They are in deadly
earnest, and take their great men with rapture and gravity. They, at any
rate, and the Immortals themselves, really believe in the Academy. They
swallow each other, and piously give thanks for the meal. The fashionable
woman hastens to invite the new Immortal to dinner for the exquisite
satisfaction of giving him the place of honour and conferring distinction
upon herself.
“However,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “we may jeer at the French Academy, but
it has not ceased to be popular in Europe.” Foreigners and Parisians
are equally eager for tickets, and French genius more eager than either
for the prizes and renown it confers. It is one of the monarchical
institutions restored by the Convention after its suppression in the
Terror. Only, instead of the monarchical Institute it had been, it
became a national Institute, existing by grace of the State and the
people, and not by that of a minister like Richelieu, or a monarch like
Louis XIV. It was thus composed of a hundred and forty-four members in
Paris, and an equal number in the provinces, with power to associate
twenty-four learned men with its corps. It was divided into three parts:
Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Moral and Political Sciences, and
Literature and the Fine Arts. This new national Institute was opened on
the 4th of April, 1796, when Daunou pronounced the inaugural address.
In those days there was no such thing as a perpetual secretary. The
excellent republican spirit of the State was naturally modified under
the Consulate, and completely demoralised under the Empire. Napoleon
reinstituted the perpetual secretary of the _ancien régime_, suppressed
the class of Political and Moral Sciences,—the least to be expected of
a political dictator without any notion of morality,—and divided the
two other classes into three, and thus restored the ancient Academy
of Sciences, French Academy, Academy of Inscriptions and Letters,
the Academies of Painting and Sculpture. Hence grew the ambition to
connect, in unbroken continuity, the defunct institution of a vanished
monarchy and the new institution of the Directory. In 1803, it began the
reactionary period, and posed as Royalist in sentiments and opinions.
Sainte-Beuve defines the Academy as that of the reigning perpetual
secretary.
What the Academy really remains is the home of tradition. Here the main
thing is not intellect, but distinction; not genius, but the consummate
perfection of expression. Urbanity is its hall-mark, and what it most
dreads in originality is the abuse of novelty. You may have little to
say; only see that your way of saying it cannot be bettered. It has
been blamed for excluding from its ranks so much real genius; and this
blame would, of course, be earned by it if its object were so much the
recognition of genius as the welcome to its midst of a congenial spirit.
Gautier, with his long hair and red waistcoat, was not a congenial
spirit, though if finish of style, charm, urbanity, and exquisite grace
are accounted academical graces, there never was a writer to whom the
term “born academician” was more applicable. But the Academy always
sees that there is a bulldog on the threshold to show his teeth to the
“masters” of to-morrow; a pedagogue to teach the aspirants to academical
honours how they should write and think, and what small beer their
literary pretensions are regarded by the Forty Immortals he speaks for
so arrogantly. The bulldog of the hour is M. Brunetière. This unamiable
pedant, the enemy of individualism and youth, the enemy of all things
not hall-marked with his pontifical approval, has announced that Zola
can enter the Academy only across his dead body. He has many hatreds
to balance the immensity of his single love and admiration, the Eagle
of Meaux, but none that can compare with his implacable hostility to
Zola. And yet this academical pontiff, who disapproved of Daudet, wiped
out the Naturalists, shot bilious blame at M. Jules Lemaître (that was
before this amiable individual sought ridicule in the famous Ligue de
la Patrie Française, a sentiment he, MM. Coppée, and Barrès were the
first Frenchmen of their time to discover) and at Anatole France, whose
shoe-strings he is not fit to tie, allows M. Henri Lavedan to sit beside
him, and does not repudiate _Le Vieux Marcheur_.
While all France has been divided of late, it would be demanding a
superhuman effort of urbanity and harmony from the Immortals to expect a
concord of sweet sounds to be heard beneath the famed cupola. Politics
have introduced their consequent animosity and bitterness here as
elsewhere, and the academicians, like the rest of their compatriots,
are ranged in two defiant and hostile camps. I am bound to say that the
_élite_ is with the splendid and disinterested minority. It is sad to
witness the extraordinary capers, the passion for popularity in which an
intelligent man like M. Lemaître indulges, and to see him brandishing
a wild pen and shouting in every tone of anger; so little dignity and
common sense are left a Frenchman when hate and rancour hold him and
when race-fury rolls over the land like a tidal wave, _Vive l’armée!_
This famous critic has betaken himself to a sort of politics invented
for the hour—a feverish antagonism to foreigners and all foreign
influences, and a passion for every form of sabred hero. He goes from
the Clotilde to Notre Dame, from Notre Dame to the Madeleine, in the
glorious attitude and humour of the Irishman at Donnybrook Fair, seeking
for somebody in the crowd who will tread upon the tail of his coat. This
offence may be committed by cheering the Republic or its President;
then there is instant competition in pugilism. And so M. Lemaître,
accompanied and admirably assisted by his no less heroic and patriotic
fellow academician, M. Coppée, forgets academical urbanity in wild and
incoherent abuse of living persons and respectable citizens who happen
not to think as he does.
This state of affairs has given rise to countless rumours and jokes over
the compilation of the eternal dictionary upon which the illustrious
company is engaged. How is it possible for men who disagree upon the
essentials of morality, justice, honour, and truth to agree upon the
definition of a word? In olden days the occasional antagonisms of this
renowned salon were rare or were revealed with a sympathetic vivacity
and wit. Sainte-Beuve could say: “The Academy is the place where
literature is the best discussed and where all the amenities are most
rigorously observed.” Now all that is changed. Happily, as an interlude
in internecine warfare, there is the yearly examination of books and
prizes to award. These are many. It is a mistake to believe that a book
crowned by the Academy is necessarily good. Noting one year that several
absolutely bad, as well as many mediocre, books had been crowned, and
sums of money awarded to the malefactors who had perpetrated them, I
asked an academician how it was. His explanation was, that so much must
be spent on prizes every year, whether there are books to crown or not,
as it would excessively complicate the affairs of such a rich body if
these sums were allowed to accumulate. Of course there are certain
large prizes, such as the Jean Reynaud (£400), which are carefully and
justly disposed of, but the multiple insignificant ones of £10, £20, and
£40, are distributed as well as they can be in days when there is not a
plethora of real talent in France. It is not only literary works that
merit academical prizes. There is the Montyon prize, awarded to “the poor
French man or woman who has done the most virtuous action during the
year.” The sum spent on prizes under this head is £800, and it is divided
between several poor persons whose lives are looked into, and of whom
usually a touching and admirable picture is drawn. It would not be in the
nature of things if the distribution of this prize did not provoke much
humorous comment in France. Some satirists maintain that the candidates
for the Montyon prize invariably go to the dogs after they have been
rewarded. I was once present at the reading out of the numerous actions
so recompensed by M. Brunetière, and I was never more deeply impressed by
the splendid record of virtue, of unparalleled abnegation and generosity,
among the French poor. The second Montyon prize is destined to reward the
most useful moral book written during the year. There are also prizes
destined to alleviate literary misfortunes, that is, unfortunate authors
or their widows and families in trouble.
The old house of Molière is, like the Academy, a permanent attraction
of Paris. It stands in the Rue de Richelieu, on a Place of its own,
a light, animated, illuminated Place, dominated by the columns of the
Théâtre Français. This was established here after the Revolution, and,
thanks to the famous Decree of Moscow, its name is almost as eternally
linked with that of Napoleon as with those of the immortal Molière and of
Louis XIV., a more liberal but not less exacting master of France than
the Corsican adventurer.
There is not a civilised land that has not something to learn of other
lands. While the French may well envy the more stable and self-respecting
government of England, England might just as well borrow something of
France; and one of the things it ought to envy is the establishment,
two centuries ago, of a national theatre. The result for France has
been the most perfect dramatic school of the world. The suppression
of excessive individuality is a benefit to the entire company, as it
forbids any ambition to “star.” We have seen what the star system has
done for the two great artists who broke away from its traditions to
amass fortunes and fling their reputations to all the quarters of the
globe. South America has had the privilege of hearing Sarah Bernhardt,
but the artist who left the Théâtre Français had genius of a finer
quality and theatrical cultivation of a higher order than those displayed
to-day by this extraordinary woman in the various more or less mediocre
plays she acts in, often without a single other actor or actress worth
listening to. The starring system is essentially the development of
all that is worst in the artist—vulgarity, crude bids for personal
popularity, blighting vanity, and egotism; in a word, all the cheapest
characteristics of the charlatan. It is precisely these ugly defects that
such an institution as the Comédie Française tends to suppress. There
the reputation of the company and not of the individual is at stake.
Minor parts are played by eminent artists, and the excessive vanity and
pretension of the one become the plague of the many. I will not advance
the assertion that everybody in the famous company of the Comédie
Française is equally admirable. Temperament will, of course, prompt your
criticism. For instance, Mounet-Sully is the beloved of many a nation as
well as of thousands of his own countrymen, and I can scarcely listen to
Mounet-Sully with patience. A greater bore I cannot conceive. He belongs
to the Byronic school, the days of cloaked and sabred romance. His sombre
voice lifts itself on a volume of sound, and is flung in mournful and
passionate reproach against the implacable walls of destiny. But yet
in your most exasperated mood, with nerves on edge from his excess of
clouded despair and desperate anguish, you must admit that the man is a
perfect artist, and that such a temperament starring about the globe,
without the control of the company to which he belongs, would drift into
ineffable charlatanism. Poor M. Claretie has much ado to keep him in
order. What would happen if he had a stage of his own to rant and roar
upon? A lesser Sarah Bernhardt, without her inexpressible charm and her
undoubted genius, which in soft interludes help us to bear with the
shrieking, hysteric, high moments. It would be a mistake to regard the
Français as a kind of happy family, living in perfect amity and peace.
The roar of domestic war sometimes penetrates without, and all Paris was
excited lately by M. Le Bargy’s noisy menace of resignation. Le Bargy,
on his own boards, in his own atmosphere, surrounded by his own company,
has made his mark as a well-cravatted, fashionable young lover; but what
will Le Bargy do elsewhere, in a theatre where, with his prestige, and
coming from such a house, he will be expected to fill the stage? I doubt
if there is the stuff of the star in him, and upon the Boulevards there
are many actors as good as and better even than he. This is the triumph
of the Français,—that by means of inexorable tradition and training,
without individuality or genius, actors acting harmoniously, guided by a
common standard, may attain an eminence in their profession achieved in
no other land. And though the chances of fortune and popularity are much
greater outside its walls, popular actors are always proud of the honour
of election into its illustrious company.
The theatre was founded by Louis XIV., by whom it was made a co-operative
association, and who established pensions for retiring members. It has
two classes of actors: _sociétaires_, who have each an interest in the
theatre, have a voice in its government, a share of the profits, assist
at the choice of plays, and retire with a pension. On retirement, they
possess not only their pension, but a little capital of their own, the
half of their share of the profits of the theatre having been annually
invested for them. The second class is composed of _pensionnaires_,
engaged yearly at a fixed salary, and at the end of a certain period of
probation nominated _sociétaires_. Napoleon chose the most astonishing
hour of his astonishing career for consideration of the destiny of the
Théâtre Français. At Moscow he diverted his mind from colossal disaster
by framing the celebrated Decree of Moscow. The theatre is a State
institution, subsidised by an annual vote of 240,000 francs, in return
for which it is bound to play the old classical repertory twice or thrice
a week. By this means the memory of the masters of the French drama,
Racine, Corneille, and Molière, is kept ever green in France, and is not
less fresh to-day than that of the modern dramatists.
And so one understands how the entire world was affected by the dreadful
catastrophe not long ago in the burning of this great old house. Neither
M. Claretie, with his eyes full of tears, nor any of the distracted
company was bemoaning a personal loss, was thinking of private interests
in sight of the devastating flames; but all were throbbing, as one
heart, before a national calamity. The civilised world felt it had lost
a precious and a unique thing. The new building will contain most of
the rescued works of art, but the figures of Rachel, of Delaunay, of so
many shades of departed dramatic glory, have gone. The new theatre will
probably be handsomer than the old one, and it could easily be that; it
will also be more modern, more comfortable; it may even be fitted up with
luxury, and, Heaven permit it! that horrid national institution, the
_ouvreuse_, may be abolished. Blessed changes! but we of our generation
will ever be grateful that it was on the old stage we saw Got and
Reichemberg, Worms, Barretta, and Bartet.
L’École des Beaux Arts is another national institution. In all things
the French passion for art is visible. Art is the one thing the entire
race takes seriously. The capital is laid out to please the eye and
captivate the senses like a work of art. This School of Fine Arts itself
is connected with one of the most radiant bits of Paris. The bridge,
called after it, seizes one of the loveliest views of the city. It
spans the river between the glorious Louvre and the imposing dome of
the Institute. Stand midway, and here, in the heart of modern life,
will you find yourself in the midst of enchantment. Let the vision be
a morning vision, and the lights about you will be pearly, the blue of
the air rose-tinged, the gold of the sun-rays, as it shimmers over the
water, broken and tossed against its blithe, persistent grey. Or see it
at the magical hour of sunset. All the gilt of the Louvre glistens like
living light. Towers and fretted spires are pencilled in the lovely glow,
seemingly enlarged by the large serenity of the atmosphere. Below, the
roll of the river curls into the deep grey hollows of the mysterious
isle whose gates of romance are fittingly guarded by the high towers of
Notre Dame, the church that foreigners will persist in regarding as the
most beautiful of Paris, and whose architectural value has been absurdly
overrated, I suppose because of Victor Hugo; while Saint Étienne-du-Mont,
with its delightful _jubé_, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, home of poetry,
and the exquisite Sainte Chapelle are neglected for this second-rate
edifice. On one side Richelieu’s dome, fronted by its circling space
which breaks the winding, gracious line of quay and bookstalls; on the
other, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, bending its Gothic shadow to the bright
glory of the Louvre, and the upward view running past bridges and
gardens, past the grey temple of legislation, to sweep upon a wide curve
into the colonnaded heights of the Trocadero. The picture is enhanced by
the bright verdure of the Tuileries gardens; by the gay, swift passage of
boats; by all the sparkling diversities of Parisian life which fill the
streets with so much colour and charm. When you have crossed the Pont des
Beaux Arts, on which I have kept you standing awhile, you will enter the
school by the busy, old-fashioned, almost provincial Rue Bonaparte. What
a pleasant place it is to be sure, this modern school of art! Here it
is that the famous Prix de Rome is given, which sends hopeful youths to
the very fount and cradle of art for its instruction and gratification,
but not infrequently for the careful destruction of all individuality
of sprouting genius in thrall to academic rule. It is the rigidity
of this academic rule in France which produces such explosions of
anarchy in literature and art. Precision and clarity are such essential
characteristics of the genius of the race that, when turbulent youth in
a tempest of revolt against the discipline of the implacable academies
decides to fling its cap over the mill, and carve out its own fresh road
to the devil, we are shocked by eccentricities that elsewhere would leave
us unmoved.
If youth must occasionally go mad, at least we demand that French youth
shall go mad with sanity of taste and judgment. His Anglo-Saxon brother
in a like predicament may be as imprecise, as vague and obscure, as
racial character and the genius of his language permit, but we exact
of this raging Gaul that his insanity shall be beautifully measured
by the canons of art. And so his excesses in anarchy appear to our
judgment far more grievous crimes against taste and tact than those of
less intellectually and artistically disciplined races. When he falls
away from the lines of beauty his defection is more deplorable than
another’s. We are accustomed to count upon him as a model of elegance in
all the finer paths of pleasure; and when he dips into crabbed prose or
rude verse, or paints us, as a symphony of modern morals, a naked woman
playing the piano, with a fashionable hat on a vulgarly dressed head, we
resent the hideous joke as evidence of unjustifiable lawlessness. The
Prix de Rome may have something to do with these outbreaks. The best art
of the world has been spontaneous and not academic; and though we may
admit that training is a priceless advantage in all paths, the individual
influence of one master of his craft is far above that of all the
academies ever formed. The French in all things depend too exclusively
on institutions. They tired of the tyranny of Throne and Church, and
overthrew the one and shook the altars of the other. But the abiding
tyranny of institutions they unmurmuringly accept and submit to as their
substitution. Louis XIV. and Napoleon ruled the people with a rod of
iron; each combined in his personal prestige and power all the resources
of the various institutions which, united, now represent the authority of
a single man. The traditions of subservience that they left were not to
be shaken off, in spite of revolutions and occasional canters down the
wild road of anarchy. There dwell permanently in the race a terror and
distrust of individualism and initiative. Since it has shaken off the
shackles of kings and dictators, it must walk in willing servitude to the
countless smaller, and, it must be admitted, less obnoxious, tyrannies
it maintains for the clipping of its own wings, and which form a kind of
stable throne for its prestige. For what would France be in the eyes of
the world without its five Academies, without its École des Beaux Arts,
its Théâtre Français, the house of Molière, without its high literary
tradition, the distinction and elegance of all that emanates from its
genius? The liberty of the gypsy is undoubtedly the greatest blessing
of life, freedom to paint, to write, to act, to speak, to breathe, by
spontaneous and untrammelled effort, freedom to ride upon the crests of
inspiration unmindful of the approval of the fogies of tradition, to tilt
against the windmills of discord in one’s own manner without a thought
for “conservatoire” or national opera-house, to go a-sailing on the lake
of dreams, without calculating the benefit it may be to your pocket,
and dive for pearls of fancy without reckoning their market value. But
civilisation sets too just a value upon the benefits of tradition and
discipline to tolerate this nomad contempt of their advantages; and in
no country are these advantages more highly prized than in France, the
land of revolution and unrest. Even the follies of the Latin Quarter,
as long as they lasted, were rigidly based upon the traditions of that
wild spot. _La Vie de Bohème_, for all its apparent recklessness of rowdy
students and Mimi Pinsons and Lisettes, had its traditions in vice and
virtue, deviation from which was regarded an infraction as intolerable
as ever could be deviation from those of the five Academies or the
Comédie Française. The student in the process of going to the dogs was
bound to go thither in the way of the Quarter. He inherited from a long
line of genius his hat and his garments, the cut of his hair and beard,
his sins and attitudes. The road of pleasure and pain, of wickedness
and repentance, of distraction and despair, was cut out for him upon
tradition as unswervable as that of the most respectable institution, and
to act the proper part assigned him in the triumph of disreputableness he
should take Villon for his model, or wring out the sombre folds of the
poet’s mantle in the gaiety and genial ruffianism of the modern ideal of
the Latin Quarter. But here, happily, we alight upon an institution in
process of doom. The Quarter is in the pangs of transformation, and soon
the cheap and unsympathetic heroes of Mürger will be but a memory, and
not a decent one at that. Along the “Boul. Mich.” youths are beginning to
pay their way, for all the world like the common “beastly burgess” across
the river.
[Illustration: THE FOYER OF THE OPERA-HOUSE]
The Conservatoire is another national institution. Like the Academy and
the Comédie Française, it is a home of traditions. The airy foreigner who
wishes to assist at one of its concerts cannot hope to open its doors
with a golden key. Its seats are subscribed for and constitute personal
property. Should the foreigner be fortunate enough to possess a friend
with one of these seats who is willing to sacrifice a concert for his
benefit, he will hear a marvellous orchestra. For a short time the scene
of this unique harmony of sound was shifted from the neighbourhood of
the Upper Boulevards to the boards of the Opera-house, and the result
was sheer disaster. The orchestra of the Conservatoire is just suited
to its own select little hall, but it is too delicate, too perfect, for
transposition to a big theatre like the Opera-house of Paris. There you
need instrumentation of a coarser quality, music less subtly rendered.
Where the polka may be fitly danced, the _pavane_ would be out of place.
M. Taffanel, the able conductor of the Conservatoire orchestra, cannot
compare with the great German conductors; he has not the genius of Mottl,
nor the magical temperament of Weingartner, nor the individuality of the
French conductor, the late Lamoureux. But in his quiet, measured way he
is an incomparable artist, to judge him by the results of his lead. When
Weingartner and Mottl conduct, the attention is continually drawn to
them. Indeed, in the case of Weingartner, who is unreasonably affected,
and, like every other artist with a “temperament,” is apt to exaggerate
its privileges, the audience is ever more conscious of him than of his
instruments. He is a superb master, but one wishes him less histrionic.
Now, M. Taffanel has not a suspicion of affectation or histrionism. He
is simplicity itself, the very model of impersonality. He so effaces
himself that you are conscious of his presence only by the perfection of
his orchestra. He is so easy and subdued that he hardly seems necessary
in this admirable triumph of art. Of course, as his house is the home
of tradition, Wagner is excluded. Wagner dominates outside, but in here
it is the masters consecrated by unmixed approval who rule the ear.
Mounet-Sully will read to you, in his inimitable, sombre Byronic way,
the ravings of Manfred, while Schumann will roll your soul over the
crests of musical passion. Beethoven will speak to your heart and brain
like a god, and Mozart will captivate you with his joyous melody and
sweetness, but not a note of Wagner, the modern Colossus. It is well that
this exclusive home of music should be kept up upon its aristocratic
traditions—the best orchestra of the world and the least accessible; but
the evil effect of exclusiveness is at once visible in a glance around at
the audience. Daudet has written that the French do not in their hearts
really like classical music. I think it is true. They delight too much
in conversation to delight in music as the duller, the denser, and more
sentimental Germans do. But to have a seat at the Conservatoire denotes
wealth, the prestige of fashion; and so they go to each concert more to
see and be seen than to hear. In doing so they are conscious of being
part of the _chic_ world. In the _loges_ around you, men and women talk
of every mortal thing except the music heard; and the chief anxiety
of both sexes, if I may judge by the testimony of my ears on repeated
occasions, is to know what baron, count, marquis, marchioness, or duchess
is present, with smart remarks upon their dress. The Conservatoire is a
traditional school of music and of the drama; prizes are awarded upon
the test of examination, and reputations started here which may end in
celebrity.
[Illustration]