of a king of the craft, the well-known Jules Janin, the feuilletonist of
the _Debats_. "Janin has lived for many years close to the Luxembourg
palace, on a fourth floor. His habitation is by no means brilliant, but
it is comfortably arranged; and when he married, shortly before I saw
him, he would not leave it. _Le Critique mariA(C)_, as they here call him,
lives in the Rue Vaugirard, rather near to the sky, but enjoying an
extensive view over the gardens, basins, statues, swans, nurses and
children, of the Luxembourg. 'I have bought a chateau for my wife,' said
he, coming down a staircase which leads from his sitting-room to his
study. 'I am married, have been married six months, am happy, too
happy--Pst, AdA"le, AdA"le!'
"AdA"le, a pretty young Parisian, came tripping down stairs and joined us
at breakfast. Janin is better-looking than his caricature at Aubert's.
Active, notwithstanding his _embonpoint_, he is seldom many minutes
quiet. Now stroking his _jeune France_ beard, then caressing AdA"le, or
running to look out of the window, he only remains at table to write and
to eat. He showed me his apartment, his arrangements, his books, even
his bed-chamber. 'I still live in my old nest,' said he, 'but I will buy
my angel--we have been married six months, and are very happy--I will
buy my angel a little chateau. I earn a great deal of money with very
bad things. If I were to write good things, I should get no money for
them.'
"It is impossible to write down mere prattle. Janin, like many authors,
finds intercourse with men a relief from intercourse with books. The
cleverest people willingly talk nonsense; but Janin talked, on the
contrary, a great deal of sense, only in a broken unconnected way,
running after AdA"le, threatening to throw her out of the window, or
rambling about the room with the stem of a little tree in his hand. 'Do
you see,' said he, 'I like you Germans because they like me--(this by
way of parenthesis)--do you see, I have brought up my wife for myself;
she has read nothing but my writings, and has grown tall whilst I have
grown fat. She is a good wife, without pretensions, sometimes
coquettish, a darling wife. It is not my first love, but my first
marriage. You have been to see George Sand? We do not smoke, neither I
nor my wife, so that we have no genius. _Pas vrai, AdA"le?_'
"AdA"le played her part admirably in this matrimonial idyl. 'She does not
love me for my reputation,' said her husband, 'but for my heart. I am a
bad author, but a good fellow. Let's talk about the theatre.'
"We did so. We spoke of Rachel, and of Janin's depreciation of that
actress, whom he had previously supported. 'It's all over with her,'
said he; 'she has left off study, she revels the night through, she
drinks grog, smokes tobacco, and intrigues by wholesale. She gives
soirA(C)es, where people appear in their shirt-sleeves. Since she has come
of age, it's all up with her. She has become dissipated. Shocking--is it
not, AdA"le?'
"'One has seen instances of genius developing itself with dissipation.'
"'They might stand her on her head, but would get nothing more out of
her,' replied Janin. 'Luckily the French theatre rests on a better
foundation than the tottering feet of Mamsell Rachel.--Do you know
Lewald? Has he translated me well?'
"'You have fewer translators than imitators.'
"'Can my style be imitated in German?'
"'Why not? I will give you an instance.'
"Janin was called away to receive a visitor, and was absent a
considerable time. He had some contract or bargain to settle. I took out
my tablets, drank my cup of tea, and wrote in Janin's style the
following criticism upon a performance at the Circus which then had a
great run."
Having previously, it may be presumed, noted down the suggestive and
curious dialogue of which we have given an abbreviation. We have our
doubts as to the propriety, or rather we have no doubts as to the
impropriety and indelicacy, of thus repeating in print the familiar
conversations, and detailing the most private domestic habits of
individuals, merely on the ground of their talents or position having
rendered them objects of curiosity to the mob. Literary notoriety does
not make a man public property, or justify his visitors in dragging him
before the multitude as he is in his hours of relaxation, and of mental
and corporeal dishabille. Mr Gutzkow is unscrupulous in this respect.
Possessing either an excellent memory, or considerable skill in
clandestine stenography, he carefully sets down the sayings of all who
are imprudent enough to gossip with him, and important enough for their
gossip to be interesting. Surely he ought to have informed Messrs
Thiers, Janin, and various others, who kindly and hospitably entertained
him, that he was come amongst them to take notes, and eke to print them.
Forewarned, they would perhaps have been less confiding and
communicative. The last four years have produced many instances of this
species of indiscretion. Two prominent ones at this moment recur to
us--a prying, conceited American, and a clever but impertinent German
_prinzlein_. The latter, we have been informed, was on one occasion
called to a severe account for his tattling propensities. With respect
to Jules Janin, we are sure that Mr Gutzkow's revelations concerning his
household economy, his pretty wife, his morning pastimes and
breakfast-table _causeries_, will not in the slightest degree disturb
his peace of mind, spoil his appetite, or diminish his _embonpoint_. The
good-humoured and clever critic is proof against such trifles. Nay, as
regards initiating the public into his private affairs and most minute
actions, he himself has long since set the example. The readers of the
witty and playful feuilletons signed J. J., will not have forgotten one
that appeared on the occasion of M. Janin's marriage, having for its
subject the courtship and wedding of that gentleman. The commencement
made us smile; the continuation rendered us uneasy; and as we drew near
the close, we became positively alarmed--not knowing how far the writer
was going to take us, and feeling somewhat pained for Madame Janin, who
might be less willing than her _insouciant_ husband that such very
copious details of her commencement of matrimony should be supplied as
pasture to the populace in the columns of a widely-circulated newspaper.
Janin got a smart lashing from some of his rival feuilletonists for his
indecent and egotistical puerility. Doubtless he cared little for the
infliction. Habituated to such flagellations, his epidermis has grown
tough, and he well knows how to retaliate them. He has few friends.
Those who have felt his lash hate him; those whom he has spared envy
him. As a professed critic, he finds it easier and more piquant to
censure than to praise; and scarcely a French author, from the highest
to the lowest, but has at one time or other experienced his pitiless
dissection and cutting _persiflage_. His feuilletons were once, and
still occasionally are, distinguished and prized for their graceful
_naA-vetA(C)_ and playful elegance of style. His correctness of
appreciation, his adherence to the sound rules of criticism, his
thorough competency to judge on all the infinite variety of subjects
that he takes up, have not always been so obvious. And of late years,
his principal charm, his style, has suffered from inattention, perhaps
also from weariness; chiefly, no doubt, from his having fallen into that
commercial money-getting vein which is the bane of the literature of the
day. Still, now and then, one meets with a feuilleton in his old and
better style, delightfully graceful, and pungent and witty, concealing
want of depth by brilliancy of surface. He is a journalist, and a
journalist only; he aspires to no more; books he has not written, none
at least worth the naming--two or three indifferent novels, early
defunct. His feuilletons are especially popular in Germany--more so,
perhaps, than in France. His arch and sparkling paragraphs contrast
agreeably with the heavy solidity of German critics of the _belles
lettres_. By the bye, we must not forget Gutzkow's attempt at an
imitation of M. Janin's style. He was interrupted before he had
completed it, but favours us with the fragment. It is a notice of the
exploits of a Pyrenean dog then acting at Paris. Its author had not time
to read it to Janin, who went out to walk with his wife. "I kept my
paper to myself, exchanged another joke or two with my whimsical host,
and departed. I have written a theatrical article, than which Janin
could not write one more childish. What German newspaper will give me
twenty thousand francs a-year for articles of this kind?" One, only,
whose proprietor and editor have taken leave of their senses. The
article _A la Janin_ is childish and frivolous enough; but childishness
and frivolity would have availed the Frenchman little had he not united
with them wit and grace. His German copyist has not been equally
successful in operating that union. But to attempt in German an
imitation of Janin's style, so entirely French as it is, and only to be
achieved in that language, appears to us nearly as rational as to try to
manufacture a dancing-pump out of elephant hide.
We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private
propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr
Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair
tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine ChimA"ne smoking a
cigar, PhA"dre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing
with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the
feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their
_foulards_ with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and
submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was
pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a
joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his _quatriA"me_,
or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and
calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.
Mr Gutzkow went to see George Sand. This was his great ambition, his
burning desire. He is an enthusiastic admirer of her works and of her
genius. It is to be inferred from what he tells us, that he did not find
it easy to obtain an introduction. Madame Dudevant lives retired, and
likes not to be trotted out for the entertainment of the curious. She is
particularly distrustful of tourists. They have sketched her in
grotesque outline, respecting neither her mysteries nor her confidence.
But Mr Gutzkow was resolved to see the outside of her house, pending
the time that he might obtain access to its interior. So away he went to
the Rue Pigale, No. 16, chattered with the portress, peeped into the
garden, gazed at the windows which George Sand, "when exhausted with
mental labour, is wont to open to cool her bosom in the fresh air."
Considering that this was in the month of March, some time had probably
elapsed since the lady had done any thing so imprudent. From a chapter
of _Lelia_ or _Mauprat_ to an equinoctial breeze! There is a catarrh in
the mere notion of the transition. However, Mr Gutzkow viewed the matter
with a poet's eye--the window, we mean to say--and after gazing his
fill, departed, musing as he went. A fortnight later he was admitted to
see the jewel whose casket he had contemplated with so much veneration.
"I have been to see George Sand. She wrote to me: 'You will find me at
home any evening. If, however, I am engaged with a lawyer or compelled
to go out, you must not impute it to want of courtesy. I am entangled in
a lawsuit in which you will see a trait of our French usages, for which
my patriotism must needs blush. I plead against my publisher, who wants
to constrain me to write a romance according to his pleasure--that is to
say, advocating his principles. Life passes away in the saddest
necessities, and is only preserved by anxieties and sacrifices. You will
find a woman of forty years old, who has employed her whole life not in
pleasing by her amiability, but in offending by her candour. If I
displease your eyes, I shall, at any rate, preserve in your heart the
place that you have conceded me. I owe it to the love of truth, a
passion whose existence you have distinguished and felt in my literary
attempts.'
"I went to see her in the evening. In a small room, scarce ten feet
square, she sat sewing by the fire, her daughter opposite to her. The
little apartment was sparingly lighted by a lamp with a dark shade.
There was no more light than sufficed to illumine the work with which
mother and daughter were busied. On a divan in one corner, and in dark
shadow, sat two men, who, according to French custom, were not
introduced to me. They kept silence, which increased the solemn, anxious
tension of the moment. A gentle breathing, an oppressive heat, a great
tightness about the heart. The flame of the lamp flickered dimly, in the
chimney the charcoal glowed away into white shimmering ashes, a
ghostlike ticking was the only sound heard. The ticking was in my
waistcoat pocket. It was my watch, not my heart." How intensely German
is all this overwrought emotion about nothing! Fortunately a chair was
at hand, into which the impressionable dramatist dropped himself. His
first speech was a blunder, for it sounded like a preparation.
"'Pardon my imperfect French. I have read your works too often, and
Scribe's comedies too seldom. From you one learns the mute language of
poetry, from Scribe the language of conversation.'"
To which compliment Aurora Dudevant merely replied: "'How do you like
Paris?'
"'I find it as I had expected.--A lawsuit like yours is a novelty. How
does it proceed?'
"A bitter smile for sole reply.
"'What is understood in France by _contrainte par corps_?'
"'Imprisonment.'
"'Surely they will not throw a woman into prison to compel her to write
a romance. What does your publisher mean by his principles?'
"'Those which differ from mine. He finds me too democratic.'
"And mechanics do not buy romances, thought I. 'Does the _Revue
IndA(C)pendante_ make good progress?'
"'Very considerable, for a young periodical.'"
And so on for a couple of pages. But George Sand was on her guard, and
stuck to generalities. She would not allow her visitor to draw her out,
as he would gladly have done. She had been already too much gossiped
about and calumniated in print. She had an intuitive perception of the
approaching danger. She _nosed_ the intended book. Nevertheless, and
although reserved, she was very amiable; talked about the drama--when Mr
Gutzkow, remembering her unsuccessful play of _Cosima_, tried to change
the subject--inquired after _Bettina_, spoke respectfully of
Germany--of which, however, she does not profess to know any thing--and
even smoked a cigar.
"George Sand laid aside her work, arranged the fire, and lighted one of
those innocent cigars which contain more paper than tobacco, more
coquetry than emancipation. I was now able, for the first time, to
obtain a good view of her features. She is like her portraits, but less
stout and round than they make her. She has a look of Bettina. Since
that time she has grown larger.
"'Who translates me in Germany?'
"'Fanny Tarnow, who styles her translations _bearbeitungen_.'
"'Probably she omits the so-called immoral passages.'
"She spoke this with great irony. I did not answer, but glanced at her
daughter, who cast down her eyes. The pause that ensued was of a second,
but it expressed the feelings of an age."
Although Mr Gutzkow's visits to Paris were each but of a few weeks'
duration, and notwithstanding that he had much to do, many persons to
call upon and things to see, he now and then felt himself upon the brink
of _ennui_. This especially in the evenings, which, he says, would be
insupportable without the theatres. To foreigners they certainly would
be so, and to many Parisians. The theatre, the coffee-house, the
reading-room, the unvarying and at last wearisome lounge on the
boulevards, compose the resources of the stranger in Paris. Access to
domestic circles he finds extremely difficult, rarely obtainable. Many
imagine, on this account, that in Paris there is no such thing as
domestic life, that the quiet evenings with books, music, and
conversation, the fireside coteries so delightful in England and
Germany, are unknown in the French metropolis. If not unknown, they are,
at any rate, much rarer. "The stranger complains especially," says Mr
Gutzkow, "that his letters of introduction carry him little further than
the antechamber. He misses nothing so much as the opportunity of passing
his evenings in familiar intercourse with some family who should admit
him to their intimacy." This want is most perceptible at the season when
Mr Gutzkow was at Paris, March and April, treacherous and rainy months,
comprising Lent, during which Paris is comparatively dull, and when many
persons, either from religious scruples or from weariness of winter and
carnival gaieties, refuse parties, and cease to give their weekly or
fortnightly soirA(C)es, often more agreeable as an habitual resort than
balls and entertainments of greater pretensions. Mr Gutzkow complains
bitterly of the bad weather. The climate of Paris is certainly the
reverse of good. The heat oppressively great in summer, rain intolerably
abundant for seven or eight months of the twelve. If London has its
fogs, Paris has its deluge, and its consequences, oceans of mud, which,
in the narrow streets of the French capital, are especially obnoxious.
The Boulevards and the Rues de Rivoli and De la Paix are really the only
places where one is tolerably secure from the splashing of coach and
scavenger.
"A rainy day," writes Mr Gutzkow, on the 22nd March; "the sky grey, the
Seine muddy, the streets filthy and slippery. You take refuge in the
passages, and in the Palais Royal. Appointments are made in the passages
and reading-rooms. Dinner at the BA"uf A la Mode, at the Grand Vatel
or Restaurant Anglais, reserving VA(C)ry, VA(C)four, the Rocher de Cancale,
for a brighter day and more cheerful mood."
"Paris is too large in bad weather, and too small in fine. Really, when
the sun shines, Paris is very small. The fashionable part of the
Boulevards, the Rue Vivienne, the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, in
all that region you are soon so much at home that your face is known to
every shopkeeper. Always the same impressions. In the daytime often
insipid; more cheerful at night, when the gas-lights gleam. The art of
false appearances is here brought to the greatest perfection. The
commonest shops are so arranged as to deceive the eye. Mirrors reflect
the wares, and give the establishment an artificial extension, by
lamplight a fantastical grandeur. You try the different _restaurants_,
dining sometimes here, sometimes there, and gradually becoming initiated
in the mysteries of the _carte_; for the most part avoiding all
complicated preparations, and confining yourself to the dishes _au
naturel_, as the surest means of not eating cat for calf. In the Palais
Royal the shops are very dear, only the dinners on the first floor are
cheap, and ennui is to be had gratis. Since so many handsome passages
have been opened through the streets, the Palais Royal has lost its
vogue. Some say that its decline began with its morality. The _Cabinets
particuliers_, formerly of such evil repute, are now the smoking rooms
of the coffeehouses. The Galerie d'Orleans is still the most frequented
part of the Palais Royal. Here the loungers pull out their watches every
five minutes; they all wait either for a friend or for dinner-time.
Meanwhile they saunter to and fro, and admire the skill of their tailors
in the range of mirrors on either side of the gallery.
"I followed the boulevards, the other day, from the Madeleine to the
Column of July--a distance which it took me almost two hours to
accomplish. From the Portes St Denis and St Martin, the boulevards lose
their metropolitan aspect. They become more countrified and homely. The
magnificence of the shops and coffeehouses diminishes and at last
disappears. The luxurious gives way to the useful, the comfortable to
the needy. At the ChActeau d'Eau, where the boulevard turns off at a
right angle, four or five theatres stand together. Here is the road to
the PA"re la Chaise. Here fell the victims of Fieschi's infernal machine.
From one of these little houses the murderous discharge was made. From
which, I will not ask. Perhaps no one could tell me. Paris has forgotten
her revolutions.
"Further on, the Goddess of Liberty flashes on us from the summit of the
July Column. Why in that dancer-like attitude? It may show the artist's
skill, but it is undignified, and seems to challenge the stormwind which
once already blew down Freedom's Goddess from the Pantheon. Upon the
column are engraved the names of the heroes of July.
"What stood formerly upon this spot? Upon yonder little house I read,
'Tavern of the Bastile.' This, then, was the birthplace of French
freedom, of the freedom of the world. Upon this site, now bare, stood
the fortress-prison, whose gloomy interior beheld for centuries the
crimes of tyrants, the violence of despotism, whereof nought but dark
rumours transpired to the world without. On the 14th July 1789, came the
dawn. The Bastile was destroyed, and not one stone of it remained upon
another. It is awfully impressive to contemplate this place, now so
naked and empty, once so gloomily shadowed.
"We enter the suburb of the workmen, the faubourg St Antoine, the former
ally and reliance of the Jacobins. Here things have a ruder and more
strongly marked aspect. It is a sort of Frankfurt Sachsenhausen. By the
Rue St Antoine we again reach the interior of the city, its most
industrious and busy quarter. I love these working-day wanderings in the
regions of labour. I prefer them to all the Sunday promenades upon the
broad pavements of luxury. True that each of these intricate and dirty
streets has its own particular and often nauseous odour. Here are the
soapboilers, yonder a slaughter-house, here again, in the Rue des
Lombards, the atmosphere is laden with the scent of spices and drugs. In
the cellars, men, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, crush brimstone and
pepper and a hundred other things in huge iron mortars; a noise and
smell which reminds me of the treacle-grinders on the Rialto at Venice.
And here, also, in these narrow alleys and dingy lanes, historical
associations linger. Yonder is the battered chapel of St MA(C)ry, where,
eight years ago, four hundred republicans, intrenched in the cloisters,
strove against the whole armed might of Paris, and were overcome only by
artillery. To-day the French Opposition takes things more easily. Its
demonstrations are dinners, as in Germany. The popping of champagne
corks causes no bloodshed. Written speeches, an article in a newspaper,
a toast to the maintenance of order, another against _tentatives
insensA(C)es_;--it will be long before such an opposition attains its end."
Mr Gutzkow, who does not conceal his ultra-liberal opinions, seems
almost to regret the revolutionary days, and to pity Paris for the
tranquillity which a firm and judicious government has at length
succeeded in establishing within its walls. Had a republican outbreak
taken place during his abode in the French capital, one might have
expected to find him raising impromptu battalions from the eighty
thousand Germans and Alsatians, who form an important item of the
Parisian population. His doctrines will hardly gain him much favour with
the powers that be in his own country. But for that he evidently cares
little. He is one of the progress; Young Germany reckons in him a stanch
and devoted partisan. With his democratic tendencies, and in Paris,
where monuments of revolutions abound, and where a thousand names and
places recall the struggles between the people and their rulers, it is
not wonderful that his enthusiasm occasionally boils over, and that he
vents or hints opinions which maturer reflection would perhaps induce
him to repudiate.