plot of the notorious novel, _La Dame aux Camélias_,—and a very
remarkable one it is,—is founded on the incongruity of real feeling
with this world, and the singular and inappropriate consequences which
result, if, by any rare chance, it does appear there. Passion is almost
_à fortiori_ out of the question. The depths of human nature have nothing
to do with this life. On this account, perhaps, it is that it harmonises
so little with the English literature and character. An Englishman can
scarcely live on the surface; his passions are too strong, his power
of _finesse_ too little. Accordingly, since Defoe, who treated the
subject with a coarse matter-of-factness, there has been nothing in our
literature of this kind—nothing at least professedly devoted to it. How
far this is due to real excellence, how far to the _bourgeois_ and not
very outspoken temper of our recent writers, we need not in this place
discuss. There is no occasion to quote in this country the early poetry
of Béranger, at least not the sentimental part of it. We may take, in
preference, one of his poems written in old, or rather in middle age:
‘_Cinquante Ans._
‘Pourquoi ces fleurs? est-ce ma fête?
Non; ce bouquet vient m’annoncer
Qu’un demi-siècle sur ma tête
Achève aujourd’hui de passer.
Oh! combien nos jours sont rapides!
Oh! combien j’ai perdu d’instants!
Oh! combien je me sens de rides!
Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans.
‘A cet âge, tout nous échappe;
Le fruit meurt sur l’arbre jauni.
Mais à ma porte quelqu’un frappe;
N’ouvrons point: mon rôle est fini.
C’est, je gage, un docteur qui jette
Sa carte, où s’est logé le Temps.
Jadis, j’aurais dit: C’est Lisette.
Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans.
‘En maux cuisants vieillesse abonde:
C’est la goutte qui nous meurtrit;
La cécité, prison profonde;
La surdité, dont chacun rit.
Puis la raison, lampe qui baisse,
N’a plus que des feux tremblotants.
Enfants, honorez la vieillesse!
Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans!
‘Ciel! j’entends la Mort, qui, joyeuse,
Arrive en se frottant les mains.
A ma porte la fossoyeuse
Frappe; adieu, messieurs les humains!
En bas, guerre, famine et peste;
En haut, plus d’astres éclatants.
Ouvrons, tandis que Dieu me reste.
Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans.
‘Mais non; c’est vous! vous, jeune amie,
Sœur de charité des amours!
Vous tirez mon âme endormie
Du cauchemar des mauvais jours.
Semant les roses de votre âge
Partout, comme fait le printemps,
Parfumez les rêves d’un sage.
Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans.’
This is the last scene of the _grisette_, of whom we read in so many
songs sparkling with youth and gaiety.
A certain intellectuality, however, pervades Béranger’s love-songs.
You seem to feel, to see, not merely the emotion, but the mind, in the
background viewing that emotion. You are conscious of a considerateness
qualifying and contrasting with the effervescing champagne of the
feelings described. Desire is rarefied; sense half becomes an idea. You
may trace a similar metamorphosis in the poetry of passion itself. If
we contrast such a poem as Shelley’s _Epipsychidion_ with the natural
language of common passion, we see how curiously the intellect can take
its share in the dizziness of sense. In the same way, in the lightest
poems of Béranger we feel that it may be infused, may interpenetrate the
most buoyant effervescence.
Nothing is more odd than to contrast the luxurious and voluptuous nature
of much of Béranger’s poetry with the circumstances of his life. He never
in all his productive time had more than 80_l._ a year; the smallest
party of pleasure made him live, he tells us himself, most ascetically
for a week; so far from leading the life of a Sybarite, his youth was
one of anxiety and privation. A more worldly poet has probably never
written, but no poet has shown in life so philosophic an estimate of
this world’s goods. His origin is very unaristocratic. He was born in
August 1780, at the house of his grandfather, a poor old tailor. Of his
mother we hear nothing. His father was a speculative, sanguine man, who
never succeeded. His principal education was given him by an aunt, who
taught him to read and to write, and perhaps generally incited his mind.
His school-teaching tells of the philosophy of the revolutionary time.
By way of primary school for the town of Péronne, a patriotic member of
the National Assembly had founded an _institut d’enfants_. ‘It offered,’
we are told, ‘at once the image of a club and that of a camp; the boys
wore a military uniform; at every public event they named deputations,
delivered orations, voted addresses: letters were written to the citizen
Robespierre and the citizen Tallien.’ Naturally, amid such great affairs
there was no time for mere grammar; they did not teach _Latin_. Nor did
Béranger ever acquire any knowledge of that language; and he may be said
to be destitute of what is in the usual sense called culture. Accordingly
it has in these days been made a matter of wonder by critics, whom we
may think pedantic, that one so destitute should be able to produce such
works. But a far keener judge has pronounced the contrary. Goethe, who
certainly did not undervalue the most elaborate and artful cultivation,
at once pronounced Béranger to have ‘a nature most happily endowed,
firmly grounded in himself, purely developed from himself, and quite
in harmony with himself.’ In fact, as these words mean, Béranger, by
happiness of nature or self-attention, has that _centrality_ of mind,
which is the really valuable result of colleges and teaching. He puts
things together; he refers things to a principle; rather, they group
themselves in his intelligence insensibly round a principle. There is
nothing _distrait_ in his genius; the man has attained to be himself;
a cool oneness, a poised personality pervades him. ‘The unlearned,’ it
has been said, ‘judge at random.’ Béranger is not unlearned in this
sense. There is no one who judges more simply, smoothly, and uniformly.
His ideas refer to an exact measure. He has mastered what comes before
him. And though doubtless unacquainted with foreign and incongruous
literatures, he has mastered his own literature, which was shaped by
kindred persons, and has been the expression of analogous natures; and
this has helped him in expressing himself.
In the same way, his poor youth and boyhood have given a reality to his
productions. He seems to have had this in mind in praising the ‘practical
education which I have received.’ He was bred a printer; and the highest
post he attained was a clerkship at the university, worth, as has been
said, 80_l._ per annum. Accordingly he has everywhere a sympathy with the
common people, an unsought familiarity with them and their life. Sybarite
poetry commonly wants this. The aristocratic nature is superficial; it
relates to a life protected from simple wants, depending on luxurious
artifices. ‘Mamma,’ said the simple-minded nobleman, ‘when poor people
have no bread, why do not they eat buns? they are much better.’ An
over-perfumed softness pervades the poetry of society. You see this in
the songs of Moore, the best of the sort we have; all is beautiful, soft,
half-sincere. There is a little falsetto in the tone, everything reminds
you of the drawing-room and the _pianoforte_; and not only so—for all
poetry of society must in a measure do this—but it seems fit for no other
scene. Naturalness is the last word of praise that would be suitable. In
the scented air we forget that there is a _pavé_ and a multitude. Perhaps
France is of all countries which have ever existed the one in which
we might seek an exception from this luxurious limitation. A certain
_égalité_ may pervade its art as its society. There is no such difference
as with us between the shoeblack and the gentleman. A certain refinement
is very common; an extreme refinement possibly rare. Béranger was able to
write his poems in poverty: they are popular with the poor.
A success even greater than what we have described as having been
achieved by Béranger in the first class of the poems of society—that of
amusement—has been attained by him in the second class, expressive of
epicurean speculation. Perhaps it is one of his characteristics that
the two are for ever running one into another. There is animation in
his thinking; there is meaning in his gaiety. It requires no elaborate
explanation to make evident the connection between scepticism and
luxuriousness. Every one thinks of the Sadducee as in cool halls and soft
robes; no one supposes that the Sybarite believes. Pain not only purifies
the mind, but deepens the nature. A simple, happy life is animal; it
is pleasant, and it perishes. All writers who have devoted themselves
to the explanation of this world’s view of itself are necessarily in a
certain measure Sadducees. The world is Sadducee itself; it cannot be
anything else without recognising a higher creed, a more binding law,
a more solemn reality—without ceasing to be the world. Equanimity is
incredulous; impartiality does not care; an indifferent politeness is
sceptical. Though not a single speculative opinion is expressed, we may
feel this in _Roger Bontemps_:—
‘_Roger Bontemps._
‘Aux gens atrabilaires
Pour exemple donné,
En un temps de misères
Roger Bontemps est né.
‘Vivre obscur à sa guise,
Narguer les mécontents:
Eh gai! c’est la devise
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Du chapeau de son père
Coiffé dans les grands jours,
De roses ou de lierre
Le rajeunir toujours;
Mettre un manteau de bure,
Vieil ami de vingt ans:
Eh gai! c’est la parure
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Posséder dans sa hutte
Une table, un vieux lit,
Des cartes, une flûte,
Un broc que Dieu remplit,
Un portrait de maîtresse,
Un coffre et rien dedans:
Eh gai! c’est la richesse
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Aux enfans de la ville
Montrer de petits jeux;
Etre un faiser habile
De contes graveleux;
Ne parler que de danse
Et d’almanachs chantants:
Eh gai! c’est la science
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Faute de vin d’élite,
Sabler ceux du canton;
Préférer Marguerite
Aux dames du grand ton;
De joie et de tendresse
Remplir tous ses instants:
Eh gai! c’est la sagesse
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Dire au Ciel: Je me fie,
Mon père, à ta bonté;
De ma philosophie
Pardonne la gaîté;
Que ma saison dernière
Soit encore un printemps:
Eh gai! c’est la prière
Du gros Roger Bontemps.
‘Vous, pauvres pleins d’envie,
Vous, riches désireux,
Vous, dont le char dévie
Après un cours heureux;
Vous, qui perdrez peut-être
Des titres éclatants,
Eh gai! prenez pour maître
Le gros Roger Bontemps.’
At the same time, in Béranger the scepticism is not extreme. The
skeleton is not paraded. That the world is a passing show, a painted
scene, is admitted; you seem to know that it is all acting and rouge and
illusion: still the pleasantness of the acting is dwelt on, the rouge
is never rubbed off, the dream runs lightly and easily. No nightmare
haunts you, you have no uneasy sense that you are about to awaken.
Persons who require a sense of reality may complain; pain is perhaps
necessary to sharpen their nerves, a tough effort to harden their
consciousness: but if you pass by this objection of the threshold, if
you admit the possibility of a superficial and fleeting world, you will
not find a better one than Béranger’s world. Suppose all the world
were a _restaurant_, his is a good _restaurant_; admit that life is an
effervescing champagne, his is the best for the moment.
In several respects Béranger contrasts with Horace, the poet whom in
general he most resembles. The song of _Roger Bontemps_ suggests one of
the most obvious differences. It is essentially democratic. As we have
said before, Béranger is the poet of the people; he himself says, _Le
peuple c’est ma muse_. Throughout Horace’s writings, however much he may
speak, and speak justly, of the simplicity of his tastes, you are always
conscious that his position is exceptional. Everybody cannot be the
friend of Mæcenas; every cheerful man of the world cannot see the springs
of the great world. The intellect of most self-indulgent men must satisfy
itself with small indulgences. Without a hard ascent you can rarely see
a great view. Horace had the almost unequalled felicity of watching the
characters and thoughts and tendencies of the governors of the world, the
nicest manipulation of the most ingenious statesmen, the inner tastes and
predilections which are the origin of the most important transactions;
and yet had the ease and pleasantness of the common and effortless life.
So rare a fortune cannot be a general model; the gospel of Epicureanism
must not ask a close imitation of one who had such very special
advantages. Béranger gives the acceptors of that creed a commoner type.
Out of nothing but the most ordinary advantages—the garret, the almost
empty purse, the not over-attired _grisette_—he has given them a model of
the sparkling and quick existence for which their fancy is longing. You
cannot imagine commoner materials. In another respect Horace and Béranger
are remarkably contrasted. Béranger, sceptical and indifferent as he is,
has a faith in, and zeal for, liberty. It seems odd that he should care
for that sort of thing; but he does care for it. Horace probably had a
little personal shame attaching to such ideas. No regimental officer of
our own time can have ‘joined’ in a state of more crass ignorance, than
did the stout little student from Athens in all probability join the
army of Brutus; the legionaries must have taken the measure of him, as
the sergeants of our living friends. Anyhow he was not partial to such
reflections; zeal for political institutions is quite as foreign to him
as any other zeal. A certain hope in the future is characteristic of
Béranger—
‘Qui découvrit un nouveau monde?
Un fou qu’on raillait en tout lieu.’
Modern faith colours even bystanding scepticism. Though probably with no
very accurate ideas of the nature of liberty, Béranger believes that it
is a great good, and that France will have it.
The point in which Béranger most resembles Horace is that which is the
most essential in the characters of them both—their geniality. This
is the very essence of the poems of society; it springs in the verses
of amusement, it harmonises with acquiescing sympathy the poems of
indifference. And yet few qualities in writing are so rare. A certain
malevolence enters into literary ink; the point of the pen pricks. Pope
is the very best example of this. With every desire to imitate Horace,
he cannot touch any of his subjects, or any kindred subjects, without
infusing a bitter ingredient. It is not given to the children of men to
be philosophers without envy. Lookers-on can hardly bear the spectacle
of the great world. If you watch the carriages rolling down to the House
of Lords, you will try to depreciate the House of Lords. Idleness is
cynical. Both Béranger and Horace are exceptions to this. Both enjoy
the roll of the wheels; both love the glitter of the carriages; neither
is angry at the sun. Each knows that he is as happy as he can be—that
he is all that he can be in his contemplative philosophy. In his means
of expression for the purpose in hand, the Frenchman has the advantage.
The Latin language is clumsy. Light pleasure was an exotic in the Roman
world; the terms in which you strive to describe it suit rather the
shrill camp and droning law-court. In English, as we hinted just now,
we have this too. Business is in our words; a too heavy sense clogs our
literature; even in a writer so apt as Pope at the _finesse_ of words,
you feel that the solid Gothic roots impede him. It is difficult not
to be cumbrous. The horse may be fleet and light, but the wheels are
ponderous and the road goes heavily. Béranger certainly has not this
difficulty; nobody ever denied that a Frenchman could be light, that the
French language was adapted for levity.
When we ascribed an absence of bitterness and malevolence to Béranger,
we were far from meaning that he is not a satirist. Every light writer
in a measure must be so. Mirth is the imagery of society; and mirth must
make fun of somebody. The nineteenth century has not had many shrewder
critics than its easy natured poet. Its intense dulness particularly
strikes him. He dreads the dreariness of the Academy; pomposity bores
him; formalism tires him; he thinks, and may well think, it dreary to have
‘Pour grands hommes des journalistes,
Pour amusement l’Opéra.’
But skilful as is the mirth, its spirit is genial and good-natured. ‘You
have been making fun of me, Sydney, for twenty years,’ said a friend to
the late Canon of St. Paul’s, ‘and I do not think you have said a single
thing I should have wished you not to say.’ So far as its essential
features are concerned, the nineteenth century may say the same of its
musical satirist. Perhaps, however, the Bourbons might a little object.
Clever people have always a _little_ malice against the stupid.
There is no more striking example of the degree in which the gospel of
good works has penetrated our modern society, than that Béranger has
talked of ‘utilising his talent.’ The epicurean poet considers that he
has been a political missionary. Well may others be condemned to the
penal servitude of industry, if the lightest and idlest of skilful men
boasts of being subjected to it. If Béranger thinks it necessary to
think that he has been useful, others may well think so too; let us
accept the heavy doctrine of hard labour; there is no other way to heave
off the rubbish of this world. The mode in which Béranger is anxious
to prove that he made his genius of use, is by diffusing a taste for
liberty, and expressing an enthusiasm for it; and also, as we suppose,
by quizzing those rulers of France who have not shared either the taste
or the enthusiasm. Although, however, such may be the idea of the poet
himself, posterity will scarcely confirm it. Political satire is the
most ephemeral kind of literature. The circumstances to which it applies
are local and temporary; the persons to whom it applies die. A very few
months will make unintelligible what was at first strikingly plain.
Béranger has illustrated this by an admission. There was a delay in
publishing the last volume of his poems, many of which relate to the
years or months immediately preceding the Revolution of 1830; the delay
was not long, as the volume appeared in the first month of 1833, yet he
says that many of the songs relate to the passing occurrences of a period
‘_déjà loin de nous_.’ On so shifting a scene as that of French political
life, the jests of each act are forgotten with the act itself; the eager
interest of each moment withdraws the mind from thinking of or dwelling
on anything past. And in all countries administration is ephemeral; what
relates to it is transitory. Satires on its detail are like the jests of
a public office; the clerks change, oblivion covers their peculiarities;
the point of the joke is forgotten. There are some considerable
exceptions to the saying that foreign literary opinion is a ‘contemporary
posterity’; but in relation to satires on transitory transactions it is
exactly expressive. No Englishman will now care for many of Béranger’s
songs which were once in the mouths of all his countrymen, which coloured
the manners of revolutions, perhaps influenced their course. The fame
of a poet may have a reference to politics; but it will be only to the
wider species, to those social questions which never die, the elements of
that active human nature which is the same age after age. Béranger can
hardly hope for this. Even the songs which relate to liberty can hardly
hope for this immortality. They have the vagueness which has made French
aspirations for freedom futile. So far as they express distinct feeling,
their tendency is rather anti-aristocratic than in favour of simple real
liberty. And an objection to mere rank, though a potent, is neither a
very agreeable nor a very poetical sentiment. Moreover, when the love of
liberty is to be imaginatively expressed, it requires to an Englishman’s
ear a sound bigger and more trumpet-tongued than the voice of Béranger.
On a deeper view, however, an attentive student will discover a great
deal that is most instructive in the political career of the not very
business-like poet. His life has been contemporaneous with the course
of a great change; and throughout it the view which he has taken of the
current events is that which sensible men took at the time, and which
a sensible posterity (and these events will from their size attract
attention enough to insure their being viewed sensibly) is likely to
take. Béranger was present at the taking of the Bastille, but he was then
only nine years old; the accuracy of opinion which we are claiming for
him did not commence so early. His mature judgment begins with the career
of Napoleon; and no one of the thousands who have written on that subject
has viewed it perhaps more justly. He had no love for the despotism of
the Empire, was alive to the harshness of its administration, did not
care too much for its glory, must have felt more than once the social
exhaustion. At the same time, no man was penetrated more profoundly, no
literary man half so profoundly, with the popular admiration for the
genius of the Empire. His own verse has given the truest and most lasting
expression of it:
‘_Les Souvenirs du Peuple._
‘On parlera de sa gloire
Sous le chaume bien longtemps.
L’humble toit, dans cinquante ans,
Ne connaîtra plus d’autre histoire.
Là viendront les villageois,
Dire alors à quelque vieille:
“Par des récits d’autrefois,
Mère, abrégez notre veille.
Bien, dit-on, qu’il nous ait nui,
Le peuple encor le révère,
Oui, le révère.
Parlez-nous de lui, grand’mère;
Parlez-nous de lui.” (_bis._)
‘“Mes enfants, dans ce village,
Suivi de rois, il passa.
Voilà bien longtemps de ça:
Je venais d’entrer en ménage.
A pied grimpant le coteau
Où pour voir je m’étais mise,
Il avait petit chapeau
Avec redingote grise.
Près de lui je me troublai;
Il me dit: ‘Bonjour, ma chère,
Bonjour, ma chère.’”
—“Il vous a parlé, grand’mère!
Il vous a parlé!”
‘“L’an d’après, moi, pauvre femme,
A Paris étant un jour,
Je le vis avec sa cour:
Il se rendait à Notre-Dame.
Tous les cœurs étaient contents;
On admirait son cortége.
Chacun disait: ‘Quel beau temps!
Le ciel toujours le protége.’
Son sourire était bien doux,
D’un fils Dieu le rendait père,
Le rendait père.”
—“Quel beau jour pour vous, grand’mère!
Quel beau jour pour vous!”
‘“Mais, quand la pauvre Champagne
Fut en proie aux étrangers,
Lui, bravant tous les dangers,
Semblait seul tenir la campagne.
Un soir, tout comme aujourd’hui,
J’entends frapper à la porte.
J’ouvre. Bon Dieu! c’était lui,
Suivi d’une faible escorte.
Il s’asseoit où me voilà,
S’écriant: ‘Oh! quelle guerre!
Oh! quelle guerre!”
—“Il s’est assis là, grand’mère!
Il s’est assis là!”
‘“‘J’ai faim,’ dit-il; et bien vite
Je sers piquette et pain bis;
Puis il sèche ses habits,
Même à dormir le feu l’invite.
Au réveil, voyant mes pleurs,
Il me dit: ‘Bonne espérance!
Je cours, de tous ses malheurs,
Sous Paris, venger la France.’
Il part; et, comme un trésor,
J’ai depuis gardé son verre,
Gardé son verre.”
“Vous l’avez encor, grand’mère!
Vous l’avez encor!”
‘“Le voici. Mais à sa perte
Le héros fut entraîné.
Lui, qu’un pape a couronné,
Est mort dans une île déserte.
Longtemps aucun ne l’a cru;
On disait: ‘Il va paraître;
Par mer il est accouru;
L’étranger va voir son maître.’
Quand d’erreur on nous tira,
Ma douleur fut bien amère!
Fut bien amère!”
—“Dieu vous bénira, grand’mère;
Dieu vous bénira.”’