PRINTING IN PARIS--THE CENSORSHIP.
Rue Visconti--Historical Buildings--The National School of Roads and
Bridges--The Introduction of Printing into Paris--The First Printing
Establishments--The Censorship.
[Illustration: THE RUE DE L’ABBAYE.]
Starting once more from the Place Saint-Sulpice, and proceeding by the
Rue Bonaparte across the Rue Jacob to the Rue des Petits Augustins, we
come to the ancient Rue des Marais, a narrow street opened in 1540
between the Rue des Petits Augustins and the Rue de Seine. It is now
called the Rue Visconti, and contains at least one house which is worth
a moment’s attention--the Hôtel de Ranes, No. 21. Here Nicholas
d’Argouges, Marquis de Ranes, who built the house, was killed in 1678.
Jean Racine came to live in the building as lodger in 1692; and here was
born in that same year the last of his children, Louis Racine, author
of that much-esteemed poem, “La Réligion.” It was here, too, that the
immortal author of “Phèdre” expired on the 21st of April, 1699. Other
theatrical associations are connected with this house.
Here, moreover, Adrienne Lecouvreur, the celebrated actress, died on the
20th of March, 1730, and, the last rites of the Church being refused,
was carried away the same night in a hackney-coach by Voltaire and a
friend of Marshal Saxe who had always been devoted to her. She was
buried on the banks of the Seine at a point beyond the Palais Bourbon,
which it is no longer possible to discover. The place was marked at the
time by a simple memorial, which from malice or through neglect and the
natural ravages of time, was destined soon to disappear.
Later on this same house was inhabited by Mdlle. Clairon, who only
quitted it when she resigned her engagement at the Comédie Française.
At No. 17 in this interesting Rue Visconti existed in 1825 the
printing-office founded by Honoré de Balzac. But the greatest novelist
of France met with no greater success as a printer than the greatest
novelist of England obtained as a publisher. Balzac, like Scott,
contracted debts in his business enterprise which weighed heavily upon
him and, compelling him to the severest literary labour, shortened his
existence. It was to pay his debts that Balzac condemned himself to that
perpetual work, those prolonged night-watches, which developed in him,
robust as he was in his early days, the germs of that hypertrophy of the
heart from which he died. In the street of Les Petits Augustins stood a
convent, founded in the midst of a garden to fulfil a vow made by Queen
Margaret at the Château d’Usson.
The convent was turned by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 into a depòt
for monuments and ruins of monuments whose preservation was desirable in
the interest of history or of art. Alexandre Lenoir, who had proposed
the formation of this museum, was appointed its superintendent. In
carrying out his seemingly peaceful work he found himself on one
occasion in danger of his life, for some madman wounded him with a
bayonet as he was protecting by main force the monument of Cardinal de
Richelieu which a number of fanatics wished to destroy. The precious
collection brought together by Lenoir was inaugurated in 1795 under the
title of the National Museum of French Monuments.
An imperial decree of the 24th of February, 1811, ordered the creation
of a School of Fine Arts, which was to contain common rooms for the
lectures and separate studios for the different professors with their
pupils. By order of the restored Louis XVIII., in April, 1816, the
School of Fine Arts, with which no progress had been made under
Napoleon, was to be completed. Then, however, it occurred to the king
that it would be unbecoming to turn out from what had been considered
their last resting-place so many statues, busts, tombs, and other
monuments. Churches were now requested to claim the ornaments of which,
under the Revolution, they had been despoiled, the different communes to
take back the arms and other insignia which had been torn by fanatical
revolutionists from their walls, while the great historic families were
assured that they were now at liberty to resume possession of their
ancestral sepulchres. But these permissions and appeals were for the
most part in vain. Meanwhile the mausoleums of the kings and princes of
France were removed to Saint-Denis, while many other monuments were
placed in the museums of Paris and Versailles.
It was now possible to proceed with the School of Fine Arts, and the
first stone of the building was laid on the 3rd of May, 1820. The
original plan, drawn up by the architect Debret, was much amplified,
under the reign of Louis Philippe, by M. Dauban, who finished it in
1838--at least in its essential parts. New buildings were added under
the Second Empire between the years 1860 and 1862. The National Special
School of Fine Arts (such is its official title) furnishes instruction
in drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and every kind of
engraving to French students aged not less than fifteen nor more than
thirty, and even to foreigners who have obtained due authorisation from
the Ministry of Fine Arts.
[Illustration: SAINT-SULPICE.]
[Illustration: APSIS OF SAINT-SULPICE.]
The School of Fine Arts occupies a palace worthy of the institution. Its
general plan is simple in the extreme. Through the gate of its entrance,
adorned with two colossal busts of Puget and of Poussin, may be seen a
square courtyard whose walls are covered with admirable monuments, for
the most part from the above-mentioned Musée des Monuments Français.
This courtyard is separated from the principal one into which it leads
by a sort of triumphal arch, dating from the year 1500. It was brought
from the Château de Gaillon and reconstructed stone by stone. At the end
of the principal courtyard is the grand façade due to M. Dauban,
composed of two storeys of arcades separated by Corinthian pilasters.
The vestibule of the ground floor contains fragments of ancient marbles,
casts from the temple of Egina and of the Parthenon, clever, curious
copies of paintings discovered at Pompeii, etc. The vestibule leads to a
magnificent collection of plaster casts from the most celebrated ancient
works of antiquity, including two columns from the temple of Jupiter
Stator, and one of the corner-pieces of the Parthenon. In the floor
above are to be seen the fifty-two copies of the Loggie of Raphael,
executed in 1836 by the brothers Balze, under the direction of the
illustrious Ingrès, who had made Raphael the study of his life. The same
storey contains, among other celebrated works, the hemicycle, painted by
Paul Delaroche, representing the principal masters of every age and of
every school, grouped around Ictinus and Phidias, the painter and
sculptor of the Parthenon. This masterpiece has been popularised, in
engraving, by Henriquel Dupont, one of the most regretted professors of
the School of Fine Arts. It is impossible to leave the School of Fine
Arts without casting a glance on the mansions which either surround or
adjoin it, from the beginning of the Quai Malaquais, at the corner of
the Rue de Seine, to the Rue des Saint-Pères, all of which enjoy
magnificent views of the Seine, the Louvre, and the Tuileries. They have
all the same origin, having been built during the first years of the
seventeenth century on the property of Queen Margaret. No. 1 on the Quai
Malaquais, with its two meagre wings on each side of a feeble body, was
the mansion of Aubespine; and it was there that the celebrated
archæologist, Visconti, died in 1818. No. 5 was at one time occupied by
Marshal Saxe.
The noble house, with its façade of red bricks and white stone--No. 9,
at the other corner of the Rue Bonaparte--was the Hôtel Loménie de
Brienne et Loutrec. Nos. 11 and 13, now replaced by the exhibition-rooms
of the School of Fine Arts, were built by Cardinal Mazarin for his niece
Marianne Martinozzi, left a widow in 1666 by the death of Prince de
Conti, younger brother of the great Condé. Originally Hôtel Conti, it
passed from Conti’s widow, who received the Hôtel Guénégaud in exchange,
into the hands successively of the Créquis, the Tremvilles, the Lauzuns,
and three or four other aristocratic families, to become subsequently
the office of the general police.
The right corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères and of the Rue de Lille is
occupied by a new building with windows few and far between, and gates
which might be those of a fortress. This is the special school of living
Oriental languages founded by Louis XIV., reorganised in 1795 and again
in 1869 and 1871. For many years it was an annex of the National
Library, where it occupied an old building in the New Street of the
Little Fields. For some few years past it has been established at No. 2
in the Rue de Lille. The languages taught in this institution comprise
literary Arabic, the Arabic of ordinary conversation, Armenian, Persian,
Turkish, Annamite, Chinese, modern Greek, Japanese, Malay, Russian,
Roumanian, Hindostanee, and the Tamul languages. Attached to the
professors are teachers born in the different and distant lands whose
languages are studied in this school.
At the opposite corner (Rue de Lille, No. 1) is a magnificent mansion
which now belongs to the publishing house of Garnier Brothers. During
the period immediately before the French Revolution the stables of the
Countess of Artois were here established. Throughout the First Empire it
was occupied by Count Réal, entrusted with the first department of the
Ministry of General Police, in which there were altogether fifty-one
departments. From 1821 to 1849 it was the office of the first military
division.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN, PLACE SAINT-SULPICE.]
On the right side of the Rue des Saints-Pères, opposite the former
entrance to the hospital of La Charité, is the National School of Roads
and Bridges--until 1788 the Hôtel Fleury; from 1824 to 1830 the Ministry
of Worship; and throughout the reign of Louis Philippe the Ministry of
Public Works.
The National School of Roads and Bridges, created by Louis XV. in 1741,
and developed by different decrees of the two empires, has for its
special object the education of young men quitting the Polytechnic
School after good examinations as civil engineers. It is placed beneath
the authority of the Minister of Public Works, and directed by an
Inspector-General of Roads and Bridges. It comprises twenty chairs
devoted to different branches of the engineer’s art, without counting
drawing--scientific and artistic--and the English and German languages.
It contains a laboratory, a library, and a gallery of models to which
the public is not admitted.
Returning towards the east as far as the Rue Saint-Benoît, we find, on
the eastern side of the street, the printing department of the firm of
Quantin, in a line with the publishing and administrative departments.
At this printing and publishing office, which has given to the world so
many fine editions, especially of illustrated books, _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ has been printed ever since it first appeared.
The art of printing has had a chequered history in Paris, being
sometimes protected, sometimes oppressed by the crown, and too
frequently crippled by two bodies who, in particular, should have nursed
it--the University and the Parliament. It was introduced into the French
capital by Allemand La Pierre, prior of the Sorbonne, one of the
greatest scholars of his time, and Guillaume Fichet, doctor in theology,
who, in 1470, invited Ulrich Gering of Constance, Michel Friburger of
Colmar, and Martin Krantz, to come and establish a printing-office
within the Sorbonne walls.
The three associates acceded to the request, and with the machines they
fitted up printed a succession of interesting volumes during their stay
at the Sorbonne, which lasted till 1473. Then their establishment was
transferred to the Rue Saint-Jacques, under the sign of the “Golden
Sun,” beside the church of Saint-Benoît. Here a number of elegant works
were produced. In 1484 Friburger and Krantz retired from the concern, in
order probably to return to Germany, the name of Gering alone being
appended to publications posterior to the month of October in that year.
Ultimately the printing-offices were again moved to a house belonging to
the Sorbonne, though the sign of the “Golden Sun” was still preserved.
Printers now began to multiply rapidly in Paris. One of the most
celebrated was Antoine Vérard, who from 1485 published a large number of
works, chiefly in French, and remarkable for the beauty of their Gothic
characters. Towards the end of 1499, at the period when the Bridge of
Notre Dame, on which his house stood, gave way, he removed to a spot
near the crossway of Saint-Séverin, afterwards shifting twice
more--first to the Rue Saint-Jacques, and then to the Rue
Neuve-Notre-Dame, where he remained till his death.
In 1513 Louis XII. testified his sympathy for the art of printing by
liberating it from a heavy tax and from certain tolls to which it had
previously been subject. Two years later his successor, Francis I.,
exempted the printers of Paris from all military service except in case
of imminent peril.
In 1521--when already Claude Garamond had replaced the old Gothic and
semi-Gothic characters by Roman letters and italics--Francis I.,
hitherto favourable to printing, issued an edict to the effect that no
book should be printed or sold unless it had previously been examined
and approved by the University and the Theological Faculty. Every book,
moreover, had now to pass beneath the inspection of the Provost of
Paris. This edict sorely fettered the two dozen printers who were then
at work in the capital.
In 1522 the famous Robert Étienne, whom we call Stephens, published a
beautiful edition of the New Testament in Latin; but the Sorbonne,
displeased at the production of an edition which tended to popularise
the Scriptures, attacked the text of Étienne, though without any
apparent desire to engage in direct controversy on the point. It does
not appear that the work was suppressed; but ten years later the
Sorbonne showed itself much more potent in dealing with a new edition of
the Latin Bible published by Robert Étienne, son and successor of the
before-mentioned, with annotations--borrowed from the most learned
authorities--on the original Hebrew. The younger Étienne had published
this edition by special privilege obtained from the king. To secure it
against criticism he had not printed it till after a careful comparison
of the ancient manuscripts of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the abbey of
Saint-Denis; he had not even omitted to call in the most famous
theologians to assist him. Yet, despite all his precautions, he could
not avert the wrath of the Sorbonne; and he was obliged to humiliate
himself before that body and promise to print nothing henceforth “_nisi
cum bonâ eorum gratiâ_.” These submissions saved Étienne, but could not
obviate the danger which threatened the art of printing. The era of
persecution had begun. The Sorbonne, which had at first patronised the
art of Gutenberg, was so terrified now at the rapid propagation of
Luther’s doctrines that it addressed to Francis I. an urgent request on
the subject of heretical books, representing strongly to the king that
if he wished to save religion, attacked and shaken on all sides, he
must, by a stern edict, permanently abolish in France the art of
printing, which daily produced so many pernicious books. The project of
the Sorbonne was on the point of being realised, when it was cleverly
thwarted by Jean de Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who explained to the
zealous monarch that in preserving so precious an art he could
effectually remedy the abuses of which such violent complaints were
made.
Meanwhile the University exercised its right of supervision. In 1534
Christian Wechel was censured and threatened with a fine for having sold
one of the works of Erasmus. The same year, on the 13th of January,
Francis I. issued letters patent which prohibited all printing and
exposed printers to rigorous punishment. These letters were not
registered by the Parliament, which remonstrated to the king concerning
so arbitrary a proceeding. A month afterwards the king’s advocate,
Jacques Cappel, communicated to the Parliament new letters patent, by
which Francis I. annulled the previous ones, but ordered that the
Parliament should elect twenty-four persons, well qualified and
cautioned, from whom he might select twelve who alone should print at
Paris, and not elsewhere, “books which were approved and essential to
the public welfare.” The printing of any other books was to be visited
with formidable punishments.
The art of Gutenberg, however, resisted all these measures, and
apparently the king did not persevere in his hostile projects, for in
1543 he exempted the printers from service in the City Guard. Two years
later, nevertheless, Robert Étienne, having published an edition of the
Bible which excited the wrath of the Sorbonne, found himself so
persecuted that he had to retire to Lyons, whence he could not venture
to return to Paris till he had obtained the protection of Henri II. A
worse fate befell a Lyons printer, named Étienne Dolet, who had taken
refuge in Paris. He was arrested, imprisoned in the Conciergerie, and at
the end of eighteen months strangled and burned in the Place Maubert on
the 3rd of August, 1546.
In 1551 Robert Étienne, seriously menaced, was forced to seek refuge at
Geneva, leaving at Paris his wife and children, who might have starved
had not Henri II., on the prayer of Charles Étienne, Robert’s brother,
restored to them the goods of the proscribed printer. This same monarch
gave a further proof of his goodwill in exempting printers, by an edict
of the 23rd of September, 1553, from the taxes to which books were then
liable.
In 1556 Henri decreed that a copy, printed on vellum, of every book
whose publication was authorised, should be contributed to the Royal
Library; and that every such copy should be magnificently bound. It is
supposed to have been to Diana of Poitiers, a great bibliophile, that
this decree was due.
Charles IX. showed no little favour to printing. By letters patent,
dated March, 1560, he confirmed and continued to the printers all those
favours, rights, privileges, liberties, exemptions, and so forth, which
had been ceded by his royal predecessors. One printer, however, Martin
Lhomme by name, derived small benefit from these letters patent, for in
the same year, on a decree of the Parliament, he was hanged.
This printer, a native of Rouen, living at Paris in the Rue du Mûrier,
was accused of having sold a book entitled “The Royal Tiger,” which was
a satire directed against the Guises. He was condemned, according to the
Parliamentary decree, “to be hanged and strangled on a scaffold erected
in the Place Maubert, a suitable and convenient spot.” The goods of the
prisoner were to be confiscated to the king, and the objectionable book
was to be burned in the printer’s presence previously to his execution.
Not long afterwards, in September, 1563, an ordinance appeared which
proclaimed that all printers, binders, and sellers of libellous placards
and other publications should be punished, for the first offence with
the whip, for the second with death. A further ordinance, issued the
same month, forbade printers to put any unauthorised volume in type
“under pain of being hanged and strangled.”
In spite of all these fetters the art of printing lived on and even
prospered. Henri Étienne, having returned into possession of the
paternal establishment, published in 1572 the four first volumes, in
folio, of the _Thesaurus linguæ Græcæ_, a work which his father had
planned, and which it took Henri eleven years to execute. This monument
of literary learning was published under the auspices of several
sovereigns, with Charles IX. amongst them.
In July, 1575, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine complained, in the
general assembly, that the books of Ambroise Paré, first surgeon to the
king, were being printed, although they contained a doctrine pernicious
to the public welfare and to good morals. The dean, therefore, prayed
the University to lay a petition before Parliament to the effect that
the writings of this author might be examined by medical professors.
Attempts were at the same time made to subject the printers of these
works to a fine.
The sixteenth century had been a time of conflict for the art of
printing, just as it had been for the Reformation. The subsidence of the
civil wars benefited both. Hardly established on the throne, Henri IV.,
by letters patent, dated 20th February, 1595, confirmed to the printers
their privileges, and liberated them from the taxes which, the year
before, had been newly imposed upon them. At the moment of his accession
he had exempted them from the duties payable for the confirmation of
their ancient rights.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.]
In 1624 a regular censorship was started by Louis XIII., who by an edict
appointed four censors, chosen from the Faculty of Theology, to each of
whom was accorded a salary of 500 livres, with honours, immunities, etc.
The University protested against this edict, which encroached upon its
secular rights. The dispute lasted long, and the four theologians
resigned their office. But in 1626 the king entrusted the Guard of the
Seals with the choice of censors, and the University lost this part of
its privileges. Three years later Louis XIII. issued an ordinance which
forbade the printing or selling of any book not inscribed with the names
of the author and the printer.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were lands of
refuge in which writers who feared the political laws and the despotism
of their own country could always find free presses: Holland, that is to
say, and Switzerland. It was in Holland that Bayle published his famous
Dictionary.
The Constitution of 1791 “guaranteed” to every man “the liberty of
writing, printing, and publishing his thoughts without his works being
liable to any censure or inspection before their publication.” The
Convention passed no law against the press. The pamphlets of the enemies
of the Revolution still exist, and testify to the plenitude of the
liberty enjoyed by writers at this period. Some of these, it is true,
were accused of connivance with the foes of their country, and punished
for that crime; but there was no question of process against the press.
The Consulate, with its strict _régime_, had less respect for the
liberty of the pen. By a decree of 17th February, 1800, the consuls
granted power to suppress those journals which published articles
contrary to the welfare of society, the sovereignty of the people, or
the glory of the national arms. Under the Empire new fetters were placed
upon the press. In 1810 the number of printers in Paris was limited to
sixty. In the following year another twenty were authorised; but, on the
other hand, the censorship which had been suspended was re-established.
The Restoration accorded to printers full liberty for producing works of
more than twenty sheets, but maintained the censorship for smaller
publications, and subjected the newspapers to royal authority.
The press had taken too great a part in the Revolution of July not to
derive from it, at first, in any case, some advantage. The new Charter,
in proclaiming the liberty of the press, within the limits of the law,
declared that the censorship could never be re-established. Some years
later, however, heavy fetters were once more placed upon the newspapers
of France, though book-publishers retained their former measure of
liberty.
At the period of 1835, under the monarchy of July, numerous prosecutions
were instituted against the press; and the jury who tried these cases,
though it often acquitted, sometimes condemned with rigour. The
Republican journal, the _Tribune_, succumbed beneath the weight of the
fines imposed on it.
The Republic of 1848 accorded to the press a liberty quite as unlimited
as it now enjoys, though the free use it made of this liberty produced a
reaction and new fetters in the following year.
* * * * *
The invention of printing was made the subject of a play by the
unfortunate Gérard de Nerval, author of the _Voyage en Orient_, and of a
translation of _Faust_ which Goethe himself admired. In Gérard de
Nerval’s drama figure a good angel and a demon; and when the good angel,
always anxious to benefit humanity, invents printing, the demon comes
forward and says: “I invent the censorship.” Of the censorship in
connection with printed works some account has been given, and a few
words may be added in reference to the censorship as bearing upon works
written for the stage.
[Illustration: THE ARC DE GAILLON, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.]
[Illustration: COURTYARD, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.]
The dramatic censorship was established in France in the middle of the
fifteenth century--that is to say, in the earliest days, of the French
stage. The clerks and students classed together as “La Basoche” were
forbidden to act any play or “satire” until after it had received the
approval of the censor. It must be supposed that the corrections and
commands of the censor were set at naught; for, thirty-four years later,
an order was published forbidding the members of the Basoche to play at
all, or even to ask permission to play. This was under the reign of
Louis XI. Under Charles VIII. theatrical representations were again
authorised, but only under rigid supervision. Louis XII. gave absolute
liberty to the comedians. All kinds of personalities were permitted to
dramatic writers, who, with impunity, could even attack the throne. On
one point alone was Louis XII. fastidious, he objected to attacks on the
honour of the queen; and for her protection in the midst of the general
licence now exhibited on the stage, authors were required to “respect
ladies under penalty of being hanged.” The threat was a severe one; and
by reason, perhaps, of its very severity, it was never found necessary
to carry it out. Under Francis I. the censorship was re-established in
full force, and an order was published calling upon the players to be
careful in their representations not to speak the passages which had
been marked out. In 1548 the priests, who hated all theatrical
performances, and looked upon stage-players as beyond the pale or the
Church, procured the formal interdiction, by the Parliament, of the
mediæval mysteries, into which much profanity had been introduced.
According to M. Poirson, one of the latest and best historians of Henri
IV., the theatre, under his happy reign, enjoyed absolute liberty. Louis
XIII., or rather his powerful minister, again introduced the censorship;
and, later on, every reader of Molière knows what trouble the great
comic dramatist met with at the hands of the censorship in connection
with one of his masterpieces, _Tartufe_. Authorised by the king, the
piece was interdicted by the Parliament, after its first representation,
besides being condemned by a mandamus from the Archbishop of Paris; and
it was not until three years after its original production that Molière
obtained full permission to perform it. Louis XIV., despot as he was,
hesitated, in the midst of the disputes between the Gallican Church and
the Court of Rome, to interfere in a matter which his clergy had taken
so deeply to heart. Molière had fresh difficulties to contend with in
connection with _Don Juan_, which he was obliged to modify in many
passages before he could obtain permission to perform it. The cynicism
of the hero’s reflections was declared to be in opposition (as Molière
intended it to be) to religious feeling; and the Parliament thought it
impious that Sganarelle (afterwards the Leporello of Mozart) should, on
seeing his master carried down to eternal torments, think of nothing but
his wages and ask pathetically from whom he was to get them.
[Illustration: A FAÇADE ON THE QUAI MALAQUAIS.]
Under Louis XIV. the political side of the censorship first shows
itself. In a farce played at the Théâtre Italien under the title of _La
Fausse Prude_, Mme. de Maintenon was recognised; and when Racine, at
Mme. de Maintenon’s request, composed _Esther_ for the pupils of St.
Cyr, the piece seemed full of political allusions, and everyone at Court
was so convinced that Esther was Mme. de Maintenon, and Vashti Mme. de
Montespan, that the performance was at last forbidden. Haman, in the
proscribed piece, was thought to be the minister, Louvois, and in the
persecution of the Jews a reference was seen to the cruel edicts against
the Protestants. The _Athalie_ of the same dramatic poet shared the fate
of _Esther_, and for like reasons.
On the death of Louis XIV. _Esther_ and _Athalie_ were freed from the
interdict which had weighed upon them, and now the picture of Judæa
under its tyrannical rulers was looked upon as that of France, while in
the character of Joas was seen the young king Louis XV. The censorship
now became, above all, political. No allusion was to be made to a
minister or to any state official, these rules being applicable to all
state functionaries, whether belonging to France or not. A phrase in a
comedy of this time, “From his rotundity one might take him for a
president,” was condemned by the Parliament of Paris, whose president at
the time was somewhat stout.
Voltaire had to take infinite trouble in order to get permission to
produce his _Mahomet_. The official censor, Crébillon, having objected
to _Mahomet_--in a spirit of jealousy, as Voltaire maintained--its
author obtained from the Duke de Richelieu permission to entrust the
censorship of the work to his friend, d’Alembert; though Crébillon, from
one point of view, seems to have been not far wrong, since _Mahomet_, on
its production as authorised by d’Alembert, excited on the part of the
religious world general disapprobation, so that Voltaire, after a time,
had to withdraw the piece.
The ingenious and daring measures by which Beaumarchais at last
succeeded in getting removed from his _Marriage of Figaro_ the veto
pronounced upon it by King Louis XVI. have been told in another place.
This brings us to the time of the Revolution, when all restrictions on
personal liberty were, for a time at least, abolished. Theatrical
representations were now given inside Notre Dame. On the first
anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI., January 21st, 1794, was
performed at the National Opera, “on behalf of, and for the people,
gratis, in joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant,” _Miltiades
at Marathon_, the _Siege of Thionville_, and the _Offering to Liberty_.
The censorship, abolished for a moment, was soon re-established under
the Republic; and now stage kings and stage queens were absolutely
suppressed. “Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage,” says
a writer on this subject, “but even their names were not to be
pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions ‘côté du roi,’ ‘côté
de la reine,’ were changed into ‘côté jardin,’ ‘côté cour,’ which, at
the theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right
of the stage from the stage point of view. At first all pieces in which
kings and queens appeared were prohibited, but the dramas of _sans
culottes_ origin were so stupid that the Republic was absolutely obliged
to return to the old monarchical repertory. Kings, however, were turned
into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people;
seigneurs subsided into mayors, and substitutes more or less synonymous
were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. The
scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia,
Portugal--everywhere except France, where it would have been
indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical point of
view, to make the lovers address one another as ‘citoyen, and
‘citoyenne.’”
One of the reasons put forward for reintroducing the censorship under
the Republic was that for a long time past the aristocracy had “taken
refuge in the administration of various theatres”; whereupon it was
resolved that the opera “should be encouraged and defended against its
enemies.” At the same time the managers were arrested as suspicious
persons, and replaced by republicans whose republicanism was beyond
question.
Napoleon, determined not to tolerate opposition or even criticism in any
form, was very severe in regard to the theatrical censorship. In a
letter on this subject to the Minister of the Interior, he says: “You
must not depend on your officials to know what the theatrical pieces
submitted to you for your examination are really like. You must read
them yourself, and then decide whether it would be better to permit or
to forbid their representation.” Under the Restoration the censorship
was not less severe than under Napoleon. The performance of Arnault’s
_Germanicus_ in 1815 had results which almost seemed to justify the
censorship’s existence. So excited did the audience become, that many of
them rose from their seats and fought with walking-sticks. It is from
this moment that the order dates by which no walking-sticks or umbrellas
must be brought into the theatre.
Towards the end of the Restoration, when the romantic school had just
arisen in France, with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas as its principal
champions on the stage, the censorship, without ceasing to be political
and moral, gave itself literary airs, and, inspired by the calmness and
moderation of the old classical school, forbade violent scenes and
scenes in which ideas of death and, above all, suicide were presented.
Thus, in a translation of _Hamlet_, the graveyard scene had to be
considerably abridged.
Out of consideration for Victor Hugo, who in these early days was a
royalist, and who, throughout his long life, was the foremost poet of
France, the Minister of Fine Arts, M. de Martignac, consented to read
all his pieces and decide upon them himself. He began with “Marion
Delorme,” and authorised the representation of that fine work, when
suddenly there was a change of Cabinet, and the new minister, M. de la
Bourdonnaye, forbade it. Through the intervention, however, of M.
Trouvé, Director of Fine Arts, permission was obtained to bring out
_Hernani_, to which all kinds of objections had previously been made.
After the overthrow of Charles X.’s Government, in July, 1830, the
censorship was absolutely abolished; but, as equally happened after the
previous revolution of 1789 and the subsequent one of 1848, it was very
soon re-established. In the month of August M. Guizot, Minister of the
Interior, named a commission for the examination of questions connected
with the liberty of the stage. “I proposed,” he says in his Memoirs, “to
re-establish a serious dramatic censorship, which would defend public
decency against the cynicism and greed of speculators in corruption.” It
was objected to M. Guizot’s proposition that the proper course to pursue
would be to allow managers full liberty of production, and to punish
them by ordinary police measures if they produced anything contrary to
public morals. This proposition was combated by the vain argument that
to stop the representation of a piece by reason of its alleged
immorality would involve managers in serious loss; as though the loss
inflicted ought not to be regarded as a just penalty. Ultimately, as has
already been said, the censorship was re-established, and there is no
reason to suppose that for some time to come it will not still be
maintained. It has been said that in France the censorship is done away
with only to be introduced anew. The Belgians have shown themselves on
this head more logical and more consistent. When at the time of the
revolution which separated Belgium from Holland, the Chamber of Deputies
of the new constitutional monarchy declared that the censorship was
abolished, it added that it could “never be re-established”; and this is
one of the fundamental laws of the Belgian Constitution. It cannot, that
is to say, be repealed or modified unless the constitution be revised.
As always happens in France, the withdrawal of restrictions is at once
followed by an abuse of the new liberty gained. All the arguments on
both sides are now thoroughly known. The simplest way, however, of
testing the necessity of a dramatic censorship is by examining the
condition of the stage in those countries where nothing of the kind
exists: Belgium, for instance, and the United States. Licentious pieces
are no more represented in Brussels than in Paris; nor is any liking for
them exhibited in America. Occasionally in Brussels a piece founded on
some recent sensational case has been produced. Some years ago, for
example, the incidents of what was known as the “Pecq murder” were
represented in dramatic form. Here there was no question of morality but
only of good taste; and the taste of the public being more delicate than
that of the manager the performance came to an end after the second
night.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: HÔTEL DES INVALIDES.]