"Whose story is that?"
"Balzac's."
At that moment the glass door of the _café_ grated upon the sanded
floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially
Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking
that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress--his
clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that
swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face,
the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an
idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression--frank
words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear
as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away,
bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next
to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is
nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large
necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical.
These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their
friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting
'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris,'" says Manet. "Manet is
in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and
be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by
force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas.
Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture
from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the
devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him,
there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints
unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently
that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely
what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision
does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from
drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he
has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his
strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the
arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the _café_ is
closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great
moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the
streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm,
speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous,
aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an
unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little
and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows
that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write
another novel, he will say, "What's the good, it would not be read; no
one read the others, and I mightn't do even as well if I tried again."
Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in
the "Nouvelle Athènes."
Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world:
somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a
forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning
there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they
shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be
forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make
live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and
aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic
soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon
thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall
that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of
the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies
the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and
stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four
sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the
streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the
suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the
accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth
floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand
francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe,
and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and
the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a
refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the
life-size "Venus de Milo." Something extraordinary would be done with
it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head
must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should
be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets.
Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard
giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion
above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day
earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he
made his _début_ at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of
consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was
immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America.
I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now--that long sallow face
ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered
with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In
all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I
remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the
glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst
thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be
rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean
accent, "_Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois
orchestres militaires."_ And when I did show thee some poor verses of
mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten
my native language--
"My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is
nauseating."
"So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and
lovers; his best poem...."
"_C'est vrai, mais il s'agissait d'une charogne et cela relève beaucoup
la chose_."
I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music
that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which
Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where
the _melody_ was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the
last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with
unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and
that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng
Saur."
And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something
too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I
think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far
removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd.
But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though
obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst
live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in
an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and
lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the
clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light
Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a
white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never
before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such
aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting
fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of
the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of
the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and
waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic
convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent
rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our
confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all
base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our
high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the
ideal, the true and living God of all men.
Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athènes"; you are a little
tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry
out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your
poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to
æstheticise till the _café_ closes; for you the homeless ones are
waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to
your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and
the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover
them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with
plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself,
you will find a few sous to give them _lager_ to cool their thirsty
throats. So you have ever lived--a blameless life is yours, no base
thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art and
friends, that is all.
Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more
fortunate than I have been.