It was at Rheims that I heard the name of Shakespeare for the first
time. It was pronounced by Charles Nodier. That was in 1825, during the
coronation of Charles X.
No one at that time spoke of Shakespeare quite seriously. Voltaire’s
ridicule of him was law. Mme. de Staël had adopted Germany, the great
land of Kant, of Schiller, and of Beethoven. Ducis was at the height of
his triumph; he and Delille were seated side by side in academic glory,
which is not unlike theatrical glory. Ducis had succeeded in doing
something with Shakespeare; he had made him possible; he had extracted
some “tragedies” from him; Ducis impressed one as being a man who could
chisel an Apollo out of Moloch. It was the time when Iago was called
Pezare; Horatio, Norceste; and Desdemona, Hedelmone. A charming and very
witty woman, the Duchess de Duras, used to say: “Desdemona, what an ugly
name! Fie!” Talma, Prince of Denmark, in a tunic of lilac satin trimmed
with fur, used to exclaim: “Avaunt! Dread spectre!” The poor spectre, in
fact, was only tolerated behind the scenes. If it had ventured to put
in the slightest appearance M. Evariste Dumoulin would have given it a
severe talking to. Some Génin or other would have hurled at it the first
cobble-stone he could lay his hand on--a line from Boileau: _L’esprit
n’est point ému de ce qu’il ne croit pas_. It was replaced on the stage
by an “urn” that Talma carried under his arm. A spectre is ridiculous;
“ashes,” that’s the style! Are not the “ashes” of Napoleon still
spoken of? Is not the translation of the coffin from St. Helena to the
Invalides alluded to as “the return of the ashes”? As to the witches
of Macbeth, they were rigorously barred. The hall-porter of the
Théâtre-Français had his orders. They would have been received with
their own brooms.
I am mistaken, however, in saying that I did not know Shakespeare. I
knew him as everybody else did, not having read him, and having treated
him with ridicule. My childhood began, as everybody’s childhood begins,
with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from
him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them
again in his old age.
During this journey in 1825 Charles Nodier and I passed our time
recounting to each other the Gothic tales and romances that have taken
root in Rheims. Our memories and sometimes our imaginations, clubbed
together. Each of us furnished his legend. Rheims is one of the most
impossible towns in the geography of story. Pagan lords have lived
there, one of whom gave as a dower to his daughter the strips of land in
Borysthenes called the “race-courses of Achilles.” The Duke de Guyenne,
in the fabliaux, passes through Rheims on his way to besiege Babylon;
Babylon, moreover, which is very worthy of Rheims, is the capital of
the Admiral Gaudissius. It is at Rheims that the deputation sent by
the Locri Ozolae to Apollonius of Tyana, “high priest of Bellona,”
“disembarks.” While discussing this disembarkation we argued concerning
the Locri Ozolae. These people, according to Nodier, were called the
Fetidae because they were half monkeys; according to myself, because
they inhabited the marshes of Phocis. We reconstructed on the spot the
tradition of St. Remigius and his adventures with the fairy Mazelane.
The Champagne country is rich in tales. Nearly all the old Gaulish
fables had their origin in this province. Rheims is the land of
chimeras. It is perhaps for this reason that kings were crowned there.
Legends are so natural to this place, are in such good soil, that they
immediately began to germinate upon the coronation of Charles X.
itself. The Duke of Northumberland, the representative of England at
the coronation ceremonies, was reputed fabulously wealthy. Wealthy and
English, how could he be otherwise than _a la mode_? The English, at
that period, were very popular in French society, although not among the
people. They were liked in certain salons because of Waterloo, which
was still fairly recent, and to Anglicize the French language was
a recommendation in ultra-fashionable society. Lord Northumberland,
therefore, long before his arrival, was popular and legendary in
Rheims. A coronation was a godsend to Rheims. A flood of opulent people
inundated the city. It was the Nile that was passing. Landlords rubbed
their hands with glee.
There was in Rheims in those days, and there probably is to-day, at the
corner of a street giving on to the square, a rather large house with
a carriage-entrance and a balcony, built of stone in the royal style
of Louis XIV., and facing the cathedral. About this house and Lord
Northumberland the following was related:
In January, 1825, the balcony of the house bore the notice: “House
for Sale.” All at once the “Moniteur” announced that the coronation of
Charles X. would take place at Rheims in the spring. There was great
rejoicing in the city. Notices of rooms to let were immediately hung
out everywhere. The meanest room was to bring in at least sixty francs
a day. One morning a man of irreproachable appearance, dressed in black,
with a white cravat, an Englishman who spoke broken French, presented
himself at the house in the square. He saw the proprietor, who eyed him
attentively.
“You wish to sell your house?” queried the Englishman.
“How much?”
“Ten thousand francs.”
“But I don’t want to buy it.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Only to hire it.”
“That’s different. For a year?”
“For six months?”
“No. I want to hire it for three days.”
“How much will you charge?”
“Thirty thousand francs.”
The gentleman was Lord Northumberland’s steward, who was looking for a
lodging for his master for the coronation ceremonies. The proprietor
had smelled the Englishman and guessed the steward. The house was
satisfactory, and the proprietor held out for his price; the Englishman,
being only a Norman, gave way to the Champenois; the duke paid the
30,000 francs, and spent three days in the house, at the rate of 400
francs an hour.
Nodier and I were two explorers. When we travelled together, as we
occasionally did, we went on voyages of discovery, he in search of rare
books, I in search of ruins. He would go into ecstasies over a _Cymbalum
Mound_ with margins, and I over a defaced portal. We had given each
other a devil. He said to me: “You are possessed of the demon Ogive.”
“And you,” I answered, “of the demon Elzevir.”
At Soissons, while I was exploring Saint Jean-des-Vignes, he had
discovered, in a suburb, a ragpicker. The ragpicker’s basket is the
hyphen between rags and paper, and the ragpicker is the hyphen between
the beggar and the philosopher. Nodier who gave to the poor, and
sometimes to philosophers, had entered the ragpicker’s abode. The
ragpicker turned out to be a book dealer. Among the books Nodier noticed
a rather thick volume of six or eight hundred pages, printed in Spanish,
two columns to a page, badly damaged by worms, and the binding missing
from the back. The ragpicker, asked what he wanted for it, replied,
trembling lest the price should be refused: “Five francs,” which Nodier
paid, also trembling, but with joy. This book was the _Romancero_
complete. There are only three complete copies of this edition now in
existence. One of these a few years ago sold for 7,500 francs. Moreover,
worms are vying with each other in eating up these three remaining
copies. The peoples, feeders of princes, have something else to do than
spend their money to preserve for new editions the legacies of human
intellect, and the _Romancero_, being merely an Iliad, has not been
reprinted.
During the three days of the coronation there were great crowds in the
streets of Rheims, at the Archbishop’s palace, and on the promenades
along the Vesdre, eager to catch a glimpse of Charles X. I said to
Charles Nodier: “Let us go and see his majesty the cathedral.”
Rheims is a proverb in Gothic Christian art. One speaks of the “nave
of Amiens, the bell towers of Chartres, the façade of Rheims.” A month
before the coronation of Charles X a swarm of masons, perched on ladders
and clinging to knotted ropes, spent a week smashing with hammers every
bit of jutting sculpture on the façade, for fear a stone might become
detached from one of these reliefs and fall on the King’s head. The
debris littered the pavement and was swept away. For a long time I had
in my possession a head of Christ that fell in this way. It was stolen
from me in 1851. This head was unfortunate; broken by a king, it was
lost by an exile.
Nodier was an admirable antiquary, and we explored the cathedral from
top to bottom, encumbered though it was with scaffolding, painted
scenery, and stage side lights. The nave being only of stone, they had
hidden it by an edifice of cardboard, doubtless because the latter bore
a greater resemblance to the monarchy of that period. For the coronation
of the King of France they had transformed a church into a theatres and
it has since been related, with perfect accuracy, that on arriving at
the entrance I asked of the bodyguard on duty: “Where is my box?”
This cathedral of Rheims is beautiful above all cathedrals. On the
façade are kings; on the absis, people being put to the torture by
executioners. Coronation of kings with an accompaniment of victims.
The façade is one of the most magnificent symphonies ever sung by that
music, architecture. One dreams for a long time before this oratorio.
Looking up from the square you see at a giddy height, at the base of the
two towers, a row of gigantic statues representing kings of France. In
their hands they hold the sceptre, the sword, the hand of justice, and
the globe, and on their heads are antique open crowns with bulging gems.
It is superb and grim. You push open the bell-ringer’s door, climb the
winding staircase, “the screw of St. Giles,” to the towers, to the high
regions of prayer; you look down and the statues are below you. The
row of kings is plunging into the abysm. You hear the whispering of the
enormous bells, which vibrate at the kiss of vague zephyrs from the sky.
One day I gazed down from the top of the tower through an embrasure. The
entire façade sheered straight below me. I perceived in the depth, on
top of a long stone support that extended down the wall directly beneath
me to the escarpment, so that its form was lost, a sort of round basin.
Rain-water had collected there and formed a narrow mirror at the bottom;
there were also a tuft of grass with flowers in it, and a swallow’s
nest. Thus in a space only two feet in diameter were a lake, a garden
and a habitation--a birds’ paradise. As I gazed the swallow was giving
water to her brood. Round the upper edge of the basin were what looked
like crenelles, and between these the swallow had built her nest.
I examined these crenelles. They had the form of fleurs-de-lys. The
support was a statue. This happy little world was the stone crown of an
old king. And if God were asked: “Of what use was this Lothario,
this Philip, this Charles, this Louis, this emperor, this king?”
God peradventure would reply: “He had this statue made and lodged a
swallow.”
The coronation occurred. This is not the place to describe it. Besides
my recollections of the ceremony of May 27, 1825, have been recounted
elsewhere by another, more ably than I could set them forth.
Suffice it to say that it was a radiant day. God seemed to have given
his assent to the fête. The long clear windows--for there are no more
stained-glass windows at Rheims--let in bright daylight; all the light
of May was in the church. The Archbishop was covered with gilding
and the altar with rays. Marshal de Lauriston, Minister of the King’s
Household, rejoiced at the sunshine. He came and went, as busy as
could be, and conversed in low tones with Lecointe and Hittorf, the
architects. The fine morning afforded the occasion to say, “the sun of
the coronation,” as one used to say “the sun of Austerlitz.” And in the
resplendent light a profusion of lamps and tapers found means to beam.
At one moment Charles X., attired in a cherry-coloured simar striped
with gold, lay at full length at the Archbishop’s feet. The peers of
France on the right, embroidered with gold, beplumed in the Henri IV.
style, and wearing long mantles of velvet and ermine, and the Deputies
on the left, in dress-coats of blue cloth with silver fleurs-de-lys on
the collars, looked on.
About all the forms of chance were represented there: the Papal
benediction by the cardinals, some of whom had witnessed the coronation
of Napoleon; victory by the marshals; heredity by the Duke d’Angoulême,
dauphin; happiness by M. de Talleyrand, lame but able to get about; the
rising and falling of stocks by M. de Villèle; joy by the birds that
were released and flew away, and the knaves in a pack of playing-cards
by the four heralds.
A vast carpet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys, made expressly for the
occasion, and called the “coronation carpet,” covered the old flagstones
from one end of the cathedral to the other and concealed the tombstones
in the pavement. Thick, luminous smoke of incense filled the nave. The
birds that had been set at liberty flew wildly about in this cloud.
The King changed his costume six or seven times. The first prince of the
blood, Louis Philippe, Duke d’Orleans, aided him. The Duke de Bordeaux,
who was five years old, was in a gallery.
The pew in which Nodier and I were seated adjoined those of the
Deputies. In the middle of the ceremony, just before the King
prostrated himself at the feet of the Archbishop, a Deputy for the Doubs
department, named M. Hémonin, turned towards Nodier, who was close to
him, and with his finger on his lips, as a sign that he did not wish to
disturb the Archbishop’s orisons by speaking, slipped something into
my friend’s hand. This something was a book. Nodier took it and glanced
over it.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Nothing very precious,” he replied. “An odd volume of Shakespeare,
Glasgow edition.”
One of the tapestries from the treasure of the church hanging exactly
opposite to us represented a not very historical interview between John
Lackland and Philip Augustus. Nodier turned over the leaves of the book
for a few minutes, then pointed to the tapestry.
“You see that tapestry?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it represents?”
“No.”
“John Lackland.”
“Well, what of it?”
“John Lackland is also in this book.”
The volume, which was in sheep binding and worn at the corners, was
indeed a copy of _King John_.