PARIS AFTER THE COMMUNE
I well remember Paris emerging from her trials. It is difficult to-day
to realise the magnitude of the disaster which laid low the beautiful
capital of France. When I arrived within its shattered walls, the
monster conflagration that would have destroyed the whole city, had it
not been for the timely arrival of the Versailles troops, was all but
subdued. The firemen, however, were still kept busily engaged, for
clouds of smoke and tongues of fire would at intervals burst forth from
the smouldering ruins. Tottering walls on the one hand, huge _façades_
of masonry on the other, marked the places where but yesterday glorious
specimens of architecture, ancient and modern, had stood. There was the
shell of what had been the Tuileries, that palace built in the 16th
century, which had seen so much of the history of France. Mobs had
pillaged and sacked it; within its state-rooms one crowned head had been
forced to wear the cap of liberty, a humiliation which did not save it
from the knife of the guillotine. Some fifty years later a bourgeois
king had to fly for his life from the palace; and last, it was an
unfortunate Empress who had to make good her escape, and seek refuge on
the shores of England.
There would be no more pillaging and sacking now; the venerable specimen
of the Renaissance style was destroyed. To-day the stranger is just
shown the place where the Tuileries stood; then, as the walls crashed
down, burying treasures and relics of bygone days in their fall, one was
appalled by the tragedy enacted before one's eyes. I had my little
personal recollections too. I had danced there more than once with some
of the fairest Parisians; I had drunk the future Emperor's champagne
with a conviction that it was quite the best of its kind, and was
evidently intended to make us understand that our host meant business,
imperial business, pretty sure to be settled ere long, whether we liked
it or not.
Well, one fine old building is gone, I thought, as I turned away from
the ruins, but at least the Louvre is saved. That marvel of architecture
was intact. The principal works of art it contained had been taken to
places of supposed safety, and the whereabouts of the Venus of Milo were
said to be known only to some few persons, who had dug a hole and
therein buried her. Much else had been providentially saved; there were
large gaps in the Rue de Rivoli, but the unique old Tour St. Jacques had
escaped unscathed. At the Palais de Justice the fire had stopped short
on the threshold of the exquisite Sainte Chapelle, one of the most
perfect works of the thirteenth century. I had with some difficulty
obtained permission to roam over the ruins of that Palais de Justice and
the Préfecture de Police, and whilst the firemen were working to subdue
the flames wherever they broke out afresh, I used my brush to make a
sketch of the huge maze before me. There were bundles of official papers
at my feet; _Actes de Naissance_ and _Actes de Décès_, charred only, and
quite easy to decipher, but as I touched them, they crumbled to ashes.
Some seemingly well-preserved parchments I consigned to my pocket, but a
few hours later I found little more than dust in their place. The Hôtel
de Ville, too, which had fallen a prey to the flames, had many an
association for me. Henri Lehmann, during the time I was studying under
him, had been commissioned to decorate the great hall with a series of
pictures. I had lent an apprentice's hand, and had seen them grow under
his brush, as, in an incredibly short space of time, he produced what
was thought to be the best work of his life--work destined to hand down
his name to posterity as one of the most fertile and distinguished
painters of the second empire. Ingres, too, who in those days was
considered the greatest draughtsman since the time of Raphael, had
contributed a masterpiece to the decoration of the hall, a _plafond_,
"The Apotheosis of Napoleon I." This work I had also seen in progress.
On the occasion of a visit to his studio I recollect a lady asking him,
in effusive language, where he had found the models for the ideally
classical horses attached to the triumphant car of the great conqueror.
Ingres led her straight to the window. "There are my models, madam," he
said bluntly, pointing to the cab-stand.
I wandered through Paris day after day, and everywhere the ghastly
traces of war, as it really is, confronted me; blood-stained flagstones,
broken-down gun-carriages, barricades that had been stormed, and homes
that had been wrecked. Everywhere the iron shutters of the shops were
riddled with shot or broken open. One climbed as best one could over a
heterogeneous mass of _impedimenta_, collected for attack or defence, or
thrown away in precipitate flight. Every effort had been made to prevent
petroleum being poured into the basement of the houses. The gratings in
the streets had been boarded over and otherwise secured against those
female fiends the Pétroleuses. Some of the wealthiest quarters of Paris
were known to be undermined, and it was only in the nick of time that
the Versailles troops arrived to prevent the execution of such written
orders as, "Faites sauter le quartier de la Bourse."
The fashionable quarters and the suburbs of Paris had suffered terribly
from the bombardment. I wandered for days over fragments of every mortal
thing that had once been whole, past dismantled batteries, along the
barren wastes of the Bois de Boulogne, and through avenues of wrecked
villas. Costly furniture and works of art had been shattered to atoms by
the enemy's bombs. In one place I came across a Louis Quinze sofa and
chairs that had evidently been carried out for removal, and stood
waiting so placidly, that they seemed to invite you to sit down and
rest; and in one of the gardens there was a cottage piano, which
appeared none the worse for its adventures; two coffee-cups stood
unharmed upon it, showing that some two persons had taken their
demie-tasse by the side of that piano.
The most striking effects of shot and shell showed themselves on the
ornamental ironwork which had once enclosed those suburban villas. It
seemed as if they had vented their fiercest passions on those
beautifully designed gates and railings French art excels in producing.
One could not suppress a feeling of pity as one saw them writhing in
anguish and stretching out their weird iron arms as if in supplication.
Here they were unhinged and started from their sockets; there their
limbs, once so perfectly poised, were twisted into unsightly shapes, and
stood out amongst the wreckage in fantastic and uncanny figures.
I had wended my way one afternoon to the revolutionary quarter of
Belleville, and had got into conversation with a workman of more than
average intelligence. Not feeling at our ease within earshot of the
"Mouchards," as the growling, spying, myrmidons of the police are
termed, and not liking the looks of the _gensdarmes à cheval_ with their
revolvers at half-cock, we had adjourned to one of the numerous
establishments kept by the _Marchand de Vins, Traiteur_, which take the
place of our public-houses. There my workman became confidential and
declared himself a Communist to the backbone. He scorned the idea that
the German was his enemy.
"If I'm to fight at all," he said, "let me find an enemy for myself. Let
me shoot the _richard en face_, the capitalist who has been exploiting
me and mine. We'll make him and the like of him disgorge his plunder,
and then we'll start a fresh deal. As for the Germans, my dear sir, I
dare say there are a lot of jolly good fellows amongst them, and plenty
who would take a bumper, a _canon de vin_, with us, if they were here
now, and drink to the perdition of the bourgeois."
"That is all very well," I answered, "but I'm pretty sure you were just
like the rest, and went tearing along the boulevards and shouting 'A
Berlin!' And you would have been only too jolly glad to get the Rhine,
if you had had a----"
"The Rhine, monsieur!" he interrupted me, "the Rhine! Do you think I
know what the blessed thing is; and, supposing we had got it, do you
think they'd have given me any of it?"
That was twenty-eight years ago, and since then many a workman has
learnt that he does not get his share of the "blessed thing" he has to
fight for. I wonder whether he will give up fighting, or whether he will
see to it that he gets his share.
It was an impressive sight that met the eye in the Place Vendôme. There
was the famous column lying prostrate in huge fragments like so many
mill-stones, with the bronze legends commemorating the conqueror's
march, battered and crushed out of all seeming in their fall. Those
gigantic vertebræ of the mighty pillar made one ponder on the
vicissitudes of greatness, and on the ups and downs of heroic symbols.
One could not help marvelling at the audacity of the men who had
ruptured that spinal cord of patriotic self-glorification.
It was an artist, and a great one too, who planned and directed the
destruction of the work of art, Courbet, the most uncompromising of
painters and of demagogues. I was living in Paris at the time his first
great works were exhibited, and I recollect what a storm of abuse they
raised. His "Enterrement à Ornans," a large and striking picture,
crudely realistic, depicting, as it did, mourners at the open grave,
with reddened noses and swollen eyes, was considered a deliberate insult
offered to all idealists, romanticists, and mannerists. His picture, "La
Baigneuse," was simply derided by the critics; there was no drawing, no
modelling. "C'est un sac de noix!" A bag of nuts, not a woman of flesh
and blood.
Well, Courbet's work has outlived criticism; history remembers him as a
_chef d'école_.
The only time I recollect meeting him was on the occasion of an
international gathering of artists in Antwerp in 1861. He was quite a
boon companion, and had a marked objection to retiring to rest before
daylight. He would sing us jolly songs, one of which, "C'est l'amour qui
nous mène,"[13] was a favourite of his.
The Commune went to work very systematically to bring down the huge
column. An incision was made at the base in the shape of a notch; a
double pulley was attached to the balustrade at the top, and another
fixed to the ground in the Rue de la Paix, a rope passing through both
to a capstan. When this was set in motion, after some preliminary
difficulties had been overcome, the column oscillated for a moment, and
then came crashing down in three colossal sections on to a bed of sand,
fascines, and straw prepared for it, there to break up into a thousand
smaller fragments. The statue of the great Emperor had lost its head and
one arm.
An act of vandalism, we say. Yes, but of vandalism with a purpose. We
can fancy Courbet declaring: "The work of art must be sacrificed as a
warning to those who would honour and perpetuate the memory of selfish
aggressors."
It was History herself he meant to drag from her pedestal--History, ever
crowning herself with wreaths of laurel and halos of virtue. It was Art
too he waged war upon, that Art which he deemed had too long served to
glorify the rule of Force: sometimes in a picture or in a legion of
pictures, as at Versailles, exalting Imperialism and inciting us to go
forth and emulate the deeds and misdeeds of our ancestors; sometimes in
a statue of some clever organiser of wholesale slaughter, appropriately
cast in the bronze of cannon taken from the enemy; or, again, in a
barbarous trophy, a triumphal arch--in fact, in a scalp of some kind,
that, from generation to generation, we are taught to gloat over.
This was the wording of the decree which condemned the column to
destruction:--
"THE COMMUNE OF PARIS
"Considering that the Imperial Column of the Place Vendôme is a
monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force, of false glory, an
encouragement of military spirit, a denial of international
rights, a permanent insult offered by the conquerors to the
conquered, a perpetual conspiracy against one of the great
principles of the French Republic, namely fraternity,
"Decrees:--
"_Sole article_--The Vendôme Column is to be demolished."
One day--it was a wretched day, the rain pouring in torrents--I went to
see the ruins of Saint Cloud. People were discussing the question as to
who had really done the work of destruction there--the Germans, the
Versaillais, or the Communards. To the poor victims who had come forth
from their hiding-places, returning only to find their homes and hearths
ruined, it could really matter little whether the grim work was done by
the six of one or the half-a-dozen of the other.
Wandering along the streets in ruins, I was struck by one piece of high
wall left standing out against the grey sky to bear witness to the
strange caprices of the destructive element; a large red umbrella hung
in its place on that wall, and a striped petticoat bedrizzled with rain
was being blown about by the wind. The fireplace had kept its every-day
appearance, whilst the floor beneath it had gone; on the mantelpiece
stood some little household gods, bits of china, a clock, and various
nick-nacks one could not distinguish at a distance. Close to me was a
touching little group of victims. A woman with three girls, their ages
ranging from eight to twelve years, stood gazing at that wall which had
once been part of their home. They did not give vent to their feelings
in tears or loud lamentations, as so many around me did; the mother was
simply dazed, the children overawed. They had come back to Saint Cloud
from I know not where, and were carrying their little belongings tied up
in cotton handkerchiefs. I think they would scarcely have been able to
identify their home, if it had not been for the red umbrella and the
striped petticoat.
After a while I spoke to the woman and elicited with some difficulty
that her husband had been killed early in the campaign, one son was
maimed for life, and the other had not been heard of for two months.
When I gave her a few francs she put them in her pocket mechanically;
her thoughts were elsewhere. I passed on to witness more destruction and
distress. When I returned, some half-an-hour later, to where the high
wall stood, I found the mother and the three girls just where I had left
them, still hopelessly gazing at the household gods that were mocking
their misery from on high.
It was not till that day that I quite realised what we mean when we
speak of blank despair.
* * * * *
The recuperative power of the French people is truly extraordinary, and,
from the first day and hour of his deliverance, the Parisian gave
striking evidence of it. Endowed as he is with indomitable pluck,
infinite resources, and inexhaustible light-heartedness, he could set to
work with a will, or dance and fiddle with a vengeance, whilst the ashes
of his city were still glowing. It came quite natural to him to
repossess himself of that city, and to drop unconcernedly into his old
ways of life.
There he was once more, the typical Parisian who must have his daily
stroll along the Boulevards; he must sit somewhere where he can sip
something and see somebody else sipping or strolling. He must watch his
opportunity of saying something polite to somebody, and, at a given
hour, he must call for an _absinthe_ and concentrate his thoughts on the
importance of an approaching meal.
And there he was again, the expert diner we all know, devoutly pinning
his napkin under his chin, and thanking the gods that at last the sacred
rites of the dinner-table could be duly performed.
One of the characteristics of the Parisian, I always thought, is that
exquisite politeness of his. What a lesson to us, who won't even make
room for a fellow-creature in a 'bus if we can help it!
In former days I used to say that I could always tell, if I wanted, to
what nationality any particular man in the motley crowd of loungers on
the Boulevards belonged. I need but tread on his toes, and he would use
strong language in his mother-tongue. The German would invoke the "holy
thunder-weather," the Dutchman would be still more sacrilegious, the
Englishman would damn something--probably the eyes I should have made
use of; and so on--each would fling his pet wicked word at me. Only the
Frenchman would raise his hat and say, "Pardon, monsieur."
Knowing and loving the amiable city as I did--I had spent altogether
about six years there--I was deeply interested in her fortunes and
misfortunes, and now warmly welcomed the first signs of returning
prosperity.
* * * * *
The cannon's roar had ceased, people were coming from their cellars or
other hiding-places, looking for their friends and congratulating one
another on being alive. Crowds of sightseers filled the streets and
stood gaping at the ruins or commenting on the unique spectacle before
them. Barricades were being demolished, and squads of men and women were
set to work to clear the roads of broken glass, splintered wood, and
other accumulations of nondescript rubbish. Shops were being opened, and
the _Dames de Comptoir_, as correct and business-like as ever, were
getting out their books. Goods and wares that had been hidden away, were
being brought to light. Shopkeepers were counting up their losses and
discounting their prospects.
Matters political were in abeyance. Whenever I asked, "What is to come
next? What Government would you vote for?" I got the answer: "Cela nous
est bien égal, monsieur, pourvu qu'il-y-ait du travail."[14] One lived
in a sort of interregnum, a period of transition from lawlessness to
order. War had ceased, but peace had only just begun to strike roots.
There was no bragging, no cheap oratory--nobody seemed to think himself
particularly "_trahi_."[15] There was no show of military rule. Even
the sentries chatted freely with the bourgeois, and there were no
ominous cries of "_Passez au large_," coupled with the significant
thrust of the fixed bayonet, as one used to hear in the days of the
_Coup d'État_. On the contrary, thousands of soldiers, with their
_Chassepots_ slung carelessly across their shoulders, were sauntering
along the streets, most of them evidently provincials, amazed at the
grandeur of the capital they were visiting for the first time.
Cabs were about, and even the heavy three-horse omnibuses were resuming
their well-regulated course; but no private carriages were to be seen.
In fact, the upper ten as well as the submerged tenth seemed to have
disappeared, and the odd million about was made up of the _bourgeois_,
the _piou-piou_,[16] the _badaud de province_, and other sightseers.
I scorned conveyances of any kind, and tramped along on foot from
morning to night, for it was only thus I felt I was my own master. I
could pull up, stumble, or climb as circumstances required, or I could
turn in, stand, drink, talk, listen, and argue--or, better still, hold
my tongue.
In the evening darkness reigned, except in the neighbourhood of the
cafés. There people were congregating as usual, seeking the light like
so many moths, and settling like flies on the sugar that was to sweeten
their _demie-tasse_ or to be pocketed for home consumption. At eleven
o'clock the cafés were closed, and nothing remained to do but to go home
in the dark. The moths, by the way, must have had a dull time of it,
for the graceful lamp-posts had suffered so severely that very few of
them were fit for service.
The Commune had naturally produced a great quantity of scurrilous
literature and vile caricatures, some quite unmentionable; but they are
interesting historically, throwing, as they do, a lurid light on the
events of those days and the passions they evoked. I bought whatever I
could find of such papers and drawings, as also a few of the more
respectable publications, and the collection is a pretty complete one,
including, as it does, copies of the Père Duchêne, La Lanterne, Le
National, La Vérité, &c., and some sixty caricatures of the Emperor, the
Empress, Thiers, Jules Favre, and many other leading men, all furnishing
abundant material for recording and illustrating the politics,
hysterics, and erotics of those troublesome times.
Towards the end of my stay I went to Saint Denis. Peace and its
blessings were really coming, and welcome signs of their approach were
not wanting; even little twigs of olive branches were being held out
where I least expected to see them.
Saint Denis was still in the hands of the Germans, and was not to be
evacuated till a stipulated sum, forming part of the war indemnity, had
been paid. Officers and men quartered there had made themselves very
much at home, and some did not seem to be on bad terms with the
inhabitants, as in one case, when a bright young fellow on the German
side seemed on particularly good terms with an attractive young lady on
the French side. He and I had got into conversation; he was evidently
pleased to meet a countryman of his (I can be a German occasionally),
and was disposed to be friendly and confidential. "Come with me," he
said; "I will show you the prettiest girl in Saint Denis." I went to see
"the prettiest girl," who, it seemed to me, had been watching for him at
the window, and now came down to the door.
He was a non-commissioned officer in I forget which regiment. When not
in uniform he was a lawyer--for aught I know, a rising young
_Rechtsanwalt_, with plenty of clients. I hope so, for the sake of the
young lady, who was charming, and was as much smitten with him as he was
with her. He had taught her a few German words, which she could not
pronounce without laughing and showing her pretty teeth; she again had
lent him some books from her little library. He spoke French fluently,
and was happy to be put through a course of French literature by his
fair friend.
Love being thicker than blood, I feel sure they eventually got married;
and after so romantic an opening, their story cannot but have proved
interesting. Should anybody care to write it, I think the line to be
taken should be this: They married, and lived "happy ever after"--as
happily as their children would let them. They had four, differing
widely in their tastes and convictions. One son enlisted in the German
army; the other in the French. Both were deeply grieved to have fallen
on evil times, when emperors and presidents were ever proclaiming the
blessings of peace, and when even the people were beginning to question
the desirability of attacking their neighbours.
Of the daughters, one loved the Germans, and was unhappy because she was
to marry a Frenchman her parents had selected; the other hated the
Germans, and was broken-hearted because she was not to marry the
Frenchman she loved.
It must all end happily, however, for it is essential that the moral
should be pointed: Love your neighbour, if only to show you are
unshackled by prejudice. Marry him or her, whether he or she is your
hereditary foe or not, and settle down to a life of peace and happiness,
that you may inaugurate, by your noble example, the blessed era, when
the lion and the lamb shall no longer hesitate to go and do likewise.
But not often was it my good fortune to spend a pleasant hour as at
Saint Denis and to imagine little romances built on slight foundations.
The tragedy being enacted around me forced itself on my view more than
once, when I met batches of miserable prisoners marched off, some to be
judged by court-martial, others already sentenced to be shot. The
Parisian looked on without exhibiting much interest in their fate. He
had seen so much of bloodshed in every form lately that he had grown
callous. The day of settlement had come, the murder of the hostages must
be avenged, and the _canaille_ must be cleared away, just as the broken
glass and the wrecked barricades had to be.
The reign of terror continued; it had only changed its name. Now it was
called Justice. Shocking specimens of depraved humanity were those
ill-fated prisoners, dragged from their haunts to be tried by the
military authorities in Versailles.
I saw types such as only come to the surface when conflicting passions
of the worst kind stir up the very dregs of society: dishevelled
viragos, brutalised men, female fiends, men devils--hyænas, ready to
spring and fasten their claws on you, were they not chained. I heard
their howl of despair and their laugh of defiance, as they were led off
to be shot.
And thus, whilst the beautiful city was smoothing her ruffled feathers
and taking out a new lease of life, the poor wretches met their doom at
the foot of the blood-spattered wall.
Wild beasts if you like--but men and women--our brothers and our
sisters--alas! born in squalor, bred in vice, and tainted with
hereditary ugliness of body and mind.
* * * * *
Who made them what they are? Let us try to find out, and, if we can, let
us stand the guilty ones up against that wall, and clear them away with
the other human wreckage. But no! neither you nor I would be left to do
the clearing away.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Portrait of Robert Browning]