It was at this same period of time I made the acquaintance of Monsieur
Edmond About. When I met him he had just appeared as an author, and his
friends everywhere declared that Voltaire's mantle had fallen on his
shoulders. He had, like Voltaire, discovered instantly that mankind were
divided into hammers and anvils, and he determined to be one of the
hammers. He began his career by ridiculing a poetical country, Greece,
whose guest he had been, and whose sovereign and ministers had received
him with confidence,--repaying three years of hospitality by a satire of
three hundred pages. "Greece and the Greeks" was translated into several
languages. This edifying publication, which put the laughers on his
side, was followed by a different sort of work, which came near
producing on this budding reputation the effect of an April frost upon
an almond-tree in blossom. Voltaire's heir had found no better mode of
writing natural and true novels (so the scandalous chronicle said) than
to copy an original correspondence, and indiscreet "detectives" of
letters menaced him with publishing the whole Italian work from which he
"conveyed" the best part of "Tolla." All the literary world cried,
Havoc! upon the sprightly fellow laden with Italian relics. It was a
critical moment in his life.
Monsieur Edmond About was introduced to me by a fascinating lady;--who
can resist the charms of the other sex? I saw before me a man some
eight-and-twenty years old, of a slender figure; his features were
irregular, but intellectual, and he looked at people like an
excessively near-sighted person who abused the advantages of being
near-sighted. He wore no spectacles. His eyes were small, cold, bright,
and were well wadded with such thick eyebrows and eyelashes it seemed
these must absorb them. I subsequently found, in a strange American
book,[24] some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression
of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even
then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal
smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could
detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that
obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and
jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good account in his commerce with
the great people of his day, and which his disciple was learning to
practise in his intercourse with the powerful of these times,--the
_parvenus_ and the wealthy. I was struck by the face of this college
Macchiavelli: on it were written the desire of success and the longing
to enjoy; the calculations of the ambitious man were allied with the
maliciousness of the giddy child. Of course he overwhelmed me with
compliments and flattery. He had, or thought he had, use for me. I
benevolently became the defender of the poor calumniated fellow in the
"Revue des Deux Mondes," just as one undertakes out of pure kindness of
heart to protect the widow and the orphan. Monsieur Edmond About thanked
me _orally_ with a flood of extraordinary gratitude; but he took good
care to avoid writing a word upon the subject. A letter might have laid
him under engagements, and might have embarrassed him one day or
another. Whereas he aimed to be both a diplomatist and a literary man.
He practised the art of good writing, and the art of turning it to the
best advantage.
Some months after this he brought out a piece called "Guillery," at the
French Comedy. The first night it was played, there was a hail-storm of
hisses. No _claqueur_ ever remembered to have heard the like before. The
charitable dramatic critics--delicate fellows, who cannot bear to see
people possess talents without their permission and despite
them--attacked the piece as blood-hounds the fugitive murderer. It
seemed as if Monsieur Edmond About was a ruined man, who could never
dare hold up his head again. He resisted the death-warrant. He had
friends in influential houses. He soon found lint enough for his wounds.
The next winter the town heard that Monsieur Edmond About's wounds had
been well dressed and were cured, and that he was going to write in
"Figaro." The amateurs of scandal began at once to reckon upon the
gratification of their tastes. They were not mistaken. The moment his
second contribution to "Figaro" appeared, it became evident to all that
he had taken this warlike position at the advanced posts of light
literature solely to shoot at those persons who had wounded his vanity.
For three months he kept up such a sharp fire that every week numbered
its dead. Such carnage had never been seen. Everybody was severely
wounded: Jules Janin, Paulin Limayrac, Champfleury, Barbey d'Aurevilly,
and a host of others. Everybody said, (a thrill of terror ran through
them as they spoke,)--There is going to be one of these mornings a
terrible butchery: that imprudent Edmond About will have at least ten
duels on his hands. Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it! There were
negotiations, embassies, explanations exchanged which explained nothing,
and reparations made which repaired nothing. But there was not a shot
fired. There was not a drop of blood drawn. O Lord! no! Third parties
intervened, and demonstrated to the offended parties, that, when
Monsieur Edmond About called them stupid boobies, humbugs, tumblers, he
had no intention whatever of offending them. Good gracious! far
otherwise! In fine, one day the farce was played, the curtain fell upon
the well-spanked critics, and all this little company (so full of
talents and chivalry!) went arm-in-arm, the insulter and the insulted,
to breakfast together at Monsieur About's rooms, where, between a dozen
oysters and a bottle of Sauterne, he asked his victims what they thought
of some Titians he had just discovered, and which he wished to sell to
the Louvre for a small fortune,--Titians which were not painted even by
Mignard. The insulter and the insulted fell into each other's arms
before these daubs, and they parted, each delighted with the other.
These pseudo-Titians were for Monsieur About his Alcibiades's
dog's-tail. He spent one every month. Literary, picturesque, romanesque,
historical, agricultural, Greek, and Roman questions were never subjects
to him: he considered them merely advertisements to puff the
transcendent merits of Edmond About. Before he left "Figaro" he
determined to show me what a grateful fellow he was. He made me the mark
for all his epigrams, and I paid the price of peace with the others. I
have heard, since then, that Monsieur Edmond About has made his way
rapidly in the world. He is rich. He has the ribbon of the Legion of
Honor. He excels in writing pamphlets. He is not afraid of the most
startling truths. He writes about the Pope like a man who is not afraid
of the spiritual powers, and he has demonstrated that Prince Napoleon
won the Battle of the Alma and organized Algeria.
* * * * *
Among the numerous details of my grandeur and my decline, none exhibit
in a clearer light our literary manners and customs than the history of
my relations with Monsieur Louis Ulbach, the virtuous author, _now_, of
"L'Homme aux Cinq Louis d'Or," "Suzanne Duchemin," "Monsieur et Madame
Fernel," and other tales, which he hopes to see crowned by the French
Academy. Monsieur Louis Ulbach at first belonged to a triumvirate which
pretended to stand above the mob of democratic writers; and of a truth
Monsieur Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders,
had none of those smoking-_café_ vulgarities which have procured so many
subscribers to the "Siècle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with
remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with _bizarre_ energy, intent upon
an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet
found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most
perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains
which so often bow down the noblest minds before idols made of plaster
or of clay. Besides, both of them were known by admirable acts of
generosity. There were in this triumvirate such dashes of aristocracy
and of revolution that they were called "the Poles of literature."
Of course, when the storm burst which I had raised by my irreverent
attacks on De Béranger, these gentlemen separated from their political
friends, and complimented me. One of them even addressed me a letter, in
which I read these words, which assuredly I would not have written:
"That stupid De Béranger." There was a sort of alliance between us.
Monsieur Louis Ulbach celebrated it by publishing in his magazine, "La
Revue de Paris," an article in my honor, in which, after the usual
reserves, and after declaring war upon my doctrines, he vowed my prose
to be "fascinating," and complained of being so bewitched as to believe,
at times, that he was converted to the cause of the throne and of the
altar. This epithet, "fascinating," in turn fascinated me; and I thought
that my prose was, like some serpent, about to fascinate all the
butcher-birds and ducks of the democratic marsh. A year passed away;
these fine friendships cooled: 't is the fate of these factitious
tendernesses. With winter my second volume appeared, and Monsieur Louis
Ulbach set to work again; but this time he found me merely "ingenious."
It was a good deal more than I merited, and I would willingly have
contented myself with this phrase. Unfortunately, I could not forget the
austere counsel of Monsieur Louis Veuillot, and at this very epoch,
Monsieur Louis Ulbach, who as a novelist could merit a great deal of
praise, took it into his head to publish a thick volume of
transcendental criticism, in which he attacked everything I admired and
lauded everything I detested. I confess that I felt extremely
embarrassed: those nice little words "fascinating" and "ingenious" stuck
in my mind. Monsieur Louis Ulbach himself extricated me from my
perplexity. I had insufficiently praised his last novel. He wrote a
third article on my third work. Alas! the honeymoon had set. The
"fascinating" prose of 1855, the "ingenious" prose of 1856, had become
in 1857, in the opinion of the same judge, and in the language of the
same pen, "pretentious and tiresome." This sudden change of things and
epithets restored me to liberty. I walked abroad in all my strength and
independence, and I dissected Monsieur Louis Ulbach's thick volume with
a severity which was still tempered by the courteous forms and the
dimensions of my few newspaper-columns. A year passed away. My fourth
work appeared. Note that these several volumes were not different works,
but a series of volumes expressing the same opinions in the very same
style; in fine, they were but one work. Note, too, that Monsieur
Ulbach's "Revue de Paris" and "L'Assemblée Nationale," in which I wrote,
were both suppressed by the government on the same day, which
established between us a fraternity of martyrdom. All this was as
nothing. Louis Ulbach, this very same Louis Ulbach, was employed by a
newspaper where he was sure to please by insulting me, and the very
first thing he did was to give me a kick, such a kick as twenty horses
covered with sleigh-bells could not give. He called me "ignoramus," and
wondered what "this fellow" meant by his literary drivelling. The most
curious part of the whole business is, that he did not write the
article, all he did was to sign it! Four years, and a scratch given his
vanity, had proved enough to produce this change!
* * * * *
Shall I speak to you now of Henry Murger? I wrote this chapter of my
Memoirs during his life. I should have suppressed it, did I feel the
least drop of bitterness mingled with the recollection of the acts of
petty ingratitude of this charming writer. But my object in writing this
work is less to satisfy sterile revenge than to exhibit to you a corner
of literary life in Paris in the nineteenth century.
In 1850 Henry Murger published a book in which the manners and customs
of people who live by their wits were painted in colors scarcely likely
to fascinate healthy imaginations. He declared to the world that the
novitiate of our future great authors was nothing but one incessant hunt
after a half-dollar and a mutton-chop. The world was told by others that
Henry Murger had learned to paint this existence by actual experience.
There were, however, in his book some excellent flashes of fancy and
youth; besides, the public then had grown tired of interminable
adventures and novels in fifty volumes. So Henry Murger's first work,
"La Vie de Bohême," was very popular; but it did not swell his purse or
improve his wardrobe. He was introduced to me, and I shall never forget
the low bow he made me. I was afraid for one moment that his bald head
would fall between his legs. This precocious baldness gave to his
delicate and sad face a singular physiognomy. He looked not so much like
a young old man as like an old young man. Henry Murger's warmest desire
was to write in the celebrated and influential "Revue des Deux Mondes,"
which we all abuse so violently when we have reason to complain of it,
and which has but to make a sign to us and we instantly fall into its
arms. I was then on the best terms with the "Revue des Deux Mondes."
Monsieur Castil-Blaze, being from the same neighborhood with me, had
obtained a place for me in the "Revue," which belonged to his
son-in-law, Monsieur Buloz. I promised Henry Murger to speak a good word
for him. A favorable opportunity of doing so occurred a few days
afterwards.
"I do not know what is to become of us," said Monsieur Buloz to me; "our
old contributors are dying, and no new ones make their appearance."
"They appear, but you refuse to see them. There is Henry Murger, for
instance; he has just written an amusing book, which is the most
successful of the season."
"Henry Murger! And is it you, Count Armand de Pontmartin, the literary
nobleman, the aristocratic writer, who wear (as the world avers) a white
cravat and white kid gloves from the time you get up, (I confess I have
never seen you with them,)--is it you who propose to me to admit Henry
Murger as a contributor to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,'--Henry Murger,
the ringleader of people who live by their wits?"
"Why shouldn't I? We live in a day when white cravats have to be very
respectful to red cravats. Besides, nothing is too strange to happen;
and I would not bet you that Murger does not write in 'Le Moniteur'
before I do."
"If you think I had better admit Henry Murger, I consent; but remember
what I say to you: It will be the source of annoyance to you."
The next day a hack bore Henry Murger and me from the corner of the
Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue du Helder to the office of the "Revue
des Deux Mondes." We talked on the way. If I had had any illusions left
of the poetical dreams and virginal thoughts of young men fevered by
literary ambition, these few minutes would have been enough to dispel
them all. Henry Murger thought of nothing upon earth but money. How was
he going to pay his quarter's rent, or rather his two or three quarters'
rent? for he was two or three quarters behindhand. He still had credit
with this _restaurateur_, but he owed so much to such another that he
dared not show his face there. He was over head and ears in debt to his
tailor. He was afraid to think of the amount of money he owed his
shoemaker. The list was long, and "bills payable" lamentable. To end
this dreary balance-sheet, I took it into my head to deliver him a
lecture on the morality of literature and the duty of literary men.
"Art," said I to him, "must escape the materialism which oppresses and
will at last absorb it. We romantics of 1828 were mistaken. We thought
we were reacting against the pagan and mummified school of the
eighteenth century and of the First Empire. We did not perceive that a
revolutionary Art can under no circumstances turn to the profit of grand
spiritual and Christian traditions, to the worship of the ideal, to the
elevation of intellects. We did not see that it would be a little sooner
or a little later discounted by literary demagogues, who, without
tradition, without a creed, without any law except their own whims,
would become the slaves of every base passion, and of all physical and
moral deformities. It is not yet too late. Let us repair our faults. Let
us elevate, let us regenerate literature; let us bear it aloft to those
noble spheres where the soul soars in her native majes"----
I was declaiming with fire, my enthusiasm was becoming more and more
heated, when Henry Murger interrupted me by asking,--"Do you think
Monsieur Buloz will pay me in advance?"
This question produced on my missionary's enthusiasm the same effect a
tub of cold water would have upon an excited poodle-dog.
"Monsieur Murger," I replied, without being too much disconcerted, "you
will arrange those details with Monsieur Buloz. All I can do is to
introduce you."
We reached the office. I was afraid I might embarrass Monsieur Buloz and
Monsieur Murger, if I remained with them; I therefore took a book and
went into the garden. I was called back in twenty minutes, and was
briefly told that Henry Murger had engaged to write a novel for the
"Revue." We went out together; but we had scarcely passed three doors,
when Murger said hurriedly to me,--"I beg your pardon, I have forgotten
something!"--and he went back to the office. I afterwards found out
that this "something" was an advance of money which he asked for upon a
novel whose first syllable he had not yet written.
If I dwell upon these miserable details, it is not (God forbid!) to
insult laborious poverty, or talent forced to struggle against the
hardships of life or the embarrassments of improvident, careless youth.
No,--but there was here, and this is the reason I speak of it, the
_trade-mark_ of that literary living-by-the wits which had taken entire
possession of Henry Murger, against which he had struggled in vain all
his life long, and which at last crushed him in its feverish grasp.
Living by the wits was to Henry Murger what _roulette_ is to the
gambler, what brandy is to the drunkard, what the traps of the police
are to the knave and the burglar: he cursed it, but he could not quit
it; he lived in it, he lived by it, he died of it. The first time I
talked with Murger, and every subsequent conversation I had with him,
brought up money incessantly, in every tone, in every form; and when,
having become more familiar with what he called my squeamishness, he
talked more frankly to me, I saw that he required to support him a sum
of money three times greater than the annual income of which a whole
family of office-holders in the country, or even in Paris, live with
ease. This brought on him protests, bailiffs, constables, incredible
complications, continual uneasiness, a hankering after pecuniary
success, eternal complaints against publishers, magazine-editors,
theatre-managers, anxious negotiations, an immense loss of time, an
incredible wear-and-tear of brain, annoyances and cares enough to put
every thought to flight and to dry every source of inspiration and of
poetry. Remember that Henry Murger is one of the luckiest of the new men
who have appeared within these last fifteen years, for he received the
cross of the Legion of Honor, which, as everybody knows, is never given
except to men who deserve it. Judge, then, what the others
must be! Judge what must be the abortions, the disdained, the
supernumeraries,--those who sleep in lodging-houses at two cents a
night, or who eat their pitiful dinner outside the barrier-gate in a
wretched eating-house patronized by hack-drivers,--those who kill
themselves with charcoal, or who hang themselves, murdered by madness or
by hunger, the two pale goddesses of atheistical literatures!
"Well," said I to Henry Murger, after we were once more seated in our
carriage, "are you pleased with Monsieur Buloz?"
"Yes--and no. The most difficult step is taken. He allows me to
contribute my masterpieces to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' and I shall
never forget the immense service you have done me. Although you and I do
not serve the same literary gods, I am henceforward yours to the death!
But--the book-keeper is deusedly hard on trigger. Will you believe it? I
asked him to advance me forty dollars, and he refused!"
We parted excellent friends, and he continued to assure me of his
gratitude, until the carriage stopped at my door.
Years passed away. Henry Murger's promised novel was long coming to the
"Revue des Deux Mondes." At last it came; another followed eighteen
months afterwards; then he contributed a third. He displayed
unquestionable talents; he commanded moderate success. He had been told
by so many people that it was a hard matter to please the readers of the
"Revue des Deux Mondes," that it was necessary for him to free himself
from all his studios' fun, and everything tinctured with the petty
press, that he really believed for true everything he heard, and
appeared awkward in his movements. His students, his _grisettes_, and
his young artists were all on their good behavior, but were not more
droll. Marivaux had come down one more flight of stairs. Alfred de
Musset had steeped the powder and the patches in a glass of Champagne
wine. Henry Murger soaked them in a bottle of brandy or in a flagon of
beer.
Henry Murger's gratitude, whenever we met, continued to exhale in
enthusiastic hymns. I lost sight of him for some time. I was told that
he lived somewhere in the Forest of Fontainebleau, to escape his
creditors' pursuit. At the critical moment of my literary life, I read
one morning in a petty newspaper a biting burlesque of which I was the
grotesque hero: I figured (my name was given in full) as a member of a
temperance society, whose members were pledged to total abstinence from
the use of ideas, wit, and style; at one of our monthly dinners, we were
said to have devoured Balzac at the first course, De Béranger for the
roast, Michelet for a side-dish, and George Sand for dessert. The next
day, and every day the petty paper appeared, the joke was renewed with
all sorts of variations. It was evidently a "rig" run on me. This joke
was signed every day "Marcel," which was the name of one of the heroes
of Henry Murger's novel, "La Vie de Bohême"; but I was very far indeed
from thinking that the man who was under so many "obligations" to me (as
Henry Murger always declared himself to be) should have joined the ranks
of my persecutors. A few days afterwards I heard, on the best authority,
that Henry Murger was the author of these articles. I felt a deep
chagrin at this discovery. Literary men constantly call Philistines and
Prudhommes those who lay great stress upon the absence of moral sense as
one of the great defects of the school of literature and art to which
Murger and his friends belong; and yet there should be a name for such
conduct as this, if for no other reason, for the sake of the culprits
themselves,--as, when poor Murger acted in this way to me, he was as
unconscious of what he did as when he raised heaven and earth to hunt
down a dollar. He was not guilty of a black heart, it was only absolute
deficiency of everything like moral sense. Henry Murger was under
obligations to me, as he said constantly; I had introduced and
recommended him to a man and a magazine that are, as of right, difficult
in the choice of their contributors; I had, for his sake, conquered
their prejudices, borne their reproaches. Whenever his novels appeared,
I treated them with indulgence, and gave them praise without examining
too particularly into their moral tendency, to the great scandal of my
usual readers, and despite the scoldings Monsieur Louis Veuillot gave
me. There never was the least coolness between Henry Murger and myself;
and yet, when I was attacked and harassed on every side, he hid himself
under a pseudonyme, and added his sarcasms to all the others directed
against me, that he might gratify his admiration for De Balzac and put a
little money in his pocket.
By-and-by I continued to meet Henry Murger again on the Boulevard, and
at the first performance of new pieces. Do you imagine he shunned me?
Not a bit of it. He did not seem on these rare occasions to feel the
least embarrassment. He gave me cordial shakes of the hand, or he
bestowed on me one of those profound bows which brought his bald head on
a level with his waistcoat-pockets. Then he published a novel in "Le
Moniteur," after which he was decorated. Nothing was now heard from or
of him for a long time. Not a line by Henry Murger appeared anywhere. I
never heard that any piece by him was received, or even refused, by a
single one of the eighteen theatres in Paris. At last I met him one day
before the Variétés Theatre. I went up to speak to him, and ended by
asking the invariable question between literary men,--"What are you at
work on now? How comes it that so long a time has elapsed since you gave
us something to read or to applaud?"
"I will tell you why," he replied, with melancholy _sang-froid_. "It is
not a question of literature, it is a question of arithmetic. I owe
eight hundred dollars to Madame Porcher, the wife of the
'authors'-tickets' dealer, who is always ready to advance money to
dramatic authors, and to whom we are all constantly in debt. I owe four
hundred dollars to the 'Moniteur,' and three hundred dollars to the
'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Follow my reasoning now: Were I to bring out a
play, my excellent friend, Madame Porcher, would lay hands on all the
proceeds, and I should receive nothing. Were I to give a novel to the
'Moniteur,' I should have to write twenty _feuilletons_ (you know they
pay twenty dollars a _feuilleton_ there) before I cancelled my old debt.
Were I to contribute to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' as soon as my six
sheets (at fifty dollars a sheet, that would be three hundred dollars)
were printed and published, the editor would say to me, 'We are even
now.' So you see that it would be unpardonable prodigality on my part to
publish anything; therefore I have determined not to work at all, in
order to avoid spending my money, and I am lazy--from economy!"
His reply disarmed the little resentment I had left. I took his hand in
mine, and said to him,--"See here, Murger, I must confess to you I was a
little angry with you; but your arithmetic is more literary than you
think it. You have given me a lesson of contemporary literature; and I
say to you, as the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' would say, 'Murger, we are
even!'"
I ran off without waiting for his reply, and whispered to myself, as I
went, "And yet Henry Murger is the most talented and the most honest of
them all!"
* * * * *
Let me continue the story of my misfortunes. The tempest was unchained
against me. It is true, there were among my adversaries some persons
under obligations to me,--some persons who were full of enthusiasm at my
first manner, and who would have made wry faces enough, had I published
their flattering letters to me,--other persons, to whom I had rendered
pecuniary services,--others, again, who had come to me with hat in hand
and supple knees, to beg my permission to allow them to dramatize my
novels. But what were these miserable considerations, when the great
interests of national literature, taste, and glory were at stake? I was
the vile detractor, the impious scorner of these glories, and it was but
justice that I should be put in the pillory and made the butt of rotten
eggs. Voltaire blasphemed, Béranger insulted, Victor Hugo outraged, were
offences which cried aloud for chastisement and for vengeance. Balzac's
shade especially complained and clamored for justice. It is true, that,
while Balzac was alive, he was not accustomed to anything like such
admiration. He openly avowed that he detested newspaper-writers, and
they returned the detestation with interest. Everybody, while he was
alive, declared him to be odd, eccentric, half-crazy, absurd. His
friends and his publishers, in fine, everybody who had anything to do
with him, told rather disreputable stories about him. No matter for
that. Balzac was dead, Balzac was a god, the god of all these
livers-by-the-wits, who but for him would have been atheists. Monsieur
Paulin Limayrac tore me to pieces in "La Presse." Monsieur Eugène
Pelletan shot me in "Le Siècle." Monsieur Taxile Delord mauled me in "Le
Charivari." To this episode of my exposition in the pillory belongs an
anecdote which I cannot omit.
I was about to set off for the country, where I reckoned upon spending
some weeks of the month of May, in order to recover somewhat from these
incessant attacks made upon me. I had read in a _café_, while taking my
beefsteak and cup of chocolate, the various details of the punishment I
was about to undergo. One of my tormentors, who was a great deal more
celebrated for his aversion to water and clean linen than for any
article he had ever written, declared that I was about to be banished
from everything like decent society; another vowed by all the deities of
his Olympus that I was a mountebank and a skeptic, who had undertaken to
defend sound doctrines and to tomahawk eminent writers simply by way of
bringing myself into public notice; a third painted me as a poor wretch
who had come from his provincial home with his pockets filled with
manuscripts, and was going about Paris begging favorable notices as a
means of touching publishers and booksellers; a fourth depicted me, on
the other hand, as a wealthy fellow, who was so diseased with a mania
for literature that I paid newspapers and reviews to publish my
contributions, which no human being would have accepted gratuitously. As
I left the _café_, one of my intimate friends ran up to me. His face
expressed that mixture of cordial commiseration and desire to make a
fuss about the matter which one's friends' faces always wear under these
circumstances.
"Well," said he, "what do you think of the way they treat you?"
"Why, they are all at it,--Monsieur Edmond About, Monsieur Louis Ulbach,
Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, Monsieur Henry Murger, Monsieur Taxile
Delord,"----
"Ah! by the way, have you seen his article of yesterday?"
"No."
"You should have read that. Those in the morning's papers are nothing to
it. Really, you ought not to leave town without seeing it." Looking very
important, he added,--"In your position, you should know everything
written against you."
I followed this friendly advice, and went to the Rue du Croissant, where
the office of "Le Charivari" moulders. As the place is anything but
attractive to well-bred persons, allow me to get there by the longest
road, and to go through the Faubourg Saint Honoré. A month before the
conversation above reported took place in front of a _café_-door, I had
the pleasure of meeting the Count de ----, an intellectual gentleman who
occupies an influential place in some aristocratic drawing-rooms which
still retain a partiality for literature. He said to me,--
"Do you know Monsieur Ernest Legouvé?"
"Assuredly! The most polite and most agreeable of all the generals of
_Alexander_ Scribe; the author of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' which Rachel
played so well, of 'Médée,' in which Madame Ristori shines; a charming
gentleman, who, in our age of clubs, cigars, stables, jockeys, and
slang, has had the good taste to like feminine society. He has a
considerable estate; he belongs to the French Academy; his house is
agreeable; his manners delightful; his dinners unequalled. If in all
happiness there is a dash of management, where is the harm in Monsieur
Ernest Legouvé's case? Why should not gentlemen, too, be sometimes
adroit? Rogues are so always! Besides, has not a little art always been
necessary to effect an entrance into the French Academy?"
"Monsieur Ernest Legouvé and I were at college together, and he bids me
bear you an invitation which I am sure you will not refuse. He has
written a play upon the delicate and thorny subject on which Monsieur
Jules Sandeau has written his admirable comedy, 'Le Gendre de Monsieur
Poirier': with this difference, however: Monsieur Legouvé has taken, not
a ruined and brilliant noble who marries the daughter of a plebeian, but
a young man, the architect of his own fortunes, with a most vulgar name,
who, on the score of talents, energy, delicacy of head and heart, is
loved by a young lady of noble birth, is accepted by her family, and
enters by right of conquest into that society from which his birth
excluded him."
"That theme is rather more difficult: for, when Mademoiselle Poirier
marries the Marquis de Presles, she becomes the Marquise de Presles;
whereas, when Mademoiselle de Montmorency marries Monsieur Bernard, she
becomes plain Madame Bernard."
"True enough! But Monsieur Legouvé is perplexed by a scruple which
reflects the greatest honor upon him: he entertains sincere respect,
great sympathy, for aristocratic distinctions; therefore he is anxious
to assure himself, before his piece is brought out in public, that it
does not contain a single scene or a single word which will be offensive
or disagreeable to noble ears. To satisfy himself in this particular,
he has asked me to allow him to read his comedy at my house. I shall
invite the Duchess de ----, the Marquis de ----, the Countess de ----,
the General de ----, the Duke de ----, the Marquise de ----, and the
Baroness de ----. I shall add to these two or three critics known in
good society, among whom I reckon upon you. In fine, this preliminary
Areopagus will be composed of sons of the Crusaders, who are almost as
sprightly as sons of Voltaire. Now Monsieur Ernest Legouvé will not be
satisfied with his comedy, unless these gentlefolk unanimously decide
that he need not blot a single line of it. Will you come? Remember,
Monsieur Ernest Legouvé invites you."
"My dear Count, I willingly accept your proposition. Monsieur Legouvé
reads admirably, and his plays are all agreeable. Nevertheless, let me
tell you that this trial will prove nothing. Our poor society is like
Sganarelle's wife, who liked to be thrashed. It has borne smiling, and
repaid with wealth and fame, much more ardent attacks than Monsieur
Legouvé can make."
Count de ---- and I shook hands, and parted. A few evenings afterwards
the reading took place. It was just what I expected. There were as many
marquises and duchesses (_real_ duchesses) as there were kings to
applaud Talma in the Erfurt pit. The noble assembly listened to Monsieur
Legouvés's comedy with that rather absent-minded urbanity and with those
charming exclamations of admiration which have been constantly given to
everybody who has read a piece in a drawing-room, from the days of the
Viscount d'Arlincourt and his "Le Solitaire," to the days of Monsieur
Viennet, of the French Academy, and his "Arbogaste." Monsieur Legouvé's
play, which was then called "Le Nom du Mari," and which has since been
played under the title of "Par Droit de Conquête," was pleasing. My ears
were not so much offended by the antagonism of poor nobility and wealthy
upstarts, which Monsieur Legouvé treated neither better nor worse than
any other has done, as by the details of roads, bridges, marsh-draining,
canals, railways, coal, coke, and the like, which were dead-weights on
Thalia's light robe; and the improbability of the plot was not so much
the marriage of a noble girl to the son of an apple-dealer as was the
perfection given to the young engineer: every virtue and every grace
were showered on him. The piece was unanimously pronounced successful.
The aristocratic audience applauded Monsieur Legouvé with their little
gloved hands, which never make much noise. He was complimented so
delicately that he was sincerely touched. There was not the slightest
objection, the lightest murmur made to the piece, and there trembled in
my eye that little tear Madame de Sévigné speaks of.
But let us quit this drawing-room, and turn our steps towards the Rue du
Croissant, where the office of "Le Charivari" is to be found. Balzac has
described in "Les Illusions Perdues" the offices of these petty
newspapers: the passage divided into two equal portions, one of which
leads to the editor's room, and the other to the grated counter where
the clerk sits to receive subscribers. Everybody knows the appearance of
these old houses, these staircases, these flimsy partitions, with their
bad light coming through a window whose panes are veiled with a triple
coating of dust, smoke, and soot,--the whitewashed walls bearing
innumerable traces of fingers covered with ink, mingled with
pencil-caricatures and grotesque inscriptions. Although it was in the
month of May that I made this visit, I shivered with cold as I entered
this old house, and my gorge rose in disgust at the unaired smell and
ignoble scenes which everywhere appeared. The clerk I applied to had the
very face one might expect to find in such a place: one of those
colorless, hard, sinister faces which are to be seen in nearly all the
scenes of Paris reality. All things were in harmony in this shop: the
air, and the light, and the house,--the letter as well as the spirit. I
asked the clerk to give me the file for the month of April. I soon
found and read Monsieur Taxile Delord's article. Monsieur Taxile Delord
comes from some one of the southern departments of France. He made his
first appearance in public in "Le Sémaphore," the well-known newspaper
of Marseilles; but the twilight of a provincial life could not suit this
eagle, and in the course of a few years he came up to Paris. Alas!
Monsieur Taxile Delord was soon obliged to add the secret sorrows of
disappointed ambition to the original gayety of his character. His
deepest sorrow was to look upon himself for a grave and thoughtful
statesman, and be condemned by fate to a chronic state of fun and to
hard labor at pun-making for life. Imagine Junius damned to lead
Touchstone's life! He became sourness itself. His puns were lugubrious.
His fun grew heavy, and his gayety was funereal. The pretensions of this
checked gravity which settled upon his factitious hilarity were enough
to melt the hearts even of his enemies, if such a fellow could pretend
to have enemies. Once this galley-slave of fun tried to make his escape
from the galley. He wrote a play; and as the manager of one of the
theatres was his friend, he had it played. The democratic opinions of
Monsieur Taxile Delord raised favorable prejudices among the school-boys
of the Latin Quarter; but who can escape his fate? The masterpiece was
hissed. Its title was "The End of the Comedy"; and a wretched witling
pretended that the piece was ill-named, since the pit refused to see the
end of the comedy. Thereupon Monsieur Taxile Delord adopted the method
of Gulliver's tailor, who measured for clothes according to the rules of
arithmetic: he demonstrated that his piece was played three times from
beginning to end,--that, as the manager was his particular friend, and
as the Odeon was always empty, he might have had it played thirty
times,--and therefore that we were all bound to be grateful to him for
his moderation. This last argument met no person bold enough to
contradict it, and the subscribers to "Le Charivari" (which is the
"Punch" of Paris) were seized with holy horror, when they thought, that,
but for Monsieur Taxile Delord's moderation, "The End of the Comedy"
might have been played seven-and-twenty times more.
What had I done to excite his ire? I had not treated Béranger with
sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade,
would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself
exactly on Béranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every
insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Béranger's fate was a hard
one, and all my attacks on him were not half so bad as this treatment he
received at the hands of Monsieur Taxile Delord. Poor Béranger! So
Monsieur Taxile Delord took up the quarrel on his account, and relieved
his gall by throwing it on me. When I read his article, I felt
humiliated,--but not as the writer desired,--I felt humiliated for the
press, and for literature, and for Béranger, who really did not deserve
this hard fate. The humid office, full of dirt and dust and
printing-ink, disgusted and depressed me, and I involuntarily thought of
Count de ----'s drawing-room, and that aristocratic society where
everything was flowers, courtesy, perfumes, elegance, where people could
not even feel hatred towards their enemies, and where the genial poet,
Monsieur Ernest Legouvé, surrounded by the most charming and most
sprightly women of Paris, recently obtained so delightful a triumph.
All at once a sympathetic and clear voice, a voice which I thought I had
heard in better society than where I was, reached my ears. Hid in the
dark corner where I sat, and where nobody could discover me, I saw the
door of the editor's room open and Monsieur Taxile Delord appear and
escort to the door a visitor. It was Monsieur Ernest Legouvé! They
passed close to me, and I heard Monsieur Ernest Legouvé say to Monsieur
Delord,--"My dear Sir, I recommend my play, 'Le Nom du Mari,' to you; I
hope you will be pleased with it!"
This contrast annoyed me. I was then horribly out of humor from an
irritating prelection, and I felt towards Monsieur Legouvé that sort of
vexation the unlucky feel towards the lucky, the poor towards the rich,
the hunchbacks towards handsome men, and the awkward towards the adroit.
I said to myself,--"Armand, my poor Armand, you will never be aught but
a most stupid fool!"
We add no commentary to this picture of literary life in Paris. We leave
the reader to draw his own conclusions. He needs no assistance,--for the
picture is painted in bright colors, and the light is thrown with no
parsimonious hand upon every corner. It is a curious exhibition of a
most unhealthy state of things. It explains a great many of those
literary mysteries, which seem so unaccountable, in the most brilliant
capital of the world.