The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Journal du Magnetisme_, for 1846, pp. 80-84.

[2] Pp. 89-106.

[3] In Dr. Tanchon's pamphlet, pp. 46-53.

[4] _Enquete, sur l'Authenticite des Phenomenes Electriques d'Angelique
Cottin_, par le Dr. Tanchon. Bailliere, Paris, 1846.

[5] See Minutes of the Academy, Session of Monday, February 16, 1846.

[6] _Enquete_, etc., p. 49.

[7] _Ibid._ p. 40.

[8] _Ibid._ p. 42.

[9] _Ibid._ p. 22.

[10] _Enquete_, etc., p. 22.

[11] _Ibid._ p. 43.

[12] _Ibid._ p. 47.

[13] _Ibid._ p. 49.

[14] _Enquete_, etc., p. 35. They were greater, also, after meals than
before; so Hebert observed. p. 22.

[15] _Enquete_, etc., p. 5.

[16] I extract them from the "Journal des Connaissances
Medico-Chirurgicales," No. 3.

[17] The words are,--"M. Arago n'a pas apercu nettement les agitations
annoncees comme etant engendrees a distance, par l'intermediaire d'un
tablier, sur un gueridon en bois: d'autres observateurs ont trouve que
les agitations etaient sensibles."

[18] _Enquete_, etc., p. 25.

[19] _Enquete_, etc., p. 36.

[20] M. Cholet, the individual who, in the hope of gain, furnished the
funds to bring Angelique to Paris for exhibition, as soon as he
perceived that the speculation was a failure, left the girl and her
parents in that city, dependent on the charity of strangers for daily
support, and for the means of returning to their humble
home.--_Enquete_, etc., p. 24.

[21] "Non avenues! ce serait commode, si c'etait possible!"

[22] _Enquete_, etc., p. 30.

[23] _Des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations Fluidiques_, par le Marquis
de Mirville, pp. 379, 380.

LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

PART II.

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-_cafe_ vulgarities which have procured so many
subscribers to the "Siecle" 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 Beranger, 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 Beranger." 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'Assemblee 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 Boheme," 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 Beranger 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 Boheme"; 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19