The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864
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Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864
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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 Varietes 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, Beranger 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 Eugene
Pelletan shot me in "Le Siecle." 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 _cafe_, 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 _cafe_, 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 Honore. A month before the
conversation above reported took place in front of a _cafe_-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 Legouve?"
"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 'Medee,' 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 Legouve'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 Legouve 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 Legouve 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 Legouve 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 Legouve 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 Legouve invites you."
"My dear Count, I willingly accept your proposition. Monsieur Legouve
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
Legouve 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
Legouves'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 Legouve's
play, which was then called "Le Nom du Mari," and which has since been
played under the title of "Par Droit de Conquete," was pleasing. My ears
were not so much offended by the antagonism of poor nobility and wealthy
upstarts, which Monsieur Legouve 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 Legouve 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 Sevigne 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 Semaphore," 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 Beranger 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 Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every
insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger'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 Beranger! 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 Beranger, 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 Legouve, 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 Legouve! They
passed close to me, and I heard Monsieur Ernest Legouve 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 Legouve 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] _Elsie Venner_, by Oliver OEendell (_sic_) Holmes.
THE MASKERS.
Yesternight, as late I strayed
Through the orchard's mottled shade,--
Coming to the moonlit alleys,
Where the sweet Southwind, that dallies
All day with the Queen of Roses,
All night on her breast reposes,--
Drinking from the dewy blooms,
Silences, and scented glooms
Of the warm-breathed summer night,
Long, deep draughts of pure delight,--
Quick the shaken foliage parted,
And from out its shadows darted
Dwarf-like forms, with hideous faces,
Cries, contortions, and grimaces.
Still I stood beneath the lonely,
Sighing lilacs, saying only,--
"Little friends, you can't alarm me;
Well I know you would not harm me!"
Straightway dropped each painted mask,
Sword of lath, and paper casque,
And a troop of rosy girls
Ran and kissed me through their curls.
Caught within their net of graces,
I looked round on shining faces.
Sweetly through the moonlit alleys
Rang their laughter's silver sallies.
Then along the pathway, light
With the white bloom of the night,
I went peaceful, pacing slow,
Captive held in arms of snow.
Happy maids! of you I learn
Heavenly maskers to discern!
So, when seeming griefs and harms
Fill life's garden with alarms,
Through its inner walks enchanted
I will ever move undaunted.
Love hath messengers that borrow
Tragic masks of fear and sorrow,
When they come to do us kindness,--
And but for our tears and blindness,
We should see, through each disguise,
Cherub cheeks and angel eyes.
CULLET.
"Good morning! Is it really a rainy day?" asked Miselle, imploringly, as
she seated herself at the breakfast-table, and glanced from Monsieur to
the heavy sky and the vane upon the coach-house, steadily pointing west.
"Indeed, I hope not. Are you ready for Sandwich?" smilingly replied the
host.
"More than ready,--eager. But the clouds."
"One learns here upon the coast to brave the clouds; we have, to be
sure, a sea-turn just now, and perhaps there will be fog-showers
by-and-by, but nothing that need prevent our excursion."
"Delightful!" exclaimed Optima, Miselle, and Madame, applying themselves
to eggs and toast with that calm confidence in a masculine decision so
sustaining to the feminine nature.
The early breakfast over, Monsieur, with a gentle hint to the ladies of
haste in the matter of toilet, went to see that Gypsy and Fanny were
properly harnessed, and that a due number of cushions, rugs, and
water-proof wrappers were placed in the roomy carriage.
Surely, never were hats so hastily assumed, never did gloves condescend
to be so easily found, never were fewer hasty returns for "something I
have forgotten," and Monsieur had barely time to send two messages to
the effect that all was ready, when the feminine trio descending upon
him triumphantly disproved once and forever the hoary slander upon their
sex of habitual unpunctuality.
With quiet self-sacrifice Optima placed herself beside Madame in the
back of the carryall, leaving for Miselle the breezy seat in front, with
all its facilities for seeing, hearing, smelling, breathing; and let us
hope that the little banquet thus prepared for the conscience of that
young woman gave her as much satisfaction as Miselle's feast of the
senses did to her.
Arching their necks, tossing their manes, spattering the dewy sand with
their little hoofs, Gypsy and Fanny rapidly whirled the carriage through
the drowsy town, across the Pilgrim Brook, and so, by the pretty suburb
of "T'other Side," (which no child of the Mayflower shall ever consent
to call Wellingsley,) to the open road skirting the blue waters of the
bay.
"Ah, this is fine!" cried Miselle, snatching from seaward deep breaths
of the east wind laden with the wild life of ocean and the freedom of
boundless space.
"Here we have it!" remarked Monsieur, somewhat irrelevantly, as he
hastily unbuckled the apron and spread it over his own lap and
Miselle's, just in time to catch a heavy dash of rain.
"I am afraid it is going to be stormy, after all," piteously murmured
Miselle.
"I told you we should have fog-showers, you know," suggested Monsieur,
with a quiet smile.
"But what must we do?--go home?"
"No, indeed!--we will go to Sandwich, let it rain twice, four times as
hard as this,--unless, indeed, Madame gives orders to the contrary. What
say you, Madame?"
"I say, let us go on for the present. We can turn round at any time, if
it becomes necessary"; and Madame smiled benevolently at Miselle, down
whose face the rain-drops streamed, but who stoutly asserted,--
"Oh, this is nothing. Only a fog-shower, you know. We shall have it fine
directly."
"Not till we are out of Eel River. This valley gathers all the clouds,
and they often get rain here when the sun is shining everywhere else."
"A regular vale of tears! Happy the remnant of the world that dwelleth
not in Eel River!" murmured Miselle, surreptitiously pulling her
water-proof cloak about her shoulders.
"Let me help you. Really, though, you are getting very wet, dear,"
remonstrated Optima.
"Not in the least. I enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just
over.--What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate
steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by
a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged
obstinacy of purpose.
"The church is an Orthodox meetinghouse, and the steeple is Orthodox
too,--for the Cape. Anything else would blow down in the spring gales.
Park-Street steeple, for instance, would stand a very poor chance here."
"Yes," said Miselle, vaguely, and she felt in her heart how this great
ocean that dwarfs or prostrates the works of man replaces them by a
temple builded in his own soul of proportions so lofty that God Himself
may dwell visibly therein.
And now, having traversed the tearful valley, the road wound up the
Delectable Mountains beyond, and so into the pine forest, through whose
clashing needles glints of sunshine began to creep, while overhead the
gray shaded softly into pearl and dazzling white and palest blue.
"There are deer in these Sandwich woods. See if we cannot find a pair of
great brown eyes peering out at us from some of the thickets," suggested
Madame.
"Charming! If only we might see one! How young this nation is, after
all, when aboriginal deer roam the woods within fifty miles of Boston!"
"But without game-laws they will soon be exterminated. A great many are
shot every winter, and the farmers complain bitterly of those that
remain. Some of their crops are quite ruined by the deer, they say,"
remarked Monsieur.
"Never mind. There are plenty of crops, and but very few deer. I
pronounce for the game-laws," recklessly declared Miselle.
But the impending battle of political economy was averted by Madame's
exclamation of,--
"See, here is Sacrifice Rock. Let us stop and look at it a moment."
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