Part 6

A severe judgment is passed by Mr Gutzkow upon the present state of musical art and representations in the French capital. The opera, he affirms, and not without reason, is on its last legs, sustained only by the ballet, by the beauty of the scenery and costumes. Duprez has had his day, Madame Stolz is among the middlings, Barroilhet alone may be reckoned a first-rate singer. Our author saw the _ElA-sir d'Amore_ given by a company which he says would hardly be listened to in a German provincial town. Madame Stolz was then absent on a starring expedition. The ballet of _Paquita_ was some compensation for the poorness of the singing. "At the 'Italiens' I heard the _Barber of Seville_, with Lablache, Ronconi, Tagliafico, Mario, and Persiani. This opera is considered the triumph of the Italian company; but I confess that the magnificence of the theatre, the high charge for admission, the Ohs! and Ahs! of the English women in the boxes, just arrived from London, and who had never before heard good music, were all insufficient to blind me with respect to the merits of the performance. I look upon the Italian opera at Paris as a mystification on the very largest scale, a thorough classic-Italian swindle. That a German company, composed of our best opera singers, would be infinitely superior to this Italian one, appears to me to admit of no dispute; but even at an ordinary theatre in Germany or Italy, one hears as good singing, perhaps with the exception of Lablache in _Bartolo_--and even he is cold and careless, devoid of freshness, and always seems to say to the audience, 'You stupid people, take that for your twelve francs a-seat!' The quackery of this theatre becomes the more intelligible when we reflect that, in all Paris, there is no other where a single note of Italian opera music can be heard, the Italians having the monopoly of the sweet melodies of their native country. The Grand Opera, and the Opera Comique, deal in French music only; and the pleasure obtainable in any small German town possessing a theatre, that, namely, of hearing _Norma_, the _Somnambula_, and other similar operas, is nowhere to be procured except by paying extravagant prices to these half-dozen Italians." This statement is not quite correct. The Opera Comique, it is true, gives nothing but French music, and poor enough it is. In this particular, the Parisians are not difficult to satisfy. A good libretto, smart scenery, a hard-handed _claque_, a few skilful _reclames_, and laudatory paragraphs in the newspapers, will create an enthusiasm even for the insipid music of Monsieur HalA(C)vy, and sustain the _Mousquetaires de la Reine_, or similar mawkish compositions, through a whole season. But at the AcadA(C)mie Royale, good operas are to be heard, although the singing be deficient. Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Donizetti are not the names of Frenchmen; and the operas of these and other foreign composers are constantly given in the Rue Lepelletier.

"Several German opera companies have visited Paris; have begun well, and finished badly. And here our most brilliant singers would meet the same fate, because they would be allowed to sing nothing but German music; and German operas are not listened to in Paris. But if it were possible, with only a moderately good German company, to give _Norma_, the _Barber_, _Robert the Devil_, the _Huguenots_, and Mozart's operas, (omitting the dialogue,) that company, supported by a good orchestra, and performing in a decent theatre, would carry all before them, and return to Germany laden with fame and gold. But that is the difficulty. In France every one must stick to a speciality. From the German they will hear nothing but German music, and the representation of other operas is positively forbidden him."

Without going the lengths that Mr Gutzkow does, or by any means coinciding in his sweeping censure of the artists who now furnish forth the Italian theatres of London and Paris, we doubt whether it is not fashion, as much as the excellence of the music, that draws the A(C)lite of French and English society to the Haymarket and the Salle Ventadour, and whether a German company of equal intrinsic merit would receive adequate patronage and encouragement in either capital, supposing even that they were allowed their choice of operas, and had the benefit of a handsome theatre and an able management. Certainly they would not get the enormous salaries which, in combination with the greediness of managers, and the manA"uvres of ticket-sellers, render the enjoyment of a good opera, in London at least, a luxury attainable but by an exceedingly limited class.

Although the prices of admission to most of the Paris theatres are moderate, they are occasionally raised by illegitimate stratagems. This is especially the case when a new piece is performed from which much is expected, or concerning which, by puffery or for other reasons, the public curiosity has been greatly excited. On such occasions, the first few representations are sometimes rendered doubly and even trebly productive. The prices cannot be raised at the theatre itself without express permission from the authorities, and as this is seldom granted, another plan is resorted to. The box-office is transferred _de facto_ from the corridor of the theatre to the open street. Whoever applies for tickets is told that there is not one left to any part of the house. Nothing then remains but to have recourse to the ticket-brokers, who carry on their disreputable commerce in the streets or at the wine-shops. In the Rue Montmartre, within a few doors of the Boulevard, there is a _marchand de vin_, whose establishment is a grand rendezvous of these gentry. They are the agents of the managers of the theatres. The latter sell all the tickets to themselves a fortnight beforehand, inscribing on the _coupons_ the names of imaginary buyers, and then distribute them amongst the brokers, who sell them in front of the theatre to eager theatrical amateurs, as a great favour, and as the last obtainable tickets, at two or three times the regulation price. The theatre pockets the profits, minus a brokerage. In this manner a first representation at the large theatre of the Porte St Martin may be made to yield ten thousand francs. When a theatre is out of vogue, and filling poorly, the same system is adopted; but in the contrary sense. The _marchands de billets_ are provided with tickets which they sell at less than the established price.

When De Balzac's drama, _Les ExpA(C)dients de Quinola_, was brought out at the "Odeon," he compounded to receive the proceeds of the first three nights, in lieu of a share of each representation whilst the piece should run. The play had been greatly talked of, the steam had been got up in every way, and the public was in a fever. It is customary enough in Paris for dramatic authors, in order at once to get paid for their labours, to barter their _droits d'auteur_ for the entire profits of the first representations. Scribe does it at the FranASec.ais. When the tickets are sold at the usual prices, this financial arrangement is regular enough, and concerns nobody but author and manager. But that would not satisfy Balzac, who is notorious for his avarice. He set the brokers to work, and drove the prices up to the highest possible point, fifteen francs for a stall, instead of five, a hundred francs for a box and so forth. "Under such circumstances," says Mr Gutzkow, "it cannot be wondered if people forgot _Eugenie Grandet_ and the _PA"re Goriot_, and hissed his play. To-day, nearly a hundred criticisms of _Quinola_ have appeared. It is my belief, that, instead of reading them, Balzac is counting his five-franc pieces." The drama fell from want of merit as well as from the indignation excited by the author's greed. Although Balzac's books are read and admired--some of them at least--personally he is most unpopular. He is accused, and not without reason, of arrogance and avarice. His assumption and conceit are evident in his works. He has sacrificed his fame to love of gold; for one good book he has produced two that are trash; by speculating on his reputation, he has undermined and nearly destroyed it. Moreover, he has committed the enormous blunder of affecting to despise the press, which consequently shows him no mercy. For a fortnight after the appearance of _Quinola_--which, although defective as a dramatic composition, was not without its merits--the unlucky play served as a daily laughing-stock and whipping-post to the battalion of Parisian critics. Janin led the way; a host of minor wasps followed in his wake, and threw themselves with deafening hum and sharp sting against the devoted head of M. de Balzac. He bore their aggravating assaults with great apparent indifference, consoled for want of friends by well-lined pockets.

At the "Ambigu Comique," Mr Gutzkow attended a performance of the _Mousquetaires_, a melo-drama founded on Dumas's romance of _Vingt Ans AprA"s_. Its success was prodigious; it was performed the whole of last winter and spring, upwards of one hundred and fifty nights, always to crowded houses. The novel was dramatised by Dumas himself, with the assistance of one of his literary subordinates, M. Auguste Maquet. One or two of the actors at the "Ambigu" are to form part of the troop at M. Dumas's new theatre, now erecting, and which will open, it is said, this autumn. It is built by a company, and Dumas has engaged to write for it a certain number of plays yearly. The Duke of Montpensier gives it his name.

It will be the twenty-third theatre in Paris. Mr Gutzkow lifts up his hands and eyes in astonishment and admiration. "And this is granted," he says, "to that same Alexander Dumas, who, two years ago, publicly declared, that the stage and modern literature, in France especially, suffer from the indifference of the king!" He proceeds to compare this good-humoured facility with the scanty amount of encouragement given to theatricals in Prussia, with which he appears as moderately satisfied as with various other matters in the Fatherland. In Berlin, he says, although another theatre is sadly wanted, there is little chance of its being conceded either to a dramatic author or to any one else. But to follow him in his complaints, would lead us from Paris.

It is somewhat strange that Mr Gutzkow, himself a dramatist, and who tells us that his chief object in visiting Paris was to see the remarkable men of France, did not make the acquaintance of M. Dumas. We infer, at least, that he did not, for the above passing reference is all that his book contains touching the distinguished author of _AngA"le and Antony_, of _Monte Christo_ and the _Mousquetaires_. To numerous other _littA(C)rateurs_, of greater and less merit, he sought and obtained introductions, and of them gives minute and interesting details. In Germany, as in England, Dumas is better known and more popular than any other French novelist; but, independently of that circumstance, as a brother dramatist, we wonder Mr Gutzkow neglected him. Perhaps, since he blames Balzac for overproduction, and speaks with aversion to the system of bookmaking, he eschewed the society of Dumas for a similar reason. Balzac is believed, at any rate, to write his books himself, although they suffer from haste; but Dumas has been openly and repeatedly accused of having his books written for him, and of maintaining a regular establishment of literary aide-de-camps, perpetually busied in the fabrication of tale, novel, and romance, whose productions he copies and signs, and then gives to the world as his own. His immense fertility has been the origin of this charge, which may be false, although appearances are really in favour of its truth. It seems physically impossible that one man should accomplish the mere pen and ink work of M. Dumas's literary labours; and even if, like Napoleon, he had the faculty of dictating to two or three different secretaries at once, it would scarcely account for the number of volumes he annually puts forth. From a clever but violent pamphlet, published in Paris in the spring of 1845, under the title of _Fabrique de Romans; Maison Alexander Dumas & C{ie.}_ we extract the following statement, which, it cannot be denied, is plausible enough:--

"It is difficult to assign limits to the fecundity of writer, and to fix the number of lines that he shall write in a given time. Romance-writing especially, that frivolous style, has a right to travel post, and to scatter its volumes in profusion by the wayside. Nevertheless, time must be taken to consider a subject, to arrange a plan, to connect the threads of a plot, to organize the different parts of a work; otherwise one proceeds blindfold, and finishes by getting into a blind alley, or by meeting insurmountable obstacles. Allowing for these needful preparations, supposing that an author takes no more repose than is absolutely necessary, eats in haste, sleeps little, is constantly inspired; in this hypothesis, the most skilful writer will produce perhaps fifteen volumes a-year--FIFTEEN VOLUMES, do you hear, Monsieur Dumas? And, even in this case, he will assuredly not write for fame; we defy him to chasten and correct his style, or to find a moment to look over his proofs. Ask those who work unassisted; ask our most fertile romance-writers, George Sand, Balzac, EugA"ne Sue, FrA(C)dA(C)ric SouliA(C); they will all tell you, that it is impossible to reach the limit we have fixed; that they have never attained it.

"You, M. Dumas, have published THIRTY-SIX volumes in the course of the year 1844; and for the year 1845, you announce twice as many.

"Well, we make the following simple calculation:--The most expert copyist, writing twelve hours a-day, hardly achieves 3900 letters in an hour, which gives, per diem, 46,800 letters, or sixty ordinary pages of a romance. At that rate he can copy five octavo volumes a month, and sixty in a year, but he must not rest an hour or lose a second. You, Monsieur Dumas, are a penman of first-rate ability. From the 1st of January to the 31st of December you work regularly twelve hours a-day, you sleep little, you eat in haste, you deprive yourself of all amusements, you hardly travel at all, you are never seen out of your house: consequently, if we suppose that your dramatic compositions, the bringing out of your plays, your correspondence with newspapers and theatres, importunate visitors, a few casual articles--as, for example, your letters in the _Democratie Pacifique_; (a series of five letters containing a fierce attack on the ThA(C)atre FranASec.ais, and on its administrator M. Buloz)--supposing, we say, that all these various occupations monopolize only one half of your time, we understand that you may have _copied_ THIRTY volumes in the course of the year 1844--but only thirty! the six others must have been the result of your son's labours. Now, if you are going to publish twice as much this year as you did during the last one, how will you manage? You must either give up sleeping, and work the twenty-four hours through, or you must teach your manufacturers to imitate your hand-writing. There is no other plan possible. To deliver your manuscripts to the printers as they are delivered to you, would be to furnish proofs against yourself."

The author of this pamphlet is himself a novelist, and allowance must be made for his jealousy of a successful rival. But there are grounds for his attack. M. Dumas is known to work hard: literary labour has become a habit and necessity of his life; but he is not the man to chain himself to the oar and renounce all the pleasures of society and of Paris, even to swell his annual budget to the enormous sum which it is reported, and which he has indeed acknowledged it, to reach. We have seen works published under his name, whose perusal convinced us that he had had little or nothing to do with their composition or execution. The internal evidence of others was equally conclusive in fixing their _bona fide_ authorship upon their reputed author. _Au reste_, Dumas troubles himself very little about his assailants, but pursues the even tenor of his way, careless of calumniators. The most important point for him is, that his pen, or at least his name, should preserve its popularity; and this it certainly does, notwithstanding that his enemies have more than once raised a cry that "_le Dumas baisse sur la place_." On the contrary, the article, whether genuine or counterfeit, was never more in demand, both with publishers and consumers. In Paris, as Mr Gutzkow says, every thing is a speciality; it requires half a dozen different shops to sell the merchandise that in England would be united in one. One establishment deals in lucifer-matches and nothing else; chips and brimstone form its whole stock in trade: it is the _spA(C)cialitA(C) des allumettes chimiques_. Yonder we find a spacious _magasin_ appropriated to glove-clasps; here is another where _clysopompes_ are the sole commodity. We were aware of this peculiarity of French shopkeeping, but were certainly not prepared to behold, as we did on our last visit to Paris, a shop opened upon the Place de la Bourse, exclusively for the sale of Monsieur Dumas's productions. This, we apprehend, is the _ne plus ultra_ of literary fertility and popularity. "Le Dumas" has become a commercial _spA(C)cialitA(C)_. The bookseller who wishes to have upon his shelves all the productions of the author of the _Corricolo_, must no longer think of appropriating any part of his space to the writings of others; or if he persists in doing so, he had better take three or four shops, knock down the partitions, and establish a _magasin monstre_, like those of which ambitious linendrapers have of late years set the fashion in the ChaussA(C)e d'Antin and Rue Montmartre. Curiosity prompted us to enter the Dumas shop and procure a list of its contents. The number of volumes would have stocked a circulating library. We were gratified to find--for we have always taken a strong interest in Alexander Dumas, some of whose bettermost books we have honoured with a notice in Maga--that several of his works were out of print. On the other hand, five or six new romances, from two to four volumes each, were, we were informed by the obliging Dumas-merchant, on the eve of appearing. It was a small instalment of the illustrious author's annual contribution to the fund of French _belles lettres_.

In the _Galerie des Contemporains Illustres_, by M. de Lomenie, we find the following remarks concerning M. Dumas:--

"He has written masses of romances, feuilletons by the hundred. In the year 1840 alone, he published twenty-two volumes. He has even written with one hand the history that he turned over with the other, and heaven knows what an historian M. Dumas is! He has published _Impressions de Voyages_, containing every thing, drama, elegy, eclogue, idyl, politics, gastronomy, statistics, geography, history, wit--every thing excepting truth. Never did writer more intrepidly hoax his readers, never were readers more indulgent to an author's gasconades. Nevertheless, M. Dumas has abused to such an extent the credulity of the public, that the latter begin to be upon their guard against the _discoveries_ of the traveller."

The public, we apprehend, take M. Dumas's narratives of travels at their just value, find them entertaining, but rely very slightly on their authenticity. It has been pretty confidently affirmed and generally believed, that many of his excursions were performed by the fireside; that rambles in distant lands are accomplished by M. Dumas with his feet on his _chenets_ in the ChaussA(C)e d'Antin, or in his country retirement at St Germains. Nor does he, when taxed with being a stay-at-home traveller, repel the charge with much violence of indignation. At the recent trial at Rouen of a sprig of French journalism, a certain Monsieur _de_ Beauvallon, (truly the noble particle was worthily bestowed,) the accused was stated to be extraordinarily skilful with the pistol; and in support of the assertion, a passage was quoted from a book written by himself, in which he stated, that in order to intimidate a bandit, he had knocked a small bird off a tree with a single ball. The prisoner declared that this wonderful shot was to be placed to the credit of his invention, and not to his marksmanship. "I introduced the circumstance," said he, "in hopes of amusing the reader, and not because it really happened. M. Dumas, who has also written his travelling impressions, knows that such license is sometimes taken." Whereupon Alexander, who was present in court, did most heartily and admissively laugh.

Apropos of that trial--and although it leads us away from Mr Gutzkow, who makes but a brief reference to the orgies, revived from the days of the Regency, which the evidence given upon it disclosed--M. Dumas certainly burst upon us on that occasion in an entirely new character. We had already inferred from some of his books, from the knowing _gusto_ with which he describes a duel, and from his intimacy with Grisier, the Parisian Angelo, to whom he often alludes, that he was cunning of fence and perilous with the pistol. But we were not aware that he was looked up to as a duelling dictionary, or prepared to find him treated by a whole court of justice--judge, counsellors, jury, and the rest--as an oracle in all that pertains to custom of cartel. We had reason to be ashamed of our ignorance; of having remained till the spring of the year 1846 unacquainted with the fact that in France proficiency with the pen and skill with the sword march _pari passu_. Upon this principle, and as one of the greatest of penmen, M. Dumas is also the prime authority amongst duellists. With our Gallic neighbours, it appears, a man must not dream of writing himself down literary, unless he can fight as well as scribble. To us peaceable votaries of letters, whose pistol practice would scarcely enable us to hit a haystack across a poultry-yard, and whose entire knowledge of swordsmanship is derived from witnessing an occasional set-to at the minors between one sailor and five villains, (sailor invariably victorious,) there was something quite startling in the new lights that dawned upon us as to the state of hot water and pugnacity in which our brethren beyond the Channel habitually live. When Hannibal Caracci was challenged by a brother of the brush, whose works he had criticised, he replied that he fought only with his pencil. The answer was a sensible one; and we should have thought authors' squabbles might best be settled with the goosequill. Such, it would seem, from recent revelations, is not the opinion on the other side of Dover Straits; in France, the aspirant to literary fame divides his time between the study and the shooting gallery, the folio and the foil. There, duels are plenty as blackberries; and the editor of a daily paper wings his friend in the morning, and writes a _premier Paris_ in the afternoon, with equal satisfaction and placidity. Not one of the men of letters who gave their evidence upon the notable trial now referred to, but had had his two, three, or half-dozen duels, or, at any rate, had _fait ses preuves_, as the slang phrase goes, in one poor little encounter. All had their cases of Devismes' pistols ready for an emergency; all were skilled in the rapier, and talked in Bobadil vein of the "affairs" they had had and witnessed. And greatest amongst them all, most versed in the customs of combat, stood M. Dumas, quoting the code, (in France there is a published code of duelling,) laying down the law, figuring as an umpire, fixing points of honour and of the duello, as, at a tourney of old, a veteran knight.