Part 7

Mr Gutzkow is not far wrong in qualifying the champagne orgies of the Parisian actresses and newspaper scribes, as a resuscitation of the _mA"urs de RA(C)gence_. It appears that these gentlemen journalists live in a state of polished immorality and easy profligacy, not unworthy the days of Philip of Orleans, whom M. Dumas, be it said _en passant_, has represented in one of his books as the most amiable, excellent, and kind-hearted of men, instead of as the base, cold-blooded, and reckless debauchee which he notoriously was. In France, to a greater extent than in England, the success of an actress or dancer depends upon the manner in which the press notices her performances. Theatrical criticisms are a more important feature in French than in English newspapers, are more carefully done, and better paid.

"As an artist," said Mademoiselle Lola Montes, the Spanish _bailerina_, who formerly attracted crowds to the Porte St Martin theatre--less, however, by the grace of her dancing, than by the brevity of her attire--"I sought the society of journalists."

Miss Lola is not the only lady of her cloth making her chief society of the men on whose suffrage her reputation, as an actress, depends. In Paris, people are apt to pin their faith on their newspaper, and, finding that the plan saves a deal of thought, trouble, and investigation, they see with the eyes and hear with the ears of the editor, go to the theatres which he tells them are amusing, and read the books that he puffs. Actresses, especially second-rate ones, thus find themselves in the dependence of a few _coteries_ of journalists, whom they spare no pains to conciliate. We shall not enter into the details of the subject, but the result of the system seems to be a sort of socialist republic of critics and actresses, having for its object a reckless dissipation, and for its ultimate argument the duelling pistol. "In Paris," says Mr Gutzkow, "the critics are often dilettanti, who seek by their pen to procure admission into the boudoirs of the pretty actresses. The theatrical critic is a _petit maA(R)tre_, the analysis of a performance a declaration of love." And favours are bartered for feuilletons. It does not appear, however, that these Helens of the foot-lamps often lead to serious rivalries between the Greeks and Trojans of the press. A pungent leading article, or a keen opposition of interests, is far more likely to produce duels than the smiles or caprices even of a LiA(C)venne or an Alice Ozy. In these days of extinct chivalry, to fight for a woman is voted _perruque_ and old style; but to fight for one's pocket is correct, and in strict conformity with the commercial spirit of the age. A's newspaper, being ably directed, rises in circulation and enriches its proprietors. Journalist B, whose subscribers fall off, orders a sub-editor to pick a quarrel with A and shoot him. The thing is done; the paper of defunct A is injured by the loss of its manager, and that of surviving B improves. The object is attained. "The history of the _ProcA"s Beauvallon_," we quote from Mr Gutzkow, "so interesting as a development of the modern _Mysteries of Paris_, arose apparently from a rivalry about women, but in reality was to be attributed to one between newspapers. It is tragical to reflect, that for the _Presse_ Emile de Girardin shot Carrel, and that now the manager of the same paper is in his turn shot by a new rival, on account of the _Globe_ or the _Epoque_. We are reminded of the poet's words: _Das ist der Fluch der bA¶sen That!_"

It will be remembered that De Girardin, the founder of the _Presse_, killed Armand Carrel, the clever editor of the _National_, in a duel. The _Presse_ was started at forty francs a-year, at a time when the general price of newspapers was eighty francs. The experiment was bold, but it fully succeeded. The thing was done well and thoroughly; the paper was in all respects equal to its contemporaries; in talent it was superior to most of them, surpassed by none. De Girardin and his associates made a fortune, the majority of the other papers were compelled to drop their prices, some of the inferior ones were ruined. The innovation and its results made the bold projector a host of enemies, and he would have found no difficulty in the world in getting shot, had he chosen to meet a tithe of those who were anxious to fire at him. But after his duel with Carrel he declined all encounters of the kind, and fought his battles in the columns of the _Presse_ instead of in the Bois de Boulogne. Had he not adopted this course he would long ago have fallen, probably by the hand of a member of the democratic party, who all vowed vengeance against him for the death of their idol. As it is, he has had innumerable insults and mortifications to endure, but he has retaliated and borne up against them with immense energy and spirit. On one occasion he was assaulted at the opera, and received a blow, when seated beside his wife, a lady of great beauty and talent. The aggressor was condemned to three years' imprisonment. The _Presse_ being a conservative paper, and a strenuous supporter of the Orleans dynasty, the opposition and radical organs of course loudly denounced the injustice and severity of the sentence. De Girardin was once challenged by the editors of the _National en masse_. His reply was an article in his next day's paper, proving that the previous character and conduct of his challengers was such as to render it impossible for a man of honour to meet any one of them. Mr Gutzkow made the acquaintance of Girardin. "At the sight of the slender delicate hand which slew the steadfast and talented editor of the _National_, I was seized with an emotion, the expression of which might have sounded somewhat too _German_. Girardin himself affected me; his daily struggles, his daily contests before the tribunals, his daily letters to the _National_, his uneasy unsatisfied ambition, his unpopularity. One may have shot a man in a duel, but in order to remember the act with tranquillity, the deceased should have been the challenger. One may have received a blow in the opera house, and yet not deem it necessary, having already had one fatal encounter, to engage in a second, but it is hard that the giver of the blow must pass three years in prison. Such events would drive a German to emigration and the back-woods; they impel the Frenchman further forward into the busy crowd. Bitterness, melancholy, nervous excitement, and morbid agitation, are unmistakeably written upon Girardin's countenance."

Himself a clever critic, Mr Gutzkow was anxious to make the acquaintance of a king of the craft, the well-known Jules Janin, the feuilletonist of the _Debats_. "Janin has lived for many years close to the Luxembourg palace, on a fourth floor. His habitation is by no means brilliant, but it is comfortably arranged; and when he married, shortly before I saw him, he would not leave it. _Le Critique mariA(C)_, as they here call him, lives in the Rue Vaugirard, rather near to the sky, but enjoying an extensive view over the gardens, basins, statues, swans, nurses and children, of the Luxembourg. 'I have bought a chateau for my wife,' said he, coming down a staircase which leads from his sitting-room to his study. 'I am married, have been married six months, am happy, too happy--Pst, AdA"le, AdA"le!'

"AdA"le, a pretty young Parisian, came tripping down stairs and joined us at breakfast. Janin is better-looking than his caricature at Aubert's. Active, notwithstanding his _embonpoint_, he is seldom many minutes quiet. Now stroking his _jeune France_ beard, then caressing AdA"le, or running to look out of the window, he only remains at table to write and to eat. He showed me his apartment, his arrangements, his books, even his bed-chamber. 'I still live in my old nest,' said he, 'but I will buy my angel--we have been married six months, and are very happy--I will buy my angel a little chateau. I earn a great deal of money with very bad things. If I were to write good things, I should get no money for them.'

"It is impossible to write down mere prattle. Janin, like many authors, finds intercourse with men a relief from intercourse with books. The cleverest people willingly talk nonsense; but Janin talked, on the contrary, a great deal of sense, only in a broken unconnected way, running after AdA"le, threatening to throw her out of the window, or rambling about the room with the stem of a little tree in his hand. 'Do you see,' said he, 'I like you Germans because they like me--(this by way of parenthesis)--do you see, I have brought up my wife for myself; she has read nothing but my writings, and has grown tall whilst I have grown fat. She is a good wife, without pretensions, sometimes coquettish, a darling wife. It is not my first love, but my first marriage. You have been to see George Sand? We do not smoke, neither I nor my wife, so that we have no genius. _Pas vrai, AdA"le?_'

"AdA"le played her part admirably in this matrimonial idyl. 'She does not love me for my reputation,' said her husband, 'but for my heart. I am a bad author, but a good fellow. Let's talk about the theatre.'

"We did so. We spoke of Rachel, and of Janin's depreciation of that actress, whom he had previously supported. 'It's all over with her,' said he; 'she has left off study, she revels the night through, she drinks grog, smokes tobacco, and intrigues by wholesale. She gives soirA(C)es, where people appear in their shirt-sleeves. Since she has come of age, it's all up with her. She has become dissipated. Shocking--is it not, AdA"le?'

"'One has seen instances of genius developing itself with dissipation.'

"'They might stand her on her head, but would get nothing more out of her,' replied Janin. 'Luckily the French theatre rests on a better foundation than the tottering feet of Mamsell Rachel.--Do you know Lewald? Has he translated me well?'

"'You have fewer translators than imitators.'

"'Can my style be imitated in German?'

"'Why not? I will give you an instance.'

"Janin was called away to receive a visitor, and was absent a considerable time. He had some contract or bargain to settle. I took out my tablets, drank my cup of tea, and wrote in Janin's style the following criticism upon a performance at the Circus which then had a great run."

Having previously, it may be presumed, noted down the suggestive and curious dialogue of which we have given an abbreviation. We have our doubts as to the propriety, or rather we have no doubts as to the impropriety and indelicacy, of thus repeating in print the familiar conversations, and detailing the most private domestic habits of individuals, merely on the ground of their talents or position having rendered them objects of curiosity to the mob. Literary notoriety does not make a man public property, or justify his visitors in dragging him before the multitude as he is in his hours of relaxation, and of mental and corporeal dishabille. Mr Gutzkow is unscrupulous in this respect. Possessing either an excellent memory, or considerable skill in clandestine stenography, he carefully sets down the sayings of all who are imprudent enough to gossip with him, and important enough for their gossip to be interesting. Surely he ought to have informed Messrs Thiers, Janin, and various others, who kindly and hospitably entertained him, that he was come amongst them to take notes, and eke to print them. Forewarned, they would perhaps have been less confiding and communicative. The last four years have produced many instances of this species of indiscretion. Two prominent ones at this moment recur to us--a prying, conceited American, and a clever but impertinent German _prinzlein_. The latter, we have been informed, was on one occasion called to a severe account for his tattling propensities. With respect to Jules Janin, we are sure that Mr Gutzkow's revelations concerning his household economy, his pretty wife, his morning pastimes and breakfast-table _causeries_, will not in the slightest degree disturb his peace of mind, spoil his appetite, or diminish his _embonpoint_. The good-humoured and clever critic is proof against such trifles. Nay, as regards initiating the public into his private affairs and most minute actions, he himself has long since set the example. The readers of the witty and playful feuilletons signed J. J., will not have forgotten one that appeared on the occasion of M. Janin's marriage, having for its subject the courtship and wedding of that gentleman. The commencement made us smile; the continuation rendered us uneasy; and as we drew near the close, we became positively alarmed--not knowing how far the writer was going to take us, and feeling somewhat pained for Madame Janin, who might be less willing than her _insouciant_ husband that such very copious details of her commencement of matrimony should be supplied as pasture to the populace in the columns of a widely-circulated newspaper. Janin got a smart lashing from some of his rival feuilletonists for his indecent and egotistical puerility. Doubtless he cared little for the infliction. Habituated to such flagellations, his epidermis has grown tough, and he well knows how to retaliate them. He has few friends. Those who have felt his lash hate him; those whom he has spared envy him. As a professed critic, he finds it easier and more piquant to censure than to praise; and scarcely a French author, from the highest to the lowest, but has at one time or other experienced his pitiless dissection and cutting _persiflage_. His feuilletons were once, and still occasionally are, distinguished and prized for their graceful _naA-vetA(C)_ and playful elegance of style. His correctness of appreciation, his adherence to the sound rules of criticism, his thorough competency to judge on all the infinite variety of subjects that he takes up, have not always been so obvious. And of late years, his principal charm, his style, has suffered from inattention, perhaps also from weariness; chiefly, no doubt, from his having fallen into that commercial money-getting vein which is the bane of the literature of the day. Still, now and then, one meets with a feuilleton in his old and better style, delightfully graceful, and pungent and witty, concealing want of depth by brilliancy of surface. He is a journalist, and a journalist only; he aspires to no more; books he has not written, none at least worth the naming--two or three indifferent novels, early defunct. His feuilletons are especially popular in Germany--more so, perhaps, than in France. His arch and sparkling paragraphs contrast agreeably with the heavy solidity of German critics of the _belles lettres_. By the bye, we must not forget Gutzkow's attempt at an imitation of M. Janin's style. He was interrupted before he had completed it, but favours us with the fragment. It is a notice of the exploits of a Pyrenean dog then acting at Paris. Its author had not time to read it to Janin, who went out to walk with his wife. "I kept my paper to myself, exchanged another joke or two with my whimsical host, and departed. I have written a theatrical article, than which Janin could not write one more childish. What German newspaper will give me twenty thousand francs a-year for articles of this kind?" One, only, whose proprietor and editor have taken leave of their senses. The article _A la Janin_ is childish and frivolous enough; but childishness and frivolity would have availed the Frenchman little had he not united with them wit and grace. His German copyist has not been equally successful in operating that union. But to attempt in German an imitation of Janin's style, so entirely French as it is, and only to be achieved in that language, appears to us nearly as rational as to try to manufacture a dancing-pump out of elephant hide.

We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine ChimA"ne smoking a cigar, PhA"dre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their _foulards_ with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his _quatriA"me_, or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.

Mr Gutzkow went to see George Sand. This was his great ambition, his burning desire. He is an enthusiastic admirer of her works and of her genius. It is to be inferred from what he tells us, that he did not find it easy to obtain an introduction. Madame Dudevant lives retired, and likes not to be trotted out for the entertainment of the curious. She is particularly distrustful of tourists. They have sketched her in grotesque outline, respecting neither her mysteries nor her confidence. But Mr Gutzkow was resolved to see the outside of her house, pending the time that he might obtain access to its interior. So away he went to the Rue Pigale, No. 16, chattered with the portress, peeped into the garden, gazed at the windows which George Sand, "when exhausted with mental labour, is wont to open to cool her bosom in the fresh air." Considering that this was in the month of March, some time had probably elapsed since the lady had done any thing so imprudent. From a chapter of _Lelia_ or _Mauprat_ to an equinoctial breeze! There is a catarrh in the mere notion of the transition. However, Mr Gutzkow viewed the matter with a poet's eye--the window, we mean to say--and after gazing his fill, departed, musing as he went. A fortnight later he was admitted to see the jewel whose casket he had contemplated with so much veneration. "I have been to see George Sand. She wrote to me: 'You will find me at home any evening. If, however, I am engaged with a lawyer or compelled to go out, you must not impute it to want of courtesy. I am entangled in a lawsuit in which you will see a trait of our French usages, for which my patriotism must needs blush. I plead against my publisher, who wants to constrain me to write a romance according to his pleasure--that is to say, advocating his principles. Life passes away in the saddest necessities, and is only preserved by anxieties and sacrifices. You will find a woman of forty years old, who has employed her whole life not in pleasing by her amiability, but in offending by her candour. If I displease your eyes, I shall, at any rate, preserve in your heart the place that you have conceded me. I owe it to the love of truth, a passion whose existence you have distinguished and felt in my literary attempts.'

"I went to see her in the evening. In a small room, scarce ten feet square, she sat sewing by the fire, her daughter opposite to her. The little apartment was sparingly lighted by a lamp with a dark shade. There was no more light than sufficed to illumine the work with which mother and daughter were busied. On a divan in one corner, and in dark shadow, sat two men, who, according to French custom, were not introduced to me. They kept silence, which increased the solemn, anxious tension of the moment. A gentle breathing, an oppressive heat, a great tightness about the heart. The flame of the lamp flickered dimly, in the chimney the charcoal glowed away into white shimmering ashes, a ghostlike ticking was the only sound heard. The ticking was in my waistcoat pocket. It was my watch, not my heart." How intensely German is all this overwrought emotion about nothing! Fortunately a chair was at hand, into which the impressionable dramatist dropped himself. His first speech was a blunder, for it sounded like a preparation.

"'Pardon my imperfect French. I have read your works too often, and Scribe's comedies too seldom. From you one learns the mute language of poetry, from Scribe the language of conversation.'"

To which compliment Aurora Dudevant merely replied: "'How do you like Paris?'

"'I find it as I had expected.--A lawsuit like yours is a novelty. How does it proceed?'

"A bitter smile for sole reply.

"'What is understood in France by _contrainte par corps_?'

"'Imprisonment.'

"'Surely they will not throw a woman into prison to compel her to write a romance. What does your publisher mean by his principles?'

"'Those which differ from mine. He finds me too democratic.'

"And mechanics do not buy romances, thought I. 'Does the _Revue IndA(C)pendante_ make good progress?'

"'Very considerable, for a young periodical.'"

And so on for a couple of pages. But George Sand was on her guard, and stuck to generalities. She would not allow her visitor to draw her out, as he would gladly have done. She had been already too much gossiped about and calumniated in print. She had an intuitive perception of the approaching danger. She _nosed_ the intended book. Nevertheless, and although reserved, she was very amiable; talked about the drama--when Mr Gutzkow, remembering her unsuccessful play of _Cosima_, tried to change the subject--inquired after _Bettina_, spoke respectfully of Germany--of which, however, she does not profess to know any thing--and even smoked a cigar.

"George Sand laid aside her work, arranged the fire, and lighted one of those innocent cigars which contain more paper than tobacco, more coquetry than emancipation. I was now able, for the first time, to obtain a good view of her features. She is like her portraits, but less stout and round than they make her. She has a look of Bettina. Since that time she has grown larger.

"'Who translates me in Germany?'

"'Fanny Tarnow, who styles her translations _bearbeitungen_.'

"'Probably she omits the so-called immoral passages.'

"She spoke this with great irony. I did not answer, but glanced at her daughter, who cast down her eyes. The pause that ensued was of a second, but it expressed the feelings of an age."