CHAPTER IV

Usurped celebrity--M. Lemercier and his works--Racan's white hare-_Le Fiesque_ by M. Ancelot--The Romantic artists--Scheffer--Delacroix --Sigalon--Schnetz--Coigniet--Boulanger--Géricault--_La Méduse_ in the artist's studio--Lord Byron's funeral obsequies in England--Sheridan's body claimed for debt

While Lord Byron's body was being carried from Missolonghi to England, the literary movement in France was steadily progressing. M. Liadière and M. Lemercier each did their best in grappling with Shakespeare and Rowe, each produced _Jane Shore_; M. Liadière at the Odéon on 2 April, and M. Lemercier at the Théâtre-Français on the 1st. M. Liadière's production just managed to pay its way, while M. Lemercier's was a failure, in spite of Talma, who played two parts in it--those of Gloucester and a beggar. Talma was wonderful in this play, poor though it was. In it he attempted what was in those days looked upon as a very extraordinary thing. He, a man of fine presence, graceful in bearing, full of poetry, lofty in mind and eloquent, played the part of the hunchbacked cripple Richard. The way he managed to make his right shoulder look higher than his left and his arm appear paralysed was a miracle of skill, and the denunciatory scene was a miracle of talent. But nothing could save such a wretched piece. It is now high time some undeserved reputations, supported by fine coteries and associations of intrigue and shuffling, should be shown in their true light.

For instance, there is the author of _Agamemnon_ and of _Pinto_,--he did not deserve a quarter of the reputation he received. _Agamemnon_ is a dull, lifeless play, devoid of poetic feeling, sense, rhythm and style; what is it compared with the _Orestes_ of Æschylus? _Pinto_ is a drama of the school of Beaumarchais, the worst type of dramatic school I know; the play would have died a natural death at the end of eight or ten representations if the Imperial Censor had not been so stupid as to attempt to stifle it. The persecution accorded to _Pinto_ gave it a species of celebrity, but, let it be played nowadays and one would soon see the worthlessness of the imitation of Æschylus and Seneca, the so-called original creation. And yet these two plays were the author's principal works.

Try, too, to read a number of other tragedies and dramas and poems that have fallen, buried beneath the cat-calls, laughter and hootings of the public! Try to read _Méléagre_ or _Lovelace_ or _le Lévite d'Éphraïm_; then, when you have thrown these first three works of the same author aside, and feel sufficiently recovered and can breathe freely once more, take up the task again and try to read _Ophis, Plaute_ or _la Comédie latine, Baudouin, Christophe Colomb, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, la Démence de Charles VI., Frédegonde and Brunehaut_, which Mademoiselle Rachel for some unknown purpose drew from the tomb, and galvanised three or four times without being able to bring back to life. Then, what else? Stay...we should be lost on the battlefield, among the productions that did not even linger wounded, but fell stark dead--_Camille_ and _le Masque de poix_, and _Cahin-Caha_ and _la Panhypocrisiade_: folly succeeding mediocrity; sheer nonsense and balderdash.

And yet, although wounded by these rebuffs and completely maimed by his falls, M. Lemercier sat quietly on in his arm-chair in the Palais Mazarin--as did his colleagues, M. Droz, M. Briffaut, and M. Lebrun, one trying to make people forget that he had written a little volume on _Bonheur_, another that he had perpetrated a tragedy called _Minus II._, and the third, that he had missed fire in his _le Cid d'Andalousie_ and mangled Schiller's _Maria Stuart_--he need not have troubled to say anything, the world would have let him sleep as quietly in his tomb as the spectators had fain have slept at the performance of his pieces, if hissing had never been invented. But nothing of the kind happened! When M. Lemercier perceived the literary movement of 1829 he cried out at the sacrilege, want of good taste and scandal of the thing; he signed petitions to the king to have the representation of _Henri III._ and of _Marion Delorme_ stopped; he barred the entrance to the Academy when Lamartine and Victor Hugo endeavoured to gain an entrance; he set the Archbishop of Paris against the one and produced a M. Flourens to checkmate the other; he recovered the use of his legs sufficiently to run about collecting votes against them, and the use of his right hand to turn the lock against them. Thank Heaven I had very little to do with this wicked little cur, neither have I had any personal quarrel with him, as I have never had any dealings with the Academy; but since someone must rise up and speak for justice I claim the privilege of being the first to set the example.

When M. Flourens was nominated in place of Hugo, I was passing through the green-room of the Théâtre-Français. I forget what the new play was, but M. Lemercier was holding forth there against the author of _Notre-Dame de Paris_ and of _Marion Delorme_ and the _Orientales_, just as he had opposed him all day long, silently, in the Academy. I listened to his diatribe for a few minutes, then, shaking my head, I said to him--

"Monsieur Lemercier, you have refused your vote to Victor Hugo; but there is one thing you will some day be compelled to yield him, and that is your own place. Take care lest, instead of the ill-natured things you are saying against him here, he be not obliged to say a kind word for you some day to the Academy."

And it happened just as I had predicted. It was no easy matter to praise Lemercier, but Hugo accomplished the matter by describing the period instead of speaking of the man, by referring to the emperor rather than to the poet.

"Have you read my speech?" Hugo asked me the day after he had made it.

"Yes."

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"I think you read as though you had just succeeded Bonaparte as a member of the Institute, instead of M. Lemercier as a member of the Academy."

"The deuce! I would much rather have seen you there than myself. How would you have got out of it?"

"As Racan did, by saying my big white rabbit had eaten my speech."

Racan, it will be remembered, once presented himself before the Academy with the scraps of a speech he had meant to read.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I had prepared a splendid speech, which could not fail to have won your suffrages; but my big white rabbit gobbled it up this morning.... I have brought you the remains, and you must try to make the best you can of them!"

"Ah! indeed," replied Hugo; "I could have done that, but it never occurred to me."

M. Liadière's _Jane Shore_ did for Mademoiselle Georges what M. Lemercier's _Jane Shore_ had done for Talma. It was, besides, the first attempt Mademoiselle Georges had made in Shakespearean drama: she led up to it in _Christine_ and in _Lucrèce Borgia._

It was the age of limitations; no one was strong enough to be original. They had to look for fresh things across the frontier; they sought admission to the theatres on the shoulders of Rowe or Schiller: if they were successful, they quietly put the German or English author outside; if they came a cropper, they fell on him, and it broke the shock of their fall.

After M. Liadière's production of _Jane Shore_, the Odéon presented M. Ancelot's _Fiesque._ But M. Ancelot was a purist: he never for one moment supposed that Schiller's _Fiesque_ could be presented complete as in the German play; therefore he entirely and discreetly suppressed the character of the Moor.

Can you imagine _Fiesque_ shorn of the Moor! without the Moor! the main peg on which the drama is hung! Without the Moor! the character for which Schiller constructed his play! When shall we have a law which, whilst permitting translation, will forbid mutilation? The Italians have no law affecting translators; but they have a proverb as short as it is expressive, as concise as it is true, "_Traduttore, traditore._"

Meanwhile, the Romantic school, although still shy in theatrical and literary circles, was boldly invading other branches of art.

M. Thiers, in history, had published his _Révolution française_, and Botta his _Histoire d'Italie_; M. de Barante was producing his excellent _Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne_, a work full of knowledge and brilliancy, which justly, this time, though accidentally, opened the Academy doors to its author. But the struggle was more noticeable in painting. David dead and Girodet just dead, their successors were such men as Scheffer, Delacroix, Sigalon, Schnetz, Coigniet, Boulanger and Géricault. The works of this galaxy of bold young artists adorned the walls of the Salon of 1824. Scheffer hung his _Mort de Gaston de Foix._ It was one of his first pictures, and rather gaudy in colouring, but the face of the warrior kneeling at the head of Gaston stood out most remarkably; Scheffer was the painter-poet, the best translator of Goethe I know; he re-created a whole world of German characters, from Mignon to the King of Thule, from Faust to Marguerite.

It was Scheffer who transferred to canvas Dante's great and exquisite story of Francesca da Rimini, a conception which all dramatic poets have failed to reproduce; Scheffer found time to join in every conspiracy going, in Dermoncourt's, Caron's and la Fayette's, and yet managed to become one of the finest painters France has ever produced.

Then there was Delacroix, whose _Massacre de Scio_ roused much discussion among all schools of painters. Delacroix was doomed to be pursued by fanatical ignoramuses and determined vilifiers, just as was Hugo in literature; he had already become known though his _Dante traversant le Styx_; and all his life he maintained the privilege--rare among artists--of being able to arouse a storm of hatred and of admiration upon the production of each fresh work. Delacroix is an intellectual man, full of knowledge as well as imagination, but he has one idiosyncrasy, he will persist in trying to become the colleague of M. Picot and of M. Abel de Pujol, who, let us hope, will happily have none of him.

Next comes Sigalon, with his rough, passionate Southern nature. His picture, _Locuste faisant sur un esclave l'essai de ses poisons_, had been recommended to the notice of M. Laffitte, and this banker patron of art bought it, probably before he had seen it; when it was hung in his salon, it terrified the bank clientèle and all the jobbers of the money market. Everyone asked the future minister why he had bought such a horrible picture, rather than one of Madame Haudebourg-Lescaut's or Mademoiselle d'Hervilly's little gems. M. Laffitte was plagued to such an extent that he sent for Sigalon and begged him to take back his _Locuste_, which threatened to send the great ladies of the commercial world into hysterics, imploring him to paint him something else in its place.

Sigalon took back his _Locuste_, but I do not know what he gave in exchange. Alas! Sigalon was among the number of those destined to premature death. He was sent to Rome to copy Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, and he had but just time to bequeath that great piece of work to France, and to stretch out his arms towards his country, before he died.

Schnetz had three pictures in the Salon of 1824--two great canvases which might have been painted by anybody just as well as by himself, and one of those _genre_ paintings in which he is inimitable. This _genre_ painting was called _un Sixte-Quint enfant_, the subject being a gipsy woman predicting he would become pope. The reader will guess with what fidelity Schnetz succeeded in depicting in his canvas, six foot high by four feet wide, an old fortune-teller, a shepherd lad and a young Roman girl: the _Sixte-Quint_ was a masterpiece.

Coigniet's _le Massacre des Innocents_ was hung opposite the door, and riveted attention directly people entered. It showed a woman crouching down, disordered in appearance by a long journey, terror in her looks and very pale, hiding herself, or rather hiding her child, in the corner of a ruined wall, whilst the massacre was proceeding in the distance. It was a fine piece of work, every detail of which, well thought out, well executed, well painted, I can still recall, after twenty-five years.

Boulanger had taken the subject of his painting from the works of the famous poet who had just died. Mazeppa, captured, is being bound to a wild horse, which is going to bear him away, heart-broken, fainting and dying, to those new lands where a kingdom awaited him on his awaking. The contortions of the strong young limbs as they struggled, stiffening, against the villains who were lashing him to the back of the savage beast, offered a marvellous contrast, not only in the technical presentation of the flesh, which was quite excellent, but even more so in the physical and moral suffering of Mazeppa as compared with the callous strength of his executioners.

Finally, there was Géricault, who, although he was not represented in that year's Salon, was talked about almost as much as those whose pictures hung on its walls. And this was because the new school, wanting a leader, felt that Géricault was the man, even although so far he had only painted a few studies. He had just finished _le Hussard_ and _le Cuirassier_,--which the Musée lately bought back, on the accession of King Louis-Philippe,--and he was finishing his _Méduse._ Poor Géricault! he too was to die, and to die miserably, after he had done his _Méduse._ I saw him a week before his death. The reader wonders how I became acquainted with Géricault? In the same way that I became acquainted with Béranger and Manuel. At my weekly dinners at M. Arnault's house, I often met Colonel Bro, a brave, excellent soldier, to whom every thought of the army was dear, and who had been friendly to me solely because I was the son of a general who served in the Revolution. Of course Bro was opposed to the Bourbon Government. He had a house in the rue des Martyrs, No. 23, and in that house there lodged various people according to their varying fortunes--Manuel the deputy who had been expelled from the Chamber, Béranger the poet and Géricault. One day when we had been speaking of Géricault, who was dying, Bro said to me--

"Come and see his picture _la Méduse_, and the painter himself, before he dies, so that you can at least say you have seen one of the greatest painters who ever lived."

I took care not to refuse, as will readily be believed, and the meeting was arranged for the following day. You ask what Géricault died of? Listen, and observe how, at every turn, fate seemed to put a cross against his name. He possessed some fortune, an income of about twelve thousand livres; he loved horses and painted them admirably. One day, as he was mounting a horse, he noticed that the buckle of his breeches belt had come off: he tied the two ends of the strap together and set off at a gallop. His horse threw him, and the knot of the strap bruised two vertebrae of the spinal cord as he fell. He was under treatment at the time for a disease which settled in this place; the wound never healed, and Géricault, the hope of a whole century, died of one of the longest and most painful diseases there is--decay of the spine. When we called upon him, he was busy drawing his left hand with his right.

"What on earth are you after, Géricault?" asked the colonel.

"You see, my dear fellow," said the dying man, "I am turning myself to account. My right hand will never find a better anatomical study than my left hand can offer it, and the egoist is taking advantage of the fact."

And, indeed, so thin was Géricault that one could see the bones and the muscles of his hand through the skin, as they are seen in plaster casts used for models by art students.

"My dear friend," asked Bro, "how did you bear your operation yesterday?"

"Very well ... it was a very curious experience. Just imagine, those butchers were cutting me about for ten minutes."

"You must have suffered horribly."

"Not very much.... I thought of other things."

"What did you think about?"

"A picture."

"How was that?"

"It was very simple. I had the head of my bed turned to the glass, so that, while the doctors were working at my back, I could see what they were doing when I raised myself on my elbows. Ah! if I could but recover, I swear I would make a noble sequel to André Vésale's study in anatomy! Only, my anatomical study would be taken from a living man."

This was the very scene which, two years later, Talma rehearsed before Adolphe and me, when he was in his bath.

Bro asked permission of the sick man for me to go upstairs and see his _Méduse._

"Do what you like," said Géricault; "you are in your own house." And he went on drawing his hand.

I stood a long time before the marvellous picture, although I was at that time ignorant about art and unable to estimate it at its true worth. As I left the studio, I stepped upon an overturned canvas. I picked it up, looked at the right side of it and saw a wonderful head of a fallen angel: I gave it to Bro.

"See," I said, "what I have found on the floor."

Bro went back to the sick man's room.

"Why, my dear fellow, you are mad, to leave such things as these lying about on the floor."

"Do you know whose head that is?" Géricault asked laughingly.

"No."

"Well, my good friend, it is the head of your porter's son. He came into my studio the other day, and I was so struck with the possibilities of his face that I asked him to sit for me, and in ten minutes I had done that study from it. Would you like to have it? Take it."

"But if it is a study, you did it for an object."

"Yes, for the object of study itself. It will perhaps come in useful to you some day."

"Some day, my dear Bro, is a far cry, and in the meantime much water will have flowed under the bridges and many dead bodies will have been taken through the gates of the cemetery Montmartre."

"Well! well!" said Bro.

"Take it, my friend, and keep it," Géricault replied; "if I ever want it, I shall be able to find it at your house."

Then he bowed us adieu, and we left him; Bro bringing away his angel's head. A week later, Géricault died, and his intimate friend and executor, Dreux-d'Orcy, had the greatest difficulty in getting the authorities of the Beaux-Arts to purchase _la Méduse_ for six thousand francs--a canvas which is now considered one of the most valuable possessions of the Musée. Yet the Government wanted it merely for the purpose of cutting out five or six of the heads as studies for its pupils to copy. Happily, De Dreux-d'Orcy stopped this sacrilege before it got beyond its inception.

But I see I have forgotten to speak of Horace Vernet, of M. Ingres and of Delaroche, each of whom deserves special mention. They shall receive notice presently, but first one word more about Lord Byron.

On 5 July, the body of the noble lord reached London from Missolonghi. It lay in a perforated shell steeped in a cask of spirits of wine. When the body was taken ashore from the _Florida_, in which it had been conveyed, the captain was going to throw this liquid overboard; but now that Lord Byron was dead, even his own countrymen became his worshippers, and these admirers begged the captain for the spirits of wine in which Lord Byron's body had been preserved, offering a louis a pint for it. The captain accepted the offer, and the sum thus received was at the same rate per pint as, so it was said, the poet had received per line. Two days after the arrival of the body, a post-mortem examination was made, and the doctors, who really ought to be able to find out a few things, discovered that Lord Byron had died because he had refused to be bled. His body was laid in state, but only those who had special tickets given them by his executor were admitted; yet, in spite of this precaution, the crowd was so great it was necessary to call in the aid of an armed force to keep order. The spirits of wine had preserved the flesh well enough for the poet to be still recognisable: his hands, especially, had kept almost life-like in their beauty--those hands of which the eccentric nobleman had taken such good care that, even when swimming, he had worn gloves! His beautiful hair, of which he had been very proud, had become nearly grey, although he was but thirty-seven. Each white hair in the poet's head could tell a tale of sorrow. Such had been the public excitement over Byron, that the question at once arose of burying him in Westminster Abbey; but his friends were afraid the authorities might refuse the request, and the family declared that his body should be buried in the vault at Newstead Abbey, where his ancestors lay. Even his death raised the clamour of tongues that pursued him through life. On the 12th, an immense crowd collected from break of day along the route the cortège was to take. Colonel Leigh, Byron's brother-in-law, was chief mourner; and in the six coaches that followed were the most famous Opposition Members of Parliament--Hobhouse, Douglas Kinnaird, Sir Francis Burdett, and O'Meara, surgeon to the emperor. Then, in their own private carriages, followed the Duke of Sussex, brother of the king, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Earl Grey, Lord Holland, etc. Two Greek deputies closed the procession. When it reached Hampstead Road, the pace was quickened; it was planned to spend the night at Welwyn, and to set out early the next day, Tuesday, to reach Higham-Ferrers that evening; on Wednesday it was to reach Oakham; on Thursday, Nottingham; and Newstead Abbey on Friday. The arrangement was punctually carried out, and on Friday, 17 August, the body was laid in the burying-place of his ancestors. Byron, who had been exiled by his wife, hunted down by his own family and repulsed by his contemporaries, had at last earned the right to return triumphantly to his country and to his home. He was dead! And yet it might have happened to him as it happened to Sheridan's dead body; poor Sheridan, who drank so much rum, brandy and absinthe that Lord Byron once said to him during an orgie--

"Sheridan! Sheridan! you drink enough alcohol to set fire to the very flannel vest you wear next your skin."

And the prophecy was fulfilled: Sheridan drank so much that his flannel vest was scorched. Sheridan was dead; and he left both his pockets and his bottles empty. This did not prevent the highest people in the land from doing him honour, as he lay dead in his home, which had been stript bare of everything by his creditors. Those friends who had, perhaps, refused to lend him ten guineas the day before, gave him a royal burial. The coffin was just going to be borne to the hearse, when a gentleman clad in deep mourning from head to foot, and apparently overcome with grief, came into the room in which were assembled the most aristocratic gentlemen of the three kingdoms, and, advancing to the coffin, begged, as a particular favour, to be allowed to look for the last time on the features of his unfortunate friend. He was refused at first, but his entreaties were so vehement, his voice was so broken, he was so shaken with sobs, that they did not like to refuse such grief a hearing. The top of the coffin was unscrewed and the body of Sheridan uncovered. Then the expression on the face of the gentleman in mourning changed completely, and he drew out of his pocket an order for the seizure of the body and took possession of it. He was a bailiff. Mr. Canning and Lord Lydmouth took the man outside and settled the amount he claimed, namely, the sum of £480.