CHAPTER XIV

FREAKS AND “FUMISTES”

“_If there is a fill of tobacco among the crew, for God’s sake pass it round and let us have a pipe before we go._”—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

“_‘Lord, my dear,’ returned he, with the utmost good humour, ‘you seem immensely chagrined; but, hang me, when the world laughs at me, I laugh at all the world, and so we are even.’_”

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, Beau Tibbs at Home.

“_Stupeur du badaud, gaîté du trottin, Le masque à Sardou, la gueule à Voltaire, La tignasse en pleurs sur maigres vertèbres Et la requimpette au revers fleuri D’horribles bouquets pris à la poubelle, Ainsi se ballade à travers Paris Du brillant Montmartre au Quartier-Latin Bibi-la-Purée, le pouilleux célèbre, Prince des crasseux et des Purotains._”

JEHAN RICTUS.

“_Much good might be sucked from these beggars._”—CHARLES LAMB.

“Mieux vaut goujat debout qu’empereur enterré.”—EMILE GOUDEAU.

The dislike of and contempt for the bourgeois felt by the Bohemian students and the other Bohemians who have elected to reside in the _Quartier Latin_ pale into insignificance before the absolute detestation of the bourgeois displayed by the _Quartier’s chevaliers d’industrie_, the hangers-on and camp-followers of its littérateurs and artists, who bear about the same relation to their principals that a side-show bears to a circus or the capering monkey to the hand-organ and its grinder.

As the lackey of the nobleman often holds himself above the commoner far more than does the nobleman himself, and as he will rather put up with poor living and poor wages in the service of an indigent aristocrat than demean himself by serving in the households of tradesmen, so these ne’er-do-wells of the _Quartier Latin_—ragged retainers of the threadbare gentry of arts and letters, pinched flunkeys of the straightened lords of thought, seedy clients of needy Latin patricians, tatterdemalion cup-bearers to tattered Parnassians, supernumeraries to the protagonists in the melodrama of cultured poverty, chorus to the soloists of the _Learned Beggars’ Opera_—would be humiliated and miserable outside of the atmosphere of letters. They would rather be door-keepers, to paraphrase a familiar text, in the house of the intellectual _élite_ than to dwell in the tents of vulgarity.

If there is more comedy and less tragedy in the existences of these satellites than in the existences of their controlling luminaries, it is not because their physical hardships are fewer,—for, parasites, sycophants, trencher-friends, pick-thanks, and toad-eaters though they be, theirs is but sorry hap,—but because they are mostly ambitionless or feeble-minded and so not as susceptible to the mental torture of disenchantment.

They “carry the half of their mattresses in their hair,” after the fashion of the nephew of Rameau described by Diderot. They don the cast-off garments and retail the worn-out epigrams of their _fétiches_, who are amused by and therefore endlessly indulgent of them. They strut and smirk and rant like children masquerading in the attic frippery of their elders, make as clever displays of superficial knowledge as the most up-to-date members of the most up-to-date women’s clubs, and revert constantly to a previous connection with the university which is not always imaginary. As individuals, these pseudo-connoisseurs and savants come and go in the _Quartier Latin_: the class goes on forever.

There are plenty of persons still living in the Latin Quarter who knew the originals of the eccentric _Quartier_ types immortalised by Jules Vallès in his phenomenal _Réfractaires_.

Fontan-Crusoe, a genuine bachelor of arts, who slept one hundred and eleven consecutive nights under a tree near the fortifications, spent for nourishment from three to five sous a day which he earned by selling in the street his two principal works, _Le Spectre Noir: Elégie_ and _Un Galop à travers l’Espace_.

Poupelin, called also “_Mes Papiers_,” he of the enormous yellow felt, “_pantalon d’enfant_,” and “_redingote de centennaire_,” who spent his time seeking titled office and recommendations therefor, when he was not occupied in one of the three positions which he accepted with equal alacrity and in which he was equally efficient,—or inefficient,—namely, teacher, school usher, and cook.

And M. Chaque, “_Orientaliste_,” another genuine _bachelier_, who had a useful habit of carrying rice pudding in his hat and omelettes and beef _à la mode_ in his pockets,—ex-professor of a colonial school; author of a volume of travels in Greece (published by a reputable firm) with which he beset Greek enthusiasts orally and successfully; a constant reader of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, to which he had, once on a time, contributed an article; communicant of all the Christian or pagan sects that had churches or temples in Paris; privileged hanger-on of gaming-houses and soldiers’ barracks; razor-sharpener and professional weeper at the cemetery of Montparnasse.

Two vagrant types (equally grotesque with those of Vallès), who are now dead, but whom one need not have been long associated with the _Quartier_ to remember, were Eugène Cochet and Amédée Cloux.

Cochet was an ex-prefect of the Department of the Eure, a rhymester and the author of an unpublished work of “philosophical reflections,” who depended for his sustenance on the bounty of one or two restaurants and the _soupes populaires_, and who had a mania for decorations, like Poupelin. The students, who made Cochet the butt of a great deal of good-natured chaffing, which he accepted gratefully as so much tribute to his worth, formally invested him one day with the star of the Legion of Honour (attached to a flaming red cravat) and with the insignia of ten fantastic foreign orders, notably with that of the Garter and that of the Green Elephant, which last consisted of a zinc elephant, painted green, suspended from a bailiff’s chain.

Amédée Cloux, poet, emulated the literary forgeries of Chatterton at closer range. He had a marvellous facility for copying poetic styles, and he got his living for a time by the deaths of his more illustrious brother poets. As soon as a well-known poet died, he produced imitations of his poetry, which he sold as posthumous works. His most successful efforts, “_Le Chien Mort_,” attributed by him to Baudelaire, and “_Plus de Représailles_” and “_L’Ode à la Colonne Déboulonnée_,” purporting to be by Eugène Vermesch, deceived both the public and the experts until the good Cloux, who was more of a joker than a vulgar swindler, acknowledged his ruse.

Of the freaks who now perch in (for they can hardly be said to inhabit) the _Quartier Latin_, far and away the most famous is Bibi-la-Purée,

“_Qui porte en son cœur un vaste mépris Pour quiconque n’est Bohème ni poète._”

No Parisian of the period, perhaps, has been more written about, and none more photographed, sculptured, etched, and painted; and none has done more to divert his time than Bibi. Bibi is by turns an artist’s model, a sponge, a simple beggar, a shoe-black, a tourist’s guide, a watcher of bicycles at café doors, a dealer in photographs of himself and in original poems, a boon companion of poets and artists, and a confidant and counsellor of _étudiantes_; but he is first, last, and all the time Bibi the fop, the Beau Tibbs of Latium, the Beau Brummel of the Castalian gutter.

The first time I saw Bibi was in 1895, at an anarchist meeting addressed by Louise Michel, in the rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève, back of the Panthéon. He was muffled to the eyes, conspirator-like, in the folds of a rusty, tattered Spanish cloak, faced with dirty red velvet, and wore besides a white yachting cap, white skin-tight pantaloons, gaping patent leather shoes fitted with cavalry spurs, and white gaiters.

The last time I saw Bibi he was pulling an unlighted cigar, and tenderly convoying to his lodging a poet, not of the most obscure, who had been imbibing too freely. He was dight in a red fez, a bright green velvet waistcoat under an Inverness cape (with no jacket intervening), a yellow silk neckerchief, cavalry boots, and baggy brown corduroy trousers; and, if I should itemise all the different costumes it has been my privilege to see Bibi wear between these dates, a large octavo volume would scarcely hold the list. Reputed in some quarters to be an ex-student, an ex-journalist, a political refugee, and a disguised nobleman, and in others to be a blackmailer, a swindler, a thief, a police spy, and a pander, the mystery that envelopes Bibi’s present as well as his past—a mystery which his autobiography, published in _L’Idée_, did appreciably nothing to dispel—gives him a curiosity-piquing charm.

There is no doubt as to Bibi’s untidiness, his inordinate vanity, his assurance, his unscrupulousness, and his genuine kindness of heart; but beyond this all is conjecture.

Jehan Rictus in a recent poem, to the recitation of which (at the _Noctambules_ or the _Grille_) Bibi often listens with his inscrutable smile, has given Bibi a large symbolic significance:—

_“On dit de Bibi: ‘Chut! c’est un mouchard!’ D’autres: ‘Taisez-vous, il est bachelier!’ Et d’autres encor’: ‘Bibi est rentier.’ Mais nul ne peut croire à la vérité: Bibi-la-Purée, c’est le Grand-Déchard. Et quel âge a-t-il? On ne sait pas bien. Son nom symbolique en le largougi Proclame qu’il est assez ancien, Quasi éternel comme la Misère. Et trimballes-tu, tu trimballeras, O Bibi, toujours ta rare effigie. Bibi-la-Purée jamais ne mourra._

* * * * *

_C’est le Pèlerin, c’est le Solitaire Qui depuis toujours marche sur la Terre, C’est un sobriquet bon pour l’Etre Humain.”_

Bibi was a humble follower and adorer—slave almost—of Verlaine, who playfully honored him with the following verses in his _Dédicaces_:—

A BIBI-PURÉE

_Bibi-Purée, Type épatant Et drôle tant!_

_Quel Dieu te crée Ce chic, pourtant, Qui nous agrée_

_Pourtant, aussi, Ta gentillesse Notre liesse, Et ton souci De l’obligeance Notre gaieté, Ta pauvreté, Ton opulence?_

A sincere mourner for Verlaine since his death, Bibi regards it as his special mission to cherish the cult of the dead poet’s memory.

The sincerity of Bibi’s mourning, however, has not prevented him from turning an honest penny by selling the inscribed volumes Verlaine had given him, nor from turning many a dishonest penny by selling, as relics, copies of Verlaine’s works supplied with forged inscriptions, and numerous other objects Verlaine never saw.

Thanks to Bibi’s zeal, Verlaine’s last cane and last pipe have been multiplied, like “the only true cross,” and have taken up their abodes in the poetic shrines of two hemispheres.[77]

It is impossible to think of Bibi without thinking of the Mère Casimir, lately deceased, who was, for some reason, Bibi’s most cordial aversion.

The Mère Casimir was a tiny, twisted, shrivelled old flower-woman, who claimed to be an _ex-danseuse_ of the _Opéra_ and to have had for friends “princes and marquises,” and who was ready at any moment, in consideration of a few sous, to prove it by executing certain grotesque Terpsichorean movements on the sidewalk.

While the Mère Casimir was still alive, there was nothing that delighted the students more than bringing about an encounter between her and Bibi, and hearing the pair blackguard each other. Only once, so far as history records, was there a truce between them,—a certain _Mi-carême_, when, Bibi having been elected king and the Mère Casimir queen of the fête, they paraded the streets of Paris together in the same car. On that day the antipathetic pair were so impressed with the dignities and responsibilities of their position that they treated each other with royal magnanimity. Bibi even went farther than strict etiquette required. In descending from his throne at the breaking up of the cortège, he gallantly fell to his knees,—sight for gods and men!—and kissed the hand of his queen.

The Marquis de Soudin, a long-haired but relatively neat little man, with the noiseless step of a bird, who makes crayon portraits, at ten sous per head, at the _Grille_ and the _Noctambules_ and in the all-night restaurants of the _Halles Centrales_, is as much of a mystery in his way as Bibi, though he has lived in the _Quartier_ more than twenty-five years. He is said to have been crossed in love early in life, and his title is believed by many to be genuine. However that may be, the little Soudin has the education and manners of a gentleman, and _noblesse oblige_ inspires his conduct. He does no offence to any, and is a veritable providence to his poorer fellow-Bohemians. M. le Marquis makes poems as well as portraits, but not for money. “At least no merchant traffics in his heart.”

The artist bard of Père Lunette’s,[78] who makes crayon portraits at ten sous a head, like the little marquis, and poems for money, unlike the little marquis, is also supposed by many to be of noble origin. He is a dashing, handsome fellow, with the felt and the swagger of a _mousquetaire_, and is, when he chooses to quit the vulgar rôle his position at Père Lunette’s imposes upon him, a lively and stimulating conversationalist. In summer, with his bosom friend Père Jules, he tramps the country roads of France.

Achille Leroy, philosopher and poet (the anarchist author-editor-publisher-bookseller, referred to in the chapter on the oral propaganda of the anarchists), is another favourite with the students, upon whose quizzical, good-natured patronage he depends mainly for the sale of his wares.

Some years back, at the moment of the anarchist “Terror,” Achille, whose illusions regarding his intellect are on a par with those of Bibi regarding his person, offered himself as a candidate for the Academy. He made the customary “visits” to the Academicians attired in the uniform of a Mexican general, and wherever he was not received left an ominous-looking brass kettle to which, along with his visiting card, this inscription was attached:

“_Je ne fais sauter que les idées._”

Other contemporary freaks who help to swell the picturesqueness and gaiety of the _Quartier_ are: the anarchist cobbler _chansonnier_ Père La Purge (author of the _Chanson du Père La Purge_, quoted in a previous chapter), whose customers (mainly the poets and artists of the _Quartier_) visit his shop in the rue de la Parcheminerie to enjoy the piquancy of the contrast between his ruddy, contented face and his anathemas against society; Gaillepand, a big, athletic-looking fellow, who, having failed to earn a living by legitimate sculpture, took to making plaster medallions of the celebrities of Paris, especially those of the _Quartier_, and selling them up and down the Boulevard St. Michel, while his brother “_Môme l’Histoire_” (now dead) displayed his phenomenal memory by reciting biographies and poems; the Mère Souris (Mother Mouse), so called from her conical head and her funny little walk, ex-proprietor of an artists’ restaurant and present palmist, fortune-teller, and reputed usurer,—in short, a very useful personage to the _étudiantes_; Victor Sainbault, author, editor, publisher, and bookseller, like Achille Leroy; and the poet Coulet, who gives author’s readings before the terraces of the cafés, and who between times, if hearsay may be credited, provides petty bourgeois families with wedding, christening, and funeral verses at so much per yard.

It is because these freaks take themselves seriously, because they are unconscious humourists and involuntary _farceurs_, that they are amusing. But the _Quartier_ has always had among its choicer Bohemians a class of conscious, almost professional humourists and deliberate _farceurs_, called _fumistes_,[79] who by drolly expressing their very disrespect for life have done much to make life worth the living.

The most renowned of the _Quartier fumistes_ who practised when those now in middle life were young was unquestionably Sapeck.

“Verily,” says Emile Goudeau, “I owe a taper to Sapeck for having initiated me into this inner folly which manifests itself outwardly by imperturbable buffooneries.... Better to have kept alive, thanks to _insouciance_, than to have died stoically of _misère_, wrapped in the cloak of a Byronian hero. If we occasionally exceeded the proper limits of the laugh, at least we did not light the brazier of Escousse nor seek the rope of Gérard de Nerval; and that is something.”

Sapeck is very likely dead now. At any rate, he is dead to the Quarter. But, as he was the successor (according to the archæologists of _fumisterie_) of Romien and Vivier, so he has his successors, one of whom the _rapin_ Karl, mystifier of Quesnay de Beaurepaire and abductor of the Comtesse Martel (“Gyp”), has almost earned the right to be regarded as his peer. Zo d’Axa, who is less a _fumiste_ than he has it in him to be, because he takes time to be a serious and talented author and to serve sentences in prison for his opinions, perpetrated a _fumisterie_ some five years back that has taken an honourable place among the classics of its kind.

It will be best narrated as he narrated it himself in one of his celebrated _Feuilles_:—

“HE IS ELECTED

“_Good People of the City, Electors_,

“Listen to the edifying story of a pretty little white jackass, candidate in the capital. It is not a Mother Goose tale nor a sensation of the _Petit Journal_. It is a veracious narrative for the grown-up youngsters who still vote:—

“A little jackass, born in the land of La Fontaine and of Rabelais, ... made a campaign for a deputy’s chair. When election day came, this jackass, this typical candidate, answering to the unequivocal name of _Nul_, executed a last-hour manœuvre. On a warm Sunday in May, while the people crowded to the urns, the white jackass, the candidate _Nul_, enthroned on a triumphal car drawn by electors, traversed Paris, his _bonne ville_.

“Erect on his hind legs, ears to the wind, craning forward, over-topping proudly the parti-colored vehicle,—the vehicle in the form of an urn,—his head planted between the traditional glass of water and the presidential bell, he passed in the midst of hisses and bravos and jests.

“The jackass beheld Paris, and Paris beheld him.

“Paris! The Paris that votes, the rout, the people sovereign every four years,—the people simpleton enough to believe that sovereignty consists in naming its masters....

“Slowly the jackass went through the streets. As he advanced, the walls were covered with placards by members of his committee, while others distributed his proclamation to the crowd:—

“‘Reflect, dear fellow-citizens. You know that your deputies deceive you, have deceived you, will deceive you; and yet you vote. Vote for me then! Vote for the jackass! Elect the jackass! It is impossible to be more stupid than you.’

“This frankness, a trifle brutal, was not to everybody’s taste.

“‘They are insulting us,’ bellowed some. ‘They are ridiculing universal suffrage,’ protested others more justly. Some one shook his fist at the jackass furiously, and said, ‘_Sale Juif!_’ (Dirty Jew), but a laugh burst out, and spread sonorous. The candidate was acclaimed. Bravely the elector made fun of himself and of his representatives. Hats and canes were waved. Ladies threw flowers. The jackass passed.

“He descended from the heights of Montmartre, going towards the _Quartier Latin_. He crossed the Grands-Boulevards, the Croissant,[80] where is cooked, without salt, the _ordinaire_ served by the gazettes. He saw the _halles_ (markets) where the starving glean in the heaps of garbage, the quays where electors elect lodgings under the bridges.

“Heart and brain! Paris! Democracy!...

“The jackass arrived before the Senate.

“He skirted the palace, whence the guard emerged hurriedly. He followed, on the outside, alas! the too-green gardens. Then came the Boulevard St. Michel. On the terraces of the cafés the youth of the _Quartier_ clapped their hands. The crowd, constantly growing, snatched out of each other’s hands the jackass’s proclamations. The students harnessed themselves to the car, a professor pushed the wheels; but it struck three, and the police appeared.

“Since ten o’clock that morning, from post to commissariat, the telegraph and the telephone had signalled the strange passage of the subversive animal. The order was issued: ‘Arrest the jackass!’ And now the police sergeants barred the route of the candidate.

“Near the Place St. Michel, the faithful committee of _Nul_ was ordered by the armed force to conduct its candidate to the nearest police station. Naturally, the committee paid no attention, and kept on its way. The car crossed the Seine, and soon it halted before the _Palais de Justice_.

“The police, re-enforced, surrounded the white jackass, the impassive jackass. The candidate was arrested at the gate of this _Palais de Justice_, whence deputies, defaulters, _panamistes_, all the big thieves, go out free.

“In the midst of the surging crowd the car swayed as if about to capsize. The police, a brigadier at their head, had seized the shafts and donned the straps. The committee insisted no more: they helped harness the _sergents de ville_.

“Thus the white jackass was abandoned by his warmest partisans. Like any other vulgar politician, the animal had come to a bad end. The police towed him, authority guided his route. _From this moment Nul was only an official candidate._ His friends acknowledged him no more. The door of the prefecture opened wide, and the jackass entered quite as if he were entering his own stall.”

What has all this starving and self-killing and freakishness and practical joking of the _Quartier_ Bohemians to do with revolution? Much every way.

Jules Vallès (all his life a Latin Quarter Bohemian), whom Richepin has characterised as “the most curious and the most complete of the _déclassés_ of the pen”; of whom his intimate friend Gill said, “He would be the tenderest, the most _spirituel_, the most charming, and the most eloquent fellow in the world, were it not for the mania which possesses him to believe himself at ease only in the smoke of battles or the bawlings of the faubourgs”; who presented himself at the elections of 1869 as “_le candidat de la misère_,” and put at the head of his second volume of _Jacques Vingtras_ (_Le Bachelier_), “_A ceux qui nourris de Grec et de Latin sont morts de faim, je dédie ce livre_,”—Jules Vallès (and who should know better than Vallès?) said, not long before the Commune was declared:—

“In this life there is a danger. _Misère_ without a flag conducts to the _misère_ that has a flag, and makes of the scattered _réfractaires_ an army which counts in its ranks less sons of the people than sons of the _bourgeoisie_. Behold them bearing down upon us, pale, mute, emaciated, beating the charge with the bones of their martyrs upon the drum of the _révoltés_, and waving as a standard, at the point of a sword, the blood-stained shirt of the last of their suicides!...

“These _déclassés_ must find places, or they will have revenge; and this is why so much absinthe runs down their throats and so much blood upon the paving-stones. They become drunkards or rebels.”

And again, in the introduction to his _Réfractaires_, he says, “Give me three hundred of these men, any sort of a flag, toss me down there before the regiments in a raking fire, and you shall see what short work I will make of the gunners at the head of my _réfractaires_!”

Every convulsion Paris has undergone has proved the truth of Vallès’ mordant sentences. What was the Commune, indeed, but the joint self-assertion of the _déclassés_?

“_Déclassés_,” wrote Richepin of the leaders of the Commune shortly after its suppression, “from the unrecognised general, Cluseret, to the unappreciated caricaturist, Pilotell; from the intelligent deputy, Millière, to the lunatic, Allix; from the great painter, Courbet, to the ex-monk, Panille, and _tutti quanti_; _déclassés_ of politics, like Delescluze and Pyat, of journalism and of literature, like Vallès, Vermesch, Vermorel, Grousset, Vésinier, Maroleau; of the army, like Rossel, of the workshop, like Assi, of the _brasserie_, like Rigault, of lower still, like Johamard.”

Not all these starving, suiciding, freakish, jesting Latin Quarter Bohemians are conscious socialists and anarchists, though there is a good proportion of them who are,—a greater proportion probably than among the students proper, by as much as their situations are more precarious; but they nearly all hold vaguely subversive humanitarian views, and they are all, even the Bohemians by choice, _réfractaires_ and _révoltés_. Like the Thélémites of Rabelais, they all recognise but the one law which is no law,—“_Fay ce que vouldras._”

Their way of living is a species of the _propagande par l’exemple_ from which it is a quick and easy step to the _propagande par le fait_. Given a crisis, _réfractaire_, _révolté_, and _révolutionnaire_ spell very much the same thing. They are all ripe for disorder.

The victims of the _misère en habit noir_—the poor doctors, teachers, lawyers, petty functionaries, and clerks—are, in the nature of the case, more submissive to their fate than the free-living freaks, littérateurs, and artists; but there are evidences that they, too, are beginning to think of stepping over the bounds within which patience is a virtue.

M. Paul Webre, one of a group of young men of means and education—evolutionists, not revolutionists—who have pursued the laboratory method of studying the conditions, the psychology, and the relations to society of various employments, has given the following testimony to the expectant, if unaggressive, attitude of the small clerks:—

“My relatively frail health forbidding me work in a factory, I sought a place as a clerk. After twenty ineffectual applications I succeeded in crossing the threshold of an insurance company. I earn there 100 francs a month, on which I manage to live without resorting to my income. I carry with me in the morning a lunch of bread, cheese, and a slice of ham or sausage, and I talk with my comrades of the office. Some are married. These are the most unfortunate; but they reflect that, if they quit their meagre situations, there are innumerable persons in the streets ready to vie with each other to obtain them, and they cling to them for dear life. Nevertheless, their hatred is brooding. While taking cold bites during the hour of respite which the avaricious administration accords us, we pass our chiefs in review, and compare their profits with our own. The director has a salary of 100,000 francs, the president is several times a millionaire; while we, _morbleu_! Oh, the monotonous days! the repulsive work! the ominous end of the month! and the certainty of plodding along for twenty years in the same fashion, only to be sent away at last without resource! It is poverty in the frayed frock-coat, the worst poverty. I have tried to organise the discontented, but they have a terror of compromising themselves and of making themselves marks for the Company’s blows. So, bending over their documents, they spy the growlings in the street, ready to descend there, in their turn, when the revolution asserts itself. The atmosphere in which these petty clerks stagnate is saturated with bitterness, with rancours, with regrets, with deceived ambitions. Terrible eruptions are being prepared therein. And I cry to the capitalists: ‘Take care! Transform these enemies into friends, these anarchists into conservators! Share your profits with them. Throw them a honey-cake while there is still time.’”

* * * * *

“_Put a man in the street with a coat that is too large on his back, pantaloons that are too short, without a collar, without a shirt, without stockings, without a sou, had he the genius of Machiavelli, of Talleyrand, he would fall into the gutter._”—JULES VALLÈS.

* * * * *