CHAPTER XXII

DESPRÉAUX, POET AND--HUSBAND OF GUIMARD

There can be nothing more irksome to a man than to be known merely as the husband of his more famous wife.

In speaking, however, of Despréaux as “husband of Guimard,” it is not my intention to cast any slight on an estimable and, in his own time, well-known personality; but I do so merely that the reader will thereby be able to “place” her genial and accomplished husband, M. Despréaux to whom reference has already been made. He was born in 1748, five years after Mlle. Guimard, and was the son of a musician at the Paris Opera, where he himself was entered as a supernumerary-dancer in 1764. He made rapid progress in the art of his choice and won increasing reputation until, unhappily a wound in the foot completely closed his career as a “star,” and being a man of much theatrical experience and general culture, he then became a _maître de ballet_ and also gave dancing lessons. In 1789 he married Madeleine Guimard, whom he had long worshipped, and the two retired, as we know, at the opening of the Revolution to a cosy nest on the heights of Montmartre. So high, indeed, were they and so steep was the roadway approaching their dwelling, that the patrols refrained from troubling them, and save for financial losses, and rumours of revolution and distant guns, the couple remained untroubled by the red and raging Anarchy in the city stretched at their feet.

Edmond de Goncourt makes out--on what authority I cannot fathom--that Despréaux was born in 1758, and _not_ 1748, thus making him out to be fifteen years the junior of Guimard when they married in 1789. As on other points he writes with such accuracy and copious wealth of detail one might suppose him to be correct, but seeing that Despréaux was undoubtedly entered a supernumerary-dancer in the Opera in 1764, and could hardly have been so at the age of six, one can only infer a slip of the pen, and that Goncourt really meant 1748, which would make the young male dancer’s age the likelier one of sixteen on appearing at Opera as a super, although he would, of course, have been training earlier.

The question of age, however, is comparatively small. The thing that matters for us is that Despréaux, following modestly in the footsteps of his far greater predecessor Boileau-Despréaux (not an ancestor, by the way) had cultivated a taste for poetry, and during his retirement at Montmartre, divided his time between amusing his wife and friends with cutting silhouettes--at which he was an expert--and singing songs and parodies which he wrote himself.

It seems an odd thing, does it not? that a man should be thus amusing himself and his friends--should be sufficiently undistracted to do so--while the greatest revolution then known to history should be in progress. But what could he do? He was a dancer, a singer, an artist; and could have had little weight had he meddled in the risky game of politics. As it was, perhaps, he chose the saner course, and when most were losing their heads he kept his own, and, as Richard Cœur de Lion had when in prison, wiled away the hours in song.

His poems were collected and published in two volumes under the title: “_Mes Passe-Temps: Chansons, suivies de l’Art de la Danse, poème en quatre chants, calqué sur l’Art Poétique de Boileau Despréaux._” They were “adorned” with engravings after the design of Moreau Junior, and the music of the songs appears at the end of the second volume.

The work was published after the Revolution fever had subsided, in 1806, and perhaps the very strangest comment on the Revolution is implied in Despréaux’s preface, which calmly opens with the following: “In 1794 I suggested to a number of friends that we should meet once or twice a month to dine together, under the condition that politics should never be mentioned, and that each should bring a song composed upon a given word. My proposition was taken up; we decided that the words should be drawn by lot, after being submitted to the judgment of the gathering, in order to eliminate subjects which might only present needless difficulties.”

And so the year 1794, being one of the worst of all those red years of Revolution, this little centre went placidly through it, dining and wining and rhyming, as if there were nothing worse than a sham fight raging round the distant horizon. It positively makes one wonder if there _was_ a French Revolution after all. But no, there evidently was, for our author had a nice little library, and in the following year, owing to monetary losses occasioned by the general _débâcle_, had to sell many of his beloved volumes. Of course he made song about it--“Ma Bibliothèque, ou Le Cauchemar”--in which he pictures the spectre of want asking him what he will do, and urging him to sell his books for food. “Que feras-tu, Despréaux?” the nightmare questions:

“Ni bois ni vin dans ta cave De chandelle pas un bout: Faussement on fait le brave Lorsque l’on manque de tout!

* * *

Une tartine de beurre Vaut plus que jadis un bœuf Dans un mois, à pareille heure Quel sera le prix d’un œuf? Par décade mille livres Ne peuvent payer ton pain Mon ami, _mange tes livres_ _Pour ne pas mourir de faim_.”

The spectre points out that the prospect of having to do so is no mere dream and urges him to sell “_tous tes auteurs fameux_,” pointing out that he could live on the “divine” Homer for at least a day or two, while on the “pensif” Rousseau he could exist a long time. He could count on his precious Virgil for the rent, while the translation “de Delille” should yield his old gardener’s wages. Among the many works mentioned in indiscriminate order are Plutarch, La Fontaine, Don Quichotte, Anacreon, Newton, Milton, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Boccaccio, Erasmus, Montesquieu, Boileau, Corneille, Voltaire, Racine, Favart, Molière, Plato, Dorat, Seneca, and a set of the British Drama!

It should be noted, by the way, that Despréaux had some knowledge of English and had paid occasional visits to London with his wife, who was rather a favourite of the then Duchess of Devonshire, and in one of his poems he gives an amusingly bitter “Tableau de Londres,” in which he complains of--

“Cette atmosphère de cendre Qui ne cesse de descendre,”

speaks of the lower classes as “insolent” and chaffs the English taste for beer and the eternal “roast-biff” (_sic_); while as to the English Sunday, the stanza must really be given in full:

“Deux cents dimanches anglais, N’en valent pas un français, Ce jour, si joyeux en France, Est le jour de pénitence; Et lorsqu’un Anglais se pend Se pend, se pend, C’est un dimanche qu’il prend; A Paris, le dimanche on danse. Vive la France!”

Our poet’s range of subject was remarkable--high philosophy, discussed with smiling raillery; curious life-contrasts, like that of his wife being a popular dancer and his sister a nun; charades, dialogues, charming and pathetic little word-pictures like “La Neige,” a “Bacchic” song on “The End of the World,” and so forth, nothing seemed to come amiss that could be turned into song. Throughout his varied work there runs a consistent strain of Gallic gaiety--itself a form of bravery; and if his Muse has not the hard, biting intensity of a Villon, nor the lofty rhetoric of a Victor Hugo, it manages to keep a middle course of sanity and pleasantry with invariable success and an infallible though limited appeal.

Among his many ingenious poems are two of special interest to stage-folk of all time, one “Le Langage des Mains,” _Chanson Pantomime_, the other “Le Langage des Yeux”; both of which require to be illustrated by the actor who sings them and emphasise the need of facial and manual expression. As he truly says:

“Le comédien ou l’orateur, Sans mains, serait un corps sans âme.”

In one of the poems appears the phrase, “La Walse (_sic_) aux mille tours,” while among the notes at the end of the volume is a definition which may be translated as follows: Walse--a Swiss dance the music of which is in 3-4 time; but it has only the value of two steps. It is done by a couple pirouetting while circling round the salon. It has nothing in it of complexity; it is the art in its infancy. When its rhythm is in 2 time it is called “_sauteuse_.” The word “_sauteuse_” suggests the ordinary polka in 2-4 time, in the customary manner, for any dance described as “sauteuse” means one in which the feet are raised from the ground, or in which leaping is indulged in, _not_ when the feet glide on the ground, as in the modern waltz. The old _volta_, from which the modern waltz is derived, was, it will be remembered, a _leaping_ dance.

The greater part of the second volume is mainly devoted to his lengthy paraphrase of the great Boileau’s “L’Art Poétique,” under the title of “L’Art de la Danse,” which is full of sound instruction to dancers and interesting criticism of his contemporaries.