Part 11

Bohemia was not to be baulked a second time. The elements were present, and all that remained to do was for somebody to give them a slight push, such as Lucretius gave to his atoms. The push occurred at the Salon of 1833, if Houssaye is to be believed--a condition not inevitably fulfilled. There, one fine day, he met Théophile Gautier and Nestor Roqueplan, the former of whom was certainly a stranger to him. A genial conversation on the merits of the pictures ensued, in which Arsène Houssaye made, as he was destined to do, a very good impression upon his senior. Gautier was not a man to leave hazard any further part after such a promising beginning, and he accordingly proffered an invitation to _déjeuner_ next day in the words: "Je te surinvite à venir déjeuner invraisemblablement demain chez les auteurs de mes jours." Houssaye turned up next day at No. 8 Place Royale, where the irrepressible Théo introduced his father as "le respectable bonhomme qui me donna l'être." The other guest at this _déjeuner_ was Gérard de Nerval, whom with true instinct Gautier had brought to test and to embrace the newly found brother. The wit and gaiety, the range and the emphasis of their postprandial conversation can be imagined. At last Théo blurted out frankly: "Tu sais que je ne te connais pas: dis-moi huit vers de toi, je le dirai qui tu es." It was not a test which the future author of "Vingt Ans" feared. Gautier found himself able to give an enthusiastic account of the new brother; the two truest Bohemians in Paris were at once bosom friends, and the most wayward of geniuses was a friend of both.

So far the credit had been with Gautier, but Bohemia was still without a dwelling-place, and in this matter Gérard de Nerval deserved pious mention in the Bohemian bidding prayer, for it was owing to him that _la Bohème galante_ found a home suitable to the golden age, a unique setting which posterity could remember but never reproduce. It was a rare opportunity, and it might almost be supposed that fortune, approving of Théo's first amiable push, advanced willingly another step, making peripatetic Gérard her tool. In the course of his wanderings he had become acquainted with one of the most singular regions in all Paris, no sign of which remains to-day. Hardly a visitor to Paris omits a look into the Louvre, but very few know that as they walk from the statue of Gambetta to the entrance of the galleries they are crossing the site that Bohemia in its florescence made memorable. On that spot there stood in 1833 part of an older Paris, which in intention had long been cleared away, but in fact remained another twenty years. Those who have read Balzac's "Cousine Bette" have made its acquaintance, though I should wager that the majority of them have taken it for granted with other of Balzac's topographical details. Let me recall to them the sinister quarter where Cousine Bette, at the opening of the story, cherishes the young sculptor Steinbock and makes the acquaintance of the infamous Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. With his practised touch for tragic effect Balzac describes it thus:

"The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of night, flourish at their height."

This can hardly be called an engaging description, and even Bohemians, it might be supposed, would shrink from such a dreadful slum. But Balzac was writing in 1847, more than ten years after Bohemia had left it, and he was making a protest against the continued existence of this quarter, which had probably deteriorated since the days when he sent there himself to offer Gautier work on the _Chronique de Paris_. However, whether Balzac was right in making the Rue du Doyenné an inferno or was only touching it up with livid tones appropriate to Cousine Bette and the Marneffes, it was certainly a more smiling spot in 1833. True, it was tumbling down, and lay below the level of the Place du Carrousel, in the midst of mournful débris, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, which Napoleon had meant to join after sweeping it away; the houses, as Gautier says,[21] were old and dark, repairs to them were forbidden, and they had the air of regretting the days when respectable canons and advocates were their inhabitants. Yet it was not a den of thieves by any means. Gérard[22] records that many _attachés_ and Government officials lived in the quarter, and that by the Place du Carrousel there was a collection of temporary wooden shops let out to curiosity dealers and print-sellers. It was enlivened, too, by the presence of a little Dutch beer-house served by a Flemish maid of considerable attractions. The view from the upper windows included, naturally, the heaps of stones, the rubbish, with the nettles and the dock-leaves by which Nature tries to cover such deformities at once; but it also included a good many trees, and the ruins of a delightful old priory, with one arch, two or three pillars, and the end of a colonnade still standing. This was the Priory of Doyenné, the dome of which, according to Gérard, fell one day in the seventeenth century upon eleven luckless canons who were celebrating the office. Its ruins stood out gracefully against the trees, and of a summer morning or evening, when, amid the peaceful silence of this forgotten corner, the bright rays of the Parisian sun lit up the lichen on its stones and a fresh breeze from the neighbouring Seine gently swayed the branches of its framing trees, it must have been well to be a-leaning out of a window.

However, Gérard de Nerval did more than find a quiet, romantic corner hidden away in the busy heart of Paris with a ruined priory to give distinction to its prospect; he also found an appropriate dwelling. In one of the old houses of the Impasse du Doyenné there was a set of rooms remarkable for its _salon_. It was a huge room, decorated in the old-fashioned Pompadour style with grooved panellings, pier-glasses, and a fantastically moulded ceiling. This decoration had for a long time been the despair of its owner and had driven away all prospective tenants, the taste for curiosities being at that time undeveloped. In vain had the landlord parcelled it out with party walls; it was still mouldering on his hands when Gérard came thither on one of his swallow-flights. He at once persuaded the good-natured Camille Rogier to transfer his household gods from the Rue des Beaux-Arts, the party walls were knocked down, and Bohemia entered on its ideal home. Gérard had still some of his patrimony left, and chose to expend it upon his one hobby, the collection of pictures and furniture. It was a golden time for the collector. Society had as yet not learned to appreciate old works of art, dealers were not too well informed, and the depredations of the Bande Noire, that, under the Restoration, had sacked so many ancient ecclesiastical foundations, had brought a large quantity of precious old furniture, tapestries, and fabrics into the curiosity shops of Paris. Gérard had acquired a wonderful canopied Renaissance bed ornamented with salamanders, a Médicis console, a sideboard decorated with nymphs and satyrs, three of each, and oval paintings on its doors, a tapestry delineating the four seasons, some medieval chairs and Gothic stools, a Ribeira--a death of Saint Joseph--and two superb panels by Fragonard, "L'Escarpolette" and "Colin Maillard," which last he had bought for fifty francs the pair. It was a magnificent studio, worthy of _la Bohème galante_. There was no question of bare attics on a sixth story, their tiny windows looking on a dreary sea of roofs, of rickety chairs and peeling wall-paper. In spite of its bare floors, its faded colours, its chipped corners, and the incongruous presence of plain easels among its ancient splendours, its riches were princely. Bohemian disorder might reign among paints and palette-knives, ends of paper inscribed with scraps of verse might dot its unswept floor, the _débris_ of eating and drinking might litter the seats on which fastidious cavaliers once delicately sat, but no realities of a careless existence could spoil its romantic atmosphere. Without its merry clan of inhabitants, no doubt, it would have seemed odd and ghostly; yet if they brought back to it the necessary colour of youth, it tinged, in turn, their life with a patina of old gold that never faded from their reminiscences.

Camille Rogier was the real lessee, and Gérard his sub-tenant. Gautier had a couple of rooms in the Rue du Doyenné, which cut the Impasse crosswise. These at first were the only permanent inhabitants of the new colony, but the great _salon_ where Rogier and Gautier worked soon became a meeting-place for a number of friends. Work was stopped at five o'clock, when Arsène Houssaye was certain to appear, Roger de Beauvoir, then in his most brilliant day, half Bohemian, half _viveur_, and Edmond Ourliac, the future dramatist. One evening Houssaye, Roger de Beauvoir, and Ourliac stayed talking till dawn; Roger departed then to his more sumptuous apartments, Ourliac to his parents' house in the Rue Saint Roch, but Arsène Houssaye stayed, on Rogier's invitation, to complete the inner conclave of Bohemia. His camp-bed was sent for next day, and he became Rogier's second tenant, paying him indeed no money, but spending, in revenge, chance gifts from home on luxurious feasts at the Frères Provençaux.

Such a society in such a setting could not long remain unknown. With its circle of guests widening it grew in importance, for in this golden age Bohemia could be important without losing its quality. Gavarni, the inimitable portrayer of Parisian types, Nanteuil, Châtillon, Marilhat, even Delacroix, were among the artists who found the gaiety of the Impasse du Doyenné to their taste; Pétrus Borel looked haggardly in occasionally; the great Dumas would rush in and out like a storm; the Roqueplans, Camille and Nestor, showed there in moments spared from their more elegant wanderings; and the effervescent Roger de Beauvoir as gaily composed there his witty rhymes as at a supper in the Café de Paris. It was no hole-and-corner Bohemia at which the superior person could affect to turn up his nose; it was a truly artistic centre in Paris and, at the same time, a _coterie_ admission to which was jealously enough guarded to exclude the half-baked dilettante who is the ruin of most artistic sets and the very negation of Bohemia. For a reason which will be obvious in the sequel, ladies with leanings to artistic society--another impossibility in Bohemia--were equally debarred from appearing. It was a more or less closely knit society of young and gifted men, lovers of the beautiful, despisers of convention without _gasconnade_, neither rich nor desperately poor, avid of pleasure, and fashioning their conduct easily upon the standards of the day, yet crowning all their hours, even the most wanton, with a graceful and light-hearted idealism that shields these pagan heroes of a golden age from any but an æsthetic judgment, a judgment which, in the case of their own countrymen, they confronted with serene self-confidence.

In all, the group was fairly large: its membership radiated dimly as far as the "dandies" on the boulevard and into the obscurer depths of the Quartier Latin. But radiation was from a central nucleus--the original Bohemian brethren whose home was in the Impasse du Doyenné: Camille Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Edmond Ourliac. The rest were visitors, but they alone were the true dwellers in _la Bohème galante_. Of their brotherhood and its life Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have all given glimpses, which compose a picture apt for pleasing and, occasionally, envious contemplation. Arsène Houssaye in his "Confessions" is the fullest source of reminiscence, and his words are delightfully illustrated by the poem, originally entitled "Vingt Ans," but in his complete works "La Bohème de Doyenné." The poem, addressed to Gautier, begins:

_Théo, te souviens-tu de ces vertes saisons_ _Qui s'effeuillaient si vite en ces vieilles maisons_ _Dont le front s'abritait sous une aile du Louvre?_ _Levons avec Rogier le voile qui les couvre,_ _Reprenons dans nos cœurs les trésors enfouis,_ _Plongeons dans le passé nos regards éblouis._

_Chimères aux cils noirs, Espérances fanées,_ _Amis toujours chantants, Amantes profanées,_ _Songes venus du ciel, flottantes Visions,_ _Sortez de vos tombeaux, jeunes Illusions!_ _Et nous rebâtirons ce château périssable_ _Que les destins changeants ont jeté sur le sable:_

_Replaçons le sofa sous les tableaux flamands;_ _Dispersons à nos pieds gazettes et romans;_ _Ornons le vieux bahut de vieilles porcelaines,_ _Et faisons refleurir roses et marjolaines;_ _Qu'un rideau de damas ombrage encore ces lits_ _Où nos jeunes amours se sont ensevelis._

Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was earning a living by his art--even more than a living, for was he not rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush he was a very agreeable singer of _chansons_ and ballads. Ourliac did not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines,

_gai convive, arrivait en chantant_ _Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,_

was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible _raconteur_ of inimitable dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work which made his name heard in the world of literature.

It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all four would set to their work, while the Pompadour _salon_ was hardly yet awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse."

"L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent pas."[23]

Gérard, his part in the foundation of _la Bohème galante_ performed, felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was also an actress. In the days of the _cénacle_ Gérard had fallen desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome of his life--a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on Arsène Houssaye's stanza:

_"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?_ _Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique_ _S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,_ _Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,_ _Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"_[24] _Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"_

wrote:

"La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait alors--et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve idéal et divin."

The question was to secure her _début_ at the Opéra, and for that purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The revellers set off joyously, Gérard's _belle désolée_ opposing only a feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme toujours!"

Gérard's adventure is in the nature of digression. So, indeed, was his whole life; but the others were not more discursive than befitted Bohemians. They slept in their beds and took their meals regularly. Luncheon, after the morning's work, was a frugal meal except for Gautier, who had developed from a weedy youth into a giant with a Gargantuan appetite. They did not entirely fail to earn a penny, but when literary labour was so poorly paid Gautier, who was doing art criticism in a small paper for nothing, was glad enough to see his mother arrive in the morning with two raw cutlets and a bottle of bouillon for his _déjeuner_. Nevertheless, when the afternoon was over and the visitors gone--Roger de Beauvoir to dress for an evening at the Opéra, Borel to rage at society in some poor garret--Rogier, Gautier, and Houssaye, now and then capturing Gérard, set out to roam in the busy city whose festive lamps were glittering on the boulevards and twinkling along the Seine. They dined--they were not too poor for that--in the Palais Royal more often than not, and wandered for the rest of the night where their fancy took them. Now the theatre would entice them with some romantic play by Hugo or Dumas, after which a supper with much punch would be indispensable; now they would invade the _Chaumière_ or some other place of dancing. At that time everybody danced deliriously,[25] the quadrille being in great vogue since it lent itself readily to choreographic invention on the part of the individual. Ourliac and Houssaye, for instance, attracted great attention by dancing a quadrille which represented Napoleon at all the critical periods of his life--the siege of Toulon, the Pyramids, Waterloo, and St. Helena. Another evening, Gautier having gone to visit his parents and Gérard absent, Houssaye might return quietly to the white and gold _salon_ with Rogier, who would talk with him or sing him songs while the cats purred on their knees; or, yet again, they might carouse in the Flemish _cabaret_ hard by, served by the young _tavernière_

_Qui tout en souriant nous versait de la bière._ _Quelle gorge orgueilleuse et quel œil attrayant!_ _Que Préault a sculpté de mots en la voyant._

_Cette fille aux yeux bleus follement réjouie,_ _Les blonds cheveux épars, la bouche épanouie,_ _Jetant à tout venant son cœur et sa vertu,_ _Et faisant de l'amour un joyeux impromptu,_ _Fut de notre jeunesse une image fidèle;_ _Ami, longtemps encor nous reparlerons d'elle._