Part 5

Speaking of the year 1841, Baudelaire in "L'Art Romantique" says:

"Paris was not then what it is to-day, a hurly-burly, a Babel inhabited by fools and futilities, with little delicacy as to how they kill time. At that time _tout Paris_ was composed of that choice body of people who were responsible for forming the opinion of the others."

The glory of Bohemia rests partly on this fact. During Louis Philippe's reign this state of society, comparable in some respects with the ideal polity of the Attic philosophers, was, it is true, being disrupted from within. The balance of power between wealth of gold and fecundity of ideas was gradually changing--a change of which Balzac is the immortal epic poet. Yet, though the power of a Nucingen was increasing, and Paris was about to start on its new prosperity as the pleasure-ground of Europe, this precious _tout Paris_ lasted till the reign was over. Paris was small, in extent, in population, in the number of those who formed its opinion. Of its actual compactness as a city I shall speak in a later chapter; suffice it now to say that the boulevards of Montmartre and Montparnasse bounded it on the north and south, that the Champs Elysées was still a wilderness, and that outside the fortifications lay open country. The population about 1835 was only 714,000; railways were hardly beginning, factories only tentatively being erected. The working classes were chiefly engaged in commerce or _petits métiers_, and the heights of Ménilmontant smiled as green and as free from slums as the Champs Elysées were free from luxurious hotels. The passing foreign population, though there was a certain number of English attracted by cheap living, was almost negligible. Brazilians and Argentines, Germans and Americans were hardly to be seen; even French provincials walked delicately instead of forming, as they do now, the chief _clientèle_ of the Parisian theatres. _Le tout Paris_ was, therefore, a nucleus within a circle of three segments--the middle class, the aristocratic families, and Bohemia.

The middle class, though the most numerous, was only potentially important at the time. Politics and money-making were its only preoccupations. It was divided, of course, into an infinity of grades, all of which may be illustrated from characters in Balzac's "Comédie Humaine." There were the bankers and usurers from the Du Tillets down to the Samanons, the successful merchants like Birotteau, the world of officials so accurately described in "Les Employés," the judges like old Popinot, and all the men of law from a Desroches down to his youngest clerk. Some were as sordid and bourgeois as the Thuilliers, others luxurious debauchees like the Camusots and Matifats, others, like the Rabourdins, fringed upon the _beau monde_. The sons of men enriched and decorated by Napoleon formed perhaps the cream of the middle class, and of these Balzac has given his opinion in describing Baron Hulot's son, who plays so large a part in "Cousine Bette":

"M. Hulot junior was just the type of young man fashioned by the Revolution of 1830, with a mind engrossed by politics, respectful towards his hopes, suppressing them beneath a false gravity, very envious of reputations, uttering phrases instead of incisive _mots_--those diamonds of French conversation--but with plenty of attitude and mistaking haughtiness for dignity. These people are the walking coffins which contain the Frenchman of former times; the Frenchman gets agitated at moments and knocks against his English envelope; but ambition holds him back, and he consents to suffocate inside it. This coffin is always dressed in black cloth."

This sombre portion of the background need, therefore, trouble us no further. It dominated politics and was ignored by _tout Paris_.

The aristocracy of the Faubourg St.-Germain is almost equally negligible. Being legitimists, they sulked after 1830, either living on their country estates or shutting themselves gloomily within the gaunt walls of their _hôtels_ in the Faubourg. This retirement, too, was not wholly due to _bouderie_, for many of them, like Balzac's Princesse de Cadignan, suffered heavy financial losses by the Revolution. Their self-denying ordinance caused a great diminution in the general gaiety of Paris for some years. Legitimist drawing-rooms, where a brilliant host of guests had been wont to gather, were hushed and dark while the dowagers gravely discussed the latest news of the Duchesse de Berry. The few official _fêtes_ were severely boycotted, and even the entertainments of foreign ambassadors suffered. It was an irksome business for the younger members, particularly the ladies of the aristocracy, who eventually gathered courage to break out into small entertainments, and in 1835 there was the first of a series of legitimist balls, the subscriptions for which went to recompense those whose civil list pensions had been suppressed in 1830. After this the Faubourg St.-Germain became more lively, and certain houses were opened to a wider circle of guests. Eugène Sue, for instance, till he became impossible, was to be found in many legitimist drawing-rooms. Nevertheless, the Faubourg St.-Germain avoided attracting the public eye by any conspicuous festivities, and this had two effects. In the first place, it brought the more joyous festivities of _tout Paris_ and the riotous celebrations of Bohemia into greater relief; and, in the second, the men of the aristocracy, like the Duc d'Aulnis, were driven to find distraction and amusement in a gayer world into which their own womankind was debarred from penetrating. It was they who formed a certain section of _tout Paris_; they were the _viveurs_, the _dandies_, the young bloods of the newly founded Jockey Club, the members of the _petit cercle_ in the Café de Paris, who joined hands with what may be called _la haute Bohème_.

There was, however, a certain amount of neutral ground between the aristocracy of birth and that of wit to be found in the literary _salons_ of the day, which, if not quite so illustrious as they had once been, shone with a considerable amount of brilliance. Among the legitimists these were, of course, not to be found, but the aristocracy of Napoleon was represented by the _salons_ of the Duchesse de Duras and the Duchesse d'Abrantès. The latter, widow of Napoleon's marshal Junot, was a particular friend of Balzac, who was the most notable figure to be found at her house. She was always dreadfully in debt, and after being sold up she died in a hospital in 1838. The _salon_ of the Princess Belgiojoso in the Rue Montparnasse attracted particular attention because, with an aristocratic hostess, it had all the _entrain_ of more purely artistic gatherings. Till troubles in Italy called them back to their estates the Prince and Princess Belgiojoso were among the gayest of the gay. The Prince with his boon companion, Alfred de Musset, ruffled it merrily on the boulevard, while the Princess, who had many of the most brilliant men of the day for her lovers, filled her apartments with poets, artists, writers, and, above all, musicians. One who frequented her drawing-room hung with black velvet, spangled with silver stars, says she had a "fierté glaciale, mais curiosité suraiguë." The splendour of her entertainments was royal, and her concerts were magnificent. To this the _salons_ of Madame Ancelot and Madame Récamier were a striking contrast. The former was composed chiefly of serious men of letters and politicians, while at L'Abbaye-aux-Bois Madame Récamier acted as priestess to the adoration of the aging Châteaubriand. The _salons_ of the pure Romantics made no pretence of splendour and were entirely free from the atmosphere of officialdom. The chief of them were those of Madame Hugo, of Madame Gay (who was succeeded by her daughter, Delphine de Girardin), and of Charles Nodier, the genial librarian of the Arsenal. In all of these, as in the _salon_ of the Princess Belgiojoso, _tout Paris_ was to be found in force. The gatherings round Victor Hugo were a little too much flavoured by the fumes of the censer, but those of the Girardins and of Nodier were of the most charming gaiety. Balzac, in a humorous article, drew a malicious sketch of the exaggerated enthusiasms of Nodier's guests when a poem was read before them. "Cathédrale!" "Ogive!" "Pyramide d'Egypte!" were the approved exclamations of ecstatic approbation. Madame Ancelot[11] confesses that she found the conversation very amusing, but very strange. "There was never a serious word," she says, "never anything profound, sensible, or simple; every word was meant to cause laughter, to make an effect. The more a thing was unexpected--that is, the less it was natural--the more prodigious was its success." She, no doubt, was prejudiced, and the fact remains that every guest who wrote in after years of Nodier's _salon_, its merry conversation followed inevitably by dancing, did so with most grateful praise, for Nodier died in 1846, leaving his Romantic friends to write regretful reminiscences. The _salon_ of Sophie Gay and her daughter was equally infected by high spirits, but it was less purely literary. Liszt, Thalberg, and Berlioz made music here; Roger de Beauvoir met Lamartine, and the Marquis de Custine sat by Balzac or Alphonse Karr. The de Vignys also had a _salon_, and Théodore de Banville speaks most warmly of their kindly hospitality; but there was a certain aloofness about the creator of "Eloa," and another of his guests found that in his house colouring seemed absent, so that "the regular guests seemed to come and go in the moonlight."[12]

To speak at greater length about the _salons_ of the Romantic period would here be beside the mark. Bohemians, no doubt, were often to be found at Victor Hugo's or Nodier's, but on those occasions they were consciously straying outside their own boundaries. Neither the stately house in the Place Royale nor the librarian's dwelling at the Arsenal was within the domains of Bohemia, and no Bohemian of the time would have dreamed of claiming them, as the later "Parnassiens" might have claimed the _salons_ of Nina de Kallias and Madame Ricard, for parts of their ordinary existence. The case, however, is different with the relations between _le tout Paris_ and Bohemia. _Le tout Paris_ was, as I have said, a nucleus, but a nucleus of disparate and constantly shifting particles. This perfectly undefined body had, of course, no definite place of assembly, but so far as it could be identified with any particular locality it may be said to have congregated on the boulevard. The Boulevard des Italiens--_the_ boulevard--was the chosen spot for the saunterings of the chosen few, a fact which by itself is a proof of the smallness and privacy of Paris compared with the present day, when this same boulevard is flooded from morning till night by a hurrying stream of indistinguishable humanity. In the days of Louis Philippe nobody, except an ignorant foreigner, ventured to appear on this sacred preserve in the afternoon without some semblance of a title. The title may have been so small as a peculiarly elegant waistcoat, a capacity for drinking, or a happy invention for practical jokes, or it may have been the reputation for a ready wit and a trenchant pen; but whosoever dared to show himself in this select society was sure to have some particular justification for making himself conspicuous, otherwise he was certain to be quizzed out of existence. The newcomer, if he survived a short but swift scrutiny, entered an informal though exclusive club of which every member was known to the others--he was known, that is, to "all Paris." All Paris, in a sense, it truly was, not because the greatest poets and statesmen belonged to it--for they had better things to do than to waste so much time--but because it served as the central intelligence department or, I might almost say, as the brain of Paris. A word uttered there was round the town in two hours; there a poet was made or a play damned--in the twinkling of an eye. One day of its activity furnished all the wit of the next day's newspapers, which is hardly surprising when so many of its members were journalists. _Le tout Paris_ was not hide-bound in its requirements; it admitted high birth as one qualification for membership, wealth if accompanied by good manners as another, but a certain way to its heart was by a brilliant handling of the pen. In spite of the exaggeration of the Parisian scenes in "Illusions Perdues," there is no unreality in Balzac's picture of Lucien's sudden rise from impoverished obscurity to fame and money. Lucien, the provincial poet, after his disappointing elopement with Madame de Bargeton, retires discomfited to a garret in the Quartier Latin. The door of rich protectors is shut in his face, no publisher will read his poems or accept his novels. The serpent arrives in the shape of Lousteau, who shows him the devilish power of journalism. By a lucky chance Lucien is asked to write a dramatic criticism for a new paper. He succeeds brilliantly, and he has Paris at his feet. The publisher cringes before his power and publishes all that he had formerly rejected; with money, fine clothes, and a reputation, he can answer stare for stare and return the impertinences of Rastignac and de Marsay; even Madame de Bargeton in the Faubourg St.-Germain cowers from his revengeful epigrams. So long as he remains a power in the Press he is flattered and caressed and plumes himself, a butterfly only just emerged, in the glittering _tout Paris_ of his day.

The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène Houssaye, Ourliac, the dramatist, and several others. There were also men who seemed to spend their time between the two, like the elder Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, and Alfred de Musset, who combined the extravagance of Bohemia with the luxury of the boulevards in different proportions, without ever being entire Bohemians or complete _viveurs_, and who maintained such a continuous communication between the more literary sections of _le tout Paris_ and the finer talents of Bohemia that it would be in some cases difficult to say where one left off and the other began. It is therefore impossible to write of the _vie de Bohème_ without entering into this larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute Bohème_. Not only was it the sound-board from which in a lucky moment the struggling whisperer on the left bank might hear his utterances booming forth to a multitude eager for novelty, not only was it an unofficial academy to which every Bohemian might aspire to belong as soon as he had made his mark, but it was also, during the years following 1830, animated by such a spirit of revelry and reckless amusement that the riots of true Bohemia were as pale ghosts before its more notable orgies. There were strong reasons for the merging of the two Bohemias, and the only precise distinction was the possession or want of money. Bohemia proper has no money except what it can make by its art, and as its inhabitants are young that is little enough. _La haute Bohème_, with a less strict limitation of years, makes money and spends it recklessly. Instead of pleading youth as the excuse of its folly, it claims the indulgence due to artistic achievement. However, so far as the generation of 1830 were concerned, this distinction was not absolute, for the Bohemians of 1830 were not invariably so destitute as their successors, so that they were enabled to mix to some extent in the gayer life of the artistic _boulevardiers_.

The most universal word--which I shall adopt--applicable to this _haute Bohème_ is the contemporary name for them, _les viveurs_. They were a particular product of the time, and no words of mine can describe them better than a passage from Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." The period of the novel is some years before 1830, but this particular description is far more applicable to the years that followed the second Revolution. I quote it in French, because it is impossible to do it justice in a translation:

"A cette époque florissait une société de jeunes gens, riches et pauvres, tous désœuvrés, appelés _viveurs_, et qui vivaient en effet avec une incroyable insouciance, intrépides mangeurs, buveurs plus intrépides encore. Tous bourreaux d'argent et mêlant les plus rudes plaisanteries à cette existence, non pas folle, mais enragée, ils ne reculaient devant aucune impossibilité, faisaient gloire de leurs méfaits, contenus néanmoins en de certaines bornes: l'esprit le plus original couvrait leurs escapades, il était impossible de ne pas les leur pardonner. Aucun fait n'accuse si hautement l'ilotisme auquel la Restauration avait condamné la jeunesse. Les jeunes gens, qui ne savaient à quoi employer leurs forces, ne les jetaient pas seulement dans le journalisme, dans les conspirations, dans la littérature et dans l'art, ils les dissipaient dans les plus étranges excès, tant il y'avait de sève et de luxuriantes puissances dans la jeune France. Travailleuse, cette belle jeunesse voulait le pouvoir et le plaisir; artiste, elle voulait des trésors; oisive, elle voulait animer ses passions; de toute manière elle voulait une place, et la politique ne lui en faisait nulle part."

Balzac gives his own character, Rastignac, as an instance of the typical _viveur_, but Rastignac had a purpose in his heart, while some of the most prominent among the _viveurs_ had none but to amuse themselves. These I name first, for, having no other preoccupations, they set the tone of the whole society. They were chiefly members of the aristocracy who found no place for their energies in a _bourgeois_ State which sought no military glory. One of their leaders, the Duc d'Aulnis, who settled down afterwards to serve the State worthily, gives in his memoirs the reason why so many young men of good family gave themselves up to riotous living, as he did under his _nom de plaisir_ of Alton-Shee. He and other young legitimists resigned their commissions in 1831 on finding that Louis Philippe, _le roi des barricades_, sided with the insurrectionists, so that, as he says, "the class of idlers was increased by a large number of legitimists who had resigned their commissions and by a contingent of refugees belonging to the Italian, Polish, and Spanish aristocracies. To distract their minds from the thoughts of so many broken careers, so many hopes disappointed, they dashed with an irresistible rush into the pursuit of enjoyment and sought to appease their generous aspirations in an unbridled love of pleasure."

These were the young men who spent all their time in imitating Brummell or the Comte d'Orsay, paying minute attention to every curve of their voluminous frock-coats, the patterns of their waistcoats, and the folding of their cravats; who drove and rode irreproachable horses imported from England, and founded the French Jockey Club under the auspices of Lord Seymour; who dined copiously at the Café de Paris and adjourned to lounge at the Opéra in the _loge infernale_, where the cream of Parisian dandyism paraded with its _lorgnette_ for the edification of the public. In racing and gambling they found their excitement; their consolation was the venal love of a ballet dancer. For no moment of the day did they pursue a worthy ambition, and their only excuse was that, being idle perforce, they attained a certain exquisiteness even in pleasure. Sadly the Duc d'Aulnis sums them up:

"Our generation had the love of liberty, passion, gaiety, an artistic nature, little vanity, the desire to be rather than to appear; then came discouragement, scepticism, the pursuit of amusement, the habit of smoking which fills the intervals, the taste for intoxication, that fugitive poetry of vulgar enjoyments, and every prodigality to satisfy our desires. If one considers what we leave behind us, our baggage is light: the folly of the carnival, the invention of the cancan, the generalization of the cigar, the acclimatization of clubs and races, will be merits of small value in the eyes of posterity.... Of these joyous _enfants du siècle_ brought by ruin to face pitiless reality, some escaped from their embarrassments by suicide, others found death or promotion in Africa, others shared their names with rich heiresses; others, persevering at all hazards, swallowing affronts and braving humiliations, lived on the precarious resources of gambling, borrowing, toadying, and parasitism; the most wretched of all fell step by step into the depths of infamy; only a very small number tried to save themselves by hard work."

These men set the pace among the _viveurs_: they were seconded by the more ambitious young men of whom Balzac's Rastignac is the type, who were determined to succeed and uttered in their hearts his famous threat to Paris by the grave of old Goriot, "Maintenant c'est entre nous." These men became _viveurs_, not as a pastime, but as a means. Rastignac, shocked to see that virtuous devotion would not save Père Goriot from a broken heart, and sick of the Maison Vauquer's squalor, determines to play society at its own game and make profit out of its corruption. He becomes the lover of Madame de Nucingen, one of Goriot's ungrateful daughters, and by allowing himself to become a tool in the crafty Baron Nucingen's third liquidation lays the foundation of his own fortunes. Such a man could not live in seclusion--he was forced into the ranks of the _viveurs_, in order to become a conspicuous figure. A smart tilbury and clothes from a first-class tailor were part of his stock-in-trade; he could not afford to run the risk of humiliation before his lady by laying himself open to affront by a more exquisite "dandy" than himself. A Rastignac had to shine to compass his ends, and he shone most brilliantly as a _viveur_, playing at idleness and debauch to cloak his subtle schemes, and drowning the shame of his parasitism in a passionate self-indulgence. Thanks to a strong will he is entirely successful, and out of the wreck of his illusions and his generous impulses builds himself a career as a politician.