Читать книгу An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections - Albert D. Vandam - Страница 6

Though literary remuneration was not in those days what it became later on, it was sufficiently large to make it difficult to explain the chronic impecuniosity of Balzac, though not that of Dumas. They were not gamblers, and had not the terrible fits of idleness or drinking which left De Musset stranded every now and again. Lamartine suffered from the same complaint, I mean impecuniosity. There is proof of Balzac's industry and frugality in two extracts from his letters to his mother, dated Angoulême, July, 1832, when he himself was thirty-two years old, and had already written half a dozen masterpieces. "Several bills are due, and, if I cannot find the money for them, I will have them protested and let the law take its course. It will give me breathing time, and I can settle costs and all afterwards."

Meanwhile he works eight hours a day at "Louis Lambert," one of the best things among his numberless best things. His mother sends him a hundred francs, and, perhaps with the same pen with which he wrote those two marvellous chapters that stand out like a couple of priceless rubies from among the mass of other jewels, he thanks her and accounts for them. "For the copying of the maps, 20 frs.; for my passport, 10 frs. I owed 15 frs. for discount on one of my bills, and 15 frs. on my fare. 15 frs. for flowers as a birthday present. Lost at cards, 10 frs. Postage and servant's tips, 15 frs. Total, 100 frs."

But these ten francs have not been lost at one fell swoop; they represent his bad luck at the gaming table during the whole month of his stay at Angoulême, at the house of his friend and sister's schoolfellow, Madame Zulma Carraud,—hence, something like seven sous (3-1/2d.) per day: for which extravagance he makes up, on his return to Paris, by plunging into work harder than ever. He goes to roost at 7 p.m., "like the fowls;" and he is called at 1 a.m., when he writes until 8 a.m. He takes another hour and a half of sleep, and, after partaking of a light meal, "gets into his collar" until four in the afternoon. After that, he receives a few friends, takes a bath, or goes out, and immediately he has swallowed his dinner he "turns in," as stated above. "I shall be compelled to lead this nigger's life for a few months without stopping, in order not to be swamped by those terrible bills that are due."

These extracts are not personal recollections. I have inserted them to make good my statement that Balzac was neither a gambler, a drunkard, nor an idler.

"How does he spend his money?" I asked Méry, when he had told us of his fourth meeting with Balzac on that very morning.

"In sops to his imagination, in balloons to the land of dreams, which balloons he constructs with his hard-won earnings and inflates with the essence of his visions, but which nevertheless will not rise three feet from the earth," he answered. Then he went on explaining: "Balzac is firmly convinced that every one of his characters has had, or has still, its counterpart in real life, notably the characters that have risen from humble beginnings to great wealth; and he thinks that, having worked out the secret of their success on paper, he can put it in practice. He embarks on the most harum-scarum speculations without the slightest practical knowledge; as, for instance, when he drew the plans for his country-house at the Jardies (Ville d'Avray), and insisted upon the builder carrying them out in every respect while he was away. When the place was finished there was not a single staircase. Of course, they had to put them outside, and he maintained that it was part of his original plan; but he had never given a thought to the means of ascent. But here is Monsieur Louis Lurine. If you would like an idea of Balzac's impracticability, let him tell you what occurred between Balzac and Kugelmann a few months ago."

Kugelmann was at that time publishing a very beautifully illustrated work, entitled "Les Rues de Paris," which Louis Lurine was editing. We were standing outside the Café Riche, and I knew Lurine by sight. Méry introduced me to him. After a few preliminary remarks, Lurine told us the following story. Of course, many years have elapsed since, but I think I can trust to my memory in this instance.

"I had suggested," said Lurine, "that Balzac should do the Rue de Richelieu, and we sent for him. I did not want more than half a sheet, so imagine my surprise when Balzac named his conditions, viz., five thousand francs, something over six hundred francs a page of about six hundred words. Kugelmann began to yell; I simply smiled; seeing which, Balzac said, as soberly as possible, 'You'll admit that, in order to depict a landscape faithfully, one should study its every detail. Well, how would you have me describe the Rue de Richelieu, convey an idea of its commercial aspect, unless I visit, one after the other, the various establishments it contains? Suppose I begin by the Boulevard des Italiens: I'd be bound to take my déjeûner at the Café Cardinal, I would have to buy a couple of scores at Brandus', a gun at the gunsmith's next door, a breastpin at the next shop. Could I do less than order a coat at the tailor's, a pair of boots at the bootmaker's?'

"I cut him short. 'Don't go any further,' I said, 'or else we'll have you in at "Compagnie des Indes," and, as both lace and Indian shawls have gone up in price, we'll be bankrupt before we know where we are.'

"Consequently," concluded Lurine, "the thing fell through, and we gave the commission to Guénot-Lacointe, who has done the thing very well and has written twice the pages Balzac was asked for, without buying as much as a pair of gloves."

When Balzac was not being harassed by the officials of the Tribunal de Commerce, he had to dodge the authorities of the National Guards, who generally had a warrant against him for neglect of duty. Unlike his great contemporary Dumas, Balzac had an invincible repugnance to play the amateur warrior—a repugnance, by-the-way, to which we owe one of the most masterly portraits of his wonderful gallery, that of the self-satisfied, bumptious, detestable bourgeoise, who struts about in his uniform; I am alluding to Crével of "La Cousine Bette." But civil discipline could take no cognizance of the novelist's likes and dislikes, and, after repeated "notices" and "warnings," left at his registered domicile, his incarceration was generally decided upon. As a rule, this happened about half a dozen times in a twelvemonth.

The next thing was to catch the refractory national guard, which was not easy, seeing that, in order to avoid an enforced sojourn at the Hôtel des Haricots,[5] Balzac not only disappeared from his usual haunts, but left his regular domicile, and took an apartment elsewhere under an assumed name. On one occasion, at a small lodgings which he had taken near his publisher, Hippolyte Souverain, under the name of Madame Dupont, Léon Gozlan, having found him out, sent him a letter addressed to "Madame Dupont, née Balzac."

The sergeant-major of Balzac's company had undoubtedly a grudge against him. He happened to be a perfumer, and ever since the publication and success of "César Birotteau" the Paris perfumers bore Balzac no goodwill. That particular one had sworn by all his essences and bottles that he would lay hands on the recalcitrant private of his company in the streets, for only under such conditions could he arrest him. To watch at Balzac's ordinary domicile was of no use, and, when he had discovered his temporary residence, he had to lure him out of it, because the other was on his guard.

One morning, while the novelist was hard at work, his old housekeeper, whom he always took with him, came to tell him that there was a large van downstairs with a case addressed to him. "How did they find me out here?" exclaimed Balzac, and despatched the dame to gather further particulars. In a few moments she returned. The case contained an Etruscan vase sent from Italy, but, seeing that it had been knocking about for the last three days in every quarter of Paris in the carman's efforts to find out the consignee, the former was anxious that M. Balzac should verify the intact condition of the package before it was unloaded. Balzac fell straight into the trap. Giving himself no time even to exchange his dressing-gown, or rather his monk's frock he was in the habit of wearing, for a coat, or his slippers for a pair of boots, he rushed downstairs, watching with a benign smile the carrier handling most delicately the treasure that had come to him.

"Caught at last," said a stentorian voice behind him, and dispelling the dream as its owner laid his hand on the novelist's shoulder, while a gigantic companion planted himself in front of the street door and cut off all retreat that way.

"With a refinement of cruelty, which in the eyes of posterity will considerably diminish the glory of his victory"—I am quoting Balzac's own words as he related the scene to us at the Hôtel des Haricots—the sergeant-major perfumer would not allow his prisoner to change his clothes, and while the van with the precious Etruscan vase disappeared in the distance, Balzac was hustled into a cab to spend a week in durance vile, where on that occasion he had the company of Adolphe Adam, the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau."

However, "les jours de fête étaient passés," and had been for the last five years, ever since the Hôtel des Haricots had been transferred from the town mansion of the De Bazancourts in the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain to its then locale near the Orléans railway station. There were no more banquets in the refectory as there had been of yore. Each prisoner had his meals in his cell. Joseph Méry, Nestor Roqueplan, and I were admitted as the clock struck two, and had to leave exactly an hour afterwards. It was during this visit that Balzac enacted the scene for us which I have endeavoured to describe above, and reminded Méry of the last dinner he had given to Dumas, Jules Sandeau, and several others in the former prison, which dinner cost five hundred francs. Eugène Sue, who was as unwilling as Balzac to perform his civic duties, had had three of his own servants to wait upon him there, and some of his plate and silver brought to his cell.

Seeing that the name of the celebrated author of "Les Mystères de Paris" has presented itself in the course of these notes, I may just as well have done with him, for he forms part of the least agreeable of my recollections. He was also an habitué of the Café de Paris. A great deal has been written about him; what has never been sufficiently insisted upon was the inveterate snobbishness of the man. When I first knew him, about '42-'43, he was already in the zenith of his glory, but I had often heard others mention his name before then, and never very favourably. His dandyism was offensive, mainly because it did not sit naturally upon him. It did not spring from an innate refinement, but from a love of show, although his father, who had been known to some of the son's familiars, was a worthy man, a doctor, and, it appears, a very good doctor, but somewhat brusque, like our own Abernethy; still much more of a gentleman at heart than the son. He did not like Eugène's extravagance, and when the latter, about '24, launched out into a cabriolet, he shipped him off on one of the king's vessels, as a surgeon; to which fact French literature owed the first novels of the future author of "Les Mystères de Paris" and "Le Juif-Errant."

But the father was gathered to his fathers, and Eugène, who had never taken kindly to a seafaring life, returned to Paris, to spend his inheritance and to resume his old habits, which made one of his acquaintances say that "le père and le fils had both entered upon a better life." It appears that, though somewhat of a poseur from the very beginning, he was witty and amusing, and readily found access to the circle that frequented the gardens of the Tivoli and the Café de Paris.[6] They, in their turn, made him a member of the Jockey Club when it was founded, which kindness they unanimously regretted, as will be seen directly.

The Tivoli gardens, though utterly forgotten at present, was in reality the birthplace of the French Jockey Club. About the year 1833 a man named Bryon, one of whose descendants keeps, at the hour I write, a large livery stables near the Grand Café, opened a pigeon-shooting gallery in the Tivoli; the pigeons, from what I have heard, mainly consisting of quails, larks, and other birds. The pigeons shot at were wooden ones, poised up high in the air, but motionless, as we still see them at the suburban fairs around Paris. Seven years before, Bryon had started a "society of amateurs of races," to whom, for a certain consideration, he let a movable stand at private meetings, for there were no others until the Society for the Encouragement of breeding French Horses started operations in 1834. But the deliberations at first took place at Bryon's place in the Tivoli gardens, and continued there until, one day, Bryon asked the fourteen or fifteen members why they should not have a locale of their own; the result was that they took modest quarters in the Rue du Helder, or rather amalgamated with a small club located there under the name of Le Bouge (The Den); for Lord Seymour, the Duke de Nemours, Prince Demidoff, and the rest were sufficiently clear-sighted to perceive that a Jockey Club governed on the English principle was entirely out of the question. That was the origin of the French Jockey Club, which, after various migrations, is, at the time of writing, magnificently housed in one of the palatial mansions of the Rue Scribe. As a matter of course, some of the fashionable habitués of the Café de Paris, though not knowing a fetlock from a pastern, were but too pleased to join an institution which, with the mania for everything English in full swing, then conferred as it were upon its members a kind of patent of "good form," and, above all, of exclusiveness, for which some, even amidst the fleshpots of the celebrated restaurant, longed. Because, it must be remembered, though the majority of the company at the Café de Paris were very well from the point of view of birth and social position, there was no possibility of excluding those who could lay no claim to such distinctions, provided they had the money to pay their reckoning, and most of them had more than enough for that. It appears that Eugène Sue was not so objectionable as he became afterwards, when the wonderful success of his "Mystères de Paris" and the "Juif-Errant" had turned his head; he was made an original member of the club. Election on the nomination by three sponsors was not necessary then. That article was not inserted in the rules until two years after the foundation of the Paris Jockey Club.

Of the success attending Sue's two best-known works, I can speak from personal experience; for I was old enough to be impressed by it, and foolish enough to rank him, on account of it, with Balzac and Dumas, perhaps a little higher than the former. After the lapse of many years, I can only console myself for my infatuation with the thought that thousands, of far greater intellectual attainments than mine, were in the same boat, for it must not be supposed that the furore created by "Les Mystères de Paris" was confined to one class, and that class the worst educated one. While it appeared in serial form in the Débats, one had to bespeak the paper several hours beforehand, because, unless one subscribed to it, it was impossible to get it from the news-vendors. As for the reading-rooms where it was supposed to be kept, the proprietors frankly laughed in your face if you happened to ask for it, after you had paid your two sous admission. "Monsieur is joking. We have got five copies, and we let them out at ten sous each for half an hour: that's the time it takes to read M. Sue's story. We have one copy here, and if monsieur likes to take his turn he may do so, though he will probably have to wait for three or four hours."

At last the guileless demoiselle behind the counter found even a more effective way of fleecing her clients. The cabinets de lecture altered their fees, and the two sous, which until then had conferred the right of staying as long as one liked, were transformed into the price of admission for one hour. Each reader received a ticket on entering, stating the time, and the shrewd caissière made the round every ten minutes. I may say without exaggeration that the days on which the instalment of fiction was "crowded out," there was a general air of listlessness about Paris. And, after the first few weeks, this happened frequently; for by that time the Bertins had become quite as clever as their formidable rival, the proprietor and editor of the Constitutionnel, the famous Dr. Véron, whom I have already mentioned, but of whom I shall have occasion to speak again and again, for he was one of the most notable characters in the Paris of my early manhood. But to return for a moment to "Les Mystères de Paris" and its author.

The serial, then, was frequently interrupted for one or two days, without notice, however, to the readers; on its resumption there was a nice little paragraph to assure the "grandes dames de par le monde," as well as their maids, with regard to the health of M. Sue, who was supposed to have been too ill to work. The public took all this au grand sérieux. They either chose to forget, or were ignorant of the fact, that a novel of that kind, especially in the early days of serial feuilleton, was not delivered to the editor bit by bit. Sue, great man as he was, would not have dared to inaugurate the system only adopted somewhat later by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, namely, that of writing "from hand to mouth." These paragraphs served a dual purpose—they whetted the lady and other readers' interest in the author, and informed the indifferent ones how great that interest was. For these paragraphs were, or professed to be,—I really believe they were,—the courteous replies to hundreds of kind inquiries which the author "could not acknowledge separately for lack of time."

But this was not all. There was really a good excuse for Eugène Sue "se prenant au sérieux," seeing that some of the most eminent magistrates looked upon him in that light and opened a correspondence with him, submitting their ideas about reforming such criminals as "le maître d'école," and praising Prince Rodolph, or rather Eugène Sue under that name, for "his laudable efforts in the cause of humanity." In reality, Sue was in the position of Molière's "bourgeois gentilhomme" who spoke prose without being aware of it; for there was not the smallest evidence from his former work that he intended to inaugurate any crusade, either socialistic or philanthropic, when he began his "Mystères de Paris." He simply wanted to write a stirring novel. But, unlike M. Jourdain, he did not plead ignorance of his own good motives when congratulated upon them. On the contrary, he gravely and officially replied in the Débats without winking. Some of the papers, not to be outdone, gravely recounted how whole families had been converted from their evil ways by the perusal of the novel; how others, after supper, had dropped on their knees to pray for their author; how one working man had exclaimed, "You may say what you like, it would be a good thing if Providence sent many men like M. Sue in this world to take up the cudgels of the honest and struggling artisan." Thereupon Béranger, who did not like to be forgotten in this chorus of praise, paid a ceremonious visit to Sue, and between the two they assumed the protectorship of the horny-handed son of toil.

It must not be supposed that I am joking or exaggerating, and that the engoûment was confined to the lower classes, and to provincial and metropolitan faddists. Such men as M. de Lourdoueix, the editor of the Gazette de France, fell into the trap. I have pointed out elsewhere that the republicans and socialists of those days were not necessarily godless folk, and M. de Lourdoueix fitly concluded that a socialistic writer like Sue might become a powerful weapon in his hands against the Jesuits. So he went to the novelist, and gave him a commission to that effect. The latter accepted, and conceived the plot of "The Wandering Jew." When it was sketched out, he communicated it to the editor; but whether that gentleman had reconsidered the matter in the interval, or whether he felt frightened at the horribly tragic conception with scarcely any relief, he refused the novel, unless it was modified to a great extent and its blood-curdling episodes softened. The author, taking himself au sérieux this time as a religious reformer, declined to alter a line. Dr. Véron got wind of the affair, bought the novel as it stood, and, by dint of a system of puffing and advertising which would even make a modern American stare, obtained a success with it in the Constitutionnel which equalled if it did not surpass that of the Débats with the "Mystères."

"It is very amusing indeed," said George Sand one night, "but there are too many animals. I hope we shall soon get out of this ménagerie." Nevertheless, she frankly admitted that she would not like to miss an instalment for ever so much.

Meanwhile Sue posed and posed, not as a writer—for, like Horace Walpole, he was almost ashamed of the title—but as "a man of the world" who knew nothing about literature, but whose wish to benefit humanity had been greater than his reluctance to enter the lists with such men as Balzac and Dumas. After his dinner at the Café de Paris, he would gravely stand on the steps smoking his cigar and listen to the conversation with an air of superiority without attempting to take part in it. His mind was supposed to be far away, devising schemes for the social and moral improvement of his fellow-creatures. These philanthropic musings did not prevent him from paying a great deal of attention—too much perhaps—to his personal appearance, for even in those days of beaux, bucks, and dandies, of Counts d'Orsay and others, men could not help thinking Eugène Sue overdressed. He rarely appeared without spurs to his boots, and he would no more have done without a new pair of white kid gloves every evening than without his dinner. Other men, like Nestor de Roqueplan, Alfred de Musset, Major Fraser, all of whose names will frequently recur in these notes, did not mind having their gloves cleaned, though the process was not so perfect as it is now; Eugène Sue averred that the smell of cleaned gloves made him ill. Alfred de Musset, who could be very impertinent when he liked, but who was withal a very good fellow, said one day: "Mais enfin, mon ami, ça ne sent pas pire que les bouges que vous nous dépeignez. N'y seriez vous jamais allé?"

In short, several years before the period of which I now treat, Eugène Sue had begun to be looked upon coldly at the Jockey Club on account of the "airs he gave himself;" and three years before the startling success of his work, he had altogether ceased to go there, though he was still a member, and remained so nominally until '47, when his name was removed from the list in accordance with Rule 5. Owing to momentary pecuniary embarrassments, he had failed to pay his subscription. It may safely be asserted that this was merely a pretext to get rid of him, because such stringent measures are rarely resorted to at any decent club, whether in London or Paris, and least of all at the Jockey Clubs there. The fact was, that the members did not care for a fellow-member whose taste differed so materially from their own, whose daily avocations and pursuits had nothing in common with theirs; for though Eugène Sue as early as 1835 had possessed a race-horse, named Mameluke, which managed to come in a capital last at Maisons-sur-Seine (afterwards Maisons-Lafitte); though he had ridden his haque every day in the Bois, and driven his cabriolet every afternoon in the Champs-Élysées, the merest observer could easily perceive that all this was done for mere show, to use the French expression, "pose." As one of the members observed, "M. Sue est toujours trop habillé, trop carossé, et surtout trop éperonné."

M. Sue was all that, and though the Jockey Club at that time was by no means the unobtrusive body of men it is to-day, its excesses and eccentricities were rarely indulged in public, except perhaps in carnival time. A M. de Chateau-Villard might take it into his head to play a game of billiards on horseback, or M. de Machado might live surrounded by a couple of hundred parrots if he liked; none of these fancies attracted the public's notice: M. Sue, by his very profession, attracted too much of it, and brought a great deal of it into the club itself; hence, when he raised a violent protest against his expulsion and endeavoured to neutralize it by sending in his resignation, the committee maintained its original decision. A few years after this, Eugène Sue disappeared from the Paris horizon.