The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

It is there given on the authority of a principal professor in one of the Royal Colleges of Paris. The case, very similar to that of Angélique Cottin, occurred in the month of December previous, in the person of a young girl, not quite fourteen years old, apprenticed to a colorist, in the Rue Descartes. The occurrences were quite as marked as those in the Cottin case. The professor, seated one day near the girl, was raised from the floor, along with the chair on which he sat. There were occasional knockings. The phenomena commenced December 2, 1845; and lasted twelve days.

LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

PART II

It was at this same period of time I made the acquaintance of Monsieur Edmond About. When I met him he had just appeared as an author, and his friends everywhere declared that Voltaire's mantle had fallen on his shoulders. He had, like Voltaire, discovered instantly that mankind were divided into hammers and anvils, and he determined to be one of the hammers. He began his career by ridiculing a poetical country, Greece, whose guest he had been, and whose sovereign and ministers had received him with confidence,—repaying three years of hospitality by a satire of three hundred pages. "Greece and the Greeks" was translated into several languages. This edifying publication, which put the laughers on his side, was followed by a different sort of work, which came near producing on this budding reputation the effect of an April frost upon an almond-tree in blossom. Voltaire's heir had found no better mode of writing natural and true novels (so the scandalous chronicle said) than to copy an original correspondence, and indiscreet "detectives" of letters menaced him with publishing the whole Italian work from which he "conveyed" the best part of "Tolla." All the literary world cried, Havoc! upon the sprightly fellow laden with Italian relics. It was a critical moment in his life.

Monsieur Edmond About was introduced to me by a fascinating lady;—who can resist the charms of the other sex? I saw before me a man some eight-and-twenty years old, of a slender figure; his features were irregular, but intellectual, and he looked at people like an excessively near-sighted person who abused the advantages of being near-sighted. He wore no spectacles. His eyes were small, cold, bright, and were well wadded with such thick eyebrows and eyelashes it seemed these must absorb them. I subsequently found, in a strange American book,24 some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good account in his commerce with the great people of his day, and which his disciple was learning to practise in his intercourse with the powerful of these times,—the parvenus and the wealthy. I was struck by the face of this college Macchiavelli: on it were written the desire of success and the longing to enjoy; the calculations of the ambitious man were allied with the maliciousness of the giddy child. Of course he overwhelmed me with compliments and flattery. He had, or thought he had, use for me. I benevolently became the defender of the poor calumniated fellow in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," just as one undertakes out of pure kindness of heart to protect the widow and the orphan. Monsieur Edmond About thanked me orally with a flood of extraordinary gratitude; but he took good care to avoid writing a word upon the subject. A letter might have laid him under engagements, and might have embarrassed him one day or another. Whereas he aimed to be both a diplomatist and a literary man. He practised the art of good writing, and the art of turning it to the best advantage.

Some months after this he brought out a piece called "Guillery," at the French Comedy. The first night it was played, there was a hail-storm of hisses. No claqueur ever remembered to have heard the like before. The charitable dramatic critics—delicate fellows, who cannot bear to see people possess talents without their permission and despite them—attacked the piece as blood-hounds the fugitive murderer. It seemed as if Monsieur Edmond About was a ruined man, who could never dare hold up his head again. He resisted the death-warrant. He had friends in influential houses. He soon found lint enough for his wounds. The next winter the town heard that Monsieur Edmond About's wounds had been well dressed and were cured, and that he was going to write in "Figaro." The amateurs of scandal began at once to reckon upon the gratification of their tastes. They were not mistaken. The moment his second contribution to "Figaro" appeared, it became evident to all that he had taken this warlike position at the advanced posts of light literature solely to shoot at those persons who had wounded his vanity. For three months he kept up such a sharp fire that every week numbered its dead. Such carnage had never been seen. Everybody was severely wounded: Jules Janin, Paulin Limayrac, Champfleury, Barbey d'Aurevilly, and a host of others. Everybody said, (a thrill of terror ran through them as they spoke,)—There is going to be one of these mornings a terrible butchery: that imprudent Edmond About will have at least ten duels on his hands. Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it! There were negotiations, embassies, explanations exchanged which explained nothing, and reparations made which repaired nothing. But there was not a shot fired. There was not a drop of blood drawn. O Lord! no! Third parties intervened, and demonstrated to the offended parties, that, when Monsieur Edmond About called them stupid boobies, humbugs, tumblers, he had no intention whatever of offending them. Good gracious! far otherwise! In fine, one day the farce was played, the curtain fell upon the well-spanked critics, and all this little company (so full of talents and chivalry!) went arm-in-arm, the insulter and the insulted, to breakfast together at Monsieur About's rooms, where, between a dozen oysters and a bottle of Sauterne, he asked his victims what they thought of some Titians he had just discovered, and which he wished to sell to the Louvre for a small fortune,—Titians which were not painted even by Mignard. The insulter and the insulted fell into each other's arms before these daubs, and they parted, each delighted with the other. These pseudo-Titians were for Monsieur About his Alcibiades's dog's-tail. He spent one every month. Literary, picturesque, romanesque, historical, agricultural, Greek, and Roman questions were never subjects to him: he considered them merely advertisements to puff the transcendent merits of Edmond About. Before he left "Figaro" he determined to show me what a grateful fellow he was. He made me the mark for all his epigrams, and I paid the price of peace with the others. I have heard, since then, that Monsieur Edmond About has made his way rapidly in the world. He is rich. He has the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. He excels in writing pamphlets. He is not afraid of the most startling truths. He writes about the Pope like a man who is not afraid of the spiritual powers, and he has demonstrated that Prince Napoleon won the Battle of the Alma and organized Algeria.

Among the numerous details of my grandeur and my decline, none exhibit in a clearer light our literary manners and customs than the history of my relations with Monsieur Louis Ulbach, the virtuous author, now, of "L'Homme aux Cinq Louis d'Or," "Suzanne Duchemin," "Monsieur et Madame Fernel," and other tales, which he hopes to see crowned by the French Academy. Monsieur Louis Ulbach at first belonged to a triumvirate which pretended to stand above the mob of democratic writers; and of a truth Monsieur Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders, had none of those smoking-café vulgarities which have procured so many subscribers to the "Siècle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with bizarre energy, intent upon an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains which so often bow down the noblest minds before idols made of plaster or of clay. Besides, both of them were known by admirable acts of generosity. There were in this triumvirate such dashes of aristocracy and of revolution that they were called "the Poles of literature."

Of course, when the storm burst which I had raised by my irreverent attacks on De Béranger, these gentlemen separated from their political friends, and complimented me. One of them even addressed me a letter, in which I read these words, which assuredly I would not have written: "That stupid De Béranger." There was a sort of alliance between us. Monsieur Louis Ulbach celebrated it by publishing in his magazine, "La Revue de Paris," an article in my honor, in which, after the usual reserves, and after declaring war upon my doctrines, he vowed my prose to be "fascinating," and complained of being so bewitched as to believe, at times, that he was converted to the cause of the throne and of the altar. This epithet, "fascinating," in turn fascinated me; and I thought that my prose was, like some serpent, about to fascinate all the butcher-birds and ducks of the democratic marsh. A year passed away; these fine friendships cooled: 't is the fate of these factitious tendernesses. With winter my second volume appeared, and Monsieur Louis Ulbach set to work again; but this time he found me merely "ingenious." It was a good deal more than I merited, and I would willingly have contented myself with this phrase. Unfortunately, I could not forget the austere counsel of Monsieur Louis Veuillot, and at this very epoch, Monsieur Louis Ulbach, who as a novelist could merit a great deal of praise, took it into his head to publish a thick volume of transcendental criticism, in which he attacked everything I admired and lauded everything I detested. I confess that I felt extremely embarrassed: those nice little words "fascinating" and "ingenious" stuck in my mind. Monsieur Louis Ulbach himself extricated me from my perplexity. I had insufficiently praised his last novel. He wrote a third article on my third work. Alas! the honeymoon had set. The "fascinating" prose of 1855, the "ingenious" prose of 1856, had become in 1857, in the opinion of the same judge, and in the language of the same pen, "pretentious and tiresome." This sudden change of things and epithets restored me to liberty. I walked abroad in all my strength and independence, and I dissected Monsieur Louis Ulbach's thick volume with a severity which was still tempered by the courteous forms and the dimensions of my few newspaper-columns. A year passed away. My fourth work appeared. Note that these several volumes were not different works, but a series of volumes expressing the same opinions in the very same style; in fine, they were but one work. Note, too, that Monsieur Ulbach's "Revue de Paris" and "L'Assemblée Nationale," in which I wrote, were both suppressed by the government on the same day, which established between us a fraternity of martyrdom. All this was as nothing. Louis Ulbach, this very same Louis Ulbach, was employed by a newspaper where he was sure to please by insulting me, and the very first thing he did was to give me a kick, such a kick as twenty horses covered with sleigh-bells could not give. He called me "ignoramus," and wondered what "this fellow" meant by his literary drivelling. The most curious part of the whole business is, that he did not write the article, all he did was to sign it! Four years, and a scratch given his vanity, had proved enough to produce this change!

Shall I speak to you now of Henry Murger? I wrote this chapter of my Memoirs during his life. I should have suppressed it, did I feel the least drop of bitterness mingled with the recollection of the acts of petty ingratitude of this charming writer. But my object in writing this work is less to satisfy sterile revenge than to exhibit to you a corner of literary life in Paris in the nineteenth century.

In 1850 Henry Murger published a book in which the manners and customs of people who live by their wits were painted in colors scarcely likely to fascinate healthy imaginations. He declared to the world that the novitiate of our future great authors was nothing but one incessant hunt after a half-dollar and a mutton-chop. The world was told by others that Henry Murger had learned to paint this existence by actual experience. There were, however, in his book some excellent flashes of fancy and youth; besides, the public then had grown tired of interminable adventures and novels in fifty volumes. So Henry Murger's first work, "La Vie de Bohême," was very popular; but it did not swell his purse or improve his wardrobe. He was introduced to me, and I shall never forget the low bow he made me. I was afraid for one moment that his bald head would fall between his legs. This precocious baldness gave to his delicate and sad face a singular physiognomy. He looked not so much like a young old man as like an old young man. Henry Murger's warmest desire was to write in the celebrated and influential "Revue des Deux Mondes," which we all abuse so violently when we have reason to complain of it, and which has but to make a sign to us and we instantly fall into its arms. I was then on the best terms with the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Monsieur Castil-Blaze, being from the same neighborhood with me, had obtained a place for me in the "Revue," which belonged to his son-in-law, Monsieur Buloz. I promised Henry Murger to speak a good word for him. A favorable opportunity of doing so occurred a few days afterwards.

"I do not know what is to become of us," said Monsieur Buloz to me; "our old contributors are dying, and no new ones make their appearance."

"They appear, but you refuse to see them. There is Henry Murger, for instance; he has just written an amusing book, which is the most successful of the season."

"Henry Murger! And is it you, Count Armand de Pontmartin, the literary nobleman, the aristocratic writer, who wear (as the world avers) a white cravat and white kid gloves from the time you get up, (I confess I have never seen you with them,)—is it you who propose to me to admit Henry Murger as a contributor to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,'—Henry Murger, the ringleader of people who live by their wits?"

"Why shouldn't I? We live in a day when white cravats have to be very respectful to red cravats. Besides, nothing is too strange to happen; and I would not bet you that Murger does not write in 'Le Moniteur' before I do."

"If you think I had better admit Henry Murger, I consent; but remember what I say to you: It will be the source of annoyance to you."

The next day a hack bore Henry Murger and me from the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue du Helder to the office of the "Revue des Deux Mondes." We talked on the way. If I had had any illusions left of the poetical dreams and virginal thoughts of young men fevered by literary ambition, these few minutes would have been enough to dispel them all. Henry Murger thought of nothing upon earth but money. How was he going to pay his quarter's rent, or rather his two or three quarters' rent? for he was two or three quarters behindhand. He still had credit with this restaurateur, but he owed so much to such another that he dared not show his face there. He was over head and ears in debt to his tailor. He was afraid to think of the amount of money he owed his shoemaker. The list was long, and "bills payable" lamentable. To end this dreary balance-sheet, I took it into my head to deliver him a lecture on the morality of literature and the duty of literary men. "Art," said I to him, "must escape the materialism which oppresses and will at last absorb it. We romantics of 1828 were mistaken. We thought we were reacting against the pagan and mummified school of the eighteenth century and of the First Empire. We did not perceive that a revolutionary Art can under no circumstances turn to the profit of grand spiritual and Christian traditions, to the worship of the ideal, to the elevation of intellects. We did not see that it would be a little sooner or a little later discounted by literary demagogues, who, without tradition, without a creed, without any law except their own whims, would become the slaves of every base passion, and of all physical and moral deformities. It is not yet too late. Let us repair our faults. Let us elevate, let us regenerate literature; let us bear it aloft to those noble spheres where the soul soars in her native majes"–

I was declaiming with fire, my enthusiasm was becoming more and more heated, when Henry Murger interrupted me by asking,—"Do you think Monsieur Buloz will pay me in advance?"

This question produced on my missionary's enthusiasm the same effect a tub of cold water would have upon an excited poodle-dog.

"Monsieur Murger," I replied, without being too much disconcerted, "you will arrange those details with Monsieur Buloz. All I can do is to introduce you."

We reached the office. I was afraid I might embarrass Monsieur Buloz and Monsieur Murger, if I remained with them; I therefore took a book and went into the garden. I was called back in twenty minutes, and was briefly told that Henry Murger had engaged to write a novel for the "Revue." We went out together; but we had scarcely passed three doors, when Murger said hurriedly to me,—"I beg your pardon, I have forgotten something!"—and he went back to the office. I afterwards found out that this "something" was an advance of money which he asked for upon a novel whose first syllable he had not yet written.

If I dwell upon these miserable details, it is not (God forbid!) to insult laborious poverty, or talent forced to struggle against the hardships of life or the embarrassments of improvident, careless youth. No,—but there was here, and this is the reason I speak of it, the trade-mark of that literary living-by-the wits which had taken entire possession of Henry Murger, against which he had struggled in vain all his life long, and which at last crushed him in its feverish grasp. Living by the wits was to Henry Murger what roulette is to the gambler, what brandy is to the drunkard, what the traps of the police are to the knave and the burglar: he cursed it, but he could not quit it; he lived in it, he lived by it, he died of it. The first time I talked with Murger, and every subsequent conversation I had with him, brought up money incessantly, in every tone, in every form; and when, having become more familiar with what he called my squeamishness, he talked more frankly to me, I saw that he required to support him a sum of money three times greater than the annual income of which a whole family of office-holders in the country, or even in Paris, live with ease. This brought on him protests, bailiffs, constables, incredible complications, continual uneasiness, a hankering after pecuniary success, eternal complaints against publishers, magazine-editors, theatre-managers, anxious negotiations, an immense loss of time, an incredible wear-and-tear of brain, annoyances and cares enough to put every thought to flight and to dry every source of inspiration and of poetry. Remember that Henry Murger is one of the luckiest of the new men who have appeared within these last fifteen years, for he received the cross of the Legion of Honor, which, as everybody knows, is never given except to men who deserve it. Judge, then, what the others must be! Judge what must be the abortions, the disdained, the supernumeraries,—those who sleep in lodging-houses at two cents a night, or who eat their pitiful dinner outside the barrier-gate in a wretched eating-house patronized by hack-drivers,—those who kill themselves with charcoal, or who hang themselves, murdered by madness or by hunger, the two pale goddesses of atheistical literatures!

"Well," said I to Henry Murger, after we were once more seated in our carriage, "are you pleased with Monsieur Buloz?"

"Yes—and no. The most difficult step is taken. He allows me to contribute my masterpieces to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' and I shall never forget the immense service you have done me. Although you and I do not serve the same literary gods, I am henceforward yours to the death! But—the book-keeper is deusedly hard on trigger. Will you believe it? I asked him to advance me forty dollars, and he refused!"

We parted excellent friends, and he continued to assure me of his gratitude, until the carriage stopped at my door.

Years passed away. Henry Murger's promised novel was long coming to the "Revue des Deux Mondes." At last it came; another followed eighteen months afterwards; then he contributed a third. He displayed unquestionable talents; he commanded moderate success. He had been told by so many people that it was a hard matter to please the readers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," that it was necessary for him to free himself from all his studios' fun, and everything tinctured with the petty press, that he really believed for true everything he heard, and appeared awkward in his movements. His students, his grisettes, and his young artists were all on their good behavior, but were not more droll. Marivaux had come down one more flight of stairs. Alfred de Musset had steeped the powder and the patches in a glass of Champagne wine. Henry Murger soaked them in a bottle of brandy or in a flagon of beer.

Henry Murger's gratitude, whenever we met, continued to exhale in enthusiastic hymns. I lost sight of him for some time. I was told that he lived somewhere in the Forest of Fontainebleau, to escape his creditors' pursuit. At the critical moment of my literary life, I read one morning in a petty newspaper a biting burlesque of which I was the grotesque hero: I figured (my name was given in full) as a member of a temperance society, whose members were pledged to total abstinence from the use of ideas, wit, and style; at one of our monthly dinners, we were said to have devoured Balzac at the first course, De Béranger for the roast, Michelet for a side-dish, and George Sand for dessert. The next day, and every day the petty paper appeared, the joke was renewed with all sorts of variations. It was evidently a "rig" run on me. This joke was signed every day "Marcel," which was the name of one of the heroes of Henry Murger's novel, "La Vie de Bohême"; but I was very far indeed from thinking that the man who was under so many "obligations" to me (as Henry Murger always declared himself to be) should have joined the ranks of my persecutors. A few days afterwards I heard, on the best authority, that Henry Murger was the author of these articles. I felt a deep chagrin at this discovery. Literary men constantly call Philistines and Prudhommes those who lay great stress upon the absence of moral sense as one of the great defects of the school of literature and art to which Murger and his friends belong; and yet there should be a name for such conduct as this, if for no other reason, for the sake of the culprits themselves,—as, when poor Murger acted in this way to me, he was as unconscious of what he did as when he raised heaven and earth to hunt down a dollar. He was not guilty of a black heart, it was only absolute deficiency of everything like moral sense. Henry Murger was under obligations to me, as he said constantly; I had introduced and recommended him to a man and a magazine that are, as of right, difficult in the choice of their contributors; I had, for his sake, conquered their prejudices, borne their reproaches. Whenever his novels appeared, I treated them with indulgence, and gave them praise without examining too particularly into their moral tendency, to the great scandal of my usual readers, and despite the scoldings Monsieur Louis Veuillot gave me. There never was the least coolness between Henry Murger and myself; and yet, when I was attacked and harassed on every side, he hid himself under a pseudonyme, and added his sarcasms to all the others directed against me, that he might gratify his admiration for De Balzac and put a little money in his pocket.

By-and-by I continued to meet Henry Murger again on the Boulevard, and at the first performance of new pieces. Do you imagine he shunned me? Not a bit of it. He did not seem on these rare occasions to feel the least embarrassment. He gave me cordial shakes of the hand, or he bestowed on me one of those profound bows which brought his bald head on a level with his waistcoat-pockets. Then he published a novel in "Le Moniteur," after which he was decorated. Nothing was now heard from or of him for a long time. Not a line by Henry Murger appeared anywhere. I never heard that any piece by him was received, or even refused, by a single one of the eighteen theatres in Paris. At last I met him one day before the Variétés Theatre. I went up to speak to him, and ended by asking the invariable question between literary men,—"What are you at work on now? How comes it that so long a time has elapsed since you gave us something to read or to applaud?"