is generally held to be one of universal applicability. But the life of our Bohemian brotherhood for once gives it the lie direct. Never, even in the most trying seasons of love and jealousy, did the ties slacken which bound the four companions—Colline, the great philosopher; Marcel, the great painter; Schaunard, the great musician; and Rodolphe, the great poet—as they called one another. Rodolphe and Mimi might lead a cat-and-dog life; Marcel might quarrel with Musette, and make it up only to quarrel again; Schaunard might see fit to address some of his telling observations to the person of the melancholy Phémie; but artist and poet, philosopher and painter, rubbed on together in peace; and if the truth must be told, smoked many a pipe in company over the grave of their dead passions. Truly the domestic side of their life left much to be desired. At one time they all occupied the same house, and then the unfortunate neighbors lived, as it were, on a volcano. Six months went by; things grew daily more and more intolerable; and then the final breaking-up of the establishment came about. “But,” adds Murger—and the remark exhibits clearly the kind of understanding which existed among the strangely-assorted friends—“in this association, despite the three young and pretty women who formed part of it, no sign of discord appeared among the men. They frequently gave way to the most absurd caprices of their mistresses; but not one of them would have hesitated a moment between the woman and the friend.”
Amid all the uncertainties and anxieties, the follies and the vices of their daily life, these brother Bohemians are possessed of a very keen and genuine enthusiasm for art, and of a sturdy faith in themselves and their own high calling. This is one good aspect of their character; another and complementary aspect, upon which Murger lays much stress, is their complete freedom from stiff-necked virtuosity and dilettante affectations. There are Bohemians who chatter only of “art for art’s sake,” who hold with inflexible obstinacy and stoical pride to the narrow path they have marked out for themselves, who scorn to descend, upon any pretext, for any purpose whatsoever, to the plane of common affairs. But Murger takes pains to make it clear that Rodolphe and his friends do not belong to this unfortunate class—the “Buveurs d’Eau,” as they are called, the first tenet of whose creed is that no one of their number, on penalty of expulsion from the society, shall accept any work outside pure art itself.[30] Rodolphe, as we know, is working hard upon his great tragedy; Marcel, upon his “Passage of the Red Sea”; Schaunard, upon his symbolic symphony; Colline, upon his system of “Hyperphysical Philosophy”: but there are no cant phrases of art-worship everlastingly upon their lips, and they are ready enough to turn their energies, when opportunity offers, into more remunerative, if less ambitious, undertakings. We have seen something already of the practical means, sometimes adopted by them, of putting a figure before the cipher, which unfortunately, as a rule, constitutes their entire available capital. If further evidence be demanded, we need only refer to the occasions when Rodolphe versifies an epitaph for an inconsolable widow and turns off a rhyming advertisement for a dentist, and when Marcel paints eight grenadiers at six francs apiece—likenesses guaranteed for a year, like a watch.
Of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life” as a whole, it would be hopeless to endeavor to give any general idea within the limits of a rapid sketch. It is little to say that from cover to cover of this wonderful book there is not a dull or indifferent page—not a page that does not teem with quaint description, brilliant bits of characterization, vivid pictures of manners and life. Of the range and opulence of its humor some hint has perhaps been given, though the merest hint only, in the personal delineations attempted above. Mirth-compelling the “Scenes” certainly are, and we feel in their case, as we cannot always feel with the masterpieces of the French comic genius, that the laughter they provoke is generous, hearty, wholesome—laughter without taint of cynicism or spite. But the humor of the volume, rich and racy as it is, and the ebullient wit that glitters and flashes in its dialogues and incidental touches of comment and criticism, are not by any means the only qualities that deserve attention. Murger was a true humorist, and, like all true humorists, he had the keenest realization of the pathos and tragedy of life, the most delicate apprehension of “the sense of tears in mortal things.” Though it can hardly be said of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” as it has been rightly said of the great body of the author’s work, that the dominant note is one of poignant melancholy, the minor chords are heavy and frequent enough to tone down the exuberant gayety of the volume, and to cause the final impression left by it to be rather sombre than exhilarating. Murger saw much of the reckless and irresponsible life of the Latin Quarter on its grotesque side, and he has given this side extraordinary prominence in this particular book, reserving many of the harsher features, which from personal contact he knew equally well, for the “Scenes de la Vie de Jeunesse” and the “Buveurs d’Eau.” But the reader who follows to their close the chapters we have here more especially been considering—and who can put them down unfinished?—will find that their brilliancy of light and color are thrown up against a very dark background, and that the shadows gather and deepen about us as the story runs its course. At length, the wild music ceases altogether; the mad laughter is silenced; and the book is laid by, not with a burst of final merriment, but with a gulp and a pang. Ah, comme nous avons ri! Yes, the struggles, the privations, the absurdities of Bohemia are comical enough; but life is stern, even in this Land of Romance; there is death in it, and many a heartbreak; and if we escape the suffering of failure, we must accept the inevitable disillusion of success. Life, too, is fleeting; the golden sands slip through our fingers as we try to clutch them. Eheu fugaces! It is the old-world burden that we must needs end with—“La jeunesse n’a qu’un temps!”
No—“ce n’est pas gai tous les jours, la Bohème.” For my own part, I know not whither one could turn to find pages of purer tenderness and pathos than those in which Murger has written of Francine’s muff and of the death of poor little Mimi. And yet, there is no effort, no melodramatic striving after effect. The lips quiver, the eyes grow dim as we read; but so admirably is the art concealed, so perfect is the reserve under which it is all done, that it is only when we come to turn back over the chapters for the express purpose of analyzing them, that we begin to realize the author’s exquisite perception and tact, and the genius with which he carries his meaning straight home to our hearts. Poor Francine! Poor Mimi! These fragile slips of womanhood from the dingy old Latin Quarter are filled with the life that the poet alone can give. We meet them once in a few pages of print; and their hungry eyes and poor, worn faces linger with us forever.
And now we must revert for a moment to a question already touched on—the loose morality not infrequently charged against this record of Bohemian life. I promised that I should try to say something about this matter ere I brought these jottings to a close; but now that it is definitely before us, I do not feel, after all, that there is very much to be said. Our judgment on such a book as this, ethically considered, must finally depend on the point of view from which we regard it, and this point of view will always be at bottom so much an affair of temperament, outlook, training, bias, that it is not likely to be much affected by any arguments, adverse or favorable. “Certainly,” Murger once imagines one of his readers saying, “I shall not allow this story to fall into the hands of my daughter.” To this, doubtless, most Anglo-Saxon fathers would say amen, and there is little question that they would, on the whole, be wise in so doing. I readily admit that it would be better that the perusal of such a work as this, as of many other great and enduring pieces of literature, should be left for those whose minds have been schooled and sobered by the discipline of real life, and who are thus in a position to bring Murger’s imaginary scenes, with all their bewitching humor, magic of description, and charm of style, to the touchstone of actual experience. But while I concede this much, I cannot for a moment go with those who would, therefore, place the volume on their unofficial “Index Expurgatorius,” on the score that it will be found dangerous to morality. Such a notion seems to me simply absurd, and due to an entire misapprehension of what it is in literature that renders it injurious in its effects. Murger drew his material from a world he had known and lived in, and he incorporates all its irregularities of conduct, and very much of its wantonness. Yet I challenge any intelligent and broad-minded reader to deny that the atmosphere of his “Scenes” is almost always fresh and wholesome. Those at least who know something of the French novel, from “La Dame aux Camélias” onward, and of some of the English fiction produced within recent decades, by writers who boldly claim place in the ranks of the moralists, will hardly feel called upon to attack our author on this particular head. Nowhere, let it be said emphatically, does Murger deliberately give himself up to the worship of the great Goddess of Lubricity; nowhere does he willingly throw the halo of poetry over mere physical passion; nowhere does he go out of his way to show vice as vice in glowing or attractive colors. These may read like phrases of the most conventional criticism, but they are here thoroughly to the point. The very story which the writer stops short for a moment to interject the imaginary comment quoted above, is as pure and delicate as a love-story well could be, and only a reader capable of sucking poison out of a lily, could be disturbed in the slightest degree by the irregularity of the relations existing between Jacques and poor Francine. It can never be often urged that in such a case as this—perhaps in all art whatsoever—the one fundamentally essential thing is treatment; and with Murger’s handling of his theme, no possible fault could be found, even by the most austere and exacting critic.
A more substantial charge may, I think, be brought against the “Scenes,” on the ground that in their delightful pages the shiftless, improvident, hand-to-mouth existence of Rodolphe and his friends is made too engaging and seductive. Are there not, it may be asked, scores of young men who believe that they have (in very large capitals) Genius and a Mission in Art, and who need nothing but the incentive of such a volume as this to lead them to throw aside the sober concerns of law or commerce, and voluntarily exchange a career of useful, if monotonous, toil, for one wherein immediate misery is practically certain, and ultimate success only a remote chance? Youths of some sensibility and ambition, who hate the counting-house and the desk; who have written verses or made sketches which have been praised by injudicious friends; and who have devoured the numerous biographies of those who, having commenced life in uncongenial labor, boldly kicked over the traces and finally made for themselves a position and a name, are prone enough, it may be alleged, to mistake themselves for great men in embryo, and to set up their backs against the daily routine and the common task, without the aid of a book which paints Bohemia so constantly on its pleasantest side, and gives to even its struggles and sufferings a romantic charm, which the jog-trot round of experience does not possess. All this, perhaps, is true. At any rate, I have myself known one young fellow of the class referred to who, under Murger’s inspiration, played for a time at Bohemianism, allowed his hair to grow down over his shoulders, wore by preference a threadbare coat, and posed as an unappreciated genius. His genius, I believe, remains unrecognized still; but he has long since assumed a respectable garb, and given other outward and visible signs of his perversion to conventionality. And yet, even with this instructive case well in mind, I think too much might easily be made of the harmful tendencies of Murger’s book. The Sturm und Drang period of youth, the period of ferment, and aimless experiment, and general unrest, will always be fraught with perils of one or another kind; and a few wild dreams of vague ambition, some spiritual green-sickness, an attack or two of the hysterics of social revolt, a little affectation of Byronism, or Shelleyism, or Murgerism, are not the worst of these. Fortunately, the real world is a businesslike and remorseless disciplinarian, and in the school of practical experience, a nature essentially healthy will presently right itself, and be none the worse—perhaps even the better—for a handful of battered illusions and some pricked bubbles of fancy. And as for the natures not fundamentally healthy—well, Life the Schoolmistress has her own effectual way with these also.
But should there perchance be any young man in danger of taking the Bohemian fever a trifle too seriously, we will refer him for treatment to a very satisfactory physician, a specialist, one may say, in the complaint—Murger himself. Properly read, and read through to the end, the “Scenes” should prove their own corrective; and if their full significance is not clear, the preface furnishes the needed commentary. It is but simple justice to Murger to say that he himself had no sympathy whatever with the indefinite ambitions and mawkish sentimentalism of a certain class of young men, who mistake the cravings of aspiration for the promptings of genius, and turn to art because they are fit for nothing else. Again and again does he insist upon the stern realities of the artist’s probation; again and again does he raise the voice of warning to those who would rashly decide to commit themselves to the artist’s career.
“Il en est dans les luttes de l’art à peu près comme à la guerre—toute la gloire conquise rejaillit sur le nom des chefs. L’armée se partage pour récompense les quelques lignes d’un ordre du jour. Quant aux soldats frappés dans le combat, on les enterre là où ils sont tombés, et une seule épitaphe suffit pour vingt mille morts.”[31]
These are solemn and uncompromising words. And scarcely less solemn are the phrases in which he describes the life of Bohemia as “charming but terrible, having its conquerors and its martyrs”—a life upon which no one should enter “who is not prepared beforehand to submit to the inexorable law of Væ Victis!” Woe to the conquered indeed! In the brilliant pages of the world’s history, the name and fortune of the one who succeeds alone are inscribed; those of the nine hundred and ninety-nine who ignominiously and miserably fail pass into everlasting oblivion.
1. Allusions to the continuance of this revolting practice are numerous as late as the eighteenth century. See, e. g., Pope’s “Essay on Man,” iv., 251-252, and the famous anecdote of Johnson and Goldsmith (Boswell, anno 1773).
2. As the pronunciation of our diarist’s name is often under discussion, I subjoin, for the reader’s guidance in the matter, some clever verses, originally published a few years ago in the London “Graphic”:—
3. A curious circumstance in connection with the first reading of the Diary is worth mentioning. An indefatigable student, it is said, toiled at its decipherment from twelve to fourteen hours a day for the space of three or four years. All the while—such is the strange untowardness of earthly things—Pepys had left in his library a long-hand transcript of his short-hand account of Charles the Second’s escape, and this, had it been known at the time, would have served the purpose of the required key.
4. This is a tragi-comedy by Dryden, written partly in blank verse, partly in rhyme. Pepys had seen it performed some two years before, and had then pronounced it “a very innocent and most pretty witty play.”
5. Taking always in my own study of literature the wider line of inquiry just indicated, I am grateful to Professor Royce for pointing out the connection between two phenomena apparently so radically diverse as the spread of prose fiction and the appearance of the Lockian philosophy. (See his delightful volume—a model of popular exposition—“The Spirit of Modern Philosophy,” pp. 80-81.)
6. The reader of Pepys, recalling Mrs. Pepys’s fondness for these interminable stories, will remember that, as we have seen, “Le Grand Cyrus” once gave rise to considerable unpleasantness between husband and wife.
7. Novel-readers will not need to be reminded that the “story-within-story” device survived long after the classical-heroic romance had passed into oblivion. It is employed, for instance, by both Fielding and Smollett, and traces of it are to be found in the earlier work of Dickens, and in other writers quite near our own time.
8. A delightfully witty account of this work, and of the classical-heroic romance at large, will be found in Jusserand’s “English Novel in the Time of Shakspere,” a book which combines with the erudition of the German specialist the verve, tact, and lucidity of the French—qualities which are commonly to be sought in vain in the voluminous and too often chaotic lucubrations of Teutonic scholarship.
9. Translations of several of the great French romances, including “Clelia,” “which opened of itself in the place that described two lovers in a bower,” are given in the list of books on Leonora’s shelves (“Spectator,” No. 37); and suggestive mention is made of “Pharamond” and “Cassandra” as late as 1711 (“Spectator,” No. 92). Mrs. Lennox’s satire, “The Female Quixote,” may be taken to show that even in 1752 these works were still sometimes read.
10. Common fairness leads me to state, though it must be in the quasi-obscurity of a foot-note, that in any exhaustive treatment of the Restoration novel, place should be found for a third female name—that of Swift’s “stupid, infamous, scribbling woman,” Mrs. Haywood. But though this lady produced, between 1720 and 1730, a number of short stories that might fittingly be touched upon here, her best-known works, “The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless” (1751) and “The History of Jeremy and Jenny Jessamy” (1754), belong to the times of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, and therefore to another school and period of fiction entirely. She would thus be very likely to tempt us too far afield for the purposes we have here in view.
11. Scott’s edition of Swift’s works (1824), vol. ii., p. 303, note.
12. This is the name under which Mrs. Behn enters the satire of Pope:-
The second line of the couplet may be left unquoted.
13. See “Apotheosis of Milton” in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” for 1738 (vol. viii., p. 469).
14. This, according to Mr. Gosse (“Dictionary of National Biography”) was “a relative whom she called her father.” Mrs. Behn certainly does speak of him as her father in “Oroonoko.” And in the Life, “by one of the Fair Sex,” prefixed to the first collected edition of her works, we read: “Her father’s name was Johnson, whose relation to the Lord Willoughby, drew him, for the advantageous post of Lieutenant-General of many isles, besides the continent of Surinam, from his quiet retreat at Canterbury to run the hazardous voyage of the West Indies.” I do not know what is the source and origin of Mr. Gosse’s implied doubt.
15. How vast was the change in taste between, say, the opening and the close of the eighteenth century, is shown by Sir Walter Scott, in an anecdote which has special interest for us here, as bearing directly upon the woman now in question. A grand-aunt of his, Mrs. Keith, of Ravelstone, towards the close of a very long life, asked Scott if he had ever seen Mrs. Behn’s novels. “I confessed the charge. Whether I could get her a sight of them?—I said, with some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I did not think she would like either the manners or the language, which approached too near that of Charles the Second’s time to be quite proper reading. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them being so much admired, and being so interested in them myself, that I wish to look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and confidential’ on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw her afterwards, she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with merely these words: ‘Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not,’ she said, ‘a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in London!’” (See Lockhart’s Scott, chap. liv.)
16. “English Women of Letters,” vol. i., p. 31.
17. Another matter of curious interest in connection with “Oroonoko” calls for passing mention, though too far removed from our special subject to detain us here. This is the remarkable way in which, in its presentation of the “noble savage,” and the innocence, purity, and high moral character of the “natural man,” the story anticipates Rousseau and the later romanticists. Jusserand, who points this out, goes so far as to say that Mrs. Behn “carries us at once beyond the times of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, and takes us among the precursors of the French Revolution.” It may be added that, in the hands of “Honest Tom Southerne,” the story of Oroonoko became a successful play.
18. “The Fair Jilt.”
19. Mrs. Manley, in her Dedication to Lady Lansdowne, says that her stories have truth for their foundation—i.e., are based on fact. Mrs. Behn calls her “Nun” a “true novel.”
20. “La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.
21. “La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.
22. Ibid.
23. In this slight historic sketch of Bohemianism, we simply follow, without comment or criticism, Murger’s original preface to the “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.”
24. A story to the point is worth repeating here. When the playwright, Barrière, went to him one afternoon to propose the dramatization of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” he found Murger in his attic in the Latin Quarter, in bed. It subsequently came out that a Bohemian friend, having occasion to pay a business visit to some important functionary, had borrowed his only pair of trousers, which had the advantage of being a trifle better than his own; and Murger had to remain in bed, with such patience as he could command, until they should be restored.
25. The passage in which reference is made to the meeting with Victor Hugo will be found at the close of chapter xiv. of the “Scenes.” “After lunching together, they started for the country. In crossing the Luxembourg, Rodolphe met a great poet, who had always behaved to him with charming kindness. For propriety’s sake, he was going to pretend not to see him. But the poet did not allow him time; in passing, he gave him a friendly recognition, and bowed to his young companion with a gracious smile. ‘Who is that gentleman?’ asked Mimi. Rodolphe replied by mentioning a name which made her blush with pleasure and pride. ‘Oh,’ said Rodolphe, ‘this meeting with a poet who has sung so well of love, is a good omen, and will bring luck to our reconciliation.’” Banville’s statement of the way in which Murger fed his fiction day by day upon the happenings of his own life, reminds us somewhat of Mr. Robert S. Hichens’ grim and powerful story, “The Collaborators.”
26. This passage, like sundry others already cited, is taken from the dramatization of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” which was, as we have seen, made by Murger in collaboration with Théodore Barrière, and was extremely successful. It differs in many particulars from the book, the scattered scenes of which are reduced to coherence and unity, but the male characters preserve their general traits.
27. The “Norman uncle” very possibly stands for Schaune’s father, the toy-manufacturer, to whose business he presently succeeded.
28. This incident of Marcel’s picture is said to have had its prototype in a composition of Tabar’s, originally sketched as “The Passage of the Red Sea,” and afterwards exhibited in the Salon as “Niobe and Her Children Slain by the Arrows of Apollo and Diana.”
29. This famous volume appears in an “édition princeps,” with “notes in modern Syriac,” in the very amusing story, “Son Excellence Gustave Colline,” which really forms an episode of the “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” though it is published in the collection of miscellanies entitled “Dona Sirène.”
30. See “Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène”; “Les Buveurs d’Eau”; “Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse”; and the “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” preface, and the story of “Le Manchon de Francine.”
31. “Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène.” Murger uses precisely the same words in the preface just referred to.
THE PRESSWORK ON THIS BOOK WAS DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO, AT THE PRINTING SHOP OF THE E. D. TAYLOR COMPANY, IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER AND YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN.