Paris and the Social Revolution Part 21

If there is one period that is vaunted to-day above another as the golden age of the Latin Quarter, it is the period portrayed in the writings of Murger, De Musset, and Nestor Roqueplan,-period when "_le vin etait spirituel et la folie philosophique_"; period of innumerable drolleries and of two revolutions; and yet each of these three writers, even the happy-hearted Murger, had recourse to that necessary, if puerile, vanis.h.i.+ng point of the perspective of thought,-an anterior golden age.

A person who did not know their authors.h.i.+p would take the opening chapters of De Musset's _Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle_ to have been written in this year of grace 1904 by a disgruntled university alumnus, who was casting longing, lingering looks behind him to De Musset's time.

As, for instance, this pa.s.sage: "The ways of the students and the artists-ways so fresh, so beautiful, so full of buoyant youthfulness-felt the effects of the universal change. Men, in separating from women, had muttered a word which wounds unto death,-disdain. They plunged into wine, and ran after courtesans. The students and the artists did likewise. They treated love as they treated glory and religion: it was a h.o.a.ry illusion. They haunted low places.

The _grisette_ so imaginative, so _romanesque_, so sweet and tender in love, found herself left behind her counter. She was poor, and she was no more lovable; she must have hats and gowns; she sold herself. O shame! The young man who should have loved her, whom she would have loved, he who formerly escorted her to the forests of Verrieres and Romainville, to the dances on the greensward, to the suppers in the shady coverts, he who came to chat by the lamp in the back shop during the long winter evenings, he who shared the morsel of bread steeped in the sweat of her brow and her poor but sublime love,-he, this very man who had deserted her, found her, during some night of orgy, within the _lupanar_, pale and livid, utterly lost, with hunger on her lips and prost.i.tution in her heart."

A sight-seeing visitor to the highways of the _Quartier_ is apt to feel that the grumbling of the elders is well grounded. The conventional, imperturbable, faultlessly attired _fils a papa_, and the over-dressed, over-breezy, blondined young (?) women he observes on the cafe terraces and in the public places, seem to have little or nothing in common with the students and _grisettes_ of poetry and romance he is out for to see.

The _Quartier Latin_ has changed along with the rest of the world, of course, in the last thirty eventful years. The humiliating memory of the Franco-Prussian war and the failure of the Third Republic to fulfil its promises of social equality and freedom have necessarily rendered the student somewhat more reflective; the a.n.a.lytic fearlessness of science has made him more relentlessly introspective; the growing fierceness of the struggle for existence occasioned by the overcrowding of the professions and the obligatory military service has forced him, in his own despite, to be somewhat more practical; the phenomenal expansion of industry, commerce, and finance, and their disillusionising tendencies, have not, in the nature of things, left him entirely untainted; and the equally phenomenal spread of luxury has instilled some absurd and deplorable sybaritic notions into his head.

There has been a net loss in the _Quartier_-and where has there not been?-in picturesqueness and spontaneity. But the vapouring cads and the stolid "digs" who call down the wrath of the elders are not representative: they are at the extremes of the student body. Taken all in all, the student has changed less than the big world about him, not only during the last thirty years, but even during the centuries which have elapsed since he came to his cla.s.s with a bundle of straw under his arm for a seat and his professor lectured _sub Jove_, liable to the interruptions of pa.s.sing washerwomen and street porters.

He has changed less; and such changes as he has undergone are, for the most part, superficial. His love of laughter, his love of liberty, and his love of love have not been lost. They manifest themselves a little differently, that is all.

His love of liberty is not, for the moment, manifested, as it was in the beginning, when Rutebuf and Villon played the highwayman and Clement Marot was king of the Ba.s.soche, by forcing the doors of the bourgeois and beating the watch; nor, as it was in 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871, by mounting the barricade, though there is never a certainty that he will not mount a barricade to-morrow. His love of laughter does not often lead him to the pillaging of taverns and workshops nowadays, as it did the roistering blade of the time of Louis XI., nor to the metamorphosing of himself into a juggler, tumbler, clown, or mountebank. And his love of love rarely blossoms into such dainty idyls as are recounted of the period of the Restoration and Louis Philippe. Perhaps, if the truth were known, it was rarely they so blossomed even then.

The ragged doublets, begging wallets, and pallets of straw have gone forever, as have the street cla.s.ses exposed to the inclemency of the weather, of which they were the fitting accompaniment. The stiff, ugly fas.h.i.+ons of this superlatively ugly age-the cut-away and frock coats, the "plug" and Derby hats, and the close-cropped hair-have, in a measure, replaced the felts _a la_ Rubens and flowing ties and the wavy locks, velvet jackets, and blouses and ta.s.selled Basque _berets_ of Romanticism. Among the _etudiantes_ the simple muslin caps and chintz, muslin, and gingham frocks have fled alarmed before modish hats and tailor-made gowns. The _cancan_, a pitiably tame _cancan_, is danced-in public-only to satisfy the curiosity of sensation-seeking tourists.

But, allowing for differences of customs and costumes, for the unavoidable concessions to the more insistent claims of the spirit of the age, the _Quartier Latin_ is still the same old _Quartier_.

There are numbers who still "live by the grace of G.o.d, eat when they can," not when they would, and "sell their books to the old book dealer for a meal or an evening at the cabaret." Poverty still stalks through the _Pays Latin_, and is still bravely cuffed or blithely bluffed out of countenance there. The student demand for rooms ranging from fifteen to thirty francs a month, and the lively, almost fierce student patronage of the _cremeries_, _bouillons_, and little wine-shops (where an _a la carte_ expenditure of 18 sous verges on extravagance), and of the _prix fixe_ restaurants at 22 and 25 sous, are eloquent of a wide-spread scarcity of funds.

"Flicoteaux exists, and will exist," wrote Balzac in _Illusions Perdues_, "as long as the student shall wish to live. He eats there,-nothing more, nothing less; but he eats there, as he works, with a sombre or joyous activity, according to his circ.u.mstances and his character."

One cannot have lived in the _Quartier_ long and not have had student friends who had more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance with hunger and for whom a fire in winter was a festival event. In his mansard, where the student is doomed to freeze in winter and broil in summer, or in his stuffy, windowless _cabinet_, where he is doomed to suffocate the year round, are enough outward signs of dest.i.tution to rive the heart of the most hardened professional charity visitor; and yet, ten to one, this poor devil of a "Jack" has his "Jill," for the _grisette_ exists.

Yes, countless Jeremiads to the contrary notwithstanding, the _grisette_ exists; under another name or, rather, under several other names,-there are words that defy strict definition; but she exists; changed somewhat, as the student himself is changed somewhat, but unchanged, as he is unchanged, in her love of laughter, her love of liberty, and her love of love. Gracious, graceful, and tender as ever; ignorant and clever, superst.i.tious and sagacious, selfish and self-sacrificing, garrulous and reticent, cruel and kind-hearted, outspoken and deceitful, conscientious and unscrupulous, generous and avaricious, and so forth _ad infinitum_; inconsequent, inconsistent, capricious, contradictory, bewitching bundle of opposites; best of comrades and sincerest, because ficklest, of mistresses; adorable, ever-changing, and unchangeable _grisette_!

Greedy of dress, the dance, and the theatre, she will sacrifice them all at the beck of a real affection. Indifferent to fortune when it comes her way, she will go without eating to have her fortune told her. She will ruin a nabob without a twinge, and share her last crust with the poor. She is true to nothing but her latest impulse. She fears nothing but being bored.

Jack nibbles scant bread and cheese, goes without wine and a fire, p.a.w.ns his overcoat, his watch, and his best hat to provide Jill with a silk petticoat or a new hat. Jill refuses a carriage and pair for love of Jack, and makes merry, coquettish s.h.i.+ft, for his sake, with "a ribbon and a rag"; and she will be as ready to go with him to the barricade to-morrow (for she dearly loves a scrimmage) as she is to go with him to a banquet or a ball to-night.

Thanks to Jack (this latter-day Abelard) and almost as much to Jill (this latter-day Helose), to their unaffected sentimentalities and innocent deviltries, the _Quartier_ has a luminous atmosphere of gayety and poesy, is, in a word, an adequate emblem of "the folly of youth that amuses itself breaking window-panes, and which is, nevertheless, priceless beside the wisdom of age that mends them."

Note the student's street masking, dancing, and singing, and his manifold extravagances at the time of the Carnival, the _Mi-careme_, and the _Quatorze Juillet_, and on special outdoor festival occasions of his own. Watch his pranks and listen to his magpie chatter in his restaurants, cafes, and _bra.s.series_,-not the big, gaudy establishments of the "_Boul' Mich_," where he apes the _chic_ of the bourgeois with whose purse he comes into direct and, for him, disastrous compet.i.tion, and where, for the matter of that, the bourgeois often outnumbers him; but in the dingy resorts of the back and side streets, where he is quite his harum-scarum self, where he is free to shout, sing, caper, and guy to his heart's content, play combs and tin horns, and applaud with beer-mugs and canes, use floors for chairs, chairs for hobby-horses, tables for floors and chairs, and sandwiches for missiles, and dance his Mariette upon his shoulder or dandle her upon his knee; and where he can vary the monotony of his dominoes and _manille_ by throwing a somersault or executing a pigeon-wing or by a turn at _savate_, leap-frog, or puss-in-the-corner. Follow him into the meetings of his bizarre clubs and sodalities; to the spots where he dances for the love of dancing,-_not_ the _Bullier_, where, except for rare occasions, he merely forms part of a show; to his midnight suppers and masquerades,-_Bal des Internes_, _Bal des Quat'z' Arts_, _Bal Julien_, and others quite as characteristic because less renowned: in all these places and situations he displays a faculty for impromptu larking, for fabricating jocund pandemoniums at short notice, that prove him no degenerate son of his father and no mean perpetuator of the mirthful prowess of his grandsires and great-grandsires.

Go with him and his Finette, his Blanchette, his Rosette, his Louisette, or his Juliette, for a Sunday picnic at Bois-Meudon or Joinville-le-Pont, and share with them-if your wind is sufficient and your Anglo-Saxon dignity can bear it-their more than infantile or lamb-like gambols over the meadows and under the trees. Keep with him, if you can be so privileged, his or her Saint's Day. Celebrate with him the _Fete des Rois_, the _Jour de l'An_, and the _Reveillon_. Rejoice with him at the successful pa.s.sing of his "exams" or condole with him for being plucked. Help him empty the pannier and the cask received from home. Enter into the spirit of his yarns, toasts, _gaudrioles_, and _chansons_ on these occasions; into the spirit of his betrayal of sentiment and play of wit, of his gallantry and persiflage, his repartee and poetry, his exaggerations and fantasies; of his _pas-seuls_ and _pas-a-quatres_, his revivals of _cancan_ (not the tame variety), _bourree_, and _chahut_, his imitations of fandangos and jigs, his ceremonious travesties of saraband and minuet, and his impulsive launching of _danses inedits_. Enjoy with him his accompaniments on gla.s.ses and symphonies on plates, his sallies and his salads, his coffee and his antics, his _pates_ and his mummeries, his horse-play and his wine. Under their spell you will be convinced, if you have any relish for life in you, that for graces of fellows.h.i.+p, refinements of revelry, and subtleties of tomfoolery the student of the _Quartier_ has not his peer upon the planet.

The memory of Murger and the cult of merriment under misfortune which his immortal _Vie de Boheme_ symbolises is faithfully cherished. His anniversary is observed every summer about the time of St. Jean by a pilgrimage to his monument in the Luxembourg and a banquet at an average price of fifteen sous in some indulgent cabaret or cafe. A recent menu was as follows: bread, wine, blood pudding, fried potatoes, almond cakes, cigars for the students and flowers for the _etudiantes_. One year a thoughtless board of managers committed the indiscretion of elevating the price of the Murger banquet to something over a franc, whereat the whole _Quartier_ was thrown into a veritable tumult of protest.

The real student cafes and cabarets[67]-which I would not name nor locate for a kingdom, since their obscurity is the one thing that saves them from being spoiled-are the lineal descendants and, _mutatis mutandis_, the worthy successors of the cafes and cabarets of the students' fathers and grandfathers and of the taverns of his remote forbears.

There the ancient custom of charcoaling or chalking the walls with skits, epigrams, and caricatures, is kept up.[68]

There long-haired, unkempt poets mount on tables and counters, gla.s.s in hand, and flaunt their new-born epics, tragedies, and ballads, or loll in dreamful, languis.h.i.+ng poses and intone their elegies and idyls, as did Rutebuf, Villon, Gringoire, and Cyrano de Bergerac in their respective epochs; Moliere, Boileau, Racine, and Crebillon, in the seventeenth century, at the "_Mouton Blanc_"; as did only yesterday Merat, Anatole France, Leon Vallade, and Leconte de Lisle at the _Cafe Voltaire_; De Banville, Murger, Daudet, and Paul Arene at the _Cafe de l'Europe_; Coppee, Mendes, Rollinat, Mallarme, Bourget (who began as a poet), Bouchor, Richepin, and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam at "The Sherry Cobbler"; and as did all the versifiers of a generation at the _Cafe Bobino_ (adjoining the famous little theatre of the same name), "which was," says Daudet, "the holy of holies for everybody who rhymed, painted, and trod the boards in the _Quartier Latin_."

There they fete the victories of their respective poetic sects-_Roman_, _Instrumentiste_, _Magique_, _Magnifique_, _Deliquescent_, _Incoherent_, or _Neo-Decadent_, as the case may be, just as the Romanticists in their time, and the Parna.s.sians, Decadents, and Symbolists in their times, feted their victories at the _Cafe Procope_. There they burn incense-as it was burned erstwhile at the _Soirees_ and _Pet.i.ts Soupers Procope_ to Hugo, Baudelaire, and Verlaine-to their divinities who have consented-oh, monstrous condescension!-to foregather with them.

There, too, they blend becomingly philosophy and disputation with good cheer, as did D'Alembert, Voltaire, Condorcet, Diderot, and Rousseau in this same all-absorbent Procope; Corot, Gerome, Francais, Jules Breton, Baudry, Harpignies, Garnier, Falguiere, Andre Theuriet, and Edmond About at the _Cafe de Fleurus_; and Therion, the original of the Elysee Merant of Daudet's _Rois en Exil_, Wallon, the original of Colline in Murger's _Vie de Boheme_, and Barbey d'Aurevilly, as famous for his lace-embroidered neckties and red-banded white trousers as for his caustic wit, at the _Cafe Tabourey_.

The student's lyric gift and _penchant_ for good fellows.h.i.+p find further vent in little cellar (_caveau_), back-room, or upper-room _cafe-concerts_[69] of his own founding, at which, in a congenial atmosphere of tobacco and beer, he sings and recites to sympathetic listeners _chansons_ and monologues of his own composition, and at which he permits the _etudiante_, who almost invariably fancies herself predestined to a brilliant career on the operatic stage, to dispense, by way of interlude, the popular _risque_ and sentimental songs of the day.

The editorial staffs of the ephemeral literary journals and reviews (_revues des jeunes_ and _journaux litteraires_) are so many mutual admiration societies whose business meetings-there is so little business to be done-are very apt to be banquets or _soirees litteraires_. In fact, more than one sheet of the _Quartier_ has no other business office than the back room of the cabaret its editors frequent.

These amateur publications (in which, for the matter of that, nearly every one who counts in French literature has made his debut) are not burdened with modesty. Witness the closing paragraph of the leading editorial of the first, last, and only number of the _Royal-Boheme_:-

"Our aim is to demand charity of those who, having intelligence and heart, will not see in us a band of useless beggars; our hope, to more than repay our benefactors with the fruits of our thoughts and the flowers of our dreams."

For a nave and concrete statement of the revolutionist's pet formula, "From every one according to his ability and to every one according to his need," or as an example of what would be called, in good American, "unmitigated nerve," the above would be hard to match.

An anonymous writer has defined the Bohemian as "a person who sees with his own eyes, hears with his own ears, thinks his own thoughts, follows the lead of his own heart, and holds to the realities of life wherever they conflict with its conventions." The typical Bohemian student of Paris is a Bohemian of this sort. He loves his comfort as well as another fellow, but he is not ready to sell his soul for it. Material well-being at the price of submission-moral, social, or political-he will none of. Practical considerations do not count with him when they antagonise his ideals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LATIN QUARTER TYPE]

In his monumental _Illusions Perdues_, Balzac describes at length a Latin Quarter _cenacle_ of nine persons, of which his hero, the poet Lucien de Rubempre, became a member. Among other things, he says:-

"In this cold mansard the finest dreams of sentiment were realised. Here brothers, all equally strong in different regions of knowledge, enlightened each other in good faith, telling one another everything, even their base thoughts,-all of an immense instruction, and all tested in the crucible of want." Something of the beautiful earnestness of these ideal and idealised Bohemians of Balzac has laid hold on the Bohemian student of to-day. Like the members of this mansard _cenacle_, he is seeking conscientiously and eagerly for a comprehensive formula of life.

"The student is thinking," writes an actual student, in answer to the charges of materialism, dilettanteism, and subserviency brought against the student body. "His thought is fermenting, trying its force, preparing the future. The present hour is grave, an hour of transition. In literature, in art, in politics, something new is desired, expected, sought after.

Everywhere is chaos. Everywhere opposing elements clash. A general synthesis or an exclusive choice from which harmony may spring is called for. What are the laws of this synthesis, what is the criterion of this choice? These are the questions which, anxiously, without ceasing, and, perhaps, in spite of himself, the contemporary youth is asking."

There have been brief seasons when the whole university world-students and faculties alike-has been afflicted with intellectual sn.o.bbishness, indifference, discouragement, disillusion, fatigue, and even despair.

The present has its share of disillusion and discouragement, but it is primarily a period of search. In the faculties, alongside of those figure-heads-in which faculties always and everywhere have been rich-who cling tenaciously to whatever is ancient, respectable, and commonplace, are men who are looking up and out.[70] M. Lavisse, for instance, with his recurring emphasis on the necessity of a closer union of the university with the people, is a sort of second (and a more scientific) Michelet; and M. Lavisse has several colleagues who are little, if any, behind him in large suggestiveness. The thought-stirring influence of the disinterested, investigating zeal of Pasteur (and his successors, Roux and Duclaux) and of Berthelot is also profound. A provincial professor, M. Herve, has recently been disciplined for unblus.h.i.+ng anti-patriotism.

The _College Libre des Sciences Sociales_ (subsidised by the state) and the _Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales_ have flung their doors wide open to socialism. Furthermore, this once descried doctrine has a hold on the university itself. Just what the following of socialism is among the students, it is not possible, in the complete absence of reliable statistics, to determine; but it is safe to say that it is large and fervent, since student socialists appear in convincing force at every important socialistic demonstration.

At the last anniversary of the "b.l.o.o.d.y Week" of the Commune, in Pere-la-Chaise I chanced upon two students wearing red eglantines in their b.u.t.tonholes, with whom I had taken my meals for several weeks previous without having been given the slightest intimation that they were interested in social or political problems, to say nothing of being socialists. The talk that resulted from this chance meeting revealed to me that they were actively affiliated with an important socialistic organisation, and that their convictions had marched fearlessly and far.

There are many such unproclaimed and unsuspected socialists in the Quarter.

Anarchy also-that is, the philosophical type of anarchy so much in favour in certain literary and artistic and even in certain scientific groups-has an indefinite and fluctuating but extensive student penumbra.

No, the student's n.o.ble aspirations have not all forsaken him. He abhors, as he has always abhorred, the prudish, the prudent, the politic, the hypocritical, and the mean. He has not become hopelessly subservient any more than he has become hopelessly morbid or hopelessly unsentimental. He can still resent dictation, as he can still laugh and love. If he truckles to his professors in the matter of Greek and Latin roots, it is that Greek and Latin roots are subjects of supreme indifference to him. When his honest thinking and his deeper emotions are concerned, he is as recalcitrant as ever. He recognises no authority, neither president nor prelate, general nor judge, nothing but his own sense of truth and right.

He is thinking. What is more, he is ready to accept the logical consequences of his thinking. When the time comes that these consequences tally with action, he will act. He has the same imperious need to act that he has to romp and to love. He looks to action-direct action, street action-for redress of wrong. He cannot help it: it is his nature. Intensity is the primal law of his being and will out, though he is merely telling a story, playing a joke, kissing a cheek, or singing a song. He is not fifty, and he is French. He has the Quixotism, the fine rashness, the sublime foolhardiness, of his years and of his race.

With a mobility impossible for the Teuton or Anglo-Saxon to understand, but which may be, notwithstanding, the highest form of self-control, he pa.s.ses from vigorous frolic to vigorous work and _vice versa_ instantaneously. For him it is no farther from a laugh or a kiss to a barricade than it is from a laugh to a kiss; and why should it be, when the laugh, the kiss, and the barricade are (as they are with him), co-ordinate a.s.sertions of liberty? "Frivolous as a pistol bullet," he flashes to his mark. Given the impact of provocation, he does not know what veering or wabbling means.

Some contemporary-De Vogue, I think-has said, "The student always rules those who think they are ruling him," in which he resembles a womanly woman; "and, when the critical moment comes, he resumes his liberty of action."

If he has not been on a barricade in thirty years, it is because neither Boulangism, Dreyfusism,[71] Derouledism, nor anti-Combeism, though he played some part in each, won, or deserved to win, his full allegiance. He has not taken the traditional chip off his shoulder, however, nor given any one permission to tread on his toes. On the contrary, he has shown flashes of his old temper, even in the tranquil third of a century just pa.s.sed, often enough to leave no doubt of its persistence. It is only a little more than twenty years since the _Quartier_ was in an uproar by reason of a slanderous article on the students published in the _Cri du Peuple_ the day after the death of Jules Valles.

It is only a round fifteen years since the students, taking into their own hands the punishment of the _souteneurs_ of the _Quartier_, ducked a number of them in the frog-pond of the Luxembourg.

It is only ten years since the students set all Paris and all France by the ears because the government had interfered-unwarrantably, as they believed-with the immemorial usages of the _Quat'z' Arts_ ball. The _Quartier_ was flooded with soldiers, blood was shed, and there was one life lost. The students carried their point. Parliament intervened, and the proceedings begun in the courts against the organisers of the ball were dropped. What the consequences might otherwise have been no one can tell; but it is almost certain they would have been not local, but national.

It is only six or seven years since it took a strong force of police to defend against the wrath of the students the director of the _Ecole des Arts Decoratifs_, whose offence was nothing more heinous than favouring the sale, under school auspices, of the drawing materials, by dealing in which a medical student had hitherto earned the money to pursue his studies; and this state of things lasted several days. And only a little over two years ago the students protested as vigorously against the condemnation of Tailhade for his incendiary article in _Le Libertaire_ as they had against the condemnation of Richepin for his _Chansons des Gueux_ a quarter of a century before.

It was in a cafe of the Left Bank that French volunteers for the Boer war were recruited; and it was most of all from the students, when Kruger came to Paris, that the ministry feared the anti-British demonstrations that might bring international complications,-demonstrations which it craftily diverted by allowing the student pro-Boer enthusiasm the fullest scope.

The persecution of the Russian students by the Russian government aroused among the students of Paris no little sympathy, which was given expression in indignation meetings. It was probably quite as much the dread of the student displeasure as of the anarchist bomb that kept the czar on his last visit to France from entering Paris.