Paris and the Social Revolution Part 45

[98] Salis died several years ago.

[99] One of these just beginning to be known, and hence sure soon to be spoiled, began with improvised tables made by placing boards upon wine-casks, and with other paraphernalia in keeping.

[100] Deceased.

[101] The French free-stage movement, which involved revolutionary thought as well as revolutionary form, was launched at Montmartre, and was identified with Montmartre through all its polemic period,-up to the moment, in fact, when it became Parisian, having gained its cause.

[102] Alexandre is about to leave Montmartre for the Grands-Boulevards.

[103] _Maquereau_ is a type name for a criminal loafer who lives by the prost.i.tution of his mistress.

[104] _Biribi_ is the name given to the African battalion to which recalcitrant soldiers are a.s.signed.

[105] _Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard._ M. Coignard belongs to the eighteenth century.

[106] Since M. France wrote these words, the images of the Christ have been removed from the French courts.

[107] As evidence that M. Barrucand's scheme for free bread deserves to be considered as something more than the Utopian ideal of a litterateur, it should be mentioned that the economist L. Auby advocated the same thing (winter of 1903-04) in as conservative an organ as the _Annales Parlementaires_.

[108] Dubois-Dessaulle, while acting as a newspaper correspondent in Abyssinia in the spring of 1904, was a.s.sa.s.sinated by natives. He was a martyr to his conscientious belief that it is a crime to carry arms.

[109] J.-H. Rosny is the signature of the Rosny brothers, who have to be treated as one person in their relations to thought and literature.

[110] Several of the persons here named are also writers of fiction or poetry.

[111] Lately deceased.

[112] Lately deceased.

[113] This t.i.tle may perhaps be paraphrased by the American colloquialism "Out of It."

[114] Henri Fouquier, an older conservative journalist (recently deceased), of so much distinction that he was considered a possible Academician, published about this time an article in the _XIX? Siecle_ in which he ridiculed the blowing up of the house of the bourgeois as an act devoid of common sense, but declared comprehensible a desire to blow up the Chamber of Deputies, the Prefecture of Police, or the Palace of the President.

[115] "I surely have the right," he said, "to quit the theatre when the piece becomes odious to me, and even to slam the doors behind me in going out, at the risk of troubling the tranquillity of those who are satisfied."

[116] Author of _Demolissons_ and _De Mazas a Jerusalem_.

[117] On the occasion of this lecture Xavier Privas was a.s.sisted by an actor and an actress who recited appropriate poems and by the _chansonnier_ Trimouillat. The hall was entirely without light except for a single lamp before the lecturer. In the accompanying ill.u.s.tration the standing figure is Trimouillat.

[118] A translation of this play has been successfully produced in America (1904) under the t.i.tle _Business is Business_.

[119] _La Cage_ is well known, nevertheless, since it is given several private representations every season.

[120] Forbidden by the censors.h.i.+p, but a favourite at the amateur theatricals of the anarchistic groups.

[121] Under the ban of the censors.h.i.+p from 1891 to 1900.

[122] Forbidden by the censors.h.i.+p, but given a representation-by invitation-at which literary and artistic Paris was fully represented.

[123] Prohibited by the censors.h.i.+p at the time it was written. The prohibition was removed in the winter of 1904.

[124] No notice is taken here of Richepin as a writer of romances.

[125] Technically, "_d'avoir commis une provocation directe au crime de meurtre, laquelle provocation, non suivie d'effet, avait pour but un acte de propagande anarchiste_."

[126] The court in detaching this violent pa.s.sage from its philosophical and artistic setting made Tailhade's offence appear much graver than it really was.

[127] "What I have had especially in view has been to serve the cause of progress, of knowledge; that is to say, the Revolution," wrote the editor of _Le Decadent_.

[128] The minor French poets are so little known in England and America that it would be superfluous to mention by name the members of these bizarre coteries.

[129] _The Magiques_, _Romanistes_, and _Magnificistes_ are possible exceptions. But the _Magiques_ possessed at one time such an unquiet spirit as Paul Adam, and the _Magnificistes_ oppose the tyranny of science and magnify "_les etres_." The _Romanistes_, it is true, accept relatively regular poetic forms, but they attack the Christian church and admit the destruction of nationality. The union of the Latin peoples, which they advocate, they regard simply as an intermediate step preparatory to the union of the whole human race.

[130] Meunier, who is primarily a sculptor, is a Belgian; but his artistic career has been sufficiently identified with Paris to warrant his introduction here.

[131] Deceased.

[132] See Chapter XVI.

[133] Dagnan-Bouveret may have a religious purpose, but scarcely a humanitarian one.

[134] The French word _dessinateur_ is currently applied to ill.u.s.trators, freehand draughtsmen, and lithographic sketch artists; in fact, to all workers in black and white, and even to certain workers in colour for purposes of reproduction. It is used above because there seems to be no single English word equally inclusive. No hard-and-fast distinction is made here between the _dessinateurs_ who are primarily caricaturists and those who are not.

[135] Willette, usually cla.s.sed as a revolutionary socialist, is said by his intimates to have been a Bonapartist always at heart. However this may be, there is no necessary conflict between Bonapartism and the revolutionary ardour which Willette has displayed too often and too unequivocally to admit of any misunderstanding regarding his att.i.tude towards the actual condition of things.

[136] M. Berenger, familiarly known as _Pere-la-Pudeur_, is an uncompromising censor of public morals.

[137] Steinlen is also a painter, but his works in this field, with the exception of certain fascinating studies of cats, are little known outside the circle of his friends, and are not equal to his drawings.

[138] Recently deceased.

[139] _L'a.s.siette au beurre_ = the plate of b.u.t.ter. To have an _a.s.siette au beurre_ is to belong to the wealthy; that is, to be able to eat b.u.t.ter on one's bread (or as the French more often say) on one's spinach.

[140] The artistic merit of the _a.s.siette au Beurre_ has sadly fallen off of late.

[141] Even these have made important concessions, as did Verdi in Italy.

[142] Produced at the _Grand Opera_.

[143] Beranger.

[144] Compare the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.