the bohemia with which the following pages are concerned is not that inland country of europe which greene and shakspere, to the indignation of all right-minded commentators, so generously endowed with a sea-coast. we must at once dismiss from our minds all thought of prague and the czechs; for the country into which we are about to offer a personally conducted excursion finds no place on our maps and no mention in our geographies. our bohemia is, in a word, none other than the bohemia of paris.
the confines and landmarks of this strange country have, fortunately for us, been authoritatively established. bohemia, according to the painter marcel, of whom we shall hear more anon, and who certainly knew well what he was talking about, is “bounded on the north by hope, work, and gayety; on the south by necessity and courage; on the west and east by calumny and the 182hospital.”[20] yet it is just possible that these cryptic phrases may fail to convey to some readers any very definite geographical information; since even rodolphe, to whom they were first addressed, is reported to have shrugged his shoulders and responded with a simple “je ne comprends pas.” hence, it may be well at the outset to attempt to describe, as succinctly as possible, the limits of that seductive land through which our road is now to lie.
this is far from being an easy task, however. often as the word bohemia is used, in the broad sense here attached to it, so many writers have colored it with so many different shades of meaning, that, though we may understand vaguely its general significance, it seems well-nigh impossible to bring it satisfactorily within the terms of a strict definition. “vive la bohème!” cries george sand, at the end of her novel, “la dernière aldini”; and “vive la bohème!” has found many an echo and re-echo in the pages of french literature, down to the present day, when it would seem that, as a free and independent country, bohemia is practically disappearing from the face of the earth. but each one of the many explorers of this dark and 183mysterious corner of our modern world, has brought back with him his own report of the territory and its inhabitants; and these travellers’ stories by no means tally one with another. to some it has seemed to be peopled by the lowest classes of those who, as the phrase goes, live upon their wits; by beggars, petty swindlers of all descriptions, and men and women who, through idleness or misfortune, are unable to obtain a livelihood, we will not say in honest ways, but in any way that society chooses to recognize as honest. to others the population has appeared to be composed of those who follow undignified and precarious careers, as cheap-jacks, circus-riders, street-conjurers, acrobats, bear-trainers, sword-swallowers, and itinerant mountebanks of kindred descriptions. a third class of writers has made bohemia a regular sink of society, the receptacle of all such outcasts and human abominations as eugène sue and his followers loved to depict; villains of the deepest dye—vitriol-throwers, house-breakers, assassins. while to a fourth group this same domain has been the land of literature and the arts, where philosophy and beer, music and debt, painting and hunger, criticism and tobacco-smoke, combine to make life picturesque and 184inspiring; a land the denizens of which either die of penury in the streets or the hospital, uncared for, unknown, or, living, at last take their rightful places in the front rank, among the painters, composers, and writers of their time.
wherein these various critics agree, is in describing bohemia as a country lying on the outskirts of ordinary society, and inhabited by those who cannot, or will not, yield to that society’s conventions—the failures or the incompatibles of decent modern civilization. it is hardly worth while to try to decide as to what particular portion of this vast and complex community has the best right to a name which has thus been used with great elasticity of meaning. it will be sufficient if we say at once that the phase of bohemian life with which we here purpose to deal is not that reflected in the romances of xavier de montépin, féval, or sue. our bohemia is the bohemia of art and letters; and, as our guide through this romantic region, we will take the man who has drawn its life for us with such marvellous power and vividness—henri murger, himself the representative bohemian, alike in the struggles and lurid contradictions of his career, and alas! in his early and tragic death.
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“to-day, as of old, every man who devotes himself to art, with no other means of subsistence than art itself, will be forced to tread the pathways of bohemia. the majority of our contemporaries who display the most beautiful heraldry of art have been bohemians; and, in their calm and prosperous glory, they often recall, sometimes perhaps with regret, the time when, climbing the green slopes of youth, they had no other fortune, in the sunshine of their twenty years, than courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the fortune of the poor. for the uneasy reader, for the timorous bourgeois, for all those who can never have too many dots on the i’s of a definition, we will repeat in the form of an axiom: bohemia is the probation of artistic life; it is the preface to the academy, the hospital, or the morgue.”
thus writes murger, in the preface to his immortal “scènes de la vie de bohème,” and the words will be found to furnish a startling commentary about the kind of life with which his volume deals—a life made up of extraordinary contrasts; of dazzling dreams and the most sordid of realities; of hope alternating with despair; of high talents ruined by reckless excesses; of splendid promises defeated by the fates; of brilliant careers cut short by premature death. “the true bohemians,” continues this writer, who, more than any other, speaks as their accredited mouthpiece and historian, “are really 186the called of art, and stand a chance of being also the chosen.” but the country of their adoption literally “bristles with dangers. chasms yawn on either side—misery and doubt. yet between these two chasms, there is at least a road, leading to a goal, which the bohemians can already reach with their eyes, while awaiting the time when they shall touch it with their hands.” but till such time shall come, even if it ever comes at all, the young enthusiast must turn a brave face upon all the troubles, the anxieties, the privations, the fears, the petty worries and distractions, by which his self-chosen career will be everywhere begirt. for those who have once set their feet in the alluring but perilous pathway, which will lead to fame or misery, to immortality or death, there must be no trembling, no hesitation, no looking backward with regretful eyes to the safe, though humble, beaten tracks which they have left below. they have dared to devote themselves, brain and soul, to art, in a world which cannot understand their aims, which sneers at their aspirations, which is very likely to leave them to starve, and will at best yield them only a grudging and tardy welcome. hence, every day’s existence becomes for them “a work of genius, an ever-recurring 187problem.”[21] nor is it surprising that, in the haphazard life which they are thus forced to lead, they should inevitably acquire those habits of carelessness, that easy-going morality, and often enough that want of settled purpose, which make them the black sheep of respectable society.
“if a little good fortune falls into their hands, they forthwith begin to pursue the most ruinous fancies ... not finding windows enough to throw their money out of; and then, when the last écu is dead and buried, they begin again to dine at the table d’h?te of chance, where their cover is always laid; and to chase, from morning till night, that ferocious beast, the hundred-sous-piece.”[22]
such is the tenor of their way; certainly not a noiseless one, nor one running through the cool, sequestered vale of life. little wonder, then, that with all the frivolities and uncertainties of their journey, with all its physical hardships and moral perils, so few should survive their pilgrimage through bohemia, or, when they finally reach a quieter resting-place, should have the heart to recount, with frankness and simplicity, their varied experiences in the probationary land.
yet the bohemians are a great race, and may boast a proud extraction. the founder of their illustrious family was none other than the great 188father of western song, who, “living by chance from day to day, wandered about the fertile country of ionia, eating the bread of charity, and stopped at eventide to hang beside the hearth of hospitality, the harmonious lyre that had chanted the loves of helen and the fall of troy.”[23] descending the centuries to modern times, the bohemian reckons his ancestors among the prominent figures of every great literary epoch. in the middle ages, the great family tradition is perpetuated among the minstrels and ballad-makers, the devotees of the gay science, the whole tribe of the melodious vagabonds of touraine; while, as we pass from the days of chivalry to the dawn of the renaissance, we find “bohemia still strolling about all the highways of the kingdom, and already invading the streets of paris itself.” who does not know of pierre gringoire, friend of vagrants and foe to fasting? who cannot picture him as “he beats the pavements of the town, nose in air, like a dog’s, sniffing the odors of the kitchens and the cook-shops”; and “jingling in imagination—alas, not in his pockets!—the ten crowns, which the aldermen have promised him for the very pious 189and devout farce he has written for their theatre in the hall of the palais de justice”? who, again, does not recall master fran?ois villon, “poet and vagabond, par excellence,” whose ballads to-day may still make us forget the ruffian, the vagabond, the debauchee? these are names with strange power still over the imagination. and, when we come to the splendid outburst of the renaissance, is it not to find ourselves face to face with men in whose veins the rich old blood was fierce and strong, with clément marot, and the ill-starred tasso, with jean goujon, pierre ronsard, mathurin regnier, and who shall say how many more? shakspere, and molière, jean jacques rousseau, and d’alembert—these, too, the historian of bohemia must include in his annals, to say nothing of the long line of great writers in england (whom murger does not even allude to), by whom the name of grub street was made illustrious in the chronicles of the eighteenth century.
two groups of bohemians in paris—where perhaps alone to-day artistic bohemianism is still possible—have within more recent years made their voices heard and their influence felt in the literature and art of their time. the first was that which gathered about poor gérard 190labrunie, better known as gérard de nerval, the unfortunate young writer whose works have yet to reap their due appreciation, but whose translation of “faust,” as goethe told eckermann, made the great german proud “to find such an interpreter.” that group was composed of such men as corot, chesseriau, arsène houssaye, théophile gautier, jules janin, and stadler; the mere recital of whose names is enough. shortly after this band was broken up—some, like nerval, dying tragically and long before their time; others reaching high rank in the world of french letters—another famous cénacle arose, the central figure of which was the prince of modern bohemia, henri murger himself. among those who toiled and suffered with him, we may make passing mention of auguste vitu, schaune, and alfred delvau; but there were, of course, others, whose names are less familiar to the reading public of to-day, especially in this country. the romance of this second bohemia has been written for us by murger in the “scènes de la vie de bohème”; and it is to the pages of this fascinating book that we purpose presently to turn. but to understand these aright, to appreciate their pathos and their comedy, to realize their intensity of meaning, we must first of all know 191something of the writer’s personality and career. i do not mean that it will be necessary for us to retell in detail the whole sad story of murger’s life. but so much of his character and experiences find embodiment in this book of his, that we should miss half its charm and more than half its significance, if we did not, to begin with, make ourselves acquainted with at least the larger facts of his existence.
henri murger was born in 1822. his father, a savoyard, moved to paris either just before or just after his son’s birth; obtained a situation as janitor; and while attending to the demands of this position, carried on at the same time his trade as a tailor. murger père was a hard, severe, unsympathetic man, totally unable to understand his son’s early-developed literary propensities, and with no higher ambition in life than that of making a decent income by the exercise of his craft. his intention from the beginning was to bring young henri up as an adept at shears and thimble, so that he might by-and-by turn out a hard-working, thrifty ninth part of a man, like himself. but henri rebelled; and as his mother sided with him, having, as it would seem, some faith in the child’s talents, or perhaps 192only a womanly yearning to make a gentleman of him, the long struggle with paternal authority finally closed, though not without the breeding of bitterness, in his favor. the original scheme of training him to manual labor was abandoned, and he received such education as his parents could afford, which, after all, was poor enough.
while still a mere boy he entered the practical business of life through the narrow and dingy portals of a lawyer’s office; but like many another youth under similar conditions, the itch for verse was too strong for him, and he relieved with the inditing of stanzas the dry technicalities of the legal routine. meanwhile, an academician, m. de jouy, had taken a fancy to him; and through his influence, at the age of sixteen, he obtained an appointment as secretary to count tolsto?, a russian diplomatist then resident in paris. forty francs a month represented the material advantages of this position; not a lordly remuneration, certainly, but acceptable enough, none the less; more especially as the duties, anything but cumbersome at the start, dwindled considerably with lapse of time and presently became almost nominal. with a small definite income to fall back upon, and plenty of leisure on his 193hands, murger now began to give free scope to his literary impulses, passing his hours in the study of the poets, and making a humble start in his own productive career. but his good fortune was destined to be of short duration; for through a rather ludicrous misadventure his connection with tolsto? was after a while brought to a sudden close. at that time he was engaged to furnish a certain amount of daily copy to one of the parisian papers. it so chanced that during the revolution of 1848 tolsto? found it necessary to put his secretarial services once more into active requisition; and, what with getting off his daily supply of matter for the press and preparing dispatches for the czar of all the russias, the young man unexpectedly found his energies taxed to the full. one memorable day the functions of diplomatist and author unfortunately became entangled, and in his hurry and excitement he sent off his feuilleton to the russian court and his dispatch to the “corsaire.” with this ill-timed performance, murger’s political career ignominiously ended, and—what was by far the most serious part of the matter—the monthly recompense of forty francs, which had seemed to him a veritable peruvian gold-mine, ended also. nor was this all. ere this his 194mother had died, and with the cessation of her mediatorial influence, the feud between himself and his father had broken out afresh. thus murger was thrown entirely on his own resources, with nothing but his pen to look to for the means of support. his father peremptorily refused to have anything to do with him. “he contents himself with giving me advice,” wrote henri to a friend, in a season of special tribulation, “and with insulting me whenever we meet.” and it is well known that one cannot live on advice, while insults, though more stimulating, are not a whit more nutritious.
it was at this point, then, that henri murger became a dweller in bohemia. he was now one of those who, in his own words, have no other means of subsistence beyond that afforded by art itself; one of those described by balzac, “whose religion is hope, whose code is faith in oneself, whose budget is charity.” through nearly all the varied experiences of which he was afterwards to write with such wonderfully sustained graphic power, the young man himself now passed; through the days of careless idleness or strenuous exertion; through the nights of homeless wandering or furious dissipation; through all the grim poverty and suffering, all the doubt and 195restlessness, all the fierce fluctuations of assurance and despair, which presently went to the making of his book. even while he had still been in receipt of count tolsto?’s allowance, things had sometimes gone hardly enough with him; for, needless to state, he was not of the thrifty or frugal kind, “your friend,” he writes in a letter, as early as 1841, “has found the means of swallowing forty francs in a fortnight; but happily for him there are still forty sous left to carry him to the end of the month. his existence, then, has been during the past fortnight diversified with beefsteaks ... and havana cigars”; while for the remaining two ill-omened weeks, recourse must be had to that “table d’h?te of chance” already referred to. with the discontinuance of this tiny but periodic dropping from the great cornucopia of providence, the beefsteaks and havana cigars became less and less frequent apparitions in his life, and the famous inn which bears the “belle etoile” as its sign and trading token, found in him a pretty constant guest. to make his shoes last more than six months, and his debts forever, now became an urgent problem for him. sometimes fortune would pay him a flying visit, and on such occasions he describes himself as being 196temporarily in possession of more money than he knows what to do with; but libraries, tailors, restaurants, cafés, theatres, turkish tobacco-pipes, and friends, combined to help him over this perplexing difficulty with extraordinary ease and rapidity. once, in the intense excitement of a sudden windfall, he went to bed and dreamed that he was the emperor of morocco and was marrying the bank of france. but such seasons of miraculous plenty were few and far between, and visions of this extraordinary kind, when they came at all, were less likely to arise from repletion than from an empty stomach; for sometimes he was brought face to face with actual starvation. now, he reports borrowing right and left from any acquaintance who had a franc to lend; now, again, “s—— is paying me the thirty francs he owes me, fourteen sous at a time.” so from month to month he struggled on, without seeming to get any nearer to the goal he had in view, or, in point of fact, to any goal at all; often tortured with physical pain and privation; often driven half-wild with despair; but, after the fashion of the true bohemian, keeping always a brave heart, and a ready jest for the good friends who stuck close to him through all, and who would have been only too willing to 197help him in his need, but for the single unfortunate circumstance that they were as badly off as himself.
unhappily, murger was, in one important respect, particularly ill-adapted for the kind of life into which he was thus driven. a man who trusts to his pen for daily bread should at least be a facile and ready writer, able to turn off indefinite quantities of copy in a given time, and willing to undertake the writing up of any subject upon which public interest may be temporarily aroused, and an article required. when literature becomes a business, the higher ambition to produce only good work must almost inevitably be subordinated to the lower and more practical aim of making the thing pay. now, the difficulty with murger was, that although literature was his livelihood, his regular trade and calling, he persistently refused to regard it mainly in that light—refused to sacrifice artistic excellence to temporary advantage, and to debase a sacred mission into mere routine work, the immediate, if not indeed the sole, object of which was to turn so much intellectual labor into so much food and clothing. he himself has remarked concerning one of his characters that, after the fashion of genius—a generalization 198which may or may not be partially true,—he had a tendency to be lazy. murger was not exactly lazy; but he was whimsical and uncertain; his energies were not always under command; and he did not, with anthony trollope, put firmer faith in a piece of beeswax on the seat of his chair than in all the promptings of the divine afflatus. like goldsmith, he recognized that the conditions of his life rendered it impossible for him to pay court to the “draggle-tail muses”; they would simply have left him to starve outright. so he turned to prose; but with prose things were nearly as bad. there were times when he could not and would not write—when the spirit was not upon him; and when he could not work as an artist, he would not work as a day-laborer or publisher’s drudge. and even when he was in full swing, his delicate taste, his almost morbid care in composition, his constant desire to do his best, prevented him from ever producing with the rapidity necessary to make the results really remunerative. never, even under the greatest stress of circumstances, would he consent to write hastily, or allow his manuscript to leave his hands without what he conceived to be its proper share of thought and revision. money to him was always the secondary 199consideration; even hunger had to wait, that the artistic sense might be satisfied. rather than prove traitor to his lofty ideals, he would live for weeks on dry bread.
thus he had more than the usual difficulty in making ends meet. but the misfortune did not stop there. a slow and exceedingly painstaking writer, he could produce but little in the normal hours of work; hence, the limit had to be frequently extended; and, for this purpose, recourse was had to the perilous aid of artificial stimulants. we now touch the saddest part of murger’s sad story. he wrote at night, and generally in bed—a practice which he had probably adopted in days when fuel was a luxury beyond his reach;[24] and his work was almost invariably done with the assistance of strong and incessant potations of coffee. when the house was perfectly quiet, when darkness and silence had fallen over the city, then murger, like 200balzac, commenced the labors of the day. with these desperate measures, there can be little doubt that he began very early to undermine a constitution which had never been robust. the story of the habits thus formed, and of the tyranny they acquired over him, is a terribly tragic one, and might furnish a fearful warning to many a jaded brain-worker, did we not know that it is the everlasting law of human nature that no one shall profit by any one else’s experiences. “i am literally killing myself,” he writes to a friend. “you must break me of coffee. i count on you.” “there are nights,” he declares at another time, “when i have consumed as much as six ounces of coffee, and only end by convincing myself more than ever of my lack of power—and this, yes, this has lasted three months. so that at present i am broken down by the application of these mochas.... and here i am still passing my nights drinking coffee like voltaire, and smoking like jean bart.” as a direct consequence of these suicidal habits, he gradually contracted a terrible disease—known to medicine as “purpura”—which took him again and again to the hospital. once, when the hand of sickness had smitten him with more than usual severity, he made a determined 201attempt to reform. he banished his coffee, and strove, by closing the shutters and lighting the candles, to trick himself into working, not of course by daylight, but simply during the day. but it was too late to inaugurate so radical a change. ere long his nocturnal instincts reasserted themselves, and continued in full force to the end of his career. doubtless, it is in the pathological conditions thus brought about, that we have to seek the explanation of the fearful restlessness which presently came to characterize him, and which earned for him the nickname of the wandering christian.
it was only after his constitution had been shattered, and he had grown prematurely old, that murger found his way out of bohemia. the path into that land of glamour and enchantments had been easy enough, like the road to avernus; the passage back again into the common world was in his case, as in the case of so many others, a steep and difficult one. but after months and years of toil and waiting, success came at last, and little by little he was able to break with tenacious old associations, and settle down to a more steady and regular routine of life. he established a connection with the “revue des deux mondes”; and with a 202position now practically assured, took up his abode at marlotte, near fontainebleau. here he had every chance of restoring his enfeebled health, and starting his career anew upon a different and a wiser plan. but the hour had gone by. a brief period of work and quiet happiness was brought to a close in january, 1861, when henri murger breathed his last in the house where he had already spent so many weeks of suffering—in the h?pital st. louis. he had not completed his thirty-ninth year.
of the general work of murger, this is not the place to speak. it is considerable in quantity, and much of it has substantial claim to critical attention; for his prose is finely wrought, and his lyrics—instance the superb “chanson de musette,” so highly but justly praised by gautier,—are sometimes of rare purity and sweetness. but it is by the “scenes of bohemian life,” and by these alone, after all, that murger keeps his hold to-day upon the broader reading public. it has been said that he only wrote at his best when he was writing straight out of his own life. this is perhaps at bottom the reason why this one singular book possesses vitality far in excess of all his other productions. these 203may still be read with enjoyment, though in the tremendous stress of modern affairs, and with the ceaseless activity of the printing-press, they are more likely to be ignored by all but special students. but the “scenes of bohemian life,” as mr. saintsbury has rightly insisted, take a permanent place in the literature of humanity. here we may notice one more illustration of the curiously distorted judgments which authors often pass upon their own works. in later years he was accustomed to speak slightingly and almost petulantly of the volume which has carried his name over into a new generation; even, it is said, going so far as to affirm that “that devil of a book will hinder me from ever crossing the pont des arts”—that is, from entering the academy, which was one of the unfulfilled ambitions of his life. but, in another and finer sense, it has placed his name among those of the immortals.
we may now pass from the author to his volume, on the title-page of which he might well have written the famous quorum pars magna fui of virgil’s hero. “murger, c’est la bohème, comme la bohème fut murger,” was the declaration of one of his personal friends; and the stuff of his wonderful scenes, with all their extravagance 204and rollicking absurdity, with all their poignant pathos and whimsical humor, is, as we have said, stuff furnished by close observation and intimate experience, though the crude material is transmuted into gold by the secret alchemy of genius. it has been said that many of murger’s chapters were actually written—in the french phrase, for which we have no satisfactory equivalent—au jour le jour; that he made the scenes of his bohemian life into literature, so to speak, while they were still being enacted. to this effect théophile de banville reported that “that which was done by rodolphe”—who, as we shall presently see, is generally to be identified with murger himself—“during the month when he was mademoiselle mimi’s neighbor, has perhaps had no parallel since letters began. his days he passed in composing verses, sketching plots of plays, and covering mimi’s hands with kisses as with a glove; but his daily bread was his feuilleton for the ‘corsaire,’ and as rodolphe had neither money nor books to invent anything but his own life, each evening he wrote as a feuilleton for the ‘corsaire’ the life of that day, and each day he lived the feuilleton for the next. it was thus that the morrow of i know not what quarrel, after the 205fashion of the lovers of horace, mimi, leaning on her lover’s arm, was bowed to in the luxembourg by the poet of the ‘feuilles d’automne,’ and returned home quite proud to the rue des canettes; and that same evening rodolphe wrote on this theme one of his most delightful chapters.”[25] this account of the connection between murger’s book and his daily life, probably overstates the matter, or is to be accepted as approximately true only in regard to exceptional occurrences, like the one directly referred to. but that the substance of the volume was throughout furnished by experience is certain. the principal characters, and even some of the minor ones, have long since been traced back to their archetypes; the spots rendered famous by 206many a memorable scene—such as the café momus and the shop of the old jewish bric-a-brac dealer, father médicis—are known to have actually existed in the old latin quarter, though in the evolution of modern paris the historic landmarks have been swept away; while there is no question that in most of his stories murger either drew immediately upon actual circumstances, or at least built his superstructure of fancy upon a very solid foundation of fact.
the heroes of the “scenes of bohemian life” are four in number. to each member of the strange group—the “quatuor murger,” as it came to be called—we will yield the honor of a separate paragraph or two of characterization.
first we have alexandre schaunard, who, though he cultivates “the two liberal arts of painting and music,” devotes the larger part of his attention to the latter, and is indeed particularly engaged at the time when we make his acquaintance, in the composition of an elaborate symbolic symphony which might almost be said to anticipate some of the crazy theories of more recent doctrinaires, representing as it does “the influence of blue in the arts.” this strange production had a real existence, and its originator in 207the book has been identified with alexandre schaune, who also drove an artistic tandem with much enthusiasm for a season, though he subsequently forsook bohemia and adopted a more profitable career in the toy-making business. he and murger became acquainted in 1841, lived together at one time in the closest intimacy in the rue de la harpe, and remained friends till the latter’s death. schaune survived among “new faces, other minds,” till 1887, and only a short time before he died published some memoirs which contain many matters of interest for the murger student. he bore among his companions the nickname of schannard-sauvage, and in murger’s original manuscript the name was so written—schannard. by a printer’s error, however, the first n was turned into a u, and the historian thought well, in reading the proof, to let the blunder pass.
schaunard in the book is specially distinguished among his acquaintances for having raised borrowing to the level of a fine art. by dint of many careful observations and delicate experiments he has discovered the days when each one of his friends is accustomed to receive money, and thus, following the periodic ebb and flow of the financial tide, spares himself the 208trouble and annoyance of appealing to the generosity of those who, at the given moment, are likely to be in as low water as himself. having, furthermore, “learned the way to borrow five francs in all the languages of the globe,” the painter-musician is able, as a rule, to keep pretty firmly on his feet. by a critical friend he was once described as “passing one half of his time in looking for money to pay his creditors, and the other half in eluding his creditors when the money has been found.”[26] but it should be remembered that this calls for some discount as a friend’s judgment, and likely, therefore, to be a trifle over-colored; and it is but doing justice to schaunard to say that, towards the immediate companions who had come to his rescue from time to time, he behaved upon a more honorable plan. to facilitate, and at the same time to equalize so far as possible, the “taxes” which he levied, he “had drawn up, in order of districts and streets, an alphabetical list containing the names of all his friends and acquaintances. 209opposite each name was inscribed the maximum sum which, having regard to their state of fortune, he might borrow from them, the times when they were in funds, their dinner-hour, and the ordinary bill of fare of the house. beside this list, schaunard kept in perfect order a little ledger, in which he entered the amounts lent to him, down to the minutest fractions; for he would never go beyond a certain figure, which was within the fortune of a norman uncle whose heir he was.[27] as soon as he owed twenty francs to an individual, he closed the account, and liquidated it at a single payment, even if for the purpose he had to borrow from others to whom he owed less. in this way he always kept up a certain credit, which he called his floating debt, and as people knew that he was accustomed to pay when his personal resources permitted, they willingly obliged him when they could.”
schaunard plays his part to the amusement, if not always to the edification, of the reader in many delightful episodes in the “scenes.” it is through his misadventures with his landlord that the establishment of the club is largely, though indirectly, brought about; it is he who 210paints the provincial blancheron’s portrait in fancy dressing-gown, while marcel goes off to dine with a deputy in his—the said blancheron’s—coat; it is he, again, who is hired by an englishman to play the piano from morning till night, as a means of getting even with an actress living near by, whose parrot and shrill declamation combined, have proved rather too much for even british nerves,—a transaction out of which, we need scarcely add, the virtuoso made a good deal more money than he did from his famous symphony. on the whole, however, of the four friends with whose doings our volume is mainly occupied, schaunard is by far the least attractive figure. he is coarse and morose; has a harsh, rasping voice; is apt to be put out about trifles; sometimes treats his male friends with scant courtesy; and has an unpleasant habit of employing, with his more intimate associates of the other sex, captain marryatt’s argumentum ad feminam—in other words, of conversing with them occasionally through the medium of a stout cane. poor phémie—the melancholy phémie—had every right more than once or twice to complain of the strength and efficacy of his logic; nor were matters made very much better for her, we may opine, when, after one of their 211quarrels, he gave her in grim joke, and as a keepsake, the stick with which he had addressed to her so many telling remarks.
after schaunard comes marcel the painter, a character of more amiable type, who appears to be a compound portrait of the two artists, tabar and lazare. he is essentially a good fellow, bright, enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, and shiftless; and though, after the fashion of the world in which he lives, he has an “insolent confidence in luck,” he is manly enough, upon occasion, to “give fortune a helping hand.” he is the hero of many amazing and some very ludicrous adventures, of which we can find space here only for a single specimen. like schaunard, he is devoting as much of his time and energy as he can save from the manufacture of pot-boilers and the consideration of the “terrible daily problem of how to get breakfast,” to the composition of one great work, which is to be his open sesame to fame—“the passage of the red sea.”[28] was ever so much labor expended with such little practical result, one may wonder, by any artist whatsoever—painter, musician, or 212poet? for five or six years marcel had worked away at his canvas with unflagging diligence and courage, and “for five or six years this masterpiece of color had been obstinately refused by the jury”; so that, by dint of going and returning from the artist’s studio to the exhibition, and from the exhibition back to the studio, the picture had come to know the way so well, that, had it been set on wheels, it could have gone to the louvre by itself. marcel, of course, attributed the policy of the jury to the personal spite of its members, and persisted, in the teeth of all discouragement, in regarding his production as the pendant to “the marriage in cana.” hence, nothing daunted, he returned again and again to his vast design, after indulging in a sufficient amount of abuse to relieve his ruffled temper. at length, under conviction that the child of this world might possibly succeed where the child of light had failed, he began to seek for means whereby, without altering the general plan of his gigantic undertaking, he might deceive the jury in supposing it to be an entirely fresh and hitherto unexamined work. thus, one year he turned pharaoh into c?sar, and the “passage of the red sea” became “the passage of the rubicon.” this ruse failing, he 213covered, as by miracle, the red sea with snow, planted a fir-tree in one corner thereof, dressed an egyptian in the costume of the imperial guard, and sent forth his canvas as “the passage of the beresina.” but, unfortunately, the jury had wiped its glasses that day and was not to be duped. it recognized the inexorable picture by dint of a multi-colored horse—his “synoptic table of fine colors,” marcel privately called this astonishing steed—that went prancing about on the top of a wave of the red sea; and again the masterpiece was churlishly blackballed. “till my dying day i will send my picture to the judges,” vowed marcel, after this new repulse; “it shall be engraved on their memories.”—“the surest way of ever getting it engraved,” remarked colline, who chanced to be near by. and so the poor painter might have been left to try further and still wilder experiments, but for the kindly intervention of daddy médicis, an old jew who had constant dealings with the bohemians, and often managed to do them a friendly turn without, as may be imagined, sacrificing himself overmuch in the transaction. this singular individual, coming one evening to marcel’s room, offered to purchase the famous picture “for the collection of a rich amateur,” 214and proposed one hundred and fifty francs as a fair price. at first, the artist grumbled; there was at least a hundred and fifty francs’ worth of cobalt in the dress of pharaoh alone, he protested. but the jew stood firm, and at last the painter yielded; whereupon daddy médicis gave the bohemians a dinner, at which “the lobster ceased to be a myth for schaunard, who contracted for this amphibious creature a passion bordering on madness.” as for marcel himself, his intoxication came near upon having deplorable results. passing his tailor’s shop, at two o’clock in the morning, he actually wanted to wake up his creditor, and give him on account the hundred and fifty francs he had just received. a ray of reason, which still flitted in the mind of colline, stopped the artist on the brink of this precipice.
and now for the sequel of the story.
“a week after these festivities, marcel found out the gallery in which his picture had been placed. in passing through the faubourg st. honoré, he stopped in the midst of a group which seemed to be watching with curious interest a sign that was being placed over a shop. this sign was neither more nor less than marcel’s picture, which had been sold by médicis to a grocer. only, ‘the passage of the red sea’ had undergone one more change, and bore a new name. 215a steamboat had been added, and it was now called ‘the harbor of marseilles.’ the curious onlookers, when they saw the picture, burst out in a flattering ovation; and marcel returned home in ecstasy over the triumph, murmuring—‘the voice of the people is the voice of god.’”
what part the synoptic charger was now called on to fill, unfortunately we cannot say.
the third member of our quartet is gustave colline, student of “hyperphysical philosophy,” and inveterate perpetrator of alarming puns. he too is a composite character, the principal ingredients of his make-up being furnished by two of murger’s old associates—jean walton and trapadoux, both of whom were men of immense and curious erudition and many eccentricities. colline himself, of a somewhat more steady way of life than his companions, gains a fairly regular income by teaching mathematics, botany, arabic, and various other subjects, as occasion demands, and spends the greater part of it in the accumulation of second-hand books. “what he did with all these volumes,” remarks the historian, “so numerous that the life of a man would never have sufficed to read them, no one knew—he least of all.” but still he goes on adding tome to tome, and when he chances to return to his lodgings at night without bringing 216a new specimen to his store, he feels that, like the good titus, he has wasted his day. thus his strange, shapeless mouth, pouting lips, double chin, shaggy light hair, and threadbare, hazel-colored overcoat, are well known upon the quays and wherever ancient volumes are exposed for sale. his tastes are catholic in the extreme; for he will buy anything and everything that is to be bought, provided only it is rare, out of the way, and for all practical purposes useless. some idea of the range and versatility of his interests may be given by reference to a single episode in his history. when, in company with marcel, rodolphe gave that famous christmas entertainment, whereof the record is to be found in its proper place in the annals of bohemia, he insisted on borrowing for the occasion the philosopher’s famous swallowtail coat. now, this coat, as the chronicler justly suggests, deserves a word or two. by courtesy it was held to be black by candle-light, though it was really of a decided blue. it was also cut upon a wild and startling plan, very short in the waist and exceedingly long in the tails. but its most astonishing features were the pockets—“positive gulfs, in which colline was accustomed to lodge some thirty of the volumes which he everlastingly carried about with 217him; which caused his friends to say that during the times when the libraries were closed scientists and men of letters could always seek information in the skirts of colline’s coat—a library always open to readers.” well, on this particular day, strange to relate, the great swallowtail apparently harbored only a quarto volume of bayle, a treatise in three volumes on the hyperphysical faculties, a volume of condillac, two of swedenborg, and pope’s “essay on man.” “hullo!” exclaimed rodolphe, when the philosopher had turned out this odd collection and allowed the other to don the imposing habit; “the left pocket still feels very heavy; there is still something in it.”—“ah!” replied colline, “that is true; i forgot to empty the foreign language pocket.” whereupon he drew out two arabic grammars, a malay dictionary, and “the perfect stock-breeder” in chinese—his favorite reading.[29] nor was this quite all. later on, in looking for his handkerchief, rodolphe came accidentally upon a small tartar volume, overlooked in the department of foreign literature.
218for the rest, colline is a very agreeable companion, pleasant of manner, and courteous of bearing; and his conversation is amusingly spiced with quaint technical expressions and the most outrageous puns. unlike his three companions, who are in perpetual bondage to love, he passes on, for the most part, in bachelor meditation, fancy free, as becomes a philosopher of the “hyperphysical school.” once in a while, we find him flirting a little with the bonne amie of one of his friends, and we recall a single occasion on which, according to his own statement, he had an appointment of a romantic character. we read also, in the most incidental way, of his devotion to a waistcoat-maker, whom he keeps day and night copying the manuscripts of his philosophical works. but at these, as at all other times, the lady of his affections remains “invisible and anonymous.” in general, it may be said that he shows himself markedly superior to the human weakness which does so much to disturb the byways of bohemia no less than the highways of the outer world.
music, painting, and philosophy are thus well represented in the bohemian cénacle, and in rodolphe, the last of the group, the sister art of poetry finds a worthy exponent. rodolphe 219is the real hero of the book, and is indeed an approximately faithful sketch of the author himself. in the fancy-poet of the latin quarter, the man who, in the very cut of his clothes, manners, appearance, conversation, “confessed his association with the muses,” many of murger’s well-known traits of character and personal idiosyncrasies are frankly reproduced. we have a brief but sufficiently detailed description of him when he makes his first appearance in the café momus, and there can be no doubt as to the artist’s model from which the study is made. he is presented as “a young man whose face was almost lost in an enormous thicket of many-colored beard. but, as a set-off against this abundance of hair on the chin, a precocious baldness had dismantled his forehead, which looked like a knee, and the nakedness of which a few stray hairs that one might have counted vainly endeavored to cover. he wore a black coat, tonsured at the elbows, and with practical ventilators under the armpits, which could be seen whenever he raised his arm too high. his trousers might once have been black, but his shoes, which had never been new, seemed to have several times made the tour of the world on the feet of the wandering jew.” in all this—in the precocious 220baldness and parti-colored beard especially—we have the historian of bohemia himself. we do not, therefore, wonder that the character of rodolphe should stand out from among the other figures of the “scenes,” by reason of a certain autobiographic distinctness of outline and color, nor that he should prevail upon us by a kind of personal charm which his companions rarely possess.
to follow rodolphe’s various adventures and enterprises back to their originals in murger’s life, would be an interesting task, but it is one that cannot be attempted here; and for the time being we must keep to the poet in the book. like his friends schaunard and marcel, this young man has pinned his faith to one ambitious work, a drama called the “the avenger,” which has already gone the round of all the theatres of paris, and of which in the course of a couple of years, he has accumulated a dozen or so huge manuscript copies, weighing collectively something like fifteen pounds. “the avenger” was ultimately produced, and ran for five successive nights, after large portions of these carefully wrought versions had been used up in the humble service of lighting the fire. but this does not come till towards the end of the story; and 221during the days when we know him best, rodolphe, awaiting his dramatic triumph, is willing enough to turn his literary talents to account in less dignified ways. the main sources of his income appear to be “the scarf of iris,” a fashion-journal, and “the castor,” a paper devoted to the interests of the hat-trade, both of which he edits, and in which he publishes from time to time his opinions on tragedy and kindred subjects. it is to the columns of the latter periodical, by-the-by, that gustave colline contributes a discussion on “the philosophy of hats, and other things in general”—how much to the amusement and instruction of its readers we are unfortunately not told. probably the financial advantages of these two undertakings are of a rather slight and unsubstantial character; at any rate, the editor-in-chief shows himself at all times ready to supplement his official emoluments whensoever occasion offers. witness his most famous piece of hack-work, the composition of “the perfect chimney constructor.” rodolphe, who has been sadly down on his luck for a time—fluctuating between going to bed without supper and supping without going to bed—happens accidentally to run across his uncle monetti, a stove-maker and physician of 222smoky chimneys, whom he has not seen for an age. now, monsieur monetti is an enthusiast in his art, and has conceived the idea of drawing up for the benefit of future generations, a manual of chimney-construction, in which his own numerous patents shall be given adequate presentation. finding his nephew fallen upon evil days, he intrusts him with this literary enterprise, promising him a remuneration of three hundred francs, and rashly giving him outright fifty francs on account. of course, rodolphe incontinently disappears, and only turns up again when the money has disappeared also. uncle monetti then resorts to drastic measures. he locks the volatile young gentleman in a small room, six stories up, with stoves and ovens for his company, and takes away his clothes, leaving in their stead a ridiculous turkish dressing-gown. in this attic solitude the unfortunate young poet is fain to wax eloquent over ventilators, till he is rescued in the most romantic way by a certain mademoiselle sidonia, as the reader will find recorded at length in its proper place in the bohemian chronicles.
in connection with one extraordinary episode in rodolphe’s career—his sudden receipt of five hundred francs in hard cash—we have an 223excellent opportunity of studying some of the mysteries of bohemian finance. he and marcel, who was then his fellow-lodger, regarded this colossal sum as practically inexhaustible; they were not a little surprised, therefore, to find, before a fortnight had gone by, that it had vanished into air, as though by magic. the strictest frugality had presided over all their expenditures, and the question was, where in the world the money could have gone to. into this problem the two economists forthwith made inquisition, analyzing their accounts, and carefully weighing them item by item. this is about the way in which the audit was conducted:—
“march 19.—received five hundred francs. paid, one turkish pipe, twenty-five francs; dinner, fifteen francs; miscellaneous expenses, forty francs,” marcel read out.
“what in the world are these miscellaneous expenses?” asked rodolphe.
“you know well enough,” said the other. “it was the evening when we didn’t come home till morning. at any rate, that saved us fuel and candles.”
there is nothing like rigid economy, as we see.
“march 20.—breakfast, one franc, fifty centimes; tobacco, twenty centimes; dinner, two 224francs; an opera glass”—needed by rodolphe, who, as editor of the “scarf of iris,” had to write a notice of an art exhibition; and so on, and so on. as the account continued, “miscellaneous expenses” reappeared with ever-increasing frequency; indeed, the two financiers had in the end to admit that this “vague and perfidious title,” as rodolphe called it, had proved a delusion and a snare.
such, then, are the four principal characters with whose doings and misdoings the “scenes of bohemian life” are mainly occupied. a word only about the women of the book.
it is while he is in their company, i suppose, more than at any other time, that the anglo-saxon reader feels how far the pathways of bohemia lie outside the boundaries of respectable society. louise, the fickle bird of passage; musette, vagabond and careless; mimi, charming, heartless, ill-fated; phémie, beneath whose delicate exterior was concealed a veritable volcano of passion;—yes, the face of the moralist will certainly harden as he dwells on the giddy vagrancy of their lives, and the hopeless tragedy in which the music and the laughter inevitably find their earthly close. about this matter i 225shall try to say something presently. for the moment i want only to point out that, though the women of murger’s book are drawn from known or conjectured originals, the portraiture does not seem to be nearly as close as it is throughout in the case of the men. this does not mean only that each girl in the “scenes” is a more or less blurred compound of various famous figures of the old latin quarter; it means, also—and this is, of course, far more important,—that the characters have undergone much transfiguration. the magic and grace by which, amid all their personal shortcomings and delinquencies, these heedless adventurers of the studio and the café are actually marked, are largely, it is to be feared, the results of murger’s own idealizing imagination and delicately poetic touch.
there is an important point, suggested by the present part of our subject, which demands a moment’s attention. the principle indicated in the well-known lines of lafontaine—
“deux coqs vivaient en paix: une poule survint,
et voilà la guerre allumée!”—
is generally held to be one of universal applicability. but the life of our bohemian brotherhood for once gives it the lie direct. never, 226even 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 227way 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 228know, 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 229cover 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 230gayety 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 231to 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 232not 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 233while 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 234like 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, 235for 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 236visible 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 237“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 238“who is not prepared beforehand to submit to the inexorable law of v? 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.
