An Englishman In Paris Part 2

"Caught at last," said a stentorian voice behind him, and dispelling the dream as its owner laid his hand on the novelist's shoulder, while a gigantic companion planted himself in front of the street door and cut off all retreat that way.

"With a refinement of cruelty, which in the eyes of posterity will considerably diminish the glory of his victory"--I am quoting Balzac's own words as he related the scene to us at the Hotel des Haricots--the sergeant-major perfumer would not allow his prisoner to change his clothes, and while the van with the precious Etruscan vase disappeared in the distance, Balzac was hustled into a cab to spend a week in durance vile, where on that occasion he had the company of Adolphe Adam, the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau."

However, "les jours de fete etaient pa.s.ses," and had been for the last five years, ever since the Hotel des Haricots had been transferred from the town mansion of the De Bazancourts in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain to its then locale near the Orleans railway station. There were no more banquets in the refectory as there had been of yore. Each prisoner had his meals in his cell. Joseph Mery, Nestor Roqueplan, and I were admitted as the clock struck two, and had to leave exactly an hour afterwards. It was during this visit that Balzac enacted the scene for us which I have endeavoured to describe above, and reminded Mery of the last dinner he had given to Dumas, Jules Sandeau, and several others in the former prison, which dinner cost five hundred francs. Eugene Sue, who was as unwilling as Balzac to perform his civic duties, had had three of his own servants to wait upon him there, and some of his plate and silver brought to his cell.

Seeing that the name of the celebrated author of "Les Mysteres de Paris"

has presented itself in the course of these notes, I may just as well have done with him, for he forms part of the least agreeable of my recollections. He was also an _habitue_ of the Cafe de Paris. A great deal has been written about him; what has never been sufficiently insisted upon was the _inveterate sn.o.bbishness of the man_. When I first knew him, about '42-'43, he was already in the zenith of his glory, but I had often heard others mention his name before then, and never very favourably. His dandyism was offensive, mainly because it did not sit naturally upon him. It did not spring from an innate refinement, but from a love of show, although his father, who had been known to some of the son's familiars, was a worthy man, a doctor, and, it appears, a very good doctor, but somewhat brusque, like our own Abernethy; still much more of a gentleman at heart than the son. He did not like Eugene's extravagance, and when the latter, about '24, launched out into a cabriolet, he s.h.i.+pped him off on one of the king's vessels, as a surgeon; to which fact French literature owed the first novels of the future author of "Les Mysteres de Paris" and "Le Juif-Errant."

But the father was gathered to his fathers, and Eugene, who had never taken kindly to a seafaring life, returned to Paris, to spend his inheritance and to resume his old habits, which made one of his acquaintances say that "le pere and le fils had _both_ entered upon a better life." It appears that, though somewhat of a _poseur_ from the very beginning, he was witty and amusing, and readily found access to the circle that frequented the gardens of the Tivoli and the Cafe de Paris.[6] They, in their turn, made him a member of the Jockey Club when it was founded, which kindness they unanimously regretted, as will be seen directly.

[Footnote 6: There were two Tivoli gardens, both in the same neighbourhood, the site of the present Quartier de l'Europe.

The author is alluding to the second, so often mentioned in the novels of Paul de k.o.c.k.--EDITOR.]

The Tivoli gardens, though utterly forgotten at present, was in reality the birthplace of the French Jockey Club. About the year 1833 a man named Bryon, one of whose descendants keeps, at the hour I write, a large livery stables near the Grand Cafe, opened a pigeon-shooting gallery in the Tivoli; the pigeons, from what I have heard, mainly consisting of quails, larks, and other birds. The pigeons shot at were wooden ones, poised up high in the air, but motionless, as we still see them at the suburban fairs around Paris. Seven years before, Bryon had started a "society of amateurs of races," to whom, for a certain consideration, he let a movable stand at private meetings, for there were no others until the Society for the Encouragement of breeding French Horses started operations in 1834. But the deliberations at first took place at Bryon's place in the Tivoli gardens, and continued there until, one day, Bryon asked the fourteen or fifteen members why they should not have a locale of their own; the result was that they took modest quarters in the Rue du Helder, or rather amalgamated with a small club located there under the name of Le Bouge (The Den); for Lord Seymour, the Duke de Nemours, Prince Demidoff, and the rest were sufficiently clear-sighted to perceive that a Jockey Club governed on the English principle was entirely out of the question. That was the origin of the French Jockey Club, which, after various migrations, is, at the time of writing, magnificently housed in one of the palatial mansions of the Rue Scribe. As a matter of course, some of the fas.h.i.+onable _habitues_ of the Cafe de Paris, though not knowing a fetlock from a pastern, were but too pleased to join an inst.i.tution which, with the mania for everything English in full swing, then conferred as it were upon its members a kind of patent of "good form,"

and, above all, of exclusiveness, for which some, even amidst the fleshpots of the celebrated restaurant, longed. Because, it must be remembered, though the majority of the company at the Cafe de Paris were very well from the point of view of birth and social position, there was no possibility of excluding those who could lay no claim to such distinctions, provided they had the money to pay their reckoning, and most of them had more than enough for that. It appears that Eugene Sue was not so objectionable as he became afterwards, when the wonderful success of his "Mysteres de Paris" and the "Juif-Errant" had turned his head; he was made an original member of the club. Election on the nomination by three sponsors was not necessary then. That article was not inserted in the rules until two years after the foundation of the Paris Jockey Club.

Of the success attending Sue's two best-known works, I can speak from personal experience; for I was old enough to be impressed by it, and foolish enough to rank him, on account of it, with Balzac and Dumas, perhaps a little higher than the former. After the lapse of many years, I can only console myself for my infatuation with the thought that thousands, of far greater intellectual attainments than mine, were in the same boat, for it must not be supposed that the _furore_ created by "Les Mysteres de Paris" was confined to one cla.s.s, and that cla.s.s the worst educated one. While it appeared in serial form in the _Debats_, one had to bespeak the paper several hours beforehand, because, unless one subscribed to it, it was impossible to get it from the news-vendors.

As for the reading-rooms where it was supposed to be kept, the proprietors frankly laughed in your face if you happened to ask for it, after you had paid your two sous admission. "Monsieur is joking. We have got five copies, and we let them out at ten sous each for half an hour: that's the time it takes to read M. Sue's story. We have one copy here, and if monsieur likes to take his turn he may do so, though he will probably have to wait for three or four hours."

At last the guileless demoiselle behind the counter found even a more effective way of fleecing her clients. The cabinets de lecture altered their fees, and the two sous, which until then had conferred the right of staying as long as one liked, were transformed into the price of admission for one hour. Each reader received a ticket on entering, stating the time, and the shrewd caissiere made the round every ten minutes. I may say without exaggeration that the days on which the instalment of fiction was "crowded out," there was a general air of listlessness about Paris. And, after the first few weeks, this happened frequently; for by that time the Bertins had become quite as clever as their formidable rival, the proprietor and editor of the _Const.i.tutionnel_, the famous Dr. Veron, whom I have already mentioned, but of whom I shall have occasion to speak again and again, for he was one of the most notable characters in the Paris of my early manhood. But to return for a moment to "Les Mysteres de Paris" and its author.

The serial, then, was frequently interrupted for one or two days, without notice, however, to the readers; on its resumption there was a nice little paragraph to a.s.sure the "grandes dames de par le monde," as well as their maids, with regard to the health of M. Sue, who was supposed to have been too ill to work. The public took all this _au grand serieux_. They either chose to forget, or were ignorant of the fact, that a novel of that kind, especially in the early days of serial feuilleton, was not delivered to the editor bit by bit. Sue, great man as he was, would not have dared to inaugurate the system only adopted somewhat later by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, namely, that of writing "from hand to mouth." These paragraphs served a dual purpose--they whetted the lady and other readers' interest in the author, and informed the indifferent ones how great that interest was. For these paragraphs were, or professed to be,--I really believe they were,--the courteous replies to hundreds of kind inquiries which the author "could not acknowledge separately for lack of time."

But this was not all. There was really a good excuse for Eugene Sue "se prenant au serieux," seeing that some of the most eminent magistrates looked upon him in that light and opened a correspondence with him, submitting their ideas about reforming such criminals as "le maitre d'ecole," and praising Prince Rodolph, or rather Eugene Sue under that name, for "his laudable efforts in the cause of humanity." In reality, Sue was in the position of Moliere's "bourgeois gentilhomme" who spoke prose without being aware of it; for there was not the smallest evidence from his former work that he intended to inaugurate any crusade, either socialistic or philanthropic, when he began his "Mysteres de Paris." He simply wanted to write a stirring novel. But, unlike M. Jourdain, he did not plead ignorance of his own good motives when congratulated upon them. On the contrary, he gravely and officially replied in the _Debats_ without winking. Some of the papers, not to be outdone, gravely recounted how whole families had been converted from their evil ways by the perusal of the novel; how others, after supper, had dropped on their knees to pray for their author; how one working man had exclaimed, "You may say what you like, it would be a good thing if Providence sent many men like M. Sue in this world to take up the cudgels of the honest and struggling artisan." Thereupon Beranger, who did not like to be forgotten in this chorus of praise, paid a ceremonious visit to Sue, and between the two they a.s.sumed the protectors.h.i.+p of the h.o.r.n.y-handed son of toil.

It must not be supposed that I am joking or exaggerating, and that the _engoument_ was confined to the lower cla.s.ses, and to provincial and metropolitan faddists. Such men as M. de Lourdoueix, the editor of the _Gazette de France_, fell into the trap. I have pointed out elsewhere that the republicans and socialists of those days were not necessarily G.o.dless folk, and M. de Lourdoueix fitly concluded that a socialistic writer like Sue might become a powerful weapon in his hands against the Jesuits. So he went to the novelist, and gave him a commission to that effect. The latter accepted, and conceived the plot of "The Wandering Jew." When it was sketched out, he communicated it to the editor; but whether that gentleman had reconsidered the matter in the interval, or whether he felt frightened at the horribly tragic conception with scarcely any relief, he refused the novel, unless it was modified to a great extent and its blood-curdling episodes softened. The author, taking himself _au serieux_ this time as a religious reformer, declined to alter a line. Dr. Veron got wind of the affair, bought the novel as it stood, and, by dint of a system of puffing and advertising which would even make a modern American stare, obtained a success with it in the _Const.i.tutionnel_ which equalled if it did not surpa.s.s that of the _Debats_ with the "Mysteres."

"It is very amusing indeed," said George Sand one night, "but there are too many animals. I hope we shall soon get out of this menagerie."

Nevertheless, she frankly admitted that she would not like to miss an instalment for ever so much.

Meanwhile Sue posed and posed, not as a writer--for, like Horace Walpole, he was almost ashamed of the t.i.tle--but as "a man of the world"

who knew nothing about literature, but whose wish to benefit humanity had been greater than his reluctance to enter the lists with such men as Balzac and Dumas. After his dinner at the Cafe de Paris, he would gravely stand on the steps smoking his cigar and listen to the conversation with an air of superiority without attempting to take part in it. His mind was supposed to be far away, devising schemes for the social and moral improvement of his fellow-creatures. These philanthropic musings did not prevent him from paying a great deal of attention--too much perhaps--to his personal appearance, for even in those days of beaux, bucks, and dandies, of Counts d'Orsay and others, men could not help thinking Eugene Sue overdressed. He rarely appeared without spurs to his boots, and he would no more have done without a new pair of white kid gloves every evening than without his dinner. Other men, like Nestor de Roqueplan, Alfred de Musset, Major Fraser, all of whose names will frequently recur in these notes, did not mind having their gloves cleaned, though the process was not so perfect as it is now; Eugene Sue averred that the smell of cleaned gloves made him ill.

Alfred de Musset, who could be very impertinent when he liked, but who was withal a very good fellow, said one day: "Mais enfin, mon ami, ca ne sent pas pire que les bouges que vous nous depeignez. N'y seriez vous jamais alle?"

In short, several years before the period of which I now treat, Eugene Sue had begun to be looked upon coldly at the Jockey Club on account of the "airs he gave himself;" and three years before the startling success of his work, he had altogether ceased to go there, though he was still a member, and remained so nominally until '47, when his name was removed from the list in accordance with Rule 5. Owing to momentary pecuniary embarra.s.sments, he had failed to pay his subscription. It may safely be a.s.serted that this was merely a pretext to get rid of him, because such stringent measures are rarely resorted to at any decent club, whether in London or Paris, and least of all at the Jockey Clubs there. The fact was, that the members did not care for a fellow-member whose taste differed so materially from their own, whose daily avocations and pursuits had nothing in common with theirs; for though Eugene Sue as early as 1835 had possessed a race-horse, named Mameluke, which managed to come in a capital last at Maisons-sur-Seine (afterwards Maisons-Lafitte); though he had ridden his _haque_ every day in the Bois, and driven his cabriolet every afternoon in the Champs-elysees, the merest observer could easily perceive that all this was done for mere show, to use the French expression, "pose." As one of the members observed, "M. Sue est toujours trop habille, trop carosse, et surtout trop eperonne."

M. Sue was all that, and though the Jockey Club at that time was by no means the un.o.btrusive body of men it is to-day, its excesses and eccentricities were rarely indulged in public, except perhaps in carnival time. A M. de Chateau-Villard might take it into his head to play a game of billiards on horseback, or M. de Machado might live surrounded by a couple of hundred parrots if he liked; none of these fancies attracted the public's notice: M. Sue, by his very profession, attracted too much of it, and brought a great deal of it into the club itself; hence, when he raised a violent protest against his expulsion and endeavoured to neutralize it by sending in his resignation, the committee maintained its original decision. A few years after this, Eugene Sue disappeared from the Paris horizon.

CHAPTER III.

Alexandre Dumas pere -- Why he made himself particularly agreeable to Englishmen -- His way of silencing people -- The pursuit he loved best next to literature -- He has the privilege of going down to the kitchens of the Cafe de Paris -- No one questions his literary genius, some question his culinary capacities -- Dr. Veron and his cordon-bleu -- Dr. Veron's reasons for dining out instead of at home -- Dr. Veron's friend, the philanthropist, who does not go to the theatre because he objects to be hurried with his emotions -- Dr. Veron, instigated by his cook, accuses Dumas of having collaborateurs in preparing his dishes as he was known to have collaborateurs in his literary work -- Dumas' wrath -- He invites us to a dinner which shall be wholly cooked by him in the presence of a delegate to be chosen by the guests -- The lot falls upon me -- Dr. Veron and Sophie make the _amende honorable_ -- A dinner-party at Veron's -- A curious lawsuit in connection with Weber's "Freyschutz" -- Nestor Roqueplan, who became the successor of the defendant in the case, suggests a way out of it -- Leon Pillet virtually adopts it and wins the day -- A similar plan adopted years before by a fireman on duty at the opera, on being tried by court-martial for having fallen asleep during the performance of "Guido et Genevra" -- Firemen not bad judges of plays and operas -- They were often consulted both by Meyerbeer and Dumas -- Dumas at work -- How he idled his time away -- Dumas causes the traffic receipts of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest to swell during his three years'

residence at Saint-Germain -- M. de Montalivet advises Louis-Philippe to invite Dumas to Versailles, to see what his presence will do for the royal city -- Louis-Philippe does not act upon the advice -- The relations between Dumas and the d'Orleans family -- After the Revolution of '48, Dumas becomes a candidate for parliament -- The story of his canva.s.s and his address to the electors at Joigny -- Dumas' utter indifference to money matters -- He casts his burdens upon others -- Dumas and his creditors -- Writs and distraints -- How they are dealt with -- Dumas' indiscriminate generosity -- A dozen houses full of new furniture in half as many years -- Dumas' frugality at table -- Literary remuneration -- Dumas and his son -- "Leave me a hundred francs."

Among my most pleasant recollections of those days are those of Alexandre Dumas. To quote his own words, "whenever he met an Englishman he considered it his particular duty to make himself agreeable to him, as part of the debt he owed to Shakespeare and Walter Scott." I doubt whether Dumas ever made himself deliberately disagreeable to any one; even when provoked, he managed to disarm his adversary with an epigram, rather than wound him. One evening, a professor at one of the provincial universities had been dining at the Cafe de Paris, as the guest of Roger de Beauvoir. He had a magnificent cameo breastpin. It elicited the admiration of every one, and notably that of Dumas. He said at once that it was a portrait of Julius Caesar.

"Are you an archaeologist?" asked the professor.

"I," replied Dumas, "I am absolutely nothing."

"Still," insisted the visitor, "you perceived at once that it was a portrait of Julius Caesar."

"That is not very wonderful. Caesar is essentially a Roman type; and, besides, I know Caesar as well as most people, and perhaps better."

To tell a professor of history--especially a provincial one--that one knows Caesar as well as most people and perhaps better, is naturally to provoke the question, "In what capacity?" As a matter of course the question followed immediately.

"In the capacity of Caesar's historian," said Dumas imperturbably.

We were getting interested, because we foresaw that the professor would, in a few minutes, get the worst of it. Dumas' eyes were twinkling with mischief.

"You have written a history of Caesar?" asked the learned man.

"Yes; why not?"

"Well, you won't mind my being frank with you: it is because it has never been mentioned in the world of savans."

"The world of savans never mentions me."

"Still, a history of Caesar ought to make somewhat of a sensation."

"Mine has not made any. People read it, and that was all. It is the books which it is impossible to read that make a sensation: they are like the dinners one cannot digest; the dinners one digests are not as much as thought of next morning." That was Dumas' way of putting a would-be impertinent opponent _hors de combat_, and his repartees were frequently drawn from the pursuit he loved as well, if not better than literature, namely, cooking. It may sound exaggerated, but I verily believe that Dumas took a greater pride in concocting a stew than in constructing a novel or a play. Very often, in the middle of the dinner, he would put down his knife and fork. "ca, c'est rudement bon: il faut que je m'en procure la recette." And Guepet was sent for to authorize Dumas to descend to the lower regions and have a consultation with his chefs. He was the only one of the _habitues_ who had ever been in the kitchens of the Cafe de Paris. As a rule these excursions were followed by an invitation to dine at Dumas' two or three days hence, when the knowledge freshly acquired would be put into practice.

There were few of us who questioned Dumas' literary genius; there were many who suspected his culinary abilities, and notably among them, Dr.

Veron. The germs of this unbelief had been sown in the doctor's mind by his own cordon-bleu, Sophie. The erstwhile director of the opera lived, at that time, in a beautiful apartment on the first floor of a nice house in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of which the Cafe de Paris was situated. Sophie had virtually a sinecure of it, because, with the exception of a dinner-party now and then, her master, who was a bachelor, took his dinners at the restaurant. And with regard to the dejeuner, there was not much chance of her displaying her talents, because the man, who was reputed to be a very Apicius, was frugality itself. His reasons for dining out instead of at home were perfectly logical, though they sounded paradoxical. One day, when I was remarking upon the seemingly strange habit of dining out, when he was paying "a perfect treasure" at home, he gave me these reasons. "My dear friend, depend upon it that it is man's stomach which found the aphorism, 'Qui va _piano_ va _sano_, qui va _sano_ va _lontano_.' In your own home the soup is on the table at a certain hour, the roast is taken off the jack, the dessert is spread out on the sideboard. Your servants, in order to get more time over their meals, hurry you up; they do not serve you, they gorge you. At the restaurant, on the contrary, they are never in a hurry, they let you wait. And, besides, I always tell the waiters not to mind me; that I like being kept a long while--that is one of the reasons why I come here.

"Another thing, at the restaurant the door is opened at every moment and something happens. A friend, a chum, or a mere acquaintance comes in; one chats and laughs: all this aids digestion. A man ought not to be like a boa-constrictor, he ought not to make digestion a business apart.

He ought to dine and to digest at the same time, and nothing aids this dual function like good conversation. Perhaps the servant of Madame de Maintenon, when the latter was still Madame Scarron, was a greater philosopher than we suspect when he whispered to his mistress, 'Madame, the roast has run short; give them another story.'

"I knew a philanthropist," wound up Dr. Veron, "who objected as much to be hurried over his emotions as I object to be hurried over my meals.

For that reason he never went to the theatre. When he wanted an emotional fillip, he wandered about the streets until he met some poor wretch evidently hungry and out of elbows. He took him to the nearest wine-shop, gave him something to eat and to drink, sat himself opposite to his guest, and told him to recount his misfortunes. 'But take your time over it. I am not in a hurry,' he recommended. The poor outcast began his tale; my friend listened attentively until he was thoroughly moved. If the man's story was very sad, he gave him a franc or two; if it was positively heart-rending and made him cry, he gave him a five-franc piece; after which, he came to see me, saying, 'I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and made the intervals between each sensational episode last as long as I liked, and, what is more, it has just cost me seven francs, the price of a stall at the theatre.'"

To return to Dr. Veron's scepticism with regard to Dumas' culinary accomplishments, and how he was converted. Dumas, it appears, had got the recipe for stewing carp from a German lady, and, being at that moment on very friendly terms with Dr. Veron, which was not always the case, had invited him and several others to come and taste the results of his experiments. The dish was simply splendid, and for days and days Veron, who was really a frugal eater, could talk of nothing else to his cook.

"Where did you taste it?" said Sophie, getting somewhat jealous of this praise of others; "at the Cafe de Paris?"

"No, at Monsieur Dumas'," was the answer.

"Well, then, I'll go to Monsieur Dumas' cook, and get the recipe."

"That's of no use," objected her master. "Monsieur Dumas prepared the dish himself."

"Well, then, I'll go to Monsieur Dumas himself and ask him to give me the recipe."

Sophie was as good as her word, and walked herself off to the Chaussee d'Antin. The great novelist felt flattered, and gave her every possible information, but somehow the dish was not like that her master had so much enjoyed at his friend's. Then Sophie grew morose, and began to throw out hints about the great man's borrowing other people's feathers in his culinary pursuits, just as he did in his literary ones. For Sophie was not altogether illiterate, and the papers at that time were frequently charging Dumas with keeping his collaborateurs too much in the background and himself too much in front. Dumas had never much difficulty in meeting such accusations, but Sophie had unconsciously hit upon the tactics of the clever solicitor who recommended the barrister to abuse the plaintiff, the defendant's case being bad, and she put it into practice. "C'est avec sa carpe comme avec ses romans, les autres les font et il y met son nom," she said one day. "Je l'ai bien vu, c'est un grand diable de vaniteux."