Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist Part 13

{1} 'Les Peuples de la France: Ethnographie Nationale.' (Didier.)

CHAPTER XIII. JASMIN AND HIS ENGLISH CRITICS.

Jasmin's visit to Paris in 1842 made his works more extensively known, both at home and abroad. His name was frequently mentioned in the Parisian journals, and Frenchmen north of the Loire began to pride themselves on their Gascon poet. His Blind Girl had been translated into English, Spanish, and Italian. The princ.i.p.al English literary journal, the Athenaeum, called attention to his works a few months after his appearance in Paris.{1} The editor introduced the subject in the following words:

"On the banks of the Garonne, in the picturesque and ancient town of Agen, there exists at this moment a man of genius of the first order--a rustic Beranger, a Victor Hugo, a Lamartine--a poet full of fire, originality, and feeling--an actor superior to any now in France, excepting Rachel, whom he resembles both in his powers of declamation and his fortunes. He is not unknown--he is no mute inglorious Milton; for the first poets, statesmen, and men of letters in France have been to visit him. His parlour chimney-piece, behind his barber's shop, is covered with offerings to his genius from royalty and rank. His smiling, dark-eyed wife, exhibits to the curious the tokens of her husband's acknowledged merit; and gold and jewels shine in the eyes of the astonished stranger, who, having heard his name, is led to stroll carelessly into the shop, attracted by a gorgeous blue cloth hung outside, on which he may have read the words, Jasmin, Coiffeur."

After mentioning the golden laurels, and the gifts awarded to him by those who acknowledged his genius, the editor proceeds to mention his poems in the Gascon dialect--his Souvenirs his Blind Girl and his Franconnette--and then refers to his personal appearance. "Jasmin is handsome in person, with eyes full of intelligence, of good features, a mobility of expression absolutely electrifying, a manly figure and an agreeable address; but his voice is harmony itself, and its changes have an effect seldom experienced on or off the stage. The melody attributed to Mrs. Jordan seems to approach it nearest. Had he been an actor instead of a poet, he would have 'won all hearts his way'... On the whole, considering the spirit, taste, pathos, and power of this poet, who writes in a patois. .h.i.therto confined to the lower cla.s.s of people in a remote district--considering the effect that his verses have made among educated persons, both French and foreign, it is impossible not to look upon him as one of the remarkable characters of his age, and to award him, as the city of Clemence Isaure has done, the Golden Laurel, as the first of the revived Troubadours, destined perhaps to rescue his country from the reproach of having buried her poetry in the graves of Alain Chartier and Charles of Orleans, four centuries ago."

It is probable that this article in the Athenaeum was written by Miss Louisa Stuart Costello, who had had an interview with the poet, in his house at Agen, some years before. While making her tour through Auvergne and Languedoc in 1840,{2} she states that she picked up three charming ballads, and was not aware that they had ever been printed. She wrote them down merely by ear, and afterwards translated Me cal Mouri into English (see page 57). The ballad was very popular, and was set to music. She did not then know the name of the composer, but when she ascertained that the poet was "one Jasmin of Agen," she resolved to go out of her way and call upon him, when on her journey to the Pyrenees about two years later.{3} She had already heard much about him before she arrived, as he was regarded in Gascony as "the greatest poet in modern times." She had no difficulty in finding his shop at the entrance to the Promenade du Gravier, with the lines in large gold letters, "Jasmin, Coiffeur"

Miss Costello entered, and was welcomed by a smiling dark-eyed woman, who informed her that her husband was busy at that moment dressing a customer's hair, but begged that she would walk into his parlour at the back of the shop. Madame Jasmin took advantage of her husband's absence to exhibit the memorials which he had received for his gratuitous services on behalf of the public. There was the golden laurel from the city of Toulouse; the golden cup from the citizens of Auch, the gold watch with chain and seals from "Le Roi" Louis Philippe, the ring presented by the Duke of Orleans, the pearl pin from the d.u.c.h.ess, the fine service of linen presented by the citizens of Pau, with other offerings from persons of distinction.

At last Jasmin himself appeared, having dressed his customer's hair.

Miss Costello describes his manner as well-bred and lively, and his language as free and unembarra.s.sed. He said, however, that he was ill, and too hoa.r.s.e to read. He spoke in a broad Gascon accent, very rapidly and even eloquently. He told the story of his difficulties and successes; how his grandfather had been a beggar, and all his family very poor, but that now he was as rich as he desired to be. His son, he said, was placed in a good position at Nantes, and he exhibited his picture with pride. Miss Costello told him that she had seen his name mentioned in an English Review. Jasmin said the review had been sent to him by Lord Durham, who had paid him a visit; and then Miss Costello spoke of Me cal Mouri, as the first poem of his that she had seen. "Oh,"

said he, "that little song is not my best composition: it was merely my first."

His heart was now touched. He immediately forgot his hoa.r.s.eness, and proceeded to read some pa.s.sages from his poems. "If I were only well,"

said he, "and you would give me the pleasure of your company for some time, I would kill you with weeping: I would make you die with distress for my poor Margarido, my pretty Franconnette." He then took up two copies of his Las Papillotos, handed one to Miss Costello, where the translation was given in French, and read from the other in Gascon.

"He began," says the lady, "in a rich soft voice, and as we advanced we found ourselves carried away by the spell of his enthusiasm. His eyes swam in tears; he became pale and red; he trembled; he recovered himself; his face was now joyous, now exulting, gay, jocose; in fact, he was twenty actors in one; he rang the changes from Rachel to Bouffe; and he finished by relieving us of our tears, and overwhelming us with astonishment. He would have been a treasure on the stage; for he is still, though his youth is past, remarkably good-looking and striking; with black, sparkling eyes of intense expression; a fine ruddy complexion; a countenance of wondrous mobility; a good figure, and action full of fire and grace: he has handsome hands, which he uses with infinite effect; and on the whole he is the best actor of the kind I ever saw. I could now quite understand what a Troubadour or jongleur he might be; and I look upon Jasmin as a revived specimen of that extinct race."

Miss Costello proceeded on her journey to Bearn and the Pyrenees, and on her return northwards she again renewed her acquaintance with Jasmin and his dark-eyed wife. "I did not expect," she says, "that I should be recognised; but the moment I entered the little shop I was hailed as an old friend. 'Ah' cried Jasmin, 'enfin la voila encore!' I could not but be flattered by this recollection, but soon found that it was less on my own account that I was thus welcomed, than because circ.u.mstances had occurred to the poet that I might perhaps explain. He produced several French newspapers, in which he pointed out to me an article headed 'Jasmin a Londres,' being a translation of certain notices of himself which had appeared in a leading English literary journal the Athenaeum.... I enjoyed his surprise, while I informed him that I knew who was the reviewer and translator; and explained the reason for the verses giving pleasure in an English dress, to the superior simplicity of the English language over modern French, for which he had a great contempt, as unfitted for lyrical composition.{4} He inquired of me respecting Burns, to whom he had been likened, and begged me to tell him something about Moore.

"He had a thousand things to tell me; in particular, that he had only the day before received a letter from the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, informing him that she had ordered a medal of her late husband to be struck, the first of which should be sent to him. He also announced the agreeable news of the King having granted him a pension of a thousand francs. He smiled and wept by turns as he told all this; and declared that, much as he was elated at the possession of a sum which made him a rich man for life (though it was only equal to 42 sterling), the kindness of the d.u.c.h.ess gratified him still more.

"He then made us sit down while he read us two new poems; both charming, and full of grace and naivete; and one very affecting, being an address to the King, alluding, to the death of his son.

"As he read, his wife stood by, and fearing that we did not comprehend the language, she made a remark to that effect, to which he answered impatiently, 'Nonsense! don't you see they are in tears?' This was unanswerable; we were allowed to hear the poem to the end, and I certainly never listened to anything more feelingly and energetically delivered.

"We had much conversation, for he was anxious to detain us; and in the course of it, he told me that he had been by some accused of vanity.

'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'what would you have? I am a child of nature, and cannot conceal my feelings; the only difference between me and a man of refinement is, that he knows how to conceal his vanity and exaltation at success, while I let everybody see my emotions.'

"His wife drew me aside, and asked my opinion as to how much money it would cost to pay Jasmin's expenses, if he undertook a journey to England. 'However,' she added, 'I dare say he need be at no charge, for of course your Queen has read that article in his favour, and knows his merit. She probably will send for him, pay all the expenses of his journey, and give him great fetes in London!" Miss Costello, knowing the difficulty of obtaining Royal recognition of literary merit in England, unless it appears in forma pauperis, advised the barber-poet to wait till he was sent for--a very good advice, for then it would be never!

She concludes her recollections with this remark: "I left the happy pair, promising to let them know the effect that the translation of Jasmin's poetry produced in the Royal mind. Indeed, their earnest simplicity was really entertaining."

A contributor to the Westminster Review{5} also gave a very favourable notice of Jasmin and his poetry, which, he said, was less known in England than it deserved to be; nor was it well known in France since he wrote in a patois. Yet he had been well received by some of the most ill.u.s.trious men in the capital, where unaided genius, to be successful, must be genius indeed; and there the Gascon bard had acquired for himself a fame of which any man might well be proud.

The reviewer said that the Gascon patois was peculiarly expressive and heart-touching, and in the South it was held in universal honour.

Jasmin, he continued, is what Burns was to the Scottish peasantry; only he received his honours in his lifetime. The comparison with Burns, however, was not appropriate. Burns had more pith, vigour, variety, and pa.s.sion, than Jasmin who was more of a descriptive writer. In some respects Jasmin resembled Allan Ramsay, a barber and periwig-maker, like himself, whose Gentle Shepherd met with as great a success as Jasmin's Franconnette. Jasmin, however, was the greater poet of the two.

The reviewer in the Westminster, who had seen Jasmin at Agen, goes on to speak of the honours he had received in the South and at Paris--his recitations in the little room behind his shop--his personal appearance, his hearty and simple manners--and yet his disdain of the mock modesty it would be affectation to a.s.sume. The reviewer thus concludes: "From the first prepossessing, he gains upon you every moment; and when he is fairly launched into the recital of one of his poems, his rich voice does full justice to the harmonious Gascon. The animation and feeling he displays becomes contagious. Your admiration kindles, and you become involved in his ardour. You forget the little room in which he recites; you altogether forget the barber, and rise with him into a superior world, an experience in a way you will never forget, the power exercised by a true poet when pouring forth his living thoughts in his own verses....

"Such is Jasmin--lively in imagination, warm in temperament, humorous, playful, easily made happy, easily softened, enthusiastically fond of his province, of its heroes, of its scenery, of its language, and of its manners. He is every inch a Gascon, except that he has none of that consequential self-importance, or of the love of boasting and exaggeration, which, falsely or not, is said to characterise his countrymen.

"Born of the people, and following a humble trade, he is proud of both circ.u.mstances; his poems are full of allusions to his calling; and without ever uttering a word in disparagment of other cla.s.ses, he everywhere sings the praises of his own. He stands by his order. It is from it he draws his poetry; it is there he finds his romance.

"And this is his great charm, as it is his chief distinction. He invests virtue, however lowly, with the dignity that belongs to it. He rewards merit, however obscure, with its due honour. Whatever is true or beautiful or good, finds from him an immediate sympathy. The true is never rejected by him because it is commonplace; nor the beautiful because it is everyday; nor the good because it is not also great. He calls nothing unclean but vice and crime, He sees meanness in nothing but in the sham, the affectation, and the spangles of outward show.

"But while it is in exalting lowly excellence that Jasmin takes especial delight, he is not blind, as some are, to excellence in high places. All he seeks is the sterling and the real. He recognises the sparkle of the diamond as well as that of the dewdrop. But he will not look upon paste.

"He is thus pre-eminently the poet of nature; not, be it understood, of inanimate nature only, but of nature also, as it exists in our thoughts, and words, and acts of nature as it is to be found living and moving in humanity. But we cannot paint him so well as he paints himself. We well remember how, in his little shop at Agen, he described to us what he believed to be characteristic of his poetry; and we find in a letter from him to M. Leonce de Lavergne the substance of what he then said to us:

"'I believe,' he said, 'that I have portrayed a part of the n.o.ble sentiments which men and women may experience here below. I believe that I have emanc.i.p.ated myself more than anyone has ever done from every school, and I have placed myself in more direct communication with nature. My poetry comes from my heart. I have taken my pictures from around me in the most humble conditions of men; and I have done for my native language all that I could.'"

A few years later Mr. Angus B. Reach, a well-known author, and a contributor to Punch in its earlier days, was appointed a commissioner by the Morning Chronicle to visit, for industrial purposes, the districts in the South of France. His reports appeared in the Chronicle; but in 1852, Mr. Reach published a fuller account of his journeys in a volume ent.i.tled 'Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone.'{6} In pa.s.sing through the South of France, Mr. Reach stopped at Agen.

"One of my objects," he says, "was to pay a literary visit to a very remarkable man--Jasmin, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the 'Last of the Troubadours,' as, with more truth than is generally to be found in ad captandum designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the patois of the people, and that patois is the still almost unaltered Langue d'Oc--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore.

"But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely availing himself of the tongue of the menestrels. He publishes, certainly, conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems.

Standing bravely up before an expectant a.s.sembly of perhaps a couple of thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays, evoking both himself and his applauding audiences into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for.

"The raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit to Auch, the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the local papers next morning a.s.sured him, in floods of flattering epigrams, that humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge the 'divinity' of a Jasmin!

"There is a feature, however, about these recitations which is still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities, and produced 2,000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him.

"After, perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box which he pa.s.ses, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil as a barber and hair-dresser. It will be generally admitted that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster.

"One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingled with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. 'Largesse' was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to a.s.sign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery.

"Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near the open Place of the town, and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur des jeunes Gens. A little bra.s.s basin dangled above the threshold; and looking through the gla.s.s I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet, and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent, in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of performance.

"I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until the shop was clear. Three words explained the nature of my visit, and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming; dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and the patois of it, spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in particular.

"Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man of about fifty, with a large, ma.s.sive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black-eyes, and features which would be heavy, were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, sending a never-ending series of varying expressions across the dark, swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality.

"The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally a.s.sumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings.

Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'G.o.d only made four Frenchmen poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!'

"Talking with the most impa.s.sioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilisation upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, salons, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true.

"Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such inst.i.tutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined--until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon.

"It might do for cheating agents de change on the Bourse--for squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the salons--for the sarcasm of Scribe-ish comedies, or the coa.r.s.e drolleries of Palais Royal farces, but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were faiseurs de phrase--thinking about words and not feelings. 'No, no,' my Troubadour continued, 'to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that which your own Burns, whom I read of in Chateaubriand, used; or like the brave, old, mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms and odd solemn words, full of shifting meanings and a.s.sociations, at once pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy litterateurs.'" The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing from every pore in his body--so rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite pieces. Every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French into patois, and from patois into French, and sometimes spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing out a pa.s.sage here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a pa.s.sage there which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect naivete, how mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of journalists.

"There was one review of his works, published in a London 'Recueil,' as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in the Tintinum, and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had never heard of the organ in question.

"'Pourtant,' he said, 'je vous le ferai voir,' and I soon perceived that Jasmin's Tintinum was no other than the Athenaeum!

"In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister {it must have been his wife}, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left him, following as he moved with a beautiful expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and trophies, awarded by critics and distinguished persons, literary and political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and laconiclegends as 'Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes!' &c.

"The number of garlands of immortelles, wreaths of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its pleasant a.s.sociative remembrance. One was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by the munic.i.p.al authorities of Agen; and a letter from M.

Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world.

M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king and different members of the Orleans family.

"I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the South of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their subjects are always rural, naive, and full of rustic pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared; and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated pathos and humour it would be difficult to find.

"Jasmin writes from a teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing. I speak, of course, from the French translations, and I can well conceive that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and power of the original. The patois in which these poems are written is the common peasant language of the South-west of France. It varies in some slight degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and Spanish--holding, however, I am a.s.sured, rather to the latter tongue than to the former, and const.i.tuting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech, very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the pa.s.sions and affections.