Memoirs of My Dead Life Part 5

"Who is he--that one slouching towards the pond, that one wearing grey trousers and a black jacket?--oh!"

My companion's exclamation was caused by a new sight of Verlaine; at that moment he had lifted off his hat (the evening was still warm), and the great bald skull, hanging like a cliff over the s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, s.h.a.ggy as furze bushes, frightened her. The poet continued his walk round the pond, and, turning suddenly towards us, he stopped to speak to me. I was but a pretext; he clearly wished to speak to my companion. But how strangely did he suit his conversation to her, yet how characteristic of his genius were the words I heard as I turned away, thinking to leave them together--"If I were in love with a young girl or with a young man?" My companion ran forward quickly and seized my arm. "You must not leave me with him," she said. On account of his genius Verlaine was a little slow to see things outside of himself--all that was within him was clear, all without him obscure; so we had some difficulty in getting rid of him, and as soon as he was out of hearing my companion inquired eagerly who he was, and I was astonished at the perception she showed. "Is he a priest? I mean, was he ever a priest?" "A sort of cross between a thieves' kitchen and a presbytery. He is the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest verses in the French language--a sort of ambling song like a robin's. You have heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide; the robin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig; his song is but a tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision of his own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with a lead pencil, never troubling himself to inquire if what he traces is good or ill. He knows that society regards him as an outcast, but society's point of view is not the only one, that he knows too, and also, though he be a lecher, a c.r.a.pulous and b.e.s.t.i.a.l fellow at times, at other times he is a poet, a visionary, the only poet that Catholicism has produced since Dante. Huysmans, the apologist of Gilles de Rais,--there he is over yonder, talking to the impressionist painter, that small thin man with hair growing thickly, low down on his forehead--Huysmans somewhere in his description of the trial of the fifteenth-century monster, the prototype, so it is said, of the nursery tale of Blue Beard, speaks of the white soul of the Middle Ages; he must have had Verlaine on his mind, for Verlaine has spoken of himself as a mediaeval Catholic, that is to say a Catholic in whom sinning and repentance alternates regularly as night and day. Verlaine has not cut the throats of so many little boys as Gilles de Rais, but Gilles de Rais always declared himself to be a good Catholic. Verlaine abandons himself to the Church as a child to a fairy tale; he does trouble to argue whether the Conception of the Virgin was Immaculate; the mediaeval sculptors have represented her attired very prettily in cloaks with long folds, they have put graceful crowns upon her head, and Verlaine likes these things; they inspire him to write, he feels that belief in the Church is part of himself, and his poetical genius is to tell his own story; he is one of the great soul-tellers. From a literary point of view there is a good deal to be said in favour of faith when it is not joined with practice; acceptation of dogma shields one from controversy; it allows Verlaine to concentrate himself entirely upon things; it weans him away from ideas--the curse of modern literature--and makes him a sort of divine vagrant living his life in the tavern and in the hospital. It is only those who have freed themselves from all prejudice that get close to life, who get the real taste of life--the aroma as from a wine that has been many years in bottle. And Verlaine is aware that this is so. Sometimes he thinks he might have written a little more poetry, and he sighs, but he quickly recovers. 'After all, I have written a good many volumes.'

'And what would art be without life, without love?' He has a verse on that subject; I wish I could remember it for you. His verse is always so winsome, so delicate, slender as the birch tree, elegiac like it; a birch bending over a lake's edge reminds me of Verlaine. He is a lake poet, but the lake is in a suburb not far from a casino. What makes me speak about the lake is that for a long time I thought these verses,

Ton ame est un lac d'amour Dont mes pensees sont les cygnes.

Vois comme ils font le tour....

were Verlaine's, but they are much less original; their beauty, for they are beautiful, is conventional; numbers of poets might have written them, whereas n.o.body but Verlaine could have written any of his, really his own, poetry. His desires go sometimes as high as the crucifix; very often they are in the gutter, hardly poetry at all, having hardly any beauty except that of truth, and of course the beauty of a versification that haunts in his ear, for he hears a song in French verse that no French poet has ever heard before, and a song so fluent, ranging from the ecstasy of the nightingale to the robin's little homily.

Oui, c'etait par un soir joyeux de cabaret, Un de ces soirs plutot trop chauds ou l'on dirait Que le gaz du plafond conspire a notre perte Avec le vin du zinc, saveur nave et verte.

On s'amusait beaucoup dans la boutique et on Entendait des soupirs voisins d'accordeon Que ponctuaient des pieds frappant presque en cadence.

Quand la porte s'ouvrit de la salle de danse Vomissant tout un flot dont toi, vers ou j'etais, Et de ta voix fait que soudain je me tais, S'il te plait de me donner un ordre peremptoire.

Tu t'ecrias 'Dieu, qu'il fait chaud! Patron, a boire!'

"She was from Picardy; and he tells of her horrible accent, and in elegy number five he continues the confession, telling how his well beloved used to get drunk.

"Tu fis le saut de ... Seine et, depuis morte-vive, Tu gardes le vertige et le gout du neant."

"But how can a man confess such things?" my companion asked me, and we stood looking at each other in the midst of the gardens until an ape, cattling prettily, ran towards me and jumped into my arms, and looking at the curious little wizened face, the long arms covered with hair, I said:

"Verlaine has an extraordinary power of expression, and to be ashamed of nothing; but to be ashamed is his genius, just as it was Manet's.

It is to his shamelessness that we owe his most beautiful poems, all written in garrets, in taverns, in hospitals--yes, and in prison."

"In prison! But he didn't steal, did he?" and the _commercant's_ wife looked at me with a frightened air, and I think her hand went towards her pocket.

"No, no; a mere love story, a dispute with Rambaud in some haunt of vice, a knife flashed, Rambaud was stabbed, and Verlaine spent three years in prison. As for Rambaud, it was said that he repented and renounced love, entered a monastery, and was digging the soil somewhere on the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea for the grace of G.o.d. But these hopes proved illusory; only Verlaine knows where he is, and he will not tell. The last certain news we had of him was that he had joined a caravan of Arabs, and had wandered somewhere into the desert with these wanderers, preferring savagery to civilization. Verlaine preferred civilized savagery, and so he remained in Paris; and so he drags on, living in thieves' quarters, getting drunk, writing beautiful poems in the hospitals, coming out of hospitals and falling in love with drabs."

Dans ces femmes d'ailleurs je n'ai pas trouve l'ange Qu'il eut fallu pour remplacer ce diable, toi!

L'une, fille du Nord, native d'un Crotoy, Etait rousse, mal gra.s.se et de prestance molle; Elle ne m'adressa guere qu'une parole Et c'etait d'un pet.i.t cadeau qu'il s'agissait, En revanche, dans son accent d'ail et de poivre, Une troisieme, recemment chanteuse au Havre, Affectait de dandinement des matelots Et m'... enguelait comme un gabier tancant les flots, Mais portrait beau vraiment, sacredie, quel dommage La quatrieme etait sage comme une image, Chatain clair, peu de gorge et priait Dieu parfois: Le diantre soit de ses sacres signes de croix!

Les seize autres, autant du moins que ma memoire Surnage en ce vortex, contaient toutes l'histoire Connue, un amant chic, puis des vieux, puis "l'ilot"

Tantot bien, tantot moins, le clair cafe falot Les tera.s.ses l'ete, l'hiver les bra.s.series Et par degres l'humble trottoir en theories En attendant les bons messieurs compatissants Capables d'un louis et pas trop repoussants _Qutorum ego parva pars erim_, me disais-je.

Mais toutes, comme la premiere du cortege, Des avant la bougie eteinte et le rideau Tire, n'oubliaient pas le "mon pet.i.t cadeau."

"In the verses I have just quoted, you remember, he says that the fourth was chaste as an image, her hair was pale brown, she had scarcely any bosom, and prayed to G.o.d sometimes. He always hated piety when it interfered with his pleasure, and in the next verse he says, 'The devil take those sacred signs of the Cross!'"

"But do you know any of these women?"

"Oh, yes; we all know the terrible Sara. She beats him."

The _commercante's_ wife asked if she were here.

"He wanted to bring her here, in fact he did bring her once, only she was so drunk that she could not get beyond the threshold, and Ninon's lover, the painter you saw painting the steam engines, was charged to explain to the poet that Sara's intemperance rendered her impossible in respectable society. 'I know Sara has her faults,' he murmured in reply to all argument, and it was impossible to make him see that others did not see Sara with his eyes. 'I know she has her faults,' he repeated, 'and so have others. We all have our faults.' And it was a long time before he could be induced to come back: hunger has brought him."

"And who is that hollow-chested man? How pathetic he looks with his goat-like beard."

"That is the celebrated Cabaner. He will tell you, if you speak to him, that his father was a man like Napoleon, only more so. He is the author of many aphorisms; 'that three military bands would be necessary to give the impression of silence in music' is one. He comes every night to the Nouvelle Athenes, and is a sort of rallying-point; he will tell you that his ballad of 'The Salt Herring' is written in a way that perhaps Wagner would not, but which Liszt certainly would understand."

"Is his music ever played? Does it sell? How does he live? Not by his music, I suppose?"

"Yes, by his music, by playing waltzes and polkas in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet. His earnings are five francs a day, and for thirty-five francs a month he has a room where many of the disinherited ones of art, many of those you see here, sleep. His room is furnished--ah, you should see it! If Cabaner wants a chest of drawers he buys a fountain, and he broke off the head of the Venus de Milo, saying that now she no longer reminded him of the people he met in the streets; he could henceforth admire her without being troubled by any sordid recollection. I could talk to you for hours about his unselfishness, his love of art, his strange music, and his stranger poems, for his music accompanies his own verses."

"Is he too clever for the public, or not clever enough?"

"Now you're asking me the question we've been asking ourselves for the last ten years.... The man fumbling at his shirt collar over yonder is the celebrated Villiers de L'Isle Adam."

And I remember how it pleased me to tell this simple-minded woman all I knew about Villiers.

"He has no talent whatever, only genius, and that is why he is a rate," I said.

But the woman was not so simple as I had imagined, and one or two questions she put to me led me to tell her that Villiers's genius only appeared in streaks, like gold in quartz.

"The comparison is an old one, but there is no better one to explain Villiers, for when he is not inspired his writing is very like quartz."

"His great name----"

"His name is part of his genius. He chose it, and it has influenced his writings. Have I not heard him say, 'Car je porte en moi les richesses steriles d'un grand nombre de rois...o...b..ies.'"

"But is he a legitimate descendant?"

"Legitimate in the sense that he desired the name more than any of those who ever bore it legitimately."

At that moment Villiers pa.s.sed by me, and I introduced him to her, and very soon he began to tell us that his _Eve_ had just been published, and the success of it was great.

"On m'a dit hier de pa.s.ser a la caisse ... l'edition etait epuisee, vous voyez--il parait, la fortune est venue ... meme a moi."

But Villiers was often tiresomely talkative about trifles, and as soon as I got the chance I asked him if he were going to tell us one of his stories, reminding him of one I had heard he had been telling lately in the _bra.s.series_ about a man in quest of a quiet village where he could get rest, a tired composer, something of that kind. Had he written it? No, he had not written it yet, but now that he knew I liked it he would get up earlier to-morrow. Some one took him away from us, and I had to tell my companion the story.

"Better," I said, "he should never write it, for half of it exists in his voice, and in his gestures, and every year he gets less and less of himself onto the paper. One has to hear him tell his stories in the cafe--how well he tells them! You must hear him tell how a man, recovering from a long illness, is advised by his doctor to seek rest in the country, and how, seeing the name of a village on the map that touches his imagination, he takes the train, feeling convinced he will find there an Arcadian simplicity. But the village he catches sight of from the carriage window is a morose and lonely village, in the midst of desolate plains. And worse than Nature are the human beings he sees at the station; they lurk in corners, they scrutinise his luggage, and gradually he believes them all to be robbers and a.s.sa.s.sins.

"He would escape but he dare not, for he is being followed, so turning on his pursuers he asks them if they can direct him to a lodging. The point of Villiers's story is how a suspicion begins in the man's mind, how it grows like a cancer, and very soon the villagers are convinced he is an anarchist, and that his trunks are full of material for the manufacture of bombs. And this is why they dare not touch them. So they follow him to the farmhouse whither they have directed him, and tell their fears to the farmer and his wife. Villiers can improvise the consultations in the kitchen; at midnight in the cafe, but when morning comes he cannot write, his brain is empty. You must come some night to the Nouvelle Athenes to hear him; leaning across the table he will tell the terror of the hinds and farmer, how they are sure the house is going to be blown up. The sound of their feet on the staircase inspires terror in the wretched convalescent. He sits up in bed, listening, great drops of sweat collected on his forehead. He dare not get out of bed, but he must; and Villiers can suggest the sound of feet on the creaking stairs--yes, and the madness of the man piling furniture against the door, and the agony of those outside hearing the noise within. When they break into the room they find a dead man; for terror has killed him. You must come to the Nouvelle Athenes to hear Villiers tell his story. I'll meet you there to-morrow night.... Will you dine with me? The dinner there is not really too bad; perhaps you'll be able to bear with it."

The _commercant's_ wife hesitated. She promised to come, and she came; but she did not prove an interesting mistress; why, I cannot remember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to think of the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, in which one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of the years I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blue eyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort of sensual Christ? He, too, was after the _commercant's_ wife. And didn't he select her as the subject of his licentious verses--rea.s.sure yourself, reader, licentious merely from the point of view of prosody.

"Ta nuque est de santal sur les vifs frissons d'or.

Mais c'est une autre, que j'adore."

The _commercant's_ wife, forgetful of me, charmed by the poet, by the excitement of hearing herself made a subject of a poem, drew nearer. Strange, is it not, that I should remember a few words here and there?

"Il m'aime, il m'aime pas, et selon l'antique rite Elle effleurait la Marguerite."

The women still sit, circlewise, as if enchanted, the night inspires him, and he improvises trifle after trifle. One remembers fragments.

Some time afterwards Cabaner was singing the song of "The Salt Herring."

"He came along holding in his hands dirty, dirty, dirty, A big nail pointed, pointed, pointed, And a hammer heavy, heavy, heavy.

He placed the ladder high, high, high, Against the wall white, white, white.

He went up the ladder high, high, high, Placed the nail pointed, pointed, pointed Against the wall--toc! toc! toc!

He tied to the nail a string long, long, long, And at the end of it a salt herring, dry, dry, dry, And letting fall the hammer heavy, heavy, heavy, He got down from the ladder high, high, high, And went away, away, away.

Since then at the end of the string long, long, long, A salt herring dry, dry, dry, Has been swinging slowly, slowly, slowly.

Now I have composed this story simple, simple, simple, To make all serious men mad, mad, mad, And to amuse children, little, little, little."