Paris and the Social Revolution Part 30

Good Madame France is a thorough _Montmartroise_, and the incident is admirably representative of the jocund humour of the b.u.t.te. The _Montmartrois_ will not only regale himself with a view from a window in lieu of an _aperitif_, but he will merrily subst.i.tute a _chanson_ for a roast, console himself with a kiss for the absence of the dessert, and warm himself, as my friend L--, who has not had a fire for three winters, expresses it, with sunsets and tobacco smoke,-his own, if possible.

During the periods of moving (namely, the 1st to the 15th of January, April, July, and October) the essential domesticity of the b.u.t.te is amply and amusingly revealed, and the complete congruity of domesticity and the arts is graphically demonstrated.

Chiffonniers lord it over model-thrones, paint brushes peep over the rims of soup-kettles or hide their heads in coal-scuttles, manikins fraternise with hat-trees and colour-boxes with stew-pans, stretchers snuggle up to pillows, pastels and aquarelles lie cheek by jowl with dish-towels and table-cloths, brooms pay court to easels, palettes make eyes at feather dusters, and impressionistic landscapes dazzle mirrors.

Monsieur, aided by a chum, tugs a precariously loaded hand-cart,[93] or, if the distance to be traversed makes the hand-cart unnecessary or a lack of funds makes it impossible, he staggers, sweats, and swears under the weight of trunks, chests, bureaus, and wardrobes; and madame, bareheaded, in wrapper and slippers, proffers highly unwelcome caution and advice while carrying the company coffee-cups or the parlour lamp.

Like most other localities that partake of the idyllic, Montmartre is most idyllic in the spring. Then painters work at their easels in its streets, while their mesdames, who have followed them forth with camp-chairs, sew and chatter in the nearest shade. Then its poplars and limes are the same crisp, inviting green as the salads that pa.s.s in the hand-barrows. Then its myriad lilac, horse-chestnut, and acacia cl.u.s.ters are thyrsi awaiting the rhythmic wavings of the baccha.n.a.ls, and then its circ.u.mambient fragrance would inflame a Hippolyta's blood, trouble a Vestal's vows, and make a Diana's senses reel. Then, too, models, posing in court-yards and back gardens for the supernal effects of sunlight on flesh, are like great pink-and-purple-dappled exotic blooms escaped from Sh.e.l.ley's pages.

The spirit of nature that with soft music is bursting the bonds of winter, and the spirit of the artist, spontaneous, impulsive, capricious, and free, are in absolute accord. One breathes contempt for prudery and custom with the very air. Nature's upward-rushing sap and the artist's careering fancy alike defy repression.

"_Tout etre a le droit d'etre libre_," the splendid throbbing lyric climax of Charpentier's Montmartre opera, _Louise_, had here its origin.

"TOUT eTRE A LE DROIT D'eTRE LIBRE!"-the careless attire, unconstrained mien, and the _sans-gene_ of the lovers of Montmartre proclaim it.

"TOUT eTRE A LE DROIT D'eTRE LIBRE!" the Montmartre winds and birds and rivulets sing.

"_Et que faudrait-il faire?_

_Calculer, avoir peur, etre bleme, Preferer faire une visite qu'un poeme, Rediger des placets, se faire-presenter?

Non, merci! non, merci! non, merci! mais chanter, Rever, rire, pa.s.ser, etre seul, etre libre, Avoir l'il qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre, Mettre, quand il vous plait, son feutre de travers, Pour un oui, pour un non, se battre-ou faire un vers!

Travailler sans souci de gloire ou de fortune, A tel voyage, auquel on pense, dans la lune._"[94]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Montmartre Carrousel]

CHAPTER XVI

LITERARY AND ARTISTIC CABARETS OF MONTMARTRE

"_We sang when the English dismembered the kingdom, we sang during the civil war of the Armagnacs, during the 'Ligue,'

during the Fronde, under the Regence; and it was to the sound of the_ chansons _of Rivarol that the monarchy disappeared at the end of the eighteenth century._"-DE JOUY.

"_The_ chanson _became history: it donned defiantly the Phrygian bonnet, and marched in the forefront.... Men went singing to the guillotine._" HENRI AVENEL.

"_It is certain that the_ chanson _is, like wine, a product of our soil, a flower of_ la patrie."-JULES CLARETIE.

"And I send these words to Paris with my love, And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them."

WALT WHITMAN.

The Bohemians of the _Quartier Latin_ who do not starve, commit suicide, return to their parents to eat the fatted calf, become rich and famous or alcoholic and insane, have one other resource left them,-a resource beside which the proverbial jump out of the frying-pan into the fire is the quintessence of discretion,-namely, emigration to Montmartre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REAL MONTMARTRE

_Cabaret du Lapin Agile_]

Originally given over to windmills and plaster ovens, a suburb at the time of the Great Revolution (when it went for a while by the name of Mont-Marat), Montmartre did not become a part of Paris proper until 1859.

"I knew Montmartre," says one of its ardent admirers, "thirty-five years ago. It was a quarter like another, less alive, in fact, than most others, except in the immediate vicinity of the b.a.l.l.s, _le Grand Turc_, _la Boule Noire_, etc.

"All of a sudden the Haussmannising empire bound it to Paris by the Boulevard Magenta, and the picks of the workmen have had no respite since."

The Eighteenth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, which corresponds roughly with Montmartre, has nearly doubled in population since the Franco-Prussian war, and is now a city of more than 225,000 souls.

"Travellers tell us," wrote Aurelien Scholl in 1898, "that in America cities spring up with incredible rapidity.... I know only two localities in France which have undergone a similar speedy transformation,-Royan[95] and Montmartre. It is not so very long ago that we saw from the boulevards looking up the rue Laffitte a verdant _b.u.t.te_ with a few windmills whose arms enlivened the perspective. There were hovels and tiny, shabby-looking shops along the present boulevards (Clichy and Rochechouart).

"Montmartre is to-day one of the finest cities of France. It has three theatres, five or six _cafes-concerts_, a circus, restaurants, and _bra.s.series_.... _La cigale_ sings there all summer-and all winter."

In the partial eyes of the loyal _Montmartrois_, Montmartre, "_Ville Libre_," literary and artistic Bohemia _par excellence_, is as much the capital of Paris[96] as Paris is the capital of France. To them all the rest of Paris, the Latin Quarter included, is merely Montmartre's back yard.

Montmartre, by reason of its surpa.s.sing view, has always been favoured as a place of residence by detached writers and artists; and, after the closing of the _Theatre Bobino_ in the _Quartier Latin_, a perceptible literary and artistic current thitherward set in. But it was the exodus of the "_Hydropathes_" and "_Hirsutes_" of the _Quartier_ to the _Chat Noir_ that marked (marked rather than caused) the real beginning of Montmartre's supremacy.

The _Cercle des Hydropathes_[97] owed its origin to one Charles Cros, who, tiring of being relegated to an inglorious obscurity while Coquelin _Cadet_ won laurels by the recitation of monologues, which he (Cros) had written, decided to recite his monologues himself.

The first formal meeting of the _Hydropathes_ was held on a Friday of October, 1878, in a small upper room of a Latin Quarter cafe, corner of the rue Cujas and the Boulevard St. Michel. There were five persons present. At the next meeting there were seventy-five, at the third one hundred, at the fourth one hundred and fifty, and so on, until, driven from cafe to cafe by the need of more room, they settled in a vacant store, with an average attendance of three hundred to three hundred and fifty twice a week.

Emile Goudeau presided,-as nearly, that is, as any one can be said to preside in a Latin Quarter a.s.sembly. There was liberty to drink, smoke, and woo the _grisette_. There were folly and tumult, confusion and fun; violin, piano, and guitar music; singing in concert of riotous roof-lifting refrains; recitations of novelties and the cla.s.sics by Villain, Leloir, Le Bargy, and Coquelin _Cadet_ of the _Comedie Francaise_. Paul Mounet, also of the _Comedie_, arrayed in a blue blouse and red neckerchief, interpreted _La Greve des Forgerons_ week in and week out with telling effect. Maurice Rollinat sang his own songs and those of Pierre Dupont, and recited selections from his _Nevroses_ and _Brandes_. Laurent Tailhade, Jean Moreas, Georges d'Esparbes, Louis Marsolleau, Jean Ajalbert, Andre Gill, Leon Valade, Charles Monselet, Paul Marrot, Edmond Haraucourt, Felicien Champsaur, Mac-Nab, Auguste Vacquerie, Louis Tiercelin, Alphonse Allais, Jules Jouy, and a full score more of poets and _chansonniers_ rendered their works. Bourget, Coppee, Paul Arene, Luigi Loir, and Bastien-Lepage were frequent, though for the most part pa.s.sive, spectators. All degrees of talent, all shades of politics, and all of the poetic schools were represented. Bernhardt was proud to be known as a _Hydropathe_. Francisque Sarcey and Jules Claretie visited the _Hydropathes_, and praised them in the press. The police threatened to dissolve them, but wisely refrained.

The _Hirsutes_ differed from the _Hydropathes_ only in name and in the fact that the name had an obvious significance.

It was the _Grand' Pinte_ (a Louis XIII. cabaret of Montmartre, frequented, but without mummery or fracas, by a band of painters and poets) that gave Rodolphe Salis, an _ex-Hydropathe_, the idea of putting the boisterous _Hydropathe_ performances into a picturesque setting and inviting the paying public to attend. Salis, who was the son of a prosperous man of affairs, was in Bohemia against his father's wishes.

Half-artist and half-litterateur, he supported himself, when the paternal purse-strings were tightened, by writing for the press and painting _Viae Dolorosae_ at fourteen francs apiece. In making himself "_gentilhomme-cabaretier_," as he called it, this resourceful Salis had hit upon a device for reconciling theory with practice, filial submission with personal inclination, and Bohemia with business, which, to say the least, was not commonplace.

Salis' _Chat Noir_, "_Cabaret Moyen-Age fonde en 1114 par un fumiste_,"

was opened on the Boulevard de Rochechouart in December, 1881; and the first number of its literary organ of the same name, ill.u.s.trated by Forain, Willette, Rochegrosse, Henri Pille, Riviere, and Steinlen, was published the month following. The cabaret's bizarre frescos, contributed by the cleverest young artists of Paris, and its fantastic furnishings of curios and antiques, which Salis had zealously collected since his boyhood, have been described too many times to be dwelt upon here. Suffice it to say, the juxtaposition of the beautiful with the grotesque, the serious with the flippant, and the reverent with the blasphemous, was so ingenious and piquant that attempts to imitate it (for the most part unsuccessful) have been made all over the civilised world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT ARISTIDE BRUANT'S

_Cabaret du Boulevard Rochechouart_]

In this suggestive setting nearly the entire _personnel_ of the _Hydropathes_ and a number of poets and dramatists, not _Hydropathes_, who have since become celebrities, among them Georges Courteline and Maurice Donnay, held witty carnival.

There was an even greater license of speech and act at the _Chat Noir_ than there had been among the _Hydropathes_. There were also more all-night revels, more startling ant.i.theses of the lively and severe, and more practical joking. All this in spite of the fact (or, perhaps, because of it) that the performers, almost without exception, affected impa.s.sibility, maintaining a supernatural gravity while dispensing the most side-splitting productions.

Salis' attempt to serve both G.o.d and Mammon resulted, as such attempts have usually resulted, advantageously for Mammon. Bohemia was reconciled to business by being completely swallowed up by business. Salis, the _gentilhomme-cabaretier_, waxed rich, and in waxing rich stooped to methods of holding and dealing with his galaxy that have made his memory the execration of the b.u.t.te. Nevertheless, Rodolphe Salis, all unworthy Bohemian as his good fortune revealed him to be, gave Paris, as impresario of the _Chat Noir_, a new manifestation of art and did more than any one man towards establishing that modern republic of arts and letters which is known as Montmartre.

The phenomenal success of the _Chat Noir_, whose fame from being Parisian became European, naturally led to the opening of establishments which copied one or more of its features. Montmartre was soon honeycombed with _cabarets artistiques et litteraires._

Steinlen, Willette, De Feure, Roedel, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec, Truchet, Bellanger, Le Pet.i.t, Grun, and other artists of the b.u.t.te, especially the first three, were kept busy decorating; and the most popular monologists and _chansonniers_,-Dominique Bonnaud, Hugues Delorme, Jacques Ferny, Jules Jouy, E. Girault, Eugene Lemercier, Camille Marceau, Georges Millandy, Marcel Legay, Gaston Coute, Paul Delmet, Theodore Botrel, Leon Durocher, Vincent Hyspa, Yann Nibor, Maurice Boukay, Charles Gallilee, Jehan Rictus, Octave Pradels, Victor Meusy, Camille Roy, Gabriel Montoya, Edmond Teulet, Paul Briand, Xavier Privas, Raoul Ponchon, Fragson, Lefevre, Xanrof, Perducet, Dumestre, Montehus, Ivanof, Chatillon, Fursy, Canqueteau, and Trimouillat,-most of whom had received a part of their training at the _Chat Noir_,-performed regularly in two or three places on the same evening.