Paris under the Commune Part 20

Here is a green monkey perched on the extreme height of a microscopic tribune. At the end of his tail he wears a crown; on his head is a Phrygian cap. It is Monsieur Thiers of course. "Gentlemen," says he, "I a.s.sure you that I am republican, and that I adore the vile mult.i.tude."

But underneath is written: "We'll pluck the Gallic c.o.c.k!" The author of this is also Monsieur Faustin. I have here a special reproach to add to what I have already said of these objectionable stupidities. I do not like the manner in which the author takes off Monsieur Thiers; he quite forgets the old and well-known resemblance of the chief of the executive power to Monsieur Prud'homme, or what is the same thing, to Prud'homme's inventor, Henri Monnier. One day Gil Perez the actor, met Henri Monnier on the Boulevard Montmartre. "Well, old fellow!" cried he, "are you back? When are you and I going to get at our practical jokes again?"

Henri Monnier looked profoundly astonished; it was Monsieur Thiers!

The next one is signed Pilotel. Pilotel, the savage commissioner! He who arrested Monsieur Chaudey, and who pocketed eight hundred and fifteen francs found in Monsieur Chaudey's drawers. Ah! Pilotel, if by some unlucky adventure you were to succ.u.mb behind a barricade, you would cry like Nero: "Qualis artifex pereo!" But let us leave the author to criticise the work. A Gavroche, not the Gavroche of the _Miserables_, but the boy of Belleville, chewing tobacco like a Jack-tar, drunk as a Federal, in a purple blouse, green trousers, his hands in his pockets, his cap on the nape of his neck; squat, violent, and brutish. With an impudent jerk of the head he grumbles out: "I don't want any of your kings!" This coa.r.s.e sketch is graphic and not without merit.

Horror of horrors! "Council of Revision of the Amazons of Paris," this next is called. Oh! if the brave Amazons are like these formidable monstrosities, it would be quite sufficient to place them in the first rank, and I am sure that not a soldier of the line, not a guardian of the peace, not a _gendarme_ would hesitate a moment at the sight, but all would fly without exception, in hot haste and in agonised terror, forgetting in their panic even to turn the b.u.t.t ends of their muskets in the air. One of these Amazons--but how has my sympathy for the amateurs of collections led me into the description of these creatures of ugliness and immodesty?--one of them.... but no, I prefer leaving to your imagination those Himalayan ma.s.ses of flesh, and pyramids of bone--these Penthesileas of the Commune of Paris that are before me.

Ah! Here is choleric old "Father d.u.c.h.esne" in a towering pa.s.sion, with short legs, bare arms, and rubicund face, topped with an immense red cap. In one hand he holds a diminutive Monsieur Thiers and stifles him as if he were a sparrow. Here, the drawing is not only vile, but stupid too.

This time we have the nude, and it is not the Republic, but France that is represented. If the Republic can afford to bare her shoulders, France may dispense with drapery entirely. She has a dove which she presses to her bosom. On one side is a portrait of Monsieur Rochefort. Again! Why this unlovely-looking journalist is a regular Lovelace. Finally, two cats (M. Jules Favre and M. Thiers) are to be seen outside the garret window with their claws ready for pouncing. "Poor dove!" is the tame inscription below the sketch.[56]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE PARIS AND HIS PLAYTHINGS. NURSE. Mais! sacre vingt-cinq mille noms d'un moutard! What will you want next?

PEt.i.t PARIS. I'll have the moon!]

Next we find a Holy Family, by Murillo. Jules Favre, as Joseph, leads the a.s.s by the reins, and a wet-nurse, who holds the Comte de Paris in her arms instead of the infant Jesus, is seated between the two panniers, trying to look at once like Monsieur Thiers and the Holy Virgin. The sketch is called "The Flight.... to Versailles." Oh! fie!

fie! Messieurs the Caricaturists, can you not be funny without trenching on sacred ground?

We might refer to dozens more. Some date from the day when Paris shook off the Empire, and are so infamous that, by a natural reaction of feeling, they inspire a sort of esteem for those they try to make you despise; others, those which were seen by everyone during the siege, are less vile, because, of the patriotic rage which originated them, and excused them; but they are as odious as they can be nevertheless. But the amateurs of collections who neglected to buy fly-sheets one by one as they appeared, must be satisfied with the above.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: As a power for the encouragement of virtue and the suppression of vice, caricature cannot be too highly estimated, though often abused. It is doubtful which exercises the greater influence, poem or picture. In England, perhaps, picture wields the greater power; in France, song. Yet, "let me write the ballads and you may govern the people," is an English axiom which was well known before pictures became so plentiful or so popular, or the refined cartoons of Mr. Punch were ever dreamt of. In Paris, where art-education is highly developed, fugitive designs seems to have, with but few exceptions, descended into vile abuse and indecent metaphor, the wildest invective being exhausted upon trivial matters--hence the failure.

The art advocates of the Commune, with but few exceptions, seem to have been of the most humble sort, inspired with the melodramatic taste of our Seven Dials or the New Out, venting itself in ill-drawn heroic females, symbols of the Republic, clad in white, wearing either mural crowns or Phrygian caps, and waving red flags. They are the work of aspiring juvenile artists or uneducated men. I allude to art favourable to the Commune, and not that coeval with it, or the vast ma.s.s of pictorial unpleasantly born of gallic rage during the Franco-Prussian war, including such designs as the horrible allegory of Bayard, "Sedan, 1870," a large work depicting Napoleon III. drawn in a caleche and four, over legions of his dying soldiers, in the presence of a victorious enemy and the shades of his forefathers', and the well-known subject, so popular in photography, of "The Pillory," Napoleon between King William and Bismarck, also set in the midst of a ma.s.s of dead and dying humanity. Paper pillories are always very popular in Paris, and under the Commune the heads of Tropmann and Thiers were exhibited in a wooden vice, inscribed Pantin and Neuilly underneath. And, again, in another print, ent.i.tled "The Infamous," we have Thiers, Favre, and MacMahon, seen in a heavenly upper storey, fixed to stakes, contemplating a dead mother and her child, slain in their happy home, the wounds very sanguine and visible, the only remaining relict being a child of very tender years in an overturned cradle; beneath is the inscription "Their Works." Communal art seems also to have been very severe upon landlords, who are depicted with long faces and threadbare garments, seeking alms in the street, or flying with empty bags and lean stomachs from a very yellow sun, bearing the words "The Commune, 1871." Whilst as a contrast, a fat labourer, with a patch on his blouse, luxuriates in the same golden sunshine. As a sample of the better kind of French art, we give two fac-similes, by Bertal, from _The Grelot_, a courageous journal started during the Commune; it existed unmolested, and still continues.

We here insert a fac-simile of a sketch called "Paris and his Playthings."

"What destruction the unhappy, spoiled, and ill-bred child whose name is Paris has done, especially of late!

"France, his strapping nurse, put herself in a pa.s.sion in vain, the child would not listen to reason. He broke Trochu's arms, ripped up Gambetta, to see what there was inside. He blew out the lantern of Rochefort; as to Bergeret himself, he trampled him under foot.

"He has dislocated all his puppets, strewed the ground with the _debris_ of his fancies, and he is not yet content,--'What do you want, you wretched baby?'--'I want the moon!' The old woman called the a.s.sembly was right in refusing this demand,--'The moon, you little wretch, and what would you do with it if you had it?'--'I would pull it to bits, as I did the rest.'"

Further on will be found "Paris eating a General a day" (Chapter LXXVIII). Early in June, 1871 there appeared in the same journal "The International Centipede," "John Bull and the Blanche Albion." The Queen of England, clad in white, holding in her hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the artist that this "Monsieur John Boule, Esquire," was well adapted by his beetle-crushers to stamp out the vermin. Perhaps, it is needless to add, that the snake-like form issues from a hole in distant Prussia, meandering through many nations, causing great consternation, and that M. Thiers is finishing off the French section in admirable style.]

LI.

What has Monsieur Courbet to do among these people? He is a painter, not a politician. A few beery speeches uttered at the Hautefeuille Cafe cannot turn his past into a revolutionary one, and an order refused for the simple reason that it is more piquant for a man to have his b.u.t.ton-hole without ornament than with a slip of red ribbon in it, when it is well known that he disdains whatever every one else admires, is but a poor t.i.tle to fame. To your last, Napoleon Gaillard![57] To your paint-brushes, Gustave Courbet! And if we say this, it is not only from fear that the meagre lights of Monsieur Courbet are insufficient, and may draw the Commune into new acts of folly,--(though we scarcely know, alas! if there be any folly the Commune has left undone,)--but it is, above all, because we fear the odium and ridicule that the false politician may throw upon the painter. Yes! whatever may be our horror for the nude women and unsightly productions with which Monsieur Courbet[58] has honoured the exhibitions of paintings, we remember with delight several, admirably true to nature, with sunshine and summer breezes playing among the leaves, and streams murmuring refreshingly over the pebbles, and rocks whereon climbing plants cling closely; and, besides these landscapes, a good picture here and there, executed, if not by the hand of an artist--for the word artist possesses a higher meaning in our eyes--at least by the hand of a man of some power, and we hate that this painter should be at the Hotel de Ville at the moment when the spring is awakening in forest and field, and when he would do so much better to go into the woods of Meudon or Fontainebleau to study the waving of the branches and the eccentric twists and turns of the oak-tree's huge trunk, than in making answers to Monsieur Lefrancais--iconoclast in theory only as yet--and to Monsieur Jules Valles, who has read Homer in Madame Dacier's translation, or has never read it at all. That one should try a little of everything, even of polities, when one is capable of nothing else, is, if not excusable, at any rate comprehensible; but when a man can make excellent boots like Napoleon Gaillard, or good paintings like Gustave Courbet, that he should deliberately lay himself open to ridicule, and perhaps to everlasting execration, is what we cannot admit. To this Monsieur Courbet would reply: "It is the artists that I represent; it is the rights and claims of modern art that I uphold. There must be a great revolution in painting as in politics; we must federate too, I tell you; we'll decapitate those aristocrats, the t.i.tians and Paul Veroneses; we'll establish, instead of a jury, a revolutionary tribunal, which shall condemn to instant death any man who troubles himself about the ideal--that king whom we have knocked off his throne; and at this tribunal I will be at once complainant, lawyer, and judge. Yes! my brother painters, rally around me, and we will die for the Commune of Art. As to those who are not of my opinion, I don't care the snap of a finger about them." By this last expression the friends of Monsieur Gustave Courbet will perceive that we are not without some experience of his style of conversation. Courbet, my master, you don't know what you are talking about, and all true artists will send you to old Harry, you and your federation. Do you know what an artistic a.s.sociation, such as you understand it, would result in? In serving the puerile ambition of one man--its chief, for there will be a chief, will there not, Monsieur Courbet?--and the puerile rancours of a parcel of daubers, without name and without talent. Artist in our way we a.s.sert, that no matter, what painter, even had he composed works superior in their way to Courbet's "_Combat de Cerfs_" and "_Femme au Perroquet_," who came and said, "Let us federate," we would answer him plainly: "Leave us in peace, messieurs of the federation, we are dreamers and workers; when we exhibit or publish and are happy enough to meet with a man who will buy or print a few thousand copies of our work without reducing himself to beggary, we are happy. When that is done, we do not trouble ourselves much about our work; the indulgence of a few friends, and the indignation of a few fools, is all we ask or hope for. We federate? Why? With whom? If our work is bad, will the a.s.sociation with any society in the world make it good? Will the works of others gain anything by their a.s.sociation with ours? Let us go home, _messieurs les artistes_, let us shut our doors, let us say to our servants--if we have any--that we are at home to no one, and, after having cut our best pencil, or seized our best pen, let us labour in solitude, without relaxation, with no other thought than that of doing the best we can, with no higher judge than that of our own artistic conscience; and when the work is completed, let us cordially shake hands with those of our comrades who love us; let us help them, and let them bring help to us, but freely, without obligation, without subscriptions, without societies, and without statutes. We have nothing to do with these free-masonries, absurd when brought into the domain of intelligence, and in which two or three hundred people get together to do that, which some new-comer, however unknown his budding fame, would accomplish at a blow, in the face of all the a.s.sociations in the world."

This is what I should navely reply to Monsieur Courbet if he took it into his head to offer me any advice or compact whatsoever to sign.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MODERN "EROSTRATE" COURBET.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN PROGRESS OF REMOVAL, JUNE 7 1871]

The artists have done still better than we should; they have not answered at all, for one cannot call the "General a.s.sembly of all the Artists in Design," presided over by Monsieur Gustave Courbet, and held on the 13th of April, 1871, in the great amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, a real meeting of French artists. We know several celebrated painters, and we saw none of them there. The citizens Potier and Boulaix had been named secretaries. We congratulate them; for this high distinction may, perhaps, aid in founding their reputation, which was in great want of a basis of some kind. But there were some sculptors there, perhaps? We saw some long beards, beards that were quite unknown to us, and their owners may have been sculptors, perhaps. For Paris is a city of sculptors. But if artists were wanting, there were talkers enough.

Have you ever remarked that there are no orators so indefatigable as those who have nothing to say? And the interruptions, the clamour, the apostrophising, more highly coloured than courteous! Such an overwhelming tumult was never heard:--

"No more jury!"

"Yes! yes! a jury! a jury!"

"Out with the reactionist!"

"Down with Cabanel!"

"And the women? Are the women to be on the jury?"

"Neither the women, nor the infirm."

And all the time there is Monsieur Gustave Courbet, the chairman, desperately ringing his bell for order, and launching some expressive exclamation from time to time. And the result of all this? Absolutely nothing at all! No! stop! There were a few statutes proposed--and every one amused himself immensely. "Well! so much the better," said one. "Every one laughed, and no harm was done to anybody."

We beg your pardon! There was a great deal of harm done--to Monsieur Courbet.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: Gaillard Senior (a sort of Odger), cobbler of Belleville and democratic stump orator. Appointed, April 8, to the Presidency of the Commission of Barricades.]

[Footnote 58: As a painter Courbet has been very diversely judged. He was the chief of the ultra-realistic school, and therefore a natural subject for the contempt and abuse of the admirers of "legitimate art."

But his later use of the political power entrusted to him has drawn down upon him the wrath of an immense majority of the French public, which his artistic misdemeanours had scarcely touched. On the sixteenth of April he was elected a member of the Commune by the 6th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Paris, and forthwith appointed Director of the Beaux Arts. Until this time his life had been purely professional, and consequently of mediocre interest for the general public. He was born at Ornans, department of the Doubs, in 1819, and received his primary instructions from the Abbe Gousset, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. He first applied himself to the study of mathematics, painting the while, and apparently aiming at a fusion of both pursuits. He subsequently read for the bar for a short time, and, finally, adopting art as his sole profession, threw himself heart and soul into a Renaissance movement as the apostle of a new style. The peculiarities of his manner soon brought him into notoriety, and a school of imitators grouped itself around him. His pride became a proverb. In 1870 he was offered the cross of the Legion of Honour, and refused it, arrogantly declaring that he would have none of a distinction given to tradesmen and ministers. The part he took in the destruction of the Colonne Vendome is familiar to all readers of the English press. Three weeks after the fall of the Commune he was denounced by a Federal officer, and discovered at the house of a friend hiding in a wardrobe, and in September was condemned by the tribunal at Versailles to six months' imprisonment and a fine of 600 francs--a slight penalty that astonished everyone.]

LII.

It is forbidden to cross the Place Vendome, and naturally, walking there is prohibited too. I had been prowling about every afternoon for the last few days, trying to pa.s.s the sentinels of the Rue de la Paix, hoping that some lucky chance might enable me to evade the military order; all I got for my pains was a sharply articulated "_Pa.s.ses au large!_" and I remained shut out.

To-day, as I was watching for a favourable opportunity, a _pet.i.te dame_ who held up her skirts to show her stockings, which were as red as the flag of the Hotel de Ville--out upon you for a female Communist!

--approached the sentinel and addressed him with her most gracious, smile. And oh, these Federals! The man in office forgot his duty, and at once began with the lady a conversation of such an intimate description, that for discretion's sake I felt myself obliged to take a slight turn to the left, and a minute later I had slipped into the forbidden Place.

A Place?--no, a camp it might more properly be called. Here and there, are seen a crowd of little tents, which would be white if they were washed, and littered about with straw. Under the tents lie National Guards; they are not seen, but plainly heard, for they are snoring. You remember the absurd old bit of chop-logic often repeated in the cla.s.ses of philosophy? One might apply it thus: he sleeps well who has a good conscience; the Federals sleep well; ergo, the Federals have a good conscience. Guards walk to and fro with their pipes in their mouths. If I were to say that these honourable Communists show by their easy manner, gentlemanly bearing, and superior conversation, that they belong to the cream of Parisian society, you would perhaps be impertinent enough not to believe one word of what I said. I think it, therefore, preferable in every way to a.s.sert the direct contrary. There is a group of them flinging away their pay at the usual game of _bouchon_. "The Soldier's Pay and the Game of Cork" is the t.i.tle that might be given by those who would write the history of the National Guard from the beginning of the siege to the present time. And if to the cork they added the bottle, they might pride themselves upon having found a perfect one. This is how it comes to pa.s.s. The wife is hungry, and the children are hungry, but the father is thirsty, and he receives the pay.

What does he do? He is thirsty, and he must drink; one must think of oneself in this world. When he has satisfied his thirst, what remains? A few sous, the empty bottle, and the cork. Very good. He plays his last sou on the famous game, and in the evening, when he returns home, he carries to his family--what?--the empty bottle!

On the Place two barricades have been made, one across the Rue de la Paix, and the other before the Rue Castiglione. "Two formidable barricades," say the newspapers, which may be read thus: "A heap of paving stones to the right, and a heap of paving stones to the left." I whisper to myself that two small field-pieces, one on the place of the New Opera-house, and the other at the Rue de Rivoli, would not be long before they got the better of these two barricades, in spite of the guns that here and there display their long, bright cylinders.

The Federals have decidedly a taste for gallantry. About twenty women--I say young women, but not pretty women--are selling coffee to the National Guards, and add to their change a few ogling smiles meant to be engaging.

As to the Column, it has not the least appearance of being frightened by the decree of the Commune which threatens it with a speedy fall. There it stands like a huge bronze I, and the emperor is the dot upon it. The four eagles are still there, at the four corners of the pedestal, with their wreaths of immortelles, and the two red flags which wave from the top seem but little out of place. The column is like the ancient honour of France, that neither decrees nor bayonets can intimidate, and which in the midst of threats and tumult, holds itself aloft in serene and n.o.ble dignity.

LIII.