Chapter XXI: Beranger

1780-1857.

Beranger was a song-writer, the whole of him. He was a song-writer and nothing else. It is his own word, "My songs, they are myself."

Beranger was not the rose-crowned lyrist of love and wine; he was not Anacreon. Beranger was not the hymner of heroes and kings, a maker of odes; he was not Pindar. Beranger was not the poet of the world, the gay world and the wise; he was not Horace. Beranger was not by chance the lowly melodist, who might by chance as well have been a lofty bard; he was not Robert Burns. Beranger was the song-singer of the people; he himself elected to be such, and he was by the people elected to be such; he said himself, "My muse is the people." In one word, Beranger was--Beranger. There was none like him before, there has been none like him since; Beranger is alone. We do not thus praise him, we simply describe him.

But it is possible to describe him better. We do so by borrowing from Victor Hugo through Sainte-Beuve.

Sainte-Beuve, not in his essay on Beranger (which, in appreciating, somewhat depreciates the poet), but among the interesting things that, under the title "Chateaubriana," he prints at the close of his monograph in two volumes on Chateaubriand, has the following personal recollection of his own, which, given here, will serve a threefold purpose; that of hinting incidentally the relation of four celebrated French authors to one another, that of illustrating the ready fecundity and plasticity of Victor Hugo's genius, and that of setting forth in concrete example Beranger's master method in his songs, which master method is essentially Beranger, the song-writer, himself. Sainte-Beuve says--of course we translate:

Victor Hugo, returning one morning from the garden of the Luxembourg
(1828 or 1829) said to me: "If I should see Beranger, I would give him
the subject of a pretty song. I just now met M. de Chateaubriand in
the Luxembourg; he did not see me; he was wrapt in thought, intently
observing some children who, seated on the ground, were playing and
tracing figures in the sand. If I were Beranger I would make a song on
the subject: 'I have been minister, I have been ambassador, etc., I
wear the decoration of the Order of the Holy Ghost, that of the Order
of the Golden Fleece, that of the order of St. Andrew, etc.; and one
sole thing at last amuses me: it is to watch children playing in the
sand. I wrote "Rene," I wrote the "Genius of Christianity," I stood up
against Napoleon, I opened the poetic era of the century, etc.; and I
know only one thing that amuses me: to watch children at play upon the
sand. I have seen America, I have seen Greece and Rome, I have seen
Jerusalem, etc.' And after each enumeration of various experiences,
forms of greatness or of honor, all kept returning still to this: to
watch children playing and tracing circles in the sand." The plan
sketched by Victor Hugo was perfect, far better than I have given it
here; but the motive is plain, the idea of the refrain. Never have I
had better defined to me the difference that separates the song, even
the most elevated in character, from the ode properly so-called.

There is Beranger, his whole secret, summed up in small by a masterhand. What Beranger, then, did was to choose wisely, with long heed, some single, simple, obvious sentiment, appealing to every body's experience, shut that sentiment up into a short, neat, striking, rememberable form of words suited to be sung, make of that form of words a refrain to recur at intervals, and finally on that refrain build up, one after another to the end, the stanzas of his song. He worked slowly and painfully. His genius was never very prolific. The time of his chief fruitfulness was short, covering only fifteen years, the fifteen years between Waterloo (1815) and the elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne of France (1830). During this time his largest product hardly exceeded a dozen songs a year.

Beranger's first discipline to his art may be considered to have been a certain favorite diversion of his childhood, the carving of cherry-stones. This exercise of skill he practiced sedulously with delight when a boy, and in it learned the long, minute patience of art. The man's songs were cut gems laboriously finished, like the boy's carvings in cherry-stones.

Beranger became immensely popular. He remained so to the end. When he died, and it was after prolonged silence on his part--if one can call silence a period marked, indeed, by non-production, but filled with the singing, from land's end to land's end, of his songs in every mouth--when he died the empire buried him and the nation attended his funeral. He had been born poor, and he was reared in poverty. Rich he would not be, when a man. He took infinite pains to be of the people, and he succeeded. The people were loving and honoring themselves in loving and honoring Beranger. Sainte-Beuve, with that critical incredulity of his, thought that Beranger carried his demonstrative cultivation of the "people" to the point of something like affectation. Perhaps; but the affectation, if it was such, had a sound basis in it of real instinctive popular sympathy. Still, Beranger's emphasized identification of himself with the people was not all a matter of instinct with him. It was in part a matter of deliberately adopted policy. He said:

The people wanted a man to speak to them the language they love and
understand, and to create imitators to vary and multiply versions of
the same text. _I have been that man._

Beranger was quite willing to make any moral descent that might seem to him necessary in order to reach his audience. He may have been instinctively, but he was also deliberately, low and lewd in some of his songs.

Without their help [said he, that is without the help of such immoral
songs] I am disposed to think that the others would not have been able
to go so far, or so low, or even so high; no offense in this last word
to the virtues of good society.

Even the best of Beranger's songs lack any thing like lift and aspiration. They are conceived in a comparatively low tone. The noblest leaven in them is love of France and of liberty. Beranger hated the Bourbons; they persecuted him, but that only helped him sing them off the throne of France. Beranger's songs did more than any other one individual influence, perhaps they did more than all other individual influences combined, first to overturn the restored Bourbon dynasty after Waterloo, and, second, to bring about the elevation of Louis Napoleon to power.

For Beranger was a passionate admirer of the great Napoleon. True, he deprecated the exhaustions visited on France by the wars of glory which Napoleon waged. But that famous piece of his, "The King of Yvetot," in which this deprecation found voice, was a protest so lightly conceived and at bottom so genial, that the jealousy of Napoleon himself could afford to laugh at it. The pieces in which, on the contrary, he celebrated the praises of the emperor were written with an emotion contagiously vivid. Let us now have before us "The King of Yvetot," with an appropriate contrast to it afterward supplied in one of these encomiastic pieces.

"Yvetot" is the name of an ancient French town, situated in a seignory the lord of which once enjoyed the nominal rank of king. The effect of Beranger's title to his song is of course humorous. The song-writer's purpose was to draw, in the king whom he describes, a whimsical contrast to the restless Napoleon. Thackeray furnishes us with a happily sympathetic rendering of Beranger's "King of Yvetot," as follows; for brevity's sake we omit one stanza:

There was a king of Yvetot,
Of whom renown hath little said,
Who let all thoughts of glory go,
And dawdled half his days a-bed;
And every night, as night came round,
By Jenny with a night-cap crowned,
Slept very sound.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That's the kind of king for me.

And every day it came to pass
That four lusty meals made he,
And step by step, upon an ass,
Rode abroad his realms to see;
And wherever he did stir,
What think you was his escort, sir?
Why, an old cur.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That's the kind of king for me.

If e'er he went into excess,
'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst,
But he who would his subjects bless,
Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first,
And so from every cask they got,
Our king did to himself allot
At least a pot.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That's the kind of king for me.

To all the ladies of the land
A courteous king, and kind, was he;
The reason why you'll understand,
They named him _Pater Patriae._
Each year he called his fighting-men,
And marched a league from home, and then,
Marched back again.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That's the kind of king for me.

* * * * *

The portrait of this best of kings
Is extant still, upon a sign
That on a village tavern swings,
Famed in the country for good wine.
The people in their Sunday trim,
Filling their glasses to the brim,
Look up to him.
Singing, ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
That's the sort of king for me.

In his autobiography, an interesting book, Beranger says that hardly any other writer equally with himself could have dispensed with the help of the printer. His songs traveled of themselves from mouth to mouth without the intervention of printed copies. In fact, Beranger was already famous before his works went into print. It was this oral currency of his songs that made them such engines of power. That brilliant Bohemian wit among Frenchmen, Chamfort, defined, it is said, before Beranger's time, the government of France to be absolute monarchy tempered by songs. This celebrated saying does not overstate the degree, though it may misstate the kind, of influence that Beranger exercised with his lyre. He was, by conviction and in sympathy, a determined and ardent republican, and yet, in fact, he founded, or played the chief part in founding, the imperial usurpation of Louis Napoleon. This he did by getting the glories of the great emperor sung by Frenchmen throughout France, until the very name of Napoleon became an irresistible spell to conjure by. We now give the most celebrated of these Bonaparte songs. Mr. William Young, an American, has a volume of translations from Beranger. Of this particular song, Mr. Young's version is so felicitous that we unhesitatingly choose it for our readers. The title of the song is, "The Recollections of the People." It was, we believe, founded on an incident of Beranger's own observation; we shorten again by a stanza:

Aye, many a day the straw-thatched cot
Shall echo with his glory!
The humblest shed, these fifty years,
Shall know no other story.
There shall the idle villagers
To some old dame resort,
And beg her with those good old tales
To make their evenings short.
"What though they say he did us harm
Our love this cannot dim;
Come, Granny, talk of him to us;
Come, Granny, talk of him."

"Well, children--with a train of kings
Once he passed by this spot;
'Twas long ago; I had but just
Begun to boil the pot.
On foot he climbed the hill, whereon
I watched him on his way;
He wore a small three-cornered hat;
His overcoat was gray.
I was half frightened till he spoke;
'My dear,' says he, 'how do?'"
"O, Granny, Granny, did he speak?
What, Granny! speak to you?"

* * * * *

"But when at length our poor Champagne
By foes was overrun,
He seemed alone to hold his ground;
Nor dangers would he shun.
One night--as might be now--I heard
A knock--the door unbarred--
And saw--good God! 'twas he, himself,
With but a scanty guard.
'O what a war is this!' he cried,
Taking this very chair."
"What! Granny, Granny, there he sat?
What! Granny, he sat there?"

"'I'm hungry,' said he: quick I served
Thin wine and hard brown bread;
He dried his clothes, and by the fire
In sleep drooped down his head.
Waking, he saw my tears--'Cheer up,
Good dame!' says he, 'I go
'Neath Paris' walls to strike for France
One last avenging blow.'
He went; but on the cup he used
Such value did I set--
It has been treasured." "What! till now?
You have it, Granny, yet?"

"Here 'tis; but 'twas the hero's fate
To ruin to be led;
He, whom a pope had crowned, alas!
In a lone isle lies dead.
'Twas long denied: 'No, no,' said they,
'Soon shall he re-appear;
O'er ocean comes he, and the foe
Shall find his master here.'
Ah, what a bitter pang I felt,
When forced to own 'twas true!"
"Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look,
Will kindly look on you."

There was not in Beranger's genius much innate and irrepressible buoyancy toward poetry, as we English-speakers conceive poetry. But he practiced a severely self-tasking art of verse, which at last yielded a product sufficiently consummate in form to command the admiration of qualified critics. He became unquestionably first among the song-writers of France; he even elevated song-writing, popular song-writing, to the rank of acknowledged literature. His fashion, and, with his fashion, his currency, are rapidly becoming things of the past; but the real merit of his achievement, and, more than that, the fact of his extraordinary influence make his name securely immortal in the literary history, and in the literature, of France.