Chapter VI: Part 6

After Schaunard comes Marcel the painter, a character of more amiable type, who appears to be a compound portrait of the two artists, Tabar and Lazare. He is essentially a good fellow, bright, enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, and shiftless; and though, after the fashion of the world in which he lives, he has an “insolent confidence in luck,” he is manly enough, upon occasion, to “give fortune a helping hand.” He is the hero of many amazing and some very ludicrous adventures, of which we can find space here only for a single specimen. Like Schaunard, he is devoting as much of his time and energy as he can save from the manufacture of pot-boilers and the consideration of the “terrible daily problem of how to get breakfast,” to the composition of one great work, which is to be his _open sesame_ to fame—“The Passage of the Red Sea.”[28] Was ever so much labor expended with such little practical result, one may wonder, by any artist whatsoever—painter, musician, or poet? For five or six years Marcel had worked away at his canvas with unflagging diligence and courage, and “for five or six years this masterpiece of color had been obstinately refused by the jury”; so that, by dint of going and returning from the artist’s studio to the exhibition, and from the exhibition back to the studio, the picture had come to know the way so well, that, had it been set on wheels, it could have gone to the Louvre by itself. Marcel, of course, attributed the policy of the jury to the personal spite of its members, and persisted, in the teeth of all discouragement, in regarding his production as the pendant to “The Marriage in Cana.” Hence, nothing daunted, he returned again and again to his vast design, after indulging in a sufficient amount of abuse to relieve his ruffled temper. At length, under conviction that the child of this world might possibly succeed where the child of light had failed, he began to seek for means whereby, without altering the general plan of his gigantic undertaking, he might deceive the jury in supposing it to be an entirely fresh and hitherto unexamined work. Thus, one year he turned Pharaoh into Cæsar, and the “Passage of the Red Sea” became “The Passage of the Rubicon.” This ruse failing, he covered, as by miracle, the Red Sea with snow, planted a fir-tree in one corner thereof, dressed an Egyptian in the costume of the Imperial Guard, and sent forth his canvas as “The Passage of the Beresina.” But, unfortunately, the jury had wiped its glasses that day and was not to be duped. It recognized the inexorable picture by dint of a multi-colored horse—his “synoptic table of fine colors,” Marcel privately called this astonishing steed—that went prancing about on the top of a wave of the Red Sea; and again the masterpiece was churlishly blackballed. “Till my dying day I will send my picture to the judges,” vowed Marcel, after this new repulse; “it shall be engraved on their memories.”—“The surest way of ever getting it engraved,” remarked Colline, who chanced to be near by. And so the poor painter might have been left to try further and still wilder experiments, but for the kindly intervention of Daddy Médicis, an old Jew who had constant dealings with the Bohemians, and often managed to do them a friendly turn without, as may be imagined, sacrificing himself overmuch in the transaction. This singular individual, coming one evening to Marcel’s room, offered to purchase the famous picture “for the collection of a rich amateur,” and proposed one hundred and fifty francs as a fair price. At first, the artist grumbled; there was at least a hundred and fifty francs’ worth of cobalt in the dress of Pharaoh alone, he protested. But the Jew stood firm, and at last the painter yielded; whereupon Daddy Médicis gave the Bohemians a dinner, at which “the lobster ceased to be a myth for Schaunard, who contracted for this amphibious creature a passion bordering on madness.” As for Marcel himself, his intoxication came near upon having deplorable results. Passing his tailor’s shop, at two o’clock in the morning, he actually wanted to wake up his creditor, and give him on account the hundred and fifty francs he had just received. A ray of reason, which still flitted in the mind of Colline, stopped the artist on the brink of this precipice.

Footnote 28:

This incident of Marcel’s picture is said to have had its prototype in
a composition of Tabar’s, originally sketched as “The Passage of the
Red Sea,” and afterwards exhibited in the Salon as “Niobe and Her
Children Slain by the Arrows of Apollo and Diana.”

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And now for the sequel of the story.

“A week after these festivities, Marcel found out the gallery in
which his picture had been placed. In passing through the
Faubourg St. Honoré, he stopped in the midst of a group which
seemed to be watching with curious interest a sign that was
being placed over a shop. This sign was neither more nor less
than Marcel’s picture, which had been sold by Médicis to a
grocer. Only, ‘The Passage of the Red Sea’ had undergone one
more change, and bore a new name. A steamboat had been added,
and it was now called ‘The Harbor of Marseilles.’ The curious
onlookers, when they saw the picture, burst out in a flattering
ovation; and Marcel returned home in ecstasy over the triumph,
murmuring—‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’”

What part the synoptic charger was now called on to fill, unfortunately we cannot say.

The third member of our quartet is Gustave Colline, student of “hyperphysical philosophy,” and inveterate perpetrator of alarming puns. He too is a composite character, the principal ingredients of his make-up being furnished by two of Murger’s old associates—Jean Walton and Trapadoux, both of whom were men of immense and curious erudition and many eccentricities. Colline himself, of a somewhat more steady way of life than his companions, gains a fairly regular income by teaching mathematics, botany, Arabic, and various other subjects, as occasion demands, and spends the greater part of it in the accumulation of second-hand books. “What he did with all these volumes,” remarks the historian, “so numerous that the life of a man would never have sufficed to read them, no one knew—he least of all.” But still he goes on adding tome to tome, and when he chances to return to his lodgings at night without bringing a new specimen to his store, he feels that, like the good Titus, he has wasted his day. Thus his strange, shapeless mouth, pouting lips, double chin, shaggy light hair, and threadbare, hazel-colored overcoat, are well known upon the quays and wherever ancient volumes are exposed for sale. His tastes are catholic in the extreme; for he will buy anything and everything that is to be bought, provided only it is rare, out of the way, and for all practical purposes useless. Some idea of the range and versatility of his interests may be given by reference to a single episode in his history. When, in company with Marcel, Rodolphe gave that famous Christmas entertainment, whereof the record is to be found in its proper place in the annals of Bohemia, he insisted on borrowing for the occasion the philosopher’s famous swallowtail coat. Now, this coat, as the chronicler justly suggests, deserves a word or two. By courtesy it was held to be black by candle-light, though it was really of a decided blue. It was also cut upon a wild and startling plan, very short in the waist and exceedingly long in the tails. But its most astonishing features were the pockets—“positive gulfs, in which Colline was accustomed to lodge some thirty of the volumes which he everlastingly carried about with him; which caused his friends to say that during the times when the libraries were closed scientists and men of letters could always seek information in the skirts of Colline’s coat—a library always open to readers.” Well, on this particular day, strange to relate, the great swallowtail apparently harbored only a quarto volume of Bayle, a treatise in three volumes on the hyperphysical faculties, a volume of Condillac, two of Swedenborg, and Pope’s “Essay on Man.” “Hullo!” exclaimed Rodolphe, when the philosopher had turned out this odd collection and allowed the other to don the imposing habit; “the left pocket still feels very heavy; there is still something in it.”—“Ah!” replied Colline, “that is true; I forgot to empty the foreign language pocket.” Whereupon he drew out two Arabic grammars, a Malay dictionary, and “The Perfect Stock-Breeder” in Chinese—his favorite reading.[29] Nor was this quite all. Later on, in looking for his handkerchief, Rodolphe came accidentally upon a small Tartar volume, overlooked in the department of foreign literature.

Footnote 29:

This famous volume appears in an “édition princeps,” with “notes in
modern Syriac,” in the very amusing story, “Son Excellence Gustave
Colline,” which really forms an episode of the “Scènes de la Vie de
Bohème,” though it is published in the collection of miscellanies
entitled “Dona Sirène.”

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For the rest, Colline is a very agreeable companion, pleasant of manner, and courteous of bearing; and his conversation is amusingly spiced with quaint technical expressions and the most outrageous puns. Unlike his three companions, who are in perpetual bondage to love, he passes on, for the most part, in bachelor meditation, fancy free, as becomes a philosopher of the “hyperphysical school.” Once in a while, we find him flirting a little with the _bonne amie_ of one of his friends, and we recall a single occasion on which, according to his own statement, he had an appointment of a romantic character. We read also, in the most incidental way, of his devotion to a waistcoat-maker, whom he keeps day and night copying the manuscripts of his philosophical works. But at these, as at all other times, the lady of his affections remains “invisible and anonymous.” In general, it may be said that he shows himself markedly superior to the human weakness which does so much to disturb the byways of Bohemia no less than the highways of the outer world.

Music, painting, and philosophy are thus well represented in the Bohemian _cénacle_, and in Rodolphe, the last of the group, the sister art of poetry finds a worthy exponent. Rodolphe is the real hero of the book, and is indeed an approximately faithful sketch of the author himself. In the fancy-poet of the Latin Quarter, the man who, in the very cut of his clothes, manners, appearance, conversation, “confessed his association with the Muses,” many of Murger’s well-known traits of character and personal idiosyncrasies are frankly reproduced. We have a brief but sufficiently detailed description of him when he makes his first appearance in the Café Momus, and there can be no doubt as to the artist’s model from which the study is made. He is presented as “a young man whose face was almost lost in an enormous thicket of many-colored beard. But, as a set-off against this abundance of hair on the chin, a precocious baldness had dismantled his forehead, which looked like a knee, and the nakedness of which a few stray hairs that one might have counted vainly endeavored to cover. He wore a black coat, tonsured at the elbows, and with practical ventilators under the armpits, which could be seen whenever he raised his arm too high. His trousers might once have been black, but his shoes, which had never been new, seemed to have several times made the tour of the world on the feet of the Wandering Jew.” In all this—in the precocious baldness and parti-colored beard especially—we have the historian of Bohemia himself. We do not, therefore, wonder that the character of Rodolphe should stand out from among the other figures of the “Scenes,” by reason of a certain autobiographic distinctness of outline and color, nor that he should prevail upon us by a kind of personal charm which his companions rarely possess.

To follow Rodolphe’s various adventures and enterprises back to their originals in Murger’s life, would be an interesting task, but it is one that cannot be attempted here; and for the time being we must keep to the poet in the book. Like his friends Schaunard and Marcel, this young man has pinned his faith to one ambitious work, a drama called the “The Avenger,” which has already gone the round of all the theatres of Paris, and of which in the course of a couple of years, he has accumulated a dozen or so huge manuscript copies, weighing collectively something like fifteen pounds. “The Avenger” was ultimately produced, and ran for five successive nights, after large portions of these carefully wrought versions had been used up in the humble service of lighting the fire. But this does not come till towards the end of the story; and during the days when we know him best, Rodolphe, awaiting his dramatic triumph, is willing enough to turn his literary talents to account in less dignified ways. The main sources of his income appear to be “The Scarf of Iris,” a fashion-journal, and “The Castor,” a paper devoted to the interests of the hat-trade, both of which he edits, and in which he publishes from time to time his opinions on tragedy and kindred subjects. It is to the columns of the latter periodical, by-the-by, that Gustave Colline contributes a discussion on “The Philosophy of Hats, and Other Things in General”—how much to the amusement and instruction of its readers we are unfortunately not told. Probably the financial advantages of these two undertakings are of a rather slight and unsubstantial character; at any rate, the editor-in-chief shows himself at all times ready to supplement his official emoluments whensoever occasion offers. Witness his most famous piece of hack-work, the composition of “The Perfect Chimney Constructor.” Rodolphe, who has been sadly down on his luck for a time—fluctuating between going to bed without supper and supping without going to bed—happens accidentally to run across his Uncle Monetti, a stove-maker and physician of smoky chimneys, whom he has not seen for an age. Now, Monsieur Monetti is an enthusiast in his art, and has conceived the idea of drawing up for the benefit of future generations, a manual of chimney-construction, in which his own numerous patents shall be given adequate presentation. Finding his nephew fallen upon evil days, he intrusts him with this literary enterprise, promising him a remuneration of three hundred francs, and rashly giving him outright fifty francs on account. Of course, Rodolphe incontinently disappears, and only turns up again when the money has disappeared also. Uncle Monetti then resorts to drastic measures. He locks the volatile young gentleman in a small room, six stories up, with stoves and ovens for his company, and takes away his clothes, leaving in their stead a ridiculous Turkish dressing-gown. In this attic solitude the unfortunate young poet is fain to wax eloquent over ventilators, till he is rescued in the most romantic way by a certain Mademoiselle Sidonia, as the reader will find recorded at length in its proper place in the Bohemian chronicles.

In connection with one extraordinary episode in Rodolphe’s career—his sudden receipt of five hundred francs in hard cash—we have an excellent opportunity of studying some of the mysteries of Bohemian finance. He and Marcel, who was then his fellow-lodger, regarded this colossal sum as practically inexhaustible; they were not a little surprised, therefore, to find, before a fortnight had gone by, that it had vanished into air, as though by magic. The strictest frugality had presided over all their expenditures, and the question was, where in the world the money could have gone to. Into this problem the two economists forthwith made inquisition, analyzing their accounts, and carefully weighing them item by item. This is about the way in which the audit was conducted:—

“March 19.—Received five hundred francs. Paid, one Turkish pipe, twenty-five francs; dinner, fifteen francs; miscellaneous expenses, forty francs,” Marcel read out.

“What in the world are these miscellaneous expenses?” asked Rodolphe.

“You know well enough,” said the other. “It was the evening when we didn’t come home till morning. At any rate, that saved us fuel and candles.”

There is nothing like rigid economy, as we see.

“March 20.—Breakfast, one franc, fifty centimes; tobacco, twenty centimes; dinner, two francs; an opera glass”—needed by Rodolphe, who, as editor of the “Scarf of Iris,” had to write a notice of an art exhibition; and so on, and so on. As the account continued, “miscellaneous expenses” reappeared with ever-increasing frequency; indeed, the two financiers had in the end to admit that this “vague and perfidious title,” as Rodolphe called it, had proved a delusion and a snare.

* * * * *

Such, then, are the four principal characters with whose doings and misdoings the “Scenes of Bohemian Life” are mainly occupied. A word only about the women of the book.

It is while he is in their company, I suppose, more than at any other time, that the Anglo-Saxon reader feels how far the pathways of Bohemia lie outside the boundaries of respectable society. Louise, the fickle bird of passage; Musette, vagabond and careless; Mimi, charming, heartless, ill-fated; Phémie, beneath whose delicate exterior was concealed a veritable volcano of passion;—yes, the face of the moralist will certainly harden as he dwells on the giddy vagrancy of their lives, and the hopeless tragedy in which the music and the laughter inevitably find their earthly close. About this matter I shall try to say something presently. For the moment I want only to point out that, though the women of Murger’s book are drawn from known or conjectured originals, the portraiture does not seem to be nearly as close as it is throughout in the case of the men. This does not mean only that each girl in the “Scenes” is a more or less blurred compound of various famous figures of the old Latin Quarter; it means, also—and this is, of course, far more important,—that the characters have undergone much transfiguration. The magic and grace by which, amid all their personal shortcomings and delinquencies, these heedless adventurers of the studio and the café are actually marked, are largely, it is to be feared, the results of Murger’s own idealizing imagination and delicately poetic touch.

There is an important point, suggested by the present part of our subject, which demands a moment’s attention. The principle indicated in the well-known lines of Lafontaine—

“Deux coqs vivaient en paix: une poule survint,
Et voilà la guerre allumée!”—

is generally held to be one of universal applicability. But the life of our Bohemian brotherhood for once gives it the lie direct. Never, even in the most trying seasons of love and jealousy, did the ties slacken which bound the four companions—Colline, the great philosopher; Marcel, the great painter; Schaunard, the great musician; and Rodolphe, the great poet—as they called one another. Rodolphe and Mimi might lead a cat-and-dog life; Marcel might quarrel with Musette, and make it up only to quarrel again; Schaunard might see fit to address some of his telling observations to the person of the melancholy Phémie; but artist and poet, philosopher and painter, rubbed on together in peace; and if the truth must be told, smoked many a pipe in company over the grave of their dead passions. Truly the domestic side of their life left much to be desired. At one time they all occupied the same house, and then the unfortunate neighbors lived, as it were, on a volcano. Six months went by; things grew daily more and more intolerable; and then the final breaking-up of the establishment came about. “But,” adds Murger—and the remark exhibits clearly the kind of understanding which existed among the strangely-assorted friends—“in this association, despite the three young and pretty women who formed part of it, no sign of discord appeared among the men. They frequently gave way to the most absurd caprices of their mistresses; but not one of them would have hesitated a moment between the woman and the friend.”

* * * * *

Amid all the uncertainties and anxieties, the follies and the vices of their daily life, these brother Bohemians are possessed of a very keen and genuine enthusiasm for art, and of a sturdy faith in themselves and their own high calling. This is one good aspect of their character; another and complementary aspect, upon which Murger lays much stress, is their complete freedom from stiff-necked virtuosity and dilettante affectations. There are Bohemians who chatter only of “art for art’s sake,” who hold with inflexible obstinacy and stoical pride to the narrow path they have marked out for themselves, who scorn to descend, upon any pretext, for any purpose whatsoever, to the plane of common affairs. But Murger takes pains to make it clear that Rodolphe and his friends do not belong to this unfortunate class—the “Buveurs d’Eau,” as they are called, the first tenet of whose creed is that no one of their number, on penalty of expulsion from the society, shall accept any work outside pure art itself.[30] Rodolphe, as we know, is working hard upon his great tragedy; Marcel, upon his “Passage of the Red Sea”; Schaunard, upon his symbolic symphony; Colline, upon his system of “Hyperphysical Philosophy”: but there are no cant phrases of art-worship everlastingly upon their lips, and they are ready enough to turn their energies, when opportunity offers, into more remunerative, if less ambitious, undertakings. We have seen something already of the practical means, sometimes adopted by them, of putting a figure before the cipher, which unfortunately, as a rule, constitutes their entire available capital. If further evidence be demanded, we need only refer to the occasions when Rodolphe versifies an epitaph for an inconsolable widow and turns off a rhyming advertisement for a dentist, and when Marcel paints eight grenadiers at six francs apiece—likenesses guaranteed for a year, like a watch.

Footnote 30:

See “Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène”; “Les Buveurs
d’Eau”; “Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse”; and the “Scènes de la Vie de
Bohème,” preface, and the story of “Le Manchon de Francine.”

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* * * * *

Of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life” as a whole, it would be hopeless to endeavor to give any general idea within the limits of a rapid sketch. It is little to say that from cover to cover of this wonderful book there is not a dull or indifferent page—not a page that does not teem with quaint description, brilliant bits of characterization, vivid pictures of manners and life. Of the range and opulence of its humor some hint has perhaps been given, though the merest hint only, in the personal delineations attempted above. Mirth-compelling the “Scenes” certainly are, and we feel in their case, as we cannot always feel with the masterpieces of the French comic genius, that the laughter they provoke is generous, hearty, wholesome—laughter without taint of cynicism or spite. But the humor of the volume, rich and racy as it is, and the ebullient wit that glitters and flashes in its dialogues and incidental touches of comment and criticism, are not by any means the only qualities that deserve attention. Murger was a true humorist, and, like all true humorists, he had the keenest realization of the pathos and tragedy of life, the most delicate apprehension of “the sense of tears in mortal things.” Though it can hardly be said of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” as it has been rightly said of the great body of the author’s work, that the dominant note is one of poignant melancholy, the minor chords are heavy and frequent enough to tone down the exuberant gayety of the volume, and to cause the final impression left by it to be rather sombre than exhilarating. Murger saw much of the reckless and irresponsible life of the Latin Quarter on its grotesque side, and he has given this side extraordinary prominence in this particular book, reserving many of the harsher features, which from personal contact he knew equally well, for the “Scenes de la Vie de Jeunesse” and the “Buveurs d’Eau.” But the reader who follows to their close the chapters we have here more especially been considering—and who can put them down unfinished?—will find that their brilliancy of light and color are thrown up against a very dark background, and that the shadows gather and deepen about us as the story runs its course. At length, the wild music ceases altogether; the mad laughter is silenced; and the book is laid by, not with a burst of final merriment, but with a gulp and a pang. _Ah, comme nous avons ri!_ Yes, the struggles, the privations, the absurdities of Bohemia are comical enough; but life is stern, even in this Land of Romance; there is death in it, and many a heartbreak; and if we escape the suffering of failure, we must accept the inevitable disillusion of success. Life, too, is fleeting; the golden sands slip through our fingers as we try to clutch them. _Eheu fugaces!_ It is the old-world burden that we must needs end with—“La jeunesse n’a qu’un temps!”

No—“ce n’est pas gai tous les jours, la Bohème.” For my own part, I know not whither one could turn to find pages of purer tenderness and pathos than those in which Murger has written of Francine’s muff and of the death of poor little Mimi. And yet, there is no effort, no melodramatic striving after effect. The lips quiver, the eyes grow dim as we read; but so admirably is the art concealed, so perfect is the reserve under which it is all done, that it is only when we come to turn back over the chapters for the express purpose of analyzing them, that we begin to realize the author’s exquisite perception and tact, and the genius with which he carries his meaning straight home to our hearts. Poor Francine! Poor Mimi! These fragile slips of womanhood from the dingy old Latin Quarter are filled with the life that the poet alone can give. We meet them once in a few pages of print; and their hungry eyes and poor, worn faces linger with us forever.

* * * * *

And now we must revert for a moment to a question already touched on—the loose morality not infrequently charged against this record of Bohemian life. I promised that I should try to say something about this matter ere I brought these jottings to a close; but now that it is definitely before us, I do not feel, after all, that there is very much to be said. Our judgment on such a book as this, ethically considered, must finally depend on the point of view from which we regard it, and this point of view will always be at bottom so much an affair of temperament, outlook, training, bias, that it is not likely to be much affected by any arguments, adverse or favorable. “Certainly,” Murger once imagines one of his readers saying, “I shall not allow this story to fall into the hands of my daughter.” To this, doubtless, most Anglo-Saxon fathers would say amen, and there is little question that they would, on the whole, be wise in so doing. I readily admit that it would be better that the perusal of such a work as this, as of many other great and enduring pieces of literature, should be left for those whose minds have been schooled and sobered by the discipline of real life, and who are thus in a position to bring Murger’s imaginary scenes, with all their bewitching humor, magic of description, and charm of style, to the touchstone of actual experience. But while I concede this much, I cannot for a moment go with those who would, therefore, place the volume on their unofficial “Index Expurgatorius,” on the score that it will be found dangerous to morality. Such a notion seems to me simply absurd, and due to an entire misapprehension of what it is in literature that renders it injurious in its effects. Murger drew his material from a world he had known and lived in, and he incorporates all its irregularities of conduct, and very much of its wantonness. Yet I challenge any intelligent and broad-minded reader to deny that the atmosphere of his “Scenes” is almost always fresh and wholesome. Those at least who know something of the French novel, from “La Dame aux Camélias” onward, and of some of the English fiction produced within recent decades, by writers who boldly claim place in the ranks of the moralists, will hardly feel called upon to attack our author on this particular head. Nowhere, let it be said emphatically, does Murger deliberately give himself up to the worship of the great Goddess of Lubricity; nowhere does he willingly throw the halo of poetry over mere physical passion; nowhere does he go out of his way to show vice as vice in glowing or attractive colors. These may read like phrases of the most conventional criticism, but they are here thoroughly to the point. The very story which the writer stops short for a moment to interject the imaginary comment quoted above, is as pure and delicate as a love-story well could be, and only a reader capable of sucking poison out of a lily, could be disturbed in the slightest degree by the irregularity of the relations existing between Jacques and poor Francine. It can never be often urged that in such a case as this—perhaps in all art whatsoever—the one fundamentally essential thing is treatment; and with Murger’s handling of his theme, no possible fault could be found, even by the most austere and exacting critic.

A more substantial charge may, I think, be brought against the “Scenes,” on the ground that in their delightful pages the shiftless, improvident, hand-to-mouth existence of Rodolphe and his friends is made too engaging and seductive. Are there not, it may be asked, scores of young men who believe that they have (in very large capitals) Genius and a Mission in Art, and who need nothing but the incentive of such a volume as this to lead them to throw aside the sober concerns of law or commerce, and voluntarily exchange a career of useful, if monotonous, toil, for one wherein immediate misery is practically certain, and ultimate success only a remote chance? Youths of some sensibility and ambition, who hate the counting-house and the desk; who have written verses or made sketches which have been praised by injudicious friends; and who have devoured the numerous biographies of those who, having commenced life in uncongenial labor, boldly kicked over the traces and finally made for themselves a position and a name, are prone enough, it may be alleged, to mistake themselves for great men in embryo, and to set up their backs against the daily routine and the common task, without the aid of a book which paints Bohemia so constantly on its pleasantest side, and gives to even its struggles and sufferings a romantic charm, which the jog-trot round of experience does not possess. All this, perhaps, is true. At any rate, I have myself known one young fellow of the class referred to who, under Murger’s inspiration, played for a time at Bohemianism, allowed his hair to grow down over his shoulders, wore by preference a threadbare coat, and posed as an unappreciated genius. His genius, I believe, remains unrecognized still; but he has long since assumed a respectable garb, and given other outward and visible signs of his perversion to conventionality. And yet, even with this instructive case well in mind, I think too much might easily be made of the harmful tendencies of Murger’s book. The _Sturm und Drang_ period of youth, the period of ferment, and aimless experiment, and general unrest, will always be fraught with perils of one or another kind; and a few wild dreams of vague ambition, some spiritual green-sickness, an attack or two of the hysterics of social revolt, a little affectation of Byronism, or Shelleyism, or Murgerism, are not the worst of these. Fortunately, the real world is a businesslike and remorseless disciplinarian, and in the school of practical experience, a nature essentially healthy will presently right itself, and be none the worse—perhaps even the better—for a handful of battered illusions and some pricked bubbles of fancy. And as for the natures not fundamentally healthy—well, Life the Schoolmistress has her own effectual way with these also.

But should there perchance be any young man in danger of taking the Bohemian fever a trifle too seriously, we will refer him for treatment to a very satisfactory physician, a specialist, one may say, in the complaint—Murger himself. Properly read, and read through to the end, the “Scenes” should prove their own corrective; and if their full significance is not clear, the preface furnishes the needed commentary. It is but simple justice to Murger to say that he himself had no sympathy whatever with the indefinite ambitions and mawkish sentimentalism of a certain class of young men, who mistake the cravings of aspiration for the promptings of genius, and turn to art because they are fit for nothing else. Again and again does he insist upon the stern realities of the artist’s probation; again and again does he raise the voice of warning to those who would rashly decide to commit themselves to the artist’s career.

“Il en est dans les luttes de l’art à peu près comme à la
guerre—toute la gloire conquise rejaillit sur le nom des chefs.
L’armée se partage pour récompense les quelques lignes d’un
ordre du jour. Quant aux soldats frappés dans le combat, on les
enterre là où ils sont tombés, et une seule épitaphe suffit pour
vingt mille morts.”[31]

Footnote 31:

“Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène.” Murger uses precisely
the same words in the preface just referred to.

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These are solemn and uncompromising words. And scarcely less solemn are the phrases in which he describes the life of Bohemia as “charming but terrible, having its conquerors and its martyrs”—a life upon which no one should enter “who is not prepared beforehand to submit to the inexorable law of _Væ Victis_!” Woe to the conquered indeed! In the brilliant pages of the world’s history, the name and fortune of the one who succeeds alone are inscribed; those of the nine hundred and ninety-nine who ignominiously and miserably fail pass into everlasting oblivion.

THE PRESSWORK ON THIS BOOK WAS DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO, AT THE PRINTING SHOP OF THE E. D. TAYLOR COMPANY, IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER AND YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN.

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Transcriber’s note:

Page 13, ‘sequested’ changed to ‘sequestered,’ “in the sequestered neighborhood”

Page 48, ‘euphuism’ changed to ‘Euphuism,’ “Yet Euphuism and Italianism were”

Page 69, comma inserted after ‘Lowell,’ “asks Mr. Lowell,”

Page 80, ‘euthusiasm’ changed to ‘enthusiasm,’ “versatility of enthusiasm”

Page 137, comma struck after “Cléopâtre”

Page 137, comma inserted after “Le Grand Cyrus”

Page 148, ‘D’Aumont’ changed to ‘d’Aumont,’ “into the mouth of d’Aumont”

Page 158, comma struck after ‘prevailing,’ “to hit the prevailing taste”

Page 159, ‘ambibitious’ changed to ‘ambitious,’ “her one ambitious effort”

Page 159, ‘consquence’ changed to ‘consequence,’ “mark the consequence!”

Page 175 footnote, second ‘a’ struck before ‘true,’ ““Nun” a “true novel.””

Page 188, ‘cookshops’ changed to ‘cook-shops,’ “kitchens and the cook-shops”

Page 188 footnote 30, single quote changed to double quote before “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème”

Page 205, ‘thfs’ changed to ‘this,’ “this meeting with a poet”

Page 208, ‘Medicis’ changed to ‘Médicis,’ “bric-a-brac dealer, Father Médicis”

Page 216, ‘courtersy’ changed to ‘courtesy,’ “By courtesy it was held”

End of Project Gutenberg's Idle Hours in a Library, by William Henry Hudson