§3
I have a sincere pity for any nation where old heads grow on young shoulders; youth is a matter, not only of years, but of temperament. The German student, in the height of his eccentricity, is a hundred times better than the young Frenchman or Englishman with his dull grown-up airs; as to American boys who are men at fifteen—I find them simply repulsive.
In old France the young nobles were really young and fine; and later, such men as Saint Just and Hoche, Marceau and Desmoulins, heroic children reared on Rousseau’s dark gospel, were young too, in the true sense of the word. The Revolution was the work of young men: neither Danton nor Robespierre, nor Louis XVI himself survived his thirty-fifth year. Under Napoleon, the young men all became subalterns; the Restoration, the “resurrection of old age,” had no use for young men; and everybody became grown-up, business-like, and dull.
The last really young Frenchmen were the followers of Saint Simon.[[54]] A few exceptions only prove the fact that their young men have no liveliness or poetry in their disposition. Escousse and Lebras blew their brains out, just because they were young men in a society where all were old. Others struggled like fish jerked out of the water upon a muddy bank, till some of them got caught on the barricades and others on the Jesuits’ hook.
[54]. Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), founded at Paris a society which was called by his name. His views were socialistic.
Still youth must assert itself somehow, and therefore most young Frenchmen go through an “artistic” period: that is, those who have no money spend their time in humble cafés of the Latin quarter with humble grisettes, and those who have money resort to large cafés and more expensive ladies. They have no “Schiller” stage; but they have what may be called a “Paul de Kock” stage, which soon consumes in poor enough fashion all the strength and vigour of youth, and turns out a man quite fit to be a commercial traveller. The “artistic” stage leaves at the bottom of the soul one passion only—the thirst for money, which excludes all other interests and determines all the rest of life; these practical men laugh at abstract questions and despise women—this is the result of repeated conquests over those whose profession it is to be defeated. Most young men, when going through this stage, find a guide and philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct celebrity who lives by sponging on his young friends—an actor who has lost his voice, or an artist whose hand has begun to shake. Telemachus imitates his Mentor’s pronunciation and his drinks, and especially his contempt for social problems and profound knowledge of gastronomy.
In England this stage takes a different form. There young men go through a stormy period of amiable eccentricity, which consists in silly practical jokes, absurd extravagance, heavy pleasantries, systematic but carefully concealed profligacy, and useless expeditions to the ends of the earth. Then there are horses, dogs, races, dull dinners; next comes the wife with an incredible number of fat, red-cheeked babies, business in the City, the Times, parliament, and old port which finally clips the Englishman’s wings.
We too did foolish things and were riotous at times, but the prevailing tone was different and the atmosphere purer. Folly and noise were never an object in themselves. We believed in our mission; and though we may have made mistakes, yet we respected ourselves and one another as the instruments of a common purpose.