This brand-new cavalcade consisted of a large number of pedestrians masquerading as ducks, geese, rabbits, frogs, camels, donkeys, cats, pigs, and giraffes (the French words for all of which have well-defined metaphorical meanings), and as chimeras, Pierrots and Pierrettes; and a score or more of fantastic floats (designed by Montmartre artists of repute), the subtle and piquant symbolism of which was all Greek to the foreign tourists who chanced to see them and not too intelligible to many Parisians who fancied they knew their Paris and their French. The floats were entitled (to mention only those whose significance is fairly obvious) Pegasus Seized by the Sheriffs, The Anti-Landlord League, The Wrestlers of Thought, The Temple of the Golden Calf, La Vache Enragée through the Ages, Feeding of la Vache Enragée, Drawing the Teeth of la Vache Enragée, A la Belle Etoile,[81] and Ma Tante.[82] The design for this last, by M. Grün, is given herewith.
Judges were satirically represented as side-whiskered café garçons; the victims of la misère en habit noir, as street pavers, attired in frayed frock-coats, wind-traversed shoes, and weather-beaten “plug” hats; and Les Jeunes,[83] as small boys, in dunce-caps, playing on drums.
GRÜN’S DESIGN FOR FLOAT IN CAVALCADE OF LA VACHE ENRAGÉE
The street parade lasted from mid-day to sunset. It was preceded by a theatrical representation for the benefit of destitute artists, which included appropriate skits by the Montmartre playwrights Xanrof and Courtéline, an address by the Montmartre socialist poet-deputy Clovis Hugues, and rapid platform drawing by the Montmartre caricaturists, Pal and Grün; and it was followed by bonfires and open-air dancing, and by a masked ball at the Moulin Rouge, in the course of which a lottery was drawn, whose principal prizes were sketches by Montmartre artists, among them Faverot, Willette, Henri Pille, Roedel, Léandre, and Puvis de Chavannes. The occasion was further signalised by the publication of a magazine, La Vache Enragée, under the editorship of Willette.
The distinctive feature of the second and last[84] fête of the Vache Enragée (1897) was a musical poem, entitled “Le Couronnement de la Muse de Montmartre,” by the Montmartre composer Gustave Charpentier, now thrice famous as the author of Louise, in which Labour, figured by one Mlle. Stumpp (a working-girl, who had been elected by ballot the Montmartre Muse), was crowned by Beauty, figured by Cléo de Mérode. Charpentier interpreted his cantata as follows:—
“The Muse is the plebeian virgin, the virtuous young working-girl, the daughter of the people, administering a formidable slap in the face to the pères la pudeur,[85] showing these drivellers of another epoch, these dotards whose sentiments are false, unnatural, and bourgeois, that it is possible to achieve the beautiful in taking for a queen an ouvrière, a rosière even, of Montmartre, region of ideals too young for their too old ideas.”
This Montmartre fête of the Vache Enragée is unique among the fêtes of the whole world, I fancy, in that it is at once a bold apotheosis of the racking poverty of the artistic career and a defiant, masterful sneer at the smugness of commercial Philistinism.[86] “It is a defence of la misère you are making,” said Zola in a communication to its organisers,—“a defence of la misère; and, to my thinking, you are right in making this defence.” Cyrano, a knight of the vache enragée, who would have found himself delightfully at home in the Montmartre cavalcade, made a similar defence, according to Rostand, some centuries ago:—