At the height of his fame the critic Gustave Planche was often without money enough to go to the barber-shop,—if Vallès is to be believed,—and occupied an attic at twenty-five francs a month. He never earned more than four thousand francs a year, and rarely as much as three thousand francs,—a sum which was destitution, nothing more nor less, for a person whose vocation forced him into the world and whose inability to walk necessitated a perpetual outlay for carriage hire.
In a striking passage of his novel, La Faiseuse de Gloire, Paul Brulat writes: “An old man approached the desk timidly, and stammered something in a low voice. The editor, annoyed at being interrupted, repelled him with cruel words. ‘Oh, say now, won’t you ever stop coming here begging?’ The old man moved off with a senile shake of the head. He bore a great name in literature. He was called Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.”
Henry Becque, whose Corbeaux was refused by ten theatres before it was accepted by the Théâtre Français, “lived on a seventh floor, under the roof,” says his friend and admirer, Henri Bauer. “The furnishings of his single room were an iron bed, an unpainted table, and three straw-bottomed chairs.” And this was long after Becque’s masterpieces had been given a hearing, at a time when he was regarded by a large and influential group of his contemporaries as the greatest French dramatist the last half of the nineteenth century had produced.
Berlioz, Millet, Verlaine, and Hégésippe Moreau ate of the Vache Enragée, more or less regularly, all their lives. So have many other artistic natures, not the least worthy and not the least celebrated.
Franz Servais, after having given fifteen years of labour, at untold sacrifice, to the creation and perfection of his opera, L’Apollonide, won the support of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar only to have his patron die just as the preparations for the production of the opera were complete and to die himself a few days after. In a letter to a friend, Servais has related how on one occasion, when everything looked dark, he missed an almost certain order from a musical publisher for want of presentable shoes: “I was unable to keep the appointment. At the last moment I perceived that my best shoes were all broken open. They gaped at the ends like carps’ noses. You can imagine the face of the good editor, his regret for having offered me a little money, and how he would have torn up the contract! I must wait for better luck.”
Franz Servais took himself too tragically in letting a good thing escape him simply because he had holes in his shoes. But Servais, though identified with Paris, was a Belgian, not a Frenchman, by birth, and was not a Montmartrois.
With a remunerative offer as an incentive, your typical Montmartrois would not have taken more than fifteen minutes to beg, borrow, or steal, hire or buy on the strength of the offer itself or of a supposititious heritage, the necessary shoes, and would have celebrated the happy outcome with his friends the very same night. Resourcefulness is a salient trait of the Bohemian wherever he may be found, and of none more than of the Bohemian of Montmartre. His contrivances for making the pot boil are legion.
In a tight place, he utilises the erudition, of which he is ordinarily more than half ashamed, in teaching foreigners French, working on cyclopedias or dictionaries, and giving lessons in the “three Rs,” for a few sous a day, to the children of his concièrge. He gives lessons just as readily in dancing, fencing, sparring, and savate.
If his talents are literary, he contributes to diet and fashion journals, writes advertisements or puffs for trade organs, sings songs of his own composition in the streets, or prints original poetry on slips and sells it in the cafés. He reads and writes letters at so much a piece for illiterate neighbours, supplies street singers (at a nominal price) with words for their songs, makes almost presentable (by editing) the productions of snobs, and constructs for feuilletonistes romances which said feuilletonistes sign. He writes indifferently theses for students, brochures for pamphleteers, placards and palaver for strolling showmen, prospectuses for charlatans, anniversary rhymes for husbands or wives, god-parents or god-children, toasts for empty-pated banqueters, and funeral speeches or elegies for unimaginative mourners. If his gift is musical, he plays in night orchestras. If his gift is artistic, he poses as a model for his companions of the chisel and brush who chance to be in funds, copies old masters at ten to fifteen francs a picture, designs posters and daubs scenery for the fêtes of the faubourgs, colours crude religious prints for the provincial market, paints workingmen’s children in their first communion regalia, and makes portraits for fond widows and widowers—between demise and burial—of their dear deceased. If his health is particularly robust, he figures the cured patient in quack doctors’ waiting-rooms.
He may, quite regardless of his bent, hawk toys in the street on fête days, play the races (under sealed orders) for a friend too busy to attend, fish tadpoles in the suburbs for the reptiles of menageries, help out a small shopkeeper with his book-keeping, back envelopes for a big bazaar, perform the duties of a valet under the euphuistic title of secretary, and advertise wares by demanding them insistently where they are not kept. He may even make himself a printer’s, house painter’s, mason’s, blacksmith’s, or carpenter’s assistant, a market porter, or a déménageur (mover). In all these contingencies, however, the immediate need having been satisfied, he takes up again his normal autonomous existence. He has not bound himself to lasting servitude. He has not sold his soul, and it is a rare thing that he is seriously demoralised by his half-humorous concessions. On the other hand, he has touched life at new points, deepened his sentiments, broadened his human sympathies, and lifted his horizon without lowering his ideal.