"With your air of romantic melancholy, you could succeed with some women. For my part, I make my conquests with drums beating and matches lighted."—From Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles, by Randon, Paris.
During the twenty years of Louis Napoleon, political caricature being extinguished, France was inundated with diluted Gavarni. Any wretch who drew or wrote for the penny almanacs, sweltering in his Mansard on a franc a day, could produce a certain effect by representing the elegant life of his country, of which he knew nothing, to be corrupt and sensual. Pick up one of these precious works blindfold, open it at random, and you will be almost certain to light upon some penny-a-line calumny of French existence, with a suitable picture annexed. I have just done so. The "Almanach Comique" for 1869, its twenty-eighth year, lies open before me at the page devoted to the month of August. My eye falls upon a picture of a loosely dressed woman gazing fondly upon a large full purse suspended upon the end of a walking-stick, and underneath are the words, "Elle ne tarde pas à se réapprivoiser." She does not delay to retame herself, the verb being the one applied to wild beasts. There is even a subtle deviltry in the syllable ré, implying that she has rebelled against her destiny, but is easily enough brought to terms by a bribe. The reading matter for the month consists of the following brief essay, entitled "August—the Virgin:" "How to go for a month to the sea-shore during the worst of the dog-days. Hire a chalet at Cabourg for madame, and a cottage on the beach of Trouville for mademoiselle. The transit between those two places is accomplished per omnibus in an hour. That is very convenient. Breakfast with Mademoiselle; dine with Madame. This double existence is very expensive, but as it is the most common, we are compelled to examine it in order to establish a basis for the expenditures of the twelve months." Is it not obvious that this was "evolved?" Does it not smell of a garlicky Mansard? And have not all modern communities a common interest in discrediting anonymous calumny? It were as unjust, doubtless, to judge the frugal people of France by the comic annuals as the good-natured people of England by the Saturday Review.
The Den of Lions at the Opera. (From Les Différents Publics de Paris, by Gustave Doré.)
It is evident, too, that the French have a totally different conception from ourselves of what is fit and unfit to be uttered. They ridicule our squeamishness; we stand amazed at their indelicacy. Voltaire, who could read his "Pucelle" to the Queen of Prussia, her young daughter being also present and seen to be listening, was astounded in London at the monstrous indecency of "Othello;" and English people of the same generation were aghast at the license of the Parisian stage. M. Marcelin, a popular French caricaturist of to-day, dedicates an album containing thirty pictures of what he styles Un certain Monde to his mother! We must not judge the productions of such a people by standards drawn from other than "Latin" sources.
Among the comic artists who began their career in Louis Philippe's time, under the inspiration of Philipon and Daumier, was a son of the Comte de Noé, or, as we might express it, Count Noah, a peer of France when there were peers of France. Amédée de Noé, catching the spirit of caricature while he was still a boy (he was but thirteen when Le Charivavi was started), soon made his pseudonym, Cham, familiar to Paris. Cham being French for Shem, it was a happy way of designating a son of Count Noah. From that time to the present hour Cham has continued to amuse his countrymen, pouring forth torrents of sketches, which usually have the merit of being harmless, and are generally good enough to call up a smile upon a face not too stiffly wrinkled with the cares of life. He is almost as prolific of comic ideas as George Cruikshank, but his pictures are now too rudely executed to serve any but the most momentary purpose. When a comic album containing sixty-one pictures by Cham is sold in Paris for about twelve cents of our currency, the artist can not bestow much time or pains upon his work. The comic almanac quoted above, containing one hundred and eighty-three pages and seventy pictures, costs the retail purchaser ten cents.
Gustave Doré, now so renowned, came from Strasburg to Paris in 1845, a boy of thirteen, and made his first essays in art, three years after, as a caricaturist in the Journal pour Rire. But while he scratched trash for his dinner, he reserved his better hours for the serious pursuit of art, which, in just ten years, delivered him from a vocation in which he could never have taken pleasure. His great subsequent celebrity has caused the publication of several volumes of his comic work. It abounds in striking ideas, but the pictures were executed with headlong haste, to gratify a transient public feeling, and keep the artist's pot boiling. His series exhibiting the Different Publics of Paris is full of pregnant suggestions, and there are happy thoughts even in his "Histoire de la Sainte Russie," a series published during the Crimean war, though most of the work is crude and hasty beyond belief.
In looking over the volumes of recent French caricature, we discover that a considerable number of English words have become domesticated in France. France having given us the words of the theatre and the restaurant, has adopted in return several English words relating to out-of-door exercises: Turf, ring, steeple-chase, box (in a stable), jockey, jockey-club, betting, betting-book, handicap, race, racer, four-in-hand, mail-coach, sport, tilbury, dog-cart, tandem, pickpocket, and revolver. Rosbif, bifstek, and "choppe" have long been familiar. "Milord" is no longer exclusively used to designate a sumptuous Englishman, but is applied to any one who expends money ostentatiously. Gentleman, dandy, dandyism, flirt, flirtation, puff, cockney, and cocktail are words that would be recognized by most Parisians. A French writer quotes the phrase "hero of two hemispheres," applied to Lafayette, as a specimen of the "puff" superlative. "Othello" has become synonymous with "jealous man;" and the sentence, "That is the question," from "Hamlet," seems to have acquired currency in France. Cab, abbreviated a century ago from the French (cabriolet), has been brought back to Paris, like the head of a fugitive decapitated in exile.