If, then—to return to the train of thought with which I began—Bohemia turns out to be something definite, with a beginning, a development, and an end, some negative criteria, at all events, will be supplied by which to judge the applicability of the label "Bohemian" to any set of conditions existing to-day, and to decide whether the disappearance of certain special implications and unique circumstances does not drain the term of all definite meaning except as applied, in retrospect, to the very persons, manners, and ideas which it originally described. By analogy from that meaning, there is no harm in saying that there have always been, and always will be, Bohemian individuals with a Bohemian state of mind. Richard Steele was a Bohemian; Lamb, perhaps, was a little too staidly settled at the India House, but his friends, George Dyer, George Burnett and, above all, Coleridge, were certainly Bohemian individuals. They were of that ultra-Bohemian type which never grows out of its Bohemianism, men who remain permanently in what should only be a "stage" till they pass the age when, as Nestor Roqueplan said, the "bohémien" risks being confounded with the "filou." Such men as Coleridge and Dyer would be called eccentrics even in the true Bohemia; like poor Gérard de Nerval, they were not entirely sane, and the Bohemian type had essentially perfect sanity. It is for this very reason that la Bohème, at its proper time, could exist, and why before and after that time it did not exist. Sane young men, no matter what their fads, fancies, and enthusiasms may be, have no need and no possibility of making to-day that particular demonstration which resulted in Bohemia. The social forces drive them in other directions. It has long been admitted in France that Bohemia is dead, and that it has been or ever will be revived in England is a delusion resting upon the unintelligent use of a word. Even young Englishmen, as we now consider youth, are too old, far too old, to live the life of which they flatter themselves they are preserving the tradition. The boy who has submitted to discipline for over a dozen years, learned to honour his neighbour on the cricket and football field and to respect society as embodied in the unwritten laws of school life—what has he in common with the youth in France, a bachelor of letters at eighteen, bursting with his own individuality, passionate in pursuit of his own ideas, revelling in his new liberty, dreaming, as only a Frenchman can dream, of glory and love, who could attach no meaning to such a phrase as "playing the game," wayward, capricious, uproarious, and completely unbalanced? Yet it was such who made the traditions of la vie de Bohème. To those who are impelled to break away and lead joyous, untrammelled young lives of privation and artistic striving all sympathy is due, but by masquerading under a tattered banner they do not revive its glory nor increase their own. Paris once had room for Bohemia, but London never. Chelsea and Soho, Highgate and St. John's Wood are to-day no more Bohemian, in the true sense of the word, than Piccadilly or Grosvenor Square. In the lapse of years a few accidental attributes of the real Bohemia have come to be regarded as the essentials of the false. We are fond of labels and catchwords, lightly casting away their implications. So it has come to pass that Bohemia—that dirty, hungry, lazy, noisy vale of youthful laughter and tears, so enchanting in prospect or retrospect, so uncompromising in actuality, which many had to pass through and most would have avoided—is looked on as the pleasant home of more or less artistic natures, that men of stable occupations, regular means, and fastidious temperaments may choose for a dwelling-place, just as they may choose a garden city.
Well, let them masquerade, yet Bohemia is dead, and more honour may be done to its memory by recalling how it walked and lived than by casting lots for its old-fashioned garments. Its virtues and its faults were balanced as equally as its good and bad fortunes, but if it were to be revived, the resurrection should begin with that which was its chief glory, the intense artistic enthusiasm that was its charter. "Nous étions ivres du beau," wrote Théophile Gautier. London, indeed, would be the better for the infusion of a more Dionysiac spirit into her æsthetic appreciations and ideals. But that is not of the times. At the end of his charming book, "Les Enfants Perdus du Romantisme," M. Henri Lardanchet quotes a speech made by the president of some university society to the effect that the youth of to-day, preoccupied with extremely definite problems, has no longer the poetic enthusiasm of the past generation, whereon he is moved to exclaim:
"Ah! ne vous glorifiez pas de l'avoir chassé, cet enthousiasme! Il était à la fois la rose et la chanson au bord de vos vingt ans désolés; il était l'opulence orgueilleuse de votre âge, il était votre grâce, votre génie, votre fierté, ô jeunesse!—toute votre jeunesse...."
Let us take this for the epitaph of La Bohème.
II
A FRINGE OF HISTORY: THE REVOLUTION OF 1830
IN the first chapter of Murger's "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème," Marcel, the painter, requires his concierge, in return for a tip of five francs, to tell him every morning the day of the week, the date, the quarter of the moon, the state of the weather, and the form of government under which they are living. A hasty generalization from this episode might conclude that the more noteworthy vicissitudes of society, which we call history, were of singularly small importance to those concerned with Bohemia. The main current of events, it would seem, rolled on, leaving the stagnant backwater undisturbed, where, in the easy garment of "art for art's sake," a few geniuses and many dilettanti lolled the day through in unpatriotic apathy. Such a conclusion from Murger's picture of Bohemia is, in fact, inevitable, but it is a wrong one, and the fault lies only with Murger. The French people, at any rate the Parisians, are extremely susceptible to the impressions of passing events, political, artistic, or social. They are more excitable, as we say, than ourselves. We only become agitated in response to orders from Fleet Street, whereas they are apt to ferment spontaneously, their natural liveliness of mind acting as the yeast. It is this quality of interest in passing events, fostered by their fondness for discussion, which renders their criticism so trenchant and their partisanship so ardent. So that we can scarcely believe Bohemia, eclectic as it was, to have been unmoved or, at least, uninfluenced by the objects of contemporary comment or debate. For this reason our picture would be seen in a false light without some reference to history. Moreover, I have been rash enough to impose upon myself the limitation of dates, which are dangerous things in themselves, always requiring justification. I put the classic period of la vie de Bohème between 1830 and 1848, the exact period of Louis Philippe's reign. At first sight the reign of this bourgeois prince would seem to have little enough connexion with the florescence and decadence of the very antitype of bourgeoisie, but this is only a further reason for not neglecting history. The Revolution of 1830 was of the highest importance for France: it was the inevitable explosion of dissatisfaction, both political and artistic, with the powers that ruled. What I wish to make clear is that, whereas before this date Bohemia, if it existed, was but an unconsidered fringe on the ancient student life of the Quartier Latin, after 1830 it not only received a population but became a force. For a few years it was an integral part of the larger Paris, a considerable element in public opinion and, to some extent, in social life, a factor that could not be ignored. Disturbance, however, yielded to peace, and the interests of the public shifted. The living spirit of Bohemia gradually hardened into a dead tradition. By 1848 independence and individual liberty, the watchwords of Bohemia, were replaced in the mind of citizens by thoughts of social reform which culminated in the Republic of 1848. Art, for the time, fell from her place of glory, and Bohemia relapsed for ever into obscurity.
The battle of Waterloo seemed to have undone all the good of the Revolution of 1789. The Bourbons came back to power, with Louis XVIII, a lazy man, on the throne, and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, leading a band of ultra-Royalists behind him. The ultra-Royalists, exasperated by the "hundred days," were breathing fire and slaughter, full of zeal to destroy the liberty and philosophy of the Revolution and to replace it with absolutism and priest-rule. Against them was arrayed the party of "Independents" with Béranger, their poet, and between the two were the "doctrinaires" or moderate Royalists. The "Ultras," whose violence began by damaging their own cause, were put into power by the assassination of the Duc de Berry in 1820, and Villèle was their minister. The succession of Charles X only strengthened the forces of reaction, till in 1828 Villèle was defeated and gave place to a Liberal, Martignac. But Martignac's party were not strong enough to support him long, and in 1829 he was succeeded by Polignac and a Royalist ministry. The Liberals now prepared for stubborn resistance. Societies were formed, with branches throughout the provinces, which were joined by all shades of Liberal opinion, and their hero was Lafayette. The blindness of Charles X precipitated events. Exasperated by the adverse result of the elections of 1830, he suspended the constitution by his famous ordinances on July 26. Paris rose at once, and four days later all was over. Louis of Orleans was in Paris by the 30th, and took the oath as King in August. This is only a bald statement of facts, but they are facts that can be seen by the eye of imagination. By 1830 Paris was a boiling cauldron of passionate enthusiasm. Revolution was aflame once more. Barricades—the mere word is a trumpet-call to Frenchmen—had been erected once more in the streets, and once more blood had flowed in their defence. Paris for years had smouldered with indignation, and now her young men glowed with triumph. The people should come to its own again, and they should be its champions. The eyes of France were on them, and they knew that their comrades in the provinces, intoxicated by the songs of Béranger, enraged by the petty vexations of Royalist officials, were envying them their opportunity and eagerly looking for any chance that would bring them to the city that so nobly stood for liberty.
The Revolution of 1830 was not only political, it was also artistic, and the artistic results were really the more permanent. This artistic revolution is generally known as the Romantic movement, about which so much has been written that I need not refer to it at length. Just as the Liberal spirit smouldered for many years against the Royalist oppression, so the Romantic spirit smouldered against the restraints of the dead classic tradition of the eighteenth century. The process of combustion, beginning as it did with Rousseau, was a slow one, and, as it has been said, Romanticism only potentially existed, as a movement, before 1820. In that year Victor Hugo founded his journal, the Conservateur Littéraire, gathering round him a brilliant company of writers. For ten years the movement grew in intensity, fostered by the institution of cénacles and the only too successful proselytism of Victor Hugo, who disdained no recruit whom he could by flattery enlist. It is not too much to say that the youth of all France was fired by the revolt against classicism in poetry and drama. Every schoolboy wrote verses and every ardent soul longed to enter the very arena in Paris, where the perruques of the Institute were so signally defied. Paris became doubly desirable as the field on which political and artistic liberty were being won. The triumph came in 1830 with the performance of "Hernani." That victory of the Romantic army is now a commonplace, but in 1830 it was magnificently new, and it was, moreover, the public manifestation of la Bohème. The effect of this double excitement was overwhelming. It literally tore the more intelligent among the young men of France from the roots of all their attachments and interests. To establish liberty, to revolutionize literature, these were their dreams, in comparison with which all ordinary professional prospects seemed dreary and unworthy. So the year 1830 saw Paris harbouring in her garrets a host of enthusiasts, most of them very young, burning with ideals and flushed with apparently glorious victories. They felt themselves incorporated in one great brotherhood of defiance to established authority, so that those who mocked their poverty and lawlessness in the name "Bohemian" were unconsciously justified, for a corporate name is the sign of a corporate existence. La Bohème in 1830 was not a haphazard collection of dilettanti and artistic eccentrics; it was a fellowship inspired by similar enthusiasms and bound together by the struggle against similar misfortunes.
Misfortunes, indeed, were not slow to come. Society is wonderfully quick to repair the breaches in its walls made by gallant assaulters, and the heroes who have been foremost in the attack find that their bravely made passage has closed behind them, and that they are left to be broken and starved into submission. So it was after 1830. Louis Philippe was at heart a Royalist who had little understanding of the Revolution. His great achievement was to keep on his throne for eighteen years by encouraging the moneyed middle class, thus laying the foundation of French industrial prosperity. Enrichissez-vous was the order of the day, an order ironically unsuitable to the reformers of Bohemia. Those among them whose ideals were political rather than literary became uncompromising Republicans, formed secret societies, carried on a violent Press campaign of articles and caricatures against Louis Philippe and his ministers, and plotted further armed risings in Paris, the most serious of which was the ill-fated insurrection of the Cloître Saint-Merri in 1832. They were to find that they had presumed too far upon their strength. In spite of the Legitimist risings in La Vendée, labour troubles at Lyons, and disaffection in Paris, Louis Philippe's government was powerful enough to meet all emergencies. Press laws were made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. Above all, the bourgeoisie held firm. They were tasting prosperity and power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and repression. Their bright dreams faded away into grey reality; they found themselves suspects and outcasts, with the problem of subsistence, instead of being miraculously solved, only rendered more acute. They had no outlet for their energies, and those whom neither the barricades nor the cholera of 1832 carried off saw the fellowship of assault followed by the isolation of retreat. They drifted away in little bands to join the societies of social reformers like Saint Simon, Fourier, or Père Enfantin. Consumption, starvation, and suicide were the ends of many of them, and their traces gradually faded from Bohemia, which became identified purely with the lives of its literary and artistic inhabitants.
The poets and artists of Bohemia survived longer, not only as individuals, but as a united brotherhood, mainly because artistic rebellion cannot be put down, as it does not manifest itself, by force, and also because the campaign in which "Hernani" was the central engagement really culminated in a lasting victory. For some years after 1830 there was plenty for the young band to do in reducing block-houses and chasing the persistent critics of the old school, who conducted a most robust guerilla warfare. Yet hardship and misfortune dogged their footsteps also. The Romantic victory of 1830 was won by an army; its spoils were shared by the few leaders—Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, de Vigny—who, as M. Henri Lardanchet has rather unkindly said,[1] "without a word of farewell or a motion of gratitude abandoned their army to famine." To tell the truth, many of the devoted enthusiasts were young men of mediocre talents at a day when the standard was very high. Verses were a drug in the market, and he was a lucky man who could earn a few francs by filling a column or two in a little fashion paper boasting a few hundred subscribers. Journalism was not yet a commercially flourishing business, expenses were high, subscribers few, and Press laws menacing. The starveling poets and dramatists of Bohemia fell upon lean years, in which the weaker and more utterly destitute were destroyed by their privations, like Elisa Mercœur and Hégésippe Moreau. Nevertheless, the Romantics were not crushed out of existence. The stout hearts of those who held out still beat to a common measure, and maintained artistic fellowship in an ideal as an essential element of la vie de Bohème.