“My friend, my friend,” cried Madame Ragon, “monsieur l’abbé is fainting!”
And the old woman seized a phial of salts, in order to bring the old priest to himself.
“Without doubt he gave me,” said he, “the handkerchief with which the King wiped his brow when he went to his martyrdom.... Poor man! ... That steel knife had a heart, when all France had none!”
The perfumers thought that the unhappy priest was delirious.
LUDOVIC HALÉVY, PARISIAN
That there is a real distinction between a short-story in French and a French short-story, Ludovic Halévy’s fictional work illustrates perfectly, for in theme, tone, and treatment it is French. More specifically still, it is Parisian. As Professor Brander Matthews observes in his discerning introduction to Parisian Points of View, a collection of our author’s stories, “Cardinal Newman once said that while Livy and Tacitus and Terence and Seneca wrote Latin, Cicero wrote Roman; so while M. Zola on the one side, and M. Georges Ohnet on the other, may write French, M. Halévy writes Parisian.” His was indeed the Parisian point of view, his the sympathetic understanding of the pursuits, the temperament, the ideals, of the dwellers in the Capital of Europe.
One service above others Halévy rendered to his Paris: while so many writers have given an unfortunate though piquant character to the French short-story by depicting chiefly the roué and the woman of easy manners, the vulgar money-king and the broken-down noble, the complacent pander and the sordid tradesman of Paris, this writer mostly chose to depict other types. He knew the gay city as few other writers of his day knew it, yet nearly all of his little fictions may be read aloud in a mixed company. The explanation of this wholesome spirit is simple—unlike the others, Halévy had not come up from the provinces with eyes ready to pop out at the city sights. From boyhood he knew all sides of Parisian life, and saw things in correct perspective, so he did not interpret light-heartedness to be lightness, nor gayety to be abandon. All sorts and conditions of men move in his stories, but the vicious, the sensual, the mean, are no more prominent in the Paris he paints than they are in the real Paris—and that means that they exist in much the same numerical proportion as in any other metropolis.
Halévy’s life does not lend itself to anecdote, for it lacked stirring events, yet his every large step marked a specific advance in his work.
On the first day of January, 1834, he was born in Paris, of Hebrew parents. His father, Léon Halévy, had attained to some distinction as a poet, and his uncle, Fromental Halévy, was not only director of singing at the Opera, but a celebrated composer as well. Upon completing his formal education at the lycée Louis-le-Grand, the youth entered the civil service in the Ministry of State, in six years rose to be chef de bureau at the Colonial Office, and finally became editor of the publications of the Legislative Corps. In these public offices he gained that inside view of official life which is apparent in his works.
Very early Halévy began to know the theatre, for through his uncle’s influence he was as a youngster of fourteen on the free-list of the principal theatres of Paris. Scarcely was he a man before he began the writing of numberless books for operas, burlesques, and dramas, the materials for which he had been gathering while meeting theatrical people of all grades. By and by some of these were published, some were acted, and at length he enjoyed a vogue. In collaboration with Henri Meilhac he wrote a number of opera books, notably La Belle Hélène, Blue-Beard, The Grand-Duchess of Gerolstein, The Brigands (all with music by Offenbach), Carmen (founded on Mérimée’s story), with music by Bizet, and The Little Duke, with music by Lecocq. These bright operettas and operas are typical of that mocking and practical spirit of the Second Empire which laughed away the old ideals with a zest worthy of a nobler occupation. His heavier play, Frou-Frou, though well known about a generation ago, is not so meritorious as his dramatic skits and sketches.