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The Paris Sketch Book

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These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are
ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people. But
the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of
resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our
readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or
humble, with any family, however poor, may bear witness how
profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English quarter, or
of his little room au sixième in the Pays Latin, has been decorated
with prints of all kinds. In the first, probably, with bad
engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the
artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay
caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are
dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of
the three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous
hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the
admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp. We have named here, we believe,
the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as
doubtless there are many--of our readers who have looked over
Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-
shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the
exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the Burlington
Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all these
artists are in their genre. We get in these engravings the loisirs
of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity,
as with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good
designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of
Beauty; and if we might raise a humble supplication to the artists
in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise,
Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should,
after the example of their French brethren and of the English
landscape painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of
their own sketches, and never more draw a single "Forsaken One,"
"Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty of any publisher or
for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness
whatever.

Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll
through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day; not to look so
much at the pictures as at the lookers-on? Thousands of the poorer
classes are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling
grisettes, smart dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed
wondering faces, marching together in little companies of six or
seven, and stopping every now and then at Napoleon or Leonidas as
they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the pictures of David or
Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the
connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same be said
of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and
amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room
or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be
built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday
paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so
well has it succeeded in materializing and binding down to the
earth the imagination of men, for which God has made another world
(which certain statesmen take but too little into account)--that
fair and beautiful world of heart, in which there CAN be nothing
selfish or sordid, of which Dulness has forgotten the existence,
and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut out from sight--


"On a banni les démons et les fées,
Le raisonner tristement s'accrédite:
On court, helas! après la vérité:
Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son mérite!"


We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as
Voltaire does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate
on the beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-
engines, and the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain
or bread, and the loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have
wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among us. We boast of our science,
and vaunt our superior morality. Does the latter exist? In spite
of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it--in
spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and all the
legislative enactments--if any person will take upon himself the
painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap
periodical prints which form the people's library of amusement, and
contain what may be presumed to be their standard in matters of
imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is that we
bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy who are so
eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance
of the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized
upon that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui
ordered by Act of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday
paper. It might be read in a club-room, where the poor could not
see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and
another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither
my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in
private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty
flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune to the publisher,
and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do
without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his
chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not for any time
be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it descended
to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread all
the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal
and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they
WILL imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than
my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the
prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a
ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is
infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind
as would have put Abbé Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry
shame. Talk of English morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the
worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely equalled the
wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours.

The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that
we would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this
immorality exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not
been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid
cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the
refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when
their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the
tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse
and vicious likewise, in an increased proportion.

Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath
Bills, politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place
in a few pages which purport only to give an account of some French
drawings: all we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are
made because they are liked and appreciated; with us they are not
made, because they are not liked and appreciated: and the more is
the pity. Nothing merely intellectual will be popular among us: we
do not love beauty for beauty's sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's
sake, as the French: for abstract art we have no appreciation. We
admire H. B.'s caricatures, because they are the caricatures of
well-known political characters, not because they are witty; and
Boz, because he writes us good palpable stories (if we may use such
a word to a story); and Madame Vestris, because she has the most
beautifully shaped legs;--the ART of the designer, the writer, the
actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very minor consideration;
each might have ten times the wit, and would be quite unsuccessful
without their substantial points of popularity.

In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art
is a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how
much superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much
better is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality
is there between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and
poor in our own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction,
and political freedom! There is, amongst the humblest, a gayety,
cheerfulness, politeness, and sobriety, to which, in England, no
class can show a parallel: and these, be it remembered, are not
only qualities for holidays, but for working-days too, and add to
the enjoyment of human life as much as good clothes, good beef, or
good wages. If, to our freedom, we could but add a little of their
happiness!--it is one, after all, of the cheapest commodities in
the world, and in the power of every man (with means of gaining
decent bread) who has the will or the skill to use it.

We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of
art in France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one
branch of art in that country--lithographic designs, and those
chiefly of a humorous character. A history of French caricature
was published in Paris, two or three years back, illustrated by
numerous copies of designs, from the time of Henry III. to our own
day. We can only speak of this work from memory, having been
unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy; but our
impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as unfavorable
as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the wit, or
poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under the
Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping
the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and
vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which
the pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection
now at the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples.
Swollen, distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the
politics of those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and
something of grandeur, that will exist in spite of taste, and is
born of energetic will. A man, disposed to write comparisons of
characters, might, for instance, find some striking analogies
between mountebank Murat, with his irresistible bravery and
horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Dugueselin and Ducrow,
and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful painter and genius, whose
idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been gained from the
bloody melodramas on the Boulevard. Both, however, were great in
their way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of
false belief and hero-worship.

As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the
rightful princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf,
her attendant, were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled
the land. The Princess Press was so closely watched and guarded
(with some little show, nevertheless, of respect for her rank),
that she dared not utter a word of her own thoughts; and, for poor
Caricature, he was gagged, and put out of the way altogether:
imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was in his phial.

How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well
known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of
Napoleon: with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed
even than before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they
pressed, that, as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan,
back of a sudden the bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who
were endeavoring to work them. The Revolution came, and up sprung
Caricature in France; all sorts of fierce epigrams were discharged
at the flying monarch, and speedily were prepared, too, for the new
one.

About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be
correct) a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was
his profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M.
Philipon designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of
an eminent publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering
about them a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up
journals of their own:--La Caricature, first published once a week;
and the Charivari afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also
appears daily.

At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly
political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between
the State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galérie Véro-Dodat.
Half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis
Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and
supporters of the monarchy, on the other; it was something like
Thersites girding at Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the
clypei septemplicis with the poisonous shafts of his scorn. Our
French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must be
confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy,
which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster
writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth fury in
return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell,
it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience,
and served almost to annihilate the adversary.

To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf,
the King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so
mercilessly ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure
drawn with such odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful
attitudes, circumstances, and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and
often so appropriate, that the King was obliged to descend into the
lists and battle his ridiculous enemy in form. Prosecutions,
seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal officials, were first
brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his little dauntless
troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out of his ranks;
and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their weapons
upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
fight no more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued
avocats du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of
a fine by some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if
his epigrams were more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was
beaten a dozen times before a jury, he had eighty or ninety
victories to show in the same field of battle, and every victory
and every defeat brought him new sympathy. Every one who was at
Paris a few years since must recollect the famous "poire" which was
chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous
a resemblance to Louis Philippe. The poire became an object of
prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a jury to answer for
the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's person, by
giving such a ludicrous version of his face. Philipon, for
defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a poire, a real large
Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower
near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves.
"There was no treason in THAT," he said to the jury; "could any one
object to such a harmless botanical representation?" Then he drew
a second pear, exactly like the former, except that one or two
lines were scrawled in the midst of it, which bore somehow a
ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose, and mouth of a celebrated
personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact portrait of Louis
Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl were
there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice. "Can I help it,
gentlemen of the jury, then," said he, "if his Majesty's face is
like a pear? Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it
not, like a pear?" Such eloquence could not fail of its effect;
the artist was acquitted, and La poire is immortal.

At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press,
which, from August, 1830, was to be "désormais une vérité," was
calmly strangled by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his
supposed championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had
been stout Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the
Chamber, which, such is the blessed constitution of French
elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in any way the
Government wishes. With a wondrous union, and happy forgetfulness
of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the
restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor
dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political satires
appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more
poires ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political
occupation is gone.

But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists,
being no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the
King and the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the
pencil in the ridicules and rascalities of common life. We have
said that public decency is greater amongst the French than amongst
us, which, to some of our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we
shall not attempt to argue that, in private roguery, our neighbors
are not our equals. The procès of Gisquet, which has appeared
lately in the papers, shows how deep the demoralization must be,
and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that
is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and
admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the
nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling
with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of
unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious police
restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the
integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may
find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has
been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present
time. The Government swindles the public, and the small traders
swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the
superior powers. Hence the art of roguery, under such high
patronage, maintains in France a noble front of impudence, and a
fine audacious openness, which it does not wear in our country.

Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists
have amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the
GREATNESS (using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave
to it) so far exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does,
all in turn, that it has come to be considered the type of roguery
in general; and now, just as all the political squibs were made to
come of old from the lips of Pasquin, all the reflections on the
prevailing cant, knavery, quackery, humbug, are put into the mouth
of Monsieur Robert Macaire.

A play was written, some twenty years since, called the "Auberge
des Adrets," in which the characters of two robbers escaped from
the galleys were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above
mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice,
butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger. It is needless to
describe the play--a witless performance enough, of which the joke
was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all
sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge
in--contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically
unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was most picturesquely
sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and forgotten, when a
very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon himself the
performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked, spoke,
and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town rung
with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted
to copy his singular figure and costume. M. Robert Macaire appears
in a most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and
patches, a pair of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way,
enormous whiskers and ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill,
as dirty and ragged as stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a
hat very gayly cocked over one eye, and a patch to take away
somewhat from the brightness of the other--these are the principal
pièces of his costume--a snuff-box like a creaking warming-pan, a
handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and a switch of about
the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments of this
exquisite personage. He is a compound of Fielding's "Blueskin" and
Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." He has the dirt and dandyism of the one,
with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle,
but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder
without scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the
scale between them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and
accompanies his actions with such philosophical remarks as may be
expected from a person of his talents, his energies, his amiable
life and character.

Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes
vicarious atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which
pantaloon performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the
fatal influence of clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that
gentleman, but he has not his genius and courage. So, in
pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been remarked by the reader,)
clown always leaps first, pantaloon following after, more clumsily
and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend and guide.
Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means of ill-
luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the
stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and
thus exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to
go through the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished
than the other. Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his
friend, and, in the event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the
lurch. There is, in the two characters, some grotesque good for
the spectator--a kind of "Beggars' Opera" moral.

Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket,
have appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the
Parisians; and with these two types of clever and stupid knavery,
M. Philipon and his companion Daumier have created a world of
pleasant satire upon all the prevailing abuses of the day.

Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to
depict was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered
coat appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old
Poire--in a country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps;
fit to govern, as he is deeper than all the rogues in his
dominions. Bertrand was opposite to him, and having listened with
delight and reverence to some tale of knavery truly royal, was
exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of the most intense
admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!"--the word blague is
untranslatable--it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other;
and only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an
epigram so wonderfully just, a little word so curiously
comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it
was received. It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty.
Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms
could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create
the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and Ovid fell a
prey.

Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack
personages so illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth
no more epigrams were launched against politics; but the
caricaturists were compelled to confine their satire to subjects
and characters that had nothing to do with the State. The Duke of
Orleans was no longer to figure in lithography as the fantastic
Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes (in chalk) to shelter
under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose: Marshal Loban's
squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy figure and round
spectacled face were no more to appear in print.* Robert Macaire
was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his remarks were a
great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of the great
men who congregated in those places.

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