Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

Passing from the deceased sovereign to his family, we are led to an apparently remote subject – namely, Mr Stahr's visit to Alexander Dumas, who, as is well known, was a favourite and intimate of the dukes of Orleans and Montpensier. When reviewing, a few years ago, the Paris diary of a countryman of Mr Stahr's – a gentleman of similar politics and equal discretion – we noticed an offensive practice common amongst modern German writers, many of whom, on return from foreign travel, scruple not to commit to print the most confidential conversation and minute domestic details of persons who have hospitably welcomed them, and imprudently admitted them to intimacy. No consideration of propriety checks these impudent scribblers. Delicacy and reserve are things unknown to them. The persons concerning whom they flippantly babble may dwell within a day's railroad of them, and be sure to see their books – may be equally sure to feel vexed or disgusted by their unwarrantable revelations and offensive inferences; no matter, they speak of them as though Pekin were their domicile. As regards the radical professor from Oldenburg, we sincerely trust that he may fall in, at an early day, with the martial author of the Mousquetaires, and receive from him, as guerdon for his gossip, a delicately administered estocade. We never heard whether Janin chastised Mr Carl Gutzkow, either with pen or pistol, for his slipshod and indecent chatter concerning him and Madame Janin; but we remember somebody doing it for him in the Revue des Deux Mondes, where we suspect Mr Stahr has a fair chance of being in his turn gibbeted. Here is the German professor's account of Dumas's personal appearance and private residence. It is a curious bit of miniature-painting. "In person he is tall and powerful; his movements, once unquestionably very flexible, are now characterised by an easy negligence. His bright complexion and large prominent light-blue eyes contrast with the mouth and nose, which betray his African origin. Good-nature, and a combination of intellectuality with a keen relish of life, are the most prominent characteristics of his broad round face. His thick woolly hair, now all but grey, seems to have been formerly light-coloured. He sits in a very large room on the first floor of the last house in the Avenue Frochot. His apartment is reached through a dark corridor. On the side that looks out upon the very quiet street, is a glass gallery, which serves as a greenhouse. There was nothing remarkable in it. Mignonette and heliotropes were growing in the tubs in which a few large oleander bushes were planted. Of the magnificent tropical vegetation of which report has spoken, there was no sign. The room was decorated, and divided into two parts, with brown woollen hangings. In the largest division, into which visitors are conducted, and in front of the greenhouse windows, stands a vast writing-table. Ancient and modern arms deck the walls. But of Oriental luxury there was not the least appearance. And some other apartments through which he afterwards took me, to show me his winter reception-room, were by no means so luxuriously fitted up as has been reported in Germany."

"I found his bookseller with him. 'Look well at the man,' said Dumas, 'who pays to one author a hundred thousand francs a-year. Such men are not to be seen every day.' Notwithstanding this little bit of brag, I hear that his finances are in no very brilliant state, and that the failure of his Théatre Historique, especially, threatens him with heavy losses. In the course of conversation, he humourously complained of the total absence of repose in his laborious existence, of which we easy-going, comfortable, German authors could scarcely form an idea. So many newspapers, a theatre of his own, the contract-romances, and the stipulated dramas – truly, it amounts to a considerable total. On subsequent visits, I never found his room and antechamber free from a throng of visitors – booksellers, printers, managers, actors, secretaries, and others – all of whom he knew how to despatch with great rapidity, and without interrupting the thread of our conversation for more than a few moments at a time." Conversations with so lively and versatile a genius as M. Dumas, turned, as may be supposed, on a vast variety of subjects, but that of which Mr Stahr has given us most details related to the ex-royal family of France. "In a side-room he showed us some very pretty pen-and-ink drawings – hunting subjects, by the late Duke of Orleans. This gave him opportunity to speak of his high respect for the mental endowments of the prince, with whom it is well known that he was on a footing of intimacy. 'He had wit enough for ten,' said Dumas. 'When we were five or six hommes d'esprit de Paris together,' added he, with amusing naiveté, 'it was quite impossible to distinguish which was the prince and which the wit. The prince was the incarnation of French esprit, and of the Parisian-French esprit, which includes all possible qualities. Her inability to understand and appreciate this esprit Parisien was a drawback upon the domestic happiness of the Duchess of Orleans, notwithstanding her many excellent qualities. Her heavier German nature did not harmonise with her husband's light elastic disposition. It put her beside herself when he transgressed in the presence of a third person the rules prescribed by the etiquette of little German courts.' Dumas told some interesting examples of this – examples, however, not adapted for publication, as they related to the prince's private life. The Duke of Orleans foresaw a revolution, in a republican sense, as a consequence of his father's system. His testamentary arrangements with respect to the education of his son were all made in anticipation of such an event coming to pass. In any case, he wished his wife to have nothing to do with the government of the country. The passage of his will relating to this point is conceived quite in the spirit of the words with which Homer's Telemachus consigns his mother Penelope to the society of her women. 'If, unhappily, the king's authority could not watch over my son until his majority, Helen should prevent her name being pronounced for the regency. Leaving, as it is her duty and her interest, all the cares of government to virile hands, accustomed to handle the sword, Helen should devote herself entirely to the education of our children.' The Duke of Orleans' death was pregnant with fatal consequences for the dynasty, because he, the most highly gifted of all the old king's sons, was perhaps the only one who would have been capable of giving things a different turn in the event of a conflict like the February revolution. He knew his brothers too well not to be convinced that they were unequal to such an emergency. 'Nemours,' said he to one of his confidants, 'is the man of rule and etiquette: he keeps step well, and keeps himself behind me with scrupulous attention. He will never assume the initiative.' He held the Dukes of Nemours and Aumale to be brave soldiers. Of the Prince de Joinville he said: 'He has a passion for danger: he will commit a thousand acts of brilliant imprudence, and will receive a ball in his breast at the assault of a barricade,' – a fate which Joinville escaped in February probably only by his absence from Paris. 'Now that younger sons are no longer made abbés,' continued the Duke of Orleans, referring to little Montpensier, 'I am at a loss to imagine what is to be done with them.'

"Of none of his sons was the old king more jealous," says Mr Stahr, "than of the heir to the crown. Letters found in the Tuileries in February 1848 show that he kept him in the strictest dependence, and had spies observing him wherever he was. In the year 1839 the duke complained 'that he had less power than any private citizen who had a vote at elections; that he did nothing but the commissions of the ministers; that everything was in danger, nothing gave promise of durability, and that it was impossible to say what might happen from one day to the other.' The prince, expressed himself thus whilst upon a journey, in a confidential circle of officers of rank. Two days later his words, set down in writing, were in the hands of the king. The surprising irresolution and want of presence of mind displayed by the other princes in the hour of danger, can only be accounted for by the slavish dependence in which the old monarch had kept them."

Although easy and affable in his intercourse with his friends, a certain jealous vigilance with regard to the respect due to his rank formed a feature in the character of the Duke of Orleans. The anecdote told to Mr Stahr by Dumas, as an illustration of this trait, can hardly, however, be admitted to prove undue susceptibility, but rather the prince's consciousness that his house stood upon an unstable foundation. It was at a hunting-party at Fontainebleau. The chase was very unsuccessful. The Duke of Orleans turned to an Italian nobleman, to whose family Louis Philippe had obligations of ancient date, and who on that account was on a friendly footing at court. "Well! Monsieur de – ," said the duke, "how are we hunting to-day?" "Like pigs, Monseigneur, (comme les cochons,)" was the Italian's coarse reply. The duke, evidently annoyed, said to Dumas: "And you believe our monarchy possible, when a De … dares thus to answer the heir to the throne?" Mr Stahr was interested to find that Dumas, notwithstanding his monarchical friendships and associations, believed in the necessity and durability of the republic. "It seems," said the ingenious and versatile author of Monte Christo, "as if Providence had resolved to let us try all manner of monarchies, in order to convince us that not one of them is adapted to our character and condition." Then he gave his auditors a detailed sketch of all the French monarchies previous to the Revolution of 1789. "Since that Revolution," he went on, "we have had the monarchy of Genius: it lasted ten years. We have had the restoration of the monarchy of esprit and chivalrous gallantry: it lasted fifteen years; and was succeeded by the citizen-monarchy, which lasted eighteen. What would you have us try now? This republic is bad. But a child in swaddling-clothes matures into a man." Sensibly enough spoken for a romance-writer, indulgently remarks Mr Stahr, who is always glad to obtain a suffrage in favour of republican institutions. We attach the same degree of value to M. Dumas's political vaticinations as to his Frenchified rifaccimenti of Shakspeare's plays. Shakspeare in French, as Mr Ford remarks in his Spanish Handbook, "is like Niagara passed through a jelly-bag." A miracle of degradation which reminds us to turn to a scornful and indignant chapter suggested to Mr Stahr by a certain Monsieur Michel Carré's version of Goethe's Faust, performed at the Gymnase theatre. "Goethe is unknown in France," says the Countess d'Agoult, one of the few competent French appreciators of German literature, in her Esquisses Morales et Politiques. Nothing, according to Mr Stahr, could be better fitted to confirm and perpetuate French ignorance of the great German than such dramas as that which he painfully endured at the Gymnase. According to Madame d'Agoult, her countrymen will not take the trouble to study Goethe. To do so they must first learn a language. "Why did he not write in French? He has only what he deserves, after all. How is it possible to be a German? – (comment est on Allemand?)" "If this is not exactly out-spoken," says Madame d'Agoult, "it is at least privately thought in a country where the arrogance of ignorance attains proportions unknown to other nations." "La superbe de l'ignorance," "der Uebermuth der Unwissenheit!" cries Mr Stahr in an ecstasy: "I kiss the fair lady's hand who wrote the word, for, without it, I should never have hit upon the appropriate term for this newest French atrocity of M. Michel Carré, perpetrated upon the most profound work of German genius. I am not without experience of the theatrical sufferings of our day; but such torture as was yesterday inflicted, at the Gymnase theatre, upon every German fibre in our frames, I never before in my whole life witnessed or underwent. I was prepared for little that was good, and for much that was laughable; but my expectations and fears were surpassed to an extent it was impossible to anticipate. Marsyas flayed by Apollo is no very pleasing picture, but the Belvidere Apollo flayed by a Marsyas is a spectacle which it takes all the nerve of German critical observation to endure." Mr Stahr then proceeds to dissect the drama, act by act, and almost scene by scene, with considerable acuteness and humour. The specimens of fustian he gives, the execrable French taste he exposes, fully justify the intensity of his disgust. The Gymnase drama is evidently worse than a tame translation; it is an obscene parody of Goethe's great poem. It is a compound, as Mr Stahr expresses it, of "dirt and fire – that sort of fire, namely, which is lighted by the brandy-bottle." We believe it impossible that Faust should ever be done justice to in a French version. But if translators, owing to the want of power of the French language, and to the utter absence of affinity and sympathy between it and the German, must ever fall to a certain extent, they at least may avoid degrading and distorting the tone and sentiments of the original. This M. Carré, of whom we now hear for the first time, seems to have cultivated his taste and sought his inspirations in the worst school of modern French literature, and in the orgies of Parisian rakes. The inference is inevitable from the scenes and passages described and quoted by Mr Stahr. As to the verbal spirit and fidelity of the translation, the following may serve as a specimen. "In the church-going scene, the lines, so charming in the original: —

'Mein schónes Fräulein, darf ich wagen,Arm und Geleite anzutragen?'

are thus rendered in M. Carré's French: Oserai-je, Mademoiselle, vous offrir mon bras, pour vous conduire jusqu'à chez vous? For Gretchen's exquisitely graceful and saucy reply —

'Bin weder Fräulein, weder schön,Kann ungeleitet nach Hause gehn!'

which so completely captivates Goethe's Faust, this Frenchman has been able to discover no better equivalent than, 'Pardon, Monsieur, je puis fort bien rentrer seule à la maison' – an answer too flat and insipid even for a Paris Lorette of the present day." Mr Stahr was tolerably well pleased with the bearing of the audience who had come to partake of this pitiable French hash. They may have felt a natural curiosity to know something about the Faust and Margaret whose acquaintance they had made in the print-shop windows, but their sympathy with the piece went no farther. Even the Rose of the Gymnase, the Rose Chéri, so cherished by the Parisian public, failed to extract applause as M. Carré's Margaret. "It is very romantic," Mr Stahr heard some of his neighbours remark, "but it is a little too German; Monsieur Goethe's poetry does not suit the French taste." Poor public! Poor Goethe! introduced to each other under such dismal auspices. It must have been a relief to Mr Stahr to quit this miserable travesty, and turn to the native drama; although even by this, judging from a letter on theatrical subjects addressed to his friend Julius Mosen, he does not appear to have been much gratified. "I know not," he says, "whether my taste for theatres is gone by, or what is the reason, but as yet I have been scarcely half-a-dozen times to the play. Beginning with the Théatre Français, I might place as a motto at the beginning of this letter the words of Courier: 'The fact is that the Théatre Français, and all the old theatres of Paris, the Opera included, are excessively wearisome.' To be sure, Rachel is not here. She is gathering laurels in Germany; and when I complained confidentially to an acquaintance that the tragedy of the Théatre Français did not move me, he endeavoured to console me by telling me of Madlle. Rachel, and of her speedy return to Paris. She stands alone, incomparable, a phenomenon. But the phenomenon is absent; and the Paris stage is consequently darkened. It is always a bad sign for the condition of an art when it thus entirely depends upon one of its professors." Mr Stahr was better pleased with the lively performances at the four Vaudeville theatres, and gives an amusing analysis of La Fille bien gardée, the little one-act piece which, for many weeks of last year, nightly drew crowds to the Théatre Montansier. It belongs to a class of dramatic trifles in which French playwrights and actors are perfect and inimitable; trifles which only grow upon French soil, and will not bear transplanting.

After his savage attacks upon Louis Philippe and the French President, it would be quite out of character if Mr Stahr – who evidently bears monarchy a grudge, and will tolerate no government that can possibly be identified with the cause of order – had not a fling at Henri Cinq. Perhaps it is because he deems the Legitimist interest less formidable to his views than the Orleanist or Buonapartist, that he adopts a different mode of attack, and exchanges ferocity for raillery. The German tongue being but indifferently adapted to the lighter manner of warfare, he glides into French, in which language he writes nearly a whole chapter. Stepping one day into a hair-dresser's rooms, he was so fortunate as to come under the hands of the master of the establishment, an eager politician and a red-hot Legitimist, voluble and communicative as only a Frenchman and a barber can be. With the very first clip of the scissors an animated conversation began, which Mr Stahr has set down so far as his memory serves him, although he much doubts that his pen has conveyed all the minuter comical touches of the dialogue. This began with the usual exordium of Frenchmen of all classes since the revolution – "You, Monsieur," said the man of wigs, "are a foreigner, and consequently uninterested in our quarrels. Tell me what you think of our situation?"

"I think," replied I, "that the President will never willingly resign power."

"But, Monsieur, what is to be hoped for from such an imbécile?"

"I do not say he will succeed; I say he will make the attempt."

"And I say that he will fail. Henry the Fifth for me! à la bonne heure! There is a man for you."

"What do you know about him? You are very anxious, then, to make tonsures?"

"What do I know about him? But, Monsieur, I have seen him, I am acquainted with him, I have spoken to him, and I tell you he is a charming man!"

"Where did you see him?"

"Did I not go to see him at Wiesbaden! Sir, there were thirty-nine of us – workmen, we called ourselves, though we were all masters – who went of our own accord to pay our respects to Henry V. The thing was briskly done, I beg you to believe. I spoke to him as I speak to you, sir, at this moment. At first I was received by M. de la Ferronnaye, his aide-de-camp. 'Good morning, Monsieur R.,' said he, 'how do you do?' – 'Very well, sir, I thank you,' answered I; and far from making me wait whole hours at the door, like those republicans of the Veille, he made me sit down beside him on the sofa, as affable as could be."

Mr Stahr inquired of the worthy coiffeur what had been the motive of his journey to Wiesbaden, which he seemed to look upon as a sort of North Pole expedition, and of whose fatigues and privations he drew a vivid picture. He wished to judge for himself, he said; to see whether the rightful heir to the throne was as ill-favoured as his enemies represented him to be. He found him, on the contrary, full of amiable qualities. He was a little lame, but his smile was irresistible. Warming with his subject, the enthusiastic Henriquinquist asked his customer's permission to relate all the particulars of his reception at Wiesbaden. This was just what Mr Stahr wished, and he duly encouraged his interlocutor.

"On our arrival," continued the hairdresser, "we presented ourselves to the aide-de-camp, as I have had the honour of informing you. He took down our names, and gave us each a number of rotation, according to which we were arranged in the afternoon at the general audience. We were formed in three ranks. The prince was informed beforehand of the name and trade of each number, so that he was able to address a few well-chosen words to everybody. When we were all drawn up in order, he came in, placed himself in the midst of us, at a few paces distance, and addressed us. 'Good day to you, my friends,' he said: 'believe me when I say that I am most sensible of the mark of sympathy you have so spontaneously given me, by quitting your families and occupations, and undertaking a journey into a foreign country to see and console me in my exile. Be sure that I will never forget what you have done for me.' Then he said, 'Come nearer, my friends!' We advanced a step. 'Nearer yet, my friends. You come from too far not to come nearer! I hope to see you all at eight o'clock to-night!'"

The hairdresser acted this scene as he related it, addressing himself and Mr Stahr alternately as the prince, by whose mandate to draw a step nearer he was evidently vastly flattered. The professor, immensely amused by the performance, still fancied he saw that the main cause of the fascination which Henry V. had exercised upon his devoted adherent was still undivulged. The sequel showed that he was not mistaken.

"In the evening," continued the coiffeur, "we returned to the Prince's residence; there we partook of refreshments, and the Prince had an amiable word for each and all of us. He talked about the state of affairs in France, and wished to know all our opinions of it. The next day some of us were received in private audience. I was of the number. But as we were numerous, and the Prince was very busy, I could not have much conversation with him. However, he gave me a silver medal, and – 'Mr R.,' said he, 'have you a comfortable bed at your hotel?' 'Monseigneur,' I replied, 'since you deign to ask the question, I am accustomed to sleep between two sheets, and as I do not understand a word of German, I have been unable to make them understand this at my hotel. They put the sheet sometimes over and sometimes under the blanket, but never more than one.' Sir," continued the delighted barber, addressing himself to Mr Stahr, whilst his face beamed with triumph, "that night I had two sheets upon my bed. Could anything be more amiable? Ah, sir, I have seen them from very near, those republicans of the Mountain, those members of the Provisional Government! – what blockheads! what boors! They aspired to command, and in their whole lives scarcely one of them had had as much as a servant at his orders! Sir, it was pitiable to behold."

Mr Stahr observed to the loyal hair-curler that he had seen the persons in question only after they had attained power, and that there are few more amiable people in the world than a pretender, before he has gained his object. He thought it possible that, once at the Tuileries, Henry V. might show himself in a less agreeable light, and trouble himself less about his adherent's bedlinen. The barber's sensible reply did him honour. But barbers, from Don Quixote's day downwards, have been men of good counsel.

"Monsieur," said the coiffeur, "I am not a fool. Do you suppose I shall go and plague him, when he is king? He will have other matters to mind then. I have no pretensions to be made minister or prefect, when there are people who have studied those things all their lives. I am a hairdresser, and I shall remain one. But I want to dress a great deal of hair, and under the republic I dress none."

"But," remarked Mr Stahr, "you dress more under the President."

The barber, however, was no admirer of the President, whom he had also been to see, before his election, and upon the appearance of whose head he passed a most unfavourable opinion. He was sulky, he said, and not conversable. The affairs of France could never go on well under a man who knew not how to talk. Moreover, nothing could suit him but Henry V. He was neither Buonapartist nor Republican. But when things were at the worst, he said, his cry had always been "Vive la France!" "Stick to that!" said a customer who just then stepped in. "France has a tough existence, and will outlive your Henri Dieudonné and all his kin, and the President to boot. And now have the goodness to curl my hair."