Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846

The author of this pamphlet is himself a novelist, and allowance must be made for his jealousy of a successful rival. But there are grounds for his attack. M. Dumas is known to work hard: literary labour has become a habit and necessity of his life; but he is not the man to chain himself to the oar and renounce all the pleasures of society and of Paris, even to swell his annual budget to the enormous sum which it is reported, and which he has indeed acknowledged it, to reach. We have seen works published under his name, whose perusal convinced us that he had had little or nothing to do with their composition or execution. The internal evidence of others was equally conclusive in fixing their bona fide authorship upon their reputed author. Au reste, Dumas troubles himself very little about his assailants, but pursues the even tenor of his way, careless of calumniators. The most important point for him is, that his pen, or at least his name, should preserve its popularity; and this it certainly does, notwithstanding that his enemies have more than once raised a cry that "le Dumas baisse sur la place." On the contrary, the article, whether genuine or counterfeit, was never more in demand, both with publishers and consumers. In Paris, as Mr Gutzkow says, every thing is a speciality; it requires half a dozen different shops to sell the merchandise that in England would be united in one. One establishment deals in lucifer-matches and nothing else; chips and brimstone form its whole stock in trade: it is the spécialité des allumettes chimiques. Yonder we find a spacious magasin appropriated to glove-clasps; here is another where clysopompes are the sole commodity. We were aware of this peculiarity of French shopkeeping, but were certainly not prepared to behold, as we did on our last visit to Paris, a shop opened upon the Place de la Bourse, exclusively for the sale of Monsieur Dumas's productions. This, we apprehend, is the ne plus ultra of literary fertility and popularity. "Le Dumas" has become a commercial spécialité. The bookseller who wishes to have upon his shelves all the productions of the author of the Corricolo, must no longer think of appropriating any part of his space to the writings of others; or if he persists in doing so, he had better take three or four shops, knock down the partitions, and establish a magasin monstre, like those of which ambitious linendrapers have of late years set the fashion in the Chaussée d'Antin and Rue Montmartre. Curiosity prompted us to enter the Dumas shop and procure a list of its contents. The number of volumes would have stocked a circulating library. We were gratified to find – for we have always taken a strong interest in Alexander Dumas, some of whose bettermost books we have honoured with a notice in Maga – that several of his works were out of print. On the other hand, five or six new romances, from two to four volumes each, were, we were informed by the obliging Dumas-merchant, on the eve of appearing. It was a small instalment of the illustrious author's annual contribution to the fund of French belles lettres.

In the Galerie des Contemporains Illustres, by M. de Lomenie, we find the following remarks concerning M. Dumas: —

"He has written masses of romances, feuilletons by the hundred. In the year 1840 alone, he published twenty-two volumes. He has even written with one hand the history that he turned over with the other, and heaven knows what an historian M. Dumas is! He has published Impressions de Voyages, containing every thing, drama, elegy, eclogue, idyl, politics, gastronomy, statistics, geography, history, wit – every thing excepting truth. Never did writer more intrepidly hoax his readers, never were readers more indulgent to an author's gasconades. Nevertheless, M. Dumas has abused to such an extent the credulity of the public, that the latter begin to be upon their guard against the discoveries of the traveller."

The public, we apprehend, take M. Dumas's narratives of travels at their just value, find them entertaining, but rely very slightly on their authenticity. It has been pretty confidently affirmed and generally believed, that many of his excursions were performed by the fireside; that rambles in distant lands are accomplished by M. Dumas with his feet on his chenets in the Chaussée d'Antin, or in his country retirement at St Germains. Nor does he, when taxed with being a stay-at-home traveller, repel the charge with much violence of indignation. At the recent trial at Rouen of a sprig of French journalism, a certain Monsieur de Beauvallon, (truly the noble particle was worthily bestowed,) the accused was stated to be extraordinarily skilful with the pistol; and in support of the assertion, a passage was quoted from a book written by himself, in which he stated, that in order to intimidate a bandit, he had knocked a small bird off a tree with a single ball. The prisoner declared that this wonderful shot was to be placed to the credit of his invention, and not to his marksmanship. "I introduced the circumstance," said he, "in hopes of amusing the reader, and not because it really happened. M. Dumas, who has also written his travelling impressions, knows that such license is sometimes taken." Whereupon Alexander, who was present in court, did most heartily and admissively laugh.

Apropos of that trial – and although it leads us away from Mr Gutzkow, who makes but a brief reference to the orgies, revived from the days of the Regency, which the evidence given upon it disclosed – M. Dumas certainly burst upon us on that occasion in an entirely new character. We had already inferred from some of his books, from the knowing gusto with which he describes a duel, and from his intimacy with Grisier, the Parisian Angelo, to whom he often alludes, that he was cunning of fence and perilous with the pistol. But we were not aware that he was looked up to as a duelling dictionary, or prepared to find him treated by a whole court of justice – judge, counsellors, jury, and the rest – as an oracle in all that pertains to custom of cartel. We had reason to be ashamed of our ignorance; of having remained till the spring of the year 1846 unacquainted with the fact that in France proficiency with the pen and skill with the sword march pari passu. Upon this principle, and as one of the greatest of penmen, M. Dumas is also the prime authority amongst duellists. With our Gallic neighbours, it appears, a man must not dream of writing himself down literary, unless he can fight as well as scribble. To us peaceable votaries of letters, whose pistol practice would scarcely enable us to hit a haystack across a poultry-yard, and whose entire knowledge of swordsmanship is derived from witnessing an occasional set-to at the minors between one sailor and five villains, (sailor invariably victorious,) there was something quite startling in the new lights that dawned upon us as to the state of hot water and pugnacity in which our brethren beyond the Channel habitually live. When Hannibal Caracci was challenged by a brother of the brush, whose works he had criticised, he replied that he fought only with his pencil. The answer was a sensible one; and we should have thought authors' squabbles might best be settled with the goosequill. Such, it would seem, from recent revelations, is not the opinion on the other side of Dover Straits; in France, the aspirant to literary fame divides his time between the study and the shooting gallery, the folio and the foil. There, duels are plenty as blackberries; and the editor of a daily paper wings his friend in the morning, and writes a premier Paris in the afternoon, with equal satisfaction and placidity. Not one of the men of letters who gave their evidence upon the notable trial now referred to, but had had his two, three, or half-dozen duels, or, at any rate, had fait ses preuves, as the slang phrase goes, in one poor little encounter. All had their cases of Devismes' pistols ready for an emergency; all were skilled in the rapier, and talked in Bobadil vein of the "affairs" they had had and witnessed. And greatest amongst them all, most versed in the customs of combat, stood M. Dumas, quoting the code, (in France there is a published code of duelling,) laying down the law, figuring as an umpire, fixing points of honour and of the duello, as, at a tourney of old, a veteran knight.

Mr Gutzkow is not far wrong in qualifying the champagne orgies of the Parisian actresses and newspaper scribes, as a resuscitation of the mœurs de Régence. It appears that these gentlemen journalists live in a state of polished immorality and easy profligacy, not unworthy the days of Philip of Orleans, whom M. Dumas, be it said en passant, has represented in one of his books as the most amiable, excellent, and kind-hearted of men, instead of as the base, cold-blooded, and reckless debauchee which he notoriously was. In France, to a greater extent than in England, the success of an actress or dancer depends upon the manner in which the press notices her performances. Theatrical criticisms are a more important feature in French than in English newspapers, are more carefully done, and better paid.

"As an artist," said Mademoiselle Lola Montes, the Spanish bailerina, who formerly attracted crowds to the Porte St Martin theatre – less, however, by the grace of her dancing, than by the brevity of her attire – "I sought the society of journalists."

Miss Lola is not the only lady of her cloth making her chief society of the men on whose suffrage her reputation, as an actress, depends. In Paris, people are apt to pin their faith on their newspaper, and, finding that the plan saves a deal of thought, trouble, and investigation, they see with the eyes and hear with the ears of the editor, go to the theatres which he tells them are amusing, and read the books that he puffs. Actresses, especially second-rate ones, thus find themselves in the dependence of a few coteries of journalists, whom they spare no pains to conciliate. We shall not enter into the details of the subject, but the result of the system seems to be a sort of socialist republic of critics and actresses, having for its object a reckless dissipation, and for its ultimate argument the duelling pistol. "In Paris," says Mr Gutzkow, "the critics are often dilettanti, who seek by their pen to procure admission into the boudoirs of the pretty actresses. The theatrical critic is a petit maître, the analysis of a performance a declaration of love." And favours are bartered for feuilletons. It does not appear, however, that these Helens of the foot-lamps often lead to serious rivalries between the Greeks and Trojans of the press. A pungent leading article, or a keen opposition of interests, is far more likely to produce duels than the smiles or caprices even of a Liévenne or an Alice Ozy. In these days of extinct chivalry, to fight for a woman is voted perruque and old style; but to fight for one's pocket is correct, and in strict conformity with the commercial spirit of the age. A's newspaper, being ably directed, rises in circulation and enriches its proprietors. Journalist B, whose subscribers fall off, orders a sub-editor to pick a quarrel with A and shoot him. The thing is done; the paper of defunct A is injured by the loss of its manager, and that of surviving B improves. The object is attained. "The history of the Procès Beauvallon," we quote from Mr Gutzkow, "so interesting as a development of the modern Mysteries of Paris, arose apparently from a rivalry about women, but in reality was to be attributed to one between newspapers. It is tragical to reflect, that for the Presse Emile de Girardin shot Carrel, and that now the manager of the same paper is in his turn shot by a new rival, on account of the Globe or the Epoque. We are reminded of the poet's words: Das ist der Fluch der bösen That!"

It will be remembered that De Girardin, the founder of the Presse, killed Armand Carrel, the clever editor of the National, in a duel. The Presse was started at forty francs a-year, at a time when the general price of newspapers was eighty francs. The experiment was bold, but it fully succeeded. The thing was done well and thoroughly; the paper was in all respects equal to its contemporaries; in talent it was superior to most of them, surpassed by none. De Girardin and his associates made a fortune, the majority of the other papers were compelled to drop their prices, some of the inferior ones were ruined. The innovation and its results made the bold projector a host of enemies, and he would have found no difficulty in the world in getting shot, had he chosen to meet a tithe of those who were anxious to fire at him. But after his duel with Carrel he declined all encounters of the kind, and fought his battles in the columns of the Presse instead of in the Bois de Boulogne. Had he not adopted this course he would long ago have fallen, probably by the hand of a member of the democratic party, who all vowed vengeance against him for the death of their idol. As it is, he has had innumerable insults and mortifications to endure, but he has retaliated and borne up against them with immense energy and spirit. On one occasion he was assaulted at the opera, and received a blow, when seated beside his wife, a lady of great beauty and talent. The aggressor was condemned to three years' imprisonment. The Presse being a conservative paper, and a strenuous supporter of the Orleans dynasty, the opposition and radical organs of course loudly denounced the injustice and severity of the sentence. De Girardin was once challenged by the editors of the National en masse. His reply was an article in his next day's paper, proving that the previous character and conduct of his challengers was such as to render it impossible for a man of honour to meet any one of them. Mr Gutzkow made the acquaintance of Girardin. "At the sight of the slender delicate hand which slew the steadfast and talented editor of the National, I was seized with an emotion, the expression of which might have sounded somewhat too German. Girardin himself affected me; his daily struggles, his daily contests before the tribunals, his daily letters to the National, his uneasy unsatisfied ambition, his unpopularity. One may have shot a man in a duel, but in order to remember the act with tranquillity, the deceased should have been the challenger. One may have received a blow in the opera house, and yet not deem it necessary, having already had one fatal encounter, to engage in a second, but it is hard that the giver of the blow must pass three years in prison. Such events would drive a German to emigration and the back-woods; they impel the Frenchman further forward into the busy crowd. Bitterness, melancholy, nervous excitement, and morbid agitation, are unmistakeably written upon Girardin's countenance."

Himself a clever critic, Mr Gutzkow was anxious to make the acquaintance of a king of the craft, the well-known Jules Janin, the feuilletonist of the Debats. "Janin has lived for many years close to the Luxembourg palace, on a fourth floor. His habitation is by no means brilliant, but it is comfortably arranged; and when he married, shortly before I saw him, he would not leave it. Le Critique marié, as they here call him, lives in the Rue Vaugirard, rather near to the sky, but enjoying an extensive view over the gardens, basins, statues, swans, nurses and children, of the Luxembourg. 'I have bought a chateau for my wife,' said he, coming down a staircase which leads from his sitting-room to his study. 'I am married, have been married six months, am happy, too happy – Pst, Adèle, Adèle!'

"Adèle, a pretty young Parisian, came tripping down stairs and joined us at breakfast. Janin is better-looking than his caricature at Aubert's. Active, notwithstanding his embonpoint, he is seldom many minutes quiet. Now stroking his jeune France beard, then caressing Adèle, or running to look out of the window, he only remains at table to write and to eat. He showed me his apartment, his arrangements, his books, even his bed-chamber. 'I still live in my old nest,' said he, 'but I will buy my angel – we have been married six months, and are very happy – I will buy my angel a little chateau. I earn a great deal of money with very bad things. If I were to write good things, I should get no money for them.'

"It is impossible to write down mere prattle. Janin, like many authors, finds intercourse with men a relief from intercourse with books. The cleverest people willingly talk nonsense; but Janin talked, on the contrary, a great deal of sense, only in a broken unconnected way, running after Adèle, threatening to throw her out of the window, or rambling about the room with the stem of a little tree in his hand. 'Do you see,' said he, 'I like you Germans because they like me – (this by way of parenthesis) – do you see, I have brought up my wife for myself; she has read nothing but my writings, and has grown tall whilst I have grown fat. She is a good wife, without pretensions, sometimes coquettish, a darling wife. It is not my first love, but my first marriage. You have been to see George Sand? We do not smoke, neither I nor my wife, so that we have no genius. Pas vrai, Adèle?'

"Adèle played her part admirably in this matrimonial idyl. 'She does not love me for my reputation,' said her husband, 'but for my heart. I am a bad author, but a good fellow. Let's talk about the theatre.'

"We did so. We spoke of Rachel, and of Janin's depreciation of that actress, whom he had previously supported. 'It's all over with her,' said he; 'she has left off study, she revels the night through, she drinks grog, smokes tobacco, and intrigues by wholesale. She gives soirées, where people appear in their shirt-sleeves. Since she has come of age, it's all up with her. She has become dissipated. Shocking – is it not, Adèle?'

"'One has seen instances of genius developing itself with dissipation.'

"'They might stand her on her head, but would get nothing more out of her,' replied Janin. 'Luckily the French theatre rests on a better foundation than the tottering feet of Mamsell Rachel. – Do you know Lewald? Has he translated me well?'

"'You have fewer translators than imitators.'

"'Can my style be imitated in German?'

"'Why not? I will give you an instance.'

"Janin was called away to receive a visitor, and was absent a considerable time. He had some contract or bargain to settle. I took out my tablets, drank my cup of tea, and wrote in Janin's style the following criticism upon a performance at the Circus which then had a great run."

Having previously, it may be presumed, noted down the suggestive and curious dialogue of which we have given an abbreviation. We have our doubts as to the propriety, or rather we have no doubts as to the impropriety and indelicacy, of thus repeating in print the familiar conversations, and detailing the most private domestic habits of individuals, merely on the ground of their talents or position having rendered them objects of curiosity to the mob. Literary notoriety does not make a man public property, or justify his visitors in dragging him before the multitude as he is in his hours of relaxation, and of mental and corporeal dishabille. Mr Gutzkow is unscrupulous in this respect. Possessing either an excellent memory, or considerable skill in clandestine stenography, he carefully sets down the sayings of all who are imprudent enough to gossip with him, and important enough for their gossip to be interesting. Surely he ought to have informed Messrs Thiers, Janin, and various others, who kindly and hospitably entertained him, that he was come amongst them to take notes, and eke to print them. Forewarned, they would perhaps have been less confiding and communicative. The last four years have produced many instances of this species of indiscretion. Two prominent ones at this moment recur to us – a prying, conceited American, and a clever but impertinent German prinzlein. The latter, we have been informed, was on one occasion called to a severe account for his tattling propensities. With respect to Jules Janin, we are sure that Mr Gutzkow's revelations concerning his household economy, his pretty wife, his morning pastimes and breakfast-table causeries, will not in the slightest degree disturb his peace of mind, spoil his appetite, or diminish his embonpoint. The good-humoured and clever critic is proof against such trifles. Nay, as regards initiating the public into his private affairs and most minute actions, he himself has long since set the example. The readers of the witty and playful feuilletons signed J. J., will not have forgotten one that appeared on the occasion of M. Janin's marriage, having for its subject the courtship and wedding of that gentleman. The commencement made us smile; the continuation rendered us uneasy; and as we drew near the close, we became positively alarmed – not knowing how far the writer was going to take us, and feeling somewhat pained for Madame Janin, who might be less willing than her insouciant husband that such very copious details of her commencement of matrimony should be supplied as pasture to the populace in the columns of a widely-circulated newspaper. Janin got a smart lashing from some of his rival feuilletonists for his indecent and egotistical puerility. Doubtless he cared little for the infliction. Habituated to such flagellations, his epidermis has grown tough, and he well knows how to retaliate them. He has few friends. Those who have felt his lash hate him; those whom he has spared envy him. As a professed critic, he finds it easier and more piquant to censure than to praise; and scarcely a French author, from the highest to the lowest, but has at one time or other experienced his pitiless dissection and cutting persiflage. His feuilletons were once, and still occasionally are, distinguished and prized for their graceful naïveté and playful elegance of style. His correctness of appreciation, his adherence to the sound rules of criticism, his thorough competency to judge on all the infinite variety of subjects that he takes up, have not always been so obvious. And of late years, his principal charm, his style, has suffered from inattention, perhaps also from weariness; chiefly, no doubt, from his having fallen into that commercial money-getting vein which is the bane of the literature of the day. Still, now and then, one meets with a feuilleton in his old and better style, delightfully graceful, and pungent and witty, concealing want of depth by brilliancy of surface. He is a journalist, and a journalist only; he aspires to no more; books he has not written, none at least worth the naming – two or three indifferent novels, early defunct. His feuilletons are especially popular in Germany – more so, perhaps, than in France. His arch and sparkling paragraphs contrast agreeably with the heavy solidity of German critics of the belles lettres. By the bye, we must not forget Gutzkow's attempt at an imitation of M. Janin's style. He was interrupted before he had completed it, but favours us with the fragment. It is a notice of the exploits of a Pyrenean dog then acting at Paris. Its author had not time to read it to Janin, who went out to walk with his wife. "I kept my paper to myself, exchanged another joke or two with my whimsical host, and departed. I have written a theatrical article, than which Janin could not write one more childish. What German newspaper will give me twenty thousand francs a-year for articles of this kind?" One, only, whose proprietor and editor have taken leave of their senses. The article à la Janin is childish and frivolous enough; but childishness and frivolity would have availed the Frenchman little had he not united with them wit and grace. His German copyist has not been equally successful in operating that union. But to attempt in German an imitation of Janin's style, so entirely French as it is, and only to be achieved in that language, appears to us nearly as rational as to try to manufacture a dancing-pump out of elephant hide.

We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine Chimène smoking a cigar, Phèdre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their foulards with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his quatrième, or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.