THE most exalted section among the viveurs, the members of which were farthest removed from any suspicion of Bohemianism, was formed of young men from noble families. Their names, which do not concern us here, may be found in the list of those who started the petit cercle of the CafÉ de Paris. This was an exclusive dining club founded by a set of gay livers who dreaded the political discussions of the one or two regular clubs then existing, but wished to have a place where they could dine together without disturbance by casual strangers. They hired, therefore, some rooms from Alexandre, the proprietor of the restaurant, and continued there till the club broke up in 1848. Little need be said of them as a body, except that they were the arbiters of Parisian elegance. As such, their chief effort was to curb the luxuriance of Parisian taste within the limits of English correctness. Anglomania was all the rage. Every dandy—a word then definitely adopted by the French—had his tilbury or phaeton and his tiny English "tiger," smoked his cigar, suffered from his "spleen," and tried to face life with an insolent air of imperturbability—a crowning proof of good taste when the effort was at all successful. This Anglomania was not entirely confined to the boulevard; it was partly an effect of Romanticism. Lady Morgan[13] laughs at it, giving a most amusing account of a performance of "Rochester" at the Porte St.-Martin. The character that created the greatest sensation, she says, was the Watchman, "who was dressed like an alguazil, with a child's rattle in his hand." Whenever he appeared there was a general murmur of "Ha! C'est le vatchman."—"Regarde donc, ma fille, c'est le vatchman; ton papa t'a souvent parlÉ des vatchmen."—"Ah, c'est le vatchman."—"Oui, c'est le vatchman." Great play, too, was made with tea. Rochester entertained his merry companions with tea; Mr. Wilkes poisoned his wife in it. This latter incident gave the highest pleasure:

The Parisian ideas and imitations of English manners were, no doubt, pretty ridiculous, and must have caused considerable amusement to Lord Seymour, one of the few Englishmen who were conspicuous among the aristocratic viveurs. He was the illegitimate son of Lady Yarmouth, daughter-in-law of the notorious Lord Hertford. He lived entirely in Paris, where, being extremely rich, he kept a fine house at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the boulevard. Here he cultivated cigar-smoking and physical exercise with great assiduity. He was a splendid boxer and fencer, and all the finest bruisers and blades, amateur and professional, were to be met in his salle d'armes. He took great pride in his strength, which was abnormal, in his skill as a whip and his success on the race-course. French sport owes him a permanent debt for his successful starting of the Jockey Club, but he can hardly have been a very popular member of a society, for he was cold and brutal, a man who took a defeat rancorously and one who had a cynical delight in causing suffering to his hangers-on. His misanthropy was the reason of his gradually dropping out of society after 1842, and it would have been beside the point to mention him here had it not been for the quite undeserved notoriety which he acquired in Paris during the thirties as the bacchanalian lord of misrule at all the carnivals. It was a strange case of mistaken identity which persisted for many years in spite of categorical denials. The more aristocratic of the viveurs were not, as I have said, Bohemians; but during the carnival, which was celebrated by all the population with extraordinary licence, some of the more youthful let themselves go and became revellers with the rest. For the last three days of the carnival the streets of Paris, by day and by night, were given up to an orgy. Crowds of masqueraders filled the pavements, the restaurants, and the theatres, where fancy-dress balls were held. The richer masks had carriages drawn by postilions, in which they drove among the crowd, scattering confetti and sweetmeats and even money, indulging in every kind of quaint antic and gallantry, and inciting the vulgar to engage them in a wordy warfare in which volleys of the coarsest expletives were fired on both sides. Riot reached its culmination on the night of Shrove Tuesday, when the revellers, after an orgy of feasting and dancing at the BarriÈre de la Courtille, on the north-east of Paris, ended by descending the steep hill towards the city in a state of bacchic frenzy. This was the famous descente de la Courtille, at which, as at all the other revels, a certain carriage, drawn by six horses and filled by a motley party of young men, was the central object of admiration. No challenger ever worsted the leader of this gang at a bout of blackguarding, no costumes equalled his in originality, no mask so tormented and excited the crowd as he with his harangues, his missiles, and his largesse. This was the man known to all the populace of Paris as "Milord Arsouille," which, as all Paris would have told you, was simply the nom de guerre of Lord Seymour. But it was not so. The real "Milord Arsouille" was a certain Charles de la Battut, son of an English chemist and a French ÉmigrÉe. His father, unwilling to compromise his position in England by recognizing him, paid for his adoption by the ruined Breton Count de la Battut. He was educated in Paris, where, even in his youth, he showed a most dissolute character. He delighted to frequent the lowest haunts, and there learnt that mastery of slang and that skill as a boxer which were his pride. The death of his real father gave him a large fortune, which he proceeded to dissipate with the utmost extravagance and bad taste. His house in the Boulevard des Capucines and his personal attire were equally flamboyant. During his short period of glory he was on certain terms of intimacy with the more rowdy among the young bloods of good family, who in after years looked back, like the Duc d'Aulnis, with shame to some of their exploits in his company. His most notable achievement was to introduce the cancan into the fashionable fancy-dress ball at the VariÉtÉs in 1832, and his perpetual grief was that all his eccentricities were attributed to Lord Seymour, in spite of his utmost efforts to proclaim the difference of identity. In 1835 he died, a shattered rouÉ, at Naples.

The only other English name deserving comment in the petit cercle of the CafÉ de Paris is that of Major Fraser, whose personality was an enigma. He was one of the most popular characters on the boulevard, and an honoured friend of the most exclusive diners at the CafÉ Anglais or the CafÉ de Paris, yet nothing was known of his personal history. He spoke English perfectly, but was not an Englishman; he never alluded to his parents, and lived as a bachelor in an entresol at the corner of the Rue Lafitte. He was never short of money, but the source of his income was a mystery; and when he died no letters were found, but only a file of receipts, including a receipt from an undertaker for his funeral expenses, and a direction that his clothes and furniture were to be sold for the benefit of the poor. In spite of the mystery surrounding him he was a prominent figure among the viveurs. His tight blue frock-coat and his grey trousers were models for the most fastidious dandies; his kindness and gentleness to everyone except professional politicians was extreme; he quoted Horace freely and had a complete knowledge of political history with a prodigious memory. Major Fraser's story could be paralleled by the head waiter of many a London club. While he lived he was a favourite; when he died he simply vanished.[14]

There are only two other members of the petit cercle whom I wish to mention—Alfred de Musset and Roger de Beauvoir—because they form a link between the exclusiveness of that society and the hurly-burly existence of la haute BohÈme, to which both more properly belonged. In the early Romantic days Alfred de Musset, with his beautiful, bored face set off by the fair curls that fell over his eyes, was the petted darling of Paris, its perfect dandy wafting the triple essence of bouquet de Romantisme. Nevertheless, Alfred de Musset, though his name was on the lips of all dandies and his poetry set a fashion in Bohemia, never took among men the place that seemed to be his due. He might have been a true Bohemian of 1830, but he disavowed his Romantic companions of letters for the greater splendour of fashionable life; while among the exquisites of the boulevard he found it impossible to preserve that impassive demeanour and attention to the niceties of dandyism which were inexorably demanded. His nature was far too passionate to make him for long together a comfortable companion for men, and his personal history, apart from his poetry, is a chapter of relations with women, of whom George Sand is the most notable. The ashes of his career have been raked over with most scrupulous care since his death, but it is no purpose of mine to take part in the scavenging. To have omitted Alfred de Musset's name would have been impossible, but having mentioned him, I can leave him. Though he hymned Musette and drank deeply with Prince Belgiojoso, he had as little place in Bohemia, high or low, as Lamartine or Victor Hugo. Their throne was the study, his the boudoir.

There are no such reservations to be made for Roger de Beauvoir, whom Madame de Girardin called "Alfred de Musset aux cheveux noirs." He was the arch-viveur, with one exquisitely shod foot on the boulevard, the other in Bohemia, the gayest of all those who supped, the insatiable quaffer of champagne, the inexhaustible fountain of epigram, the king of la haute BohÈme, the very incarnation of the Noctambule in Charpentier's delightful opera, "Louise." His family was the good Norman family of de Bully, and he took the name of Beauvoir from one of the two estates which were his heritage. Those who were responsible for his early guidance clearly intended that he should make his way in diplomacy—a career in which his good looks, sympathetic voice, and charming manners would have greatly helped his pioneering—for he was sent to be Polignac's secretary when that unfortunate minister occupied the embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association with politics was incompatible with gilded ease, abandoned all attempts to play the game of a Rastignac, and pursued his fantasies in airy independence. The Romanticism of the Jeune-France party attracted at once the enthusiasm of a young man, just in his majority by 1830, who was naturally a lover of brilliant colouring. He became a fanatical medievalist, who displayed with pride a Gothic cabinet panelled in carved oak, hung with black velvet, and lit by stained-glass windows. The ceiling was covered with coats-of-arms; the chief decorations were a panoply of armour and an old prie-dieu on which a missal of 1350 opened its illuminated pages. Even in 1842, when Maxime du Camp first met him, he still dreamt of reviving the age of chivalry, having just created a sensation by waltzing at a ball in full armour, fainting and falling with the clatter of innumerable stove-pipes. Undeterred by this mishap, he proposed to form a company, to be called the "SociÉtÉ des champs clos de France," which was to buy land for a tilting-ground, Arab steeds, and armour for the purpose of holding weekly tourneys. The shares were to be 1000 francs each, but as Maxime du Camp's guardian prohibited the purchase of any by his enthusiastic ward, the project was dropped. Like every true Romantic he wrote a medieval novel, but his novel, "L'Écolier de Cluny," unlike those of the majority, was published and brought him considerable fame. After its publication in 1832, he became in some sort a man of letters, but he never added to his reputation, being far too bent upon the pursuit of pleasure to bear the restrictions of any profession. Having failed as a writer of vaudevilles, he found his true vocation as the leader of a band of revellers and a composer of wicked epigrams in verse. His epigrams, always written impromptu upon the pages of a notebook, were a real addition to the gaiety of Paris. Here is one composed when Ancelot—literary husband of a literary wife—was elected to the Academy:

His dress was of the highest elegance in a day when men were not confined to a funereal black. His blue frock-coat, tight-waisted with amply curving skirts, broad velvet revers, and gilt buttons, fitted as neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest to be seen. In his own apartment he tempered the shadows of his Gothic furniture by wearing a green silk dressing-gown and red cashmere trousers. So long as their fortunes lasted he and his companions bade dull care begone. At midday they left the softest of beds, and, after a serious hour of dressing, met for dÉjeuner at the CafÉ Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the CafÉ Hardi. By four they were to be seen in force upon the boulevard, displaying their waistcoats and quizzing the ladies upon the marble steps of Tortoni's. Before dinner they would visit a drawing-room or two, buy a picture or bargain for some bibelot—a Toledo blade or a Turkish narghile—with a dealer in curiosities. The evening programme was a set of variations upon the ground bass of dinner, opera, supper. Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous loge infernale at the OpÉra, and it is needless to say that their attention was devoted more to the ballet than to the music, for they were all connoisseurs in choreography and had a personal acquaintance with the dancers, which developed in most cases into something more than Platonic affection. The foyer des artistes was the enchanted garden of la haute BohÈme, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the true Bohemians did at the ChaumiÈre or the Closerie des Lilas.

The science of practical joking was sedulously cultivated by Roger and his friends, who rejoiced to bring off successful "mystifications." One of Roger's best was played upon Duponchel, the director of the OpÉra. One day the whole street where Duponchel lived was set all agog by the appearance of a magnificent funeral procession, consisting of a hearse and fifty carriages, with Roger and his friend Cabanon occupying the first carriage as chief mourners; the head of the procession drew up at Duponchel's door, to his great indignation. The joke up to this point was of no especial originality, but Roger gave it a turn of his own. The Romantic fashion dictated that every chapter in a novel should be headed by an epigraph, as extravagant as possible, from the work of some Romantic author. Roger therefore headed a chapter in his novel "Pulchinella," which was just appearing, "Feu Duponchel (Histoire contemporaine)." Even after he was hopelessly in debt he remained a joker. Being saddled with a thin and dirty bailiff, he gave him ten francs a day, washed him, dressed him as a Turk, and gave an evening party in honour of his Pasha, who could only talk in signs. The supreme mystificateurs, however, were Romieu and Monnier. Romieu was reputed to be the most amusing man in Paris, and so firmly founded was his reputation that nobody ever took him seriously. When he became prefect of QuimperlÉ—an easy post which enabled him to take many a holiday upon the boulevard—he was faced with the problem of dealing with a plague of cockchafers in the prefecture. He hit upon the wise and perfectly successful device of offering fifty francs for every bushel of dead cockchafers. The Bretons were grateful enough, but all Paris was in a roar. Here was the crowning farce of which only its lost joker would have been capable, and it supplied the smaller comic papers with copy for several days. Romieu made Monnier's acquaintance in an appropriate way. About eleven o'clock one night the artist heard a knock at his door, which he opened to a stranger, who came in and entered into a polite conversation without a word of introduction. Monnier made no comment, but replied with equal affability. After an hour or so, as the stranger remained, he ransacked his sideboard and entertained his guest with an impromptu supper. Time passed, the small hours struck, and still the stranger made no sign of going. Monnier therefore announced that he was ready for bed and that his sofa was at his guest's disposition. So they parted for the night, and next morning when they met Monnier's first words were "You are Romieu," a compliment returned by "You are Monnier."

Monnier, says Champfleury in his memoir, belonged to Bohemia till the end of his life; but it is clear that this Bohemia was that of the boulevards and cafÉs. He was no real Romantic, and far too fond of a good time to stay in the Bohemia which Champfleury himself knew so well. As a writer of short stories and dialogues, an actor, and an artist he had a huge success in the thirties, and he followed the pleasures of life with inexhaustible zest. Balzac drew him as Bixiou in "Les EmployÉs." The portrait, according to Champfleury, was very true, but unjust:

"IntrÉpide chasseur de grisettes, fumeur, amuseur de gens, dÎneur et soupeur, se mettant partout au diapason, brillant aussi bien dans les coulisses qu'au bal des grisettes dans l'allÉe des Veuves, il Étonnait autant À table que dans une partie de plaisir; en verve À minuit dans la rue, comme le matin si vous le preniez au saut du lit, mais sombre et triste avec lui-mÊme, comme la plupart des grands comiques. LancÉ dans le monde des actrices et des acteurs, des Écrivains, des artistes, et de certaines femmes dont la fortune est alÉatoire, il vivait bien, allait au spectacle sans payer, jouait À Frascati, gagnait souvent. Enfin cet artiste, vraiment profond, mais par Éclairs, se balanÇait dans la vie comme sur une escarpolette, sans s'inquiÉter du moment oÙ la corde casserait."