The biography of Alfred de Musset

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Preface

'T^HE' memoir of Alfred de Musset by his devoted brother Paul is, in many respects, a model of whaf a biography ought not to be. It is an ardent and tearful defence, a eulogy, a threnody, a picturesque and highly idealized sketch : it is any thing, in short, but a sober and truthful piece of portraiture. But who would care to read a brother's memorial of a life so brief and troubled, a nature so richly endowed, and in many ways so winhing, if it were dispassionate .'' The whole of the sad truth concerning the dissipations which wrecked the poet's health, and the waywardness and weakness which paralyzed his exquisite talent, years even before he passed away, may be read elsewhere. In particular, the study or series of studies by Paul Lindau, published in Berlin almost simultaneously with the present memoir, contains a great deal of sound criticism, and is quite remarkable for its lack of reserve in details. But the eager plea of M. Paul de Musset deceives as vi Preface.

little as eager pleas usually do. We divine all that he avoids saying, at the same time that we like him the better for his chivalrous care of his brother's reputation.

The task of rendering into English his graphic and simple narrative has been a very pleasant one ; and, for an explanation of its few obscure allusions to matters connected with French literature and politics, I am indebted to my friend, Mme. George Harney, of Cambridge.

Harriet W. Preston.

York, September 3, 1877.

THE BIOGRAPHY

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

I HAVE long cherished the purpose of giving to the admirers of Alfred de Musset the story of his life. I have often felt moved to begin the task, but have been withheld by the very vividness of my recollections. And yet it is no mere duty which I propose to fulfil toward the man whom, of all men, I have best loved, and whose most loyal friend and recipient of confidence I have ever been. I regard it rather as a complement needful to the perfect understanding of his work. For his work is himself ; and in it we perceive that daily transmutation of genius which belongs only to those privileged poets in whom the imagination is in constant communion with the heart. The creations of these rare minds, their merest fancies, do not usually wear the aspect of fiction for the reason that they reveal the very workings of the poet's soul. Their history becomes the history of the human heart, and nothing . can be uninteresting which makes them better known. This it is which renders the curiosity of the public, about the incidents of their lives, legitimate and intelligent.

Not only did Alfred de Musset receive the gift of keen feeling and forceful expression, but the sentiments and the thoughts to which he gave so fair a form were those of a vifhole generation. I know not if any other poet could be cited as being the poet of his era so thoroughly as was he. The first readers of " Rolla " and the "Nuit de Mai" may possibly have seen therein only a philosophic thesis, the doubts of an unquiet mind, the plaints of an unhappy lover ; but ultimately men recognized, even there, the truthful expression of universal feelings. What the poet suffered, he suffered in common with all his contemporaries ; and this is why his works were read in attics as well as in castles, and why his verses charmed the tedium of the bivouac on the remote frontiers of Kalybia.

It has often been said that the poetry of sentiment makes the envied possessor of this form of expression unhappy. Sensitive souls are sent into the world to be crowded and crushed. The loss of a mistress, the defection of a friend, a disappointed hope, an illusion dispelled, — all the ills, great and small, of which life is made up, — exasperate them, and wOuld drive them to desire death if they could not find a solace for their woes in the poet's inspiration. So that those who afford us our highest intellectual pleasures and our sweetest consolations appear doomed to weariness and melancholy, even when they are not actually molested and tormented, as too often happens ; and if their best friends sometimes irritate them unintentionally, how many others wound them on purpose, well knowing that a pin-prick will make them bleed. 'I'he biography

Biography of Alfred de Mtisset. 3

which follows will not merely furnish an additional proof, of these undeniable truths : it will help to establish another not quite so hackneyed ; namely, that sorrow makes great poets, as Alfred de Musset himself has said in the " Nuit de Mai."

Is it not plain that we owe the finest passages in the " Divine Comedy " to the bitterness of the exile, and to Dante's resentment against the injustice of his fellowcitizens ? The " Misanthrope " of Molifere might never have seen the light if Armande Bdjart had been a virtuous and faithful wife. Happy is the poet who, like, Petrarch, finds an inexhaustible source of sorrow and sensibility in the virtue of a gentle and compassionate woman !

Like his predecessors, Alfred de Musset drew from love and from grief his finest inspiration. A secret instinct forewarned him of those dangerous fellowbeings who were destined to put his affections to their hardest tests. But he had no need to go in search of suffering. Rather, it sought him out so often that his sensibilities were never allowed to sleep. Every one seemed to contribute something to the sum of his sorrows ; and thus it is that the evil and invidious defeat their own end by rendering the poet's renown yet costlier, and more difficult for him to obtain.

If Alfred de Musset had been bom in the age of Louis XIV., he would, of course, have belonged to the court, and shared the intimacy of the kingr He would have enjoyed the privileges then reserved for nobility and genius ; he would have held some important charge and been admitted everywhere, like Racine. Nor would he have been indifferent to this kind of distinction. Independent as his character was, he would . have yielded to the requirements of etiquette ; he would have taken an active part in the refined enjoyments of the only sovereign who ever understood the great art of grouping all manner of talents about himself, and absorbing them for the augmentation of his own glory. He was essentially a man of the world, and he might have been a genuine grand seigneur. The friendship of the Prince of Condd, the company of Molibre and Despreaux, would have charmed him more than formal honors. He would have had a far happier life ; but would he have been a greater man to day .' Would he have made, in an age when life would have been so easy to him, the same deep impression which he has left upon our own ? I think not. His weariness and disgust in the midst of a society which is growing every day more material have caused to vibrate in him the more hidden strings. For every wound which he has received, he has mounted higher. His renown has been only the more solid and brilliant for being slowly won, and an early death has but added to his fame. That sad consecration was not needed. He had had time enough.

The De Musset family, which originated in the Duchy of Bar, established itself at Blois and Vendome, in the fifteenth century, about the time of the siege of Orleans. The first gentleman of that name mentioned in the " Gallia Christiana " is a certain Rudolphe de Musset, present as a witness at the ceremony of founding an abbey in the diocese of Paris, in 1140. I have elsewhere spoken of Colin de Musset, a celebrated poet and musician of the thirteenth century, the contemporary and friend of Thibaut, Count of Champagne.^

Other De Mussets are to be found in the council of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and brother of Charles VI. ; in that of Dunois, bastard of Orleans ; fighting in the army of Charles VII. at the battle of Pathay ; and in the household of the Princess of Clbves, the mother of Louis XII. Several of them were lords-lieutenant of the province of Blois. Two of them commanded the companies of arquebusiers, and certain free companies of fifty men under Henry III. Fran5ois de Musset was killed at Philipsbourg, in attempting to quell a revolt of the German troops in the garrison. The most celebrated soldier in the family was Alexander de Musset, a chevalier of Saint Louis, and lieutenant of the king at La Rochelle, who distinguished himself in all the battles of the war of the Succession, and became the comrade in arms of Maurice of Saxony. He received several wounds, and only retired after sixty years of active service.

, Minister d'Argenson, and the Marshals of Saxony, Lowendal, Belle-Isle, and d'Estrdes wrote him flattering letters, which his heirs have carefully preserved.

Certain interesting alliances of the De Musset family are also to be noted. An indirect one with Joan of Arc, through her niece, Catherine du Lys, whose marriage Charles VII. desired to arrange, and to whom he gave a dowry ; others with the Bombelles, the Du Tillets, the

1 See a brief notice of the life of Alfred de Musset, in the large quarto edition of the poet's complete works published in 1866.

6 Biography of Alfred de Mtisset.

Du Bellays. The paternal grandmother of Alfred de Musset, Margaret Angdiique du Bellay,' the last female child of that name, belonged to a family which prized literary no less than military distinction. She married her second son, Joseph Alexander de Musset, to Jeanne Catherine d'Harville, an extremely clever woman. Victor de Musset, the father of Alfred, was the offspring of this marriage.

According to the peerage of France, the arms of this family are a golden hawk, hooded and jessed upon an azure field perched on a bar gules, with the device, " Courtoisie, Bonne-aventure aux preux." La Courtoisie and Bonne-aventure were two patrimonial estates : the first remained in the family until the middle of the last century; the second, which formed a part of the patrimony of Alfred de Musset, was occupied by Antoine de Bourbon, the father of Henry IV., during the sojourn of the French court at the chiteaux of Amboise and Blois. It lies two leagues from Vendome, at the confluence of the Loir and a lesser river, at a place called Gu6-du- Loir. It is well known that Antoine de Bourbon's was no edifying career. He frequently sought relief from the tedium of a life of show by retiring from the court to Bonne-aventure, where he gave shelter to certain damsels rather less virtuous than Queen Catherine's maidsof-honor. The secret of these- pleasure parties was ill kept J and the fame of them reached the ears of the poet Rousard, who chanced to be at Poissonifere, not far from Vendome. Rousard composed a song on the- frolics of the king, the refrain of which was, " La bonne aventure au gui, la bonne aventure I" This satirical lyric went from one end of France to the other, and nurses sing the air of it to this day.^

The foregoing details are addressed to persons who are curious in matters of genealogy and heraldry. | Here are a few for those who interest themselves in the mysterious laws of hereditary transmission. It is only by an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances that Nature succeeds in producing a man of genius. Savants affirm that a single case of high intelligence will retard by three generations the progress of idiocy in a feebleminded family. Apparently, the introduction of one inferior woman into an intellectual family is quite enough to debase the mental faculties of three generations : these facts are not sufiicientlj^ heeded in marriage. The maternal grandfather of Alfred de Musset used to relate that he said to himself, after his third interview with the lady whom he afterwards married, " There is the woman whom I need," and that a month before the marriage he knew nothing of the fortune of her parents, nor what dowry she would receive. But this same grandfather was an original character ; a person of antique simplicity, a charming spirit, and a poet besides.

Claude Antoine Guyot-Desherbiers was of an old family in Champagne, and came to Paris to study law, under the reign of Louis XV. He was admitted to the

^ In the collections of popular songs, this familiar refrain is variously given. To insure correct spelling we must go back to Rousard, and remember that Bonne-aventure was situated on the Gu6-du-Loir. The song quoted by Alceste in the first act of the " Misanthrope " is evidently derived from this of Rousard's; but the refrain, "y'aime mieux ma mie atigue," is perfect nonsense.

bar, and afterwards made a magistrate. During the excitement which preceded the Revolution, he became the friend of the Abbd Morellet, of M. Suard, of the savant Cabanis, the astronomer Lalande, Merlin de Douai, De Barras, and ethers,' into whose hands it was destined that power should presently fall. The tenth of August having abolished his seat on the bench, Guyot- Desherbiers lived in retirement till the end of the Revolution. After the 9th of Thermidor, he was appointed president of the committee on civil legislation. In this position he exerted his influence to save some heads from the scaffold j among others, that of the Baron de Batz, who had tried to effect the escape of the queen and her children^from their prison in the Temple. He even ran the risk of keeping M. de Batz hidden in his own house during the pursuit of the revolutionary tribunal.

M. Guyot-Desherbiers was endowed with a prodigious memory. At an advanced age, he amused himself by reciting whole comedies, playing all the parts with a degree of talent and spirit which delighted his audience, his grandchildren especially. I have heard that the excellent Carmontelle, several of whose proverbs he knew by heart, took especial pleasure in hearing him recite them ; and that this performance revealed to the author himself gleams of wit and shades of meaning of which he would not otherwise have dreamed.

Our grandfather's feeling for poetry was somewhat capriciously manifested ; but that which especially distinguished M. Guyot-Desherbiers was a Gallic gayety, and a picturesque way of saying things, which imparted

Biography of Alfred de Mussd. 9

a peculiar charm to his conversation. Tliis original turn of mind reappears in the comedies of his grandson, especially in the characters of Fantasio and Valentin and of Octave in the " Caprices de Marianne.''

From the maternal side, also, Alfred de Musset derived qualities no less remarkable. ,M. Desherbiers had married Marie Anne Daret, a person of rare merit and excellent judgment, — a woman who gave good counsel, as her husband was fond of saying. Habitually grave and equable, our grandmother was at heart affectionate, tender, and impassioned ; and, in moments of emotion, her eloquence carried one away. Her tall figure, the dignity of her countenance, the penetrating tones of her voice, and the unspeakable goodness of her heart have left a deep impression upon the minds of her grandchildren, — the memory of a kind of angelic creature. Her eldest daughter, who was very like her, transmitted to Alfred de Musset sensibility, eloquence, and pathos. It is through their union with distinguished faculties on the father's side, that these happy gifts have been enhanced to the utmost in the case of a single person.

Victor Donatien de Musset took a good rank in the military college at Vendome, where he was a royal pupil. When he left school at eighteen, he had an elder brother already captain in a regiment at Bresse, and a sister who was queen's pensioner at Saint-Cyr with the promise of being made a canoness. On his return to his father's house, he found there a numerous and agreeable circle of relatives, friends, and neighbors. The eldest of the family was living at Cogners, near Saint-Calais. Other lO Biography of Alfred de Musset.

relatives and intimate friends dwelt at Tours, at Blois, and at Chartres. Vendome was the centre where they often assembled. For the sake of spending a few days together, they would traverse abominable roads ; but the cheer was good, and the time passed gaily. The entire circle was occupied with plans for making life as pleasant as possible, without a suspicion that they were on the very verge of a political cataclysm. The father of Victor de Musset — called M. de Pathay in the province, to distinguish him from his two brothers — was so entirely preoccupied with the fortunes of the son who was a captain, that he made up his mind one day that his second son must not marry. Submissive to the fate of a cadet, Victor Donatien had resigned himself to the Church, when the Revolution arrived and snatched off those clerical bands of which he was so ready to be rid ; whence it is fair to conclude that the events of 1789 gave to France one great poet who else would never have seen the light.

About the same time that his future father-in-law saved the life of Baron de Batz, Victor de Musset met on the highway of Tours a condemned nobleman who was being escorted to Paris and the scaffold. The sight of this unfortunate man moved him to the deepest pity. He brought up a hay-cart under the windows of an inn where the gendarmes had stopped, deposited the prisoner in it, drove off with him by cross-roads with which he was familiar, and eluded pursuit. His prowess would have cost him dear, had not General Marescot taken a fancy to the youth, given him shelter under the folds of the flag, and received him into his own service. Em-

Biography of Alfred de Mtisset. 1 1

ployed at first in the inspection of fortified places, Victor de Musset made the second Italian Campaign with the general, and on his return from Marengo was appointed chief inspector of engineers. His elder brother, following a star very unlike his own, had emigrated and fallen by a republican bullet in the ranks of Condd's army. During this interval, also, his parents had both died, only a few months apart. To repair these cruel bereavements he had recourse to marriage. One of his friends introduced him at the house of M. Desberbiers, whose eldest daughter he sought in marriage, and was readily accepted.

Victor de Musset remained in the War Department until 1811, when he was made head»of a division (chef de bureaii) in the Ministry of the Interior. Superseded in 18 18 by M. Lain6 for the expression of liberal opinions, he took an active, literary part in the Restoration movement. In 182 1, he published an excellent edition of the works of J. J. Rousseau, and shortly afterwards a careful and valuable work on the life and writings of the Genevan philosopher, M. de S^monville, who chanced to meet and become attached to him, and caused him to be appointed librarian of the Chamber of Peers. In 1828, \yhen General de Caux joined the political coalition which goes by the name of M. de Martignac, Victor de Musset was called to the War Department, in the capacity of chief clerk {chef du cabinet du ministre), whence he passed to the department of Military Justice, in which he remained until his death.

During his long administrative career, Victor de Musset was fortunate in being able constantly to exercise the distinctive qualities of his disposition ; namely, an inexhaustible kindness and serviceableness. Never did a man in power take so much trouble in the service of others ; display such constant activity, energy, and courage in assisting and protecting the unfortunate and the persecuted. It may well be supposed that occasions were not lacking. I will cite but two.

Near the close of the Empire, an emigre named D'Hotland returned to France, burdened with a numerous family, and stripped of all his resources. He asked employment and bread for his children of M. de Musset, who appointed him inspector of the central police-station at Melun. Almost as soon as he was installed in office, he was denounced ■ to the Emperor as an old royalist, and from the higher realms of government came the order for his instant removal. The minister summoned the head of the bureau, who undertook an energetic defence of his creature, in which he offered himself as surety for the persons whom he employed, claiming that he had the free choice of his subalterns, and was responsible for them. At the end of a month a new complaint was lodged, and there was a fresh order for immediate removal, this time in terms so peremptory that the minister was terrified. But M. de Musset refused to be intimidated. At the risk of his own removal, he addressed to the Emperor a second communication, yet firmer than the first, in which he denounced with indignation the scheme of the informers. It was not without hesitation that the minister M. de Montalivet included this paper in his portfolio ; but it came back t;he next day with this postscript in Napoleon's own hand, — " The chief of the bureau is right," and the poor official kept his place.

The other affair was more important than the preceding, and created some excitement. One Fabry — an overseer or commissary of troops, I do not know which — was accused of embezzlement, tried before a courtmartial, condemned to the galleys, and there died. Fifteen years afterwards, the proofs of his innocence were discovered. As the heirs of Lesurques, his wife and children demanded his rehabilitation, which could not however be effected without the passage of a law in both Chambers. This was in 183 1, and it was fortunate for Mme. Fabry that she found M. de Musset in the department of military justice. She made him enter into her feelings and share them for a year. The minister of war positively shrieked when the chief of the bureau proposed to award her an indemnity of a hundred thousand francs ; but, after repeated discussions, they kept to that figure and proposed the law. The statement of the case was a piece of genuine eloquence ; and the day on which Mme. Fabry gained her cause before the Chamber of Deputies was a holiday at home. This obligingness, carried even to the point of self-sacrifice, was once a peculiarly French quality, but is now no longer in vogue. It has been replaced by the American precept, " Time is money ; " and, ever since men began to fancy that time can be estimated in cash, they have ceased to spend it in the service of others.

To such qualities of heart Victor de Musset united those graces of the mind which go to make up what we call an amiable man, — a sparkling gayety, an astonishing promptitude of repartee, and profound learning of which he made no parade. He would tell a story in a few words, and with a bonhomie which concealed great art. At table, among his intimate friends, when enlivened by wine and good cheer, his gayety would fly to his head, and a running fire of jests and droll sallies ensued; but on these festive occasions, as on graver ones, the moment he perceived a trace of unfriendliness, his tongue became sharper, his eye flashed fire, his retort was biting, and he straightway became calm. And, as he never came out of such a skirmish otherwise than victorious, he became the terror of the snappish and surly.

On one of his visits to Vendome, he took my brother and myself to see a country gentleman in the neighborhood when the mercury stood at twenty-five degrees.^

Our neighbor was penurious, and, in place of the refreshments which are invariably offered in the provinces to every visitor, he exhibited two ancient stone statues recently disinterred.

" You are one of the learned," said our host mockingly, " and will doubtless recognize at once the two saints whose images these are."

" Perfectly," replied M. de Musset. " One is evidently Saint Niggard and the other Saint Glutton ;" and, relieved by the delivery of this scratch, he smiled affably upon his neighbor. Victor de Musset wrote one comedy in verse, which was not found among his papers.

' Celsius ; that is, about 78° Fahrenheit.

Part First

A LFRED DE MUSSET was born on the eleventh -^^^ of December, 1810, in the heart of old Paris, near the Hotel de Cluny, in a house which still bears the number, — 33 Rue des Noyers.^ At thirty-seven in the same street lived our Grandfather Desherbiers, and a great-aunt, the proprietress of a garden which extended to the base of the ancient church of Saint Jean de Latran, now demolished. All the great-nephews of Mme. Denoux took their first steps in this garden. Alfred de Musset used to say, jestingly, that in his childhood he was just as stupid as another ; but I do not hesitate to assert that he gave early evidence of a rarely precocious intelligence. ; After he had been to church for the first time, he asked his mother, as innocently as possible, whether she would take him again next Sunday to see the comedy of the Mass ; nor had he any suspicion of the Voltairean character of his remark. If half the noteworthy things which children say are attributable to ignorance, there are others to which we give little heed, but which reveal, amid the simplicity of the child, the character of the future man. Here is one. When Alfred was three years old, some one gave him a pair of red shoes, which

1 This street, partially destroyed by the recent embellishments of Paris, is no longer to be recognized. One may get an idea of what it was from other streets in the same quarter, as yet untouched by the hammer, — the Rue Galande, for example.

"iS Biography of Alfred de Musset.

he admired exceedingly. He was being dressed, and was in a great hurry to go forth in the new foot-gear whose color took his eye. He quivered with impatience while his mother combed his long curls, and at last cried out in a tearful voice, "Oh, make haste, mamma, or my new shoes will be old ! "

We can but laugh at this vivacity, but it was the first symptom of an impatience for pleasure, a disposition to devour the time, which was never calmed nor contradicted for a single day. Here is another in which the child plainly knows what he is talking about. He had committed some peccadillo or other ; and his young Aunt Nanine, of whom he was especially fond, told him that, if he did so again, she should not love him any more.

" You think so," he replied ; " but you can't help it ! "

" Indeed I can, sir,'' was the aunt's reply ; and, to give greater effect to her menace, she assumed as stern an air as possible. The child scanned her face carefully and a "ittle uneasily, for a few minutes, until he detected an involuntary smile, when he cried out, " But I can see that you love me ! "

Some other misdemeanor, graver apparently than the last, had led one day to his being shut up in the dark closet. When I was of his age, if a like misfortune overtook me, I never budged an inch, but endured my imprisonment in a transport of pride. He, however, the moment he was shut up, began to bemoan himself as if he had been in carcere duro.

" Oh, how miserable I am ! " he cried. " How can I have deserved to be punished by so good and loving a mamma ? I must be dreadfully naughty if she is angry with me ! How can I make her forgive me ? What a wicked child I am ! It is God who is punishing me."

He went on for a long while in the same pathetic strain. Finally, his mother, touched by so deep a repentance, went and opened the door; whereupon the prisoner, who had never dreamed of such success, cut short his lamentations, and remarked in an indignant and reproachful tone, " Pooh ! you are not very pitiful ! " (attendrissante.)

Among the recollections of childhood, this word remained as a memorable thing, and Alfred himself liked often to quote it. He liked better still to recall another remark, equally childish, but foretelling, to one disposed to heed the indication, the man of imagination. In one of the chambers of our old house there was an immense beam in the ceiling, which the baby regarded with a sort of terror. One day his Aunt Nanine wished to take away from him a very young kitten which he was holding by the head, to the great displeasure of the animal. After clinging long to the little beast, he saw that he should be forcibly deprived of it, and gave it up ; exclaiming furiously, however, in the style of Camille's malediction, " There ! Take your cat ! It will scratch you ; it will tear your gown ; and the beam will fall on your head ; and I shall go and dine at Bagneux."