A NEW THEORY OF BOHEMIANS. BY CARL BENSON. Last spring,' the spring of 1870, I mean-if this communication waits as long as some of mine have done, it may be spring before last, or spring before that, when it is published-in the spring of 1870, I say, it was rumoured that a club of Bohemians had been established-an idea which provoked much ridicule. This set Carl Benson a-thinking (for he does perform that operation sometimes, and it was not the first time he had performed it on the very same subject) about the differentia of the Bohemian —what he is and what he is not, what properly constitutes him, and whether he is a specific product of a particular city, or one of all civilized countries. The name, if not invented, was at least fixed in circulation by Henry Murger. His "Bohemian Life" was published some twenty-five years since, and about half as long ago Carl Benson translated it in tutta la sua parte sana, according to the Italian editors' phrase (that is to say, rather less than half of it) for the as some of the readers may or may not remem- Bohemianism, then, we see considered by its | first historians as a necessarily transient state which men must get out of or be swallowed up by -a state of poverty, and incidentally of vice. I say incidentally of vice, because its inventors as a status, a metier, were Frenchmen, and everything in France must have a spice of vice about it. Now this I maintain to be a limited and inadequate conception of Bohemianism. It is not necessarily a state of poverty (if by poverty you mean want of substantial comforts), still less of vice-that is, of dissipation. It is not necessarily a transition state; on the contrary, people are born to it, and live and die in it. Sala, it appears to me, first hinted at the truth of the case when he talked of a Bohemian going home at ten o'clock to read Plato and drink water gruel. Paradoxical it must have seemed to many of his readers, but nevertheless literally true. There are Bohemians who go home at ten o'clock at night to read Plato and drink water-gruel. There are Bohemians with houses and lands and rent-rolls and government stocks-nay, there are Bohemians who keep their accounts and their appointments with rarely deviating regularity. And Bohemianism, I repeat, is not a phase, a transit ory period of a man's life, but the whole of it. The Bohemian may be born poor, and die rich, or vice versa: he is always a Bohemian. But who and what, then, is the Bohemian you may ask. Define him at once, or we find it more difficult to tell who is not a Bohemian than who is. Well, then, I proceed to my definition: A Bohemian is a man with literary or artistic tastes, and an incurable proclivity to debt. To many members of our mercantile community the second head of this definition would appear to be merely a natural sequence from the first. It has long been a doctrine on 'Change that authors and artists and such people are bound to be in debt and difficulty, and at more or less risk of starvation all their lives. But this is a fallacy of juxtaposition and imperfect generalization which it is not worth while to confute seriously or at length. Look at a fashionable English portrait-painter, or indeed at an English artist generally. Can there be anything less Bohemian? How many Wilkies do we find for one Haydon? Look at literary men. How many Thackerays, Dickenses, Trollopes are there for one Poe! On the other hand, it is evident that the unfortunate propensity to run in debt is not confined to literary men and artists, but is common to many men of all and of no profession, utterly innocent of any artistic or literary pretension or Every man ought to have a hobby, provided he can keep it within bounds, and doesn't ride it over other people's toes. The misfortune is, that the Bohemian's hobby can't be kept within bounds, but is always tending to eat its own head off and outrun the constable. Here, then, we have the first reason why the Bohemian must and will get into debt. Secondly, the Bohemian is generous; free of his money when he has any, and sometimes when he has not. There are plenty of men who live "about" on society generally, and contrive to support themselves at the expense of others; some of these are literary men, or soi-disant ones; there may be some quasi-artists among them, too; but they are not Bohemians (though sometimes erroneously confounded with the real article); they are only sponges. Thirdly, beside these particular debt-incurring traits, the Bohemian has a general inaptitude for business; not merely a distaste for business details-this he may have and often has-but even if he has brought himself to conquer this dislike, nay, even if he has it not (for there are Bohemians rather methodical than otherwise, as we have already remarked), he always makes a mess of his business. In the first place the Bohemian is always a man with a hobby. He may have more than one, but one he must have, and that not a mere theoretic and speculative, but a substantial, material, money-costing hobby. It may be larger or smaller according to his means and position, but is very apt to be too large for those means, whatever they are. If he is a rich man, he may be fond of horse-flesh, which is not an illiterate taste as some overwise people would have you believe; or he may have a mania for collecting pictures, of which even good artists are not necessarily the best judges; or a weakness for fine furniture and jewellery; many great authors have run into such seemingly feminine extravagances. If poor, he will have some smaller weakness, but one equally fatal in proportion to his income. Men have ruined themselves buying pipes. La Brunie, who wrote under the name of "Gerard de Nerval," was in this respect perhaps the most finished This incapacity for business is by "men of type of the Bohemian. He had garrets full of the world" and men of the ledger frequently atcuriosities and bric-a-brac, and no certain daily tributed to all votaries of art and literature inmeans of procuring a dinner. At last he was discriminately; and some literary men have acfound hanging in one of his garrets. He would cepted the imputation, and rather gloried in it. sooner part with life than part with his curiosi-Thus, Alphonse Karr allows it as the most ties, or give up the habit of collecting them. Of course such manias are not the peculiar property of authors and artists: a more common example is that of the inveterate gambler. But the Bohemian is a literary or artistic man with a hobby; though it must be observed that his hobby is not necessarily connected with literature or art. natural thing in the world that a novelist should know nothing of any other figures than those of metaphor, and he illustrates the position by some odd comparisons. The danseuse, he says, develops her legs at the expense of her chest; so the literary man develops his brains at the expense of his chest, he probably would have said, only the pun can't be made in Moreover, it is necessary that his hobby, or French. But this rule (as we also have had ocweakness, or whatever you choose to call it casion to remark previously) is subject to so his "wanity," as Sam Weller would say-should many limitations and exceptions that it cannot not be a profitable one. The man who collects be considered a general rule at all. No doubt a pictures, or books, or horses-curiosities or lad who has been placed in a counting-house at animals of any sort with a view to selling them seventeen will know more of book-keeping and again, is the very reverse of a Bohemian. There trade at twenty-one than if he had passed that are many such speculative collectors to be time at a university or in an atelier. So, too, found; Paris is particularly flush of them just an author, plunged suddenly into any business now. They are only a variety of Barnum. It matter-made a consul, for instance-may find is true that the real Bohemian's reckless expen-himself at first awkward in the routine. But it diture may sometimes, by pure accident, turn out to his pecuniary advantage. Thus there is a story of Balzac how he had once very absurdly furnished his parlour all in white satin with magnificent chandeliers, and some jolly friends dining with him had lighted up the chandeliers to see the effect." Suddenly a publisher "happened in," and was so struck by (what appeared to be) the author's daily luxury, that he made him a huge offer for his next romance. But these are only accidental hits; the Bohemian's hobby is necessarily an expensive and very likely a ruinous one. Now don't fancy that I disapprove of hobbies On the contrary I believe in them immensely is a long jump from this to the conclusion that the scholar or the painter is ipso facto incompetent to manage his private business, or a reasonable amount of public business. Some scholars and writers and painters there are, and these some are the Bohemians. How many such young men have I seeen put into, or putting themselves into, mercantile harness, working for years invita Minerva enough, God knows! but diligently and conscientiously, only at last to ruin themselves and others. And when they were ruined, and thoroughly given up to Bohemianism, they were happier than before; and the business world was happier too, to be rid of them Their un-Bohemian period of life had been a dead loss to themselves and to the Bohemian. It certainly is a common to society. If the phrenologists could only in- Bohemian habit. The grave and important vent an organ of Bohemianism, and prevent such question, how far this practice is necessarily a persons from being placed by mistaken parents vice, would demand a separate treatise. Let us upon counting-house stools, destined to be real merely remark that some of the usual objections stools of repentance, or placing themselves into it are much the reverse of fact; as when it is "firms" which are anything but firm, what a said that smoking directly encourages drinking, blessing it would be to all concerned! But of whereas the case is just the contrary. Nothing course the phrenologists can't, any more than has done more to put down after dinner tippling they can do anything else of real practical than the cigar. As to the excess of the utility. practice, let us notice with special reference to the Bohemian, that the man who works or talks with interest, putting his whole mind into his work or talk, is much less likely, nay, much less able to smoke excessively than he who works mechanically, and whose mind is idle during the intervals of repose. Having thus defined the subject of our investigation, we have next to consider whether the popular prejudice against him on the ground of vice is justly founded. Theoretically, and in the abstract nature of things, there is no reason why it should be. So far as a man is artistic or literary, he is pro tanto provided with resources and mental occupation, and is so far better protected against the temptations of gross animal vice than the mere man of business who has no intellectual resources outside of his ordinary occupation. A man's taste, though it can never be a substitute for religion and morality, may often be a valuable auxiliary to them. True, we can imagine a man taking up vice artistically, plunging into the haunts of dissipation that he may be able to portray them graphically, or even deliberately committing sin in order to study its effect upon himself and his fellow sinner. So Firmilian murders his friends and blows up the cathedral in order to realize and analyze the feelings of an assassin and incendiary. But the Firmilians are rare and monstrous exceptions, and can scarcely occur save in a thoroughly diseased condition of society. The source of the connection in the popular mind of one particular form of immorality with Bohemianism, we have already hinted at. The Bohemian was first taken from the Parisian point of view, and all society taken from that point of view (except perhaps some purely poetic and utopian state), is equally immoral. If Murger's artist tenants have their mistresses the bourgeois landlord (a married man too) has his. This count of the indictment, then, we may summarily dismiss. Drunkenness is another vice charged upon the Bohemian, especially by those who ignorantly or malevolently, confound jollity with drunkenness. Here again the exceptions are constantly made to serve for the rule; a Byron or a Poe is obstinately represented as the type of a whole class. A lot of laughers and quaffers are set down as an orgie, though their potations may be nothing stronger then pale-ale. This much I admit, that your true Bohemian generally has in him a potentiality of drink, not an energy or entelechy constantly acting, but a dynamis (how is our friend T. L., by the way?) enabling him to enjoy his liquor on proper occasions, though most nights he may go home early to his water-gruel (like Sala's example) or tea or orgeat. In teetotalers' eyes the Bohemian is lost and condemned. But we are not writing for teetotalers. Smoking is another vice popularly attributed A modern school of reformers do indeed maintain that drinking and smoking are always excesses; that there is no such thing as temperance in the use of wine and tobacco, all indulgence, however limited, in those articles, being intemperance, and tending to shortern life. Possibly, in a certain sense, they do so tend; and probably the creed of these philosophers was never so pithily summed up as in the advice of Punch's Scotchman to his son: "Wear thick shoes, eat oatmeal porridge, and walk ten miles a day; thus you may live a hundred years, and enjoy the last year as much as the first." The question is, what such a man's life is worth. He can hardly be said to have gelebt und geliebet. One vice, indeed, the Bohemian must have, it is an essential part of his character and definition. He must be normally and habitually in debt. A terrible thing to be in debt, no doubt, and a great theme to moralize on. One's children, and society, and the bad example, and so forth. Unfortunately, it is with some people a natural infirmity, perhaps an hereditary one; men are born to get into debt, and so born Bohemians, as I said. Now here again, if the wise phrenologists could only invent an organ of get-into-debt-iveness-that and philippism, and a great many other propensities stronger than most of those in their charts they have never been able to locate ! Perhaps after all, though, it is as well that these unfortunates cannot be labelled for life beforehand, have hay put on their horns (fonum in cornu), at the risk of being prematurely cut off. Well, go read "Panurge's Apology for Debt," and whileyou are looking for it in your "Rabelais," remember that I don't more than half believe that dogmatic adage about "being just before," etc. I am not by any means sure that it is always better to be just (in the sense implied by the adage) than to be generous. There was Lamartine, one of the real kings of Bohemia, a man certainly not profligate, certainly not idle, but always in pecuniary difficulties. That is a generous man. Now on the other side, take a Jew tailor; he is a just man in the mercantile sense, agrees with his labourers for a penny, or tenpence a day, as the case may be, pays them that which is theirs and does what he likes with his own, as is lawful. Which would you rather, for it; besides, it has received a few touchings be I mean apart from all reference to the former's literary reputation; merely looking at the conscience and feelings of the two menLamartine or the Jew tailor? One point remains, too important to be passed over in silence; the relation of woman to the Bohemian life. It is a delicate question. My own cpinion (which I express with diffidence, and which to some readers will appear not the least novel position in my novel theory) is that women are not fit for Bohemians. They are flowers too delicate for the violent extremes of the Bohemian climate. They can't stand the ups-and-downs. When women have to pass from luxury to privation (positive or comparative), they are in danger either of losing their temper, or of going to the bad altogether. Moreover, it is difficult for a woman, without some loss of delicacy, to be unconventional, very and that is just what a Bohemian is apt to be. Indeed, it is so general a trait of the Bohemian character, that I had at first some thoughts of adding it to the definition, thus: "A Bohemian is a man with literary or artistic tastes, an incurable proclivity to debt, and a strong disbelief in Mrs. Grundy." I fancy women must believe a little in Mrs. Grundy. This unconventionalism is, after all, the crying sin of the Bohemian in many people's eyes, because they vaguely imagine it to include and connote all possible vice. All things considered, I am inclined to think that when a man has the misfortune (for misfortune on some accounts it certainly is) to be a Bohemian born, it is better for him and society that he should light upon a wife of rather anti-Bohemian tendencies to keep his house in order. I am well aware that not only the above opinion, but the whole theory of this essay, may be strongly contested. It may be considered an unfounded pretension on my part to admission among the Knights of the-what table? No table at all, most probably, like the soirée of Murger's hero, where they could only sit down metaphorically. Certainly I do claim to be a Bohemian, as a literary man by profession and (after a fashion) practice, and as never having been out of debt but twice since the age of sixteen. Once I recollect having had a balance at my banker's; they stopped payment immediately after, which I accepted as a judment and a lesson. Nevertheless, if any of your readers refuse to accept my claim or my theory, and cling obstinately to the old pre-conceived type of Bohemian, let me present them with this ballad as a peace-offering in accordance with their own conception of the subject. It has already appeared once in print, but where the un-Bohemian portion of your subscribers would hardly think of going to look up for its new destination. Strike up, fiddlers; Hats off in front, and small boys will please to sit down. Don't be frightened at the rhythm. it goes to an air from Wagner's "Music of the Future:" THE THREE GYPSIES. (From the German of Lenau.) Once I came upon Gypsies three, One in his hands a fiddle had got, The second had a pipe in his mouth; He looked at the smoke, as jolly As if upon earth, from north to south, All else to him was folly. The third one's banjo hung on a tree, The wind o'er its strings was sweeping; A dream swept over his soul, while he Beneath lay cosily sleeping. For clothes the three had around them curled Threefold they showed me, as there they lay, How those who take life in the true sense, Fiddle it, smoke it, and sleep it away, And trebly despise its nuisance. As I went on I had to look back, Watching those curious creatures, Watching their locks of hair, jet black, And their merry dark-brown features. It is worthy of observation, that the most imperious masters over their own servants, are, at the same time, the most abject slaves to the servants of other masters.-Seneca. A winter's evening. Do you know how that comes here among the edges of the mountains that fence in the great Mississippi valley? The sea-breath in the New England States thins the air and bleaches the sky, sucks the vitality out of Nature, I fancy, to put it into the brains of the people but here, the earth every day in the year pulses out through hill or prairie or creek a full, untamed animal life-shakes off the snow too early in spring, in order to put forth untimed and useless blossoms, wasteful of her infinite strength. So when this winter's evening came to a lazy town bedded in the hills that skirt Western Virginia close by the Ohio, it found that the December air, fiercely as it blew the snow-clouds about the hill-tops, was instinct with a vigorous, frosty life, and that the sky above the clouds was not wan and washed-out, as farther North, but massive, holding yet a sensuous yellow languor, the glow of unforgotten autumn days. eve. The very sun, quite certain of where he would soonest meet with gratitude, gave his kindliest good-night smile to the great valley of the West, asleep under the snow: very kind tonight, just as calm and loving, though he knew the most plentiful harvest which the States had yielded that year was one of murdered dead, as he gave to the young, untainted world, that morning, long ago, when God blessed it, and saw that it was good. Because, you see, this was the eve of a more helpful, God-sent day than that, in spite of all the dead: Christmas To-morrow was the birthday of Christ. The sun glowed as cheerily, steadily, on blood as water. Let them fret, and cut each other's throats, if they would. God had them and Christ's day was coming. But one fancied that the earth, not quite so secure in the infinite Love that held her, had learned to doubt, in her six thousand years of hunger, and heard the tidings with a thrill of relief. Was the Helper coming? Was it the true Helper? The very hope, even, gave meaning to the tender rose-blush on the peaks of snow, to the childish sparkle on the grim rivers. They heard and understood. The whole world answered. One man, at least, fancied so: Adam Craig, hobbling down the frozen streets of this oldfashioned town. He thought, rubbing his bouy hands together, that even the wind knew that Christmas was coming-the day that Christ was born: it went shouting boisterously through the great mountain-gorges, its very uncouth soul shaken with gladness. The city itself, he fancied, had caught a new and curious beauty: this winter its mills were stopped, and it had time to clothe the steep streets in spotless snow and icicles; its windows glittered red and cheery out into the early night: it looked just as if the old burgh had done its work, and sat down, like one of its own mill men, to enjoy the evening, with not the cleanest face in the world, to be sure, but with an honest, jolly old heart under all, beating rough and glad and full. That was Adam Craig's fancy: but his head was full of queer fancies under the rusty old brown wig: queer, maybe, yet as pure and childlike as the prophet John's: coming, you know, from the same kinship. Adam had kept his fancies to himself these forty years. A lame old chap, cobbling shoes day by day, fighting the wolf desperately from the door for the sake of orphan brothers and sisters, has not much time to put the meanings God and Nature have for his ignorant soul into words, has he? But the fancies had found utterance for themselves, somehow: in his hatchet-shaped face, even, with its scraggy grey whiskers; in the quick shrewd smile; in the eyes, keen eyes, but childlike, too. In the very shop out there on the creek-bank you could trace them. Adam had cobbled there these twenty years, chewing tobacco and taking snuff (his mother's habit, that), but the little shop was pure: people with brains behind their eyes would know that a clean and delicate soul lived there. They might have known it in other ways too, if they chose: in his gruff, sharp talk, even, full of slang and oaths; for Adam, invoke the devil often as he might, never took the name of Christ or a woman in vain. So his foolish fancies, as he called them, cropped out. must be so, you know: put on what creed you may, call yourself chevalier or Sambo, the speech your soul has held with God and the devil will tell itself in every turn of your head, and jangle of your laugh: you cannot help that. It But it was Christmas eve. Adam took that he drew. Different from any Christmas eve bein with keener enjoyment, in every frosty breath fore: pulling off his scuffed cap to feel the full 66 nor'rer." Whew! how it strength of the blew! straight from the ice-fields of the Pole, he thought. So few people there were up there to be glad of Christmas! But those little dwarfs up there needed Him all the same. Every man of them had a fiend tugging at his soul, like us was lonely, wanting a God to help him, and--a wife to love him. Adam stopped short here a minute, something choking in his throat. "Jinny!" he said, under his breath, turning to some new hope in his heart, with as tender, awestruck a touch as one lays upon a new-born infant. 'Jinny!" praying silently with blurred |