The Contributors' Club

IT is early summer when those vegetable imitations of flying orthoptera, the winged seeds of the red maple, are sent abroad by the parent tree. With these my dooryard is sometimes so thickly strewn as to suggest by their ripe color that autumn has joined hands with spring, and summer has been dropped from the seasons’ dance. Not so very long after this fall of seeds, little trees start up everywhere about the yards and the borders of the streets. Any one who sympathizes with the masses and an overcrowded population must pity these younglings of the maple tribe, which, with the whole wide earth around them, obtain so little room and opportunity for life. Out of the hundreds that spring up in early summer, perhaps not one sees the autumn. Whether their life has been in vain is a fit question for the sentimentalist to decide. One such tender tree I remember, which died young, either because the gods loved it, or because they sought to punish the pride I had in its possession. My Roof-Free I called it. I do not think there was another such in the whole village, — lor I took some pains to look at my neighbors’ roofs, to see whether the same honor had been bestowed upon them.

It was one morning after a plentiful rain, when the shingles of the roof showed a pleasing mossiness, that I discovered a maple seedling growing from a crevice close to the eaves-trough. It had already passed its first infancy, the plumule had unfolded, and a pair of jaunty, delicately notched leaves balanced each other on the stem. It leaned forward slightly, and seemed to nod a good-morning, or an assurance that it had the house and its inmates under faithful watch and ward, as became the character of a good roof-tree. Afterwards, no day of its brief life passed but some agreeable speculation was suggested by this half-span sapling. It even hinted that one might have a hanging garden as remarkable in its way as the hanging gardens of Babylon. Tree-culture on one’s own roof would be a taking novelty. The eaves-trough, — might it not be turned to account as a river, upon whose rich alluvial banks various kinds of quick tropical growths might be induced to take up their residence ? At night, too, I could not help noticing the attitude of quiet ecstasy which my little roof-tree maintained, outlined as it was against the moonlit sky. More than once I suspected that Hop and Drop, and Sib and Tib, and the rest of that ilk, were tripping it featly under those two fairy leaves, while mortals slept none the less soundly. Jack’s bean-stalk shrunk into total insignificance beside this tree of the roof, by which one’s fancies could so easily climb into heaven. But alas for my airy expectations ! Under the good shade of the tree which produced it, the seedling flourished for a time ; but when the fiercer heats of summer came on, the two brave leaves were crisped brown, the stem withered away, and soon nothing remained of my rooftree. True, it was no great shelter, yet for some reason I could ill afford to spare it.

— The recent marriages of two of our countrywomen — one to a prince of the house of Colonna, and the other to the Comte de Fitzjames—lead one to review the list of American women who have wedded foreigners of rank, real or imagined. Of course in these late instances there can be no uncertainty; the one is too modern and the other too ancient for any mistakes. Few princely families, however, are so well known as the Colonnas and the remnant of the Stewarts. One is sometimes at a loss to divine the glamour in names which, even if provided with more than one “ handle,” are neither historical nor famous. It is fair to our young countrywomen to suppose that their first motive in marrying is love, and in some cases romantic notions suggest love. Those notions have gone out of fashion, yet many a girl in her secret heart still cherishes a vision of a lover, with dark eyes and mustache, who sings or rides, who is a soldier, who has a pretty Christian name or a fine title. The attraction of the last often rests on the belief that noble blood possesses good and generous qualities, which only reach perfection by long transmission ; there are proverbs to that effect and heraldic mottoes which proclaim it. We respect an illusion like this as much as the dream of love in a cottage, if there be an American girl alive who still dreams of that. But to provide as far as possible against disappointment, our young ladies would do well to be certain that their titled suitors really inherit their name and its moral entail.

To begin with, good lineage does not always go with rank, and there are plenty of titles in England which have as little connection with it as Lord Chancellor or Lord Mayor. Burke’s Vicissitudes of Noble Families relates the loss of station and final extinction which have overtaken some of the finest breeds that came to England with William the Conqueror, and the transfer of their titles to very inferior stock. The ups and downs of the line of Percy are a lesson ; for although we may believe with Galton and others that hereditary merit comes through the mother, the chivalric quality seems impaired when it passes to the distaff under the name of Smithsou. Prince Dolgourouki’s little book on the noble families of Russia contains curious facts about bedizened patronymics ending in off and iev, not to be found in the Velvet Book, or among the companions of Rurik. The haughty old Tartar frequently suppresses the genealogy of an upstart prince by saying that he respects himself and his readers too much to refer to the origin of this family. Polish nobility is the most fallacious order in Europe. In a nation consisting of but two castes, the noble and the serf, in which everybody not sprung from the former is descended from the latter, the possessor of the most heroic name may be a coarse, illiterate, indigent peasant, or the highest title may rightfully belong to a gentleman who lives by his wits. Moreover, a country which, for over a century, has had no autonomy, no court, no centres of society, no entity in short, cannot give vouchers for the legitimacy of her children or of their pretensions.

Italian and Spanish rank is often accepted as a guarantee of good blood, because in those countries a father generally transmits his title to all his sons. But although nowhere is a claim to high extraction so severely tested as among Spanish grandees, even at the fountainhead of blue blood, the appellation of prince, duke, marquis, etc., is bestowed at the royal pleasure on men whose family names are not more distinguished than Brown, Jones, or Robinson. In Italy the papacy has been the great mint of titles. A Pope’s immediate forbears might have been fishermen or swineherds, yet his sons and nephews almost invariably become princes, with fortunes to maintain their rank ; political reasons would induce the patrician families of Rome and Venice, or even the reigning houses of other countries, to form matrimonial alliances with them, and thus establish them on a footing of apparent equality. But it was not necessary to be a pontiff’s kinsman to receive a title from him ; in recent times, a certain Pope, after making a little journey through the province in which he was born, ennobled every family in his own district.

France is the country into which hitherto our young ladies have most frequently married, so that the antiquity of her nobility is specially interesting to us. In the first place, strictly speaking, there is no longer such a class in France, but as titles are still in use they have their value. The French themselves have long been concerned in this matter. The Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy, a spurious autobiography, but composed of authentic documents, gives a catalogue of the old French families extant at the time of the Revolution, by which it can be seen that several of the most ancient had already died out. The Revolution, besides exterminating some of the remaining ones, passed its bloody hand over all patents of nobility, and abolished titles of every sort; the further to humble those who owned them, and take away their very identity, sometimes after the confiscation of property the former owners were compelled to keep the name of an estate, and drop a family name more illustrious than any rank, — as though the son of Prince Doria should be forced to call himself Valmontone, without a title, and forbidden to use the name of Doria. There was wholesale destruction of the archives and monuments recording the titles and pedigrees of ancient lines, sometimes intentionally, though more often accidentally, when the castles, religious houses, or town halls in which they were kept were burned or razed. Napoleon, on making himself Emperor, created an aristocracy to reflect his pomp, and distributed the nicknames of prince and duke among men of the most plebeian origin and surname. The old French titles were not renewed or recognized. Such of their representatives as had fought for their country under Napoleon were not rewarded by being reinstated in their hereditary rank; a different and usually lower title was conferred upon them, that they too might recollect that they owed everything to the new Cæsar.

At the Restoration, although the old nobility was allowed to resume its former designations, policy did not admit of doing away with Napoleon’s hierarchy. The Dukes of Bassano, Piacenza, etc., retained their stage names and properties, and when their less eminent comrades obtained the favor of Louis XVIII., or married some daughter of a feudal race, the sham titles of the First Empire were exchanged for genuine ones, and the offspring of these unions gave themselves the airs of descendants of crusaders. Bourbons and Orleans alike continued to create new nobles ; Louis Philippe, the citizen king, condescended to make an Englishman Due de Stackpole.

The long expatriation of the surviving émigrés, or of their children, favored all sorts of impostures. The Tichborne case has shown how easy it would be to maintain a false claim if nobody had an interest in disputing it; and there are stories of more than one clever servant who appropriated the papers and personal effects of a master who had died obscurely in exile, returned to France after a quarter of a century’s absence, personated him, and received his possessions and titles. This fraud was successfully perpetrated by the footman of an old lady of quality, who had died abroad. The impudent varlet came back disguised as a woman, under his late mistress’s name, and obtained from the government a pension and a lodging at Versailles, which in those days was an asylum for persons of good position, as Hampton Court and Kensington Palace now are. The parchments of so many families having perished, and the government heralds’ offices having been abolished, made it difficult to establish or disprove a claim. The rage for rank, which seems inherent in human nature, prompted people to grab at a title wherever they could lay hands upon one : a man who had no nearer claim to being a count than his great aunt’s having been a countess wore his honors with angry contempt of those whose coronets had come brand new from the king. Then the Second Empire arose, with a new crop of dignitaries, so that a man was termed a noble of yesterday or the day before yesterday, according as he owed his rank to the first or second of the preceding dynasties. One of Louis Philippe’s batch, on hearing of Louis Napoleon’s latest novelty, exclaimed, “ Why, then I belong to the ancienne noblesse ! ”

It is easy to fancy the confusion that ensued. Even the claim to gentle birth lost its significance; people who had not the luck or wit to obtain a title adopted the prefix de, called in France the particute nobiliaire, and generally accepted as a sign of good blood. Sometimes it was taken merely for identification by men of mark with common surnames, who adopted the name of their native town, like the great lawyer Michel de Bourges, or the sculptor David d’Angers. But more often the introduction of a de, or d with an apostrophe, if the surname began with a vowel, was an assumption of gentility.

The doubts which rest on these and similar pretensions are older than the Revolution. As early as the Valois kings, titles were conferred in recognition of military service ; this honorable recompense of merit, which gave lustre to rank, was soon extended to persons who advanced money in time of war or other public need. By degrees, according privileges of nobility became an indirect mode of replenishing the royal exchequer through a tax paid on the assumption of a title, and ruined noblemen were not slow in resorting to the same expedient for bettering their affairs. These last bartered not their estates only, but their titles, which, even if they could not legally be borne by the purchaser, could pass to his grandson ; but this formality was commuted on the payment of a sum to the crown. Several French kings attempted to check the base growth which was supplanting the finest genealogical trees of the kingdom: edicts were issued by Louis XIV. and Louis XV. to establish all existing titles by compelling the possessors to prove their claims, fines being imposed for usurpation. But the abuse had already gone too far, and had taken root in custom; it soon sprang up in new directions. The nobles propagated it by intermarriage with the daughters of rich and often most ignoble commoners, a proceeding which they insolently termed manuring their lands; after a few generations the inheritance would occasionally slip over to collateral branches on the female side, carrying title and pedigree with it. Ancestors who had fought under Henri IV., or bowed before Louis XIV., must sometimes have turned in their graves at the posterity foisted upon them. At last came the Revolution with its axe, and more than one foolish head paid the penalty for having worn a borrowed coronet. Thus flourished the Empire, the Restoration, and the Second Empire, with their successive batches of fictitious princes and dukes, counts and grafts of old titles on new stocks, until the sower could not have separated the tares from the wheat. The most notorious instance of our times was Louis Napoleon’s granting the splendid name of Montmorenci, which had lately become extinct, to a person whom nothing could justify in bearing it. This imposition was resisted, and resented by duels and blackballing; but the new owner has held fast to his ill-gotten distinction, although not long ago he was obliged to defend it by a letter in the Figaro, a quasi-comic, quasi-religious newspaper of immense circulation in France.

But the opposition is dying out, and au undisputed title or patronymic soon becomes as bard to contest as an established right of way. After a few decades hardly anybody outside of France will remember that the Montmorencis are interlopers. In France itself, the families who rightfully bear the old names and wear the old crests, and not a few of those who strut in borrowed plumes, will always know whose claims are genuine and whose spurious, and the new-comers are the sharper to repel intruders. So our young ladies, before committing themselves, should be careful to ascertain whether they are to accept the name and style of an aristocrat or of an upstart. They may be sure that a fraudulent title will not give them the place in foreign society which belongs to a real one. Even the modest particule nobiliaire, if arbitrarily prefixed, sounds as absurdly as O’Robinson, McJones, or ap-Brown would to Irish, Scotch, or Welsh ears. It is safer to marry men who have made their own name and position : a lady whose husband is called simply M. Waddington or M. Alexandre Ribot finds her place ready for her. But if our girls desire merely to style themselves marchioness or countess, like the servants in high life below stairs, or to use a coronet upon their note-paper, the fac-simile of a tinsel one answers such purposes.

— M. Jean Gigoux, the painter, lithographer, and illustrator, has recently published a volume of souvenirs entitled Causeries sur les Artistes de Mon Temps. It is one of the most gossipy and interesting books of reminiscences that have been written in this century, so rich in memoirs and recollections of all kinds. For the information of the reader, and in order to complete the lacuna which the author’s modesty has caused him to leave in his volume, it may be said that M. Jean Gigoux is a veteran, who was born at Besançon in 1809, came to Paris in 1827, and has remained there ever since, in close relations of friendship with all the literary, artistic, and political celebrities of the times. He first became famous as a lithographer: his illustration of Gil Blas, consisting of six hundred vignettes, has made the edition of 1835 famous in the annals of bibliophilism ; his large historical paintings, the Death of Leonardo, the Good Samaritan, Antony and Cleopatra after the Battle of Actium, the Capture of Ghent, etc., figure with honor in the museums of the Luxembourg, of Versailles, and of his native town of Besançon, while still vaster compositions adorn different churches in Paris. In the way of official recompenses M. Gigoux has achieved all that ambition can desire ; and the esteem in which he has been held by his contemporaries will doubtless be ratified by posterity.

M. Gigoux was very intimate with Eugène Delacroix, the mighty colorist. No one, he tells us, was more familiar with the antique and a more conscientious student from nature than Delacroix. He was not a tranquil artist ; he was always seeking that which no master can teach, and which is yet the most striking thing in a picture, namely, life. He wanted life everywhere and at any price, — in the landscape, in the sky, around his figures. All the rest was, in his eyes, secondary. He used to work with furious energy; dashing in a patch of light here and there, trying to render the plashing of water, the movement of horses, the scintillation of light on armor, — “ l’impression, encore l’impression, toujours l’impression ! ” Then, finally, when the picture was exhibited, the public and the critics cried out, ‘‘What a daub ! Why, it is not finished ! The shading is not graduated ! ” Delacroix’s sketches were often clumsy; but if he could devote a little time to them, his drawings became charming. M. Gigoux is the happy possessor of three hundred examples, — figures from life, as finished as the finest miniatures, and many drawings from the terra-cotta figurines of Tanagra. One day, while looking over the collection in the author’s studio, M. Bonnat said that these drawings were, in his opinion, as fine as those of the greatest of the great masters. And yet, the morning of the opening of the Salon, Delacroix was obliged to announce to his friend Gigoux that the jury of the Salon had refused each one of the seventeen pictures which he had sent in ! All these seventeen canvases have since appeared in public auctions, and the prices paid for them have varied between 40,000 and 45,000 fr.!

Here is an anecdote which shows that the life of literary men in the reign of Napoleon III. was not altogether a blissful career. Théophile Gautier told Gigoux one morning, as they were going off to breakfast in the country, that he had received the visit of a gentleman, who had said to him, “ I know you are now writing an article on the début of Mlle. X. I hope that, whatever your opinion of her may be, you will speak favorably of her ; in the contrary case, the pension on the civil list which you at present enjoy will be withdrawn.”

Of M. Thiers, whose collection, bequeathed by will to the Louvre, is now the laughing-stock of the habitués of the museum and the despair of the curators, M. Jean Gigoux has several anecdotes to tell. The two were frequently neighbors at the auction sales at the Hôtel Drouot. About 1858, M. Thiers became a passionate collector of prints, for which he used to pay the wildest prices at the Hôtel Drouot. This went on for some time, but M. Thiers never was able to appreciate the differences between proofs and “ states,” and finally he sold out his collection at a considerable loss. Then he conceived a new mania, — that of having made at Florence water-color copies from the old masters. At the present moment these ridiculous works are hung up on the walls of two rooms in the Louvre, much to the disgust of the curators and of the public. In vain M. Gigoux sought to dissuade M. Thiers from carrying out this idea, telling him that necessarily the novices charged with making the copies did not see what was in the originals. “ These beautiful works were made by great men, and he who copies them does not see them ; he looks at them, it is true, but, I repeat, he does not see them.” “ That is sufficient,” replied M. Thiers crossly ; “ they are good enough for me.”

As a lithographer, M. Jean Gigoux could not fail to lament in his Causeries the disappearance of his art. He asks justly why the masterpieces of lithography are not yet represented in the Louvre. “The lithographs of Raffet and those of Français after Rousseau, for instance, are, I venture to affirm, superior to the etchings of Ruysdaël and of the ancients. Certainly, it is impossible for this fine art to be entirely lost; it is too important for painters. Why was it not known in the time of Raphael, of Titian, or of Correggio, or of Jean Van Eyck ! Those beautiful drawings on stone reproducing the work of all these great men would be inestimable.”

Corot, Troyon, Fromentin, Jules Jacquemart, Bosio, Ingres, Courbet, Pradier, Gavarni, Daumier, etc., — all the famous names of the century come under M. Gigoux’s notice in the course of his chatty volume, and he always has some new anecdote to give of the famous men and immortal artists who were all more or less his friends and comrades.

— There seems to be a strong tendency in modern art to turn to the Orient for instruction and inspiration. A genius for wonderfully delicate and exquisite architectural forms and a passionate love of color, joined with an unerring taste in its use, are among the most striking characteristics of the Persian and Arabian workman, and we do well simply to stand and learn of him. Yes, we must even humble ourselves still more, and acknowledge that this is not the first time that the dying art of the West has received new life from the East. Long ago, when Western art, as represented in the Roman centres of civilization, was growing stiff and dry, the lucky removal of the Emperor to Constantinople brought about the perfection of the dome and the development of mosaic decoration.

The Persians’ power of expression was not confined to the arts of painting and sculpture, however. In their literature also we find the same love of vivid coloring, the same subtlety and suggestiveness, and the same wonderful genius for form. So when Constantine threw wide open the doors of the Orient, it was not the new art alone which came over to Italy, with

but also all the glow and warmth of Eastern legends and songs. The tales of Boccaccio, the sonnets of Petrarch, the Jerusalem of Tasso, the Divine Comedy of Dante, will all bear witness to the debt of Italian literature to that of Persia.

To these great Italian sources we can trace back much of Chaucer, Shakespeare,and Milton. Indirectly, therefore, English literature, also, is indebted to the Orient. During the classical revival in England, however, we find little, if any, of the daring fancy and epigrammatic wit of Persia and Arabia. It is not till the romantic renaissance in the days of Byron, Shelley, and Keats that the debt is renewed, and the “ balance of trade” has been in favor of the East ever since. In America, too, we have a noble example of the influence of Persian culture. It has been well said that Mr. Emerson had a Persian head on Yankee shoulders. His philosophy shows a quickness of insight, a power of condensation, an aptness of illustration, which is essentially Persian ; indeed, we know that he himself acknowledged his deep gratitude to Oriental thinkers.

There is one lesson in the arts, however, which the English race do not seem to have learned of Persian teachers, and that is the skillful handling of poetical form. We have imitated all the elaborate contortions of the troubadours and of the wandering singers of Provençal ; we have written sonnets, and rondeaus, and villanelles, and ballades, but we have never thought of turning to Persia for poetical forms. Yet is it not likely that a people who had such a perfect taste in architectural proportions should have had an equally flue taste in poetry ?

This question occurred to our cousins, the Germans, nearly three quarters of a century ago, and they have answered it very satisfactorily. They discovered that the favorite form in Persian poetry was the so-called ghazel, which may be described briefly as follows : —

The poem may be written in any metre, and may be anywhere from four to sixteen or seventeen lines long. The first couplet is rhymed; then comes an unrhymed line ; next a line rhyming with the first couplet, then another unrhymed line; next another line rhyming with the first couplet, then another unrhymed line; and so on, every alternate line after the first couplet being unrhymed, and only one rhyme being used throughout. This form, when short, is used for apothegms; when long, for drinking and love songs; and a more melodious poem than a properly written ghazel it is impossible to find.

The Germans claim that they have completely mastered the ghazel, and identified it with their poetry. A few instances will show that they are fully justified in their claim. It would take a more skillful hand than mine to translate them into English. The first, an instance of the shorter form, in which a

single thought is expressed, is by von Platen; the second, a love-song, by Leuthold ; and the third, a ghazel on the ghazel, by Rückert.

I.

II.

III.

These are the usual forms of the ghazel. It will be noticed that the rhymes in all these instances are complex, or, as they are called in German, long, rich rhymes. This is not required, but lends greatly to the musical effect.

There is another form, used both in Persian and in German, in which one long poem is made up of a series of ghazels of four lines each, a new rhyme beginning each ghazel. In this form the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, which is now so familiar to English readers through Mr. Fitzgerald’s admirable translation and Mr. Vedder’s beautiful drawings, was written. Mr. Fitzgerald has been wonderfully successful in retaining the original versification. Recall any of those delicious verses which hold their place so tenaciously in the memory : —

There are other variations, too, but as they are German inventions, not to be found in Persian poetry, we may pass them by.

The first German who attempted to nationalize the ghazel was Goethe, in his West-Eastern Divan; but he rarely succeeds in carrying it beyond four or five lines, and even in this short space often introduces unwarrantable variations. Still, here, as in so many other fields, it is to Goethe’s first fruitful suggestion that we owe the splendid final result in the masterpieces of Friedrich Rückert, who made the greatest and most successful use of this beautiful form, and thoroughly incorporated it into German poetry. Yet, strange to say, few great poets have followed his example ; we may count them on the fingers of one hand. Immediately after Rüekert, as a master of the ghazel, comes von Platen ; his successor was the brilliant Heinrich Leuthold, of melancholy memory.

There is another Persian, or rather Arabian, form, called the makame, of which, I am sorry to say, I have not sufficient knowledge to speak with any authority ; and, if I had, I am sure there would be enough to fill another paper on that subject alone.

The very name is tempting: makame means market-place; hence a tale told in a market-place. What an Eastern picture of gay booths, red-fezzed Turks and white-robed Egyptians, gray donkeys and brown camels, it brings before our inward eye ! But with this unsubstantial pageant I have thus far had to rest content. I only know that the matter of this form of poem may be epic, or parable, or even pun ; in any case the utmost splendor of language must be used. The principal artist in the makame form was the Arabian singer Alchariri (1054-1122), who wrote a long story called The Wanderings of Abu Seid. Abu Seid is a sort of Till Eulenspiegel, or Falstaff, whose many vices and trickeries we excuse on account of their frank cleverness and exquisite good humor. The makame was introduced into German by Rückert.

The only modern German poet who uses the makame with skill and musical effect is Leopold Jacoby, a socialistic writer, who was exiled from Germany on account of the radical opinions expressed in his work, Es Werde Licht.

The first attempt that has been made thus far to engraft these Persian forms on English literature is the translation of the Rubáiyát, before mentioned, and it is sincerely to be desired that the ghazel and the makame may tempt the study of our rising young English and American singers at least equally with the French forms revived so successfully by Dobson and Lang