Mademoiselle de Maupin. Theophile Gautier

      We said, before beginning this review of messieurs the critics, that the material would fill fifteen or sixteen folio volumes, but that we would content ourselves with a few lines; I am beginning to fear that those lines will prove to be each two or three thousand fathoms long and will resemble those thick, bulky pamphlets that a cannon-ball would not make a hole through, which bear the perfidious title: "A word concerning the Revolution," a word concerning this or that. The history of the doings of the manifold loves of the goddess Madeleine de Maupin, would run great risk of being elbowed out of the first book, and you will understand that two whole volumes are not too much to sing worthily the adventures of that lovely Bradamante.—That is why, however much we may desire to continue the blazonry of the illustrious Aristarchuses of the age, we will content ourselves with the partial sketch we have drawn, adding a few reflections concerning the good-nature of our easy-going confrères in Apollo, who, as stupid as the Cassander of pantomime, stand still to receive the blows from Harlequin's lath and the clown's kicks in the stern, without budging any more than an idol.

      They resemble a fencing-master, who should fold his arms behind his back during a bout, and receive all his opponent's thrusts in his unprotected breast without attempting a single parry.

      It is like the trial of a cause in which the king's attorney only is allowed to speak, or a debate in which no reply is permitted.

      The critic puts forward this or that theory. He makes a great dash and ostentatious display. Absurd, detestable, monstrous; it resembles nothing, it resembles everything. A drama is produced, the critic goes to see it; he finds that it bears no resemblance to the drama he had constructed in his head on the strength of the title; thereupon he substitutes, in his feuilleton, his own drama for the author's. He interlards it with his erudite phrases; he relieves himself of all the knowledge he has collected the day before in some library, and belabors people to whom he ought to go to school, and the least of whom could teach greater men than he.

      Authors endure this with a magnanimity, a long-suffering which seems to me truly inconceivable. After all is said and done, who are these critics whose tone is so cutting, whose words are so peremptory, that one would say they were veritable sons of the gods? they are simply men who were our school-fellows, and who have evidently profited less by their studies than we, since they have produced nothing and can do nothing but befoul and spoil the work of others like genuine Stymphalian vampires.

      Would it not be worth while to criticise the critics? for those disgruntled great men, who are so fond of playing the magnificent and the fastidious, are far from being infallible like the Holy Father. There would be matter enough to fill a daily newspaper of the largest size. Their errors, historical or otherwise, their distorted quotations, their mistakes in grammar, their plagiarism, their drivel, their oft-repeated, ill-bred jests, their paucity of ideas, their lack of intelligence and tact, their ignorance of the simplest things which leads them to mistake the Piræus for a man and Monsieur Delaroche for a painter, would furnish authors with ample material for vengeance, without other labor than that of drawing a line under the passages and reproducing them word for word; for one does not receive a commission as a great writer with a commission as critic, and to reproach others for errors in language or taste is not enough to ensure one against making them himself; our critics prove it every day.—If Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and other men of that stamp should become critics, I could understand that people might go down on their knees and worship them; but that Messieurs Z. K. Y. V. Q. X., or any other letter of the alphabet between Alpha and Omega, should set themselves up as little Quintilians and scold you in the name of morality and good literature—that is what always disgusts me and sends me into an unparalleled rage. I would like to have a police ordinance issued prohibiting certain names from attacking certain others. To be sure, a cat may look at a king, and Saint-Peter's at Rome, giant that it is, cannot prevent the Transteverins from defiling its base in strange fashion; but I do not believe, nevertheless, that it would be a bad idea to inscribe upon certain monumental reputations:

      NO FILTH DEPOSITED HERE.

      Charles X. alone understood the question. By ordering the suppression of newspapers he conferred a great service upon the arts and civilization. Newspapers are in a certain sense courtiers or jobbers, who interpose between artists and public, between king and people. We know the fine things that resulted therefrom. This perpetual barking and snarling benumbs inspiration and causes such a feeling of distrust in the heart and mind, that no one dares place his confidence either in a poet or in a government; the result being that royalty and poesy, the two greatest things in the world, become impossible, to the great detriment of the people, who sacrifice their well-being to the paltry pleasure of reading every morning a few vile sheets printed on vile paper, besmeared with vile ink, and filled with vile stuff. There was no criticism of art under Julius II., and I never heard of any feuilleton on the subject of Daniel de Volterra, Sebastiano del Piombo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Ghiberti della Porta, or Benvenuto Cellini; and yet I think that, for people who had no newspapers, who did not know the word art or the word artistic, they had a fair share of talent and acquitted themselves reasonably well at their trade. The reading of newspapers hinders the growth of genuine scholars and genuine artists; it is like daily dissipation that brings you, enervated and weak, to the bed of the Muses, those harsh, exacting damsels who will have none but fresh and lusty lovers. The newspaper kills the book, as the book has killed architecture, as artillery has killed physical courage and muscular strength. No one realizes the pleasures that the newspapers deprive us of. They strip everything of its virginity; they prevent us from having anything of our own, even from owning a book all by ourselves; they deprive us of the pleasure of being surprised at the theatre by telling us beforehand how every play ends; they deprive us of the pleasure of spreading idle gossip and tittle-tattle and slander, of inventing false news or peddling genuine news for a whole week through every salon in society. They drone ready-made opinions to us, do what we will, and warn us against things we might like; by their means, dealers in phosphorous matches, although they have poor memories, discuss literature as impertinently as provincial academicians; by their means we hear, all day long, in place of artless opinions or individual nonsense, ill-digested fragments of newspapers, which resemble omelets half cooked on one side and burned on the other—and we are pitilessly stuffed with news three or four hours old, which children at the breast already know; they deaden our taste, they make us like those people who drink spiced brandy, and those who swallow lemons and grape-stalks, and lose the flavor of the most generous wines and cannot appreciate their delicate, perfumed bouquet. If Louis-Philippe should suppress all literary and political journals once for all, I should be infinitely grateful to him and I would dash off on the spot a fine, rambling dithyramb, in soaring verse with alternate rhymes; signed: "Your most humble and loyal subject," etc. Pray do not imagine that there would be no further interest in literature; in the days when there were no newspapers, a quatrain engrossed all Paris for a week, and a first performance for six months.

      It is true that this step would result in the loss of advertisements and puffs at thirty sous a line, and notoriety would be less sudden and less overwhelming. But I have thought out a very ingenious way of replacing advertisements. If, between now and the day when this magnificent novel is placed on sale, my gracious sovereign shall have suppressed the newspapers, I shall most assuredly make use of it, and I anticipate wonders therefrom. When the great day arrives, twenty-four mounted criers, in the livery of Renduel, with his address on their backs and breasts, carrying banners in their hands with the title of the novel embroidered on both sides, each preceded by a drummer and kettle-drummer, will ride through the city, and, halting on all the squares and corners, will shout in a loud, distinct voice: "To-day, not yesterday or to-morrow, is placed on sale the admirable, the inimitable, the divine and more than divine novel by the most illustrious Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin, which Europe, not to mention other parts of the world and Polynesia, has been awaiting so impatiently for a year and more. It is selling at the rate of five hundred a minute, and editions follow one another from half-hour to half-hour; the nineteenth is already on sale. A detachment of municipal guards is stationed at the door of the shop, holding back the crowd and preventing all confusion." Surely that would be worth as much as three lines in the Débats or the Courrier Français, between advertisements of elastic belts, hoop-skirts, nursing-bottles with indestructible teats, Regnault paste, and remedies for fluor albus.