Barber, Poet, Philanthropistt
S >>
Samuel Smiles >> Barber, Poet, Philanthropistt
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
After mentioning the golden laurels, and the gifts awarded to
him by those who acknowledged his genius, the editor proceeds to
mention his poems in the Gascon dialect--his Souvenirs his
Blind Girl and his Franconnette--and then refers to his
personal appearance. "Jasmin is handsome in person, with eyes
full of intelligence, of good features, a mobility of expression
absolutely electrifying, a manly figure and an agreeable address;
but his voice is harmony itself, and its changes have an effect
seldom experienced on or off the stage. The melody attributed
to Mrs. Jordan seems to approach it nearest. Had he been an
actor instead of a poet, he would have 'won all hearts his
way'... On the whole, considering the spirit, taste, pathos, and
power of this poet, who writes in a patois hitherto confined to
the lower class of people in a remote district--considering the
effect that his verses have made among educated persons, both
French and foreign, it is impossible not to look upon him as
one of the remarkable characters of his age, and to award him,
as the city of Clemence Isaure has done, the Golden Laurel,
as the first of the revived Troubadours, destined perhaps to
rescue his country from the reproach of having buried her poetry
in the graves of Alain Chartier and Charles of Orleans,
four centuries ago."
It is probable that this article in the Athenaeum was written by
Miss Louisa Stuart Costello, who had had an interview with the
poet, in his house at Agen, some years before. While making her
tour through Auvergne and Languedoc in 1840,[2] she states that
she picked up three charming ballads, and was not aware that
they had ever been printed. She wrote them down merely by ear,
and afterwards translated Me cal Mouri into English (see page
57). The ballad was very popular, and was set to music. She did
not then know the name of the composer, but when she ascertained
that the poet was "one Jasmin of Agen," she resolved to go out
of her way and call upon him, when on her journey to the
Pyrenees about two years later.[3] She had already heard much
about him before she arrived, as he was regarded in Gascony as
"the greatest poet in modern times." She had no difficulty in
finding his shop at the entrance to the Promenade du Gravier,
with the lines in large gold letters, "Jasmin, Coiffeur"
Miss Costello entered, and was welcomed by a smiling dark-eyed
woman, who informed her that her husband was busy at that moment
dressing a customer's hair, but begged that she would walk into
his parlour at the back of the shop. Madame Jasmin took
advantage of her husband's absence to exhibit the memorials
which he had received for his gratuitous services on behalf of
the public. There was the golden laurel from the city of
Toulouse; the golden cup from the citizens of Auch, the gold
watch with chain and seals from "Le Roi" Louis Philippe, the ring
presented by the Duke of Orleans, the pearl pin from the Duchess,
the fine service of linen presented by the citizens of Pau,
with other offerings from persons of distinction.
At last Jasmin himself appeared, having dressed his customer's
hair. Miss Costello describes his manner as well-bred and
lively, and his language as free and unembarrassed. He said,
however, that he was ill, and too hoarse to read. He spoke in a
broad Gascon accent, very rapidly and even eloquently. He told
the story of his difficulties and successes; how his grandfather
had been a beggar, and all his family very poor, but that now he
was as rich as he desired to be. His son, he said, was placed in
a good position at Nantes, and he exhibited his picture with
pride. Miss Costello told him that she had seen his name
mentioned in an English Review. Jasmin said the review had been
sent to him by Lord Durham, who had paid him a visit; and then
Miss Costello spoke of Me cal Mouri, as the first poem of his
that she had seen. "Oh," said he, "that little song is not my
best composition: it was merely my first."
His heart was now touched. He immediately forgot his hoarseness,
and proceeded to read some passages from his poems. "If I were
only well," said he, "and you would give me the pleasure of your
company for some time, I would kill you with weeping: I would
make you die with distress for my poor Margarido, my pretty
Franconnette." He then took up two copies of his Las Papillotos,
handed one to Miss Costello, where the translation was given in
French, and read from the other in Gascon.
"He began," says the lady, "in a rich soft voice, and as we
advanced we found ourselves carried away by the spell of his
enthusiasm. His eyes swam in tears; he became pale and red;
he trembled; he recovered himself; his face was now joyous,
now exulting, gay, jocose; in fact, he was twenty actors in one;
he rang the changes from Rachel to Bouffe; and he finished by
relieving us of our tears, and overwhelming us with astonishment.
He would have been a treasure on the stage; for he is still,
though his youth is past, remarkably good-looking and striking;
with black, sparkling eyes of intense expression; a fine ruddy
complexion; a countenance of wondrous mobility; a good figure,
and action full of fire and grace: he has handsome hands,
which he uses with infinite effect; and on the whole he is the
best actor of the kind I ever saw. I could now quite understand
what a Troubadour or jongleur he might be; and I look upon Jasmin
as a revived specimen of that extinct race."
Miss Costello proceeded on her journey to Bearn and the Pyrenees,
and on her return northwards she again renewed her acquaintance
with Jasmin and his dark-eyed wife. "I did not expect," she
says, "that I should be recognised; but the moment I entered the
little shop I was hailed as an old friend. 'Ah' cried Jasmin,
'enfin la voila encore!' I could not but be flattered by this
recollection, but soon found that it was less on my own account
that I was thus welcomed, than because circumstances had occurred
to the poet that I might perhaps explain. He produced several
French newspapers, in which he pointed out to me an article
headed 'Jasmin a Londres,' being a translation of certain notices
of himself which had appeared in a leading English literary
journal the Athenaeum .... I enjoyed his surprise, while I
informed him that I knew who was the reviewer and translator; and
explained the reason for the verses giving pleasure in an English
dress, to the superior simplicity of the English language over
modern French, for which he had a great contempt, as unfitted for
lyrical composition.[4] He inquired of me respecting Burns,
to whom he had been likened, and begged me to tell him something
about Moore.
"He had a thousand things to tell me; in particular, that he had
only the day before received a letter from the Duchess of
Orleans, informing him that she had ordered a medal of her late
husband to be struck, the first of which should be sent to him.
He also announced the agreeable news of the King having granted
him a pension of a thousand francs. He smiled and wept by turns
as he told all this; and declared that, much as he was elated at
the possession of a sum which made him a rich man for life
(though it was only equal to 42 sterling), the kindness of the
Duchess gratified him still more.
"He then made us sit down while he read us two new poems; both
charming, and full of grace and naivete; and one very affecting,
being an address to the King, alluding, to the death of his son.
"As he read, his wife stood by, and fearing that we did not
comprehend the language, she made a remark to that effect, to
which he answered impatiently, 'Nonsense! don't you see they are
in tears?' This was unanswerable; we were allowed to hear the
poem to the end, and I certainly never listened to anything more
feelingly and energetically delivered.
"We had much conversation, for he was anxious to detain us; and
in the course of it, he told me that he had been by some accused
of vanity. 'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'what would you have? I am a
child of nature, and cannot conceal my feelings; the only
difference between me and a man of refinement is, that he knows
how to conceal his vanity and exaltation at success, while I let
everybody see my emotions.'
"His wife drew me aside, and asked my opinion as to how much
money it would cost to pay Jasmin's expenses, if he undertook a
journey to England. 'However,' she added, 'I dare say he need be
at no charge, for of course your Queen has read that article in
his favour, and knows his merit. She probably will send for him,
pay all the expenses of his journey, and give him great fetes in
London!" Miss Costello, knowing the difficulty of obtaining
Royal recognition of literary merit in England, unless it
appears in forma pauperis, advised the barber-poet to wait till
he was sent for--a very good advice, for then it would be never!
She concludes her recollections with this remark: "I left the
happy pair, promising to let them know the effect that the
translation of Jasmin's poetry produced in the Royal mind.
Indeed, their earnest simplicity was really entertaining."
A contributor to the Westminster Review[5] also gave a very
favourable notice of Jasmin and his poetry, which, he said, was
less known in England than it deserved to be; nor was it well
known in France since he wrote in a patois. Yet he had been
well received by some of the most illustrious men in the capital,
where unaided genius, to be successful, must be genius indeed;
and there the Gascon bard had acquired for himself a fame of
which any man might well be proud.
The reviewer said that the Gascon patois was peculiarly
expressive and heart-touching, and in the South it was held in
universal honour. Jasmin, he continued, is what Burns was to the
Scottish peasantry; only he received his honours in his lifetime.
The comparison with Burns, however, was not appropriate.
Burns had more pith, vigour, variety, and passion, than Jasmin
who was more of a descriptive writer. In some respects Jasmin
resembled Allan Ramsay, a barber and periwig-maker, like himself,
whose Gentle Shepherd met with as great a success as Jasmin's
Franconnette. Jasmin, however, was the greater poet of the two.
The reviewer in the Westminster, who had seen Jasmin at Agen,
goes on to speak of the honours he had received in the South and
at Paris--his recitations in the little room behind his shop
--his personal appearance, his hearty and simple manners--and
yet his disdain of the mock modesty it would be affectation to
assume. The reviewer thus concludes: "From the first
prepossessing, he gains upon you every moment; and when he is
fairly launched into the recital of one of his poems, his rich
voice does full justice to the harmonious Gascon. The animation
and feeling he displays becomes contagious. Your admiration
kindles, and you become involved in his ardour. You forget the
little room in which he recites; you altogether forget the
barber, and rise with him into a superior world, an experience
in a way you will never forget, the power exercised by a true
poet when pouring forth his living thoughts in his own verses....
"Such is Jasmin--lively in imagination, warm in temperament,
humorous, playful, easily made happy, easily softened,
enthusiastically fond of his province, of its heroes, of its
scenery, of its language, and of its manners. He is every inch a
Gascon, except that he has none of that consequential
self-importance, or of the love of boasting and exaggeration,
which, falsely or not, is said to characterise his countrymen.
"Born of the people, and following a humble trade, he is proud
of both circumstances; his poems are full of allusions to his
calling; and without ever uttering a word in disparagment of
other classes, he everywhere sings the praises of his own.
He stands by his order. It is from it he draws his poetry;
it is there he finds his romance.
"And this is his great charm, as it is his chief distinction.
He invests virtue, however lowly, with the dignity that belongs
to it. He rewards merit, however obscure, with its due honour.
Whatever is true or beautiful or good, finds from him an
immediate sympathy. The true is never rejected by him because it
is commonplace; nor the beautiful because it is everyday; nor
the good because it is not also great. He calls nothing unclean
but vice and crime, He sees meanness in nothing but in the sham,
the affectation, and the spangles of outward show.
"But while it is in exalting lowly excellence that Jasmin takes
especial delight, he is not blind, as some are, to excellence in
high places. All he seeks is the sterling and the real.
He recognises the sparkle of the diamond as well as that of the
dewdrop. But he will not look upon paste.
"He is thus pre-eminently the poet of nature; not, be it
understood, of inanimate nature only, but of nature also, as it
exists in our thoughts, and words, and acts of nature as it is
to be found living and moving in humanity. But we cannot paint
him so well as he paints himself. We well remember how, in his
little shop at Agen, he described to us what he believed to be
characteristic of his poetry; and we find in a letter from him
to M. Leonce de Lavergne the substance of what he then said to
us:
"'I believe,' he said, 'that I have portrayed a part of the
noble sentiments which men and women may experience here below.
I believe that I have emancipated myself more than anyone has
ever done from every school, and I have placed myself in more
direct communication with nature. My poetry comes from my heart.
I have taken my pictures from around me in the most humble
conditions of men; and I have done for my native language all
that I could.'"
A few years later Mr. Angus B. Reach, a well-known author,
and a contributor to Punch in its earlier days, was appointed a
commissioner by the Morning Chronicle to visit, for industrial
purposes, the districts in the South of France. His reports
appeared in the Chronicle; but in 1852, Mr. Reach published a
fuller account of his journeys in a volume entitled 'Claret and
Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone.'[6] In passing through
the South of France, Mr. Reach stopped at Agen. "One of my
objects," he says, "was to pay a literary visit to a very
remarkable man--Jasmin, the peasant-poet of Provence and
Languedoc--the 'Last of the Troubadours,' as, with more truth
than is generally to be found in ad captandum designations, he
terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers;
for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the patois of
the people, and that patois is the still almost unaltered Langue
d'Oc--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore.
"But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely
availing himself of the tongue of the menestrels. He publishes,
certainly, conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate
modern times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations
of his poems. Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly
of perhaps a couple of thousand persons--the hot-blooded and
quick-brained children of the South--the modern Troubadour
plunges over head and ears into his lays, evoking both himself
and his applauding audiences into fits of enthusiasm and
excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry,
an Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for.
"The raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind
are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has
received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit to Auch,
the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of
their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them
in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the
local papers next morning assured him, in floods of flattering
epigrams, that humble as he was now, future ages would
acknowledge the 'divinity' of a Jasmin!
There is a feature, however, about these recitations which is
still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of popular
enthusiasm which they produce. His last entertainment before I
saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities, and produced
2,000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public charities;
Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a
species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted,
chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to
exhibit for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him.
"After, perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France,
delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many
thousands of francs into every poor-box which he passes,
the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to
the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil
as a barber and hair-dresser. It will be generally admitted that
the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as
this, is no ordinary poetaster.
"One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and
absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer
downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of
Quixotism mingled with and tinging the pure fervour of the
enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon
whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no
means so scrupulous. 'Largesse' was a very prominent word in
their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to assign any
satisfactory reason for a man refusing to live upon the exercise
of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for
his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery.
"Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was
speedily directed to his abode, near the open Place of the town,
and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few
moments I found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest
shop inscribed Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur des jeunes Gens.
A little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and looking
through the glass I saw the master of the establishment shaving
a fat-faced neighbour. Now I had come to see and pay my
compliments to a poet, and there did appear to me to be
something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having
to address, to some extent, in a literary and complimentary
vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic
and unelevated a species of performance.
"I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until the
shop was clear. Three words explained the nature of my visit,
and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which
was very peculiar and very charming; dashing at once, with the
most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a
sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and the
patois of it, spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in
particular.
"Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man of about fifty,
with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead,
overhanging two piercingly bright black-eyes, and features which
would be heavy, were they allowed a moment's repose from the
continual play of the facial muscles, sending a never-ending
series of varying expressions across the dark, swarthy visage.
Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp
his individuality.
"The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all
the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating,
conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented
upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to
despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. 'God only made four Frenchmen
poets,' he burst out with, 'and their names are, Corneille,
Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!'
"Talking with the most impassioned vehemence, and the most
redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the
influences of civilisation upon language and manners as being
fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed
upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far
removed from cities, salons, and the clash and din of social
influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants,
who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished
to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true.
"Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature,
and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the
bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very
French language. You could no more write poetry in French now
than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been
licked and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified,
and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--
(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets
he used)--and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined--until,
for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere
unavailable and contemptible jargon.
"It might do for cheating agents de change on the Bourse--
for squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies
in the salons--for the sarcasm of Scribe-ish comedies, or the
coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces, but for poetry the
French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were
faiseurs de phrase--thinking about words and not feelings.
'No, no,' my Troubadour continued, 'to write poetry, you must get
the language of a rural people--a language talked among fields,
and trees, and by rivers and mountains--a language never
minced or disfigured by academies and dictionary-makers,
and journalists; you must have a language like that which your
own Burns, whom I read of in Chateaubriand, used; or like the
brave, old, mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with
the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms and odd solemn
words, full of shifting meanings and associations, at once
pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful--the language which
I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating
men of science or jack-a-dandy litterateurs.' "The above
sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which
Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing from every pore in his
body--so rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of
them. Warming more and more as he went on, he began to sketch
the outlines of his favourite pieces. Every now and then
plunging into recitation, jumping from French into patois,
and from patois into French, and sometimes spluttering them out,
mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he
rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old
chests and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews,
pointing out a passage here in which the estimate of the writer
pleased him, a passage there which showed how perfectly the
critic had mistaken the scope of his poetic philosophy, and
exclaiming, with the most perfect naivete, how mortifying it was
for men of original and profound genius to be misconceived and
misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of journalists.
"There was one review of his works, published in a London
'Recueil,' as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great
pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the
preface to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the
highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic,
he said, wrote in the Tintinum, and he looked dubiously at me
when I confessed that I had never heard of the organ in question.
'Pourtant,' he said, 'je vous le ferai voir,' and I soon
perceived that Jasmin's Tintinum was no other than the Athenaeum!
"In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the
poet speedily introduced me, his sister [it must have been his
wife], a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left him,
following as he moved with a beautiful expression of love and
pride in his glory, received me with simple cordiality. The
walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and
trophies, awarded by critics and distinguished persons, literary
and political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are
of a nature to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin
possesses gold and silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes,
medals of honour, and a whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed
with such characteristic and laconiclegends as 'Au Poete, Les
Jeunes filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes!' &c.
"The number of garlands of immortelles, wreaths of ivy-jasmin
(punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such
tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative
remembrance. One was given by the ladies of such a town; another
was the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department.
A handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by
the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter from M.
Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the writer's
belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the
modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of
Honour, and has several valuable presents which were made to him
by the late ex-king and different members of the Orleans family.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19