A biting satire by Octave Mirbeau exposing the hypocrisy of French high society through the story of a penniless journalist who writes society columns under aristocratic pseudonyms. Sharp wit and social criticism from 1901.
Yesterday I read an admirable article in Le Gaulois, amongst others… This admirable piece, which could have been penned by M. Costa de Beauregard, M. Albert Vandal or M. Frédéric Febvre, was devoted to the Comédie-Française, naturally, and it explained—oh! so melancholically—it explained “for reasons not yet articulated” the profound causes of its former grandeur and present-day decline… You know how everything’s in decline these days, except of course Le Gaulois, the nobility who read it, and the old regular who writes for it. For this article I speak of so enthusiastically is signed—you have guessed it already—”An Old Regular”. Naturally, this old regular is an old regular of Le Gaulois, that goes without saying, and also an old regular of the Comédie-Française… So he is a terribly smart chap, doubly smart, one of those old clubmen so elegant, so intelligent, so vieille France, the sort Sem sketches with his joyful ferocity, his tragically joyful ferocity… I can see him from here, this old regular… And seeing him thus… ah! how he makes me pine for all the splendours of fallen regimes!
Oh! oh! he is an old regular!
Is he truly a terribly smart chap, this old regular?… Here I find myself full of doubts and hesitations. With newspapers, even newspapers of such perfect decorum as Le Gaulois, one never knows what to make of these old regulars… And they would have some jolly surprises, those devoted readers—for there are devoted readers too—if they could see the odd types who usually hide behind those troubling masks of “old regular”, “old academician”, “old general”, “old jurist”, “old senator”, who pop up from time to time during great Parisian events to recount their memories and regrets in the papers.
I remember—how sadly I remember!—a poor devil who was actually the kindest and most touching fellow on earth… For more than fifteen years he had been writing the society gossip for this same Gaulois, along with all the sensational studies and special articles that high society could warrant in such a correct and strict journal, so professionally strict. This good fellow, dead now, wasn’t terribly rich… let’s be blunt, he was terribly poor, so poor he didn’t even own evening dress… not that he needed to appear in society—one didn’t ask so much of a society informant—but when he called at certain duchesses’ servants’ halls or certain barons’ stables, he didn’t want to appear inferior to the livery. You can imagine how painfully ironic his poverty made his sumptuous duties… Barely clothed, dressed in disparate cast-offs acquired here and there, lodging in wretched furnished rooms, not always eating his fill, deprived more than anyone of all the joys, all the pleasures, all the festivities he celebrated so passionately, he signed himself, upon my word… if I remember correctly… he signed himself Lauzun, unless it was Brummel… And on occasions requiring more social psychology in more retrospective anecdotes, when his personality needed more polish and more mysterious gravity, then he didn’t hesitate to sign: “An Old Regular” or “A Dowager”, etc. He quickly exhausted, in well-heeled pseudonyms, all the pompous signatures and slang sobriquets that nobility, clubs, theatres, tennis, polo, salons, boudoirs—boudoirs!—in short, elegant life, could furnish him with… Ah! what splendid articles they were!… With what superb disdain he would say: “Our elegances!” You should have seen the vengeful bitterness with which he accused the Republic of “having decapitated our elegances”! And what pitiless mockery of the ill-cut trousers, the pedants’ frock coats, the inharmonious cravats of “the new classes”! For him, to say republican was to say ragamuffin, beggar, hooligan… Ah! our elegances… our elegances! Where were they?… And he would intoxicate himself with powder, perfumes, diamonds, lace, bare shoulders… With impeccable rigour, he codified men’s dress, the hats, the boots, the shirtfronts… He described the succulence of tables, the sumptuousness of stables, the furnishing of salons… After which, he would go off to dine at the brasserie… and sadly, facing a beer on a greasy table, he would swallow a sauerkraut that the proprietor’s pity inscribed on slates rarely wiped clean.
And I don’t know why I remembered this poor devil in connection with Le Gaulois‘s old regular. These memories came back to me whilst reading the article I mentioned. And I was reading this article aloud whilst my valet moved about the room. Sometimes François would interrupt my reading with a shrug or burst of laughter. When I reached this passage:
“What then is or was this style which, not for years but for more than two centuries, was or still is that of the Comédie-Française, and which is so difficult to replace, or even seriously modify, so completely have style and setting always been one? It is, in few words, but words that must all be carefully weighed, what good society likes to hear at home.”
François couldn’t contain himself: “Oh blimey!…” he exclaimed… “Well, that’s a good one!” “What is it, François?… What’s got into you?” “But sir, if people went to the Théâtre-Français to hear what’s said in good society… well! that would be something!… no thank you!…” “Come now, François!…” “But sir, I know good society, I do… and I know it inside out, if I may say so… And that’s why I’m shrugging my shoulders… and crying: ‘Oh blimey!’ But sir, they’d close a theatre where the actors talked like good society… It would be too filthy!… Come on!…”
And he explained: “Look here, sir… last year, I was still in service with the Countess de F… You can’t say that’s not good society… It’s the ne plus ultra of the type… There’s none better… Well, sir!… you should hear her in private… She can’t say three words without shouting: ‘Shit!’ Absolutely!… She’s pretty… she’s got diamonds… airs and graces… exquisite dresses… delicious eyes… everything you could want… Yes, but she shouts: ‘Shit!’ Now… can you imagine that at the Théâtre-Français?… The audience’s faces, sir!…”
And, slapping his thigh, he added with a snigger: “No!… really!… what ideas! I’m killing myself laughing!… Good society!… I know all about it… I’ve always been in it!…”
And, pointing to the newspaper that had fallen from my hands, he said again: “But where on earth has he been in service, that one?…”
1901.
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