A biting satirical piece by Octave Mirbeau (1899) lamenting the death of Georges Galapiat and the decline of Parisian boulevard culture. This sharp social critique captures the bohemian spirit of Belle Époque France through witty anecdotes and the recurring lament ‘Poor France!
This week they buried Georges Galapiat at Montmartre—practically on the sly.
Georges Galapiat!
The chroniclers—the real ones, oh yes, the genuine article!—those few remaining chroniclers will tell you that an entire era has vanished with Georges Galapiat. True, he had never achieved the fame of Gustave Claudin at the Café Riche. Yet he had kept alive those traditions which now—on the Boulevard, the Boulevard!—have lost their last defender…
Poor France!
Georges Galapiat! At heart, he was a wretched soul who had had a go at everything—painting, writing, advertising, commission work—and who had been by turns street hawker, photographer, music-hall singer and possibly police informant, before deciding one fine day, fed up with his rotten luck, that he would simply pack it all in. Thus he had tumbled from the dodgiest bohemia into the most abject poverty. Living off God knows what, sleeping God knows where, he would vanish for months at a time, then suddenly reappear sporting jackets too short, trousers too long, and blazing cravats, only to disappear again for years. Always cheerful, mind you, and patriotic as they come, and despite his motley wardrobe, ever faithful to his long greasy locks and broad felt hats. But don’t you dare joke with him about the great principles of morality. Oh no! Slovenly, clownish, rolling from one bit of filth to another, probably a pimp, certainly a drunk, and a thief when needs must—he belonged to that grand party which Louis Veuillot, in his vengeful irony, dubbed “the Respectable Folk.” He was also one of those prehistoric specimens, those extinct zoological forms who would still regale you—with what verbose enthusiasm!—with tales of Roqueplan, Villemot, Albert Wolff and Villemessant! Nor could he be stopped on the subjects of Adèle Courtois and Monsieur Lockroy… When the anecdote-spouting, inexhaustible Galapiat ran into us after years of absence, he would always say, whilst sipping his absinthe:
“Ah, what a brilliant time that was! People knew how to talk then, how to be magnificently mad! Rochefort, Alphonse Duchesne, Carjat, and our old Pathey! Proper blokes they were, not like today’s lot! I’m telling you, mate, I knew La Barucci! Swear to God! Now there was a woman! Fantasy, lyricism and love, like something out of Banville! And those orgiastic, Borgian gatherings at the Grand-Seize! And Lockroy! You’ve no idea what Lockroy was like, the intellectual influence he had on the youth of the day! And his wit! Oh, his wit! Like fireworks, crackling and popping—the tiniest spark could set off rockets, Catherine wheels and Roman candles! His articles? Christ, mate, they’d have you in stitches… And beneath all that unbridled, explosive but good-natured laughter, there was a tough philosophy, I tell you! I remember one of his pieces in Le Figaro—go and see if they write anything like it today—where, to stick it to the Empire, he wrote: ‘Given a four-pound loaf, calculate the size of the baker’s wife’s toes…’ Eh? That’s genius for you! But you had to live through those times to grasp all the hidden, symbolic beauty… And since the navy was already on his mind in those jolly, robust days, he ended his piece with this full-throttle charge against the omnipotence of high command: ‘Given the height of a ship’s masts and the number of its cannons, calculate the length of the admiral’s sideburns!’ Now that was proper stuff, a sort of mathematical literature… No wonder the Empire fell under such withering wit! What can you do? Today, with press freedom, there’s no finesse in writing, no style, nothing! And Monselet, old boy? You never knew him? And Roqueplan? And Dinochau? Finished, dead, gone! Now it’s all Nietzsche, Schopenhauer… And today’s gods? Flaubert, Renan… Bloody bores! Ah! Poor France!”
For he pitied France greatly. And all his stories, all his memories, all his aesthetic, literary, political and social discussions invariably ended with that painful exclamation:
“Poor France! Ah, poor France!”
What he most lamented about France was that she had suddenly become sad, sad and dreary. She no longer knew how to enjoy herself, and that was the great evil, the great poison… Sad, thinking peoples are defeated peoples from the start… A people must be able, he said, to pass gaily from a burst of laughter to a burst of shrapnel… But today, no one laughs, and no one fights!
“Ah! Poor France!”
A few months ago, I ran into him on the Boulevard de Clichy. He was terribly old and broken, but his soul remained firm in its ancient beliefs. I took him to a little café and ordered him an absinthe—his last absinthe:
“You know,” he said, “I spent four years at Couture’s studio. Ah, those were the days! My whole youth, really! An enthusiastic youth, passionate, believing… And the dreams I dreamt there! Dreams of glory, fortune, love! All the dreams! Would you believe, I’d learned to copy The Wedding at Cana, by the sublime Veronese… And I’d got so good at it, those blessed Wedding at Cana, that I could knock off five exact copies a week in my room, without a model, just like that… I’d sell them for ten francs to a picture dealer in the Rue Lepic… I can still see him, tiny and very fat, with a short grey beard and dark glasses. His name was… well, I’ve forgotten… And he’d say: ‘Ah! Monsieur Galapiat, you’re a great artist… Your Wedding at Cana, you see, I can never get enough of them… They’re much better than Monsieur Fantin’s…’ Yes, I think I could have been a great artist!”
He swallowed a gulp of absinthe and said, shaking his long grey hair:
“But let’s not dwell on that! The past is past… In remembering my years at Couture’s studio, I just wanted to tell you an anecdote that speaks volumes about the state of mind, the ideals of an ardent youth, full of faith and joy, who understood that it’s not in German philosophy and degenerate arts that a people’s soul is forged… Listen… I was living then, very near here, on the fifth floor of a house that’s since been demolished. For everything disappears—ideas, characters, traditions and houses… Ah! Poor France! I was living with a friend you might have known, Francis Luberlu—a great soul, you know! Need I tell you that Luberlu is dead… What would he do in these sad, sceptical times? Above us lived an old lady with her maid… She had a balcony, and on the balcony, a bowl with three goldfish… One Sunday when the old lady had gone to mass with her maid, Luberlu said to me: ‘We must fish for the goldfish… we’ll fry them and put them back in the bowl… Won’t the old lady’s face be a picture! Brilliant!’ Using a string with a bent pin baited with a bit of bread, we fished out the goldfish… After frying them, we religiously returned them to the bowl… When the old lady came back and saw her dear fish completely fried, she flew into a rage at her maid: ‘I told you to bring them in!’ she screamed. ‘You see the sun has fried them!’ Then she sacked her maid and wept like a fountain for the rest of the day… That’s how we were, old boy… Whereas today… Oh dear me… Poor France! Ah! Poor France!”
And he asked for a second absinthe…
1899.
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Léon Hennique Novel 