A FAMILY OF POETS*

BARTHÉLEMY TISSEUR, JEAN TISSEUR, CLAIR TISSEUR

I

HERE were at Lyons four brothers, Barthélemy, Jean, Alexander, and Clair Tisseur. Three were poets and the fourth, Alexander, had an acute appreciation of art and poetry. They lived modestly and honoured in their native city. Barthélemy died in 1843. Jean died doing good to others. He was, for forty years, Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of Lyons. Alexander and Clair are still alive. The latter is an architect. He is the best poet of this brilliant family. He has written his brother Jean's life with great simplicity. Jean, in his old age, began the biography of Barthélemy, which was finished by Alexander. These lives of good, obscure men possess an exquisite charm. One breathes in them a fragrance of sympathy, something sweet, pure, and simple, which one misses in the biographies of the illustrious.

*Poésies de Barthélemy Tisseur, Poésies de Jean Tisseur recueillies par ses frères, I vol. Clair Tisseur, Pauca Paucis. See also the volume by M. Paul Mariéton-Joséphin Soulary et la pléiade lyonnaise, 1884 en -18. M. Mariéton has done much for the literature of Lyons.

Souls have a flower which glory effaces. These brotherly narratives touch one by their air of truth, and if occasionally the praise flows rather freely it pleases one to see it thus offered by a pious hand, like a household offering on a tomb. These family records should be more numerous. We should take care to preserve the memories of our familiar dead. It is in them that times and places are faithfully depicted; it is through them that one penetrates into the heart of things human.

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The eldest brother, Barthélemy, was born at Lyons when the Grande Armée was perishing in Russia. He was a child of his age, impetuous and melancholy. All the aspirations of liberal and romantic France swelled his heart. Frail in appearance, small and short-sighted, he bore on his forehead, as a sign, a large vein which grew black in moments of anger. And what angered him was vulgarity, mediocrity, the happy mean"; in short, the ordinary succession of things. He was devoured by a thirst for the Ideal. He longed for the early consummation of the emancipation of the peoples and universal fraternity. He believed in infinite progress. One fine day, in his twentieth year, as he was walking from Aix to the lake of Berre, ardent, generous, drunk with the thyme on the hills and the rays of the sun, he attracted the benevolent attention of a fellow-wayfarer, who was wearing a yellow coat with five capes; a man of substance. The latter, full of astonishment, asked him :

"Are you a merchant?"

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Certainly not," answered Barthélemy. "An artist ?"

"Not that either."

The man in the coat reflected a moment, and then: "You are not an artist. In that case you are a Pole. You need not conceal the fact. I like the Poles."

And he would not abandon the idea. In spite of all denials he insisted on regarding Barthélemy as a Pole.

In a certain sense the man in the coat was right. There was something Polish in Barthélemy Tisseur. There was something Polish in all the youth of those days.

The letters written by Barthélemy to his brothers during the romantic walks of his twentieth year, in Provence, reveal a soul of ardent purity, full of poetry and vagueness. His farewell to the town of Arles, which has been preserved for us, gives one the idea of an adolescent Edgar Quinet:

"Farewell, little valley of Jehoshaphat, soil impregnated with the ashes and tears of humanity, you who unite Rome with the Middle Ages; you whose women are so beautiful, beloved daughter of Constantine, so melancholy under the flaming southern sun, you who, with your ruins and tombs, would be the sublimest theatre of love. Good-bye! good-bye! Aliscamps; sleep on, desolate shades."

While he was at Aix he met a young man with dishevelled hair, a gloomy eye, and an inspired face. It was Victor de Laprade. Naturally, they talked of art and poetry. After a few minutes' conversation they loved each other devotedly. They mingled their enthusiasms; they recited verses. Barthélemy, pale, with flowing locks, no doubt expounded, with artless enthusiasm, his theory of inspiration. He had said:

"Verses are not made; in reality they lie from all eternity, under the eye of God, in the urn of

the absolute; the great poet is he who has a lucky touch, and lights upon good verses; it would be impossible for us or for God himself to mend them."

Laprade probably answered in the accents of a grandiose pantheism. They understood one another. At that period God explained everything. Since then some people have replaced God by protoplasm or the germ-cell. They are quite satisfied. It is a great comfort to change the name of the Unknowable from time to time.

One must do this justice to Barthélemy's relations, that they gave up the idea of turning him into a merchant or a business man. It was resolved to make a lawyer of him, and he was sent to study law in Paris.

The poor boy was very lonely there; a lost orphan. He lived in the Rue des Fossés-SaintVictor, in a room under the roof; but it made his heart beat to think that he was divided from Michelet only by a party wall; and as he rose early, he could see, from his garret, the Pantheon, shining in the morning light, amid an ocean of roofs. A hard worker, he assiduously followed the courses at the law school, and those at the Collège de France, where in those days were heard the seductive voices of the leaders of youth. He frequented a reading-room in the district. It is not stated whether it was that of the good Mme Cardinal. But we may suppose that he there devoured Valentine and Lélia. This establishment was much frequented by students: the whole School of Medicine came to read there. The medical students brought with them arms and legs, which got mixed up on the tables with the books and

papers. Skeletons hung among the umbrellas in all the corners. The mystical Christianity of the young Lyonnais saw in these human remnants the remains of a temple which had been inhabited by a soul, and was disgusted by such profanation. While the students, with their caps over their ears, cracked gruesome jokes, he would murmur the words of Lactantius: Pulcher hymnis Dei homo immortalis. His keenest pleasure was to go to the theatre, and from the pit to applaud Mme Dorval, Bocage or Frédéric. At that period the boards resounded with the groans and sighs of romantic drama, and Barthélemy Tisseur would delightfully devour with his eyes the tears of Katy Bell.

This noble young man was sustained in the sadness and disquietude of his solitary life by the sentiment of admiration which forms the charm and the value of a beautiful youth. One day when he was present at a public sitting of the Five Academies he had the happiness of contemplating his beloved poet, Lamartine. When the meeting broke up he reverently followed in the great man's steps, and later in the evening he wrote radiantly to his brothers of his good fortune.

"At the end of the sitting," he says, " I followed him for half an hour, as far as 73 Rue de GrenelleSaint-Germain, where he entered. He is tall and thin; one hand in his pocket, walking with big strides, confidently and like a horseman, swinging his shoulders a little from left to right. One would have said he had purposely dressed as carelessly as possible for the ceremonious sitting. Many Academicians wore gold-embroidered coats; he wore just a black coat, greyish blue trousers, boots and spurs."