Everybody was struck with his great faculty of observation, with his powerful gift of satire, with his implacable and just irony that penetrated so deeply humanity's ridiculous side.
A well-informed and free mind, to which social conventions were nothing but falsehood and servility, a generous and clear-sighted soul, which, instead of bending under the humiliating level of prejudice, bravely directed its impulses toward a pure and elevated social ideal.
At least so Victor Charrigaud was described to me by one of his friends, a painter, who was stuck on me, and whom I used sometimes to go to see, and from whom I got the opinions just expressed and the details that are to follow regarding the literature and the life of this illustrious man.
Among the ridiculous things that Charrigaud had lashed so severely, there was none that he had treated so harshly as snobbishness.
In his lively conversation, well supported by facts, even more than in his books, he branded its moral cowardice and its intellectual barrenness with a bitter precision in the picturesque, a comprehensive and merciless philosophy, and sharp, profound, terrible words, which, taken up by some and passed on by others, were repeated at the four corners of Paris, and at once became classics, in a way.
A complete and astonishing psychology of snobbishness is contained in the impressions, the traits, the concise profiles, the strangely-outlined and life-like silhouettes, of which this prodigal and never-wearying originality was an ever-flowing source.
It seems, then, that, if any one should have escaped that sort of moral influenza which rages so violently in the salons, it was Victor Charrigaud, better protected than anybody else against contagion by that admirable antiseptic—irony.
But man is nothing but surprise, contradiction, incoherence, and folly.
Scarcely had he felt the first caresses of success, when the snob that was in him—and that was the reason why he was able to paint the snob with such force of expression—revealed itself, exploded, one might say, like an engine that has just received an electric shock.
He began by dropping those friends that had become embarrassing or compromising, keeping only those who, some by their recognized talent, others by their position in the press, could be useful to him, and bolster his young fame by their persistent puffery.
At the same time he made dress and fashion a subject of most careful consideration.
He was seen in frock coats of an audacious Philippism, wearing collars and cravats of the style of 1830 much exaggerated, velvet waistcoats of irresistible cut, and showy jewels; and he took from metal cases, inlaid with too precious stones, cigarettes sumptuously rolled in gilt paper.
But, heavy of limb and awkward of movement, he retained, in spite of everything, the unwieldy gait of the Auvergne peasants, his compatriots.
Too new in a too sudden elegance in which he did not feel at home, in vain did he study himself and the most perfect models of Parisian style; he could not acquire that ease, that supple, delicate, and upright line which he saw in the young swells at the clubs, at the race-courses, at the theatres, and at the restaurants, and which he envied them with a most violent hatred.
It astonished him, for, after all, he patronized only the most select furnishing houses, the most famous tailors, memorable shirt-makers, and what shoemakers! what shoemakers!
Examining himself in the glass, he threw insults at himself, in his despair.
"In vain do I cover myself with velvets, silks, and satin; I always look like a boor.
There is always something that is not natural."
As for Madame Charrigaud, who previously had dressed very simply and with discreet taste, she, too, sported showy and stunning costumes, with hair too red, jewels too big, silks too rich, giving her the air of a laundry queen, the majesty of a Mardi-Gras empress. They made a great deal of sport of her, sometimes cruelly.
Old comrades, at once humiliated and delighted by so much luxury and so much bad taste, avenged themselves by saying jestingly of this poor Victor Charrigaud:
"Really, for an ironist, he has no luck."
Thanks to fortunate manoeuvres, incessant diplomacy, and more incessant platitudes, they were received into what they called—they too—real society, in the houses of Jewish bankers, Venezuelan dukes, and vagrant arch-dukes, and in the houses of very old ladies, crazed over literature, panderism, and the Academy.
They thought of nothing but cultivating and developing these new relations, and of acquiring others more desirable and more difficult of attainment,—others, others, and always others.
One day, to free himself from an obligation which he had stupidly assumed by accepting an invitation to the house of a friend who was not a conspicuous personage, but whom he was not yet ready to drop, Charrigaud wrote him the following letter:
My Dear Old Friend:
We are disconsolate.
Excuse us for not keeping our promise for Monday.
But we have just received, for that very day, an invitation to dine at the Rothschilds.
It is the first.
You understand that we cannot refuse. It would be disastrous.
Fortunately, I know your heart. Far from being angry with us, I am sure that you will share our joy and our pride.
Another day he was telling of the purchase that he had just made of a villa at Deauville:
"I really don't know for whom these people took us.
They undoubtedly took us for journalists, for Bohemians.
But I quickly let them see that I had a notary."
Gradually he eliminated all that remained of the friends of his youth,—those friends whose simple presence in his house was a constant and disagreeable reminder of the past, and a confession of that stain, of that social inferiority,—literature and labor.
And he contrived also to extinguish the flames that sometimes kindled in his brain, and to finally stifle that cursed wit whose sudden revival on certain occasions it frightened him to feel, supposing it to be dead forever.
Then, it was no longer enough for him to be received in the houses of others; he desired, in turn, to receive others in his own house.
His occupancy of a residence of some pretension, which he had just bought in Auteuil, was made the pretext for a dinner.
I entered their service at the time when the Charrigauds had at last resolved to give this dinner.
Not one of those private dinners, gay and without pose, such as they had been in the habit of giving, and which for some years had made their house so charming, but a really elegant, really solemn dinner, a stiff and chilly dinner, a select dinner, to which should be ceremoniously invited, together with some correct celebrities of literature and art, some society personalities, not too difficult to reach, not too regularly established, but sufficiently decorative to shed a little of their brilliancy upon their hosts.
"For the difficult thing," said Victor Charrigaud, "is not to dine in the city, but to give a dinner at home."
After thinking over the plan for a long time, Victor Charrigaud made this proposition:
"Well, I have it.
I think that at first we can have only divorced women—with their lovers.
We must begin somewhere.
There are some who are very suitable, and whom the most Catholic newspapers speak of with admiration.
Later, when our connections shall have become more extensive, and at the same time more select,—why, we can let the divorced people slide."
"You are right," approved Mme. Charrigaud.
"For the moment, the important thing is to get the best people among those who are divorced.