Imaginary Lives / Preface by Marcel Schwob

 

IMAGINARY LIVES

PREFACE

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Prólogo

The science of history leaves us uncertain as to individuals, revealing only those points by which individuals have been attached to generalities. History tells us that Napoleon was ill on the day of Waterloo; that we must attribute Newton’s excessive intellectuality to the absolute consistency of his temperament; that Alexander was drunk when he killed Klitos; and that the fistula of Louis XIV was perhaps the cause of certain of his resolutions. Pascal speculates on the length of Cleopatra's nose... the possible consequences had it been a trifle shorter; and on the grain of sand in Cromwell’s urethra. All these facts are valued only when they modify events or alter a series of events. They are causes, established or possible. We must leave them to savants.

Nicolas Loyseleue by Marcel Schwob

 

NICOLAS LOYSELEUE

Judge

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Nicolás Loyseur

Born on Ascension Day, he was dedicated to the Virgin, whose aid he invoked at all times during his life until he could not hear her name without his eyes would fill with tears. He was first schooled by a lean man in a little loft on the rue Saint-Jacques, where, after learning his psalms, donats and penitences with three other children, he laboriously acquired the logic of Okam. He soon became bachelor and master of the arts, for the venerable instructors found his gentle nature charmingly unctuous, as sweet words of adoration slipped easily from his fat lips. No sooner had he obtained his baccalaureate than the Church had its eye on him. He served first in the diocese of the Bishop of Beauvais who recognized his talent, using it to inform the English before Chartres how certain French captains were deploying. When he was about thirty-five years old they made him a canon of the Cathedral of Rouen, where he struck up a friendship with another canon and chorister, Jean Bruillot, with whom he psalmed fine litanies in honor of Mary. 

Walter Kennedy by Marcel Schwob

 

Walter Kennedy

WALTER KENNEDY

Unlettered Pirate 

by Walter Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Walter Kennedy

Captain Kennedy was an Irishman. He could neither read nor write. Under the great Roberts he rose to the lieutenant grade by merit of his talent for torture. He was perfection itself at the art of tightening a cord around a prisoner’s brow until his eyes popped out, or of tickling his face with a flaming palm leaf. When Darby Mullin was tried for treason aboard the Corsaire Captain Kennedy’s reputation became assured. Seated in a semicircle behind the wheel house, the judges assembled with their long tobacco pipes around a bowl of punch. Then the process began. They were about to vote the verdict when someone suggested another pipe before concluding the business. Kennedy rose, drew his clay from his pocket, spat and delivered himself of the following sentiments: 

William Phips by Marcel Schwob

 

Illustration by George Barbier

WILLIAM PHIPS

Treasure Hunter

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / William Phips

Marcel Schwob / William Phips

WILLIAM PHIPS William Phips was bom in 1651 near the mouth of the Kennebec River and those forests from which the shipbuilders cut their lumber. In a Maine village, poor and small, he dreamed his dreams of fortune hunting and adventure for the first time. There, in the sight of ships and makers of ships, the shifting, changing light from the New England seas brought to his eyes a gleam of sunken gold—a gleam of silver buried beneath the sands. Wealth was out there under the sea, he believed, and he wanted it. He learned shipbuilding, earned a small stake, journeyed to Boston. Strong in his faith, he repeated this prophecy: “Some day I’ll command a king’s ship and own a fine brick house on Green Street.” 

Sufrah by Marcel Schwob

 

Sufrah
Illustration by George Barbier

S U F R A H

Geomancer

by Marcel Shwob

Marcel Schwob / Sufrah

The story of Aladdin is in error when it tells how the African magician was poisoned in his palace and how his body, burned black by the drug, was thrown to the dogs and cats. His brother was so deceived by these appearances that he stabbed himself after donning the robes of the blessed Fatima, but it is nevertheless certain that Moghrabi Sufrah (for that was the magician’s name) only slept under the influence of the powerful narcotic. He escaped through one of the twenty-four windows of the great hall while Aladdin was tenderly embracing the princess. 

Gabriel Spenser by Marcel Schwob

Gabriel Spenser
George Barbier

GABRIEL SPENSER

Actor

By Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Gabriel Spenser

Marcel Schwob / Gabriel Spenser

His mother was a woman named Flum who had a little basement in Piked-Hatch at the end of Rotton-Row. After supper a captain with brass rings on his fingers used to come to see her, along with two gallants in loosened doublets. Flum lodged three girls named Poll, Doll and Moll, and none of them could stand the smell of tobacco. Frequently when they retired to the rooms above, the polite gentlemen would accompany them after first taking a glass of Spanish wine to wash away the taste of their pipes. Little Gabriel used to sit on the hearth watching them roast apples to put in their ale-pots. Actors of all sorts came there too—actors who dared not show themselves in the big taverns where the famous entertainers went. Some of them boasted in the grand manner, others stuttered like idiots. They often played with Gabriel, teaching him tragic verse and rustic jokes, and once they gave him a scrap of giltfringed crimson drapery with a velvet mask and an old wooden dagger. Then he paraded up and down all alone in front of the fireplace until his mother’s triple chins shook in a quiver of admiration for her precocious child. 

Cecco Angiolero by Marcel Schwob

 

Cecco Angiolieri

CECCO ANGIOLIERI

Poet of Hate

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Cecco Angiolieri

Marcel Schwob / Cecco Angiolieri

Cecco Angiolieri was born hateful. His birth at Sienna coincided to the very day with the birth of Dante Alaghieri at Florence. Cecco’s father was a rich wool merchant whose sympathies inclined toward the empire. From his earliest childhood the boy muttered scornful, jealous things against his sire. In those days many of the nobles had reached a point where they were no longer willing to serve the Pope, the Ghibellines having already rebelled while even the Guelphes were divided into factions designated as the Whites and the Blacks. Imperial intervention was not distasteful to the Whites, but the Blacks remained staunchly loyal to Rome and the Holy See. Cecco felt instinctively Black, perhaps because his father was a White. 

Major Stede-Bonnet by Marcel Schwob

Stede-Bonnet

MAJOR STEDE-BONNET

Pirate by Fancy

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / El mayor Stede Bonnet

Major Stede-Bonnet was a gentleman and a retired soldier living on his plantation in the Barbadoes in the year 1715. His fields of sugar-cane and coffee brought him a good income, and he had the pleasure of smoking tobacco he himself had cultivated. He had been unhappily married, for his wife, it was said, had driven him slightly mad, though his aberrations were only mild ones until after the quarantine. At first, his servants and neighbors humored them as mere childish fancies. 

Captain Kidd by Marcel Schwob

 

Captain Kidd
Illustration by George Barbier

CAPTAIN KIDD

Pirate

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / El capitán Kidd

How this pirate came by the name of Kidd is not altogether clear. The act through which William the Third of Eng¬ land granted him his commission of the Adventure in 1695 began with these words: “To our faithful and well loved captain, William Kidd, commander . . . greetings.” Certainly from that time on it was a name of war. In battle or maneuver some say he always had the elegant habit of wearing delicate kid gloves with revers of Flanders lace. Others declare he would cry out during his worst butcheries: “Me?—why, I’m as meek and mild as a new-born kid!” Still others there are who say he stored his treasure in sacks made from the skins of young goats, the custom dating from the time he pillaged a ship laden with quicksilver, emptying a thousand bags of this metal which remain buried even now on the slopes of a little hill in the Barbadoes. It is enough to know that his black silk flag was blazoned with a death’s head and the head of a goat, and his seal graven with the same emblems. Some who have hunted the numerous treasures Kidd buried in Asia and America have driven a little goat before them, thinking it would bleat if it crossed the Captain’s path, but no one has ever found his hidden gold. Guided by Gabriel Loff, one of Kidd’s old sailors, Blackbeard himself searched the dunes where Fort Providence now stands, finding no more than a few traces of quick silver oozing up through the sand. All this digging has been useless, for Kidd himself told how his secrets would remain eternally undiscovered because of the “man with the bloody bucket.” He was haunted by this man all his life, and his treasures have been haunted and defended by him ever since. 

Burke and Hare by Marcel Schwob

BURKE AND HARE

Assassins

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Mm. Burke et Hare

Marcel Schwob / Los señores Burke y Hare

Mr. William Burke rose from the meanest obscurity to eternal renown. Born in Ireland, he started life as a shoemaker, later practicing his trade for several years in Edinburgh where he made the acquaint¬ ance of Mr. Hare, on whom he had the greatest influence. In the collaboration of Messrs. Burke and Hare the inventive and analytic powers belonged, no doubt, to Mr. Burke, but their two names remain inseparable in art, as inseparable as the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. Together they lived, together they worked and they were finally taken together. Mr. Hare never protested against the popular favor particularly attached to the person of Mr. Burke.

Cyril Tourneur by Marcel Schwob

 

Illustration by William Blake

CYRIL TOURNEUR

Tragic Poet

by Marcel Schowb

Marcel Schwob / Cyril Tourneur

Marcel Schwob / Cyril Tourneur

Cyril Tourneur was born out of the union of an unknown god with a prostitute. Proof enough of his divine origin has been found in the herioc atheism to which he suc¬ cumbed. From his mother he inherited the instinct for revolt and luxury, the fear of death, the thrill of passion and the hate of kings. His father bequeathed him his de¬ sire for a crown, his pride of power and his joy of creating. To him both parents handed down their taste for nocturnal things, for a red glare in the night, and for blood. 

Katherine The Lacemaker by Marcel Schwob

 

KATHERINE THE LACEMAKER

Girl of the Streets

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Katherine la dentellière

Marcel Schwob / Katherine la encajera

She was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, in the rue de la Parcheminerie near the rue Saint-Jacques, during a winter so cold that wolves ran over Paris on the snow. An old woman with a red nose under her hood took Katherine in and brought her up. At first she played in the doorways with Perrenette, Guillemette, Ysabeau and Jehanneton, who wore little petticoats and gathered icicles, chilling their small red fists in the icy gutters. They would watch the neighborhood boys whistle at passers-by from the tables of the SaintMerry tavern. Under open sheds they saw buckets of tripe, long fat sausages and big iron hooks from which the butchers hung quarters of meat near Saint-Benoit le Betourne, where the scriveners lived. They heard the scratching of quills in little shops, and in the evening saw clerks snuff out their flickering candles. At Petit-Pont they mocked the sidewalk orators, then scampered away to hide among the angles of the rue des Trois-Portes. After that they would sit together along the fountain’s curb and chatter until nightfall. 

Pocahontas by Marcel Schwob

 

POCAHONTAS

Princess

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Pocahontas

Marcel Schwob / Pocahontas

Pocahontas was the daughter of King Powhatan who ruled from a couch-like throne draped in coon-skin robes with all the tails hanging down. She was raised in a house made of plaited reeds, among priests and women whose faces and shoulders were painted vivid red, and who amused her with leather toys and snake rattles. Namontak, a faithful old servant, watched over the princess while she played; sometimes they took her into the woods beside the wide Rappahannock River where thirty young girls would dance for her. They would he tinted bright colors and girdled with green leaves, having goats’ horns on their heads and otter skins in their belts as they shook their clubs, leaping around a crackling fire. The dance they would stamp out the fire and over, return with the princess in the glowing light of smoldering embers. 

Fra Dolcino by Marcel Schwob

Fra Dolcino

FRA DOLCINO

Heretic

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Frate Dolcino

Marcel Schwob / Frate Dolcino

He first learned of holy things in the church of San-Michele at Orte, when his mother held him so his little hands might touch the pretty wax figures hanging before the Virgin. His parents’ house adjoined the baptistry. Three times a day, at dawn, at noon and at nightfall, he saw two Franciscan monks go by begging bread for their basket, and often he followed them to the convent door. One of these two was very old, having been ordained by Saint Francis himself, so he said. He promised to teach Dolcino the language of the birds and how to talk with all the beasts of the fields. Soon Dolcino spent his days in the convent, adding his fresh young voice to the songs of the brethren. When the bell called them to work he would help wash their greens and vegetables around a big bucket. Robert, the cook, loaned him an old knife to scrape the bowls. Dolcino liked to visit the refectory; he loved to see the fine lamp they had there, and the painted shade with its pictures of the Twelve Apostles in wooden sandals and little capes that fell over their shoulders. 

Septima by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob

S E P T I M A

Enchantress

Marcel Shwob / Septimia

Marcel Schwob / Septimia

Septima was a slave under the African sun in the city of Hadrumetum. Her mother, Amoena, was a slave, and the mother of her mother—all had been slaves, beautiful and unknown, to whom the dark gods had revealed the spells of love and of death. 

Alain the Gentle by Marcel Schwob

 

ALAIN THE GENTLE 

Soldier 

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Alain el Gentil

From the age of twelve he served Charles VII as an archer, for he was brought up by men-at-arms in the flat country of Normandy and the circumstance of his adoption was the following. When the armies came through that region, burning barns, skinning the legs of peasants with their sheath-knives and flinging young girls down broken on their beds, Alain was hid in an empty cask at the door of a wine press, and when the soldiers tumbled the cask upside down they found him. They carried him away just as he was, in his shirt and his perky petticoat, to the captain of the troop, who gave him a little leather jacket and a cape that had been through the battle of Saint-Jacques. Perrin Godin taught him how to draw a bow and how to gamble at cards. In this company he passed through Bordeaux, Angouleme and Poitou to Bourges; saw SaintPourcain where the king sat beyond the marches of Lorrain; visited Tout; returned to Picardy; entered Flanders; crossed SaintQuentin and turned again toward Normandy. During his twenty-three years of military travel he met the Englishman,Jehan Poule-Cras, from whom he learned British curses; Chiquerello the Lombard, who instructed him in the cure of Saint-Anthony’s fire; and young Ydre de Laon, who taught him how to pull down breastworks. 

Empedocles by Marcel Schwob

 

Empedocles

EMPEDOCLES

Supposed God 

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Empédocle

Marcel Schwob / Empédocles

 No one knows in what manner he was born or how he came upon the earth. He appeared near the golden banks of the river Acragas, in the good city of Agrigentum, a little after the time Xerxes had the sea beaten with chains. Tradition tells only that his grandfather named him Empedocles; nothing more is known. Undoubtdly he was said to be self-conceived, for he was admittedly a god. His disciples were sure that before visiting in his glory the Sicilian lands, he had already passed through four existences, having been plant, fish, bird and girl. He wore a purple mantle with his long locks falling over it; he had a fillet of gold around his head, on his feet were brazen sandals, and he carried a garland of fleece and laurel intertwined. 

Crates by Marcel Schwob

 

Crates
Illustration by George Barbier

CRATES

Cynic

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Cratès

Marcel Schwob / Crates

Born at Thebes, he was a disciple of Diogenes and he also knew Alexander. From his father, a wealthy man named Ascondas, he inherited two hundred talents. Then one day, while attending a tragedy by Euripides, he beheld a vision. He saw Telephy, King of Mysia, dressed in beggar’s rags with a basket in his hand. So Crates stood up on his feet there in the theater, declaring he would give the two hundred talents of his inheritance to all who wanted the money. Henceforth, he said, the garb of King Telephy would suffice him. Shaking with laughter, the Thebans trooped before his house where they found him laughing even louder than they. After throwing all his money and furniture out of the windows he took up a plain cloak and a leather sack and went away. 

Petronius by Marcel Schwob

 

Petronius
Illustration by George Barbier

PETRONIUS

Romancer

by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob / Petróne

Marcel Schwob / Petronio

He was born in the days when greengarbed clowns used to sit around a fire roast¬ ing young pig; when bearded porters in cherry-colored tunics squatted by the gay mosaics at villa gates, shelling peas into silver platters; when rich freedmen played politics in the towns of Provence; when minstrels sang their epic poems to the desert; and when the Latin language was stuffed with redundant words and puffed-up names from Asia. 

Paolo Uccello by Marcel Schwob

 

Paolo Uccello
by George Barbier

PAOLO UCCELLO

Painter

by Marcel Schowob

Marcel Schwob / Paolo Uccello

Marcel Schwob / Paolo Uccello

His real name was Paolo di Dono, but the Florentines called him Uccelli or Paul of the Birds because of the many bird figures and painted beasts in his house, for he was too poor to feed live animals or to obtain those strange species he did not know. At Padua he was said to have executed a fresco of the four elements, with an image of a chameleon representing the air. He had never seen one, so he made it a sort of pot-bellied camel with a gaping snout (while the chameleon, explains Vasari, resembles a small dry lizard and the camel is a great humped beast). Uccello was not concerned with the reality of things but in their multiplicity and the infinity of their lines. He made fields blue, cities red, and cavaliers in black armor on ebony horses with blazing mouths, the lances of the riders radiating toward every quarter of the heavens. He had a fancy for drawing the mazocchio, a headdress made of wooden hoops so covered that the cloth fell down in pleats all about the wearer’s face. Uccello drew pointed ones and square ones and others in pyramids and cones, following every intricacy of their perspectives so studiously as to find a world of combinations in their folds. The sculptor Donatello used to say to him: “All, Paolo, you leave the substance for the shadow.”