A History of the French Novel Volume I Part 29

[319] The two most undoubted cases--his ugly and, unluckily, repeated acceptance of the part of Pandarus-Leporello--were only too ordinary rascalities in the seventeenth century. The books of the chronicles of England and France show us not merely clerks and valets but gentlemen of every rank, from esquire to duke, eagerly accepting this office.

[320] In a curious pa.s.sage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well as a knave.

[321] One of Lesage's triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last, "M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least ingenuousness.

[322] Not of course as opposed to "romantic," but as = "chief and princ.i.p.al."

[323] The reader must not forget that this formidable word means "privateer" rather than "pirate" in French, and that this was the golden age of the business in that country.

[324] Those who are curious may find something on him by the present writer, not identical with the above account, in an essay ent.i.tled _A Study of Sensibility_, reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_ (London, 1891), and partly, but outside of the Marivaux part, reproduced in Chap. XII. of the present volume.

[325] By M. Gustave Larroumet. Paris, 1882.

[326] I need hardly say that I am not referring to things like _Rebecca and Rowena_ or _A Legend of the Rhine_, which "burst the outer sh.e.l.l of sin," and, like Mrs. Martha Gwynne in the epitaph, "hatch themselves a cherubin" in each case.

[327] The reader will perhaps excuse the reminder that the sense in which we (almost exclusively) use this word, and which it had gained in French itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged sarcasm on person and world (_Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arrive_), was not quite original. The _parvenu_ was simply a person who _had_ "got on": the disobliging slur of implication on his former position, and perhaps on his means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is doubtful whether there is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in Marivaux's t.i.tle.

[328] It is the acme of what may be called innocent corruption. She does not care for her master, nor apparently for vicious pleasure, nor--certainly--for money as such. She does care for Jacob, and wants to marry him; the money will make this possible; so she earns it by the means that present themselves, and puts it at his disposal.

[329] He is proof against his master's threats if he refuses; as well as against the money if he accepts. Unluckily for Genevieve, when he breaks away she faints. Her door and the money-box are both left open, and the latter disappears.

[330] Here and elsewhere the curious cheapness of French living (despite what history tells of crushing taxation, etc.) appears. The _locus cla.s.sicus_ for this is generally taken to be Mme. de Maintenon's well-known letter about her brother's housekeeping. But here, well into another century, Mlle. Habert's 4000 _livres_ a year are supposed to be at least relative affluence, while in _Marianne_ (_v. inf._) M. de Climal thinks 500 or 600 enough to tempt her, and his final bequest of double that annuity is represented as making a far from despicable _dot_ even for a good marriage.

[331] The much greater blood-thirstiness of the French highwayman, as compared with the English, has been sometimes attributed by humanitarians to the "wheel"--and has often been considered by persons of sense as justifying that implement.

[332] The Devil's Advocate may say that Marianne turns out to be of English extraction after all--but it is not Marivaux who tells us so.

[333] To question or qualify Marianne's virtue, even in the slightest degree, may seem ungracious; for it certainly withstands what to some girls would have been the hardest test of all--that is to say, not so much the offer of riches if she consents, as the apparent certainty of utter dest.i.tution if she refuses. At the same time, the Devil's Advocate need not be a Kelly or a c.o.c.kburn to make out some damaging suggestions.

Her vague, and in no way solidly justified, but decided family pride seems to have a good deal to do with her refusal; and though this shows the value of the said family pride, it is not exactly virtue in itself.

Still more would appear to be due to the character of the suit and the suitor. M. de Climal is not only old and unattractive; not only a sneak and a libertine; but he is a clumsy person, and he has not, as he might have done, taken Marianne's measure. The mere shock of his sudden transformation from a pious protector into a prospective "keeper," who is making a bid for a new concubine, has evidently an immense effect on her quick nervous temperament. She is not at all the kind of girl to like to be the plaything of an old man; and she is perfectly shrewd enough to see that vengeance, and fear as regards his nephew, have as much as anything else, or more, to do with the way in which he brusques his addresses and hurries his gift. Further, she has already conceived a fancy, at least, for that nephew himself; and one sees the "jury droop,"

as d.i.c.kens has put it, with which the Counsel of the Prince of the Air would hint that, if the offers had come in a more seductive fashion from Valville himself, they might not have been so summarily rejected. But let it be observed that these considerations, while possibly unfair to Marianne, are not in the least derogatory to Marivaux himself. On the contrary, it is greatly to his credit that he should have created a character of sufficient lifelikeness and sufficient complexity to serve as basis for "problem"-discussions of the kind.

[334] To put the drift of the above in other words, we do not need to hear any more of Marianne in any position, because we have had enough shown us to know generally what she would do, say, and think, in all positions.

[335] It has been observed that there is actually a Meredithian quality in Aristides of Smyrna, though he wrote no novel. A tale in Greek, to ill.u.s.trate the parallel, would be an admirable subject for a University Prize.

[336] Two descriptions of "Marivaudage" (which, by the way, was partly antic.i.p.ated by Fontenelle)--both, if I do not mistake, by Crebillon _fils_--are famous: "Putting down not only everything you said and thought, but also everything you would like to have thought and said, but did not," and, "Introducing to each other words which never had thought of being acquainted." Both of these perhaps. .h.i.t the modern forms of the phenomenon even harder than they hit their original b.u.t.t.

[337] It is only fair to the poor Prioress to say that there is hardly a heroine in fiction who is more deeply in love with her own pretty little self than Marianne.

[338] One does not know whether it was prudence, or that materialism which, though he was no _philosophe_, he shared with most of his contemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharp though mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hinted that both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned, whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their own safety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed"

creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparison of Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to many persons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.

[339] His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror are odd crosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn historical novel.

[340] Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay, saw, as most would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle. a.s.se's.

But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident "protector," M. de Ferreol. Mlle. a.s.se herself had earlier read the _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ and did not think much of them. But this was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciated Manon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.

[341] The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch] _Oeuvres Choisies_ above noticed has given abstracts of Prevost's novels as well as of Richardson's, which the Abbe translated. These, with Sainte-Beuve's of the _Memoires_, will help those who want something more than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of the original. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the end of _Cleveland_.

[342] He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of being bled was actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who thought him dead and only brought him to life--to expire actually in torment.

[343] Crebillon _pere_, tragedian and academician, is one of the persons who have never had justice done to them: perhaps because they never quite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal, rhetorical, and as over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if we want to find the true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth century, we must go to him.

[344] "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and Crebillon."

[345] Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony Hamilton, with whose family, as has been noticed, he had early relations.

[346] He goes further, and points out that, as she is his _really_ beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't wish him to declare himself false to that other lady?--having also previously observed that, after what has occurred, he could never think of deceiving his Celie herself by false declarations. These topsy-turvinesses are among Crebillon's best points, and infinitely superior to the silly "plat.i.tudes reversed" which have tried to produce the same effect in more recent times.

[347] It has been said more than once that Crebillon had early access to Hamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in _Ah! Quel Conte!_ and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter of Cristalline la Curieuse herself.

[348] Nor perhaps even then, for pa.s.sion is absolutely unknown to our author. One touch of it would send the curious Rupert's drop of his microcosm to shivers, as _Manon Lescaut_ itself in his time, and _Adolphe_ long after, show.

[349] Some remarks are made by "Madame _Hepenny_"--a very pleasing phoneticism, and, though an actual name, not likely to offend any actual person.

[350] No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two of the personages of _Les egarements_, Crebillon's intended gentlemen are nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and his ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in this last point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closely resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find some twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of _Love for Love_ as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of "breeding" never broke down in France till the _philosophe_ period, while with us it lasted till--when shall we say?

CHAPTER XI

THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL

[Sidenote: The use of the novel for "purpose"--Voltaire.]

It has been for some time a commonplace--though, like most commonplaces, it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (even in the sense of _communis_) original perception of the borrowers--that nothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in the eighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, at other times, have used quite different forms to subserve similar purposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in _Ra.s.selas_, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not in any single instance much better, ill.u.s.trated in France by the three great leaders of the _philosophe_ movement; by considerable, if second-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, like Marmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.

There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire[351]

deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume, and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps more than any of the others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good deal to Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master, Saint-evremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent on these models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikely if the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. There are in literature some things which must have existed, and of which it is not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there, or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to do it. Of these, _Candide_ is evidently one, and more than one of _Candide's_ smaller companions have at least something of the same characteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had not written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free from boisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting of foam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling, must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if the playfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of what contemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous") kind; and if the author had not been constantly longing to make somebody or many bodies uncomfortable,[352] to damage and defile shrines, to exhibit a misanthropy more really misanthropic, because less pa.s.sionate and tragical, than Swift's, and, in fact, as his patron, persecutor, and counterpart, Frederick the Jonathan-Wildly Great, most justly observed of him, to "play monkey-tricks," albeit monkey-tricks of immense talent, if not actually of genius. If the recent attempts to interpret monkey-speech were to come to something, and if, as a consequence, monkeys were taught to write, one may be sure that prose fiction would be their favourite department, and that their productions would be, though almost certainly disreputable, quite certainly amusing. In fact there would probably be some among these which would be claimed, by critics of a certain type, as. .h.i.therto unknown works of Voltaire himself.

Yet if the straightforward tale had not, owing to the influences discussed in the foregoing chapters, acquired a firm hold, it is at least possible that he would not have adopted it (for originality of form was not Voltaire's _forte_), but would have taken the dialogue, or something else capable of serving his purpose. As it was, the particular field or garden had already been marked out and hedged after a fashion; tools and methods of cultivation had been prepared; and he set to work to cultivate it with the application and intelligence recommended in the famous moral of his most famous tale--a moral which, it is only fair to say, he did carry out almost invariably. A garden of very questionable plants was his, it may be; but that is another matter. The fact and the success of the cultivation are both undeniable.

[Sidenote: General characteristics of his tales.]

At the same time, Voltaire--if indeed, as was doubted just now, he be a genius at all--is not a genius, or even a djinn, of the kind that creates and leaves something Melchisedec-like; alone and isolated from what comes before and what comes after. He is an immense talent--perhaps the greatest talent-but-not-genius ever known--who utilises and improves and develops rather than invents. It is from this that his faculty of never boring, except when he has got upon the Scriptures, comes; it is because of this also that he never conceives anything really, simply, absolutely _great_. His land is never exactly weary, but there is no imposing and sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These _romans_ and _contes_ and _nouvelles_ of his stimulate, but they do not either rest or refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, the theatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearly consummate works of art, or at least craft, they stand almost alone.

He had seen[353] the effect of which the fairy tale of the sophisticated kind was capable, and the attraction which it had for both vulgars, the great and the small: and he made the most of it. He kept and heightened its _haut gout_; he discarded the limitations to a very partial and conventional society which Crebillon put on it; but he limited it in other ways to commonplace and rather vulgar fancy, without the touches of imagination which Hamilton had imparted. Yet he infused an even more accurate appreciation of certain phases of human nature than those predecessors or partial contemporaries of his who were discussed in the last chapter had introduced; he _practicalised_ it to the _n_th, and he made it almost invariably subordinate to a direct, though a sometimes more or less ign.o.ble, purpose. There is no doubt that he had learnt a great deal from Lucian and from Lucian's French imitators, perhaps as far back as Bonaventure des Periers; there is, I think, little that he had added as much as he could add from Swift.[354]

His stolen or borrowed possessions from these sources, and especially this last, remind one in essence rather of the pilferings of a "light horseman," or river-pirate who has hung round an "old three-decker,"

like that celebrated in Mr. Kipling's admirable poem, and has caught something even of the light from "her tall p.o.o.p-lanterns shining so far above him," besides picking up overboard trifles, and cutting loose boats and cables. But when he gets to sh.o.r.e and to his own workshop, his almost unequalled power of sheer wit, and his general craftsmanship, bring out of these lootings something admirable in its own way.

[Sidenote: _Candide._]

_Candide_ is almost "great," and though the breed of Dr. Pangloss in its original kind is nearly extinct, the England which suffered the approach, and has scarcely yet allowed itself to comprehend the reality, of the war of 1914, ought to know that there have been and are Pangloss_otins_ of almost appalling variety. The book does not really require the smatches of sculduddery, which he has smeared over it, to be amusing; for its lifelikeness carries it through. As is well known, Johnson admitted the parallel with _Ra.s.selas_, which is among the most extraordinary coincidences of literature. I have often wondered whether anybody ever took the trouble to print the two together. There would be many advantages in doing so; but they might perhaps be counter-balanced by the fact that some of the most fervent admirers of _Ra.s.selas_ would be infinitely shocked by _Candide_, and that perhaps more of the special lovers of _Candide_ would find themselves bored to extinction by _Ra.s.selas_. Let those who can not only value but enjoy both be thankful, but not proud.

Many people have written about the Consolations of Old Age, not seldom, it is to be feared, in a "Who's afraid?" sort of spirit. But there are a few, an apple or two by the banks of Ulai, which we may pluck as the night approaches. One is almost necessarily accidental, for it would be rash and somewhat cold-blooded to plan it. It consists in the reading, after many years, of a book once familiar almost to the point of knowing by heart, and then laid aside, not from weariness or disgust, but merely as things happened. This, as in some other books mentioned in this history, was the case with the present writer in respect of _Candide_.

From twenty to forty, or thereabouts, I must have read it over and over again; the sentences drop into their places almost without exercising any effort of memory to recognise them. From forty to seventy I do not think I read it at all; because no reason made reading necessary, and chance left it untouched on the shelf. Sometimes, as everybody knows, the result of renewed acquaintance in such cases is more or less severe disappointment; in a few of the happiest, increased pleasure. But it is perhaps the severest test of a cla.s.sic (in the exact but limited sense of that word) that its effect shall be practically unchanged, shall have been established in the mind and taste with such a combination of solidity and _nettete_, that no change is possible. I do not think I have ever found this to be more the case than with the history of Candide (who was such a good fellow, without being in the least a prig, as I am afraid Zadig was, that one wonders how Voltaire came to think of him) and of Mademoiselle Cunegonde (n.o.body will ever know anything about style who does not feel what the continual repet.i.tion in Candide's mouth of the "Mademoiselle" does) of the indomitable Pangloss, and the detestable baron, and the forgivable Paquette, and that philosopher Martin, who did _not_ "let cheerfulness break in," and the admirable Cacambo, who shows that, much as he hated Rousseau, Voltaire himself was not proof against the n.o.ble savage mania.[355]