A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 16

[Sidenote: _Francois le Champi._]

The third in the order of mention of what is usually considered her trilogy of idylls, _Francois le Champi_, if not the prettiest, is the strongest, and the most varied in interest, of the three. The shadier side of human character lifts itself and says, _Et in Arcadia ego_,[189]

much more decidedly than in the childish petulances of _La Pet.i.te Fadette_ and the merely "Third Murderer" appearance of the unprincipled farmer in _La Mare au Diable_. Even the mostly blameless hero is allowed, towards the close, to exhibit the well-known _ruse_ or _madre_ characteristics of the French peasant to the extent of more than one not quite white lie; the husband of the heroine is unfaithful, tyrannical as far as he dare be, and a waster of his family's goods before his fortunately rather early death; his pretty young sister, Mariette, is a selfish and spiteful minx; and his paramour (sarcastically named "La Severe") is unchaste, malignant, and dishonest all at once--a combination which may be said to exclude any possible goodness in woman.

The only thoroughly white sheep--though the "Champi" or foundling (his cradle being the genial fields and not the steps of stone) has but the grey patches noticed above, and those acquired with the best intentions--is Madeleine Blanchet, his protectress for many years, and finally, after difficulties and her widowhood, his wife. That she is some twelve years older than he is is a detail which need not in itself be of much importance. It lends itself to that combination of maternal and s.e.xual affection of which George Sand is so fond, and of which we may have to speak some harsh words elsewhere. But here it matters little. Arcady is a kind of Saturnian realm, and "mixtures" elsewhere "held a stain" may pa.s.s there.

[Sidenote: Others--_Mauprat_.]

We may make a further _glissade_ (to return to some remarks made above), though of a different kind, over a few of the very large number of novels that we cannot discuss in detail. But _Mauprat_ adds just a little support to the remarks there made. For this (which is a sort of crime-and-detection novel, and therefore appeals to some readers more than to the present historian) turns wholly on the atrocious deeds of a seignorial family of the most melodramatic kind. Yet it is questionable whether the wickedest of them ever did anything worse than the action of their last and renegade member, who actually, when he comes into the property, ruins his ancestral castle because naughty things have been done there. Now, when Milton said, "As well kill a man as kill a good book," though it was no doubt an intentional hyperbole, there was much sound sense in what he said. Still, except in the case of such a book as has been produced only a few times in the world's history, it may be urged that probably something as good might be written by somebody else among the numerous men that were not killed. But, on the same principle, one would be justified in saying, "Better kill a hundred men than ruin a castle with hundreds of years of memories, bad or good." You can never replace _it_, while the hundred men will, at the very moment they are killed, be replaced, just as good on the average, by the ordinary operations of nature. Besides, by partially ruining the castle, you give an opening to the sin of the restorer, for which there is, we know, _no_ pardon, here or hereafter.[190]

[Sidenote: _La Daniella._]

_La Daniella_ is a rather long book and a rather dull one. There is a good deal of talkee-talkee of the _Corinne_ kind in it: the heroine is an angelic Italian soubrette; the hero is one of the c.o.xcombish heroes of French novels, who seem to have set themselves to confirm the most unjust ideas of their nation entertained in foreign climes; there is a "Miss Medora," who, as the hero informs us, "plays the coquette clumsily, as English girls generally do," etc. _Pa.s.sons outre_, without inquiring how much George Sand knew about English girls.

[Sidenote: _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore._]

One of the best of her books to read, though it has neither the human interest of _Lucrezia Floriani_, nor the prettiness of the Idylls, nor the style-colour of some other books, is _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore_. It is all the more agreeable that we may even "begin with a little aversion." It suggests itself as a sort of interloper in the great business of Dumas and Co.: it opens, indeed, only a few years before D'Artagnan rode up to the inn on the b.u.t.tercup-coloured pony.

And, in manner, it may look at first as if the writer were following another but much inferior example--our own G. P. R. James; for there are "two cavaliers," and one tells the other a tale fit to make him fall asleep and off his saddle. But it improves remarkably, and before you have read a hundred pages you are very fairly "enfisted." The figure of the old Marquis de Bois-Dore--an aged dandy with divers absurdities about him,[191] but a gentleman to his by no means yet stiffened or stooping backbone; a heart of gold, and a wrist with a good core of steel left in it--might easily have been a failure. It is a success. His first guest and then adversary, the wicked Spaniard, Sciarra d'Alvimar or de Villareal, whom the old marquis runs through the body in a moonlight duel for very sufficient reason,[192] may not be thought quite equally successful. Scoundrel as he is, George Sand has unwisely thrown over him a touch of _guignon_--of shadowing and resistless fate--which creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that your villain should always be allowed a certain run for his money--a temporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel the marquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, of the book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anything within those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going (very sensibly) to fly at him. He is altogether too much in appearance and too little in effectuality of the stage Spaniard--black garments, black upturned moustache, hook-nose, _navaja_, and all the rest of it.

But he does not spoil the thing, though he hardly does it much good; and if he is badly treated he has his revenge on the author.

For the book becomes very dull after his supposed death (he _does_ die, but not at once), and only revives when, some way into the second volume, an elaborate attempt to revenge him is made by his servant, Sanche, _ame d.a.m.nee_ and also _d.a.m.nante_ (if one may coin this variant), who is, as it turns out, his irregular father. This again rather stagy character organises a formidable body of wandering _reitres_, gipsies, and miscellaneous ruffians to attack and sack the marquis's house--a plan which, though ultimately foiled, brings about a very refreshing series of hurly-burlys and hullabaloos for some hundred and fifty pages.

The narrative is full of improbable impossibilities, and contrasts singularly with the fashion in which Dumas, throughout all his great books (and not a few of his not so great ones), manages to _escamoter_ the difficulty. The boy Mario,[193] orphan of the murdered brother, left unknown for many years, recognised by his uncle, avenger of his father on Sanche, as Bois-Dore himself had been on Alvimar, is altogether too clever and effective for his age; and the conduct of Bellinde, Bois-Dore's cashiered _gouvernante_, is almost preposterous throughout.

But it is what a schoolboy of the old days would have called a "jolly good scrimmage," and restores the interest of the book for most of the second volume. The end--scarcely, one would think, very interesting to any one--is quite spoilt for some by another example of George Sand's inveterate pa.s.sion for "maternal" love-making and matches where the lady is nearly double the age of her husband. Others--or the same--may not be propitiated for this by the "horrors"[194] which the author has liberally thrown in. But the larger part of the book, like the larger part of _Consuelo_, is quite good stuff.

[Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Villemer._]

It is, indeed, a really lively book. Two duller ones than the first two allotted, at the beginning of this notice, to her last period I have seldom read. They are both instances (and one at least contains an elaborate vindication) of the "novel of purpose," and they are by themselves almost enough to d.a.m.n it. M. le Marquis de Villemer is an appalling prig--virtuous, in the Devil-and-his-grandmother style, to the _n_th--who devotes his energies to writing a _History of the Patriciate since the Christian Era_, the object being to reveal the sins of aristocracy. He has a rather nice half-brother spend-thrift, Duque d'Aleria (Madame de Villemer the elder has first married a Spaniard), whose debts he virtuously pays, and after a great deal of scandal he marries a poor but n.o.ble and n.o.ble-minded damsel, Caroline de Saint-Geneix, who has taken the position of companion to his mother in order to help her widowed and four-childed sister. For the virtue of George Sand's virtuous people _is_ virtue and no mistake. The lively and amiable duke is fortunately fitted with a lively and amiable d.u.c.h.ess, and they show a little light in the darkness of copy-book morality and republican principles.

[Sidenote: _Mlle. La Quintinie._]

This kindly light is altogether wanting in _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, where the purpose pa.s.ses from politics to religion. The book is rather famous, and was, at the time, much read, because it is not merely a novel of purpose, but an instance of the duello fought, not with sword or pistol, not with quarter-staves or sand-bags, but with _feuilletons_ of fiction. It, and Octave Feuillet's _Sibylle_, to which it is the countercheck-quarrelsome, both appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

It should be seen at a further stage of this volume that I do not think _Sibylle_ a masterpiece, either of tale-telling or of argumentation, though it is more on my side than the reply is. But Feuillet, though not a genius, as some people would have George Sand to be, nor yet possessing anything like the talent which no sane criticism can deny her, was a much better craftsman in the art of novel-writing.

[Sidenote: _Flamarande._]

For a final notice--dealing also with the last, or almost the last, of all her books--we may take _Flamarande_ and its sequel, _Les Deux Freres_. They give the history of the unfounded jealousy of a husband in regard to his wife--a jealousy which is backed up by an equally unfounded suspicion (supported by the most outrageous proceedings of espionage and something like burglary) on the part of a confidential servant, who, as we are informed at last, has himself had a secret pa.s.sion for his innocent mistress. It is more like a Feuillet book than a George Sand, and in this respect shows the curious faculty--possessed also by some lady novelists of our own--of adapting itself to the change of novel-fashion. But to me at least it appeals not.

So turn we from particulars (for individual notice of the hundred books is impossible) to generals.

[Sidenote: Summary and judgment.]

[Sidenote: Style.]

It may be difficult to sum up the characteristics of such a writer as George Sand shortly, but it has to be done. There is to be allowed her--of course and at once--an extraordinary fertility, and a hardly less extraordinary escape from absolute sinking into the trivial. She is preposterous early, somewhat facile and "journalistic" later, but she is never exactly commonplace. She belongs to the school of immense and almost mechanical producers who are represented in English by Anthony Trollope as their "prior" and by Mrs. Oliphant[195] and Miss Braddon as commandresses of the order. (I think she runs a good deal below the Prior but a good deal above the Commandresses.[196]) But, if she does so belong, it is very mainly due, not to any pre-eminence of narrative faculty, but to that gift of style which has been for nearly a hundred years admitted. Now I have in this _History_ more than once, and by no means with tongue in cheek, expressed a diffidence about giving opinions on this point. I have, it is true, read French for more than sixty years, and I have been accustomed to "read for style" in it, and in divers other languages, for at least fifty. But I see such extraordinary blunders made by foreigners in regard to this side of our own literature, that I can never be sure--being less conceited than the pious originator of the phrase--that even the Grace of G.o.d has prevented me from going the same way. Still, if I have any right to publish this book, I must have a little--I will not say "right," but _venia_ or licence--to say what seems to me to be the fact of the matter. That fact--or that seeming of fact--is that George Sand's style is _too_ facile to be first-rate. By this I do not mean that it is too plain. On the contrary, it is sometimes, especially in her early books, ornate to gorgeousness, and even to gaudiness. And it was a curious mistake of the late Mr. Pater, in a quite honorific reference to me, to imply that I preferred the plain style--a mistake all the more curious that he knew and acknowledged (and was almost unduly grateful for) my admiration of his own. I like both forms: but for style--putting meaning out of the question--I would rather read Browne than Swift, and Lamennais than Fenelon.

George Sand has both the plain and the ornate styles (and various shades of "middle" between them) at command. But it seems to me that she has them--to use a financial phrase recently familiar--too much "on tap."

You see that the current of agreeable and, so to speak, faultless language is running, and might run volubly for any period of life that might be allotted to her. In fact it did so. Now no doubt there was something of Edmond de Goncourt's bad-blooded fatuity in his claim that his and his brother's epithets were "personal," while Flaubert's were not. Research for more personal "out-of-the-wayness" in style will rarely result in anything but jargon. But, on the other hand, Gautier's great injunction:

Sculpte, lime, cisele!

is sound. You cannot reach the first cla.s.s in any art by turning a tap and letting it run.

[Sidenote: Conversation and description.]

The one point of what we may call the "furniture" of novels, in which she seems to me to have, occasionally at least, touched supremacy, is conversation. It has been observed by those capable of making the induction that, close as drama and novel are in some ways, the distinction between dramatic and non-dramatic talk is, though narrow, deeper than the very deepest Alpine creva.s.se from Dauphine to Carinthia.

Such specimens as those already more than once dwelt on--Consuelo's and Anzoleto's debate about her looks, and that of Germain and Marie in the midnight wood by the Devil's Mere--are first-rate, and there is no more to say. Some of her descriptions, again, such as the opening of the book last quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its various labouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in _Lucrezia Floriani_, or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of _Un Hiver a Majorque_, are unsurpa.s.sable. Nor is this gift limited to mere _paysage_. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned for praise is only first among many. But whether these things are supported by sufficient strength of character, plot, incident, "thought," and the rest; whether that strange narrative power, so hard to define and so impossible to mistake or to fail to distinguish from these other elements, is present--these are great questions and not easy to answer.

I am, as will have been seen throughout, rather inclined to answer them in the unfavourable way.

In fact--impertinent, insolent, anything else as it may seem--I venture to ask the question, "Was George Sand a very great craftswoman in the novel?" and, what is more, to answer it in the negative. I understand that an ingenious critic of her own s.e.x has recently described her method as "rolling through the book, locked in the embraces of her subject," as distinguished from the aloofness and elaboration of a more recent school. So far, perhaps, so good; but I could wish to find "the intricacies of Diego and Julia" more interesting to me than as a rule they are. And it must be remembered that she is constantly detaching herself from the forlorn "subject," leaving it _un_embraced and shivering, in order to sermonise it and her readers. I do not make the very facile and somewhat futile criticism that she would have written better if she had written half or a quarter as much as she did. She could not have written little; it is as natural and suitable for Tweed to "rin wi' speed" as for Till to "rin slaw," though perhaps the result--parallel to but more cheerful than that recorded in the old rhyme--may be that Till has the power not of drowning but of intoxicating two men, where Tweed can only manage one. But this engrained fecundity and facundity of hers inevitably make her work novel-journalism rather than novel-literature in all points but in that of style, which has been discussed already.[197]

FOOTNOTES:

[174] It is attested by the well-known story, more excusable in a man than creditable to a gentleman, of her earliest or earliest known lover, Jules Sandeau (_v. inf._), seeing a photograph of her in later days, turning to a companion and saying, "Et je l'ai connue _belle_!"

[175] It is possible that some readers may not know the delightfully unexpected, and not improbably "more-expressive-than-volumes" _third_ line--

"Not like the woman who lies under the next stone."

But tradition has, I believe, mercifully omitted to identify this neighbouring antipode.

[176] Details of personal scandal seldom claim notice here. But it may be urged with some show of reason that _this_ scandal is too closely connected with the substance and the spirit of the novelist's whole work, from _Indiana_ to _Flamarande_, to permit total ignoring of it.

_Lucrezia Floriani_, though perhaps more suggestive of Chopin than of Musset, but with "tangency" on both, will be discussed in the text. That most self-accusing of excuses, _Elle et Lui_, with its counterblast Paul de Musset's _Lui et Elle_, and a few remarks on _Un Hiver a Majorque_ (conjoined for a purpose, which will be indicated) may be despatched in a note of some length.

[Sidenote: Note on _Elle et Lui_, etc.,]

The rival novel-_plaidoyers_ on the subject of the loves and strifes of George Sand and Alfred de Musset are sufficiently disgusting, and if they be considered as novels, the evil effect of purpose--and particularly of personal purpose--receives from them texts for a whole series of sermons. Reading them with the experience of a lifetime, not merely in literary criticism, but (for large parts of that lifetime) in study of evidence on historical, political, and even directly legal matters, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, though there is no doubt a certain amount of _suggestio falsi_ in both, the _suppressio veri_ is infinitely greater in _Elle et Lui_. If the letters given in Paul de Musset's book were not written by George Sand they were written by Diabolus. And there is one retort made towards the finale by "edouard de Falconey" (Musset) to "William Caze" (George Sand) which stigmatises like the lash of a whip, if not even like a hot iron, the whole face of the lady's novels.

"Ma chere," lui dit-il, "vous parlez si souvent de chastete que cela devient indecent. Votre amitie n'est pas plus 'sainte' que celle des autres." [If he had added "maternite" the stigma would have been completer still.] And there is also a startling verisimilitude in the reply a.s.signed to her:

"Mon cher, trouvez bon que je console mes amis selon ma methode. Vous voyez qu'elle leur plait a.s.sez, puisqu'ils y reviennent."

It was true: they did so, rather to their own discredit and wholly to their discomfort. But she and her "method" must have pleased them enough for them to do it. It is not so pleasing a method for an outsider to contemplate. He sees too much of the game, and has none of the pleasure of playing or the occasional winnings. Since I read Helisenne de Crenne (_v. sup._ Vol. I, pp. 150-1) there has seemed to me to be some likeness between the earlier stage of her heroine (if not of herself) and that of George Sand in her "friendships." They both display a good deal of mere sensuality, and both seem to me to have been quite ignorant of pa.s.sion.

Helisenne did not reach the stage of "maternal" affection, and perhaps it was well for her lover and not entirely bad for her readers. But the best face that can be put on the "method" will be seen in _Lucrezia Floriani_.

[Sidenote: and on _Un Hiver a Majorque_.]

The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which were shown most disagreeably in _Elle et Lui_, appear on a different side in another book which is not a novel at all--not even a novel as far as masque and domino are concerned,--though indirectly it touches another of George Sand's curious personal experiences--that with Chopin. _Un Hiver a Majorque_ is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel, except Smollett's too famous production, ever written by a novelist of talent or genius. The Majorcans certainly did not ask George Sand to visit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is the fashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her own accord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments of what she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europe by never going to church, though and while she actually lived in a disestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the _non sequitur_ is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt, discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and garlic, varying the talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food, discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finest pa.s.sages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, and in the famous record of Chopin's playing; but otherwise it is hardly worth reading.

[177] She survived into the next decade and worked till the last with no distinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Her famous direction about her grave, _Laissez la verdure_, is characteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. But if any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable preoccupation in favor of herself, he should begin with her _Letters_. Those of her old age especially are charming.

[178] Cf. Mr. Alfred Lammle on his unpoetical justice to Mr. Fledgeby in _Our Mutual Friend_.

[179] Valentine has an elder sister who has a son, irregularily existent, but is as much in love with Benedict as if she were a girl and he were a gentleman; and this son marries the much older Athenais, a lovely peasant girl who has been the unwilling _fiancee_ and wife of the ingenious pitchforker. You have seldom to go far in George Sand for an unmarried lady with a child for chast.i.ty, and a widow who marries a boy for maternal affection.

[180] There is also an Irish priest called Magnus, who, like everybody else, is deeply and (in the proper sense of _sans espoir_) desperately in love with Lelia. He is, on the whole, quite the maddest--and perhaps the most despicable--of the lot.

[181] If any one says, "So, then, there are several 'most intolerables,'" let me point out that intolerableness is a more than "twy-peaked" hill or range. Julien Sorel and Marius were not designed to be gentlemen.