A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 25

But he does get clear, and makes a striking picture of the great thoroughfares of Market Street and Piccadilly; of the view--a wonderful one certainly, and then not interfered with by railway viaducts--from and of the Cathedral; and of the extraordinary utilisation of the scanty "naval" capabilities of Irk and Irwell and Medlock. But, as has been said, such things are at best but accidents of the novel.

[Sidenote: Karr.]

If not much is found here about Alphonse Karr, it is certainly not because the present writer undervalues his general literary position. As a journalist and miscellanist, Karr had few superiors in a century of miscellaneous journalism; and as a maker of telling and at the same time solid phrase, he was Voltaire's equal in the first respect and his superior in the second. The immortal "Que MM. les a.s.sa.s.sins commencent,"

already referred to, is perhaps the best example in all literature of the terse _argumentum joculare_ which is not more sparkling as a joke than it is crushing as an argument; "Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose"[301] is nearly as good; and if one were writing a history, not of the novel, but of journalism or essay-writing of the lighter kind, Karr would have high place and large room. But as a novelist he does not seem to me to be of much importance, nor even as a tale-teller, except of the anecdotic kind. He can hardly be dull, and you seldom read him long without coming to something[302] refreshing in his own line; but his tales, as tales, are rarely first-rate, and I do not think that even _Sous les Tilleuls_, his best-known and perhaps best production, needs much delay over it.

[Sidenote: Roger de Beauvoir--_Le Cabaret des Morts_.]

Roger de Beauvoir (whose _de_ was genuine, but who embellished "Bully,"

his actual surname, into the one by which he was generally known) also had, like Bernard and Reybaud, the honour of being noticed, translated, and to some extent commented on by Thackeray.[303] I have, in old times, read more of his novels than I distinctly remember; and they are not very easy to procure in England now. Moreover, though he was of the right third or fourth _cru_ of _mil-huit-cent-trente_, there was something wanting in his execution. I have before me a volume of short stories, excellently ent.i.tled (from the first of them) _Le Cabaret des Morts_. One imagines at once what Poe or Gautier, what even Bulwer or Washington Irving, would have made of this. Roger (one may call him this without undue familiarity, because it is the true factor in both his names) has a good idea--the muster of defunct painters in an ancient Antwerp pot-house at ghost-time, and their story-telling. The contrast of them with the beautiful _living_ barmaid might have been--but is not--made extremely effective. In fact the fatal improbability--in the Aristotelian, not the Barbauldian sense--broods over the whole. And the Cabaret des Morts itself ceases, not in a suitable way, but because the Burgomaster shuts it up!!! All the other stories--one of Marie Antoinette's Trianon dairy; another of an anonymous pamphlet; yet another of an Italian n.o.ble and his use of malaria for vengeance; as well as the last, told by a Sister of Mercy while watching a patient--miss fire in one way or another, though all have good subjects and are all in a way well told. It is curious, and might be made rather instructive by an intelligent Professor of the Art of Story-telling, who should a.n.a.lyse the causes of failure. But it is somewhat out of the way of the mere historian.[304]

[Sidenote: Ourliac--_Contes du Bocage_.]

edouard Ourliac, one of the minor and also one of the shorter-lived men of 1830, seems to have been pleasant in his life--at least all the personal references to him that I remember to have seen, in a long course of years, were amiable; and he is still pleasant in literature.

He managed, though he only reached the middle of the road, to acc.u.mulate work enough for twelve volumes of collection, while probably more was uncollected. Of what I have read of his, the _Contes_ and _Nouveaux Contes du Bocage_--tales of La Vendee, with a brief and almost brilliant, certainly vivid, sketch of the actual history of that glorious though ill-fated struggle--deserve most notice. Two of the _Nouveaux Contes_, _Le Carton D._ (a story of the rescue of her husband by a courageous woman, with the help of the more amiable weaknesses of the only amiable Jacobin leader, Danton) and _Le Chemin de Keroulaz_ (one of treachery only half-defeated on the Breton coast), may rank with all but the very best of their kind. In another, _Belle-Fontaine_, people who cannot be content with a story unless it instructs their minds on points of history, morality, cosmogony, organo-therapy, and everything _quod exit in y_, except jollity and sympathy, may find a section on the youth of 1830--really interesting to compare with the much less enthusiastic account by Gerard de Nerval, which is given above. And those who like to argue about cases of conscience may be glad to discuss whether Jean Reveillere, in the story which bears his name, _ought_ to have spared, as he actually did, the accursed _conventionnel_, who, after receiving shelter and care from women of Jean's family, had caused them to be ma.s.sacred by the _bleus_, and then again fell into the Vendean's hands.

But, with one or two more notices, we must close this chapter.

Although Dumas, by an odd antic.i.p.atory reversal of what was to be his son's way, spent a great deal of time on more or less trashy[305] plays before he took to his true line of romance, and so gave opportunity to others to get a start of him in the following of Scott, it was inevitable that his own immense success should stir emulation in this kind afresh. In a way, even, Sue and Soulie may be said to belong to the cla.s.s of his unequal compet.i.tors, and others may be noticed briefly in this place or that. But there is one author who, for one book at least, belonging to the successors rather than the _avant-coureurs_, but decidedly of the pre-Empire kind, must have a more detailed mention.

[Sidenote: Achard.]

Many years ago somebody was pa.s.sing the small tavern which, dating for aught I know to the times of Henry Esmond, and still, or very lately, surviving, sustained the old fashion of a thoroughfare, fallen, but still fair, and fondly loved of some--Kensington High Street, just opposite the entrance to the Palace. The pa.s.ser-by heard one loiterer in front of it say to his companion in a tone of emotion, and almost of awe: "There was beef, and beer, and bread, and greens, and _everything you can imagine_." This _pheme_ occurred to me when, after more than half a century, I read again Amedee Achard's _Belle-Rose_. I had taken it up with some qualms lest crabbed age should not confirm the judgment of ardent youth; and for a short s.p.a.ce the extreme n.o.bility of its sentiments did provoke the giggle of degeneracy. But forty of the little pages of its four original volumes had not been turned when it rea.s.sured me as to the presence of "beef, and beer, and bread, and greens, and everything you can imagine" in its particular style of romance. The hero, who begins as a falconer's son and ends as a rich enough colonel in the army and a Viscount by special grace of the Roi Soleil, is a _sapeur_, but far indeed from being one of those graceless comrades of his to whom nothing is sacred. At one time he does indeed succ.u.mb to the sorceries of a certain Genevieve de Chateaufort, a d.u.c.h.ess _aux narines fremissantes_. But who could resist this combination? even if there were a marquise of the most beautiful and virtuous kind, only waiting to be a widow in order to be lawfully his. Besides, the Lady of the Quivering Nostrils becomes an abbess, her rather odd abbey somehow accommodating not merely her own irregularly arrived child (_not_ Belle-Rose's), but Belle-Rose himself and his marchioness after their marriage; and she is poisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There are actually two villains--a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is a more difficult person than your hero) very unusual--one of whom is despatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actual curtain. There is the proper persecuting minister--Louvois in this case.

There are valiant and comic non-commissioned officers. There is a brave, witty, and generous Count; a lover of the "fatal" and ill-fated kind; his bluff and soldierly brother; and more of the "affair of the poisons"

than even that mentioned above. You have the Pa.s.sage of the Rhine, fire-raisings, duels, battles, skirmishes, ambuscades, treachery, chivalry--in fact, what you will comes in. And you must be a very ill-conditioned or feeble-minded person if you _don't_ will. Every now and then one might, no doubt, "smoke" a little reminiscence; more frequently slight improbabilities; everywhere, of course, an absence of any fine character-drawing. But these things are the usual spots, and very pardonable ones, of the particular sun. I do not remember any French book of the type, outside the Alexandrian realm, that is as good as _Belle-Rose_;[306] and I am bound to say that it strikes me as better than anything of its kind with us, from James and Ainsworth to the excellent lady[307] who wrote _Whitehall_, and _Whitefriars_, and _Owen Tudor_.

[Sidenote: Souvestre, Feval, etc.]

It must, however, be evident that of this way in making books, and of speaking of them, there is no end.[308] Fain would I dwell a little on emile Souvestre, in whom the "moral heresy," of which he was supposed to be a sectary, certainly did not corrupt the pure milk of the tale-telling gift in such charming things as _Les Derniers Bretons_, _Le Foyer Breton_, and the rather different _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_; also on the better work of Paul Feval, who as certainly did not invariably do suit and service to morality, but Sue'd and Soulie'd it in many books with promising t.i.tles;[309] and who, once at least, was inspired (again by the witchery of the country between the Baie des Trepa.s.ses and the Rock of Dol) to write _La Fee des Greves_, a most agreeable thing of its kind. Auguste Maquet (or Augustus MacKeat) will come better in the next chapter, for reasons obvious to some readers no doubt already, but to be made so to others there. And so--for this division or subdivision--an end, with one word more on Petrus Borel's _Champavert_.

[Sidenote: Borel's _Champavert_.]

Borel, whose real Christian name, it is almost unnecessary to say, was Pierre, and who was a sort of incarnation of a "Jeune-France" (beginning as a _bousingot_--not ill translated by the contemporary English "bang-up" for an extreme variety of the kind--and ending as a _sous-prefet_), wrote other things, including a longer and rather tedious novel, _Madame Putiphar_. But the tales of _Champavert_,[310]

which had the doubly-"speaking" sub-t.i.tle of _Contes Immoraux_, are capital examples of the more literary kind of "rotting." They are admirably written; they show considerable power. But though one would not be much surprised at reading any day in the newspaper a case in which a boatman, plying for hire, had taken a beautiful girl for "fare,"

violated her on the way, and thrown her into the river, the subject is not one for art.

FOOTNOTES:

[262] It will be observed that I use the words referred to in this note with more discrimination than is always the case with some excellent folk. I sympathise with Cadoudal most of the three, but I quite recognise that Bonaparte had a kind of right to try, and to execute him.

So, if Pichegru had been tried, he might have been executed. The Enghien business was pure murder. In some more recent instances these distinctions have not, I think, been correctly observed by public speakers and writers.

[263] This _philosophe inconnu_ (as his ticket-name goes in French) is, I fancy, even more unknown in England. I have not read much of him; but I think, if it had come in my way, I should have read more.

[264] Without doing this, it my be suggested that the contrast elsewhere quoted "Merimee etait gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'etait pas," was likely to make its unfavourable side specially felt in this connection.

He seems to have disgusted even the Princess Mathilde, one of the staunchest of friends and certainly not the most squeamish or prudish of women. Nor, in another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture of rum and curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinking it might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, and the curacao does not really improve the rum. It is a pity he did not know the excellent Cape liqueur called Vanderhum, which is not a mixture but a true hybrid of the two.

[265] In articles written for the _Fortnightly Review_ during a large part of the year 1878, and reprinted in the volume of _Essays on French Novelists_ frequently referred to.

[266] _Vide_ the wonderful poem--one of Mr. Anon's pearls, but Donne's for more than a ducat--"Thou sent'st to me a heart was crowned," etc.

However, the bitter remark quoted elsewhere (_v. inf._) looks like a lasting wound.

[267] I can conceive a modernist rising up and saying, "And your mawkish ante-nuptial wooings? Haven't _we_ had enough of _them_?" To which I should reply, "Impossible." The sages of old have rightly said that 'The way of a man with a maid' is a mystery always, and the proofs thereof are well seen in literature as in life. But the way of an extra-man with another person's wife can, as ill.u.s.trated, if not demonstrated, by the myriads of treatises thereon in French and the thousands of imitations in other languages (reinforced, if not the Stoic scavenger-researcher so pleases, by the annals of the Divorce Court and its predecessors), be almost scientifically reduced to two cla.s.ses. (1) Is the lady _adulteraturient_? In that case results can be attained anyhow. (2) Is she not? In that case results can be attained nohow. Which considerably minishes the interest of this situation. The interest of the other is the interest of "the world's going round" in quality, and almost infinitely various in detail. But when something has once happened the variety ceases, or is immensely reduced.

[268] "_Bien! mon sang._" I suppose "democratic" sentiment is quite insensible to this, which seems to be a pity.

[269] I think it should be added to Sandeau's credit that (as it appears to me at least) he had a strong influence on the reaction against Naturalism at the end of the century.

[270] Most of his contemporaries would have envied him this admirably _moyen-age_ and sonorous designation. But it is certainly c.u.mbrous for a t.i.tle-page, and its owner--a modest man with a sense of humour--may perhaps have thought that it _might_ be rather more ridiculous than sublime there.

[271] As is usual and natural with men of his time, La Vendee mostly supplies it; but that glorious failure did not inspire him quite so well as it did Sandeau or even (_v. inf._) edouard Ourliac. However, he was a sound Royalist, for which peace be to his soul!

[272] Who, by the way, was a good friend and a good appreciator of Bernard.

[273] For any one who cares for the minor "arts and crafts" of literature this is _the_ example of Adaptation itself. The story is not translated; it is not imitated; it is not parodied. It is simply _transfused_ from one body of a national literature into another, and I defy the acutest and most experienced critic to find in the English, if he did not previously know the facts, any trace of a French original.

[274] Corinne made a great blunder: but admirers of Miss Austen have sometimes taken it as being greater than it was. "Vulgaire" and "vulgar"

are by no means exact synonyms: in fact the French word is probably used much oftener in a more or less inoffensive sense than otherwise.

[275] Especially in the next chapter but one.

[276] Or was it Comte that was "naught" and Fourier that was "void"? I am sure the third person, namely, Cabet, was "puerile"; but I do not think I could read _Aurora Leigh_ again, even to make sure of the distribution of the other epithets.

[277] The real _old_ Constantia has, I believe, ceased to exist. It was a delicious _vin de liqueur_, but you might as well ice Madeira or a brown sherry.

[278] Thackeray pays Sue the very high compliment of having "tried almost always [to attain], and in _Mathilde_ very nearly succeeded in attaining, a tone of _bonne compagnie_," I found the particular book difficult to get hold of. Apropos of French naval novels, will somebody tell me who wrote _Le Roi des Gabiers_, an immense _feuilleton_-romance, which I remember reading a vast number of years ago? I think he had (or took) a Breton name, and wrote others. But the navy, even with Jean Bart and Surcouf and the Bailli, has never attracted any of the _great_ French novelists.

[279] I ought perhaps to say that the second volume does not seem to me to be quite equal to the first. The "sixteen years allowed for refreshment" do not justify themselves.

[280] In _La Lionne_ (which is not to be confused with _Le Lion Amoureux_, a "psychological" diploma-piece praised by some) there are chapters and chapters of love-making "of a sort." But it is not the right sort.

[281] The famous or legendary chamber at Glamis--and perhaps another not so generally known story of a mansion farther north still, where you see from the courtyard a window the room belonging to which cannot be found from the inside--will occur. But Soulie, though he might have heard of the former, is very unlikely to have known the latter, which comes nearer to his arrangement.

[282] The contact _here_ with the _Peau de Chagrin_ need hardly be dwelt upon.

[283] A little more on this subject may be given later to Gaboriau and Ponson du Terrail.

[284] Reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_.

[285] A somewhat fuller discussion of this heretical _bona patria_ of literature may be found in the original Essay. I had at one time thought of reprinting it--in text or appendix--here. But perhaps it would be superfluous. I ought, however, to add that I have seen, in French writers, later again than those referred to in the text, some touches of revived interest in Murger.

[286] Translated at length in the Essay.

[287] I have always been a little curious to know whether that remarkable periodical, Cope's _Tobacco Plant_, which gave us not a little of James Thomson the Second's work, was really, as it might have been, conceived as a follower of _Le Castor_.

[288] Murger knows this and allows it.

[289] Who, moreover, _did_ work, and that pretty hard, in his Secretaryship, and by no means disdained pay for it--purely "patriotic"