A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 26

as (in his view) it was.

[290] _Jerome Paturot, with Considerations on Novels in General_, originally appeared in _Fraser_ for September 1843. Not reprinted in the author's lifetime, or till the supplementary collection of 1885-86. May be found, with some remarks by the present writer, in the "Oxford"

Thackeray, vol. vi. pp. 318-342.

[291] It is fair to say that some of the best Alexandriana were still to come.

[292] The retort courteous, if not even the countercheck quarrelsome, "Then why do you notice it?" is pretty obvious. Taking it as the former, it may be answered, "The political novel, if not the most strictly legitimate species of the kind, is numerous and not unimportant. It may therefore be allowed a specimen, and an examination of that specimen."

[293] Malvina, as one might expect, is by this time an "Anti-" of the most stalwart kind; though in the Saint-Simonian salad days, she had (as naturally) taken the other side.

[294] Probably more people know _La Croix de Berny_, which he wrote with Sandeau, Gautier, and Madame de Girardin, than anything exclusively his.

[295] Others may have been more fortunate. In any case, what follows, whatever its intrinsic merit, is typical of a great ma.s.s of similar French fiction, and therefore may claim attention here.

[296] It would be interesting to know where Mery got this hideous, cacophonous, hopelessly anti-a.n.a.logical and anti-etymological but alas!

actually existing name. I never heard of a ship called by it, but I once knew a poor lady on whom it had been inflicted at her baptism. Why any one with Jemima (not, of course, originally a feminine of "Jem," but adopted as such), which, though a little comic, is not intolerable, Jacqueline and Jaquetta (which are exceedingly pretty), and Jacobina (which, though with unfortunate historical a.s.sociations, is not itself ugly) to choose from, should have invented this horrible solecism, I never could make out. It is, I believe, confined to Scotland, and the only comfort connected with it is the negative one that, in two considerable residences there, I never heard of a "_Charles_ina." I suppose "Caroline" and "Charlotte" sufficed; or perhaps, while Whigs disliked the name (at least before that curious purifier of it, Fox), Tories shrank from profanation thereof.

[297] Was it Mr. Augustus Dunshunner? It was just about the time of the Glenmutchkin Railway, and most of "Maga's" men were Oxonians.

[298] See in vol. v. of the Oxford edition of Thackeray (for the thing, though never acknowledged, is certainly his) an exemplary "justification" of this very impudent offender.

[299] I have no quarrel with Manchester--quite the reverse--in consequence of divers sojourns, longer and shorter, in the place, and of much kindness shown to me by the not at all barbarous people. But neither the climate nor the general "conditions" of the city can be called paradisaical.

[300] They were as much shocked at it as we were at their "Houses of Tolerance" and at the inst.i.tution of the _grisette_.

[301] Not the worst perhaps of the myriad attempts to do something of the same kind in English was made recently: "If a man conscientiously objects to be shot _for_ his country, he may be conscientiously shot _by_ it."

[302] Here is one from "Un Diamant" (_Contes et Nouvelles_), which, though dest.i.tute of the charms of poetry, rivals and perhaps indeed suggested our own

And even an Eastern Counties' train Comes in at last.

"Quelque loin qu'on aille, on finit par arriver; _on arrive bien a Saint-Maur--trois lieues a faire--en coucou_."

[303] In the same article in which he dealt with Charles de Bernard.

[304] I know that many people do not agree with me here; but Blake did: "Tell me the facts, O historian, and leave me to reason on them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish.... Tell me the What: I do not want you to tell me the Why and the How. I can find that out for myself."

[305] If my friend Mr. Henley were alive (and I would he were) I should have to "look out for squalls." It was, as ought to be well known, his idea that _Henri Trois et Sa Cour_ was much more the rallying trumpet of 1830 that _Hernani_, and I believe a large part of his dislike for Thackeray was due to the cruel fun which _The Paris Sketch-book_ makes of _Kean_. But I speak as I think and find, after long re-thinking and researching.

[306] I have made some further excursions in the work of Achard, but they did not incline me to continue them, and I do not propose to say anything of the results here. I learn from the books that there were some other Achards, one of whom "improved the production of the beet-root sugar." I would much rather have written _Belle-Rose_.

[307] Emma Robinson. I used, I think, to prefer her to either of her more famous companions in the list. But I have never read her _Caesar Borgia_. It sounds appetising.

[308] Some may say, "There might have been an end much sooner with some of the foregoing." Perhaps so--once more. I do not claim to be _hujus...o...b..s Papa_ and infallible. But I sample to the best of my knowledge and judgment.

[309] _Beau Demon_, _Coeur d'Acier_, _La Tache Rouge_, etc. Feval began a little later than most of the others in this chapter, but he is of their cla.s.s.

[310] Thackeray, when very young and wasting his time and money in editing the _National Standard_, wrote a short and very savage review of this which may be found in the Oxford Edition of his works (vol. i., as arranged by the present writer). It is virtuously indignant (and no wonder, seeing that the writer takes it quite seriously), but, as Thackeray was almost to the last when in that mood, quite bull-in-a-china-shoppy. You _might_ take it seriously, and yet critically in another way, as a "degeneracy" of the Terror-Novel. But the "rotting" view is better.

CHAPTER VIII

DUMAS THE ELDER

[Sidenote: The case of Dumas.]

With Dumas[311] _pere_ the same difficulties (or nearly the same) of general and particular nature present themselves as those which occurred with Balzac. There is, again, the task--not so arduous and by no means so hopeless as some may think, but still not of the easiest--of writing pretty fully without repet.i.tion on subjects on which you have written fully already. There is the enormous bulk, far greater than in the other case, of the work: which makes any complete survey of its individual components impossible. And there is the wide if not universal knowledge of this or that--if not of this _and_ that--part of it; which makes such survey unnecessary and probably unwelcome. But here, as there, in whatever contrast of degree and kind, there is the importance in relation to the general subject, which needs pretty abundant notice, and the particular character of that importance, which demands special examination.

There are probably not quite so many readers as there might have been a generation ago who would express indignation at the idea that the two novelists can be held in any degree[312] comparable. Between the two periods a pretty strong and almost concerted effort was made by persons of no small literary position, such as Mr. Lang, Mr. Stevenson, and Mr.

Henley, who are dead, and others, some of whom are alive, to follow the lead of Thackeray many years earlier still. They denounced, supporting the denunciation with all the literary skill and vigour of which they were capable, the notion, common in France as well as in England, that Dumas was a mere _amuseur_, whether they did or did not extend their battery to the other notion (common then in England, if not in France) that he was an amuser whose amus.e.m.e.nts were pernicious. These efforts were perhaps not entirely ineffectual: let us hope that actual reading, by not unintelligent or prejudiced readers, had more effect still.

[Sidenote: Charge and discharge.]

But let us also go back a little and, adding one, repeat what the charges against Dumas are. There is the moral charge just mentioned; there is the not yet mentioned charge of plagiarism and "devilling"; and there is the again already mentioned complaint that he is a mere "pastimer"; that he has no literary quality; that he deserves at best to take his chance with the novelists from Sue to Gaboriau who have been or will be dismissed with rather short shrift elsewhere. Let us, as best seems to suit history, treat these in order, though with very unequal degrees of attention.

[Sidenote: Morality.]

The moral part of the matter needs but a few lines. The objection here was one of the still fewer things that did to some extent justify and "_sens_ify" the nonsense and injustice since talked about Victorian criticism. In fact this nonsense may (there is always, or nearly always, some use to be made even of nonsense) be used against its earlier brother. It is customary to objurgate Thackeray as too moral.

Thackeray never hints the slightest objection on this score against these novels, whatever he may do as to the plays. For myself, I do not pretend to have read everything that Dumas published. There may be among the crowd something indefensible, though it is rather odd that if there is, I should not merely never have read it but never have heard of it.

If, on the other hand, any one brings forward Mrs. Grundy's opinion on the Ketty and Milady pa.s.sages in the _Mousquetaires_; on the story of the origin of the Vicomte de Bragelonne; on the way in which the divine Margot was consoled for her almost tragic abandonment in a few hours by lover and husband--I must own that as Judge on the present occasion I shall not call on any counsel of Alexander's to reply. "Bah! it is bosh," as the greatest of Dumas' admirers remarks of another matter.

[Sidenote: Plagiarism and devilling.]

The plagiarism (or rather devilling + plagiarism) article of the indictment, tedious as it may be, requires a little longer notice. The facts, though perhaps never to be completely established, are sufficiently clear as far as history needs, on the face of them. Dumas'

works, as published in complete edition, run to rather over three hundred volumes. (I have counted them often on the end-papers of the beloved tomes, and though they have rather a knack, like the windows of other enchanted houses, of "coming out" different, this is near enough.) Excluding theatre (twenty-five volumes), travels, memoirs, and so-called history, they must run to about two hundred and fifty. Most if not all of these volumes are of some three hundred pages each, very closely printed, even allowing for the abundantly "s.p.a.ced" conversation. I should say, without pretending to an accurate "cast-off," that any _three_ of these volumes would be longer even than the great "part"-published works of d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, or Trollope; that any _two_ would exceed in length our own old average "three-decker"; and that any _one_ contains at least twice the contents of the average six-shilling masterpiece of the present day.

Now it stands to reason that a man who spent only the later part of his working life in novel-production, who travelled a great deal, and who, according to his enemies, devoted a great deal of time to relaxation,[313]

is not likely to have written all this enormous bulk himself, even if it were physically possible for him to have done so. One may go farther, and say that pure internal evidence shows that the whole was _not_ written by the same person.

[Sidenote: The Collaborators?]

As for the actual collaborators--the "young men," as Thackeray obligingly called them, who carried out the works in a less funereal sense than that in which the other "young men" carried out Ananias and Sapphira--that is a question on which I do not feel called upon to enter at any length. Anybody who cannot resist curiosity on the point may consult Alphonse Karr (who really might have found something fitter on which to expend his energies); Querard, an ill-tempered bibliographer, for whom there is the excuse that, except ill-temper, idleness, with a particularly malevolent Satan to find work for its hands to do, or mere hunger, hardly anything would make a man a bibliographer of his sort; and the person whom the law called Jacquot, and he himself by the handsomer t.i.tle of Eugene de Mirecourt. Whether Octave Feuillet exercised himself in this other kind before he took to his true line of novels of society; whether that ingenious journalist M. Fiorentino also played a part, are matters which who so lists may investigate. The most dangerous compet.i.tor seems to be Auguste Maquet--the "Augustus MacKeat"

of the Romantic dawn--to whom some have even a.s.signed the _Mousquetaires_[314] bodily, as far as the novel adds to the Courtils de Sandras "memoirs." But even with him, and still more with the others, the good old battle-horse, which never fails one in this kind of _chevauchee_, will be found to be effective in carrying the banner of Alexander the Greatest safe through. How does it happen that in the independent work of none of these, nor of any others, do the _special_ marks and merits of Dumas appear? How does it happen that these marks and merits appear constantly and brilliantly in all the best work a.s.signed to Dumas, and more fitfully in almost all its vast extent?

There may be a good deal of apple in some plum-jam and perhaps some vegetable-marrow. But plumminess is plumminess still, and it is the plumminess of "Dumasity" which we are here to talk of, and that only--the quality, not the man. And whether Dumas or Diabolus conceived and brought it about matters, in the view of the present historian, not a _centime_. By "Dumas" is here and elsewhere--throughout this chapter and throughout this book--meant Dumasity, which is something by itself, and different from all other "-nesses and -tudes and -ties."

[Sidenote: The positive value as fiction and as literature of the books: the less worthy works.]

We can therefore, if we choose, betake ourselves with a joyful and quiet mind to the real things--the actual characteristics of that Dumasity, Diabolicity, or _Dieu-sait-quoi_, which distinguishes (in measures and degrees varying, perhaps essentially, certainly according to the differing castes of readers) the great Mousquetaire trilogy; the hardly less great collection of _La Reine Margot_ and its continuations; the long eighteenth-century set which, in a general way, may be said to be two-centred, having now Richelieu (the Duke, not the Cardinal) and now Cagliostro for pivot; and _Monte Cristo_--with power to add to their number. In what will be said, attention will chiefly be paid to the books just mentioned, and perhaps a few more, such as _La_ _Tulipe Noire_; nor is even this list so closed that anybody may not consider any special favourites of his own admissible as subjects for the almost wholly unmitigated appreciation which will follow. I do not think that Dumas was ever at his best before the late sixteenth century or after the not quite latest eighteenth. _Isabel de Baviere_ and the _Batard de Mauleon_, with others, are indeed more readable than most minor historical novels; but their wheels drive somewhat heavily. As for the revolutionary set, after the _Cagliostro_ interest is disposed of, some people, I believe, rate _Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge_ higher than I do.

It is certainly better than _Les Blancs et les Bleus_ or _Les Louves de Machecoul_, in the latter of which Dumas has calmly "lifted" (or allowed a lazy "young man" to lift) the whole adventure of Rob Roy at the Fords of Frew, pretty nearly if not quite _verbatim_.[315] Of more avowed translations such as _Ivanhoe_ and _Jacques Ortis_ (the latter about as much out of his way as anything could be), it were obviously superfluous to take detailed notice. In others the very t.i.tles, such as, for instance, _Les Mohicans de Paris_, show at once that he is merely imitating popular styles. Yet others, such as _Madame de Chamblay_[316]

(in which I cannot help thinking that the "young man" was Octave Feuillet not yet come to his prime), have something of the ordinary nineteenth-century novel--not of the best kind.

But in all these and many more it is simply a case of "Not here!" though in the historical examples, before Saint Bartholomew and after Sainte-Guillotine, the sentence may be mitigated to "Not here _consummately_." And it may be just, though only just, necessary to say that this examination of Dumas' qualities should itself, with very little application or moral, settle the question whether he is a mere circulating-library caterer or a producer of real literature.

[Sidenote: The worthier--treatment of them not so much individually as under heads.]

To give brief specifications of books and pa.s.sages in the novels mentioned above, in groups or individually, may seem open to the objections often made to a mere catalogue of likes and dislikes. But, after all, in the estimation of aesthetic matters, it _is_ likes and dislikes that count. Nowhere, and perhaps in this case less than anywhere else, can the critic or the historian pretend to dispense his readers from actual perusal; it is sufficient, but it is at the same time necessary, that he should prepare those who have not read and remind those who have. For champion specimen-pieces, satisfying, not merely in parts but as wholes, the claim that Dumas shall be regarded as an absolute master in his own craft and in his own particular division of it, the present writer must still select, after fifty years' reading and re-reading, _Vingt Ans Apres_ and _La Reine Margot_. Parts of _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ are unsurpa.s.sed and unsurpa.s.sable; but the Bonacieux love-affair is inadequate and intruded, and I have never thought Milady's seduction of Felton quite "brought off." In _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ this inequality becomes much more manifest. Nothing, again, can surpa.s.s the single-handed achievement of D'Artagnan at the beginning in his kidnapping of General Monk, and few things his failure at the end to save Porthos, with the death of the latter--a thing which has hardly a superior throughout the whole range of the novel in whatever language (so far as I know) it has been written. But the "young men" were allowed their heads, by far too frequently and for too long periods, in the middle;[317] and these heads were by no means always equal to the occasion. There is no such declension in the immediate followers of _La Reine Margot_, _La Dame de Monsoreau_, and _Les Quarante-Cinq_. Chicot is supreme, but the personal interest is less distributed than in the first book and in the _Mousquetaire_ trilogy.