A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 27

This lack of distribution, and the inequalities of the actual adventures, are, naturally enough, more noticeable still in the longer and later series dealing with the eighteenth century, while, almost of necessity, the purely "romantic" interest is at a lower strength. I can, however, find very little fault with _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_--an excellent blend of lightness and excitement. _Olympe de Cleves_ has had very important partisans;[318] but though I like Olympe herself almost better than any other of Dumas' heroines, except Marguerite, she does not seem to me altogether well "backed up"; and there is here, as there had been in the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_, and was to be in others, too much insignificant court-intrigue. The Cagliostro cycle again appeals very strongly to some good critics, and I own that in reading it a second time I liked it better than I had done before. But I doubt whether the supernatural of any kind was a circle in which Dumas could walk with perfect freedom and complete command of his own magic. There remains, as among the novels selected as pieces, not of conviction, but of diploma, _Monte Cristo_, perhaps the most popular of all, certainly one of the most famous, and still holding its popularity with good wits.

Here, again. I have to confess a certain "correction of impression." As to the _Chateau d'If_, which is practically an independent book, there can hardly be two opinions among competent and unprejudiced persons. But I used to find the rest--the voluminous rest--rather heavy reading.

Recently I got on better with them; but I can hardly say that they even now stand, with me, that supreme test of a novel, "Do you want to read it again?" I once, as an experiment, read "Wandering Willie's Tale"

through, every night for a week, having read it I don't know how many times before; and I found it no more staled at the seventh enjoyment than I should have found the charm of Helen or of Cleopatra herself. I do not know how many times I have read Scott's longer novels (with one or two exceptions), or d.i.c.kens', or Thackeray's, or not a few others in French and English, including Dumas himself. And I hope to read them all once, twice, or as many times more as those other Times which are in Some One's hand will let me. But I do not want to read _Monte Cristo_ again.

It will be clear from these remarks that, whether rightly or wrongly, I think Dumas happiest in his dealings with historical or quasi-historical matters, these dealings being subject to the general law, given more than once elsewhere, that the historical personages shall not, in their historically registered and detailed character, occupy the chief positions in the story. In other words, he seems to me to have preferred an historical canvas and a few prominent figures outlined thereon--in which respect he does not greatly differ from other historical novelists so far as they are historical novelists merely. But Dumas, as a novelist of French history, had at his disposal sources and resources, for filling up his pictures, which were lacking elsewhere, and which, in particular, English novelists possessed hardly at all, as regards anything earlier than the eighteenth century. I dare say it has often occurred to other people, as it has to me, how vastly different _Peveril of the Peak_--one of the least satisfactory of Scott's novels--would have been if Pepys's Diary had been published twenty years earlier instead of two years later. Evelyn was available, but far less suitable to the purpose, and was only published when Scott had begun to write rather than to read.[319] For almost every year, certainly for every decade and every notable person's life with which and with whom he wished to deal, Dumas had "Memoirs" on to which, if he did not care to take the trouble himself, he had only to turn one of the "young men" to get facts, touches, ornaments, suggestions enough for twenty times his own huge production. Of course other people had these same stores open to them, and that other people did not make the same use thereof[320] is one of the chief glories of Alexander the Great in fiction. But in any real critical-historical estimate of him, the fact has to take its place, and its very great place.

But there is the other fact, or collection of facts, of greater importance still, implied in the question, "What did he do with these stores?" and "How did he, as it seems to Alexandrians at least, do so much better than those other people, to whom they were open quite as freely?"

It is, however, before answering these questions at large, perhaps once more necessary to touch on what may be called the historical-_accuracy_ objection. If anybody says, "The man represents Charles I. as having been taken, after he had been sold by the Scotch, direct from Newcastle to London, tried at once, and executed in a day or two. This was not the way things happened"--you are bound to acknowledge his profound and recondite historical learning. But if he goes on to say that he cannot enjoy _Vingt Ans Apres_ as a novel because of this, you are equally bound to pity his still more profound aesthetic ignorance and impotence.

The facts, in regard to the criticism of historical novels as such, ill.u.s.trate the wisdom of Scott in keeping his historical characters for the most part in the background, and the _un_wisdom of Vigny in preferring the opposite course. But they do nothing more. If Dumas had chosen, he might have separated the dramatic meeting of the Four at Newcastle itself--and the intenser tale of their effort to save Charles, with its sequel of their own narrow escape from the _eclair_ felucca--by chapters, or a book, of adventures in France. But he did not choose; and the liberty of juxtaposition which he took is more apparently than really different from that which Shakespeare takes, when he jumps ten years in _Antony and Cleopatra_. What Dumas _really_ borrows from history--the tragic interest of the King's fate--is in each case historically true, though it is eked and adapted and manipulated to suit the fict.i.tious interest of the Quadrilateral. You certainly could not, then or now, _ride_ from Windsor to London in twenty minutes, though you could now motor the distance in the time, at the risk of considerable fines. And an Englishman, jealous of his country's honour, might urge that, while the "Vin _de Porto_" itself came in rather later, there were few places in the England of the seventeenth century where that "Vin _d'Espagne_," so dear to Athos, was not more common than it was in France, though one would not venture to deny that the shortly-to-become Baron de Bracieux _had_ some genuine Xeres (as we are told) in his cellar. But these things are--no more and no less than the greater ones--utter trifles as far as the actual novel interest is concerned.

They are, indeed, less than trifles: they can hardly be said to exist.

[Sidenote: His att.i.tude to Plot.]

The "four wheels of the novel" have been sometimes, and perhaps rightly, said to be Plot, Character, Description, and Dialogue--Style[321] being a sort of fifth. Of the first there is some difficulty in speaking, because the word "plot" is by no means used, as the text-books say, "univocally," and its synonyms or quasi-synonyms, in the different usages, are themselves things "kittle" to deal with. "Action" is sometimes taken as one of these synonyms--certainly in some senses of action no novelist has ever had more; very few have had so much. But of concerted, planned, or strictly co-ordinated action, of more than episode character, he can hardly be said to have been anything like a master. His best novels are chronicle-plays undramatised--large numbers of his scenes could be cut out with as little real loss as foolish "cla.s.sical" critics used to think to be the case with Shakespeare; and his connections, when he takes the trouble to make any, are often his very weakest points. Take, for instance, the things that bring about D'Artagnan's great quest for the diamonds--one of the most excellent episodes in this department of fiction, and something more than an episode in itself. The author actually cannot think of any better way than to make Constance Bonacieux--who is represented as a rather unusually intelligent woman, well acquainted with her husband's character, and certainly not likely to overestimate him through any superabundance of wifely affection or admiration--propose that he, a middle-aged mercer of sedentary and _bourgeois_ habits, shall undertake an expedition which, on the face of it, requires youth, strength, audacity, presence of mind, and other exceptional qualities in no ordinary measure, and which, if betrayed to an ever vigilant, extremely powerful, and quite unscrupulous enemy, is almost certain to be frustrated.

Still the "chronicle"-action dispenses a man, to a large extent, in the eyes of some readers at any rate, from even attempting exact and tight _liaisons_ of scene in this fashion, though of course if he does attempt them he submits himself to the perils of his attempt just as his heroes submit themselves to theirs. But other readers--and perhaps all those predestined to be Alexandrians--do not care to exact the penalties for such a failure. They are quite content to find themselves launched on the next reach of the stream, without asking too narrowly whether they have been ushered decorously through a lock or have tumbled somehow over a lasher. Such troubles never drown or damage _them_. And indeed there are some of them sufficiently depraved by nature, and hardened by indulgence in sin, to disregard _general_ action altogether, and to look mainly if not wholly to the way in which the individual stories are told, not at that in which they come to have to be told. Of Dumas' power of telling a story there surely can be no two opinions. The very reproach of _amuseur_ confesses it. Of the means--or some of them--by which he does and does not exercise this power, more may be said under the heads which follow. We are here chiefly concerned with the power as it has been achieved and stands--in, for instance, such a thing, already glanced at, as the "Vin de Porto" episode or division of _Vingt Ans Apres_, which, though there are scores of others nearly as good, seems to me on the whole the very finest thing Dumas ever did in his own peculiar kind. There are just two dozen pages of it--pages very well filled--from the moment when Blaisois and Mousqueton express their ideas on the subject of the unsuitableness of beer, as a fortifier against sea-sickness, to that when the corpse of Mordaunt, after floating in the moonlight with the gold-hilted dagger flashing from its breast, sinks for the last time. The interest grows constantly; it is never, as it sometimes is elsewhere, watered out by too much talk, though there is enough of this to carry out the author's usual system (_v. inf._).

Nothing happens sufficiently extravagant or improbable to excite disgust or laughter, though what does happen is sufficiently "palpitating." If this is melodrama, it is melodrama free from most of the objections made elsewhere to the kind. And also if it is melodrama, it seems to me to be melodrama infinitely superior, not merely in degree, but in kind, to that of Sue and Soulie.

[Sidenote: To Character.]

It is in this "enfisting" power of narrative, constantly renewed if not always logically sustained and connected, that Dumas' excellence, if not his actual supremacy, lies; and the fact may dispense us from saying any more about his plots. As to Character, we must still keep the offensive-defensive line. Dumas' most formidable enemies--persons like the late M. Brunetiere--would probably say that he has no character at all. Some of his champions would content themselves with e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. the two names "D'Artagnan!" and "Chicot!" shrugging their shoulders, and abstaining from further argument as likely to be useless, there being no common ground to argue upon. In actual life this might not be the most irrational manner of proceeding; but it could hardly suffice here. As is usually, if not invariably, the case, the difference of estimate _is_ traceable, in the long run, to the fact that the disputants or adversaries are not using words in the same sense--working in conjunction with the other fact that they do not like and want the same things. Almost all words are ambiguous, owing to the length of time during which they have been used and the variety of parts they have been made to play. But there are probably few which--without being absolutely equivocal like "box" and our other "foreigners' horrors"--require the use of the _distinguo_ more than "character." As applied to novels, it may mean (1) a human personality more or less deeply a.n.a.lysed; (2) one vividly distinguished from others; (3) one which is made essentially _alive_ and almost recognised as a real person; (4) a "personage"

ticketed with some marks of distinction and furnished with a dramatic "part"; (5) an eccentric. The fourth and fifth may be neglected here. It is in relation to the other three that we have to consider Dumas as a character-monger.

In the compet.i.tion for representation of character which depends upon a.n.a.lysis, "psychology," "problem-projection," Dumas is of course nowhere, though, to the disgust of some and the amus.e.m.e.nt of others, _Jacques Ortis_ figures in the list of his works. _Rene_, _Adolphe_, the works of Madame de Stael (if they are to be admitted) and those of Beyle (which no doubt must be) found nothing corresponding in his nature; and there was not the slightest reason why they should. The cellar of the novel contains even more than the "thousand dozen of wine" enshrined by that of Crotchet Castle, but no intelligent possessor of it, any more than Mr. Crotchet himself, would dream of restricting it to one kind of vintage. Nor, probably, would any really intelligent possessor arrange his largest bins for this kind, which at its best is a very exquisite _vin de liqueur_, but which few people wish to drink constantly; and which at its worst, or even in mediocre condition, is very poor tipple--"shilpit," as Peter Peebles most unjustly characterises sherry in _Redgauntlet_. Skipping (2) for the moment, I do not know that under head (3) one can make much fight for Alexander. D'Artagnan and Chicot are doubtless great, and many others fall not far short of them. I am always glad to meet these two in literature, and should be glad to meet them in real life, particularly if they were on my side, though their being on the other would add considerably to the excitement of one's existence--so long as it continued. But I am not sure that I _know_ them as I know Marianne and Des Grieux, Tom Jones and My Uncle Toby, the Baron of Bradwardine and Elizabeth Bennet. Athos I know or should know if I met him, which I am sorry to say I have not yet done; and La Reine Margot, and possibly Olympe de Cleves; but there is more guess-work about the knowledge with her than in the other cases. Porthos (or somebody very like him) I did know, and he was most agreeable; but he died too soon to go into the army, as he ought to have done, after leaving Oxford. And though I never met a complete Aramis, I think I have met him in parts. There are not many more of this cla.s.s. On the other hand, there is almost an entire absence in Dumas of those mere lay-figures which are so common in other novelists. There is great plenty of something more than toy-theatre characters cut out well and brightly painted, fit to push across the stage and justify their "words"

and vanish; but that is a different thing.

And this leads us partly back and partly up to the second head, the provision of characters sufficiently distinguished from others, and so capable of playing their parts effectually and interestingly. It is in this that he is so good, and it is this which distinguishes himself from all his fellows but the very greatest. D'Artagnan and Chicot are again the best; but how good, at least in the better books, are almost all the others! D'Artagnan would be a frightful loss, but suppose he were not there and you knew nothing about him, would you not think Planchet something of a prize? Without Chicot there would be a blank horrible to think of. But do we not still "share"? Have we not Dom Gorenflot?

It is in this provision of vivid and sufficiently, if not absolutely, vivified characters and personages--"company" for his narrative dramas--that Dumas is so admirable under this particular head. If they are rarely detachable or independent, they work out the business consummately. Lackeys and ladies' maids, inn-keepers and casual guests at inns, courtiers and lawyers, n.o.blemen and "lower cla.s.ses," they all do what they ought to do; they all "answer the ends of their being created,"--which is to carry out and on, through two or three or half a dozen volumes, a blissful suspension from the base realities of existence. And if anybody asks of them more than this, it is his own fault, and a very great fault too.[322]

[Sidenote: To Description (and "style").]

Of Description, as of the "fifth wheel" style, there is little to say about Dumas, though the littleness is in neither respect damaging. They are both adequate to the situation and the composition. Can you say much more of him or of anybody? If it were worth while to go into detail at all, this adequacy could be made out, I think, a good deal more than sufficiently. Take one of his greatest things, the "Bastion Saint-Gervais" in the _Mousquetaires_. If he has not made you see the heroic hopeless town, and the French leaguer and the shattered redoubt between, and the forlorn hope of the Four foolhardy yet forethoughtful and for ever delightful heroes, with their not so cheerful followers, eating, drinking, firing, consulting, and flaunting the immortal napkin-pennant in the enemy's face--you would not be made to see it, though the authors of _Ines de las Sierras_ or of _Le Chateau de la Misere_ had given you a cast of their office. And, what is more, the method of _Ines de las Sierras_ and of _Le Chateau de la Misere_ would have been actually out of place. It would have got in the way of the business, the engrossing business, of the manual fight against the Roch.e.l.lois, and the spiritual fight against Richelieu and Rochefort and Milady. So, again--so almost tautologically--with "style" in the more complicated and elaborate sense of the word. One may here once more thank emile de Girardin for the phrase that he used of Gautier's own style in _feuilleton_ attempts. It _would_ be _genant pour l'abonne_--even for an _abonne_ who was not the first comer. It is not the beautiful phrase, over which you can linger, that is required, but the straightforward competent word-vehicle that carries you on through the business, that you want in such work. The essence of Dumas' quality is to find or make his readers thirsty, and to supply their thirst. You can't quench thirst with _liqueurs_; if you are not a Philistine you will not quench it with vintage port or claret, with Chateau Yquem, or even with fifteen-year-old Clicquot. A "long" whisky and potash, a bottle of sound Medoc, or, best of all, a pewter quart of not too small or too strong beer--these are the modest but sufficient quenchers that suit the case. And Dumas gives you just the equivalents of these.

[Sidenote: To Conversation.]

But it may seem that, for the last head or two, the defence has been a little "let down"--the pa.s.s, if not "sold," somewhat weakly held.[323]

No such half-heartedness shall be chargeable on what is going to be said under the last category, which, in a way, allies itself to the first. It is, to a very large extent, by his marvellous use of conversation that Dumas attains his actual mastery of story-telling; and so this characteristic of his is of double importance and requires a Benjamin's allowance of treatment. The name just used is indeed specially appropriate, because Conversation is actually the youngest of the novelist's family or staff of work-fellows. We have seen, throughout or nearly throughout the last volume, how very long it was before its powers and advantages were properly appreciated; how mere _recit_ dominated fiction; and how, when the personages were allowed to speak, they were for the most part furnished only or mainly with harangues--like those with which the "unmixed" historian used to endow his characters. That conversation is not merely a grand set-off to a story, but that it is an actual means of telling the story itself, seems to have been unconscionably and almost unintelligibly slow in occurring to men's minds; though in the actual story-telling of ordinary life by word of mouth it is, and always must have been, frequent enough.[324] It is not impossible that the derivation of prose from verse fiction may have had something to do with this, for gossippy talk and epic or romance in verse do not go well together. Nor is it probable that the old, the respectable, but the too often mischievous disinclination to "mix kinds" may have had its way, telling men that talk was the dramatist's not the novelist's business. But whatever was the cause, there can be no dispute about the fact.

It was, it should be hardly necessary to say, Scott who first discovered the secret[325] to an effectual extent, though he was not always true to his own discovery. And it is not superfluous to note that it was a specially valuable and important discovery in regard to the novel of historical adventure. It had, of course, and almost necessarily, forced itself, in regard to the novel of ordinary life, upon our own great explorers in that line earlier. Richardson has it abundantly. But when you are borrowing the _subjects_ of the historian, what can be more natural than to succ.u.mb to the _methods_ of the historian--the long continuous narrative and the intercalated harangue? It must be done sometimes; there is a danger of its being done too often. Before he had found out the true secret, Scott blunted the opening of _Waverley_ with _recit_; after he had discovered it he relapsed in divers places, of which the opening of _The Monastery_ may suffice for mention here. Dumas himself (and it will be at once evident that this is a main danger of "turning on your young man") has done it often--to take once more a single example, there is too much of it in the account of the great _emeute_, by which Gondy started the Fronde. But it is the facility which he has of dispensing with it--of making the story speak itself, with only barely necessary additions of the pointer and reciter at the side of the stage--which const.i.tutes his power. Instances can hardly be required, for any one who knows him knows them, and every one who goes to him, not knowing, will find them. Just to touch the _apices_ once more, the two scenes following the actual overtures of the _Mousquetaires_ and of _La Reine Margot_--that where the impossible triple duel of D'Artagnan against the Three is turned into triumphant battle with the Cardinalists, blood-cementing the friendship of the Four; and that where Margot, after losing both husband and lover, is supplied with a subst.i.tute for both; adding the later pa.s.sage where La Mole is saved from the noose at the door--may suffice.

Of course this device of conversation, like the other best things--the beauty of woman, the strength of wine, the sharpness of steel, and red ink--is "open to abuse."[326] It has been admitted that even the fervency of the present writer's Alexandrianism cools at the "wall-game"

of Montalais and Malicorne. There may be some who are not even prepared to like it in places where I do. They are like Porthos, in the great initial interchange of compliments, and "would still be _doing_." But surely they cannot complain of any lack of incident in this latest and not least _Alexandreid_?

It may seem that the length of this chapter is not proportionate to the magnitude of the claims advanced for Dumas. But, as in other cases, I think it may not be impertinent to put in a reference to what I have previously written elsewhere. Moreover, as, but much more than, in the cases of Sandeau, Bernard, and Murger, there is an argument, paradoxical in appearance merely, for the absence of prolixity.

His claim to greatness consists, perhaps primarily, in the simplicity, straightforwardness, and general human interest of his appeal. He wants no commentaries, no introductions, no keys, no dismal Transactions of Dumas Societies and the like. Every one that thirsteth may come to his fountain and drink, without mysteries of initiation, or formalities of licence, or concomitant nuisances of superintendence and regulation. In the _Camp of Refuge_ of Charles Macfarlane (who has recently, in an odd way, been recalled to pa.s.sing knowledge)--a full and gallant private in the corps of which Dumas himself was then colonel _vice_ Sir Walter deceased--there is a sentence which applies admirably to Dumas himself.

After a success over the other half of our ancestors, and during a supper on the conquered provant, one of the Anglo-Saxon-half observes, "Let us leave off talking, and be jolly." Nothing could please me better than that some reader should be instigated to leave off my book at this point, and take up _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ or _Les Quarante-Cinq_, or if he prefers it, _Olympe de Cleves_--"and be jolly".[327]

FOOTNOTES:

[311] The postponement of him, to this last chapter of the first division of the book, was determined on chiefly because his _novels_ were not begun at all till years after the other greater novelists, already dealt with, had made their reputation, while the greatest of them--the "Mousquetaire" and "Henri Trois" cycles--did not appear till the very last _l.u.s.trum_ of the half-century. But another--it may seem to some a childish--consideration had some weight with me. I wished to range father and son on either side of the dividing summary; for though the elder wrote long after 1850 and the younger some time before it, in hardly any pair is the opposition of the earlier and later times more clearly exposed; and the ident.i.ty of name emphasises the difference of nature.

[312] In using this phrase I remembered the very neat "score" made off the great Alexander himself by a French judge, in some case at Rouen where Dumas was a witness. Asked as usual his occupation, he replied somewhat grandiloquently: "Monsieur, si je n'etais pas dans la ville de Corneille, je dirais 'Auteur dramatique.'" "Mais, Monsieur," replied the official with the sweetest indulgence, "il y a des degres." (This story is told, like most such, with variants; and sometimes, as in the particular case was sure to happen, not of Alexander the father, but of Alexander the son. But I tell it, as I read or heard it, long years ago.)

[313] You may possibly do as an English novelist of the privileged s.e.x is said to have done, and write novels while people are calling on you and you are talking to them (though I should myself consider it bad manners, and the novels would certainly bear traces of the exploit). But you can hardly do it while, as a famous caricature represents the scene, persons of that same s.e.x, in various dress or undress, are frolicking about your chair and bestowing on you their obliging caresses. Nor are corricolos and speronares, though they may be good things to write on in one sense, good in another to write in.

[314] As far as I know Maquet, his line seems to me to have been drama rather than fiction.

[315] I seem to remember somebody (I rather think it was Henley, and it was very likely to be) attempting a defence of this. But, except _pour rire_, such a thing is hopeless.

[316] I think (but it is a long time since I read the book) that it is the heroine of this who, supposed to be a dead, escapes from "that grewsome thing, premature interment" (as Sandy Mackay justly calls it), because of the remarkable odour of _violettes de Parme_ which her unspotted flesh evolves from the actual grave.

[317] I do not mind Montalais, but I object to Malicozne both in himself and as her lover. Mlle. de la Valliere and the plots against her virtue give us "pious Selinda" at unconscionable length, and, but that it would have annoyed Athos, I rather wish M. le Vicomte de la Bragelonne himself had come to an end sooner.

[318] My friend Mr. Henley, I believe, ranked it very high, and so did a common friend of his and mine, the late universally regretted Mr. George Wyndham. It so happened that, by accident, I never read the book till a few years ago; and Mr. Wyndham saw it, fresh from the bookseller's and uncut (or technically, "unopened") in my study. I told him the circ.u.mstances, and he said, in his enthusiastic way, "I _do_ envy you!"

[319] I do not need to be reminded of the conditions of health that also affected _Peveril_.

[320] I need not repeat, but merely refer to, what I have said of _Cinq-Mars_ and of _Notre-Dame de Paris_.

[321] On the very day on which I was going over the rough draft of this pa.s.sage I saw, in a newspaper of repute, some words which perhaps throw light on the objection to Dumas as having no literary merit. In them "incident, coherence, humour, and dramatic power" were all excluded from this merit, "style" alone remaining. Now I have been almost as often reproved for attaching too much value to style in others as for attending too little to it myself. But I certainly could not give it such a right to "reign alone." It will indeed "do" almost by itself; but other things can "do" almost without it.

[322] To be absolutely candid, Dumas himself did sometimes ask more of them than they could do; and then he failed. There can, I think, be little doubt that this is the secret of the inadequacy (as at least it seems to me) of the Felton episode. As a friend (whose thousand merits strive to cover his one crime of not admiring Dumas quite enough), not knowing that I had yet written a line of this chapter, but as it happened just as I had reached the present point, wrote to me: "Think what Sir Walter would have made of Felton!"

[323] I could myself be perfectly content to adapt George III. on a certain _Apology_, and subst.i.tute for all this a simple "I do not think Dumas needs any defence." But where there has been so much obloquy, there should, perhaps, be some refutation.

[324] "And then he says, says he...."

[325] In modern novels, of course. You have some good talk in Homer and also in the Sagas, but I am not thinking or speaking of them.

[326]

"Red ink for ornament and black for use-- The best of things are open to abuse."

(_The Good Clerk_ as vouched for by Charles Lamb.)

[327] Yet, being nothing if not critical, I can hardly agree with those who talk of Dumas' "_wild_ imagination"! As the great Mr. Wordsworth was more often made to mourn by the grat.i.tude of men than by its opposite, so I, in my humbler sphere, am more cast down sometimes by inapposite praise than by ignorant blame.

CHAPTER IX

THE FRENCH NOVEL IN 1850