A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 29

The excuse, indeed, for this long digression may be, I think, made without impropriety or "forcing" to coincide with the natural sequel and correlation of this chapter. The development of the novel of ordinary life in the second half of the century _was_ extraordinary; but it was to a very large extent marked by the peculiarities--some of them near to corruptions--which have been just discussed. With the possible exception of Beyle, there was little more theory, or attempt at synthesis in accordance therewith, in the "ordinary" than in the "historical"

division of this earlier time. We have seen how the absence of "general ideas"--another way of putting it--has been actually brought as a charge against Balzac. George Sand had, especially at first, something of it; and this something seems, to me at least, by no means to have improved her work. In none or hardly any of the rest is there any evidence of "school," "system," "pattern," "problem," or the like. Yet they give us an immense amount of pastime, and I do not think their or their readers'

state was any the less gracious for what they did _not_ give us.

FOOTNOTES:

[328] I have not called this so, because the division into "Books," with which the _raison d'etre_ of "Interchapters" is almost inseparably connected, has not been adopted in this _History_.

[329] This fact, as well, perhaps, as others, should be taken into account by any one who may be at first sight surprised, and perhaps in the Biblical sense "offended," at finding two-thirds of the volume allotted to half of the time.

[330] To vary a good epigram of the _Rolliad_ crew on Pitt:

"'The French' for 'France' can't please the _Blanc_, The _Bleu_ detests the 'King.'"

[331] _V. sup._ on Reybaud.

[332] This is of course quite a different thing from saying that politicians had better have nothing to do with letters, or that men of letters may not _discuss_ politics. It is when they become Ministers that they too often disgust men and amuse angels.

[333] _Adolphe_ actually belongs to the nineteenth century.

[334] As I write this I remember how my friend the late M. Beljame, who and whose "tribe" have come so n.o.bly for English literature in France for forty years past, was shocked long ago at my writing "Mazar_in_ Library," and refused to be consoled by my a.s.surance that I should never dream of writing anything but "Bibliotheque Mazar_ine_." But I had, and have, no doubt on the principle.

[335] I _hope_, but do not trust, that no descendant of the persons who told Charles Lamb that Burns could not at the time be present because he was dead, will say, "But all these were subsequent to 1850."

[336] In my _History of Criticism_, _pa.s.sim_.

[337] _V. sup._ Vol. I., on the "heroic" romance.

[338] It seems unnecessary to repeat what has been said on Vigny and Merimee; but it is important to keep constantly in mind that they came before Dumas. As for the still earlier _Solitaire_, I must repeat that M. d'Arlincourt's utter failure as an individual ought not completely to obscure his importance as a pioneer in kind.

[339] "Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter, no doubt. But I am Crites, not Poietes.

[340] Pedantius may urge, "But 'James III.' is made to affect the fortunes of Esmond and Beatrix very powerfully." True; but he himself is by no means a _very_ "prominent historical character," and the exact circ.u.mstances of the agony of Queen Anne, and the _coup d'etat_ of Shrewsbury and Argyle, have still enough of the unexplained in or about them to permit somewhat free dealing.

[341] If any one says "_Leicester's Commonwealth?_" I say "_The Faerie Queene?_"

[342] I intend nothing offensive in thus mentioning his att.i.tude. In my _History of Criticism_ I have aimed at justice both to his short stage of going with, or at least not definitely against, the Romantic vein, and his much longer one of reaction. He was always vigorous in argument and dignified in manner; but his nature, when he found it, was essentially neo-cla.s.sic.

[343] In the _Times Literary Supplement_ for Thursday, Nov. 1, 1917.

[344] "It is vain to ask, as is the modern custom, whether the leap from the word 'copy' to the word 'recreate' (_v. sup._ Vol. I. p. 471) does not cover a difference in kind.... One feels that Prof. S. is rather sympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards as essential ... close psychological a.n.a.lysis of motive," etc. And so he even questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praises it, _is_ "A History of The French Novel." But did I ever undertake to give this _from the French point of view_, or to write a _History of French Novel-Criticism_? Or need I do so?

[345] It might, however, be a not uninteresting matter of debate whether Panurge's conduct to the Lady of Paris was _really_ so very much worse than part of Hamlet's to Ophelia.

[346] By one of those odd coincidences which diversify and relieve literary work, I read, for the first time in my life, and a few hours _after_ writing the above words, these in Dumas _fils'_ _Therese_: "Il procede par synthese." They do not there apply to authorship, but to the motives and conduct of one of the writer's questionable quasi-heroes.

But the whole context, and the usual methods of Dumas _fils_ himself, are saturated with synthesis _by rule_. (Of course the other process is, as also according to the strict meaning of the word, "synthetic," but _not_ "by rule.")

[347] I own I see a little less of it and a little more of the other in him; whence a certain lukewarmness with which I have sometimes been reproached.

[348] My very amiable reviewer thinks that eighteenth-century French society _did_ behave _a la Laclos_. I don't, though I think it did _a la Crebillon_.

CHAPTER X

DUMAS THE YOUNGER

[Sidenote: Division of future subjects.]

No one who has not had some experience in writing literary history knows the difficulties--or perhaps I should say the "unsatisfactorinesses"--which attend the shepherding of examples into separate chronological folds. But every one who has had that experience knows that mere neglect to attempt this shepherding has serious drawbacks. In such cases there is nothing for it but a famous phrase, "We will do what we can." An endeavour has been made in the last chapter to show that, about the middle of the nineteenth century, a noteworthy change _did_ pa.s.s over French novel-literature. In a similar retrospect, at the end of the volume and the _History_, we may be able, _si Dieu nous prete vie_, to show that this change was not actually succeeded by any other of equal importance as far as our own subject goes. But the stage had, like all such things, sub-stages; and there must be corresponding breaks, if only mechanical ones, in the narrative, to avoid the distasteful "blockiness" resulting from their absence. After several changes of plan I have thought it best to divide what remains of the subject into five chapters (to which a separate Conclusion may be added). The first of these will be allotted, for reasons to be given, to Alexandre Dumas _fils_; the second to Gustave Flaubert, greatest by far, if not most representative, of all dealt with in this latter part of the volume; the third to others specially of the Second Empire, but not specially of the Naturalist School; the fourth to that School itself; and the fifth to those now defunct novelists of the Third Republic, up to the close of the century, who may not have been dealt with before.

There should not, I think, be much doubt that we ought to begin with Alexandre Dumas, the son, who--though he launched his most famous novel five years before Napoleon the Third made himself come to the throne, had been writing for about as many earlier still, and lived till long after the Terrible Year, and almost to the end of our own tether--is yet almost more essentially _the_ novelist of the Second Empire than any one else, not merely because before its end he practically gave up Novel for Drama, but for other reasons which we may hope to set forth presently.

[Sidenote: A confession.]

Before sitting down comfortably to deal with him in my critical jacket, I have to put on, for ceremonial purposes, something of a white sheet, and to hold a candle of repentance in my hand. I have never said very much about the younger Dumas anywhere, and I am not conscious of any positive injustice in what I _have_ said;[349] but I do suspect a certain imperfection of justice. This arose, as nearly all positive and comparative injustices do, from insufficient knowledge and study. What it was exactly in him that "put me off" of old I could not now say; but I think it was because I did come across some of his numerous and famous fisticuffs of Preface and Dissertation and controversy. I thought then, and I still think, that the artist has something better to do than to "fight prizes": he has to do things worthy of the prize. "They say. What say they? Let them say" should be his motto. And later, when I might have condoned this (in the proper sense of that appallingly misused word) in virtue of his positive achievements, he had left off novel-writing and had taken to drama, for which, in its modern forms, I have never cared. But I fear I must make a further confession. The extravagant praise which was lavished on him by other critics, even though they were, in some cases at least, [Greek: philoi andres], once more proved a stumbling-block.[350] I have endeavoured to set matters right here by serious study of his novel work and some reference to the rest; so I hope that I may discard the sheet, and give the rest of the candle to the poor, now much requiring it.

[Sidenote: His general character.]

One thing about him is clear from his first famous, though not his first, book[351]--a book which, as has been said, actually preceded the Second Empire, but which has been thought to cast something of a prophetic shadow over that period of revel and rottenness--that is to say, from _La Dame aux Camelias_--that he was even then a very clever man.[352]

[Sidenote: _La Dame aux Camelias._]

"The Lady with the Camellias" is not now the widely known book that once it was; and the causes of its loss of vogue might serve as a text for some "Meditations among the Tombs," though in respect of rather different cemeteries from those which Addison or Hervey frequented. As a mere audacity it has long faded before the flowers, themselves "over"

now, of that Naturalism which it helped to bring about; and the once world-popular composer who founded almost, if not quite, his most popular opera on it, has become for many years an abomination and a hissing to the very same kind of person who, sixty years since, would have gone out of his way to extol _La Traviata_, and have found in _Il Trovatore_ something worth not merely all Rossini[353] and Bellini and Donizetti put together, but _Don Giovanni_, the _Zauberflote_, and _Fidelio_ thrown in; while if (as he might) he had known _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_ he would have lifted up his hoof against them. It is the nature of the fool of all times to overblame what the fools of other times have overpraised. But the fact that these changes have happened, and that other accidents of time have edulcorated that general ferocity which made even men of worth in England refuse to lament the death of the Prince Imperial in our service, should on the whole be rather favourable to a quiet consideration of this remarkable book. Indeed, I daresay some, if not many, of the "warm young men" to whom the very word "tune" is anathema might read the words, "Veux-tu que nous quittions Paris?" without having their pure and tender minds and ears sullied and lacerated by the remembrance of "Parigi, O cara, noi lasceremo"--simply because they never heard it.

A very remarkable book it is. Camellias have gone out of fashion, which is a great pity, for a more beautiful flower in itself does not exist: and those who have seen, in the Channel Islands, a camellia tree, as big as a good-sized summer-house, clothed with snow, and the red blossoms and green leaf-pairs unconcernedly slashing the white garment, have seen one of the prettiest sights in the world. But I should not dream of transferring the epithets "beautiful" or even "pretty" from the flower to the book. It _is_ remarkable, and it is clever in no derogatory sense. For it has pathos without mere sentiment, and truth, throwing a light on humanity, which is not wholly or even mainly like that of

The blackguard boy That runs his link full in your face.

The story of it is, briefly, as follows. Marguerite Gautier, its heroine, is one of the most beautiful and popular _demi-mondaines_ of Paris, also a _poitrinaire_,[354] and as this, if not as the other, the pet and protegee, in a _quasi_-honourable fashion, of an old duke, whose daughter, closely resembling Marguerite, has actually died of consumption. But she does not give up her profession; and the duke in a manner, though not willingly, winks at it. One evening at the theatre a young man, Armand Duval, who, though by no means innocent, is shy and _gauche_, is introduced to her, and she laughs at him. But he falls frantically in love with her, and after some interval meets her again.

The pa.s.sion becomes mutual, and for some time she gives herself up wholly to him. But the duke cannot stand this open _affiche_, and withdraws his allowances. Duval is on the point of ruining himself (he is a man of small means, partly derived from his father) for her, while she intends to sell all she has, pay her debts, and, as we may say, plunge into mutual ruin with him. Then appears the father, who at last makes a direct and effective appeal to her. She returns to business, enraging her lover, who departs abroad. Before he comes back, her health, and with it her professional capacity, breaks down, and she dies in agony, leaving pathetic explanations of what has driven him away from her. A few points in this bare summary may be enlarged on presently.

Even from it a certain resemblance, partly of a topsy-turvy kind, may be perceived by a reader of not less than ordinary acuteness to _Manon Lescaut_. The suggestion, such as it is, is quite frankly admitted, and an actual copy of Prevost's masterpiece figures not unimportantly in the tale.[355] Of the difference between the two, again presently.

The later editions of _La Dame aux Camelias_ open with an "Introduction"

by Jules Janin, dealing with a certain Marie Duplessis--the recently living original, as we are told, of Marguerite Gautier. A good deal has been said, not by any means always approvingly, of this system of "introductions," especially to novels. In the present instance I should say that the proceeding was dangerous but effective--perhaps not entirely in the way in which it was intended to be so. "Honest Janin,"[356] as Thackeray (who had deservedly rapped his knuckles earlier for a certain mixture of ignorance and impudence) called him later, was in his degree almost as "clever" a man as young Dumas; but his kind was different, and it did involve the derogatory connotation of cleverness. It is enough to say of the present subject that it displays, in almost the highest strength, the insincerity and superficiality of matter and thought which accompanied Janin's bright and almost brilliant facility of expression and style. His Marie Duplessis is one of those remarkable young persons who, to alter Dr. Johnson very slightly, unite "the manners of a _d.u.c.h.ess_ with the morals of" the other object of the doctor's comparison unaltered; superadding to both the amiability of an angel, the beauty of Helen, and the taste in art of all the great collectors rolled into one. The thing is pleasantly written bosh; and, except to those readers who are concerned to know that they are going to read about "a real person," can be no commendation, and might even cause a little disgust, not at all from the moral but from the purely critical side.

A lover of paradox might almost suggest that "honest Janin" had been playing the ingenious but dangerous finesse of intentionally setting up a foil to his text. He has certainly, to some tastes, done this. There is hardly any false prettiness, any sham Dresden china (a thing, by the way, that has become almost a proverbial phrase in French for _demi-monde_ splendour), about _La Dame aux Camelias_ itself. Nor, on the other hand, is there to be found in it--even in such antic.i.p.ated "naturalisms" as the exhumation of Marguerite's _two_-months'-old corpse,[357] and one or two other somewhat more veiled but equally or more audacious touches of realism--anything resembling the exaggerated horrors of such efforts of 1830 itself as Janin's own _ane Mort_ and part of Borel's _Champavert_. In her splendour as in her misery, in her frivolity as in her devotion and self-sacrifice, repulsive as this contrast may conventionally be, Marguerite is never impossible or unnatural. Her chief companion of her own s.e.x, Prudence Duvernoy, though, as might be expected, a good deal of a _proxenete_, and by no means disinterested in other ways, is also very well drawn, and a.s.sists the general effect more than may at first be seen.

The "problem" of the book, at least to English readers, lies in the person whom it is impossible to call the hero--Armand Duval. It would be very sanguine to say that he is unnatural; but the things that he does are rather appalling. That he listens at doors, opens letters not addressed to him, and so on, is sufficiently fatal; but a very generous extension of lovers' privileges may perhaps just be stretched over these things.[358] No such licence will run to other actions of his. In his early days of chequered possession he writes, anonymously, an insulting letter to his mistress, which she forgives; but he has at least the grace to repent of this almost immediately. His conduct, however, when he returns to Paris, after staying in the country with his family, and finds that she has returned to her old ways, is the real crime. A violent scene might, again, be excusable, for he does not know what his father has done. But for weeks this young gentleman of France devotes all his ingenuity and energies to tormenting and insulting the object of his former adoration. He ostentatiously "keeps" a beautiful but worthless friend of hers in her own cla.s.s, and takes every opportunity of flaunting the connection in Marguerite's face. He permits himself and this creature to insult her in every way, apparently descending once more to anonymous letters. And when her inexhaustible forgiveness has induced a temporary but pa.s.sionate reconciliation, he takes fresh umbrage, and sends money to her for her complaisance with another letter of more abominable insult than ever. Now it is bad to insult any one of whom you have been fond; worse to insult any woman; but to insult a prost.i.tute, faugh![359]

However, I may be reading too much English taste into French ways here,[360] and it is impossible to deny that a man, whether French or English, _might_ behave in this ineffable manner. In other words, the irresistible _humanum est_ clears this as it clears Marguerite's own good behaviour, so conventionally inconsistent with her bad. The book, of course, cannot possibly be put on a level with its pattern and inspiration, _Manon Lescaut_: it is on a much lower level of literature, life, thought, pa.s.sion--everything. But it has literature; it has life and thought and pa.s.sion; and so it shall have no black mark here.

[Sidenote: _Tristan le Roux._]