A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 33

Of Flaubert's famous doctrine of "the single word" perhaps a little more should, after all, be said. The results are so good, and the processes by which they are attained get in the way of the reader so little, that it is difficult to quarrel with the doctrine itself. But it was perhaps, after all, something of a superst.i.tion, and the almost "fabulous torments" which it occasioned to its upholder and pract.i.tioner seem to have been somewhat Fakirish. We need not grudge the five years spent over _Salammbo_; the seven over _L'education_; the earlier and, I think, less definitely known gestation of _Madame Bovary_; and that portion of the twenty which, producing these also, filled out those fragments of _La Tentation_ that the July Monarchy had actually seen. Perhaps with _Bouvard et Pecuchet_ he got into a blind alley, out of which such labour was never like to get him, and in which it was rather likely to confine him. But if the excess of the preparation had been devoted to the completion of, say, only half a dozen of such _Contes_ as those we actually have, it would have been joyful.

Yet this is idle pining, and the goods which the G.o.ds provided in this instance are such as ought rather to make us truly thankful. Flaubert was, as has been said, a Romantic, but he was born late enough to avoid the extravagances and the childishnesses of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ while retaining its inspiration, its _diable au corps_, its priceless recovery of inheritances from history. Nor, though he subjected all these to a severe criticism of a certain kind, did he ever let this make him (as something of the same sort made his pretty near contemporary, Matthew Arnold, in England) inclined to blaspheme.[403] He did not, like his other contemporary and peer in greatness of their particular country and generation, Baudelaire, play unwise tricks with his powers and his life.[404] He was fortunately relieved from the necessity of journey-work--marvellously performed, but still journey-work--which had beset Gautier and never let go of him.[405]

And he utilised these gifts and advantages as few others have done in the service of the novel. One thing may be brought against him--I think one only. You read--at least I read--his books with intense interest and enjoyment, but though you may recognise the truth and humanity of the characters; though you may appreciate the skill with which they are set to work; though you may even, to a certain extent, sympathise with them, you never--at least I never--feel that intense interest in them, as persons, which one feels in those of most of the greatest novelists. You can even feel yourself in them--a rare and great thing--you can _be_ Saint Anthony, and feel an unpleasant suspicion as if you had sometimes been Frederic Moreau. But this is a different thing (though it is a great triumph for the author) from the construction for you of loves, friends, enemies even--in addition to those who surround you in the actual world.

Except this defect--which is in the proper, not the vulgar sense a defect--that is to say, not something bad which is present, but only something good which is absent--I hardly know anything wrong in Flaubert. He is to my mind almost[406] incomparably the greatest novelist of France specially belonging to the second half of the nineteenth century, and I do not think that Europe at large has ever had a greater since the death of Thackeray.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] He _might_ have said--to make a Thackerayan translation of what was actually said later of an offering of roses rashly made to some French men of letters at their hotel in London: "Who the devil is this?

Let them flank him his vegetables to the gate!" But what he did say, I believe, though he did not know or mention my name, was that "a blonde son of Albion" had ventured something _gigantesque_ on him. And _gigantesque_ had, if I do not again fondly err, sometimes if not always its "milder shade" of meaning in Flaubert's energetic mouth.

[390] As in those cases, and perhaps even more than in most, I have taken pains to make the new criticism as little of a replica of the old as possible.

[391] Possibly this is exactly what M. de Goncourt meant.

[392] There is some scandal and infinite gossip about Flaubert, with all of which I was once obliged to be acquainted, but which I have done the best that a rather strong memory will allow me to forget. I shall only say that his early friend and quasi-biographer, Maxime du Camp, seems to me to have had nearly as hard measure dealt out to him as Mr. Froude in the matter of Mr. Carlyle. Both were indiscreet; I do not think either was malevolent or treacherous.

[393] For in novels, to a greater degree than in poems, greatness _does_ depend on the subject.

[394] Somebody has, I believe, suggested that if Emma had married Homais, all would have been well. If this means that he would have promptly and comfortably poisoned her, for which he had professional facilities, there might be something in it. Otherwise, hardly.

[395] His forte is in single utterances, such as the unmatched "J'ai un amant!" to which Emma gives vent after her first lapse (and which "speaks" her and her fate, and the book in ten letters, two s.p.a.ces, and an apostrophe), or as the "par ce qu'elle avait touche au manteau de Tanit" of _Salammbo_; and the "Ainsi tout leur a craque dans la main" of the unfinished summary of _Bouvard et Pecuchet_.

[396] It is known that Flaubert, perhaps out of rather boyish pique (there was much boyishness in him), had originally made its offence ranker still. One of the most curious literary absurdities I have ever seen--the absurd almost drowning the disgusting in it--was an American attempt in verse to fill up Flaubert's _lacuna_ and "go one better."

[397] The old foreign comparison with London was merely rhetorical; but there really would seem to have been some resemblance between Carthage and modern Berlin, even in those very points which Flaubert (taking advice) left out.

[398] There is a recent and exceptionally good translation of the book.

[399] The Letters are almost, if not quite, of first-rate quality. The play, _Le Candidat_, is of no merit.

[400] Vol. I. p. 4.

[401] All these will be found Englished in the Essay referred to.

[402] Too much must not be read into the word "failure": indeed the next sentence should guard against this. I know excellent critics who, declining altogether to consider the book as a novel, regard it as a sort of satire and _satura_, Aristophanic, Jonsonian or other, in gist and form, and by no means a failure as such. But as such it would have no, or very small, place here. I think myself that it is, from that point of view, nearer to Burton than to any one else: and I think further that it might have been made into a success of this kind or even of the novel sort itself. But _as it stands with the sketch of a completion_, I do not think that Flaubert's alchemy had yet achieved or approached projection.

[403] I have sometimes wished that Mr. Arnold had written a novel. But perhaps _Volupte_ frightened him.

[404] There is controversy on this point, and Baudelaire's indulgence in artificial and perilous Paradises may have been exaggerated. That it existed to some extent is, I think, hardly doubtful.

[405] I know few things of the kind more pathetic than Theo's quiet lament over the "artistic completeness" of his ill-luck in the collapse of the Second Empire just when, with Sainte-Beuve dead and Merimee dying, he was its only man of letters of the first rank left, and might have had some relief from collar-work. But it must be remembered that though he had ground at the mill with slaves, he had never been one of them, and perhaps this would always have prevented his promotion.

[406] Reserving Maupa.s.sant under the "almost."

CHAPTER XII

THE OTHER "NON-NATURALS" OF THE SECOND EMPIRE

If any excuse is needed for the oddity of the t.i.tle of this chapter, it will not be to readers of Burton's _Anatomy_. The way in which the phrase "Those six non-natural things" occurs and recurs there; the inextinguishable tendency--in view of the eccentricity of its application--to forget that the six include things as "natural" (in a non-technical[407] sense) as Diet, to forget also what it really means and expect something uncanny--these are matters familiar to all Burtonians. And they may excuse the borrowing of that phrase as a general label for those novelists, other than Flaubert and Dumas _fils_, who, if their work was not limited to 1850-70, began in (but not "with") that period, and worked chiefly in it, while they were at once _not_ "Naturalists" and yet more or less as "natural" as any of Burton's six.

One of the two least "minor," Alphonse Daudet, was among Naturalists but scarcely of them. The other, Octave Feuillet, was anti-Naturalist to the core.

[Sidenote: Feuillet.]

This latter, the elder of the two, though not so much the elder as used to be thought,[408] was at one time one of the most popular of French novelists both at home and abroad; but, latterly in particular, there were in his own country divers "dead sets" at him. He had been an Imperialist, and this excited one kind of prejudice against him; he was, in his way, orthodox in religion, and this aroused another; while, as has been already said, though his subjects, and even his treatment of them, would have sent our English Mrs. Grundy of earlier days into "screeching asterisks," the peculiar grime of Naturalism nowhere smirches his pages. For my own part I have always held him high, though there is a smatch about his morality which I would rather not have there. He seems to me to be--with the no doubt numerous transformations necessary--something of a French Anthony Trollope, though he has a tragic power which Trollope never showed; and, on the other side of the account, considerably less comic variety.

[Sidenote: His novels generally.]

As a "thirdsman" to Flaubert and Dumas _fils_, he shows some interesting differences. Merely as a maker of literature, he cannot touch the former, and has absolutely nothing of his poetic imagination, while his grasp of character is somewhat thinner and less firm. But it is more varied in itself and in the plots and scenery which give it play and setting--a difference not necessary but fortunate, considering his very much larger "output." Contrasted with Dumas _fils_, he affords a more important difference still, indeed one which is very striking. I pointed out in the appropriate place--not at the moment thinking of Feuillet at all--the strange fashion in which Alexander the Younger constantly "makes good" an at first unattractive story; and, even in his most generally successful work, increases the appeal as he goes on. With Feuillet the order of things is quite curiously reversed. Almost (though, as will be seen, not quite) invariably, from the early days of _Bellah_ and _Onesta_ to _La Morte_, he "lays out" his plan in a masterly manner, and acc.u.mulates a great deal of excellent material, as it were by the roadside, for use as the story goes on. But, except when he is at his very best, he flags, and is too apt to keep up his curtain for a fifth act when it had much better have fallen for good at the end of the fourth. As has been noted already, his characters are not deeply cut, though they are faithfully enough sketched. That he is not strong enough to carry through a purpose-novel is not much to his discredit, for hardly anybody ever has been. But the _Histoire de Sibylle_--his swashing blow in the George Sand duel (_v. sup._ p. 204)--though much less dull than the _riposte_ in _Mlle. la Quintaine_, would hardly induce "the angels," in Mr. Disraeli's famous phrase, to engage him further as a Hal-o'-the-Wynd on their side.

But Feuillet's most vulnerable point is the peculiar sentimental morality-in-immorality which has been more than once glanced at. It was frankly found fault with by French critics--themselves by no means strait-laced--and the criticisms were well summed up (I remember the wording but not the writer of it) thus: "An honest woman does not feel the temptations" to which the novelist exposes his heroines. That there _is_ a certain morbid sentimentality about Feuillet's att.i.tude not merely to the "triangle" but even to simple "exchange of fantasies"

between man and woman in general, can hardly be denied. He has a most curious and (one might almost say) Judaic idea as to woman as a temptress, in fashions ranging from the almost innocent seduction of Eve through the more questionable[409] one of Delilah, down to the sheer att.i.tude of Zuleika-Phraxanor, and the street-corner woman in the Proverbs. And this necessitates a correspondingly unheroic presentation of his heroes. They are always being led into serious mischief ("in a red-rose chain" or a ribbon one), as Marmontel's sham philosopher[410]

was into comic confusion by that ingenious Presidente. Yet, allowing all this, there remains to Feuillet's credit such a full and brilliant series of novels, hardly one of which is an actual failure, as very few novelists can show. Although he lived long and wrote to the end of his life, he left no "dotages"; hardly could the youngest and strongest of any other school in France--Guy de Maupa.s.sant himself--have beaten _La Morte_, though it is not faultless, in power.

[Sidenote: Brief notes on some--_Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_.]

I suppose few novels, succeeding not by scandal, have ever been much more popular than the _Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_, the t.i.tle of which good English folk have been known slightly to alter in meaning by putting the _pauvre_ before the _jeune_. It had got into its third hundred of editions before the present century had reached the end of its own first l.u.s.trum, and it must have been translated (probably more than once) into every European language. It is perfectly harmless; it is admirably written; and the vicissitudes of the loves of the _marquis dechu_ and the headstrong creole girl are conducted with excellent skill, no serious improbability, and an absence of that tendency to "tail off" which has been admitted in some of the author's books. It was, I suppose, Feuillet's diploma-piece in almost the strictest technical sense of that phrase, for he was elected of the Academy not long afterwards. It has plenty of merits and no important faults, but it is not my favourite.

[Sidenote: _M. de Camors._]

[Sidenote: Other books.]

Neither is the novel which, in old days, the proud and haughty scorners of this _Roman_, as a _berquinade_, used to prefer--_M. de Camors_.[411]

Here there is plenty of naughtiness, attempts at strong character, and certainly a good deal of interest of story, with some striking incident.

But it is spoilt, for me, by the failure of the princ.i.p.al personage. I think it not quite impossible that Feuillet intended M. de Camors as a sort of modernised, improved, and extended Lovelace, or even Valmont--superior to scruple, destined and able to get the better of man or woman as he chooses. Unfortunately he has also endeavoured to make him a gentleman; and the compound, as the chemists say, is not "stable."

The c.o.xcombry of Lovelace and the priggishness, reversed (though in a less detestable form), of Valmont, are the elements that chiefly remain in evidence, unsupported by the vigorous will of either. I have myself always thought _La Pet.i.te Comtesse_ and _Julia de Trecoeur_ among the earlier novels, _Honneur d'Artiste_ and _La Morte_ among the later, to be Feuillet's masterpieces, or at least nearest approaches to a masterpiece. _Un Mariage dans le Monde_ (one or the rare instances in which the "honest woman" does get the better of her "temptations") is indeed rather interesting, in the almost fatal cross-misunderstanding of husband and wife, and the almost fabulous ingenuity and good offices of the "friend of the family," M. de Kevern, who prevents both from making irreparable fools of themselves. _Les Amours de Philippe_ is more commonplace--a prodigal's progress in love, rewarded at last, very undeservedly, with something better than a fatted calf--a formerly slighted but angelic cousin. But to notice all his work, more especially if one took in half- or quarter-dramatic things (his pure drama does not of course concern us) of the "Scene" and "Proverbe" kind, where he comes next to Musset, would be here impossible. The two pairs, early and late respectively, and already selected, must suffice.

[Sidenote: _La Pet.i.te Comtesse._]

They are all tragic, though there is comedy in them as well. Perhaps _La Pet.i.te Comtesse_, a very short novel and its author's first thing of great distinction, might by some be called pathetic rather than tragic; but the line between the two is a "leaden" barrier (if indeed it is a barrier at all) and "gives" freely. Perhaps the Gigadibs in any man of letters may be conciliated by one of his fellows being granted some of the fascinations of the "clerk" in the old Phyllis-and-Flora _debats_ of mediaeval times; but the fact that _this_ clerk is also represented as a fool of the most disastrous, though not the most contemptible kind, should be held as a set-off to the bribery. It is a "story of three"--though not at all the usual three--graced (or not) by a really brilliant picture of the society of the early Second Empire. One of the leaders of this--a young countess and a member of the "Rantipole"[412]

set of the time, but exempt from its vulgarity--meets in the country, and falls in love with, a middle-aged _savant_, who is doing archaeological work for Government in the neighbourhood. He despises her as a frivolous feather-brain at first, but soon falls under the spell.

Yet what has been called "the fear of the 'Had-I-wist'" and the special notion--more common perhaps with men than is generally thought--that she cannot _really_ love him, makes him resist her advances. By rebound, she falls victim for a time to a commonplace Lovelace; but finds no satisfaction, languishes and dies, while the lover, who would not take the goods the G.o.ds provided, tries to play a sort of altered part of Colonel Morden in _Clarissa_, and the G.o.ds take their revenge for "sinned mercies." In abstract (it has been observed elsewhere that Feuillet seldom abstracts well, his work being too much built up of delicate touches) there may seem to be something of the preposterous in this; but it must be a somewhat coa.r.s.e form of testing which discovers any real preposterousness in the actual story.

[Sidenote: _Julia de Trecoeur._]

It may, however, as has been said, seem to some to belong to the pathetic-sentimental rather than to the actually tragic; I at least could not allow any such judging of _Julia de Trecoeur_, though there are more actual faults in it than in _La Pet.i.te Comtesse_, and though, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the rather repulsive catastrophe may have been more or less borrowed. The _donnee_ is one of the great old simple cross-purposes of Fate--not a mere "conflict," as the silly modern jargon has it. Julia de Trecoeur is a wilful and wayward girl, as are many others of Feuillet's heroines. Her mother is widowed early, but consoles herself; and Julia--as such a girl pretty certainly would do--resents the proceeding, and refuses to live at home or to see her stepfather. He, however, is a friend of his wife's own cousin, and this cousin, conceiving a pa.s.sion for Julia, offers to marry her. Her consent, in an English girl, would require some handling, but offers no difficulties in a French one. As a result, but after a time, she agrees to meet her mother and that mother's new husband. And then the tragedy begins. She likes at once, and very soon loves, her stepfather--he succ.u.mbs, more slowly, to Moira and Ate. But he is horrified at the notion of a quasi-incestuous love, and Julia perceives his horror. She forces her horse, like the d.u.c.h.ess May, but over the cliffs of the Cotentin, not over a castle wall; and her husband and her stepfather himself see the act without being able--indeed without trying--to prevent it. The actual place had nearly been the scene of a joint suicide by the unhappy lovers before.

Once more, the thing comes badly out of a.n.a.lysis--perhaps by the a.n.a.lyst's fault, perhaps not. But in its own presentation, with some faults hardly necessary to point out, it is both poignant and _empoignant_, and it gives a special blend of pity and terror, the two feelings being aroused by no means merely through the catastrophe, but by the rise and progress of the fatal pa.s.sion which leads to it. I know very few, if any, things of the same kind, in a French novel, superior, or indeed equal to, the management of this, and to the fashion in which the particular characters, or wants of character, of Julia's mother and Julia's husband (excellent persons both) are made to hurry on the calamity[413] to which she was fated.

[Sidenote: _Honneur d'Artiste._]

This tragic undercurrent, surging up to a more tragic catastrophe, reappears in the two best of the later issues, when Feuillet was making better head against the burst sewers[414] of Naturalism. _Honneur d'Artiste_ is the less powerful of the two; but what of failure there is in it is rather less glaring. Beatrice de Sardonne, the heroine, is a sort of "Pet.i.te Comtesse" transformed--very cleverly, but perhaps not quite successfully. _Her_ "triangle" consists of herself, a somewhat New-Yorkised young French lady of society (but too good for the worst part of her); and her two lovers, the Marquis de Pierrepont, a much better Lovelace, in fact hardly a Lovelace at all, whom she is engineered into refusing for honourable love--with a fatal relapse into dishonourable; and the "Artiste" Jacques Fabrice. He adores her, but she, alas! does not know whether she loves him or not till too late; and, after the irreparable, he falls by the hazard of the lot in that toss-up for suicide, the pros and cons of which (as in a former instance) I should like to see treated by a philosophical historian of the duello.