A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 36

All this is interesting, but I fear it confirms a variation of the t.i.tle of a famous Elizabethan play--"Novelists beware novelists." Poets have a worse reputation in this way, or course; but, I think, unjustly. Perhaps the reason is that the quality of poetry is more _definite_, if not more definable, than that of prose fiction, or else that poets are more really sure of themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly[445] had an apparently undoubting mind, but perhaps there were unacknowledged doubts, which transformed themselves into jealousies, in his heart of hearts. For myself, I sympathise with his political and religious (if not exactly with his ecclesiastical) views pretty decidedly; I think (speaking as usual with the due hesitation of a foreigner) that he writes excellent French; and I am sure--a point of some consequence with me, and not too commonly met--that he generally writes (when he does not get _too_ angry) like a gentleman. He sometimes has phrases which please me very much, as when he describes two lovers embracing so long that they "must have drunk a whole bottle of kisses," or when he speaks of the voice of a preacher "_tombant_ de la chaire dans cette eglise ou _pleuvaient_ les tenebres du soir," where the opposition-combination of "tombant" and "pleuvaient," and the image it arouses, seem to me of a most absolute fancy. He can write scenes--the finale of his best book, _L'Ensorcelee_; the overture of _Un Pretre Marie_; and nearly the whole of the last and best _Diabolique_, "Une Vengeance de Femme"--which very closely approach the first cla.s.s. And, whether he meant me to do so or not, I like him when in "Un Diner d'Athees" he makes one of them "swig off" (_lamper_) a b.u.mper of Picardan, the one wine in all my experience which I should consider fit _only_ for an atheist.[446] But a good novelist I cannot hold him.

The inability does not come from any mere "unpleasantness" in his subjects, though few pleasant ones seem to have lain in his way, and he certainly did not go out of that way to find them. But _L'Ensorcelee_ can only be objected to on this score by an absurdly fastidious person, and I do not myself want any more rose-pink and sky-blue in _Un Pretre Marie_;[447] while the last _Diabolique_, already mentioned, is a capital example of grime made more than tolerable.[448] Indeed, nothing of the sort can be more unmistakable than the sincerity of Barbey's "horrors." They mark, in that respect, nearly the apex of the triangle, the almost disappearing lower angles of which may be said to be represented by the crude and clumsy vulgarities of Janin's _ane Mort_, and the more craftsmanlike, indeed in a way almost artistic, but unconvinced and unconvincing atrocities of Borel's _Champavert_.

[Sidenote: And defects.]

[Sidenote: Especially as shown in _L'Ensorcelee_.]

The objection, and the defect which occasions the objection, are quite different. Barbey d'Aurevilly has many gifts and some excellencies. But his work in novel constantly reminds me of the old and doubtless well-known story of a marriage which was almost ideally perfect in all respects but one--that the girl "couldna bide her man." He can do many things, but he cannot or will not tell a story, save in such fragments and flashes as those noted above. His _longueurs_ are exasperating and sometimes nearly maddening, though perhaps many readers would save themselves by simply discontinuing perusal. The first _Diabolique_ has metal attractive enough of its kind. A young officer boards with a provincial family, where the beautiful but at first silent, abstracted, and, as the Pleiade would have said, _marbrine_ daughter suddenly, though secretly, develops frantic affection for him, and shows it by constant indulgence in the practice which that abominable cad in Ophelia's song put forward as an excuse for not "wedding." But, on one of these occasions, she translates trivial metaphor into ghastly fact by literally dying in his arms. Better stuff--again of its kind--for a twenty-page story, or a little more, could hardly be found. But Barbey gives us _ninety_, not indeed large, but, in the usual editions, of exceptionally close and small print, watering out the tale intolerably almost throughout, and giving it a blunt and maimed conclusion. _Le Bonheur dans le Crime_,[449] _Le Dessous de Cartes_, and the above-mentioned _Diner d'Athees_, which fill a quarter of a thousand of such pages, invite slashing with a hook desperate enough to cut each down to a quarter of a hundred. _Un Pretre Marie_, which perhaps comes next to _L'Ensorcelee_ in merit, would be enormously improved by being in one volume instead of two. Of _Une Vieille Maitresse_ I think I could spare both, except a vigorously told variant (the suggestion is acknowledged, for Barbey d'Aurevilly was much too proud to steal) of Buckingham's duel[450] and the Countess (not "d.u.c.h.ess," by the way) of Shrewsbury. _Une Histoire sans Nom_, a substantial though not a very long book, is only a short story spun out. Even in _L'Ensorcelee_ itself the author, as a critic, might, and probably would, have found serious fault, had it been the work of another novelist. There is less surplusage and more continuous power, so that one is carried through from the fine opening on the desolate moor (a _little_ suggested, perhaps, by the meeting of Harry Bertram and Dandie Dinmont, but quite independently worked out) to the vigorous close above referred to. But the story is quite unnecessarily muddled by information that part of it was supplied by the Norman Mr. Dinmont, and part by an ancient countess.

We never get any clear idea _why_ Jeanne le Hardouey was bewitched, and _why_ the Chevalier-Abbe de la Croix-Jugan suffered and diffused so gruesome a fate.[451] Yet the fate itself is enough to make one close, with the sweet mouth, remarks on this very singular failure of a genius.

Few things of the sort in fiction are finer than the picture of the terrible unfinished ma.s.s (heralded over the desolate moor at uncertain times by uncanny bell-ringing), which the reprobate priest (who has been shot at the altar-steps before he could accomplish the Sacrifice of Reconciliation[452]) endeavours after his death to complete, being always baffled before the consecrating moment.

[Sidenote: Champfleury.]

Cladel had a considerable, and Barbey d'Aurevilly an almost exclusive, fancy for the tragical. On the other hand, Champfleury (who, no doubt partly for a bibliographical memory,[453] prefixed the Champ- to his actual surname) occupies, as has been said, a curious, but in part far from unsatisfactory, position in regard to our subject, and one blessed by the Comic Spirit. His confessed fictions are, indeed, not very successful. To take one volume only, _Madame Eugenio_, the t.i.tle-story, _not_ the first in order, but the longest, is most unfortunately, but far too accurately, characterised by a phrase towards its end, "ce _triste_ recit," the adjective, like our "poor," being capable of two different meanings. _Histoire du Lieutenant Valentin_, on the other hand--a story of a young soldier, who, leaving Saint-Cyr in cholera-time, has to go to hospital, and, convalescing pleasantly while sh.e.l.ling peas and making rose-gays for the Sisters, is navely surprised at one of them being at first very kind and then very cold to him--is a miss of a masterpiece, but still a miss, partly owing to too great length. And so with others.

[Sidenote: _Les Excentriques._]

But in his much earlier _Les Excentriques_ (not unnaturally but wrongly called "_Contes_ Excentriques" by some), handling what profess to be true stories, he shows a most excellent narrative faculty. Whether they are true or not (they rather resemble, and were perhaps inspired by, some things of Gautier and Gerard) matters little--they are quite good enough to be false. They are, necessarily, not quite equal, and there may be for some tastes, not for all, too much of the Fourierism and other queernesses of the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, the book is of 1852, and its subjects are almost all of the decade preceding. But some are exceedingly refreshing, the dedication, of some length, to the great caricaturist Daumier being not the least so. Yet it is not so unwise as to disappoint the reader by being better than the text. "Lucas," the circle-squarer, who explains how, when he was in a room with a lady and her two daughters, he perceived that "this was all that was necessary for him to attain the cubation of two pyramids," is very choice.

"Cambriel"--who not only attained the philosopher's stone and the universal medicine, but ascertained that G.o.d is six feet six high, of flame-coloured complexion, and with particularly perfect ankles--runs him hard. And so does Rose Marius Sardat, who sent a copy of his _Loi d'Union_, a large and nicely printed octavo, to every Parisian newspaper-office, informing the editors that they might reprint it in _feuilletons_ for nothing, but that he should not write the second volume unless the first were a success. Some of us ought to be particularly obliged to Rose Marius for holding that persons over seventy are indispensable, and that, if there are not enough in France, they must be imported. The difference of this from the callous short-sightedness which talks about "fixed periods" is most gratifying.

But perhaps the crown and flower of the book is the vegetarian Jupille, who wrote pamphlets addressed:

AUX GOURMANDS DE CHAIR!

decided that meat is of itself atheistical, though he admitted a "siren"

quality about it; and held that the fact of onions making human beings weep attests their own "touching sensibility for us" (albeit he had to admit again that garlic was demoniac). M. Jupille (who was a practical man, and cooked cabbage and cauliflower so that his meat-eating visitor could not but acknowledge their charm) explained St. Peter's net of animal food with ease as a diabolic deception, but was floored by crocodiles' teeth. And not the worst thing in the book is the last, where a waxwork-keeper--a much less respectable person than Mrs. Jarley, and of the other s.e.x--falls in love with one of his specimens, waltzes with her, and unwittingly presents a sort of third companion to one of the less saintly kings of the early Graal legends, and to yet another character of d.i.c.kens's, much less well known than Mrs. Jarley, the hairdresser in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, who, to the disgust of his female acquaintances, "worshipped a hidle" in the shape of the turning bust of a beautiful creature in his own shop-window. The book is a book to put a man in a good temper--and to keep him in one--for which reason it affords an excellent colophon to a chapter.[454]

FOOTNOTES:

[407] The technical-scholastic being "things born _with_ a man."

[408] By some curious mistake, his birth used for a long time to be ante-dated ten years from 1822 to 1812. At the risk of annoying my readers by repeating such references, I should perhaps mention that there is an essay on Feuillet in the book already cited.

[409] I give Delilah (for whom Milton's excessive rudeness naturally inspires a sort of partisanship) the benefit of a notion that her action was, partly if not mainly, due to unbearable curiosity. How many women are there who could resist the double temptation of seeing whether the secret _did_ lie in the hair, and if so, of possessing complete mistress-ship of their lovers? Some perhaps: but many?

[410] _V. sup._ Vol. I. pp. 420-1.

[411] It may be worth while to remind the reader that Maupa.s.sant included this in his selection of remarkable novels of all modern times and languages.

[412] How sad it is to think that a specific reference to that all-but-masterpiece, as a picture of earlier _fin-de-siecle_ society, Miss Edgeworth's _Belinda_, may perhaps be necessary to escape the d.a.m.ning charge of unexplained allusion!

[413]

"Where'er I came I brought _calamity_."

When I read the foolish things that foolish people still write about Tennyson, I like to repeat to myself that "lonely word" in its immediate context.

[414] If you can "take arms against a sea" you can, I suppose, make head against a sewer.

[415] His brother Ernest was a novelist of merit sufficient to make it not unnatural that he should--as, unless my memory plays me tricks, he did--resent being whelmed in the fraternal reputation. But he does not require much notice here.

[416] I do not call Flaubert "his fellow," or the fellow of any one noticed in this chapter, for which reason I kept him out of it.

[417] It must be remembered that it was long before even 1870. I suppose some one, in the ma.s.s of war-literature, must have dealt with "The Ideal German in European Literature between 1815 and 1864." If n.o.body has, an excellent subject has been neglected.

[418] And, according to one reviewer, the deficient sense of humour.

[419] They _might_ serve to exemplify About's often doubtful taste. The central story and main figures of _Tolla_ were taken from a collection of the poor girl's letters published by her family a few years before; and the original of "Lello" was still alive. _His_ relations tried to buy up the book, and nearly succeeded. In the MS. About had, while slightly altering the names, referred pretty fully to this doc.u.ment. The whole thing has, however, rather a much-ado-about-nothing air and, save as connected with a periodical of such undoubted "seriousness," might suggest a trick.

[420] "It" was _Timon of Athens_.

[421] It may please the historically given reader to regard this as an actual survival of the Scudery _histoire_--_Histoire de Madame Fratieff et de sa fille Nadine_. Only it would, as such, have occupied a score or two of pages for each one.

[422] Tolla is not so _very_ delightful: but she is meant to be.

[423] About has a gird or two at Balzac, but evidently imitates him. In this very book, when the old duke (_v. inf._) comes under Madame Chermidy's influence, he suggests Baron Hulot; and _Madelon_ (_v. inf.

ib._) is almost throughout imitation-Balzacian.

[424] For Honorine, though managing to retain some public reputation, has long been practically "uncla.s.sed"; and it is not only her husband's profession which has made him leave her.

[425] Germaine, quite naturally and properly, starts with a strong dislike to her husband. When he takes her to Italy, and devotes himself to the care of her health, this changes to affection. And the more it changes, the more disagreeable she makes herself to him.

[426] This also has, in matters not political, the "charming and useful"

side. It would be very unpleasant if she always saw all sides of all questions.

[427] I am quite aware that the giving up of the islands was not the _immediate_ result of his mission.

[428] That is to say, supposing that Isopel ever could have been happy with a lover

So _laggard_ in love, _though_ so dauntless in war

as George Borrow.

[429] As well as the Balzacian following, _haud pa.s.sibus aequis_, above referred to.

[430] I do not know whether any other novelists continued the series of diversely coloured "doctors," as the fly-makers have done.

[431] He _could_ "piffle" when he went out of it. The would-be satirical characterisation of two aristocrats, Madame d'Arlange and M. de Commarin, in the book shortly to be noticed, is the thinnest and most conventional of things, except, perhaps, the companion trap-to-catch-the-French-Philistine of anti-clericalism which also shows itself sometimes.

[432] Two people, thinking of moving house in London, went once to inspect an advertised abode in the Kensington district. They did not much like the street; they still less liked a very grim female who opened the door and showed them over the house; and there was nothing to reconcile them in the house itself. But, wishing to be polite, the lady of the couple, as they were leaving, addressed to the grim guardian some feeble compliment on something or other as being "nice." "P'raps," was the reply, "for them as likes the ---- Road." It is unnecessary to say that the visitors went down the steps in a fashion for which we have no exact English term, but which is admirably expressed by the French verb _degringoler_.

[433] The favouritism declined, and the history of its decline was anecdotised in a fashion somewhat _gaulois_, but quite harmless. "Uncle Beuve," to the astonishment of literary mankind, put the portrait of this "nephew" of his in his _salon_. After _Daniel_ (I think) it was moved to the dining-room, and thence to his bedroom. Later it was missed even there, and was, or was said to be, relegated to _un lieu plus intime encore_. The _trovatore_ of this probably remembered his Rabelais.

[434] The labour of reading the book has been repaid by a few useful specimens of Feydeau's want of anything like distinction of thought or style. He makes his hero (whom he does not in the least mean for a fool, though he is one) express surprise at the fact that when he was _in statu pupillari_ he liked _fredaines_, but when he became his own master did not care about them! Again: "Were I to possess the power and infinite charm of HIM [_sic_] who invented the stars I could never exactly paint the delightful creature who stood before me." Comment on either of these should be quite needless. Again: "Her nose, by a happy and bold curve, joined itself to the lobes, lightly expanded, of her diaphanous nostrils." Did it never occur to the man that a nose, separately considered from its curve and its nostrils, is terribly like that of La Camarde herself? I wasted some time over the tedious trilogy of _Un Debut a L'Opera_, _M. de Saint Bertrand_, _Le Mari de la Danseuse_. n.o.body--not even anybody _qui_ Laclos _non odit_--need follow me.

[435] Their author wrote others--_Babolin_, _Autour d'une Source_ etc.

But the wise who can understand words will perhaps confine themselves to _Mr., Mme. et Bebe_ and its sequel.

[436] Cf. _inf._ on M. Rod.