A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 39

To run through the actual "turn-out" in novel[484] and tale as far as is possible here, _Bel-Ami_ started, in England at least, with the most favouring gales possible. It was just when the decree had gone forth, issued by the younger Later Victorians, that all the world should be made naughty; that the insipid whiteness of their Early and Middle elders should be washed black and scarlet, and especially "blue"; and that if possible, by this and other processes, something like real literature might be made to take the place of the drivellings and botcheries of Tennyson and Browning; of d.i.c.kens and Thackeray; of Ruskin and Carlyle. To these persons _Bel-Ami_ was a sweet content, a really "_shady_ boon." The hero never does a decent thing and never says a good one; but he has good looks and insinuating manners of the kind that please some women, whence his name, originally given to him by an innocent little girl, and taken up by her by no means innocent mamma and other quasi-ladies.[485] He starts as a soldier who has served his time in Algeria, but has found nothing better to do than a subordinate post in a railway office. He meets a former comrade who is high up in Paris journalism, and who very amiably introduces Georges Duroy to that bad resting-place but promising pa.s.sageway. Duroy succeeds, not so much (though he is not a fool) by any brains as by impudence; by a faculty of making use of others; by one of the farce-duels in which combatants are put half a mile off each other to fire _once_, etc.; but most of all by his belamyship (for the word is good old English in a better sense). The women of the book are what is familiarly called "a caution." They revive the old Helisenne de Crenne[486] "sensual appet.i.te" for the handsome bounder; and though of course jealous of his infidelities, are quite ready to welcome the truant when he returns. They also get drunk at restaurant dinners, and then call their lovers--quite correctly, but not agreeably--"Cochon!" "Sale bete," etc. This of course is what our _fin-de-siecle_ critics _could_ "recommend to a friend."

But if the reader thinks that this summary is a prelude to anything like the "slate" that I thought it proper to bestow upon _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_, or even to such remarks as those made on the Goncourts, he is quite mistaken. Laclos had, as it seemed to me, a disgusting subject and no real compensation of treatment. In _Bel-Ami_ the merits of the treatment are very great. The scenes pa.s.s before you; the characters play their part in the scenes--if not in an engaging manner, in a completely life-like one. There is none of the _psychologie de commande_, which I object to in Laclos, but a true adumbration of life.

The music-hall opening; the first dinner-party; the journalist scenes; the death of Forestier and the proposal of re-marriage over his corpse;[487] the honeymoon journey to Normandy--a dozen other things--could not be better done in their way, though this way may not be the best. It did not fall to me to review _Bel-Ami_ when it came out, but I do not think I should have made any mistake about it if it had.

There are weak points technically; for instance, the character of Madeleine Forestier, afterwards Duroy--still later caught in flagrant delict and divorced--is left rather enigmatic. But the general technique (with the reservations elsewhere made) is masterly, and two pa.s.sages--a Vigny-like[488] descant on Death by the old poet Norbert de Varenne and the death-scene of Forestier itself--give us Maupa.s.sant in that mood of _macabre_ sentiment--almost Romance--which chequers and purifies his Naturalism.

But the main objection which I should take to the book is neither technical nor goody. The late Mr. Locker, in, I think, that most fascinating "New Omniana" _Patchwork_,[489] tells how, in the Travellers' Club one day, a haughty member thereof expressed surprise that he should see Mr. Locker going to the corner-house next door. The amiable author of _London Lyrics_ was good enough to explain that some not uninteresting people also used the humbler establishment--bishops, authors, painters, cabinet-ministers, etc. "Ah!" said the Traverser of Perilous Ways, "that would be all very well if one _wanted_ to meet that sort of people. But, you see, one _doesn't_ want to meet them." Now, I do not want to meet anybody in _Bel-Ami_; in fact, I would much rather not.

[Sidenote: _Une Vie._]

_Une Vie_ is, in this respect and others, a curious pendant to _Bel-Ami_. It ill.u.s.trates another side of Maupa.s.sant's pessimism--the overtly, but for the most part quietly, tragic. It might almost (borrowing a second t.i.tle from the _Index_) call itself "Jeanne; ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu." The heroine is perfectly innocent, though both a _femmelette_ and a fool. She never does any harm, nor, except through weakness and folly, deserves that any should be done to her. But she has an unwise and not blameless though affectionate and generous father, with a mother who is an invalid, and whom, after her death, the daughter discovers to have been, in early days, no better than she should be.

Both of them are, if not exactly spendthrifts, "wasters," very mainly through careless and excessive generosity. She marries the first young man of decent family, looks, and manners that she comes across; and he turns out to be stingy, unfaithful in the most offensive way, with her own maid and others, and unkind. She loses him, by the vengeance of a husband whom he has wronged, and her second child is born dead in consequence of this shock. Her first she spoils for some twenty years, till he goes off with a concubine and nearly ruins his mother. We leave her consoling herself, in a half-imbecile fashion, with a grandchild.

Her only earthly providence is her _bonne_ Rosalie, the same who had been her husband's mistress, but a very "good sort" otherwise. The book is charged with grime of all kinds. It certainly cannot be said of M. de Maupa.s.sant, to alter the p.r.o.noun in Mr. Kipling's line, that "[_He_]

never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came," for _Une Vie_ contains two of these delectable scenes; and in other respects we are treated with the utmost "candour." But the book is again saved by some wonderful pa.s.sages--specially those giving Jeanne's first night at the sea-side _chateau_ which is to be her own, and her last visit to it a quarter of a century after, when it has pa.s.sed to strangers--and generally by the true tragedy which pervades it. When Maupa.s.sant took Sorrow into cohabitation and collaboration, there was no danger of the result.

_Mont-Oriol_, though not, save in one respect, the most "arresting" of Maupa.s.sant's books, has rather more varied and at the same time coherent interest than some others. It is also that one which most directly ill.u.s.trates--on the great scale--the general principles of the Naturalist school. Not, indeed, in specially grimy fashion, though there is the usual adultery (_not_ behind the scenes) and the (for Maupa.s.sant) not unusual _accouchement_. (His fondness for this most unattractive episode of human life is astonishing: if he were a more pious person and a political feminist, one might think that he was trying to make us modern Adams share the curse of Eve, at least to the extent of the disgust caused by reading about its details.) The main extra-amatory theme throughout is the "physiologie" of an inland watering-place, its extension by the discovery of new springs, the financing of them, the jealousies of the doctors, the megrims of the patients, etc. All these are treated quite on the Zolaesque scheme, but with a lightness and beauty not often reached by the master, though common enough in the pupil.[490] The description of Christiane Andermatt's first bath, and the sensations of mild bliss that it gave her, is as true as it is pretty; and others of scenery have that vividness without over-elaboration which marks their author's work. Nor are his ironic-human touches wanting. Almost at its birth he satirises, in his own quiet Swiftian way, an absurd tendency which has grown mightily since, and flourishes now: "'Tres _moderne_'--entre ses levres, etait le comble de l'admiration." As for the love-affair itself, one's feelings towards it are mixed. A good deal of it shows that unusual grasp of the proper ways of the game with which Maupa.s.sant is fully credited here.

Personally, I should not, after quoting Baudelaire to a lady (so far so good), inform her that I was a donkey for expecting her to enjoy anything so subtle. But perhaps Paul Bretigny, though neglectful of the Seventh Commandment, was an honester man than I am. And it is quite true that Christiane was _not_ subtle. Her hot lover's[491] cooling partly dated from the time when she expected him to show palpable interest in the fact that she was likely to have a child by him. And though her cry (on the question what name this infant, of course accepted as his own by the unfortunate Andermatt, should bear) that as for _her_ name, "Cela promet trop de souffrances de porter le nom du Crucifie," could not be better as a general sentiment, the particular circ.u.mstances in which it is uttered show a slight want of grace of congruity. Still, the minor characters are not only more in number, but more interesting than is always the case; and the book, if you skip the obstetrics, is readable throughout. Yet it is, to use wine-language, not above "Maupa.s.sant _premier bourgeois_," except in some of the earlier love-scenes.

[Sidenote: _Fort comme la Mort._]

In _Fort comme la Mort_ the author rises far above these two books, powerful as they are in parts. The basis is indeed the invariable and unsatisfactory "triangle." But the structure built on it might almost have been lifted to another, and stands foursquare in nearly all respects of treatment. The chief technical objection that can be brought against it is that there is a certain want of air and s.p.a.ce; the important characters are too few, the situations too uniform; so that a kind of oppression results. Olivier Bertin, one of the most popular of Parisian painters though no longer young, a great man of society, etc., has, for many years, been the lover of the Countess de Guilleroy, and, of course, the dear friend of her husband. We are introduced to them just at the time when a sort of disgust of middle age is coming over him, as well as a certain feeling that the springs of his genius are running low. He is not tired of the Countess, who is pa.s.sionately devoted to him; and, except that they do not live together, their relations are rather conjugal than anything else. Just at this moment her daughter Annette comes home from a country life with her grandmother, and proves to be the very double of what her mother was in her own youth. Bertin, without ceasing to love the mother, conceives a frantic pa.s.sion for the daughter; and the vicissitudes of this take up the book. At last the explosives of the situation are "fused," as one may say, by one of the newspaper attacks of youth on age. Annette's approaching marriage, and this _Figaro_ critique of his own "old-fashioned" art, put Bertin beside himself. Either hurrying heedlessly along, or deliberately exposing himself, he is run over by an omnibus, is mortally hurt, and dies with the Countess sitting beside him and receiving his last selfishness--a request that she will bring the girl to see him before he dies.

The story, though perhaps, as has been said, too much concentrated as a whole, is brilliantly illuminated by sketches of society on the greater and smaller scale: of Parisian club-life; of picture-shows; of the diversions of the country, etc.: but its effect, though certainly helped by, is not derived from, these. As always with Maupa.s.sant, it is out of the bitter that comes the sweet. Hardly anywhere outside of _Ecclesiastes_, Thackeray,[492] and Flaubert is the irony of life more consummately handled in one peculiar fashion; while the actual _pa.s.sion_ of love is nowhere better treated by this author,[493] or perhaps by any other French novelist of the later century, except Fromentin.

[Sidenote: _Pierre et Jean._]

The line of ascent was continued in _Pierre et Jean_. It is not a long book--a fact which perhaps has some significance--and no small part of it is taken up by a Preface on "Le Roman" generally (_v. sup._), which is the author's most remarkable piece of criticism; one of the most noteworthy from a man who was not specially a critic; and one of the few but precious examples of an artist dealing, at once judicially and masterfully, with his own art.[494] In fact, recognising the truth of the "poetic moment," he would extend it to the moments of all literature; and lays it down that the business of the novelist is, first to realise his own illusion of the world and then to make others realise it too.

_Pierre et Jean_ itself has no weakness except that _narrowing_ of interest which has been already noted in Maupa.s.sant, and which is rather a limitation than a positive fault. There is practically one situation throughout; and though there are several characters, their interest depends almost wholly on their relations with the central personage.

This is Pierre Roland, a full-fledged physician of thirty, but not yet successful, and still living with, and on, his parents. His father is a retired Paris tradesman, who has come to live at Havre to indulge a mania for sea-fishing; he has a mother who is rather above her husband in some ways; and a brother, Jean, who, though considerably younger, is also ready to start in his own profession--that of the law. A "friend of the family," Mme. Rosemilly--a young, pretty, and rather well-to-do widow--completes the company, with one or two "supers." Just as the story opens, a large legacy to Jean by an older friend of the family--this time a man--is announced, to the surprise of almost everybody, but at first only causing a little natural jealousy in Pierre. Charitable remarks of outsiders, however, suggest to him the truth--that Jean is the fruit of his mother's adultery with the testator--and this "works like poison in his brain," till--Jean, having gained another piece of luck in Mme. Rosemilly's hand, and having, though enlightened by Pierre and by his mother's confession, very common-sensibly decided that he will not resign the legacy, smirched as it is--Pierre accepts a surgeon-ship on a Transatlantic steamer, and the story ends.

On its own scheme and showing there is scarcely a fault in it. The mere settings--the fishing and prawn-catching; the scenery of port and cliff; the "interiors"; the final sailing of the great ship--are perfect. The minor characters--the good-tempered, thick-headed _bourgeois_ husband and father; the wife and mother, with her bland acceptance of the transferred wages of shame, and (after discovery only) her breaking down with the ba.n.a.l blasphemy of "marriage before G.o.d" and the rest of it; the younger brother--not exactly a bad fellow, but thoroughly convinced of the truth of _non olet_; the widow playing her part and no more,--all are artistically just what they should be. And so, always remembering scale and scheme, is Pierre. One neither likes him (for he is not exactly a likeable person) nor dislikes him (for he is quite excusable) very much; one is only partially sorry for him. But one knows that he _is_--he has that actual and indubitable existence which is the test and quality alike of creator and creation. His first vague envy of his brother's positive luck in money and probable luck in love--for both have had floating fancies for the pretty widow; the again perfectly natural spleen when this lucky brother, by an accident, secures the particular set of rooms in which Pierre had hoped to improve his position as a doctor; the crushing blow of finding out his mother's shame; the process (the truest thing in the whole book, though it is all true) by which he tortures both her and himself in constant oblique references to her fault; the explosion when he directly informs his brother; and all the rest, could hardly be improved. It is not a novel on the great scale, but rather what may be called a long short story. It does not quite attain to the position of some books on a small scale in different kinds--_Manon Lescaut_ itself, _Adolphe_, _La Tentation de Saint-Antoine_. But the author has done what he meant to do, and has done it in such a fashion that it could not, on its own lines, be done better.

Maupa.s.sant's last novel of some magnitude, _Notre Coeur_, was written when the shadow was near enveloping him; and it cannot be said to have the perfection of _Pierre et Jean_. But it still rises higher in certain very important ways--it is perhaps the book that one likes him best for, outside of pure comedy; and there is none which impresses one more with the sense of his loss to French literature.

[Sidenote: _Notre Coeur._]

The story, like all Maupa.s.sant's stories, is of the simplest. Andre Mariolle, a well-to-do young Parisian bachelor of no profession, is a member of a set of mostly literary and artistic people, almost all of whom have, as a main rendezvous, the house of a beautiful, wealthy, and variously gifted young widow, Mme. de Burne. She lives chaperoned in a manner by her father; indisposed to a second marriage by the fact that she has had a tyrannical husband; accepting homage from all her familiars and being very gracious in differing degrees to all of them; but having no "lover in t.i.tle" and not even being suspected of having (in the French novel-sense[495]) any "lover" at all. For a long time Mariolle has, from whim, refused introduction to her, but at last he consents to be taken to the house by his friend the musician Ma.s.sival, and of course falls a victim. It cannot be said that she is a Circe,[496] nor that, as perhaps might be expected, she revenges herself for his holding aloof by snaring and throwing him away. Quite the contrary. She shows him special favour: when she has to go to stay with friends at Avranches she privately asks him to follow her; and finally, when the party pa.s.s the night at Mont Saint-Michel, she comes--uninvited, though of course much longed for--to his room, and (as they used to say with elaborate decency) "crowns his flame." Nor does she turn on him--as again might be expected--even then. On the contrary, she comes constantly to a secret Eden which he has prepared for her in Paris, and though, after long practice of this, she is sometimes rather late, and once or twice actually puts off her a.s.signation, it is "no more than reason,"[497] and she by no means jilts or threatens jilting, though she tells him frankly that his way of loving (which _is_ more than reason) is not hers. At last he cannot endure seeing her surrounded with admirers, and flies to Fontainebleau, where he is partly--only partly--consoled by a pretty and devoted _bonne_. Yet he sends a despairing cry to Mme. de Burne; and she, gracious as ever, actually comes to see him, and induces him to return to Paris. He does so, but takes the _bonne_ Elisabeth with him; and the book ends abruptly, leaving the reader to imagine what is the outcome of this "double arrangement"--or failure to arrange.

But, as always with Maupa.s.sant's longer stories and not quite never with his shorter ones, the "fable is the least part." The "atmosphere"; the projection of character and pa.s.sion; the setting; the situations; the phrase--these are the thing. And, except for the enigmatic and "stump-ended" conclusion, and for a certain overdose of words (which rather grew on him), they make a very fine thing. It is here that, on one side at least, the author's conception of love--which at some times might appear little more than animal, at others conventional-capricious in a fashion which makes that of Crebillon universal and sincere--has sublimed itself, as it had begun to do in _Fort comme la Mort_ (_Pierre et Jean_ is in this respect something of a divagation), into very nearly the true form of the Canticles and Shakespeare, of Donne and Sh.e.l.ley and Heine, of Hugo and Musset and Browning. But it is curious, in the first place, that he whom his friends fondly called a _fier male_, who has sometimes pushed masculinity near to brutality, and who is always cynical more or less, has made his Andre Mariolle, though a very good lover, a distinct weakling in love. He is a "too quick despairer," and his despair is more illogical than even a lover's has a right to be. And this is very interesting, because, evidently without the author's knowledge (though perhaps, if things had gone more happily, he might have come to that knowledge later), it shows the rottenness of the foundation, and the flimsiness of the superstructure, on and in which the Covenant of Adultery--even that of Free Love--is built. Mich.e.l.le de Burne gives Andre Mariolle everything with one exception, if even with that, that the greediest lover can want. She "distinguishes" him at once; she shows keen desire for his company; she makes the last (or first) surrender like a G.o.ddess answering a hopeless and unspoken prayer; she is strangely generous in continuing the _don d'amoureux merci_; she never really wearies of or jilts him, though he is a most exacting lover; and when he has flung away from her she allows him, in the most gracious manner, to whistle himself back. But there is one thing, or rather two which are one, that she will not, or perhaps cannot, give him. It is the idealised pa.s.sion which nature has denied to her, though not to him, and the absolute faithfulness and "forsaking of all others" proper to what?--to a perfect wife. So here, in the realms of spouse-breach, marriage is once more king, or rather the throne is felt to be empty--the kingdom an anarchy--without it!

The lighter side of the matter reminds one of two celebrated utterances. The first is Paul de Florac's criticism on the Lady Clara-Barnes-Highgate triangle, "Do not adopt our inst.i.tutions _a demi_." Here the situation is topsy-turvied in the most curious fashion, for it is the character of marriage that is desiderated in the absence thereof, and in a country where that character itself is scoffed at.

Further, it reminds one still more of Sydney Smith's excellent jest when Lady Holland, having previously asked him to stay at Holland House, sent him a formal invitation to dinner, for a day within the period of the larger hospitality. This, said Sydney, was "an attempt to combine the stimulus of gallantry with the security of connubial relations." That was precisely the moon that Mariolle sighed for, and that his not exactly Artemis would not--indeed could not be expected to--give him.

Of Mich.e.l.le de Burne herself there is less to be said. The curious misogyny which chequered Maupa.s.sant's gynomania seems to have tried hard to express itself in her portrait. It is less certain that it does. The other characters are quite subordinate, except the _bonne_ Elisabeth (who, promising as she is, merely makes her _debut_) and a novelist, Gaston de Lamarthe, who may sometimes be taken as the author's mouthpiece, but who does not do him justice. The book on the whole does much to confirm, and hardly anything to invalidate, the position that its writer had far more to say than he ever said.

[Sidenote: _Les Dimanches_, etc.]

The ordinary list of Maupa.s.sant's "Romans," as distinct from "Nouvelles"

and "Contes," ends with _Les Dimanches d'un Bourgeois de Paris_. This, however, is merely a series of tales (some of them actually rehandled from earlier ones), with a single figure for centre, to wit, a certain M. Patissot, a bachelor government-official, who is a sort of mixture of Leech's Mr. Briggs and of Jerome Paturot, with other predecessors who get into sc.r.a.pes and "fixtures." It is not unamusing, but scarcely first-cla.s.s, the two political skits at the end being about the best part of it.

[Sidenote: _Yvette._]

On the other hand, _Yvette_, which is only allowed the eponymship of a volume of short stories, though it fills to itself some hundred and seventy pages, is one of Maupa.s.sant's most carefully written things and one of his best--till the not fully explained, but in any case unsatisfactory, end[498]. Its heroine is the daughter of a sham Marquise and real courtesan, who has attained wealth, who can afford herself lovers "for love"[499] and not for money, when she chooses, and who keeps up a sort of demi-monde society, in which most of the men are adventurers and all the women adventuresses, but which maintains outward decencies. In consequence of this Yvette herself--in a fashion a little impossible, but artistically made not improbable--though she allows herself the extreme "tricks and manners" of faster society, calls half the men by nicknames, wanders about alone with them, etc., preserves not merely her personal purity but even her ignorance of unclean things in general, and especially of her mother's real character and conduct. Her relations with a clever and not ungentlemanly _roue_, one M. de Servigny; his difficulties (these are very curiously and cleverly told) in making love to a girl not of the lower cla.s.s (at least apparently) and not vicious; his attempt to brusque the matter; her horror at it and at the coincident discovery of her mother's ways; her attempt to poison herself; and her salvage by Servigny's coolness and devotion--are capitally done. Out of many pa.s.sages, one, where Madame la Marquise Obardi, otherwise Octavie Bardin, formerly domestic servant, drops her mask, opens her mouth, and uses the crude language of a procuress-mother to her daughter, is masterly. But the end is not from any point of view satisfactory. Apparently (for it is not made quite clear) Yvette retracts her refusal to be a kept mistress. In that case certainly, and in the almost impossible one of marriage probably, it may be feared that the catastrophe is only postponed. Now Yvette has been made too good (I do not mean goody) to be allowed to pine or poison herself, as a soon-to-be-neglected concubine or a not-much-longer-to-be-loved wife.

[Sidenote: Short stories--the various collections.]

That the very large mult.i.tude[500] of his short stories (or, one begs pardon, brief-narratives) is composed of units very different in merit is not wonderful. It was as certain that the covers of the author of _Boule de Suif_[501] would be drawn for the kind of thing frequently, as that these would sometimes be drawn either blank, or with the result of a very indifferent run. To an eye of some expertness, indeed, a good many of these pieces are, at best, the sort of thing that a clever contributor would turn off to editorial order, when he looked into a newspaper office between three and five, or ten and midnight. I confess that I once burst out laughing when, having thought to myself on reading one, "This is not much above a better written Paul-de-k.o.c.kery," I found at the end something like a frank acknowledgment of the fact, _with the name_. In fact, Maupa.s.sant was not good at the pure _grivoiserie_; his contemporary M. Armand Silvestre (_v. inf._) did it much better. Touches of tragedy, as has been said, save the situation sometimes, and at others the supernatural element of dread (which was to culminate in _Le Horla_, and finally to overpower the author himself) gives help; but the zigzags of the line of artistic success are sharp and far too numerous.

For a short story proper and a "proper" short story, _L'epave_, where an inspector of marine insurance visits a wreck far out on the sands of the Isle of Rhe, and, finding an Englishman and his daughter there, most unprofessionally forgets that the tides come up rapidly in such places, is nearly perfect. On the other hand, _Le Rosier de Mme. Husson_, one of the longest, is almost worthless.

[Sidenote: Cla.s.ses--stories of 1870-71.]

At one time I had designed--and to no small extent written--a running survey of a large number of these stories as they turn up in the volumes, most of which--the _Contes de la Beca.s.se_ is the chief exception--have no unity, and are merely "scoopings" of pieces enough to fill three hundred pages or so. But it would have occupied far too much s.p.a.ce for its importance and interest. As a matter of fact, they are to some extent cla.s.sifiable, and so may be dealt with on a representative system. There is the division of "La Revanche," which might have saved some of our fools at home from mistaking the Prussian for anything but a Prussian. _Boule de Suif_ heads this, of course; but _Mlle. Fifi_, which is a sort of tragic _Boule de Suif_--the tragedy being, one is glad to say, at the invaders' expense--is not far below it. _Deux Amis_, one of the best, records how two harmless Parisian anglers, pursuing their beloved sport too far, were shot for refusing to betray the pa.s.sword back; and _La Mere Sauvage_, the finest of all, how a French mother, hearing of her son's death, burnt her own house with some Germans billeted in it, and was, on her frank confession, shot. But _Un Duel_, though a Prussian officer (_vile d.a.m.num_) pays for his brutality with his life, restores the comic element, partly at the expense of the two English seconds.[502]

Connected with the war of 1870 too, though not military, is the capital _Coup d'etat_, in which a Monarchist French squire checkmates, for the moment at least, a blatant Republican village doctor.

[Sidenote: Norman stories.]

Very much larger than any other group is, naturally enough, that on Norman subjects. Maupa.s.sant does not flatter his fellow-subjects of the great Duchy, but he loves them, and knows them, and delights to talk of them--talking always well and often at his best. There must be, in all, several volumes-full of these, though they are actually scattered over a dozen: and it is not easy to go wrong with them. Perhaps a new "Farce du Cuvier," quite different from those known to readers of Boccaccio and the Fabliaux (a very drunk peasant sells his wife[503] by weight or measure to another, and scientifically ascertains the exact sum to be paid by making her fill a b.u.t.t with water and putting her into it--the displacement giving the required result) is the merriest. The story of the schoolboy who negotiates a marriage between his Latin tutor and a young person is excellent; and that of "Boitelle," a poor fellow who is prevented (through that singular abuse of _patria potestas_ so long allowed by French law) from marrying an agreeable negress, is the most pathetic. But I myself am rather fond of the _Legende du Mont Saint-Michel_. At first one is a little shocked at finding "the great vision of the guarded mount"[504] yoked to the old Scandinavian troll-and-farmer story of the fraudulent bargain as to alternate upper- and under-ground crops. But the magnificent opening description of "the fairy castle planted in the sea"[505] excuses, and is thrown up by, the sequel. Mont-Saint-Michel is not like Naples. When you have seen it, it is not your business to die, but to live and remember the sight of it; and, if you are lucky, your remembrance will have antic.i.p.ated Maupa.s.sant's words, and be freshened by them.

[Sidenote: Algerian and Sporting.]

Algiers and the Riviera were also fruitful in quant.i.ty, rather less so in quality. But on the former two stories, _Allouma_ and _Au Soir_, may be found together, the whole of the first of which, and the beginning of the second, are first-rate. The above mentioned _Contes de la Beca.s.se_ are almost all good, though by no means all sporting.

[Sidenote: Purely comic.]

For pure comedy one might put as the first three--with the caution that Mrs. Grundy had better keep away from them--_Les Soeurs Rondoli_,[506]

for which I feel certain that, when Maupa.s.sant reached the Elysian Fields, Aristophanes and Rabelais jointly requested the pleasure of introducing him to the company, and crowned him with the choicest laurels; _Mouche_, which is really touching as well as tickling at the end, though the grave and precise must be doubly warned off this; and _Enragee_--which is a sort of blend of an old smoking-room story of the perils of the honeymoon when new, and that curious tale[507] of Vigny's which has been given above.

[Sidenote: Tragic.]

For pure, or almost pure, tragedy and pathos, again, _Monsieur Parent_ stands first--the history of the late vengeance of a deceived husband and friend. _Miss Harriet_ gives us something more than a stage Englishwoman with large feet, projecting teeth, tartan skirts, and tracts, though it gives us this too. _Madame Baptiste_--the very short tale of a hapless woman who, having been the victim of crime in her youth, is pursued by the scandal thereof to suicide, in spite of her having found a worthy husband--is one of Maupa.s.sant's intensest.

[Sidenote: Tales of Life's Irony.]

As examples, bending sometimes to the comic, sometimes to the pathetic side of studies in the irony of life, one may recommend _A Cheval_ (a holiday taken by a poor but well-born family, which saddles them with an unconscionable "run-over" Old-_Wo_man-of-the-_Land_); _La Parure_ and _Les Bijous_ (the first a variant of _A Cheval_, the second a discovery by a husband, after his wife's death, of her shame); and perhaps best of all, _Regret_, in which a gentleman of sixty, reflecting on his wasted life, remembers a picnic, decades earlier, where the wife of his lifelong friend--both of them still friends and neighbours--behaved rather oddly. He hurries across to ask her (whom he finds jam-making) what she would have done if he had "failed in respect," and receives the cool answer, "J'aurais cede." It is good; but fancy not being able to take a walk, and observe the primroses by the river's brim, without being bound in honour to observe likewise whether the lady by your side was ready to "cede" or not! It seems to me that in such circ.u.mstances one would, to quote a French critic on an entirely different author and matter, "lose all the grace and liberty of the composition."

[Sidenote: Oddments.]

Some oddments[508] may deserve addition. _Fini_, which might have been mentioned in the last group, is a very perfect thing. A well-preserved dandy in middle age meets, after many years, an old love, and sees, mirrored in _her_ decay, his own so long ignored. n.o.body save a master could have done this as it is done. _Julie Romain_ is a quaint half-dream based on some points in George Sand's life, and attractive.

The _t.i.tle_ of _L'Inutile Beaute_ has also always been so to me (the _story_ is worth little). It would be, I think, a fair test of any man's taste in style, whether he did or did not see any difference between it and _La Beaute Inutile_. In _Adieu_, I think, Maupa.s.sant has been guilty of a fearful heresy in speaking of part of a lady's face as "ce _sot_ organe qu'on appelle le nez." Now that a nose, both in man and woman, can be foolish, n.o.body will deny. But that foolishness is an organic characteristic of it--in the sense of inexpressiveness, want of character, want of charm--is flatly a falsehood.[509] Neither mouth nor eyes can beat it in that respect; and if it has less variety individually, it gives perhaps more general character to the face than either. However, he is, if I mistake not, obliged to retract partially in the very story.

I have notes of many others--some of which may be special favourites with readers of mine--but room for no more. Yet for me at least among all these, despite the glaring inequality, despite the presence of some things utterly ephemeral and not in the least worth giving a new day to; despite the "_salete_ bete"[510] and the monotonous and obligatory adultery,[511] there abides, as in the large books, and from circ.u.mstances now and then with gathered intensity, that quality of above-the-commonness which has obliged me to speak of Maupa.s.sant as I have spoken.

[Sidenote: General considerations.]

The vividness and actuality of his power of presentation are unquestioned, and there has been complaint rather of the character of his "illusions" (_v. sup._) than of his failure to convey them to others. It is not merely that nature, helped by the discipline of practice under the severest of masters, had endowed him with a style of the most extraordinary sobriety and accuracy--the style of a more scholarly, reticent, and tightly-girt Defoe. It is not merely that his vision, and his capacity of reproducing that vision, were unsurpa.s.sed and rarely equalled for sharpness of outline and perfection of disengagement. He had something else which it is much less easy to put into words--the power of treating an incident or a character (character, it is true, less often and less fully than incident) as if it were a phrase or a landscape, of separating it, carving it out (so to speak), and presenting it isolated and framed for survey. His performances in these tracks are so numerous that it is difficult to single out any. But I do not know that finer examples (besides those noticed above in _Une Vie_) of his power of thus isolating and projecting a scene are to be found than two of the pa.s.sages in _Pierre et Jean_, the prawn-catching party and Pierre's meditation at the jetty-head. Of his similar but greater faculty of treating incident _and_ character _Monsieur Parent_ is perhaps the very finest example (for _Boule de Suif_ is something greater than a mere slice), though _Promenade_, _Les Soeurs Rondoli_, _Boitelle_, _Deux Amis_, and others are almost as good. But this very excellence of our author's carries with it a danger which most of his readers must have recognised. His definition and vignetting of separate scenes, incidents, and characters is so sharp and complete that he finds a difficulty in combining them. The attempt to disdain and depreciate plot which the above-mentioned Preface contains is, I suspect (though I am, as often confessed, no plot-worshipper), as our disdains and depreciations so often are, itself a confession. At any rate, it is allowed that the longer books, with the exception of _Pierre et Jean_ (which was for that very reason, and perhaps for others, disdained by the youngest and most impressionist school of critics), are deficient in beginning, middle, and end. _Une Vie_ and _Bel-Ami_ are surveys or chronicles, not dramas or histories. _Mont-Oriol_, open enough to objection in some ways, is rather better in this point. _Fort Comme la Mort_ relapses under the old curse of the situation of teasing unhappiness from which there is no outlet, and in which there is little action. _Notre Coeur_ should perhaps escape criticism on this head, as the shadow of the author's fate was already heavy on him. In fact, as observed above, it is little more than a torso. Even _Pierre et Jean_, by far the greatest of all, if scale and artistic perfection be taken together, falls short in the latter respect of _Boule de Suif_, which, small as it is, is a complete tragi-comedy in little, furnished with beginning, middle, and end, complying fully with those older exigences which its author affected to despise, and really as great as anything of Merimee's--greater it could not be.

There is no doubt that the theory which Maupa.s.sant says he learnt from Flaubert (in whose own hands it was always subordinated to an effort at larger completeness) does lead to the composition of a series or flock of isolated vignettes or scenes rather than to that of a great picture or drama. For it comes perilously close--though perhaps in Maupa.s.sant's own case it never actually reached--the barest and boldest (or baldest) individualising of impressions, and leaving them as they are, without an attempt at architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I was walking down the Euston Road. There pa.s.sed me a fellow dragging a truck, on which truck there were three barrels with the heads knocked out, so that each barrel ensheathed, to a certain extent, the one in front of it. Astride of the centre barrel, his arms folded and a pipe in his mouth, there sat a man in a sort of sailor-costume--trousers, guernsey, and night-cap--surveying the world, and his fellow who dragged him, with an air of placid _goguenarderie_. It was really a striking impression, and absorbed me, I should think, for five or six seconds. I can conceive its coming into a story very well. But Maupa.s.sant's theories would have led to his making a whole story out of it, and his followers have already done things quite as bad, while he has himself come near to it more than once.[513] In other words, the method tends to the presentations of sc.r.a.ps, orts, fragments, instead of complete wholes. And Art should always seek the whole.