Essays in Little Part 1

Essays in Little.

by Andrew Lang.

PREFACE

Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this volume.

They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a Young Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and "The Last Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no! we never mention Her," appeared in the New York _Sun_, and was suggested by Mr.

Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on Thackeray and d.i.c.kens were published in _Good Words_, that on Dumas appeared in _Scribner's Magazine_, that on M. Theodore de Banville in _The New Quarterly Review_.

The other essays were originally written for a newspaper "Syndicate."

They have been re-cast, augmented, and, to a great extent, re-written.

A. L.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough wherein to tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and Shalum, in Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for half a century and a courtship for two hundred years, might have sufficed for an exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to offer, in the brief seasons of our perishable days. I own that I have not read, and do not, in the circ.u.mstances, expect to read, all of Dumas, nor even the greater part of his thousand volumes. We only dip a cup in that sparkling spring, and drink, and go on,--we cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, nor to carry away with us the well itself. It is but a word of grat.i.tude and delight that we can say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an _ave_ of friendship that we can call across the bourne to the shade of the Porthos of fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even still more widely circulated than they are; that the young should read them, and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them again, and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that is what we desire.

Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he tried several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold _sous le manteau_. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in the

"scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type;"

he never made his way so far as

"the woful sixteenth print."

"I had, thank G.o.d, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of my six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in 1864, when the _Censure_ threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the Emperor: "Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a girl in our most modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, may not be allowed to read."

The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take Dumas exactly at his word. There is a pa.s.sage, for example, in the story of Miladi ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well think undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original pa.s.sage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has pa.s.sed through a medium, as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good taste. His enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he breathes is a healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own choice, for he had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, and every opportunity.

Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the other by his own son, which show, in brief s.p.a.ce, why this novelist is so beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M. Villaud, a railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and Spain, was the person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for Dumas. He felt so much grat.i.tude to the unknown friend of lonely nights in long exiles, that he could not be happy till his grat.i.tude found a permanent expression. On returning to France he went to consult M. Victor Borie, who told him this tale about George Sand. M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just before her death, and found Dumas' novel, "Les Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about the Valois kings) lying on her table. He expressed his wonder that she was reading it for the first time.

"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have read 'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious, melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that M. Sarcey was in the same cla.s.s at school with a little Spanish boy. The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was almost in a decline.

"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey.

"No: she is dead."

"Your father, then?"

"No: he used to beat me."

"Your brothers and sisters?"

"I have none."

"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?"

"To finish a book I began in the holidays."

"And what was its name?"

"'Los Tres Mosqueteros'!"

He was homesick for "The Three Musketeers," and they cured him easily.

That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to old age, he charms away the half-conscious _nostalgie_, the _Heimweh_, of childhood. We are all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land of blue skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, on the battle- field, in the prison, on the desert isle. And then Dumas comes, and, like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into the wine, the drug nepenthe, "that puts all evil out of mind." Does any one suppose that when George Sand was old and tired, and near her death, she would have found this anodyne, and this stimulant, in the novels of M. Tolstoi, M.

Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the "scientific" observers whom we are actually requested to hail as the masters of a new art, the art of the future? Would they make her laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as Porthos, Athos, and Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar time, as the enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these new authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, _precieux_, pitiful, charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a light heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that old Gascon rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James Douglas, we had liefer hear the lark sing over moor and down, with Chicot, than listen to the starved-mouse squeak in the _bouge_ of Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not that there is not a place and an hour for him, and others like him; but they are not, if you please, to have the whole world to themselves, and all the time, and all the praise; they are not to turn the world into a dissecting-room, time into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas into crowns of nettles.

There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not produced the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that labour. One of the worst books that ever was written, if it can be said to be written, is, I think, the English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style, grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own books, that his books were written by "collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is no doubt that Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that _live_, whoever his a.s.sistants were, could any of his a.s.sistants write books that live, without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in good practice a thief and an impostor because he has juniors to "devil" for him, as make charges of this kind against Dumas. He once asked his son to help him; the younger Alexandre declined. "It is worth a thousand a year, and you have only to make objections," the sire urged; but the son was not to be tempted. Some excellent novelists of to-day would be much better if they employed a friend to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator did much more. Dumas' method, apparently, was first to talk the subject over with his _aide-de-camp_. This is an excellent practice, as ideas are knocked out, like sparks (an elderly ill.u.s.tration!), by the contact of minds. Then the young man probably made researches, put a rough sketch on paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his "brief." Then Dumas took the "brief" and wrote the novel. He gave it life, he gave it the spark (_l'etincelle_); and the story lived and moved.

It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molere and that he took a good deal. In the gallery of an old country-house, on a wet day, I came once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where they had lain since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. There were our old friends the Musketeers, and there were many of their adventures, told at great length and breadth. But how much more vivacious they are in Dumas!

M. About repeats a story of Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great man at Ma.r.s.eilles, where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the new love" before being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M.

About, literally lifted him in his embrace, and carried him off to see a play which he had written in three days. The play was a success; the supper was prolonged till three in the morning; M. About was almost asleep as he walked home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had just got out of bed. "Go to sleep, old man," he said: "I, who am only fifty-five, have three _feuilletons_ to write, which must be posted to-morrow. If I have time I shall knock up a little piece for Montigny--the idea is running in my head." So next morning M. About saw the three _feuilletons_ made up for the post, and another packet addressed to M.

Montigny: it was the play _L'Invitation a la Valse_, a chef-d'oeuvre!

Well, the material had been prepared for Dumas. M. About saw one of his novels at Ma.r.s.eilles in the chrysalis. It was a stout copy-book full of paper, composed by a practised hand, on the master's design. Dumas copied out each little leaf on a big leaf of paper, _en y semant l'esprit a pleines mains_. This was his method. As a rule, in collaboration, one man does the work while the other looks on. Is it likely that Dumas looked on? That was not the manner of Dumas. "Mirecourt and others," M.

About says, "have wept crocodile tears for the collaborators, the victims of his glory and his talent. But it is difficult to lament over the survivors (1884). The master neither took their money--for they are rich, nor their fame--for they are celebrated, nor their merit--for they had and still have plenty. And they never bewailed their fate: the reverse! The proudest congratulate themselves on having been at so good a school; and M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence and affection of his great friend." And M. About writes "as one who had taken the master red-handed, and in the act of collaboration." Dumas has a curious note on collaboration in his "Souvenirs Dramatiques." Of the two men at work together, "one is always the dupe, and _he_ is the man of talent."

There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a biography exists in abundance. There are the many volumes of his "Memoires," there are all the tomes he wrote on his travels and adventures in Africa, Spain, Italy, Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the romance of _Ange Pitou_, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty of little studies by people who knew him. As to his "Memoires," as to all he wrote about himself, of course his imagination entered into the narrative. Like Scott, when he had a good story he liked to dress it up with a c.o.c.ked hat and a sword. Did he perform all those astonishing and innumerable feats of strength, skill, courage, address, in revolutions, in voyages, in love, in war, in cookery? The narrative need not be taken "at the foot of the letter"; great as was his force and his courage, his fancy was greater still. There is no room for a biography of him here. His descent was n.o.ble on one side, with or without the bend sinister, which he said he would never have disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did not happen to inherit. On the other side he _may_ have descended from kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must have added, "African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these mythical feats of strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while clutching a rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before him over a wall, as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the leap ("Memoires," i.

122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard about this ancestor--in whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant Porthos. In the Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of Monsieur de l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a guillotine; and of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pa.s.s as bravely as the Roman "in the brave days of old."

This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity, strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he preached and practised. They say he was generous before he was just; it is to be feared this was true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not listen to a tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes left himself short of a dinner. He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were open to everybody but bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve came, making thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas consented, and repented.

"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social position and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive from heaven force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. Let them bide! But, in the interests of their own good luck, see they are not thirteen, an unfortunate number!"

"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away."

"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some three pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends would cost thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say my wine was good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this fashion Dumas fared royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined him as certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He, too, had his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog, Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the other held the throat of the brute. "Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful; what it once holds it holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a guid grip o' the gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at them.

"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard murmuring, when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man _preached_ socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of friends are common, and men are our friends.

The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame Dumas in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was sadly to seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught himself to read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of mythology. He knew all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom Jones, "a child's Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every G.o.d, G.o.ddess, fawn, dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful information. Dear Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more delightful thou art than the fastidious Smith or the learned Preller! Dumas had one volume of the "Arabian Nights," with Aladdin's lamp therein, the sacred lamp which he was to keep burning with a flame so brilliant and so steady. It is pleasant to know that, in his boyhood, this great romancer loved Virgil. "Little as is my Latin, I have ever adored Virgil: his tenderness for exiles, his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of an unknown G.o.d, have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me most, and they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did not last long: Madame Dumas got a little post--a licence to sell tobacco--and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his great Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the stage--Racine and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously--till he saw _Hamlet_: _Hamlet_ diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of Shakespeare, but here was something he could appreciate. Here was "a profound impression, full of inexplicable emotion, vague desires, fleeting lights, that, so far, lit up only a chaos."

Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation of Burger's "Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott translated the ballad, and Dumas failed. _Les mortes vont vite_! the same refrain woke poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman.

"Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed: Dost fear to ride with me?"

So Dumas' literary career began with a defeat, but it was always a beginning. He had just failed with "Lenore," when Leuven asked him to collaborate in a play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had not succeeded in gallant efforts to read through "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote." "To my shame," he writes, "the man has not been more fortunate with those masterpieces than the boy." He had not yet heard of Scott, Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of Shakespeare only as a barbarian. Other plays the boy wrote--failures, of course--and then Dumas poached his way to Paris, shooting partridges on the road, and paying the hotel expenses by his success in the chase. He was introduced to the great Talma: what a moment for Talma, had he known it! He saw the theatres. He went home, but returned to Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a gentleman at the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was turned out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors of the play he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks verisimilitude. It reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the subject of Elzevirs, and had fashioned his new knowledge into a little story. He could make a story out of anything--he "turned all to favour and to prettiness." Could I translate the whole pa.s.sage, and print it here, it would be longer than this article; but, ah, how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas did he did with such life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity, that his whole career is one long romance of the highest quality.

La.s.sagne told him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper, Froissart, Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He entered the service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear hand, and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour or two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's office stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit his hand he managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I have tried it, but forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed wild feats of rapid caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, and he wrote his plays in one "hand," his novels in another. The "hand" used in his dramas he acquired when, in days of poverty, he used to write in bed. To this habit he also attributed the _brutalite_ of his earlier pieces, but there seems to be no good reason why a man should write like a brute because it is in bed that he writes.

In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a study of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was to rush at danger; if he had to wait, he felt his courage oozing out at the tips of his fingers, like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he was himself again. In dreams he was a coward, because, as he argues, the natural man _is_ a poltroon, and conscience, honour, all the spiritual and commanding part of our nature, goes to sleep in dreams. The animal terror a.s.serts itself unchecked. It is a theory not without exceptions. In dreams one has plenty of conscience (at least that is my experience), though it usually takes the form of remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers which, in waking hours, one might probably avoid if one could.