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A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
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A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. L.L.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OFEDINBURGH
VOL. II
FROM 1800 TO 1900
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1919
Solo a veces, con un dejo de zozobra y de ansiedad, timido tiembla en sus labios un viejo y triste cantar, copla que vibre en el aire como un toque funeral: _La Noche Buena se viene, la Noche Buena se va! Y nosotros nos iremos y no volveremos mas._
CARLOS FERNANDEZ SHAW, _La Balada de los Viejos._
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
"The second chantry" (for it would be absurd to keep "temple") of thiswork "is not like the first"; in one respect especially, which seems todeserve notice in its Preface or porch--if a chantry may be permitted aporch. In Volume I.--though many of its subjects (not quite all) hadbeen handled by me before in more or less summary fashion, or in reviewsof individual books, or in other connections than that of thenovel--only Hamilton, Lesage, Marivaux, and the minor "Sensibility" menand women had formed the subjects of separate and somewhat detailedstudies, wholly or mainly as novelists. The case is altered in respectof the present volume. The _Essays on French Novelists_, to which Ithere referred, contain a larger number of such studies appertaining tothe present division--studies busied with Charles de Bernard, Gautier,Murger, Flaubert, Dumas, Sandeau, Cherbuliez, Feuillet. On Balzac I havepreviously written two papers of some length, one as an Introduction toMessrs. Dent's almost complete translation of the _Comedie_, withshorter sequels for each book, the other an article in the _QuarterlyReview_ for 1907. Some dozen or more years ago I contributed to anAmerican edition[1] of translations of Merimee by various hands, a long"Introduction" to that most remarkable writer, and I had, somewhatearlier, written on Maupassant for the _Fortnightly Review_. One or twoadditional dealings of some substance with the subject might bementioned, such as another Introduction to _Corinne_, but not to_Delphine_. These, however, and passages in more general _Histories_,hardly need specification.
On the other hand, I have never dealt, substantively and in detail, withChateaubriand, Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Beyle, George Sand, or Zola[2]as novelists, nor with any of the very large number of minors notalready mentioned, including some, such as Nodier and Gerard de Nerval,whom, for one thing or another, I should myself very decidedly put aboveminority. And, further, my former dealings with the authors in the firstlist given above having been undertaken without any view to a generalhistory of the French novel, it became not merely proper but easy for meto "triangulate" them anew. So that though there may be more previouswork of mine in print on the subjects of the present volume than onthose of the last, there will, I hope, be found here actually less, andvery considerably less, _rechauffe_--hardly any, in fact (save a fewtranslations[3] and some passages on Gautier and Maupassant)--of theamount and character which seemed excusable, and more than excusable, inthe case of the "Sensibility" chapter there. The book, if not actually a"Pisgah-sight reversed," taken from Lebanon instead of Pisgah aftermore than forty years' journey, not in the wilderness, but in thePromised Land itself, attempts to be so; and uses no more than fairly"reminiscential" (as Sir Thomas Browne would say) notes, taken on thatjourney itself.
It was very naturally, and by persons of weight, put to me whether Icould not extend this history to, or nearer to, the present day. I putmy negative to this briefly in the earlier preface: it may be perhapscourteous to others, who may be disposed to regret the refusal, to giveit somewhat more fully here. One reason--perhaps sufficient initself--can be very frankly stated. I do not _know_ enough of the Frenchnovel of the last twenty years or so. During the whole of that time Ihave had no reasons, of duty or profit, to oblige such knowledge. I havehad a great many other things to do, and I have found greater recreationin re-reading old books than in experimenting on new ones. I might, nodoubt, in the last year or two have made up the deficiency to someextent, but I was indisposed to do so for two, yea, three reasons, whichseemed to me sufficient.
In the first place, I have found, both by some actual experiment of myown, and, as it seems to me, by a considerable examination of theexperiments of other people, that to co-ordinate satisfactorily accountsof contemporary or very recent work with accounts of older is sodifficult as to be nearly impossible. The _foci_ are too different to beeasily adjusted, and the result is almost always out of composition, ifnot of drawing.
Secondly, though I know I am here kicking against certain pricks, itdoes not appear to me, either from what I have read or from criticismson what I have not, that any definitely new and decisively illustratedschool of novels has arisen since the death of M. Zola.
Thirdly, it would be impossible to deal with the subject, save in anabsurdly incomplete fashion, without discussing living persons. To doingthis, in a book, I have an unfashionable but unalterable objection. Theproductions of such persons, as they appear, are, by now establishedcustom, proper subjects for "reviewing" in accordance with the decenciesof literature, and such reviews may sometimes, with the same proviso, beextended to studies of their work up to date. But even these lattershould, I think, be reserved for very exceptional cases.
A slight difference of method may be observed in the treatment ofauthors in Chapter X. and onwards, this treatment being not onlysomewhat less judicial and more "impressionist," but also more generaland less buckrammed out with abstracts of particular works.[4] Thereappeared to me to be more than one reason for this, all such reasonsbeing independent of, though by no means ignoring, the mechanicalpressure of ever-lessening space. In the first place, a very much largernumber of readers may be presumed to be more or less familiar with thesubjects of discussion, thus not only making elaborate "statement ofcase" and production of supporting evidence unnecessary, but exposingthe purely judicial attitude to the charge of "no jurisdiction."Moreover, there is behind all this, as it seems to me, a reallyimportant principle, which is not a mere repetition, but a noteworthyextension, of that recently laid down. I rather doubt whether theabsolute historico-critical verdict and sentence can ever be pronouncedon work that is, even in the widest sense, contemporary. The "firmperspective of the past" can in very few instances be acquired: andthose few, who by good luck have acquired something of it, should notpresume too much on this gift of fortune. General opinion of a man isduring his lifetime often wrong, for some time after his death almostalways so: and the absolute balance is very seldom reached till a fullgeneration--something more than the conventional thirty years--haspassed. Meanwhile, though all readers who have anything critical in themwill be constantly revising their impressions, it is well not to putone's own out as more than impressions. It is only a very few yearssince I myself came to what I may call a provisionally final estimate ofZola, and I find that there is some slight alteration even in thatwhich, from the first, I formed of Maupassant. I can hardly hope thatreaders of this part of the work will
not be brought into collision withexpressions of mine, more frequently than was the case in the firstvolume or even the first part of this. But I can at least assure themthat I have no intention of playing Sir Oracle, or of trailing my coat.
The actual arrangement of this volume has been the subject of a gooddeal of "pondering and deliberation," almost as much as Sir ThomasBertram gave to a matter no doubt of more importance. There was aconsiderable temptation to recur to the system on which I have writtensome other literary histories--that of "Books" and "Interchapters." ThisI had abandoned, in the first volume, because it was not so muchdifficult of application as hardly relevant. Here the relevance is muchgreater. The single century divides itself, without the slightestviolence offered, into four parts, which, if I had that capacity orpartiality for flowery writing, the absence of which in me some criticshave deplored, I might almost call Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.There is the season, of little positive crop but importantseed-sowing,--the season in which the greater writers, Chateaubriand andMme. de Stael, perform their office. Here, too, quite humblefolk--Pigault-Lebrun completing what has been already dealt with,Ducray-Duminil and others doing work to be dealt with here, and Paul deKock most of all, get the novel of ordinary life ready in various ways:while others still, Nodier, Hugo, Vigny, Merimee, and, with howeverdifferent literary value, Arlincourt, implant the New Romance. There isthe sudden, magnificent, and long-continued outburst of all the kinds inand after 1830. There is the autumn of the Second Empire, continuing andadding to the fruits and flowers of summer: and there is the gradualdecadence of the last quarter of the century, with some late blossomingand second-crop fruitage--the medlars of the novel--and the dying off ofthe great producers of the past. But the breach of uniformity in formalarrangement of the divisions would perhaps be too great to the eyewithout being absolutely necessary to the sense, and I have endeavouredto make the necessary recapitulation with a single "halt" ofchapter-length[5] at the exact middle. It will readily be understoodthat the loss of my own library has been even more severely felt in thisvolume than in the earlier one, while circumstances, public and private,have made access to larger collections more difficult. But I haveendeavoured to "make good" as much as possible, and grumbling orcomplaining supplies worse than no armour against Fate.
I have sometimes, perhaps rashly, during the writing of this bookwondered "What next"? By luck for myself--whether also for my readers itwould be ill even to wonder--I have been permitted to execute all theliterary schemes I ever formed, save two. The first of these (omitting awork on "Transubstantiation" which I planned at the age of thirteen butdid not carry far) was a _History of the English Scholastics_, which Ithought of some ten years later, which was not unfavoured by goodauthority, and which I should certainly have attempted, if other peopleat Oxford in my time had not been so much cleverer than myself that Icould not get a fellowship. It has, strangely enough, never been doneyet by anybody; it would be a useful corrective to the exoteric chatterwhich has sometimes recently gone by the name of philosophy; and perhapsit might shake Signor Benedetto Croce (whom it is hardly necessary tosay I do _not_ include among the "chatterers") in his opinion thatthough, as he once too kindly said, I am a _valente letterato_, I amsadly _digiuno di filosofia_.[6] But it is "too late a week" for this.And I have lost my library.
Then there was a _History of Wine_, which was actually commissioned,planned, and begun just before I was appointed to my Chair at Edinburgh,and which I gave up, not from any personal pusillanimity or loss ofinterest in the subject, but partly because I had too much else to do,and because I thought it unfair to expose that respectable institutionto the venom of the most unscrupulous of all fanatics--those ofteetotalism. I could take this up with pleasure: but I have lost mycellar.
What I should really like to do would be to translate _in extenso_ Dr.Sommer's re-edition of the Vulgate Arthuriad. But I should probably diebefore I had done half of it; no publisher would undertake the risk ofit; and if any did, "Dora," reluctant to die, would no doubt put us bothin 'prison for using so much paper. Therefore I had better be contentwith the divine suggestion, and not spoil it by my human failure toexecute.
And so I may say, for good, _Valete_ to the public, abandoning the restof the leave-taking to their discretion.[7]
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _Christmas_, 1918.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is perhaps worth while to observe that I did not "edit" this, andthat I had nothing whatever to do with any part of it except the_Introduction_ and my earlier translation of the _Chronique de CharlesIX_, which was, I believe, reprinted in it.
[2] In very great strictness an exception should perhaps be made fornotice of him, and of some others, in _The Later Nineteenth Century_(Edinburgh and London, 1907).
[3] There will, for pretty obvious reasons, be fewer of these than inthe former volume. The texts are much more accessible; there is nodifficulty about the language, such as people, however unnecessarily,sometimes feel about French up to the sixteenth century; and the spaceis wanted for other things. If I have kept one or two of my old ones itis because they have won approval from persons whose approval is worthhaving, and are now out of print: while I have added one or twoothers--to please myself. Translations--in some cases more than one ortwo--already exist, for those who read English only, of nearly the wholeof Balzac, of all Victor Hugo's novels, of a great many of Dumas's, andof others almost innumerable.
[4] The chief exceptions are Dumas _fils_, the earliest, and Maupassant,the greatest except Flaubert and far more voluminous than Flauberthimself.
[5] The most unexpected chorus of approval with which Volume I. wasreceived by reviewers, and which makes me think, in regard to this, ofthat unpleasant song of the Koreish "After Bedr, Ohod," leaves littlenecessity for defending points attacked. I have made a few addenda andcorrigenda to Volume I. to cover exceptions, and the "Interchapter" orits equivalent should contain something on one larger matter--the smallaccount taken here of French _criticism_ of the novel.
[6] I wonder whether he was right, or whether the late Edward Caird waswhen he said, "I don't think I ever had a pupil [and he was among thefirst inter-collegiate-lecturers] with more of the philosophical _ethos_than you have. But you're too fond of getting into logical coaches andletting yourself be carried away in them." I think this was provoked bya very undergraduate essay arguing that Truth, as actually realised, wasuninteresting, while the possible forms of Falsehood, as conceivablyrealisable in other circumstances, were of the highest interest.
[7] I have to give, not only my usual thanks to Professors Elton, Ker,and Gregory Smith for reading my proofs, and making most valuablesuggestions, but a special acknowledgment to Professor Ker, at whoserequest Miss Elsie Hitchcock most kindly looked up for me, at theBritish Museum, the exact title of that striking novel of M. H. Cochin(_v. inf._ p. 554 _note_). I have, in the proper places, already thankedthe authorities of the _Reviews_ above mentioned; but I should like alsoto recognise here the liberality of Messrs. Rivington in putting thecontents of my _Essays on French Novelists_ entirely at my disposal. AndI am under another special obligation to Dr. Hagbert Wright for givingme, of his own motion, knowledge and reading of the fresh batch ofseventeenth-century novels noticed below (pp. xiv-xvi).
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