CHAPTER IX
THE FRENCH NOVEL IN 1850
[Sidenote: The peculiarity of the moment.]
It was not found necessary, in the last volume, to suspend the currentof narrative or survey for the purpose of drawing interim conclusions inspecial "Interchapters."[328] But the subjects of this present are somuch more bulky and varied, in proportion to the space available and thetime considered; while the fortunes of the novel itself altered soprodigiously during that time, that something of the kind seemed to bedesirable, if not absolutely necessary. Moreover, the actual centre ofthe century in France, or rather what may be called its precinct, thepolitical interregnum of 1848-1852, is more than a _mere_ political andchronological date. To take it as an absolute apex or culmination wouldbe absurd; and even to take it as a definite turning-point might beexcessive. Not a few of the greatest novelists then living andworking--Hugo, whose most popular and bulkiest work in novel was yet tocome; George Sand, Merimee, Gautier--were still to write for the bestpart of a quarter of a century, if not more; and the most definite freshstart of the second period, the rise of Naturalism, was not to takeplace till a little later. But already Chateaubriand, Beyle, Charles deBernard, and, above all, Balzac, were dead or soon to die: and it cannotbe said that any of the survivors developed new characters of work, foreven Hugo's was (_v. sup._) only the earlier "writ large" andmodernised in non-essentials. On the other hand, it was only after thistime that Dumas _fils_, the earliest of what may be called the newschool, produced his most remarkable work.
But the justification of such an "Interchapter" as this practically isdepends, not on what is to come after, but on what has come before; andin this respect we shall find little difficulty in vindicating theposition and arrangement assigned to the remarks which are to follow,though some of these may look forward as well as backward.[329]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A political nadir.]
I should imagine that few Frenchmen--despite the almost infinite andsometimes very startling variety of selection which the _laudatortemporis acti_ exhibits--look back upon the reign of Louis Philippe as agolden age in any respect but one. Regarding it from the point of viewof general politics, the ridiculous change[330] from "King of France" to"King of the French" stamped it at once, finally and hopelessly, as theworst kind of compromise--as a sort of spiritual imitation of themethods of the Triumvirate, where everybody gives up, not exactly hisfather or his uncle or his brother, but his dearest and most respectableconvictions, together with the historical, logical, and sentimentalsupports of them. The king himself--though certainly no fool, and thoughhardly to be called an unmitigated knave--was one of those unfortunatepersons whose merits do not in the least interest and whose defects dovery strongly disgust. Domestically, the reign was a reign, in the othersense, of silly minor revolutions, which, till the end, came to nothing,and then came to something only less absurd than the Russian revolutionof the other day, though fortunately less disastrous;[331] ofbureaucracy of the corrupt and shabby character which seemed to clingto the whole _regime_; and of remarkable vying between two distinguishedmen of letters, Guizot and Thiers, as to which should do most to confirmthe saying of the wicked that men of letters had much better havenothing to do with politics.[332] Abroad (with the exception of theacquisition of Algeria, which had begun earlier, and which conferred nogreat honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a fewloose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according toour custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms,despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, whileFrench diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs inhistory, the matter of the Spanish marriages.
[Sidenote: And almost a literary zenith.]
But this unsatisfactory state of things was made up--and more than madeup--for posterity if not for contemporaries--by the extraordinarydevelopment of literature and the arts--especially literature and mostespecially of all the _belles-lettres_. If (which would be ratherimpossible) one were to evaluate the relative excellence of poetry andof prose fiction in the time itself, a great deal could be said on bothsides. But if one took the larger historic view, it would certainly haveto be admitted that, while the excellence of French poetry was amagnificent Renaissance after a long period of something like sterility,the excellence of the novel was something more--an achievement of thingsnever yet achieved; an acquisition and settlement of territory which hadnever previously been even explored.
I venture to hope that no great injustice has been done to the previousaccomplishments of France in this department as they were surveyed inthe last volume. She had been, if not the inventress of Romance, the[Greek: aidoie tamie]--the revered distributress--of it to all nations;she had made the short story her own to such an extent that, in almostall its forms, she had reached and kept mastery of it; and in variousisolated instances she had done very important, if not now universallyacceptable, work in the practice of the "Heroic." With Rabelais, Lesage,almost Marivaux, certainly, in his one diploma-piece, Prevost, she hadcontributed persons and things of more or less consummateness to thenovel-staff and the novel treasury. But she had never quite reached, asEngland for two full generations had reached before 1800, the consummateexpression of the--_pure_ novel--the story which, not neglectingincident, but as a rule confining itself to the incidents of ordinarylife; advancing character to a position at least equal with plot;presenting the manners of its own day, but charging them with essence ofhumanity in all days; re-creates, for the delectation of readers, a newworld of probable, indeed of actual, life through the medium ofliterature. And she had rarely--except in the fairy-tale and a very fewmasterpieces like _Manon Lescaut_ again and _La NouvelleHeloise_[333]--achieved what may be called the Romantic or passionatenovel; while, except in such very imperfect admixtures of the historicelement as _La Princesse de Cleves_, she had never attempted, and evenin these had never attained, the historical novel proper.
Now, in 1850, she had done all this, and more.
[Sidenote: The performance of the time in novel.]
As has been seen, the doing was, if not solely effected between 1830 and1848, mainly and almost wholly carried out in the second quarter of thecentury. In the first, only three persons possessing anything likegenius--Benjamin Constant, Madame de Stael, and Chateaubriand--hadbusied themselves with the novel, and they were all strongly chargedwith eighteenth-century spirit. Indeed, Constant, as we saw in the lastvolume, though he left pattern and stimulus for the nineteenth and thefuture generally, really represented the last dying words of that"Sensibility" school which was essentially of the past, though it wasundoubtedly necessary to the future. Likewise in Madame de Stael, andstill more in Chateaubriand, there was model, stimulus, germ. But theyalso were, on the whole, of the eve rather than of the morrow. I haveindeed sometimes wondered what would have happened if Chateaubriand hadgone on writing novels, and had devoted to fiction the talent which hewasted on the _mesquin_[334] politics of the France of his later daysand on the interesting but restricted and egotistic _Memoiresd'Outre-Tombe_. It is no doubt true that, though old men have oftenwritten great poetry and excellent serious prose, nobody, sofar as I remember, has written a great novel after seventy. For_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, if it be great, is a romance rather than a novel,and a romance which had much better have been poetry. But this is anexcursion into the Forbidden Country of the Might-Have-Been. We areconcerned with what was.
The accomplishment of these twenty or five-and-twenty years is soextraordinary--when bulk, variety, novelty, and greatness of achievementare considered together--that there is hardly anything like itelsewhere. The single work of Balzac would mark and make an epoch; andthis is wholly the property of the period. And though there is still,and is likely always to be, controversy as to whether the Balzacian menand women are exactly men and women of _this_ world, there can, as mayhave been shown, be no rational denial of the fact that they represent_a_ world--not of pure roman
ce, not of fairy-tale, not of convention orfashion or coterie, but a world human and synthetically possible in itskind.
[Sidenote: The _personnel_.]
But while the possession of Balzac alone would have sufficed, by itself,to give the time front rank among the periods of the novel, it is not inthe least extravagant to add that if Balzac had been blotted out of itsrecord it could still prove title-deeds enough, and more than enough, tosuch a place. Fault has here been found--perhaps not a few readers maythink to an excessive, certainly to a considerable extent--with thenovel-work of Hugo and with that of George Sand. But the fault-finderhas not dreamed of denying that, as literature in novel-form, _LesMiserables_ and _L'Homme Qui Rit_ and _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ are great,and that _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ is of the greatest.[335] And onthe other hand, while strong exceptions have been taken from severalsides to the work of George Sand, the fact remains--and no attempt hasbeen made to obscure or to shake it--that George Sand gave noveldelectation, in no vulgar fashion, and to no small extent in the form ofthe pure novel itself, probably to as large a number of readers as anynovelist except Scott and Dumas; and perhaps Dickens, has ever given. Ofthe miraculous production of Dumas himself almost enough should havebeen said before, though a little more may come after; and whatevercontroversy there may be about its purely literary value, therecan--with reasonable people who are prepared to give and take--be littleanxiety to deny that each of these three, like Balzac, might have takenthe burden of the period on his or her own shoulders, while as a matterof fact they have but to take each a corner. Nor, even when thusdivided, is the burden left wholly to them. The utmost perfection, atleast in the short story, is reached by Merimee and Gautier, little lessthan such perfection by others. For suggestions of new kinds and newtreatments, if for no single performance, few periods, if any, have asuperior to Beyle.
But, once more, just as the time need not rely on any single champion ofits greatest to maintain its position, so, if all the greater names justmentioned were struck out, it would still be able to "make good" by dintof the number, the talent, the variety, the novelty of its second- andthird-rate representatives. Even those who may think that I have takenPaul de Kock too seriously cannot deny--for it is a simple fact--thevigorous impulse that he gave to the _popularity_ of the novel as a formof the printed book, if not of literature; while I can hardly imagineany one who takes the trouble to examine this fact refusing to admitthat it is largely due to an advance in reality of a kind--though theymay think this kind itself but a shady and sordid one. On the otherhand, I think less of Eugene Sue than at one time "men of good" used tothink; but I, in my turn, should not dream of denying his popularity, orthe advance which he too effected in procuring for the novel its share,and a vast share, in the attention of the general reader. Jules Sandeauand Charles de Bernard, Soulie and Feval and Achard, and not a fewothers mentioned or not mentioned in the text, come up to support theirpriors, while, as I have endeavoured to point out, two others still,Charles Nodier and Gerard de Nerval, though it may seem absurd to claimprimacy for them, contribute that idiosyncrasy without which, whether itbe sufficient to establish primacy or not, nothing can ever claim topossess that quality.
[Sidenote: The kinds--the historical novel.]
But while it is not necessary to repeat the favourable estimates alreadygiven of individuals, it is almost superfluous to rest the claims of theperiod to importance in novel history upon them. Elsewhere[336] I havelaid some emphatic and reiterated stress on the mischief which hassometimes arisen from too exclusive critical attention to "kinds,"classes, and the like in literature--to the oblivion or obscuring ofindividual men and works of letters. But as there has been, and I hopewill be, no ignoring of individuals here, and as this whole bookendeavours to be a history of a kind, remarks on subdivisions of thatkind as such can hardly be regarded as inopportune or inconsistent.
[Sidenote: Appearance of new classes--the historical.]
Now it is impossible that anybody who is at all inclined or accustomedto think about the characteristics of the pleasure he receives fromliterature, should not have noticed in this period the fact--beside andoutside of the other fact of a provision of delectable novelists--of agreat splitting up and (as scientific slang would put it) fissiparousgeneration of the the classes of novel. It is, indeed, open to theadvocates or generic or specific criticism--though I think they cannotpossibly maintain their position as to poetry--to urge that a great dealof harm was done to the novel, or at least that its development wasunnecessarily retarded, by the absence of this division earlier. And inparticular they might lay stress on the fortunes and misfortunes of thehistorical element. That element had at least helped to start--and hadlargely provided the material of--the earlier verse-romances and storiesgenerally; but the entire absence of criticism at the time had mergedit, almost or altogether, in mere fiction. It had played, as we saw, agreat part in the novels of the seventeenth century; but it had for themost part merely "got in the way" of its companion ingredients and inits own. I have admitted that there are diversities of opinion as to itsvalue in the _Astree_; but I hold strongly to my own that it would bemuch better away there. I can hardly think that any one, uninfluenced bythe sillier, not the nobler, estimate of the classics, can think thatthe "heroic" novels gain anything, though they may possibly not losevery much, by the presence in them of Cyrus and Clelia, Arminius andCandace, Roxana and Scipio. But perhaps the most fruitful example forconsideration is _La Princesse de Cleves_. Here, small as is the totalspace, there is a great deal of history and a crowd, if for the mostpart mute, of historical persons. But not one of these has the veryslightest importance in the story; and the Prince and the Princess andthe Duke--we may add the Vidame--who are the only figures that _have_importance, might be the Prince and Princess of Kennaquhair, the Duke ofChose, and the Vidame of Gonesse, in any time or no time since thecreation of the world, while retaining their fullest power of situationand appeal.
But this side of the matter is of far less consequence than another.This historical element of the _historia mixta_[337] was not merelyrather a nuisance and quite a superfluity as regarded the whole of thestories in which it appeared; but its presence there and the tricks thathad to be played with it prevented the development of the historicalnovel proper--that, as it has been ticketed, "bodiless childful oflife," which waited two thousand years in the ante-natal gloom before itcould get itself born. Here, indeed, one may claim--and I suppose nosensible Frenchmen would for a moment hesitate to admit it--that evenmore than in the case of Richardson's influence nearly a centuryearlier, help came to their Troy from a Greek city. To France as toEngland, and to all the world, Scott unlocked the hoard of thisdelightful variety of fictitious literature, though it was not quite atonce that she took advantage of the treasury.
But when she did, the way in which she turned over the borrowed capitalwas certainly amazing, and for a long time she quite distanced thefollowers of Scott himself in England. James, Ainsworth, and even Bulwercannot possibly challenge comparison with the author of _Notre Dame deParis_ as writers, or with Dumas as story-tellers; and it was not tillthe second half of the century was well advanced, and when Dumas' ownbest days were very nearly over, that England, with Thackeray's _Esmond_and Kingsley's _Westward Ho!_ and Charles Reade's _The Cloister and theHearth_, re-formed the kind afresh into something which France has neveryet been able to rival.
In order, however, to obviate any possible charge of insular unfairness,it may be well to note that Chateaubriand, though he had never reached(or in all probability attempted to reach) anything of the true Scottkind, had made a great advance in something the same direction, and hadindeed to some extent sketched a different variety of historical novelfrom Scott's own; while, before Scott's death, Victor Hugo imbued theScott romance itself with intenser doses of passion, of the subsidiaryinterests of art, etc., and of what may be in a way called "theory,"than Scott had cared for. In fact, the Hugonic romance is a sort ofblending of Scott and Byron, with a good deal
of the author's country,and still more of himself, added. The connection again between Scott andDumas is simpler and less blended with other influences; the chiefdifferences should have been already pointed out. But the importantthing to notice is that, with a few actual gaps, and several patcheswhich have been more fully worked over and occupied than others,practically the whole of French history from the fourteenth century to,and including, the Revolution was "novelised" by the wand of this secondmagician.[338]
That the danger of the historical variety was entirely avoided by theseits French practitioners cannot indeed be said. Even Scott had notwholly got the better of it in his less perfect pieces, such, forinstance, as those already glanced-at parts of _The Monastery_, wherehistorical _recit_ now and then supplies the place of vigorousnovel-action and talk. Dumas' co-operative habits (which are as littleto be denied as they are to be exaggerated) lent themselves to it muchmore freely. But, notwithstanding this, the total accession of pleasureto the novel-reader was immense, and the further possibility of suchaccession practically unlimited. And accordingly the kind, thoughsometimes belittled by foolish criticism, and sometimes going out offavour by the vicissitudes of mere fashion, has constantly reneweditself, and is likely to do so. Its special advantages and its specialwarnings are of some interest to discuss briefly. Among the first may beranked something which the foolish belittlers above mentioned entirelyfail to appreciate, and indeed positively dislike. The danger of thenovel of ordinary and contemporary life (which accompanied this andwhich is to be considered shortly as such) is that there may be so much_mere_ ordinariness and contemporariness that the result may bedistasteful, if not sickening, to future ages. This has (to take oneexample out of many) happened with the novels of so clever a person asTheodore Hook in England, even with comparatively elect judges; with thevulgar it is said to have happened even with such consummate things asthose of Miss Austen. With a large number of another sort of vulgar itis said to happen with "Victorian" novels generally, while even theelect sometimes find it difficult to prevent its happening withEdwardian and Fifth Georgian. Now the historical novelist has before himthe entire range of the most interesting fashions, manners, incidents,characters, literary styles of recorded time. He has but to select fromthis inexhaustible store of general material, and to charge it withsufficient power of humanity of all time, and the thing is done.[339]Under no circumstances can the best historical novels ever lose theirattraction with the best readers; and as for the others in each kind,who cares what happens to _them_?
There are, moreover, some interesting general rules about the historicalnovel which are well worth a moment's notice, even if this partake tosome extent of the nature of repetition. The chief of them, which atleast ought to be well known, is that it is never safe to make aprominent historical character, and seldom safe to make a prominenthistorical event, the central subject of your story. The reason is ofcourse obvious. The generally known facts cramp and hamper the writer;he is constantly knocking against them, and finding them in the way ofthe natural development of his tale. No doubt there is, and has been, agood deal of otiose and even rather silly criticism of details inhistorical novels which do not satisfy the strict historian. The fusswhich some people used to make about Scott's anachronisms in _Ivanhoe_and _Kenilworth_; the shakings of heads which ought to know better, overThackeray's dealings with the Old Chevalier and his scandals about MissOglethorpe in _Esmond_, can be laughed or wondered at merely. But thenthese are matters of no importance to the main story. It is Ivanhoe andRebecca, Henry Esmond and Beatrix,[340] all of them persons absolutelyunknown to history, in whom we are really interested; and in the othercase mentioned, Amy Robsart is such a creature or "daughter," if not "ofdreams" "of debate," that you may do almost what you like with her; andthe book does not sin by presentation of a Leicester so very differentfrom the historical.[341] But, on the other hand, the introduction ofhistorical persons, skilfully used, seasons, enforces, and vivifies theinterest of a book mightily; and the action of great historical scenessupports that of the general plot in a still more remarkable manner. Onthe whole, we may perhaps say that Dumas depends more on the latter,Scott on the former, and that the difference is perhaps connected withtheir respective bulk and position as dramatists. Dumas has made of nohistorical magnate anything like what Scott has made of Richard and ofMary and of Elizabeth; but Scott has not laid actual historical scenesunder contribution to anything like the same extent as that by whichDumas has in a fashion achieved a running panorama-companion to thehistory of France from the fourteenth century to the Revolution and,more intensively, from the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew to theestablishment of Louis XIV.'s autocracy.
In fact, the advantages, both to the novelist and to his readers, of thehistorical kind can hardly be exaggerated. The great danger of inventedprose narrative--of _all_ invented narrative, indeed, prose orverse--has always been, and has always from the first shown itself asbeing, that of running into moulds. In the old epics (the Classical, notthe _Chansons_) this danger was accentuated by the rise ofrule-criticism; but the facts had induced, if they did not justify, thatrule-system itself. The monotony of the mediaeval romance, whether_Chanson_ or _Roman_, has been declared more than once in this book tobe exaggerated, but it certainly exists. The "heroic" succumbs to asimilar fate rather fatally, though the heroic element itself comesslightly to the rescue; and even the picaresque by no means escapes. Todescend, or rather to look, into the gutter for a moment, the samenessof the deliberately obscene novel is a byword to those who, in pursuitof knowledge, have incurred the necessity of "washing themselves inwater and being unclean until the evening"; and we saw that even such alight and lively talent as Crebillon's, keeping above the very lowestgutter-depths, could not escape the same danger wholly. In the upper airthe fairy-tale flies too often in prescribed gyres; and the most modernkinds of all--the novel of analysis, the problem-novel, and all the restof them--strive in vain to avoid the curse of--as Rabelais put somethingnot dissimilar long ago--"fatras _a la douzaine_." "All the stories aretold," saith the New, even as the Old, Preacher; all but the highestgenius is apt to show ruts, brain-marks, common orientations of routeand specifications of design. Only the novel of creative--not merelysynthetised--character in the most expert hands escapes--for humancharacter undoubtedly partakes of the Infinite; but few are they who cancommand the days and ways of creation.
Yet though history has its unaltering laws; though human nature ingeneral is always the same; though that which hath been shall be, andthe dreams of new worlds and new societies are the most fatuous of vainimaginations--the details of historical incident vary as much as thoseof individual character or feature, and the whole of recorded timeoffers them, more than half ready for use, in something like the samecondition as those patterns of work which ladies buy, fill up, andregard as their own. To make an historical novel of the very highestclass, such as the best of Scott and Thackeray, requires of course verymuch more than this--to make one of all but the highest class, such as_Les Trois Mousquetaires_, requires much more. But that "tolerablepastime," which it is the business of the average novelist to supply atthe demand of the average reader, can perhaps be attained more easily,more abundantly, and with better prospect of average satisfaction in thehistorical way than in any other.
[Sidenote: Other kinds and classes.]
[Sidenote: The Novel of Romanticism generally.]
It would, however, of course be an intolerable absurdity to rest theclaims of the French novel of 1825 to 1850 wholly--it would be somewhatabsurd to rest them mainly--on its performances in this single kind. Itfound out, continued, or improved many others; and perhaps most of itsgreatest achievements were in these others. In fact "others" is anincorrect or at least an inexact term; for the historic novel itself isonly a subdivision or offshoot of the great literary revolution which wecall Romanticism. Indeed the entire novel of the nineteenth century,misapprehend the fact as people may, is in fact Romantic, from the firstnovel of Chateaubriand to the last of Zo
la, though the Romanticism ischequered and to a certain extent warped by that invincible Frenchdetermination towards "Rule" which has vindicated itself so often, andon which shortly we may have to make something almost like an excursus.But this very fact, if nothing else, would make a discussion of theRomantic novel as such out of place _here_; it will have to come, tosome extent at any rate, in the Conclusion itself. Only for the presentneed it be said, without quite the same danger of meeting with scornfulor indignant protest, that all the books hitherto discussed from _Rene_to _Dominique_, from _Le Solitaire_ to _Monte Cristo_--even the work ofMerimee and Sainte-Beuve, those celebrated "apostates" as some wouldhave them to be--is really Romantic. It may follow the more poeticalromanticism of Nodier and Hugo, of Gautier and Gerard; the historicalromanticism of Vigny and Merimee; the individualism and analysis ofBeyle and his disciples; the supernaturalism of George Sand and Nodieragain; the adventurous incident of Sue and Soulie and Dumas and theDumasians generally; it may content itself with that modified form ofthe great Revolt which admits "low" or "middle" subjects and discardsthe classical theories that a hero ought to be dignified. But alwaysthere is something of the general Romantic colour about--something overwhich M. Nisard has shaken or would have shaken his respectable_perruque_.[342]
So turn we to the other larger group--the largest group of all that comeunder our survey--the New Ordinary Novel, that which concerns itselfwith the last shade of his colour just described.
[Sidenote: The "ordinary."]
We had seen, before the beginning of this volume, how Pigault-Lebrun, invulgar ways and with restricted talent, had nevertheless made distinctadvances in this direction; and we saw in the beginning of this how Paulde Kock--with something of the same limitations but with the advantageof a predecessor in Pigault and of further changes in society towardsthe normal--improved upon the earlier progression. But Pigault and Paulwere thrown into the shade by those writers, younger contemporaries ofboth, who brought to their task greater genius, better taste, and if notknowledge of better society, at any rate better knowledge how to usetheir knowledge. Whether Balzac's books can be ticketed _sans phrase_,as "novels of _ordinary_ life," has been, or should have been, dulydiscussed already. It is certain that, as a rule, they intend to be so.So it is with at least the majority of George Sand's; so with all thoseof her first lover and half name-father Sandeau; so with Charles deBernard; so with some at least of Merimee's best short stories andMusset's, if not exactly of Gautier's; so with others who have hadplaces, and a good many more for whom no place could be found. France,indeed, may be said to have caught up and passed England in this kind,between the time when Miss Austen died and that when Thackeray at lastdid justice to himself with _Vanity Fair_. And this novel of ordinarylife has continued, and shows no signs of ceasing, to be the kind mostin demand, according to the usual law of "Like to Like." We shall seefurther developments of it and shall have to exercise careful criticaldiscretion in deciding whether the apparent improvement only meansnearer approximation to our own standard of ordinariness, or to a moreabstract one. But that it was in these twenty or five and twenty yearsthat something like a norm of ordinariness was first reached, hardlyadmits of any question. Still, very much question may arise, and must befaced, on the point whether this novel of ordinary life has notredeveloped a _non_-ordinary subdivision, or many such, in the "problem"novel, the novel of analysis, of abnormal individualism, of theory,naturalist and other, etc. To this we must turn; for at least part ofthis new question is a very important one, though it may requiresomething of a digression to deal with it properly.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Discussion on a point of general novel criticism.]
I have in these volumes, rather sedulously--some readers no doubt maythink too sedulously--avoided "fighting prizes" on general points of thecriticism or novel-theory. Not that I have the slightest objection tofighting "for my own hand" or to seeing or reading about a good fightbetween others--very much the contrary. I never thought it the worstcompliment paid to Englishmen--the Indian opinion of us, as reported bythe late M. Darmesteter--that we cared for nothing but fighting, sport,and making love. But the question now to be discussed is so germane toour subject, both general and special; and the discussion of it once forall (with _renvois_ thereto elsewhere) will save so much space, trouble,and inconvenience, that it may as well be handled at full length.
There was hinted--in a review[343] of the first volume of this workotherwise so complimentary that it must have satisfied the Archbishop ofGranada himself--a doubt whether I had given sufficient weight tosomething which I shall let the reviewer express in his own words;[344]and whether my admission of Rabelais (of which admission, except onprinciple, he was himself very glad); my relegation of Laclos to theCondemned Corps; and my comparative toleration of Pigault-Lebrun, didnot indicate heresy. Now I feel pretty certain that such a well-wisherwould hardly suspect me of doing any of these things by inadvertence;and as I must have gone, and shall still go, much further from what isthe right line in his (and no doubt others') opinion, I may as wellstate my point of view here. It should supply a sort of justificatorycomment not merely on the chapters and passages just referred to, andothers in the last volume, but on a much larger number in this--in fact,after a fashion, to the whole of this. Any difference of it from thenormal French view will even help to explain my attitude in those partsof this book (_e.g._ the remarks on Dumas _pere_) to which it does notdirectly apply, as well as those (_e.g._ on Dumas _fils_) to which itdoes.
The whole question seems to me to turn on the curiously differentestimates which different people make of what constitutes "humanity." Tocite another dictum of my friend the enemy, he, while, as I have said,speaking with extraordinary kindness of my chapter on Rabelais initself, disallows it in a _History of the Novel_ because, among otherreasons, Panurge is not, or is very slightly, human. I should have saidthat Panurge was as human as Hamlet, though certainly not so_gentle_human.[345] I never met either; but I might do so, and I amsure I should recognise both as men and brothers. Still, the comparisonhere is of course somewhat rhetorical. Let us take Panurge with Laclos'Valmont, whom, I think, my critic _does_ consider human; whom I am sureI never have met and never shall meet, even if I should be sounfortunate as to go to the place which (but, of course, for theconsolations of the Church) would have been his, _if_ he had been human;and whom I never could in the most impossible event or _milieu_recognise as anything but a synthetised specification. One may perhapsdwell on this, for it is of immense importance to the general question.Panurge and Valmont, comparatively considered, have beyond doubt pointsin common. Both are extremely immoral, and both are--though the one onlysometimes, the other always--ill-natured. Neither is a fool, though theone does, or is going to do, at least one very foolish thing with hiseyes open; while nothing that the other does--even his provocation ofMadame de Merteuil--can be said to be exactly "foolish." Both areattempts to do what Thackeray said he attempted to do in most of thecharacters of _Vanity Fair_--to draw people "living without God in theworld." Yet I can tolerate Panurge, and recognise him as human even whenhe indirectly murders Dindenault, even when (which is worse) he behavesso atrociously to the Lady of Paris; and I cannot tolerate or validateValmont even when he excogitates and puts in practice that veryingenious and picturesque idea of a writing-desk, or when he seeks theconsolations and fortifications of the Church after Danceny has done onhim the first part of the judgment of God. And I think I can givereasons, both for my intolerance and for my toleration, "rightly and inmine own division."
The reason why I think that Panurge is rightly and Valmont wrongly"copied or re-created" is that Panurge is made at the hazard of theartist, Valmont according to prescription. There might be--there havebeen--fifty or a hundred Valmonts, the prescription being followed, andslightly--still remaining a prescription--altered. There is and can beonly one Panurge. This difference reminds me of, and may be illustratedby, a fact which, in one form or another,
must be familiar to manypeople. I was once talking to a lady who had just come over from China,and who wore a dress of soft figured silk of the most perfectlove-in-a-mist colour-shade which I had ever seen, even in turning overthe wonder-drawers at Liberty's. I asked her if (for she then intendedto go back almost at once) she could get me any like it. "No," she said,"at least not exactly. They never make two pieces of just the sameshade, and in fact they couldn't if they tried. They take handfuls ofdifferent dyes, measured and mixed, as it seems, at random." Now that isthe way God and, in a lesser degree, the great artists work, and theresult is living creatures, according to the limitations of artistic andthe no-limitations of natural life. The others weigh out a dram of lust,a scruple of cleverness, an ounce of malice, half an ounce ofsuperficial good manners, etc., and say, "Here is a character for you.Type No. 12345." And it is not a living creature at all. But, havingbeen made by regular synthesis,[346] it can be regularly analysed, andpeople say, "Oh, how clever he is." The first product, having grownrather than been made, defies analysis, and they say, "How commonplace!"
One can perhaps lay out the ropes of the ring of combat mostsatisfactorily and fairly by using the distinction of the reviewer (if Ido not misunderstand him), that I have neglected the interval between"to copy" and "to re-create." I accept this dependence, which mayperhaps be illustrated further from that (in itself) foolish and vulgarboast of Edmond de Goncourt's that his and his brother's epithets were"personal" while Flaubert's were only "admirably good specimens of theepithets of _tout le monde_."
To translate: Should the novelist aim, by _mimesis_--it is a misfortunewhich I have lamented over and over again in print that "Imitation" and"Copying" are such misleading versions of this--of actual characters, toevolve a personality which will be recognised by all competent observersas somebody whom he has actually met or might have met? Or should he,trusting to his own personal powers of putting together qualities andtraits, but more or less neglecting the patterns which the Almighty hasput before him in _tout le monde_--sometimes also regarding conventionaltypes and "academies"--either (for this is important) to follow orviolently _not_ to follow them--produce something that owes _its_personality to himself only? The former has been the aim of the greatEnglish novelists since Fielding, if not since Richardson[347] or evenDefoe. It was the aim of Lesage: he has told us so in so many words. Itis by no means alien from that of Marivaux, though he did not pursue itwith a single eye; and the same may be said even of Crebillon. WhetherPrevost aimed at it or not, he hit the white in _Manon_ as certainly andunmistakably as he lost his arrows elsewhere. Rousseau both did it andmeant it in the first part of _Julie_. Pigault, in a clumsy, botcherlyfashion, made "outers" not infrequently. But Laclos seems to me to have(as his in some sense follower Dumas _fils_ has it in the passage notedabove) "proceeded by synthesis"--to have said, "Let us make amischievous Marquise and a vile Viscount. Let us deprive them of everyamiable quality and of every one that can be called in any sense 'good,'except a certain kind of intellectual ability, and, in the Viscount'scase, an ingenious fancy in the matter of extemporising writing-desks."And he did it; and then the people who think that because (to adopt thelanguage of George de Barnwell) "the True is not always the Beautiful"the Ugly must always be the True, hail him as a master.[348]
That this half-digression, half-dilemma, is prospective as well asretrospective will hardly form a subject of objection for any one but amere fault-finder. From the top of a watershed you necessarily surveyboth slopes. The tendency which we have been discussing is certainlymore prevalent in the second half of the century than in the first half.It is prominent in Dumas _fils_, with whom we shall be dealing shortly;it increases as time goes on; and it becomes almost paramount in thepractice of and the discussions about the Naturalist School. In the timeon which we look back it is certainly important in Beyle and Balzac. ButI cannot admit that it is predominant elsewhere, and I am prepared todeny utterly that, until the time of the Sensibility and _Philosophe_novels, it is even a notable characteristic of French fiction. Many hardthings have been said of criticism; but, acknowledging the badness of abird who even admits any foulness in his own nest--far more in one whocauses it--I am bound to say that I think the state of the department ofliterature now under discussion was happier before we meddled with it.Offence must come; it would even be sometimes rather a pity if it didn'tcome: but perhaps the old saying is true in the case of those by whomsome kinds of it come. If criticism and creation could be kept asseparate as some creators pridefully pretend, it would not matter. Andthe best critics never attempt to show how things should be done, butmerely to point out how they have been done--well or badly. But when menbegin to write according to criticism, they generally begin to writebadly, just as when women begin to dress themselves according tofashion-mongers they usually begin (or would but for the grace of God)to look ugly. And there are some mistakes which appear to be absolutelyincorrigible. When I was a Professor of Literature I used to say everyyear in so many words, as I had previously written for more than as manyyears, when I was only a critic of it, "I do not wish to teach you howto write. I wish to teach you how to read, and to tell you what there isto read." The same is my wish in regard to the French Novel. What hasbeen done in it--not what these, even the practitioners themselves, havesaid of it--is the burden of my possibly unmusical song.
* * * * *
The excuse, indeed, for this long digression may be, I think, madewithout impropriety or "forcing" to coincide with the natural sequel andcorrelation of this chapter. The development of the novel of ordinarylife in the second half of the century _was_ extraordinary; but it wasto a very large extent marked by the peculiarities--some of them near tocorruptions--which have been just discussed. With the possible exceptionof Beyle, there was little more theory, or attempt at synthesis inaccordance therewith, in the "ordinary" than in the "historical"division of this earlier time. We have seen how the absence of "generalideas"--another way of putting it--has been actually brought as a chargeagainst Balzac. George Sand had, especially at first, something of it;and this something seems, to me at least, by no means to have improvedher work. In none or hardly any of the rest is there any evidence of"school," "system," "pattern," "problem," or the like. Yet they give usan immense amount of pastime, and I do not think their or their readers'state was any the less gracious for what they did _not_ give us.
FOOTNOTES:
[328] I have not called this so, because the division into "Books," withwhich the _raison d'etre_ of "Interchapters" is almost inseparablyconnected, has not been adopted in this _History_.
[329] This fact, as well, perhaps, as others, should be taken intoaccount by any one who may be at first sight surprised, and perhaps inthe Biblical sense "offended," at finding two-thirds of the volumeallotted to half of the time.
[330] To vary a good epigram of the _Rolliad_ crew on Pitt:
"'The French' for 'France' can't please the _Blanc_, The _Bleu_ detests the 'King.'"
[331] _V. sup._ on Reybaud.
[332] This is of course quite a different thing from saying thatpoliticians had better have nothing to do with letters, or that men ofletters may not _discuss_ politics. It is when they become Ministersthat they too often disgust men and amuse angels.
[333] _Adolphe_ actually belongs to the nineteenth century.
[334] As I write this I remember how my friend the late M. Beljame, whoand whose "tribe" have come so nobly for English literature in Francefor forty years past, was shocked long ago at my writing "Mazar_in_Library," and refused to be consoled by my assurance that I should neverdream of writing anything but "Bibliotheque Mazar_ine_." But I had, andhave, no doubt on the principle.
[335] I _hope_, but do not trust, that no descendant of the persons whotold Charles Lamb that Burns could not at the time be present because hewas dead, will say, "But all these were subsequent to 1850."
[336] In my _History of Criticism_, _passim_.
[337] _V. sup._
Vol. I., on the "heroic" romance.
[338] It seems unnecessary to repeat what has been said on Vigny andMerimee; but it is important to keep constantly in mind that they camebefore Dumas. As for the still earlier _Solitaire_, I must repeat thatM. d'Arlincourt's utter failure as an individual ought not completely toobscure his importance as a pioneer in kind.
[339] "Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter,no doubt. But I am Crites, not Poietes.
[340] Pedantius may urge, "But 'James III.' is made to affect thefortunes of Esmond and Beatrix very powerfully." True; but he himself isby no means a _very_ "prominent historical character," and the exactcircumstances of the agony of Queen Anne, and the _coup d'etat_ ofShrewsbury and Argyle, have still enough of the unexplained in or aboutthem to permit somewhat free dealing.
[341] If any one says "_Leicester's Commonwealth?_" I say "_The FaerieQueene?_"
[342] I intend nothing offensive in thus mentioning his attitude. In my_History of Criticism_ I have aimed at justice both to his short stageof going with, or at least not definitely against, the Romantic vein,and his much longer one of reaction. He was always vigorous in argumentand dignified in manner; but his nature, when he found it, wasessentially neo-classic.
[343] In the _Times Literary Supplement_ for Thursday, Nov. 1, 1917.
[344] "It is vain to ask, as is the modern custom, whether the leap fromthe word 'copy' to the word 'recreate' (_v. sup._ Vol. I. p. 471) doesnot cover a difference in kind.... One feels that Prof. S. is rathersympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards asessential ... close psychological analysis of motive," etc. And so heeven questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praisesit, _is_ "A History of The French Novel." But did I ever undertake togive this _from the French point of view_, or to write a _History ofFrench Novel-Criticism_? Or need I do so?
[345] It might, however, be a not uninteresting matter of debate whetherPanurge's conduct to the Lady of Paris was _really_ so very much worsethan part of Hamlet's to Ophelia.
[346] By one of those odd coincidences which diversify and relieveliterary work, I read, for the first time in my life, and a few hours_after_ writing the above words, these in Dumas _fils'_ _Therese_: "Ilprocede par synthese." They do not there apply to authorship, but to themotives and conduct of one of the writer's questionable quasi-heroes.But the whole context, and the usual methods of Dumas _fils_ himself,are saturated with synthesis _by rule_. (Of course the other process is,as also according to the strict meaning of the word, "synthetic," but_not_ "by rule.")
[347] I own I see a little less of it and a little more of the other inhim; whence a certain lukewarmness with which I have sometimes beenreproached.
[348] My very amiable reviewer thinks that eighteenth-century Frenchsociety _did_ behave _a la Laclos_. I don't, though I think it did _a laCrebillon_.
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