A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2

A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 Page 18

by George Saintsbury

  CHAPTER XIV

  OTHER NOVELISTS OF 1870-1900

  [Sidenote: The last stage.]

  The remaining novelists of the Third Republic, apart from the survivorsof the Second Empire and the Naturalist School, need not occupy us verylong, but must have some space. There would be no difficulty on my partin writing a volume on them, for during half the time I had to producean article on new French books, including novels, every month,[519] andduring no small part of the rest, I did similar work on a smaller andless regular scale, reading also a great deal for my own purposes. Butacknowledging, as I have elsewhere done, the difficulty of equatingjudgment of contemporary and non-contemporary work exactly, I think Ishall hardly be doing the new writers of this time injustice if I saythat no one, except some excluded by our specifications as living, couldput in any pretensions to be rated on level with the greater novelistsfrom Lesage to Maupassant. There are those, of course, who would protestin favour of M. Ferdinand Fabre, and yet others would "throw for" M.Andre Theuriet, both of whom shall have due honour. I cannot whollyagree with them. But both of them, as well as, for very oppositereasons, MM. Ohnet and Rod, may at least require notice of some length.

  [Sidenote: Ferdinand Fabre: _L'Abbe Tigrane_.]

  _L'Abbe Tigrane_, by Ferdinand Fabre, may be described as one of not theleast remarkable, and as certainly one of the most remarked, novels ofthe later nineteenth century. It never, I think, had a very large sale;for though at the time of its author's death, over thirty years and moreafter its appearance, it had reached its sixteenth thousand, that is notmuch for a _popular_ French novel. Books of such different appeal asZola's and Feuillet's (not to mention for the present a capital exampleto be noted below) boasted ten times the number. But it dared anextremely non-popular subject, and treated that subject with anaudacious disregard of anything like claptrap. There is no love in itand hardly a woman; there is no--at least no military--fighting; noadventure of any ordinary sort. It is neither a _berquinade_, nor acrime-story, nor (except in a very peculiar way) a novel of analysis. Itrelies on no preciousness of style, and has not very much description,though its author was a great hand at this when and where he chose. Itis simply the history of an ambitious, strong-willed, strong-minded, andviolent-tempered priest in an out-of-the-way diocese, who strives forand attains the episcopate, and after it the archiepiscopate, and isleft aspiring to the Papacy--which, considering the characters of theactual successors of Pius IX., the Abbe Capdepont[520] cannot havereached, in the fifty years (or nearly so) since the book was published.

  Now, in the first place, it is generations since a clerical novel waslikely to please the French novel-reading public. In this very bookthere is an amusing scene where the _abbe_, then a private tutor,induces his employer, a deputy, to invite clerics of distinction to aparty, whereat the other guests melt away in disgust. And this was along time before a certain French minister boasted that his countrymen"had taken God out of Heaven." Moreover, while there are two obviousways of reconciling extremists to the subject, M. Fabre rejected both.His book is neither a panegyric on clericalism nor a libel on it. Hishero is as far as possible from being a saint, but he is perfectly freefrom all the vulgar vices. The rest of the characters--all, withinsignificant exceptions, clerics--are quite human, and in no case--noteven in that of Capdepont's not too scrupulous aide-de-camp the AbbeMical--offensive. But at the beginning the bishop, between whom and thehero there is truceless war, is, though privately an amiable andcharitable gentleman (Capdepont is a Pyrenean peasant by origin), ratherundignified, and even a little tyrannical; while a cardinal towards theend makes a distinction--between the impossibility of the Church lyingand the positive duty of Churchmen, in certain circumstances, tolie--which would have been a godsend to Kingsley in that unequalconflict of his with a colleague of his Eminence's.[521]

  Yet critics of almost all shades agreed, I think, in recognising themerits of M. Fabre's book; and it established him in a special positionamong French novelists, which he sustained not unworthily with nearly ascore of novels in a score and a half of years. It is undoubtedly a bookof no small power, which is by no means confined to the petty matters ofchapter-and-seminary wrangling and intrigue. On the contrary, the scenewhere, owing to Capdepont's spite, the bishop's coffin is kept, in afrightful storm, waiting for admission to its inmate's own cathedral, isa very fine thing indeed--almost, if not quite, in the grandstyle--according to some, if not according to Mr. Arnold. The figure ofthe arch-priest Clamousse, both in connection with this scene[522] andothers--old, timid, self-indulgent, but not an absolutely bad fellow--isof first-rate subordinate quality. Whether Capdepont himself has not alittle too much of that synthetic character which I have discussedelsewhere--whether he is quite a real man, and not something of acomposition of the bad qualities of the peasant type, the intriguingecclesiastic type, the ambitious man, the angry man, and so on--must, Isuppose, be left to individual tastes and judgments. If I am not soenthusiastic about the book as some have been, it is perhaps because itseems to me rather a study than a story.[523]

  [Sidenote: _Norine_, etc.]

  This criticism--it is not intended for a reproach--does not extend toother, perhaps not so powerful, but more _pastimeous_ books, though M.Fabre seldom entirely excluded the clerical atmosphere of hisyouth.[524] A very pleasant volume-full is _Norine_, the title-piece ofwhich is full at once of Cevenol scenery and Parisian contrast, of love,and, at least, preparations for feasting; of sketches of that"Institute" life which comes nearest to our collegiate one; and ofpleasant bird-worship. But M. Fabre should have told us whether thebishop actually received and appreciated[525] the dinner of Truscastrout and Faugeres wine (alas! this is a blank in my fairly extensivewine-list), and the miscellaneous _maigre_ cookery of the excellentPrudence, and the splendid casket of _liqueurs_ borrowed from a brother_cure_. _Cathinelle_ (an unusual and pretty diminutive of Catherine) isan admirably told pendant to it; and I venture to think the "idyllic"quality of both at least equal, if not superior, to the best of GeorgeSand. _Le R. P. Colomban_ is, according to M. Fabre's habit, a sort ofdouble-edged affair--a severe but just rebuke of the "popularpreacher," and a good-humoured touch at the rebuker, Monseigneur Onesimede la Boissiere, Eveque de Saint-Pons, who incidentally proposes tosubmit _L'Abbe Tigrane_ to the Holy Congregation of the Index. Finally,the book closes with a delightful panegyric of Alexandre Dumas _pere_,and an anecdote avowedly autobiographic (as, indeed, the whole bookgives itself out to be, though receivable with divers pinches of salt)of that best-natured of men franking a bevy of impecunious students at a_premiere_ of one of his plays.

  [Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Pierrerue._]

  To read _Le Marquis de Pierrerue_ after these two books--one the piecewith which Fabre established his reputation, and the other a product ofhis proved mastery--is interesting to the critic. Whether it would be soto the general reader may be more doubtful. It is the longest of itsauthor's novels; in fact its two volumes have separate sub-titles;[526]but there is no real break, either of time, place, or action, betweenthem. It is a queer book, quite evidently of the novitiate, andsuggesting now Paul de Kock (the properer but not _quite_ proper Paul),now Daudet (to whom it is actually dedicated), now Feuillet, now Murger,now Sandeau, now one of the melodramatic story-tellers. Very possiblyall these had a share in its inspiration. It is redolent of the medicalstudies which the author actually pursued, between his abandonment ofpreparation for the Church and his settling down as a man of letters.Its art is palpably imperfect--blocks of _recit_, wedges of not verynovel or acute reflection, a continual reluctance or inability to "getforrard." Of the two heroes, Claude Abrial, Marquis de Pierrerue--afervent Royalist and Catholic, who lavishes his own money, and everybodyelse's that he can get hold of, on a sort of private Literary Fund,[527]allows himself to be swindled by a scoundrelly man of business, immureshis daughter, against her wish, as a Carmelite nun, and dies apauper--is a quite possible but not quite "brought off" figure. ThevenFalgouet, the Breton _buveur d'eau_,[
528] who is introduced to us atactual point of starvation, and who dies, self-transfixed on the sharpspikes of the Carmelite _grille_, is perhaps not _im_possible, andoccasionally pathetic. But the author seems, in his immaturity as acraftsman, never to have made up his mind whether he is producing an"alienist" study, or giving us a fairly ordinary _etudiant_ and aspirantin letters. Of the two heroines, the noble damsel Claire dePierrerue--object of Falgouet's love at first sight, a love ill-fatedand more insane than even love beseems--is quite nice in her way; andRose Keller--last of grisettes, but a grisette of the Upper House, anartist grisette, and, as some one calls her, the "soeur de charite dela galanterie"[529]--is quite nice in hers. But Rose's action--inburning, to the extent of several hundred thousand francs' worth, notesand bonds, the wicked gains of one of her lovers (Grippon, the Marquis'sfraudulent intendant), and promptly expiring--may pair off withFalgouet's repeating on himself the Spanish torture-death of the_guanches_,[530] as pure melodrama. In fact the whole thing isundigested, and shows, in a high degree, that initial difficulty ingetting on with the story which has not quite disappeared in _L'AbbeTigrane_, but which has been completely conquered[531] in _Norine_ and_Cathinelle_.

  [Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Celestin._]

  This mixed quality makes itself felt in others of Fabre's books. Perhapsthere is none of them, except _L'Abbe Tigrane_ itself, which has been agreater favourite with his partisans than _Mon Oncle Celestin_. Here wehave something of the same easy autobiographic quality, with the samegeneral scene and the same relations of the narrator and the principalcharacters, as in other books; but "Mr. the nephew" (the agreeable andcontinuous title by which the faithful parishioners address theirbeloved pastor's boy relative) has a different uncle and a different_gouvernante_, at least in name, from those in _Norine_ and_Cathinelle_. The Abbe Celestin, threatened with consumption, exchangesthe living in which he has worked for many years, and little good comesof it. He is persecuted, actually to the death, by his rural dean, asort of duplicate of the hero of _L'Abbe Tigrane_; but the circumstancesare not purely ecclesiastical. He has, in his new parish, taken forgoat-girl a certain Marie Galtier, daughter of his beadle, but,unluckily, also step-daughter of a most abominable step-mother. Marie,as innocently as possible, "gets into trouble," and dies of it,accusations being brought against her guiltless and guileless master inconsequence. There are many good passages; the opening is (as nearlyalways with M. Fabre) excellent; but both the parts and the whole are,once more, too long--the mere "flitting" from one parish to anotherseems never to be coming to an end. Still, the book should be read; andit has one very curious class of personages, the "hermits" of theCevennes--probably the latest (the date is 1846) of their kind inliterature. The general characteristics of that kind do not seem to havebeen exactly saintly;[532] and the best of them, Adon Laborie, afterbeing "good" throughout, and always intending to be so, brings about thecatastrophe by calmly suppressing, in the notion that he will save theAbbe trouble, three successive citations from the Diocesan Council,thereby getting him "interdicted." The shock, when the judgment incontumacy is announced by the brutal dean, proves fatal.

  [Sidenote: _Lucifer._]

  In Lucifer M. Fabre is still nearer, though with no repetition, to the_Tigrane_ motive. The book justifies its title by being the mostambitious of all the novels, and justifies the ambition itself byshowing a great deal of power--most perhaps again, of all; thoughwhether that power is used to the satisfaction of the reader mustdepend, even more than is usual, on individual tastes. Bernard Jourfier,at the beginning of the book and of the Second Empire, is a young_vicaire_, known to be of great talents and, in especial, of unusualpreaching faculty, but of a violent temper, ill at ease about his ownvocation, and suspected--at least by Ultramontanes--of very doubtfulorthodoxy and not at all doubtful Gallicanism. He is, moreover, thegrandson of a _conventionnel_ who voted for the King's death, and theson of a deputy of extreme Liberal views. So the Jesuits, after tryingto catch him for themselves, make a dead set at him, and secure hisappointment to out-of-the-way country parishes only, and even in thesehis constant removal, so that he may acquire as little influence aspossible anywhere. At last, in a very striking interview with hisbishop, he succeeds in clearing his character, and enters on the way ofpromotion. The cabals continue; but later, on the overthrow ofBonapartism, he is actually raised to the episcopate. His violenttemper, however, is always giving handles to the enemy, and he finallydetermines that life is intolerable. After trying to starve himself, hemakes use of the picturesque but dangerous situation of his palace, andis crushed by falling, in apparent accident, through a breach in thegarden wall with a precipice beneath--"falling like Lucifer," as hislifelong enemy and rival whispers to a confederate at the end. For theappellation has been an Ultramontane nickname for him long before, andhas been not altogether undeserved by his pride at least. It has beensaid that the book is powerful; but it is almost unrelievedly gloomythroughout, and suffers from the extremely narrow range of its interest.

  [Sidenote: _Sylviane_ and _Taillevent_.]

  Those who are not tired of the Cevenol atmosphere--which, it must beadmitted, is quite a refreshing one--will find a lighter example in_Sylviane_, once more recounted by "Mr. the nephew," but with hismovable uncle and _gouvernante_ shifted back to "M. Fulcran" and"Prudence"; and in _Taillevent_, a much longer book, which isindependent of uncle and nephew both. _Sylviane_ has agreeable things init, but perhaps might have been better if its form had been different.It is a long _recit_ told by a gamekeeper, with frequentinterruptions[533] and a very thin "frame." _Taillevent_ ends with twomurders, the second a quite excusable lynch-punishment for the first,and the marriage of the avenger just afterwards to the daughter of theoriginal victim, a combination of "the murders _and_ the marriages"deserving Osric's encomia on sword furniture. So vigorous a conclusionhad need have a well-stuffed course of narrative to lead up to it, andthis is not wanting. There is a wicked--a _very_ wicked--Spaniard forthe lynched-murderer part; an exceedingly good dog-, bear-, andman-fight in the middle; an extensive and well-utilised wolf-trap in thewoods; bankruptcies; floods; all sorts of things; with a course of"idyllic" true love running through the whole. There _is_ a _cure_--arather foolish one; but the ecclesiastical interest in itself is almostabsent from the book. The weakest part of it lies in the characters ofwhat may be called the hero and heroine of the beginning andmiddle--Frederic Servieres and Madeleine his wife. That the formershould fall into the most frantic love before marriage, and almostneglect his wife as soon as she has borne him a child, may be said to becommon enough in books, and, unluckily, by no means uncommon in life.But there may be more question about the repetition of the inconsistencyin other parts of the character--extreme business aptitude and fatalneglect of business, extreme energy and fatal depression over quitesmall things, etc. The general combination is not impossible; it is noteven improbable; but it is not quite "made so." And something is thesame with Madeleine, who is, moreover, left "in the air" in so curious afashion that one begins to wonder whether the Mrs. Martha Buskbodyattitude, so often jibed at, does not possess some excuse.

  [Sidenote: _Toussaint Galabru._]

  A pleasant contrast in this respect, though the end here is tragic in away, may be found in _Toussaint Galabru_, the last, perhaps, of M.Fabre's books for which we can find special room here, though no doubtsome favourites of particular readers may have been omitted. The novelis divided into two pretty equal halves, with an interval first of tenyears between them and, almost immediately, of sixteen more. The firsthalf is occupied by an adventure of "Mr. the nephew's," though he is nothere "Mr. the nephew," but "Mr. the son," living with his father andmother at Bedarieux, M. Fabre's actual birthplace. He plays truant fromChurch on Advent Sunday to join a shooting expedition with hisschool-fellow Baptistin and that school-fellow's not too pious father,who is actually a church _suisse_, but has received an exeat from the_cure_ to catch a famous hare for that _cure_ to eat. The vicissitudesof the chase are numerous, and the whole is nar
rated with extraordinaryskill as from the boy's point of view, his entire innocence, when he isbrought into contact with very shady incidents, being--and this is amost difficult thing to do--hit off marvellously well. It is onlytowards the end of this part (he has been heard of before) thatToussaint Galabru, sorcerer and Lothario, makes his appearance--asclever as he is handsome, and as vicious as he is clever. When he doesappear he has his way--with the game shot by others, and with a certain_metayer's_ wife--after the same hand-gallop fashion in which thepersonage in Blake's lines enjoyed both the peach and the lady.

  The earlier and shorter, but not short, interval, mentioned above,passes to 1852, and does little more than bring the now "Parisian"narrator into fresh contact with his old school-fellow Baptistin, now afull-grown priest, but, though very pious, in some difficulties from hispersistent love of sport. Sixteen years later, again, in 1868,reappears, "coming to his death,"[534] Galabru himself. The part ischiefly occupied by a _recit_ of intervening history (including a sadlyunsuccessful attempt, both at spiritual and physical combat, byBaptistin) and by a much-interrupted journey in snow.[535] But it givesoccasion for another agreeable "idyll" between Vincinet, Galabru's son,and the Abbe Baptistin's god-child Lalie; and it ends with a strikingprocession to carry, hardly in time, the _viaticum_ to the dying wizard,whereby, if not his own weal in the other world, that of the lovers inthis is happily brought about.

  Not very many generalities are required on M. Ferdinand Fabre. Howcompletely his way lies out of most of the ruts in which the wain of theFrench novel usually travels must have been shown; and it may be hopedthat enough has been said also to show that there are plenty of minororiginalities about him. No novelist[536] in any language known to me(unless you call Richard Jefferies a novelist) has such an extraordinarycommand of "the country"--bird-nature and rock scenery being hisfavourite but by no means his only subjects. For "Scenes of ClericalLife" he stands admittedly alone in France, and has naturally been dealtwith most often from this point of view. Of that intense provincialism,in the good sense, which is characteristic of French literature, therehave been few better representatives. Wordsworth himself is scarcelymore the poet of our Lake and Hill country than Fabre is the novelist ofthe Cevennes. Peasant life and child life of the country (he meddleslittle, and not so happily, with towns of any size) find in himadmirably "vatical" properties and combinations; and if he does not runany risk of Feste's rebuke by talking much of "ladies," he knows as muchabout women as a man well may. His comedy is never coarse or trivial,and the tragedy never goes off through the touch-hole. Of onesituation--very easy to spoil by rendering it mawkish--the early but not"calf"-love of rustic man and maid, beginning in childhood, he wascuriously master. George Sand herself[537] has nothing to beat (if shehas anything to equal) the pairs of Taillevent and Riquette (in thenovel named from the lover), and of Vincinet and Lalie (in _ToussaintGalabru_). As for his pictures of clerical cabals and clericalweaknesses, they may be too much of a good thing for some tastes; butthat they are a good thing, both as an exercise in craftsmanship and asan alternative to the common run of French novel subjects, can hardly bedenied. In this respect, and not in this respect only, M. Fabre has hisown place, and that no low one.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Andre Theuriet.]

  In coming to M. Andre Theuriet I felt a mixture of curiosity with aslight uneasiness. For I had read not a few of his books[538] carefullyand critically at their first appearance, and in such cases--when novelsare not of the _very_ first order (which, good as these are, I think fewreally critical readers would allot them) nor possessed of those"oddments" of appeal which sometimes make more or less inferior booksreadable and readable again--fresh acquaintance, after a long time, isdangerous. It has been said here (possibly more than once) that, when abook possesses this peculiar readableness, a second reading ispositively beneficial to it, because you neglect the "knots in the reed"and slip along it easily. This is not quite the case with others: and,unless great critical care is taken, a new acquaintance, itself thirtyyears old, has, I fear, a better chance than an old one renewed afterthat time. However, the knight of Criticism, as of other ladies,[539]must dare any adventure, and ought to be able to bring the proper armsand methods to the task. For the purposes of renewal I chose_Sauvageonne_, _Le Fils Maugars_, and _Raymonde_. With the first, thoughI did not remember much more than its central situation and itscatastrophe, with one striking incident, I do remember being originallypleased; the second has, I believe, at least sometimes, been thoughtTheuriet's masterpiece; and the third (which, by the way, is a"philippine" containing another story besides the title-one) is an earlybook which I had not previously read.

  [Sidenote: _Sauvageonne._]

  The argument of _Sauvageonne_ can be put very shortly. A young man offour-and-twenty, of no fortune, marries a rich widow ten years olderthan himself, and, as it happens, possessed of an adopted daughter ofseventeen. He--who is by no means an intentional scoundrel, but acommonplace and selfish person, and a gentleman neither by birth nor bynature--soon wearies of his somewhat effusive and exacting wife; thegirl takes a violent fancy to him; accident hurries on the natural ifnot laudable consequences; the wife covers the shame by succeeding inpassing off their result as her own child, but the strain is too muchfor her, and she goes mad, but does not die.

  This tragic theme (really a tragic [Greek: hamartia], for there is muchgood in Sauvageonne, as she is called, from her tomboy habits, and, withhappier chance and a nobler lover, all might have been well with her) ishandled with no little power, and with abundant display of skill in twodifferent departments which M. Theuriet made particularly hisown--sketches of the society of small country towns, and elaboratedescription of the country itself, especially wood-scenery. In regard tothe former, it must be admitted that, though there is plenty of scandaland not a little ill-nature in English society of the same kind, thelatter nuisance seems, according to French novelists, to be more_active_ with their country folk than it is with ours[540]--a thing, ina way, convenient for fiction. Of the descriptive part the onlyunfavourable criticism (and that a rather ungracious one) that could bemade is that it is almost too elaborate. Of two fateful scenes of_Sauvageonne_, that where Francis Pommeret, the unheroic hero, comesacross Denise (the girl's proper name) sitting in a crab-tree in theforest and pelting small boys with the fruit, is almost startlinglyvivid. You see every detail of it as if it were on the Academy walls. Infact, it is almost more like a picture than like reality, which is moreshaded off and less sharp in outline and vivid in colour. As for thecharacter-drawing, if it does not attain to that consummateness whichhas been elsewhere described and desiderated--the production of peoplethat you _know_--it attains the second rank; the three prominentcharacters (the rest are merely sets-off) are all people that you_might_ know. Denise herself is very near the first rank, and FrancisPommeret--not, as has been said, by any means a scoundrel, for he onlysuccumbs to strong and continued temptation, but an ordinary selfishcreature--is nearer than those who wish to think nobly of human naturemay like, to complete reality. One is less certain about the unhappyAdrienne Lebreton or Pommeret, but discussion of her would be rather "anintricate impeach." And one may have a question about the end. We aretold that Francis and Denise keep together (the luckless wife living onin spite of her madness) because of the child, though they absolutelyhate each other. Would it not be more natural that, if they do not part,they should vary the hatred with spasms of passion and repulsion?

  [Sidenote: _Le Fils Maugars._]

  _Le Fils Maugars_ is not only a longer book, but its space is lessexclusively filled with a single situation, and the necessary prelude toit. In fact, the whole thing is expanded, varied, and peopled. Auberive,near Langres, the place of _Sauvageonne_, is hardly more than a largevillage; Saint-Clementin, on the Charente, though not a large town, isthe seat of a judicial Presidency, of a _sous-prefecture_, etc. "Le_pere_ Maugars" is a banker who, from having been a working stone-mason,has enri
ched himself by sharp practice in money-lending. His son is alawyer by the profession chosen for him, and a painter by preference.The heroine, Therese Desroches, is the daughter of a Republican doctor,whose wife has been unfaithful, and who suspects Therese of not beinghis own child. The scene shifts from Saint-Clementin itself to thecountry districts where Poitou and Touraine meet, as well as to Paris.The time begins on the eve of the Coup d'Etat, and allows itself a gapof five years between the first and second halves of the book. Besidesthe love-scenes and the country descriptions and the country feaststhere is a little general society; much business; some politics,including the attempted and at last accomplished arrest of the doctorfor treason to the new _regime_; a well-told account of a contest forthe Prix de Rome; a trial of the elder Maugars for conspiracy (with asubordinate usurer) to defraud, etc. The whole begins with more than alittle aversion on everybody's part for the innocent Etienne Maugars,who, having been away from home for years, knows neither the fact northe cause of his father's unpopularity; and it ends with condignpoetical justice, on the extortioner in the form of punishment, and forthe lovers in another way. It is thus, though a less poignant book than_Sauvageonne_, a fuller and wider one, and it displays, better than thatbook, the competence and adequacy which mark the author, though theremay be something else to be said about it (or rather about itsillustration of his general characteristics) presently.

  [Sidenote: _Le Don Juan de Vireloup_ and _Raymonde_.]

  _Le Don Juan de Vireloup_, a story of about a hundred pages long, whichacts as makeweight to _Raymonde_, itself only about twice the length, isa capital example of Theuriet at nearly his best--a pleasant mixture of_berquinade_ and _gaillardise_ (there are at least two passages ateither of which Mrs. Grundy would require _sal volatile_, and would thenput the book in the fire). The reformation and salvation of Jean deSantenoge--a poor (indeed penniless) gentleman, who lives in a littleold manor, or rather farm-house, buried in the woods, and whose soleoccupations are poaching and making love to peasant girls--are mostagreeably conducted by the agency of the daughter of a curmudgeonlyforest-inspector (who naturally regards Santenoge with specialabhorrence). She is helped by her grand-uncle, a doctor of the familiarstamp, who has known Diderot's child, Madame de Vandeul (the scene, asin so many of the author's books, is close to Langres), and worshipsDenis himself. As for _Raymonde_, its heroine comes closer to"Sauvageonne," though she is less of a savagess: and the worst that canbe said against her lucky winner is that he is a little of a prig. But,to borrow, and very slightly alter, one of Sir Walter's pieces of divinecharity, "The man is mortal, and a scientific person." Perhaps fate andM. Theuriet are a little too harsh to another (but not this timebeggarly) _gentillatre_, Osmin de Prefontaine, to whom, one regrets tosay, Raymonde positively, or almost positively, engages herself, beforeshe in the same way virtually accepts the physiological Antoine Verdier.And the _denouement_, where everything comes right, is a littlestagy.[541] But the whole is thoroughly readable, competentlycharactered, and illustrated by some of the best of the author's forestdescriptions.

  [Sidenote: General characteristics.]

  One has thus been able to give an account, very favourable in the main,of these three or four stories--selected with no hidden design, and intwo cases previously unknown to the critic, who has, in addition, a fairremembrance of several others. But it will be observed that there is inthem, with all their merits, some evidence of that "rut" or "mould"character which has been specified as absent in greater novelists, butas often found in company with a certain accomplishment, in _ordonnance_and readable quality, that marks the later novel. The very greatprominence of description is common to all of them, and in three out ofthe four the scenes are from the same district--almost from the samepatch--of country. The heroine is the most prominent character and, asshe should be, the most attractive figure of all; but she is made up andpresented, if not exactly _a la douzaine_, yet with a strong, almost asisterly, family likeness. Far be it from the present writer to regretor desiderate the adorably candid creature who so soon smirches herwhiteness. Even the luckless Sauvageonne--worst mannered, worstmoralled, and worst fated of all--is a jewel and a cynosure comparedwith that other class of girl; while Raymonde (whose maltreatment of M.de Prefontaine is to a great extent excused by her mother's bullying,her real father's weakness, and her own impulsive temperament); theTherese of _Le Fils Maugars_; and the Marianne of _Le Don Juan deVireloup_ are, in ascending degrees, girls of quite a right kind. Only,it is just a little too much the _same_ kind. And without unfairness,without even ingratitude, one may say that this sameness does somewhatcharacterise M. Theuriet.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Georges Ohnet.]

  There were some who did not share the general admiration, a good manyyears ago, of the dictum of a popular French critic on a more popularFrench novelist to the effect that, though it was his habit, in thearticles he was writing, to confine himself to literature, he wouldbreak this good custom for once and discuss M. Ohnet. In the firstplace, this appeared to the dissidents a very easy kind of witticism;they knew many men, many women, and many schoolboys who could haveuttered it. In the second, they were probably of the opinion (changingthe matter, instead of, like that wicked Prince Seithenyn, merelyreversing the order, of the old Welsh saying) that "The goodness of witsleeps in the badness of manners." But if the question had been then, orwere now, asked seriously whether the literary value of _Le Maitre deForges_ and its companion novels was high, few of them would, asprobably, have been or be able to answer in the affirmative. For my ownpart, I always used to think, when M. Ohnet's novels came out, that theywere remarkably like those of the eminent Mrs. Henry Wood[542] inEnglish--of course _mutatis mutandis_. They displayed very fair aptitudefor the _business_ of novel manufacture, and the results were such as,in almost every way, to satisfy the average subscriber to a circulatinglibrary, supposing him or her to possess respectable tastes (scarcely"taste"), moderate intelligence, and a desire to pass the timecomfortably enough in reading them once, without the slightestexpectation of being, or wish to be, able to read them again. They mighteven sometimes excite readers who possessed an adjustable "tally" ofexcitableness. But beyond this, as it seemed to their critic of thosedays, they never went.

  Re-reading, therefore--though perhaps the consequence may not seemdownright to laymen--promised some critical interest. I first selectedfor the purpose, to give the author as good a chance as possible, _SergePanine_, which the Academy crowned, and which went near its hundred andfifty editions when it was still a four-year-old; and _Le Maitre deForges_ itself, the most popular of all, adding _Le Docteur Rameau_ and_La Grande Marniere_, which my memory gave me as having seemed to be ofsuch pillars as the particular structure could boast.

  [Sidenote: _Serge Panine._]

  I suppose the Forty crowned _Serge Panine_ because it was a virtuousbook, and an attack on the financial trickeries which, about the timeand a little later, enriched the French language with the word "krach."Otherwise, though no one could call it bad, its royalty could hardlyseem much other than that which qualifies for the kingdom of the blind.The situations are good, and they are worked up into a Fifth Act, as wemay call it (it occupies almost exactly a fifth of the book, which was,of course, dramatised), _melo_dramatic to the _n_th, ending in adiscovery of flagrant delict, or something very like it, and in theshooting of a son-in-law by his mother-in-law to save the downfall ofhis reputation. But the characters do not play up to their parts, oreach other, very well, with the possible or passable exception of themother-in-law, and of one very minor personage, the secretary Marechal,whom M. Ohnet, perhaps distrustful of his power to make him more, leftminor. The hero is a Polish prince, with everything that a stage Polishprince requires about him--handsome, superficially amiable, what theprecise call "caressing" and the vulgar "carneying" in manner, butextravagant, quite non-moral, and not possessed of much common sense.His princess Micheline is a silly jilt before marriage and a sillier"door-ma
t" (as some women call others) of a wife. Her rival, and in afashion foster-sister (she has been adopted before Micheline's birth),does things which many people might do, but does not do them in aconcatenation accordingly. The jilted serious young man Pierre accepts aperfectly impossible position in reference to his former _fiancee_ andhis supplanter, and gives more proofs of its impossibility by hisconduct and speech than was at all necessary. The conversation is veryflat, and the descriptions are chiefly confined to long, gaudyinventories of rich parvenus' houses, which read like auctioneers'catalogues.

  But the worst part of the book, and probably that which at itsappearance exasperated the critics, though it did not disturb the_abonne_--or, more surprisingly, the Immortals--is the flatness of stylewhich has been already noted in the conversation, but which overflowsinsupportably into the narrative. M. Ohnet speaks somewhere, justlyenough, of "le style a la fois pretentieux et plat, familier auxreporters." But was he trying--there is no sign of it--to parody theseunfortunate persons when he himself described dinner-rolls as "Cesboules dorees qui sollicitent l'appetit le plus rebelle, et accommodeesdans une serviette damassee artistement pliee, parent si elegamment uncouvert"? Or when he tells us that at a ball "Les femmes, leurssplendides toilettes gracieusement etalees sur les meubles bas etmoelleux, causaient chiffons sous l'eventail, ou ecoutaient lescantilenes d'un chanteur exotique pendant que les jeunes gens leurchuchotaient des galanteries a l'oreille." This last is really worthy ofthe feeblest member of our "_plated_ silver fork school" between thetime of Scott and Miss Austen and that of Dickens and Thackeray.

  [Sidenote: _Le Maitre de Forges._]

  In the year 1902, _Le Maitre de Forges_, which was then just twentyyears old, had reached its three hundred and sixty-seventh edition. Sixyears later Fromentin's _Dominique_, which was then forty-five yearsold, had reached its twenty-seventh. The accident of the two books lyingside by side on my table has enabled me to make this comparison, themoral of which will be sufficiently drawn by a reference to what hasbeen said of _Dominique_ above,[543] and by the few remarks on M.Ohnet's most popular book which follow.

  One old receipt for popularity, "Put your characters up several steps insociety," M. Ohnet has faithfully obeyed. We begin with a marquisunintentionally poaching on the ironmaster's ground, and (rather oddly)accepting game which he has _not_ shot thereon. We end with themarquis's sister putting her dainty fingers before the mouth of a duke'sexploding pistol--to the not surprising damage of those digits, but withthe result of happiness ever afterwards for the respectable charactersof the book. There is a great deal of gambling, though, unfortunatelytold in a rather uninteresting manner of _recit_, which is a pity, forgambling can be made excellent in fiction.[544] There are several of M.Ohnet's favourite inventories, and a baroness--not a bad baroness--whohas frequented sales, and knows all about _bric-a-brac_. Also there areseveral exciting situations, even before we come to the application of alady's fingers as tompions. M. Ohnet is, it has been said, rather goodat situations. But situations, to speak frankly, are rather things forthe stage than for the story, except very rarely, and of a verystriking--which does not mean melodramatic--kind. And it is veryimportant, off the stage, that they should be led up to, and acted inby, vigorously drawn and well filled in characters.

  To do M. Ohnet justice, he has attempted to meet this requirement in oneinstance at least, the one instance by which the book has to stand orfall. Some of the minor personages (like Marechal in _Serge Panine_) arefair enough; and the little baroness who, arriving at a country-house ina whirl of travel and baggage, cries, "Ou est mon mari? Est-ce que j'ai_deja_ egare mon mari?" puts one, for the moment, in quite a goodtemper. The ironmaster's sister, too, is not a bad sort of girl. Hehimself is too much of the virtuous, loyal, amiable, but not weak man ofthe people; the marquis is rather null, and the duke, who jilts hiscousin Claire de Beaulieu, gambles, marries a rich and detestabledaughter of a chocolate-man, and finally fires through Claire's fingers,is very much, to use our old phrase, _a la douzaine_. But Claire mightsave the book, and probably does so for those who like it. To me sheseems quite wrongly put together. The novel has been so very widelyread, in the original and in translations, that it is perhapsunnecessary to waste space on a full analysis of its central scene--athing not to be done very shortly. It may be sufficient to say thatClaire, treacherously and spitefully informed, by her successful rival,of the fact that she has been jilted, and shortly afterwards confrontedwith the jilter himself, recovers, as it seems to her, to the company,and I suppose to the author, the whip-hand by summoning the ironmaster(who is hanging about "promiscuous," and is already known to be attachedto her, though she has given him no direct encouragement) and bestowingher hand upon him, insisting, too, upon being married at once, beforethe other pair. The act is supposed to be that of an exceptionally calm,haughty, and aristocratic damsel: and the acceptance of it is made by aman certainly deep in love, but independent, sharp-sighted, andstrong-willed. To be sure, he could not very well refuse; but this veryfact should have weighed additionally, with a girl of Claire's supposedtemperament, in deciding her not to make a special Leap Year for theoccasion. To hand yourself over to Dick because Tom has declined to haveanything to do with you is no doubt not a very unusual proceeding: butit is not usually done quite so much _coram populo_, or with suchacknowledgment of its being done to spite Tom and Tom's preferredone.[545]

  [Sidenote: _Le Docteur Rameau._]

  Two more of "Les Batailles de la Vie" (as, for some not too obvious[546]reason, it pleased M. Ohnet to _super_-title his novels) may perhapssuffice to give a basis for a more general judgment of his position. _LeDocteur Rameau_ is, at least towards its close, one of the mostambitious, if not _the_ most ambitious of all its author's books. Thehero is one of those atheistic and republican physicians who are aptrather to _embeter_ us by their frequency in French novels. He is throwninto the also familiar situation of ascertaining, after his wife'sdeath, that she has been false, and that his daughter, of whom he isvery fond, is probably or certainly not his own. At the end, however,things come right as usual. Rameau is converted from hating hisdaughter, which is well, and from being an atheist, which is better.But, unluckily, M. Ohnet devotes several pages, in his own peculiarstyle, to a rhetorical exhibition of the logic of these conclusions. Itseems to come to this. There is no God and no soul, because freewill issufficient to account for everything. But M. le Docteur Rameau haswilled, in the free-willingest manner, to hate his daughter, and findshe cannot. Therefore there is a God and a soul. A most satisfactoryconclusion, but a most singular major premiss. Why should there be noGod and no soul because there is (if there is) freewill?[547] But all iswell that ends well: and how can you end better than by being heard toejaculate, "Mon Dieu!" (quite seriously and piously, and not in theordinary trivial way) by a scientific friend, at the church ofSainte-Clotilde, during your daughter's wedding?

  [Sidenote: _La Grande Marniere._]

  _La Grande Marniere_ does not aspire to such heights, and is perhaps oneof the best "machined" of M. Ohnet's books. The main plot is not verynovel--his plots seldom are--and, in parts as well as plots, any one whocared for rag-picking and hole-picking might find a good deal ofindebtedness. It is the old jealousy of a clever and unscrupulousself-made man towards an improvident _seigneur_ and his somewhatrobustious son. The seigniorial improvidence, however, is not of theusual kind, for M. le Marquis de Clairefont wastes his substance, andgets into his enemy's debt and power, by costly experiments onagricultural and other machinery, partly due to the fact that hepossesses on his estate a huge marl-pit and hill which want developing.There is the again usual cross-action of an at first hopeless affectionon the part of the _roturier's_ son, Pascal Carvajan, a rising lawyer,for Antoinette de Clairefont. But M. Ohnet--still fertile insituations--adds a useful sort of conspiracy among Carvajan's tools ofvarious stations against the house of Clairefont; a conspiracy whichactually culminates in a murder-charge against Robert de Clairefont, thevictim being the pretty daughter
of a local poacher, one of the gang,with whom the Viscount has notoriously and indeed quite openly flirted.Now comes Pascal's opportunity: he defends Robert, and not merelyobtains acquittal, but manages to discover that the crime was actuallycommitted by the village idiot, who betrays himself by remorse andsleep-walking. There is a patient, jilted lover, M. de Croix-Mesnil (itmay just be noted that since French novel-heroines were allowed anychoice at all in marriage, they have developed a faculty of alteringthat choice which might be urged by praisers of times past against theenfranchisement); a comic aunt; and several other promoters of business.It is no wonder that, given a public for the kind of book, thisparticular example of it should have been popular. It had reached itssixtieth edition before it had been published a twelvemonth.

  [Sidenote: Reflections.]

  Sixty editions of one book in one year; three hundred and sixty-seven ofanother in twenty; a hundred and forty-two of _Serge Panine_ in five;sixty-nine of _Le Docteur Rameau_ in certainly at the outside not more;these are facts which, whatever may be insinuated about the number of an"edition," cannot be simply put aside. Popularity, as the wiser criticshave always maintained, is no test of excellence; but as they have alsomaintained when they were wise, it is a "fact in the case," and it willnot do merely to sneer at it. I should say that the popularity of M.Ohnet, like other popularities in England as well as in France, is quiteexplicable. Novel-writing, once again, had become a business, and he sethimself to carry that business out with a thorough comprehension of whatwas wanted. His books, it is to be observed, are generally quite modern,dealing either with his own day or a few years before it; and modernityhas, for a long time, been almost a _sine qua non_ of what is to pleasethe public. They are, it has been said, full of situations, and thesituation is what pleases the public most in everything. They came justwhen the first popularity of Naturalism was exhausting itself,[548] andthey are not grimy; but, on the other hand, they do not aim at anexcessive propriety. Their characters are not of the best, or even ofthe second-best class, as so often defined, but they are sufficient towork out the situations without startling inadequacy. The public neverreally cares, though part of it is sometimes taught to pretend to care,for style, and the same may be said of the finer kind of description.The conversation is not brilliant, but, like the character, it servesits turn. I once knew an excellent gentleman, of old lineage and fairfortune, who used to say that for his part he could not tell mutton fromvenison or Marsala from Madeira, and he thanked God for it. Thenovel-reading public,--that at least which reads novels by the threehundred and fifty thousand,--is very much of the same taste, and I amsure I hope it is equally pious.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Edouard Rod.]

  I have quite a lively remembrance of the advent of M. Edouard Rod, ofthe crowning of _Le Sens de la Vie_, and so forth. That advent formedpart of the just mentioned counter-attack on Naturalism, in which, asusual, some of the Naturalist methods and weapons themselves were used;but it had a distinct character of its own. Unless I mistake, it was notat first very warmly welcomed by "mortal" French criticism. There mayhave been something in this of that curious grudge[549] againstSwiss-French, on the part of purely French-French, men of letters whichnever seems to have entirely ceased. But there was something more thanthis, though this something more was in a way the reason, some might saythe justification, of the grudge. M. Rod was exceedingly serious; thetitle of his laureated book is of itself almost sufficient to show it;and though the exclusive notion of "the gay and frivolous Frenchman"always was something of a vulgar error, and has been increasingly sosince the Revolution, Swiss seriousness, with its strong Germanicleaven, is not French seriousness at all. But he became, if not exactlya popular novelist to the tune of hundreds or even scores of editions, aprolific and fairly accepted one. I think, though he died in middle ageand produced other things besides novels, he wrote some twenty or thirtystories, and his production rather increased than slackened as he wenton. With the later ones I am not so well acquainted as with the earlier,but there is a pervading character about these earlier ones which is notlikely to have changed much, and they alone belong strictly to oursubject.

  [Sidenote: _La Vie Privee de Michel Teissier._]

  Next to _Le Sens de la Vie_ and perhaps in a way, as far as popularitygoes, above it, may be ranked, I suppose, _La Vie Privee de MichelTeissier_, with its sequel, _La Seconde Vie de M. T._ These bookscertainly made a bold and wide separation of aim and subject from thesubject and the aim of most French novels in these recent years. Hereyou have, instead of a man who attempts somebody else's wife, one whowishes to get rid--on at least legally respectable terms--of his own,and to marry a girl for whom he has, and who has for him, a passionwhich is, until legal matrimony enfranchises it, able to restrain itselffrom any practical satisfaction of the as yet illicit kind. He availshimself of the then pretty new facilities for divorce (the famous "LoiNaquet," which used to "deave" all of us who minded such things manyyears ago), and the situation is (at least intentionally) made morepiquant by the fact that Teissier, who is a prominent statesman andgives up not merely his wife but his political position for this newlove of his, starts as an actual supporter of the repeal of the divorcelaws. To an English reader, of course, the precise problem would nothave the same charm of novelty, except in his capacity as a reader ofFrench novels. But, putting that aside, the position is obviouslycapable of being treated with very considerable appeal. The struggles ofthe husband, who _has_ loved his wife--M. Rod had not the audacity orthe strength to make him love her still--between his duties and hisdesires; the indignant suffering of the wife; and most of all, theposition of the girl who, by ill-fortune or the fault of others, findsherself expending, on an at first illicit and always ill-famed love,what she might have devoted to an honourable one, certainly has greatcapabilities. But I did not think when I read it first, and I do notthink now when I have read it again, that these various opportunitiesare fully taken. It is not that M. Rod has no idea of passion. He isconstantly handling it and, as will be seen presently, not withoutsuccess occasionally. But he was too much what he calls his eidolon inone book, "Monsieur le psychologue," and the Psyche he deals with is toooften a skinny and spectacled creature--not the love of Cupid and themother of Voluptas.[550]

  [Sidenote: _La Sacrifiee._]

  If he has ever made his story hot enough to make this pale cast glow, itis in _La Sacrifiee_. This is all the more remarkable in that thebeginning of the book itself is far from promising. There is a ratherunnecessary usher-chapter--a thing which M. Rod was fond of, and which,unless very cleverly done, is more of an obstacle than of a "shoe-horn."The hero-narrator of the main story is one of the obligatorily atheisticdoctors--nearly as great a nuisance as obligatorily adulterousheroines--whom M. Rod has mostly discarded; and what is more, he is oneof the pseudo-scientific fanatics who believe in the irresponsibility ofmurderers, and do not see that, the more irresponsible a criminal is,the sooner he ought to be put out of the way. Moreover, he has theill-manners to bore the company at dinner with this craze, and theindecency (for which in some countries he might have smarted) to condemnout loud, in a court of justice, the verdict of the jury and thesentence of the judge on his pet. Neither can one approve the haste withwhich he suggests to the wife of his oldest and most intimate friendthat she is not happy with her husband. But this time M. Rod had got theforge working, and the bellows dead on the charcoal. The development ofthe situation has something of that twist or boomerang effect which wehave noticed in _Michel Teissier_. Dr. Morgex begins by defendingmurderers; he does not end, but starts the end, by becoming a murdererhimself, though one with far more "extenuating circumstances" than thoseso often allowed in French courts. His friend--who is an advocate of nomean powers but loose life and dangerously full habit--has, when thedoctor warns him against apoplexy, half scoffed, but also begged him, ifa seizure should take place, to afford him a chance of euthanasiainstead of lingering misery. The actual situation, though
with stagesand variations which are well handled, arises; the doctor, who has longsince been frantically in love with the wife, succumbs to thetemptation--which has been aggravated by the old request, by thesufferings of the victim, and by the urgent supplications of the family,that he _shall_ give morphia to relieve these sufferings. He givesit--but in a dose which he knows to be lethal.

  After a time, and having gone through no little mental agony, he marriesthe widow, who is in every sense perfectly innocent; and a brief periodof happiness follows. But his own remorse continues; the well-meaningchatter of a lady, who has done much to bring about the marriage, and towhom Morgex had unwarily mentioned "obstacles," awakes the wife'ssuspicion, and, literally, "the murder is out." Morgex confesses, firstto a lawyer friend, who, to his intense surprise, pronounces him legallyguilty, of course, but morally excusable; then to a priest, who takesalmost exactly the opposite point of view, and admitting that the legalcrime may be excusable, declares the moral guilt not lessened; while hepoints out that while the wages of iniquity are retained, no pardon canbe deserved or expected. And so the pair part. Morgex gives himself upto the hardest and least profitable practitioner-work. Of what the wifedoes we hear nothing. She has been perfectly guiltless throughout; shehas loved her second husband without knowing his crime, and afterknowing it; and so she is "La Sacrifiee." But this (as some would callit) sentimental appeal is not the real appeal of the book, though it isdelicately led up to from an early point. The gist throughout is thetempering and purifying of the character and disposition of Morgexhimself, through trial and love, through crime and sacrifice. It is notperfectly done. If it were, it would land the author at once in thoseupper regions of art which I cannot say I think he attains. But it is avery remarkable "try," and, with one other to be mentioned presently, itis nearest the goal of any of his books.

  [Sidenote: _Le Silence._]

  On the other hand, if he ever wrote a worse book than _Le Silence_, Ihave not read, and I do not wish to read, that. The title is singularlyunhappy. Silence is so much greater a thing than speech that a speaker,unless he is Shakespeare or Dante or Lucretius,[551] or at least thebest kind of Wordsworth, had better avoid the subject, avoid even theword for it. And M. Rod's examples of silence, preluded in each case(for the book has two parts) by one of those curious harbingerings ofhis which are doubtfully satisfactory, are not what they call nowadays"convincing." The first and longest--it is, indeed, much too long andmight have been more acceptable in twenty pages than in twohundred--deals with the usual triangle--brutal husband, suffering wife,interesting lover. But the last two never declare themselves, or aredeclared; and they both die and make no sign. In the second part thereis another triangle, where the illegitimate side is established andresults in a duel, the lover killing the husband and establishinghimself with the wife. But a stove for tea-making explodes; she losesher beauty, and (apparently for that reason) poisons herself, though itdoes not appear that her lover's love has been affected by the change.In each case the situation comes under that famous and often-quoted banof helpless and unmanageable misery.

  [Sidenote: _La-Haut._]

  Nor can I think highly of _La-Haut_, which is quite literally an accountof an Alpine village, and of its gradual vulgarisation by anenterprising man of business. Of the ordinary novel-interests there islittle more than the introduction at the beginning of a gentleman whohas triangled as usual, till, the husband has, in his, the lover's,presence, most inconsiderately shot his wife dead, has missed (which wasa pity) M. Julien Sterny himself, and, more unconscionably still, hasbeen acquitted by a court of justice, in which the officials, and thepublic in general, actually seemed to think that M. Sterny was to blame!He is much upset by this, and, coming to Vallanches to recuperate, isrewarded later for his good deeds and sufferings,[552] by the hand of avery attractive young woman with a fortune. This poetic justice,however, is by no means the point of the book, which, indeed, has noparticular point. It is filled up by details of Swiss hotel-life: of thewicked conduct of English tourists, who not merely sing hymns on Sunday,but dance on wet evenings in the week (nearly the oddest combination ofcrimes known to the present writer); of a death in climbing of one ofthe characters which is not in the least required by the story; of thescalding of her arm by a _paysanne_ in a sort of "ragging" flirtation,and the operation on the mortifying member by a cure who knowssomething of chirurgy; and of the ruin of some greedy peasants who turntheir chalet into a hotel with no capital to work it, and are boughtout, with just enough to cover their outlay and leave them penniless, bythe general _entrepreneur_. It is a curious book, but the very reverseof a successful one.

  [Sidenote: _La Course a la Mort._]

  The centre, not by any means in the chronological sense (for they wereamong his earliest), but in the logical and psychological, of M. Rod'snovel production, is undoubtedly to be found in the two contrastedlytitled books _Le Sens de la Vie_ and _La Course a la Mort_. The first,which, as has been said, received Academic distinction, I approachedmany years ago without any predisposition against it, and closed with adistinct feeling of disappointment. The other I read more recently witha distinct apprehension of disapproval, which was, if not entirely, to avery large extent removed as I went on. It was strongly attacked asmorbid and mischievous at its first appearance in 1885; and the author,some years afterwards, prefixed a defence to his fifth edition, which isnot much more effective than such defences usually are. It takessomething like the line which, as was mentioned above, Mr. Traill tookabout Maupassant--that Pessimism was a fact like other facts, and onewas entitled to take it as a subject or motive. But it also contained aslip into that obvious but, somehow or other, seldom avoided trap--theargument that a book is "dramatic," and does not necessarily express theauthor's own attitude. Perhaps not; but the rejoinder that almost all,if not all, M. Rod's books are "sicklied o'er" in this way is ratherfatal. One gets to expect, and seldom misses, a close and dreary airthroughout, often aggravated by an actual final sentence or paragraph oflamentation and mourning and woe. But I do not resent the "nervousimpression" left on me by _La Course a la Mort_, with its indefinitelystated but certain end of suicide, and its unbroken soliloquy of drearydream. For it is in one key all through; it never falls out of tune ortime; and it does actually represent a true, an existent, though apartial and morbid attitude of mind. It is also in parts very wellwritten, and the blending of life and dream is sometimes almost Poesque.A novel, except by the extremest stretch of courtesy, it is not, beingsimply a panorama of the moods of its scarcely heroic hero. And he doesnot "set one's back up" like Rene, or, in my case at least, produceboredom like most of the other "World-pain"-ers. The still more shadowyappearances of the heroine Cecile, who dies before her lover, while thecourse of his love is more dream than action, are well brought in andattractive; and there is one passage descriptive of waltzing which wouldatone for anything. Many people have tried to write about waltzing, butfew have done it well; this is almost adequate. I wonder if I daretranslate it?

  We never thought that people might be turning an evil eye on us; we cared nothing for the indignation of the mammas sitting passive and motionless; we hardly felt the couples that we jostled.[553] Thanks to the cradling of the rhythm, to the intoxication of our rapid and regular movement, there fell on us something like a great calm. Drunk with one another, hurried by the absorbing voluptuousness of the waltz, we went on and on vertiginously. People and things turned with us, surrounding us with a gyre of moving shadows, under a fantastic light formed of crossing reflections, in an atmosphere where one breathed inebriating perfumes, and where every atom vibrated to the ever more bewildering sound of music. Time passed, and we still went on; losing little by little all consciousness except that of our own movement. Then it even seemed that we came out of ourselves; we heard nothing but a single beat, marking the cadence with strokes more and more muffled. The lights, melting into one, bathed us in a dreamy glow; we felt not
the floor under our feet; we felt nothing but an immense oblivion--the oblivion of a void which was swallowing us up.

  And doubtless it was so, as has been seen of many in the Time ofRoses.[554]

  [Sidenote: _Le Menage du Pasteur Naudie._]

  To take one or two more of his books, _Le Menage du Pasteur Naudie_,though less poignant than _La Sacrifiee_ and with no approach to theextra-novelish merit of _La Course a la Mort_, starts not badly with aninteresting scene, no less a place than La Rochelle, very rarely met,since its great days, in a French novel--a rather unfamiliar society,that of French Protestantism at Rochelle itself and Montauban--and acertainly unusual situation, the desire of a young, pretty, and wealthygirl, Jane Defos, to marry an elderly pastor who is poor, and, though awidower, has four children.

  That nothing but mischief can come of this proceeding--as of an abnormalleap-year--is clear enough: whether the way in which the mischief isbrought about and recounted is good may be more doubtful. That a personlike M. Naudie, simple, though by no means a fool, should be taken in bya very pretty girl falling apparently in love with him--even though, tothe general dangers of the situation, are added frank warnings that shehas been given to a series of freakish fancies--is not unnatural; thatshe should soon tire of him, and sooner still of the four step-children,is very natural indeed. But the immediate cause of the finaldisruption--her taking a new fancy to, and being atheistically convertedby, a cousin who, after all, runs away from temptation--is not verynatural, and is unconvincingly told. Indeed the whole character of Janeis insufficiently presented. She is meant to be a sort of Blanche Amory,with nothing real in her--only a succession of false and fleetingfancies. But M. Rod was not Thackeray.

  [Sidenote: _Mademoiselle Annette._]

  [Sidenote: _L'Eau Courante._]

  With two or three more of his later-middle books (it does not seemnecessary to deal with the very latest, which are actually beyond ourlimit, and could not alter the general estimate very favourably) thepreparation of judgment may cease. _Mademoiselle Annette_ is the historyof a "house-angel" and her family, and the fortunes and misfortunes theygo through, and the little town of Bielle on the Lake of Geneva.[555] Itis told, rather in M. Ferdinand Fabre's way, by a bystander, from thetime when the heroine was his school-dame and, as such dames sometimes,if not often, are, adored by her pupils. Annette dies at last, and M.Rod strews the dust of many others on her way to death. An Americanbrother of the typical kind plays a large part. He is tamed partly byAnnette, partly by a charming wife, whom M. Rod must needs kill, withoutany particular reason. _L'Eau Courante_ is an even gloomier story. Itbegins with a fair picture of a home-coming of bride and bridegroom, ona beautiful evening, to an ideal farm high up on the shore of Leman. Ina very few pages M. Rod, as usual, kills the wife after subjecting herto exceptional tortures at the births of her children, and then settlesdown comfortably to tell us the ruin of the husband, who ends by arsonof his own lost home and drowning in his own lost pond. The interval isall blunder, misfortune, and folly--the chief _causa malorum_ being asenseless interference with the "servitude" rights of neighbours, whomhe does not like, by stopping, for a week, a spring on his own land.Almost the only cheerful character in the book (except a delightful_juge de conciliation_, who carries out his benevolent duties in hiscellar, dispensing its contents to soften litigants) is a blackbilly-goat named Samuel, who, though rather diabolical, is in a way the"Luck of the Bertignys," and after selling whom their state is doomed.But we see very little of him.

  The summing up need probably not be long. That M. Rod was no merestuffer of the shelves of circulating libraries must have been madeclear; that he could write excellently has been (with all due modesty)confessed; that he could sometimes be poignant, often vivid, evenoccasionally humorous, is true. He has given us a fresh illustration ofthat tendency of the later novel, to "fill all numbers" of ordinarylife, which has been insisted upon. But that he is too much of a "dismalJemmy" of novel-writing is certainly true also. The House of Mourning isone of the Houses of Life, and therefore open to the novelist. But it isnot the _only_ house. It would sometimes seem as if M. Rod were (asusual without his being able to help it) a sort of _jettatore_,--as ifthere were no times or places for him except that

  When all the world is old, And all the trees are brown, And all the sport is cold, And all the wheels run down.

  [Sidenote: _Scenes de la Vie Cosmopolite._]

  But there is something to add, and even one book not yet noticed tocomment on, which may serve as a real light on this remarkable novelist.The way in which I have already spoken of _La Course a la Mort,_ whichwas a very early book, may be referred to. Even earlier, or at least asearly, M. Rod wrote some short stories, which were published as _Scenesde la Vie Cosmopolite_. They include "Lilith" (the author, though farfrom an Anglophile, had a creditable liking for Rossetti), which is astory of the rejection of a French suitor by an English governess; theending of a liaison between a coxcomb and a lady much older than himself("Le Feu et l'Eau"); "L'Ideal de M. Gindre," with a doubtfulmarriage-close; a discovery of falseness ("Le Pardon"); "La DerniereIdylle" (which may be judged from some of its last words: "I have made aspectacle of myself long enough, and now the play is over"), and "Nocesd'Or," the shortest and bitterest of all, in which the wife, who hasfelt herself tyrannised over for the fifty years, mildly retaliates byproviding for dinner _nearly_ all the things that she likes and herhusband does not, though she effects a reconciliation with _pate decanard d'Amiens_. I wonder if they ate duck-pies at Amiens in the springof 1918?

  The purpose of this postscript-account, and of the reference to _LaCourse_, should not be very obscure. It is clear that, at first and fromthe first, M. Rod's vocation was to be a prophet of discouragement anddisappointment. You may be this and be quite a major prophet; but if youare not a major prophet your minority will become somewhat painfullyapparent, and it will often, if not always, go near to failure. I thinkthis was rather the case with M. Rod.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Catulle Mendes.]

  It is with reluctance that I find myself unable to give more than praisefor admirable French, and "form" in the strict sense, to the work inprose fiction of M. Catulle Mendes, sometime Gautier's son-in-law[556]and always, I think, his disciple. His early verse-work in the _ParnasseContemporain_ fifty years ago, was attractive and promising, thoughperhaps open to the exception which some took to the _Parnasse_generally, and which may be echoed here, _not_ with that generalconcernment, but as to his own novel and tale-work. His late criticalsurvey of modern French poetry was a really difficult thing admirablydone. But his fiction leaves me cold, as Parnassian poetry did others,but not me. A friend of mine, whom I should have thought quiteunshockable, either by principles or practice, once professed himself tome aghast at _Mephistophela_. But M. Mendes's improprieties neithershock nor excite nor amuse me, because they have a certain air of being"machined." If anybody wishes to sample them at their very best, thehalf-score loosely and largely printed pages of "Tourterelle" in thevolume entitled _Lesbia_ will be no severe experiment. He may then takehis choice of not going further at all, or of going further at thehazard of faring worse, or as well now and then, but hardly, I think,better.

  * * * * *

  I do not propose to add any further studies in detail to those alreadypresented in this chapter. As I have (perhaps more than once) remarked,there are few periods of the century with the minor as well as majornovel work of which I am better acquainted than with that of its lastquarter. As I remember independently, or am in this or that wayreminded, of the names of Jules de Glouvet; of at least threePauls--Alexis, Arene, and Mahalin; of Ernest d'Hervilly; of the prolificHector Malot; of Oscar Metenier, and Octave Mirbeau, and Jules Valles ofthe Commune, of the brothers Margueritte and of others too many tomention, a sort of shame invades me at leaving them out.[557] Some ofthem may be alive still, though most, I think, are dead. But dead oralive,
I have no room for them, and, for reasons also elsewhere stated,it is perhaps as well. The blossoming of the aloe, not once in a hundredyears but all through them, has been told as best I could tell it.

  Not shame but sorrow attends the exclusion of others, some of them, Ithink, better novelists than those actually discussed in thischapter--especially "Gyp" and MM. Anatole France, Paul Bourget, JeanRichepin, and "Pierre Loti." It would have been agreeable to pay, oncemore, suit and service to the adorable chronicler of the little rascalBob and the unpretentiously divine Chiffon; to recall the delightedsurprise with which one read _Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard_, and followthe train of triumphs that succeeded it; to do justice (unbribed, butpleasantly seasoned, by some private gratitude) to the vigour andacuteness of _L'Irreparable_ and its companions; to salute thatmasterpiece of Realism at its best, _La Glu_, and the more complicatedas well as more pathetic history of _Cesarine_; and to re-discover thecountries and the manners depicted for us from _Aziyade_ to _Pecheurd'Islande_. But the _consigne_ elsewhere laid down and experiencedforbids it, and I think that _consigne_ should not be "forced."

  FOOTNOTES:

  [519] It was in connection with this, at some time in the 'eighties,that I came across a curious survival of the old prejudice againstnovels--deserving perhaps, with better claim than as a mere personalanecdote, record in this history. One French publisher, who held himselfabove the "three-fifty," and produced dainty books of art and letters,once sent a pathetic remonstrance against his wares being reviewed"sometimes unkindly, _and always with the novels_."

  [520] "Tigrane" is a nickname, early accounted for and perhapssuggesting its own explanation.

  [521] At the extreme end there is an interesting reminder of thatcurious moment when it was thought on the cards that Pius IX. mightaccept an English asylum at Malta, and that, as a part-consequence, notof course Newman but Manning might be his successor. The probableresults of this, to "those who knew" at the time, are still matter ofinteresting, if unpractical, speculation.

  [522] He is playing whist comfortably with the cathedral keys in hispocket, and has nearly made a slam (Fr. _chelem_), while the pelting ofthe pitiless storm is on the dead bishop's bier and its faithfulguardians.

  [523] There is something Browningesque about it, a something by no meansconfined to the use of the history--actually referred to in the text,but likely to be anticipated long before by readers--of Popes Formosusand Stephen. That it did not satisfy Ultramontanes is not surprising;_v. inf._ on one of the smaller pieces in _Norine_.

  [524] He had actually been intended for the Church.

  [525] One thing, for the credit of the Gallican Church, we may trustthat he did _not_ do. An Anglican prelate, like this his brother on aConfirmation tour, is alleged to have pointed to a decanter on hishost's sideboard and said, "I hope, on my next visit, I shall not see_that_." I do not know what the rector answered: I do know what _I_should have said, despite my reverence for the episcopate: "My Lord, youwill not have the opportunity."

  [526] _La Rue du Puits qui Parle_ and _Le Carmel de Vaugirard_.

  [527] The _Societe des Secours Intellectuels_.

  [528] See on Murger.

  [529] Whenever she hears that any of her numerous lovers has fallen ill,she promptly "plants there" the man in possession, and tends and, as faras she can, supports the afflicted.

  [530] _Vide_ the frontispiece of Settle's _Empress of Morocco_.

  [531] It would be curmudgeonly to say, "evaded by shortness of space."

  [532] They are, however, orthodox after a fashion; and I do not thinkthat M. Fabre, in the books that I have read, ever introducesdescendants of the Camisards, though dealing with their country.

  [533] M. Fabre is so fond of these interrupted _recits_ that one issometimes reminded of _Jacques le Fataliste_ and its landlady. But, todo him justice, he "does it more natural."

  [534]

  "Come to thy death, Victor _Galbraith_."--LONGFELLOW.

  [535] See note above on M. Fabre's weakness for this style of narrative.

  [536] The next to be mentioned runs him hard perhaps.

  [537] Her girls are perhaps as good, but scarcely her men.

  [538] This had _not_ been the case--to an extent which I am puzzled toaccount for--with those of M. Fabre.

  [539] _Deformem vocant quidam_, as in other cases also: but that isbecause she has eyes and they have none.

  [540] For instance, in Highbury or Cranford there might be scandal abouta young bachelor's very late visits to a pretty widow. But the adultportion of the population, at any rate, would hardly lay booby-traps totrip him in a river on his return.

  [541] An old schoolmaster, whom Raymonde has deeply offended byupsetting his just-gathered mushrooms at the beginning of the book, andwho is warmly attached to Antoine, turns out to be the girl's legalfather--her mother, a disagreeable, handsome person, having been runaway twenty years earlier by another character who has passed hithertoas respectable husband and paterfamilias.

  [542] Excepting some of the "Johnny Ludlow" stories, which were, Ithink, in their kind, better than anything M. Ohnet ever did to myknowledge--I may perhaps observe that the above notice was written,exactly as it stands, _before_ M. Ohnet's death, but under theimpression that the death had occurred. When it did, there were thingsin the obituaries which made me raise my eyebrows. That he was a"belated Romantic" had certainly never occurred to me; but I have noquarrel with the description of him, in another place, as a practitionerof the _roman bourgeois_.

  [543] _V. sup._ p. 277-280.

  [544] The great scene in Mr. Disraeli's _Young Duke_, when that youthfulnobleman loses, what is it? two hundred and seventeen thousand pounds, Ithink; the brief but poignant plucking of Mr. Dawkins; the occasion in_Sans Merci_ where the hero _will_ not lead trumps, and thereby, thoughnot at once, seals his fate; and a quite nice game at Marmora in Mr. E.F. Benson's _The Babe, B.A._ emerge from many memories, reinforced bysome of actual experience. Marmora _is_ a nice game: with penny stakes,and three players only, you may have five pounds in the pool before youknow where you are. But I do not know anything more really exciting thana game at which you guess how many marbles the other fellow holds in hisfist. The sequel, however, in which you have to ask for an advance ofpocket-money to settle your "differences", is not so pleasant.

  [545] Another scene, which brings on the _denouement_ and in whichClaire is again supposed to have the _beau role_, does not please memuch better. Thinking that her husband is flirting with the detestedDuchess, she publicly orders her out of the house--a very natural, but arather "fish-faggy" proceeding.

  [546] It has been, and will be, pointed out that he was in all waysstudious to run before the wind; and it was just at this time, if Iremember rightly, that the catchword of "conflict" began to pester onein criticism. Perhaps this was the reason.

  [547] The argument, or assumption rather, is all the odder because, onthe one hand, orthodoxy holds Free-will (if it accepts that) as a Divineendowment of the Soul: and, on the other, serious Atheism is almostalways Determinist. But the study of M. Ohnet was probably not muchamong the Sentences.

  [548] The obituarist above mentioned, who thought M. Ohnet a belatedRomantic, thought also that he was "struggling against the rising tideof Realism." I do not think you would ever have found him strugglingagainst rising tides, and, as a matter of fact, the tide was already onthe turn.

  [549] Already mentioned in the case of M. Cherbuliez (_v. sup._ p. 447).

  [550]

  [Sidenote: Note on _La Seconde Vie de M. T._]

  The second part is occupied with two different but connected subjects.Suzanne, the first wife, dies suddenly, and the two daughters, theelder, Annie, quite, and the second, Laurence, nearly grown up--returnto the custody of their father, and therefore to the society at least ofhis second wife, Blanche, who, though of course feeling the awkwardness,welcomes them as well as she can. The situation, though much _more_awkward, is something like that of Miss Yonge's _Young Stepmothe
r_: butM. Rod makes it more tragic by Annie's death, partly in consequence of alove-marriage failing, through the lover's father's objection to thestate of her family. The other subject is the gradual hankering ofMichel after a return to political life, and his (consequentiallyinevitable) ratting from Right to Left. M. Rod brought into the matterdirect reminiscences of the Parnell and Dilke cases, and possibly owedthe conception of the whole book to them; but he has, as is sometimeshis wont, rather "sicklied it over" with political and other discussion.

  [551] A pleasant study, in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is thegradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of _silentianoctis_, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautologicalthough) of the Virgilian _tacitae per amica silentia lunae_, to therecovery and intensifying of magnificence in _dove il sol tace_. By theway, _silentia_ (for the singular undergoes Quintilian's apology for theLatin _-um_) is one of the few instances in which a Latin word beats theGreek. [Greek: sige] is really inferior.

  [552] What annoys him most of all is that he should have anuncomfortable feeling about the woman "_comme_ si je l'avais _aimee_!"He had only, you see, done something else.

  [553] They should not have done this, and I do not think they did; itwas the couples that jostled them. And even this ought not to havehappened. The fastest waltzing (I am speaking of the old _deux-temps_,which this must have been) conveyed an almost uncanny extra power ofvision, and at the same time of avoidance, to the right persons. Indeed,the first three lines of this extract have been objected to as base andinconsistent. I think not; the common out of which you rise to theuncommon is worth indication.

  [554] It may be added that the contrast of an earlier mazurka--in theslowness of which the pair had time to look at each other, feel eachother, and otherwise remain in Paradise, but outside of the doubleNirvana--is highly creditable. But I hope they _waltzed_ to the mazurka.It is rather annoying to other people who are doing the orthodox step;but it is the perfection of the slow movement, which affords, as above,opportunities that do not exist in the faster and more deliriousgyration.

  [555] This (which may be called M. Rod's novel-headquarters) occurs alsonot merely in _L'Eau Courante_ but in _Les Roches Blanches_, a bookwhich opens very well in a Mrs. Gaskell or Mrs. Oliphant vein, with theintroduction of a new pastor, but ends much less satisfactorily, with aguiltless but not at all convincing love-affair between this pastor andthe wife of his chief parishioner.

  [556] His wife for a time, Madame Judith Gautier, who died veryrecently, wrote in a fashion not unworthy of her blood both in verse andprose (part of her production being translations from Chinese), and wasthe only lady-member of the quaint _Contre_-academie formed by E. deGoncourt.

  [557] And this shame becomes more acute when I think of one or twoindividual books, such especially as M. Henry Cochin's _Manuscrit deMonsieur C. A. L. Larsonnier_--a most pathetic and delightful story of amental malady which makes time and memory seem to go backward though thevictim can force himself to continue his ordinary duties, and record hissufferings.

 

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