by Walter Pater
“Never before, I think, has the world seen, never again will it see, so small a number of persons absorb and occupy for their own uses so large a number of human lives. Some of my friends had as many as three thousand slaves, and hardly knew the real extent of their riches. And the science of pleasure was on a level with the resources at its disposition. Many successive generations of a privileged class had made a study of the means of refining, varying, multiplying, agreeable sensations. Posterity, assuredly, will hardly conceive the kind of life which some of us have known and practised. But as the future will not easily imagine the intensity of our physical pleasures, perhaps it will even less understand the depth of our satiety. It will be surprised, in reading our chronicles, at the number of those who in this age have committed suicide. After fifteen yean of a revel, refined and coarse by turns, my body exhausted, my senses dulled, my heart void to the bottom of all belief, and even of illusion, what was I to do in the world? It figured to me as a ridiculous spectacle, and interested me no longer. I had retained that native sweetness of temper which came to me from my father, but only because I found it pleasant to be kind; and even that too was come to be indifferent to me. For the rest, public employments had become sordid things of purchase, and I loathed every form of activity. I languished in an immense, an incurable ennui, and having no further motive to live, I wished to die. Death had no fears for me. It was the great deliverer. Only, I desired to die without suffering.”
The would-be suicide is saved from death by the intervention, at the last moment, of his sister, the youthful Serena, in the retired life of a young orphan girl scarcely known by him hitherto; and her subsequent devotion during the long illness which follows touches him deeply. In reality her devotion is due in part to a motive higher than natural sisterly devotion. On the part of Serenus also, there was something deeper than merely fraternal affection.
“It was love of a peculiar kind, such as I had never before experienced in the faintest degree. Serena was so different from all the women I had ever known. It seemed to me that that love evoked from the depths of my past life and brought to new birth within me what had been lost in my earlier days, those ardours of the youthful sage aspiring towards an absolute purity. Then, in proportion as I recovered my mental vigour, my old curiosity returned; and little by little I introduced into this ardent affection for my sister, the attentive mood of an observer, attracted by the spectacle of an extraordinary soul.
“One day Serena said to me, ‘Will you give me a great pleasure? Come with me to-morrow morning where I shall take you.’
“‘ I will go where you will, Serena.’”
Serena takes him to see the ceremonies of the Eucharist in a Christian oratory.
“I perceived among the company assembled the consul of that year, Flavius Clemens — a circumstance which explained the fact that this meeting took place in one of the burial places of his family. I recognised the wife of Clemens and his niece, and Paulina, the widow of Seneca, pale for ever from having followed her husband more than half way on the road to death.
They were deeply veiled. At last I saw in the front rank Acte, the former mistress of Nero, the former friend of my father, still beautiful in spite of her fifty years, but with a little of the cosmetic art, methinks. The rest of the company appeared to be composed of poor people and slaves.”
To Serenus the company, the office for which it was assembled, seemed grave, majestic, touching, and something altogether new. But he perceives also, clearly enough, once for all, that for him these rites will never be more than a spectacle, that there is a gulf between these people and himself.
“‘ My dear Serenus,’ said my sister, as we departed, ‘You have now seen what the Christians are. You will love them more and more in proportion as you come to know them. You are unhappy, as I well know. You must become a Christian. The Truth is there. There, also, is the secret of consolation.’
“‘I will think of it, Serena.’”
In fact, he takes pains to inform himself on the matter, interested at finding many a familiar thought of ancient Pagan wisdom in a new setting. Yes! —
“All the virtues which the Pagan philosophers had already known and preached seemed to me among the disciples of Christ to have been transformed by a sentiment absolutely new — a love of a God who was man, a God crucified — alove burning, full of sensibility, of tears, of confidence, of hope. Clearly, neither the personification of the forces of nature, nor the abstract deity of the Stoics, had ever inspired anything like this. And this love of God, the origin of, and first step towards, all other Christian virtues, communicated to them a purity and sweetness, an unction, and, as it were, a perfume, such as I had never breathed before.”
Yet with all his heartfelt admiration for believers, Serenus is still unable to believe. Like a creature of the nineteenth century, he finds the world absolutely subject to the reign of physical law. And then there were difficulties of another sort, of which he became sensible now and again.
“The idea which my new brethren entertained of the world about us, and of our life here, Jarred upon I know not what sentiment of nature within me. In spite of my own persistent pessimism, I was displeased that men should so despise the only mode of life, after all, of which we are certain. I found them, moreover, far too simple-minded, closed against all artistic impressions, limited, inelegant Or, perhaps, a certain anxiety awaking in me, I feared for the mischief which might be caused to the empire by a conception of life such as that, if it continued to spread — a detachment such as theirs from all civil duties, all profane occupations. Sometimes I was decidedly unjust to them. The religious after-thought which the Christians mingled with their affections, by way of purifying them, seemed to me to chill those affections, in depriving them of their natural liberty, their grace, their spontaneity. To be loved only as redeemed by Christ, and in regard of my eternal salvation, made my heart cold. And then it shocked me that these saintly people should feel so sure of so many things, and things so wonderful, while I, for my part, had searched so carefully without finding, had doubted so much in my life, and finally made a pride of my unbelief.”
But, inconsistently enough, he is offended at times by the survival of many a human weakness among the believers. The consul Clemens, among those brothers who were all equal before Heaven, was treated with marked consideration, and welcomed it Slaves were still slaves. The women were rivals for the special attention of the priests. Acte, once the mistress of Nero, somewhat exaggerated her piety, and still retained also many of her former artificial manners.
“In spite of those little weaknesses, what good, what beautiful souls, I came across there! In vain I said to myself, these holy persons are making a bargain; they reckon on Paradise; it is in view of a reward that they practise the most sublime virtues. But to believe at all in that distant far-off recompense, is not this too itself an act of virtue, since it involves belief in the justice of God, and a conception of Him, as being that which He ought to be?”
And noting sometimes the ardent quality of their faith and its appropriateness to human needs, the needs especially of the poor and suffering, Serenus could not but feel that the future would be with them. If the empire failed, the religion of Christ would flourish on its ruins. Then, what sort of a thing would that new humanity be? More virtuous, doubtless, and therefore happier, since happiness comes of the soul; on the other hand, he thinks ( mistakenly, as we know, looking backwards on the length and breadth of Christian history ) with less art, and less elegance of soul, a feebler understanding of the beautiful.
Presently, a certain change takes place in the life of the Christian community. The influence of Calixtus, a priest of the sweeter and more lenient type, is superseded by that of Timotheus, lately returned to Rome — a man sincerely good, but narrow-minded and rigorous in his zeal. He would have Serenus receive baptism, or depart entirely from the church. It takes Serenus some time to explain away his scruples regarding what seems at first sight an act
of hypocrisy. And then the trial comes. Partly on the ground of their religious belief, mainly for an affront to the Emperor, the chief members of the community are arrested. Serenus has said adieu to his sister. He is in prison, awaiting his end.
“My gaoler is a good-natured fellow. I had about me the means of writing, and he has procured me a lamp. He informs me that the executioner will come about the hour of daybreak. I have been writing all the night. My last link to life is broken; and death, be it annihilation, be it the passage to a world unknown, has no terrors for me. I have replaced myself almost exactly in the state of mind in which I was last year, when I determined to die in my bath. But at this last moment a dread has come upon me for a death which soils and disfigures: I fear the stroke of the axe, which may fail in its aim. In my time the science of poisons has reached a high perfection, and the hollow pearl in my ring contains a colourless drop of liquid which will destroy me in a few minutes, almost without pain. I have seen the honours Christians pay to the burial-place wherein rest the remains of the victims of Nero. They will honour me also as one of their saints. Can I, at this late hour, undeceive them? But for what purpose? I am willing they should guess the fact of my suicide, that they should read my confession; yet I will do nothing to that end; for if Serena knew how I died, in what condition of unbelief, her grief would be too great for her. For the rest, I have good hope that Timotheus, who has no love for me, will allow only a limited form of reverence to be paid to my bones; and if some simple hearts revere me more than I deserve, again what does it matter? It is their faith will be reckoned to them, not the merits of the saint they will invoke. And then, after all, it is not a bad man whose memory they will honour. I have sincerely sought for truth. I forced myself in youth to attain to sanctity as I conceived it. And if I have been indolent, weak, voluptuous — if I have done little for other people — at least I have always had great indulgence for them, a great pity.”
The austere Timotheus, full of suspicion, pored for hours over the manuscript, which was clear enough at the beginning. But the scholarly Latin of the young patrician was not always intelligible to him, towards the end the handwriting became confused, and he remained still in doubt regarding the precise character of the death of Serenus. He might have confided the confession to a more expert reader; but, though profoundly curious on the matter, he feared a possible scandal. More than suspicious, he would fain allow Serenus the benefit of such doubt as remained. If he had not died for Christ, at least he had been condemned because of Him; and, perhaps, even at the last moment, some sudden illumination, some gleam of faith had come to him. For a moment he thought of burning the manuscript; but a certain sense of respect for the dead restrained him. He replaced the manuscript in a fold of the tunic: “Let his sin, or his innocence, remain with him. God! who judgest the heart, I recommend my brother to your goodness!”
It is about eight hundred years later that we find Serenus again — Marcus Annæus Serenus, by the designation of his tombstone in the catacombs, — as Saint Marc le Romain, at Beaugency-sur-Loire, whither his precious relics have been brought from Rome by the Abbot Angelran. Among those relics the Abbot had discovered the manuscript, and confided it, still intact, to the most learned member of the Benedictine community over which he presided. With him those old doubts of Timotheus became certainty. With much labour he deciphers the writing, and discovers that the supposed martyr had died a Pagan.
But Saint Marc the Roman had already become popular, and worked miracles. The learned monk was unwilling to trouble the minds of the faithful, to gratify, moreover, the monks of a rival house. Still, he lacked the courage to destroy a document so singular, and hid the manuscript in a corner of the monastic library. It passed we are told, in 1793, into the public library of Beaugency, where it was found and read by our author. The reputation of Saint Marc the Roman maintained itself till far onwards in the Middle Ages. His miracles, like himself of old, were always considerate, always full of “indulgence.” The same sort of irony, then, makes itself felt, as the final impression of the history of Serenus — the same sort of irony as that which shaped the fortunes of M. Lemaitre’s other characters — the worthiest of all the sisters, who fails to get married: the mother who embraces the wrong infant: Boun, with her gift of the fairy’s ring, whose last, best miracle of assistance is but to restore her again to the simplicity of mind and body in which it had found her. “She has this irony — Dame Nature!” — and in the recognition of it, supplemented by a keen sense of what should be the complementary disposition on man’s part, is the nearest approach which our author makes to a philosophy of life. Nature, circumstance, is far from pitiful, abounds in mockeries, in baffling surprises and misadventures, like a cynical person amused with the distresses of children. Over against that cynical humour, it may be our part to promote in life the mood of the kindly person, still regarding people very much as children, but, like Serenus, with “a great pity for them, a great indulgence.”
M. Lemaitre has many and varied interests, a marked individuality of his own amid them all, and great literary accomplishments. His success in the present volume might well encourage him to undertake a work of larger scope, — to add to his other excellent gifts, in the prolonged treatment of some one of those many interests, that great literary gift of patience.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE, AUGUST 25, 1888
PROSE as a fine art, of which French literature affords a continuous illustration, had in Gustave Flaubert a follower, unique in the decisiveness of his conception of that art and the disinterestedness of his service to it Necessitated by weak health to the regularity and the quiet of a monk, he was but kept the closer to what he had early recognised as his vocation in life. By taking care, he lived to be almost sixty years old, in the full use of his gift, as we may suppose, and he wrote seven or eight books, none of them lengthy. “Neglect nothing,” he writes to a friend. “Labour! Do the thing over again, and don’t leave your work till you feel convinced you have brought it to the last point of perfection possible for you. In these days genius is not rare. But what no one has now, what we should try to have, is the conscience of one’s work.” To that view he was faithful; and he had, and keeps, his reward. So sparing as a writer of books, he was a voluminous letter-writer. A volume of his letters to George Sand appeared in 1883. In 1887 his niece, for many years his intimate companion, published the first portion of his general correspondence, and it is the purpose of this paper to note some of the lights thrown by it on himself and on his work.
Gustave Flaubert was born at Rouen in 1821. His earliest home was in the old Maison-Dieu, of which his father was surgeon. The surgeon’s household was self-respecting, affectionate, refined, liberal in expense; but the inevitable associations of the place — the suffering, white-capped faces at the windows — stayed by the susceptible lad, and passed into his work as a somewhat overbalanced sense of unhappiness in things. More cheerful influences came with the purchase of a country house at Croisset, a few miles down the Seine, on the right bank, “white, and in the old style.” In after years Flaubert delighted to believe that Pascal, that great master of prose, had once visited it. It was here, in the large rooms, the delightful garden, with views of Rouen, the busy river, the wooded hills, that the remainder of Flaubert’s life was chiefly spent. His letters show that the feeling of vocation to literature came early; oddly enough, for he was no precocious child, and took a longer time than is usual in learning to read. From the first he was abundant in enthusiasm for the literary art of others. In early youth he meets Victor Hugo, and is surprised to find him much like any one else externally, wondering at “the greatness of the treasure contained in so ordinary a casket,” fixing his eyes devoutly “on the right hand which had written so many beautiful things.” He was a singularly beautiful child, and records that royal ladies had stopped their carriages to take him in their arms and kiss him. By its vigour and beauty, again, his youth made people thi
nk of the young demigods of Greek sculpture. Then, somewhere in early manhood, came an alarm regarding health, both bodily and mental; and from that time to his death he continued more or less of an invalid, or at least a valetudinarian, enjoying life, indeed, its work, his gift, but always with an undercurrent of nervous distress, “To practical life,” he writes at twenty-four, “I have said an irrevocable adieu. Hence, for a long time to come, all I ask is five or six hours of quiet in my own room daily, a big fire in the winter, and two candles every evening to give me light”: again, “I am well enough, now that I have consented to be always ill”: and again, “My life seems arranged now after a regular plan with less large, less varied horizons, but the deeper perhaps, because more restrained. You would not believe what mischief any sort of derangement causes me.” Henceforth a sort of sacerdotal order is impressed everywhere. In the quiet house his writing-table is before him, reverently covered with all its apparatus of work, under a light silken cloth, when a visitor is announced: his life slides early into even grooves; an organisation naturally exquisite becomes fastidious. He was still, at carefully-guarded hours, abundant in friendship, in the good-humour, and the humour or wit, which attaches and amuses friends. After all, there was plenty of laughter, not always satiric, in his life. And then an intimate domestic affection, so largely evidenced in these letters, making heavy demands from time to time on his patience, his self-denial, and procuring him in return immense consideration, was a necessity alike of his personal and his literary life. It is a very human picture, with average battles and sorrows and joys, quite like those of the bourgeois he so greatly despised, but for him with all the joys also, all the various intellectual adventure, of the artistic life, followed loyally as an end in itself. The quiet people he quietly loves are a relaxation from the somewhat over-intent character of his “art,” while they supply some of its motives. And the enforced monotony of a recluse life is in their favour. “To take pleasure in a place it is necessary to have lived there long. One day is not enough for warming one’s nest.” Yet in spite of bad health, in spite of his love of retirement, of routine, his passion for a recluse life, he had been, at least for a Frenchman, a good deal of a traveller. Foreign travel — mental, and as far as might be physical, journeys — to the old classical lands, the desert, the wondrous East, the very matter of his work was in considerable measure dependent upon that. Rapid yet penetrative notice of the places he visits animates his correspondence. The student of his writings — so brief a list! — is glad to add to them the record of a journey to Brittany in 1847, written in “collaboration” with his travelling companion, M. Maxime du Camp. He visited many parts of France, above all, the grand old Pagan towns of the South, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, “a brave country, still virgin as to the bourgeois, who have not yet arrived to degrade it with their admiration, a country ardent and grave, all red and black.” At last, with a thousand daily solicitudes for the poor old mother left at Croisset, came his long journey to Syria and Egypt, the record of which fills the last hundred pages of the volume before us.