by Ouida
He says in another place, ‘Italians have no imagination.’ This is but partially true; I am not sure that it is true at all. Their modern poetry is beautiful, more beautiful than that of any other nation. Their popular songs are poetic and impassioned as those of no other nation are, and one may hear among their peasantry expressions of singular beauty of sentiment and phrase. A woman of middle age, a contadina, said to me once, ‘So long as one’s mother lives, one’s youth is never quite gone, for there is always somebody for whom one is young.’ A rough, rude man, a day labourer, who knew not a letter, and spent all his life bent over his spade or plough, said to me once, one lovely night in spring, as he looked up at the full moon, ‘How beautiful she is! But she has no heart. She sees us toiling and groaning and suffering down here, and she is always fair and calm, and never weeps!’ Another said once, when a tree was hard to fell, ‘He is sorry to come away, it has been his field so long.’ And when a flock of solan geese flew over our lands, going from the Marches to the mountains on their homeward way, and descended to rest, the peasants did not touch them: ‘They are tired, poor souls,’ said one of the women; ‘one must not grudge them the soil for their lodging.’ Surely such ideas as these in people wholly uneducated indicate imagination in the speakers?
And what can he possibly mean by no poets, which he says in another place? Has he never read a line of Carducci? Much as we may mourn and resent Carducci’s turncoat and reactionary politics, no one can deny that he is a poet of the purest kind. Has he never heard the ringing stanzas of Cavallotti which sound like a clarion through the land? Has he never studied the exquisite if too erotic odes of D’Annunzio, or the touching verse of Stecchetti? There are others besides these who are true and fine poets also; and even in the ordinary verses written for newspapers (which in other countries are so poor and tawdry) there is frequently in Italy a true and delicate feeling and an adorable lyrical harmony which make one mourn to see things so fair wasted on so ephemeral a life.
It is through their imagination still more than by their vanity that Italians are led by unscrupulous political flattery and cajoled into disastrous political enterprises. They will believe anything if it be sufficiently captivating to their self-admiration and their fancy, and will dance blindfold on the brink of a bottomless pit. It is only an imaginative people who love so wildly, and kill themselves so madly for affection’s sake, as the Italian people do. The other day, because a young soldier was sent to Africa, his brother killed himself in despair, and the father of the two youths then killed himself also. It is an inflammable imagination which makes the nation so easily led away by the promises and the phantasmagoria of glory with which unscrupulous statesmen have enticed it to the brink of ruin. It was its imagination which made it so credulous that when told by its victors that the disgraceful surrender of Makale was a victory, it believed and rejoiced, illuminated and hung out flags, and never saw what a dupe it was being made until cruelly awakened from its delusions by the déroute of Abbu Carima.
Mr Crawford has lived chiefly in cities, and in the cities, even in Rome, the Italian is much debased by contact with foreigners; the influence of foreigners on Italians is excessively bad, especially American and English influence; and in the cities also the preponderance of Jews is great. Innumerable persons who call themselves by Italian names and speak of Italy as their country are Jews and nothing else. A Finnish Jew known to me buys an Italian estate, and with the estate a title, which, by the payment of a large sum to a complaisant Government, he is allowed to adopt; he is decorated by the king for his munificent ‘charities’ in the land of his adoption; he marries an English woman, and their children masquerade as Italian nobility with not a single drop of Italian blood in their veins. Such ‘Italian nobles’ are numerous, unhappily, in modern Italy, and do immeasurable discredit to the nationality which they assume. In a generation or two their origin will be forgotten, and they will be taken by society in general to be what they pretend to be. Thus, unhappily, are great nations caricatured, old titles prostituted, and Italy accredited with sons not her own, with pretended offspring who are not even her bastards; persons who impudently affect her name and boast of her blood, when not one single hair of their head or fibre of their flesh has any affiliation to her.
What stifles Italian imagination, and kills the Italian soul, is the passion for money; pure acquisitiveness or avarice, for the desire is to get, little or no pleasure is taken in spending. It is often alleged that this passion is due to their poverty; but poverty is not necessarily accompanied by avarice; the Irish people are very poor, but they are extremely generous; the Spanish people are so also. A comical instance of this stinginess occurred the other day at Milan: a rich tradesman had built himself a fine set of new premises, and opened his new establishment with much feasting; he sent fifteen francs to the municipality to be divided among the poor, and everyone applauded his liberality! This love of money, acquisitiveness, niggardliness, or whatever we call it, is too general not to be injurious to the Italian character; and it enters into all daily life and personal acts, and is frequently the chief motor power of marriage, of career, of education. And then added to this injurious power there is another which is more deleterious still, which weakens, debases, and falsifies the character from infancy: it is the direful influence of the Church. But to treat of this matter would occupy too much space, and would lead too far away from the stories of Mr Crawford, in which there is an unfortunate tendency towards approval of what he calls hierarchical government, although a tendency not strongly enough insisted on by him for it to demand minute examination. The powers of Mr Crawford, however, are limited by the narrowness of what is called religion, and the inability to see the higher side of these subversive opinions which he dreads, and which he has done his best to turn into ridicule by putting them into the mouth of the half-mad artist Marzio.
Indeed, his bigotry on religious subjects is very droll to see in these days; and he speaks of ‘unbelievers’ in a tone worthy of Puritans in the days of the Mayflower pilgrims. It does not agree with the tone of his books, which is invariably the tone of a man of the world; as such he should possess that liberality of thought which is the chief, perhaps the only, virtue of his generation; and if he had possessed it he would undoubtedly have reached a much higher level, a much finer ideal, than he has actually done. It would seem as if he distrusted and checked the larger intelligence in him, as an over-cautious rider distrusts and checks a horse which only asks to be given a free rein to go at speed over a wide pasture; it would seem as if some extraneous ‘influence’ were always at his elbow to keep his reason cribbed, cabined and confined.
His religious prejudices have contributed to arrest his intellectual development, for they are puritanical and antiquated in a singular and lamentable degree. He speaks of liberi pensatori as the Church elders of Maine or Massachusetts might have done in the days of witch-torturing and atheist-burning. He thinks that the future great war will be between what he calls believers and unbelievers; and he looks forward with joy to the coming conflict when men shall again fly at each other’s throat for the glory of God. This kind of mental cecity has its inevitable results: it makes him step lamely where he would otherwise walk with manly alacrity, and it makes him afraid to face the light of facts which his truer instincts tell him are existing and incontrovertible. Is this the result of early education, of hereditary inclinations, of female or ecclesiastical influence? I do not know; but come whence it may, this taint of bigotry obscures his intelligence and stops his progress, and is matter of profound regret to those who see what he would have been without it.
Many passages in his works show that he has perceived and grasped the universal dominance of that corruption which so fatally exists in all Italian life, and one could wish that he would make a more complete exposure of it. Take this account of how the banker, Del Ferice, obtained the decoration for a syndic who was one of his political supporters: —
‘Del Ferice, left to himself,
returned to the question of the mayor’s decoration. If he failed to get the man what he wanted, the fellow would doubtless apply to someone of the opposite party, would receive the coveted honour, and would take the whole voting population with him at the next general election, to the total discomfiture of Del Ferice.
It was necessary to find some valid reason for proposing him for the distinction. He could not decide what to do just then, but he ultimately hit upon a successful plan. He advised his correspondent to write a pamphlet upon the rapid improvement of agricultural interests in his district under the existing Ministry, and he even went so far as to compose and send some notes on the subject. These notes proved to be so voluminous and complete, that when the mayor had copied them he could not find a pretext for adding a single word or correction. They were printed upon excellent paper with ornamental margins under the title of Onward, Parthenope! The mayor got his decoration and Del Ferice was re-elected, but no one has ever inquired into the truth of the statements contained in the pamphlet.’
These passages and others similar give one the conviction that Mr Crawford, if he had ‘let himself go,’ might have been a satirist of no slight force. He has preferred to write charming stories, ingenious in construction, but slight in development, to amuse his generation; yet there is, I think, abundant evidence that he might have done stronger things, perhaps may do them still. He has preferred to lead a seagull’s life, skimming the surface of the deep and shunning its storms. But he might have led the petrel’s. Probably all the influences of an agreeable social existence have tended to make him indolent and unwilling to raise tempests in it. Few resist the pressure of a social atmosphere. His book called With the Immortals, marred as it is by the incongruity and impossibility of its setting, shows that he can reflect if he likes, and can express his reflections. If this work had been cast in such a form as Mr Mallock’s New Republic, or Sir Arthur Helps’ Friends in Council, or Christopher North’s Noctes Ambrosianæ it would have been remarkable for the arguments and dialogues contained in it. But the ghost-element, the supernatural scenic effects, kill its excellence. Dr Johnson, Heine, Pascal, Bayard, François de Valois and Cæsar are too ill-assorted for us to accept them in each other’s company, and the idea of these dead men being all able to converse in English, and all doomed to wear through ages the clothes they wore in life, is so comical that it destroys all interest and illusion which their conversation otherwise might excite. There is a regrettable inability in Mr Crawford to perceive the ridiculous. He lacks humour, and the perception of the incongruous is not alive in him; nor is there either any poetic feeling in his way of regarding life. He is essentially a citizen of the world as the world exists in this last quarter of the fast-fading century, and the Sirens sing not for him, though he dwells upon their shores.
Let him, therefore, appreciate more thoroughly his own very admirable powers, and confine himself to painting the men and women of his time and class, with all that cosmopolitan knowledge of them which he possesses. I should like to see from him an Italian novel of modern political life. He has, I make no doubt, had ample opportunities of studying its machinery and its intrigues. He can dissect with so much subtlety and correctness the brain and the temper of such a man as Del Ferice, that there can be no doubt a political novel from him, placed in Rome, would have alike accuracy and interest and irony. But he must clear his mind of some of its cobwebs, and he must realise that the ‘unbelievers’ and revolutionists, who at present horrify him, constitute the keenest intellectual element in Italy, indeed, the only healthy one, and contain the only hope there is, if this be but a feeble one, of any attainment by the nation in the future to any true liberty and cleanliness in political aims.
I cannot conclude these few remarks upon his Italian stories without a word of thanks to him for the pleasant hours he has often given me, and the gallery of interesting portraits with which he has enriched the memory of all those who read his novels.
IV. LE SECRET DU PRÉCEPTEUR
At the opening ceremony of a new free library at Lambeth in London, not many weeks ago, Sir John Lubbock is reported to have made the following remarks regarding fiction: —
‘Sir J. Lubbock, in moving a vote of thanks to the Prince of Wales and the Princess Louise, remarked that the free libraries of London now contained more than 250,000 books, whilst last year over 100,000 people borrowed volumes, and on more than 2,500,000 occasions books were used in the libraries themselves. It was a fallacy to suppose that public libraries were only used by novel readers. The proportion of works of fiction used in the Camberwell libraries was only 65 per cent., and, of course, in this percentage were included nearly all the books used by children. It must also be borne in mind that it took a great deal longer to read a history or a work of science than it did to run through a story. Under these circumstances he thought it might fairly be said that the people of London exercised a very good choice in the books they read. He himself should be very sorry to undervalue novels. Even nonsense was extremely refreshing, and he thought the English people had learnt more of their history from novels and from Shakespeare’s plays than from books of history.’
In these few sentences there are embraced the views entertained in general by the English nation with regard to the art of fiction. By the English nation it is, and probably always will be, regarded as on a par with chromo-lithography, the use of the kodak, and tight-rope dancing.
‘Even nonsense is refreshing,’ says this kind defender of romance. He might have added that this depends very much on the character of the nonsense; there is dull nonsense, strained nonsense, self-conscious nonsense, vulgar nonsense, which is duller than a dull sermon and heavier than heavy bread; the nonsense which dilates and delights the heart of the coarse and common fool, is as a stagnant and stinking pond to the cultured mind; and true nonsense, i.e., jeux d’esprit, caricatures, parodies, ‘exquisite fooling,’ does not come under the head of novels at all.
Someone had apparently been objecting to the creation of free libraries on the score that they were chiefly used by readers of fiction, and in support of such libraries Sir John Lubbock (not venturing to make so heterodox an assertion as that the perusal of fiction per se is valuable and desirable) pleads that only sixty-five per cent. of the books borrowed were novels, and refers to the rapidity with which a novel can be ‘run through,’ as he phrases it, and proceeds, as an excuse for the perusal of fiction, to state that the English public chiefly derives its knowledge of history from novels and from Shakespeare’s plays. This declaration, which is enough to make Mr Freeman turn in his grave, and Mr Froude writhe in his professorial chair, is, I believe, based on an exact truth, but it never appears to occur to the speaker that while the history to be learned from fiction and the drama is not of the purest kind, the fine art of an admirable book, as of an admirable play, contains many another lesson more valuable than even those of correct history to the reader who is capable of assimilating and appreciating it.
Sir John Lubbock kindly adds that he should be ‘very sorry to undervalue novels.’ Sweet and gracious condescension! He would be sorry to ‘undervalue’ Boccaccio, Cervantes, Guerrazzi, Théophile Gautier, Merimée, Victor Hugo, Thackeray, Walter Scott, Fielding, Octave Feuillet, Georges Sand, and Bulwer Lytton! Admirable benevolence! A treatise on the ways of ants or bees must, of course, rank as an infinitely higher work than a mere study of the manners, characters, and passions of mankind. To peruse the former work is education; to read the latter work is recreation, not absolutely injurious, perhaps, but scarcely beneficial. Sir John Lubbock on an ant-hill has the sublimity of the scientist: Alphonse Daudet on human nature is a mere trumpery trifler.
It does not appear even to occur to Sir John Lubbock that a fine novel contains intellectual qualities of the highest kind, and combines in itself the widest effects and the most delicate minutiæ of creative art. A fine novel should be no more ‘run through’ than the sculptures of the Vatican or the pictures of the Uffizi should be run through
in ignorance and haste: common readers, like common tourists, may do so, but to do so is as gross and unpardonable an insult to the book as it is to the sculptures and the paintings.
Reflect but a moment upon all the divers and numerous qualities which are of necessity existent in the creator of a fine novel before it can be produced; not only imagination but wit, not only wit but scholarship, not only scholarship but fancy, not only fancy but discrimination, observation, knowledge of the passions, sympathy with the most opposite temperaments, the power to call up character from the void, as the sculptor creates figures from the clay, and, for amalgamating, condensing, and vivifying all these talents, the mastery of an exquisite subtlety, force, and eloquence in language. All these various gifts must be united in one writer before a fine novel can be produced; and when it is produced it requires (to be duly estimated) as cultured and as respectful a study of it as an educated traveller would take to the Vatican or to the Uffizi.
I have derived month by month, as it has appeared in the Révue des Deux Mondes, the most delicate and acute pleasure from the perusal of Le Secret du Précepteur, yet it is a pleasure which can only be obtained from it by a serene, leisurely, artistic enjoyment of its exquisite literary qualities. It is like a wine of which the bouquet can only be appreciated by educated palates. There is but little movement in it; the incident is slight, the situations derive their fascination for the reader not from their violence or their singularity, but from their perfect probability, and from their psychological interests; and the whole tone of it is kept carefully throughout to the smooth bantering semi-gouailleur tone of the opening recital. Ah, that style! — clear as water, delicate, full of grace, limpid, harmonious, exquisite! It has all the polished charm of the man of the world, and all the eloquence and brilliancy of the artist. I have heard a great ambassador in a beautiful tapestried chamber play the music of Schumann and Chopin and Bach with admirable and sympathetic maestria; the style of Cherbuliez reminds me of that diplomât-virtuose. We hear incessantly of the magical style of Paul Bourget; but beside the style of Cherbuliez that of Bourget is strained, tortuous, affected, artificial. The supreme excellence of that of Cherbuliez is its consummate ease, like the ease of a perfect manner in society. To employ all the resources of such a style is as great a delight to the master of it as the use of the rapier to the master of fencing, as the handling of the plastic clay to the sculptor. To relate a narrative in such a style is as warm and full a pleasure to the possessor of it as it is to the painter to create a winter’s night or summer’s day, youth or age, dawn or moonlight, a dance of nymphs, or a frolic of fauns, out of a few ground earths, a little oil, and a square of canvas. But to appreciate it the reader of it must bring with him some qualities on his own behalf.