Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  Berthoud’s most successful book after the Chroniques et traditions surnaturelles de la Flandre was probably his account of the life of Pierre-Paul Rubens (1840), initially published as a supplement to the Musée des Familles, but he followed it up with a long series of novels, most of which were “domestic melodramas” slanted at the same audience as the Musée des Familles, beginning with La Bague antique (1842), a title confusingly attached to two two-volume novels (neither of which has any connection with the similarly-titled short story translated herein) and continuing with Berthe Frémicourt (1843), L’Enfant sans mère [The Motherless Child] and Le Fils du rabbin [The Rabbi’s Son] (1844), Daniel (1845) and Mémoires de ma cuisinière [My Cook’s Memoirs] (1846). He did other work alongside the series that reflected his wider interests, including La Palette d’or [The Golden Palette] (1845). The series of his publications might well have continued unabated had it not been brought to an abrupt halt by the revolution of 1848, when—as Berthoud points out in one of the mock-autobiographical stories included herein—men of letters suddenly found themselves with a lot of leisure time because the entire economy had ground to a halt.

  Berthoud undoubtedly kept up his journalistic work throughout the decade prior to the 1848 Revolution, and was active as a feuilletonist too, although the evidence of that activity thus far reproduced on gallica is patchy. Several of his works were, however, reprinted in the annual omnibuses Echo des Feuilletons and the Revue des Feuilletons, some volumes of which are available on gallica. The samples include “Voyage au ciel,” originally published in Girardin’s La Presse in 1841; how extensive his contributions were to that paper it is presently impossible to tell. One publication that is partially reproduced on gallica to which Berthoud made numerous contributions, however, is the devoutly Romantic Revue Pittoresque; among the three stories he published there in 1844 were “Le Maître du temps,” here translated as “The Master of the Weather,” and “Le Fou,” here translated as “The Madman,” both of which have evident thematic links with “Voyage au ciel.”

  All three stories are accounts of scientific obsession, but they are distanced somewhat from precious tales of “mad scientists” by virtue of their treatment of the theme. All three stories feature scientists who are, to begin with, not merely sane but exceptionally so—more so, in fact, than the uncomprehending neighbors whose incomprehension and diffidence routinely play a part, sometimes crucially, in driving them mad. Their eventual and seemingly inevitable annihilation by overwhelming compulsive obsession is presented as stark tragedy, akin in a more than merely metaphorical sense, to martyrdom.

  There might have been other stories in that group published in other periodicals; Fantaises scientifiques de Sam, which reprinted “Voyage au ciel” and “Le Fou”—the latter in a section revealingly headed “Martyrs”—contains another possible candidate that has close thematic links with them, “Le Second soleil,” here translated as “The Second Sun,” which slots in between “Voyage au Ciel” and “Le Fou” in developmental terms; it is possible, however, that that appearance is deceptive, and that it was a later addition to the group.

  The longer of the two stories that Berthoud contributed to the Revue Pittoresque in 1845 also belongs to the set, and adds further layers of complication to the basic pattern, thus becoming a very peculiar story indeed. Although it is impossible to tell, at present, whether Berthoud added any further stories to the sequence thereafter, there certainly seems to be an element of conclusion about the story in question, “Le Chaudron de Bicêtre” (1845), here translated as “The Cauldron of Bicêtre,” which not only complicates and confuses the thread running through the series but almost seems to break it off deliberately and throw it away.

  “Le Chaudron de Bicêtre” can easily be imagined as a pivotal work in Berthoud’s career; it is a kind of summation of his more exotic endeavors so far, being an extended conte cruel in a form that as later to become one of the standard templates of that genre, and a tale of diabolism, the force of which is only slightly diminished a frame narrative placing it in the mouth of an inmate of the lunatic asylum at Bicêtre. It is also, however, an account of fatal compulsive obsession and frustrated scientific discovery, in exactly the same fashion as its three (or perhaps four) recent predecessors.

  “Voyage au ciel” and “Le Maître du temps” both feature fictitious scientists—as does “Le Second soleil”—but “Le Fou” broke that pattern by using an actual scientist as its protagonist, after the fashion of so many of Berthoud’s historical romances, although the story constructed around his name and career is a drastic distortion of the history of the real individual. “Le Chaudron de Bicêtre” continues that pattern, again featuring an actual historical individual as its doomed inventor, but again playing fast and loose with actual history in a fashion that would seem extraordinarily reckless even without the supernatural element. It might conceivably have been complaints about such cavalier distortions of fact that persuaded Berthoud to take things a little easier in future; while few of his other stories featuring real individuals can be commended for their accuracy and authenticity, most are far more conscientious in treating their heroes than “Le Chaudron de Bicêtre.”

  In order to avoid spoilers I shall say no more about “Le Fou” and “Le Chaudron de Bicêtre” here, but I shall add afterwords to both stories to explain the actual histories of their central characters, neither of whom would have been a household name in Paris in 1844-45 and who will almost certainly be unfamiliar to modern readers. It is, however, worth making in advance the general observation that what seems to have struck Berthoud most forcibly when he began to investigate the history of science in the 1830s and 1840s was the extreme disillusionment suffered by some scientists as a result of society’s misunderstanding of their endeavors and indifference to their achievements. That, at least, seems to have the chief aspect of scientific endeavor with which he identified himself imaginatively.

  The five stories that I have gathered into the “Martyrs” section of the present sampler are certainly Berthoud’s most interesting attempts to invent a form of “scientific fiction,” and are all the more interesting because they remain so distinctive—indeed, effectively unique; there is nothing else in the historical record of precursors of modern science fiction quite like them. They are interesting both because of the detail in the accounts they offer of the allegedly-typical psychology of scientists, in terms of their obsessiveness and social awkwardness—“Voyage au ciel,” in particular, contains what would now be recognized as a textbook description of Asperger’s syndrome—and because of their insistence on the hostile manner in which the scientists’ fellow men react to their eccentricities. As to why Berthoud found that kind of plight ripe for passionate identification, we can only speculate, although the attitude and depth of feeling of the Contes misanthropiques and such cynical items of fakelore as “Saint-Mathias l’ermite” (here translated as “Saint Mathias the Hermit”) probably offer a clue.

  Because all his accounts of hypothetical scientific discoveries are set in the past, Berthoud had to find narrative means of obliterating them all from the historical record: a strategy that prevented him from extrapolating their possible social and intellectual consequences, and thus prevented him from inventing a kind of fiction more akin to modern science fiction. What it did enable him to do, however, by way of partial compensation, was to construct a striking account of the frustrations of genius occasioned by ambient incomprehension, and to give that account a particular dimension of tragedy. That achievement is certainly not without interest, and it is worthy of praise as well as attention.

  Berthoud’s popularity and perceived importance in this phase of his career is reflected in the fact that he was appointed a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1844, but it is likely that his endeavors on behalf of the education of the masses had more responsibility for that award than his reputation among his literary peers; at the very best, he would have been ranked alongside some of the other “f
oot-soldiers” of Romanticism who contributed extensively to the Revue pittoresque, such as Joseph Méry, Jules Janin and Léon Gozlan, and he might well have been ranked some way beneath them because of the increasing banality of his didactic novels. In that context, the short stories he did for the Revue Pittoresque can probably be considered his most ambitious work, and might also be considered as a peak of aspiration that he did not attempt to scale again.

  It is profoundly unclear, from the record provided in gallica, exactly what Berthoud was doing throughout the 1850s, although he certainly resumed regular publication once the most difficult months of the Second Republic were over. He published the Algeria-set The Zéphir d’El Arouch [The Soldier of El Arouch] (1850)—one of two books he published about that country, which he might well have visited in the mid-1840s—and La Vierge de Tasse [Tasso’s Virgin] (1851) in spite of the continued economic difficulties, and had a number of plays produced during the Second Republic, including L’Anneau de Salomon, légende hollandaise (1850 at the Théâtre des Variétés). It appears that he became a regular contributor to the newspaper Le Pays in 1849, although he subsequently transferred his primary allegiance to La Patrie, where the bulk of the non-fictional materials reprinted in the Fantaisies scientifiques probably made their original appearance.

  It seems to have been in the 1850s that Berthoud settled down to work primarily as a popularizer of science and commentator on scientific progress, but he did other work as well, including a good deal of fiction for children, and might well have been active as an editor in that field, although the evidence for that is indirect. By that time, the Romantic Movement as such was a thing of the past and all of its leading contributors had moved on, although those who became and remained famous all maintained its ideals in one form or another.

  Many of the leading members of the Movement had a hard time after 1951, especially those who had accepted positions in the government of the Second Republic, including Victor Hugo, Edgar Quinet, Alphonse de Lamartine (its first, provisional, President), Jules Hetzel and Eugène Sue. Many were formally exiled following Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état, and not all of them consented to return when offered amnesty a few years later. Where Berthoud stood is not entirely clear—his works exhibit an almost total disregard for contemporary politics—but his long-time employer, Émile de Girardin, started out as one of Louis-Napoléon’s most enthusiastic supporters when he was a candidate for the presidency of the Republic, and then became one of his diehard opponents when he proclaimed himself emperor. Berthoud’s association with him must have been potentially problematic, and it might have been the case that Berthoud found it politic to distance himself from Girardin; at any rate, his eventual association with the conservative and imperialist La Patrie suggested that he accommodated himself comfortably within that camp. If so, that might help to explain why Jules Hetzel, when he accepted amnesty and returned from exile, does not seem to have had any dealings with Berthoud, who would otherwise have seemed an ideal contributor to, if not a collaborator with, the “family magazines” that Hetzel founded and promoted so enthusiastically in the late 1850s and 1860s.

  When there was a new boom in periodical production, book production and the popularization of science in the early 1860s, however, Berthoud was more than ready to capitalize on it on his own account, and his publications in volume form became prolific again throughout the decade. With specific regard to the popularization of science, he became the editor of and leading contributor to the annual Petites chroniques de la science (1861-72) and in addition to the four volumes of Fantaisies scientifiques he published several other volumes of popularizing fiction, most notably Contes du Dr. Sam [Tales of Dr. Sam] (1862), L’Homme depuis cinq mille ans, Les Féeries de la science [The Enchantments of Science] (1866) and Les Soirées du Dr. Sam [Dr. Sam’s Evening Entertainments] (1871), all of them slanted toward juvenile readers. Les Cassette des sept amis (The Seven Friends’ Casket] (1869) is similar in structure, although its inclusions are mostly unconcerned with scientific themes. He also published a series of orthodox non-fictional popularizations, including Causeries sur les insectes [Conversations about Insects] (1862), Le Monde des insectes [The World of Insects] (1864), L’Esprit des oiseaux [The Intelligence of Birds] (1867) and Les Os d’un géant, histoire familière du globe terrestre avant les hommes [A Giant’s Bones: An Informal History of the Terrestrial Globe Before Humankind] (1868).

  These works were, however, part of a veritable deluge. Having published no volumes at all in the later 1850s, and only one in 1860, he published no less than thirteen in 1861, and half a dozen more in 1862, many of which must have been written during the 1850s; which of them had appeared in periodicals and merely awaited reprinting and which had simply been stockpiled, it is difficult to tell. Few of them are readily available for consultation, but the titles suggest that most of them were children’s stories—at least ten appeared in a series of publications for children—and that others continued the series of sentimental melodramas developed in the 1840s. Those that appear to be novels include La Belle limonadière du Palais-Royal [The Beautiful Lemonade-Seller of the Palais-Royal] (1861), Étienne le Manchot [One-Armed Étienne] (1861), Histoire d’un meunier et ses enfants [The Story of a Miler and his Children] (1861), La Petite Columbelle ou Aventures d’un tisserand [Little Columbelle; or, The Adventures of a Weaver] (1861). Le phénomène vivant: histoire de la Saint-Barthélemy [The Living Phenomenon: The Story of Saint Bartholomew] (1861), Quinze ans de la vie d’une femme [Fifteen Years in a Woman’s Life] (1861), L’Enfant du mystère, un tyran en jupon [The Mystery Child: A Petticoat Tyrant] (1862) and Les Femmes vengées [The Avenged Women] (1863), while volumes of shorter works include Les Aventures d’un bossu, suivies de l’histoire du lion Daniel [The Adventures of a Hunchback and The Story of the Lion Daniel] (1861), La Fidèle servante, suivi des Aventures de Burgett [The Faithful Maidservant, and The Adventures of Burgett] (1861), Lectures des soirées d’hiver [Readings for Winter Evenings] (1862), Contes à Dodo et à Dedele [Tales for Dodo and Dedele] (1863) and Histoires pour les petits et pour les grands enfants [Stories for Little and Big Children] (1863).

  In addition to these works of fiction, Berthoud also published several non-fiction works unrelated to his studies of natural history, including three works on what might loosely be termed “marriage guidance,” which suggest that he must have contributed to the specialist women’s magazines of the 1850s. “Le Château de Heidenloch,” translated herein as “Heindenloch Castle” was published in the June 1962 issue of the Journal des Demoiselles—a long-running magazine aimed primarily at teenage girls—without a by-line before being reprinted in Contes du Dr. Sam, and it is impossible to guess how many other unsigned contributions he might have made to that and other publications of a similar sort. Other works that were probably based on articles in women’s magazines include La Nouvelle et veritable Morale en action [The New and True Morality in Action] (1861), Le Nouveau jardin d’amour, précédé du Conseiller conjugal [The New Garden of Love, preceded by the Marriage Guidance Counselor] (1861) and Le Veritable tableau de l’amour conjugal d’après les écrivains le plus célèbres de l’antiquité et des temps modernes [The True Depiction of Conjugal Love, According to the Most Famous Writers of Antiquity and Modern Times] (1863).

  Other areas represented in his non-fiction publications of the 1860s include an interest in the occult fringe of the history of science, represented in Le Grand Albert et ses secrets magiques et merveilleux [Albertus Magnus and His Magical and Marvelous Secrets] (1861) and further illustrated by Le Dragon rouge ou l’Art de commander au démon et aux esprits infernaux [The Red Dragon; or, The Art of Commanding Demons and Infernal Spirits] (1865), which is presumably either a reprint of or a commentary on the eponymous grimoire, from which Berthoud had quoted in some of his fakeloristic tales, including “Saint-Mathias l’ermite.” Le Baiser du diable [The Devil’s Kiss] (1861) might conceivably belong to this group, although it might as easily be a novel whose
title is purely metaphorical.

  This glut of book publication obtained Berthoud a second round of popularity and celebrity, and a promotion to the rank of officier in the Légion d’honneur in 1867. The brief description of his lifestyle contained in “L’An deux mille huit cent soixante-cinq” (1865; herein translated as “The Year 2865”) is confirmed by one of the few journalistic sketches available, contained in Jules Brisson and Félix Ribeyre’s Les Grands Journaux de France (1862); he really did live in a house cluttered with books and his various collections of specimens, in company with a dog named Master Flock and a pet lemur he called Mademoiselle Mine.

  As in the 1840s, however, history interrupted his career yet again, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 brought further economic and political upheavals. Once again he continued his career as best he could, but he was now getting old, and he slowed down drastically; apart from reprints of earlier works, he only published a handful of books during the Third Republic, of which the most significant are La Botanique au village [Village Botany] (1874) and Histoires et romans des végétaux [Histories and Romances of Vegetable Life] (1882). By the time he died, on 26 March 1891, he was virtually forgotten, and remained so throughout the 20th century.

  It is arguable that everything Berthoud did in the course of his checkered career was done better by other people—that he was, in effect, a second-rate writer of limited interest. That certainly seems to have been the prevailing view within his lifetime as well as thereafter. Even if that were true, however, it would not detract from the fact that he was a genuine pioneer, and that he did at least do several significant things before the people who then went on to improve on his efforts. In fact, though, he was a writer of considerable ability, who might have spent a great deal of his time “free-wheeling” in the comfortable production of routinized work, but whose best efforts are certainly meritorious. His Contes misanthropiques are occasionally awkward in construction, but they do have a genuine bite as well as an experimental verve. The same is true of the best of his supernatural stories, which are not necessarily shown off to their best advantage by being buried in a supposed collection of antiquarian folklore.