A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1

by George Saintsbury

  CHAPTER I

  INTRODUCTORY

  [Sidenote: The early history of prose fiction.]

  Although I have already, in two places,[4] given a somewhat preciseaccount of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term,and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modernliterature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated inancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subjectwith a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter ofpractically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worthwhile to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before theChristian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunatelystill fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the leastpart" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the _telling_ ofthe story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the _Odyssey_ at anyrate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all),and Xenophon[5] are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story,for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those ofthe Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong"_ethos_ of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story"character. In Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid;[6] of whomthe one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, andthe other, admirable _raconteur_ as he is, thinks first of his poetry.Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, andmay have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: thereare no entries for the competition.

  [Sidenote: The late classical stage.]

  In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of thingsalters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fictionproper--that is to say, either prose or verse in which theaccomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interestingtreatment of the subject--constitutes a very large department, or evenany regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person,and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius--thatfirst-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined--the actualfoundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius(strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) givesecurer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius;though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have stilla fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger numberof centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing,indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--itestablishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimesnot disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute orunpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane aboutthe application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe orto her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without theheroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though herindividuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.

  [Sidenote: A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance? The facts about thematter.]

  The connection between these curious performances (with the much largernumber of things like them which we know to have existed) on the oneside, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been atvarious times matter of considerable controversy; but it need nottrouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influenceon the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally calledby the same name as itself, it would seem[7] to have had next to none.Until we come to _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and perhaps _Parthenopex_,things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and sonecessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Easterninfluence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the samekinship to the Greek stories as the Old English _Apollonius of Tyre_,which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. Thesources of French "romance"--I must take leave to request a "truce ofGod" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for presentpurposes--appear to have been two--the Saint's Life and the patriotic orfamily _saga_, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by theMahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. Thestory-telling instinct--kindled by, or at first devoted to, thesesubjects--subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost allwas fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two greatsubjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale ofTroy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerousto proclaim a fourth "matter" (even if anybody had been likely to takethe view that it was so), these classifications are, like most of theirkind, more specious than satisfactory.

  [Sidenote: The power and influence of the "Saint's Life."]

  Any person--though indeed it is to be feared that the number of suchpersons is not very large--who has some knowledge of hagiology _and_some of literature will admit at once that the popular notion of aSaint's Life being necessarily a dull and "goody" thing is one of thefoolishest pieces of presumptuous ignorance, and one of the mostignorant pieces of foolish presumption. Not only have modern novelistssometimes been better informed and better inspired--as in the case ofmore than one version of the Legends of St. Mary of Egypt, of St.Julian, of Saint Christopher, and others--but there remain scores if nothundreds of beautiful things that have been wholly or all but whollyneglected. It is impossible to imagine a better romance, either in verseor in prose, than might have been made by William Morris if he had kepthis earliest loves and faiths and had taken the _variorum_ Legend of St.Mary Magdalene, as we have it in divers forms from quite early Frenchand English to the fifteenth-century English Miracle Play on thesubject. That of St. Eustace ("Sir Isumbras"), though old letters andmodern art have made something of it, has also never been fullydeveloped in the directions which it opens up; and one could name manyothers. But it has to be admitted that the French (whether, as somewould say, naturally enough or not) never gave the Saint's Life pure andsimple the development which it received in English. It started them--Iat least believe this--in the story-telling way; but cross-roads, tothem more attractive, soon presented themselves.

  [Sidenote: The Legend of St. Eulalia.]

  Still, it started them. I hope it is neither intolerably fanciful northe mere device of a compiler anxious to make his arrows of all wood, tosuggest that there is something noteworthy in the nature of the veryfirst piece of actual French which we possess. The Legend of St. Eulaliacan be tried pretty high; for we have[8] the third hymn of the_Peristephanon_ of Prudentius to compare it with. The metre of this

  Germine nobilis Eulalia

  is not one of the best, and contrasts ill with the statelydecasyllables--perhaps the very earliest examples of that mighty metrethat we have--which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised foritself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, ifa poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and aprosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows--_not_ of yewand _not_ cloth-yard shafts--when contrasted with the dialect andspeech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from somepoints of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ageswins. Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines,with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification. He wants to say thatEulalia was twelve years old; but he actually informs us that

  Curriculis tribus atque novem, Tres hyemes quater attigerat,

  and the whole history of the martyrdom is attitudinised and bedizened inthe same fashion.

  Now listen to the noble simplicity of the first French poet andtale-teller:

  A good maiden was Eulalia: fair had she the body, but the soul fairer. The enemies of God would fain conquer her--would fain make her serve the fiend. She listened not to the evil counsellors, that she should deny God, who abideth in Heaven aloft--neither for gold, nor for silver, nor for garments
; for the royal threatenings, nor for entreaties. Nothing could ever bend the damsel so that she should not love the service of God. And for that reason she was brought before Maximian, who was the King in those days over the pagans. And he exhorted her--whereof she took no care--that she should flee from the name of Christian. But she assembled all her strength that she might rather sustain the torments than lose her virginity: for which reason she died in great honour. They cast her in the fire when it burnt fiercely: but she had no fault in her, and so it pained her [_or_ she burnt[9]] not.

  To this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that Christ may upon us have mercy after death, and of His clemency may allow us to come to Him.

  [Sidenote: The _St. Alexis_.]

  Of course this is story-telling in its simplest form and on its smallestscale: but the essentials are there, and the non-essentials can beeasily supplied--as indeed they are to some extent in the _Life of St.Leger_ and to a greater in the _Life of St. Alexis_, which almost followthe _Sainte-Eulalie_ in the making of French literature. The _St.Alexis_ indeed provides something like a complete scheme of romanceinterest, and should be, though not translated (for it runs to between600 and 700 lines), in some degree analysed and discussed. It had, ofcourse, a Latin original, and was rehandled more than once or twice. Butwe have the (apparently) first French form, probably of the eleventhcentury. The theme is one of the commonest and one of the leastsympathetic in hagiology. Alexis is forced by his father, a rich Roman"count," to marry; and after (not before) the marriage, though of coursebefore its consummation, he deserts his wife, flies to Syria, andbecomes a beggar at Edessa. After a time, long enough to preventrecognition, he goes back to Rome, and obtains from his own family almsenough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by theservants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognisedforthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive _donnee_(there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed,either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes arather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, allthings considered; but he is something very different indeed fromdespicable as a tale-teller. To begin, or, strictly speaking, to endwith (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must bethe necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), hehas lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (mostunusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time ratheraudaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's"gustation of God" above:

  Without doubt is St. Alexis in Heaven, With him has he God in the company of the Angels, _With him the maiden to whom he made himself strange,_ _Now he has her close to him--together are their souls,_ _I know not how to tell you how great their joy is._[10]

  But there are earlier touches of that life which makes all literature,and tale-telling most of all. An opening on Degeneracy is scarcely oneof these, for this was, of course, a commonplace millenniums earlier,and it had the recent belief about the approaching end of the world atthe actual A.D. 1000 to prompt it. The maiden is "bought" for Alexisfrom her father or mother. Instead of the not unusual and ratherdistasteful sermons on virginity which later versions have, the futuresaint has at least the grace to accompany the return of the ring[11]with only a few words of renunciation of his spouse to Christ, and ofdeclaration that in this world "love is imperfect, life frail, and joymutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when searchfor the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroysits decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,[12] and who, whenthe final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashionwhich is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of _us_?Why hast thou not spoken to me _once_?" The bride has neither forgottennor resented: she only weeps her deserter's former beauty, and swears tohave no other spouse but God. The poem ends--or all but ends--in ahurly-burly of popular enthusiasm, which will hardly resign its newsaint to Pope or Emperor, till at last, after the usual miracles ofhealing, the body is allowed to rest, splendidly entombed, in the Churchof St. Boniface.

  Now the man who could thus, and by many other touches not mentioned, runblood into the veins of mummies,[13] could, with larger range of subjectand wider choice of treatment, have done no small things in fiction.

  But enough talk of might-have-beens: let us come to the things that weredone.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [4] The article "Romance" in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed.;and the volume on _The English Novel_ in Messrs. Dent's series "Channelsof English Literature," London, 1913.

  [5] Plato (or Socrates?) does it only on a small scale and partially,though there are the makings of a great novelist in the _Dialogues_.Apollonius Rhodius is the next verse-tale teller to Homer among theprae-Christian Greeks.

  [6] Virgil, in the only parts of the _Aeneid_ that make a good story, isfollowing either Homer or Apollonius.

  [7] To me at least the seeming seems to approach demonstration; and Ican only speak as I find, with all due apologies to those who finddifferently.

  [8] There is, of course, a Latin "sequence" on the Saint which is nearerto the French poem; but that does not affect our present point.

  [9] The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used ofpunitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the transferredsense of _cuire_, "to _pain_," is not nearly or quite as old.

  [10] Not the least interesting part of this is that it is almostsufficient by itself to establish the connection between Saint's Lifeand Romance.

  [11] By a very curious touch he gives her also "les renges de s'espide,"_i.e._ either the other ring by which the sword is attached to thesword-belt, or the belt itself. The meaning is, of course, that with herhe renounces knighthood and all worldly rank.

  [12] She addresses the room itself, dramatically enough: "Chamber! nevermore shalt thou bear ornament: never shall any joy in thee be enjoyed."

  [13] Let me repeat that I mean no despite to the "Communion of Saints"or to their records--much the reverse. But the hand of any _purpose_,Religious, Scientific, Political, what not, is apt to mummify story.