CHAPTER X
LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST, CREBILLON
The words which closed the last chapter should make it unnecessary toprefix much of the same kind to this, though at the end we may haveagain to summarise rather more fully.
[Sidenote: The subjects of the chapter.]
As was there observed, our figures here are, with the possible exceptionof Crebillon _Fils_, "larger" persons than those dealt with before them;and they also mark a further transition towards the condition--the"employment or vocation"--of the novelist proper, though the polygraphichabit which has grown upon all modern literature, and which began inFrance almost earlier than anywhere else, affects them. Scarron was evenmore of a dramatist than of a novelist; and though this was also thecase with Lesage and Marivaux--while Prevost was, save for hismasterpiece, a polygraph of the polygraphs--their work in fiction wasfar larger, both positively and comparatively, than his. _Gil Blas_ forgeneral popularity, and _Manon Lescaut_ for enthusiastic admiration ofthe elect, rank almost, if not quite, among the greatest novels of theworld. Marivaux, for all his irritating habit of leaving thingsunfinished, and the almost equally irritating affectation of phrase, inwhich he anticipated some English novelists of the late nineteenth andearliest twentieth century, is almost the first "psychologist" of prosefiction; that is to say, where Madame de la Fayette had taken thesoul-analysis of hardly more than two persons (Nemours scarcely counts)in a single situation, Marivaux gives us an almost complete dissectionof the temperament and character of a girl and of a man under manyordinary life-circumstances for a considerable time.
[Sidenote: Lesage--his Spanish connections.]
But we must begin, not with him but with Lesage, not merely as the olderman by twenty years, but in virtue of that comparative "greatness" ofhis greatest work which has been glanced at. There is perhaps a doubtwhether _Gil Blas_ is as much read now as it used to be; it is prettycertain that _Le Diable Boiteux_ is not. The certainty is a pity; and ifthe doubt be true, it is a greater pity still. For more than a century_Gil Blas_ was almost as much[309] a classic, either in the original orin translation, in England as it was in France; and the delight which itgave to thousands of readers was scarcely more important to the historyof fiction generally than the influence it exerted upon generation aftergeneration of novelists, not merely in its own country, but on the fargreater artists in fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury in England from Fielding to Scott, if not to Dickens. Now, Isuppose, that we are told to start with the axiom that even Fielding'sstructure of humanity is a simple toy-like thing, how much more isLesage's? But for those of us who have not bowed the knee to foolishmodern Baals, "They reconciled us; we embraced, and we have since beenmortal enemies"; and the trout; and the soul of the licentiate; and Dr.Sangrado; and the Archbishop of Granada--to mention only the most famousand hackneyed matters--are still things a little larger, a little morecomplex, a little more eternal and true, than webs of uninterestinganalysis told in phrase to which Marivaudage itself is golden andhoneyed Atticism.
Yet once more we can banish, with a joyful and quiet mind, a crowd ofidle fancies and disputes, apparently but not really affecting oursubjects. The myth of a direct Spanish origin for _Gil Blas_ is almostas easily dispersible by the clear sun of criticism as the exaggerationof the debt of the smaller book to Guevara. On the other hand, the_general_ filiation of Lesage on his Spanish predecessors is undeniable,and not worth even shading off and toning down. A man is not ashamed ofhaving good fathers and grandfathers, whose property he now enjoys,before him in life; and why should he be in literature?
[Sidenote: Peculiarity of his work generally.]
Lesage's work, in fiction and out of it, is considerable in bulk, but itis affected (to what extent disadvantageously different judges may judgedifferently) by some of the peculiarities of the time which have beenalready mentioned, and by some which have not. It is partly original,partly mere translation, and partly also a mixture of the strangestkind. Further, its composition took place in a way difficult to adjustto later ideas. Lesage was not, like Marivaux, a professed and shameless"_un_finisher," but he took a great deal of time to finish hiswork.[310] He was not an early-writing author; and when he did begin, heshowed something of that same strange need of a suggestion, a"send-off," or whatever anybody likes to call it, which appears even inhis greatest work. He began with the _Letters_ of Aristaenetus, which,though perhaps they have been abused more than they deserve by peoplewho have never read them, and would never have heard of them if it hadnot been for Alain Rene, are certainly not the things that mostscholars, with the whole range of Greek literature before them to choosefrom, would have selected. His second venture was almost worse than hisfirst; for there _are_ some prettinesses in Aristaenetus, and except forthe one famous passage enshrined by Pope in the _Essay on Criticism_,there is, I believe,[311] nothing good in the continuation of _DonQuixote_ by the so-called Avellaneda. But at any rate this job, whichis attributed to the suggestion of the Abbe de Lyonne, "put" Lesage onSpanish, and never did fitter seed fall on more fertile soil.
[Sidenote: And its variety.]
Longinus would, I think, have liked _Gil Blas_, and indeed Lesage, verymuch. You might kill ten asses, of the tallest Poitou standard in sizeand the purest Zoilus or Momus sub-variety in breed, under you whilegoing through his "faults." He translates; he borrows; he "plagiarises"about as much as is possible for anybody who is not a mere dullard todo. Of set plot there is nothing in his work, whether you take the twofamous pieces, or the major adaptations like _Estevanille Gonzales_ and_Guzman d'Alfarache_, or the lesser things, more Lucianic than anythingelse, such as the _Cheminees de Madrid_[312] and the _Journee desParques_ and the _Valise Trouvee_. "He worked for his living" (as M.Anatole France long ago began a paper about him which is not quite thebest of its very admirable author's work), and though the pot neverboiled quite so merrily as the cook deserved, the fact of thepot-boiling makes itself constantly felt. _Les chaines de l'esclavage_must have cut deep into his soul, and the result of the cutting isevident enough in his work. But the vital marks on that work are such asmany perfectly free men, who have wished to take literature as amistress only, have never been able to impress on theirs. He died fullof years, but scarcely of the honours due to him, failing in power, andafter a life[313] of very little luck, except as regards possession of awife who seems to have been beautiful in youth and amiable always, withat least one son who observed the Fifth Commandment to the utmost. Buthe lives among the immortals, and there are few names in our presenthistory which are of more importance to it than his.
Some of his best and least unequal work is indeed denied us. We havenothing to do with his drama, though _Turcaret_ is something like amasterpiece in comedy, and _Crispin Rival de son Maitre_ a capitalfarce. We cannot even discuss that remarkable _Theatre de la Foire_,which, though a mere collection of the lightest Harlequinades, has morereadable matter of literature in it than the whole English comic dramasince Sheridan, with the exception of the productions of the late SirWilliam Gilbert.
Nor must much be said even of his minor novel work. The latertranslations and adaptations from the Spanish need hardly any notice forobvious reasons; whatever is good in them being either not his, orbetter exemplified in the _Devil_ and in _Gil_. The extremely curiousand very Defoe-like book--almost if not quite his last--_Vie etAventures de M. de Beauchesne, Capitaine de Flibustiers_, is rather asubject for a separate essay than for even a paragraph here. But Lesage,from our point of view, is _Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, and tothe _Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ let us accordingly turn.
[Sidenote: _Le Diable Boiteux._]
The relations of the earlier and shorter book to the _Diablo Cojuelo_ ofLuis Velez de Guevara are among the most open secrets of literature. TheFrenchman, in a sort of prefatory address to his Spanish parent andoriginal, has put the matter fairly enough; anybody who will take thetrouble can "control" or check the statement, by comparing the two booksthemselves. The idea--t
he rescuing of an obliging demon from the graspof an enchanter, and his unroofing the houses of Madrid to amuse hisliberator--is entirely Guevara's, and for a not inconsiderable space oftime the French follows the Spanish closely. But then it breaks off, andthe remainder of the book is, except for the carrying out of the generalidea, practically original. The unroofing and revealing of secrets, frombeing merely casual and confined to a particular neighbourhood, becomessystematised: a lunatic asylum and a prison are subjected to theprocess; a set of dreamers are obliged to deliver up what Queen Mab isdoing with them; and, as an incident, the student Don Cleofas, who hasfreed Asmodeus,[314] gains through the friendly spirit's means a richand pretty bride whom the demon--naturally immune from fire--has rescuedin Cleofas's likeness from a burning house.
[Sidenote: Lesage and Boileau.]
The thing therefore neither has, nor could possibly pretend to have, anymerit as a plotted and constructed whole in fiction. It is merely avariety of the old "framed" tale-collection, except that the frame is ofthe thinnest; and the individual stories, with a few exceptions, areextremely short, in fact little more than anecdotes. The power andattraction of the book lie simply in the crispness of the style, theease and flow of the narrative, and the unfailing satiric knowledge ofhuman nature which animates the whole. As it stands, it is double itsoriginal length; for Lesage, finding it popular, and never being underthe trammels of a fixed design, very wisely, and for a wonder notunsuccessfully, gave it a continuation. And, except the equally obviousand arbitrary one of the recapture of the spirit by the magician, it hasand could have no end. The most famous of the anecdotes about it is thatBoileau--in 1707 a very old man--found his page reading it, and declaredthat such a book and such a critic as he should never pass a night underthe same roof. Boileau, though he often said rude, unjust, anduncritical things, did not often say merely silly ones; and it has beenquestioned what was his reason for objecting to a book by no meansshocking to anybody but Mrs. Grundy Grundified to the very _n_th,excellently written, and quite free from the bombast and thewhimsicality which he loathed. Jealousy for Moliere,[315] to whom, invirtue of _Turcaret_, Lesage had been set up as a sort of rival; meresenile ill-temper, and other things have been suggested; but the matteris of no real importance even if it is true. Boileau was one of theleast catholic and the most arbitrary critics who ever lived; he hadlong made up and colophoned the catalogue of his approved library; hedid not see his son's coat on the new-comer, and so he cursed him. It isnot the only occasion on which we may bless what Boileau cursed.
[Sidenote: _Gil Blas_--its peculiar cosmopolitanism.]
_Gil Blas_, of course, is in every sense a "bigger" book of literature.That it has, from the point of view of the straitest sect of theUnitarians--and not of that sect only--much more unity than the_Diable_, would require mere cheap paradox to contend. It has neitherthe higher unity, say, of _Hamlet_, where every smallest scene andalmost personage is connected with the general theme; nor the lowerunity of such a thing as _Phedre_, where everything is pared down, or,as Landor put it in his own case, "boiled off" to a meagre residuum oftheme special. It has, at the very most, that species of unity whichAristotle did not like even in epic, that of a succession of eventshappening to an individual; and while most of these might be omitted, orothers substituted for them, without much or any loss, they existwithout prejudice to mere additions to themselves. As the excellent Mr.Wall, sometime Professor of Logic at Oxford, and now with God, used tosay, "Gentlemen, I can conceive an elephant," so one may conceive a _GilBlas_, not merely in five instead of four, but in fifty or five hundredvolumes. But, on the other hand, it has that still different unity (ofwhich Aristotle does not seem to have thought highly, even if he thoughtof it at all), that all these miscellaneous experiences do not merelyhappen to a person with the same name--they happen to the sameperson.[316] And they have themselves yet another unity, which I hardlyremember any critic duly insisting on and discussing, in the fact thatthey all are possibly human accidents or incidents. Though he was anative of one of the most idiosyncratic provinces of not the leastidiosyncratic country in Europe, Lesage is a citizen not of Brittany,not of France, not of Europe even, but of the world itself, in far morethan the usual sense of cosmopolitanism. He has indeed colouredbackground and costume, incident and even personage itself so deeplywith essence of "things of Spain," that, as has been said, theSpaniards, the most jealous of all nationalities except the smallerCeltic tribes, have claimed his work for themselves. Yet though Spainhas one of the noblest languages, one of the greatest literatures inquality if not in bulk, one of the most striking histories, and one ofthe most intensely national characters in the world, it is--perhaps forthe very reason last mentioned--as little cosmopolitan as any country,and Lesage, as has been said, is inwardly and utterly cosmopolitan ornothing.
At Paris, at Rome, at the Hague he's at home;
and though he seems to have known little of England, and, as mostFrenchmen of his time had reason to do, to have disliked us, he hascertainly never been anywhere more at home than in London. In fact--andit bears out what has been said--there is perhaps no capital in Europewhere, in the two hundred years he has had to nationalise himself,Lesage has been less at home than at Paris itself. The French are ofcourse proud of him in a way, but there is hardly one of their greatwriters about whom they have been less enthusiastic. The technical, andespecially the neo-classically technical, shortcomings which have beenpointed out may have had something to do with this; but thecosmopolitanism has perhaps more.
[Sidenote: And its adoption of the _homme sensuel moyen_ fashion.]
For us Lesage occupies a position of immense importance in the historyof the French novel; but if we were writing a history of the novel atlarge it would scarcely be lessened, and might even be relativelylarger. He had come to it perhaps by rather strange ways; but it is nonovelty to find that conjunction of road and goal. The Spanishpicaresque romance was not in itself a very great literary kind; but ithad in it a great faculty of _emancipation_. Outside the drama[317] itwas about the first division of literature to proclaim boldly therefusal to consider anything human as alien from human literaryinterest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated itsprotests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flownnon-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle andrejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, totake the average man of unheroic stamp, the _homme sensuel moyen_ of alater French phrase, for his subject. _Gil Blas_ is not a virtuousperson,[318] but he is not very often an actual scoundrel.[319] (Isthere any of us who has never been a scoundrel at all at all?) He isclever after his fashion, but he is not a genius; he is a little bit ofa coward, but can face it out fairly at a pinch; he has some luck andill-luck; but he does not come in for _montes et maria_, either of goldor of misery. I have no doubt that the comparison of _Gil Blas_ and _DonQuixote_ has often been made, and it would be rather an _excursus_ here.But inferior as Lesage's work is in not a few ways, it has, like othernon-quintessential things, much more virtue as model and pattern.Imitations of _Don Quixote_ (except Graves's capital book, where thefollowing is of the freest character) have usually been failures. It ishardly an extravagance to say that every novel of miscellaneousadventure since its date owes something, directly or indirectly, to _GilBlas_.
One of the "faults"--it must be understood that between "faults" withinverted commas and faults without them there is a wide and sometimes anunbridgeable gulf--lies in the fact that the book is after all not muchmore of a whole, in any sense but that noted above, than _Le DiableBoiteux_ itself. The innumerable incidents are to a very large extentepisodes merely, and episodes in the loose, not the precise, sense ofthe term. That is to say, they are not merely detachable; they might bereattached to almost any number of other stories. But the redeemingfeature--which is very much more than a _mere_ redeeming feature--is thepersonality of the hero which has been already referred to. Lesage'sscrip and staff, to apply the old images exactly enough, are
hisinexhaustible fertility in well-told stories and his faculty ofdelineating a possible and interesting human character.
[Sidenote: Its inequality--in the Second and Fourth Books especially.]
The characteristics of the successive parts of _Gil Blas_ are distinctand interesting, the distinctions themselves being also rather curious.The anecdote cited above as to the Fourth and last volume is certainlyconfirmed by, and does not seem, as so many anecdotes of the kind do, tohave been even possibly drawn from, the volume itself. Although the oldpower is by no means gone, the marks of its failing are pretty obvious.A glance has been given already to the unnecessary and disgustingrepetition of the Pandar business--made, as it is, more disgusting bythe distinctly tragic touch infused into it. The actual _finale_ is, onthe other hand, a good comedy ending of a commonplace kind, except thata comic author, such as Lesage once had been on and off the stage, wouldcertainly have made _Gil Blas_ suffer in his second marriage for hismisdeeds of various kinds earlier, instead of leaving him in the not tooclean cotton or clover of an old rip with a good young wife. If he hadwanted a happy ending of a still conventional but satisfactory kind, heshould have married Gil to Laure or Estelle (they were, in modern slang,sufficiently "shop-worn goods" not to be ill-mated, and Laure is perhapsthe most attractive character in the whole book); have legitimatedLucrece, as by some odd crotchet he definitely refuses to do;[320] havedropped the later Leporello business, in which his old love and herdaughter are concerned, altogether, and have left us in a mild sunset of"reconciliation." If anybody scorns this suggestion as evidence of afutile liking for "rose-pink," let him remember that Gil Blas,_ci-devant picaro_ and other ugly things, is actually left lapped in anElysium not less improbable and much more undeserved than this. But itis disagreeable to dwell on the shortcomings of age, and it has onlybeen done to show that this is a criticism and not a mere panegyric.
Oddly enough, the Second volume is also open to much exception ofsomething, though not quite, the same kind; it seems as if Lesage, aftermaking strong running, had a habit of nursing himself and evengoing to sleep for a while. The more than questionable habit of_histoire_-insertions revives; that of the rascal-hermit _picaro_, "DonRaphael," is, as the author admits, rather long, and, as he might haveadmitted, and as any one else may be allowed to say, very tiresome. GilBlas himself goes through a long period of occultation, and the wholerather drags.
The First and the Third are the pillars of the house; and the Third,though (with the exception of the episode of the Archbishop, and thateternal sentence governing the relations of author and critic that "thehomily which has the misfortune not to be approved" by the one is thevery best ever produced by the other) not so well known, is perhaps evenbetter than anything in the First. But the later part has, of course,not quite so much freshness; and nobody need want anything better thanthe successive scenes, slightly glanced at already, in which Gil Blas istaught, by no means finally,[321] the ways of the world; the pureadventure interest of the robbers' cave, so admirably managed and solittle over-dwelt on; the experiences of travel and of the capital; thevivid pictures of _petit maitre_ and actress life; the doubledeception--thoroughly Spanish this, but most freshly and universallyhandled--by Laure and Gil; many other well-known things; all deserve theknowledge and the admiration that they have won. But the Third, in whichthe hero is hardly ever off the scene from first to last, is my ownfavourite. He shows himself--not at his best, but humanly enough--in theaffair with the ill-fated Lorenca, on which the Leyva family might havelooked less excusingly if the culprit had been anybody but Gil. TheGranada scenes, however, and not by any means merely those with theArchbishop, are of the very first class; and the reappearance of Laure,with the admirable coolness by which she hoodwinks her "keeper"Marialva, yields to nothing in the book. For fifty pages it is allnovel-gold; and though Gil Blas, in decamping from the place, andleaving Laure to bear the brunt of a possible discovery, commits one ofhis least heroic deeds, it is so characteristic that one forgives, notindeed him, but his creator. The whole of the Lerma part is excellentand not in the least improbably impossible; there is infinitely more"human natur'" in it, as Marryat's waterman would have said, than in the_rechauffe_ of the situation with Olivares.
[Sidenote: Lesage's quality--not requiring many words, butindisputable.]
The effect indeed which is produced, in re-reading, by _Le DiableBoiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, but especially by the latter, is of thatespecial kind which is a sort of "_a posteriori_ intuition," if such aphrase may be permitted, of "classical" quality.[322] This sensation,which appears, unfortunately, to be unknown to a great many people, issometimes set down by the more critical or, let us say, the morecensorious of them, to a sort of childish prepossession--akin to thatwhich makes a not ill-conditioned child fail to discover anyuncomeliness in his mother's or a favourite nurse's face. There is noretort to such a proposition as this so proper as the argument not _adhominem_, but _ab_ or _ex homine_. The present writer did not read the_Devil_ till he had reached quite critical years; and though he read_Gil Blas_ much earlier, he was not (for what reason he cannot say)particularly fond of it until the same period was reached. And yet itsattractions cannot possibly be said to be of any recondite or artificialkind, and its defects are likely to be more, not less, recognised as thecritical faculty acquires strength and practice. Nevertheless, recentreperusal has made him more conscious than ever of the existence of thisquality of a classic in both, but especially in the larger and morefamous book. And this is a mere pailful added to an ocean of previousand more important testimony. _Gil Blas_ has certainly "classed" itselfin the most various instances, of essentially critical, not speciallycritical but generally acute and appreciative, and more or lessunsophisticated and ordinary judgments, as a thing that is past allquestion, equally enjoyable for its incidents, its character-sketches,and its phrasing--though the first are (for time and country) in nosense out of the way, the second scarcely go beyond the individualisedtype, and the third is neither gorgeous nor "alambicated," as the Frenchsay, nor in any way peculiar, except for its saturation with a sharp,shrewd, salt wit which may be described as the spirit of the popularproverb, somehow bodied and clothed with more purely literary form. Itis true that, in the last few clauses, plenty of ground has beenindicated for ascription of classicality in the best sense; and perhapsLesage himself has summed the whole thing up when, in the "Declaration"of the author at the beginning of _Gil Blas_, he claims "to have setbefore himself only the representation of human life as it is." He hassaid it; and in saying and doing it he has said and done everything forhis merits as a novelist and his place in the history of the novel.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Marivaux--_Les Effets de la Sympathie (?)_]
The Archbishop of Sens, who had the duty of "answering" Marivaux's"discourse of reception" into the Academy in the usual _aigre-doux_manner, informed him, with Academic frankness and Archiepiscopalpropriety, that "in the small part of your work which I have runthrough, I soon recognised that the reading of these agreeable romancesdid not suit the austere dignity with which I am invested, or the purityof the ideas which religion prescribes me." This was all in the game,both for an Academician and for an Archbishop, and it probably did notdiscompose the novelist much. But if his Grace had read _Les Effets dela Sympathie_, and had chosen to criticise it, he might have made itsauthor (always supposing that Marivaux _was_ its author, which does notseem to be at all certain) much more uncomfortable. Although there isplenty of incident, it is but a dull book, and it contains not a traceof "Marivaudage" in style. A hero's father, who dies of poison in thefirst few pages, and is shown to have been brought round by an obliginggaoler in the last few; a hero himself, who thinks he has fallen in lovewith a beautiful and rich widow, playing good Samaritaness to him afterhe has fallen in among thieves, but a page or two later really does fallin love with a fair unknown looking languishingly out of a window; a_corsaire_,[323] with the appropriate name of Turcamene, who isrobu
stious almost from the very beginning, and receives at the end afatal stab with his own poniard from the superfluous widow, herself alsofatally wounded at the same moment by the same weapon (an economy oftime, incident, and munitions uncommon off the stage); an intermediatepersonage who, straying--without any earthly business there--into one ofthose park "pavilions" which play so large a part in these romances,finds a lady asleep on the sofa, with her hand invitingly dropped,promptly kneels down, and kisses it: these and many other things fill upa Spanish kind of story, not uningeniously though rather improbablyengineered, but dependent for its interest almost wholly on incident;for though it is not devoid of conversation, this conversation iswithout spirit or sparkle. It is, in fact, a "circulating library" novelbefore--at any rate at an early period of--circulating libraries: notunworkmanlike, probably not very unsatisfactory to its actual readers,and something of a document as to the kind of satisfaction theydemanded; but not intrinsically important.
One has not seen much, in English,[324] about Marivaux, despite theexistence, in French, of one of the best[325] of those monographs whichassist the foreign critic so much, and sometimes perhaps help to begethis own lucubrations. Yet he is one of the most interesting writers ofFrance, one of the most curious, and, one may almost say, one of themost puzzling. This latter quality he owes, in part at least, to a"skiey influence" of the time, which he shares with Lesage and Prevost,and indeed to some extent with most French writers of the eighteenthcentury--the influence of the polygraphic habit.
[Sidenote: His work in general.]
He was a dramatist, and a voluminous one, long before he was a novelist:and some of his thirty or forty plays, especially _Les FaussesConfidences_ and _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, still rank among atleast the second-class classics of the French comic stage. He tried, fora time, one of the worst kinds of merely fashionable literature, thetravesty-burlesque.[326] He was a journalist, following Addison openlyin the title, and to some extent in the manner, of _Le Spectateur_,which he afterwards followed by _Le Cabinet d'un Philosophe_, showing,however, here, as he was more specially tempted to do, his curious, andit would seem unconquerable, habit of leaving things unfinished, whichonly does not appear in his plays, for the simple and obvious reasonthat managers will not put an unfinished play on the stage, and that, ifthey did, the afterpiece would be premature and of a very livelycharacter. But the completeness of his very plays is incomplete; they"run huddling" to their conclusion, and are rather bundles of good ornot so good acts and scenes than entire dramas. We are, however, onlyconcerned with the stories, of which there are three: the early,complete, but doubtful _Effets de la Sympathie_, already discussed; thecentral in every way, but endlessly dawdled over, _Marianne_, whichnever got finished at all (though Mme. Riccoboni continued it inMarivaux's own lifetime, and with his placid approval, and somebodyafterwards botched a clumsy _Fin_); and _Le Paysan Parvenu_, the latterpart of which is not likely to be genuine, and, even if so, is not areal conclusion. We may, however, with some, advantage, take it before_Marianne_, if only because it is not the book generally connected withits author's name.
[Sidenote: _Le Paysan Parvenu._]
Notwithstanding this comparative oblivion, _Le Paysan Parvenu_ is analmost astonishingly clever and original book, at least as far as thefive of its eight parts, which are certainly Marivaux's, go. I have readthe three last twice critically, at a long interval of time, and I feelsure that the positive internal evidence confirms, against theirauthenticity, the negative want of external for it. In any case they addnothing--they do not, as has been said, even really "conclude"--and wemay, therefore, without any more apology, confine ourselves to the partwhich is certain. Some readers may possibly know that when thatstrangest of strange persons, Restif de la Bretonne (see the lastchapter of this book), took up the title with the slight change or glossof _Parvenu_ to _Perverti_, he was at least partly actuated by his ownvery peculiar, but distinctly existing, variety of moral indignation.And though Pierre Carlet (which was Marivaux's real name) and "MonsieurNicolas" (which was as near a real name as any that Restif had) were,the one a quite respectable person on ordinary standards, and the otheran infinitely disreputable creature, still the later novelist wasperhaps ethically justified. Marivaux's successful rustic does not, sofar as we are told, actually do anything that contravenes popularmorality, though he is more than once on the point of doing so. He isnot a bad-blooded person either; and he has nothing of the wild-beastelement in the French peasantry which history shows us from theJacquerie to the Revolution, and which some folk try to excuse as theresult of aristocratic tyranny. But he is an elaborate and exceedinglyable portrait of another side of the peasant, and, if we may trustliterature, even with some administration of salt, of the French peasantmore particularly. He is what we may perhaps be allowed to callunconsciously determined to get on, though he does not go quite to thelength of the _quocunque modo_, and has, as far as men are concerned,some scruples. But in relation to the other sex he has few if any,though he is never brutal. He is, as we may say, first "perverted,"though not as yet _parvenu_,[327] in the house of a Parisian, himself a_nouveau riche_ and _novus homo_, on whose property in Champagne his ownfather is a wine-farmer. He is early selected for the beginnings ofLady-Booby-like attentions by "Madame," while he, as far as he iscapable of the proceeding, falls in love with one of Madame's maids,Genevieve. It does not appear that, if the lady's part of the matter hadgone further, Jacob (that is his name) would have been at all likeJoseph. But when he finds that the maid is also the object of"Monsieur's" attentions, and when he is asked to take the profits ofthis affair (the attitude[328] of the girl herself is very skilfullydelineated) and marry her, his own _point d'honneur_ is reached.[329]Everything is, however, cut short by the sudden death, in hopelesslyembarrassed circumstances, of Monsieur, and the consequent cessation ofMadame's attraction for a young man who wishes to better himself. Heleaves both her and Genevieve with perfect nonchalance; though he hasgood reason for believing that the girl really loves him, however shemay have made a peculiar sort of hay when the sun shone, and that bothshe and his lady are penniless, or almost so.
He has, however, the luck which makes the _parvenu_, if in this instancehe can hardly be said to deserve it. On the Pont Neuf he sees an elderlylady, apparently about to swoon. He supports her home, and finds thatshe is the younger and more attractive of two old-maid and _devote_sisters. The irresistibleness to this class of the feminine sex (andindeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsomefootman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, bothFrench and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though theelder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly_bonne_, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger,Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here),wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makesno objection, for obvious reasons. But the elder sister recalcitratesviolently, summoning to her aid her "director," and the younger, who isfinancially independent,[330] determines to leave the house. She does so(_not_ taking Catherine with her, though the _bonne_ would willinglyhave shared Jacob's society), and having secured lodgings, regularlyproposes to her (the word may be used almost accurately) "swain." Jacobhas no scruples of delicacy here, though the nymph is thirty years olderthan himself, and though he has, if no dislike, no particular affectionfor her. But it is an obvious step upwards, and he makes nodifficulties. The elder sister, however, makes strong efforts to forbidthe banns, and her interest prevails on a "President" (the half-regularpower of the French _noblesse de robe_, though perhaps less violentlyexercised, must have been almost as galling as the irresponsibleness ofmen of birth and "sword") to interpose and actually stop the arrangedceremony. But Jacob appears in person, and states his case convincingly;the obstacle is removed, and the pair are made happy at an extraordinaryhour (two or three in the morning), which seems to have been thenfashionable for marriages. The conventional phrase is fairly justified
;for the bride is completely satisfied, and Jacob is not displeased.
His marriage, however, interferes not in the very least with hisintention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. Onthe very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, andalso of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife,has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something forhim. This quickly results in a regular assignation, which, however, iscomically broken off. Moreover this lady introduces him to another ofthe same temperament--which indeed seems to have been common with Frenchladies (the Bellaston type being not the exception, but the rule). _She_is to introduce him to her brother-in-law, an influential financier, andshe quickly makes plain the kind of gratitude she expects. This also is,as far as we are told, rather comically interfered with--Marivaux'sdramatic practice made him good at these disappointments. She does givethe introduction, and her brother-in-law, though a curmudgeon, is atfirst disposed to honour her draft. But here an unexpected change ismade by the presentation of Jacob as a man of noble sentiment. The placehe is to have is one taken from an invalid holder of it, whose wifecomes to beg mercy: whereat Jacob, magnanimously and to the financier'sgreat wrath, declines to profit by another's misfortune. Whether thefact that the lady is very pretty has anything to do with the matterneed not be discussed. His--let us call it at least--good nature,however, indirectly makes his fortune. Going to visit the husband andwife whom he has obliged, he sees a young man attacked by three enemiesand ill-bested. Jacob (who is no coward, and, thanks to his wifeinsisting on his being a gentleman and "M. de la Vallee," has a sword)draws and uses it on the weaker side, with no skill whatever, but in thedownright, swash-and-stab, short- and tall-sailor fashion, which (innovels at least) is almost always effective. The assailants decamp, andthe wounded but rescued person, who is of very high rank, conceives astrong friendship for his rescuer, and, as was said above, makes hisfortune. The last and doubtful three-eighths of the book kill off poorMlle. Habert (who, although Jacob would never have been unkind to her,was already beginning to be very jealous and by no means happy), andmarry him again to a younger lady of rank, beauty, fashion, and fortune,in the imparted possession of all of which we leave him. But, except tothe insatiables of "what happened next," these parts are as questionablyimportant as they are decidedly doubtful.
The really important points of the book are, in the first place, theease and narrative skill with which the story is told in the difficultform of autobiography, and, secondly, the vivacity of the characters.Jacob himself is, as will have been seen already, a piebald sort ofpersonage, entirely devoid of scruple in some ways, but not ill-natured,and with his own points of honour. He is perfectly natural, and so areall the others (not half of whom have been mentioned) as far as they go.The cross sister and the "kind" one; the false prude and false _devote_Mme. de Ferval, and the jolly, reckless, rather coarse Mme. de Fecour;the tyrannical, corrupt, and licentious financier, with others moreslightly drawn, are seldom, if ever, out of drawing. The contemporarywash of colour passes, as it should, into something "fast"; you are inthe Paris of the Regency, but you are at the same time in general humantime and place, if not in eternity and infinity.
[Sidenote: _Marianne_--outline of the story.]
The general selection, however, of _Marianne_ as Marivaux's masterpieceis undoubtedly right, though in more ways than one it has less engagingpower than the _Paysan_, and forebodes to some extent, if it does notactually display, the boring qualities which novels of combined analysisand jargon have developed since. The opening is odd: the author havingapparently transplanted to the beginning of a novel the promiscuousslaughter with which we are familiar at the end of a play. Marianne (letus hail the appearance of a Christian-named heroine at last), a smallchild of the tenderest years, is, with the exception of an ecclesiastic,who takes to his heels and gets off, the sole survivor of a coachful oftravellers who are butchered by a gang of footpads,[331] because two ofthe passengers have rashly endeavoured to defend themselves. Nothing canbe found out about the child--an initial improbability, for the partyhas consisted of father, mother, and servants, as well as Marianne. Butthe good _cure_ of the place and his sister take charge of her, andbring her up carefully (they are themselves "gentle-people," as the goodold phrase, now doubtless difficult of application, went) till she isfifteen, is very pretty, and evidently must be disposed of in some way,for her guardians are poor and have no influential relations. Thesister, however, takes her to Paris--whither she herself goes to secure,if possible, the succession of a relative--to try to obtain somesituation. But the inheritance proves illusory; the sister falls ill atParis and dies there; while the brother is disabled, and his living hasto be, if not transferred to, provided with, a substitute. This secondmassacre (for the brother dies soon) provides Marivaux with thesituation he requires--that of a pretty girl, alone in the capital, andabsolutely unfriended. Fortunately a benevolent Director knows a piousgentleman, M. de Climal, who is fond of doing good, and also, as itappears shortly by the story, of pretty girls. Marianne, with theearliest touch of distinct "snobbishness"--let it be proudly pointed outthat the example is not English,[332]--declines to go into service, butdoes not so much mind being a shop-girl, and M. de Climal establishesher with his _lingere_, a certain Mme. Dutour.
This good lady is no procuress, but her morals are of a somewhataccommodating kind, and she sets to work, experiencing very littledifficulty in the process, to remove Marianne's scruples about acceptingpresents from M. de Climal--pointing out, very logically, that there isno obligation to (as Chesterfield put it not long after) _payer de sapersonne_; though she is naturally somewhat disgusted when the giftstake the form of handsome _lingerie_ bought at another shop. When this,and a dress to match, are made up, Marianne as naturally goes to churchto show them: and indulges in very shrewd if not particularly amiableremarks on her "even-Christians"--a delightful English archaism, whichsurely needs no apology for its revival. Coming out, she slips andsprains her ankle, whereupon, still naturally, appears the inevitableyoung man, a M. de Valville, who, after endless amicable wrangling,procures her a coach, but not without an awkward meeting. For M. deValville turns out to be the nephew of M. de Climal; and the uncle, witha lady, comes upon the nephew and Marianne; while, a little later, eachfinds the other in turn at the girl's feet. Result: of course more thansuspicion on the younger man's part, and a mixture of wrath and desireto hurry matters on the elder's. He offers Marianne a regular (orirregular) "establishment" at a dependent's of his own, with a smallincome settled upon her, etc. She refuses indignantly, the indignationbeing rather suspiciously divided between her two lovers; is "plantedthere" by the old sinner Climal, and of course requested to leave byMme. Dutour; returns all the presents, much to her landlady's disgust,and once more seeks, though in a different mood, the shelter of theChurch. Her old helper the priest for some time absolutely declines toadmit the notion of Climal's rascality; but fortunately a charitablelady is more favourable, and Marianne gets taken in as a _pensionnaire_at a convent. Climal, whose sister and Valville's mother the lady turnsout to be, falls ill, repents, confesses, and leaves Marianne acomfortable annuity. Union with Valville is not opposed by the mother;but other members of the family are less obliging, and Valville himselfwanders after an English girl of a Jacobite exiled family, Miss Warton(Varthon). The story then waters itself out, before suddenly collapsing,with a huge and uninteresting _Histoire d'une Religieuse_. Whereat somefolk may grumble; but others, more philosophically, may be satisfied, inno uncomplimentary sense, without hearing what finally made MarianneCountess of Three Stars, or indeed knowing any more of her actualhistory.
For in fact the entire interest of _Marianne_ is concentrated in and onMarianne herself, and the fact that this is so at once makescontinuation superfluous, and gives the novel its place in the historyof fiction. We have quite enough, as it is, to show us--as the PrincessAugusta said to Fanny Burney of the ill-starred last of French "MesdamesRoyales"--"what sort o
f a girl she is." And her biographer has made hera very interesting sort of girl, and himself in making her so, a veryinteresting, and almost entirely novel, sort of novelist. To say thatshe is a wholly attractive character would be entirely false, exceptfrom the point of view of the pure student of art. She is technicallyvirtuous, which is, of course, greatly to her credit.[333] She is notbad-blooded, but if there were such a word as "good-blooded" it couldhardly be applied to her. With all her preserving borax- orformalin-like touch of "good form," she is something of a minx. She isvain, selfish--in fact wrapped up in self--without any sense of otherthan technical honour. But she is very pretty (which covers a multitudeof sins), and she is really clever.
[Sidenote: Importance of Marianne herself.]
Yet the question at issue is not whether one can approve of Marianne,nor whether one can like her, nor even whether, approving and liking heror not, one could fall in love with her "for her comely face and for herfair bodie," as King Honour did in the ballad, and as _homo rationalis_usually, though not invariably, does fall in love. The question iswhether Marivaux has, in her, created a live girl, and to what extent hehas mastered the details of his creation. The only critical answer, Ithink, must be that he has created such a girl, and that he has not lefther a mere outline or type, but has furnished the house as well as builtit. She is, in the particular meaning on which Mr. Hardy's defendersinsist, as "pure" a "woman" as Tess herself. And if there is a good dealmissing from her which fortunately some women have, there is nothing inher which some women have not, and not so very much which the majorityof women have not, in this or that degree. It is difficult not to smilewhen one compares her quintessence with the complicated and elusivecaricatures of womanhood which some modern novel-writers--noisily hailedas _gyno_sophists--have put together, and been complimented on puttingtogether. What is more, she is perhaps the first nearly completecharacter of the kind that had been presented in novel at her date. Thisis a great thing to say for Marivaux, and it can be said without theslightest fear of inability to support the saying.[334]
[Sidenote: Marivaux and Richardson--"Marivaudage."]
Although, therefore, we may not care much to enter into calculations asto the details of the indebtedness of Richardson to Marivaux, someapproximations of the two, for critical purposes, may be useful. One mayeven see, without too much folly of the Thaumast kind, an explanation,beyond that of mere idleness, in the Frenchman's inveterate habit of notcompleting. He did not want you to read him "for the story"; andtherefore he cared little for the story itself, and nothing at all forthe technical finishing of it. The stories of both his characteristicnovels are, as has been fairly shown, of the very thinnest. What he didwant to do was to analyse and "display," in a half-technical sense ofthat word, his characters; and he did this as no man had done beforehim, and as few have done since, though many, quite ignorant of theirindebtedness, have taken the method from him indirectly. In the secondplace, his combination of method and phrase is for infinite thoughts.This combination is not necessary; there is, to take up the comparativeline, nothing of it in Richardson, nothing in Fielding, nothing inThackeray. A few French eighteenth-century writers have it in directimitation of Marivaux himself; but it dies out in France, and in thegreatest novel-period there is nothing of it. It revives in the laternineteenth century, especially with us, and, curiously enough, if welook back to the beginnings of Romance in Greek, there is a good dealthere, the crown and flower being, as has been before remarked, inEustathius Macrembolita, but something being noticeable in earlier folk,especially Achilles Tatius, and the trick having evidently come fromthose rhetoricians[335] of whose class the romancers were a kind ofoffshoot. It is, however, only fair to say that, if Marivaux thought inintricate and sometimes startling ways, his actual expression is neverobscure. It is a maze, but a maze with an unbroken clue of speechguiding you through it.[336]
[Sidenote: Examples:--Marianne on the _physique_ and _moral_ ofPrioresses and Nuns.]
A few examples of method and style may now be given. Here is Marianne'scriticism--rather uncannily shrewd and very characteristic both of hersubject and of herself--of that peculiar placid plumpness which has beenobserved by the profane in devout persons, especially in the RomanChurch and in certain dissenting sects (Anglicanism does not seem to beso favourable to it), and in "persons of religion" (in the technicalsense) most of all.
This Prioress was a short little person, round and white, with a double chin, and a complexion at once fresh and placid. You never see faces like that in worldly persons: it is a kind of _embonpoint_ quite different from others--one which has been formed more quietly and more methodically--that is to say, something into which there enters more art, more fashioning, nay, more self-love, than into that of such as we.[337]
As a rule, it is either temperament, or feeding, or laziness and luxury, which give _us_ such of it as we have. But in order to acquire the kind of which I am speaking, it is necessary to have given oneself up with a saintlike earnestness to the task. It can only be the result of delicate, loving, and devout attention to the comfort and well-being of the body. It shows not only that life--and a healthy life--is an object of desire, but that it is wanted soft, undisturbed, and dainty; and that, while enjoying the pleasures of good health, the person enjoying it bestows on herself all the pettings and the privileges of a perpetual convalescence.
Also this religious plumpness is different in outward form from ours, which is profane of aspect; it does not so much make a face fat, as it makes it grave and decent; and so it gives the countenance an air, not so much joyous, as tranquil and contented.
Further, when you look at these good ladies, you find in them an affable exterior; but perhaps, for all that, an interior indifference. Their faces, and not their souls, give you sympathy and tenderness; they are comely images, which seem to possess sensibility, and which yet have merely a surface of kindness and sentiment.[338]
Acute as this is, it may be said to be somewhat displaced--though itmust be remembered that it is the Marianne of fifty, "Mme. la Comtessede * * *," who is supposed to be writing, not the Marianne of fifteen.No such objection can be taken to what follows.
[_She is, after the breach with Climal, and after Valville has earlierdiscovered his wicked uncle on his knees before her, packing upthe--well! not wages of iniquity, but baits for it--to send back to thegiver. A little "cutting" may be made._]
[Sidenote: She returns the gift-clothes.]
Thereupon I opened my trunk to take out first the newly bought linen. "Yes, M. de Valville, yes!" said I, pulling it out, "you shall learn to know me and to think of me as you ought." This thought spurred me on, so that, without my exactly thinking of it, it was rather to him than to his uncle that I was returning the whole, all the more so that the return of linen, dress, and money, with a note I should write, could not fail to disabuse Valville, and make him regret the loss of me. He had seemed to me to possess a generous soul; and I applauded myself beforehand on the sorrow which he would feel at having treated so outrageously a girl so worthy of respectful treatment as I was--for I saw in myself, confessedly, I don't know how many titles to respect.
In the first place I put my bad luck, which was unique; to add to this bad luck I had virtue, and they went so well together! Then I was young, and on the top of it all I was pretty, and what more do you want? If I had arranged matters designedly to render myself an object of sympathy, to make a generous lover sigh at having maltreated me, I could not have succeeded better; and, provided I hurt Valville's feelings, I was satisfied. My little plan was never to see him again in my lifetime; and this seemed to me a very fair and proud one; for I loved him, and I was even very glad to have loved him, because he had perceived my love, and, seeing me break with him, notwithstanding, would see also what a h
eart he had had to do with.
The little person goes on very delectably describing the packing, andhow she grudged getting rid of the pretty things, and at last sighed andwept--whether for herself, or Valville, or the beautiful gown, shedidn't know. But, alas! there is no more room, except to salute her asthe agreeable ancestress of all the beloved coquettes and piquant minxesin prose fiction since. Could anything handsomer be said of her creator?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Prevost.]
[Sidenote: His minor novels--the opinions on them of Sainte-Beuve.]
[Sidenote: And of Planche.]
It is, though an absolute and stereotyped commonplace, an almost equallyabsolute necessity, to begin any notice of the Abbe Prevost by remarkingthat nothing of his voluminous work is now, or has been for a long time,read, except _Manon Lescaut_. It may be added, though one is hererepeating predecessors to not quite the same extent, that nothing elseof his, in fiction at least, is worth reading. The faithful few who donot dislike old criticism may indeed turn over his _Le Pour et [le]Contre_ not without reward. But his historical and othercompilations[339]--his total production in volumes is said to run overthe hundred, and the standard edition of his _Oeuvres Choisies_extends to thirty-nine not small ones--are admittedly worthless. As tohis minor novels--if one may use that term, albeit they are as major inbulk as they are minor in merit--opinions of importance, and presumablyfounded on actual knowledge, have differed somewhat strangely.Sainte-Beuve made something of a fight for them, but it was theSainte-Beuve of almost the earliest years (1831), when, according to aweakness of beginners in criticism, he was a little inclined "to bedifferent," for the sake of difference. Against _Cleveland_ even helifts up his heel, though in a rather unfortunate manner, declaring thereading of the greater part to be "aussi fade que celle d'_Amadis_." Nowto some of us the reading of _Amadis_ is not "fade" at all. But he findssome philosophical and psychological passages of merit. Over the_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_--that huge and unwieldy galleon towhich the frail shallop of _Manon_ was originally attached, and whichhas long been stranded on the reefs of oblivion, while its fly-boatsails for ever more--he is quite enthusiastic, finds it, though with acertain relativity, "natural," "frank," and "well-preserved," gives it along analysis, actually discovers in it "an inexpressible savour"surpassing modern "local colour," and thinks the handling of itcomparable in some respects to that of _The Vicar of Wakefield_! The_Doyen de Killerine_--the third of Prevost's long books--is "infinitelyagreeable," "si l'on y met un peu de complaisance." (The Sainte-Beuve oflater years would have noticed that an infinity which has to be madeinfinite by a little complaisance is curiously finite). The later andshorter _Histoire d'une Grecque moderne_ is a _joli roman_, and_gracieux_, though it is not so charming and subtle as Crebillon _fils_would have made it, and is "knocked off rather haphazardly." Anothercritic of 1830, now perhaps too much forgotten, Gustave Planche, doesnot mention the _Grecque_, and brushes aside the three earlier andbigger books rather hastily, though he allows "interest" to both_Cleveland_ and the _Doyen_. Perhaps, before "coming to real things" (asBalzac once said of his own work) in _Manon_, some remarks, not long,but first-hand, and based on actual reading at more than one time oflife, as to her very unreal family, may be permitted here, though theymay differ in opinion from the judgment of these two redoubtablecritics.
[Sidenote: The books themselves--_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_.]
I do not think that when I first wrote about Prevost (I had read _Manon_long before) more than thirty years ago, in a _Short History of FrenchLiterature_, I paid very much attention to these books. I evidently hadnot read the _Grecque Moderne_, for I said nothing about it. Of theothers I said only that they are "romances of adventure, occupying amiddle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux." It is perfectlytrue, but of course not very "in-going," and whatever reading I thengave any of them had not left very much impression on my mind, whenrecently, and for the purpose of the present work, I took them up again,and the _Histoire_ as well. This last is the story of a young modernGreek slave named Theophe (a form of which the last syllable seems moremodern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by herparticularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman,admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), andfreed by him. He does not at first think of making her his mistress, butlater does propose it, only to meet a refusal of a somewhatsentimental-romantic character, though she protests not merelygratitude, but love for him. The latter part of the book is occupied bywhat Sainte-Beuve calls "delicate" ambiguities, which leave us in doubtwhether her "cruelty" is shown to others as well, or whether it is not.In suggesting that Crebillon would have made it charming, the greatcritic has perhaps made another of those slips which show the novitiate.The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have madeit anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety,"either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it aspassionate as _Manon_ itself, or the sort of filigree play with thoughtand phrase which Marivaux would have given, would be required. As a"Crebillonnade" (_v. inf._) it might have been both pleasant and subtle,but it could only have been made so by becoming exceedingly indecent.
[Sidenote: _Cleveland._]
Still, its comparative (though only comparative) shortness, and acertain possibility rather than actuality of interest in thesituation,[340] may recommend this novel at least to mercy. If thepresent writer were on a jury trying _Cleveland_, no want of food orfire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard tothat intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very fewbooks--one of the still fewer novels--which I have found it practicallyimpossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion whichshould, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (_i.e._ dutyto others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, butwhich nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almostthe only good thing I can find to say about it is that Prevost, wholived indeed for some time in England, is now and then, if not always,miraculously correct in his proper names. He can actually spellHammersmith! Other merit--and this is not constant (in the dips which Ihave actually made, to rise exhausted from each, and skip rather thaneven skim to the rest)--I can find none. The beginning is absurd andrather offensive, the hero being a natural son of Cromwell by a womanwho has previously been the mistress of Charles I. The continuation is amish-mash of adventure, sometimes sanguinary, but never exciting, travel(in fancy parts of the West Indies, etc.), and the philosophicaldisputations which Sainte-Beuve found interesting. As for the end, notwo persons seem quite agreed what _is_ the end. Sainte-Beuve speaks ofit as an attempted suicide of the hero--the most justifiable of all hisactions, if he had succeeded. Prevost himself, in the Preface to the_Doyen de Killerine_, repeats an earlier disavowal (which he says hehad previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his ownwork ended with the murder of Cleveland by one of the characters. Again,this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might havefollowed, though it could not have preceded, the other. But if it wasthe end, the other was not. A certain kind of critic may say that it ismy duty to search and argue this out. But, for my part, I say as areader to _Cleveland_, "No more _in_ thee my steps shall be, For everand for ever."[341]
[Sidenote: _Le Doyen de Killerine._]
_Le Doyen de Killerine_ is not perhaps so utterly to be excommunicatedas _Cleveland_, and, as has been said above, some have found realinterest in it. It is not, however, free either from thepreposterousness or from the dulness of the earlier book, though thefirst characteristic is less preposterous as such preposterousness goes.The Dean of Killerine (Coleraine) is a Roman Catholic dean, just afterthe expulsion of James II., when, we learn with some surprise, thatneighbourhood was rather specially full of his co-religionists. He is asort of _lusus naturae_, being bow-legged, humpbacked, potbellied, andpossessing warts on his brows, which make him a sort of later hornedMoses. T
he eccentricity of his appearance is equalled by that of hisconduct. He is the eldest son of an Irish gentleman (nobleman, it wouldsometimes seem), and his father finds a pretty girl who is somehowwilling to marry him. But, feeling no vocation for marriage, he suggeststo her (a suggestion perhaps unique in fiction if not in fact) that sheshould marry his father instead. This singular match comes off, and asecond family results, the members of which are, fortunately, not _lususnaturae_, but a brace of very handsome and accomplished boys, George andPatrick, and an extremely pretty girl, Rosa. Of these three, theirparents dying when they are something short of full age, the excellentdean becomes a sort of guardian. He takes them to the exiled court ofVersailles, and his very hen-like anxieties over the escapades of thesemost lively ducklings supply the main subject of the book. It might havebeen made amusing by humorous treatment, but Prevost had no humour inhim: and it might have been made thrilling by passion, but he never,except in the one great little instance, compressed or distilled hisheaps and floods of sensibility and sensationalism into that. The scenewhere a wicked Mme. de S---- plays, and almost outplays, Potiphar's wifeto the good but hideous Dean's Joseph is one of the most curious innovel-literature, though one of the least amusing.
[Sidenote: The _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_.]
We may now go back to the _Memoires_, partly in compliment to the masterof all mid-nineteenth-century critics, but more because of their almostfortuitous good luck in ushering _Manon_ into the world. There issomething in them of both their successors, _Cleveland_ and the _Doyen_,but it may be admitted that they are less unreadable than the first, andless trivial than the second. The plan--if it deserve that name--is odd,one marquis first telling his own fortunes and voyages and whatnots, andthen serving as Mentor (the application, though of course not original,is inevitable) to another marquis in further voyages and adventures.There are Turkish brides and Spanish murdered damsels; English politicsand literature, where, unfortunately, the spelling _does_ sometimesbreak down; glances backward, in "Histoires" of the _Grand Siecle_, atmeetings with Charles de Sevigne, Racine, etc.; mysterious remedies, agreat deal of moralising, and a great deal more of weeping. Indeed thewhole of Prevost, like the whole of that "Sensibility Novel" of which heis a considerable though rather an outside practitioner, is pervadedwith a gentle rain of tears wherein the personages seem to revel--indeedadmit that they do so--in the midst of their woes.
[Sidenote: Its miscellaneous curiosities.]
On the whole, however, the youthful--or almost youthful--half-wisdom ofSainte-Beuve is better justified of its preference for the _Memoires_than of other things in the same article. I found it, reading it lateron purpose and with "preventions" rather the other way, very much morereadable than any of its companions (_Manon_ is not its companion, butin a way its constituent), without being exactly readable _simpliciter_.All sorts of curious things might be dug out of it: for instance, quiteat the beginning, a more definite declaration than I know elsewhere ofthat curious French title-system which has always been such a puzzle toEnglishmen. "Il _se fit_ appeler le Comte de ... et, se voyant un fils,il _lui donna_ celui de Marquis de ..." There is a good deal in it whichmakes us think that Prevost had read Defoe, and something which makes itnot extravagant to fancy that Thackeray had read Prevost. But once more"let us come to the real things--let us speak of" _Manon Lescaut_.
[Sidenote: _Manon Lescaut._]
[Sidenote: Its uniqueness.]
It would be a very interesting question in that study ofliterature--rather unacademic, or perhaps academic in the best senseonly--which might be so near and is so far--whether the man is most tobe envied who reads _Manon Lescaut_ for the first time in blissfulignorance of these other things, and even of what has been said of them;or he who has, by accident or design, toiled through the twenty volumesof the others and comes upon Her. My own case is the former: and I amfar from quarrelling with it. But I sometimes like to fancy--now that Ihave reversed the proceeding--what it would have been like to dare thevoices--the endless, dull, half-meaningless, though not threateningvoices--of those other books--to refrain even from the appendix to the_Memoires_ as such, and never, till the _Modern Greekess_ has beendispatched, return to and possess the entire and perfect jewel of_Manon_. I used to wonder, when, for nearer five and twenty than twentyyears, I read for review hundreds of novels, English and French, whetheranybody would ever repeat Prevost's extraordinary spurt and "sport" inthis wonderful little book. I am bound to say that I never knew aninstance. The "first book" which gives a promise--dubious it may be, butstill promising--and is never followed by anything that fulfils this, isnot so very uncommon, though less common in prose fiction than inpoetry. The not so very rare "single-speech" poems are also not realparallels. It is of the essence of poetry, according to almost everytheory, that it should be, occasionally at least, inexplicable andunaccountable. I believe that every human being is capable of poetry,though I should admit that the exhibition of the capability would be inmost cases--I am sure it would be in my own--"highly to be deprecated."But with a sober prose fiction of some scope and room and verge it isdifferent. The face of Helen; the taste of nectar; the vision of theclouds or of the sea; the passion of a great action in oneself orothers; the infinite poignancy of suffering or of pleasure, maydraw--once and never again--immortal verse from an exceedingly mortalperson. Such things might also draw a phrase or a paragraph of prose.But they could not extract a systematic and organised prose tale of sometwo hundred pages, each of them much fuller than those of our averagesix-shilling stuff; and yet leave the author, who had never shownhimself capable of producing anything similar before, unable to produceanything in the least like it again. I wonder that the usual literarybusybodies have never busied themselves--perhaps they have, for during acouple of decades I have not had the opportunity of knowing everythingthat goes on in French literature as I once did--with Prevost,demonstrating that _Manon_ was a posthumous work of the Regent (who wasa clever man), or an expression of a real passion which lay at the backof Richelieu's debauchery, or written by some unknown author from whomthe Abbe bought it, and who died early, or something else of the kind.
There does not, however, appear to be the slightest chance or hope orfear (whichever expression be preferred) of the kind. Although Prevostelsewhere indulges--as everybody else for a long time in France andEngland alike did, save creative geniuses like Fielding--intransparently feigned talk about the origins of his stories, he was avery respectable man in his way, and not at all likely to father or tosteal any one else's work in a disreputable fashion. There are no otherclaimants for the book: and though it may be difficult for a foreignerto find the faults of style that Gustave Planche rebukes in Prevostgenerally, there is nothing in the mere style of _Manon_ which sets itabove the others.
For once one may concede that the whole attraction of the piece, barringone or two transient but almost Shakespearian flashes ofexpression--such as the famous "Perfide Manon! Perfide!" when she andDes Grieux first meet after her earliest treason--is to be found in itsmarvellous humanity, its equally marvellous grasp of character, and theintense, the absolutely shattering pathos of the relations of the heroand heroine. There are those, of course, who make much of the _personatertia_, Tiberge, the virtuous and friendly priest, who has a remarkablecommand of money for a not highly placed ecclesiastic, lends it withsingular want of circumspection, and then meddles with the best ofintentions and the most futile or mischievous of results. Veryrespectable man, Tiberge; but one with whom _on n'a que faire_. Manonand Des Grieux; Des Grieux and Manon--these are as all-sufficient to thereader as Manon was more than sufficient to Des Grieux, and as he, alas!was, if only in some ways, _in_sufficient to Manon.
One of the things which are nuisances in Prevost's other books becomespardonable, almost admirable, in this. His habit of incessant,straight-on narration by a single person, his avoidance of dialogueproperly so called, is, as has been noted, a habit common to all theseearly novels, and, to our taste if not to that of their early
readers,often disastrous. Here it is a positive advantage. Manon speaks verylittle; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (torepeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of herlover and herself--to the age-long delectation of readers. On the otherhand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue bettersuited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there arein them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none ofthis littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in thevery best sense of the term, and as we gather--not from anything he saysof himself, but from the general tenor--by no means a "wild gallant";affectionate, respectful to his parents, altogether "douce," and,indeed, rather (to start with) like Lord Glenvarloch in _The Fortunes ofNigel_. He meets Manon (Prevost has had the wits to make her a littleolder than her lover), and _actum est de_ both of them.
[Sidenote: The character of its heroine.]
But Manon herself? She talks (it has been said) very little, and it wasnot necessary that she should talk much. If she had talked as Mariannetalks, we should probably hate her, unless, as is equally probable, weceased to take any interest in her. She is a girl not of talk but ofdeeds: and her deeds are of course quite inexcusable. But still thatgreat and long unknown verse of Prior, which tells how a more harmlessheroine did various things--
As answered the end of her being created,
fits her, and the deeds create her in their process, according to thewonderful magic of the novelist's art. Manon is not in the least aMessalina; it is not what Messalina wanted that she wants at all, thoughshe may have no physical objection to it, and may rejoice in it when itis shared by her lover. Still less is she a Margaret of Burgundy, or oneof the tigress-enchantresses of the Fronde, who would kill their loversafter enjoying their love. It has been said often, and is beyond alldoubt true, that she would have been perfectly happy with Des Grieux ifhe had fulfilled the expostulations of George the Fourth as to Mr.Turveydrop, and had not only been known to the King, but had had twentythousand a year. She wants nobody and nothing but him, as far as the"Him" is concerned: but she does not want him in a cottage. And here thesubtlety comes in. She does not in the least mind giving to others whatshe gives him, provided that they will give her what he cannot give. Thepossibility of this combination is of course not only shocking to Mrs.Grundy, but deniable by persons who are not Mrs. Grundy at all. Itsexistence is not really doubtful, though hardly anybody, except Prevostand (I repeat it, little as I am of an Ibsenite) Ibsen in the _WildDuck_, has put it into real literature. Manon, like Gina and probablylike others, does not really think what she gives of immense, or of anygreat, importance. People will give her, in exchange for it, what shedoes think of great, of immense importance; the person to whom she wouldquite honestly prefer to give it cannot give her these other things. Andshe concludes her bargain as composedly as any _bonne_ who takes thebasket to the shops and "makes its handle dance"--to use the Frenchidiom--for her own best advantage. It does annoy her when she has topart from Des Grieux, and it does annoy her that Des Grieux should beannoyed at what she does. But she is made of no nun's flesh, and suchsoul as she has is filled with much desire for luxury and pleasure. Thedesire of the soul will have its way, and the flesh lends itself readilyenough to the satisfaction thereof.
[Sidenote: And that of the hero.]
So, too, there is no such instance known to me of the presentation oftwo different characters, in two different ways, so complete and yet soidiosyncratic in each. Sainte-Beuve showed what he was going to become(as well, perhaps, as something which he was going to lose) in hisslight but suggestive remarks on the relation of Des Grieux to theaverage _roue_ hero of that most _roue_ time. It is only a suggestion;he does not work it out. But it is worth working out a little. DesGrieux is _ab initio_, and in some ways _usque ad finem_, a sort of_ingenu_. He seems to have no vicious tendencies whatever; and had Manonnot supervened, might have been a very much more exemplary Chevalier deMalte than the usual run of those dignitaries, who differed chieflyfrom their uncrossed comrades and brethren in having no wife to beunfaithful to. He is never false to Manon--the incident of one ofManon's lovers trying vainly to tempt his rival, with a pretty cast-offmistress of his own, is one of the most striking features of the book.He positively reveres, not his mother, who is dead, and reverence forwhom would be nothing in a Frenchman, but his father, and even, it wouldseem, his elder brother--a last stretch of reverence quite unknown tomany young English gentlemen who certainly would not do things that DesGrieux did. Except when Manon is concerned, it would seem that he mighthave been a kind of saint--as good at least as Tiberge. But his love forher and his desire for her entirely saturate and transform him. That hedisobeys his father and disregards his brother is nothing: we all dothat in less serious cases than his, and there is almost warrant for itin Scripture. But he cheats at play (let us frankly allow, rememberingGrammont and others, that this was not in France the unpardonable sinthat it has--for many generations, fortunately--been with us), at thesuggestion of his rascally left-hand brother-in-law, in order to supplyManon's wants. He commits an almost deliberate (though he makes someexcuses on this point) and almost cowardly murder, on an unarmedlay-brother of Saint-Sulpice, to get to Manon. And, worst of all, heconsents to the stealing of moneys given to her by his supplanters inorder to feed her extravagance. After this his suborning the King'ssoldiers to attack the King's constabulary on the King's highway torescue Manon is nothing. But observe that, though it is certainly not"All for God," it _is_ "All for Her." And observe further that all thesethings--even the murder--were quite common among the rank and file ofthat French aristocracy which was so busily hurrying on the FrenchRevolution. Only, Des Grieux himself would pretty certainly not havedone them if She had never come in his way. And he tells it all with alimpid and convincing clarity (as they would say now) which puts thewhole thing before us. No apology is made, and no apology is needed. Itis written in the books of the chronicles of Manon and Des Grieux; inthe lives of Des Grieux and Manon, suppose them ever to have existed orto exist, it could not but happen.
[Sidenote: The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of theirhistory.]
It is surely not profane (and perhaps it has been done already) toborrow for these luckless, and, if you will, somewhat graceless persons,the words of the mighty colophon of Matthew Arnold's most unequal but inparts almost finest poem, at least the first and last lines:
So rest, for ever rest, immortal pair,
and
The rustle of the eternal rain of love.
Nor is it perhaps extravagant to claim for their creator--even for theirreporter--the position of the first person who definitely vindicated forthe novel the possibility of creating a passionate masterpiece,outstripping _La Princesse de Cleves_ as _Othello_ outstrips _A WomanKilled with Kindness_. As for the enormous remainder of him, if it isvery frankly negligible by the mere reader, it is not quite so by thestudent. He was very popular, and, careless bookmaker as he was in avery critical time, his popularity scarcely failed him till his horribledeath.[342] It can scarcely be said that, except in the one great citedinstance, he heightened or intensified the French novel, but he enlargedits scope, varied its interests, and combined new objectives with itsalready existing schemes, even in his less good work. In _Manon Lescaut_itself he gave a masterpiece, not only to the novel, not only to France,but to all literature and all the world.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Crebillon _fils_.]
The unfortunate nobleman as to whom Dickens has left us in doubt whetherhe was a peer in his own right or the younger son or a Marquis or Duke,pronounced Shakespeare "a clayver man." It was perhaps, in theparticular instance, inadequate though true. I hardly know any one inliterature of whom it is truer and more adequate than it is of ClaudeProsper Jolyot de Crebillon the younger, commonly called Crebillon_fils_.[343] His very name is an abomination to Mrs. Grundy, whoprobably never read, or even attempt
ed to read, one of his naughtybooks. Gray's famous tribute[344] to him--also known to a large numberwho are in much the same case with Mrs. Grundy--is distinctlypatronising. But he is a very clever man indeed, and the cleverness ofsome of his books--especially those in dialogue--is positively amazing.
[Sidenote: The case against him.]
At the same time it is of the first importance to make the due provisosand allowances, the want of which so frequently causes disappointment,if not positive disgust, when readers have been induced by unbalancedlaudation to take up works of the literature of other days. There are,undoubtedly, things--many and heavy things--to be said againstCrebillon. A may say, "I am not, I think, _Mr._ Grundy: but I cannotstand your Crebillon. I do not like a world where all the men areapparently atheists, and all the women are certainly the other thingmentioned in Donne's famous line. It disgusts and sickens me: and I willhave none of it, however clever it may be." B, not quite agreeing withA, may take another tone, and observe, "He _is_ clever and he _is_amusing: but he is terribly monotonous. I do not mind a visit to the'oyster-bearing shores' now and then, but I do not want to live inLampsacus. After all, even in a pagan Pantheon, there are otherdivinities besides a cleverly palliated Priapus and a comparativelyladylike Cotytto. Seven volumes of however delicately veiled'sculduddery' are nearly as bad as a whole evening's golf-talk in a St.Andrews hotel, or a long men's dinner, where everybody but yourself is amember of an Amateur Dramatic Society." The present writer is not farfrom agreeing with B, while he has for A a respect which disguises noshadow of a sneer. Crebillon does harp far too much on one string, andthat one of no pure tone: and even the individual handlings of thesubject are chargeable throughout his work with _longueurs_, in thegreater part of it with sheer tedium. It is very curious, and for us ofthe greatest importance, to notice how this curse of long-windedness,episodic and hardly episodic "inset," endless talk "about it and aboutit," besets these pioneers of the modern novel. Whether it was a legacyof the "Heroics" or not it is difficult to say. I think it was--to someextent. But, as we have seen, it exists even in Lesage; it is foundconspicuously in Marivaux; it "advances insupportably" in Prevost,except when some God intervenes to make him write (and to stop himwriting) _Manon_; and it rests heavily even on Crebillon, one of thelightest, if not one of the purest, of literary talents. It isimpossible to deny that he suffers from monotony of general theme: andequally impossible to deny that he suffers from spinning out ofparticular pieces. There is perhaps not a single thing of his whichwould not have been better if it had been shorter: and two of hisliveliest if also most risky pieces, _La Nuit et le Moment_ and _LeHasard au Coin du Feu_, might have been cut down to one half withadvantage, and to a quarter with greater advantage still.
There are, however, excuses for Crebillon: and though it may seem a rashthing to say, and even one which gives the case away, there is, at leastin these two and parts of _Le Sopha_, hardly a page--even of the partswhich, if "cut," would improve the work as a whole--that does not initself prove the almost elfish cleverness now assigned to him.
[Sidenote: For the defendant--The veracity of his artificiality and hisconsummate cleverness.]
The great excuse for him, from the non-literary point of view, is thatthis world of his--narrow though crowded as it is, corrupt,preposterous, inviting the Judgment that came after it as no periodperhaps has ever done, except that immediately before the Deluge, thatof the earlier Roman empire, and one other--was a real world in its day,and left, as all real things do, an abiding mark and influence on whatfollowed. One of the scores and almost hundreds of sayings whichdistinguish him, trivial as he seems to some and no doubt disgusting ashe seems to others, is made by one of his most characteristic and mostimpudent but not most offensive heroes _a la_ Richelieu, who says, notin soliloquy nor to a brother _roue_, but to the mistress of the moment:"If love-making is not always a pleasure, at any rate it is always akind of occupation." That is the keynote of the Crebillon novel: it isthe handbook, with illustrative examples, of the business, employment,or vocation of flirting, in the most extensive and intensive meanings ofthat term comprehensible to the eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: The Crebillonesque atmosphere and method.]
Now you should never scamp or hurry over business: and Crebillonobserves this doctrine in the most praiseworthy fashion. With thethorough practicality of his century and of his nation (which has alwaysbeen in reality the most practical of all nations) he sets to work togive us the ways and manners of his world. It is an odd world at firstsight, but one gets used to its conventions. It is a world of what theyused to call, in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century,"high fellers" and of great ladies, all of whom--saving for glimpses ofmilitary and other appointments for the men, which sometimes take themaway and are useful for change of scene, of theatres, balls,gaming-tables for men and women both--"have nothing in the world to do"but carry on that occupation which Clitandre of "The Night and theMoment," at an extremely suitable time and in equally appropriatecircumstances, refers to in the words quoted above. There are some otheroddities about this world. In some parts of it nobody seems to bemarried. Mrs. Grundy, and even persons more exercised in actual factthan Mrs. Grundy, would expect them all to be, and to neglect the tie.But sometimes Crebillon finds it easier to mask this fact. Often hisladies are actual widows, which is of course very convenient, and mightbe taken as a sign of grace in him by Mrs. G.: oftener it is difficultto say what they are legally. They are nearly all duchesses ormarchionesses or countesses, just as the men hold corresponding ranks:and they all seem to be very well off. But their sole occupation is thatconducted under the three great verbs, _Prendre_; _Avoir_; _Quitter_.These verbs are used rather more frequently, but by no meansexclusively, of and by the men. Taking the stage nomenclature familiarto everybody from Moliere, which Crebillon also uses in some of hisbooks, though he exchanges it for proper names elsewhere, let us supposea society composed of Oronte, Clitandre, Eraste, Damis (men), andCydalise, Celie, Lucinde, Julie (ladies). Oronte "takes" Lucinde,"possesses" her for a time, and "quits" her for Julie, who has beenmeanwhile "taken," "possessed," and "quitted" by Eraste. Eraste passesto the conjugation of the three verbs with Cydalise, who, however, takesthe initiative of "quitting" and conjugates "take" in joint active andpassive with Damis. Meanwhile Celie and Clitandre are similarly occupiedwith each other, and ready to "cut in" with the rest at fresharrangements. These processes require much serious conversation, andthis is related with the same mixture of gravity and irony which isbestowed on the livelier passages of action.
The thing, in short, is most like an intensely intricate dance, withendless figures--with elaborate, innumerable, and sometimesindescribable stage directions. And the whole of it is written downcarefully by M. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon.
He might have occupied his time much better? Perhaps, as to the subjectof occupation. But with that we have, if not nothing, very little to do.The point is, How did he handle these better-let-alone subjects? andwhat contribution, in so handling them, did he make to the generaldevelopment of the novel?
I am bound to say that I think, with the caution given above, he handledthem, when he was at his best, singularly well, and gave hints, to betaken or left as they chose, to handlers of less disputable subjectsthan his.
One at least of the most remarkable things about him is connected withthis very disputableness. Voltaire and Sterne were no doubt greater menthan Crebillon _fils_: and though both of them dealt with the same classof subject, they also dealt with others, while he did not. But,curiously enough, the reproach of sniggering, which lies so heavily onLaurence Sterne and Francois Arouet, does not lie on Crebillon. He hasan audacity of grave persiflage[345] which is sometimes almost Swiftianin a lower sphere: and it saves him from the unpardonable sin of thesnigger. He has also--as, to have this grave persiflage, he almostnecessarily must have--a singularly clear and flexible style, which isonly made more piquant by the "-assiez's" and "-ussiez's" of the olderlanguage. Further, a
nd of still greater importance for the novelist, hehas a pretty wit, which sometimes almost approaches humour, and, if nota diabolically, a _diablotin_ically acute perception of human nature asit affects his subject. This perception rarely fails: and conventional,and very unhealthily conventional, as the Crebillon world is, the peoplewho inhabit it are made real people. He is, in those best things of hisat least, never "out." We can see the ever-victorious duke (M. deClerval of the _Hasard_ is perhaps the closest to the Richelieu model ofall Crebillon's coxcomb-gallants), who, even after a lady has given himmost unequivocal proofs of her affection, refuses for a long time, ifnot finally, to say that he loves her, because he has himself agraduated scheme of values in that direction, and though she may havetouched his heart, etc., she has not quite come up to his "love"standard.[346] And we know, too, though she is less common, thephilosophical Marquise herself, who, "possessing" the most notoriouslyinconstant lover in all Paris (this same M. de Clerval, it happens),maintains her comparative indifference to the circumstance, allegingthat even when he is most inconstant he is always "very affectionate,though a little _extinguished_." And in fact he goes off to her from thevery fireside, where such curious things have chanced. Extravagant asare the situations in _La Nuit et le Moment_, the other best thing, theyare, but for the _longueurs_ already censured, singularly verisimilar ontheir own postulates. The trusty coachman, who always drivesparticularly slowly when a lady accompanies his master in the carriage,but would never think of obeying the check-string if his master's ownvoice did not authorise it; the invaluable _soubrette_ who will sit upto any hour to play propriety, when her mistress is according a_tete-a-tete_, but who, most naturally, always falls asleep--thesecomplete, at the lower end of the scale, what the dukes and thecountesses have begun at the upper. And Crebillon, despite hisverbosity, is never at a loss for pointed sayings to relieve and frothit up. Nor are these mere _mots_ or _pointes_ or conceits--there is asingular amount of life-wisdom in them, and a short anthology might bemade here, if there were room for it, which would entirely vindicate theassertion.
[Sidenote: Inequality of his general work--a survey of it.]
It is true that the praises just given to Crebillon do not (as wasindeed hinted above) apply to the whole of his work, or even to thelarger part of it. An unfavourable critic might indeed say that, instrictness, they only apply to parts of _Le Sopha_ and to the two littledialogue-stories just referred to. The method is, no doubt, one by nomeans easy to apply on the great scale, and the restriction of thesubject adds to the difficulty. The longest regular stories of all, _Ah!Quel Conte!_ and _Le Sopha_ itself, though they should have beenmentioned in reverse order, are resumptions of the Hamiltonian idea[347]of chaining things on to the _Arabian Nights_. Crebillon, however, doesnot actually resuscitate Shahriar and the sisters, but substitutes alater Caliph, Shah Baham, and his Sultana. The Sultan is exceedinglystupid, but also very talkative, and fond of interrupting his vizier andthe other tale-tellers with wiseacreries; the Sultana is an acute enoughlady, who governs her tongue in order to save her neck. The framework isnot bad for a short story, but becomes a little tedious when it is madeto enshrine two volumes, one of them pretty big. It is better in _LeSopha_ than in _Ah! Quel Conte!_ and some of the tales that it gives usin the former are almost equal to the two excepted dialogues. Moreover,it is unluckily true that _Ah! Quel Conte!_ (an ejaculation of theSultana's at the beginning) might be, as Crebillon himself doubtlessforesaw, repeated with a sinister meaning by a reader at the end._Tanzai et Neadarne_ or _L'Ecumoire_, another fairy story, thoughlivelier in its incidents than _Ah! Quel Conte!_--nay, though itcontains some of Crebillon's smartest sayings, and has perhaps hisnicest heroine,--is heavy on the whole, and in it, the author's_gauffre_-like lightness of "impropriety" being absent, the toneapproaches nearer to that dismallest form of literature ornon-literature--the deliberate obscene.
_Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, on the other hand--one ofthe author's earliest books--is the furthest from that most undesirableconsummation, and one of the most curious, if not of the most amusing,of all. It recounts, from the mouth of the neophyte himself, the"forming" of a very young man--almost a boy--to this strange kind ofcommerce, by an elderly, but not yet old, and still attractivecoquette, Madame de Lursay, whose earlier life has scandalised even thenot easily scandalisable society of her time (we are not told quitehow), but who has recovered a reputation very slightly tarnished. Thehero is flattered, but for a long time too timid and innocent to availhimself of the advantages offered to him; while, before very long,Madame de Lursay's wiles are interfered with by an "Inconnue-Ingenue,"with whom he falls in deep calf-love of a quasi-genuine kind. The bookincludes sketches of the half-bravo gallants of the time, and is notnegligible: but it is not vividly interesting.
Still less so, though they contain some very lively passages, and arethe chief _locus_ for Crebillon's treatment of the actual trio ofhusband, wife, and lover, are the _Lettres de la Marquise de M---- auComte de P----_. The scene in which the husband--unfaithful, peevish,and a _petit maitre_--enters his wife's room to find an ancient, goutyMarquis, who cannot get off his knees quick enough, and terminates thesituation with all the _aplomb_ of the Regency, is rather nice: and thegradual "slide" of the at first quite virtuous writer (the wife herself,of course) is well depicted. But love-letters which are neitherhalf-badinage--which these are not--nor wholly passionate--which thesenever are till the last,[348] when the writer is describing a state ofthings which Crebillon could not manage at all--are very difficultthings to bring off, and Claude Prosper is not quite equal to thesituation.
It will thus be seen that the objectors whom we have called A and B--orat least B--will find that they or he need not read all the pages of allthe seven volumes to justify their views: and some other work, still tobe mentioned, completes the exhibition. I confess, indeed, once moreunblushingly, that I have not read every page of them myself. Had theyfallen in my way forty years ago I should, no doubt, have done so; butforty years of critical experience and exercise give one the power, andgrant one the right, of a more summary procedure in respect of matterthus postponed, unless it is perceived to be of very exceptionalquality. These larger works of Crebillon's are not good, though they arenot by any means so bad as those of Prevost. There are nuggets, of theshrewd sense and the neat phrase with which he has been credited, innearly all of them: and these the skilled prospector of reading goldwill always detect and profit by. But, barring the possibility of acollection of such, the _Oeuvres Choisies_ of Crebillon need notcontain more than the best parts of _Le Sopha_, the two comparativelyshort dialogue-tales, and a longer passage or two from _Tanzai etNeadarne_. It would constitute (I was going to say a respectable, but asthat is hardly the right word, I will say rather) a tolerable volume.Even in a wider representation _Les Heureux Orphelins_ and _LettresAtheniennes_ would yield very little.
The first begins sensationally with the discovery, by a young Englishsquire in his own park, of a foundling girl and boy--_not_ of his ownproduction--whom he brings up; and it ends with a tedious description ofhow somebody founded the first _petite maison_ in England--a worthy workindeed. It is also noteworthy for a piece of bad manners, which, oneregrets to say, French writers have too often committed; lords andladies of the best known names and titles in or near Crebillon's ownday--such as Oxford, Suffolk, Pembroke--being introduced with the utmostnonchalance.[349] Our novelists have many faults to charge themselveswith, and Anthony Trollope, in _The Three Clerks_, produced a Frenchmanwith perhaps as impossible a name as any English travesty in Frenchliterature. But I do not remember any one introducing, in a _not_historical novel, a Duc de la Tremoille or a member of any of thebranches of Rohan, at a time when actual bearers of these titles existedin France. As for the _Lettres Atheniennes_, if it were not forcompleteness, I should scarcely even mention them. Alcibiades is thechief male writer; Aspasia the chief female; but all of them, male andfemale, are equally destitute of Atticism and of interest. The contrastof the contrasts
between Crebillon's and Prevost's best and worst workis one of the oddest things in letters. One wonders how Prevost came towrite anything so admirable as _Manon Lescaut_; one wonders howCrebillon came to write anything so insufficient as the two books justcriticised, and even others.
It may be said, "This being so, why have you given half a chapter tothese two writers, even with Lesage and Marivaux to carry it off?" Thereason is that this is (or attempts to be) a history of the Frenchnovel, and that, in such a history, the canons of importance are not thesame as those of the novel itself. _Gil Blas_, _Marianne_, _ManonLescaut_, and perhaps even _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_ are interesting inthemselves; but the whole work of their authors is important, andtherefore interesting, to the historical student. For these authorscarried further--a great deal further--the process of laying thefoundations and providing the materials and plant for what was to come.Of actual masterpieces they only achieved the great, but not _equally_great, one of _Gil Blas_ and the little one of _Manon Lescaut_. But itis not by masterpieces alone that the world of literature lives in thesense of prolonging its life. One may even say--touching the uncleanthing paradox for a moment, and purifying oneself with incense, andsalt, and wine--that the masterpieces of literature are more beautifuland memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. Theycatch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such afashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The drearyimitation _Iliads_, the impossible sham _Divina Commedias_, theSheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us.Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest ofwhat they themselves hardly know, strike out paths, throw seed, sketchdesigns which others afterwards pursue, and plant out, and fill up.There are probably not many persons now who would echo Gray's wish foreternal romances of either Marivaux or Crebillon; and the accompanyingremarks in the same letter on _Joseph Andrews_, though they show someappreciation of the best characters, are quite inappreciative of themerit of the novel as a whole. For eternal variations of _JosephAndrews_, "_Passe!_" as a French Gray might have said.
Nevertheless, I am myself pretty sure that Marivaux at least helpedRichardson and Fielding, and there can be no doubt that Crebillon helpedSterne. And what is more important to our present purpose, they andtheir companions in this chapter helped the novel in general, and theFrench novel in particular, to an extent far more considerable. We maynot, of course, take the course of literary history--general orparticular--which has been, as the course which in any case must havebeen. But at the same time we cannot neglect the facts. And it is aquite certain fact that, for the whole of the last half of theeighteenth century, and nearly the whole of the first quarter of thenineteenth, the French novel, as a novel, made singularly littleprogress. We shall have to deal in the next chapter, if not in the nexttwo chapters, with at least two persons of far greater powers than anyone mentioned in the last two. But we shall perhaps be able to showcause why even Voltaire and Rousseau, why certainly Diderot, whyMarmontel and almost every one else till we come, not in this volume, toChateaubriand, whose own position is a little doubtful, somehow failedto attain the position of a great advancer of the novel.
These others, whatever their shortcomings, _had_ advanced it by bringingit, in various ways, a great deal nearer to its actual ideal of acompleted picture of real human life. Lesage had blended with hisrepresentation a good deal of the conventional picaresque; Marivaux hadabused preciousness of language and petty psychology; Prevost, save inthat marvellous windfall of his and the Muses which the historian ofnovels can hardly mention without taking off his hat if he has one on,or making his best bow if he has not, had gone wandering afterimpossible and uninteresting will-o'-the-wisps; Crebillon had done worsethan "abide in his inn," he had abided almost always in his polite[350]bordello. But all of them had meant to be real; and all of them had, ifonly now and then, to an extent which even Madame de la Fayette hadscarcely achieved before, attained reality.
FOOTNOTES:
[309] In fact it has been said, and may be said again, that Lesage isone of the prophets who have never had so much justice done them intheir own countries as abroad.
[310] The first part of _Gil Blas_ appeared in 1715; and nearly twentyyears later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the authorhad been paid in advance for it six or seven years earlier.
[311] I have never read it in the original, being, though a greatadmirer of Spanish, but slightly versed therein.
[312] This, which is a sort of Appendix to the _Diable Boiteux_, is muchthe best of these _opera minora_.
[313] He had a temper of the most _Breton-Bretonnant_ type--notill-natured but sturdy and independent, recalcitrant alike toill-treatment and to patronage. He got on neither at the Bar, his firstprofession, nor with the regular actors, and he took vengeance in hisbooks on both; while at least one famous anecdote shows his way oftreating a patron--indeed, as it happened, a patroness--who presumed.
[314] Asmodeus, according to his usual station in the infernalhierarchy, is _demon de la luxure_: but any fears or hopes which may bearoused by this description, and the circumstances of the action, willbe disappointed. Lesage has plenty of risky situations, but his languageis strictly "proper."
[315] Against this may be cited his equally anecdotic acceptance ofRegnard, who was also "run" against Moliere. But Regnard was a "classic"and orthodox in his way; Lesage was a free-lance, and even a Romanticbefore Romanticism. Boileau knew that evil, as evil seemed to him, _had_come from Spain; he saw more coming in this, and if he anticipated morestill in the future, 1830 proved him no false prophet.
[316] In other words, there is a unity of personality in the attitudewhich the hero takes to and in them.
[317] And in it too, of course; as well as in Spain's remarkable but toosoon re-enslaved criticism.
[318] As he says of himself (vii. x.): _Enfin, apres un severe examen jetombais d'accord avec moi-meme, que si je n'etais pas un fripon, il nes'en fallait guere._ And the Duke of Lerma tells him later, "_M. deSantillane, a ce que je vois, vous avez ete tant soit peu_ picaro."
[319] The two most undoubted cases--his ugly and, unluckily, repeatedacceptance of the part of Pandarus-Leporello--were only too ordinaryrascalities in the seventeenth century. The books of the chronicles ofEngland and France show us not merely clerks and valets but gentlemen ofevery rank, from esquire to duke, eagerly accepting this office.
[320] In a curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaimspaternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by adesire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is aclumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well as a knave.
[321] One of Lesage's triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last,"M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on andsometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at leastingenuousness.
[322] Not of course as opposed to "romantic," but as = "chief andprincipal."
[323] The reader must not forget that this formidable word means"privateer" rather than "pirate" in French, and that this was the goldenage of the business in that country.
[324] Those who are curious may find something on him by the presentwriter, not identical with the above account, in an essay entitled _AStudy of Sensibility_, reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_(London, 1891), and partly, but outside of the Marivaux part, reproducedin Chap. XII. of the present volume.
[325] By M. Gustave Larroumet. Paris, 1882.
[326] I need hardly say that I am not referring to things like _Rebeccaand Rowena_ or _A Legend of the Rhine_, which "burst the outer shell ofsin," and, like Mrs. Martha Gwynne in the epitaph, "hatch themselves acherubin" in each case.
[327] The reader will perhaps excuse the reminder that the sense inwhich we (almost exclusively) use this word, and which it had gained inFrench itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged sarcasm onperson and world (_Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arrive_), was not quiteoriginal. The _parvenu_ was simply
a person who _had_ "got on": thedisobliging slur of implication on his former position, and perhaps onhis means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is doubtful whetherthere is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in Marivaux's title.
[328] It is the acme of what may be called innocent corruption. She doesnot care for her master, nor apparently for vicious pleasure,nor--certainly--for money as such. She does care for Jacob, and wants tomarry him; the money will make this possible; so she earns it by themeans that present themselves, and puts it at his disposal.
[329] He is proof against his master's threats if he refuses; as well asagainst the money if he accepts. Unluckily for Genevieve, when he breaksaway she faints. Her door and the money-box are both left open, and thelatter disappears.
[330] Here and elsewhere the curious cheapness of French living (despitewhat history tells of crushing taxation, etc.) appears. The _locusclassicus_ for this is generally taken to be Mme. de Maintenon'swell-known letter about her brother's housekeeping. But here, well intoanother century, Mlle. Habert's 4000 _livres_ a year are supposed to beat least relative affluence, while in _Marianne_ (_v. inf._) M. deClimal thinks 500 or 600 enough to tempt her, and his final bequest ofdouble that annuity is represented as making a far from despicable _dot_even for a good marriage.
[331] The much greater blood-thirstiness of the French highwayman, ascompared with the English, has been sometimes attributed byhumanitarians to the "wheel"--and has often been considered by personsof sense as justifying that implement.
[332] The Devil's Advocate may say that Marianne turns out to be ofEnglish extraction after all--but it is not Marivaux who tells us so.
[333] To question or qualify Marianne's virtue, even in the slightestdegree, may seem ungracious; for it certainly withstands what to somegirls would have been the hardest test of all--that is to say, not somuch the offer of riches if she consents, as the apparent certainty ofutter destitution if she refuses. At the same time, the Devil's Advocateneed not be a Kelly or a Cockburn to make out some damaging suggestions.Her vague, and in no way solidly justified, but decided family prideseems to have a good deal to do with her refusal; and though this showsthe value of the said family pride, it is not exactly virtue in itself.Still more would appear to be due to the character of the suit and thesuitor. M. de Climal is not only old and unattractive; not only a sneakand a libertine; but he is a clumsy person, and he has not, as he mighthave done, taken Marianne's measure. The mere shock of his suddentransformation from a pious protector into a prospective "keeper," whois making a bid for a new concubine, has evidently an immense effect onher quick nervous temperament. She is not at all the kind of girl tolike to be the plaything of an old man; and she is perfectly shrewdenough to see that vengeance, and fear as regards his nephew, have asmuch as anything else, or more, to do with the way in which he brusqueshis addresses and hurries his gift. Further, she has already conceived afancy, at least, for that nephew himself; and one sees the "jury droop,"as Dickens has put it, with which the Counsel of the Prince of the Airwould hint that, if the offers had come in a more seductive fashion fromValville himself, they might not have been so summarily rejected. Butlet it be observed that these considerations, while possibly unfair toMarianne, are not in the least derogatory to Marivaux himself. On thecontrary, it is greatly to his credit that he should have created acharacter of sufficient lifelikeness and sufficient complexity to serveas basis for "problem"-discussions of the kind.
[334] To put the drift of the above in other words, we do not need tohear any more of Marianne in any position, because we have had enoughshown us to know generally what she would do, say, and think, in allpositions.
[335] It has been observed that there is actually a Meredithian qualityin Aristides of Smyrna, though he wrote no novel. A tale in Greek, toillustrate the parallel, would be an admirable subject for a UniversityPrize.
[336] Two descriptions of "Marivaudage" (which, by the way, was partlyanticipated by Fontenelle)--both, if I do not mistake, by Crebillon_fils_--are famous: "Putting down not only everything you said andthought, but also everything you would like to have thought and said,but did not," and, "Introducing to each other words which never hadthought of being acquainted." Both of these perhaps hit the modern formsof the phenomenon even harder than they hit their original butt.
[337] It is only fair to the poor Prioress to say that there is hardly aheroine in fiction who is more deeply in love with her own pretty littleself than Marianne.
[338] One does not know whether it was prudence, or that materialismwhich, though he was no _philosophe_, he shared with most of hiscontemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharpthough mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hintedthat both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned,whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their ownsafety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed"creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparisonof Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to manypersons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.
[339] His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror are oddcrosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn historicalnovel.
[340] Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay, saw, asmost would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle. Aisse's.But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident"protector," M. de Ferreol. Mlle. Aisse herself had earlier read the_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ and did not think much of them. Butthis was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciatedManon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.
[341] The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch] _OeuvresChoisies_ above noticed has given abstracts of Prevost's novels as wellas of Richardson's, which the Abbe translated. These, withSainte-Beuve's of the _Memoires_, will help those who want somethingmore than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of theoriginal. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the endof _Cleveland_.
[342] He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of being bledwas actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who thought him deadand only brought him to life--to expire actually in torment.
[343] Crebillon _pere_, tragedian and academician, is one of the personswho have never had justice done to them: perhaps because they neverquite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal, rhetorical, andas over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if we want to findthe true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth century, we mustgo to him.
[344] "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and Crebillon."
[345] Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony Hamilton, withwhose family, as has been noticed, he had early relations.
[346] He goes further, and points out that, as she is his _really_beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't wish him todeclare himself false to that other lady?--having also previouslyobserved that, after what has occurred, he could never think ofdeceiving his Celie herself by false declarations. Thesetopsy-turvinesses are among Crebillon's best points, and infinitelysuperior to the silly "platitudes reversed" which have tried to producethe same effect in more recent times.
[347] It has been said more than once that Crebillon had early access toHamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in _Ah! Quel Conte!_and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter ofCristalline la Curieuse herself.
[348] Nor perhaps even then, for passion is absolutely unknown to ourauthor. One touch of it would send the curious Rupert's drop of hismicrocosm to shivers, as _Manon Lescaut_ itself in his time, and_Adolphe_ long after, show.
[349] Some remarks are made by "Madame _Hepenny_"--a very pleasingphoneticism, and, though an actual name, not likely to offend any actualperson.
[350] No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two ofthe personages of _Les Egarements_, Crebillon's intended gentlem
en arenearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and hisladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in this lastpoint at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closelyresembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find sometwentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of _Lovefor Love_ as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of"breeding" never broke down in France till the _philosophe_ period,while with us it lasted till--when shall we say?
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