CHAPTER XII
"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.
THE FRENCH NOVEL, _C._ 1800
[Sidenote: "Sensibility."]
Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to thecurious phenomenon called in French _sensibilite_ (with a derivative ofcontempt, _sensiblerie_), the exact English form of which supplies partof the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, ofone of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears firstdefinitely[404] in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly,in Marivaux, and to some extent in Prevost and Marmontel, while it is,as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly inSaint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and booksdisplaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; andin this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately finda place, not merely because some of them are late, but becauseSensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginningbefore its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have toencroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than inreality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was theproperty of the eighteenth century.[405]
[Sidenote: A glance at Miss Austen.]
To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and _Sense and Sensibility_,everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over MarianneDashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in thegenial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standardof feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling"was admitted as something out of the way--on which side of the wayopinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically theaccepted type--a type which lasted far into the next century, though itwas obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do sovainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expectedfrom women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. Thewonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of theirlong-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_,at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interestingbrother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionableecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of theperiod--an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and wasonly cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.
[Sidenote: The thing essentially French.]
The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughlyEnglish at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, whoimpressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women incivilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day whenMadame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romancesof Madeleine de Scudery, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in_Adolphe_, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-centuryromance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.
[Sidenote: Its history.]
Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the main century wehave already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close,Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, they mix too many secondary purposeswith their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan ofthe present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence ofconventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if notwholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome youngBritonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must lookelsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her othernames already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin(most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women),Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souzaand de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkablenames of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our"documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant piecesof literary _bric-a-brac_; perhaps they are something a little more thanthat. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world.Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseauand Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks andcorners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverentlycalled "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitatedin full force before some of us are dead.[406] For it has exactly thepeculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions--the appeal tosomething which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great dealthat is not.
[Sidenote: Mme. de Tencin and _Le Comte de Comminge_.]
In the followers of Madame de la Fayette[407] we find that a good manyyears have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grownstill more official; and instead of using it to express genuinesentiments, which in another language might deserve expression wellenough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modernreader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning thesentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. Thisis somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin thanelsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer aperson than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that shecould hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evidentenough in the _Comte de Comminge_ and in the _Malheurs de l'Amour_.Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of theRegency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in herwritings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, likethe former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, thedefects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almostimpossible that those who practised it should escape.
Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moralpurposes and her _esprit_, she indulged in a good deal of rathercomplicated and sometimes extravagant incident. _M. de Comminge_, whichis very short, contains, not to mention other things, the ratherstartling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for hislady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has beencharged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroineliving for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle,however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anythingelse the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached.All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who isfurious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in adungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.[408]
Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Benavides. What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am contracting_.
The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicisedpassages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverestwomen of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that therestrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upperclasses and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,were very embarrassing.
[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]
Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows thecompleted product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is acapital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girlof sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rivalbetrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes herwrite an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of adeclaration in form or a rup
ture. For a Sensible man, it must beconfessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. Shehas slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensiblepostscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a force del'ecrire; rien ne peut m'obliger a le penser ni le desirer." Apparentlyit was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as badas Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.
MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever you may think proper to do, without considering myself entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my present circumstances permit me not to seek.
Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in thisbroad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, itcould not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressydespatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel thewaiting-maid"--
Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent than that with which my heart burns for the amiable Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle, how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might regret others less estimable, but which have been the object of his hope and desire, etc. etc.
This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who willassist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives itin approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her"trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin itagain many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubiousnature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret andindignation rise to her eyes"--tears which indeed are excusable evenfrom a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far,however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "denotre sensibilite, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait naitre, que nous devonsnous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to arguewith a lady.
The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whoseconduct is--translated into the language of Sensibility, and adjustedto the manners of the time and class--a ludicrous anticipation of thePickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymouslyto the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter--
A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known, gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions, and the step she takes to let you know it is the first weakness which she has to confess.
The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but itsSensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story ofthe _Marquis de Cressy_, which is a very little book[409] and notextremely edifying. But it supplies us with another _locus classicus_ onsentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide,and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter fromAdelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil--
'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth, wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to bury me in this retreat.
And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not speciallyunnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be alittle embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence oftheir wives (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuseof pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wiveswould not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has thefinest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then--
The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried, bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love. Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having deprived you of the only possession which excited your desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"
[Sidenote: Her other work--_Milady Catesby_.]
All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or lessinteresting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used sofreely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer,exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The_Histoire d'Ernestine_ in particular is a charming little novelette. Butif it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, _MiladyCatesby_, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages fromEngland, would be the one to choose. _Milady Catesby_ is well worthcomparing with _Evelina_, which is some twenty years its junior, and thesentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. LordOssery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he isdescribed in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of thestyle, as when she writes--
Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not hear him once more.
That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion orexcuse for all this excitement except Sensibility. But Sensibility wasgetting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be inthe heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We arealready a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, fromMarianne's whimsical _minauderies_. All the resources oftypography--exclamations, points, dashes--have to be called in toexpress the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately thissort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup)requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself havenot the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as _La NouvelleHeloise_, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must havesomething of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. Butthen Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At theMadame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it isdifficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinarytight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.
[Sidenote: Mme. de Beaumont--_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_.]
The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days,and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, evenfarther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of _Mademoiselle deClermont_, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of thecharacters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, andother performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the _Lettres duMarquis de Roselle_ of Madame Elie de Beaumont (wife of the youngadvocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brotherand sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what sheregards as a misalliance, ends (o
r at least almost ends, for the usualflood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.
"And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what can make him happy than the Countess of St. Sever; and that he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, in spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these sacred names he started, stopped, and _allowed himself to be conducted to a sofa_.
[Sidenote: Mme. de Souza.]
This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places,even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by theway, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to hisson's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that bynot doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filialattachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist.These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in theway of noble sentiment or affecting emotion--these whippings andspurrings of the feelings and the fancy--characterise all the later workof the school.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]
Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of thenovelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and itscaricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curiouscoincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible toimagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier deMaistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly calledBenjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, arenot the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de maChambre_, its sequel the _Expedition Nocturne_, and the _Lepreux de laCite d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if onemay be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself inagreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, butfleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence ofthe emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steepplace, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped thatmost people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charminglittle books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know_Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs theborrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ canonly be said to come after _Werther_ and _Rene_ in time, not in theleast to follow them in nature.
The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded)is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experienceswhen confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashionwhich has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates thevarious objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about themand about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on thefaithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _ExpeditionNocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The_Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how thenarrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodgedin a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of theseworks, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_and _Jeune Siberienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singularnarrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier duCaucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Merimee), and inthe remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes atevery moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier deB---- in the _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, which Joseph de Maistre issaid to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggestsitself as one follows the whimsicalities of the _Voyage_ and the_Expedition_. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple,that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.
[Sidenote: His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.]
Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de Maistre illustratesthe effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured,cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character orstrength of emotion. He has not the least intention of takingSensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow orother. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humoristat the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simplytold, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems atfirst sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it toSterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, hisimaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a realcontact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, thetaking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusteddeliberately--to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictlyaccording to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, whenpursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount offrivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting theplayer. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong andgenuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the _suave marimagno_ preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matterswhich directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do tobe too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a mannergiving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. WhenXavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de genie estde savoir bien elever sa bete," he means a great deal more than hesupposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, whobelieves it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a seriesof emotions which can be taken gently.
The author of the _Voyage_ takes his without any extravagance. He takesgood care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, thoughhe tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affectionfor Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind ofaffection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats ashe is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves usin no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "repritbientot son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the othersense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take careof that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear ofrepentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, eitherironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chereJenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is tohis mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of alover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the_Expedition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathomsbelow his garret.
[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]
All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid ofSensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attemptconsciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approachingdownfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have todo with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. Incomparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is verynoticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a truebeliever in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, andhow far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he wasquite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, andvery admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means sowell convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretendingand making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and makingbelieve. He still thinks Sensibilit
y a _gratissimus error_, a verypretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at itwith a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But thespirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilite_ (in real life, ifnot in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier deMaistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely andunexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severeinquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. Itis not merely that he jests--as, for instance, that when he is imaginingthe scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hearsa cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoin'ai-je amene ma femme a la fete?" That is quite proper and allowable.It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, theundercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling,which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this thatwas inevitable.
Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborategames, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. Theparties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicionthat they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnestenough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty oftime to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study,political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, toget too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive notonly to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As thecentury grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, thatgame became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yetnot too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, theyoften fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly socalled, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in reallife as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstrationof the same moral in fiction as _Werther_, were enough to discourage theman of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley,the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances whichbeset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believeanything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yetneither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make anot too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermonmight be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient topoint out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustrationof the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant--_Adolphe_.]
Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never havingappeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a centuryago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but itcalls here for something more than a very small mention. The books whichmake an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make abeginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made abeginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all theanalytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here sufficeto discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuvecertainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show,but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for alarge allowance of charity. The theory of _Adolphe's_ best editor, M. deLescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure'stime), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Stael, will not, Ithink, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental,Ellenore and Madame de Stael are at opposite poles. Ellenore wasbeautiful, Madame de Stael was very nearly hideous; Ellenore wascareless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to societyas any one who ever lived; Ellenore was somewhat uncultivated, hadlittle _esprit_, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herselfin any way except in exacting affection where no affection existed; thegood Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thoughtherself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any onein company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insistedon general admiration and homage.
However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty toregard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth.What is important is that Madame de Stael was almost the last genuinedevotee of Sensibility, and that _Adolphe_ was certainly written by alover of Madame de Stael, who had, from his youth up, been a Man ofFeeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book hehad run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructedas a youth[410] by ancient women of letters; he had married and got ridof his wife _a la mode Germanorum_; he had frequently taken a hint from_Werther_, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he hadgiven, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want oftaste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marryingCharlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Stael would notmarry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finallydeserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely butintellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of acertain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue shouldbe thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past masterin Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he hadonly one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincereand hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote _Adolphe_.But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which itbears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis ofSensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne'sadmirable "Stage Love"--
Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry, They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die; Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow, Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.
That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better accountthan _Adolphe_ exists of the rising in sorrow.
The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man,fresh from the University of Goettingen, goes to finish his education atthe _residenz_ of D----. Here he finds much society, courtly and other.His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P----, who lives,unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ellenore. In the easy-going days ofSensibility the _menage_ holds a certain place in society, though it islooked upon a little askance. But Ellenore is, on her own theory,thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P----, though in danger of hisfortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the resultof the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, andthe teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironicallygiven than himself. His main character is all that a young man's shouldbe from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'a melivrer a ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his fathersnubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling thatthey are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them.Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironicjests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquiresthe character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu sur," the last of whichexpressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "anill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."
All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching ofSensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong."'Je veux etre aime,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je nevoyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me parutsusceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man wouldresign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions ofhaving no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for thepupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphepitches on the luckless Ellenore, who "me parut une conquete digne demoi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, haveused language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is theportrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.
Ellenore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was, was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There was nothing she set more value on than regularity of conduct, precisely because her own conduct was conventionally irregular.[411] She was very religious, because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her society none but men of the highest rank and most irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only amusement. In short, Ellenore and her destiny were at daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind of protest against her social position. And as she felt that facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity. Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.
The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strikeeverybody here. If we are still some way from Emma Bovary, it is onlyin point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the herois still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility.He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but hehas a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conquete." He is still actuated bythe odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by thename of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he hastaken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he isplaying the game from the lower point of view--the mere point of view ofwinning. It does not take him very long to win. Ellenore at firstbehaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his firstdeclaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and theexemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator'sbiographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employingin similar cases, and which the great popularity of _Werther_ madeterrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will killhimself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer.The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but thefact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility wasdominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of viewalike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:[412]
I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once more the distractions of society and the crowds which she formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details, and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the future.
This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, noone who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellenore(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equalterms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that theunhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took themethod of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody elseof proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had becomeunequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and theEllenores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairsbefore long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having playedhis game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely."Ellenore etait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais ellen'etait pas plus un but--elle etait devenue un lien." But Ellenore doesnot see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a fewscenes ("Nous vecumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces,quelque fois doux, jamais completement libres, y rencontrant encore duplaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Countforbids Ellenore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaksthe ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.
Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation,but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man whospeaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.
Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ellenore and I each concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.
Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's ownwords, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither,when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There werenone of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentimentmet sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. Whenthe rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some othercustomer--a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent inpractice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit soeasily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and hiscorrespondence with Ellenore is described in one of the astonishinglytrue passages which make the book so remarkable.
During my absence I wrote regularly to Ellenore. I was divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion," for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ellenore sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her, a species of double-dealing the very success of which was against my wishes and prolonged my misery.
This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear hi
s absence, andhalf puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ellenore follows him, and hisfather for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromisingstep. Ellenore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is oncemore perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutralterritory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, longconfiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe(still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to befree) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Countde P----, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke herlover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from acorrespondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of hisfather's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue andepilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in theworld (from which he had thought his _liaison_ debarred him), wanderedabout in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage,though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of politicaljustice, but on sound critical grounds.
[Sidenote: Mme. de Duras's "postscript."]
[Sidenote: _Sensibilite_ and _engouement_.]
This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is truethat, five years later than _Adolphe_, appeared Madame de Duras'sagreeable novelettes of _Ourika_ and _Edouard_, in which something ofthe old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life,and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and ofsociety. "Le ton de cette societe," says Madame de Duras herself, "etaitl'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found todescribe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be saidwithout presumption, much miswritten about. _Engouement_ itself is anearly untranslatable word.[413] It may be clumsily but not inaccuratelydefined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which israther more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less seriousthan genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude ofFrench polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number ofsubjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the _sensibilite_ whichdominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and_sensibilite_ stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuinepassion on the other, exactly as _engouement_ does to caprice andenthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth withsome success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in theeighteenth.[414] Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") preventedthat. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself andits sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can becalled real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind oflove-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulnessto the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changedpartners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but therules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit ofbeing treated with levity.
[Sidenote: Some final words on the matter.]
Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkablepart, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature hasbeen attempted in this discussion. The English and German developmentsof it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, containperhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, andthey are out of our province. Marivaux[415] served directly as model toboth English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of thenational temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In Englandthe great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure toSensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature ofSensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide--a consummationthan which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. Itis true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de laFayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, andthe virtuous Prince of Cleves and the penitent Adelaide in the _Comte deComminge_ do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as thecurtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quitecomfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all thefirst-named young man's extravagance, four generations have knownperfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, whilein Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility hadbeen sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and thewhirlwind had begun to be reaped.[416]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Its importance here.]
This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have notmuch to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels,artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a _History_such as the present they have very great importance. They are soentirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, thatreading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strangecountry; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened thatcountry for coming writers as well as readers. They are oftenextraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set theexample, though the power of the writers made them something verydifferent in matter--_Julie_, _La Religieuse_, _Paul et Virginie_,[417]_Corinne_, _Rene_--give their progenitors not a little importance, or atleast not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the schoolof Sensibility that the author of _Manon Lescaut_ somehow or otherdeveloped that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would beprudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselvesin the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possiblymaledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except inthe case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are justthe cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. Itis often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than criticsthemselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and _causeries_that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers,will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading oftheir own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be hadon the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tonsof ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a fewpennyweights of metal.
* * * * *
Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as arule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Ofthe work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailednotices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.
[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]
It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes ofreaders to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Retif)mentioned here at all--at any rate to find him taken seriously, and notentirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting ofthose who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground theirsurprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the _IndexExpurgatorius_, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French NedWard, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these mightderive some support from the stock ticket-jingle _Rousseau du ruisseau_,which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading.Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those whohave read him to some extent, may urge that Decency--taking her revengefor the axiom of the boatswain in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_--forbids Duty tolet him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy,literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos deLaclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as theymost assuredly will be.
In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had amore regular education and society, literary or other, and could havekept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off thecontinual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a veryconsiderable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as stylegoes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of alearned language when he has to use (which is regrettably of
ten) wordsthat do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is notthe slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, asLouvet and Laclos--as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not evenCrebillon--certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects,gets hold of a man--especially one of those whom a rather celebratedFrench lady called _les cerebraux_--he can think of nothing else: andthough this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minorcrazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more true than ofany one else who can be called a man of letters.
Probably no one has read all he wrote;[420] even the late M. Assezat,who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend tohave done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptionalmeans of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found todo, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem tohave made his books popular.[421] His largest work, _LesContemporaines_, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some threehundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though thedifferences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the_Memoirs of Several Ladies_. His most remarkable by far, thequasi-autobiographical _Monsieur Nicolas_,[422] in fourteen. He couldwrite with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against _Le PaysanParvenu_, above referred to; in _La Vie de Mon Pere_ (a book agreeablyfree from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographicalwritings of sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantlytitled _Pornographe_, which is also morally intended, and dull enough tobe as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.
Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forwardby those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restifthroughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness withit, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of itsevident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the authoris handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himselfdifficult, if not impossible: but his _differentia_ as regards them may,with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the firstplace, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost agentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau'sblackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as Ibelieve, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage.The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame"Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to hiswife--whom he seems to have married in a sort of _clairvoyant_ mixtureof knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charmsand allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying thesewithout marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds ofactual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies inothers,[423] does he ever appear to have taken either the Restorationand Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" onthe other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimonyunceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a _manie depaternite_, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With theprivileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have beenperfectly contented: and he never would have availed himself of that ofSchahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.
All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject,and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of awriter who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif tothe young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are veryremarkable. The second title of _Monsieur Nicolas_--_Le Coeur HumainDevoile_--ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in asingularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I rememberrightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time,there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about theautopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as wellas to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and allfour share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in theFrenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and withother dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of DeQuincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with thisdream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, ismade much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday fromhis day-long and night-long devotion to
Cotytto or Venus Astarte or Ashtoreth,
he might have been a most remarkable novelist, and as it is his _mere_narrative faculty is such as by no means every novelist possesses.Moreover, he counts, once more, in the advance towards real things infiction. "A pretty kind of reality!" cries Mrs. Grundy. But the real isnot always the pretty, and the pretty is not always the real.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Pigault-Lebrun--the difference of his positive and relativeimportance.]
There is also a good deal that is curious, as well as many things thatare disgusting, for the student of the novel in Pigault-Lebrun.[424] Inthe first place, one is constantly reminded of that redeeming pointwhich the benevolent Joe Gargery found in Mr. Pumblechook--
And, wotsume'er the failings on his part, He were a corn-and-seedsman in his hart.
If Pigault cannot exactly be said to have been a good novelist, he"were" a novelist "in his hart." Beside his _polissonneries_, hisfrequent dulness, his singular gropings and failures at anything likegood novelist _faire_, one constantly finds what might be pedanticallyand barbarously called a "novelistic velleity." His much too ambitiouslytitled _Melanges Litteraires_ turn to stories, though stories touchedwith the _polisson_ brush. His _Nouvelles_ testify at least to hisambition and his industry in the craft of fiction. "Je ne suis pasVoltaire," he says somewhere, in reference, I think, to his plays, nothis tales. He most certainly is not; neither is he Marmontel, as far asthe tale is concerned. But as for the longer novel, in a blind andblundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of geniusand his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, heseems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than theyhave, or than any other Frenchman had before him.
[Sidenote: His general characteristics.]
Pigault-Lebrun[425] spent nearly half of his long life in the nineteenthcentury, and did not die till Scott was dead in England, and the greatseries of novel-romances had begun, with Hugo and others, in France. Buthe was a man of nearly fifty in 1800, and the character of his work,except in one all-important point, or group of points, is thoroughly ofthe eighteenth, while even the excepted characteristics are of a morereally transitional kind than anything in Chateaubriand and Madame deStael, whom we have postponed, as well as in Constant and Xavier deMaistre, whom we have admitted. He has no high reputation in literature,and, except from our own special point of view, he does not deserve evena demi-reputation. Although he is not deliberately pornographic, he isexceedingly coarse, with a great deal of the nastiness which is not evennaughty, but nastiness pure and simple. There is, in fact, and in moreways than one, something in him of an extremely inferior Smollett.Comparing him with his elder contemporary, Restif de la Bretonne, he isvulgar, which Restif never is. Passing to more purely literary matters,it would be difficult, from the side of literature as an art--I do notsay as a craft--to say anything for him whatever. His style[426] is, Ishould suppose (for I think no foreigner has any business to do morethan "suppose" in that matter), simply wretched; he has sentences aslong as Milton's or Clarendon's or Mr. Ruskin's, not merely without thegrandeur of the first, the beauty of the last, and the weighty sense ofthe second, but lacking any flash of graceful, pithy, or witty phrase;character of the model-theatre and cut-out paper kind; a mereaccumulation of incidents instead of a plot; hardly an attempt atdialogue, and, where description is attempted at all, utterineffectiveness or sheer rhyparography.[427]
It is a fair _riposte_ to the last paragraph to ask, "Then why do youdrag him in here at all?" But the counter-parry is easy. The exceptedpoints above supply it. With all his faults--admitting, too, that everygeneration s
ince his time has supplied some, and most much better,examples of his kind--the fact remains that he was the firstconsiderable representative, in his own country, of that variety ofprofessional novelist who can spin yarns, of the sort that his audienceor public[428] wants, with unwearied industry, in great volume, and of aquality which, such as it is, does not vary very much. He is, in short,the first notable French novelist-tradesman--the first who gives usnotice that novel-production is established as a business. There is evena little more than this to be said for him. He has really madeconsiderable progress, if we compare him with his predecessors andcontemporaries, in the direction of the novel of ordinary life, as thatlife was in his own day. There are extravagances of course, but they arescarcely flagrant. His atmosphere is what the cooks, housemaids,footmen, what the grocers and small- or middle-class persons who, Isuppose, chiefly read him, were, or would have liked to be, accustomedto. His scene is not a paradise in either the common or the Greek sense;it is a sort of cabbage-garden, with a cabbage-garden's lack of beauty,of exquisiteness in any form, with its presence of untidiness, andsometimes of evil odour, but with its own usefulness, and with acultivator of the most sedulous. Pigault-Lebrun, for France, may be saidto be the first author-in-chief of the circulating library. It may notbe a position of exceeding honour; but it is certainly one which giveshim a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merelythese general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) ofhis particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as wellspend his time in translating the English newspaper _feuilletons_ of"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeedthat _Minnigrey_, which I remember reading as a boy, and which longafterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of themasterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and agreat deal more.
[Sidenote: _L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim._]
The worst of it is, that to be amused by him--to be, except as astudent, even interested in a large part of his work--you must be almostas ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who hashad before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: andthis is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being hissuccessor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he _is_interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothingto be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles tomaster his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readersappear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not alwaysthe case with such things.
The book which stands first in his Works, _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, startswith an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses nowand then. The body of it--occupied with the history of a base-bornchild, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his littledaughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's loverand then her husband--is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidentlytraced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius _DonQuixote_ or _Gil Blas_, but somehow or other a good deal nearer generalmodern life. _Les Barons de Felsheim_, which succeeds it, seems to havetaken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of _Candide_, andcontinues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising Germanways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Verycommonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, withfrequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffablydreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage.There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low orderof dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attemptingsomething and finding that he cannot bring it off.
At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, andstupidest novels, _La Folie Espagnole_--a supposed tale of chivalry,which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance,and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied _Gil Blas_, with a rankinfusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism[430]--the author has arather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerableprobability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of"Quelles miseres! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered_Angelique et Jeanneton_, a little work of a very different kind, andthe public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, andhe must try to please. As for _La Folie_, everybody, including his cook,can understand _this_. One remembers similar expostulations from morerespectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun--aLebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of thatname--thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at aventure, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit itoftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and forhis public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation andcorrelation of facts that history consists.
[Sidenote: _Angelique et Jeanneton._]
_Angelique et Jeanneton_ itself, as might be expected from the abovereference, is, among its author's works, something like _Le Reve_ amongZola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is alsoone of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. Itbegins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easyfortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of hischambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting youngperson with an "argentine" voice. This may look _louche_; but thesilvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortlyappears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital.It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to thehero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instalsher in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearesthotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this GoodSamaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and herlover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance,resists temptation of repayment (_not_ in coin) on more than oneoccasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritagewhich has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in withAngelique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marriesher. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault,becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, notsurprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title ofMarmontel's _Heureusement_ governs all, and the end is peace, though notwithout some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like thebook and did like _La Folie Espagnole_ is not surprising; but thebearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as aregular craft is important.
[Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Thomas._]
Perhaps on the whole _Mon Oncle Thomas_, which seems to have been one ofthe most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not thebest, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only,is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and othersto our _dis_credit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, andwhich was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection ofepithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas--child of aprostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, whoafterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police--are toldwith a good deal of spirit--one even thinks of _Colonel Jack_--and theauthor shows his curious vulgar common sense, and his knowledge ofhuman nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in theearlier part of the book.
[Sidenote: _Jerome._]
_Jerome_ is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys--distinctlyblackguard boys as a rule--from their mischievous, or, as the earlyEnglish eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, totheir most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom onesincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however,more vigour in _Jerome_ than in most, and, if one has the knack of"combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying littleattention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. Itcontains, in particular, one of the most
finished of its author'ssketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into hiscountry's literature--that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic _routier_or professional soldier--brave as you like, and--at least at some timeswhen neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god--notungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he isbrave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant,save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the oldertype, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare forneglecting in Iago.
[Sidenote: The redeeming points of these.]
It may seem that too much space is being given to a reprobate and oftendull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint,and something more may be added now and again. French literature, fromthe death of Chenier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally beenheld to contain hardly more than two names--those of Chateaubriand andMadame de Stael--which can even "seem to be" those of "pillars"; and itmay appear fantastic and almost insulting to mention one, who in longstretches of his work might almost be called a mere muckheap-raker, incompany with them. Yet, in respect to the progress of his owndepartment, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than theirequal. _Rene_ and _Corinne_ contain great suggestions, but they aresuggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper.Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, butthat humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creatingreal character, decency almost always, sense very often.[431] But allthe same, he made the novel _march_, as it had not marched, save inisolated instances of genius, before.
[Sidenote: Others--_Adelaide de Meran_ and _Tableaux de Societe_.]
[Sidenote: _L'Officieux._]
Yet Pigault could hardly have deserved even the very modified praisewhich has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. Hecould never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went onand the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts ofRepublican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. _Adelaidede Meran_ (his longest single book), _Tableaux de Societe_,_L'Officieux_, and others, are of this class; and without presenting asingle masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, giveevidence of that advance in the kind generally with which their authorhas been credited. _Adelaide_ is very strongly reminiscent ofRichardson, and more than reminiscent of "Sensibility"; it is written inletters--though all by and to the same persons, except a fewextracts--and there is no individuality of character. Pigault, it hasbeen said, never has any, though he has some of type. But by exercisingthe most violent constraint upon himself, he indulges only in one rape(though there have been narrow escapes before), in not more than two orthree questionable incidents, and in practically no "improper"details--conduct almost deserving the description of magnanimity andself-denial. Moreover, the thing really is a modern novel, though a badand rickety one; the indefinable _naturaleza_ is present in it after astrange fashion. There is less perhaps in the very inappropriately named_Tableaux de Societe_--the autobiography of a certain Fanchette deFrancheville, who, somewhat originally for a French heroine, starts bybeing in the most frantic state of mutual passion with her husband,though this is soon to be succeeded by an infatuation (for some timevirtuously resisted) on her side for a handsome young naval officer, andby several others (not at all virtuously resisted) for divers ladies onthe husband's. With his usual unskilfulness in managing character,Pigault makes very little of the opportunities given by his heroine'salmost unconscious transference of her affections to Sainte-Luce; whilehe turns the uxorious husband, not out of jealousy merely, into afaithless one, and something like a general ruffian, after a very clumsyand "unconvincing" fashion. As for his throwing in, at the end, anotherfatal passion on part of their daughter for her mother's lover, it is,though managed with what is for the author, perfect cleanliness,entirely robbed of its always doubtful effect by the actual marriage ofFanchette and her sailor, and that immediately after the poor girl'sdeath. If he had had the pluck to make this break off the whole thing,the book might have been a striking novel, as it is actually an attemptat one; but Pigault, like his friends of the gallery, was almostinviolably constant to happy endings.[432] _L'Officieux_, if he had onlyhad a little humour, might have been as good comically as the Tableauxmight have been tragically; for it is the history, sometimes notill-sketched as far as action goes, of a _parvenu_ rich, but brave andextremely well-intentioned marquis, who is perpetually getting intofearful scrapes from his incorrigible habit of meddling with otherpeople's affairs to do them good. The situations--as where the marquis,having, through an extravagance of officiousness, got himself put underarrest by his commanding officer, and at the same time insulted by acomrade, insists on fighting the necessary duel in his own drawing-room,and thereby reconciling duty and honour, to the great terror of a ladywith whom he has been having a tender interview in the adjoiningapartment--are sometimes good farce, and almost good comedy; butPigault, like Shadwell, has neither the pen nor the wits to make themost of them.
_La Famille Luceval_--something of an expanded and considerablyPigaultified story _a la_ Marmontel--is duller than any of these, andthe opening is marred by an exaggerated study of a classical mania onthe part of the hero; but still the novel quality is not quite absentfrom it.
[Sidenote: Further examples.]
Of the rest, _M. Botte_, which seems to have been a favourite, is arather conventional extravaganza with a rich, testy, but occasionallygenerous uncle; a nephew who falls in love with the charming butpenniless daughter of an _emigre_; a noble rustic, who manages to keepsome of his exiled landlord's property together, etc. _M. de Roberval_,though in its original issue not so long as _Adelaide de Meran_, becomeslonger by a _suite_ of another full volume, and is a rather tediouschronicle of ups and downs. There may be silence about the remainder.
[Sidenote: Last words on him.]
The stock and, as it may be called, "semi-official" ticket forPigault-Lebrun in such French literary history as takes notice of him,appears to be _verve_: and the recognised dictionary-sense of _verve_ is"heat of imagination, which animates the artist in his composition." Inthe higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it couldnever be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," whichis perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label.These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latinraces, are of more authority in France than in England, though as longas we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif"the father of English prose" we need not boast ourselves too much. ButPigault has this "go"--never perhaps for a whole book, but sometimes forpassages of considerable length, which possess "carrying" power. Itundoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise itnow, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining andjustifying his true place in the further "domestication"--if only indomesticities too often mean and grimy--of the French novel.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The French novel in 1800.]
There are more reasons than the convenience of furnishing a separatelypublished first volume with an interim conclusion, for making, at theclose of this, a few remarks on the general state of the French novel atthe end of the eighteenth century. No thoroughly similar point isreached in the literary history of France, or of any country known tome, in regard to a particular department of literature. In England--theonly place, which can, in this same department, be even considered incomparison, although at this very time two novelists, vastly superior toany of whom France has to boast, were just writing, or just about towrite, and were a little later to revolutionise the novel itself--thegeneral state and history of the kind had, for nearly two generations,reached a stage far beyond anything that France could claim. She hadmade earlier "running"; on the whole period of some seven hundred yearsshe had always, till very recently, been in front. But in the novel, asdistinguished from the romance, she had absolu
tely nothing to show likeour great quartette of the mid-eighteenth century, and hardly anythingto match the later developments of Miss Burney and others in domestic,of Mrs. Radcliffe and others still in revived romantic fiction. Verygreat Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with theexceptions of Lesage in _Gil Blas_, Prevost in that everlastinglywonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in _La Nouvelle Heloise_,none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness hadbeen a novelist pure and simple. No species[433] of fiction, except theshort tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-longmastery, had been thoroughly developed in her literature.
The main point, where England went right and France went wrong--to beonly in the most equivocal way corrected by such a writer asPigault-Lebrun--was the recognition of the connection--the intimate andall but necessary connection--of the completed novel with ordinary life.Look over the long history of fiction which we have surveyed in the lastthree or four or five chapters. There is much and sometimes greatliterary talent; sometimes, again, even genius; there are episodes ofreality; there are most artful adjustments of type and convention andthe like, of fashion in morals (or immorals) and sentiments. But a realobjective novel of ordinary life, such as _Tom Jones_, or even _HumphryClinker_, nay, such inferior approaches to it as exist elsewhere inEnglish, you will not find. Of the Scudery romances we need not speakagain; for all their key-references to persons, and their abstentionfrom the supernatural, etc., they are, as wholes, hardly more real than_Amadis_ and its family themselves. Scarron has some and Furetiere moreobjectivity that may be argued for, but the Spanish picaresque hasbecome a convention, and they, especially Scarron, are aiming more atthe pattern than at the life-model. Madame de la Fayette has much, andsome of her followers a little, real passion; but her manners,descriptions, etc., are all conventional, though of another kind. Thefairy tales are of course not "real." Marivaux is aiming directly atSensibility, preciousness, "psychology," if you like, but not at holdingup the glass to any ordinary nature as such.[434] And though Crebillonmight plead that his convention was actually the convention of hundredsand almost thousands of accomplished ladies and gentlemen, no one candeny that it was almost as much a convention as the historical orlegendary acting of the _Comedie Humaine_ by living persons a hundredyears later at Venice.
No writer perhaps illustrates what is being said better than Prevost. Noone of his books, voluminous as they are, has the very slightestreality, except _Manon Lescaut_; and that, like _La Princesse deCleves_, though with much more intensity and fortunately with no alloyof convention whatever, is simply a study of passion, not of life atlarge at all. With the greater men the case alters to some extent inproportion to their greatness, but, again with one exception, not tosuch an extent as to affect the general rule. Voltaire avowedly neverattempts ordinary representation of ordinary life--save as the merestby-work, it is all "purpose," satire, fancy. Rousseau may not, in onesense, go beyond that life in _Julie_, but in touching it he is almostas limited and exclusive as Prevost in his masterpiece. Diderot has toget hold of the abnormal, if not the unreal, before he can give yousomething like a true novel. Marmontel is half-fanciful, and though hedoes touch reality, subordinates it constantly to half-allegorical andwholly moral purpose. All the minor "Sensibility" folk follow theirleaders, and so do all the minor _conteurs_.
The people (believed to be a numerous folk) who are uncomfortable with afact unless some explanation of it is given, may be humoured here. Thefailure of a very literary nation--applying the most disciplinedliterary language in Europe to a department, in the earlier stages ofwhich they had led Europe itself--to get out of the trammels which wehad easily discarded, is almost demonstrably connected with the verynature of their own literary character. Until the most recent years, ifnot up to the very present day, few Frenchmen have ever been happywithout a type, a "kind," a set of type-and kind-rules, a classificationand specification, as it were, which has to be filled up and workedover. Of all this the novel had nothing in ancient times, while inmodern it had only been wrestling and struggling towards something ofthe sort, and had only in one country discovered, and not quiteconsciously there, that the beauty of the novel lies in having no type,no kind, no rules, no limitations, no general precept or motto for thecraftsman except "Here is the whole of human life before you. Copy it,or, better, recreate it--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--asfaithfully, but as freely, as you can." Of this great fact evenFielding, the creator of the modern novel, was perhaps not wholly awareas a matter of theory, though he made no error about it in practice.Indeed the "comic prose epic" notion _might_ reduce to rules like thoseof the verse. Both Scott and Miss Austen abstained likewise fromformalising it. But every really great novel has illustrated it; andattempts, such as have been recently made, to contest it and draw up anovelists' code, have certainly not yet justified themselves accordingto the Covenant of Works, and have at least not disposed some of us towelcome them as a Covenant of Faith. It is because Pigault-Lebrun,though a low kind of creature from every point of view, except that ofmere craftsmanship, did, like his betters, recognise the fact inpractice, that he has been allowed here a place of greater considerationthan perhaps has ever fallen to his lot before in literary history.
Still, even putting out of sight the new developments which had shownthe irrepressible vitality of the French _conte_, the seven hundredyears had not been wasted. The product of the first half of themremained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the olderage, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like theComte de Tressan;[435] but the treasure-house was very soon to be brokenopen and utilised. It is open to any one to contend--it is, indeed,pretty much the opinion of the present writer--that it was this veryneglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies themselves so slow and so imperfect in its total results. Forthose who like to look for literary causes outside literature, there maybe other explanations. But any intelligent reader can do something forhimself if he has the facts before him. It is these facts that it hasbeen and will be our business to give and to summarise here.
They have been given; let us attempt to summarise them in the briefestpossible way. France possibly did not invent Romance; no man or mencould do that; it was a sort of deferred heritage which Humankind, likethe Heir of Lynne, discovered when it was ready to hang itself (speakingin terms of literature) during the Dark Ages. But she certainly grew theseed for all other countries, and dispersed the growth to the ends ofthe earth. Very much the same was the case with the short tale in the"Middle" period. From the fifteenth century to the eighteenth (bothincluded) she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, studded withoases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais wasborn, and found Quintessence, and of that finding--more fortunate thanthe result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen--was born Pantagruelism.In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, itwas consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a _Don Quixote_ ora _Tom Jones_, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again,as had happened in the Middle Ages themselves, but on a smaller scale,what France did found development and improvement in other lands; whileher own miniature masterpieces, from the best of the _Cent NouvellesNouvelles_ and the _Heptameron_, through all others that we noticed downto _Adolphe_, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fixupon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.[436]
FOOTNOTES:
[404] We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in thePastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken inthem.
[405] In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the authorhas utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some previouslypublished work, _A Study of Sensibility_, which appeared originally inthe _Fortnightly Review_ for September 1882, and was republished in avolume (_Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891) which has been
forsome years out of print. Much of the original essay, dealing withMarivaux and others already treated here, has been removed, and thewhole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new contexts. Butit seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say the samething differently about matters which, though as a whole indispensable,are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the firstimportance.
[406] These words were originally written more than thirty years ago. Iam not sure that there was not something prophetic in them.
[407] Madame de Fontaines in _La Comtesse de Savoie_ and _Amenophis_"follows her leader" in more senses than one--including a sort ofpseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a habit. Butshe is hardly important.
[408] Readers of Thackeray may remember in _The Paris Sketch Book_ ("Onthe French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some remarks onJacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge," which hethought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his "itappears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he didnot know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or summary.
[409] The extreme shortness of all these books may be just worthnoticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding centurymay have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the "tale"something more. But the _causa verissima_ was probably the impossibilityof keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of time,incident, or talk.
[410] _Vide_ on the process Crebillon's _Les Egarements du Coeur et del'Esprit_, as above, pp. 371, 372.
[411] The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most people.
[412] But for uniformity's sake I should not have translated this, forfear of doing it injustice. "Not presume to dictate," in Mr. Jingle'sconstantly useful phrase, but it seems to me one of the finest in Frenchprose.
[413] "Craze" has been suggested; but is, I think, hardly an exactsynonym.
[414] This may seem to contradict, or at any rate to be inconsistentwith, a passage above (p. 367) on the "flirtations" of Crebillon'spersonages. It is, however, only a more strictly accurate use of theword.
[415] Two remarkable and short passages of his, not quoted in thespecial notice of him, may be given--one in English, because of itsremarkable anticipation of the state of mind of Catherine Morland in_Northanger Abbey_; the other in French, as a curious "conclusion of thewhole matter." They are both from _Marianne_.
"I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. I cannot indeedtell you what was the exact object of my fear, or why it was so lively.All that I know is that I constantly beheld before me the countenance ofmy landlord, to which I had hitherto paid no particular attention, andthen I began to find terrible things in this countenance His wife'sface, too, seemed to be gloomy and dark; the servants looked likescoundrels; all their faces made me in a state of unbearable alarm. Isaw before me swords, daggers, murders, thefts, insults. My blood grewcold at the perils I imagined."
* * * * *
"Enfin ces agitations, tant agreables que penibles, s'affaiblirent et sepasserent. L'ame s'accoutume a tout; sa sensibilite s'use: et je mefamiliarisais avec mes esperances et mes inquietudes."
[416] Since, long ago, I formed the opinion of _Adolphe_ embodied above,I have, I think, seen French criticisms which took it ratherdifferently--as a personal confession of the "confusions of a wastedyouth," misled by passion. The reader must judge which is the justerview.
[417] By a little allowance for influence, if not for intrinsic value.
[418] On representations from persons of distinction I have given Laclosa place in an outhouse (see "Add. and Corr."). But I have made thisplace as much of a penitentiary as I could.
[419] I must apologise by anticipation to the _official_ French critic.To him, I know, even if he is no mere minor Malherbe, Restif's style isvery faulty; but I should not presume to take his point of view, eitherfor praise or blame.
[420] There is a separate bibliography by Cubieres-Palmezeaux (1875).The useful _Dictionnaire des Litteratures_ of Vapereau contains a listof between thirty and forty separate works of Restif's, divided intonearer two than one hundred volumes. He followed Prevost in _NouveauxMemoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ as he had followed Marivaux in the_Paysan Perverti_. He completed this work of his own with _La PaysannePervertie_; he wrote, besides the _Pornographe_, numerous books ofsocial, general, and would-be philosophical reform--_Le Mimographe_,dealing with the stage; _Les Gynographes_, with a general plan forrearranging the status of women; _L'Andrographe_, a "whole duty of man"of a very novel kind; _Le Thesmographe_, etc.,--besides, close upon theend and after the autobiography above described, a _Philosophie de M.Nicolas_. His more or less directly narrative pieces, _Le Pied deFanchette_, _Lucile_, _Adele_, _La Femme Infidele_, _Ingenue Saxancour_,are nearly always more or less tinged with biography of himself and ofpersons closely connected with him, as _La Vie de Mon Pere_, his mostrespectable book, is wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that the noticein Vapereau, while not bearing very hard on Restif on the whole, repeatsthe words _cynisme_ and _cynique_ in regard to him. Unless the term isin part limited and in part extended, so as to mean nothing but"exposure of things generally kept secret without apparent shame," it isentirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in hiserotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but mostgenuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness whichhad reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainlysincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what iscommonly called cynicism.
[421] There are, however, contradictory statements on this point.
[422] Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal name, and "dela Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal nourishes socommon in the French eighteenth century. He chose to consider thesurname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and as for hisChristian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose Lambelin, one ofhis harem, and a _soubrette_ of some literature, used to address him as"Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers know, a masculineas well as a feminine _prenom_ in French.
[423] Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have beenimaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer moodthan when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe, havebeen identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to_Monsieur Nicolas_ have probably escaped identification.
[Sidenote: His life and the reasons for giving it.]
[424]It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it hadbeen necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to givebiographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except inspecial cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the daysbefore education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: andsomething is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the lifeof Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to saysomething, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life hadrather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second,very little will be found about him in most histories of Frenchliterature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in thetext--not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as aresult of rather painful reading--a considerably higher place in thehistory of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correctname--till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French_Chats-Fourres_, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and theunbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement ofParis--was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault deL'Epinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings,was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself toQueen Philippa's _protege_, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides themysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume hadto suffer from him, while such things existed, several _lettres decachet_. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having beensettled, on leaving school as
a clerk in an English commercial house, heseduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubthave married her--for Pigault was never a really bad fellow--if she hadnot been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. Heescaped--one hopes not without trying to save her. After anotherscandal--not the second only--of the same kind, he did marry the victim,and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of _patriapotestas_ referred to above. At least two _lettres de cachet_ hadpreceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastilleprevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, hehad been a gentleman-trooper in the _gendarmerie d'elite de la petitemaison du roi_, which, seeing that the _roi_ was Louis Quinze, probablydid not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or ofCromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." Thelife of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, andPigault became an actor--a very bad but rather popular actor, it wassaid. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they arecertainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But itwas not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that heundertook prose fiction; his first book being _L'Enfant du Carnaval_ in1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which thereare so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back tosoldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, butwent on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, andcertainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, thisarbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which wasperhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault,who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not ascoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with hisbrothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in thecustoms, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying elevenyears later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously tilla short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This oddcareer was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was EmileAugier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, thelate Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him towrite an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Someyears (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels,plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavovolumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, willbe justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But hewill find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it isthe fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject ofthe text.--There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroadas well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him beforeWaterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strongstomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times thanwas the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who havingenjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age.For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and mostof her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorianprudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking thatMarryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and theresemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: butnot, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.
[425] He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist, and,apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself rather inthe manner of 1830--Pigault-_Maubaillarck_. I have not yet come acrossthis junior's work.--For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault and Restif,see note at end of chapter.
[426] At least in his early books; it improves a little later. But seenote on p. 453.
[427] For a defence of this word, _v. sup._ p. 280, _note_.
[428] It may be objected, "Did not the Scuderys and others do this?" Theanswer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a "public" atall--it was a larger or smaller coterie.
[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and heshows more knowledge of English things and books than was common withFrenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, evenduring the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.
[430] Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though wecan seldom laugh _with_ him. It led him once to compose one of the verydullest books in literature, _Le Citateur_, a string of anti-Christiangibes and arguments from his idol and others.
[431] Yet sometimes--when, for instance, one thinks of therottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's _Eric_, or the _spiritusvulgaritatis fortissimus_ of Mark Twain's _A Yankee at the Court of KingArthur_--one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.
[432] There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effectivepossibility--to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame deFrancheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would havelacked audacity.
[433] For the story "species" of _Gil Blas_ was not new, was of foreignorigin, and was open to some objection; while the other two books justnamed derived their attraction, in the one case to a very small extent,in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.
[434] Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural--quite the contrary--butthat their situations are conventionalised.
[435] _Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie._ 4 vols. Paris, 1782.
[436] The link between the two suggested at p. 458, _note_, is asfollows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to _Hand'Islande_ and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for,besides the difference between _canaille_ and _caballeria_, the authorof _M. Botte_ was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why hehas, in Part IV. Book VII. of _Les Miserables_ selected Restif as"undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is notnearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the"wholesomeness" of, among others--Diderot!
APPENDICES
A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 Page 16