A History of the French Novel. Volume 2. To the Close of the 19th Century

305

If my friend Mr. Henley were alive (and I would he were) I should have to "look out for squalls." It was, as ought to be well known, his idea that Henri Trois et Sa Cour was much more the rallying trumpet of 1830 that Hernani, and I believe a large part of his dislike for Thackeray was due to the cruel fun which The Paris Sketch-book makes of Kean. But I speak as I think and find, after long re-thinking and researching.

306

I have made some further excursions in the work of Achard, but they did not incline me to continue them, and I do not propose to say anything of the results here. I learn from the books that there were some other Achards, one of whom "improved the production of the beet-root sugar." I would much rather have written Belle-Rose.

307

Emma Robinson. I used, I think, to prefer her to either of her more famous companions in the list. But I have never read her Caesar Borgia. It sounds appetising.

308

Some may say, "There might have been an end much sooner with some of the foregoing." Perhaps so – once more. I do not claim to be hujus orbis Papa and infallible. But I sample to the best of my knowledge and judgment.

309

Beau Démon, Cœur d'Acier, La Tache Rouge, etc. Féval began a little later than most of the others in this chapter, but he is of their class.

310

Thackeray, when very young and wasting his time and money in editing the National Standard, wrote a short and very savage review of this which may be found in the Oxford Edition of his works (vol. i., as arranged by the present writer). It is virtuously indignant (and no wonder, seeing that the writer takes it quite seriously), but, as Thackeray was almost to the last when in that mood, quite bull-in-a-china-shoppy. You might take it seriously, and yet critically in another way, as a "degeneracy" of the Terror-Novel. But the "rotting" view is better.

311

The postponement of him, to this last chapter of the first division of the book, was determined on chiefly because his novels were not begun at all till years after the other greater novelists, already dealt with, had made their reputation, while the greatest of them – the "Mousquetaire" and "Henri Trois" cycles – did not appear till the very last lustrum of the half-century. But another – it may seem to some a childish – consideration had some weight with me. I wished to range father and son on either side of the dividing summary; for though the elder wrote long after 1850 and the younger some time before it, in hardly any pair is the opposition of the earlier and later times more clearly exposed; and the identity of name emphasises the difference of nature.

312

In using this phrase I remembered the very neat "score" made off the great Alexander himself by a French judge, in some case at Rouen where Dumas was a witness. Asked as usual his occupation, he replied somewhat grandiloquently: "Monsieur, si je n'étais pas dans la ville de Corneille, je dirais 'Auteur dramatique.'" "Mais, Monsieur," replied the official with the sweetest indulgence, "il y a des degrés." (This story is told, like most such, with variants; and sometimes, as in the particular case was sure to happen, not of Alexander the father, but of Alexander the son. But I tell it, as I read or heard it, long years ago.)

313

You may possibly do as an English novelist of the privileged sex is said to have done, and write novels while people are calling on you and you are talking to them (though I should myself consider it bad manners, and the novels would certainly bear traces of the exploit). But you can hardly do it while, as a famous caricature represents the scene, persons of that same sex, in various dress or undress, are frolicking about your chair and bestowing on you their obliging caresses. Nor are corricolos and speronares, though they may be good things to write on in one sense, good in another to write in.

314

As far as I know Maquet, his line seems to me to have been drama rather than fiction.

315

I seem to remember somebody (I rather think it was Henley, and it was very likely to be) attempting a defence of this. But, except pour rire, such a thing is hopeless.

316

I think (but it is a long time since I read the book) that it is the heroine of this who, supposed to be a dead, escapes from "that grewsome thing, premature interment" (as Sandy Mackay justly calls it), because of the remarkable odour of violettes de Parme which her unspotted flesh evolves from the actual grave.

317

I do not mind Montalais, but I object to Malicozne both in himself and as her lover. Mlle. de la Vallière and the plots against her virtue give us "pious Selinda" at unconscionable length, and, but that it would have annoyed Athos, I rather wish M. le Vicomte de la Bragelonne himself had come to an end sooner.

318

My friend Mr. Henley, I believe, ranked it very high, and so did a common friend of his and mine, the late universally regretted Mr. George Wyndham. It so happened that, by accident, I never read the book till a few years ago; and Mr. Wyndham saw it, fresh from the bookseller's and uncut (or technically, "unopened") in my study. I told him the circumstances, and he said, in his enthusiastic way, "I do envy you!"

319

I do not need to be reminded of the conditions of health that also affected Peveril.

320

I need not repeat, but merely refer to, what I have said of Cinq-Mars and of Notre-Dame de Paris.

321

On the very day on which I was going over the rough draft of this passage I saw, in a newspaper of repute, some words which perhaps throw light on the objection to Dumas as having no literary merit. In them "incident, coherence, humour, and dramatic power" were all excluded from this merit, "style" alone remaining. Now I have been almost as often reproved for attaching too much value to style in others as for attending too little to it myself. But I certainly could not give it such a right to "reign alone." It will indeed "do" almost by itself; but other things can "do" almost without it.

322

To be absolutely candid, Dumas himself did sometimes ask more of them than they could do; and then he failed. There can, I think, be little doubt that this is the secret of the inadequacy (as at least it seems to me) of the Felton episode. As a friend (whose thousand merits strive to cover his one crime of not admiring Dumas quite enough), not knowing that I had yet written a line of this chapter, but as it happened just as I had reached the present point, wrote to me: "Think what Sir Walter would have made of Felton!"

323

I could myself be perfectly content to adapt George III. on a certain Apology, and substitute for all this a simple "I do not think Dumas needs any defence." But where there has been so much obloquy, there should, perhaps, be some refutation.

324

"And then he says, says he…"

325

In modern novels, of course. You have some good talk in Homer and also in the Sagas, but I am not thinking or speaking of them.

326

"Red ink for ornament and black for use – The best of things are open to abuse." (The Good Clerk as vouched for by Charles Lamb.)

327

Yet, being nothing if not critical, I can hardly agree with those who talk of Dumas' "wild imagination"! As the great Mr. Wordsworth was more often made to mourn by the gratitude of men than by its opposite, so I, in my humbler sphere, am more cast down sometimes by inapposite praise than by ignorant blame.

328

I have not called this so, because the division into "Books," with which the raison d'être of "Interchapters" is almost inseparably connected, has not been adopted in this History.

329

This fact, as well, perhaps, as others, should be taken into account by any one who may be at first sight surprised, and perhaps in the Biblical sense "offended," at finding two-thirds of the volume allotted to half of the time.

330

To vary a good epigram of the Rolliad crew on Pitt:

"'The French' for 'France' can't please the Blanc, The Bleu detests the 'King.'"

331

V. sup. on Reybaud.

332

This is of course quite a different thing from saying that politicians had better have nothing to do with letters, or that men of letters may not discuss politics. It is when they become Ministers that they too often disgust men and amuse angels.

333

Adolphe actually belongs to the nineteenth century.

334

As I write this I remember how my friend the late M. Beljame, who and whose "tribe" have come so nobly for English literature in France for forty years past, was shocked long ago at my writing "Mazarin Library," and refused to be consoled by my assurance that I should never dream of writing anything but "Bibliothèque Mazarine." But I had, and have, no doubt on the principle.

335

I hope, but do not trust, that no descendant of the persons who told Charles Lamb that Burns could not at the time be present because he was dead, will say, "But all these were subsequent to 1850."

336

In my History of Criticism, passim.

337

V. sup. Vol. I., on the "heroic" romance.

338

It seems unnecessary to repeat what has been said on Vigny and Mérimée; but it is important to keep constantly in mind that they came before Dumas. As for the still earlier Solitaire, I must repeat that M. d'Arlincourt's utter failure as an individual ought not completely to obscure his importance as a pioneer in kind.

339

"Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter, no doubt. But I am Crites, not Poietes.

340

Pedantius may urge, "But 'James III.' is made to affect the fortunes of Esmond and Beatrix very powerfully." True; but he himself is by no means a very "prominent historical character," and the exact circumstances of the agony of Queen Anne, and the coup d'état of Shrewsbury and Argyle, have still enough of the unexplained in or about them to permit somewhat free dealing.

341

If any one says "Leicester's Commonwealth?" I say "The Faërie Queene?"

342

I intend nothing offensive in thus mentioning his attitude. In my History of Criticism I have aimed at justice both to his short stage of going with, or at least not definitely against, the Romantic vein, and his much longer one of reaction. He was always vigorous in argument and dignified in manner; but his nature, when he found it, was essentially neo-classic.

343

In the Times Literary Supplement for Thursday, Nov. 1, 1917.

344

"It is vain to ask, as is the modern custom, whether the leap from the word 'copy' to the word 'recreate' (v. sup. Vol. I. p. 471) does not cover a difference in kind… One feels that Prof. S. is rather sympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards as essential … close psychological analysis of motive," etc. And so he even questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praises it, is "A History of The French Novel." But did I ever undertake to give this from the French point of view, or to write a History of French Novel-Criticism? Or need I do so?

345

It might, however, be a not uninteresting matter of debate whether Panurge's conduct to the Lady of Paris was really so very much worse than part of Hamlet's to Ophelia.

346

By one of those odd coincidences which diversify and relieve literary work, I read, for the first time in my life, and a few hours after writing the above words, these in Dumas fils' Thérèse: "Il procède par synthése." They do not there apply to authorship, but to the motives and conduct of one of the writer's questionable quasi-heroes. But the whole context, and the usual methods of Dumas fils himself, are saturated with synthesis by rule. (Of course the other process is, as also according to the strict meaning of the word, "synthetic," but not "by rule.")

347

I own I see a little less of it and a little more of the other in him; whence a certain lukewarmness with which I have sometimes been reproached.

348

My very amiable reviewer thinks that eighteenth-century French society did behave à la Laclos. I don't, though I think it did à la Crébillon.

349

As, for instance, in A Short History of French Literature (Oxford, 7th ed., 1917), pp. 550-552.

350

At the same time, and admitting (see below) that it is wrong to meet overpraise with overblame, I think that it may be met with silence, for the time at any rate.

351

I have, for reasons unnecessary to particularise, not observed strict chronological order in noticing his work or that of some others; but a sufficient "control" will, I hope, be supplied by the Appendix of dated books under their authors' names as treated in this volume.

352

I observe with amusement (which may or may not be shared by "the friends of Mr. Peter Magnus") that I have repeated in the case of Dumas fils what I said on Crébillon fils. The contrast-parallel is indeed rather striking. Partly it is a case of reversal, for Crébillon père was a most respectable man, most serious, and an academician; the son, though not personally disreputable, was the very reverse of serious, and academic neither by nature nor by status. In Dumas' case the father was extremely lively, and the Academy shuddered or sneered at him; the son was very serious indeed, and duly academised. Some surprise was, I remember, occasioned at the time by this promotion. There are several explanations of it; mine is Alexander the son's fondness for the correct subjunctive. George Sand, in a note to one of her books (I forget which), rebelliously says that the speaker in the text ought to have said, "aimasse," not "aimais," but that he didn't, and she will not make him do it. On the other hand, I find "aimasse," "haïsse," and "revisse" in just three lines of La Dame aux Camélias. And everybody ought to know the story of the Immortal who, upon finding a man "where nae mon should be," and upon that "mon" showing the baseness derived from Adam by turning on his accomplice and saying, "Quand je vous disais qu'il était temps que je m'en aille!" neglected crim. con. for crim. gram. and cried in horror, "Que je m'en allasse, Monsieur!" But this preciseness did not extend to the younger Alexander's choice of subjects.

353

To whose "music" also our young friends, As they tell us, have "lost the key."

354

Dumas, like other mid-nineteenth century novelists in France and England both, is perhaps too fond of this complaint. But, after all, it does "stage" more prettily than appendicitis or typhoid.

355

Nor is this the only place where Manon figures in the work of Alexander the younger. Especially in the early books direct references, more or less obvious, are frequent; and, as will be seen, the inspiration reappears in his best and almost last novel.

356

It may perhaps seem to some readers that Janin's own novel-work should have been noticed earlier. I had at one time thought of doing this. But his most famous book of the sort, L'Âne Mort et la Femme Guillotinée, is a foolish fatrasie of extravagant, undigested, unaffecting horrors, from the devouring by dogs of the live donkey, at the beginning, to the "resurrectioning" of the guillotined woman, at the end. Sterne has played tricks with many clumsy imitators, but with none to more destructive effect than in this case. I read it first in the flush of my early enthusiasm for 1830, and was miserably disappointed; I tried to read it again the other day, and simply broke down. Barnave is interesting only as referred to by Gautier; and so on. The fact is that "J. J." was "J. J. J." – a journalist merely – with a not unpleasant frothy ginger-beery style, but with nothing whatever within it or beyond it.

357

And, with dim-fretted foreheads all, On corpses three months old at noon she came. (The Palace of Art.)

358

If anybody cannot tolerate the stretching he had better abstain from Alexander the younger's work, for "they all do it" there. The fact may have conciliated some of our own contemners of "good form."

359

Every one is entitled to write this word once in his life, I believe; so I have selected my occasion at last. Of course some one may say: "You have admitted that he did not know Marguerite's pact with his father." True; and this might excuse the wrath, but not the way of showing it.

360

As I write this I remember a comic experience of fifty years ago. I was trying to find out the ruins of a certain castle in Brittany, and appealed, in my very best bad French, to an old road-mender. He scowled at me, as if it had been in the days of the Combat des Trente, and answered, "Mais c'est de l'Anglais que vous me parlez là!"

361

Another trait of his may not displease readers, though it be not strictly relevant. I once, perhaps with some faint mischievous intent, asked him about the competence of Dr. Pusey and of M. Renan in the sacred tongue. "Pusey," he said, "knew pretty well everything about Hebrew that there was to be known in his day." He was not quite so complimentary about Renan; though, as he put his judgment less pointedly, I do not remember the exact words.

362

With a bow and arrows, remember; not a Browning pistol.

363

The indebtedness to Michelet is pretty obvious.

364

It may be well to illustrate this, lest it be said that having been more than just to the father (v. sup.) I am still less than just to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fée in the eleventh century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake – over whom even Morgane had no power. The English child-King, for whom Bedford was regent, is repeatedly called Henry IV. There would have been quite other fish for Joan to fry, and other thread for her to retwist, if she had had to do with Henry of Bolingbroke instead of Henry of Windsor. Tristan's Mauthe Doog – not a bad kind of hound, though – bears the "Celtic" name of Thor. Of course all these things are trifles, but they are annoying and useless. When the father abridged Charles the First's captivity from years to days, he did it for the good of his story. The son had no such justification. He is also very careless about minute joinings of the flats at a most important point of the conclusion (v. inf.). Tristan has no sword, begs one of the bourreau, and is refused. He goes straight to church, and immediately afterwards we find him sword in hand. Where did he get it? By an unmentioned miracle?

365

Tristan defeats an effort of Xaintrailles to rescue her, in a way vaguely resembling the defeat, in the greater Alexander's work, of the rescue of King Charles by the Four.

366

Unluckily, with a young man's misjudgment, Dumas would not let it be the actual end, though that is not a couple of pages off. After the fight Tristan goes out of the tomb to rest himself; and meets the herald Bretagne, whom he had saved from the wolves in the overture. Bretagne tells him what has happened since the Maid's death, including the fate of his half-brother on the father's side, Gilles de Retz, who, like himself, has repented in time to save his soul, if not his life. Having also seen afar off a cavalcade in which are Olivier and Alix, now married and rapturous, Tristan retires into the tomb, which closes over him. His horse "Baal" and his dogs, the "Celtically" (in the latter case we may say Piratically) named Thor and Brinda, are petrified round its entrance.

367

Crusading times, and Jôf or Edessa for Rouen and Poitiers as places, might seem preferable. But the fifteenth century did a lot of diablerie in the West.

368

A curious variant of this fancy of his will be noticed later. What is more curious still need, perhaps, hardly be indicated for any intelligent reader – the "sicklying over" of Paul-de-Kockery with a "cast of thought" – "pale," or "dry," or up to "Old Brown" in strength and character as it may seem to different people.

369

As I have received complaints, mild and other, of the frequency of my unexplained allusions, I may here refer explicitly to Mr. Traill's Recaptured Rhymes; and if anybody, after looking up the book, is not grateful to me, I am sorry for him. For the commoner practice here I can only plead that I follow the Golden Rule. Nothing pleases me so much as an allusion that I understand – except one that I don't and have to hunt up.

370

Rather too big a title for an adventurer to meddle with, surely?

371

He has found out a secret about her. When she learns his crimes and his fate, she puts an end to herself in a way which I fear Octave Feuillet borrowed, rather unceremoniously, though he certainly improved it, in Julia de Trécœur (v. inf.). I did not read Trois Hommes Forts till many years after I had read and praised Feuillet's work. Also, is it absolutely blasphemous to suggest that the beginning of the book has a faint likeness to that of Les Misérables much later?

372

V. sup. last chapter, passim.

373

One remembers, as so often, Dr. Johnson to Boswell: "This lady of yours, Sir, is very fit for," etc.

374

This is, I think, the best of his short stories. Thérèse is rather a sermon on the somewhat unsavoury text of morbid appetite in the other sex, than a real story. The little Histories Vraies, which he wrote with a friend for the Moniteur in 1864, are fairly good. For the formally entitled Contes et Nouvelles and the collection headed by Ilka, v. inf.

375

He represents himself as suffering forty-eight hours of very easy imprisonment for not mounting guard as a "National," and writing the story to pass the time.