Dear master,
Here it is a night and a day that I have spent with you. I had
finished Nanon at four o'clock in the morning, and Francia at three
o'clock in the afternoon. All of it is still dancing around in my
head. I am going to try to gather my ideas together to talk about
these excellent books to you. They have done me good. So thank you,
dear, good master. Yes, they were like a great whiff of air, and,
after having been moved, I feel refreshed.
In Nanon, in the first place I was charmed with the style, with a
thousand simple and strong things which are included in the web of
the work, and which make it what it is; for instance: "as the burden
seemed to me enormous, the beast seemed to me beautiful." But I did
not pay any attention to any thing, I was carried away, like the
commonest reader. (I don't think that the common reader could admire
it as much as I do.) The life of the monks, the first relations
between Emilien and Nanon, the fear caused by the brigands and the
imprisonment of Pere Fructueux which could be commonplace and which
it is not at all. What a fine page is 113! and how difficult it was
to stay within bounds! "Beginning with this day, I felt happiness in
everything, and, as it were, a joy to be in the world."
La Roche aux Fades is an exquisite idyll. One would like to share
the life of those three fine people.
I think that the interest slackens a little when Nanon gets the idea
of becoming rich. She becomes too strongminded, too intelligent! I
don't like the episode of the robbers either. The reappearance of
Emilien with his arm cut off, stirred me again, and I shed a tear at
the last page over the portrait of the Marquise de Francqueville in
her old age.
I submit to you the following queries: Emilien seems to me very much
up in political philosophy; at that period did people see as far
ahead as he? The same objection applies to the prior, whom I think
otherwise charming, in the middle of the book especially. But how
well all that is brought in, how well sustained, how fascinating,
how charming! What a creature you are! What power you have!
I give you on your two cheeks, two little nurse's kisses, and I pass
to Francia! Quite another style, but none the less good. And in the
first place I admire enormously your Dodore. This is the first time
that anyone has made a Paris gamin real; he is not too generous, nor
too intemperate, nor too much of a vaudevillist. The dialogue with
his sister, when he consents to her becoming a kept woman, is a
feat. Your Madame de Thievre, with her shawl which she slips up and
down over her fat shoulders, isn't she decidedly of the Restoration!
And the uncle who wants to confiscate his nephew's grisette! And
Antoine, the good fat tinsmith so polite at the theatre! The Russian
is a simple-minded, natural man, a character that is not easy to do.
When I saw Francia plunge the poignard into his heart, I frowned
first, fearing that it might be a classic vengeance that would spoil
the charming character of that good girl. But not at all! I was
mistaken, that unconscious murder completed your heroine.
What strikes me the most in the book is that it is very intelligent
and exact. One is completely in the period.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this twofold reading. It
has relaxed me. Everything then is not dead. There is still
something beautiful and good in the world.
CCXLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 29 November, 1872
You spoil me! I did not dare to send you the novels, which were
wrapped up addressed to you for a week. I was afraid of interrupting
your train of thought and of boring you. You stopped everything to
read Maurice first, and then me. We should be remorseful if we were
not egoists, very happy to have a reader who is worth ten thousand
others! That helps a great deal; for Maurice and I work in a desert,
never knowing, except from each other, if a thing is a success or a
mess, exchanging our criticisms, and never having relations with
accredited JUDGES.
Michel never tells us until after a year or two if a book has SOLD.
As for Buloz, if it is with him we have to do, he tells us
invariably that the thing is bad or poor. It is only Charles Edmond
who encourages us by asking us for copy. We write without
consideration for the public; that is perhaps not a bad idea, but we
carry it too far. And praise from you gives us the courage which
does not depart from us, but which is often a sad courage, while you
make it sparkling and gay, and healthful for us to breathe.
I was right then in not throwing Nanon into the fire, as I was ready
to do, when Charles Edmond came to tell me that it was very well
done, and that he wanted it for his paper. I thank you then, and I
send you back your good kisses, for Francia especially, which Buloz
only put in with a sour face and for lack of something better: you
see that I am not spoiled, but I never get angry at all that and I
don't talk about it. That is how it is, and it is very simple. As
soon as literature is a merchandise, the salesman who exploits it,
appreciates only the client who buys it, and if the client
depreciates the object, the salesman declares to the author that his
merchandise is not pleasing. The republic of letters is only a
market in which one sells books. Not making concession to the
publisher is our only virtue; let us keep that and let us live in
peace, even with him when he is peevish, and let us recognize, too,
that he is not the guilty one. He would have taste if the public had
it.
Now I've emptied my bag, and don't let us talk of it again except to
advise about Saint-Antoine, meanwhile telling ourselves that the
editors will be brutes. Levy, however, is not, but you are angry
with him. I should like to talk of all that with you; will you come?
or wait until my trip to Paris? But when shall I go? I don't know.
I am a little afraid of bronchitis in the winter, and I do not leave
home unless I absolutely have to for business reasons.
I don't think that they will play Mademoiselle La Quintinie. The
censors have declared that it is a MASTERPIECE OF THE MOST ELEVATED
AND HEALTHIEST MORALITY, but that they could not TAKE UPON
THEMSELVES to authorize the performance. IT WILL HAVE TO BE TAKEN TO
HIGHER AUTHORITIES, that is to say, to the minister who will send it
to General Ladmirault; it is enough to make you die laughing. But I
don't agree to all that, and I prefer to keep quiet till the new
administration. If the NEW administration is the clerical monarchy,
we shall see strange things. As for me, I don't care if they stand
in my way, but how about the future of our generation?...
CCXLV. TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday, 4th December, 1872
Dear master,
I notice a phrase in your last letter: "The publisher would have
taste if the public had it...or if the public forced him to have
it." But that is asking the impossible. They have LITERARY IDEAS,
rest assured, and so have messieurs the managers of the theatre.
Both insist that they are JUDGES IN THAT RESPECT, and their
estheticism mingling with their commercialism makes a pretty result.
According to the publishers, one's last book is always inferior to
the preceding one. May I be hung if that is not true. Why does Levy
admire Ponsard and Octave Feuillet more than father Dumas and you?
Levy is academic. I have made more money for him than Cuvillier-
Fleury has, haven't I? Well, draw a parallel between us two, and you
will see how you will be received. You know that he did not want to
sell more than 1200 copies of the Dernieres Chansons, and the 800
which were left over, are in my niece's garret, rue de Clichy! That
is very narrow of me, I agree to that; but I confess that the
proceeding has simply enraged me. It seems to me that my prose might
have been more respected by a man for whom I have turned a penny or
two.
Why publish, in these abominable times? Is it to get money? What
mockery! As if money were the recompense for work, or could be! That
will be when one has destroyed speculation, till then, no! And then
how measure work, how estimate the effort? The commercial value of
the work remains. For that one would be obliged to suppress all
intermediaries between the producer and the purchaser, and even
then, that question in itself permits of no solution. For I write (I
speak of an author who respects himself) not for the reader of
today, but for all the readers who can present themselves as long as
the language lives. My merchandise, therefore, cannot be consumed,
for it is not made exclusively for my contemporaries. My service
remains therefore indefinite, and in consequence, unpayable.
Why publish then? Is it to be understood, applauded? But yourself,
YOU, great George Sand, you confess your solitude. Is there at this
time, I don't say, admiration or sympathy, but the appearance of a
little attention to works of art? Who is the critic who reads the
book that he has to criticise? In ten years they won't know,
perhaps, how to make a pair of shoes, they are becoming so
frightfully stupid! All that is to tell you that, until better times
(in which I do not believe), I shall keep Saint-Antoine in the
bottom of a closet.
If I publish it, I would rather that it should be at the same time
as another entirely different book. I am working now on one which
will go with it. Conclusion: the wisest thing is to keep calm.
Why does not Duquesnel go to find General Ladmirault, Jules Simon,
Thiers? I think that the proceeding concerns him. What a fine thing
the censorship is! Let us be reassured, it will always exist, for it
always has! Our friend Alexandre Dumas fils, to make an agreeable
paradox, has boasted of its advantages in the preface to the Dame
aux Camelias, hasn't he?
And you want me not to be sad! I think that we shall soon see
abominable things, thanks to the inept stubbornness of the Right.
The good Normans, who are the most conservative people in the world,
incline towards the Left very strongly.
If they consulted the bourgeoisie now, it would make father Thiers
king of France. If Thiers were taken away, it would throw itself in
the arms of Gambetta, and I am afraid it will do that soon! I
console myself by thinking that Thursday next I shall be fifty-one
years old.
If you are not to come to Paris in February, I shall go to see you
at the end of January, before going back to the Pan Monceau; I
promise.
The princess has written me to ask if you were at Nohant. She wants
to write to you.
My niece Caroline, to whom I have just given Nanon to read, is
enchanted with it. What struck her was the "youth" of the book. The
criticism seems true to me. It is a real BOOK while Francia,
although more simple, is perhaps more finished; more irreproachable
as a work.
I read last week the Illustre Docteur Matheus, by Erckmann-Chatrian.
How very boorish! There are two nuts, who have very plebeian souls.
Adieu, dear good master. Your old troubadour embraces you,