CCLXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Thursday, one o'clock, 12 March, 1874
Speaking of FROSTS, this is one! People who want to flatter me
insist that the play will do better before the real public, but I
don't think so! I know the defects of my play better than anyone. If
Carvalho had not, for a month, bored me to death with corrections
that I have cut out, I would have made re-touches or perhaps
changes which would perhaps have modified the final issue. But I was
so disgusted with it that I would not have changed a line for a
million francs. In a word, I am dished.
It must be said too that the hall was detestable, all fops and
students who did not understand the material sense of the words.
They made jokes of the poetical things. A poet says: "I am of 1830,
I learned to read in Hernani, and I wanted to be Lara." Thereupon a
burst of ironical laughter, etc.
And moreover I have fooled the public in regard to the title. They
expected another Rabagas! The conservatives have been vexed because
I did not attack the republicans. Similarly the communists would
have liked some insults against the legitimists.
My actors played superbly, Saint-Germain among others; Delannoy who
carries all the play, is distressed, and I don't know what to do to
soften his grief. As for Cruchard, he is calm, very calm! He had
dined very well before the performance, and after it he supped even
better. Menu: two dozen oysters from Ostend, a bottle of champagne
frappe, three slices of roast beef, a truffle salad, coffee and a
chaser. Religion and the stomach sustain Cruchard.
I confess that I should have liked to make some money, but as my
fall involves neither art nor sentiment I am profoundly unconcerned.
I tell myself: "well, it's over!" and I experience a feeling of
freedom. The worst of it all is the scandal about the tickets.
Observe that I had twelve orchestra seats and a box! (Le Figaro had
eighteen orchestra seats and three boxes.) I did not even see the
chief of the claque. One would say that the management of the
Vaudeville had arranged for me to fail. Its dream is fulfilled.
I did not give away a quarter of the seats that I needed and I
bought a great many for people who slandered me eloquently in the
lobbies. The "bravos" of a devoted few were drowned at once by the
"hushes." When they mentioned my name at the end, there was applause
(for the man but not for the work) accompanied by two beautiful cat-
calls from the gallery gods. That is the truth.
La Petite Presse of this morning is polite. I can ask no more of it.
Farewell, dear good master, do not pity me, for I don't feel
pitiable.
P. S.--A nice bit from my servant when he handed me your letter this
morning. Knowing your handwriting, he said sighing: "Ah! the best
one was not there last evening!" That is just what I think.
CCLXXIII TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday, April, 1874
Thank you for your long letter about le Candidat. Now here are the
criticisms that I add to yours: we ought to have: (1) lowered the
curtain after the electoral meeting and put the entire half of the
third act into the beginning of the fourth; (2) cut out the
anonymous letter, which is unnecessary, since Arabelle informs
Rousselin that his wife has a lover; (3) inverted the order of the
scenes in the fourth act, that is to say, beginning with the
announcement of the tryst between Madame Rousselin and Julien and,
making Rousselin a little more jealous. The anxieties of his
election turn him aside from his desire to go to entrap his wife.
Not enough is made of the exploiters. There should be ten instead of
three. Then, he gives his daughter. The end was there, and at the
instant that he notices the blackguardism, he is elected. Then his
dream is accomplished, but he feels no joy over it. In that manner
there would have been moral progress.
I think, whatever you say about it, that the subject was good, but
that I have spoiled it. Not one of the critics has shown me in what.
But I know, and that consoles me. What do you think of La Rounat,
who in his page implores me, "in the name of our old friendship,"
not to have my play printed, he thinks it so "silly and badly
written"! A parallel between me and Gondinet follows.
The theatrical mystery is one of the funniest things of this age.
One would say that the art of the theatre goes beyond the limits of
human intelligence, and that it is a secret reserved for those who
write like cab drivers. The QUESTION OF IMMEDIATE SUCCESS leads all
others. It is the school of demoralization. If my play had been
sustained by the management, it could have made money like another.
Would it have been the better for that?
The Tentation is not doing badly. The first edition of two thousand
copies is exhausted. Tomorrow the second will be published. I have
been torn in pieces by the petty journals and praised highly by two
or three persons. On the whole nothing serious has appeared yet, nor
will appear, I think. Renan does not write any more (he says) in the
Debats, and Taine is busy getting settled at Annecy.
I have been EXECRATED by the Messrs. Villemessant and Buloz, who
will do all they can to be disagreeable to me. Villemessant
reproaches me for not "having been killed by the Prussians." All
that is nauseous!
And you beg me not to notice human folly, and to deprive myself of
the pleasure of depicting it! But the comic is the only consolation
of virtue. There is, moreover, a manner of taking it which is
elevated; that is what I am aiming at with two good people. Don't
fear that they are too realistic! I am afraid, on the contrary, that
it may seem beyond the bounds of possibility, for I shall push the
idea to the limit. This little work that I shall start in six weeks
will keep me busy for four or five years!
CCLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND
April, 1874
As it would have necessitated a STRUGGLE, and as Cruchard has
lawsuits in horror, I have withdrawn my play on the payment of five
thousand francs, so much the worse! I will not have my actors
hissed! The night of the second performance when I saw Delannoy come
back into the wings with his eyes wet, I felt myself a criminal and
said to myself: "Enough." (Three persons affect me: Delannoy,
Tourgueneff and my servant!) In short, it is over. I am printing my
play, you will get it towards the end of the week.
I am jumped on on all sides! le Figaro and le Rappel; it is
complete! Those people to whom I lent money or for whom I did favors
call me an idiot. I have never had less nerves. My stoicism (or
pride) surprises myself even, and when I look for the causes, I ask
myself, dear master, if you are not one of them.
I recall the first night of Villemer, which was a triumph, and the
first night of Don Juan de Village, which was a failure. You do not
know how much I admired you on those two occasions! The dignity of
your character (a thing rarer still than genius) edified me! and I
formulated within myself this prayer: "Oh! how I wish I could be
like her, on a similar occasion." Who knows, perhaps your example
has sustained me? Forgive the comparison! Well, I don't bat an eye-
lid. That is the truth.
But I confess to regretting the THOUSANDS OF FRANCS which I should
have made. My little milk-jug is broken. I should have liked to
renew the furniture at Croisset, fooled again!
My dress rehearsal was deadly! Every reporter in Paris! They made
fun of it all. I shall underline in your copy, all the passages that
they seized on. Yesterday and the day before they did not seize on
them any more. Oh! well, so much the worse! It is too late. Perhaps
the PRIDE of Cruchard has killed it.
And they have written articles on MY dwellings, my SLIPPERS, my DOG.
The chroniclers have described my apartment where they saw "on the
walls, pictures and bronzes." But there is nothing at all on the
walls! I know that one critic was enraged because I did not go to
see him; and a third person came to tell me so this morning, adding:
"What do you want me to tell him?...But Messieurs Dumas, Sardou and
even Victor Hugo are not like you.--Oh! I know it!--Then you are not
surprised, etc."
Farewell, dear good adored master, friendly regards to yours. Kisses
to the dear little girls, and all my love to you.
P.S. Could you give me a copy or the original of Cruchard's
biography; I have no draft of it and I want to reread it to freshen
up MY IDEAL.
CCLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 10 April, 1874
Those who say that I do not think Saint-Antoine beautiful! and
excellent, lie about it, I do not need to tell you. Let me ask you
how I could have confided in the Levy clerks whom I do not know! I
remember, as for Levy himself, saying to him last summer, that I
found the thing superb and first class.
I would have done an article for you if I had not already refused
Maurice recently, to do one about Hugo's Quatre-vingt-treize. I
said that I was ill. The fact is, that I do not know how to DO
ARTICLES, and I have done so many of them for Hugo that I have
exhausted my subject. I wonder why he has never done any for me;
for, really, I am no more of a journalist than he is, and I need his
support much more than he needs mine.
On the whole, articles are not of any use, now, no more than are
friends at the theatre. I have told you that it is the struggle of
one against all, and the mystery, if there is one, is to turn on an
electric current. The subject then is very important in the theatre.
In a novel, one has time to win the reader over. What a difference!
I do not say as you do that there is nothing mysterious in that.
Yes, indeed, there is something very mysterious in one respect:
namely that one can not judge of one's effect beforehand, and that
the shrewdest are mistaken ten times out of fifteen. You say
yourself that you have been mistaken. I am at work now on a play; it
is not possible to know if I am mistaken or not. And when shall I
know? The day after the first performance, if I have it performed,
which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that
has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and
PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this
GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think
it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No
one indeed ever says anything to me: they know that I would not
allow it. Be valiant and CONTENT since Saint-Antoine is doing well
and selling better. What difference does it make if they cut you up
in this or that paper? In former times it meant something; in these
days, nothing. The public is not the public of other days, and
journalism has not the least literary influence. Every one is a
critic and forms his own opinions. They never write articles about
my novels. That doesn't make any difference to me.