directly urged, in the other contribution to literature published by
Vauvenargues in his lifetime, the "Réflexions sur divers sujets." Here
he abandons the attempt at forming a philosophical system, and admits
that his sole object is "to form the hearts and the manners" of his
readers. Perhaps the most penetrating of all his sentences is that in
which he says: "If you possess any passion which you feel to be noble
and generous, be sure you foster it." This was diametrically opposed
to all the teaching of the seventeenth-century moralists who had
preceded him, and also had taught us that we should mistrust our
passions and disdain our enthusiasms. To see how completely
Vauvenargues rejected the Christian doctrine of the utter decrepitude
and hopeless inherent badness of the human mind, we have but to gather
some of his sparse thoughts together. He says, in defiance of Pascal
and the Jansenists, "Mankind is the only source of our happiness,
outside that there is nothing." Again, "As it is the heart, in most
people, that doubts, so when once the heart is converted, all is done;
it leads them along the path to virtue." He deprecated the constant
checking and blaming of children which was part of the system of
education then in vogue; he declared that it sapped the confidence of
the young, their inherent sense of virtue; and he exclaimed, "Why does
no one dream of training children to be original, bold and
independent?"
Those who knew Vauvenargues recognized in the purity and sweetness and
severity of his teaching the record of his own conduct. Marmontel
speaks of the "tender veneration" with which all the more serious of
his early comrades in the army regarded him. In his works we trace the
result of a curious thing, experience superseding, taking the place
of, education. "He observed the weaknesses of mankind before he had
time to reflect upon their duties," says a contemporary. His mind,
although assaulted by such a crowd of disadvantages, remained calm,
and free from prejudice; remained gently indulgent to human weakness
on the one hand, rigid in allegiance to his ideal pursuit of "la
gloire" on the other. The noble movements of his mind were native, not
acquired, and he had not been hardened or exasperated by the pressure
of a mortifying theology. He does not take so exalted or so pitiless
an attitude as the classic seventeenth-century moralist. Pascal
scourges the mass of humanity down a steep place into the sea;
Vauvenargues takes each wanderer by the hand, and leads him along the
primrose path.
A singular charm in the French character lies in its gift for
composite action. Frenchmen prefer marching towards victory in a body
to a scattered effort of individual energy. It was part of the
constructive genius of Vauvenargues to find the aim and joy of life in
a combination of sentiment and action, in a community of rivals
amiably striving for the crown with fellowmen of like instincts and of
like experience. He was of all moralists the least solitary; he had
spent his life as a soldier among soldiers, among those who did their
best, in the midst of hardships, to live a life of pleasure without
reflection. He was no prig, but he had formed the habit of giving
fatherly counsel which was much beyond his years. He observes that
"the advice of old men is like winter sunshine that gives out light
without warmth," but that the words of a wise and genial young man may
radiate heat and glow. His own advice, given first to his
fellow-officers, then to a circle of literary friends, then to France
so long as her classic literature finds readers, was identical. He
hated conscientious subterfuges which equalize good and evil. He looked
upon "gloire" and "vertu" as the two great motive forces of a sane and
beneficent life. In this he was unique; Voltaire notes that
Vauvenargues soared, in an age of mediocrities, _un siècle des
petitesses_, by his refusal to adopt the spirit of the world. He was a
puritan of the intelligence, and for the ideal of Sully or Villars he
put up the ideal of Oliver Cromwell.
The moral grandeur and spiritual force of Vauvenargues' philosophy
demanded in the disciple a constant exercise of energy and will. Faith
inspired by effort was to be pursued through sacrifice to the utmost
limits of endurance, and with no ultimate reward but _gloire_. This
was, however, modified, as it is in the most strenuous direction of
character in the Frenchmen of to-day, by an illuminating humanity.
Lofty as was the aim of Vauvenargues, nothing could have been more
tender than his practice. We are told that the expression in the eyes
of a sick animal, the moan of a wounded deer in the forest, moved him
to compassion. He carried this tolerance into human affairs, for he
was pre-eminently a human being; "the least of citizens has a right to
the honours of his country." He set a high moral value on courtesy,
and exposed, as a fallacy, the pretence that to be polite is to lack
sincerity. His disposition was easy-going, although his intellect was
such a high-flyer; in pagan times he would have believed in ridiculous
divinities rather than set himself up as an atheist. He did not
believe that excess of knowledge gives firmness to the judgment, and
he remarks that the opulence of learned men often leads to more errors
than the poverty of those who depend on the native virtues of instinct
and experience. He has phrases which seem meant to condemn the
mechanical emptiness of the modern German system of _kultur_.
Full of ardour for all that is beautiful and good, tortured by disease
and pinched by poverty, but never allowing his personal misfortunes to
affect his view of life, or to cloud his vision of the trinity of
heavenly lights, _mérite_, _vertu_, _gloire_, Vauvenargues pursued his
painful life in the Street of the Peacock. He knew his feebleness, but
he refused to let it depress him; "labour to get _gloire_ is not
lost," he said, "if it tends to make us worthy of it." In his curious
mixture of simplicity and acuteness, in his gravity and ardour, he was
morally just like the best types which this great war has produced, he
is like Paul Lintier in France, like Julian Grenfell among ourselves,
meeting the worst blows of fate with serenity and almost with ecstasy,
with no shadow of indignation or rebellion. Some posthumous
reflections have let us into the secret that, as the shadows darkened
around him, he occasionally gave way, if not to despair, yet to
depression, and permitted himself to wonder whether all his effort in
the cause of manliness and virtue had been useless. He had not
awakened the sleepers in France; he doubted that his voice would ever
reach them; he asked himself whether all his effort had not been in
vain. This was the natural inner weakness consequent on his physical
state; he gave no outward sign of it. Marmontel, who watched his last
hours with enthusiastic affection, says that, "In his company we
learned how to live,--and how to die." He lay like Socrates,
surrounded by his friends, talking and listening to the last; he
astonished them by the eloquence and gravity of his discourse. His
latest recorded utterance was, "Fortune may sport with the wisdom of
those who are courageous, but it has no power to bend their courage."
Gently but firmly refusing the importunities of the Church,
Vauvenargues was released from his life-in-death on May 28, 1747, in
his thirty-second year.
You will not find in the pages of Vauvenargues a distinct revival of
that passion for the very soil of France, "la terre sainte, la douce
France," which inspired the noble "Chanson de Roland" and has been so
strongly accentuated in the recent struggle for Alsace-Lorraine. But
he recalled to the memory of a generation which had grown densely
material the forgotten ideal of France as the champion of chivalry. We
must not forget that we possess in the writings of Vauvenargues merely
the commencements of reflection, the first fruit of a life which was
broken before its summer was complete. But we find in his teaching,
and in that of no other moralist of the early eighteenth century, the
insistence on spiritual courage as the necessary opposite to brutal
force and mere materialism. He connected that high ambition, that
craving for _la gloire_, with all pure and elevated things, with the
art and literature, with the intelligence and beauty of the French
creative mind. He recommended, in that gray hour of European dulness,
a fresh ornament to life, a scarlet feather, a _panache_, as our
French friends say. And the gay note that he blew from his battered
clarion was still sounding last year in the heroic resistance of the
forts of Verdun.
THE GALLANTRY OF FRANCE
The spirit displayed by the young French officers in this war deserves
to be compared in many essential respects with that which is blazoned
in the glorious "Chanson de Roland." It is interesting to remember
that during the long years in which the direct influence of that
greatest of medieval epics was obscured, it was chiefly known through
the paraphrase of it executed in German by the monk Konrad in the
twelfth century. Many years ago, Gaston Paris pointed out the curious
fact that Konrad completely modified the character of the "Chanson de
Roland" by omitting all expressions of warlike devotion to "la douce
France," and by concentrating the emotion of the poem on its religious
sentiment. But the real theme of the "Chanson de Roland," as we know
now, was the passionate attachment of the heroes to the soil of
France; "ils étaient poussés par l'amour de la patrie, de l'empereur
français leur seigneur, de leur famille, et surtout de la gloire."
It is a remarkable instance of German "penetration" that in the
paraphrase of the "Chanson de Roland" which Germany so long foisted
upon Europe, these elements were successfully effaced. There was a
sort of poetical revenge, therefore, in the attitude of those who
answered the challenge of Germany in the true spirit of Roland and
Oliver.
We have seen that Vauvenargues--to whose memory the mind incessantly
reverts in contemplation of the heroes of this war--says in one of his
"Maximes"--written nearly two centuries ago--"The earliest days of
spring have less charm than the budding virtue of a young man." No
figure of 1914 exemplifies this quality of grace more surprisingly
than Jean Allard (who called himself in literature Méeus). He was only
twenty-one and a half when he was killed at Pierrepont, at the very
beginning of the war, but he was already one of the promising figures
of his generation. Allard was looked upon as an incipient Admirable
Crichton; he was a brilliant scholar, an adroit and multiform athlete,
the soul of wit and laughter, the centre of a group of adoring
admirers. This sparkling poet was suddenly transformed by the
declaration of war into the sternest of soldiers. His poem, called
"Demain," created, or rather expressed, the patriotic passion which
was simultaneously evoked all over France; it is really a lesser
"Marseillaise." Not less popular, but more elaborate and academic, is
Allard's aviation poem, "Plus haut toujours!"--an extraordinary vision
of the flight and ecstasy and tragic death of a solitary airman. We
may notice that in this, and many other verses describing recent
inventions of science, the young French poets contrive to be very
lucid and simple in their language, and to avoid that display of
technical verbiage which deforms too many English experiments in the
same class.
It is not, however, so much by his writings, which are now collected
in two, or perhaps three, little volumes, that Allard-Méeus strikes
the imagination of a foreign spectator, as by his remarkable attitude.
From the first, this lad of twenty-one exemplified and taught the
value of a chivalrous behaviour. In the face of events, in that
corruption of all which could make the martial spirit seem noble, that
Germany has forced upon the world, this attitude of young French
officers at the very opening of the war is pathetic, and might even
lend itself, if we were disposed for mirth, to an ironic smile. But it
should be recorded and not forgotten. It was Allard who revived the
etiquette of going to battle dressed as sprucely as for a wedding. We
shall do well to recollect the symbolic value which the glove holds in
legends of medieval prowess. When the dying Roland, under the
pine-trees, turns to the frontier of Spain, he offers, as a dying
soldier, his glove to God--
"_Pur ses pecchiez deu puroftrid son guant_."
Allard-Méeus at St. Cyr made all the young officers swear that they
would not go into battle except in white gloves and with their _képi_
adorned with the _casoar_, the red and white dress-plume. "Ce serment,
bien français, est aussi élégant que téméraire," he said, and the rest
followed him with acclamation. He was one of the first French officers
to fall in battle, at the head of his infantry, and his mother was
presented by the regiment with his _casoar_ and his gloves, worn at
the moment of his death, on August 22, 1914, and stained with his
blood. Allard offers a fugitive but typical specimen of the splendour
of French sentiment in the first flush of its enthusiasm.
On March 26, 1917, the Société des Gens de Lettres in Paris held a
solemn assembly under the presidency of M. Pierre Decourcelle to
commemorate those authors who, during the present war, have fallen in
the service of France. Touching and grave in the extreme was the
scene, when, before a crowded and throbbing audience, the secretary
read the name of one young writer after another, pausing for the
president to respond by the words "Mort au champ d'honneur!" In each
case there followed a brief silence more agitating in its emotion than
any eloquence could be.
The great number of young men of high intellectual promise who were
killed early in this war is a matter for grave and painful reflection.
Especially in the first months of the autumn of 1914 the holocaust was
terrible. There was no restraining the ardour of the young, who sought
their death in a spirit of delirious chivalry, each proud to be the
Iphigenia or the Jephtha's Daughter of a France set free. It has been
noted since that the young generation, born about 1890, had been
prepared for the crisis in a very significant way. The spiritual
condition of these grave and magnificent lads resembled nothing that
had been seen before, since the sorrows of 1870. They gave the
impression of being dedicated. As we now read their letters, their
journals, their poems, we are astonished at the high level of moral
sentiment which actuated them all. There is often even a species of
rapturous detachment which seems to lift them into a higher sphere
than that of vain mortality. Examples might be given by the sheaf, but
it suffices here to quote a letter from the youthful Léo Lantil, who
was killed early in 1915, in one of the obscure battles of Champagne.
He says, in writing to his parents, shortly before his death, "All our
sacrifice will be of sweet savour if it leads to a really glorious
victory and brings more light to human souls." It was this Léo Lantil,
dying in his twenty-fifth year, whose last words were "Priez pour la
France, travaillez pour la France, haussez-la!"
A story is told by M. Henri Bordeaux which illustrates the impression
made by these young soldiers. A peasant of Savoy, while ploughing his
fields in the autumn of 1914, saw his wife crossing to him with the
local postman, who had a letter in his hands. He took it from them,
and put on his spectacles, and read that his two sons had been killed
in an engagement in the Vosges. He said quietly, "God has found them
ready," and then, slowly, "My poor wife!" and he returned to his yoke
of oxen. It would seem that the French accepted, without reserve and
without difficulty, an inward discipline for which the world had
formed little conception of their readiness. There is no question now,
since all the private letters and diaries prove it, that the
generation which had just left college, and had hardly yet gone out
into the world, had formed, unsuspected by their elders, a conception
of life which might have been called fatalistic if it had not been so
rigorously regulated by a sense of duty. They were singularly calm
under a constant presentiment of death. When the war came, they
accepted the fiery trial not merely with resignation, but even with
relief. Their athletic stoicism took what fortune offered them,
instead of attempting to rebel against it. Their sentiment was that a
difficulty had been settled. Life had been producing upon their
consciences a sense of complication, a tangle of too many problems.
Now they might, and did, cheerfully relinquish the effort to solve
them. One of the most extraordinary features of the moral history of
the young French officers in this war has been the abandonment of
their will to the grace of God and the orders of the chief. In the
letters of the three noble brothers Belmont, who fell in rapid
succession, this apprenticeship to sacrifice is remarkable, but it
recurs in all the records. "God found them ready!"
When all is of so inspired an order of feeling, it is difficult, it is
even invidious, to select. But the figure of Paul Lintier, whose
journals have been piously collected by M. Edmond Haraucourt, stands
out before us with at least as much saliency as any other. We may take
him as a peculiarly lucent example of his illuminated class.
Quartermaster Lintier died on March 15, 1916, struck by a shell, on
the Lorraine frontier, at a place called Jeandelincourt. He had not
yet completed his twenty-third year, for he was born at Mayenne on May
13, 1893. In considering the cases of many of these brilliant and
sympathetic young French officers, who had already published or have
left behind them works in verse and prose, there may be a disposition,
in the wonderful light of their experience, to exaggerate the positive
value of their productions. Not all of them, of course, have
contributed, or would have contributed, durable additions to the store
of the literature of France. We see them, excusably, in the rose-light
of their sunset. But, for this very reason, we are inclined to give
the closer attention to Paul Lintier, who not only promised well but
adequately fulfilled that promise. It seems hardly too much to say
that the revelation of a prose-writer of the first class was brought
to the world by the news of his death.
His early training predicted nothing of romance. He was intended for a
career in commerce, but, showing no aptitude for trade, he dallied
with legal studies at Lyons, and "commenced author" by publishing some
essays in that city. At the age of twenty he joined a regiment of
artillery, and seems to have perceived, a year before the war, that
the only profession he was fitted for was soldiering. Towards the
close of September 1914, in circumstances which he recounts in his
book, he was severely wounded; he went back to the front in July 1915,
and, as we have said, fell fighting eight months later. This is the
history of a young man who will doubtless live in the annals of French
literature; and brief as it seems, it is really briefer still, since
all we know of Paul Lintier, or are likely ever to know, is what he
tells us himself in describing what he saw and practised and endured
between August 1 and September 22, 1914. This wonderful book, "Ma
Pièce," was written by the young gunner, night after night, on his
knee, during seven weeks of inconceivable intensity of emotion, and it
is by this revelation of his genius that his memory will be preserved.
The style of Paul Lintier is one of the miracles of art. There is no
evidence that this youth had studied much or had devoted himself to
any of the training which adequate expression commonly demands. We
know nothing about him until he suddenly bursts upon us, in the
turmoil of mobilization, as a finished author. What strikes a critical
reader of "Ma Pièce," as distinguishing it from other works of its
class, is a certain intellectual firmness most remarkable in a lad of
Lintier's age, suddenly confronted by such a frenzy of public action.
There is no pessimism, and no rhetoric, and no touch of humour, but an
obsession for the truth. This is displayed by another and an extremely
popular recent publication, "En Campagne," by M. Marcel Dupont, which
exhibits exactly the same determination to exaggerate nothing and to
reduce nothing, but to report exactly what the author saw with his own
eyes, in that little corner of the prodigious battle-field in which
his own regiment was fighting. Truth, the simple unvarnished truth,
has been the object of these various writers in setting down their
impressions, but the result exemplifies the difference between what
is, and what is not, durable as literature. For this purpose, it is
well to turn from Lintier's pages to those of the honest writers of
whom Dupont is the type, and then back again to Lintier. All evoke,
through intense emotion, most moving and most tragic sensations, but
Lintier, gifted with some inscrutable magic, evokes them in the
atmosphere of beauty.
A quality of the mind of Paul Lintier which marked him out for a place
above his fellows was the prodigious exactitude of his memory. This
was not merely visual, but emotional as well. Not only did it retain,
with the precision of a photograph, all the little fleeting details of
the confused and hurried hours in which the war began, but it kept a
minute record of the oscillation of feeling. Those readers who take a
pleasure in the technical parts of writing may enjoy an analysis of
certain pages in "Ma Pièce," for instance, the wonderful description
of an _alerte_ at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp.
131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may
compare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to
form such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes
(August 14, 1914):--"La nuit est claire, rayée par les feux des
projecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel;
merveilleuse nuit de mi-août, infiniment constellée, égayée d'étoiles
filantes qui laissent après elles de longues phosphorescences.
"La lune s'est levée. Elle perce mal les feuillages denses des
pruniers et le cantonnement immobile reste sombre. Çà et là,
seulement, elle fait des taches jaunes sur l'herbe et sur les croupes
des chevaux qui dorment debout. Le camarade avec qui je partage cette
nuit de garde est étendu dans son manteau au pied d'un grand poirier.
Devant moi, la lune illumine la plaine. Les prairies sont voilées de
gaze blanche. Les deux armées, tous feux éteints, dorment ou se
guettent."