I met Mérimée frequently in society. He was a tall man, erect in his
bearing, pale, and, excepting his smile, had the appearance of an
Englishman; he had, at all events, that cold, distant manner which
forbids in advance any attempt at familiarity. Merely to see him one was
impressed by his callousness, either natural or acquired, by his
self-control, by his determined self-repression. On ceremonious
occasions, especially, the immobility of his countenance was
conspicuously manifest.
Even in the society of his intimate friends, and when relating a witty
anecdote, his voice retained its habitual calmness and tranquillity,
with never an outburst, never a sign of enthusiasm. The drollest details
he described in the most precise language, in the tone of a man asking
for a cup of tea. All evidences of sensibility he had mastered until it
seemed a quality absent from his nature. Not that it was so--quite the
contrary; but race-horses there are so well trained that, once under
their master’s hand, they never so much as make a sudden start.
His training, it must be said, had begun early. When ten or eleven years
old, I imagine, having committed some impropriety, he was scolded
severely and sent from the room. Weeping and in great distress, he was
just closing the door when he heard laughter within the room, and some
one said: “Poor child! he believes we are really angry with him!”
Intolerable to him was the idea of being a dupe, and he resolved
thereupon to overcome a sensitiveness which had caused him such
humiliation. He kept his word. “Remember to mistrust,” such was his
motto.
To guard against every manifestation of pleasure, never to abandon
himself unreservedly to the expression of emotion, to be tricked neither
by others nor by himself, in his conduct and his writings to have in
view the constant presence of an unsympathetic, mocking spectator; to be
himself that spectator--these are the most distinguishing
characteristics of his nature, of which every phase of his life, of his
work, and of his talent bears the imprint.[1]
His attitude was always that of an amateur; it can hardly be otherwise
with one who is endowed with the critical temperament. From turning the
tapestry around and around, one ends by seeing nothing but the wrong
side; and thus, instead of lovely figures, gracefully posed, one sees
only the rough bits of embroidery silk. To such a one, it is irksome
with forbearance to engage in any public work; to cast in his lot even
with the party of his choice, with the school of his preference, the
science which he pursues, the art in which he excels; and if, at times,
he descends voluntarily into the contest, more frequently he regards it
from afar.
At an early age he was placed in comfortable circumstances, then in an
employment which was both congenial and interesting, that of Inspector
of Historic Monuments. He then succeeded to a seat in the Senate
Chamber, and later to a post at court.
As Inspector of Historic Monuments, he was capable, painstaking, and
valuable; in the Senate he had the good taste to be usually absent or
silent; at court, he enjoyed perfect freedom of action and of speech. To
travel, to study, to mingle with men and affairs, such was his real
occupation, and his official claims proved no restraint to the
indulgence of his tastes. We must remember, too, that a man of such
genius compels respect, even in the face of obstacles. His irony pierces
the best case-hardened armour. Let us see with what ease and grace he
handles it, even to the point of directing it against himself, thus
making a double shot.
One day, at Biarritz, he had read one of his novels to the empress. “Not
long afterward I received a visit from a policeman, who said he had been
sent by the grand-duchess. ‘In what way may I serve you?’ ‘I come in the
name of her royal highness, to beg that you will attend her this evening
with your novel.’ ‘What novel?’ ‘The one you read to her majesty the
other day.’ I replied that I had the honour to be her majesty’s jester,
and that without her permission I could not accept engagements outside
the court. I flew without delay to tell her the incident, expecting
that the result would be, at the very least, a war with Russia, and I
was no little chagrined not only to receive authority to go, but to go
that very evening to the home of the grand-duchess, to whom the
policeman had been assigned as factotum. However, to soothe my feelings
I wrote a letter to the grand-duchess giving her a piece of my mind.
This letter, ‘giving her a piece of my mind,’ must have been an
interesting composition, and I am sure the factotum did not show himself
again.”
As for formal gatherings, it would be impossible for any one to address
them with more seriousness of demeanour and with less inward deference.
Grave, sedate, of dignified carriage, when making an Academic visit, or
delivering an impromptu address in public, his manner was
irreproachable; but all the while the bird-organ behind the scenes was
playing a comic air which turned both the orator and the audience to
ridicule. “The president of the Antiquarian Society rose from his seat,
all the other guests following his example. He began to speak, saying
that inasmuch as from those aspects I was a man of notable attainments,
he wished to propose my health, as senator, as man of letters, and as a
scholar. There was only the table between us, and I was strongly tempted
to hurl a glass of Roman punch at his head.... The next morning I
listened to the minutes of the proceedings of the night before, in which
it was stated that I had delivered a most eloquent address. I made a
speech, to urge that all the adverbs be omitted from the report, but my
request was not granted.”
While a candidate for the Academy of Inscriptions, he was taken to call
upon some learned persons of formidable aspect; he wrote, on his
return: “Have you ever seen dogs entering a badger’s hole? Before they
have had some experience in this occupation, they make, on entering, a
desperate show of fierceness, and not infrequently come out much faster
than they go in, for the badger is an ugly beast to visit. I never touch
the door-bell of an Academician that I am not reminded of the badger,
and compare myself, in my mind’s eye, to the dog I have just described.
I have not yet been bitten, however, but I have had some ludicrous
encounters.”
He was elected, and had, along with others, his archæological burrow. It
is easy to guess, however, that his was not the temperament to be
restricted to this or to any place of hiding. For him there were always
several modes of exit. In him were two individualities: one which
acquitted himself conscientiously of the essential duties and
ceremonials incumbent upon him as a member of society; the other
dwelling beside or above the first, and in contempt or resignation
observing his actions.
Similarly, in his affections he had within him two distinct
personalities. The first, the natural man, was kind, even tender. In
friendship no one was more loyal, more trustworthy. Once he had extended
his hand, there was no withdrawal. We see an instance of this in his
defence of M. Libri, in opposition to the decision of the judges and to
public sentiment. It was the act of a knight, who single-handed combats
a whole army. Fined, and condemned to prison, he assumed no martyr’s
airs, and in submitting to his misfortune, brought to it all the grace
that he had brought of courage to its provocation. He has never
referred to it, save in a preface, and then only by way of apology,
stating that he had been compelled “during the preceding month of July
to spend a fortnight in a place in which he was not at all
inconvenienced by the sunshine, and where he enjoyed unlimited leisure.”
Nothing more. It is the prudent, subtle smile of a gallant man.
He was, moreover, helpful and obliging. People who approached him to ask
a favour went away discouraged because of his cold aspect, but a month
later he would call upon them with the requested favour in his pocket.
In his correspondence he gives expression to a striking phrase, to the
truth of which all his friends will bear testimony: “It seldom happens
that I sacrifice others to myself, and when this does occur I am
overcome with remorse.”
Toward the close of his life there lived in his home two elderly English
ladies, to whom he seldom spoke and to whom apparently he gave little
attention; yet a friend of mine found him in tears because one of them
was ill. He never spoke of his most profound sentiments. Here we have a
correspondence of love, which developed into friendship lasting for
thirty years; the final letter was written the last day of his life, and
yet no one knows the name of his correspondent. To one who can read
these letters understandingly they are all that is graceful, tender, and
delicate, truly affectionate, and--who would imagine it?--at times
poetic, imaginative even, like a German lyric.
The following incident is so strange, that it must be quoted almost
wholly:
“You have been such a long time writing to me that I began to be very
uneasy. Besides, I have been harassed by an absurd idea, which I have
not dared to tell you before. I was visiting the amphitheatre at Nîmes
with an architect of the department, who was explaining to me at length
the repairs which he had had made there, when I saw ten feet away a
lovely bird, a little larger than a tomtit, with a linen-gray body, and
wings of red, black and white. This bird was perched on a cornice,
gazing at me fixedly. I interrupted the architect, who is a great
sportsman, to ask him the name of the bird. He told me he had never seen
one like it. I approached, and, perching a few steps beyond, and still
watching me, the bird did not take flight until I was close enough to
touch it. Wherever I went the bird seemed to follow, for I saw it on
every tier of the amphitheatre. It had no companion, and its flight was
noiseless, like that of a bird of night.
“The next day I returned to the amphitheatre, and there was my bird
again. I had brought some bread with me, which I threw to it. The bird
looked at the food, but would not touch it. I then tempted it with a big
grasshopper, thinking from the shape of the bill that it would eat
insects, but the bird paid no attention to the grasshopper. The most
learned ornithologist in the city told me that no bird of that species
lived in the country.
“Finally, when I visited the amphitheatre for the last time, I found my
bird again, still pursuing my steps, following me even into a narrow,
dark corridor, where, bird of light that it was, it should not have
dared to venture.
“I recalled then that the duchess of Buckingham had seen her husband in
the form of a bird the day of his assassination, and the thought came to
me that you were dead, perhaps, and that you had assumed this form in
order to visit me. In spite of myself, I could not shake off this
foolish idea, and I was delighted, I assure you, to see that your letter
bore the date of the day when I had first seen my mysterious bird.”
It is thus that, even in a sceptic, affection and imagination are
stirred; ‘tis a “piece of folly,” to be sure, but it is no less true
that he was on the threshold of dreaming and in the highway of love.[2]
But along with the lover dwelt the critic, and the conflict between
these two personages in the same man was productive of strange results.
In such a case, it is better, perhaps, not to look too closely. “Do you
realise,” said La Fontaine, “that I am as blind to the faults of persons
whom I may love never so little, as if I were a mole living a hundred
feet under the ground? No sooner do I feel an atom of love, than I
hasten to moisten it with all the incense of my store-house.” This,
perhaps, is the secret of his charm.
In the letters of Mérimée harsh words fall like rain amidst the soft
ones; “I will admit that you have become much more beautiful physically,
but not morally.... You still have a sylph-like figure, and, although I
am somewhat _blasé_ concerning black eyes, I have never seen any so
large in Constantinople or in Smyrna.
“Now comes the reverse of the medal. In many respects you have remained
a child, and you have become a hypocrite into the bargain.... You
imagine that you are proud, but I regret to tell you that what you think
is pride is only the petty vanity which one would expect in a religious
temperament. It is the fashion nowadays to preach. Shall you follow it?
That would be the finishing stroke.” And a little farther on: “In all
that you say and do, you substitute invariably a conventional for a
genuine sentiment.... I respect convictions, even those that seem to me
the most absurd. You have a great many ridiculous notions (pardon the
word), of which I should hesitate to deprive you since you are so fond
of them, and have no others to take their place.”
After two months of affectionate words, of quarrels, and of meetings he
concludes thus: “It seems to me you become more egotistical every day.
When you speak of _us_, you mean only _yourself_. The more I think of
this, the more deplorable it appears.... We are so unlike that it is
hardly possible to understand each other.” It seems that he had met a
character as restive and as independent as his own, “a lioness, though
tame,” and he analyses it thus: “It is a pity we can not meet the day
after having a quarrel, for I am sure we should be in a perfectly
amiable frame of mind.... Without doubt, my most dangerous enemy to your
heart or, if you prefer, my strongest rival, is your pride. Whatever
wounds that, excites your indignation. This notion you carry out,
perhaps unconsciously, in the most trifling matters. Is it not, for
instance, your pride which is satisfied when I kiss your hand? This, you
have said to me, makes you happy, and to this sensation you abandon
yourself, because a demonstration of humility is gratifying to your
pride.”
Four months later, while he is absent from Paris, after a more serious
misunderstanding: “You are one of those chilly women of the North, who
are governed only by the mind.... Farewell, since we can be friends only
at a distance. When we have grown old, perhaps we shall meet again with
pleasure.” Then, with a word of affection, he recovers his serenity. But
the antagonism of their temperaments is bound to reappear. “Seldom do I
reproach you, except for that lack of frankness, which keeps me
constantly in a rage with you, compelled as I am always to search for
your meaning under a disguise.... Why is it, when we have become all we
are to each other, that you must reflect for several days before
replying frankly to the simplest question of mine?... Between your
reason and your heart, I never feel sure which will win; you do not know
yourself, but you give the preference always to your reason.... If you
have committed any wrong, it is assuredly that preference which you give
to your pride over all the tenderness of your nature. The first
sentiment is to the second as a colossus to a pygmy. And that pride of
yours is at bottom nothing but a kind of selfishness.”
All this ended in a warm and lasting friendship. But do you not consider
admirable his delightful manner of love-making? They met in the Louvre,
at Versailles, and in the adjoining woods; they took long walks, even
in January, several times a week; he admired “a radiant physiognomy, a
splendid bearing, a white hand, superb black hair”; a mind whose
intelligence and attainments were worthy of his own, the charms of an
unusual type of beauty, the attractions of a broad and miscellaneous
culture, the fascinations of a toilet, and a coquetry cleverly directed
and managed; he breathed the exquisite perfume of an education so well
chosen, and of a “nature so refined, that it summed up for him an entire
civilisation”; to sum it all up, he was under the charm. Then the
spectator reappears and resumes his post. He disputed the purport of a
reply, of a gesture; he dissociated himself from his feelings that he
might form an unbiassed judgment; he expressed candidly and
epigrammatically his views one day, to regret them the next.
Such was the man as we find him reflected in his books. As a dilettante
he wrote and studied, passing from one subject to another, as suggested
by the occasion or his own fancy, without devoting himself to one system
of knowledge, without dedicating himself to the worship of one idea.
This was owing to no lack of study or of natural endowment; few men, on
the contrary, have enjoyed a broader mental training. Besides French he
was master of six languages, including their literature and philology:
Italian, Greek, Latin, English, Spanish, and Russian. I believe, also,
that he read German. An occasional phrase, or a reference in his
correspondence, shows the extent to which he had directed these studies.
_Calo_ he spoke in such a manner as to astonish the Spanish gipsies. He
was familiar with the various Spanish dialects, and was able to decipher
the archaic title-deeds of Catalonia. He understood perfectly English
versification. Those only who have studied an entire literature, both in
print and in manuscript, during the several successive periods of its
development, in style and in orthography, are able to appreciate the
skill and perseverance necessary to know Spanish as the author of _Don
Pedro_ knew it, and Russian as the author of _The Cossacks_ and of _The
False Demetrius_ knew it. With a natural gift for languages, he pursued
their acquirement even after reaching maturity. During the latter part
of his life he became interested in philology, and while living in
Cannes devoted himself to the critical studies which compose the
comparative grammar.
To this acquaintance with books he had added that of monuments, his
reports proving that throughout France he was the acknowledged expert in
this branch of learning. He understood not only the purpose, but the
technique, of architecture. Each ancient church he visited in person,
conducting his examinations with the aid of the best architects the
country afforded. His memory of local affairs was excellent by nature
and by careful training.
Born in a family of artists, he was clever in the use of the brush, and
as a water-colourist was equally skilful. In short, in this, as in
everything he did, he went to the very foundations of the subject.
Evasive expression he detested, writing no word until he had reached
definite and absolute conclusions. It would be difficult to find a
historian whose head was so complete a store-house of information
relating to the past, who was himself, indeed, a whole library, a whole
museum of information.
He possessed, besides, the rarer gifts of a knowledge of life and a
clear imagination, by the exercise of which those relics of the past
were revivified and lived again. He had travelled widely, having made
one journey to the Orient and two to Greece; he had visited England,
Spain, and other countries twelve or fifteen times, and wherever he went
he had been a close observer of the manners and customs not only of the
best society, but of the peasantry also: “Many a time have I broken
bread with people whom an Englishman would not notice for fear of losing
his self-respect. I have even drunk from the same bottle with a
convict.”
He had lived on familiar terms with Spanish gipsies and toreadors. Many
an evening he had told stories for the entertainment of a group of
peasant men and women of Ardèche. One of the places where he felt most
at home was in a Spanish _venta_, with the “mule-drivers and peasant
women of Andalusia.”
He sought out types perverted, and types unsullied, “through an
inexhaustible curiosity for every variety of the human species,” and
thus formed in his memory a gallery of living pictures inestimably more
precious than any other kind; for those of books and of edifices are but
empty shells, once tenanted, but whose structure may be known only by
imagining the forms that dwelt therein, from the poems that have
survived. By a sort of divination, keen, accurate, and swift, he made
this mental reconstruction. In the _Chronicle of Charles IX_, in _The
Experiments of an Adventurer_, and in the _Theater of Clara Gazul_ it is
evident that such was his involuntary method. His writings tend
naturally to the demi-dreams of the artist, to scenic effect, and to
romance which clothes the dead past with new life. With splendid
acquirements and talents like these, he might have occupied in the field
of history and of art a position of eminent importance and distinction;
yet as a historian he has taken but a mediocre place, and as an artist,
his rank, while a high one, is of narrow limit.
The bent of his mind led Mérimée to be suspicious, and suspicion carried
to excess is harmful. To obtain from the study of any subject all that
it is able to bestow, one must, I fancy, give oneself to it without
reserve, be wedded to it, indeed, but not treat it as a mistress to whom
one is devoted for two or three years, only to discard and take a new
one. A man produces the best of which he is capable only when, after
conceiving to himself some form of art, some method of science, in short
some general idea of his subject, he becomes so enamoured that he finds
it possessing attractions above all else--himself especially--and
worships it as a goddess, whom he is happy only in serving.
Mérimée, also, was capable of cherishing this affection and adoration,
but after a time the critic within him awoke, bringing the goddess to
trial, only to discover that she was not entirely divine. All our
methods of science, all our forms of art, all our general ideas, have
some weak spot; the inadequate, the uncertain, the expedient, the
artificial, abound therein; only the illusion of love can find them
perfect, and a sceptic does not remain long in love. He put on his
magnifying glasses, and in the enchanting statue discovered a lack of
poise, a vagueness and insincerity of construction, a modernity of
attitude. Becoming disgusted, he turned away, not without reason, to be
sure, and these reasons he explains in passing. He sees in our
philosophy of history an element of speculation, in our mania for
erudition the futility, inutility; he sees extravagance in our taste for
the picturesque, and insipidity in our paintings of realism. Let
inventors and simpletons, through vanity or stupidity, accept, if they
like, such a system, such a style; but as for himself, he rejects it,
or, if he has not rejected, he regrets that he has not done so.
“About the year of grace 1827 I belonged to the Romantic school. We said
to the Classicists, ‘Without _local colour_, there is no hope of
salvation,’ meaning by local colour that which in the seventeenth
century was known as manners and customs. But we were mighty proud of
our word, and imagined that we had invented both the word and the thing
for which it stood.” When, later, he wrote some Illyrian poems which
were construed by the critics beyond the Rhine with the utmost
seriousness, he was able to boast of having, indeed, created local
colour. “But,” said he, “the process was so simple, so easy, that I came
at last to doubt the value of local colour itself, and forgave Racine
for having clothed with civilisation the savage heroes of Sophocles and
Euripides.”
Toward the end of his life, he avoided resolutely the acceptance of all
theories; they were, in his opinion, good only to work on the credulity
of philosophers and as a means of livelihood for professors. He accepted
and repeated only anecdotes and small facts of observation in
philology; for instance, the exact date when one ceases to meet in Old
French the two cases derived from the Latin declension. By dint of his
craving for certainty, knowledge came to be to him but a withered plant,
a stalk devoid of blossoms. In no other way can we explain the
lifelessness of his historical essays, _Don Pedro_, _The Cossacks_, _The
False Demetrius_, _The Social War_, _The Conspiracy of Catiline_,
studies vigorous, exhaustive, well-maintained and well-developed, but
whose characters are not alive, probably because he did not care to give
them life. For in another work, _The Experiments of an Adventurer_, he
has caused the sap to return to the plant, so that it may be seen
successively under its two aspects, dull and rigid in the historical
herbarium, fresh and green in the work of art. In placing his Spaniards
of the nineteenth century as the contemporaries of Sylla in this
herbarium, they were as clearly seen by his inner vision, no doubt, as
was his adventurer; at any rate, this would have been no more of a tax
upon his mental retina. He was reluctant, however, to permit us to see
them thus, conceding only facts which could bear the test of proof,
refusing to give his own assumptions rather than authentic occurrences,
critical to the impairment of his own work, severe to the point of
suppressing the best part of himself, and of placing his imagination
under the ban.
In his artistic works the critic still rules, but in this case his
office is usually one of service, to control and to direct his talent
like a spring which is confined within a pipe that it may gush forth in
a stream slender and compressed. Certain gifts were his by nature which
no amount of application can bestow, and which were never possessed by
his master, Stendhal--the talent for scenic effect, for dialogue, for
humorous situations. He knew the art of introducing two characters, and
by their conversation alone of bringing them in strong relief before the
vision of the reader. Like Stendhal, moreover, he understood personal
peculiarities, and was a skilful story-teller. These clever powers he
subjected to a severe training, and, by a double strain, endeavoured to
compel them to yield the best results from the smallest material.
From the very first he had delighted in the Spanish drama, which is
overflowing with vigour and action; and he borrowed a number of its
situations to compose, under a fictitious name, some short pieces of
deep purport and modern significance; and, a thing unique in the history
of literature, many of these imitations--_The Crisis_ and _Perichole_,
for example--are superior to his original stories. Nowhere else do the
characters stand out so distinctly and so energetically as in his
comedies. In _The Conspirators_, and in _The Two Heirs_, each personage,
according to Goethe, resembles one of those perfect watches of
transparent crystal, in the face of which is visible, not only the exact
time, but also the action of the entire interior mechanism. All the
minutest details are burdened with significance.
It is the attribute of great masters of painting in five or six strokes
of the crayon to sketch in a face which, once seen, can never be
forgotten. Even in his less popular comedies--for example, in _The
Spaniards in Denmark_--there are characters, like the Lieutenant
Charles Leblanc and his mother, the spy, who will remain forever in the
human memory.
If, indeed, so confirmed a sceptic had deigned to have any moral
sensibility, he would have explained, I fancy, that to a good judge of
mankind every individual is reduced to three or four essential
qualities, which manifest themselves completely in a few significant
actions; all else is but acquired, and therefore unimportant, to exhibit
which is but a waste of time. Intelligent readers will take this for
granted, and it is for intelligent readers only that one should write.
Leave idle chatter to chatterers; deal with vital points only, and these
exemplify by none but convincing actions. To condense, to curtail, to
summarise life, is the purpose of art.
Such, at any rate, was his, which he realises even better in his
romances than in his comedies, where the requirements of stage effect
and of humorous situations can not fail to exaggerate incidents, to
caricature truth, and to conceal behind a theatrical mask the living
face.[3] The novelist, less hampered by restrictions and with wider
resources at his command, may draw his characters with a more accurate
and also a freer hand. Many of these novels are masterpieces, and we may
believe that they will continue in the future to be held as classics.
For this assumption there are several reasons: In the first place, they
have lived already for thirty or forty years, and _Carmen_, _The Taking
of the Redoubt_, _Colomba_, _Matteo Falcone_, _The Abbé Aubain_, _Arsène
Guillot_, _The Venus of Ille_, _The Game of Backgammon_, _Tamango_, even
_The Etruscan Vase_, and _The Double Mistake_, are almost all little
structures that stand now as firmly as the day they were erected. This
is explained by the fact that they are built of carefully selected
stone, not of stucco and other popular materials. Here we find none of
those descriptions which pass out of fashion after half a century, and
which to-day we consider so tiresome in the romances of Walter Scott; we
see none of those reflections, disquisitions, interpretations, which we
think so tedious in the novels of Fielding; nothing but action, and
action never fails to be instructive. This is all the more striking
inasmuch as important action only is introduced, intelligible alike to
readers of another country and another century. In the works of Balzac
and of Dickens, where this precaution was not observed, many minute
details of local or technical significance will be lost, like a
plastered wall which crumbles away, or they will be serviceable only to
commentators in their commentaries.
A second reason for their endurance is the brevity of these romances,
the longest of them consuming but half a volume, while one is but six
pages. All, however, stand out clearly and are carefully developed, the
interest centred around a single action and a single purpose. Now we
must consider posterity in the light that we do a foreigner, in that it
does not exercise the forbearance of contemporary readers, and that it
does not tolerate tediousness; for how many persons to-day will submit
to the eight volumes of Clarissa Harlowe? We must remember, in short,
that human attention overtaxed ends invariably in bankruptcy; it is
prudent, therefore, when after a century its consideration is still
sought, to speak in language concise, clear, and open.
It is wise, moreover, in addressing posterity to choose interesting
subjects and to treat them in an interesting way. Interesting subjects:
that would exclude events essentially tame or commonplace, characters
essentially colourless or ordinary. To treat these in an interesting
way: which means situations and passions of sufficient vitality, after
the lapse of a century, to have them serve actual conditions. The types
chosen by Mérimée were sincere, strong, and original. We may compare
them to medallions of durable metal, in bold relief, set in an
appropriate frame and amid harmonious surroundings; an officer’s first
battle, a Corsican vendetta, a slave-trader’s last voyage, a slip from
the path of integrity, the sacrifice of a son by his father, a secret
tragedy in a modern salon. Like the novels of Bandello and the Italian
fiction-writers, almost all his tales are sanguinary, and are painful,
besides, from the cold-bloodedness of the recital, the accuracy of the
action, and the skilful convergence of details.
Far better, each one is, in its little setting, a record of human
nature, a record, complete and of far-reaching import, to which a
philosopher, a moralist, may return year after year without exhausting
its interest.
Multitudes of dissertations on primitive and savage instinct, wise
treatises, like those of Schopenhauer, on the metaphysics of love and
of death, can not be compared in value to the hundred pages of _Carmen_.
The wax taper of _Arsène Guillot_ summarises many volumes concerning the
religion of the common people and of the inmost feelings of courtesans.
I know of no more scathing sermon against the blunders of credulity or
of imagination than _The Double Mistake_, and _The Etruscan Vase_. In
the year 2000 _The Game of Backgammon_ will be read again, probably, to
learn what it costs to cheat.
Notice, finally, that at no time does the author force himself on our
notice that he may emphasise the lesson, but remains in the background,
leaving us to draw our own conclusions. He effaces himself even
deliberately so as to appear altogether absent. Future readers will show
consideration for a host so polite, so graceful, so discreet in doing
the honours of his own home. Good manners are at all times pleasing, and
a more courteous host than Mérimée it would be impossible to find.
Greeting his guests at the threshold, he introduces them and then
withdraws, leaving them at liberty to examine and to criticise
undisturbed. He is not obtrusive; he does not call attention to his
treasures; never will he be caught in the act of a display of vanity.
Instead of exposing his knowledge, he conceals it; to listen to him, it
would seem as if any one at all might have written his book. Now it is
an anecdote related to him by one of his friends, and which he has
transcribed on the spot; now it is “a selection” from Brantôme, and from
d’Aubigné. If he wrote _The Experiments of an Adventurer_, it was
because he had once, for a fortnight, had nothing better to do. For
writing _The Guzla_, the recipe is simple: to procure statistics
referring to Illyria, to get the travels of the Abbé Fortis, and to
learn five or six Slav words. This resolution not to over-estimate
himself comes to be in the end an affectation. So great is his dread of
appearing pedantic that he flies to the opposite extreme, and the result
is his tone of flippancy, his unceremonious manner of the man of
society.
The day may come when this will prove to be his vulnerable point, when
it will be asked whether this perpetual air of irony is not intentional;
whether he is justified in joking in the very midst of tragedy; whether
his apparent callousness is not due to the fear of ridicule; whether his
free-and-easy tone is not the effect of embarrassment; whether the
gentleman has not been harmful to the author; whether his art was
sufficiently dear to him. On more than one occasion, notably in _The
Venus of Ille_, he availed himself of this to mystify the reader.
Elsewhere, in Lokis,[4] a grotesque idea, with double meaning, lies at
the foundation of the tale, like a toad in a chiselled casket. He seemed
to find delight in seeing a woman’s fingers unlock the casket, and a
pretty face terrified by the sight of some object of loathing made him
laugh. It appears that he wrote almost always at random, to amuse
himself, to pass the time, without allowing himself to be swayed by an
idea, with no conception of a great unity of purpose, with no
self-subordination to his work.
In this, as in all else, he was disenchanted, and we find him finally
out of tune with life. Scepticism engenders melancholy; and in this
regard his correspondence is truly depressing. His health failed
gradually; he spent his winters regularly at Cannes, realising that life
was slipping away from him.
He took care of his health; he watched over himself; it is the sole
concern which the man continued to feel until the end. By the advice of
his physician, he practised archery, and as a distraction painted views
of the adjacent country. Every day he might be seen walking in silence
along the country roads with his two Englishwomen, one carrying his bow,
the other his box of water-colours. In this way he killed time and
cultivated patience. Out of kindliness of heart he went to a lonely
cabin half a mile away, to nurse a cat; he collected flies for a pet
lizard; these were his favorite companions. When the railway train
brought a friend to visit him, he recovered his animation and became
once more his charming self; his letters were so always, for his quaint
and exquisite humour he could not repress. But of happiness there was
none; to him the future was dark, almost as dark as it is to us to-day;
before closing his eyes it was his sorrow to witness the complete
destruction of his country’s edifice. He expired September 23, 1870.
If one should endeavour to sum up his character and his genius, he will
find, I fancy, that with a tender heart, the gift of nature, endowed
with superior intelligence, having lived the life of a gentleman and
having worked with somewhat of industry, producing a number of books of
the highest order, Mérimée did not, however, accomplish all the good
that was his to yield, did not attain to all the happiness to which it
was his right to aspire. Through his fear of being a dupe, he was
suspicious in every phase of life--in love, in science, in art;[5] and
yet he was the dupe of his own mistrust. One is sure always of being the
dupe of something, and it may be better, perhaps, to reconcile oneself
to the fact in advance.