Teniers or Daumier?
To the maker of Poirier and Fabrice, of Seraphine and Giboyer, of Olympe
and the Marquis d'Auberive, there were analogies between the genius of
Labiche and the genius of Teniers. 'C'est au premier abord,' says he,
'le meme aspect de caricature; c'est, en y regardant de plus pres, la
meme finesse de tons, la meme justesse d'expression, la meme vivacite de
mouvement.' For myself, I like to think of Labiche as in some sort akin
to Honore Daumier. Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much in
common with that king of caricaturists. The lusty frankness, the jovial
ingenuity, the keen sense of the ridiculous, the insatiable instinct of
observation, of the draughtsman are a great part of the equipment of the
playwright. Augier notes that truth is everywhere in Labiche's work, and
Augier is right. He is before everything a dramatist: an artist, that
is, whose function is to tell a story in action and by the mouths of its
personages; and whimsical and absurd as he loves to be, he is never
either the one or the other at the expense of nature. He is often
careless and futile: he will squander--(as in _Vingt-neuf Degres a
l'Ombre_ and _l'Avare en Gants_ _Jaunes_)--an idea that rightly belongs
to the domain of pure comedy on the presentation of a most uproarious
farce. But he is never any falser to his vocation than this. Now and
then, as in _Moi_ and _le Voyage de M. Perrichon_, he is an excellent
comic poet, dealing with comedy seriously as comedy should be dealt with,
and incarnating a vice or an affectation in a certain character with
impeccable justness and assurance. Now and then, as in _les Petits
Oiseaux_ and _les Vivacites du Capitaine Tic_, he is content to tell a
charming story as pleasantly as possible. Sometimes, as in _Celimare le
Bien-Aime_ (held by M. Sarcey to be the high-water mark of the modern
_vaudeville_), _le Plus Heureux des Trois_, and _le Prix Martin_, he
fights again from a humouristic point of view that triangular duel
between the wife, the husband, and the lover which fills so large a place
in the literature of France; and then he shows the reverse of the medal
of adultery--with the husband at his ease, the seducer haunted by the
ghosts of old sins, the erring wife the slave of her unsuspecting lord.
Or again, he takes to turning the world upside down, and--as in the
_Cagnotte_, the _Chapeau de Paille_, and the _Trente Millions_--to
producing a scheme of morals and society that seems to have been dictated
from an Olympus demoralised by champagne and lobster. But at his wildest
he never forgets that men and women are themselves. His dialogue is
always right and appropriate, however extravagant it be. His vivid and
varied knowledge of life and character supplies him with touches enough
of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen ordinary dramatists;
and withal you feel as you read that he is writing, as Augier says of
him, to amuse himself merely, and that he could an if he would be solemn
and didactic with all the impressiveness that a perfect acquaintance with
men and things and an admirable dramatic aptitude can bestow. The fact
that he is always in a good temper has done him some wrong in that it has
led him to be to all appearances amusing only, where he might well have
posed as a severe and serious artist. But he is none the less true for
having elected to be funny, and there is certainly more genuine human
nature and human feeling in such drolleries as the _Chapeau de Paille_
and _le Plus Heureux des Trois_ than in all the serious dramas of Ponsard
(say) and Hugo put together.
Labiche.
Perhaps the most characteristic and individual part of his work is that
in which he has given his invention full swing, and allowed his humour to
play its maddest pranks at will. _Moi_ is an admirable comedy, and De la
Porcheraie is almost hideously egoistic; the _Voyage de M. Perrichon_ is
delightful reading, and Perrichon is as pompous an ass as I know; but the
_Chapeau de Paille_, the _Cagnotte_, the _Trente Millions_, the
_Sensitive_, the _Deux Merles Blancs_, the _Doit-On le Dire_, and their
compeers--with them it is other-guess work altogether. In these
whimsical phantasmagorias men and women move and speak as at the bidding
of destinies drunk with laughing-gas. Time and chance have gone
demented, fate has turned comic poet, society has become its own parody,
everybody is the irrepressible caricature of himself. You are in a topsy-
turvy world, enveloped in an atmosphere instinct with gaiety and folly,
where burlesque is natural and only the extravagant is normal; where your
Chimaera has grown frolic, your Nightmare is first Cousin to the Cheshire
Cat, and your Sphinxes are all upon the spree; and where you have as
little concern for what is real as you have in that hemisphere of the
great globe of Moliere--that has Scapin and Sganarelle for its
breed-bates, and Pourceaugnac for its butt, and Pancrace and Marphurius
for its scientific men, and Lelie and Agnes for its incarnations of love
and beauty. That the creator of such a world as this should have aspired
to the Academy's spare arm-chair--that one above all others but just
vacated by the respectable M. de Sacy--was a fact that roused the _Revue
des Deux Mondes_ even to satire. But if the arm-chair brought honour
with it, then no man better deserved the privilege than Eugene Labiche,
for he had amused and kept awake the public for nearly forty years--for
almost as long, that is, as the _Revue_ had been sending it to sleep.
There are times and seasons when a good laugh makes more for edification
than whole folios of good counsel. 'I regarded him not,' quoth Sir John
of one that would have moved him to sapience, 'and yet he talked wisely.'
Now Sir John, whatever his opinion of the _Revue_, would never have said
all that--the second part of it he might--of anything signed 'Eugene
Labiche,' nor--so I love to believe--would his august creator either. For
is not his work so full of quick, fiery, and delectable shapes as to be
perpetual sherris? And when time and season fit, what more can the heart
of man desire?