The books that we re-read the oftenest are not always those that we
admire the most; we choose and we re-visit them for many and various
reasons, as we choose and revisit human friends. One or two of Scott’s
novels, Shakespeare, Molière, Montaigne, _The Egoist_, and the _Vicomte
de Bragelonne_, form the inner circle of my intimates. Behind these
comes a good troop of dear acquaintances; _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ in the
front rank, _The Bible in Spain_ not far behind. There are besides a
certain number that look at me with reproach as I pass them by on my
shelves: books that I once thumbed and studied: houses which were once
like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms
(and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt.
Last of all, there is the class of book that has its hour of
brilliancy—glows, sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance
until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on me by
turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who, were they but
“Their sometime selves the same throughout the year,”
must have stood in the first company with the six names of my continual
literary intimates. To these six, incongruous as they seem, I have long
been faithful, and hope to be faithful to the day of death. I have never
read the whole of Montaigne, but I do not like to be long without reading
some of him, and my delight in what I do read never lessens. Of
Shakespeare I have read all but _Richard III._, _Henry VI._, _Titus
Andronicus_, and _All’s Well that Ends Well_; and these, having already
made all suitable endeavour, I now know that I shall never read—to make
up for which unfaithfulness I could read much of the rest for ever. Of
Molière—surely the next greatest name of Christendom—I could tell a very
similar story; but in a little corner of a little essay these princes are
too much out of place, and I prefer to pay my fealty and pass on. How
often I have read _Guy Mannering_, _Rob Roy_, or _Redgauntlet_, I have no
means of guessing, having begun young. But it is either four or five
times that I have read _The Egoist_, and either five or six that I have
read the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_.
Some, who would accept the others, may wonder that I should have spent so
much of this brief life of ours over a work so little famous as the last.
And, indeed, I am surprised myself; not at my own devotion, but the
coldness of the world. My acquaintance with the _Vicomte_ began,
somewhat indirectly, in the year of grace 1863, when I had the advantage
of studying certain illustrated dessert plates in a hotel at Nice. The
name of d’Artagnan in the legends I already saluted like an old friend,
for I had met it the year before in a work of Miss Yonge’s. My first
perusal was in one of those pirated editions that swarmed at that time
out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish volumes. I
understood but little of the merits of the book; my strongest memory is
of the execution of d’Eyméric and Lyodot—a strange testimony to the
dulness of a boy, who could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place de
Grêve, and forget d’Artagnan’s visits to the two financiers. My next
reading was in winter-time, when I lived alone upon the Pentlands. I
would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the shepherd;
a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly retriever scurry
upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the _Vicomte_
for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light evening by the fire. And yet I
know not why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such a clatter
of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk;
or why I call those evenings solitary in which I gained so many friends.
I would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow and
the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch garden, and the winter moonlight
brighten the white hills. Thence I would turn again to that crowded and
sunny field of life in which it was so easy to forget myself, my cares,
and my surroundings: a place busy as a city, bright as a theatre,
thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech. I
carried the thread of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it
unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast, it was
with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own labours; for no
part of the world has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages, and
not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so dear, as
d’Artagnan.
Since then I have been going to and fro at very brief intervals in my
favourite book; and I have now just risen from my last (let me call it my
fifth) perusal, having liked it better and admired it more seriously than
ever. Perhaps I have a sense of ownership, being so well known in these
six volumes. Perhaps I think that d’Artagnan delights to have me read of
him, and Louis Quatorze is gratified, and Fouquet throws me a look, and
Aramis, although he knows I do not love him, yet plays to me with his
best graces, as to an old patron of the show. Perhaps, if I am not
careful, something may befall me like what befell George IV. about the
battle of Waterloo, and I may come to fancy the _Vicomte_ one of the
first, and Heaven knows the best, of my own works. At least, I avow
myself a partisan; and when I compare the popularity of the _Vicomte_
with that of _Monte Cristo_, or its own elder brother, the _Trois
Mousquetaires_, I confess I am both pained and puzzled.
To those who have already made acquaintance with the titular hero in the
pages of _Vingt Ans Après_, perhaps the name may act as a deterrent. A
man might, well stand back if he supposed he were to follow, for six
volumes, so well-conducted, so fine-spoken, and withal so dreary a
cavalier as Bragelonne. But the fear is idle. I may be said to have
passed the best years of my life in these six volumes, and my
acquaintance with Raoul has never gone beyond a bow; and when he, who has
so long pretended to be alive, is at last suffered to pretend to be dead,
I am sometimes reminded of a saying in an earlier volume: “_Enfin_, _dit
Miss Stewart_,”—and it was of Bragelonne she spoke—“_enfin il a fait
quelquechose_: _c’est_, _ma foi_! _bien heureux_.” I am reminded of it,
as I say; and the next moment, when Athos dies of his death, and my dear
d’Artagnan bursts into his storm of sobbing, I can but deplore my
flippancy.
Or perhaps it is La Vallière that the reader of _Vingt Ans Après_ is
inclined to flee. Well, he is right there too, though not so right.
Louise is no success. Her creator has spared no pains; she is
well-meant, not ill-designed, sometimes has a word that rings out true;
sometimes, if only for a breath, she may even engage our sympathies. But
I have never envied the King his triumph. And so far from pitying
Bragelonne for his defeat, I could wish him no worse (not for lack of
malice, but imagination) than to be wedded to that lady. Madame enchants
me; I can forgive that royal minx her most serious offences; I can thrill
and soften with the King on that memorable occasion when he goes to
upbraid and remains to flirt; and when it comes to the “_Allons_,
_aimez-moi donc_,” it is my heart that melts in the bosom of de Guiche.
Not so with Louise. Readers cannot fail to have remarked that what an
author tells us of the beauty or the charm of his creatures goes for
nought; that we know instantly better; that the heroine cannot open her
mouth but what, all in a moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall
from round her like the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us,
self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a strapping
market-woman. Authors, at least, know it well; a heroine will too often
start the trick of “getting ugly;” and no disease is more difficult to
cure. I said authors; but indeed I had a side eye to one author in
particular, with whose works I am very well acquainted, though I cannot
read them, and who has spent many vigils in this cause, sitting beside
his ailing puppets and (like a magician) wearying his art to restore them
to youth and beauty. There are others who ride too high for these
misfortunes. Who doubts the loveliness of Rosalind? Arden itself was
not more lovely. Who ever questioned the perennial charm of Rose
Jocelyn, Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middleton? fair women with fair names,
the daughters of George Meredith. Elizabeth Bennet has but to speak, and
I am at her knees. Ah! these are the creators of desirable women. They
would never have fallen in the mud with Dumas and poor La Vallière. It
is my only consolation that not one of all of them, except the first,
could have plucked at the moustache of d’Artagnan.
Or perhaps, again, a proportion of readers stumble at the threshold. In
so vast a mansion there were sure to be back stairs and kitchen offices
where no one would delight to linger; but it was at least unhappy that
the vestibule should be so badly lighted; and until, in the seventeenth
chapter, d’Artagnan sets off to seek his friends, I must confess, the
book goes heavily enough. But, from thenceforward, what a feast is
spread! Monk kidnapped; d’Artagnan enriched; Mazarin’s death; the ever
delectable adventure of Belle Isle, wherein Aramis outwits d’Artagnan,
with its epilogue (vol. v. chap. xxviii.), where d’Artagnan regains the
moral superiority; the love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St.
Aignan’s story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche, de Wardes, and
Manicamp; Aramis made general of the Jesuits; Aramis at the bastille; the
night talk in the forest of Sénart; Belle Isle again, with the death of
Porthos; and last, but not least, the taming of d’Artagnan the untamable,
under the lash of the young King. What other novel has such epic variety
and nobility of incident? often, if you will, impossible; often of the
order of an Arabian story; and yet all based in human nature. For if you
come to that, what novel has more human nature? not studied with the
microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye?
What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, and unflagging,
admirable literary skill? Good souls, I suppose, must sometimes read it
in the blackguard travesty of a translation. But there is no style so
untranslatable; light as a whipped trifle, strong as silk; wordy like a
village tale; pat like a general’s despatch; with every fault, yet never
tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right. And, once more, to make an
end of commendations, what novel is inspired with a more unstrained or a
more wholesome morality?
Yes; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to the name of d’Artagnan
only to dissuade me from a nearer knowledge of the man, I have to add
morality. There is no quite good book without a good morality; but the
world is wide, and so are morals. Out of two people who have dipped into
Sir Richard Burton’s _Thousand and One Nights_, one shall have been
offended by the animal details; another to whom these were harmless,
perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in his turn by the
rascality and cruelty of all the characters. Of two readers, again, one
shall have been pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by that
of the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_. And the point is that neither need be
wrong. We shall always shock each other both in life and art; we cannot
get the sun into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be such a
thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there glimmer some hint of
the great light that blinds us from heaven; enough if, in the other,
there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit of magnanimity. I would
scarce send to the _Vicomte_ a reader who was in quest of what we may
call puritan morality. The ventripotent mulatto, the great eater,
worker, earner and waster, the man of much and witty laughter, the man of
the great heart and alas! of the doubtful honesty, is a figure not yet
clearly set before the world; he still awaits a sober and yet genial
portrait; but with whatever art that may be touched, and whatever
indulgence, it will not be the portrait of a precisian. Dumas was
certainly not thinking of himself, but of Planchet, when he put into the
mouth of d’Artagnan’s old servant this excellent profession: “_Monsieur_,
_j’étais une de ces bonnes pâtes d’hommes que Dieu a fait pour s’animer
pendant un certain temps et pour trouver bonnes toutes choses qui
accompagnent leur séjour sur la terre_.” He was thinking, as I say, of
Planchet, to whom the words are aptly fitted; but they were fitted also
to Planchet’s creator; and perhaps this struck him as he wrote, for
observe what follows: “_D’Artagnan s’assit alors près de la fenêtre_,
_et_, _cette philosophie de Planchet lui ayant paru solide_, _il y
rêva_.” In a man who finds all things good, you will scarce expect much
zeal for negative virtues: the active alone will have a charm for him;
abstinence, however wise, however kind, will always seem to such a judge
entirely mean and partly impious. So with Dumas. Chastity is not near
his heart; nor yet, to his own sore cost, that virtue of frugality which
is the armour of the artist. Now, in the _Vicomte_, he had much to do
with the contest of Fouquet and Colbert. Historic justice should be all
upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty, and fiscal competence.
And Dumas knew it well: three times at least he shows his knowledge; once
it is but flashed upon us and received with the laughter of Fouquet
himself, in the jesting controversy in the gardens of Saint Mandé; once
it is touched on by Aramis in the forest of Sénart; in the end, it is set
before us clearly in one dignified speech of the triumphant Colbert. But
in Fouquet, the waster, the lover of good cheer and wit and art, the
swift transactor of much business, “_l’homme de bruit_, _l’homme de
plaisir_, _l’homme qui n’est que parceque les autres sont_,” Dumas saw
something of himself and drew the figure the more tenderly. It is to me
even touching to see how he insists on Fouquet’s honour; not seeing, you
might think, that unflawed honour is impossible to spendthrifts; but
rather, perhaps, in the light of his own life, seeing it too well, and
clinging the more to what was left. Honour can survive a wound; it can
live and thrive without a member. The man rebounds from his disgrace; he
begins fresh foundations on the ruins of the old; and when his sword is
broken, he will do valiantly with his dagger. So it is with Fouquet in
the book; so it was with Dumas on the battlefield of life.
To cling to what is left of any damaged quality is virtue in the man; but
perhaps to sing its praises is scarcely to be called morality in the
writer. And it is elsewhere, it is in the character of d’Artagnan, that
we must look for that spirit of morality, which is one of the chief
merits of the book, makes one of the main joys of its perusal, and sets
it high above more popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of years, has
declined too much into the preacher, and the preacher of a sapless creed;
but d’Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind and upright,
that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book
about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural
civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor—no Wesley
or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement whether for good
or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who
have approached the _Vicomte_, not across country, but by the legitimate,
five-volumed avenue of the _Mousquetaires_ and _Vingt Ans Après_, will
not have forgotten d’Artagnan’s ungentlemanly and perfectly improbable
trick upon Milady. What a pleasure it is, then, what a reward, and how
agreeable a lesson, to see the old captain humble himself to the son of
the man whom he had personated! Here, and throughout, if I am to choose
virtues for myself or my friends, let me choose the virtues of
d’Artagnan. I do not say there is no character as well drawn in
Shakespeare; I do say there is none that I love so wholly. There are
many spiritual eyes that seem to spy upon our actions—eyes of the dead
and the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in our most private hours,
and whom we fear and scruple to offend: our witnesses and judges. And
among these, even if you should think me childish, I must count my
d’Artagnan—not d’Artagnan of the memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to
prefer—a preference, I take the freedom of saying, in which he stands
alone; not the d’Artagnan of flesh and blood, but him of the ink and
paper; not Nature’s, but Dumas’s. And this is the particular crown and
triumph of the artist—not to be true merely, but to be lovable; not
simply to convince, but to enchant.
There is yet another point in the _Vicomte_ which I find incomparable. I
can recall no other work of the imagination in which the end of life is
represented with so nice a tact. I was asked the other day if Dumas made
me laugh or cry. Well in this my late fifth reading of the _Vicomte_, I
did laugh once at the small Coquelin de Volière business, and was perhaps
a thought surprised at having done so: to make up for it, I smiled
continually. But for tears, I do not know. If you put a pistol to my
throat, I must own the tale trips upon a very airy foot—within a
measurable distance of unreality; and for those who like the big guns to
be discharged and the great passions to appear authentically, it may even
seem inadequate from first to last. Not so to me; I cannot count that a
poor dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those I love; and, above
all, in this last volume, I find a singular charm of spirit. It breathes
a pleasant and a tonic sadness, always brave, never hysterical. Upon the
crowded, noisy life of this long tale, evening gradually falls; and the
lights are extinguished, and the heroes pass away one by one. One by one
they go, and not a regret embitters their departure; the young succeed
them in their places, Louis Quatorze is swelling larger and shining
broader, another generation and another France dawn on the horizon; but
for us and these old men whom we have loved so long, the inevitable end
draws near and is welcome. To read this well is to anticipate
experience. Ah, if only when these hours of the long shadows fall for us
in reality and not in figure, we may hope to face them with a mind as
quiet!
But my paper is running out; the siege guns are firing on the Dutch
frontier; and I must say adieu for the fifth time to my old comrade
fallen on the field of glory. _Adieu_—rather _au revoir_! Yet a sixth
time, dearest d’Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take horse together
for Belle Isle.