[Footnote 7: _L'Imperieuse Bonte_, J. H. Rosny.]
A French critic has ranked the Freres Rosny amongst the 'authors of
to-morrow,' and in a certain sense they, no doubt, belong to the class
called _les jeunes_, often wrongly, since amongst these _jeunes_ there
are men of middle age. _Les jeunes_ is an expression which is rather
intended to indicate new methods and new views than to describe the
actual age of the writers. In a sense everyone belongs to _les jeunes_
who is emancipated from conventional tradition; but too much stress, too
much importance, has been attached to this name; true art is always
natural, and this new school is seldom natural; there is more
eccentricity of manner in it than there is genuine originality of
thought; there is too great an effort, too perpetual a strain in its
productions; frequently, as in the case of Maurice Barres, subtlety of
language is employed to conceal absolute poverty of idea; or, as in the
case of Georges Ohnet, to clothe mere wooden puppets with a semblance of
life by skill in depicting incident; or, as in the case of Paul
Bourget, to eke out a slender modicum of incident and idiosyncrasy with
charm of style and an imposing psychology, and disarm criticism by
euphuism.
In the two Rosnys there are some of the affectations of these writers,
but there is none of their poverty of idea. They are full of ideas; full
of meditation, of observation, of sympathy, of experience; the narrow
limits to which custom confines the novel are far too small for their
abundant powers. In portions of their work there is that more artificial
mode of treatment, that strain after recondite words and tortuous and
archaic methods of expressions, which are the blemish of _les jeunes_;
but in many other portions their true insight, their deep feeling, and
their artistic instincts raise them above this pedantry and enable them
to produce certain passages which have few equals in any literature.
_L'Imperieuse Bonte_ is a very long book, but the reader would be dull
indeed who did not wish it were longer, and who would not feel that the
writers had been forced to renounce many scenes and many reflections and
descriptions with which their minds were teeming. They convey to their
reader their own attachment to their personages; willingly, we feel
sure, they could have filled a hundred volumes with the story of their
fate; the fountain of their sympathies is fed by an eternal spring. What
is most admirable also in them is their remarkable equity; they can see
the injustice done to the rich by the poor, as well as that done to the
poor by the rich; and this quality of impartial sympathy is very rare.
There is abundance in the world of that one-sided sympathy which springs
from a _parti pris_, but that which is many-sided and perfectly just is
very unusual. The Rosnys are capable of it.
The language indeed is at times tortuous, inflated, archaic, after the
manner of the modern school; but at other times it loses this mannerism
and becomes the clear, limpid, polished French so dear to us. It is
never clearer or simpler than in the passages concerning the Lamarques
and other sufferers which touch the heart.
The first portion of the book is the finest; the scenes which treat of
this family are the greatest as they are the simplest of the whole. Was
there ever any passage more pathetic and more real than this description
of the last drive in the poor hired vehicle of the dying man and his
children?
'Lamarque drew a deep breath under the delicious weight of the
freshened air. Strength and peace brushed his tired, sickly
frame.
'"Ah! I was sure that this would make me well."
'A smile came around his diaphanous nostrils, his lips parted
with childlike pleasure. Albert felt that heaven and earth were
born again in endless life. His soul shone through his blue
eyes; he began to laugh and jest with nature. But his mother
and Georges only saw more plainly in the luminous light the
deadly thinness of Lamarque, and could think of nothing except
how they should be able to make up for the expense of the five
francs for the cab. They had driven out towards a road which
looked mysterious and poetic; limes, acacias, young elms, all
kinds of shades of green, were lit by a descending sun. There
were flocks of slender trunks; a dainty philosophy of verdure;
high above, pale foliage seemed to drink in the light; then
depths where the sun-rays seemed to flow and stream like the
nebulae of comets, where they lay like vapour on which some
fragile insect life floated like medusae on the sea. Already
dead leaves were on the ground like the tanned flesh, or the
brown fur, of forest creatures. Spiders' webs had the colours
of the rainbow; in these birdless trees butterflies lent an
illusion of winged life and figured the flight of nestlings.
Happiness seemed crystallised in the figure of a woman
knitting; in the cry of a distant railway train; in the joy of
two children munching pears with their crusts; in the sport of
a dog who rolled on the grass with a youthful bark and the eyes
of one in love with life. The red frock of a young girl passing
by lent a note of force, of splendour, of intensity, to the
golden afternoon.
'"It is so nice here!" said Albert.
'Georges, watching the silvery gossamer webs of the spiders,
remembered all the visions he had ever had of liberty and space
for kind animals and kind people.
'"I am young again!" murmured Lamarque.
'He was still pale, but his pallor was less corpse-like. Even
the little Francois listened and enjoyed with a mute
delight--mute because shut within himself--and loved his
parents, his brothers, the driver, the trees, and the buzzing
flies.
'"Stop," said the sick man suddenly. It was before a high gate,
through which was visible a spectacle of Eden, a large garden.
'They could see a great pond, over which there could float
whole broods of delicate dreams; there were tall Lombardy
poplars, and the grace of weeping willows. Drooping larches
also hung over the water-lilies; there were the thick shade of
Canadian poplars, and also the timid murmurs, the sensitive
sighs, of aspens. Then there was the charm of woodland life
reflected in the water; of the landscape repeated below,
symmetrical, and sombre in an abyss of oxidised silver. Then
came grassy walks and gentle slopes of turf; further off were
clearings in which beautiful trees were half seen, half hidden
in misty distance like a promise of abundance and of happiness.
The felicity of the place entered into the souls of the poor
family who looked on it; they had at once the anguish of
feeling that nothing like this would ever be theirs, and the
ecstasy of knowing that such beauty did exist.
'Standing up in their sorry hired carriage, they gazed in
rapture, saying but few words.
'"One little corner of this garden would be wealth to us!"
sighed the mother.
'"That corner--there," said Lamarque.
'"One could not eat one's garden," said Albert.
'Georges, hypnotised, followed with his eyes the flight of an
insect. Poised in the sunlight, the creature was motionless
awhile; then descended, ascended, then, swift as a sped arrow,
vanished in the shadows. One would wish for such an atom,
taking so small a place in creation, the joys, the instincts,
the intelligence of a great animal. At anyrate, it symbolises
all the enjoyments of life, repose on a leaf, movement, ecstasy
of travel through space and towards mystery.
'"Ah!" thought Georges, in distress, "even to come and see
this, one must have money!"
'The hard and heavy thought was like a blow on the tender heart
of the boy. Soon this bitterness entered into the souls of all,
even of the youngest child.'
What I have translated as 'oxidised silver' is in the original
'blackened nickel,' one of those unfortunate, grotesque, inharmonious
expressions of which there are many in this work. To compare water, the
liquid, the mobile, the translucent, to any metal is a strange and
unfitting comparison. In this passage, which is serious and poetical,
the intrusion of such words as 'blackened nickel' seems offensive, and
mars all the impression of the phrase. But it is in this kind of offence
to the ear and the intelligence that _les jeunes_ unhappily revel; they
see in such offences signs of emancipation, of realism, of originality,
when, in truth, the usage is no sign of anything except of a faulty ear
and a lack of judgment.
Throughout the work, however, despite these occasional blemishes, every
episode connected with the Lamarques is a masterpiece of pathos and of
simplicity, until the last scene of all, when the three children with
their mother are about to light the charcoal collected by the little
Francois as it dropped from the waggons when they passed along the quay,
and kept in a corner of the miserable room, in readiness for the last
hour of all.
The characters of the three boys, so dissimilar and yet united by the
vague likeness of race, are drawn with a life-like distinctness:
Georges, pensive and philosophic, proud, gentle, observant; Albert,
sceptic and scornful, with his passionate sense that, since death killed
his father through serving others, there can be no God; and the
youngest, Francois, timid, imaginative, devoted, hiding himself under
the table, to still the pangs of hunger with fancies of a lonely fairy
isle where neither want nor death should come. These three children
offer one of the most perfect pictures of innocent and unmerited
suffering which literature can offer, and the limner of them and of
their sorrows is a fine writer. Jacques Fougeraye, the central figure of
the romance, yields his place to them as its chief interest; and is also
perhaps inferior in interest to his unhappy and generous patron
Dargelle. One would desire to know through what circumstances a man of
the talent and character of Fougeraye comes to be destitute in the
streets of Paris; something also of the parentage, education, influences
which have gone towards making him what he is. In the same way one would
wish to know how Lamarque fell into poverty, how his children became so
cultured and refined, how the whole family is aloof in every way from
their common and odious kindred. _Les jeunes_ do not deign to throw
light on the antecedents of their _dramatis personae_; they are wrong,
for two reasons: one because they thus baulk the natural and legitimate
curiosity of their readers; the second, that there is no true psychology
(the word they worship) without study of the causes which have
contributed to make a man or woman what the observer of them finds them
to be. A writer like Gyp may with airy grace jump, as through a
circus-hoop, into the middle of the lives of her personages without
further explanation, but in a philosophic student of human nature in its
sad seriousness such saltatory pranks are unbecoming.
One could well spare the hundreds of pages devoted to long and, one must
say, tiresome descriptions of moral and mental states, for a few pages
of lucid and graphic information as to the causes which brought the
characters of the book to the pass in which we find them at their first
appearance. But this is a method of composition too simple, direct, and
natural to commend itself to _les jeunes_. And when on rare occasions
they do furnish personal descriptions, these are so wrapped up in
anatomical and physiological language that we can conjure up from them
little or no real likeness. The characteristic of this new school is an
extreme vagueness, an intentional nebulosity. Their personages are never
introduced to the reader, nor are they given any pedigree; even personal
description of them is of the slightest. They come abruptly on the scene
as though they came up through a trap-door. It is left to the
intelligence of the reader to supply all the details which the author
disdains to furnish. In a book, as in life, one likes to have people
duly presented before making their acquaintance; but this is a prejudice
which the new school scorns to gratify.
There is a certain tedium in some of the experiences of Fougeraye, such
as in his visits to the hospitals and the asylum of misshappen human
creatures; and the young woman Louise, a medical student, who has
learned to look on death with professional indifference, is so virtuous
and self-satisfied that one is indisposed to share the admiration which
Fougeraye feels for her. He himself is so unpretentious, so
warm-hearted, so single-minded, and so manly that he deserves a more
sympathetic and less vain helpmeet than this female doctor, with her too
prosy platitudes and her chill philosophies.
Jeanne Dargelle, whom he rejects, is the least truthful, the most
artificial, figure in the book. We are never interested in her. The
breath of life has not been breathed into her; and when she kills
herself we remain indifferent; we know that in her world women do not
kill themselves, and a very proud woman would have found the idea of
dying, because her husband's secretary had no love for her, altogether
unendurable. We feel also that in real life Fougeraye would probably
have shared her passion, and the struggle it would have caused between
his temptation, and his loyalty and gratitude to Dargelle, would have
been of profound interest. The chapter following on her death, in which
Dargelle is alone with her dead body, is very fine, and reflects exactly
that strange mixture of emotions and sensations which sway the survivor
who passes long hours of solitude beside the corpse of one once dear to
him--the trivial incongruities which force themselves in amidst intense
regret, the eccentric fancies which dance like marsh-lights over the
sombre swamp of a deep despair. Who amongst us has not cried, like
Dargelle, 'Pardon, pardon!' from the depths of an aching heart, looking
on the dead features of one to whom, in the eyes of the world, we had no
fault?
There is in the Rosnys the distressing habit, common to all the more
recent French writers, with few exceptions, of endeavouring to be
pedantic, to be involved, to express an idea barbarously and
bewilderingly instead of harmoniously and clearly; to say _epiderme_
instead of _peau_, _veridique_ instead of _vrai_, _prunelles_ instead of
_yeux_; to use the jargon of science, the abomination of foreign or
technical idioms; to turn away from the natural, the direct, the usual,
the obvious, and seek an appearance of profundity in what is merely a
confusion of sounds. These affectations, these efforts, spoil many of
the pages, and weary the most attentive reader in many of the chapters;
as does also the incessant tendency to find similes of the most bizarre
and eccentric kind, such as the comparison of dead leaves to the fur of
animals; of a simile 'frail as the downy blow-ball of dandelion-seed';
of a sky 'of a powdery blue, with the horizon of an aquarium'; of a
heart beating 'like a pear oscillating in a breeze,' and many others as
far-fetched, as incongruous, and as grotesque. The excessive use of
simile, however apt and exact, is always a fault; but similes as absurd
and as strained as are most of those employed by the Rosnys, become a
deformity of style, annoy the mind, and disagreeably abstract and
distract the thoughts.
A too long, too technical, and too involved description is an inventory
which leaves no concrete whole upon the reader's mind; it is a mere
conglomeration of items. Take, as an instance, this description of
Dargelle's physiognomy; and be it remembered that we never know who or
what Dargelle is, how he came by his vast fortune, or anything, indeed,
about him, except that he is _un pauvre riche_, a capitalist, one
supposes, rich by inheritance. Here is the personal description of
him:--
'A fat face, sad, meditative; his cheeks fell in; they were
flabby. The forehead was a half-circle, with three deep
wrinkles, the temples inflamed. The brow was vast but
undecided, despite heavy eyebrows above violent eyes. The lips
of a wild beast; a short beard which had never grown; flat
hair, forming a little patch behind the brow and advancing
laterally to the ears. The whole a Finnish face, very pale,
with a disposition of the skin to become scaly. The nose long,
broad, very irregular, between the snub and the aquiline, the
end raised, the bridge bowed. Hardly any back to the head; the
neck, like a Celt's, running straight up to the crown. The ears
folded backward, stiff, cartilaginous,' etc., etc., etc.
This long and disagreeable description merely conveys the impression of
a monster; and it does not in any way agree with the character of
Dargelle, magnanimous, tender, generous, and sensitive; suffering
acutely from a sense of utter loneliness amidst the parasites, who trade
on his kind feelings. A man of this temperament would not have violent
eyes or wild-beast lips; and the elevation of his sentiments would
certainly have given some beauty of expression to his features.
Of Jacques Fougeraye, the hero of the work, we are given no description
whatever. On the other hand, the portraiture of the frightful occupant
of a monsters' asylum is traced in fullest and most minute detail, with
an ostentation of technical knowledge, in that passion for what is
horrible and abnormal which is characteristic of this school.
Dargelle, morally, is throughout consistent and lovable, from his first
movement of suspicion and distrust, feeling that his new favourite will
only use him and cheat him, as all the other dispensers of his charities
have done, to the last frank smile with which, though jealous of the
happiness he has himself created, he says: 'Allons donc! Je vois bien
que vous m'aimez aussi.'
The rich man will only have the crumbs of the bread of the soul which is
called love, but his generosity is content with it. '_Le pauvre riche!_'
say the Rosnys, with rare insight into the small consolation which, to
those in full possession of them, the powers of wealth can give.
Dargelle is unique, and it is almost to be regretted that he should
occupy but a secondary place in the narrative. The description of his
physical malady is perhaps exaggerated; deafness would scarcely cause
such violent moral and mental torture; but the pathos of his last
appearance is unexaggerated, and goes to the heart of the reader. By his
mere word so many people are made happy, and yet, to secure happiness,
even relief, for himself his millions are powerless! This is what many a
rich and generous man must have felt. The irony of fate is more cruel in
a sense to the heirs, than to the disinherited, of fortune. But the pain
which the rich suffer is purely sentimental, and there are very few
indeed who have nobility of nature enough to feel this at all.
The rich man has always material comfort, freedom from daily and hourly
anxieties; he is at liberty to go wherever he likes, to do whatever he
pleases; he enjoys, if he have the true faculty for enjoyment; he can
make himself obeyed, if the obedience be but eye-service; he can
surround himself with beautiful objects; and he can freely indulge the
luxury of generosity, although it is the one luxury of which the rich
are not enamoured, the rich man in general never gives except to see his
name in print in the newspapers. The compassion of the Rosnys for the
rich is scarcely justified, since their greatest burden is _ennui_, and
this is an artificial kind of suffering due to defective sympathies, as
cold feet are due to sluggish circulation. The statement, put in the
mouth of Dargelle, that suicide is much more general amongst the rich
than the poor, is certainly not based on fact or on statistics. The rich
man, moreover, has one great and most precious exemption: he is free
from petty, carking bodily cares; he never knows the greatest agony
possible, that of seeing those dear to him hungry and homeless; he can
be always warm in cold weather, cool in hot weather; in illness he has
every palliative and assistance; his home is his own if he care for it,
intangible and immutable; the whole world is his if he possess
perception enough to enjoy it; his sufferings may be considerable from
dyspepsia and discontent, and, if he be of a high nature, from
irritation at the ingratitude and insincerity of human nature, but it is
absurd to compare his pains with those of the poor--above all, when the
poor are of fine temper, sensitive nerve and cultured intellect like
the Fougeraye and Lamarque of the Rosnys. It is well to remind society
that there are sorrows of the soul from which the rich may suffer more
acutely than the poor; but it is to exceed this truth to represent the
rich as often suffering from this cause. The rich man is usually a
complete egotist, whose philanthropy has a political purpose or a social
ambition as its mainspring. A Dargelle may exist, does exist; but he is
one in ten millions. He is legitimate in his place as a character in
romance, but as a character in real life he is met with but very rarely.
There are many social questions and many philosophic theories discussed
in _L'Imperieuse Bonte_. An unkind critic might say that it is rather a
social and philosophic essay than a romance. But in much it conforms to
and fulfils the highest demands of fiction, and the naturalness and
lovableness of the chief personages lend to it throughout the interest
of romance. The mission of Fougeraye in the expenditure of Dargelle's
money introduces, perforce, many phases of social misery. It was
probably to do this that the book was written; but the harmony and
interest of the action of the novel, as a novel, are not sacrificed to
this intention. In these chapters all affectation, all artifice drop
from the style, and the writers become masters of strong, simple and
infinitely touching prose. It is to be regretted that the influence of
their time should ever mislead them into tortuous and strained
exaggerations and archaisms when it is possible for them to write thus
simply and eloquently:--
'The few precious things--the brooch and earrings of Madame
Lamarque, even her wedding-ring, alas! then the china service,
saved with such effort from the fire, with a little rosewood
secretaire, and two Sevres vases won at a lottery for charity,
the gift to it of the Empress Eugenie--all disappeared, all
were devoured by the monster Misery. Georges suffered as much
as his parents; his nature was inclined towards the adoration
of relics, of frail things, of the semi-vitality of objects.
* * * * *
'It rained a little; in the shadow of the fortifications the
lamps trembled under gusts of wind; the reflections touched the
wet grass, which seemed for the moment as fresh as the turf of
meadows. Everywhere solitude--solitude filled with a sense of
near and hidden human life in the closed houses from which came
the subdued light of unseen chambers in vague suggestion of
mysterious joys. But there was no living creature out of doors
except in the openings of the ramparts; on the grass, a dog
looking as furtive as a hunting wolf. The boy's eyes gazed at
the sky, at the grass, at the long vista of burning lamps, at
the grey stony road under his feet. A sense of beauty came into
his soul, but a beauty sombre as the psalms of All Saints' Day.
'Beside him his mother carried the mattress which had been
sold; he bore one side of it on his shoulder.
'They walk thus, beaten, conquered, the child full of
suffocating revolt, the mother humble and resigned, like the
meek beasts of the stall, with occasional flickers of wrath
soon extinguished. They go thus, saying to each other a few
words, muffled and heavyhearted, which are the mere dull
echoes of their souls. "We must turn down that street. How will
it end?--why does not the family help?" At a corner they stop,
and suddenly Georges is overwhelmed with pity for his mother,
as he sees her profile wet with rain in the light of the street
lamp.
'He gazes at her. He remembers, in his earliest childhood, a
time when there had been two servants in their house; when his
mother had been a gentlewoman, going out for a walk with his
father, while the bonne pushed the little carriage of the baby
Francois. And here she was, his own mother, with a mattress for
sale on her shoulder, on foot in the mud at this time of night.
"Mamma! mamma! dear little mamma!" he cried, sobbing, without a
single selfish thought, caring only for her, so profoundly, so
intensely!'
Again, there is the same intense sympathy in the author with the
suffering of the spirit when the two Sevres vases are taken to their new
home, sold for twenty francs, the poor, pretty, familiar things which
look so elegant, so slender, so aristocratic amongst the coarse, vulgar
ornaments of their new owners, that Georges is proud of their
superiority amidst the anguish with which he thinks of them, lost for
ever:
'Frail penates, saturated with the soul of home. Ah! how many
birthday mornings, how many twilights of study, how many long
rainy days and gentle suns of springtime, how many dreams of
future voyages in far lands, how many nights fearful with storm
or mute with falling snow, had these objects seen! They had
been always there, fixing themselves inalienably on the retina
in their unalterable attitude of delicacy and art: and now they
were lost for ever, given over to an alien hand for a coin of
gold which would last two days!'
Nothing can be more touching, more sincere, more eloquent than this
episode.
Take again the magnificent opening chapter of the fire at which Lamarque
contracts the illness which ultimately kills him. It is too long to
quote here, but its description is of a force incomparable, and of a
truth as great. No one of his contemporaries could have written this
chapter; its sobriety and veracity, united to its splendour of diction
and its terror of suggestion, make it a _magnum opus_.
It has only one defect; it gives the reader the impression that it cost
great effort to the author. It does not convey that sense of the
author's spontaneous fertility and joy in creation which Pierre Loti,
Francois Coppee, Anatole France, feel and give. _L'Imperieuse Bonte_ is
a great work, but its greatness must have cost painful thought and
unremitting labour.
One feels that there is nothing of improvisation, of careless and happy
inspiration, about it. It is the matured fruit of profound observation,
and of complicated doubt, of an unselfish sorrow, and of a noble
altruism. It is a work which must impress and elevate all readers who
are capable of comprehending its teaching. But there is no laughter in
it, nor is there even a smile, save that sad divine smile which
accompanies the tears of pity.