IV

With the critical taste that uncovers bare the bones of the dead I have

no concern, nor shall I enter the way which would lead me into the

dusty region of professional ethics. Every portrait painter from Titian

to John Sargent, from Velasquez to Zuloaga, has had a model. Novelists

are no less honest when they build their characters upon human beings

they have known and studied, whether their name be Fielding or Balzac

or Flaubert.

The curiosity which seeks to unveil the anonymity of a novelist's

personages may not be exactly laudable; it is yet excusable. I am

reminded of its existence by a certain Parisian journalist who, acting

upon information that appeared in the pages of a well-known French

literary review, went to Normandy in search of the real Emma Bovary.

Once called wicked, the novel has been pronounced as moral as a

Sunday-school tract. Thackeray admired its style, but deplored, with

his accustomed streak of sentimentalism, the cold-blooded analysis

which hunted Emma to an ignominious grave. Yet the author of Vanity

Fair did not hesitate to pursue through many chapters his mercurial

Rebecca Sharp.

The story of Emma Bovary would hardly attract, if published in the

daily news columns, much attention nowadays. A good-looking young

provincial woman tires of her honest, slow-going husband. She reads

silly novels, as do thousands of silly married girls to-day. Emma lived

in a little town not far from Rouen. Flaubert named it Yonville. We

read that Emma flirted with a country squire who in order to escape

eloping with the romantic goose suddenly disappeared. She consoled

herself with a young law student, but when he tired of her the

consequences were lamentable. Harassed by debt, Emma took poison. Her

stupid husband, a hard-working district doctor, was aghast at her death

and puzzled by the ruin which followed fast at its heels. He found it

all out, even the love-letters of the squire. He died suddenly.

A sordid tale, but perfectly told and remarkable not only for the

fidelity of the landscapes, the chaste restraint of the style, but

also because there are half a dozen marvellously executed characters,

several of which have entered into the living current of French speech.

Homais, the vainglorious, yet human and likable Homais, is a synonym

for pedantic bragging mediocrity. He is a druggist. He would have

made an ideal politician. He stands for a shallow "modernity" but is

more superstitious than a mediæval sexton. Flaubert's novel left an

indelible mark in French fiction and philosophy. Even Balzac did not

create a Homais.

Now comes the curious part of the story. It was the transcription

of a real occurrence. Flaubert did not invent it. In a town near

Rouen named Ry there was once a young physician, Louis Delamarre. He

originally hailed from Catenay, where his father practised medicine.

In the novel Ry is called Yonville. Delamarre paid his addresses to

Delphine Couturier, who in 1843 was twenty-three years of age. She was

comely, had a bright though superficial mind, spoke in a pretentious

manner, and over-dressed. From her father she inherited her vanity

and the desire to appear as occupying a more exalted position than

she did. The elder Couturier owned a farm, though heavily mortgaged,

at Vieux-Château. He was a close-fisted Norman anxious to marry off

his daughters--Emma had a sister. He objected to the advances of the

youthful physician, chiefly because he saw no great match for his girl.

Herein the tale diverges from life.

But love laughs at farmers as well as locksmiths, and by a ruse worthy

of Paul de Kock, Delphine, by feigning maternity, got the parental

permission. She soon regretted her marriage. The husband, Louis, was

prosaic. He earned the daily bread and butter of the household, and

even economised so that his pretty wife could buy fallals and foolish

books. She hired a servant and had her day at home--Fridays. No one

visited her. She was only an unimportant spouse of a poverty-stricken

country doctor. At Saint-Germain des Essours there still lives an

octogenarian peasant woman once the domestic of the Delamarres-Bovarys.

She said, when asked to describe her mistress: "Heavens, but she was

pretty. Face, figure, hair, all were beautiful."

In Ry there was a druggist named Jouanne. He is the original Homais.

Delphine's, or rather Emma Bovary's, first admirer was a law clerk,

Louis Bottet. He is described as a small, impatient, alert old man

at the time of his death. The faithless Rodolphe--what a name for

sentimental melodrama--was really a proprietor named Campion. He lost

his farm and revenue after Emma's death and went to America to make

his fortune. Unsuccessful, he returned to Paris, and about 1852 shot

himself on the boulevard. Who may deny, after this, that truth is

stranger than Flaubert's fiction?

The good, sensible old Abbé Boumisien, who advised Emma Bovary, when

she came to him for spiritual consolation, to consult her doctor

husband, was, in reality, an Abbé Lafortune. The irony of events is

set forth in sinister relief by the epitaph which the real Emma's

husband had carved on her tomb: "She was a good mother, a good wife."

Gossips of Ry aver that after the truth came to Dr. Delamarre he took

a slow poison. But this seems turning the screw a trifle too far. Mme.

Delamarre, or Emma Bovary, was buried in the graveyard of the only

church at Ry. To-day the tomb is no longer in existence. She died March

6, 1848. The inhabitants still show the church,--the porch of which

was too narrow to allow the passage of unlucky Emma's coffin--the

house of her husband, and the apothecary shop of M. Homais. The latter

survived for many years the unhappy heroine, who stole the poison that

killed her from his stock. A delightful touch of Homais-like humour was

displayed--one that exonerated Flaubert from the charge of exaggeration

in portraying Homais--when the novel appeared. The characters were at

once recognized, both in Rouen and Ry. This druggist, Jouanne-Homais,

was flattered at the lengthy study of himself, of course missing its

relentless ironic strokes. He regretted openly that the author had not

consulted him; for, said he, "I could have given him many points about

which he knew nothing." The epitaph which the real Homais composed for

the tomb of his wife--surely you can never forget her after reading the

novel--is magnificent in its bombast. Flaubert knew his man.

The distinguished writer is a sober narrator of facts. His is not a

domain of delicate thrills. His women are neither doves nor devils.

He does not paint those acrobats of the soul so dear to psychological

fiction. Despite his pretended impassibility, he is tender-hearted;

the pity he felt for his characters is not effusively expressed. But

the larger rhythms of humanity are ever present. If he had been hard of

heart, he would have related the Bovary tale as it happened in life.

Charles Bovary finds the love-letters and meets Rodolphe. Nothing

happens. The real Charles never knew of the real Emma's treachery.

Madame d'Epinay was not far amiss when she wrote: "The profession of

woman is very hard."

V

No less a masterpiece than Don Quixote has been cited in critical

comparison with Madame Bovary. Flaubert was called the Cervantes who

had ridiculed from the field the Romantic School. This irritated him,

for he never posed as a realist; indeed, he confessed that he had

intended to mock the Realistic School--then headed by Champfleury--in

his Bovary. The very name of this book would arouse a storm of abuse

from him. He knew that he had more than one book in him, he believed

better books; the indifference of the public to Sentimental Education

and the Temptation he never understood. Much astonishment was

expressed, after the appearance of Bovary, that such a mature work of

art should have been the author's first. But Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms

did not permit their juvenile efforts to see the light; the same

was the case with Flaubert. In 1835--he was fourteen at the time--he

wrote Mort du Duc de Guise; in 1836 another historical study. Short

stories in the style of Hoffmann, with thrilling titles, such as Rage

et Impuissance, Le Rêve d'Enfer (1837), and a psychologic effort,

Agonies (dedicated to Alfred le Poittevin--as are both versions of

the Temptation; Alfred's sister later became the mother of Guy de

Maupassant): all these exercises, as is a Dance of Death, are still in

manuscript. But in 1839 a scenario of a mystery bearing the cryptic

title of Smarh was written; and this with Novembre, and a study of

Rabelais, and Nuit de Don Juan, have been published in the definitive

edition; with a record of travels in Normandy. The Memoirs of a Madman

appeared a few years ago in a Parisian magazine. It was a youthful

effort. There is also in the collection of Madame Grout a 300-page

manuscript (1843-1845) named L'Education Sentimentale--vaguely inspired

by Wilhelm Meister--which has nothing in common with his novel of the

same name published in 1869.

Flaubert's taste in the matter of titles was lamentable. He made a

scenario for a tale called Spiral, and he often asserted that he

hankered to write in marmoreal prose the Combat of Thermopylae;

he meditated, too, a novel the scene and characters laid in the

Second Empire, and dilated upon the beauty of a portrait executed in

microscopic detail of that immortal character, M. le Préfet. We might

have had a second Homais if he had made this project a reality. He told

Turgenev that he had another idea, a sort of modern Matron of Ephesus

--in the Temptation there is an episode that suggests the Ephesus.

He did not lack invention and he was an extremely rapid writer--but

his artistic conscience was morbidly sensitive. It pained him to see

Zola throwing his better self to the dogs in his noisy, inartistic

novels--in which, he said, was neither poetry nor art. And he wrote

this opinion to Zola, who promptly called him an idiot. In that correct

but colourless book of Faguet's on Flaubert, the critic makes note

of all the novelist's grammatical errors and reaches the conclusion

that he was a stylist unique, but not careful in his grammar. Now,

while this is piffling pedantry, the facts are in Faguet's favour;

Faguet, who holds the critical scales nicely, as he always does,

though listlessly. But in the handling of such a robust, red-blooded

subject as Flaubert the college professor was hardly a wise selection.

The Faguet study is clear and painstaking but not sympathetic. Mr.

James has praised it, possibly because Faguet agrees with him as to

the psychology of Sentimental Education. Not a study, Faguet's, for

Flaubertians, who see the faults of their Saint Polycarp--his favourite

self-appellation--and love him for his all-too-human imperfections.

In 1845 Flaubert, on a visit to Italy, stopped at Genoa. There, in the

Palace Balbi-Senarega--and not at the Doria, as Du Camp wrote, with

his accustomed carelessness--the young Frenchman saw an old picture by

Breughel (probably by Pieter the Younger, surnamed Hell-Breughel) that

represents a temptation of Saint Antony. It is hardly a masterpiece,

this Breughel, and is dingy in colour. But Flaubert, who loved the

grotesque, procured an engraving of this picture and it hung in his

study at Croisset until the day of his death. It was the spring-board

of his own Temptation. The germ may be found in his mystery, Smarh,

with its Demon and metaphysical colouring. Breughel set into motion the

mental machinery of the Temptation that never stopped whirring until

1874. The first _brouillon_ of the Temptation was begun May 24, 1848,

and finished September 12, 1849. It numbered 540 pages of manuscript.

Set aside for Bovary, Flaubert took up the draft again and made the

second version in 1856. When he had done with it, the manuscript was

reduced to 193 pages. Not satisfied, he returned to the work in 1872,

and when ready for publication in 1874 the number of pages were 136.

He even then cut, from ten chapters, three. Last year the French

world read the second version of 1856 and was astonished to find it

so different from the definitive one of 1874. The critical sobriety

and courage of Flaubert were vindicated. In 1849, reading to Bouilhet

and Du Camp, he had been advised to burn the stuff; instead he boiled

it down for the 1856 version. To Turgenev he had submitted the 1872

draft, and thus it came that this wonderful coloured-panorama of

philosophy, this Gulliver-like travelling amid the master ideas of the

antique and the early Christian worlds, was published.

All the youthful romantic Flaubert--the "spouter" of blazing phrases,

the lover of jewelled words, of monstrous and picturesque ideas and

situations--is in the first turbulent version of the Temptation. In

the later version he is more critical and historical. Flaubert had

grown intellectually as his emotions had cooled with the years. The

first Temptation is romantic and religious; the 1874 version cooler

and more sceptical. Dramatic, arranged more theatrically than the

first, the author's affection for mysticism, the East, and the classic

world shows more in this version. Psychologic gradations of character

and events are clearer in the second version. I cannot agree with

Louis Bertrand, who edited the 1856 version, that it is superior in

interest to the 1874 version. It is a novelty, but Flaubert was never

so much the surgeon as when he operated upon his own manuscript. He

often hesitated, he always suffered, and he never flinched when his

mind was finally satisfied. Faguet calls the Temptation an abstract

pessimistic novel. He also complains that the philosophic ideas are not

novel; a new philosophy would be a veritable phoenix. Why should they

be? Flaubert does not enunciate a new philosophy. He is the artist

who shows us apocalyptic visions of all philosophies, all schools,

ethical systems, cultures, religions. The gods from every land defile

by and are each in turn swept away by the relentless Button-Moulder,

Oblivion. There was a talking and amusing pig in the first version;

he is not present in the second--possibly because Flaubert discovered

that it was not Saint Antony of Egypt, but Saint Antony of Padua, who

had a pig. (Rops has remembered the animal in his etching of Flaubert's

Antony.) The Antony of 1856 has a more modern soul; the second reveals

the determinism of Flaubert. He is phlegmatic, almost stupid, a supine

Faust incapable of self-irony. Everything revolves about him--the

multi-coloured splendours of Alexandria, of the Queen of Sheba; Satan,

Death and Luxury, Hilarion, Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana tempt

him; upon his ears fall the enchanting phrases of the eternal dialogue

between Sphinx and Chimera--we dream of the Songs of Solomon when

reading: "Je cherche des parfums nouveaux, des fleurs plus larges, des

plaisirs inéprouvés"; the speech of the Chimera. Flaubert knew the Old

Testament rhythms and beauty of phrase; witness this speech of Death's:

"et on fait la guerre avec de la musique, des panaches, des drapeaux,

des harnais d'or...." You seem to overhear the golden trumpets of

Bayreuth.

The demon retires baffled at the end of the first version. He is

diabolic and not a little theatrical. The Devil of 1874 is more

artful. He shows Antony the Cosmos, but he is not the victor in the

duel. The new Antony studies the protean forms of life and at the

end is ravished by the sight of protoplasm. "O bliss!" he cries, and

longs to be transformed into every species of energy, "to be matter."

Then the dawn comes up like the uplifted curtains of a tabernacle

--Flaubert's image--and in the very disc of the sun shines the face

of Jesus Christ. "Antony makes the sign of the cross and resumes his

prayers." Thus ends the 1874 edition, ends a book of irony, dreams,

and sumptuous landscapes. A sense of the nothingness of human thought,

human endeavour, assails the reader, for he has traversed all the

metaphysical and religious ideas of the ages, has viewed all the

gods, idols, demi-gods, ghosts, heresies, and heresiarchs; Jupiter on

his throne and the early warring Christian sects vanish into smoke,

crumble into the gulf of _Néant_. A vivid episode was omitted in the

definitive version. At the close of the gods' procession the Saviour

appears. He is old, white-haired, and weary from the burden of the

cross and the sins of mankind. Some mock him; He is reproached by

kings for propounding the equality of the poor; but by the majority

He is unrecognised; and, spurned, the Son of Man falls into the dust

of life. A poignant page, the spirit of which may be recognised in

some latter-day French pictures and in the eloquent phrases of Jehan

Rictus. M. Bertrand has pointed out that the 1849 version of the

Temptation contains colour and imagery similar to the Légendes des

Siècles, though written ten years before Hugo's poem. The Temptation

of Saint Antony was neither a popular nor a critical success in 1874.

France realises that in Flaubert's prose epic she has a masterpiece of

intellectual power, profound irony, and unsurpassed beauty. The reader

is alternately reminded of the Apocalypse, of Dante's grim visions, and

of the second Faust.

[Illustration: Corrected proof page of Madame Bovary,

produced from the original manuscript.]

Almost numberless are the studies of Flaubert's method in composing

his books. A small library could be filled by books about his style.

We have seen the reproductions of the various drafts that he made in

the description of Emma Bovary's visit to Rouen. Armand Weil, with

a patience that is itself Flaubertian, has shown us the variations

in the manuscript of Salammbô (see, _Revue Universitaire_, April 15,

1902). Yet, compared with Balzac's spider-haunted, scribbled-over

proofs, Flaubert's seem virginal of corrections. The one reproduced

here is from two pages of original manuscript that I was lucky enough

to secure at Paris in 1903. They contain instructions to the printer,

as may be seen, and demonstrate Flaubert's sharp eye; in every instance

his changes are an improvement. One of the arguments in favour of the

last version of the Temptation is its shrinkage in bulk from the 1856

manuscript. The letter, hitherto unpublished--for it will not be found

in the six volumes of the Correspondence--is possibly addressed to

his niece, Caroline Hamard. Unusual for Flaubert is the absence of

any date; he was scrupulous in giving hour, day, month, and year,

in his letters. The princess referred to is the Princess Mathilde

Bonaparte-Demidoff, the patron of artists and literary men, an admirer

of Flaubert's. He often dined with her at Saint-Gratien. Madame Pasca

the actress was also a friend and visited Croisset when he fractured

his leg. He had a genius for friendships with both women and men. His

mother, often telling him that his devotion to style had dried up his

natural affections, admitted that he had a bigger heart than head. And,

after all, this motherly estimate gives us the measure of the real

Flaubert.