who perhaps took the name of the great scholar[69] for the sake of
contrast, was even more famous for his melodramas[70] than for his
fiction, one piece especially, "Trente Ans, ou La Vie d'un Joueur,"
having been among the triumphs of the Porte-Saint-Martin and of
Frédérick Lemaître. As a novelist he did not write for children like
Ducray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful preface
scoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety brought
against him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of his
which I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary to
extend my acquaintance in search of it. He seems to have been a
quarrelsome sort of person, for he got into trouble not only with the
moralists, not only with the Restoration government, but with the
Academy, which he attacked; and he is rather fond of "scratchy"
references such as "On peut mériter encore quelque intérêt sans être un
Amadis, un Vic-van-Vor [poor Fergus!], un Han, ou un Vampire." But his
intrinsic merit as a novelist did not at first seem to me great. A book
worse _charpenté_ than that just quoted from, _L'Artiste et le Soldat_,
I have seldom read. The first of its five volumes is entirely occupied
with the story (not badly, though much too voluminously told) of a
captain who has lost his leg at Waterloo, and though tended by a pretty
and charming daughter, is in great straits till helped by a mysterious
Black Nun, who loves _les militaires_, and has been entrusted with money
to help them by the Empress Josephine. The second, "without with your
leave or by your leave" of any kind,[71] jumps back to give us, under a
different name for a long time, the early history of this captain, which
occupies two whole volumes and part of a third (the fourth of the book).
Then another abrupt shift introduces us to the "artist," the younger
brother, who bears a _third_ name, itself explained by another jump back
of great length. Then a lover turns up for Suzanne, the captain's
daughter, and we end the fifth volume with a wedding procession in ten
distinct carriages.
[Sidenote: _Ludovica._]
_Ludovica ou Le Testament de Waterloo_, a much later book, was, the
author tells us, finished in June 1830 under the fiendish tyranny of
"all-powerful bigots, implacable Jesuits, and restored marquises"; but
the glorious days of July came; a new dynasty, "jeune, forte, sincère"
(Louis Philippe "young and sincere"!), was on the throne; the ship of
state entered the vast sea of liberty; France revived; all Europe seemed
to start from its shroud--and _Ludovica_ got published. But the author's
joy was a little dashed by the sense that, unlike its half-score of
forerunners, the book had not to battle with the bigots and the Jesuits
and the "restored marquises"--the last a phrase which has considerable
charms of suggestion.
All this, of course, has its absurd side; but it shows, by way of
redemption, that Ducange, in one of the many agreeable phrases of his
country, "did not go to it with a dead hand." He seems, indeed, to have
been a thoroughly "live" person, if not a very wise one: and _Ludovica_
begins with a rousing situation--a crowd and block in the streets of
Paris, brought about by nobody quite knows what, but ending in a
pistol-shot, a dead body, the flight of the assassin, the dispersal of
the crowd by the _gendarmes_, and finally the discovery by a young
painter, who has just returned from seeing his mother at Versailles, of
a very youthful, very pretty, and very terrified girl, speaking an
unknown tongue, and not understanding French, who has fled for refuge
into a dark alley ending in a flight of cellar-steps. It is to the point
that among the confused cries attending the disturbance have been some
about a girl being carried off.
It must be admitted that this is not unpromising, and I really think
_Ludovica_ (with a caution as to the excessive prolixity of its kind and
time) might be recommended to lovers of the detective novel, of which it
is a rather early sample. I have confessed, in a later chapter, that
this particular "wanity" is not my favourite; but I found myself getting
through M. Victor Ducange's six volumes--burdened rather than ballasted
as they are by political outbursts, rather "thorn-crackling" attempts at
humour, and the like--with considerably less effort than has sometimes
attended similar excursions. If they had been three instead of six I
hardly think I should have felt the collar at all. The superiority to
_L'Artiste et le Soldat_ is remarkable. When honest Jules Janin
attributed to Ducange "une érudition peu commune," he must either have
been confusing Victor with Charles, or, which is more probable,
exhibiting his own lack of the quality he refers to. Ducange does quote
tags of Latin: but erudition which makes Proserpine the daughter of
_Cybele_, though certainly _peu commune_ in one sense, is not so in the
other. The purposes and the jokes, as has been said, may bore; and
though the style is better than Ducray's, it would not of itself
"over-stimulate." But the man is really almost prodigal of incident, and
does not manage it badly.
Here, you have Ludovica's father and mother (the former of whom has been
crimped to perform a marriage under the impression that he is a priest,
whereas he is really a colonel of dragoons) escaping through a hole at
the back of a picture from a skylighted billiard-room. There, an
enterprising young man, "sitting out" at a ball, to attend which he has
disguised himself, kisses his partner,[72] and by that pleasing
operation dislodges half his borrowed moustache. It falls, alas! on her
hand, she takes it for a spider, screams, and so attracts an unwelcome
public. Later in the same evening he finds himself shut up in the young
lady's bedroom, and hears her and her mother talking secrets which very
nearly concern him. The carrying off of Ludovica from Poland to Paris is
very smartly managed (I am not sure that the great Alexander or one of
his "young men" did not borrow some details from it for the arrest of
D'Artagnan and Porthos after their return from England), and the way in
which she and a double of hers, Trinette van Poupenheim, are mixed up is
really clever. So is the general cross-purposing. Cabmen turn up just
when they should; and though letters dropped out of pockets are as
common as blackberries, I know few better excuses for such carelessness
than the fact that you have pulled the letter out with a silk wrapper,
which you proceed to fold tenderly round the beautiful neck of a damsel
in a cab somewhere about midnight. A holograph will made on the eve of
Waterloo and preserved for fifteen years by the faithful depositary; a
good doctor, of course; many bad Jesuits, of course; another, and this
time virtuous, though very impudent, carrying-off of the _other_ young
woman from the clutches of the hated _congréganistes_;[73] a boghei;[74]
a jokei; a third _enlèvement_ of the real Ludovica, who escapes by a
cellar-trap; and many other agreeable things, end in the complete defeat
of the wicked and the marriage of the good to the tune of _four_
couples, the thing being thus done to the last in Ducange's usual
handsome manner.[75] I do not know whether _Ludovica_ was
melodramatised. _Le Jésuite_ of the same year by Ducange and the great
Pixérécourt looks rather like it; and so does _Il y a Seize Ans_ of a
year later, which he seems to have written alone. But if it was not it
ought to have been. The half-moustache-spider-kissing-screaming scene,
and the brilliant youth retreating through the laughing crowd with the
other half of his decoration, might have reconciled even me to the
theatre.
[Sidenote: Auguste Ricard--_L'Ouvreuse de Loges_.]
A short account of the last novel (except _Le Solitaire_) mentioned
above must stand for sample, not merely of the dozen other works of its
author, Auguste Ricard, but for many more advertised on the fly-leaves
of this time, and long since made "alms for oblivion." Their titles, _Le
Portier_, _La Grisette_, _Le Marchand de Coco_, by Ricard himself, on
one side, _L'Homme des Ruines_, _Bleack-_ (sic) _Beard_, _La Chambre
Rouge_ (by a certain Dinocourt) on the other, almost tell their whole
story--the story of a range (to use English terms once more) between the
cheap followers of Anne Radcliffe and G. W. M. Reynolds. _L'Ouvreuse de
Loges_, through which I have conscientiously worked, inclines to the
latter kind, being anti-monarchic, anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic
(though it admits that these aristocrats are terrible fellows for
behaving in a way which the _roturier_ cannot imitate, however hard he
tries), and anti-things-in-general. Its title-heroine is a bad old
woman, who "keeps the door" in the Elizabethan sense as well as
theatrically. Its real hero is a _ci-devant_ duke; malversator under the
Republic; supposed but not real victim of the Septembriseurs; atheist;
winner and loser of several fortunes; and at last _particulier_ of Paris
under a feigned name, with an apartment full of _bric-à-brac_, a drawer
full of little packets of money, after the expenditure of the last of
which he proposes to blow his brains out; tall man of stature and of his
hands, etc., etc. The book is in a way one of purpose, inculcating the
danger of wooing opera-girls, and instancing it with three very weak
young men, another duke, a rich young _parvenu_, and a musician. Of
these the first and the last are, with their wives, rather arbitrarily
saved from the clutches into which they have fallen, by the mysterious
"M. Luc," while the other comes to a very bad end. The novel, which is
in five volumes, is, like most of those mentioned in this section, not
of the kind that one would read by preference. But it is a very fair
specimen of the "below stairs" romance which sometimes prepares the way
for others, fit to take their places above stairs. And so it has its
place here.[76]
[Sidenote: The importance of these minors not inconsiderable.]
It has been pointed out more than once that though neglect of such books
as these may be perfectly natural and probable in the average reader,
such neglect--and still more any contempt of them--is, though it may not
be unnatural, utterly unscholarly and uncritical from the point of view
of history. Their authors themselves learnt something from their own
mistaken experiments, and their successors learnt a good deal more.
They found that "sculduddery" was not a necessary attraction. Ducray
does not avail himself of it, and Ducange seems to have left it off.
They did not give up, but they came less and less to depend upon,
extravagant incident, violent peripeteias, cheap supernaturalities, etc.
But the most important thing about them perhaps is the evidence they
give of learning what has been called their "business." Already, to a
great extent if not wholly, that earliest obsession and preoccupation of
the novelist--the idle anxiety to answer the question, "How do you know
all these things?"--has begun to disappear. This is rather less the case
with another foolish fancy--the belief that it is necessary to account
not merely for what we call the consequents, but for the antecedents of
all the characters (at least those of any importance) that you
introduce. There can be no doubt that this was one of the objects, as it
was part of the original cause, of the mistaken _Histoire_ system, which
made you, when or soon after you introduced a personage, "tell us all
about it," as the children say, in a separate inset tale. You did not
now do this, but you made, as in the capital instance of Victor Ducange,
huge diversions, retrospects, episodes, in the body of the story itself.
This method, being much less skippable than the inset by those who did
not want it, was not likely to continue, and so applied the cure to its
own ill. And yet further, as novels multiplied, the supposed necessity
of very great length tended to disappear. The seven or eight volumes of
the eighteenth century, which had replaced the twelves and twenties of
the seventeenth, shrank to six (_Ludovica_), five (_L'Artiste et Le
Soldat_ and _l'Ouvreuse de Loges_), four (_Le Petit Carillonneur_), and
then three or two, though later the historical kind swelled again, and
the almost invariable single volume did not establish itself till the
middle of the century. As a consequence again of this, the enormous
delay over single situations tended, though very slowly, to disappear.
It is one of the merits of Pigault-Lebrun that he is not a great sinner
in verbosity and prolixity: his contemporary minors of this volume are
far more peccant in this kind.
[Sidenote: The Vicomte d'Arlincourt--_Le Solitaire_.]
_Le Solitaire_ is a book which I have been "going to read" for some
fifty years, but by some accident did not till the present occasion. I
knew it generally as one of the vedettes of Romanticism, and as
extremely popular in its own day: also as having been, with its author's
other work in poem and play and prose fiction, the subject of some
ridicule. But till I read it, and some things about it, I never knew how
well it deserved that ridicule and yet how very popular it was, and how
really important is its position in the history of the Romantic
movement, and so of the French novel and French literature generally. It
was published at the end of January 1821, and at the end of November a
seventh edition appeared, with an elaborate _Io Triumphe!_ from the
publisher. Not only had there been those seven editions (which, it must
be remembered in fairness, represent at least seventy at the other end
of the century[77]), but it had been translated into four foreign
languages; _fourteen_ dramas had been based on it, some half of which
had been at least conditionally accepted for performance; painters of
distinction were at work on subjects from it; it had reached the stages
of Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a very
beautiful composition"), while French approval had been practically
unanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and--crowning, but
perhaps rather ominous honour--somebody had actually published a
burlesque imitation.
I have seldom read greater rubbish than _Le Solitaire_. It is a
historical-romantic story (the idolatrous preface refers both to Scott
and to Byron), and bears also strong, if sometimes distinctly
unfortunate, resemblances to Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, and
Chateaubriand. The scene is that of Charles the Bold's defeat at Morat:
and the "Solitary" is Charles himself--the identification of his body
after the decisive overthrow at Nancy _was_ a little doubtful--who has
hidden there partly to expiate, by good deeds, his crime of massacring
the monks of the adjoining Abbey of Underlach, and partly to avail
himself of a local tradition as to a _Fantôme Sanglant_, who haunts the
neighbourhood, and can be conveniently played by the aid of a crimson
mantle. The slaughter of the monks, however, is not the only event or
circumstance which links Underlach to the crimes of Charles, for it is
now inhabited by a Baron d'Herstall (whose daughter, seduced by the
Duke, has died early) and his niece, Elodie de Saint-Maur, whose father,
a former favourite of the Burgundian, that prince has killed in one of
his fits of rage. Throw in a local priest, Anselm, and you have what may
be called the chief characters; but a good Count Ecbert de Norindall, a
wicked Prince of Palzo, and divers others figure. Everybody, including
the mysterious Bleeding-Phantom-Solitary-Duke himself, falls in love
with Elodie,[78] and she is literally "carried off" (that is to say,
shouldered) several times, once by the alarming person in the crimson
shroud, but always rescued, till it is time for her to die and be
followed by him. There are endless "alarums and excursions"; some of the
_not_ explained supernatural; woods, caves, ruins, underground
passages--entirely at discretion. Catherine Morland would have been
perfectly happy with it.
It is not, however, because it contains these things that it has been
called "rubbish." A book might contain them all--Mrs. Radcliffe's own
do, with the aggravation of the explained wonders--and not be that. It
is because of the extraordinary silliness of the style and sentiments. I
should imagine that M. d'Arlincourt was trying to write like his brother
viscount, the author of _Les Martyrs_, and a pretty mess he has made of
it. "Le char de la nuit roulait silencieux sur les plaines du ciel" (p.
3). "L'entrée du jour venait de s'élancer radieuse du palais de
l'Aurore." "L'amante de l'Érèbe et la mère des Songes[79] avait achevé
la moitié de sa course ténébreuse," etc., etc. The historic present is
constantly battling with the more ordinary tenses--the very same
sentence sometimes contains both. And this half-blown bladder of a style
conveys sentiments as feebly pompous as itself. The actual story, though
no great thing, is, if you could strip it of its froth and fustian, not
so very bad: as told it is deplorable.
At the same time its mere existence--much more the fury of acceptance
which for the moment greeted it--shows what that moment wanted. It
wanted Romance, and in default of better it took _Le Solitaire_.
* * * * *
An occasional contrast of an almost violent kind may be permitted in a
work requiring something more than merely catalogue-composition. It can
hardly be found more appropriately than by concluding this chapter,
which began with the account of Paul de Kock, by one of Charles Nodier.
[Sidenote: Nodier.]
To the student and lover of literature there is scarcely a more
interesting figure in French literary history, though there are many
greater. Except a few scraps (which, by one of the odd ways of the
book-world, actually do not appear in some editions of his _Oeuvres
Choisies_), he did nothing which had the quality of positive greatness
in it. But he was a considerable influence: and even more of a "sign."
Younger than Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, but far older than any
of the men of 1830 proper, he may be said in a way to have, in his
single person, played in France that part of schoolmaster to
Romanticism, which had been distributed over two generations and many
personalities in England; and which Germany, after a fashion, did
without, at the cost of a few undisciplined and quickly overbloomed
master-years. Although he was born in 1780, nine years before the
Revolution itself, he underwent German and English influences early,
"took" Wertherism, Terrorism,[80] and other maladies of that _fin de
siècle_ with the utmost facility, and produced divers ultra-Romantic
things long before 1830 itself. But he had any number of literary and
other avocations or distractions. He was a kind of entomologist and
botanist, a kind of philologist (one is a little astonished to find that
rather curious and very charlatanish person and parson Sir Herbert
Croft, whose secretary Nodier was for a time, dignified in French books
by the name of "_philologue_ Anglais"), a good deal more than a kind of
bibliographer (he spent the last twenty years of his life as Librarian
of the Arsenal), and an enthusiastic and stimulating, though not exactly
trustworthy, critic. But he concerns us here, of course, for his prose
fiction, which, if not very bulky, is numerous in its individual
examples, and is animated in the best of them by a spirit almost new in
French and, though often not sufficiently caught and concentrated,
present to almost the highest degrees in at least three examples--the
last part of _La Fée aux Miettes_, _La Légende de Soeur Béatrix_, and,
above all, _Inès de las Sierras_.
For those who delight in literary filiations and genealogies, the kind
of story in which Nodier excelled (and in which, though some of his own
were written after 1830, he may truly be considered as "schoolmaster" to
Mérimée and Gautier and Gérard de Nerval and all their fellows), may be,
without violence or exaggeration, said to be a new form of the French
fairy-tale, divested of common form, and readjusted with the help of the
German _Märchen_ and fantasy-pieces. _Le Diable Amoureux_ had, no doubt,
set the fashion of this kind earlier; but that story, charming as it is,
is still scarcely "Romantic." Nodier is so wholly; and it is fair to
remember that Hoffmann himself was rather a contemporary of his, and
subject to the same influences, than a predecessor.[81]
[Sidenote: His short stories.]
The best collection of Nodier's short tales contains nine pieces:
_Trilby_, _Le Songe d'Or_, _Baptiste Montauban_, _La Fée aux Miettes_,
_La Combe de l'Homme mort_, _Inès de las Sierras_, _Smarra_, _La
Neuvaine de la Chandeleur_, and _La Légende de Soeur Béatrix_. Of
these I believe _Trilby_, _La Fée aux Miettes_, and _Smarra_ have been
the greatest favourites, and were pretty certainly the most influential
in France. My own special delights are _Le Songe d'Or_, _Inès de las
Sierras_, and _Soeur Béatrix_, with part of the _Fée_. But none is
without its attractions, and the Preface to the _Fée aux Miettes_, which
is almost a separate piece, has something of the quintessential in that
curious quality which Nodier possesses almost alone in French or with
Gérard de Nerval and Louis Bertrand only. English readers may "perceive
a good deal of [Charles] Lamb in it," with touches of Sterne and De
Quincey and Poe.
[Sidenote: _Trilby._]
It is much to be feared that more people in England nowadays associate
the name of "Trilby" with the late Mr. Du Maurier than with Nodier, and
that more still associate it with the notion of a hat than with either
of the men of genius who used it in literature.
So mighty Byron, dead and turned to clay,
Gave name to collars for full many a day;
And Ramillies, grave of Gallic boasts so big,
Found most perpetuation in a wig.[82]
The original story united divers attractions for its first readers in
1822, combining the older fashion of Ossian with the newer one of Scott,
infusing the supernatural, which was one great bait of the coming
Romanticism, and steeping the whole cake in the tears of the newer
rather than the older "Sensibility." "Trilby, le Lutin d'Argaïl"[83]
(Nodier himself explains that he alters the spelling here with pure
phonetic intent, so as to keep the pronunciation for French eyes _and_
ears[84]), is a spirit who haunts the cabin of the fisherman Dougal to
make a sort of sylph-like love to his wife Jeannie. He means and does no
harm, but he is naturally a nuisance to the husband, on whom he plays
tricks to keep him away from home, and at length rather frightens the
wife. They procure, from a neighbouring monastery, a famous exorcist
monk, who, though he cannot directly punish Trilby, lays on him sentence
of exclusion from the home of the pair, unless one of them invites him,
under penalty of imprisonment for a thousand years. How the story turns
to Jeannie's death and Trilby's duress can be easily imagined, and may
be read with pleasure. I confess that to me it seems pretty, but just a
little mawkish.[85] Perhaps I am a brute.
[Sidenote: _Le Songe d'Or._]
_Le Songe d'Or_, on the other hand, though in a way tragic, and capable
of being allegorised almost _ad infinitum_ in its sense of some of the
riddles of the painful earth, is not in the least sentimental, and is
told, till just upon the end, with a certain tender irony. The author
called it "Fable Levantine," and the venerable Lo[c]kman is introduced
in it. But I have read it several times without caring (perhaps this was
reprehensible) to ascertain whether it is in the recognised Lokman bunch
or not. All I know is that here Nodier and not Lokman has told it, and
that the result is delightful. First a beautiful "kardouon," the
prettiest of lizards, all azure and ruby and gold, finds in the desert a
heap of gold-pieces. He breaks his teeth on them, but is sure that such
nice-looking things must be good to eat--probably slices of a root which
some careless person has left too long in the sun--and that, if properly
treated, they will make a famous winter provision. So he conveys them
with much care and exertion, one by one, to a soft bed of fresh moss,
just the thing to catch the dew, under the shadow of a fine old tree.
And, being naturally tired, he goes to sleep beside them. And this is
the history of the kardouon.
Now there was in that neighbourhood a poor woodcutter named
Xaïloun--deformed, and not much more than half-witted, but amiable--who
had taken a great fancy to the kardouon as being a beautiful beast, and
likely to make a charming friend. But the kardouon, after the manner of
shy lizards, had by no means reciprocated this affection, and took
shelter behind stones and tree-stumps when advances were made to him. So
that the children, and even his own family, including his mother, used
to jeer at Xaïloun and tell him to go to his friend. On this particular
occasion, the day after the kardouon's _trouvaille_, Xaïloun actually
found the usually wide-awake animal sleeping. And as the place, with the
moss and the great tree-shadow and a running stream close by, was very
attractive, Xaïloun lay down by the lizard to wait till he should wake.
But as he himself might go to sleep, and the animal, accustomed to the
sun, might get a chill in the shade, Xaïloun put his own coat over him.
And he too slept, after thinking how nice the kardouon's friendship
would be when they _both_ woke. And this is the history of Xaïloun.
Next day again there came a fakir named Abhoc, who was on a pretended
pilgrimage, but really on the look-out for what he might get. He saw a
windfall at once, was sure that neither of its sleeping guardians could
keep it from him, and very piously thanked the Almighty for rewarding
his past devotion and self-sacrifice by opening a merry and splendid
life to him. But as, with such custodians, the treasure could be
"lifted" without the slightest difficulty, he too lay down by it, and
went to sleep, dreaming of Schiraz wine in golden cups and a harem
peopled with mortal houris. And this is the history of the fakir Abhoc.
A day and a night passed, and the morrow came. Again there passed a wise
doctor of laws, Abhac by name, who was editing a text to which a hundred
and thirty-two different interpretations had been given by Eastern Cokes
and Littletons. He had just hit upon the hundred and thirty-third--of
course the true one--when the sight described already struck him and put
the discovery quite out of his head, to be lost for ever. As became a
jurist, he was rather a more practical person than the woodcutter or the
fakir, if not than the lizard. His human predecessors were, evidently,
thieves, and must be brought to justice, but it would be well to secure
"pieces of conviction." So he began to wrap up the coins in his turban
and carry them away. But there were so many, and it was so heavy, that
he grew very weary. So he too laid him down and slept. And this is the
history of the doctor Abhac.
But on the fifth day there appeared a much more formidable person than
the others, and also a much more criminous. This was the "King of the
Desert"--bandit and blackmailer of caravans. Being apparently a bandit
of letters, he reflected that, though lizards, being, after all,
miniature dragons, were immemorial guardians of treasure, they could not
have any right in it, but were most inconveniently likely to wake if any
noise were made. The others were three to one--too heavy odds by
daylight. But if he sat down by them till night came he could stab them
one by one while they were asleep, and perhaps breakfast on the
kardouon--said to be quite good meat. And he went to sleep himself. And
this is the history of the King of the Desert.
But next day again the venerable Lokman passed by, and _he_ saw that the
tree was a upas tree and the sleepers were dead. And he understood it
all, and he passed his hand through his beard and fell on his face, and
gave glory to God. And then he buried the three covetous ones in
separate graves under the upas itself. But he put Xaïloun in a safer
place, that his friends might come and do right to him; and he buried
the kardouon apart on a little slope facing the sun, such as lizards
love, and near Xaïloun. And, lastly, having stroked his beard again, he
buried the treasure too. But he was very old: and he was very weary when
he had finished this, and God took him.
And on the seventh day there came an angel and promised Xaïloun
Paradise, and made a mark on his tomb with a feather from his own wing.
And he kissed the forehead of Lokman and made him rise from the dead,
and took him to the seventh heaven itself. And this is the history of
the angel. It all happened ages ago, and though the name of Lokman has
lived always through them, so has the shadow of the upas tree.
And this is the history of the world.
Only a child's goody-goody tale? Possibly. But for my part I know no
better philosophy and, at least as Nodier told it, not much better
literature.
[Sidenote: Minors.]
_Baptiste Montauban_ and _La Combe de l'Homme mort_ are, though scarcely
shorter than _Le Songe d'Or_, slighter. The first is a pathetic but not
quite consummate story of "love and madness" in a much better sense than
that in which Nodier's eccentric employer, Sir Herbert Croft, used the
words as his title for the history of Parson Hackman and Miss Ray.[86]
The second ("combe," the omission of which from the official French
dictionaries Nodier characteristically denounces, is our own "combe"--a
deep valley; from, I suppose, the Celtic Cwm; and pronounced by
Devonshire folk in a manner which no other Englishman, born east of the
line between the mouths of the Parret and the Axe, can master) is a
good but not supreme _diablerie_ of a not uncommon kind. _La Neuvaine de
la Chandeleur_ is longer, and from some points of view the most pathetic
of all. A young man, hearing some girls talk of a much-elaborated
ceremony like those of Hallowe'en in Scotland and of St. Agnes' Eve in
Keats, by which (in this case) _both_ sexes can see their fated lovers,
tries it, and discerns, in dream or vision, his ideal as well as his
fate. She turns out to be an actual girl whom he has never seen, but
whom both his father and her father--old friends--earnestly desire that
he should marry. He travels to her home, is enthusiastically greeted,
and finds her even more bewitching than her wraith or whatever it is to
be called. But she is evidently in bad health, and dies the same night
of aneurism. Not guested in the house, but trysted in the morning, he
goes there, and seeing preparations in the street for a funeral, asks of
some one, being only half alarmed, "_Qui est mort?_" The answer is,
"Mademoiselle Cecile Savernier."
Had these words terminated the story it would have been nearly perfect.
Two more pages of the luckless lover's progress to resignation from
despair and projected suicide seem to me to blunt the poignancy.
[Sidenote: _La Fée aux Miettes._]
In fact, acknowledging most humbly that I could not write even the worst
and shortest of Nodier's stories, I am bound to say that I think he was
not to be trusted with a long one. _La Fée aux Miettes_ is at once an
awful and a delightful example. The story of the mad shipwright Michel,
who fell in love with the old dwarf beggar--so unlike her of Bednal
Green or King Cophetua's love--at the church door of Avranches; who
followed her to Greenock and got inextricably mixed between her and the
Queen of Sheba; who for some time passed his nights in making love to
Belkis and his days in attending to the wisdom of the Fairy of the
Crumbs (she always brought him his breakfast after the Sabaean Nights);
who at last identified the two in one final rapture, after seeking for a
Singing Mandrake; and who spent the rest (if not, indeed, the whole) of
his days in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum;--is at times so ineffably
charming that one is almost afraid oneself to repeat the refrain--
C'est moi, c'est moi, c'est moi!
Je suis la Mandragore!
La fille des beaux jours qui s'éveille à l'aurore--
Et qui chante pour toi!
though, after all, every one whose life has been worth living has
listened for the song all that life--and has heard it sometimes.
To find any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous.
But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue of
the narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as a
tomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kind
alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has
seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? What
would a Frenchman say if an English story-teller christened some girl of
Gaul "Sottise Librefille"? "Sir Jap Muzzleburn," the Bailiff of the Isle
of Man, and his black poodle-equerry, Master Blatt, amuse me but little;
and Master Finewood, the shipbuilder,--whose rejected six sons-in-law,
lairds of high estate, run away with his thirty thousand guineas, and
are checkmated by six sturdy shipwrights,--less. I have no doubt it is
my fault, my very great fault, but I wish they would _go_, and leave me
with Michel and La Fée, or rather allow me to _be_ Michel _with_ La Fée.
[Sidenote: _Smarra_ and _Soeur Béatrix_.]
_Smarra_--which made a great impression on its contemporaries and had a
strong influence on the Romantic movement generally--is a fantasia of
nightmare based on the beginning of _The Golden Ass_, with, again, a
sort of prologue and epilogue of modern love. It is undoubtedly a fine
piece of work of its kind and beautifully written. But in itself it
seems to me a little too much of a _tour de force_, and its kind a
little rococo. Again, _mea maxima culpa_ perhaps. On the other hand,
_Soeur Béatrix_ is a most charmingly told version of a very
wide-spread story--that of Our Lady taking the place of an erring sister
during her sojourn in the world, and restoring her to it without any
scandal when she returns repentant and miserable after years of absence.
It could not be better done.
[Sidenote: _Inès de las Sierras._]
But the jewel of the book, and of Nodier's work, to me, is _Inès de las
Sierras_--at least its first and larger part; for Nodier, in one of
those exasperatingly uncritical whims of his which have been noticed,
and which probably prevented him from ever writing a really good novel
of length, has attached an otiose explanation _à la_ Mrs. Radcliffe,
which, if it may please the weakest kind of weak brethren, may almost
disgust another, and as to which I myself exercise the critic's
_cadi_-rights by simply ignoring and banishing what I think superfluous.
As for what remains, once more, it could not be done better.
Three French officers, at the moment of disturbance of the French
garrisons in the north of Spain, owing to Napoleon's Russian disasters
(perhaps also to more local events, which it was not necessary for
Nodier to mention), are sent on remount duty from Gerona to Barcelona,
where there is a great horse-fair on. They are delayed by bad weather
and other accidents, and are obliged to stop half-way after nightfall.
But the halting-place is choke-full of other travellers on their way to
the same fair, and neither at inn nor in private house is there any room
whatever, though there is no lack of "provant." Everybody tells them
that they can only put up at "the castle of Ghismondo." Taking this for
a Spanish folkword, they get rather angry. But, finding that there _is_
a place of the name close by in the hills--ruinous, haunted, but
actual--they take plenty of food, wine, and torches, etc., and persuade,
with no little difficulty, their _arriero_ and even their companion and
the real hirer of the vehicle (a theatrical manager, who has allowed
them to accompany him, when they could get no other) to dare the night
adventure. On the way the _arriero_ tells them the legend, how,
centuries before, Ghismondo de las Sierras, ruined by debauchery,
established himself in this his last possession, with one squire, one
page (both of the worst characters), his beautiful niece Inès, whom he
has seduced, and a few desperate followers, who help him to live by
brigandage. Every night the three chiefs drank themselves senseless, and
were regularly dragged to bed by their men. But one Christmas Eve at
midnight, Inès, struck with remorse, entered the hall of orgies, and
implored them to repent, actually kneeling before Ghismondo, and placing
her hand on his heart. To which the ruffian replied by stabbing her, and
leaving her for the men-at-arms to find, a corpse, among the drunken but
live bodies. For a whole twelvemonth the three see, in dreams, their
victim come and lay a burning hand on their hearts; and at its end, on
the same day and at the same hour, the dream comes true--the phantom
appears, speaks _once_, "Here am I!" sits with them, eats and drinks,
even sings and dances, but finally lays the flaming hand of the dream on
each heart; and they die in torture--the men-at-arms entering as usual,
only to find _four_ corpses. (Now it is actually Christmas Eve--the
Spanish _Noche Buena_--at "_temp._ of tale.")
So far the story, though admirably told, in a fashion which mere summary
cannot convey, is, it may be said, not more than "as per usual." Not so
what follows.
The four travellers--the unnamed captain who tells the story; his two
lieutenants, Boutraix, a bluff Voltairian, with an immense capacity for
food and drink, and Sergy, a young and romantic Celadon, _plus_ the
actor-manager Bascara, who is orthodox--with the _arriero_, arrive at
last at the castle, which is Udolphish enough, and with some difficulty
reach, over broken staircases and through ruined corridors, the great
banqueting-hall.[87]
Here--for it is less ruinous that the rest of the building and actually
contains furniture and mouldering pictures--they make themselves
tolerably comfortable with their torches, a huge fire made up from
broken stairs and panels, abundance of provisions, and two dozen of
wine, less a supply for the _arriero_, who prudently remains in the
stables, alleging that the demons that haunt those places are fairly
familiar to him and not very mischievous. As the baggage has got very
wet during the day, the dresses and properties of Bascara's company are
taken out and put to air. Well filled with food and drink, the
free-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves from
these with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page of
the legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game,
and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnight
comes, and they cry, "Where is Inès de las Sierras?" lifting their
glasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of the
great hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure in
a white shroud, which seats itself in the vacant place assigned by
tradition to Inès herself. She is extraordinarily beautiful, and is,
under the white covering, dressed in a fashion resembling the mouldering
portrait which they have seen in the gallery. She speaks too, half
rallying them, as if surprised at _their_ surprise; she calls herself
Inès de las Sierras; she throws on the table a bracelet with the family
arms, which they have also seen dimly emblazoned or sculptured about the
castle; she eats; and, as a final piece of conviction, she tears her
dress open and shows the scar on her breast. Then she drinks response to
the toast they had in mockery proposed; she accepts graciously the
advances of the amorous Sergy; she sings divinely, and she dances more
divinely still. The whole scene is described supremely well, but the
description of the dance is one of the very earliest and very finest
pieces of Romantic French prose. One may try, however rashly, to
translate it:
(_She has found a set of castanets in her girdle._)
She rose and made a beginning by grave and measured steps,
displaying, with a mixture of grace and majesty, the
perfection of her figure and the nobility of her attitudes.
As she shifted her position and put herself in new aspects,
our admiration turned to amazement, as though another and
another beautiful woman had come within our view, so
constantly did she surpass herself in the inexhaustible
variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid
transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to
transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more
and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors;
then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange
ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the
far-off darkness of the huge hall, and the clash of the
castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, and
diminished ever till, as we ceased to see, so we ceased to
hear her. But again it came back from the distance,
increasing always by degrees, till it burst out full as she
reappeared in a flood of light at the spot where we least
expected her. And then she came so near that she touched us
with her dress, clashing the castanets with a maddening
volubility, till they weakened once more and twittered like
cicalas, while now and then across their monotonous racket
she uttered shrill yet tender cries which pierced to our own
souls. Afterwards she retired once more, but plunged herself
only half in the darkness, appearing and disappearing by
turns, now flying from our gaze and now desiring to be
seen,[88] while later still you neither saw nor heard her
save for a far-off plaintive note like the sigh of a dying
girl. And we remained aghast, throbbing with admiration and
fear, longing for the moment when her veil, fluttering with
the dance-movement, should be lighted up by the torches,
when her voice should warn us of her return, with a joyful
cry, to which we answered involuntarily, because it made us
vibrate with a crowd of secret harmonies. Then she came
back; she spun round like a flower stripped from its stalk
by the wind; she sprang from the ground as if it rested only
with her to quit earth for ever; she dropped again as if it
was only her will which kept her from touching it at all;
she did not bound from the floor--you would have thought
that she shot from it--that some mysterious law of her
destiny forbade her to touch it, save in order to fly from
it. And her head, bent with an expression of caressing
impatience, and her arms, gracefully opened, as though in
appealing prayer, seemed to implore us to save her.
The captain himself is on the point of yielding to the temptation, but
is anticipated by Sergy, whose embrace she returns, but sinks into a
chair, and then, seeming to forget the presence of the others
altogether, invites him to follow her through tortuous and ruined
passages (which she describes) to a sepulchre, which she inhabits, with
owls for her only live companions. Then she rises, picks up her
shroud-like mantle, and vanishes in the darkness with a weird laugh and
the famous words, "_Qui m'aime me suive_."
The other three have the utmost difficulty in preventing Sergy (by main
force at first) from obeying. And the captain tries rationalism,
suggesting first that the pretended Inès is a bait for some gang of
assassins or at least brigands, then that the whole thing is a trick of
Bascara's to "produce" a new cantatrice. But Boutraix, who has been
entirely converted from his Voltairianism by the shock, sets aside the
first idea like a soldier, and Bascara rebuts the second like a sensible
man. Brigands certainly would give no such warning of their presence,
and a wise manager does not expose his prima donna's throat to
cohabitation in ruins with skeletons and owls. They finally agree on
silence, and shortly afterwards the three officers leave Spain. Sergy is
killed at Lutzen, murmuring the name of Inès. Boutraix, who has never
relapsed, takes the cowl, and the captain retires after the war to his
own small estate, where he means to stay. He ends by saying _Voilà
tout_.
Alas! it is not all, and it is not the end. Some rather idle talk with
the auditors follows, and then there is the above-mentioned Radcliffian
explanation, telling how Inès was a real Las Sierras of a Mexican
branch, who had actually made her début as an actress, had been, as was
at first thought, murdered by a worthless lover, but recovered. Her
wits, however, were gone, and having escaped from the kind restraint
under which she was put, she had wandered to the castle of her
ancestors, afterwards completely recovering her senses and returning to
the profession in the company of Bascara himself.
Now I think that, if I took the trouble to do so, I could point out
improbabilities in this second story sufficient to damn it on its own
showing.[89] But, as has been said already, I prefer to leave it alone.
I never admired George Vavasour in Trollope's _Can You Forgive Her?_ But
I own that I agree with him heartily in his opinion that "making a
conjurer explain his tricks" is despicably poor fun.
Still, the story, which ends at "Voilà tout" and which for me does so
end "for good and all," is simply magnificent. I have put it elsewhere
with _Wandering Willie's Tale_, which it more specially resembles in the
way in which the ordinary turns into the extraordinary. It falls short
of Scott in vividness, character, manners, and impressiveness, but
surpasses him in beauty[90] of style and imagery. In particular, Nodier
has here, in a manner which I hardly remember elsewhere, achieved the
blending of two kinds of "terror"--the ordinary kind which, as it is
trivially called, "frightens" one, and the other[91] terror which
accompanies the intenser pleasures of sight and sound and feeling, and
heightens them by force of contrast. The scene of Inès' actual
appearance would have been the easiest thing in the world to spoil, and
therefore was the most difficult thing in the world to do right. But it
is absolutely right. In particular, the way in which her conduct in at
once admitting Sergy's attentions, and finally inviting him to "follow,"
is guarded from the very slightest suggestion of the professional
"comingness" of a common courtesan, and made the spontaneous action of a
thing divine or diabolic, is really wonderful.
At the same time, the adverse criticism made here, with that on _La Fée
aux Miettes_ and a few other foregoing remarks, will probably prepare
the reader for the repeated and final judgment that Nodier was very
unlikely to produce a good long story. And, though I have not read
_quite_ all that he wrote, I certainly think that he never did.
[Sidenote: Nodier's special quality.]
In adding new and important masterpieces to the glittering chain of
short cameo-like narratives which form the peculiar glory of French
literature, he did greatly. And his performance and example were greater
still in respect of the _quality_ which he infused into those best
pieces of his work which have been examined here. It is hardly too much
to say that this quality had been almost dormant--a sleeping beauty
among the lively bevies of that literature's graces--ever since the
Middle Ages, with some touches of waking--hardly more than motions in a
dream--at the Renaissance. The comic Phantasy had been wakeful and
active enough; the graver and more serious tragic Imagination had been,
though with some limitations, busy at times. But this third sister--Our
Lady of Dreams, one might call her in imitation of a famous fancy--had
not shown herself much in French merriment or in French sadness: the
light of common day there had been too much for her. Yet in Charles
Nodier she found the magician who could wake her from sleep: and she
told him what she had thought while sleeping.[92]
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Vol. I. pp. 458, 472, _notes_.
[38] Vol. I. p. 161.
[39] When he published _Le Cocu_, it was set about that a pudibund lady
had asked her book-seller for "Le Dernier de M. Paul de Kock." And this
circumlocution became for a time popular, as a new name for the poor
creature on the ornaments of whose head our Elizabethans joked so
untiringly.
[40] A short essay, or at least a "middle" article, might be written on
this way of regarding a prophet in his own country, coupling Béranger
with Paul de Kock. Of course the former is by much a _major_ prophet in
verse than Paul is in prose. But the attitude of the superior French
person to both is, in different degrees, the same. (Thackeray in the
article referred to below, p. 62 _note_, while declaring Paul to be
_the_ French writer whose works are best known in England, says that his
educated countrymen think him _pitoyable_.--_Works_, Oxford edition,
vol. ii p. 533.)
[41] A gibe at the Vicomte d'Arlincourt's very popular novel, to be
noticed below. I have not, I confess, identified the passage: but it may
be in one of the plays.
[42] It would _not_ be fair to compare the two as makers of literature.
In that respect Theodore Hook is Paul's Plutarchian parallel, though he
has more literature and less life.
[43] Charity, outrunning knowledge, may plead "Irony perhaps?"
Unfortunately there is no chance of it.
[44] I really do not know who was (see a little below). Parny in his
absurd _Goddam!_ (1804) has something of it.
[45] And _he_ knew something of it through Addison.
[46] The straight hair is particularly curious, for, as everybody who
knows portraits of the early nineteenth century at all is aware,
Englishmen of the time preferred brushed back and rather "tousled"
locks. In Maclise's famous "Fraserians" there is hardly a
straight-combed head among all the twenty or thirty. At the same time it
is fair to say that our own book-illustrators and caricaturists, for
some strange reason, did a good deal to authorise the libels. Cruikshank
was no doubt a wonderful draughtsman, but I never saw (and I thank God
for it) anything like many, if not most, of his faces. "Phiz" and
Cattermole in (for example) their illustrations to _The Old Curiosity
Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ sometimes out-Cruikshank Cruikshank in this
respect.
[47] Paul's ideas of money are still very modest. An income of 6000
francs (£240) represents ease if not affluence; with double the amount
you can "aspire to a duchess," and even the dispendious Irish-French
Viscount Edward de Sommerston in _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_ (_v. inf._)
starts on his career with scarcely more than three thousand a year.
[48] Paul's scholarship was very rudimentary, as is shown in not a few
scraps of ungrammatical Latin: he never, I think, ventures on Greek. But
whether he was the first to _estropier_ the not ugly form "_Cleodora_,"
I know not. Perhaps he muddled it with "Clotilde."
[49] This cult of the widow might form the subject of a not
uninteresting excursus if we were not confining ourselves to the
literary sides of our matter. It has been noticed before (Vol. I. p.
368), and forms one of the most curious differences between the two
countries. For, putting Mr. Weller out of the question, I have known far
from sentimental critics who thought Trollope's best book by no means
improved by the previous experience of Eleanor Bold. Cherolatry in
France, however, is not really old: it hardly appears before the
eighteenth century. It may be partly due to a more or less conscious
idea that perhaps the lady may have got over the obligatory adultery at
the expense of her "dear first" and may not think it necessary to
repeat. A sort of "measles over."
[50] He also improves his neglected education in a manner not
unsuggestive of Prince Giglio. In fact, I fancy there is a good deal of
half-latent parody of Paul in Thackeray.
[51] There might have been fifteen or fifty, for the book is more a
sequence of scenes than a schematic composition: for which reason the
above account of it may seem somewhat _décousu_.
[52] I think I have commented elsewhere on the difficulty of villains.
It was agreeable to find confirmation, when this book was already in the
printer's hands, given at an exemption tribunal by a theatrical manager.
For six weeks, he said, he had advertised and done everything possible
to supply the place of a good villain, with no success. And your bad
stage villain _may_ be comic: while your bad novel villain is only a
bore.
[53] Frédérique, Madame Dauberny (who has, without legal sanction,
relieved herself of a loathsome creature whom she has married, and lives
a free though not at all immoral life), was not very easy to do, and is
very well done.
[54] This, which is short and thoroughly lively, is, I imagine, the
latest of Paul's good books. It is indeed so late that instead of the
_jupons_, striped and black and white, of which Georgette has made
irreproachable but profitable use, she appears at the _denouement_ in a
crinoline!
[55] The most interesting thing in it is a longish account by Jacques of
his association with a travelling quack and fortune-teller, which at
once reminds one of _Japhet in Search of a Father_. The resemblances and
the differences are almost equally characteristic.
[56] Of course I am not comparing him with Paul on any other point.
[57] Except in regard to the historical and other matters noticed above,
hardly at all.
[58] For a picture of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest
master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in
company!) who ever lived, see that _Britannia_ article of Thackeray's
before referred to--an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and
therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown.
This and its companion articles from the _Britannia_ and the _Corsair_,
all of 1840-41, but summarising ten or twelve years' knowledge of Paris,
form, with the same author's _Paris Sketch Book_ (but as representing a
more mature state of his genius), the best commentary on Paul de Kock.
They may be found together in the third volume of the Oxford Thackeray
edited by the present writer.
[59] Unless they start from the position that an English writer on the
French novel is bound to follow--or at least to pay express attention
to--French criticism of it. This position I respectfully but unalterably
decline to accept. A critical tub that has no bottom of its own is the
very worst Danaid's vessel in all the household gear of literature.
[60] The scene and society are German, but the author knows the name to
have been originally English.
[61] Such, perhaps, as Gibbon himself may have used while he "sighed as
a lover" and before he "obeyed as a son." It should perhaps be said that
Mme. de Montolieu produced many other books, mostly translations--among
the latter a French version of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.
[62] In dealing with "Sensibility" earlier, it was pointed out how
extensively things were dealt with by _letter_. In such cases as these
the fashion came in rather usefully.
[63] The treatment of the authors here mentioned, _infra_, will, I hope,
show that the introduction of their names is not merely "promiscuous."
[64] I am quite prepared to be told that this was somebody else or
nobody at all. "Moi, je dis Madame de Genlis."
[65] P. 436.
[66] The kind endeavours of the Librarian of the London Library to
obtain some in Paris itself were fruitless, but the old saying about
neglecting things at your own door came true. My friend Mr. Kipling
urged me to try Mr. George Gregory of Bath, and Mr. Gregory procured me
almost all the books I am noticing in this division.
[67] The British Museum (see Preface) being inaccessible to me.
[68] Readers will doubtless remember that the too wild career of this
kind of vehicle, charioteered by wicked aristocrats, has been among the
thousand-and-three causes assigned for the French Revolution.
[69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actual
surname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory.
[70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minor
novels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone the
process, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised.
[71] That is to say, in the text: the second title of the whole book,
"_ou Les Enfants de Maître Jacques_," does in some sort give a warning,
though it is with Maître Jacques rather than with his children that the
fresh start is made.
[72] He has, though unknown and supposed to be an intruder, carried her
off from an English adorer--a sort of Lovelace-Byron, whose name is Lord
Gousberycharipay (an advance on Paul de Kock and even Parny in the
nomenclature of the English peerage), and who inserts h's before French
words!
[73] If novels do not exaggerate the unpopularity of these persons
(strictly the lay members of the S.J., but often used for the whole body
of religious orders and their lay partisans), the success of "July"
needs little further explanation.
[74] That is to say, not a bogey, but a buggy.
[75] Here is another instance. Ludovica's father and a bad
Russo-Prussian colonel have to be finished off at Waterloo. One might
suppose that Waterloo itself would suffice. But no: they must engage in
single combat, and even then not kill each other, the Russian's head
being carried off by some kind of a cannon-ball and the Frenchman's
breast pierced by half a dozen Prussian lances. This is really "good
measure."
[76] Ousting others which deserved the place better? It may be so, but
one may perhaps "find the whole" without particularising everything. Of
short books especially, from Fiévée's _Dot de Suzette_ (1798), which
charmed society in its day, to Eugénie Foa's _Petit Robinson de Paris_
(1840), which amused _me_ when I was about ten years old, there were no
end if one talked.
[77] _V. inf._ on M. Ohnet's books.
[78] Many people have probably noticed the frequency of this name--not a
very pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or other
attraction--in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. It
was certainly due to _Le Solitaire_.
[79] If any proper moral reader is disturbed at this conjunction of
_amante_ and _mère_, he will be glad to know that M. d'Arlincourt
elsewhere regularises the situation and calls Night "_l'épouse_
d'Érèbe."
[80] In the Radcliffian-literary not the Robespierrean-political sense.
For the Wertherism, _v. sup._ on Chateaubriand, p. 24 note.
[81] He was four years older than Nodier, but did not begin to write
fiction nearly so early. The _Phantasiestücke_ are of 1814, while Nodier
had been writing stories, under German influence, as early as 1803. It
is, however, also fair to say that all those now to be noticed are later
than 1814, and even than Hoffmann's later collections, the _Elixiere des
Teufels_ and _Nachtstücke_.
[82] The prudent as well as judicious poet who wrote these lines
provided a variant to suit those who, basing their position on
"Ramillies _cock_," maintain that it was a hat, not a wig, that was
named after Villeroy's defeat. For "grave--big" read "where Gallic hopes
fell flat," and for "wig" "hat" _simpliciter_, and the thing is done.
But Thackeray has "Ramillies _wig_" and Scott implies it.
[83] Nodier, who had been in Scotland and, as has been said, was a
philologist of the better class, is scrupulously exact in spelling
proper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau"
(I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) he
makes no blunder, and he actually knows all about "Argyle's Bowling
Green."
[84] If phonetics had never done anything worse than this they would not
be as loathsome to literature as they sometimes are.
[85] On the other hand, compared with its slightly elder contemporary,
_Le Solitaire_ (_v. sup._), it is a masterpiece.
[86] Two little passages towards the end are very precious. A certain
bridegroom (I abridge a little) is "perfectly healthy, perfectly
self-possessed, a great talker, a successful man of business, with some
knowledge of physics, chemistry, jurisprudence, politics, statistics,
and phrenology; enjoying all the requirements of a deputy; and for the
rest, a liberal, an anti-romantic, a philanthropist, a very good
fellow--and absolutely intolerable." This person later changes the
humble home of tragedy into a "school of mutual instruction, where the
children learn to hate and envy each other and to read and write, which
was all they needed to become detestable creatures." These words "please
the soul well."
[87] The description is worth comparing with that of Gautier's _Château
de la Misère_--the difference between all but complete ruin and mere,
though extreme, disrepair being admirably, and by the later master in
all probability designedly, worked out.
[88] _Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri._
[89] Note, too, a hint at a never filled in romance of the captain's
own.
[90] I must ask for special emphasis on "beauty." Nothing can be _finer_
or _fitter_ than the style of Steenie's ghostly experiences. And the
famous Claverhouse passage _is_ beautiful.
[91] As Rossetti saw it in "Sibylla Palmifera":
"Under the arch of Life, where Love and Death,
_Terror_ and Mystery guard her shrine,
I saw Beauty enthroned."
[92] Perhaps there are few writers mentioned in this book to whose
lovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in the
case of Nodier. "Where," I hear reproaching voices crying, "is _Jean
Sbogar_? Where is _Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires_ in novel-plural or _Le
Vampire_ in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred other
books, pieces, pages, paragraphs, passages from five to fifty words
long?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "But
you found more room for Paul de Kock?" Yes: and I have tried to show
why.