DUMAS THE YOUNGER
[Sidenote: Division of future subjects.]
No one who has not had some experience in writing literary
history knows the difficulties--or perhaps I should say the
"unsatisfactorinesses"--which attend the shepherding of examples into
separate chronological folds. But every one who has had that experience
knows that mere neglect to attempt this shepherding has serious
drawbacks. In such cases there is nothing for it but a famous phrase,
"We will do what we can." An endeavour has been made in the last chapter
to show that, about the middle of the nineteenth century, a noteworthy
change _did_ pass over French novel-literature. In a similar retrospect,
at the end of the volume and the _History_, we may be able, _si Dieu
nous prête vie_, to show that this change was not actually succeeded by
any other of equal importance as far as our own subject goes. But the
stage had, like all such things, sub-stages; and there must be
corresponding breaks, if only mechanical ones, in the narrative, to
avoid the distasteful "blockiness" resulting from their absence. After
several changes of plan I have thought it best to divide what remains of
the subject into five chapters (to which a separate Conclusion may be
added). The first of these will be allotted, for reasons to be given, to
Alexandre Dumas _fils_; the second to Gustave Flaubert, greatest by far,
if not most representative, of all dealt with in this latter part of the
volume; the third to others specially of the Second Empire, but not
specially of the Naturalist School; the fourth to that School itself;
and the fifth to those now defunct novelists of the Third Republic, up
to the close of the century, who may not have been dealt with before.
* * * * *
There should not, I think, be much doubt that we ought to begin with
Alexandre Dumas, the son, who--though he launched his most famous novel
five years before Napoleon the Third made himself come to the throne,
had been writing for about as many earlier still, and lived till long
after the Terrible Year, and almost to the end of our own tether--is yet
almost more essentially _the_ novelist of the Second Empire than any one
else, not merely because before its end he practically gave up Novel for
Drama, but for other reasons which we may hope to set forth presently.
[Sidenote: A confession.]
Before sitting down comfortably to deal with him in my critical jacket,
I have to put on, for ceremonial purposes, something of a white sheet,
and to hold a candle of repentance in my hand. I have never said very
much about the younger Dumas anywhere, and I am not conscious of any
positive injustice in what I _have_ said;[349] but I do suspect a
certain imperfection of justice. This arose, as nearly all positive and
comparative injustices do, from insufficient knowledge and study. What
it was exactly in him that "put me off" of old I could not now say; but
I think it was because I did come across some of his numerous and famous
fisticuffs of Preface and Dissertation and controversy. I thought then,
and I still think, that the artist has something better to do than to
"fight prizes": he has to do things worthy of the prize. "They say. What
say they? Let them say" should be his motto. And later, when I might
have condoned this (in the proper sense of that appallingly misused
word) in virtue of his positive achievements, he had left off
novel-writing and had taken to drama, for which, in its modern forms, I
have never cared. But I fear I must make a further confession. The
extravagant praise which was lavished on him by other critics, even
though they were, in some cases at least, [Greek: philoi andres], once
more proved a stumbling-block.[350] I have endeavoured to set matters
right here by serious study of his novel work and some reference to the
rest; so I hope that I may discard the sheet, and give the rest of the
candle to the poor, now much requiring it.
[Sidenote: His general character.]
One thing about him is clear from his first famous, though not his
first, book[351]--a book which, as has been said, actually preceded the
Second Empire, but which has been thought to cast something of a
prophetic shadow over that period of revel and rottenness--that is to
say, from _La Dame aux Camélias_--that he was even then a very clever
man.[352]
[Sidenote: _La Dame aux Camélias._]
"The Lady with the Camellias" is not now the widely known book that once
it was; and the causes of its loss of vogue might serve as a text for
some "Meditations among the Tombs," though in respect of rather
different cemeteries from those which Addison or Hervey frequented. As a
mere audacity it has long faded before the flowers, themselves "over"
now, of that Naturalism which it helped to bring about; and the once
world-popular composer who founded almost, if not quite, his most
popular opera on it, has become for many years an abomination and a
hissing to the very same kind of person who, sixty years since, would
have gone out of his way to extol _La Traviata_, and have found in _Il
Trovatore_ something worth not merely all Rossini[353] and Bellini and
Donizetti put together, but _Don Giovanni_, the _Zauberflöte_, and
_Fidelio_ thrown in; while if (as he might) he had known _Tannhäuser_
and _Lohengrin_ he would have lifted up his hoof against them. It is the
nature of the fool of all times to overblame what the fools of other
times have overpraised. But the fact that these changes have happened,
and that other accidents of time have edulcorated that general ferocity
which made even men of worth in England refuse to lament the death of
the Prince Imperial in our service, should on the whole be rather
favourable to a quiet consideration of this remarkable book. Indeed, I
daresay some, if not many, of the "warm young men" to whom the very word
"tune" is anathema might read the words, "Veux-tu que nous quittions
Paris?" without having their pure and tender minds and ears sullied and
lacerated by the remembrance of "Parigi, O cara, noi lasceremo"--simply
because they never heard it.
A very remarkable book it is. Camellias have gone out of fashion, which
is a great pity, for a more beautiful flower in itself does not exist:
and those who have seen, in the Channel Islands, a camellia tree, as big
as a good-sized summer-house, clothed with snow, and the red blossoms
and green leaf-pairs unconcernedly slashing the white garment, have seen
one of the prettiest sights in the world. But I should not dream of
transferring the epithets "beautiful" or even "pretty" from the flower
to the book. It _is_ remarkable, and it is clever in no derogatory
sense. For it has pathos without mere sentiment, and truth, throwing a
light on humanity, which is not wholly or even mainly like that of
The blackguard boy
That runs his link full in your face.
The story of it is, briefly, as follows. Marguerite Gautier, its
heroine, is one of the most beautiful and popular _demi-mondaines_ of
Paris, also a _poitrinaire_,[354] and as this, if not as the other, the
pet and protégée, in a _quasi_-honourable fashion, of an old duke, whose
daughter, closely resembling Marguerite, has actually died of
consumption. But she does not give up her profession; and the duke in a
manner, though not willingly, winks at it. One evening at the theatre a
young man, Armand Duval, who, though by no means innocent, is shy and
_gauche_, is introduced to her, and she laughs at him. But he falls
frantically in love with her, and after some interval meets her again.
The passion becomes mutual, and for some time she gives herself up
wholly to him. But the duke cannot stand this open _affiche_, and
withdraws his allowances. Duval is on the point of ruining himself (he
is a man of small means, partly derived from his father) for her, while
she intends to sell all she has, pay her debts, and, as we may say,
plunge into mutual ruin with him. Then appears the father, who at last
makes a direct and effective appeal to her. She returns to business,
enraging her lover, who departs abroad. Before he comes back, her
health, and with it her professional capacity, breaks down, and she dies
in agony, leaving pathetic explanations of what has driven him away from
her. A few points in this bare summary may be enlarged on presently.
Even from it a certain resemblance, partly of a topsy-turvy kind, may be
perceived by a reader of not less than ordinary acuteness to _Manon
Lescaut_. The suggestion, such as it is, is quite frankly admitted, and
an actual copy of Prévost's masterpiece figures not unimportantly in the
tale.[355] Of the difference between the two, again presently.
The later editions of _La Dame aux Camélias_ open with an "Introduction"
by Jules Janin, dealing with a certain Marie Duplessis--the recently
living original, as we are told, of Marguerite Gautier. A good deal has
been said, not by any means always approvingly, of this system of
"introductions," especially to novels. In the present instance I should
say that the proceeding was dangerous but effective--perhaps not
entirely in the way in which it was intended to be so. "Honest
Janin,"[356] as Thackeray (who had deservedly rapped his knuckles
earlier for a certain mixture of ignorance and impudence) called him
later, was in his degree almost as "clever" a man as young Dumas; but
his kind was different, and it did involve the derogatory connotation of
cleverness. It is enough to say of the present subject that it displays,
in almost the highest strength, the insincerity and superficiality of
matter and thought which accompanied Janin's bright and almost brilliant
facility of expression and style. His Marie Duplessis is one of those
remarkable young persons who, to alter Dr. Johnson very slightly, unite
"the manners of a _duchess_ with the morals of" the other object of the
doctor's comparison unaltered; superadding to both the amiability of an
angel, the beauty of Helen, and the taste in art of all the great
collectors rolled into one. The thing is pleasantly written bosh; and,
except to those readers who are concerned to know that they are going to
read about "a real person," can be no commendation, and might even cause
a little disgust, not at all from the moral but from the purely critical
side.
A lover of paradox might almost suggest that "honest Janin" had been
playing the ingenious but dangerous finesse of intentionally setting up
a foil to his text. He has certainly, to some tastes, done this. There
is hardly any false prettiness, any sham Dresden china (a thing, by the
way, that has become almost a proverbial phrase in French for
_demi-monde_ splendour), about _La Dame aux Camélias_ itself. Nor, on
the other hand, is there to be found in it--even in such anticipated
"naturalisms" as the exhumation of Marguerite's _two_-months'-old
corpse,[357] and one or two other somewhat more veiled but equally or
more audacious touches of realism--anything resembling the exaggerated
horrors of such efforts of 1830 itself as Janin's own _Âne Mort_ and
part of Borel's _Champavert_. In her splendour as in her misery, in her
frivolity as in her devotion and self-sacrifice, repulsive as this
contrast may conventionally be, Marguerite is never impossible or
unnatural. Her chief companion of her own sex, Prudence Duvernoy,
though, as might be expected, a good deal of a _proxénète_, and by no
means disinterested in other ways, is also very well drawn, and assists
the general effect more than may at first be seen.
The "problem" of the book, at least to English readers, lies in the
person whom it is impossible to call the hero--Armand Duval. It would be
very sanguine to say that he is unnatural; but the things that he does
are rather appalling. That he listens at doors, opens letters not
addressed to him, and so on, is sufficiently fatal; but a very generous
extension of lovers' privileges may perhaps just be stretched over these
things.[358] No such licence will run to other actions of his. In his
early days of chequered possession he writes, anonymously, an insulting
letter to his mistress, which she forgives; but he has at least the
grace to repent of this almost immediately. His conduct, however, when
he returns to Paris, after staying in the country with his family, and
finds that she has returned to her old ways, is the real crime. A
violent scene might, again, be excusable, for he does not know what his
father has done. But for weeks this young gentleman of France devotes
all his ingenuity and energies to tormenting and insulting the object of
his former adoration. He ostentatiously "keeps" a beautiful but
worthless friend of hers in her own class, and takes every opportunity
of flaunting the connection in Marguerite's face. He permits himself and
this creature to insult her in every way, apparently descending once
more to anonymous letters. And when her inexhaustible forgiveness has
induced a temporary but passionate reconciliation, he takes fresh
umbrage, and sends money to her for her complaisance with another letter
of more abominable insult than ever. Now it is bad to insult any one of
whom you have been fond; worse to insult any woman; but to insult a
prostitute, faugh![359]
However, I may be reading too much English taste into French ways
here,[360] and it is impossible to deny that a man, whether French or
English, _might_ behave in this ineffable manner. In other words, the
irresistible _humanum est_ clears this as it clears Marguerite's own
good behaviour, so conventionally inconsistent with her bad. The book,
of course, cannot possibly be put on a level with its pattern and
inspiration, _Manon Lescaut_: it is on a much lower level of literature,
life, thought, passion--everything. But it has literature; it has life
and thought and passion; and so it shall have no black mark here.
[Sidenote: _Tristan le Roux._]
Few things could be more different from each other than _Tristan le
Roux_--another early book of Dumas _fils_--is from _La Dame aux
Camélias_. Indeed it is a good, if not an absolutely certain, sign that
so young a man should have tried styles in novel-writing so far apart
from each other. _Tristan_ is a fifteenth-century story of the later
part of the Hundred Years' War, and of Gilles de Retz, and of Joan of
Arc, and of _diablerie_, and so forth. I first heard approval of it from
a person whose name may be unexpected by some readers--the late
Professor Robertson Smith. But the sometime editor of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ was exceptionally well qualified for the literary side of
his office, and could talk about French quite as knowledgeably as he
could about Arabic and Hebrew.[361] He was rather enthusiastic about the
book, an enthusiasm which, when I myself came to read it, for a
considerable time puzzled me a little. It opens pretty well, but already
with a good deal of the "possible-improbable" about it; for when some
twenty wolves have once pulled a horse down and a man off it, his chance
of escaping (especially without revolvers) seems small, even though two
rescuers come up, one of whom has a knack of shooting these
creatures[362] and the other of throttling them. It is on these rescuers
that the central interest of the story turns. Olivier de Karnak and
Tristan le Roux are, though they do not at the time know it, brothers by
the same mother, the guiltless Countess of Karnak having been drugged,
violated, and made a mother by Gilles de Retz's father. They are also
rivals for the love of their cousin Alix, and as she prefers Olivier,
this sends Tristan literally "to the Devil." The compact is effected by
means of a Breton sorceress, who has been concerned in the earlier
crime, and is an accomplice of Gilles himself. That eminent patriot
performs,[363] for Tristan's benefit or ruin, one of his black masses,
with a murdered child's blood for wine. Further _diablerie_ opens a
great tomb near Poitiers, where, seven hundred years earlier, in Charles
Martel's victory, an ancestor of the Karnaks has been buried alive,
with the Saracen Emir he had just slain, by the latter's followers; and
where the two have beguiled the time by continuous ghostly fighting. The
Saracen, when the tomb is opened, evades, seen by no one but Tristan,
and becomes the apostate's by no means guardian devil. Then we have the
introduction of the Maid (whom Tristan is specially set by his master to
catch), the siege of Orleans and the rest of it, to the tragedy of
Rouen.
Up to this point--that is to say, for some seven-eighths of the book--I
confess that I did not, and do not, think much of it. I am very fond of
fighting in novels; and of _diablerie_ even "more than reason"; and of
the Middle Ages; and of many other things connected with the work. But
it does not seem to me well managed or well told. One never can make out
whether the "Sarrazin" is, as he is actually sometimes called, Satan
himself, or not. If he is not, why call him so? If he is, why was there
so little evidence of his being constantly employed in fighting with M.
de Karnak between the Battle of Poitiers (not ours, but the other) and
the Siege of Orleans? I love my Dark and Middle Ages; but I should say
that there was considerable diabolic activity in them, outside tombs. Or
was the Princedom of the Air "in commission" all that time? Minor
improbabilities constantly jar, and there are numerous small blunders of
fact[364] of the unintentional kind, which irritate more than
intentional ones of some importance.
But at the end the book improves quite astonishingly. Tristan, as has
been said, has been specially commissioned by the fiend to effect the
ruin of Joan. He has induced his half-brother, Gilles de Retz--not,
indeed, to take the English side, for patriotism, as is well known, was
the one redeeming point of that extremely loathsome person, but--to join
the seigneurs who were malcontent with her, and if possible drug her and
violate her, a process, as we have seen, quite congenial, hereditarily
as well as otherwise, to M. de Laval. He is foiled, of course, and
pardoned. But Tristan himself openly takes the English side, inflicts
great damage on his countrymen, and after our defeat at the bastilles or
bastides round Orleans, resumes his machinations against Joan, helps to
effect her capture, and does his utmost to torment and insult her, and
if possible resume Gilles's attempt, in her imprisonment; while, on the
contrary, his brother Olivier (they are both disguised as monks) works
on her side, nearly saves her,[365] and attends her on the scaffold. It
is somewhat earlier than this that the author, as has been said, "wakes
up" and wakes _us_ up. When Tristan, admitted to Joan's cell, designs
the same outrage to which he had counselled his brother, it is the
Maid's assumption of her armour to protect herself from him that (in
this point for once historically) seals her fate. But at the very last
his hatred is changed, _not_ at all impossibly or improbably, to violent
love as she smiles on him from the fire; and he sees the legendary dove
mount to heaven, after he himself has flung to her, at her dying cry, an
improvised crucifix, or at least cross. And then a choice miracle
happens, told with almost all the vigour of the "Vin de Porto" itself.
Tristan seeks absolution, but is, though not harshly, refused, before
penitence and penance. He begs his brother Olivier's pardon, and is
again refused--this time with vituperation--but bears it calmly. He
takes, meekly, more insult from the very executioner. At last he makes
the sign of the compact and summons the "Saracen" fiend. And then, after
a very good conversation, in which the Devil uses all his powers of
sarcasm to show his victim that, as usual, he has sold his soul for
naught, Tristan draws his sword, calls on the Trinity, Our Lady, and
Joan, and one of the strangest though not of the worst fights in fiction
begins.
The Red Bastard is himself almost a giant; but the Saracen is a fiend,
and though it seems that in this case the Devil _can_ be dead, he can,
it seems also, only be killed at Poitiers in his original tomb. So
They wrestle up, they wrestle down,
They wrestle still and sore,
for two whole years, the Demon constantly giving ground and misleading
his enemy as much as he can. But Tristan, in the strength of repentance
and with Joan's unseen help, lives, fights, and forces the fiend back
over half France and half the world. By a good touch, after long combat,
the Devil tries to tempt his adversary on the side of chivalry, asking
to be allowed to drink at a stream on a burning day, to warm himself at
a fire they pass in a snow-storm, to rest a moment. But Tristan has the
single word "Non!" for any further pact with or concession to the Evil
One; the two years' battle wears away his sin; and at last he finds
himself pressing his fainting foe towards the very tomb in the fields of
Poitou. It opens, and the combatants entering, find themselves by the
actual graves. They drop their swords and now literally wrestle. Tristan
wins, throws the Saracen into his own tomb, and runs him through the
body, once more inflicting on him such death as he may undergo.[366]
There is a grandiose extravagance about it which is really
Oriental;[367] and perhaps it was this which conciliated Robertson
Smith, as it certainly reconciled me.
[Sidenote: _Antonine._]
A third "book of the beginning," _Antonine_, is far inferior to these.
It is, in fact, little more than a decentish Paul-de-Kockery, with a
would-be philosophical conclusion. Two young men, Gustave Daunont and
Edmond de Péreux, saunter after breakfast looking for young ladies'
ankles, and Edmond sees a pair so beautiful that he follows the
possessor and her unobservant father home. Having then ascertained that
the father is a doctor, he adopts the surprisingly brilliant expedient
of going to consult him, and so engineering an entry. _He_ thinks there
is nothing the matter with him; but the doctor (it was apparently "at
temp. of tale"--1834, while the port was getting ready,--the practice of
French physicians, to receive their patients in dressing-gowns)
discovers that he is in an advanced stage of Dumas _fils'_ favourite
_poitrine_. He says, however, nothing about it (which seems odd) to his
patient, merely prescribing roast-meat and Bordeaux; but (which seems
odder) he _does_ mention it to his daughter Antonine, the Lady with the
Ankles. For the moment nothing happens. But Gustave the friend has for
mistress an adorable _grisette_--amiability, in the widest sense, _nez
retroussé_, garret, and millinery all complete--whom Madame de Péreux,
Edmond's mother--a _sainte_, but without prejudices--tolerates, and in
fact patronises. It is arranged that Nichette shall call on Antonine to
ask, as a milliner, for her custom. Quite unexpected explanations follow
in a not uningenious manner, and the explosion is completed by Edmond's
opening (not at all treacherously) a letter addressed to Gustave and
containing the news of his own danger. The rest of the story need not be
told at length. A miraculous cure effected by M. Devaux, Antonine's
father; marriage of the pair; pensioning off of Nichette, and marriage
of Gustave to another adorable girl (ankles not here specified);
establishment of Nichette at Tours in partnership with a respectable
friend, etc., etc., can easily be supplied by any novel-reader.
But here the young author's nascent seriousness, and his still existing
Buskbody superstition, combine to spoil the book, not merely, as in the
_Tristan_ case, to top-hamper it. Having given us eight pages of rather
cheap sermonising about the poetry of youth not lasting; having
requested us to imagine Manon and Des Grieux "decrepit and catarrhous,"
Paul and Virginie shrivelled and toothless, Werther and Charlotte united
but wrinkled,[368] he proceeds to tell us how, though Gustave and his
Laurence are as happy as they can be, though Nichette has forgotten her
woes but kept her income and is married to a book-seller, things are not
well with the other pair. Antonine loves her husband frantically, but he
has become quite indifferent to her--says, indeed, that he really does
not know whether he ever _did_ love her. Later still we take leave of
him, his "poetry" having ended in a prefecture, and his passion in a
_liaison_, commonplace to the _n_th, with a provincial lawyer's wife.
_La moralité de cette comédie_ (to quote, probably not for the first
time, or I hope the last, words of Musset which I particularly like)
would appear to be--first, that to secure lasting happiness in matrimony
it is desirable, if not necessary, to have lived for eighteen months
antenuptially with a charming _grisette_--amiability, _nez retroussé_,
garret, and millinery all complete--_or_ to have yourself been this
grisette; while, on the other hand, it is an extremely dangerous thing
to recover a man of his consumption. Which last result the folklorists
would doubtless assimilate to the well-known superstition of the shore
as to the rescue of the drowning.
[Sidenote: _La Vie à Vingt Ans._]
Two other early books of this author promise the Pauline influence in
their titles and do not belie it in their contents, though in varying
way and degree. Indeed, the first story of _La Vie à Vingt Ans_--that of
a schoolboy who breaks his bounds and "sells his dictionaries" to go to
the Bal de l'Opéra; receives, half in joy, half in terror, an
assignation from a masked _débardeur_, and discovers her to be an aged
married woman with a drunken husband (the pair knowing from his card
that his uncle is a Deputy, and having determined to get a _débit de
tabac_ out of him)--made me laugh as heartily as the great Paul himself
can ever have made Major Pendennis. The rest--they are all stories of
the various amatory experiences of a certain Emmanuel de Trois Étoiles,
and have a virtuous epilogue extolling pure affection and honest
matrimony--are inferior, the least so being that of the caprice-love of
a certain Augustine, Emmanuel's neighbour on his staircase, who admits
only one other lover and finally marries _him_, but conceives a frantic
though passing affection for her _voisin_. Unluckily there is in this
book a sort of duplicate but, I think, earlier sketch of the atrocious
conduct of Duval to the Dame aux Camélias; and there are some of the
author's curious "holes where you can put your hand" (as a Jacobean poet
says of the prosodic licences in nomenclature and construction of his
fellows).
[Sidenote: _Aventures de Quatre Femmes._]
The other, much longer, and much more ambitious and elaborate book,
_Aventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un Perroquet_, seems to me on the whole
worse than any just mentioned, though it at least attempts to fly higher
than _Antonine_. It begins by one of those _goguenardises_ which 1830
itself had loved, but it is not a good specimen. Two men who have
determined on suicide--one by shooting, one by hanging--meet at the same
tree in the Bois de Boulogne and wrangle about possession of the spot,
till the aspirant to suspension _per coll._ recounts his history from
the branch on which he is perched. After which an unlucky thirdsman,
interfering, gets shot, and buried _as_ one of the others--"which is
witty, let us 'ope," as the poetical historian of the quarrel between
Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Buchanan observes of something else.[369] As the
book begins with two attempted and disappointed suicides, so it ends
with two accomplished ones. A great part, and not the least readable, is
occupied by a certain English Countess of Lindsay (for Dumas the
younger, like Crébillon the younger, commits these _scandala magnatum_
with actual titles). The hero is rather a fool, and not much less of a
knave than he should be. His somewhat better wife is an innocent
bigamist, thinking him dead; and one of the end-suicides is that of her
second husband, who, finding himself _de trop_, benevolently makes way.
As for the parrot, he nearly spoils the story at the beginning by
"_singing_" (which I never heard a parrot do), and atones at the end by
getting poisoned without deserving it. I am afraid I must call it a
rather silly book.
It does not, however, lack the cleverness with which silliness,
especially in the young _and_ the old, is often associated, and so does
not break the assignment of that quality to its author. All these five
books were produced (with others) in a very few years, by a man who was
scarcely over twenty when he began and was not thirty when he wrote the
last of them. Now people sometimes write wonderful poetry when they are
very young, because, after all, a poet is not much more than a
mouthpiece of the Divine, whose spirit bloweth where it listeth. But it
is not often that they write thoroughly good novels till, like other
personages who have to wait for their "overseership" up to thirty, they
have had time and opportunity roughly to scan and sample life. There is,
in this work of Alexander the younger, plenty of imitation, of
convention, of that would-be knowingness which is the most amusing form
of ignorance, etc., etc. But there is a good deal more: and especially
there is plenty of the famous _diable au corps_, of _verve_, of "go," of
refusal to be content with one rut and one model. And all this came
once, even at this period, in _La Dame aux Camélias_, to something which
I shall not call a masterpiece, but which certainly is a powerful thesis
for the attainment of the master's degree.
[Sidenote: _Trois Hommes Forts._]
Perhaps there is no better example of the curious mixture of _verve_,
variety, and vigorous hitting-off which characterised the youth of Dumas
_fils_ than _Trois Hommes Forts_--a book of the exact middle of the
century, which begins with an idyll, passing into a tragedy; continues
with a lively ship-and-yellow-fever scene; plunges into a villainous
conspiracy against virtue and innocence diversified with a
bull-throwing; and winds up with another killing, which, this time, _is_
no murder; a trial, after which and an acquittal the accused and the
Crown Prosecutor embrace before (and amidst the chalorous applause of)
the whole Court; not forgetting a final _panache_ of happy
marriage between innocence, a very little damaged, and the
bull-thrower-avenger-_ouvrier_, Robert. It is of course pure
melodrama--_Minnigrey_ and the Porte-Saint-Martin pleasantly
accommodated. But it is not too long; it never drags; and it knocks
about in the cheerfullest "pit-box-and-gallery" fashion from first to
last. When the wicked "Joseph le Mendiant," _alias_ M. Valéry, _alias_
Frédéric Comte de La Marche[370]--who has stabbed a priest with one hand
and throttled an old woman with the other; then made a fortune in
Madagascar; then nearly died of yellow-fever on board ship, but
recovered (something after the fashion of one of Marryat's heroes) by
drinking a bottle of Madeira; then gone home and bought an estate and
given himself the above title; then seduced the innocent sister of the
person who heard his confession; then tried to marry a high-born
maiden;[371] then threatened to betray the sister's shame if her
brother "tells"--when this villain has his skull broken by Robert, all
right-minded persons will clap their hands sore. But remembrance of one
passage at the beginning may "leave a savour of sorrow." Could you, even
in Meridional France, to-day procure a breakfast consisting of truffled
pigs' feet, truffled thrush, tomato omelette (I should bar the
tomatoes), and strawberries in summer, or "quatre-mendiants" (figs,
nuts, and almonds and raisins) in winter, _with_ a bottle of sound
Roussillon or something like it, for three francs? Alas! one fears not.
[Sidenote: _Diane de Lys._]
_Diane de Lys_, a little later than most of the books just mentioned,
and one, I think, of the first to be dramatised, so announcing the
author's change of "kind," acquired a certain fame by being made (in
which form I am not certain, but probably as a play) the subject of one
of those odd "condemnations" by which the Second Empire occasionally
endeavoured to show itself the defender of morality and the prop of
family and social life. I do not think that Flaubert and Baudelaire had
much reason to pride themselves on their predecessor in this particular
pillory. Alexander the younger is not here even a coppersmith; his metal
is, to me, not attractive at all. The Marquise de Lys is one of those
beauties, half Greek, half Madonnish, and wholly regular-scholastic, to
whom it has been the habit of modern novelists and poets to assign what
our Elizabethan ancestors would have called "cold hearts and hot
livers." Dumas _fils'_ theory--for he must, Heaven help him! always have
one[372]--is that it all depends on ennui. I know not. At any rate,
Diane is not a heroine that I should recommend, for personal
acquaintance, to myself or my friends. With one of those rather silly
excuses which chequer his cleverness equally, whether they are made
honestly or with tongue in cheek, our author says: "On va sans doute
nous dire que nous présentons un caractère impossible, que nous faisons
de l'immoralité" (which the compositors of the stereotyped edition
pleasantly misprint "immor_t_alité"), etc. Far be it from me to say that
any woman is impossible. I would only observe that when Diane, neglected
by and neglecting her husband for some two years, determines to take a
lover, being vexed at the idea of reaching the age of thirty without
having one; when she takes him without any particular preference, as one
might call a cab from a longish rank, and then has a fancy to make a
scientific comparison of forgotten joys with her husband, deciding
finally that there is nothing like alternation--when, I say, she does
this, I think she is not quite nice.[373] Nor does her school-friend
Marceline Delaunay--who, being herself a married woman irreproachably
faithful to her own husband, makes herself a go-between, at least of
letters, for Diane--seem very nice either. It is fair to say that Mme.
Delaunay gets punished in the latter part of the story, which any one
may read who likes. It is, if not white, a sort of--what shall we
say?--French grey, compared with the opening.
[Sidenote: Shorter stories--_Une Loge à Camille_.]
That standard edition of _Diane de Lys_ which has enabled us to pick up
such a pleasant _coquille d'imprimerie_ contains three shorter stories
(_Diane_ itself is not very long). Two or them are not worth much: _Ce
qu'on ne sait pas_ is a pathetic _grisetterie_, something of the class
of Musset's _Frédéric et Bernerette_; _Grangette_ deals with the very
true but very common admonition that in being "on with" two loves at
once there is always danger, particularly when, as M. le Baron Francis
de Maucroix does here, you write them letters (to save time) in exactly
the same phraseology. Neither love, Adeline the countess or the
Gris-Grang-ette, is disagreeable; indeed Francis himself is a not
detestable idiot, and there is a comfortable conversation as he sits at
Adeline's feet in proper morning-call costume, with his hat and stick
on a chair. (Even kneeling would surely be less dangerous, from the
point of view of recovering a more usual attitude when another caller
comes.) But the whole thing is slight. The third and last, however, _Une
Loge à Camille_, is the only thing in the whole volume that is
thoroughly recommendable. It begins with an obviously "felt" and "lived"
complaint of the woes which dramatic authors perhaps most of all, but
others more or less, experience from that extraordinary
inconsecutiveness (to put it mildly) of their acquaintances which makes
people--who, to do them justice, would hardly ask for five, ten, or
fifty shillings except as a loan, with at least pretence of
repayment--demand almost, or quite, as a right, a box at the theatre or
a copy of a book. This finished, an example is given in which the
hapless playwright, having rashly obliged a friend, becomes (very much
in the same way in which Mr. Nicodemus Easy killed several persons on
the coast of Sicily) responsible for the breach, not merely of a
left-handed yet comparatively harmless _liaison_, but of a formal
marriage, the knitting of a costly and disreputable amour, a duel, an
imprisonment for debt, and--for himself--the abiding reputation of
having corrupted, half ruined, and driven into enlistment for Africa a
guileless scientific student. It is good and clean fun throughout.[374]
[Sidenote: _Le Docteur Servans._]
[Sidenote: _Le Roman d'une Femme_.]
Some others must have shorter shrift. One volume of the standard edition
contains two stories, _Le Docteur Servans_ and _Un Cas de Rupture_. The
latter is short and not very happy, beginning with a rather feeble
following of Xavier de Maistre,[375] continuing with stock
_liaison_-matter, and ending rather vulgarly. Let us, however, give
thanks to Alexander the younger in that he nobly defends the sacred
persons of our English ladies against the venerable Gallic calumny of
large feet, though he unhappily shows imperfect knowledge of the idioms
of our language by using "Lady" as if it were like "Milady": "Reprit
Lady," "Lady vit," etc. _Le Docteur Servans_ is more substantial, though
itself not very long. It is a rather well-engineered story (illustrative
of a fact to be noticed presently in regard to much of its author's
work) about a benevolent doctor who, at first as a method of kindness
and then as a method of testing character, "makes believe," and makes
others believe, that he has the secret of Resurrection.[376] On the
other hand, I have only read _Le Roman d'une Femme_ in the beloved
little old Belgian edition which gave one one's first knowledge of so
many pleasant things, and the light-weighting and large print of which
are specially suitable to fiction. Putting one thing aside, it is not
one of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal of
that rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young persons
which, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe"
will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long--as duly happens here.
There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing the
departure of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecot
with that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. And I must admit
that, after a middle of commonplace grime, the author works up an end of
complicated and by no means unreal tragedy.
[Sidenote: The habit of quickening up at the end.]
The point referred to about the two principal books just noticed, and
indeed about Alexander the Younger's books generally, is the remarkable
faculty--and not merely faculty but actual habit--which he displays, of
turning an uninteresting beginning into an interesting end. I cannot
remember any other novelist, in any of the literatures with which I am
acquainted, who possesses, or at least uses, this odd gift to anything
like the same degree. On the contrary, some of the greatest--far greater
than he is--give results exactly contrary. Lady Louisa Stuart's reproach
to Scott for "huddling up" his conclusions is well known and by no means
ill-justified, while Sir Walter is far from being a solitary sinner. I
must leave it to those who have given more study than I have to drama,
especially modern drama, to decide whether this had anything to do with
the fact that Dumas turned to the other kind. The main fact itself
admits, as far as my experience and opinion go, of absolutely no
dispute. Again and again, not merely in _Le Docteur Servans_ and _Le
Roman d'une Femme_, but in _La Dame aux Camélias_ itself, in _Tristan le
Roux_, in _Les Aventures de Quatre Femmes_, and in others still, I have
been, at first reading, on the point of dropping the book. But, owing to
the mere "triarian" habit of never giving up an appointed post, I have
been able to turn my defeat (and his, as it seemed to me) into a
victory, which no doubt I owe to him, but which has something of my own
in it too. His heroes very frequently disgust and his heroines do not
often delight me; I have "seen many others" than his baits of
voluptuousness; he does not amuse me like Crébillon; nor thrill me like
Prévost in the unique moment; nor interest me like his closest
successor, Feuillet. I cannot place his work, despite the excellence of
his mere writing, high as great literature. He is altogether on a lower
level than Flaubert or Maupassant; and one could not think of evening
him with Hugo in one way, with Balzac in another, with his own father in
a third, with Gautier or Mérimée in a fourth. But he does, somehow or
other, manage that, in the evening time, there shall be such light as he
can give; and I am bound to acknowledge this as a triumph of craft, if
not of actual art. That while a gift and a remarkable one, it is rather
a dangerous gift for a novelist to rely on, needs little argument.
[Sidenote: _Contes et Nouvelles._]
The formally titled _Contes et Nouvelles_ do not contain very much of
the first interest. In the opening one there is a lady who, not perhaps
in the context quite tastefully, remarks that "Nous avons toutes notre
calvaire," her own Golgotha consisting of the duty of adjusting "the
extremist devotion" to her husband with "remembrance" (there was a good
deal to remember) of her lover "to her last heart-beat." To help her to
perform this self-immolation, she bids the lover leave her, refuses him,
and that repeatedly, permission to return, till, believing himself
utterly cast off, he makes up his mind to love a very nice girl whom his
parents want him to marry. _Then_ the self-Calvarised lady promptly
discovers that she wants him again; and as he, acknowledging her claim,
does not disguise his actual state of feeling, she, though going off in
a huff, tells him that she had never meant him either to leave her at
first or to accept her command not to return. All this, no doubt, is not
unfeminine in the abstract; but the concrete telling of it required more
interesting personages. _Le Prix de Pigeons_ is a good-humoured
absurdity about an English scientific society, which offers a prize of
£2000 to anybody who can eat a pigeon every day for a month; _Le Pendu
de la Piroche_, a fifteenth-century anecdote, which may be a sort of
_brouillon_ for _Tristan_; _Césarine_, a fortune-telling tale. But _La
Boîte d'Argent_, the story of a man who got rid of his heart and found
himself none the better for getting it back again (the circumstances in
each case being quite different from those of _Das kalte Herz_), and _Ce
que l'on voit tous les jours_, a sketch of "scenes" between keeper and
mistress, but of much wider application, go far above the rest of the
book. The first (which is of considerable length and very cleverly
managed in the change from ordinary to extraordinary) only wants "that"
to be first-rate. The second shows in the novelist the command of
dialogue-situation and of dialogue itself which was afterwards to stand
the playwright in such good stead.
[Sidenote: _Ilka._]
Some forty years afterwards--indeed I think posthumously--another
collection appeared, with, for main title, that of its first story,
_Ilka_. Subject to the caution, several times already given, of the
inadequacy of a foreigner's judgment, I should say that it shows a great
improvement in mere style, but somewhat of a falling off in originality
and _verve_. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is an anecdote of the
author's youth, when, having in the midst of a revolution extracted the
mighty sum of two hundred francs in one bank-note from a publisher for a
bad novel (he does not tell us which), he gives it to a porter to
change, and the messenger being delayed, entertains the direst
suspicions (which turn out to be quite unjust) of the poor fellow's
honesty. The sketch of mood is capitally done, and is set off by a most
pleasant introduction of Dumas _père_. More ambitious but less
successful, except as mere descriptive _ecphrases_,[378] are the
title-story of a beautiful model posing, and _Le Songe d'une Nuit
d'Été_, with a companion picture of two lovers bathing at night; _Pile
ou Face_ (a girl who is so divided between two lovers that a friend
advises her to toss up, with the pessimist-satiric addition that no
doubt, between tossing and marriage, she will be sorry she did not take
the other, but afterwards will forget all about him) is slighter; and
_Au Docteur J. P._ looks like a kind of study for a longer novel or at
least a more elaborate novel-hero.[379]
[Sidenote: _Affaire Clémenceau._]
And so, at last, we may come to the book which curiously carries out,
with a slight deflection, but an almost equivalent intensification, of
meaning, what has been observed before of others--the singular habit
which Dumas _fils_ has of quickening up for the run-in. This book was,
I believe, in all important respects actually his run-in for the
novel-prize; and what he had hitherto shown in the conduct of individual
books he now showed in regard to his whole novel-list, betaking himself
thenceforward, though he had nearly a third of a century to live, to the
theatre, to pamphlets, etc. Against _Affaire Clémenceau_[380] there are
some things to be said, and in criticism, not necessarily hostile, a
great many about it. But nobody who knows strength when he sees it can
deny that this is a strong book from start to finish. I can very well
remember the hubbub it caused when it first appeared, and the debates
about "Tue-la!" but I did not then read it, having, as I have confessed,
a sort of prejudice--not then or at any time common with me--against the
author--a prejudice strengthened rather than weakened by reviews of the
book. What did I care (I am bound to say that I might add, "What _do_ I
care?") about discussions whether if somebody breaks the Seventh
Commandment to your discomfort you may break the Sixth to theirs? Did I
want diatribes on the non-moral character of women, or anything of that
sort? I wanted an interesting story; an attractive (no matter in what
fashion) heroine; a hero who is a gentleman, if possible, a man anyhow;
and I did not think I should find them here. _Now_, I can "dichotomise"
to some extent; and I can get an interesting story, striking moments, if
not exactly an attractive heroine or hero, at any rate such as take
their part in the interest, though I may have crows to pluck with them.
It is, once more, a strong book: it is nearly--though I do not think
quite--a great book. And to all sportsmanlike lovers of letters it is,
despite its discomfortable matter, a comfortable book, because it shows
us a considerable man of letters who has never yet, save perhaps in _La
Dame aux Camélias_, quite "come off," coming off beyond all fair doubt
or reasonable question.
[Sidenote: Story of it.]
Probably a good many people know the story of it, but certainly some do
not. It can be told pretty shortly. Pierre Clémenceau, the _fils
naturel_ (for this _vulnus_ is _eternum_) of a linen-draperess, is made,
partly on account of his birth, unhappy at school, being especially
tormented by an American-Italian boy, André Minati, whom, however, he
thrashes, and who dies--but not of the thrashing. The father of another
and _not_ hostile school-fellow, Constantin Ritz, is a sculptor, and
accident helps him to discover the same vocation in young Clémenceau,
who is taken into his protector's household as well as his studio, and
makes great progress in his art--the one thing he cares for. He goes,
however, a very little into society, and one evening meets a remarkable
Russian-Polish Countess, whose train (for it is a kind of fancy ball) is
borne by her thirteen-year-old daughter Iza, dressed as a page. The girl
is extraordinarily beautiful, and Clémenceau, whose heart is practically
virgin, falls in love with her, child as she is; improving the
acquaintance by making a drawing of her when asleep, as well as later a
bust from actual sittings, _gratis_. After a time, however, the
Countess, who has some actual and more sham "claims" in Poland and
Russia, returns thither. Years pass, during which, however, Pierre hears
now and then from Iza in a mixed strain of love and friendship, till at
last he is stung doubly, by news that she is to marry a young Russian
noble named Serge, and by a commission for the trousseau to be supplied
by his mother,[381] who has retired from business. The correspondence
changes to sharp reproach on his part and apparently surprised
resentment on hers. But before long she appears in person (the Serge
marriage having fallen through), and, to speak vernacularly, throws
herself straight at Pierre's head, even offering to be his mistress if
she cannot be his wife.[382] They are married, however, and spend not
merely a honeymoon, but nearly a honey-year in what is, in _Hereward the
Wake_, graciously called "sweet madness," the madness, however, being
purely physical, though so far genuine, on her side, spiritual as well
as physical on his. The central scene of the book (very well done) gives
a picture of Iza insisting on bathing in a stream running through the
park (private, but practically open to the public) of the house lent to
them. When her husband has brought her warm milk in a chased-silver cup
of their host's, she casts it, empty, on the ground, and on the
husband's exclamation, "Take care!" replies coolly, "What does it
matter? It isn't _mine_."
This may be said to be the third warning-bell; but though it shocks even
the "ensorceressed" Pierre for the moment, his infatuation continues. At
last he begins to have an idea that people look askance at him; trains
of suspicion are laid; after one or two clever evasions of Iza's, the
usual "epistolary communication" forces the matter, and Constantin Ritz
at last tells the unhappy husband that not merely has "Serge"
reappeared, but there are nearly half-a-dozen "others," and that doubts
have even been suggested as to connivance on Pierre's part--doubts
strengthened by Iza's treacherous complaints as to her husband having
employed her as a model. A violent scene follows, Iza brazening it out,
and calmly demanding separation. Clémenceau goes to Rome after forcing a
duel on Serge and wounding him; but the blow has weakened, if not
destroyed, his powers in art. Fresh scandals follow, and the
irresistible Iza seduces Constantin himself, characteristically
communicating the fact in an anonymous letter to her miserable husband.
He returns (for the second time), takes no vengeance on his friend, but
sees his wife. The interview provides an audaciously devised but finely
executed curtain. She calmly proposes--how shall we say it?--to "put
herself in commission." She loves nobody but him, she says, and knows he
has loved, loves, and will love nobody but her. He ought, originally,
to have taken her offer of being his mistress, and then no harm would
have happened. She would really like to go back with him to Saint-Assise
(the honeymoon place). Suppose they do? As for _living_ with him and
being "faithful" to him--that is impossible. But she will come to him,
at his whistle, whenever he likes, and be absolutely his for a day and a
night and a morrow. In fact he may begin at once if he likes: and she
puts her arms round his neck and her mouth to his. He takes her at her
word; but when the night is half passed and she is asleep, he gently
rises, goes into the next room, fetches a stiletto paper-knife with
which he has seen her playing, half wakes her, asks her if she loves
him, to which, still barely conscious, she answers "Yes!" with a
half-formed kiss on her lips. Then he stabs her dead with a single blow,
leaving the house quietly, and giving himself up to the police at dawn.
[Sidenote: Criticism of it and of its author's work generally.]
If anybody asks me, "Is this well done?" expecting me to enter on the
discussion of the _lex non scripta_, I shall reply that this is not my
trade. But if the question refers to the merits of the handling, I can
reply as confidently as the dying Charmian, "It is well done, and
fitting for a novelist." In no book, as it seems to me, has the author
obtained such a complete command of his subject or reeled out his story
with such steady confidence and fluency. No doubt he sometimes preaches
too much.[383] The elder Ritz's advice against suicide, for instance, if
sound is superfluous. But this is not a very serious evil, and the
steady _crescendo_ of interest which prevails throughout the story
carries it off. There are also numerous separate passages of real
distinction, the fateful bathing-scene being, as it should be, the best,
except the finale; but others, such as the history of Pierre's first
modelling from the life, being excellent. The satire on the literary
coteries of the Restoration is about the best thing of the kind that the
author has done; and many of the "interiors"--always a strong point with
him--are admirable. It is on the point of character that the chief
questions may arise; but here also there seems to me to be only one of
these--it is true it is the most important of all--on which there should
be much debate. The succumbing of Constantin seems perhaps a little more
justifiable by its importance to the story than by its intrinsic
probability.[384] Clémenceau seems to me "constant to himself," or in
the "good childlikeness" of his character, throughout; and to ask
whether it was necessary to make him smash the bust that he finds in
Serge's possession seems to be equivalent to asking whether it was
necessary to put the Vice-Consul of Tetuan in petticoats.[385] It is
only about Iza herself that there can be much dispute. Has that process
synthetic which is spoken of elsewhere been carried too far with her?
Have doses of childlikeness, beauty, charm, ill-nature, sensual
appetite, etc., been taken too "boldly" (in technical doctors' sense)
and mixed too crudely to measure? A word or two may be permissible on
this.
I do not think that Iza is an impossible personage; nor do I think that
she is even an improbable one to such an extent as to bar her out,
possible or impossible. But I am not sure that she is not rather
arbitrarily synthetised instead of being re-created, or that she, though
possible and not quite improbable, is not singly abnormal[386] to the
verge of monstrosity. It must be evident to any reader of tolerable
acuteness that the obsession of _Manon Lescaut_ has not left Dumas
_fils_. Although the total effect of Manon and of Iza is very different,
and although they are differently "staged," their resemblances in
detail are very great; and, to speak paradoxically, the differences are
almost more resembling still. Iza offers herself as mistress if there
are any difficulties in the way of her being a wife; would, in fact, as
she admits long afterwards, have preferred the less honourable, but also
less fettering, estate. On the other hand, be it remembered, it was
something of an accident that Manon and Des Grieux were _not_ actually
married. The two women are alike in their absolute insistence on luxury
and pleasure before anything else; but they differ in that Iza does--as
we said Manon did _not_, or did not specially--want "what Messalina
wanted." On the other hand, Iza is ill-natured and Manon is not. In
these respects we may say that the Manon-formula has passed through that
of Madame de Merteuil, and bears unpleasant signs of the passage. Manon
repents, which Iza never could do. But they agree in the courtesan
essence--the readiness to exchange for other things that commodity of
theirs which should be given only for love. I never wish to supply my
readers with problem-tabloids; but I think that in this paragraph I have
supplied them with materials for working out the double question, "Is
Iza less human than Manon? and if so, why?" for themselves, as well as,
if by any chance they should care to do so, of guessing my own answers
to it.[387]
[Sidenote: Reflections.]
It is more germane to custom and purpose here to add a few general
remarks on the story, and more, but still few, on its author's general
position. _Affaire Clémenceau_ is certainly, as has been said before,
his strongest book, and, especially if taken together with _La Dame aux
Camélias_ (which, if less free from faults, contains some different
merits), it constitutes a strong thesis or diploma-piece for all but the
highest degree as a novelist. Taking in the others which have been
surveyed, we must also acknowledge in the author an unusually wide range
and a great display of faculty--even of faculties--almost all over that
range, though perhaps in no other case than the two selected has he
thoroughly mastered and firmly held the ground which he has attempted to
win. If he has not--if _Tristan le Roux_ is, on the whole, only a
second- or third-rate historical romance; _Trois Hommes Forts_ a fair
and competent, but not thrilling melodrama, and so on, and so on--it is
no doubt partly, to speak with the sometimes useful as well as engaging
irrationality of childhood, "because he couldn't." But I think it is
also because of something that can be explained. It was because he was
far too prone to theorise about men and women and to make his books
attempted demonstrations, or at least illustrations, of his theories.
Now, to theorise about men is seldom very satisfactory; but to theorise
about women is to weigh gossamer and measure moonbeams. The very wisest
thing ever said about them is said in the old English couplet:
Some be lewd, and some be shrewd,
_But all they be not so_,
and I think that our fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century _vates_
showed his wisdom most in sticking to the strict negative in his
exculpatory second line, here italicised.
Now if Alexander the Younger does not absolutely insist that "all they
_be_ so," he goes very near to it, excepting only characters of
insignificant domesticity. When he does give you an "honnête femme" who
is not merely this, such as the Clémentine of the _Roman d'une Femme_ or
the Marceline of _Diane de Lys_, he gives them some queer touches. His
"_shady_ Magdalenes" (with apologies to one of the best of parodies for
spoiling its double rhyme) and his even more shady, because more
inexcusable, _marquises_; his adorable innocents, who let their
innocence vanish "in the heat of the moment" (as the late Mr. Samuel
Morley said when he forgot that Mr. Bradlaugh was an atheist), because
the husbands pay too much attention to politics; and his affectionate
wives, like the Lady in _Thérèse_,[388] who supply their missing
husbands' place just for once, and forget all about it--these _might_ be
individually creatures of fact, but as a class they _are_ creatures of
theory. And theory never made a good novel yet: it is lucky if it has
sometimes, but too rarely, failed to make a good into a bad one. But it
has been urged--and with some truth as regards at least the later forms
of the French novel--that it is almost founded on theory, and certainly
Dumas _fils_ can be cited in support--perhaps, indeed, he is the first
important and thoroughgoing supporter. And this of itself justifies the
place and the kind of treatment allotted to him here, the justification
being strengthened by the fact that he, after Beyle, and when Beyle's
influence was still little felt, was a leader of a new class of
novelist, that he is the first novelist definitely of the Second Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[349] As, for instance, in _A Short History of French Literature_
(Oxford, 7th ed., 1917), pp. 550-552.
[350] At the same time, and admitting (see below) that it is wrong to
meet overpraise with overblame, I think that it may be met with silence,
for the time at any rate.
[351] I have, for reasons unnecessary to particularise, not observed
strict chronological order in noticing his work or that of some others;
but a sufficient "control" will, I hope, be supplied by the Appendix of
dated books under their authors' names as treated in this volume.
[352] I observe with amusement (which may or may not be shared by "the
friends of Mr. Peter Magnus") that I have repeated in the case of Dumas
_fils_ what I said on Crébillon _fils_. The contrast-parallel is indeed
rather striking. Partly it is a case of reversal, for Crébillon _père_
was a most respectable man, most serious, and an academician; the son,
though not personally disreputable, was the very reverse of serious, and
academic neither by nature nor by status. In Dumas' case the father was
extremely lively, and the Academy shuddered or sneered at him; the son
was very serious indeed, and duly academised. Some surprise was, I
remember, occasioned at the time by this promotion. There are several
explanations of it; mine is Alexander the son's fondness for the correct
subjunctive. George Sand, in a note to one of her books (I forget
which), rebelliously says that the speaker in the text _ought_ to have
said, "aimasse," not "aimais," but that he didn't, and she will not make
him do it. On the other hand, I find "aimasse," "haïsse," and "revisse"
in just three lines of _La Dame aux Camélias_. And everybody ought to
know the story of the Immortal who, upon finding a man "where nae mon
should be," and upon that "mon" showing the baseness derived from Adam
by turning on his accomplice and saying, "Quand je vous disais qu'il
était temps que je m'en aille!" neglected _crim. con._ for _crim. gram._
and cried in horror, "Que je m'en all_asse_, Monsieur!" But this
preciseness did not extend to the younger Alexander's choice of
subjects.
[353]
To whose "music" also our young friends,
As they tell us, have "lost the key."
[354] Dumas, like other mid-nineteenth century novelists in France and
England both, is perhaps too fond of this complaint. But, after all, it
_does_ "stage" more prettily than appendicitis or typhoid.
[355] Nor is this the only place where _Manon_ figures in the work of
Alexander the younger. Especially in the early books direct references,
more or less obvious, are frequent; and, as will be seen, the
inspiration reappears in his best and almost last novel.
[356] It may perhaps seem to some readers that Janin's own novel-work
should have been noticed earlier. I had at one time thought of doing
this. But his most famous book of the sort, _L'Âne Mort et la Femme
Guillotinée_, is a foolish _fatrasie_ of extravagant, undigested,
unaffecting horrors, from the devouring by dogs of the _live_ donkey, at
the beginning, to the "resurrectioning" of the guillotined woman, at the
end. Sterne has played tricks with many clumsy imitators, but with none
to more destructive effect than in this case. I read it first in the
flush of my early enthusiasm for 1830, and was miserably disappointed; I
tried to read it again the other day, and simply broke down. _Barnave_
is interesting only as referred to by Gautier; and so on. The fact is
that "J. J." was "J. J. _J._"--a journalist merely--with a not
unpleasant frothy ginger-beery style, but with nothing whatever within
it or beyond it.
[357]
And, with dim-fretted foreheads all,
On corpses _three_ months old at noon she came.
(_The Palace of Art._)
[358] If anybody cannot tolerate the stretching he had better abstain
from Alexander the younger's work, for "they all do it" there. The fact
may have conciliated some of our own contemners of "good form."
[359] Every one is entitled to write this word once in his life, I
believe; so I have selected my occasion at last. Of course some one may
say: "You have admitted that he did not know Marguerite's pact with his
father." True; and this might excuse the wrath, but not the way of
showing it.
[360] As I write this I remember a comic experience of fifty years ago.
I was trying to find out the ruins of a certain castle in Brittany, and
appealed, in my very best bad French, to an old road-mender. He scowled
at me, as if it had been in the days of the _Combat des Trente_, and
answered, "_Mais c'est de l'Anglais que vous me parlez là!_"
[361] Another trait of his may not displease readers, though it be not
strictly relevant. I once, perhaps with some faint mischievous intent,
asked him about the competence of Dr. Pusey and of M. Renan in the
sacred tongue. "Pusey," he said, "knew pretty well everything about
Hebrew that there was to be known in his day." He was not quite so
complimentary about Renan; though, as he put his judgment less
pointedly, I do not remember the exact words.
[362] With a bow and arrows, remember; not a Browning pistol.
[363] The indebtedness to Michelet is pretty obvious.
[364] It may be well to illustrate this, lest it be said that having
been more than just to the father (_v. sup._) I am still less than just
to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fée in the _eleventh_
century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about
Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a
millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake--over whom even
Morgane had no power. The English child-King, for whom Bedford was
regent, is repeatedly called Henry _IV_. There would have been quite
other fish for Joan to fry, and other thread for her to retwist, if she
had had to do with Henry of Bolingbroke instead of Henry of Windsor.
Tristan's Mauthe Doog--not a bad kind of hound, though--bears the
"Celtic" name of Thor. Of course all these things are trifles, but they
are annoying and useless. When the father abridged Charles the First's
captivity from years to days, he did it for the good of his story. The
son had no such justification. He is also very careless about minute
joinings of the flats at a most important point of the conclusion (_v.
inf._). Tristan has no sword, begs one of the _bourreau_, and is
refused. He goes straight to church, and immediately afterwards we find
him sword in hand. Where did he get it? By an unmentioned miracle?
[365] Tristan defeats an effort of Xaintrailles to rescue her, in a way
vaguely resembling the defeat, in the greater Alexander's work, of the
rescue of King Charles by the Four.
[366] Unluckily, with a young man's misjudgment, Dumas would not let it
be the actual end, though that is not a couple of pages off. After the
fight Tristan goes out of the tomb to rest himself; and meets the herald
Bretagne, whom he had saved from the wolves in the overture. Bretagne
tells him what has happened since the Maid's death, including the fate
of his half-brother on the father's side, Gilles de Retz, who, like
himself, has repented in time to save his soul, if not his life. Having
also seen afar off a cavalcade in which are Olivier and Alix, now
married and rapturous, Tristan retires into the tomb, which closes over
him. His horse "Baal" and his dogs, the "Celtically" (in the latter case
we may say _Piratically_) named Thor and Brinda, are petrified round its
entrance.
[367] Crusading times, and Jôf or Edessa for Rouen and Poitiers as
places, might seem preferable. But the fifteenth century did a lot of
_diablerie_ in the West.
[368] A curious variant of this fancy of his will be noticed later. What
is more curious still need, perhaps, hardly be indicated for any
intelligent reader--the "sicklying over" of Paul-de-Kockery with a "cast
of thought"--"pale," or "dry," or up to "Old Brown" in strength and
character as it may seem to different people.
[369] As I have received complaints, mild and other, of the frequency of
my unexplained allusions, I may here refer explicitly to Mr. Traill's
_Recaptured Rhymes_; and if anybody, after looking up the book, is not
grateful to me, I am sorry for him. For the commoner practice here I can
only plead that I follow the Golden Rule. Nothing pleases _me_ so much
as an allusion that I understand--except one that I don't and have to
hunt up.
[370] _Rather_ too big a title for an adventurer to meddle with, surely?
[371] He has found out a secret about her. When she learns his crimes
and his fate, she puts an end to herself in a way which I fear Octave
Feuillet borrowed, rather unceremoniously, though he certainly improved
it, in _Julia de Trécoeur_ (_v. inf._). I did not read _Trois Hommes
Forts_ till many years after I had read and praised Feuillet's work.
Also, is it absolutely blasphemous to suggest that the beginning of the
book has a faint likeness to that of _Les Misérables_ much later?
[372] _V. sup._ last chapter, _passim_.
[373] One remembers, as so often, Dr. Johnson to Boswell: "This lady of
yours, Sir, is very fit for," etc.
[374] This is, I think, the best of his short stories. _Thérèse_ is
rather a sermon on the somewhat unsavoury text of morbid appetite in the
other sex, than a real story. The little _Histories Vraies_, which he
wrote with a friend for the _Moniteur_ in 1864, are fairly good. For the
formally entitled _Contes et Nouvelles_ and the collection headed by
_Ilka_, _v. inf._
[375] He represents himself as suffering forty-eight hours of very easy
imprisonment for not mounting guard as a "National," and writing the
story to pass the time.
[376] The author has shown his skill by inducing at least one very old
hand to wonder, for a time at least, whether Dr. Servans is a quack, or
a lunatic, or Hoffmannishly uncanny, when he is, in fact, something
quite different from any of these.
[377] The other, Clémentine (who is not very unlike a more modern Claire
d'Orbe), being not nearly so "candid" as her comrade Marie, continues
honest.
[378] _V. sup._ Vol. I. p. 204.
[379]
[Sidenote: _Revenants. Sophie Printemps._]
Two early and slight books (one of them, perhaps, the "bad" one referred
to above) may find place in a note. _Revenants_ is a fantasy, in which
the three most famous pairs of lovers of the later eighteenth century,
Des Grieux and Manon, Paul and Virginie, Werther and Charlotte, are
revived and brought together (_v. sup._ p. 378). This sort of thing, not
seldom tried, has very seldom been a success; and _Revenants_ can hardly
be said to be one of the lucky exceptions. _Sophie Printemps_ is the
history of a good girl, who, out of her goodness, deliberately marries
an epileptic. It has little merit, except for a large episode or
parenthesis of some forty or fifty pages (nearly a sixth of the book),
telling the prowess of a peremptory but agreeable baron, who first foils
a dishonest banker, and then defends this very banker against an
adventurer more rascally than himself, whom the baron kills in a duel.
This is good enough to deserve extraction from the book, and separate
publication as a short story.
[380] It is constantly called (and I fear I have myself sinned in this
respect) _L'Affaire Clémenceau_. But this is not the proper title, and
does not really fit. It is the heading of a client's instruction--a sort
of irregular "brief"--to the advocate who (_resp. fin._) is to defend
him; and is thus an autobiographic narrative (diversified by a few
"put-in" letters) throughout. The title is the label of the brief.
[381] This is probably meant as the first "fight" on the shady side of
Iza's character; not that, in this instance, she means to insult or
hurt, but that the probability of hurting and insulting does not occur
to her, or leaves her indifferent.
[382] Second "light," and now not dubious, for it is made a point of
later.
[383] It has sometimes amused me to remember that some of the warmest
admirers of Dumas _fils_ have been among the most violent decriers of
Thackeray--_for_ preaching. I suppose they preferred the Frenchman's
texts.
[384] Neither morality, nor friendship, nor anything like sense of "good
form" could be likely to hold him back. But he is represented as nothing
if not _un homme fort_ in character and temperament, who knows his woman
thoroughly, and must perceive that he is letting himself be beaten by
her in the very act of possessing her.
[385] Vide _Mr. Midshipman Easy_.
[386] This phrase may require just a word of explanation. I admitted
(Vol. I. p. 409) the abnormality in _La Religieuse_ as not
disqualifying. But this was not an abnormality of the _individual_.
Iza's is.
[387] Perhaps I may add another subject for those who like it. "Both
Manon and Iza do _prefer_, and so to speak only _love_, the one lover.
Does this in Iza's case aggravate, or does it partially redeem, her
general behaviour?" A less disputable addition, for the reason given
above, may be a fairly long note on the author's work outside of
fiction.
[Sidenote: Note on Dumas _fils'_ drama, etc.]
With the drama which has received such extraordinary encomia (the great
name of Molière having even been brought in for comparison) I have no
exhaustive acquaintance; but I have read enough not to wish to read any
more. If the huge prose tirades of _L'Étrangère_ bore me (as they do) in
the study, what would they do on the stage, where long speeches, not in
great poetry, are always intolerable? (I have always thought it one of
the greatest triumphs of Madame Sarah Bernhardt that, at the very
beginning of her career, she made the heroine of this piece--_if_ she
did so--interesting.) Over the _Fils Naturel_ I confess that even I, who
have struggled with and mastered my thousands, if not my tens of
thousands, of books, broke down hopelessly. _Francillon_ is livelier,
and might, in the earlier days, have made an amusing novel. But
discounting, judicially and not prejudicially, the excessive laudation,
one sees that even here he did what he meant to do, and though there is
higher praise than that, it is praise only too seldom deserved. As for
his Prefaces and Pamphlets, I think nearly as much must be granted; and
I need not repeat what has been said above on the other side. The
charity "puff" of _Les Madeleines Repenties_ is an admirable piece of
rhetoric not seldom reaching eloquence; and it has the not unliterary
side-interest of suggesting the question whether its ironic treatment of
the general estimate of the author as Historiographer Royal to the venal
Venus is genuine irony, or a mere mask for annoyance. The Preface to the
dreary _Fils Naturel_ (it must be remembered that Alexander the Younger
himself was originally illegitimate and only later legitimated), though
rhetorical again, is not dreary at all. It contains a very agreeable
address to his father--he was always agreeable, though with a suspicion
of rather amusing patronage-upside-down, on this subject--and a good
deal else which one would have been sorry to lose. In fact, I can see,
even in the dramas, even in the prose pamphleteering, whether the matter
gives me positive delight or not, evidence of that _competence_, that
not so seldom mastery, of treatment which entitles a man to be
considered not the first comer by a long way.
[388] The obliging gentleman who on this occasion plays the part of
"substitute" in a cricket-match, is the most elaborate and confessed
example of Dumas' "theorised" _men_. He is what the seedsmen call an
"improved Valmont," with more of lion in him than to meddle with
virgins, but absolutely destructive to duchesses and always ready to
suggest substitution to distressed grass-widows.