CHAPTER XII

"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.

THE FRENCH NOVEL, _C._ 1800

[Sidenote: "Sensibility."]

Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to the

curious phenomenon called in French _sensibilite_ (with a derivative of

contempt, _sensiblerie_), the exact English form of which supplies part

of the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, of

one of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears first

definitely[404] in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly,

in Marivaux, and to some extent in Prevost and Marmontel, while it is,

as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly in

Saint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and books

displaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; and

in this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately find

a place, not merely because some of them are late, but because

Sensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginning

before its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have to

encroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than in

reality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was the

property of the eighteenth century.[405]

[Sidenote: A glance at Miss Austen.]

To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and _Sense and Sensibility_,

everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over Marianne

Dashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in the

genial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standard

of feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling"

was admitted as something out of the way--on which side of the way

opinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically the

accepted type--a type which lasted far into the next century, though it

was obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do so

vainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expected

from women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. The

wonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their

long-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_,

at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interesting

brother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionable

ecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of the

period--an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and was

only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.

[Sidenote: The thing essentially French.]

The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughly

English at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, who

impressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women in

civilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day when

Madame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romances

of Madeleine de Scudery, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in

_Adolphe_, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century

romance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.

[Sidenote: Its history.]

Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the main century we

have already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close,

Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, they mix too many secondary purposes

with their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan of

the present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence of

conventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if not

wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome young

Britonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look

elsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her other

names already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin

(most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women),

Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza

and de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkable

names of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our

"documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant pieces

of literary _bric-a-brac_; perhaps they are something a little more than

that. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world.

Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseau

and Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks and

corners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverently

called "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitated

in full force before some of us are dead.[406] For it has exactly the

peculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions--the appeal to

something which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great deal

that is not.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Tencin and _Le Comte de Comminge_.]

In the followers of Madame de la Fayette[407] we find that a good many

years have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grown

still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine

sentiments, which in another language might deserve expression well

enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern

reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the

sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This

is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than

elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer a

person than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that she

could hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evident

enough in the _Comte de Comminge_ and in the _Malheurs de l'Amour_.

Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of the

Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in her

writings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, like

the former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, the

defects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almost

impossible that those who practised it should escape.

Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moral

purposes and her _esprit_, she indulged in a good deal of rather

complicated and sometimes extravagant incident. _M. de Comminge_, which

is very short, contains, not to mention other things, the rather

startling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his

lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has been

charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine

living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle,

however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything

else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached.

All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is

furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a

dungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.[408]

Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what

your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the

terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of

extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make

you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as

yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am

required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to

another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price

that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me

perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I

shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Benavides.

What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall

have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as

to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am

contracting_.

The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised

passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest

women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the

restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper

classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,

were very embarrassing.

[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]

Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows the

completed product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is a

capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl

of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival

betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her

write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a

declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be

confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She

has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible

postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a force de

l'ecrire; rien ne peut m'obliger a le penser ni le desirer." Apparently

it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad

as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.

MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the

innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a

person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever

you may think proper to do, without considering myself

entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy

should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the

arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me

of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my

sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my

present circumstances permit me not to seek.

Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in this

broad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it

could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressy

despatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel the

waiting-maid"--

Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the

greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your

pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent

than that with which my heart burns for the amiable

Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs

of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle,

how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes

even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed

you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might

regret others less estimable, but which have been the object

of his hope and desire, etc. etc.

This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who will

assist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it

in approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her

"trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin it

again many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubious

nature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret and

indignation rise to her eyes"--tears which indeed are excusable even

from a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far,

however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "de

notre sensibilite, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait naitre, que nous devons

nous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to argue

with a lady.

The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whose

conduct is--translated into the language of Sensibility, and adjusted

to the manners of the time and class--a ludicrous anticipation of the

Pickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously

to the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter--

A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known,

gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your

heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me

insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your

happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be

sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have

no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your

compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who

feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions,

and the step she takes to let you know it is the first

weakness which she has to confess.

The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but its

Sensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story of

the _Marquis de Cressy_, which is a very little book[409] and not

extremely edifying. But it supplies us with another _locus classicus_ on

sentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide,

and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter from

Adelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil--

'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the

perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth,

wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered

by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory

present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to

bury me in this retreat.

And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not specially

unnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be a

little embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence of

their wives (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuse

of pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wives

would not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has the

finest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then--

The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into

the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an

inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried,

bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much

sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love.

Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost

you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having

deprived you of the only possession which excited your

desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling

myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"

[Sidenote: Her other work--_Milady Catesby_.]

All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or less

interesting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used so

freely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer,

exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The

_Histoire d'Ernestine_ in particular is a charming little novelette. But

if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, _Milady

Catesby_, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages from

England, would be the one to choose. _Milady Catesby_ is well worth

comparing with _Evelina_, which is some twenty years its junior, and the

sentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. Lord

Ossery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he is

described in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of the

style, as when she writes--

Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what

trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to

me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord

Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not

hear him once more.

That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion or

excuse for all this excitement except Sensibility. But Sensibility was

getting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be in

the heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We are

already a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, from

Marianne's whimsical _minauderies_. All the resources of

typography--exclamations, points, dashes--have to be called in to

express the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately this

sort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup)

requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself have

not the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as _La Nouvelle

Heloise_, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must have

something of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. But

then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At the

Madame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it is

difficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinary

tight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Beaumont--_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_.]

The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days,

and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even

farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of _Mademoiselle de

Clermont_, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of the

characters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, and

other performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the _Lettres du

Marquis de Roselle_ of Madame Elie de Beaumont (wife of the young

advocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brother

and sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what she

regards as a misalliance, ends (or at least almost ends, for the usual

flood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.

"And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose

that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not

insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what

can make him happy than the Countess of St. Sever; and that

he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, in

spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to

leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he

resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a

movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my

father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these

sacred names he started, stopped, and _allowed himself to be

conducted to a sofa_.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Souza.]

This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places,

even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by the

way, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to his

son's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that by

not doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filial

attachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist.

These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in the

way of noble sentiment or affecting emotion--these whippings and

spurrings of the feelings and the fancy--characterise all the later work

of the school.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]

Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of the

novelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and its

caricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curious

coincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to

imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de

Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called

Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are

not the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de ma

Chambre_, its sequel the _Expedition Nocturne_, and the _Lepreux de la

Cite d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one

may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in

agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but

fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of

the emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steep

place, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped that

most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming

little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know

_Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,

for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the

borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ can

only be said to come after _Werther_ and _Rene_ in time, not in the

least to follow them in nature.

The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded)

is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences

when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion

which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the

various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them

and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the

faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _Expedition

Nocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The

_Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how the

narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged

in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these

works, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_

and _Jeune Siberienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singular

narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier du

Caucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Merimee), and in

the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at

every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de

B---- in the _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, which Joseph de Maistre is

said to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggests

itself as one follows the whimsicalities of the _Voyage_ and the

_Expedition_. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple,

that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.

[Sidenote: His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.]

Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de Maistre illustrates

the effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured,

cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character or

strength of emotion. He has not the least intention of taking

Sensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or

other. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humorist

at the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simply

told, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems at

first sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to

Sterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, his

imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a real

contact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, the

taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusted

deliberately--to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictly

according to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, when

pursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount of

frivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting the

player. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong and

genuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the _suave mari

magno_ preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matters

which directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do to

be too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a manner

giving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. When

Xavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de genie est

de savoir bien elever sa bete," he means a great deal more than he

supposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, who

believes it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a series

of emotions which can be taken gently.

The author of the _Voyage_ takes his without any extravagance. He takes

good care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though

he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection

for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of

affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as

he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us

in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit

bientot son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other

sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care

of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of

repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;

it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either

ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chere

Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to

his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a

lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the

_Expedition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms

below his garret.

[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]

All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of

Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt

consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching

downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to

do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In

comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very

noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,

and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true

believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.

How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and

how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was

quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and

very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so

well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending

and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making

believe. He still thinks Sensibility a _gratissimus error_, a very

pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it

with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the

spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilite_ (in real life, if

not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de

Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely and

unexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severe

inquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. It

is not merely that he jests--as, for instance, that when he is imagining

the scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears

a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi

n'ai-je amene ma femme a la fete?" That is quite proper and allowable.

It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the

undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling,

which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this that

was inevitable.

Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborate

games, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. The

parties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicion

that they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnest

enough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty of

time to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study,

political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, to

get too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive not

only to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As the

century grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, that

game became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yet

not too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, they

often fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly so

called, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in real

life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration

of the same moral in fiction as _Werther_, were enough to discourage the

man of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley,

the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which

beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe

anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet

neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make a

not too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermon

might be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient to

point out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustration

of the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant--_Adolphe_.]

Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never having

appeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a century

ago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but it

calls here for something more than a very small mention. The books which

make an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make a

beginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made a

beginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all the

analytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here suffice

to discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve

certainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show,

but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for a

large allowance of charity. The theory of _Adolphe's_ best editor, M. de

Lescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure's

time), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Stael, will not, I

think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental,

Ellenore and Madame de Stael are at opposite poles. Ellenore was

beautiful, Madame de Stael was very nearly hideous; Ellenore was

careless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to society

as any one who ever lived; Ellenore was somewhat uncultivated, had

little _esprit_, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herself

in any way except in exacting affection where no affection existed; the

good Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thought

herself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any one

in company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insisted

on general admiration and homage.

However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty to

regard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth.

What is important is that Madame de Stael was almost the last genuine

devotee of Sensibility, and that _Adolphe_ was certainly written by a

lover of Madame de Stael, who had, from his youth up, been a Man of

Feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book he

had run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructed

as a youth[410] by ancient women of letters; he had married and got rid

of his wife _a la mode Germanorum_; he had frequently taken a hint from

_Werther_, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he had

given, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want of

taste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marrying

Charlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Stael would not

marry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finally

deserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely but

intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a

certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should

be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master

in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had

only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere

and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote _Adolphe_.

But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which it

bears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis of

Sensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne's

admirable "Stage Love"--

Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry,

They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;

Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,

Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.

That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better account

than _Adolphe_ exists of the rising in sorrow.

The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man,

fresh from the University of Goettingen, goes to finish his education at

the _residenz_ of D----. Here he finds much society, courtly and other.

His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P----, who lives,

unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ellenore. In the easy-going days of

Sensibility the _menage_ holds a certain place in society, though it is

looked upon a little askance. But Ellenore is, on her own theory,

thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P----, though in danger of his

fortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result

of the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, and

the teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironically

given than himself. His main character is all that a young man's should

be from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'a me

livrer a ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his father

snubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that

they are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them.

Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironic

jests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquires

the character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu sur," the last of which

expressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "an

ill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."

All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching of

Sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong.

"'Je veux etre aime,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne

voyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me parut

susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man would

resign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions of

having no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for the

pupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphe

pitches on the luckless Ellenore, who "me parut une conquete digne de

moi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have

used language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is the

portrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.

Ellenore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her

thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was,

was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and

elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but

she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There

was nothing she set more value on than regularity of

conduct, precisely because her own conduct was

conventionally irregular.[411] She was very religious,

because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In

conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have

seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared

that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as

were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her

society none but men of the highest rank and most

irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she

shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate

mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only

amusement. In short, Ellenore and her destiny were at

daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind

of protest against her social position. And as she felt that

facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could

be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly

miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her

circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent

and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity.

Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never

quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous

conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an

unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more

piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in

short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.

The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strike

everybody here. If we are still some way from Emma Bovary, it is only

in point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the hero

is still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility.

He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but he

has a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conquete." He is still actuated by

the odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by the

name of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he has

taken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he is

playing the game from the lower point of view--the mere point of view of

winning. It does not take him very long to win. Ellenore at first

behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his first

declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the

exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's

biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing

in similar cases, and which the great popularity of _Werther_ made

terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill

himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer.

The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the

fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was

dominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of view

alike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:[412]

I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the

happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal

affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had

suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she

had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her

efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had

hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had

felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and

how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once

more the distractions of society and the crowds which she

formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,

and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of

a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the

absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have

need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own

past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of

having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a

stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and

illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a

little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it

exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the

future.

This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no

one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.

Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellenore

(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.

In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal

terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the

unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the

method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else

of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become

unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the

Ellenores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairs

before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played

his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely.

"Ellenore etait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle

n'etait pas plus un but--elle etait devenue un lien." But Ellenore does

not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few

scenes ("Nous vecumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces,

quelque fois doux, jamais completement libres, y rencontrant encore du

plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count

forbids Ellenore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaks

the ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.

Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation,

but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man who

speaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.

Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have

pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each

other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be

happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to

do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to

revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ellenore and I each

concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me

her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had

not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not

complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not

had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on

the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were

prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke

of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.

Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's own

words, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither,

when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There were

none of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentiment

met sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. When

the rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some other

customer--a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent in

practice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit so

easily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and his

correspondence with Ellenore is described in one of the astonishingly

true passages which make the book so remarkable.

During my absence I wrote regularly to Ellenore. I was

divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and

the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have

liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without

being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had

substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion,"

for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ellenore

sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for

consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages

I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness

suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying

enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her,

a species of double-dealing the very success of which was

against my wishes and prolonged my misery.

This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear his absence, and

half puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ellenore follows him, and his

father for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromising

step. Ellenore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is once

more perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutral

territory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, long

confiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe

(still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to be

free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Count

de P----, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke her

lover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from a

correspondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his

father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue and

epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in the

world (from which he had thought his _liaison_ debarred him), wandered

about in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage,

though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of political

justice, but on sound critical grounds.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Duras's "postscript."]

[Sidenote: _Sensibilite_ and _engouement_.]

This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is true

that, five years later than _Adolphe_, appeared Madame de Duras's

agreeable novelettes of _Ourika_ and _Edouard_, in which something of

the old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life,

and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of

society. "Le ton de cette societe," says Madame de Duras herself, "etait

l'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to

describe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be said

without presumption, much miswritten about. _Engouement_ itself is a

nearly untranslatable word.[413] It may be clumsily but not inaccurately

defined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which is

rather more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious

than genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude of

French polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number of

subjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the _sensibilite_ which

dominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and

_sensibilite_ stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine

passion on the other, exactly as _engouement_ does to caprice and

enthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth with

some success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in the

eighteenth.[414] Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") prevented

that. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself and

its sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can be

called real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind of

love-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulness

to the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changed

partners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but the

rules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit of

being treated with levity.

[Sidenote: Some final words on the matter.]

Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkable

part, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature has

been attempted in this discussion. The English and German developments

of it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, contain

perhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, and

they are out of our province. Marivaux[415] served directly as model to

both English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of the

national temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In England

the great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to

Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of

Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide--a consummation

than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It

is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la

Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and

the virtuous Prince of Cleves and the penitent Adelaide in the _Comte de

Comminge_ do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as the

curtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quite

comfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all the

first-named young man's extravagance, four generations have known

perfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, while

in Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility had

been sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and the

whirlwind had begun to be reaped.[416]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Its importance here.]

This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not

much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels,

artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a _History_

such as the present they have very great importance. They are so

entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that

reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange

country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that

country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often

extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the

example, though the power of the writers made them something very

different in matter--_Julie_, _La Religieuse_, _Paul et Virginie_,[417]

_Corinne_, _Rene_--give their progenitors not a little importance, or at

least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school

of Sensibility that the author of _Manon Lescaut_ somehow or other

developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be

prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves

in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly

maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in

the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just

the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It

is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics

themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and _causeries_

that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers,

will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of

their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had

on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons

of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few

pennyweights of metal.

* * * * *

Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a

rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of

the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed

notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.

[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]

It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of

readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Retif)

mentioned here at all--at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not

entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of

those who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their

surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the _Index

Expurgatorius_, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned

Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might

derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle _Rousseau du ruisseau_,

which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading.

Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who

have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency--taking her revenge

for the axiom of the boatswain in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_--forbids Duty to

let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy,

literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de

Laclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they

most assuredly will be.

In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a

more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have

kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the

continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very

considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style

goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a

learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words

that do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is not

the slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, as

Louvet and Laclos--as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not even

Crebillon--certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects,

gets hold of a man--especially one of those whom a rather celebrated

French lady called _les cerebraux_--he can think of nothing else: and

though this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minor

crazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more true than of

any one else who can be called a man of letters.

Probably no one has read all he wrote;[420] even the late M. Assezat,

who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend to

have done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptional

means of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found to

do, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem to

have made his books popular.[421] His largest work, _Les

Contemporaines_, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some three

hundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though the

differences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the

_Memoirs of Several Ladies_. His most remarkable by far, the

quasi-autobiographical _Monsieur Nicolas_,[422] in fourteen. He could

write with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against _Le Paysan

Parvenu_, above referred to; in _La Vie de Mon Pere_ (a book agreeably

free from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographical

writings of sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantly

titled _Pornographe_, which is also morally intended, and dull enough to

be as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.

Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forward

by those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restif

throughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness with

it, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of its

evident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the author

is handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himself

difficult, if not impossible: but his _differentia_ as regards them may,

with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the first

place, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost a

gentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau's

blackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as I

believe, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage.

The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame

"Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to his

wife--whom he seems to have married in a sort of _clairvoyant_ mixture

of knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charms

and allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying these

without marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds of

actual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies in

others,[423] does he ever appear to have taken either the Restoration

and Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" on

the other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimony

unceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a _manie de

paternite_, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With the

privileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have been

perfectly contented: and he never would have availed himself of that of

Schahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.

All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject,

and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of a

writer who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif to

the young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are very

remarkable. The second title of _Monsieur Nicolas_--_Le Coeur Humain

Devoile_--ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in a

singularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I remember

rightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time,

there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about the

autopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as well

as to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and all

four share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in the

Frenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and with

other dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of De

Quincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with this

dream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, is

made much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday from

his day-long and night-long devotion to

Cotytto or Venus

Astarte or Ashtoreth,

he might have been a most remarkable novelist, and as it is his _mere_

narrative faculty is such as by no means every novelist possesses.

Moreover, he counts, once more, in the advance towards real things in

fiction. "A pretty kind of reality!" cries Mrs. Grundy. But the real is

not always the pretty, and the pretty is not always the real.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Pigault-Lebrun--the difference of his positive and relative

importance.]

There is also a good deal that is curious, as well as many things that

are disgusting, for the student of the novel in Pigault-Lebrun.[424] In

the first place, one is constantly reminded of that redeeming point

which the benevolent Joe Gargery found in Mr. Pumblechook--

And, wotsume'er the failings on his part,

He were a corn-and-seedsman in his hart.

If Pigault cannot exactly be said to have been a good novelist, he

"were" a novelist "in his hart." Beside his _polissonneries_, his

frequent dulness, his singular gropings and failures at anything like

good novelist _faire_, one constantly finds what might be pedantically

and barbarously called a "novelistic velleity." His much too ambitiously

titled _Melanges Litteraires_ turn to stories, though stories touched

with the _polisson_ brush. His _Nouvelles_ testify at least to his

ambition and his industry in the craft of fiction. "Je ne suis pas

Voltaire," he says somewhere, in reference, I think, to his plays, not

his tales. He most certainly is not; neither is he Marmontel, as far as

the tale is concerned. But as for the longer novel, in a blind and

blundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of genius

and his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, he

seems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than they

have, or than any other Frenchman had before him.

[Sidenote: His general characteristics.]

Pigault-Lebrun[425] spent nearly half of his long life in the nineteenth

century, and did not die till Scott was dead in England, and the great

series of novel-romances had begun, with Hugo and others, in France. But

he was a man of nearly fifty in 1800, and the character of his work,

except in one all-important point, or group of points, is thoroughly of

the eighteenth, while even the excepted characteristics are of a more

really transitional kind than anything in Chateaubriand and Madame de

Stael, whom we have postponed, as well as in Constant and Xavier de

Maistre, whom we have admitted. He has no high reputation in literature,

and, except from our own special point of view, he does not deserve even

a demi-reputation. Although he is not deliberately pornographic, he is

exceedingly coarse, with a great deal of the nastiness which is not even

naughty, but nastiness pure and simple. There is, in fact, and in more

ways than one, something in him of an extremely inferior Smollett.

Comparing him with his elder contemporary, Restif de la Bretonne, he is

vulgar, which Restif never is. Passing to more purely literary matters,

it would be difficult, from the side of literature as an art--I do not

say as a craft--to say anything for him whatever. His style[426] is, I

should suppose (for I think no foreigner has any business to do more

than "suppose" in that matter), simply wretched; he has sentences as

long as Milton's or Clarendon's or Mr. Ruskin's, not merely without the

grandeur of the first, the beauty of the last, and the weighty sense of

the second, but lacking any flash of graceful, pithy, or witty phrase;

character of the model-theatre and cut-out paper kind; a mere

accumulation of incidents instead of a plot; hardly an attempt at

dialogue, and, where description is attempted at all, utter

ineffectiveness or sheer rhyparography.[427]

It is a fair _riposte_ to the last paragraph to ask, "Then why do you

drag him in here at all?" But the counter-parry is easy. The excepted

points above supply it. With all his faults--admitting, too, that every

generation since his time has supplied some, and most much better,

examples of his kind--the fact remains that he was the first

considerable representative, in his own country, of that variety of

professional novelist who can spin yarns, of the sort that his audience

or public[428] wants, with unwearied industry, in great volume, and of a

quality which, such as it is, does not vary very much. He is, in short,

the first notable French novelist-tradesman--the first who gives us

notice that novel-production is established as a business. There is even

a little more than this to be said for him. He has really made

considerable progress, if we compare him with his predecessors and

contemporaries, in the direction of the novel of ordinary life, as that

life was in his own day. There are extravagances of course, but they are

scarcely flagrant. His atmosphere is what the cooks, housemaids,

footmen, what the grocers and small- or middle-class persons who, I

suppose, chiefly read him, were, or would have liked to be, accustomed

to. His scene is not a paradise in either the common or the Greek sense;

it is a sort of cabbage-garden, with a cabbage-garden's lack of beauty,

of exquisiteness in any form, with its presence of untidiness, and

sometimes of evil odour, but with its own usefulness, and with a

cultivator of the most sedulous. Pigault-Lebrun, for France, may be said

to be the first author-in-chief of the circulating library. It may not

be a position of exceeding honour; but it is certainly one which gives

him a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merely

these general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) of

his particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as well

spend his time in translating the English newspaper _feuilletons_ of

"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeed

that _Minnigrey_, which I remember reading as a boy, and which long

afterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of the

masterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and a

great deal more.

[Sidenote: _L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim._]

The worst of it is, that to be amused by him--to be, except as a

student, even interested in a large part of his work--you must be almost

as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has

had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and

this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his

successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he _is_

interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing

to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to

master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers

appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always

the case with such things.

The book which stands first in his Works, _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, starts

with an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses now

and then. The body of it--occupied with the history of a base-born

child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little

daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover

and then her husband--is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,

bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently

traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius _Don

Quixote_ or _Gil Blas_, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general

modern life. _Les Barons de Felsheim_, which succeeds it, seems to have

taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of _Candide_, and

continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German

ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very

commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with

frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably

dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage.

There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order

of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting

something and finding that he cannot bring it off.

At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, and

stupidest novels, _La Folie Espagnole_--a supposed tale of chivalry,

which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance,

and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied _Gil Blas_, with a rank

infusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism[430]--the author has a

rather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerable

probability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of

"Quelles miseres! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered

_Angelique et Jeanneton_, a little work of a very different kind, and

the public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, and

he must try to please. As for _La Folie_, everybody, including his cook,

can understand _this_. One remembers similar expostulations from more

respectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun--a

Lebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of that

name--thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at a

venture, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit it

oftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and for

his public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation and

correlation of facts that history consists.

[Sidenote: _Angelique et Jeanneton._]

_Angelique et Jeanneton_ itself, as might be expected from the above

reference, is, among its author's works, something like _Le Reve_ among

Zola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is also

one of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. It

begins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easy

fortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of his

chambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting young

person with an "argentine" voice. This may look _louche_; but the

silvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortly

appears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital.

It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to the

hero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instals

her in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearest

hotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this Good

Samaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and her

lover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance,

resists temptation of repayment (_not_ in coin) on more than one

occasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritage

which has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in with

Angelique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marries

her. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault,

becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, not

surprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title of

Marmontel's _Heureusement_ governs all, and the end is peace, though not

without some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like the

book and did like _La Folie Espagnole_ is not surprising; but the

bearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as a

regular craft is important.

[Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Thomas._]

Perhaps on the whole _Mon Oncle Thomas_, which seems to have been one of

the most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not the

best, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only,

is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and others

to our _dis_credit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, and

which was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection of

epithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas--child of a

prostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, who

afterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police--are told

with a good deal of spirit--one even thinks of _Colonel Jack_--and the

author shows his curious vulgar common sense, and his knowledge of

human nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in the

earlier part of the book.

[Sidenote: _Jerome._]

_Jerome_ is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys--distinctly

blackguard boys as a rule--from their mischievous, or, as the early

English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to

their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one

sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however,

more vigour in _Jerome_ than in most, and, if one has the knack of

"combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little

attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It

contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's

sketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into his

country's literature--that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic _routier_

or professional soldier--brave as you like, and--at least at some times

when neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god--not

ungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he is

brave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant,

save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the older

type, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare for

neglecting in Iago.

[Sidenote: The redeeming points of these.]

It may seem that too much space is being given to a reprobate and often

dull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint,

and something more may be added now and again. French literature, from

the death of Chenier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally been

held to contain hardly more than two names--those of Chateaubriand and

Madame de Stael--which can even "seem to be" those of "pillars"; and it

may appear fantastic and almost insulting to mention one, who in long

stretches of his work might almost be called a mere muckheap-raker, in

company with them. Yet, in respect to the progress of his own

department, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than their

equal. _Rene_ and _Corinne_ contain great suggestions, but they are

suggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper.

Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, but

that humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creating

real character, decency almost always, sense very often.[431] But all

the same, he made the novel _march_, as it had not marched, save in

isolated instances of genius, before.

[Sidenote: Others--_Adelaide de Meran_ and _Tableaux de Societe_.]

[Sidenote: _L'Officieux._]

Yet Pigault could hardly have deserved even the very modified praise

which has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. He

could never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went on

and the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts of

Republican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. _Adelaide

de Meran_ (his longest single book), _Tableaux de Societe_,

_L'Officieux_, and others, are of this class; and without presenting a

single masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, give

evidence of that advance in the kind generally with which their author

has been credited. _Adelaide_ is very strongly reminiscent of

Richardson, and more than reminiscent of "Sensibility"; it is written in

letters--though all by and to the same persons, except a few

extracts--and there is no individuality of character. Pigault, it has

been said, never has any, though he has some of type. But by exercising

the most violent constraint upon himself, he indulges only in one rape

(though there have been narrow escapes before), in not more than two or

three questionable incidents, and in practically no "improper"

details--conduct almost deserving the description of magnanimity and

self-denial. Moreover, the thing really is a modern novel, though a bad

and rickety one; the indefinable _naturaleza_ is present in it after a

strange fashion. There is less perhaps in the very inappropriately named

_Tableaux de Societe_--the autobiography of a certain Fanchette de

Francheville, who, somewhat originally for a French heroine, starts by

being in the most frantic state of mutual passion with her husband,

though this is soon to be succeeded by an infatuation (for some time

virtuously resisted) on her side for a handsome young naval officer, and

by several others (not at all virtuously resisted) for divers ladies on

the husband's. With his usual unskilfulness in managing character,

Pigault makes very little of the opportunities given by his heroine's

almost unconscious transference of her affections to Sainte-Luce; while

he turns the uxorious husband, not out of jealousy merely, into a

faithless one, and something like a general ruffian, after a very clumsy

and "unconvincing" fashion. As for his throwing in, at the end, another

fatal passion on part of their daughter for her mother's lover, it is,

though managed with what is for the author, perfect cleanliness,

entirely robbed of its always doubtful effect by the actual marriage of

Fanchette and her sailor, and that immediately after the poor girl's

death. If he had had the pluck to make this break off the whole thing,

the book might have been a striking novel, as it is actually an attempt

at one; but Pigault, like his friends of the gallery, was almost

inviolably constant to happy endings.[432] _L'Officieux_, if he had only

had a little humour, might have been as good comically as the Tableaux

might have been tragically; for it is the history, sometimes not

ill-sketched as far as action goes, of a _parvenu_ rich, but brave and

extremely well-intentioned marquis, who is perpetually getting into

fearful scrapes from his incorrigible habit of meddling with other

people's affairs to do them good. The situations--as where the marquis,

having, through an extravagance of officiousness, got himself put under

arrest by his commanding officer, and at the same time insulted by a

comrade, insists on fighting the necessary duel in his own drawing-room,

and thereby reconciling duty and honour, to the great terror of a lady

with whom he has been having a tender interview in the adjoining

apartment--are sometimes good farce, and almost good comedy; but

Pigault, like Shadwell, has neither the pen nor the wits to make the

most of them.

_La Famille Luceval_--something of an expanded and considerably

Pigaultified story _a la_ Marmontel--is duller than any of these, and

the opening is marred by an exaggerated study of a classical mania on

the part of the hero; but still the novel quality is not quite absent

from it.

[Sidenote: Further examples.]

Of the rest, _M. Botte_, which seems to have been a favourite, is a

rather conventional extravaganza with a rich, testy, but occasionally

generous uncle; a nephew who falls in love with the charming but

penniless daughter of an _emigre_; a noble rustic, who manages to keep

some of his exiled landlord's property together, etc. _M. de Roberval_,

though in its original issue not so long as _Adelaide de Meran_, becomes

longer by a _suite_ of another full volume, and is a rather tedious

chronicle of ups and downs. There may be silence about the remainder.

[Sidenote: Last words on him.]

The stock and, as it may be called, "semi-official" ticket for

Pigault-Lebrun in such French literary history as takes notice of him,

appears to be _verve_: and the recognised dictionary-sense of _verve_ is

"heat of imagination, which animates the artist in his composition." In

the higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it could

never be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," which

is perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label.

These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latin

races, are of more authority in France than in England, though as long

as we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif

"the father of English prose" we need not boast ourselves too much. But

Pigault has this "go"--never perhaps for a whole book, but sometimes for

passages of considerable length, which possess "carrying" power. It

undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it

now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and

justifying his true place in the further "domestication"--if only in

domesticities too often mean and grimy--of the French novel.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The French novel in 1800.]

There are more reasons than the convenience of furnishing a separately

published first volume with an interim conclusion, for making, at the

close of this, a few remarks on the general state of the French novel at

the end of the eighteenth century. No thoroughly similar point is

reached in the literary history of France, or of any country known to

me, in regard to a particular department of literature. In England--the

only place, which can, in this same department, be even considered in

comparison, although at this very time two novelists, vastly superior to

any of whom France has to boast, were just writing, or just about to

write, and were a little later to revolutionise the novel itself--the

general state and history of the kind had, for nearly two generations,

reached a stage far beyond anything that France could claim. She had

made earlier "running"; on the whole period of some seven hundred years

she had always, till very recently, been in front. But in the novel, as

distinguished from the romance, she had absolutely nothing to show like

our great quartette of the mid-eighteenth century, and hardly anything

to match the later developments of Miss Burney and others in domestic,

of Mrs. Radcliffe and others still in revived romantic fiction. Very

great Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with the

exceptions of Lesage in _Gil Blas_, Prevost in that everlastingly

wonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in _La Nouvelle Heloise_,

none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness had

been a novelist pure and simple. No species[433] of fiction, except the

short tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-long

mastery, had been thoroughly developed in her literature.

The main point, where England went right and France went wrong--to be

only in the most equivocal way corrected by such a writer as

Pigault-Lebrun--was the recognition of the connection--the intimate and

all but necessary connection--of the completed novel with ordinary life.

Look over the long history of fiction which we have surveyed in the last

three or four or five chapters. There is much and sometimes great

literary talent; sometimes, again, even genius; there are episodes of

reality; there are most artful adjustments of type and convention and

the like, of fashion in morals (or immorals) and sentiments. But a real

objective novel of ordinary life, such as _Tom Jones_, or even _Humphry

Clinker_, nay, such inferior approaches to it as exist elsewhere in

English, you will not find. Of the Scudery romances we need not speak

again; for all their key-references to persons, and their abstention

from the supernatural, etc., they are, as wholes, hardly more real than

_Amadis_ and its family themselves. Scarron has some and Furetiere more

objectivity that may be argued for, but the Spanish picaresque has

become a convention, and they, especially Scarron, are aiming more at

the pattern than at the life-model. Madame de la Fayette has much, and

some of her followers a little, real passion; but her manners,

descriptions, etc., are all conventional, though of another kind. The

fairy tales are of course not "real." Marivaux is aiming directly at

Sensibility, preciousness, "psychology," if you like, but not at holding

up the glass to any ordinary nature as such.[434] And though Crebillon

might plead that his convention was actually the convention of hundreds

and almost thousands of accomplished ladies and gentlemen, no one can

deny that it was almost as much a convention as the historical or

legendary acting of the _Comedie Humaine_ by living persons a hundred

years later at Venice.

No writer perhaps illustrates what is being said better than Prevost. No

one of his books, voluminous as they are, has the very slightest

reality, except _Manon Lescaut_; and that, like _La Princesse de

Cleves_, though with much more intensity and fortunately with no alloy

of convention whatever, is simply a study of passion, not of life at

large at all. With the greater men the case alters to some extent in

proportion to their greatness, but, again with one exception, not to

such an extent as to affect the general rule. Voltaire avowedly never

attempts ordinary representation of ordinary life--save as the merest

by-work, it is all "purpose," satire, fancy. Rousseau may not, in one

sense, go beyond that life in _Julie_, but in touching it he is almost

as limited and exclusive as Prevost in his masterpiece. Diderot has to

get hold of the abnormal, if not the unreal, before he can give you

something like a true novel. Marmontel is half-fanciful, and though he

does touch reality, subordinates it constantly to half-allegorical and

wholly moral purpose. All the minor "Sensibility" folk follow their

leaders, and so do all the minor _conteurs_.

The people (believed to be a numerous folk) who are uncomfortable with a

fact unless some explanation of it is given, may be humoured here. The

failure of a very literary nation--applying the most disciplined

literary language in Europe to a department, in the earlier stages of

which they had led Europe itself--to get out of the trammels which we

had easily discarded, is almost demonstrably connected with the very

nature of their own literary character. Until the most recent years, if

not up to the very present day, few Frenchmen have ever been happy

without a type, a "kind," a set of type-and kind-rules, a classification

and specification, as it were, which has to be filled up and worked

over. Of all this the novel had nothing in ancient times, while in

modern it had only been wrestling and struggling towards something of

the sort, and had only in one country discovered, and not quite

consciously there, that the beauty of the novel lies in having no type,

no kind, no rules, no limitations, no general precept or motto for the

craftsman except "Here is the whole of human life before you. Copy it,

or, better, recreate it--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as

faithfully, but as freely, as you can." Of this great fact even

Fielding, the creator of the modern novel, was perhaps not wholly aware

as a matter of theory, though he made no error about it in practice.

Indeed the "comic prose epic" notion _might_ reduce to rules like those

of the verse. Both Scott and Miss Austen abstained likewise from

formalising it. But every really great novel has illustrated it; and

attempts, such as have been recently made, to contest it and draw up a

novelists' code, have certainly not yet justified themselves according

to the Covenant of Works, and have at least not disposed some of us to

welcome them as a Covenant of Faith. It is because Pigault-Lebrun,

though a low kind of creature from every point of view, except that of

mere craftsmanship, did, like his betters, recognise the fact in

practice, that he has been allowed here a place of greater consideration

than perhaps has ever fallen to his lot before in literary history.

Still, even putting out of sight the new developments which had shown

the irrepressible vitality of the French _conte_, the seven hundred

years had not been wasted. The product of the first half of them

remained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the older

age, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like the

Comte de Tressan;[435] but the treasure-house was very soon to be broken

open and utilised. It is open to any one to contend--it is, indeed,

pretty much the opinion of the present writer--that it was this very

neglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries themselves so slow and so imperfect in its total results. For

those who like to look for literary causes outside literature, there may

be other explanations. But any intelligent reader can do something for

himself if he has the facts before him. It is these facts that it has

been and will be our business to give and to summarise here.

They have been given; let us attempt to summarise them in the briefest

possible way. France possibly did not invent Romance; no man or men

could do that; it was a sort of deferred heritage which Humankind, like

the Heir of Lynne, discovered when it was ready to hang itself (speaking

in terms of literature) during the Dark Ages. But she certainly grew the

seed for all other countries, and dispersed the growth to the ends of

the earth. Very much the same was the case with the short tale in the

"Middle" period. From the fifteenth century to the eighteenth (both

included) she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, studded with

oases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais was

born, and found Quintessence, and of that finding--more fortunate than

the result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen--was born Pantagruelism.

In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, it

was consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a _Don Quixote_ or

a _Tom Jones_, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again,

as had happened in the Middle Ages themselves, but on a smaller scale,

what France did found development and improvement in other lands; while

her own miniature masterpieces, from the best of the _Cent Nouvelles

Nouvelles_ and the _Heptameron_, through all others that we noticed down

to _Adolphe_, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.

How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fix

upon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.[436]

FOOTNOTES:

[404] We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in the

Pastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken in

them.

[405] In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the author

has utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some previously

published work, _A Study of Sensibility_, which appeared originally in

the _Fortnightly Review_ for September 1882, and was republished in a

volume (_Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891) which has been for

some years out of print. Much of the original essay, dealing with

Marivaux and others already treated here, has been removed, and the

whole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new contexts. But

it seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say the same

thing differently about matters which, though as a whole indispensable,

are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the first

importance.

[406] These words were originally written more than thirty years ago. I

am not sure that there was not something prophetic in them.

[407] Madame de Fontaines in _La Comtesse de Savoie_ and _Amenophis_

"follows her leader" in more senses than one--including a sort of

pseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a habit. But

she is hardly important.

[408] Readers of Thackeray may remember in _The Paris Sketch Book_ ("On

the French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some remarks on

Jacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge," which he

thought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his "it

appears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he did

not know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or summary.

[409] The extreme shortness of all these books may be just worth

noticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding century

may have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the "tale"

something more. But the _causa verissima_ was probably the impossibility

of keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of time,

incident, or talk.

[410] _Vide_ on the process Crebillon's _Les Egarements du Coeur et de

l'Esprit_, as above, pp. 371, 372.

[411] The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most people.

[412] But for uniformity's sake I should not have translated this, for

fear of doing it injustice. "Not presume to dictate," in Mr. Jingle's

constantly useful phrase, but it seems to me one of the finest in French

prose.

[413] "Craze" has been suggested; but is, I think, hardly an exact

synonym.

[414] This may seem to contradict, or at any rate to be inconsistent

with, a passage above (p. 367) on the "flirtations" of Crebillon's

personages. It is, however, only a more strictly accurate use of the

word.

[415] Two remarkable and short passages of his, not quoted in the

special notice of him, may be given--one in English, because of its

remarkable anticipation of the state of mind of Catherine Morland in

_Northanger Abbey_; the other in French, as a curious "conclusion of the

whole matter." They are both from _Marianne_.

"I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. I cannot indeed

tell you what was the exact object of my fear, or why it was so lively.

All that I know is that I constantly beheld before me the countenance of

my landlord, to which I had hitherto paid no particular attention, and

then I began to find terrible things in this countenance His wife's

face, too, seemed to be gloomy and dark; the servants looked like

scoundrels; all their faces made me in a state of unbearable alarm. I

saw before me swords, daggers, murders, thefts, insults. My blood grew

cold at the perils I imagined."

* * * * *

"Enfin ces agitations, tant agreables que penibles, s'affaiblirent et se

passerent. L'ame s'accoutume a tout; sa sensibilite s'use: et je me

familiarisais avec mes esperances et mes inquietudes."

[416] Since, long ago, I formed the opinion of _Adolphe_ embodied above,

I have, I think, seen French criticisms which took it rather

differently--as a personal confession of the "confusions of a wasted

youth," misled by passion. The reader must judge which is the juster

view.

[417] By a little allowance for influence, if not for intrinsic value.

[418] On representations from persons of distinction I have given Laclos

a place in an outhouse (see "Add. and Corr."). But I have made this

place as much of a penitentiary as I could.

[419] I must apologise by anticipation to the _official_ French critic.

To him, I know, even if he is no mere minor Malherbe, Restif's style is

very faulty; but I should not presume to take his point of view, either

for praise or blame.

[420] There is a separate bibliography by Cubieres-Palmezeaux (1875).

The useful _Dictionnaire des Litteratures_ of Vapereau contains a list

of between thirty and forty separate works of Restif's, divided into

nearer two than one hundred volumes. He followed Prevost in _Nouveaux

Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ as he had followed Marivaux in the

_Paysan Perverti_. He completed this work of his own with _La Paysanne

Pervertie_; he wrote, besides the _Pornographe_, numerous books of

social, general, and would-be philosophical reform--_Le Mimographe_,

dealing with the stage; _Les Gynographes_, with a general plan for

rearranging the status of women; _L'Andrographe_, a "whole duty of man"

of a very novel kind; _Le Thesmographe_, etc.,--besides, close upon the

end and after the autobiography above described, a _Philosophie de M.

Nicolas_. His more or less directly narrative pieces, _Le Pied de

Fanchette_, _Lucile_, _Adele_, _La Femme Infidele_, _Ingenue Saxancour_,

are nearly always more or less tinged with biography of himself and of

persons closely connected with him, as _La Vie de Mon Pere_, his most

respectable book, is wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that the notice

in Vapereau, while not bearing very hard on Restif on the whole, repeats

the words _cynisme_ and _cynique_ in regard to him. Unless the term is

in part limited and in part extended, so as to mean nothing but

"exposure of things generally kept secret without apparent shame," it is

entirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in his

erotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but most

genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which

had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly

sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is

commonly called cynicism.

[421] There are, however, contradictory statements on this point.

[422] Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal name, and "de

la Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal nourishes so

common in the French eighteenth century. He chose to consider the

surname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and as for his

Christian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose Lambelin, one of

his harem, and a _soubrette_ of some literature, used to address him as

"Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers know, a masculine

as well as a feminine _prenom_ in French.

[423] Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have been

imaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer mood

than when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe, have

been identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to

_Monsieur Nicolas_ have probably escaped identification.

[Sidenote: His life and the reasons for giving it.]

[424]

It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it had

been necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to give

biographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except in

special cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the days

before education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: and

something is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the life

of Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to say

something, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life had

rather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second,

very little will be found about him in most histories of French

literature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in the

text--not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as a

result of rather painful reading--a considerably higher place in the

history of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correct

name--till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French

_Chats-Fourres_, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and the

unbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement of

Paris--was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault de

L'Epinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings,

was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself to

Queen Philippa's _protege_, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides the

mysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume had

to suffer from him, while such things existed, several _lettres de

cachet_. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having been

settled, on leaving school as a clerk in an English commercial house, he

seduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubt

have married her--for Pigault was never a really bad fellow--if she had

not been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. He

escaped--one hopes not without trying to save her. After another

scandal--not the second only--of the same kind, he did marry the victim,

and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of _patria

potestas_ referred to above. At least two _lettres de cachet_ had

preceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastille

prevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, he

had been a gentleman-trooper in the _gendarmerie d'elite de la petite

maison du roi_, which, seeing that the _roi_ was Louis Quinze, probably

did not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or of

Cromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." The

life of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, and

Pigault became an actor--a very bad but rather popular actor, it was

said. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they are

certainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But it

was not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that he

undertook prose fiction; his first book being _L'Enfant du Carnaval_ in

1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which there

are so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back to

soldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, but

went on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, and

certainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, this

arbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which was

perhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault,

who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not a

scoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with his

brothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in the

customs, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying eleven

years later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously till

a short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This odd

career was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was Emile

Augier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, the

late Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him to

write an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Some

years (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels,

plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavo

volumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, will

be justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But he

will find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it is

the fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject of

the text.--There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroad

as well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him before

Waterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strong

stomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times than

was the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who having

enjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age.

For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and most

of her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorian

prudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking that

Marryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and the

resemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: but

not, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.

[425] He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist, and,

apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself rather in

the manner of 1830--Pigault-_Maubaillarck_. I have not yet come across

this junior's work.--For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault and Restif,

see note at end of chapter.

[426] At least in his early books; it improves a little later. But see

note on p. 453.

[427] For a defence of this word, _v. sup._ p. 280, _note_.

[428] It may be objected, "Did not the Scuderys and others do this?" The

answer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a "public" at

all--it was a larger or smaller coterie.

[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and he

shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common with

Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, even

during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.

[430] Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though we

can seldom laugh _with_ him. It led him once to compose one of the very

dullest books in literature, _Le Citateur_, a string of anti-Christian

gibes and arguments from his idol and others.

[431] Yet sometimes--when, for instance, one thinks of the

rottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's _Eric_, or the _spiritus

vulgaritatis fortissimus_ of Mark Twain's _A Yankee at the Court of King

Arthur_--one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.

[432] There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effective

possibility--to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame de

Francheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would have

lacked audacity.

[433] For the story "species" of _Gil Blas_ was not new, was of foreign

origin, and was open to some objection; while the other two books just

named derived their attraction, in the one case to a very small extent,

in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.

[434] Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural--quite the contrary--but

that their situations are conventionalised.

[435] _Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie._ 4 vols. Paris, 1782.

[436] The link between the two suggested at p. 458, _note_, is as

follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to _Han

d'Islande_ and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for,

besides the difference between _canaille_ and _caballeria_, the author

of _M. Botte_ was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he

has, in Part IV. Book VII. of _Les Miserables_ selected Restif as

"undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not

nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the

"wholesomeness" of, among others--Diderot!

APPENDICES

CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION

NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME

11TH CENTURY

_Vie de Saint Alexis_ (probably).

_Roland_ and one or two other _Chansons_ (possibly).

12TH CENTURY

Most of the older _Chansons_.

_Arthurian Legend_ (in some of its forms).

_Roman de Troie_, _Romans d'Alexandre_ (older forms).

13TH CENTURY

Rest of the more genuine _Chansons_.

Rest of ditto Arthuriad and "Matter of Rome."

_Romans d'Aventures_ (many).

Early Fabliaux (probably).

_Roman de la Rose_ and _Roman de Renart_ (older parts).

Prose Stories (_Aucassin et Nicolette_), etc.

14TH CENTURY

Rehandlings, and younger examples, of all kinds above mentioned.

15TH CENTURY

Ditto, but only latest forms of all but Prose Stories, and many of the

others rendered into prose.

_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._ First _edition_, 1480, but written much

earlier.

_Petit Jehan de Saintre_, about 1459, or earlier.

_Jehan de Paris._ Uncertain, but before 1500.

16TH CENTURY

Rabelais. First Book of _Pantagruel_ Second of the whole, 1533;

_Gargantua_, 1535; rest of _Pantagruel_ at intervals, to the

(posthumous) Fifth Book in 1564.

Marguerite de Navarre. _Heptameron._ Written before (probably some time

before) Marguerite's death in 1549. Imperfectly published as _Les Amants

Fortunes_, etc., in 1558; completely, under its permanent title, next

year.

Bonaventure Desperiers. _Cymbalum Mundi_, 1537; _Contes et Joyeux

Devis_, 1558, but written at least fourteen years earlier, as the author

died in 1544.

Helisenne de Crenne. _Les Angoisses_, etc., 1538.

_Amadis_ Romances. Date of Spanish or Portuguese originals uncertain.

Herberay published the first part of his French translation of _Amadis_

itself in 1540.

Many of the small pastoral and adventurous stories noticed at the

beginning of Chapter VIII. appeared in the last fifteen years of the

sixteenth century, the remainder in the first quarter of the

seventeenth. But of the Greek and Spanish compositions, which had so

great an influence on them and on the subsequent "Heroic" School, the

work of Heliodorus had been translated as early as 1546, and the _Diana_

of Montemayor in 1578.

17TH CENTURY

Honore d'Urfe. _L'Astree_, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urfe's

lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)

"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its principal examples, the exact

dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote

almost up to her death in 1683.

Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the

masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame

d'Aulnoy's _Contes des Fees_ appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's

_Contes de ma Mere L'Oye_ did not come till fifteen years later, in

1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I

think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the

appearance of Galland's _Arabian Nights_, 1704, and the author's death

in 1720. As for the _Cabinet_ and its later constituents, see below on

the eighteenth century.

Sorel, Ch. _Francion_, 1622; _Le Berger Extravagant_, 1627.

Scarron, P. _Le Roman Comique_, 1651.

Cyrano de Bergerac. _Histoire Comique_, etc., 1655.

Furetiere, A. _Le Roman Bourgeois_, 1666.

La Fayette, Madame de. _La Princesse de Cleves_, 1678. Her first book,

_La Princesse de Montpensier_ (much slighter but well written), had

appeared eighteen years earlier, and _Zaide_ or _Zayde_ in 1670,

fathered by Segrais.

Fenelon. _Telemaque_, 1699.

18TH CENTURY

_Cabinet des Fees_, containing not only the authors or translators

mentioned under the head of the preceding century, but a series of later

writings down to the eve of the Revolution. Gueulette's adaptations and

imitations ranged from the _Soirees Bretonnes_, published in 1712 during

Hamilton's lifetime, to the _Thousand and One Hours_, 1733, the other

collections mentioned in the text coming between. It may be worth

mentioning that, being an industrious editor as well as tale-teller and

playwright, he reprinted _Le Petit Jehan de Saintre_ in 1724 and

Rabelais in 1732. Caylus's tales seem to have been scattered over the

middle third of the century from about 1730 to his death in 1765.

Cazotte's _Diable Amoureux_ (not in the _Cabinet_) is of 1772--he had

written very inferior things of the tale kind full thirty years earlier.

Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont (who was long an actual governess in England)

wrote her numerous "books for the young" for the most part between 1757

(_Le Magazin des Enfants_) and 1774 (_Contes Moraux_).

Lesage. _Le Diable Boiteux_, 1707; _Gil Blas de Santillane_, 1715-35.

Marivaux. _Les Effets Surprenants_, 1713-14; _Marianne_, 1731-36; _Le

Paysan Parvenu_, 1735.

Prevost. _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_, 1728-32, followed by _Manon

Lescaut_, 1733; _Cleveland_, 1732-39; _Le Doyen de Killerine_, 1735;

_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_, 1741.

(It may not be impertinent to draw attention to the fact that Prevost,

like Defoe--though not quite to the same extent, and in the middle, not

towards the end of his career--concentrated the novel-part of an

enormous polygraphic production upon a few years.)

Crebillon _fils_. _Lettres de la Marquise_, 1732; _Tanzai et Neadarne_,

1734; _Les Egarements_, 1736; _Le Sopha_, 1745; _La Nuit et le Moment_,

1755; _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_, 1763; _Ah! Quel Conte!_ 1764.

Voltaire's _Tales_ were distributed over a large part of his long and

insatiably busy life; but none of his best are very early. _Zadig_ is of

1747; _Micromegas_ of 1752; _Candide_ of 1759; _L'Ingenu_ and _La

Princesse de Babylone_ of 1767 and 1768 respectively.

Rousseau. _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 1760; _Emile_, 1762.

Diderot. _Les Bijoux Indiscrets_, 1748. _Jacques le Fataliste_ and _La

Religieuse_ were posthumously published, but must have been written much

earlier than their author's death in 1784.

Marmontel. _Contes Moraux_ appeared in the official or semi-official

_Mercure de France_, with which the author was connected from 1753-60,

being its manager or editor for the last two of these years. _Belisaire_

came out in 1767.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. _Paul et Virginie_, 1787; _La Chaumiere

Indienne_, 1790.

"Sensibility" Novels:--

Madame de Tencin. _Le Comte de Comminge_, 1735; _Les Malheurs de

l'Amour_, 1747.

Madame Riccoboni. _Le Marquis de Cressy_, 1758; _Lettres de Julie

Catesby_, 1759; _Ernestine_, 1762.

Madame Elie de Beaumont. _Le Marquis de Roselle_, 1764.

Madame de Souza. _Adele de Senanges_, 1794.

Madame de Genlis. _Mlle. de Clermont_, 1802.

Madame de Duras. _Ourika_, 1823; _Edouard_, 1825.

Xavier de Maistre. _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, 1794; _Le Lepreux de

la Cite d'Aoste_, 1812; _Les Prisonniers du Caucase, La Jeune

Siberienne_, 1825.

Benjamin Constant. _Adolphe_, 1815.

Restif de la Bretonne. _Le Pied de Fanchette_, 1769; _Adele_, 1772; _Le

Paysan Perverti_, 1775-76; _Les Contemporaines_, 1780-85; _Ingenue

Saxancour_, 1789; _Monsieur Nicolas_, 1794-97.

Pigault-Lebrun. _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, 1792; _Les Barons de Felsheim_,

1798; _Angelique et Jeanneton_, _Mon Oncle Thomas_, _La Folie

Espagnole_, 1799; _M. Botte_, 1802; _Jerome_, 1804; _Tableaux de

Societe_, 1813; _Adelaide de Meran_, 1815; M. de Roberval,

_L'Officieux_, 1818.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

(Although it is probably idle to attempt to satisfy or placate the

contemporary _helluo_ of bibliography, it may be respectful to other

readers to observe that this is not intended to deal with the whole

subject, but only as a companion, or chrestomathic guide, to this book

itself.)

CHAPTER I

_Apollonius of Tyre._ Ed. Thorpe. London, 1834.

_English Novel, The._ By the present writer. London (Dent), 1913.

_French Literature, A Short History of._ By the present writer. Oxford,

1882, and often reprinted.

_Greek Romances, The._ Most convenient editions of originals--Didot's

_Erotici Graeci_, Paris, 1856, or Teubner's, ed. Herscher, Leipzig,

1858. English translations in Bohn's Library. For those who prefer books

about things to the things themselves, there is a very good English

monograph by Wolff (Columbia University Series, New York).

_Hymn of St. Eulalia._ Quoted in most histories of French literature,

_e.g._ that entered above, pp. 4, 5.

_Life of St. Alexis._ Ed. G. Paris and L. Pannier. Paris, 1872-87.

CHAPTER II

_Alexander Legends_ ("Matter of Rome"). The most important editions of

romances concerning Alexander are Michelant's of the great poem from

which, according to the most general theory, the "Alexandrine" or

twelve-syllabled verse takes its name (Stuttgart, 1846), and M. Paul

Meyer's _Alexandre le Grand dans la Litterature Francaise au moyen age_

(2 vols., Paris, 1886), a monograph of the very first order, with

plentiful reproduction of texts.

_Arthurian Legend, The._ No complete bibliography of this is possible

here--a note of some fulness will be found in the writer's _Short

History_ (see above on Chapter I.). The most important books for an

English reader who wishes to supplement Malory are M. Paulin Paris's

abstract of the whole, _Les Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,

1869-77), a very charming set of handy volumes, beautifully printed and

illustrated; and, now at last, Dr. Sommer's stately edition of the

"Vulgate" texts, completed recently, I believe (Carnegie Institution,

Washington, U.S.A.).