MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN
_VOLUME ONE_
BY
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
THE REALISTS
PRINTED BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA
1897
[Illustration: Mlle. de Maupin]
THIS EDITION OF
MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN
HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
BY
I. G. BURNHAM
THE ETCHINGS ARE BY
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LE SUEUR
AND DRAWINGS BY
ÉDOUARD TOUDOUZE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN--VOLUME I
MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN Front.
THE IMAGINARY MISTRESS
FIRST MEETING WITH ROSETTE
EPISODE OF THE "TOILETTE DE BAL"
D'ALBERT AND ROSETTE
THE ARRIVAL OF THÉODORE
THÉODORE AND THE PAGE
ROSETTE'S MORNING AUDIENCE
THE ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
This celebrated novel, the celebrity of which has not been lessened by
the very numerous editions that have been published, had a very modest
beginning which in no way foreshadowed the great success which it was
to obtain later.
The title: _Mademoiselle de Maupin--Double Love_ appeared, we believe,
for the first time in Renduel's catalogue in connection with _The Life
of Hoffman_, by Lœve-Weimars, which appeared in October, 1833,
announcing the new work of Théophile Gautier as being in press. Renduel
had made the acquaintance of the author at Victor Hugo's; he had
published in August, 1833, his first volume of prose, _Young France_,
and now it was a question of launching a work in two volumes, a truly
daring undertaking for a publisher of that day; especially in the case
of the work of an author but little known and only twenty-two years
old.
_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ was not, however, destined to see the light so
soon. For two years Théophile Gautier, more enamored of freedom than of
work, or preferring the task of making two harmonious rhymes to all the
beauties of his learned and rhythmic prose, incessantly abandoned and
resumed the promised work. A tradition preserved in the family of the
poet tells how his father often shut him up in his room at that time,
forbidding him to leave it until he had completed a certain number of
pages of the _Grotesques_ or of _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ When the
maternal kindness did not come to his aid, the frolicsome author, who
then lived with his parents on Place Royale, often found the means
of getting away by the window and so escaping a paternal task. Such
escapades being frequently renewed, it may well be believed that the
novel made but little progress; 1834 was drawing to a close; only the
first of the two volumes was finished; the publisher complained, and
the author tried to pacify him by notes similar to the following:
"I have just discovered at a bric-à-brac dealer's a charming picture of
Boucher in a splendid state of preservation; it is an opportunity that
I do not wish to miss, and not having money enough, I take the liberty
of asking you for my balance.[1] You will confer on me a real pleasure
in sending it to me.
"I am harnessed to _La Maupin_, and that prevents me from prowling
about and calling on you.
"With cordial wishes, I am, yours,
"THÉOPHILE GAUTIER."
Finally, in 1835, the second volume was written in six weeks on Rue du
Doyenné, where the poet, having left the paternal nest, had installed
himself; the manuscript was delivered to Renduel and we read the
following note in _Le Monde Dramatique_, of September 20th, concerning
the biography of the strange person who really bore the name of Maupin,
a biography signed by Rochefort and published in that number under the
title: _Mademoiselle d'Aubigny-Maupin_: "One of our collaborators,
Monsieur Théophile Gautier, has been busy for a long time on a romance
entitled: _Mademoiselle (de) Maupin._"
The work was now soon to appear; it was issued in November, 1835,
in two octavo volumes, printed by Madame Poussin under the title:
_Mademoiselle de Maupin--Double Love._ The first volume bears the date
1835, the second 1836, while the preface is dated May, 1834.
The work produced no very great sensation. A few journals spoke of
it, but publicity was not then systematized as it is to-day, and
except by some few literary men and the small romantic group of the
author's friends, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ was soon forgotten. Let
us remark, nevertheless, that immediately the book appeared, Honoré
de Balzac wrote Renduel a note, asking for a copy, this note we
have seen ourselves; from this moment dates the admiration that he
always professed thereafter for Théophile Gautier. We learn from
Monsieur Arsène Houssaye, the old and faithful friend of the poet,
that owing to the failure to sell the work, Renduel determined not
to publish anything more for his author; _La Comédie de la Mort_,
already announced upon the covers of the work (as well as _Capitaine
Fracasse)_, was, in fact, returned to the author, and only appeared in
1838, when it was published by Desessart, at that time one of Arsène
Houssaye's publishers; it was the author of _La Couronne de Bleuets_,
who introduced his friend to him and secured a favorable consideration
for his collection of verses.
How strange to us and unlikely, even, all this seems, when one recalls
the exorbitant prices obtained for some years past for rare, stitched
copies in good condition of the first edition of the work that we are
now considering. Many have realized one thousand five hundred francs,
that is to say, the total sums received by the author as royalty on
the first issue of his work. This sum is verified by his receipts to
Renduel, which are in our hands.
A curious incident occurred as to _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ After
its appearance, all the opening of the eleventh chapter was inserted
in _Le Monde Dramatique_ of January 4, 1836, without mentioning its
source, under the title of: _La Comédie Romanesque._ Since that time,
those pages have been frequently reprinted, but not a single one of
these reproductions gives any indication of their origin. It must be
admitted that Théophile Gautier himself gave rise to this error in _La
Presse_ of December 17, 1838, in again quoting these lines, inserted
in an unpublished commentary, as an isolated article which had come
under his notice by chance. He had forgotten this extract, and believed
in good faith to have found in _La Monde Dramatique_ only a newspaper
improvisation. This first mistake was the starting-point of all that
succeeded, the most striking of which is the insertion in 1858 of this
fragment from _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in the first volume of Théophile
Gautier's work: _Histoire de l'Art Dramatique in France._ It is useless
to add that no one noticed this fact.
Time, however, rolled on, and the renown of the poet continued to
increase; his appearance in _La Presse_ in 1836, and his critical
work, had made a circle of new readers. Then, _Fortunio, La Comédie de
la Mort, Une Larme du Diable, Tra Los Montès, Les Grotesques_, etc.,
etc., had considerably increased his literary _impedimenta._ So, when
Monsieur Charpentier, the father of the present publisher of Théophile
Gautier's complete works, had founded the collection to which he gave
his name, he soon thought of reprinting our author's principal works.
Monsieur Charpentier, who succeeded in grouping in his catalogue the
most select of the remarkable works of his age, was of refined literary
taste and held among the publishers of his day a place similar to that
then held by Monsieur Buloz in his capacity of director of _La Revue
des Deux Mondes_: it was difficult to obtain an interview with either,
and to appear in print in their collections was regarded as a kind of
consecration.
It was in 1845 when four of Théophile Gautier's volumes appeared in the
Charpentier catalogue; they were _Poésies Complètes, Nouvelles, Voyage
en Espagne_, and _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ For this reprint, the first
since the original edition[2], the author modified, but very slightly,
some phrases of his work, the text of which, from that time, has never
been changed.
Here ends, in reality, the history of this work. Since 1845, the
number of editions has continued to increase; we will only quote two
that appeared in 1878: one in two volumes, 24mo, illustrated with four
designs by Eugèn Giraud, and another in a large 12mo volume, upon
Holland paper, embellished with a portrait of the heroine by Théophile
Gautier himself, the portrait dated 1834. Finally, in 1880, there was
added to a reprint of this edition, a reproduction of the medallion of
the author by David d'Anger; this reproduction is erroneously dated
1834, instead of 1835, which is the actual year of its execution.
Is it possible, as has often been asserted, that this work, whose
incomparable style should have warranted the opening of the doors of
the Académie Française to the author, was in part the cause of their
remaining stubbornly closed against him?--We do not know; but from
another tradition preserved in the poet's family, it would appear that
the father himself, when he knew of the completion of the work (only
the first volume, as we have seen, was written under his eyes), could
not have been without apprehension as to the part which the book would
play in the life of his son, and, notwithstanding his admiration for
the style of the work, he would often have expressed the fear that the
second volume would at times influence the future of the author.
In any case, the renown of Théophile Gautier, like that of his
illustrious friend, Honoré de Balzac, who, likewise, was never a member
of the Académie, has only increased since his death, and the names of
these two rare talents are in truth missed among those of the members
of that illustrious body. For Théophile Gautier at least, the Académie
itself expressed one day, by the mouth of one of its members, its
regret at not having received him. On October 25, 1872, at its public
session and at the very hour of the obsequies of the great writer,
Monsieur Camille Doucet pronounced the following words which do honor
to their author, and we are happy to reproduce them here: "Permit me to
digress a moment. When I speak of the fraternity of Letters, I should
fail, messieurs, if I appeared longer to forget that at this very
hour, upon the threshold of a tomb, which I have left only with regret
to come here to fulfil another duty, Letters mourning, weep for a true
poet dear to all, a brilliant writer whose wit was thoroughly French
and whose heart was still more French. Very many votes have proved to
him that his place was indicated among us, and so we deplore the more
the sudden stroke to which Théophile Gautier succumbs."
We will add nothing to these touching lines and will close this notice
by saying a few words as to the present edition of _Mademoiselle de
Maupin._ It is the first reprint, absolutely conforming to the original
text. The work appears in two volumes, divided like those of 1835,
and the publishers have exerted every effort to satisfy bibliophiles
desirous of possessing as perfect an edition as possible, both as
regards the exactness of the text and the technical execution of the
work.
Finally, let us say that the designs of E. Toudouze, made especially
for this work, will render this edition still more complete. It will
rank, we hope, among the most treasured editions of the book.
CHARLES DE LOVENJOUL.
NOTES
[Footnote 1: Of his royalties as author of _Young France._]
[Footnote 2: _Figaro_, of May 26, 1837, and some other journals,
announced the sale, at Renduel's, of a second edition of this book. It
was only the first edition that the publisher was trying to get rid of
by this means.]
PREFACE
One of the most burlesque incidents of the glorious epoch in which
we have the good fortune to live side by side with Deutz and General
Bugeaud, is, beyond question, the rehabilitation of virtue undertaken
by all the newspapers, of whatever color they may be, red, green, or
tri-colored.
Virtue is most assuredly a very respectable thing, and we have no
wish to fail in our devotion to the excellent, worthy creature--God
forbid!--We consider that her eyes shine with sufficient brilliancy
through her spectacles, that her stockings are reasonably well put on,
that she takes snuff from her gold snuff-box with all imaginable grace,
that her little dog courtesies like a dancing-master.--We agree to all
that.--We are even willing to admit that her figure is not bad for her
age, and that she carries her years as well as any one could. She is
a very agreeable grandmother, but she is a grandmother. It seems to
me to be natural to prefer to her, especially when one is twenty years
old, some little immorality, very pert, very coquettish, very wanton,
with the hair a little out of curl, the skirt rather short than long,
the foot and eye alluring, the cheek slightly flushed, a smile on the
lips and the heart in the hand.--The most horribly virtuous journalists
can hardly be of a different opinion; and, if they say the contrary,
it is very probable that they do not think it. To think one thing and
write another is something that happens every day, especially among
virtuous folk.
I remember the epigrams uttered before the Revolution--I refer to the
Revolution of July--against the ill-fated and virginal Vicomte Sosthène
de la Rochefoucauld, who lengthened the skirts of the dancers at the
Opéra and applied with his own patrician hands a chaste plaster around
the middle of all the statues.--Monsieur le Vicomte Sosthène de la
Rochefoucauld is far surpassed.--Modesty has been greatly perfected
since his day, and we go into refinements that he would never have
imagined.
I, who am not accustomed to look at statues in certain places,
considered, as others did, the vine-leaf cut by the scissors of
Monsieur le Chargé des Beaux-Arts, the most absurd thing in the world.
It seems that I was wrong, and that the vine-leaf is one of the most
meritorious of institutions.
I have been told, but I refused to believe it, it seemed to me so
extraordinary, that there were people who, when looking at Michael
Angelo's fresco of the _Last Judgment_, had seen nothing therein but
the episode of the lewd priests, and had veiled their faces, crying out
at the abomination of desolation!
Such people know nothing of the romance of Rodrigue except the couplet
of the snake.--If there is any nudity in a book or a picture, they go
straight to it as the swine to the mire, and pay no attention to the
blooming flowers or the golden fruit that hang within reach on all
sides.
I confess that I am not virtuous enough for that. Dorine, the
brazen-faced soubrette, may display before me her swelling bosom, I
certainly will not draw my handkerchief to cover it so that it cannot
be seen.--I will look at her bosom as at her face, and if it is fair
and well-shaped I will take pleasure in it.--But I will not touch
Elmire's dress to see if it is soft, nor will I push her reverently
upon the table as that poor devil of a Tartuffe did.
This great affectation of morality that reigns to-day would be very
laughable if it were not very tiresome.--Every _feuilleton_ becomes a
pulpit; every journalist a preacher; only the tonsure and the little
neckband are wanting. The weather is rainy and homiletic; one can
defend one's self against both by going out only in a carriage and
reading Pantagruel between one's bottle and one's pipe.
Blessed Jesus! what an outcry! what a frenzy!--Who bit you? who pricked
you? what the devil's the matter with you that you cry so loud, and
what has poor vice done to you that you should bear him such a grudge,
he is such a good fellow, so easy to live with, and asks nothing except
to be allowed to amuse himself and not bore others, if such a thing
can be? Act with vice like Serre with the gendarme: embrace and have
done with it all.--Believe me, you will be the better for it.--Eh! _Mon
Dieu_! my worthy preachers, what would you do without vice? You would
be reduced to beggary to-morrow, if the world should become virtuous
to-day.
The theatres would be closed to-night.--What would you take for the
subject of your _feuilleton_?--No more Opéra balls to fill your
columns,--no more novels to dissect; for balls, novels, plays, are the
real pomps of Satan, if we are to believe our holy Mother Church.--The
actress would dismiss her protector and could no longer pay you for
puffing her.--Nobody would subscribe to your newspapers; people would
read Saint Augustine, they would go to church, they would tell their
beads. That would be very praiseworthy, perhaps, but you would gain
nothing by it. If people were virtuous, what would you do with your
articles on the immorality of the age? You see plainly that vice is
good for something.
But it is the fashion nowadays to be virtuous and Christ-like, it is
an attitude people affect; they pose as Saint Jeromes just as they
used to pose as Don Juans; they are pale and wasted, they wear their
hair as the apostles did, they walk with folded hands and eyes glued
to the ground, they assume an expression sugared to perfection; they
have an open Bible on the mantel, a crucifix and consecrated box-wood
above their beds; they never swear, they smoke but little, and they
chew almost not at all.--With that they become Christians, they talk
about the sanctity of art, the lofty mission of the artist, the poesy
of Catholicism, about Monsieur de La Mennais, about the painters of
the angelic school, about the Council of Trent, about progressive
humanity, and about a thousand other fine things.--Some infuse a little
republicanism into their religion, they are not the least interesting.
They couple Robespierre and Jesus Christ in the most cheerful way and
amalgamate with praiseworthy gravity the Acts of the Apostles and the
decrees of the _Holy_ Convention--that is the sacramental title; others
add, for a final ingredient, some Saint-Simonian ideas.--These latter
are complete, they rest upon a square foundation; after them we can
look for nothing better. Human absurdity can go no farther,--_has ultra
metas_--etc. They are the Hercules Pillars of Burlesque.
Christianity is so in vogue by reason of the prevailing hypocrisy, that
even Neo-Christianity enjoys a certain amount of favor. They say that
it can boast thus far one recruit, Monsieur Drouineau included.
An extremely interesting variety of the moral journalist, properly
so-called, is the journalist with a female family.
He carries his modest sensitiveness to the point of anthropophagy, or
very nearly that.
His mode of procedure, although it seems at the first glance simple and
easy, is none the less clownish and superlatively entertaining, and
in my opinion it deserves to be handed down to posterity--to our last
nephews, as the old fogies of the so-called _Grand Siècle_ used to say.
In the first place, to pose as a journalist of this variety, you need
some few preliminary utensils--such as two or three legitimate wives,
a few mothers, as many sisters as possible, a full assortment of
daughters, and cousins innumerable.--The second requisite is a play or
novel of some sort, a pen, ink, paper, and a printer. Perhaps it would
be as well to have an idea or two and several subscribers; but you
can do without them, if you have a large stock of philosophy and the
shareholders' money.
When you have all these things you can set up as a moral journalist.
The two following recipes, varied to suit the occasion, will suffice
for the editorial part.
_Models of Virtuous Articles Concerning a First Performance._
"After the literature of blood, the literature of mud; after the morgue
and the galleys, the alcove and the brothel; after the rags stained
by murder, the rags stained by debauchery; after," etc. (according
to the necessity of the occasion and the available space, you can
continue in this vein from six lines to fifty or more),--"this is as
it should be.--This is where neglect of sacred doctrines and romantic
licentiousness lead: the stage has become a school of prostitution
where one dares not venture, save with fear and trembling, with a woman
one respects. You come upon the faith of an illustrious name, and you
are obliged to retire at the third act with your young daughter all
confused and abashed. Your wife hides her blushes behind her fan;
your sister, your cousin," etc. (The degrees of relationship may be
diversified at pleasure; it is enough that they be all females.)
NOTE.--There is one man who has carried morality so far as to say: "I
will not go to see that play with my mistress."--That man I admire and
love; I carry him in my heart, as Louis XVIII. carried all France in
his; for he has conceived the most triumphant, the most monumental,
the most insane, the most extravagant idea that has passed through the
brain of man in this blessed nineteenth century, which has seen the
birth of so many and such amusing ideas.
The method of dealing with a book is very expeditious and within the
range of every intellect:
"If you choose to read this book, lock yourself securely into your
own room; do not leave it lying on the table. If your wife and your
daughter should open it, they would be lost.--This is a dangerous
book, it advises vicious habits. It would have made a great success,
perhaps, in the time of Crébillon, in the houses of kept mistresses, at
a duchess's select supper-parties; but now that morals are purified,
now that the hand of the people has razed the rotten edifice of
aristocracy, and that,--etc., etc.--there must be in every work an
idea--an idea--yes, a moral and religious idea which--an exalted
and profound aim, answering to the needs of humanity; for it is a
deplorable thing that young writers should sacrifice the most sacred
things to success, and should expend their talent--a notable talent by
the way--in lewd descriptions that would make a captain of dragoons
blush."--(The virginity of the captain of dragoons is, after the
discovery of America, the most delightful discovery that has been made
for a long while.)--"The novel we are considering recalls Justine,
the philosophic Thérèse, Félicia, Compère Matthieu, the Contes de
Grécourt, the Priapées of the Marquis de Sade." The virtuous journalist
is immensely erudite in the matter of filthy novels;--I am very curious
to know why.
It may be obtained at Eugène Renduel's, Rue des Grands-Augustins, No.
22. A handsome volume in 8vo. with vignette. Price 7 francs 50 centimes.
_Eccò_,--_ecce_,--see it.
It is frightful to think that, through the fault of the newspapers,
there are many honest manufacturers who have only these two recipes to
live upon, they and the numerous families they employ.
Apparently I am the most monumentally immoral personage to be found
in Europe or elsewhere; for I can see nothing more licentious in the
novels and plays of the present day than in the novels and plays of an
earlier time, and I find it difficult to understand why the ears of the
gentlemen of the journals have suddenly become so Jansenically ticklish.
I do not believe that the most innocent newspaper man will dare to say
that Pigault-Lebrun, Crébillon Fils, Louvet, Voisenon, Marmontel, and
all other writers of novels and tales do not surpass in immorality,
since there is such a thing as immorality, the most dissolute and
licentious productions of Messieurs Such-an-one and So-and-so, whom I
do not name out of regard for their modesty.
One must be most notoriously false to his convictions not to agree to
that.
Let not the objection be made that I have cited names little known or
unfavorably known. If I have not mentioned the brilliant, imperishable
names, it is not because they will not support my assertion with the
weight of their great authority.
The novels and tales of Voltaire, aside from the question of merit, are
most assuredly no more suitable to be given as prizes to little slips
of boarding-school misses than are the immoral tales of our friend the
lycanthropist, or even the moral tales of the insipid Marmontel.
What do we find in the comedies of the great Molière? the sacred
institution of marriage--as the catechism and the newspapers call
it--scoffed at and ridiculed in every scene.
The husband is old, ugly, and peevish; he wears his wig awry; his coat
is out of fashion; he has a bill-headed cane, a nose smeared with
snuff, short legs, and a paunch as fat as a budget.--He stammers,
says nothing but foolish things, and does as many as he says; he sees
nothing, he hears nothing; his wife is kissed before his face, and he
has no idea what is going on; that state of things lasts until he is
well and duly proved a cuckold in his own eyes and in the eyes of the
whole audience, who are mightily edified and applaud in a way to bring
the walls down.
They who applaud the loudest are they who are the most married.
In Molière, marriage is named George Dandin or Sganarelle.
Adultery is Damis or Clitandre; there is no name sweet and charming
enough for it.
The adulterer is always young, handsome, well-made, and a marquis
at the very least. He enters from the wings humming the very latest
waltz; he takes one or two steps on the stage with the most deliberate,
all-conquering air imaginable; he scratches his ear with the pink nail
of his deftly spread little finger; he combs his lovely fair hair with
his tortoise-shell comb, and arranges his ruffles, which are of great
volume. His doublet and his hose are almost covered with bows and knots
of ribbon; his neckband is from the best maker; his gloves smell
sweeter than balsam and civet; his plumes cost a louis apiece.
How his eye sparkles and his cheek glows! how smiling his mouth! how
white his teeth! how soft and well cared for his hand!
He speaks, naught issues from his lips save poesy, perfumed gallantries
in the most refined style and with the most charming manner; he has
read the latest novels and knows all about poetry, he is brave, and
quick to draw his sword, he scatters gold with lavish hand.--And so
Angélique, Agnès, Isabelle, can hardly refrain from leaping on his
neck, well-bred and great ladies though they be; and so the husband is
regularly betrayed in the fifth act, and is very lucky that he was not
in the first.
That is how marriage is treated by Molière, one of the loftiest and
most serious geniuses who ever lived.--Do you think there is anything
stronger in the suits of _Indiana_ and of _Valentine_?
Paternity is even less respected, if that be possible. Witness Orgon,
Géronte, and all the rest of them.
How they are robbed by their sons, cheated by their valets! How their
avarice, their obstinacy, their idiocy are laid bare, without mercy for
their age!--What practical jokes! what mystifications.--How they are
taken by the shoulder and pushed out of life, poor old fellows, who
take a long time to die and refuse to give up their money! how much is
said about the immortality of parents! what arguments against heredity,
and how much more convincing they are than all this Saint-Simonian
declamation!
A father is an ogre, an Argus, a jailer, a tyrant, something that at
the best is good for nothing but to delay a marriage for three acts
until the final reconciliation.--A father is the ridiculous husband
perfected.--A son is never ridiculous in Molière; for Molière, like all
authors at all possible epochs, paid his court to the young generation
at the expense of the old.
And what of the Scapins, with their striped cloaks _à la Napolitaine_,
their caps tilted over their ears, their plumes sweeping the layers of
air,--are not they very pious, very chaste individuals, most worthy of
canonization?--The galleys are filled with honest folk who have not
done the fourth part of what they do. The knavery of Trialph is paltry
knavery compared with theirs. And the Lisettes, the Martons, _tudieu_!
what hussies!--The girls of the street are far from being as sharp,
as quick at prurient retort as they. How well they understand how to
deliver a note! what good watch they keep during assignations!--On my
word, they are invaluable girls, serviceable and shrewd advisers.
It is a charming company that walks and fidgets through those comedies
and imbroglios.--Duped guardians, cuckold husbands, lewd maids,
keen-witted valets, young ladies mad with love, dissolute sons,
adulterous wives; are not these quite as bad as the melancholy young
beaux and poor, weak women, oppressed and impassioned, of the dramas
and novels of the writers in vogue to-day?
And yet the denouements, minus the final blow of the dagger, minus the
regulation cup of poison, are as happy as the time-honored ending of a
fairy tale, and everybody, even the husband, is perfectly satisfied.
In Molière, virtue is always in disgrace, always being pummelled; it
is virtue that wears horns and turns her back to Mascarille; morality
barely shows its face once at the end of the play, in the somewhat
commonplace person of the gendarme Loyal.
All this that we have said is not intended to knock a chip off
Molière's pedestal; we are not mad enough to attempt to shake that
bronze colossus with our weak arms; we desired simply to show the pious
_feuilletonistes_, who are terrified by recent works and by those of
the romantic school, that the old classics, whom they urge us every day
to read and imitate, far surpass them in looseness and immorality.
To Molière we might easily add Marivaux and La Fontaine, those two
strongly-contrasted exponents of the French mind, and Regnier and
Rabelais and Marot, and many others. But it is not our purpose in
this place to prepare, from the standpoint of morality, a course in
literature for the benefit of the virgin minds of the _feuilleton_.
It seems to me that we should not raise such a hubbub for so small a
matter. Luckily we are not living in the days of the fair Eve, and we
cannot, in good conscience, be as primitive and patriarchal as people
were in the days of the ark. We are not little girls preparing for our
first communion; and when we play crambo, we do not answer _cream-pie_.
We are passably knowing in our innocence, and our virginity has been
on the town for a long while; those are things that one does not have
twice, and, whatever we may do, we cannot recover them, for there is
nothing in the world that runs faster than a fleeing virginity and a
vanishing illusion.
After all, perhaps there is no great harm in that, and knowledge of
everything is preferable to ignorance of everything. That is a question
that I leave for those who know more than I, to discuss. The fact
remains that the world has passed the age when one can feign modesty
and chastity, and I consider it too old a greybeard to play the child
and the virgin without making itself ridiculous.
Since its marriage to civilization, society has lost the right to be
artless and bashful. There are certain blushes that are all right for
the bridal bed, but can serve no further purpose the next day; for the
young wife thinks no more of the maiden, it may be, or if she does
think of her, it is a most improper thing and gravely endangers her
husband's reputation.
When I chance to read one of the fine sermons that have taken the place
of literary criticism in the public sheets, I sometimes feel great
remorse and dire apprehension, having on my conscience some paltry
equivocal stories, a little too highly spiced, such as a young man of
spirit and animation may have to reproach himself for.
Beside these Bossuets of the Café de Paris, these Bourdaloues of the
balcony at the Opéra, these Catos at so much a line, who berate the
present age in such fine fashion, I esteem myself the most infamous
villain that ever marred the face of the earth; and yet, God knows,
the list of my sins, capital as well as venial, with the usual blank
spaces and leads, would barely, even in the hands of the most skilful
publisher, make one or two octavo volumes a day, which is a small
matter for one who does not claim to be bound for paradise in the other
world and to win the Monthyon prize or be rose-maiden in this.
And then, when I think that I have met under the table, and elsewhere,
too, a considerable number of these dragons of virtue, I return to a
better opinion of myself, and I consider that, whatever faults I may
have, they have another which is, in my eyes, the greatest and worst of
all:--I refer to hypocrisy.
By looking carefully one might perhaps find another little vice to
add; but this is so hideous that I really hardly dare to name it. Come
nearer and I will breathe its name into your ear:--it is envy.
Envy, and nothing else.
It is envy that crawls and wriggles through all these paternal
homilies; however careful it may be to hide itself, you can see its
flat little viper's head from time to time gleaming above the metaphors
and rhetorical figures; you surprise it licking with its forked tongue
its lips blue with venom, you hear it hissing softly in the shadow of
an insidious epithet.
I am well aware that it is insufferably conceited to say that any one
envies you, and that a dandy who boasts of a conquest is almost as
nauseating.--I am not so boastful as to believe that I have enemies or
envious detractors; that is a piece of good fortune that is not given
to everybody, and I probably shall not enjoy it for a long time; so
I will speak freely and without reservation as one who is perfectly
disinterested in the matter.
An unquestionable fact, and easy of demonstration to those who may
doubt it, is the natural antipathy of the critic to the poet--of him
who does nothing to him who does something--of the drone to the bee--of
the gelding to the stallion.
You do not become a critic until the fact is established to your
own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet. Before descending to
the pitiful rôle of watching cloaks and counting strokes like a
billiard-marker or a tennis-court attendant, you have long courted the
Muse, you have tried to seduce her; but you have not sufficient vigor
for that; your breath has failed you and you have fallen back, pale and
broken-winded, to the foot of the sacred mountain.
I can conceive that antipathy. It is painful to see another take his
seat at the banquet to which you are not invited and lie with the woman
who would have none of you. I pity with all my heart the poor eunuch
who is compelled to assist at the delights of the Great Turk.
He is admitted to the most secret recesses of the Oda; he escorts the
sultanas to the bath; he sees their lovely bodies gleaming in the
silvery water of the great reservoirs, shedding streams of pearls
and smoother than agate; the most hidden charms are disclosed to him
unveiled. No one is embarrassed by his presence.--He is a eunuch.--The
sultan caresses his favorite before him and kisses her on her
pomegranate mouth.--In very truth his is a terribly false position and
he must be sadly embarrassed to keep himself in countenance.
It is the same with the critic who sees the poet walking in the garden
of poesy with its nine fair odalisques, and disporting himself
indolently in the shade of tall green laurels. It is very hard for him
not to pick up stones in the road to throw at him and wound him over
the wall, if he is skilful enough to do it.
The critic who has produced nothing of his own is a coward; he is like
an abbé paying court to a layman's wife: the layman cannot pay him back
in his own coin or fight with him.
I think that an account of the different methods of depreciating any
sort of work, resorted to during the last month, would be at least
as interesting as the story of Tiglath-Pileser, or of Gemmagog, who
invented peaked shoes.
There would be enough matter to fill fifteen or sixteen folio volumes,
but we will have pity on the reader and confine ourselves to a few
lines--a favor for which we demand more than everlasting gratitude.--In
a very remote age, lost in the darkness of time--it was fully three
weeks ago--the romance of the Middle Ages flourished principally in
Paris and the suburbs. The coat of arms was held in high esteem;
_coiffures à la Hennin_ were not despised and party-colored trousers
were thought well of; the dagger was priceless; the peaked shoe was
adored as a fetich.--There was nothing but ogive windows, turrets,
colonnettes, stained glass, cathedrals, and fortified châteaux;--the
characters were all _damoiselles_ and _damoiseaux_, pages and
varlets, beggars and swash-bucklers, gallant knights and ferocious
castellans;--all of which were more innocent certainly than innocent
games, and did absolutely no harm to anybody.
The critic did not wait for the second romance before beginning his
work of depreciation: as soon as the first appeared, he enveloped
himself in his robe of camel's hair, and sprinkled a bushel of ashes on
his head; then, in his loud, wailing voice, he began to cry:
"More Middle Ages, nothing but the Middle Ages! who will deliver me
from the Middle Ages, from the Middle Ages which are not the Middle
Ages?--Paste-board and terra-cotta Middle Ages, which have nothing of
the Middle Ages save the name!--Oh! these iron barons, in their iron
armor, with iron hearts in their iron breasts! Oh! the cathedrals with
their rose-work always in bloom and their stained glass in flower,
with their lace-work of granite, with their open-work trefoils, their
toothed gables, their chasubles of stone embroidered like a bride's
veil, with their tapers, their psalms, their glittering priests, with
their people on their knees, their rumbling organ, and their angels
soaring aloft and flapping their wings under the arches!--how they have
spoiled my Middle Ages, my refined, brightly-colored Middle Ages!--how
they have blotted it from sight under a layer of coarse plaster!--what
discordant colors!--Ah! ignorant daubers, who fancy you have created
an effect by splashing red upon blue, white upon black, and green
upon yellow, you have seen only the outer shell of the Middle Ages,
you have not divined the true meaning of the Middle Ages, the blood
does not circulate beneath the skin in which you have clothed your
phantoms, there is no heart in your steel corselets, there are no legs
in your tricot trousers, no stomach or breast behind your emblazoned
skirts; they are clothes that have the shape of men and that is
all.--So, down with the Middle Ages as they are presented to us by the
_fabricators_"--the great word is out, the _fabricators_!--"The Middle
Ages meet no need of the present day, we must have something else."
And the public, seeing how the _feuilletonistes_ snarled at the Middle
Ages, was seized with an ardent passion for the Middle Ages, which
they claim to have killed at a single blow. The Middle Ages invaded
everything, assisted by the obstruction of the newspapers:--dramas,
melodramas, novels, tales, poetry--there were even Middle-Age
vaudevilles, and Momus recited feudal mummeries.
Beside the romance of the Middle Ages flourished the carrion romance,
a very pleasing variety, which nervous _petites-maîtresses_ and blasé
cooks consumed in great numbers.
The _feuilletonistes_ speedily came flocking to the stench, like
crows to the carrion, and they tore with the beaks of their pens and
inhumanly put to death that poor species of novel, which asked nothing
more than to be allowed to prosper and putrefy in peace on the greasy
shelves of the book-stalls. What did they not say? what did they not
write?--Literature of the morgue or the galleys, an executioner's
nightmare, hallucination of a drunken butcher, or a convict-keeper with
the jail-fever! They benignly gave us to understand that the authors
were assassins and vampires, that they had contracted the vicious habit
of killing their fathers and mothers, that they drank blood from human
skulls, that they used the bones of the legs for forks and cut their
bread with a guillotine.
And yet they knew better than any one, from having frequently
breakfasted with them, that the authors of those charming slaughters
were excellent young men of family, very easy-going and in the best
society, white-gloved and fashionably near-sighted,--with a decided
preference for beefsteak over human cutlets, and more accustomed
to drink Bordeaux wine than the blood of young girls or new-born
children.--From having seen and touched their manuscripts, they knew
perfectly well that they were written with ink of great virtue upon
English paper, and not with blood from the guillotine upon the skin of
a Christian flayed alive.
But whatever they might say or do, the age was after carrion, and the
charnel-house suited them better than the boudoir; the reader would
bite at no hook that was not baited with a little body already turning
blue.--A state of things easily conceived; put a rose at the end of
your line and the spiders will have time to spin their webs in the
crook of your elbow before you catch the tiniest minnow; put on a worm
or a piece of rank cheese, and carp, barbel, perch, eels, will all leap
three feet out of water to snap at it.--Men are not so different from
fish as people generally seem to believe.
One would have said that the newspaper men had become Quakers,
Brahmins, or Pythagoreans, or bulls, they had been suddenly seized with
such a horror of red and of blood.--Never had they been known to be
in such a soft and melting mood;--it was cream and buttermilk.--They
admitted the existence of only two colors, sky-blue and apple-green.
Pink was only tolerated, and if the public would have allowed them to
do as they chose, they would have led it to the banks of the Lignon to
feed on spinach beside the sheep of Amaryllis. They had changed their
black frock-coats for the dove-colored jacket of Celadon or Silvander,
and surrounded their goose-feathers with clusters of roses and ribbons
after the style of a shepherd's crook. They let their hair float in the
wind like a child's, and had made themselves virgins according to the
recipe of Marion Delorme, and about as successfully as she.
They applied to literature the article in the Decalogue:
_Thou shalt not kill._
The least little dramatic murder was no longer permissible, and the
fifth act had become an impossibility.
They considered the poniard extravagant, poison monstrous, the axe
horrible beyond words. They would have liked dramatic heroes to live
to the age of Melchisedec; and yet it has been a recognized fact, from
time immemorial, that the object of every tragedy is to have a poor
devil of a great man, who cannot help himself, murdered in the last
act, just as the object of every comedy is to join in matrimony two
idiots of _jeunes premiers_ of about sixty years each.
It was about this time that I threw into the fire--after having taken
a duplicate, as almost always happens--two superb and magnificent
Middle-Age dramas, one in verse, the other in prose, in which the
heroes were quartered and boiled on the stage, which would have been
very entertaining and decidedly unusual.
To conform to their ideas, I have since composed an antique tragedy in
five acts called _Héliogabale_, the hero of which throws himself into
the privy, an extremely novel situation and one that has the merit of
introducing a bit of scenery not yet seen on the stage.--I have also
written a modern drama, very much superior to _Antoni,--Arthur,_ or
_L'Homme Fatal,_ where the providential idea arrives in the shape of
a Strasbourg pâté de foie gras, which the hero eats to the last crumb
after committing various rapes, and that, combined with his remorse,
brings on a frightful attack of indigestion of which he dies.--A moral
ending, if ever there was one, which proves that _God is just_, and
that vice is always punished and virtue rewarded.
As for the monstrosity species, you know how they have dealt with that,
how they have abused Han d'Islande the cannibal, Habibrah the obi,
Quasimodo the bell-ringer, and Triboulet, who is only a hunch-back--all
that family so strangely swarming--all those gigantic deformities whom
my dear neighbor sends crawling and leaping through the virgin forests
and the cathedrals of his romances. Neither the great strokes _à la_
Michael Angelo, nor the curiosities worthy of Callot, nor the effects
of light and shade after the fashion of Goya, could find favor before
them; they sent him back to his odes when he wrote novels, to his
novels when he wrote dramas: the ordinary tactics of journalists who
always praise what you have done at the expense of what you are doing.
A fortunate man, however, is he who is acknowledged to be superior,
even by the _feuilletonistes_, in all his works,--except, of course,
the particular one with whom they are dealing,--and who need only write
a theological treatise or a manual of cooking to have his plays admired.
Concerning the romance of the heart, the ardent, impassioned romance,
whose father is Werther the German, and its mother Manon Lescaut
the French-woman, we had a few words to say, at the beginning of
this preface, of the moral scurf that has fastened itself upon it in
desperation, on the pretext of religion and good morals. The critical
louse is like the body-louse that deserts the dead body for the living.
From the corpse of the Middle Ages the critics have passed on to the
living body of this age, whose skin is tough and hard and might well
break their teeth.
We think, notwithstanding a deep respect for the modern apostles,
that the authors of these so-called immoral novels, without being
so thoroughly married as the virtuous journalist, generally have a
mother, and that several of them have sisters and are provided with
an abundance of female relations; but their mothers and sisters do
not read novels, even immoral novels; they sew and embroider and look
after the house-keeping.--Their stockings, as Monsieur Planard would
say, are--entirely white: you can look at them on their legs--they are
not _blue_, and excellent Chrysale, who hated learned women so, would
suggest them as models to the skilled Philaminte.
As for these gentlemen's _wives_, as they have so many of them,
however spotless their husbands may be, it seems to my simple mind
that there are certain things they ought to know.--Indeed, it may well
be that their husbands have never shown them anything. In that case I
understand that they are bent upon keeping them in that useful state of
blessed ignorance. God is great and Mohammed is his prophet!--Women are
inquisitive creatures; may Heaven and morality grant that they gratify
their curiosity in a more legitimate way than that adopted by their
grandmother Eve, and do not go putting questions to the serpent!
As for their daughters, if they have been at boarding-school, I fail to
see what they can learn from these books.
It is as absurd to say that a man is a drunkard because he describes
an orgy, or a debauchee because he narrates a debauch, as to claim
that a man is virtuous because he has written a book on morals; we
see the contrary every day. It is the character that speaks, not the
author; his hero may be an atheist, that does not mean that he is an
atheist; he represents brigands as acting and talking like brigands,
but that does not make him a brigand. On that theory we should have
to guillotine Shakespeare, Corneille, and all the writers of tragedy;
they have committed more murders than Mandrin and Cartouche; we have
not done it, however, and, indeed, I do not believe that we shall
do it for a long time to come, however virtuous and moral criticism
may become. It is one of the manias of these little shallow-brained
scribblers always to substitute the author for the work, and to resort
to personalities, in order to give some paltry scandalous interest to
their miserable rhapsodies, which they are well aware that nobody would
read if they contained only their individual opinions.
We can hardly imagine the tendency of all this wailing, or what good
purpose all this indignation and snarling can serve--or who impels
these Messieurs Geoffroy on a small scale to set themselves up as the
Don Quixotes of morality, and, like genuine literary policemen, to lay
hands upon and club, in the name of virtue, every idea that appears in
a book with its mob-cap awry or its petticoats raised a little too
high.--It is very strange.