CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A 
 COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 1854-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PQ 286. J27 1904 
 
 French Poe««,,f,n|3M,Gffiiiuiifiiira 
 
 3 1924 027 180 375 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027180375 
 
FRENCH 
 POETS AND NOVELISTS 
 
FRENCH 
 POETS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 HanlTDn 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1904 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 EL 
 
First Edition {Crown Zzo) 1878 ; Second, 1884 
 Reprinted {Globe Zvo) 1893, 1904 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Alfred de Musset ....... i 
 
 THfOPHILE GaUTIER 3I " 
 
 Charles Baudelaire 57 
 
 HoNORfi DE Balzac . . . . . . .66- 
 
 Balzac's Letters . 119 
 
 George Sand 149^ 
 
 Charles de Bernard and Gustave Flaubert . .186 
 Ivan Turg^nieff , . . . . . . .211 
 
 , The Two Amperes . 253 
 
 Madame de Sabran 283 
 
 Mf rim^e's Letters ....... 307 
 
 The Theatre Fran^ais . . . . . .316 
 
FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ALFRED DE MUSSET. 
 
 It had been known for some time that M. Paul de 
 Musset was preparing a biography of his illustrious 
 brother, and the knowledge had been grateful to Alfred 
 de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "RoUa" 
 and the "Lettre k Lamartine" has lovers. The book 
 has at last appeared — more than twenty years after 
 the death of its hero.* It is probably not unfair to 
 suppose that a motive for delay has been removed by 
 the recent death of Madame Sand. M. Paul de Musset's 
 volume proves, we confess, rather disappointing. It is 
 a careful and graceful but at the same time a very 
 slight performance, such as was to be expected from 
 the author of "Lui et EUe" and of the indignant re- 
 futation (in the biographical notice which accompanies 
 the octavo edition of Alfred de Musset's works) of 
 M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to 
 walking about the streets late at night. As regards 
 this latter point, M. Paul de Musset hastens to declare 
 that his brother had no such habits — that his customs 
 
 * "Biographie de Alfred de Musset: sa Vie et ses CEuvres.* 
 Par Paul de Musset. Paris : Charpentier. 
 French Poets and Novelists. I 
 
2 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 were those of a gentilhomme ; by which the biographer 
 would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad 
 after dark it was in his own carriage, or at least in a 
 hired cab, summoned from the nearest stand. M. Paul 
 de Musset is a devoted brother and an agreeable 
 writerj but he is not, from the critic's point of view, 
 the ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously 
 to be regretted, for it is little to be desired that the 
 ideal biography of Alfred de Musset should be written, 
 or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and 
 foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him 
 would prefer to judge him with all kinds of allowances 
 and indulgences — sentimentally and imaginatively. Be- 
 tween him and his readers it is a matter of affection, 
 or it is nothing at all; and there is something very 
 happy, therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fraternal 
 reticences and extenuations. He has related his 
 brother's life as if it were a pretty "story;" and in- 
 deed there is enough that was .pretty in it to justify 
 him. We should decline to profit by any information 
 that might be offered us in regard to its prosaic, its 
 possibly shabby side. To make the story complete, 
 however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul 
 de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different 
 sort — a biography of the poet by a clever German 
 writer, Herr Paul Lindau.* Herr Lindau is highly 
 appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a 
 great many things that M. Paul de Musset leaves un- 
 said. As becomes a German biographer, he is very 
 minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should 
 desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably 
 get more instruction from his pages than from the 
 " "Alfred de Musset." Von Paul Lindau. Berlin: Hoftnann. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 3 
 
 French memoir. Their fault is injjeed that they are 
 apparently addressed to persons whose mind is sup- 
 posed to be a blank with regard to the author of 
 "RoUa." The exactions of bookmaking alone can ex- 
 plain the long analyses and paraphrases of Alfred de 
 Musset's comedies and tales to which Herr Lindau 
 treats his readers — the dreariest kind of reading when 
 an author is not in himselt essentially inaccessible. 
 Either one has not read Alfred de Musset's comedies 
 or not felt the charm of them — in which case one will 
 not be likely to resort to Herr Lindau's memoir — or 
 one has read them in the charming original, and can 
 therefore dispense with an elaborate German summary. 
 In saying just now that M. Paul de Musset's biography 
 of his brother is disappointing, we meant more parti- 
 cularly to express our regret that he should have given 
 us no letters — or given us at least but two or three. It 
 is probable, however, that he had no more in his hands. 
 Alfred de Musset lived in a very compact circle; he 
 spent his whole life in Paris, and his friends lived in 
 Paris near him. He was little separated from his 
 brother, who appears to have been his best friend (M. 
 Paul de Musset was six years Alfred's senior) and much 
 of his life was passed under the same roof with the 
 other members of his family. Seeing his friends con- 
 stantly, he had no occasion to write to them; and as 
 he saw little of the world (in the larger sense of the 
 phrase) he would have had probably but little to write 
 about. He made but one attempt at travelling — his 
 journey to Italy, at the age of twenty-three, with 
 George Sand. "He made no important journeys," says 
 Herr Lindau, "and if one excepts his love-affairs, he 
 really had no experiences." But his love-affairs, as a 
 
4 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 general thing, coul^ not properly be talked about M. 
 de Musset shows good taste in not pretending to narrate 
 them. He mentions two or three of the more important 
 episodes of this class, and with regard to the others 
 he says that when he does not mention them they may 
 always be taken for granted. It is perhaps indeed in 
 a limited sense that Alfred de Musset's love-affairs may 
 be said to have been in some cases more important 
 than in others. It was his own philosophy that in this 
 matter one thing is about as good as another — 
 
 "Aimer est le grand point; qu'importe la maJtresse? 
 Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ait I'ivresse?" 
 
 Putting aside the "ivresse," which was constant, 
 Musset's life certainly offers little material for narra- 
 tion. He wrote a few poems, tales and comedies, and 
 that is all. He did nothing, in the sterner sense of 
 the word. He was inactive, indolent, idle; his record 
 has very few dates. Two or three times the occasion 
 to do something was offered him, but he shook his head 
 and let it pass. It was proposed to him to accept a 
 place as attach^ to the French embassy at Madrid, a 
 comfortable salary being affixed to the post. But 
 Musset found no inspiration in the prospect. He had 
 written about Spain in his earlier years — he had sung 
 in the most charming fashion about Juanas and Pepitas, 
 about senoras in mantillas stealing down palace stair- 
 cases that look "blue" in the starlight. But the desire 
 to see the picturesqueness that he had dreamt of 
 proved itself to have none of the force of a motive. 
 This is the fact in Musset's life which the writer of 
 these lines finds most regrettable — the fact of his 
 contented smallness of horizon — the fact that on his 
 own line he should not have cared to go farther. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 5 
 
 There is something really exasperating in the sight of 
 a picturesque poet wantonly slighting an opportunity 
 to go to Spain — the Spain of forty years ago. It does 
 violence even to that minimum of intellectual eagerness 
 which is the portion of a contemplative mind. It is 
 annoying to think that Alfred de Musset should have 
 been narrowly contemplative. This is the weakness 
 that tells against him, more than the weakness of what 
 would be called his excesses. From the point of view 
 of his own peculiar genius it was a good fortune for 
 him to be susceptible and tender, sensitive and pas- 
 sionate. The trouble was not that he was all this, but 
 that he was lax and soft; that he had too little energy 
 and curiosity. Shelley was at least equally tremulous 
 and sensitive — equally a victim of his impressions, and 
 an echo, as it were, of his temperament. But even 
 Musset's fondest readers must feel that Shelley had 
 within him a firm, divinely-tempered spring, against 
 which his spirit might rebound indefinitely. As regards 
 intense sensibility — that fineness of feeling which is the 
 pleasure and pain of the poetic nature — M. Paul de 
 Musset tells two or three stories of his brother which 
 remind one of the anecdotes recorded of the author of 
 the "Ode to the West Wind." "One of the things that 
 he loved best in the world was a certain exclamation 
 of Racine's Phaedra, which expresses by its bizarrerte 
 the trouble of her sickened heart: 
 
 "Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour bless^e, 
 Vous mourtttes aux bords ou vous fiites laissee!" 
 
 When Rachel used to murmur forth this strange, un- 
 expected plaint, Alfred always took his head in his two 
 hands and turned pale with emotion." 
 
 The author describes the poet's early years, and gives 
 
FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 several very pretty anecdotes of his childhood. Alfred 
 de Musset was born in 1810, in the middle of old Paris, 
 on a spot familiar to those many American visitors who 
 wander across the Seine, better and better pleased as 
 they go, to the museum of the Hotel de Cluny. The 
 house in which Musset's parents lived was close to this 
 beautiful monument — a happy birthplace for a poet; 
 but both the house and the street have now disappeared. 
 M. Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother 
 began to versify in his infancy; but Alfred was indeed 
 hardly more than an infant when he achieved his first 
 success. The poems published under the title of 
 "Contes d'Espagne et dTtalie" were composed in his 
 eighteenth and nineteenth years; he had but just com- 
 pleted his nineteenth when the volume into which 
 they had been gathered was put forth. There are cer- 
 tainly — if we consider the quality of the poems — few 
 more striking examples of literary precocity. The cases 
 of Chatterton and Keats may be equally remarkable 
 but they are not more so. These first boyish verses of 
 Musset have a vivacity, a brilliancy, a freedom of feel- 
 ing and of fancy which may well have charmed the 
 little cinacle to which he read them aloud — ^the group 
 of litterateurs and artists which clustered about Victor 
 Hugo, who, although at this time very young, was 
 already famous. M. Paul de Musset intimates that if 
 his brother was at this moment (and as we may sup- 
 pose, indeed, always) one of the warmest admirers of 
 the great author of "Hernani" and those other splendid 
 productions which project their violent glow across the 
 threshold of the literary era of 1830, and if Victor 
 Hugo gave kindly audience to "Don Paez" and "Mar- 
 doche," this kindness declined in proportion as the fame 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 7 
 
 of the younger poet expanded. Alfred de Musset was 
 certainly not fortunate in his relations with his more 
 distinguished contemporaries. Victor Hugo "dropped" 
 him; it would have been better for him if George Sand 
 had never taken him upj and Lamartine, to whom, in 
 the shape of a passionate epistle, he addressed the 
 most beautiful of his own, and one of the most beauti- 
 ful of all, poems, acknowledged the compliment only 
 many years after it was paid. The cinacle was all for 
 Spain, for local colour, for serenades, and daggers, and 
 Gothic arches. It was nothing if not audacious (it was 
 in the van of the Romantic movement), and it was 
 partial to what is called in France the "humoristic" 
 as well as to the ferociously sentimental. Musset pro- 
 duced a. certain "Ballade a la Lune" which began — 
 
 "C'etait dans la nuit brune, 
 Sur le clocher jauni, 
 
 La Ivme, 
 Comme un point sur un i ! " 
 
 This assimilation of the moon suspended above a 
 church spire to a dot upon an i became among the 
 young Romanticists a sort of symbol of what they 
 should do and dare; just as in the opposite camp it 
 became a by-word of horror. But this was only play- 
 ing at poetry, and in his next things, produced in the 
 following year or two, Musset struck a graver and more 
 resonant chord. The pieces published under the title 
 of "Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil" have all the youth- 
 ful grace and gaiety of those that preceded them; but 
 they have beyond this a suggestion of the quality 
 which gives so high a value to the author's later and 
 best verses — the accent of genuine passion. It is hard 
 to see what, just yet, Alfred de Musset had to be pas- 
 
8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 sionate about; but passion, with a poet, even when it 
 is most genuine, is very much an affair of the imagina- 
 tion and the personal temperament (independently, we 
 mean, of strong provoking causes) and the sensibilities 
 of this young man were already exquisitely active. 
 His poems found a great many admirers, and these 
 admirers were often women. Hence for the young 
 poet, says M. Paul de Musset, a great many romantic 
 and "Boccaciennes" adventures. "On several occasions 
 I was awaked in the middle of the night to give my 
 opinion on some question of high prudence. All these 
 little stories having been confided to me under the 
 seal of secrecy, I have been obliged to forget them; 
 but I may affirm that more than one of them would 
 have aroused the envy of Bassompierre and Lauzun. 
 Women at that time were not wholly absorbed in their 
 care for luxury and dress. To hope to please, young 
 men had no need to be rich; and it served a purpose 
 to have at nineteen years of age the prestige of talent 
 and glory." This is very pretty, as well as very Gallic; 
 but it is rather vague, and we may without offence sus- 
 pect it to be, to a certain extent, but that conventional 
 coup de chapeau which every self-respecting Frenchman 
 renders to actual or potential, past, present or future 
 gallantry. Doubtless, however, Musset was, in the 
 native phrase, land. He lived with his father and 
 mother, his brother and sister; his purse was empty; 
 Seville and Granada were very far away; and these 
 "Andalusian passions," as M. Paul 4e Musset says, 
 were mere reveries and boyish visions. But they were 
 the visions of a boy who was all ready to compare 
 reality with romance, and who, in fact, very soon ac- 
 ceded to a proposal which appeared to offer a peculiar 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 9 
 
 combination of the two. It is noticeable, by the way, 
 that from our modest Anglo-Saxon point of view these 
 same "Andalusian passions," dealing chiefly with ladies 
 tumbling about on disordered couches, and pairs of 
 lovers who take refuge from an exhausted vocabulary 
 in biting each other, are an odd sort of thing for an 
 ingenuous lad, domiciled in the manner M. Paul de 
 Musset describes, and hardly old enough to have a 
 latch-key, to lay on the family breakfast-table. But 
 this was very characteristic, all round the circle. Musset 
 was not a didactic poet, and he had no' time to lose 
 in going through the preliminary paces of one. His 
 business was to talk about love in unmistakable terms, 
 to proclaim its pleasures and pains with all possible 
 eloquence; and he would have been quite at a loss to 
 understand why he should have blushed or stammered 
 in preluding to so beautiful a theme. Herr Lindau 
 thinks that even in the germ Musset's inspiration is 
 already vicious — that "his wonderful talent was almost 
 simultaneously ripe and corrupted." But Herr Lindau 
 speaks from the modest Saxon point of view; a point 
 of view, however, from which, in such a matter, there 
 is a great deal to be said. 
 
 The great event in Alfred de Musset's life, most 
 people would say, was his journey to Italy with George 
 Sand. This event has been abundantly — superabun- 
 dantly — described, and Herr Lindau, in the volume 
 before us, devotes a long chapter to it and lingers over 
 it with peculiar complacency. Our own sentiment 
 would be that there is something extremely displeasing 
 in the publicity which has attached itself to the epi- 
 sode; that there is indeed a sort of colossal indecency 
 in the way it has passed into the common fund of 
 
10 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 literary gossip. It illustrates the base, the weak, the 
 trivial side of all the great things that were concerned 
 in it — fame, genius and love. Either the Italian jour- 
 ney was in its results a very serious affair for the re- 
 markable couple who undertook it — in which case it 
 should be left in that quiet place in the history of the 
 development of the individual into which public in- 
 trusion can bring no light, but only darkness; or else 
 it was a piece of levity and conscious self-display — in 
 which case the attention of the public has been invited 
 to it on false grounds. If there ever was an affair it 
 should have been becoming to be silent about, it was 
 certainly this one; but neither the actors nor the 
 spectators have been of this way of thinking; one may 
 almost say that there exists a whole literature on the 
 subject. To this literature Herr Lindau's contribution 
 is perhaps the most ingenious. He has extracted those 
 pages from Paul de Musset's novel of "Lui et EUe" 
 which treat of the climax of the relations of the hero 
 and heroine, and he has printed the names of George 
 Sand and Alfred de Musset instead of the fictitious 
 names. The result is perhaps of a nature to refresh 
 the jaded vision of most lovers of scandal. 
 
 We must add that some of his judgments on the 
 matter happen to have a certain felicity. M. Paul de 
 Musset has narrated the story more briefly — having, 
 indeed, by the publication of "Lui et EUe," earned the 
 right to be brief. He mentions two or three facts, how- 
 ever, the promulgation of which he may have thought it 
 proper, as we said before, to postpone to Madame Sand's 
 death. One of them is sufficiently dramatic. Musset 
 had met George Sand in the summer of 1833, about the 
 time of the publication of "RoUa" — seeing her for the 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 1 1 
 
 first time at a dinner given to the contributors of the 
 "Revue des Deux Mondes," at the restaurant of the 
 Trois Frferes Provengaux. George Sand was the only- 
 woman present. Sainte-Beuve had already endeavoured 
 to bring his two friends together, but the attempt had 
 failed, owing to George Sand's reluctance, founded on 
 an impression that she should not like the young poet. 
 Alfred de Musset was twenty-three years of age; George 
 Sand, who had published "Indiana," "Valentine," and 
 "Lelia," was nearly thirty. Alfred de Musset, as the 
 author of "RoUa," was a very extraordinary young 
 man — quite the young man of whom Heinrich Heine 
 could say "he has a magnificent past before him." 
 Upon his introduction to George Sand an intimacy 
 speedily followed — an intimacy commemorated by the 
 lady in expansive notes to Sainte-Beuve, whom she 
 kept informed of its progress. When the winter came 
 the two intimates talked of leaving Paris together, and, 
 as an experiment, paid a visit to Fontainebleau. The 
 experiment succeeded, but this was not enough, and 
 they formed the project of going to Italy. To this 
 project, as regarded her son, Madame de Musset re- 
 fused her consent. (Alfred's father, we should say, 
 had died before the publication of "Rolla," leaving his 
 children without appreciable property, though during 
 his lifetime, occupying a post in a government office, 
 he had been able to maintain them comfortably.) His 
 mother's opposition was so vehement that Alfred gave 
 up the project and countermanded the preparations 
 that had already been made for departure. 
 
 "That evening toward nine o'clock," saysM. Paul de 
 Musset, "our mother was alone with her daughter by 
 the fireside, when she was informed that a lady was 
 
12 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 waiting for her at the door in a hired carriage and 
 begged urgently to speak with her. She went down 
 accompanied by a servant. The unknown lady named 
 herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to 
 confide her son to her, saying that she would have for 
 him a maternal affection and care. As promises did 
 not avail, she went so far as sworn vows. She used 
 all her eloquence, and she must have had a great 
 deal, since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of 
 emotion the consent was given." The author of 
 "L61ia" and the author of "Rolla" started for Italy to- 
 gether. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accom- 
 panied them to the mail coach "on a sad, misty even- 
 ing, in the midst of circumstances that boded ill." 
 They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de 
 Musset and his mother continued to hear regularly 
 from Alfred. But toward the middle of February his 
 letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they were 
 without news. They were on the point of starting for 
 Italy, to put an end to their suspense, when they re- 
 ceived a melancholy epistle informing them that their 
 son and brother was on his way home. He was slowly 
 recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon 
 as he should be able to drag himself along he would 
 seek the refuge of the paternal roof 
 
 On the loth of April he reappeared alone. A 
 quarter of a century later, and a short time after his 
 death, Madame Sand gave to the world, in the guise 
 of a novel, an account of the events which had oc- 
 cupied this interval. The account was highly to her 
 own advantage and much to the discredit of her com- 
 panion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a 
 Uttle book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 
 
 13 
 
 tolerably good, probably, as history. As a devoted 
 brother, given all the circumstances, it was perhaps the 
 best thing he could do. It is believed that his reply 
 was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Madame Sand 
 had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of docu- 
 ments of the existence of which she had been ignorant, 
 Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her version of their 
 relations would be given to the world, had, in the last 
 weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed 
 statement of those incidents to which misrepresenta- 
 tion would chiefly address itself, and this narrative 
 Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his novel. The 
 gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage 
 of his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly 
 unfaithful, and that, discovering her infidelity, he re- 
 lapsed into a brain fever which threatened his life and 
 from which he rose only to make his way home with 
 broken wings and a bleeding heart. Madame Sand's 
 version of the story is that his companion's infidelity 
 was a delusion of the fever itself and the charge 
 but the climax of a series of intolerable affronts and 
 caprices. 
 
 Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public 
 deliberately invited to ponder this delicate question! 
 The public should never have been appealed to; but 
 once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough 
 justice of its own. According to this rough justice, 
 the case looks badly for Musset's fellow-traveller. She 
 was six years older than he (at that time of life a 
 grave fact); she had drawn him away from his mother, 
 taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their 
 two literary physiognomies were before the world, and 
 she was, on tjie face of the matter, the riper, stronger. 
 
14 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 more reasonable nature. She had made great pre- 
 tensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de 
 Musset that he had made none whatever. What the 
 public sees is that the latter, unreasonable though he 
 may have been, comes staggering home, alone and 
 forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice 
 and writes three or four highly successful romances. 
 Herr Lindau, who analyzes the affair, comes to the 
 same conclusion as the gross, synthetic public; and he 
 qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant 
 readers of George Sand's writings will recognise the 
 iustice. It is very happy to say "she was something 
 of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all experience, 
 with her, was the desire to turn it to some economical 
 account; and that she probably irritated her companion 
 in a high degree by talking too much about loving 
 him as a mother and a sister. (This, it will be remem- 
 bered, is the basis of action with Therfese, in "EUe et 
 Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain 
 him in the filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's 
 friend, Madame de Warens.) On the other hand, it 
 seems hardly fair to make it one of Musset's grievances 
 that his comrade was industrious, thrifty and methodical; 
 that she had, as the French say, de I'ordre; and that, 
 being charged with the maintenance of a family, she 
 allowed nothing to divert her from producing her daily 
 stint of "copy." 
 
 It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the 
 patience of a tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques 
 Laurent in "Elle et Lui," is a suflSciently vivid portrait 
 of a highly endowed, but hopelessly petulant, unreason- 
 able and dissipated egotist. We are far from suspect- 
 ing that the portrait is perfectly exact; no portrait by 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 
 
 IS 
 
 George Sand is perfectly exact. Whatever point of 
 view she takes, she always abounds too much in her own 
 sense. But it evidently has a tolerably solid foundation 
 in fact. Herr Lindau holds that Alfred de Musset's 
 life was literally blighted by the grief that he suffered 
 in Italy, and that the rest of his career was a long, 
 erratic, unprofitable effort to drown the recollection of 
 it. Our own inclination would be to judge him at once 
 with more and with less indulgence. Whether deservedly 
 or no, there is no doubt that his suffering was great; 
 his brother quotes a passage from a document written 
 five years after the event, in which Alfred affirms that 
 on his return to Paris he spent four months shut up in 
 his room in incessant tears — tears interrupted only by 
 a "mechanical" game of chess in the evening. But 
 Musset, like all poets, was essentially a creature of 
 impressions; as with all poets, his sentimental faculty 
 needed constantly to renew itself. He found his ac- 
 count in sorrow, or at least in emotion, and we may 
 say, in differing from Herr Lindau, that he was not a 
 man to let a grievance grow stale. To feel permanently 
 the heed of smothering sorrow is in a certain sense to 
 be sobered by it. Musset was never sobered (a cynical 
 commentator would say he was never sober). Emotions 
 bloomed again lightly and brilliantly on the very stem 
 on which others had withered. After the catastrophe 
 his imagination often saved him from hopeless melan- 
 choly; indeed it rather too vividly lighted the way to 
 pleasure. 
 
 M. Paul de Musset mentions that in 1837 his brother 
 conceived a "passion s6rieuse" for an attractive young 
 lady, and that the attachment lasted two years — "two 
 years during which there was never a quarrel, a storm. 
 
1 6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 a cooling-off; never a pretext for umbrage or jealousy. 
 This is why," he adds, "there is nothing to be told of 
 them. Two years of love without a cloud cannot be 
 narrated." It is noticeable that this is the third "passion 
 s^rieuse" that M. Paul de Musset alludes to since the 
 dolorous weeks which followed the return from Venice. 
 Shortly after this period another passion had come to 
 the front, a passion which, like that which led him to 
 Italy, was destined to have a tragical termination. This 
 particular love-affair is commemorated, in accents of 
 bitter melancholy, in the "Nuit de D&embre," just as 
 the other, which had found its catastrophe at Venice, 
 figures by clear allusion in the "Nuit de Mai," pub- 
 lished a few months before. It may provoke a philo- 
 sophic smile to learn, as we do from M. Paul de Musset 
 — candid biographer! — that the "motives" of these two 
 poems are not identical, as they have hitherto been 
 assumed to be. It had never occurred to the reader 
 that one disillusionment could follow so fast upon the 
 heels of another. When we add that a short time after- 
 wards — as the duration of great intimacies of the heart 
 is measured — Alfred de Musset was ready to embark 
 upon "two years of love without a cloud" with stiU 
 another object — to say nothing of the brief interval 
 containing yet one more sentimental episode, of which 
 our biographer gives the prettiest account — we seem 
 to be justified in thinking that, for a "blighted" life, 
 that of Alfred de Musset exhibited a certain germinal 
 vivacity. 
 
 During his stay in Italy he had written nothing; but 
 the five years which followed his return are those of his 
 most active and brilliant productiveness. The finest of 
 his verses, the most charming of his tales, the most 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 1 7 
 
 original of his comedies, belong to this relatively busy 
 period. Everything that he wrote at this time has a 
 depth and intensity that distinguish it from the jocosely 
 sentimental productions of his commencement and from 
 the somewhat mannered and vapidly elegant composi- 
 tions which he put forth, at wide intervals, during the 
 last fifteen years of his life. This was the period of 
 Musset's intellectual virility. He was very precocious, 
 but he was at the same time, at first, very youthful. 
 On the other hand, his decline began early; in most of 
 his later things, especially in his verses (they become 
 very few in number) the inspiration visibly runs thin. 
 "Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon 
 verre," he had said, and both clauses of the sentence 
 are true. His glass held but a small quantity; the best of 
 his verses — those that one knows by heart and never 
 wearies of repeating — are very soon counted. We have 
 named them when we have mentioned "RoUa," the 
 "Nuit de Mai," the "Nuit d'Aoflt," and the "Nuit d'Oc- 
 tobre"; the "Lettre a Lamartine," and the '.'Stances a 
 la Malibran." These, however, are perfection; and if 
 Musset had written nothing else he would have had a 
 right to say that it was from his own glass that he 
 drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "On ne 
 badine pas avec I'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the 
 same year belongs the "Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if 
 not the most exquisite, of his dramatic attempts. His 
 two most agreeable »o«Oi?//m, "Emmeline" and "Frederic 
 et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we 
 have not space to enumerate his productions in detail. 
 During the fifteen last years of his life, as we have 
 said, they grew more and more rare; the poet had, in 
 a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years 
 
 French Poets and Noveltsis. ^ 
 
1 8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered 
 sketch; picturing him especially as a figure publicly fami- 
 liar to Parisian loungers, who observed him as "an un- 
 fortunate with an interesting face, dressed with extreme 
 care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of age, 
 seated in a corner of a cafe and gazing blankly over 
 a marble table on which "a half empty bottle of ab- 
 sinthe and a quite empty glass" stood before him. 
 M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's later 
 years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with 
 a very proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many 
 foibles and transgressions in the shade. He mentions, 
 however, Alfred's partiality for stimulants — a taste 
 which had announced itself in his early years. Musset 
 made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English, he 
 got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his 
 merciless but valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author 
 of "RoUa" as coming tipsy to the sittings of the French 
 Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was cur- 
 rent on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said 
 some one. "II s' absinthe trop," replied some one else. 
 He had been elected to the Academy in 1852. His 
 speech on the occasion of his reception was a dis- 
 appointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes 
 the sterility of his later years to indolence and per- 
 versity; and it is probable that there is not a little 
 justice in the charge. He was unable to force himself; 
 he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do 
 as they like. When a literary task was proposed to 
 him and he was not in the humour for it, he was wont 
 to declare that he was not a maid-of-all-work but an 
 artist. He must write when the fancy took him; the 
 fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 1 9 
 
 With a very uncertain income and harassed constantly 
 by his debts, he scorned to cultivate a pecuniary in- 
 spiration. He died in the arms of his brother in the 
 spring of 1857. 
 
 He was beyond question one of the first poets of ^ 
 our day. If the poetic force is measured by the 
 quality of the inspiration — by its purity, intensity and 
 closely personal savour — Alfred de Musset's place is 
 surely very high. He was, so to speak, a thoroughly 
 personal poet. He was not the poet of nature, of the 
 universe, of reflection, of morality, of history; he was 
 the poet simply of a certain order of personal emotions, 
 and his charm is in the frankness and freedom, the 
 grace and harmony, with which he expresses these 
 emotions. The affairs of the heart — these were his 
 province; in no other verses has the heart spoken more 
 characteristically. Herr Lindau says very justly that 
 if he was not the greatest poet among his contem- 
 poraries, he was at any rate the most poetically con- 
 stituted nature. A part of the rest of Herr Lindau's 
 judgment is worth quoting: 
 
 "He has remained the poet of youth. No one has sung so 
 truthfully and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its 
 doubts and its hopes. No one has comprehended and justified its 
 follies and its amiable idiosyncrasies with a more poetic irony, with 
 a deeper conviction. His joy was young, his sorrow was young, 
 and young was his song. To youth he owed all happiness, and in 
 youth he sang his brightest chants. But the weakness of youth 
 was his fatal enemy, and with youth faded away his joy in existence 
 and in creation. " 
 
 This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's 
 writing is its simple suggestion of youthfulness — of 
 something fresh and fair, slim and tremulous, with a 
 tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers 
 
20 FRENCH POETS 'AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; 
 and it is very true that he was not a Stoic. You 
 may even call him unmanly. He cries out when he 
 is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks 
 much about his tears. (We have seen that after his 
 return from Venice they formed, for four months, his 
 principal occupation.) I But his defence is that if he 
 does not bear things like a man, he at least, according 
 to Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man:^ 
 What makes him valuable is just this gift for the ex- 
 pression of that sort of emotion which the conventions 
 and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary utter- 
 ance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in 
 the vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature 
 important enough to have its exponent. If the pre- 
 sumption is against the dignity of lyrical utterance, 
 poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere — he is 
 a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in 
 judging him you do not stint your sympathy, you will 
 presently perceive him to have an extraordinarily pre- 
 cious quality — a quality equally rare in literature and 
 in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a 
 great deal of reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of 
 genius; but (especially in English poetry) there is little 
 of this peculiar property of Musset's. When it occurs 
 we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us beyond 
 anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the 
 quality by which he will live in spite of those weak- 
 nesses and imperfections which may be pointed out 
 by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect re- 
 sembled the poet whom he appears most to have ad- 
 mired — living at a time when it had not begun to be 
 the fashion to be ashamed to take Byron seriously. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 21 
 
 Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of 
 him with violent scorn as B}rron's "attendant dwarf," 
 or something of that sort. But this is to miss the case 
 altogether. There is nothing diminutive in generous 
 admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a younger 
 brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way 
 of stating the position. Musset resembles B)rron in 
 the fact that the beauty of his verse is somehow iden- 
 tical with the feeling of the writer — with his immediate, 
 sensible warmth — and not dependent upon that reflec- 
 tive stage into which, to produce its great effects, 
 most English poetic expression instantly passes, and 
 which seems to chUl even while it nobly beautifies. 
 Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as 
 Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that 
 he often made bad verses, and he is accused of having 
 but half known his trade. This sort of criticism is 
 eminently just, and there is a weak side of the author 
 of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack. 
 
 Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious 
 correspondent, wrote poetry as an amateur — wrote it, 
 as they say in France, en gentilhomme. It is the 
 fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on one's guard 
 against speaking foreign tongues too well (the pre- 
 caution is perhaps superfluous), lest a marked pro- 
 ficiency should expose one to be taken for a teacher 
 of languages. It was a feeling of this kind, perhaps, 
 that led Alfred de Musset to a certain aff'ectation of 
 negligence and laxity; though he wrote for the maga- 
 zines he could boast a long pedigree, and he had no- 
 thing in common with the denizens of Grub Street. 
 Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up 
 — of which, indeed, his contemporary, Thdophile 
 
22 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Gautier, may be regarded as the founder. These gentle- 
 men have taught French Poetry a multitude of paces 
 of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have 
 been supposed capable; they have discovered a great 
 many secrets that Musset appears never to have sus- 
 pected, or (if he did suspect them) to have thought 
 not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths 
 of versification, and beside their refined, consummate 
 facture Musset's simple devices and good-natured pro- 
 sody seem to belong to a primitive stage of art. It 
 is the difference between a clever performer on the 
 tight-rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft 
 turf with his hands in his pockets. If people care 
 supremely for form, Musset wOl only half satisfy them. 
 It is very pretty, they will say; but it is confoundedly 
 unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered, 
 and in spite of an ineffable natural grace it lacks the 
 positive qualities of cunning workmanship — those 
 qualities which are found in such high perfection in 
 Th^ophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's ex- 
 quisite feeling makes up for one-half the absence of 
 finish, and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now 
 makes up for the other half. His sweetness of passion, 
 of which the poets who have succeeded him have so 
 little, is a more precious property than their superior 
 science. His grace is often something divine; it is in 
 his grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau 
 says that Heine speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" 
 being his salient qualities. (By the first, we take 
 it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.) 
 His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; 
 the rhythm of even some of his earliest verses makes 
 them haunt the ear after one has murmured them aloud. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 23 
 
 "Uliic, des mers nul oeil n'a mesure I'abtme, 
 Ni les herons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots; 
 Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime, 
 Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots." 
 
 Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and un- 
 affectedness, is altogether peculiar; though it must be 
 said that it is only in the poems of his middle period 
 that it is at its best. His latest things are, according 
 to Sainte-Beuve, colifichets — baubles; they are too much 
 in the rococo, the Dresden china, style. But as we 
 have said before, with his youth Musset's inspiration 
 failed him. It failed him in his prose as well as in 
 his verse. "II faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou 
 fermee," one of the last of his dramatic proverbs, is 
 very charming, very perfect in its way; but compared 
 with the tone of the "Caprices de Marianne," the 
 "Chandelier," "Fantasio," the sentiment is thin and 
 the style has rather a simper. It is what the French 
 call marivaudage. There can, however, be no better 
 example of the absoluteness of the poetic sentiment, of 
 its justifying itself as it goes, of lyrical expression 
 being as it were not only a means, but an end, than 
 the irresistible beauty of such effusions as the "Lettre 
 a Lamartine" and the "Nuit d'Aoiit." 
 
 "Poete, je t'ecris pour te dire que j'aime! " 
 
 — that is all, literally, that Musset has to say to the 
 "amant d'Elvire"; and it would be easy to make 
 merry at the expense of so simply candid a piece of 
 "gush." But the confidence is made with a transparent 
 ardour, a sublime good faith, an audible, touching 
 tremour of voice, which, added to the enchanting har- 
 mony of the verse, make the thing one of the most 
 splendid poems of our day. 
 
24 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 "Ce ne sont pas des chaiits, ce ne sont que des larmes, 
 Et je ne te dirai que ce que Dieu m'a dit!" 
 
 Musset has never risen higher. He has, in strictness, 
 only one idea — the idea that the passion of love and 
 the act of loving are the divinest things in a miserable 
 world; that love has a thousand disappointments, de- 
 ceptions and pangs, but that for its sake they are all 
 worth enduring, and that as Tennyson has said, more 
 curtly and reservedly, 
 
 '"Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. " 
 
 Sometimes he expresses this idea in the simple epicu- 
 rean fashion, with gaiety and with a more or less 
 cynical indifference to the moral side of the divine 
 passion. Then he is often pretty, picturesque, fanciful, 
 but he remains essentially light. At other times he 
 feels its relation to the other things that make up 
 man's destiny, and the sense of aspiration mingles 
 with the sense of enjoyment or of regret. Then he 
 is at his best; then he seems an image of universally 
 sentient youth. 
 
 "Je ne puis; malgre moi, I'infini me tourmente, 
 Je n'y saurais songer sans crainte et sans espoir; 
 Et quoiqu'on en ait dit, ma raison s'epouvante 
 De ne pas le comprendre, et pourtant de le voir." 
 
 While we may suspect that there is something a little 
 over-coloured in M. Paul de Musset's account of the 
 degree to which his brother was haunted by the 
 religious sentiment — by the impulse to grope for some 
 philosophy of life — we may also feel that with the 
 poet's sense of the "divineness" of love there went a 
 conviction that ideal love implies a divine object. 
 This is the feeling expressed in the finest lines of the 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 2$ 
 
 "Lettre k Lamartine" — in lines at least which, if they 
 are not the finest, are fine enough to quote. 
 
 "Eh bien, bon ou mauvais, inflexible ou fragile. 
 Humble ou gai, triste ou fier, mais toujours gemissant, 
 Cet homme, tel qu'il est, cet 4tre fait d'argile, 
 Tu I'as vu, Lamartine, et son sang est ton sang. 
 Son bonheur est le tien; sa douleur est la tienne; 
 Et des maux qu'ici bas il lui faut endurer, 
 ■Pas un qui ne te touche et qui ne t'appartienne; 
 Puisque tu sais chanter, ami, tu sais pleurer. 
 Dis-moi, qu'en penses-tu dans tes jours de tristesse? 
 Que t'a dit le malheur quand tu I'as consult^ ? 
 Trompe par tes amis, trahi par ta maltresse, 
 Du del et de toi-meme as-tu jamais doute ? 
 Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste experience 
 Nous apporte la cendre et n'eteint pas le feu. 
 Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence; 
 Tu le laisses passer et tu crois k ton Dieu. 
 Quelqu'il soil, c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances. 
 Je ne sais pas son nom: j'ai regarde les cieux; 
 Je sais qu'Us sont k lui, je sais qu'Us sont immenses, 
 Et que I'immensite ne peut pas 6tre k deux. 
 J'ai connu, jeune encor, de severes souffrances; 
 J'ai vu verdir les bois et j 'ai tente d'aimer. 
 Je sais ce que la terre engloutit d'esperances, 
 Et pour y recueillir ce qu'il y faut semer. 
 Mais ce que j'ai senti, ce que je veux t'ecrire, 
 C'est ce que m'ont appris les anges de douleur; 
 Je le sais mieux encor et puis mieux te le dire, 
 Car leur glaive, en entrant, I'a grave dans mon cceur. " 
 
 And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of 
 belief in immortality. 
 
 We have called the "Lettre k Lamartine" Musset's 
 highest flight, but the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as 
 fine a poem — full of imaginative splendour and melan- 
 choly ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is altogether 
 superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the 
 "Nuit de Decembre," which has a great deal of sombre 
 
26 FRENCH POETS ANB NOVELISTS. 
 
 beauty, but whicli is not, like the others, in the form 
 of dialogue between the Muse and the poet — ^the Muse 
 striving to console the world-wounded bard for his 
 troubles and urging him to take refuge in hope and 
 production. 
 
 Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser; 
 La fleur de I'eglantier sent ses bourgeons eclore. 
 Le printemps natt ce soir; les vents vont s'embraserj 
 Et la bergeronnette, en attendant Taurore, 
 Aux premiers buissons verts commence a se poser. 
 Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser. 
 
 That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night 
 The same poem (the "Nuit de Mai") contains the 
 famous passage about the pelican — the passage begin- 
 ning— 
 
 Les plus desesperes sont les chants les plus beaux, 
 Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots — 
 
 in which the legend of the pelican opening his breast 
 to feed his starving young is made an image of what 
 the poet does to entertain his readers: 
 
 Poete, c'est ainsi que font les grands poetes. 
 lis laissent s'^gayer ceux qui vivent un temps; 
 Mais les festins humains qu'ils servent a leurs fetes 
 Ressemblent la plupart k ceux des pelicans. 
 
 This passage is perhaps — unless we except the 
 opening verses of "Rolla" — Musset's noblest piece of 
 poetic writing. We must place next to it — next to 
 the three "Nuits" — the admirably passionate and 
 genuine "Stanzas to Malibran" — a beautiful charac- 
 terization of the artistic disinterestedness of the singer 
 who suffered her genius to consume her — who sang 
 herself to death. The closing verses of the poem have 
 a wonderful purity; to rise so high, and yet in form. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 2"] 
 
 in accent, to remain so still and temperate, belongs 
 only to great poetry; as it would be well to remind 
 the critic who thinks the author of the "Stanzas to 
 Malibran" dwarfish. There is another sort of verse 
 in which violence of movement is more sensible than 
 upwardness of direction. 
 
 So far in relation to Musset's lyric genius — though 
 we have given but a brief and inadequate account of 
 it. He had, besides, a dramatic genius of the highest 
 beauty, to which we have left ourself space to devote 
 only a few words. It is true that the drama, with 
 Musset, has a decidedly lyrical element, and that 
 though his persons always talk prose they are con- 
 stantly saying things which would need very little help 
 to fall into the mould of a stanza or a sonnet. In his 
 dramas as in his verses his weakness is that he is 
 amateurish; they lack construction; their merit is not \ 
 in their plots, but in what, for want of a better term, 
 we may call their sentimental fragrance. The earliest 
 of them failed upon the stage, and for many years it 
 was supposed they could not be played. Musset sup- 
 posed so himself, and took no trouble to encourage 
 the experiment. He made no concessions to contem- 
 porary "realism." But at last they were taken up — 
 almost by accident — and it was found that in the 
 hands of actors whose education enabled them to 
 appreciate their delicacy, this delicacy might become 
 wonderfully effective. If feeling is the great quality 
 in his verses, the case is the same in his strange, 
 fantastic, exquisite little comedies; comedies in the 
 literal English sense of the word we can hardly call 
 them, for they have almost always a melancholy or 
 a tragical termination. They are thoroughly senti- 
 
28 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 mentalj he puts before us people who convince us 
 that they really feel; the drama is simply the history 
 of their feeling. In the emotions of Valentin and 
 Perdican, of Fantasio and Fortunio, of Celio and 
 Octave, of Carmosine and Bettine, there is something 
 contagious, irresistibly touching. But the great charm 
 is Musset's dramatic world itself, the atmosphere in 
 which his figures move, the element they breathe. 
 
 It seems at first a reckless thing to say, but we 
 will risk it: in the quality of his fancy Musset always 
 reminds us of Shakespeare. His little dramas go for- 
 ward in the country of "As You Like It" and the 
 "Winter's Tale"; the author is at home there, like 
 Shakespeare himself, and he moves with something of 
 the Shakespearean lightness and freedom. His fancy 
 loves to play with human life, and in the tiny mirror 
 that it holds up we find something of the depth and 
 mystery of the object. Musset's dialogue, in its mingled 
 gaiety and melancholy, its sweetness and irony, its 
 allusions to real things and its kinship with a romantic 
 world, -has an altogether indefinable magic. To utter 
 it on the stage is almost to make it coarse. Once 
 Musset attempted a larger theme than usual; in 
 "Lorenzaccio" he wrote an historical drama on the 
 scale of Shakespeare's histories; that is, with a multi- 
 tude of figures, scenes, incidents, illustrations. He 
 laid his hand on an admirable subject — the story of a 
 certain Lorenzino de' Medici, who played at being a 
 debauchee and a poltroon in order better to put the 
 tyrant of Florence (his own cousin) off his guard, and 
 serve his country by ridding her of him. The play 
 shows an extraordinary abundance and vivacity of 
 imagination; it is full of the sentiment of creative de- 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET. 2g 
 
 light in a great theme and a rich period. Alfred de 
 Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as 
 ready to handle a hundred figures as a dozen — of 
 having imagination enough for them all. The thing 
 has the real creative inspiration, and if it is not the 
 most perfect of his productions it is probably the most 
 vigorous. 
 
 We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is 
 the same as of the comSdies — that of spontaneous feel- 
 ing, and of putting people before us in whose feelings 
 we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace 
 and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are 
 the most mannered of his productions. Two or three 
 of them, however — "Emmeline," "Les Deux Mattresses," 
 "Frederic et Bernerette" — are masterpieces; this last 
 epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter 
 written by the heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an 
 incorrigibly volage grisette) to her former lover on the 
 occasion of his marrying and settling. The incoherency, 
 the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an 
 amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the 
 intensity of her emotion and the levity of her nature, 
 are caught in the act. And yet it is not fair to say 
 of anything represented by Musset that it is caught in 
 the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is 
 not the exact reality, but a something seen by the 
 imagination — a tinge of the ideal, a touch of poetry. 
 We must try to see Musset himself in the same way; 
 his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of 
 our imagination. And yet, even with such help taken, 
 we cannot but feel that he is an example of the waste- 
 ful way in which nature and history sometimes work — 
 of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of 
 
30 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 economy — of the vast amount of material they take to 
 produce a little result. 
 
 Alfred de Musset's superfine organization, his exalta- 
 tions and weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions 
 and debaucheries, his intemperance and idleness, his 
 years of unproductiveness, his innumerable mistresses 
 (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem proper 
 to attribute to theni), his quarrel with a woman of genius, 
 and the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that 
 are so ungracefully bound up with it — all this was 
 necessary in order that we should have the two or 
 three little volumes into which his best could be com- 
 pressed. It takes certainly a great deal of life to make 
 a little art! In this case, however, we must remember, 
 tliat little is exquisite. 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 3 1 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 Teiere very recently died in Paris a man of genius 
 whom his eulogists all made haste to proclaim a true 
 poet. Many of them, indeed, spoke of Theophile 
 Gautier as a great poet, and one, we remember, men- 
 tioned his last little volume, "Tableaux de Siege," as 
 the crowning glory of the resistance to the Prussians. 
 Gautier was indeed a poet and a strongly representative 
 one — a French poet in his limitations even more than 
 in his gifts; and he remains an interesting example of 
 the manner in which, even when the former are sur- 
 prisingly great, a happy application of the latter may 
 produce the most delightful works. Completeness on 
 his own scale is to our mind the idea he most in- 
 stantly suggests. Such as his finished task now pre- 
 sents him, he is almost sole of his kind. He has had 
 imitators who have imitated ever3rt;hing but his spon- 
 taneity and his temper; and as they have therefore 
 failed to equal him we doubt whether the literature of 
 our day presents a genius so naturally perfect. We 
 say this with no desire to transfer Gautier to a higher 
 pedestal than he has fairly earned — a poor service, 
 for the pedestal sometimes sadly dwarfs the figure. 
 His great merit was that he understood himself so per- 
 fectly and handled himself so skilfully. Even more 
 than Alfred de Musset (with whom the speech had a 
 shade of mock-modesty) he might have said that, if 
 
32 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 his glass was not large, at least it was all his owe 
 glass. As an artist, he never knew an hour's weakness 
 nor failed to strike the note that should truly render 
 his idea. He was indeed of literary artists the most 
 accomplished. He was not of the Academy, but he 
 completes not unworthily the picturesque group, gain- 
 ing relief from isolation, of those eminent few — Moli^re, 
 Pascal, Balzac, B^ranger, George Sand — who have 
 come near making it the supreme literary honour in 
 France not to be numbered among the Forty. There 
 are a host of reasons why we should not compare 
 Gautier with such a poet as Browning; and yet there 
 are several why we should. If we do so, with all 
 proper reservations, we may wonder whether we are 
 the richer, or, at all events, the better entertained, as a 
 poet's readers should before all things be, by the clear, 
 undiluted strain of Gautier's minor key, or by the vast, 
 grossly commingled volume of utterance of the author 
 of "Men and Women." This, perhaps, is an idle ques- 
 tion; and the artificer of "Emaux et Camees" was 
 presumably of opinion that it is idle at all times to 
 point a moral. But if there are sermons in stones, 
 there are profitable reflections to be made even on 
 Th6ophile Gautier; notably this one — that a man's 
 supreme use in the world is to master his intellectual 
 instrument and play it in perfection. 
 
 There is, perhaps, scant apparent logic in treating 
 a closed career more tenderly than an open one; but 
 we suspect it belongs to the finer essence of good 
 criticism to do so, and, at any rate, we find our judg- 
 ment of the author of the "Voyage en Espagne" and 
 the "Capitaine Fracasse" turning altogether to un- 
 protesting kindness. We had a vague consciousness 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 33 
 
 of lurking objections; but on calling them to appear 
 they gave no answer. Gautier's death, indeed, in the 
 nature of things could not but be touching and dis- 
 pose one to large allowances. The world he left was 
 the sum of the universe for him, and upon any other 
 his writings throw but the dimmest light — project, in- 
 deed, that contrasted darkness which surrounds the 
 edges of a luminous surface. The beauty and variety 
 of our present earth and the insatiability of our earthly 
 temperament were his theme, and we doubt whether 
 these things have ever been placed in a more flatter- 
 ing light. He brought to his task a sort of pagan 
 bonhomie which makes most of the descriptive and 
 pictorial poets seem, by contrast, a group of shivering 
 ascetics or muddled metaphysicians. He excels them 
 by his magnificent good temper and the unquestioning 
 serenity of his enjoyment of the great spectacle of 
 nature and art. His style certainly is one of the 
 latest fruits of time; but his mental attitude before the 
 universe has an almost Homeric simplicity. His world 
 was all material, and its outlying darkness hardly more 
 suggestive, morally, than a velvet canopy studded with 
 silver nails. To close his eyes and turn his back on 
 it must have seemed to him the end of all things; 
 death, for him, must have been as the sullen dropping 
 of a stone into a well. His faculty of visual discrimi- 
 nation was extraordinary. His observation was so 
 penetrating and his descriptive instinct so unerring, 
 that one might have fancied grave Nature, in a fit of 
 coquetry, or tired of receiving but half-justice, had 
 determined to construct a genius with senses of a finer 
 strain than the mass of the human family. Gautier, 
 as an observer, often reminds us of those classic 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 3 
 
34 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 habituds of the opera who listen with a subtler sense 
 than their neighbours and register with a murmured 
 hrava the undistinguishable shades of merit in a prima 
 donna's execution. He was for many years a diligent 
 theatrical critic, faithful to his post in all dramatic 
 weathers, so that one has only to extend the image 
 a little to conceive him as always in an orchestra-stall 
 before the general stage, watching a lamplit perform- 
 ance — flaring gas in one case, the influence of his 
 radiant fancy in the other. "Descriptive" writing, to 
 our English taste, suggests nothing very enticing — a 
 respectable sort of padding, at best, but a few degrees 
 removed in ponderosity from downright moralizing. 
 The prejudice, we admit, is a wholesome one, and the 
 limits of verbal portraiture of all sorts should be 
 jealously guarded. But there is no better proof of 
 Gautier's talent than that he should have triumphantly 
 reformed this venerable abuse and, in the best sense, 
 made one of the heaviest kinds of writing one of the 
 lightest. Of his process and his success we could give 
 an adequate idea only by a long series of citations, 
 and these we lack the opportunity to collect. We 
 think the reader would remain convinced, with us, that 
 Gautier is an inimitable model. He would never find 
 himself condemned to that thankless task of pulling 
 the cart up hill — retouching the picture — which in 
 most descriptions is fatal to illusion. The author's 
 manner is so light and true, so really creative, his 
 fancy so alert, his taste so happy, his humour so genial, 
 that he makes illusion almost as contagious as laughter; 
 the image, the object, the scene, stands arrested by 
 his phrase with the healthy glow of truth overtaken. 
 Gautier's native gift of expression was extremely rich, 
 
TH^OPHILE GAUTIER. 35 
 
 and he cultivated and polished it with a diligence 
 that may serve to give the needed balance of gravity 
 to his literary character. He enriched his picturesque 
 vocabulary from the most recondite sources; it has an 
 unprejudiced comprehensiveness. His favourite read- 
 ing, we have somewhere seen, was the dictionary; he 
 loved words for themselves — for their look, their aroma, 
 their colour, their fantastic intimations. He kept a 
 supply of the choicest constantly at hand and intro- 
 duced them at effective points. In this respect he was 
 a sort of immeasurably lighter-handed Rabelais, whom, 
 indeed, he resembled in that sensuous exuberance of 
 temperament which his countrymen are fond of call- 
 ing peculiarly "Gaulois." He had an almost Rabe- 
 laisian relish for enumerations, lists, and catalogues 
 — a sort of grotesque delight in quantity. We need 
 hardly remind the reader that these are not the tokens 
 of a man of thought, and Gautier was none. In the 
 line of moral expression his phrase would have halted 
 sadly; and when occasionally he emits a reflection he 
 is a very Philistine of Philistines. In his various re- 
 cords of travel, we remember, he never takes his seat 
 in a railway train without making a neat little speech 
 on the marvels of steam and the diffusion of civiliza- 
 tion. If it were not in a Parisian Feutllelon it might 
 proceed from Mr. Barlow, and be addressed to Harry 
 Sandford and Tommy Merton. These genial common- 
 places are Gautier's only tributes to philosophy. It 
 seems as absurd to us as that very youthful perform- 
 ance itself that the philosophic pretensions of the 
 famous preface to "Mademoiselle de Maupin" should 
 have provoked any other retort than a laugh. Gautier 
 was incapable of looking, for an appreciable duration 
 
 3* 
 
36 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of time, at any other than the superficial, the pictur- 
 esque, face of a question. If you find him glanc- 
 ing closer, you may be sure, with all respect, 
 that the phenomenon will last just as long as a terrier 
 will stand on his hind-legs. 
 
 To raise on such a basis so large a structure was 
 possible only to a Frenchman, and to a Frenchman 
 inordinately endowed with the national sense of form 
 and relish for artistic statement. Gautier's structure 
 is composed of many pieces. He began, in his early 
 youth, with "Mademoiselle de Maupin." It has seemed 
 to us rather a painful exhibition of the prurience of 
 the human mind that, in most of the recent notices 
 of the author's death (those, at least, published in 
 England and America) this work alone should have 
 been selected as the critic's text. Brilliant as it is, it 
 is the one performance of Gautier's in which the note 
 of defiance has a vicious — and hence a disagreeable — 
 ring; how it came to be written it is of small profit at 
 this time to inquire. In certain lights the book is 
 almost ludicrously innocent, and we are at a loss what 
 to think of those critics who either hailed or denounced 
 it as a serious profession of faith. With faith of any 
 sort Gautier strikes us as slenderly furnished. Even his 
 assthetic principles are held with a good-humoured 
 laxity that allows him, for instance, to say in a hundred 
 places the most delightfully sympathetic and pictorial 
 things about the romantic or Shakespearean drama, 
 and yet to describe a pedantically classical revival of 
 the "Antigone" at Munich with the most ungrudging 
 relish. The only very distinct statement of intellectual 
 belief that we remember in his pages is the singularly 
 perfect little poem which closes the collection of 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 37 
 
 chiselled and polished verses called "Emaux et Camdes." 
 It is a charming example of Gautier at his best, and 
 we shall be pardoned for quoting it. 
 
 L'ART. 
 
 "Oui, I'oeuvre sort plus belle 
 D'une forme au travail 
 
 Rebelle, 
 Vers, marbre, onyx, email. 
 
 "Point de contraintes fausses! 
 Mais que pour marcher droit 
 
 Tu chausses. 
 Muse, un cothume etroit. 
 
 "Fi du rbythme commode, 
 Comme un Soulier trop grand, 
 
 Du mode 
 Que tout pied quitte et prendl 
 
 "Statuaire, repousse 
 L'argile que petrit 
 
 Le pouce, 
 Quand flotte ailleurs I'espritj 
 
 "Lutte avec le carrare, 
 Avec le paros dur 
 
 Et rare, 
 Gardiens du contour pur; 
 
 "Emprunte a Syracuse 
 Son bronze ou fermement 
 
 S 'accuse 
 Le trait fier et charmant; 
 
 "D'une main delicate 
 Poursuis dans un filon 
 
 D'agate 
 Le profil d'ApoUon. 
 
38 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 "Peintre, fuis I'aquarelle, 
 Et fixe la couleur 
 
 Trop frele 
 Au four de I'^mailleur; 
 
 "Fais les sWues bleues, 
 Tordant de cent fa9ons 
 
 Leurs queues; 
 Les monstres des blasons; 
 
 "Dans son nimbe triloba 
 La Vierge et son Jesus; 
 
 Le globe 
 Avec la croix dessus. 
 
 "Tout passe. — L'art robuste 
 Seul a I'eternite. 
 
 Le buste 
 Survit k la cite. 
 
 "Et la raedaille austere 
 Que trouve un laboreur 
 
 Sous terre 
 RevBe un empereur. 
 
 "Les dieux eux-memes meurent, 
 Mais les vers souverains 
 
 Demeurent 
 Plus forts que les airains. 
 
 "Sculpte, lime, cisele; 
 Que ton reve flottant 
 
 Se sceUe 
 Dans de bloc resistant." 
 
 These admirable verses seem to us to be almost 
 tinged with intellectual passion. It is a case of an 
 aesthetic, an almost technical, conviction, glowing with 
 a kind of moral fervour. They vividly reflect, in our 
 opinion, the great simplicity of the author's mind. 
 
THfiOPHILE GAUTIER. 39 
 
 We doubt whether life often addressed him a more 
 puzzling question that the one he has so gracefully- 
 answered here. He had, of course, his likes and dis- 
 likes; and, as the poet of the luxuries of life, he 
 naturally preferred those paternal governments which 
 pay heavy subventions to opera-houses, order palace 
 frescos by the half-mile, and maintain various pictur- 
 esque sinecures. He was sensuously a conservative; 
 although, after all, as an observer and describer, he 
 was the frankest of democrats. He had a glance for 
 everything and a phrase for everything on the broad 
 earth, and all that he asked of an object, as a source 
 of inspiration, was that it should have length, breadth 
 and colour. Much of Gautier's poetry is of the same 
 period as "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and some of it 
 of the same quality; notably the frantically pictur- 
 esque legend of "Albertus," written in the author's 
 twenty-first year, and full of the germs of his latei 
 flexibility of diction. "Emaux et Camees," the second 
 volume of his collected verses, contains, evidently, his 
 poetic bequest. In this chosen series every poem is 
 a masterpiece; it has received the author's latest and 
 fondest care; all, as the title indicates, is goldsmiths' 
 work. In Gautier's estimation, evidently, these ex- 
 quisite little pieces are the finest distillation of his 
 talent; not one of them but ought to have outweighed 
 a dozen Academic blackballs. Gautier's best verse is 
 neither sentimental, satirical, narrative, nor even lyrical. 
 It is always pictorial and plastic — a matter of images, 
 "effects," and colour. Even when the motive is an idea 
 — of course, a slender one — the image absorbs and 
 swallows it, and the poem becomes a piece of rhyth- 
 mic imitation. What is this delightful little sonnet 
 
40 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 —the "Pot de Fleurs" — but a piece of self-amused 
 imagery? 
 
 Parfois un enfant trouve une petite graine, 
 Et tout d'abord, charme de ses vives couleurs, 
 Pour la planter, il prend un pot de porcelaine 
 Orni de dragons bleus et de bharres fleurs. 
 
 II s'en va. La racine en couleuvres s'allonge, 
 Sort de terre, fleurit et devient arbrisseau; 
 Chaque jour, plus avant, son pied chevelu plonge 
 Tant qu'il fasse eclater le ventre du vaisseau. 
 
 L'enfant revient; surpris, il voit la plarte grasse 
 Sur les debris du pot brandir ses verts poignards; 
 II la vent arracher, mais la tige est tenace; 
 II s'obstine, et ses doigts s'ensanglantent aux dards, 
 
 Ainsi germa I'amour dans mon ame surprise; 
 Je croyais ne semer qu'une fleur de printemps : 
 C'est un grand alo^s dont la racine brise 
 Le pot de porcelaine aux dessins eclatants. 
 
 We may almost fancy that the whole sonnet was 
 written for the sake of the charming line we have 
 marked — a bit of Keats Gallicized. Gautier's first and 
 richest poetry, however, is to be found in his prose — 
 the precious, artistic prose which for forty years he 
 lavished in newspaper feuilletons and light periodicals. 
 Here the vivid, plastic image is his natural, constant 
 formula; he scatters pictures as a fine singer roulades; 
 every paragraph is the germ of a sonnet, every sentence 
 a vignette. "It is pure Lacrima-Christi," as Sainte- 
 Beuve says, " qiion vous verse au coin (Tune borne." The 
 twenty-five volumes or so into which this long daily 
 labour has been gathered — feuilletons and sketches, 
 novels and tales, records of travel, reports of "damned" 
 plays and unsold pictures — form a great treasury of 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 4 1 
 
 literary illustration. When Gautier, according to pre- 
 sent promise, begins to be remembered mainly as the 
 author of an indecent novel whose title is circulated 
 in the interest of virtue, needy poets may deck their 
 wares for the market with unmissed flowers of descrip- 
 tion from his blooming plantations. He has com- 
 memorated every phase and mood and attribute of 
 nature and every achievement and possibility of art; 
 and you have only to turn his pages long enough to 
 find the perfect presentment of your own comparatively 
 dim and unshaped vision. 
 
 Early in life he began to travel — to travel far for 
 a Frenchman — and, of course, to publish his impres- 
 sions. They relate altogether to the look of the coun- 
 tries he visited — to landscape, art-collections, street- 
 scenery and costume. On the "institutions" of foreign 
 lands he is altogether silent. His delightful vividness 
 on his chosen points is elsewhere unapproached , and 
 his "Voyage en Espagne," his "Constantinople," his 
 "Italia," and his "Voyage en Russie," seem to us his 
 most substantial literary titles. No other compositions 
 of the same kind begin to give us, in our chair, under 
 the lamp, the same sense of standing under new skies, 
 among strange scenes. With Gautier's readers the 
 imagination travels in earnest and makes journeys more 
 profitable in some respects than those we really under- 
 take. He has the broad-eyed, universal, almost inno- 
 cent gaze at things of a rustic at a fair, and yet he 
 discriminates them with a shrewdness peculiarly his 
 own. We renew over his pages those happiest hours 
 of youth when we have strolled forth into a foreign 
 town, still sprinkled with the dust of travel, and lost 
 ourselves deliciously in the fathomless sense of local 
 
42 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 difference and mystery. Gautier had a passion for 
 material detail, and he vivifies, illuminates, interprets 
 it, woos it into relief, resolves it into pictures, with a 
 joyous ingenuity which makes him the prince oi ciceroni. 
 His "Voyage enEspagne" is, in this respect, a master- 
 piece and model. It glows, from beginning to end, 
 with an overcharged verisimilitude in which we seem 
 to behold some intenser essence of Spain — of her light 
 and colour and climate, her expression and personality. 
 All this borrows a crowning vivacity from the author's 
 genial unpretentiousness, his almost vainglorious tri- 
 viality. A "high standard" is an excellent thing; but 
 we sometimes fancy it takes away more than it gives, 
 and that an untamed natural faculty of enjoying at a 
 venture is a better conductor of aesthetic light and 
 heat. Gautier's superbly appreciative temperament 
 makes him, at the least, as solid an observer as the 
 representative German doctor in spectacles, bristling 
 with critical premises. It is signally suggestive to com- 
 pare his lusty tribute to San Moi"s6 at "Venice, in his 
 "■Italia," with Mr. Ruskin's stern dismissal of it in his 
 "Stones of Venice" — Mr. Ruskin so painfully unable 
 to see the "joke" of it and Gautier, possibly, so unable 
 to see anything but the joke. We may, in strictness, 
 agree with Ruskin, but we envy Gautier. It was to be 
 expected of such a genius that he should enjoy the 
 East; and Gautier professed a peculiar devotion to 
 that part of the globe. He was fond of pretending 
 that he was really an Oriental, and had no place in 
 our Western world. He has described Eastern scenery 
 and manners. Eastern effects of all kinds, with incom- 
 parable gusto; and, on reading the libretti to the three 
 or four ballets included in the volume we have named, 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 43 
 
 we wonder whether his natural attitude was not to re- 
 cline in the perfumed dusk of a Turkish divan, puffing 
 a chibouque and thinking over the successive episodes 
 of a Mohammedan immortality. This pretension, how- 
 ever, did him injustice; and such a book as the "Vo- 
 yage en Russie;" such chapters as his various notes 
 on the Low Countries, their landscape and their painters; 
 such a sketch, indeed, as his wonderful humoristique 
 history of a week in London, in his "Caprices et Zig- 
 zags" — prove abundantly that he had more than one 
 string to his bow. He shot equally far with them all. 
 Each of his chapters of travel has a perfect tone of its 
 own and that unity of effect which is the secret of the 
 rarest artists. The "Voyage en Espagne" is a masterly 
 mixture of hot lights and warm shadows; the "Con- 
 stantinople" is an immense verbal Decamps, as one 
 may say; and the "Voyage en Russie," made up of 
 effects taken from the opposite end of the scale, is 
 illuminated with the cold blue light of the North. 
 Gautier's volumes abound in records of the most un- 
 adventurous excursions — light sketches of a feuille- 
 tonist's holidays. His fancy found its account in the 
 commonest things as well as the rarest — in Callot as 
 well as in Paul Veronese — and these immediate notes 
 are admirable in their multicoloured reflections of the 
 perpetual entertainment of Nature. Gautier found 
 Nature supremely entertaining; this seems to us the 
 shortest description of him. She had no barren places 
 for him, for he rendered her poverty with a brio that 
 made it as picturesque as her wealth. He professed 
 always to care for nothing but beauty. "Fortunio," he 
 says, in the preface to this grotesquely meretricious 
 production, "is a hymn to Beauty, Wealth, and Happi- 
 
44 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ness — the only three divinities we recognise. It cele- 
 brates gold, marble, and purple." But, in fact, he was 
 too curious an artist not to enjoy ugliness very nearly 
 as much, and he drew from it some of his most strik- 
 ing effects. We recommend to the reader the account 
 of a stroll among the slaughter-houses and the asylums 
 of lost dogs and cats in the Paris banlieue, in the 
 "Caprices et Zigzags;" his elaborate pictures, several 
 times repeated, of Spanish bull-fights (which show to 
 what length I'art pour I'art can carry the kindest- 
 tempered of men), and a dozen painful passages in his 
 "Tableaux de Siege." This little volume, the author's 
 last, is a culminating example of his skill. It is a 
 common saying with light litterateurs, that to describe 
 a thing you must not know it too well. Gautier knew 
 Paris — picturesque Paris— with a forty years' know- 
 ledge; yet he has here achieved the remarkable feat 
 of suppressing the sense of familiarity and winning 
 back, for the sake of inspiration, a certain freshness of 
 impression. The book was written in evil days; but 
 nothing from Gautier's hand is pleasanter; and the 
 silvery strain of his beautiful language, after so long a 
 season of thunderous bulletins and proclamations, sug- 
 gests the high clear note of some venerable nightingale, 
 after a summer storm. Deprived of his customary 
 occupation, he became a forced observer of certain 
 vulgarly obvious things and discovered that they too 
 had their poetry and that, if you only look at it closely, 
 everything is remunerative. He found poetry in the 
 poor rawboned lions and tigers of the Jardin des Plantes; 
 in the hungry dogs in the street, hungrily eyed; in a 
 trip on a circular railway and on the penny steamers 
 on the Seine; in that delicacy of vanished seasons, a 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 45 
 
 pat of fresh butter in Chevet's window. Beneath his 
 touch these phenomena acquire the finely detailed re- 
 lief of the accessories and distances in a print of Albert 
 Diirer's; we remember no better example of the magic 
 of style. But the happiest performance in the book is 
 a series of chapters on Versailles, when the whirligig 
 of time had again made its splendid vacancy an active 
 spot in the world's consciousness. No one should go 
 there now without Gautier's volume in his pocket. It 
 was his good fortune that his autumn was as sound as 
 his summer and his last writing second to none before 
 it. The current of expression in this final volume is 
 as fuU and clear as in the "Voyage en Espagne." 
 
 Gautier's stories and novels belong, for the most 
 part, to his prime; he reached his climax as a story- 
 teller ten years ago, with "Le Capitaine Fracasse." 
 His productions in this line are not numerous, for 
 dramatic invention with him was evidently not abun- 
 dant. As was to be supposed, the human interest in 
 his tales is inferior to the picturesque They remind 
 us of those small cabinet paintings of the contemporary 
 French school, replete with archaeological details as to 
 costume and furniture, which hang under glass in im- 
 mense gilt frames and form the delight of connoisseurs. 
 Gautier's figures are altogether pictorial; he cared for 
 nothing and knew nothing in men and women but the 
 epidermis. With this, indeed, he was marvellously ac- 
 quainted, and he organized in its service a phraseology 
 as puzzlingly various as the array of pots and brushes 
 of a coiffeur. His attitude towards the human creature 
 is, in a sublimated degree, that of a barber or tailor. 
 He anoints and arranges and dresses it to perfection; 
 but he deals only in stuffs and colours. His fable is 
 
46 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 often pretty enough; but one imagines it always written 
 in what is called a studio light — on the comer of a 
 table littered with brushes and frippery. The young 
 woman before the easel, engaged at forty sous a sitting 
 to take oif her dress and let down her hair, is obviously 
 the model for the heroine. His stories are always the 
 measure of an intellectual need to express an ideal of 
 the exquisite in personal beauty and in costume, com- 
 bined with that of a certain serene and full-blown 
 sensuality in conduct, and accompanied with gorgeous 
 visions of upholstery and architecture. Nothing clas- 
 sifies Gautier better, both as to the individual and the 
 national quality of his genius, than the perfect frank- 
 ness of his treatment of the human body. ( We $i Eng- 
 lish speech pass (with the French) for prudishLpn this 
 pointjland certain it is that there is a limit to the 
 freedom with which we can comfortably discourse of 
 hair and skin, and teeth and nails, even to praise 
 them, j The French, on the other hand, discuss their 
 physical texture as complacently as we discuss that of 
 our trousers and boots. The Parisians profess, we 
 believe, to have certain tendencies in common with 
 the old Athenians; this unshrinking contemplation of 
 our physical surfaces might be claimed as one of them. 
 Practically, however, it gives one a very different im- 
 pression from the large Greek taste for personal beauty; 
 for the French type, being as meagre as the Greek 
 was ample, has been filled out with the idea of "grace," 
 which, by implying that the subject is conscious, makes 
 modesty immediately desirable and the absence of it 
 vicious. Gautier, in this respect, is the most eloquent 
 of our modern Athenians, and pays scantiest tribute to 
 our English scruples. Flesh and blood, noses and 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 47 
 
 bosoms, arms and legs were a delight to him, and it 
 was his mission to dilate upon them. For any one who 
 has glanced at the dusky background of Parisian life, 
 with its sallow tones and close odours, among which 
 no Athenian sky makes a blue repoussoir either for 
 statues or mortals, there is something almost touchingly 
 heroic in Gautier's fixed conception of sublime good 
 looks. He invents unprecedented attributes, and it is 
 nothing to say of his people that they are too good to 
 live. In "Une Nuit de Cleopitre," the hero, inflamed 
 with a hopeless passion for the Egyptian queen, has 
 been pursuing her barge in a little skiff, and rowing so 
 fast, under an Egyptian sun, that he has overtaken her 
 fifty oarsmen. "He was a beautiful young man of 
 twenty, with hair so black that it seemed blue, a skin 
 blond as gold, and proportions so perfect that he 
 might have been taken for a bronze of Lysippus. 
 Although he had been rowing some time, he betrayed 
 no fatigue, and had not on his brow a single drop of 
 sweat." Gautier's heroines are always endowed with 
 transparent finger tips. These, however, are his idler 
 touches. His real imaginative power is shown in his 
 masterly evocation of localities, and in the thick-coming 
 fancies that minister to his inexhaustible conception of 
 that pictorial "setting" of human life which interested 
 him so much more than human life itself. In the 
 "Capitaine Fracasse," the "Roman de la Momie," "Le 
 Roi Candaule," "Une Nuit de Cleopitre," and "Aria 
 Marcella" he revels in his passion for scenic properties 
 and backgrounds. His science, in so far as it is 
 archaeological, is occasionally at fault, we suspect, and 
 his facts slightly fantastic; but it all sounds very fine 
 and his admirable pictorial instinct makes everything 
 
48 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 pass; He reconstructs the fabulous splendours of old 
 Egypt with a magnificent audacity of detail, and rivals 
 John Martin, of mezzotinto fame, in the energy with 
 which he depicts the light of torches washing the 
 black basalt of palace stairs. If the portrait is here 
 and there inaccurate, so much the worse for the ori- 
 ginal. The works we have just mentioned proceed 
 altogether by pictures. No reader of "Le Roman de 
 laMomie" will have forgotten the portentous image of 
 the great Pharaoh, who sits like a soulless idol upon 
 his palace roof and watches his messengers swim across 
 the Nile and come and lie on their faces (some 
 of them dying) at his feet. Such a picture as the 
 following, from "Une Nuit de C16opatre," may be 
 rather irresponsible archaeology, but it is admirable 
 imagery. — 
 
 "Le spectacle changeait k chaque instant; tant6t c'etait de 
 gigantesques propylees qui venaient mirer au fleuve leurs miirailles 
 en talus, plaquees de larges pannaeux de figures bizarres; des 
 pyl6nes aux chapiteaux evas&, des rampes c&toyees de grands 
 sphinx accroupis , coiffes du bonnet a barbe cannelee, et croisant 
 sous leurs mamelles aigues leurs pattes de basalte noir; des palais 
 demesures, faisant saillir sur I'horizon les lignes horizontales et 
 sev^res de leur entablement, oil le globe emblematique ouvrait les 
 ailes mysterieuses comme un aigle a I'envergure demesuree; des 
 temples aux coloimes enormes, grosses comme des tours, oil se 
 detachait sur un fond d'eclatante blancheur des processions des 
 figures hieroglyphiques; toutes les prodigiosites de cette architec- 
 tui'e de Titans; tant6t des passages d'une aridite desolante; des 
 coUines forraees par des petits eclats de pierre provenant des fouilles 
 et des constructions, miettes de cette gigantesque debauche de 
 granit qui dura plus de trente si^cles; des montagnes exfoliees de 
 chaleur, dechiquetees et zebrees de rayures noires, semblables aux 
 cauterizations d'une incendie; des tertres bossus et difformes, ac- 
 croupis comme le creoc^phale des tombeaux, et decoupaiit au bord 
 du ciel leur attitude contrefaite; des marnes verdatres, des ochres 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 49 
 
 roux, des tufs d'un blanc farineux, et, de temps a autre, quelque 
 escarpement de marbre couleur rose-siche, oil baiUaieut les bouches 
 noires des carrieres. " 
 
 If, as an illustration, we could transfuse the essence 
 of one of Gautier's best performances into this colour- 
 less report, we should choose the "Capitaine Fracasse." 
 In this delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and 
 produced the model of picturesque romances. The 
 story was published, we believe, some twenty-five years 
 after it was announced — and announced because the 
 author had taken a fancy to the title and proposed to 
 write "up" to it. We cannot say how much of the 
 long interval was occupied with this endeavour; but 
 certainly the "Capitaine Fracasse" is as good as if a 
 quarter of a century had been given to it. Besides 
 being his most ambitious work it bears more marks of 
 leisure and meditation than its companions. M. Meis- 
 sonier might have written it, if, with the same talent 
 and a good deal more geniality, he had chosen to use 
 the pen rather than the brush. The subject is just 
 such a one as Gautier was born to appreciate — a sub- 
 ject of which the pictorial side emphasizes itself as 
 naturally as that of "Don Quixote." It is borrowed, 
 indeed, but as great talents borrow — for a use that 
 brings the original into fashion again. Scarron's 
 "Roman Comique," which furnished Gautier with his 
 starting-point, is as barren to the eye as "Gil Bias" 
 itself, besides being a much coarser piece of humour. 
 The sort of memory one retains of the "Capitaine 
 Fracasse" is hard to express, save by some almost 
 physical analogy. We remember the perusal of most 
 good novels as an intellectual pleasure — a pleasure 
 which varies in degree, but is as far as it goes an affair 
 
 French- Poets and Noz'elists. 4 
 
50 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of the mind. The hours spent over the "Capitaine 
 Fracasse" seem to have been an affair of the senses, 
 of personal experience, of observation and contact as 
 illusory as those of a peculiarly vivid dream. The novel 
 presents the adventures of a company of strolling 
 players of Louis XIH.'s time, — their vicissitudes col- 
 lective and individual, their miseries and gaieties, their 
 loves and squabbles, and their final apportionment of 
 worldly comfort — very much in that symmetrical fashion 
 in which they have so often stood forth to receive it 
 at the fall of the curtain. It is a fairy-tale of Bohemia, 
 a triumph of the picaresque. In this case, by a special 
 extension of his power, the author has made the dramatic 
 interest as lively as the pictorial, and lodged good 
 human hearts beneath the wonderfully-painted rusty 
 doublets and tarnished satins of his maskers. The 
 great charm of the book is a sort of combined geniality 
 of feeling and colouring, which leaves one in doubt 
 whether the author is the most joyous of painters or 
 the cleverest of poets. It is a masterpiece of good- 
 humour — a good-humour sustained by the artist's in- 
 defatigable relish for his theme. In artistic "bits," of 
 course, the book abounds; it is a delightful gallery of 
 portraits. The models, with their paint and pomatum, 
 their broken plumes and threadbare velvet, their false 
 finery and their real hunger, their playhouse'manners 
 and morals, are certainly not very choice company; 
 but the author handles them with an affectionate, sym- 
 pathetic jocosity of which we so speedily feel the in- 
 fluence that, long before we have finished, we seem to 
 have drunk with them one and all out of the playhouse 
 goblet to the confusion of respectability and life before 
 the scenes. If we incline to look for deeper meanings, 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 5 1 
 
 we can fancy the work in the last analysis an expres- 
 sion of that brotherly sympathy with the social position 
 of the comedian which Gautier was too much what the 
 French call an homme de thidtre not to entertain as an 
 almost poetic sentiment. The "Capitaine Fracasse" 
 ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of imagina- 
 tion produced in our day. 
 
 Of Gautier as a critic there is not much to say 
 that we have not said of him as a traveller and story- 
 teller. Rigid critic he was none; it was not in his 
 nature to bring himself to fix a standard. The things 
 he liked he spoke well of; of the things he disliked, a 
 little less well. His brother critics, who would have 
 preferred to count on him to substantiate their sever- 
 ities, found him unpardonably "genial." We imagine 
 that, in the long run, he held a course nearer the truth 
 than theirs, and did better service. His irresistible 
 need for the positive in art, for something describable 
 — phrasable, as we may say — often led him to fancy 
 merit where it was not, but more often, probably, to 
 detect it where it lurked. He was a constructive com- 
 mentator; and if the work taken as his text is often 
 below his praise, the latter, with its magical grasp of 
 the idea, may serve as a sort of generous lesson. His 
 work as a critic is very abundant and has been but 
 partially collected. For many years he reported elabo- 
 rately on the annual Salon and produced a weekly 
 review of the theatre. His accounts of the Salon, which 
 have yet to be republished, form, probably, the best 
 history — if also the least didactic — of modern French 
 art. When pictures and statues have passed out of 
 sight, it is rather meagre entertainment to peruse 
 amendments to their middle distance and to the finer 
 
 4* 
 
52 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 points in their anatomy. Gautier's pages preserve 
 what was best in them — the attempt, the image, the 
 vision. His criticism illustrates more pointedly, per- 
 haps, than his poems and tales, his native incapacity 
 to moralize. Occasionally, we think, a promising sub- 
 ject comes near being sacrificed to it. We were lately 
 struck, in reading the delightful "Correspondance" of 
 Henri Regnault, whose herald-in-chief Gautier con- 
 stituted himself, with the latter's fatally shallow con- 
 ception of the duties of an aesthetic friend. Gautier, 
 possibly, would not have pretended that he was a 
 guide; but, at any rate, he spoke with authority; and 
 the splendid, unmeasured flattery which he pours out 
 on the young painter gives us something of the dis- 
 comfort with which we should see an old man plying 
 a young lad with strong wine. Regnault, fortunately, 
 had a strong head; but the attitude, in Gautier, is 
 none the less immoral. He repaints the young man's 
 pictures, verbally, with almost superior power, and con- 
 secrates their more ominous eccentricities by his glow- 
 ing rhetoric. To assure a youth of genius, by sound 
 of trumpet, that his genius is infallible, is, doubtless, 
 good comradeship, but, from a high point of view, it 
 is poor aesthetics. 
 
 The first half of Gautier's theatrical feuilletons have 
 been gathered into six volumes, under the ambitious 
 title — a device, evidently, of the publishers rather than 
 the author — of "L'Histoire de I'Art Dramatique en 
 France." In the theatre, as at the Salon, he is the 
 most good-natured of critics, and enjoys far less pick- 
 ing a feeble drama to pieces than sketching fine scenery 
 and good acting. The book, however, is an excellent 
 one; its tone is so easy, its judgments are so happy 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 53 
 
 and unpedantic, its good taste is so pervasive, its spirit 
 so wholesomely artistic. But we confess that what has 
 most struck us, in turning it over, has been the active 
 part played by the stage in France during these forty 
 years; its incalculable fertility and its insatiable ab- 
 sorption of talent and ingenuity. Buried authors and 
 actors are packed away in Gautier's pages as on the 
 shelves of an immense mausoleum; and if, here and 
 there, they exhibit the vivifying touch of the embalmer, 
 the spectacle is on the whole little less lugubrious. It 
 takes away one's breath to think of the immense con- 
 sumption of witticisms involved in the development of 
 civilization. Gautier's volumes seem an enormous 
 monument to the shadowy swarm of jokes extinct and 
 plots defunct — dim-featured ghosts, still haunting the 
 lawless circumference of literature in pious confidence 
 that the transmigration of souls will introduce them to 
 the foot-lights again. Gautier's dealings with the 
 theatre were altogether those of a spectator; for the 
 little comedies collected in the volume which forms 
 the text of our remarks are not of the sort approved 
 by managers. They are matters of colour, not of 
 structure, and masterpieces of style rather than of 
 situation. The best of them, "Li Tricorne Enchante, 
 Bastonnade en un Acte, et en Vers, Mglee d'un Cou- 
 plet," has been represented since the author's death, 
 but, we believe, with only partial success. The piece 
 is a pastiche, suggested by various sources — Moh^re, 
 Goldoni, the old prints of the figures in the conven- 
 tional Italian farce. The style is a marvel of humorous 
 ingenuity; it exhales a delightful aroma of the grotesque 
 stage-world of jealous guardians and light-fingered 
 valets, saucy waiting-maids and modest inginues. The 
 
54 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 verse occasionally emulates Molifere with the happiest 
 vivacity. G6ronte, having lost his valet, determines to 
 serve himself. 
 
 " Quel est done le fosse, quelle est done la muraille 
 Oil git, cuvant son vin, cette brave canaille? 
 O Champagne! es-tu mort? As-tu pris pour cercueil 
 Un tonneau defonc^ de brie ou d'argenteuil? 
 ModHe des valets, perle des domestiques. 
 Qui passais en vertu les esclaves antiques, 
 Que le ciel avait fait uniquement pour moi, — 
 Par qui remplacer, comment vivre sans toi? 
 — Parbleu! Si j'essayais de me servir moi-meme? 
 Ce serait la fa9on de trancher le problime. 
 Je me commanderais et je m'obeirais. 
 Je m'aurais sous la main, et quand je me voudrais, 
 Je n'aurais pas besoin de me pendre aux sonnettes. 
 Nul ne sait mieux que moi que j'ai des mceurs honn^tes, 
 Que je me suis toujours conduit loyalement. 
 Ainsi done je m'accepte avec impressement. 
 Ah, Messieurs les blondins, si celui-li me trompe, 
 Vous le pourrez aller crier k sou de trompe: 
 J'empocherai votre or, et me le remettrai : 
 Vos billets pleins de muse, c'est moi qui les lirai. 
 D'ailleurs, je prends demain, qu'on me loue ou me blame, 
 Mademoiselle Inez, ma pupille, pour femme. 
 EUe me soignera dans mes quintes de toux, 
 Et pris d'elle couche, je me rirai de vous, 
 Les Amadis transis,' les coureurs de fortune, 
 Gelant sous le balcon par un beau clair de lune! 
 Et, quand j'apercevrai mon coquin de neveu, 
 De deux ou trois seaux d'eau j'arroserai son feu! " 
 
 The little piece called "Une Larme du Diable," to 
 which the author has afiSxed the half-apologetic quali- 
 fication of "Myst^re," is one of his cleverest and most 
 characteristic performances. None illustrates better, 
 perhaps, what we have called the simplicity of his 
 mind — the way in which he conceived the most exalted 
 
THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 55 
 
 ideas as picturesque and picturesque only. "Une 
 Larme du Diable" is a light pastiche of a mediaeval 
 miracle-play, just as the "Tricorne Enchante" is an 
 imitation of a seventeenth-century farce. The scene 
 is alternately in heaven and on earth. Satanas is the 
 hero, and le Bon Dieu and Christus, grotesquely asso- 
 ciated with Othello and Desdemona, are among the 
 minor characters. Christus himself, conversing in 
 heaven, manifests a taste for the picturesque. "C« 
 matin je me suis diguisS en mendiant, je leur (the two 
 heroines) ai demands I'aumOne; elks ont diposi dans ma 
 main lipreuse, chacune d, leur tour, une grosse piice de 
 cuivre, toute glade de\ veri-de-gris." These copper 
 coins, glazed with verdigris, are a sort of symbol of 
 the drama — a drama in which the celestial mind has 
 a turn for bric-a-brac. Shrewdly fantastic as is the 
 whole composition, it is a capital example of the weak- 
 ness of an imagination dependent wholly upon the 
 senses. That Gautier's fancy should have prompted 
 him to write "Une Larme du Diable" is up to a cer- 
 tain point to its credit; that it should have carried 
 him through the task suggests unutterable things as to 
 his profundity. He had evidently no associations with 
 divine images that it cost him a moment's hesitation 
 to violate; and one may say of him that he was in- 
 capable of blasphemy because he was incapable of 
 respect. He is characterized by consistent levity. 
 These are strange things f;o find one's self saying of a 
 poet, and they bring us back to our first remark — 
 that our author's really splendid development is in- 
 exorably circumscribed. Infinite are the combinations 
 of our faculties. Some of us are awkward writers and 
 yearning moralists; others are (masters of a perfect 
 
56 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Style which has never reflected a spiritual spark. 
 Gautier's disposition served him to the end, and en-- 
 abled him to have a literary heritage perfect of its 
 kind. He could look every day at a group of beggars 
 sunning themselves on the Spanish Steps at Rome, 
 against their golden wall of mouldering travertine, and 
 see nothing but the fine brownness of their rags and 
 their flesh-tints — see it and enjoy it for ever, without 
 an hour's disenchantment, without a chance of one of 
 those irresistible revulsions of mood in which the 
 "mellowest" rags are but filth, and filth is poverty, 
 and poverty a haunting shadow, and picturesque 
 squalor a mockery. His unfaltering robustness of vision 
 -^of appetite, one may say — made him not only strong 
 but enviable. 
 
CHARLES BAXJDELAIRE. 57 
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 As a brief discussion was lately carried on*) touch- 
 ing the merits of the writer whose name we have pre- 
 fixed to these lines, it may not be amiss to introduce 
 him to some of those readers who must have observed 
 the contest with little more than a vague sense of the 
 strangeness of its subject. Charles Baudelaire is not 
 a novelty in literature; his principal work**) dates from 
 1857, and his career terminated a few years later. But 
 his admirers have made a classic of him and elevated 
 him to the rank of one of those subjects which are al- 
 ways in order. Even if we differ with them on this 
 point, such attention as Baudelaire demands will not 
 lead us very much astray. He is not, in quantity 
 (whatever he may have been in quality), a formidable 
 writer; having died young, he was not prolific, and the 
 most noticeable of his original productions are con- 
 tained in two small volumes. 
 
 His celebrity began with the publication of "Les 
 Fleurs du Mai," a collection of verses of which some 
 had already appeared in periodicals. The "Revue des 
 Deux Mondes" had taken the responsibility of intro- 
 
 * There had been an exchange of letters on the subject in an 
 American journal. 
 
 ** "Les Fleurs du Mai." Par Charles Baudelaire. Precede 
 d'une Notice par Th^ophile Gautier. Paris: Michel Levy. 
 
58 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ducing a few of them to the world — or rather, though 
 it held them at the baptismal font of public opinion, 
 it had declined to stand godfather. An accompanying 
 note in the "Revue" disclaimed all editorial approval 
 of their morality. This of course procured them a 
 good many readers; and when, on its appearance, the 
 volume we have mentioned was overhauled by the police 
 a still greater number of persons desired to possess it 
 Yet in spite of the service rendered him by the censor- 
 ship, Baudelaire has never become in any degree popular; 
 the lapse of twenty years has seen but five editions of 
 "Les Fleurs du Mai." The foremost feeling of the 
 reader of the present day will be one of surprise, and 
 even amusement, at Baudelaire's audacities having pro- 
 voked this degree of scandal. The world has travelled 
 fast since then, and the French censorship must have 
 been, in the year 1857, i^ ^ veiy prudish mood. There 
 is little in "Les Fleurs du Mai" to make the reader of 
 either French or English prose and verse of the present 
 day even open his eyes. We have passed through the 
 fiery furnace and profited by experience. We are happier 
 than Racine's heroine, who had not 
 
 Su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais. 
 
 Baudelaire's verses do not strike us as being dictated 
 by a spirit of bravado — though we have heard that, in 
 talk, it was his habit, to an even tiresome degree, to 
 cultivate the quietly outrageous — to pile up monstro- 
 sities and blasphemies without winking and with the 
 air of uttering proper commonplaces. 
 
 "Les Fleurs du Mai" is evidently a sincere book — 
 so far as anything for a man of Baudelaire's temper 
 and culture could be sincere. Sincerity seems to us to 
 
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 59 
 
 belong to a range of qualities with which Baudelaire 
 and his friends were but scantily concerned. His great 
 quality was an inordinate cultivation of the sense of 
 the picturesque, and his care was for how things looked, 
 and whether some kind of imaginative amusement was 
 not to be got out of them, much more than for what 
 they meant and whither they led and what was their 
 use in human life at large. The later editions of "Les 
 Fleurs du Mai" (with some of the interdicted pieces 
 still omitted and others, we believe, restored) contain a 
 long preface by Thdophile Gautier, which throws a 
 curious side-light upon what the Spiritualist newspapers 
 would call Baudelaire's "mentality." Of course Baude- 
 laire is not to be held accountable for what Gautier says 
 of him, but we cannot help judging a man in some 
 degree by the company he keeps. To admire Gautier 
 is certainly excellent taste, but to be admired by Gautier 
 we cannot but regard as' rather compromising. He 
 gives a magnificently picturesque account of the author 
 of "Les Fleurs du Mai," in which, indeed, the question 
 of pure exactitude is evidently so very subordinate that 
 it seems grossly ill-natured for us to appeal to such a 
 standard. While we are reading him, however, we find 
 ourselves wishing that Baudelaire's analogy with the 
 author himself were either greater or less. Gautier 
 was perfectly sincere, because he dealt only with the 
 picturesque and pretended to care only for appearances. 
 But Baudelaire (who, to our mind, was an altogether 
 inferior genius to Gautier) applied the same process of 
 interpretation to things as regards which it was alto- 
 gether inadequate; so that one is constantly tempted to 
 suppose he cares more for his process — for making 
 grotesquely-pictorial verse^than for the things them- 
 
6o FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 selves. On the whole, as we have said, this inference 
 would be unfair. Baudelaire had a certain groping 
 sense of the moral complexities of life, and if the best 
 that he succeeds in doing is to drag them down into 
 the very turbid element in which he himself plashes 
 and flounders, and there present them to us much be- 
 smirched and bespattered, this was not a want of 
 goodwill in him, but rather a dulness and permanent 
 immaturity of vision. For American readers, further- 
 more, Baudelaire is compromised by his having made 
 himself the apostle of our own Edgar Poe. He trans- 
 lated, very carefully and exactly, all of Poe's prose 
 writings, and, we believe, some of his very superficial 
 verses. With all due respect to the very original genius 
 of the author of the "Tales of Mystery," it seems to us 
 that to take him with more than a certain degree of 
 seriousness is to lack seriousness one's self. An en- 
 thusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive 
 stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound 
 philosopher, the neglect of whose golden utterances 
 stamped his native land with infamy. Nevertheless, 
 P oe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well 
 as-fte^greatei—gemus." 
 
 "Les Fleurs du Mai" was a very happy title for 
 
 ^audelaire's verses, but it is not altogether a just one. 
 
 Sgcattered flowers incontestably do bloom in the quaking 
 swamps of evil, and the poet who does not mind en- 
 countering bad odours in his pursuit of ^weet ones is 
 quite at liberty to go in search of them.\ But Baude- 
 laire has, as a general thing, not plucked the flowers 
 — he has plucked the evil-smelling weeds (we take it 
 that he did not use the word flowers in a purely ironi- 
 cal sense) and he has often taken up mere cupfuls of 
 
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 6 1 
 
 mud and bog-water. He had said to himself that it 
 was a great shame that the realm of evil and unclean 
 things should be fenced off from the domain of poetry; 
 that it was full of subjects, of chances and effects; that 
 it had its light and shade, its logic and its mystery; 
 and that there was the making of some capital verses 
 in it So he leaped the barrier and was soon im- 
 mersed in it up to his neck. Baudelaire's imagination, 
 was of a melancholy and sinister kind, and, to a con- 
 siderable extent, this plunging into darkness and dirt 
 was doubtless very spontaneous and disinterested. But 
 he strikes us on the whole as passionless, and this, in 
 view of the unquestionable pluck and acuteness of his 
 fancy, is a great pity. He knew evil not by experience, 
 not as something within himself, but by contemplation 
 and curiosity, as something outside of himself, by which 
 his own intellectual agUity was not in the least dis- 
 composed, rather, indeed (as we say his fancy was of 
 a dusky cast) agreeably flattered and stimulated. In 
 the former case, Baudelaire, with his other gifts, might 
 have been a great poet. But, as it is, evil for him 
 begins outside and not inside, and consists primarily 
 of a great deal of lurid landscape and unclean furni- 
 ture. This is an almost ludicrously puerile view of 
 the matter. Evil is representend as an affair of blood 
 and carrion and physical sickness — there must be 
 stinking corpses and starving prostitutes and empty 
 laudanum bottles in order that the poet shall be effec- 
 tively inspired. 
 
 A good way to embrace Baudelaire at a glance is 
 to say that he was, in his treatment of evil, exactly 
 what Hawthorne was notrr^Hawthorne,. who felt the 
 thing at its source, deep in the human consciousness. 
 
62 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Baudelaire's infinitely slighter volume of genius apart, 
 he was a sort of Hawthorne reversed. It is the ab- 
 sence of this metaphysical quality in his treatment of 
 his favourite subjects (Poe was his metaphysician, and 
 his devotion sustained him through a translation of 
 "Eureka!") that exposes him to that class of accusa- 
 tions of which M. Edmond Sch^rer's accusation of 
 feeding upon pourriture is an example; and, in fact, in 
 his pages we never know with what we are dealing. 
 We encounter an inextricable confusion of sad emotions 
 and vile things, and we are at a loss to know whether 
 the subject pretends to appeal to our conscience or — ^^ 
 we were going to say — to our olfactories. "Le Mal?^ 
 we exclaim; "you do yourself too much honouii— -Jhisy 
 is not Evil; it is not the wrong; it is simply the nasty!" 
 Our impatience is of the same order as that which we 
 should feel if a poet, pretending to pluck "the flowers 
 of good," should come and present us, as specimens, a 
 rhapsody on plumcake and eau de Cologne. Independ- 
 ently of the question of his subjects, the charm of 
 Baudelaire's verse is often of a very high order. He 
 belongs to the class of geniuses in whom we ourselves 
 find but a limited pleasure — the laborious, deliberate, 
 economical writers, those who fumble a long time in 
 their pockets before they bring out their hand with a 
 coin in the palm. But the coin, when Baudelaire at 
 last produced it, was often of a high value. He had 
 an extraordinary verbal instinct and an exquisite feli- 
 city of epithet. We cannot help wondering, however, 
 at Gautier's extreme admiration for his endowment in 
 this direction; it is the admiration of the writer who 
 gushes for the writer who trickles. In one point Baude- 
 laire is extremely remarkable — in his talent for sug- 
 
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 63 
 
 gesting associations. His epithets seem to have come 
 out of old cupboards and pockets j they have a kind 
 of magical mustiness. Moreover, his natural sense of 
 the superficial picturesqueness of the miserable and 
 the unclean was extremely acute; there may be a 
 difference of opinion as to the advantage of possessing 
 such a sense; but whatever it is worth Baudelaire had 
 it in a high degree. One of his poems — "To a Red- 
 haired Beggar Girl" — is a masterpiece in the way of 
 graceful expression of this high relish of what is 
 shameful. 
 
 Pour moi, poete chetif, 
 Ton jeune corps maladif, 
 Plein de taches de rousseur, 
 A sa douceur. 
 
 Baudelaire repudiated with indignation the charge 
 that he was what is called a realist, and he was 
 doubtless right in doing so. He had too much fancy 
 to adhere strictly to the real; he always embroiders 
 and elaborates— endeavours to impart that touch of 
 strangeness and mystery which is the very raison 
 d'etre of poetry. Baudelaire was a poet, and for a 
 poet to be a realist is of course nonsense. The idea 
 that Baudelaire imported into his theme was, as a 
 general thing, an intensification of its repulsiveness, but 
 it was at any rate ingenious. When he makes an 
 invocation to "la Debauche aux bras immondes" one 
 may be sure he means more by it than is evident to 
 the vulgar — he means, that is, an intenser perversity. 
 Occasionally he treats agreeable subjects, and his least 
 sympathetic critics must make a point of admitting 
 that his most successful poem is also his least morbid, 
 and most touching; we allude to "Les Petites Vieilles" 
 
64 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTr . 
 
 — ^a really masterly production. But if it represents 
 the author's maximum, it is a note that he very rarely 
 struck. 
 
 Baudelaire, of course, is a capital text for a dis- 
 cussion of the question as to the importance of the 
 morality — or of the subject-matter in general — of a 
 work of art; for he offers a rare combination of 
 technical zeal and patience and of vicious sentiment. 
 But even if we had space to enter upon such a dis- 
 cussion, we should spare our words; for argument on 
 
 Tthis point wears to our sense a really ridiculous aspect. 
 
 >^To deny the relevancy of subject-matter and the im- 
 portance of the moral quality of a work of art strikes 
 us as, in two words, very childish.N We do not know 
 what the great moralists would say about the matter 
 — they would probably treat it very good-humouredly; 
 but that is not the question. There is very little 
 doubt what the great artists would say. People of 
 that, temper feel that/ the whole thinking man is one, 
 and]thatito count out the moral element in one's ap- 
 preciation of an artistic total is exactly as sane as it 
 would be (if the total were a poem) to eliminate all 
 the words in three syllables, or to consider only such 
 portions of it as had been written by candle-light.^ 
 
 ^ The crudity of sentiment of the advocates of " art for 
 art" is often a striking example of the fact that a 
 great deal of what is called culture may fail to dis- 
 sipate a well-seated provincialism of spirit. They talk 
 of morality as Miss Edgeworth's infantine heroes and 
 heroines talk of "physic" — they allude to its being 
 put into and kept out of a work of art, put into and 
 kept out of one's appreciation of the same, as if it 
 were a coloured fluid kept in a big-labelled bottle in 
 
CHARLES BAXJDELAIRE. 65 
 
 some mysterious intellectual closet. It is in reality 
 simply a part of the essential richness of inspiration 
 — it has nothing to do with the artistic process and it 
 has everything to do with the artistic effect. The 
 more a work of art feels it at its source, the richer it 
 is; the less it feels it, the poorer it is. People of a 
 large taste prefer rich works to poor ones and they 
 are not inclined to assent to the assumption that the 
 process is the whole work. We are safe in believing 
 that all this is comfortably clear to most of those 
 who have, in any degree, been initiated into art by 
 production. For them the subject is as much a part 
 of their work as their hunger is a part of their dinner. 
 Baudelaire was not so far from being of this way of" 
 thinking as some of his admirers would persuade us; 
 yet we may say on the whole that he was the victim 
 of a grotesque illusion. He tried to make fine verses 
 on ignoble subjects, and in our opinion he signally 
 faUed. He gives, as a poet, a perpetual impression 
 of discomfort and pain. He went in search of cor- 
 ruption, and the ill-conditioned jade proved a thankless 
 muse. The thinking reader, feeling himself, as a critic, 
 aU one, as we have said, finds the beauty perverted 
 by the ugliness. What the poet wished, doubtless, 
 was to seem to be always in the poetic attitude; 
 what the reader sees is a gentleman in a painful- 
 looking posture, staring very hard at a mass of things 
 from which,. more intelligently, we avert our heads. 
 
 French Poeis and Novelists. 
 
66 FRENCH POKTS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 The French in general do their duty by their great 
 men; they render them a liberal tribute of criticism, 
 commentary, annotation, biographical analysis. They 
 do not, indeed, make them the subject of "memoirs" 
 in the English sense; there are few French examples 
 of that class of literature to which Boswell's "Johnson" 
 and Lockhart's "Scott" belong. But there usually 
 clusters about the image of a conspicuous writer an 
 infinite number of travaux, as the French say, of every 
 degree of importance. Many of these are very solid 
 and serious; their authors are generally to be charged 
 with attaching too absolute a value to their heroes. 
 The departed genius is patiently weighed and mea- 
 sured; his works are minutely analysed; the various 
 episodes of his life are made the object of exhaustive 
 research; his letters are published, and his whole per- 
 sonality, physical, moral, intellectual, passes solemnly 
 into literature. He is always in order as a "subject"; 
 it is admitted that the last word can never be said 
 about him. From this usual fate of eminent French- 
 men, one of the greatest has been strikingly exempted. 
 Honor6 de Balzac is weighted neither with the honours 
 nor with the taxes of an accumulated commentary. 
 The critic who proposes to study him, and who looks 
 for extrinsic assistance in his task, perceives such aid 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 67 
 
 to be very meagre. Balzac has been discussed with 
 first-rate, ability only by one writer. M. Taine's essay, 
 incomplete as it is, may be said at any rate to be 
 essentially worthy of its subject. Sainte-Beuve wrote 
 upon Balzac two or three times, but always with strik- 
 ing and inexplicable inadequacy. There is a long 
 article on the author of the "Comedie Humaine" by 
 Theophile Gautier, which is admirably picturesque but 
 not at all critical. M. Edmond Schdrer, a writer upon 
 whom an ample fold of Sainte-Beuve's mantle has 
 fallen, lately published a few pages which are sug- 
 gestive, but in which he affirms that Balzac is neither 
 an artist, a master, nor a writer. The great novelist's 
 countrymen, in a word, have taken him less seriously 
 than was to be expected. If we desire biographical 
 details we are reduced to consulting the very flimsy 
 gossip of M. Leon Gozlan. Balzac has indeed what is 
 called his Ugende, but it has been chiefly in the keep- 
 ing of the mere tattlers of literature. The critic is 
 forced to look for the man almost exclusively in his 
 works; and it must be confessed that in the case of a 
 writer so voluminous as Balzac such a field is ample. 
 We should rather rejoice than regret that there are not 
 more pages to turn. Balzac's complete works occupy 
 twenty-three huge octavo volumes in the stately but 
 inconvenient "edition definitive," lately published. 
 There is a prospect of his letters being given to the 
 world in a complementary volume. 
 
 5* 
 
68 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 HoNORE DE Balzac was born at Tours in 1799; he 
 died at Paris in 1850. Most first-rate men at fifty- 
 one have still a good deal of work in them, and there 
 is no reason to believe that, enormous as had been the 
 demands he made upon it, Balzac's productive force 
 was fully spent. His prefaces are filled with confident 
 promises to publish novels that never appeared. Never- 
 theless it is impossible altogether to regret that Balzac 
 should have died with work stUl in him. He had 
 written enough; he had written too much. His novels, 
 in spite of their extraordinary closeness of tissue, all 
 betray the want of leisure in the author. It is true 
 that shortly before his death he had encountered a 
 change of fortune; he had married a rich woman and 
 he was in a position to drive his pen no faster than 
 his fancy prompted. It is interesting to wonder whether 
 Balzac at leisure — ^Balzac with that great money-ques- 
 tion which was at once the supreme inspiration and 
 the aesthetic alloy of his life, placed on a relatively 
 ideal basis — would have done anything essentially finer 
 than "Les Parents Pauvres" or "Le P^re Goriot." We 
 can hardly help doubting it. M. Taine, looking as 
 usual for formulas arid labels, says that the most com- 
 pl ete description of Balzac is t5 gtH}ig;;;gar a man of 
 busmess — a man of business in debt. The formula 
 "Eereis on thF^^ole satisfactory; it expresses not only 
 what he was by circumstances, but what he was by 
 inclination. We cannot say how much Balzac liked 
 being in debt, but we are very sure he liked, for it- 
 self, the process of manufacture and sale, and that 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 69 
 
 even when all his debts had been paid he would have 
 continued to keep his shop. 
 
 Before he was thirty years old he had published, 
 under a variety of pseudonyms, some twenty long 
 novels, veritable Grub Street productions, written in 
 sordid Paris attics, in poverty, in perfect obscurity. 
 Several of these "oeuvres de jeunesse" have lately been 
 republished, but it is hard to read even the best of 
 them. No writer ever served a more severe appren- 
 ticeship to his art, or lingered more hopelessly at the 
 base of the ladder of fame. This early incompetence 
 seems at first an anomaly, but it is only partially an 
 anomaly. That so vigorous a genius should have 
 learned his trade so largely by experiment and so 
 little by divination; that in order to discover what he 
 could do he should have had to make specific trial of 
 each of the things he could not do — this is something 
 which needs explanation. The explanation is found, 
 it seems to us, simply in the folly of his attempting, 
 at that age, to produce such novels as he aspired to 
 produce. It was not that he could not use his wings; 
 it was simply that his wings had not grown. The 
 wings of great poets generally sprout very early; the 
 wings of great artists in prose, great explorers of the 
 sources of prose, begin to spread themselves only after 
 the man is tolerably formed. Good observers, we be- 
 lieve, will confess to a general mistrust of novels written 
 before thirty. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamartine, Victor 
 Hugo, Alfred de Musset, were hardly in their twenties 
 before they struck their fully resonant notes. Walter 
 Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, Madame Sand, waited 
 tiU they were at least turned thirty, and then without 
 prelude, or with brief prelude, produced a novel that 
 
70 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 was a masterpiece. If it was well for them to wait, it 
 would have been infinitely better for Balzac. Balzac 
 was to be preeminently a social novelist; his strength 
 ^ was to lie in representing the innumerable actual facts 
 of the French civilization of his day — things only to 
 be learned by patient experience. Balzac's inspisation, 
 his stock, his fonds, was outside of him, in the rich 
 French world of the nineteenth century. If, instead of 
 committing to paper impossible imaginary tales, be 
 could have stood for a while in some other relation to 
 the society about him than that of a scribbler, it would 
 have been a very great gain. The great general defect 
 of his manner, as we shall see, is the absence of fresh 
 air, of the trace of disinterested observation; he had 
 from his earliest years, to carry out our metaphor, an 
 eye to the shop. (^In every great artist who possesses 
 taste there is a little — a very little — of the amateur; 
 but in Balzac there is absolutely nothing of the ama- 
 teur, and nothing is less to be depended upon than 
 Balzac's taste. But he was forced to write; his family 
 wished to make a lawyer of him, and he preferred to 
 be a romancer. He mastered enough law to be able 
 to incorporate the mysteries of legal procedure in the 
 "Com^die Humaine," and then embarked upon the 
 most prolific literary career, perhaps, that the world 
 has seen. His family cut down his supplies and tried 
 to starve him out; but he held firm, and in 1830 made 
 his first step into success. Meanwhile he had engaged 
 in several commercial ventures, each one of which 
 failed, leaving him a ponderous legacy of debt. To 
 the end of his life he was haunted with undischarged 
 obligations and was constantly trying new speculations 
 and investments. It is true, we believe, that he amused 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 7 I 
 
 himself with representing this pecuniary incubus as 
 more mysteriously and heroically huge than it was. 
 His incessant labour brought him a remuneration which 
 at this day and in this country would be considered 
 contemptible. M. Gozlan affirms that his annual in- 
 come, in his successful years, rarely exceeded 12,000 
 francs. This appears incredible until we find the edi- 
 tor of the "Revue de Paris" crying out against his de- 
 mand of 3,000 francs for the MS. of "Eugenie Grandet." 
 There is something pitiful in the contrast between this 
 meagre personal budget and his lifelong visions of 
 wealth and of the ways of amassing wealth, his jovial, 
 sensual, colossal enjoyment of luxury, and the great 
 monetary architecture as it were of the "Com^die Hu- 
 maine." Money is the most general element of Balza c's , 
 novels; other things come and go, but money is always 
 there. His great ambition and his great pretension as 
 a social chronicler was to be complete, and he was 
 more complete in this direction than in any other. He 
 rarely introduces a person without telling us in detail 
 how his property is invested, and the fluctuations of 
 his rentes impartially divide the writer's attention with 
 the emotions of his heart. Balzac never mentions an 
 object without telling us what it cost, and on every 
 occasion he mentions an enormous number of objects. 
 His women, too, talk about money quite as much as 
 his men, and not only his ignoble and mercenary 
 women (of whom there are so many) but his charming 
 women, his heroines, his great ladies. Madame de 
 Mortsauf is intended as a perfect example of feminine 
 elevation, and yet Madame de Mortsauf has the whole 
 of her husband's agricultural economy at her fingers' 
 ends; she strikes us at moments as an attorney in petti- 
 
72 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 coats. Each particular episode of the "Comedie Hu- 
 maine" has its own hero and heroine, but the great 
 
 -, general protagonist is the twenty-francs piece.- — ' 
 
 One thing at any rate Balzac achieved during these 
 early years of effort and obscurity; he had laid the 
 foundations of that intimate knowledge of Paris which 
 was to serve as the basis — the vast mosaic pavement 
 — of the "Comedie Humaine." Paris became his world, 
 his universe; his passion for the great city deserves to 
 
 -7 rank in literature beside Dr. Johnson's affection for Lon- 
 don. Wherever in his novels Paris is not directly pre- 
 sented she is even more vividly implied; the great ne- 
 gative to this brilliant positive, that vie de province of 
 which he produced such elaborate pictures, is always 
 observed from the standpoint of the Boulevard. If 
 Balzac had represented any other country than France, 
 if his imagination had ever left a footprint in England 
 or Germany, it is a matter of course for those who 
 know him that his fathomless Parisian cockneyism 
 would have had on these occasions a still sharper em- 
 phasis. But there is nothing to prove that he in the 
 least " realized," as we say, the existence of England 
 and Germany. That he had of course a complete 
 theory of the British constitution and the German in- 
 tellect makes little difference; for Balzac's theories 
 were often in direct proportion to his ignorance. H^ 
 never perceived with any especial directness that the 
 civilized world was made up of something else than 
 
 "• Paris and the provinces; and as he is said to have 
 been able to persuade himself, by repeating it a few- 
 times, that he had done various liings whidi he had 
 not done — made a present of a white horse, for in- 
 stance, to his publisher — so he would have had only 
 
HON ORE DE BALZAC. 73 
 
 to say often enough to himself that England was a 
 mythic country to believe imperturbably that there 
 was in fact, three hundred miles away, no magnificent 
 far-spreading London to invalidate his constant as- 
 sumption that Paris is the pivot of human history. 
 Nqver was a great genius more essentiaU^^Logal^ Shake- 
 speaf&7-9c8tf7"Cjoethe,'"savour ofmeirMHve soil; but 
 they have a glance that has only to fix itself a moment 
 to call up easily other horizons. Balzac's power of 
 creation gains perhaps in intensity what it loses in 
 reach; it is certain at any rate that his conception of 
 the stage on which the "Comedie Humaine" is perpe- 
 tually being acted is surrounded by a Chinese wall. 
 Never was an imagination more in sympathy with the 
 French theory of centralization. 
 
 When his letters are published it will be interest- 
 ing to learn from them, in so far as we may, how his 
 life was spent during these first ten years of his man- 
 hood. He began very early to write about countesses 
 and duchesses; and even after he had become famous 
 the manner in which he usually portrays the denizens 
 of the Faubourg St. Germain obliges us to believe that 
 the place they occupy in his books is larger than any 
 that they occupied in his experience. Did he go into 
 society? did he observe manners from a standpoint 
 that commanded the field? It was not till he became 
 famous that he began to use the aristocratic prefix; in 
 his earlier years he was plain M. Balzac. I believe it 
 is more than suspected that the pedigree represented 
 by this de was as fabulous (and quite as ingenious) as 
 any that he invented for his heroes. Balzac was pro- 
 foundly and essentially roturier ; we shall see that the 
 intrinsic evidence of his plebeian origin is abundant. 
 
74 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 He may very well, like his owii Eugtoe de Rastignac, 
 have lived at a Maison Vauquer; but did he, like 
 Rastignac, call upon a Madame de Beauseant and see 
 her receive him as a kinsman? We said just now that 
 we had to look for Balzac almost altogether in his 
 books; and yet his books are singularly void of 
 personal revelations. They tell us a vast deal about 
 his mind, but they suggest to us very little about his 
 life. It is hard to imagine a writer less autobiographic. 
 This is certainly a proof of the immense sweep of his 
 genius — of the incomparable vividness of his imagina- 
 tion. Tlie--things-JieJLaYeutedjeere__as real J;a_him_as 
 the_thingsjie knew, and his actual experience is over- 
 laid with a thousand thicknesses, as it were, of imaginary 
 experience. The person is irrecoverably lost in the 
 artist. There is sufficient evidence, however, that the 
 person led a rather hungry and predatory life during 
 these early years, and that he was more familiar with 
 what went on in the streets than with what occurred 
 in the salons. Whatever he encountered, however, he 
 [observed. In one of his tales he describes a young, 
 ! man who follows people in the street to overhear what 
 ' they say. This at least is autobiographic, and the 
 young man is Honord de Balzac, "devoured by his 
 genius and by the consciousness of his genius," as 
 M. Taine says — with all the unwritten "Comedie 
 Humaine'' within him. "In listening to these people 
 I could espouse their life. I felt their rags upon my 
 back; I walked with my feet in their tattered shoes; 
 their desires, their wants — everything passed into my 
 soul, and my soul passed into theirs; it was the dream 
 of a waking man." This glimpse of Balzac laying up 
 data is especially interesting, because it is singularly 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 75 
 
 rare. It must be that for years he spent many an 
 hour in silent, instinctive contemplation, for his novels 
 imply a period of preparatory research, of social 
 botanizing, geologizing, palseontologizing, just as Hum- 
 boldt's "Cosmos" implies a large amount of travel. It 
 happens that most of the anecdotes about Balzac 
 pertain to his productive period, and present him to us 
 in his white friar's dress, getting out of bed at mid- 
 night to work, in a darkened room, three weeks at a 
 sitting. The open-air Balzac, as we may call it, has 
 been little commemorated. White Dominican robes, 
 darkened rooms, deep potations of coffee, form the 
 staple of M. Gozlan's reminiscences. Every man works 
 as he can and as he must; and if, in order to write the 
 "Parents Pauvres," Balzac had had to dress himself in 
 a bearskin, we trust he would not have hesitated. 
 But it is nevertheless true that between the lines of 
 the "Comedie Humaine" the reader too often catches a 
 glimpse of the Dominican robe and the darkened room, 
 and longs for an open window and a costume some- 
 what less capricious. A realistic novelist, he re- 
 members, is not an astrologer or an alchemist. 
 
 In 1830 Balzac published the "Peau de Chagrin" 
 — the first work of the series on which his reputation 
 rests. After this," for twenty years, he produced with- 
 out cessation. The quantity of his work, when we * 
 consider the quality, seems truly amazing. There are 
 writers in the same line who have published an abso- 
 lutely greater number of volumes. Alexandre Dumas, 
 Madame Sand, Anthony TroUope, have been all im- 
 mensely prolific; but they all weave a loose web, as it # 
 were, and Balzac weaves a dense one. The tissue of 
 his tales is always extraordinarily firm and hard; it 
 
76 FRENCH POKTS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 may not at every point be cloth of gold, but it has 
 always a metallic rigidity. It has been worked over a 
 dozen times, and the work can never be said to be- 
 long to light literature. You have only to turn the 
 pages of a volume of Balzac to see that, whatever may 
 be the purity of the current, it at least never runs thin. 
 There is none of that wholesale dialogue, chopped 
 into fragments, which Alexandre Dumas fabricates by 
 the yard, and which bears the same relation to real 
 narrative architecture as a chain of stepping-stones 
 tossed across a stream does to a granite bridge. 
 ^Balzac is always definite; you can say Yes or No to 
 him as you go on; the story bristles with references 
 that must be verified, and if sometimes it taxes the 
 attention more than is thought becoming in a novel, 
 we must admit that, being as hard reading in the way 
 of entertainment as Hallam or Guizot, it may also have 
 been very hard writing. This it is that makes Balzac's 
 fertility so amazing — the fact that, whether we relish 
 its results or not, we at least perceive that the process 
 is not superficial. His great time was from 1830 to 
 1840; it was during these ten years that he published 
 his most perfect works. "Eugenie Grandet," "La 
 Recherche de I'Absolu," "Le P6re Goriot," "Un 
 Manage de Garjon," "Le Cabinet des Antiques," be- 
 long to the earlier period. "Beatrix," "Modeste 
 Mignon," "Une T6n6breuse Affaire," "Les Illusions 
 Perdues," the "Mdmoires de deux Jeunes Marines," 
 "La Muse du Departement," "Le D6put6 d'Arcis," be- 
 long to the latter. Balzac is never simple, and in a 
 sense which it will be interesting to attempt to ex- 
 plain, he is always corrupt; but "La Recherche de 
 I'Absolu" and "Le P6re Goriot" — we will not mentioo 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 77 
 
 "Eugdnie Grandet," which was so praised for its 
 innocence that the author found himself detesting it — 
 have a certain relative simplicity and purity; whereas in 
 the "Jeunes Mariees," "Beatrix," and "Modeste Mignon," 
 we are up to our necks in sophistication. If, however, 
 the works of the first half of Balzac's eminent period 
 are, generally speaking, superior to those of the second 
 half, it must be added that there are two or three in- 
 congruous transpositions. "Le Lys dans la Valine," 
 published in 1835, is bad enough to be coupled with 
 "Beatrix"; and "Les Parents Pauvres" and "Les 
 Paysans," finished shortly before the author's death, 
 are in many respects his most powerful achievements. 
 Most of Balzac's shorter tales are antecedent to 1840, 
 and his readers know how many masterpieces the list 
 contains. "Le Colonel Chabert" and "L'Interdiction" 
 are found in it, as well as "La Femme Abandonnee,'' 
 "La Grenadi^re" and "Le Message," and the admir- 
 able little stories grouped together (in the common 
 duodecimo edition) with "Les Marana." The dura- 
 tion of Balzac's works will certainly not be in propor- 
 tion to their length. "Le Cure de Tours," for all its 
 brevity, will be read when "Le Depute d'Arcis" lies 
 unopened; and more than one literary adventurer will 
 turn, out-wearied, from "La Peau de Chagrin" and 
 find consolation in "Un Debut dans la Vie." 
 
 We know not how early Balzac formed the plan 
 of the "Comedie Humaine"; but the general preface, 
 in which he explains the unity of his work and sets 
 forth that each of his tales is a block in a single im- 
 mense edifice and that this edifice aims to be a com- 
 plete portrait of the civilization of his time — this re- 
 markable manifesto dates from 1842. (If we call it 
 
78 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 remarkable, it is not that we understand it; though so 
 much as we have just expressed may easily be gathered 
 from it. From the moment that Balzac attempts to 
 philosophize, readers in the least sensible of the differ- 
 ence between words and things must part company 
 with him.) He complains, very properly, that the 
 ' official historians have given us no information about 
 manners that is worth speaking of; that this omission 
 is unpardonable; and that future ages will care much 
 more for the testimony of the novel, properly executed, 
 than for that of the writers who "set in order facts 
 which are about the same in all nations, look up the 
 spirit of laws which have fallen into disuse, elaborate 
 theories which lead nations astray, or, like certain 
 metaphysicians, endeavour to explain what is." In- 
 spired by this conviction, Balzac proposed to himself 
 to illustrate by a tale or a group of tales every phase 
 of French life and manners during the first half of the 
 nineteenth century. To be colossally and exhaustively 
 complete — complete not only in the generals but in the 
 particulars — to touch upon every salient point, to illumi- 
 nate every typical feature, to reproduce every sentiment, 
 every idea, every person, every place, every object, that 
 has played a part, however minute, however obscure, 
 in the life of the French people — nothing less than this 
 was his programme. The undertaking was enormous, 
 but it will not seem at first that Balzac underestimated 
 the needful equipment. He was conscious of the neces- 
 sary talent and he deemed it possible to acquire the 
 necessary knowledge. This knowledge was almost 
 encyclopaedic, and yet, after the vividness of his 
 imagination, Balzac's strongest side is his grasp of 
 actual facts. Behind our contemporary civilization is an 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 79 
 
 immense and complicated machinery — the machinery 
 of government, of police, of the arts, the professions, 
 the trades. Among these things Balzac moved easily 
 and joyously; they form the rough skeleton of his great 
 edifice. There is not a little pedantrj^in his preten- 
 sion to universal and infallible accuracy, but his ac- 
 curacy, so far as we can measure it, is extraordinary, 
 and in dealing with Balzac we must, in every direction, 
 make our account with pedantry. He made his cadres, 
 as the French say; he laid out his field in a number 
 of broad divisions; he subdivided these, and then he 
 filled up his moulds, pressing the contents down and 
 packing it tight. You may read the categories on the 
 back of the cover of the little common edition. There 
 are the "Sctoes de la Vie Priv6e"— "de la Vie de Pro- 
 vince" — "de la Vie Parisienne" — "de la Vie Politique" 
 — "de la Vie MUitaire" — "de la Vie de Campagne"; 
 and in a complementary way there are the "Etudes 
 Philosophiques" — (this portentous category contains the 
 picturesque "Recherche de I'Absolu") — and the "Etudes 
 Analytiques." Then, in the way of subdivisions, there 
 are "Les Celibataires," "Les Parisiens en Province," 
 "Les Rivalitds," "Les Illusions Perdues," the "Splen- 
 deurs etMis^res des Courtisanes," the "Parents Pauvres," 
 the "Envers de I'Histoire Contemporaine." This goodly 
 nomenclature had a retroactive effect; the idea of the 
 "Comddie Humaine," having developed itself when the 
 author was midway in his career, a number of its com- 
 ponent parts are what we may call accomplices after 
 the fact. They are pieces that dovetail into the vast 
 mosaic as they best can. But even if the occasional 
 disparities were more striking they would signify little, 
 for what is most interesting in Balzac is not the 
 
8o FRENCH POKTS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 achievement but the attempt. The attempt was, as he 
 himself has happily expressed it, to "faire concurrence 
 k r6tat civil" — to start an opposition, as we should say 
 in America, to the civil registers. He created a com- 
 plete social system — an hierarchy of ranks and pro- 
 fessions which should correspond with that of which 
 the officers of the census have cognizance. Every- 
 thing is there, as we find it in his pages — the king (in 
 "Le D^put6 d'Arcis" Louis XVIII. is introduced and 
 makes witticisms quite iniditi), the administration, the 
 church, the army, the judicature, the aristocracy, thfe 
 bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the peasantry, the artists, 
 the journalists, the men of letters, the actors, the 
 children (a little girl is the heroine of "Pierrette," and 
 an urchin the hero of "Un Debut dans la Vie") the 
 shopkeepers of every degree, the criminals, the thou- 
 sand irregular and unclassified members of society. 
 All this in Balzac's hands becomes an organic whole; 
 it moves together; it has a pervasive life; the blood 
 circulates through it; its parts are connected by sinuous 
 arteries. We have seen in English literature, in two 
 cases, a limited attempt to create a permanent stock, a 
 standing fund, of characters. Thackeray has led a few 
 of his admirable figures from one novel to another, and 
 Mr. Trollope has deepened illusion for us by his re- 
 peated evocations of Bishop Proudie and Archdeacon 
 Grantley. But these things are faint shadows of 
 Balzac's extravagant thoroughness — his fanta,stic cohe^ 
 siveness, A French brain alone could have persisted 
 in making a system sf all this. Balzac's "Comddie 
 Humaine" is on the imagiJi'ative line very much what 
 Comte's "Positive Philosophy" is on the ..scientific. 
 These great enterprises are equally characteristic of 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 8 1 
 
 the French passion for completeness, for symmetry, for 
 making a system as neat as an epigram— #of its intoler- 
 ance of the indefinite, the unformulated' The French 
 mind likes better to squeeze things into a formula that 
 mutilates them, if need be, than to leave them in the 
 frigid vague. The farther limit of its power of arrange- 
 ment (so beautiful as it generally is) is the limit of the 
 knowable. Consequently we often see in the visions 
 and systems of Frenchmen what may be called a con- 
 ventional infinite. The civilization of the nineteenth 
 century is of course not infinite, but to us of English 
 speech, as we. survey it, it appears so multitudinous, so 
 complex, so far-spreading, so suggestive, so portentous 
 ^t has such misty edges and far reverberations — that 
 the imagination, oppressed and overwhelmed, shrinks 
 from any attempt to grasp it as a whole. The French 
 imagination, in the person of Balzac, easily dominates 
 it, as he would say, and, without admitting that the 
 problem is any the less vast, regards i$"as practically 
 soluble. He would be an incautious spirit who should 
 propose hereupon to decide whether the French imagi- 
 nation or the English is the more potent. The one 
 sees a vast number of obstacles and the other a vast 
 number of remedies — the one beholds a great many 
 shadows and the other a great many lights. If the 
 human comedy, as Balzac pours it, condensed and soli- 
 dified, out of his mould, is a very reduced copy of its 
 original, we may nevertheless admit that the mould is 
 of enormous dimensions. "Very good," the English 
 imagination says; "call it large, but don't call it 
 universal." The impartial critic may assent; but he 
 privately remembers that it was in the convenient 
 faculty of persuading himself that he could do every- 
 
 Frenck Poets and Novelists. " 
 
82 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 thing that Balzac found the inspiration to do sc 
 much. 
 
 In addition to possessing an immense knowledge 
 of his field, he was conscious that he needed a philo- 
 
 ^sophy — a system of opinions. On this side too he 
 equipped himself; so far as quantity goes no man was 
 ever better provided with opinions. Balzac has an 
 opinion on everything in heaven and on earth, and a 
 complete, consistent theory of the universe, which was 
 always ready for service. "The signs of a superior 
 mind," says M. Taine, in speaking of him, "are vues 
 i ensemble — general views;" and judged by its wealth 
 in this direction Balzac's should be the greatest mind 
 the world has seen. We can think of no other mind 
 that has stood ready to deliver itself on quite so many 
 subjects. We doubt whether, on the whole, Aristotle 
 had so many vues d'ensemhle as Balzac. In Plato, in 
 Bacon, in Shakespeare, in Goethe, in Hegel, there are 
 shameful intermissions and lapses, ugly blank spots, 
 ungraceful liabilities to be taken by surprise. But 
 Balzac, as the showman of the human comedy, had 
 measured his responsibilities unerringly and convinced 
 himself that he must not only know what ever3rthing 
 is, but what everything should be. He is thus par ex- 
 
 1 cellence the philosophic novelist; his pages bristle with 
 axioms, moral, political, ethical, aesthetical; his narra- 
 tive groans beneath the weight of metaphysical and 
 scientific digression. The value of his philosophy and 
 his science is a question to be properly treated apart; 
 we mean simply to indicate that, formally, in this 
 direction he is as complete as in the others. In the 
 •yfront rank, of course, stand his political and religious 
 
 ^opinions. These are anchored to "the two eternaj 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 83 
 
 truths — the monarchy and the Catholic Church." 
 Balzac is, in other words, a passionate conserv-aliyie — 
 .a -Tory- of- the deepest dye. How well, as a rich 
 romancer, he knew what he was about in adopting 
 this profession of faith will be plain to the most super- 
 ficial reader. His philosophy, his morality, his religious 
 opinions have a certain picturesque correspondence 
 with his political views. Speaking generally, it may 
 be said that he had little belief in virtue and still less 
 admiration for it. He is so large and various that 
 you find all kinds of contradictory things in him; he 
 has that sign of the few supreme geniuses that, if you 
 look long enough he offers you a specimen of every 
 possible mode of feeling. He has represented virtue, 
 innocence and purity in the most vivid forms. C^sar 
 Birotteau, Eugenie Grandet, Mile. Cormon, Mme. Gras- 
 lin, Mme. Claes, Mme. de Mortsauf, Popinot, Genestas, 
 the Cousin Pons, Schmucke, Chesnel, Joseph Bridau, 
 Mme. Hulot — these and many others are not only ad- 
 mirably good people, but they are admirably success- 
 ful figures. They live and move, they produce an 
 illusion, for all their goodness, quite as much as their, 
 baser companions — Mme. Vauquer, Mme. Marnefife, 
 Vautrin, Philippe Bridau, Mme. de Rochefide. Balzac 
 had evidently an immense kindliness, a salubrious good 
 nature which enabled him to feel the charm of all 
 artless and helpless manifestations of life. That robust- 
 ness of temperament and those high animal spirits 
 which carried him into such fantastic explorations of 
 man's carnal nature as the "Physiologie du Mariage" 
 and the "Contes Drdlatiques" — that lusty natural 
 humour which was not humour in our English sense, 
 but a relish, sentimentally more dry but intellectually 
 
 6- 
 
84 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 more keen, of all grotesqueness and quaintness and 
 uncleanness, and which, when it felt itself flagging, had 
 still the vigour to keep itself up a while as what the 
 French call the "humoristic" — to emulate Rabelais, to 
 torture words, to string together names, to be pedantic- 
 ally jovial and archaically hilarious — all this helped 
 Balzac to appreciate the simple and the primitive with 
 an intensity subordinate only to his enjoyment of cor- 
 ruption and sophistication. We do wrong indeed to 
 say subordinate; Balzac was here as strong and as 
 frank as he was an)rwhere. We are almost inclined 
 to say that his profoundly simple people are his best 
 — ^that in proportion to the labour expended upon 
 them they are most lifelike. Such a figure as "big 
 Nanon," the great, strapping, devoted maid-servant in 
 "Eugenie Grandet," may stand as an example. (Balzac 
 is full, by the way, of good servants; from Silvie and 
 Christophe in "Le P6re Goriot" ,to Chesnel the notary, 
 whose absolutely canine fidelity deprives him even of 
 the independence of a domestic, in "Le Cabinet des 
 Antiques.") What he represents best is extremely 
 simple virtue, and vice simple or complex, as you 
 please. In superior virtue, intellectual virtue, he fails; 
 when his superior people begin to reason they are lost 
 — they become prigs and hypocrites, or worse. Ma- 
 dame de Mortsauf, who is intended to be at once the 
 purest and cleverest of his good women, is a kind of 
 fantastic monster; she is perhaps only equalled by the 
 exemplary Madame de I'Estorade, who (in "Le Deput6 
 d'Arcis") writes to a lady with whom she is but scantily 
 acquainted a series of pros and cons on the question 
 whether "it will be given" (as she| phrases it) to a 
 certain gentleman to make her "manquer i ses 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 85 
 
 devoirs." This gentleman has snatched her little girl 
 from under a horse's hoofs, and for a while afterward 
 has greatly annoyed her by his importunate presence 
 on her walks and drives. She immediately assumes 
 that he has an eye to her "devoirs." Suddenly, how- 
 ever, he disappears, and it occurs to her that he is 
 "sacrificing his fancy to the fear of spoiling his fine 
 action." At this attractive thought her "devoirs" begin 
 to totter, and she ingenuously exclaims, "But on this 
 footing he would really be a man to reckon with, and, 
 my dear M. de I'Estorade, you would have decidedly 
 to look out!" And yet Madame de I'Estorade is given 
 us as a model of the all-gracious wife and mother; she 
 figures in the "Deux Jeunes Mariees" as the foil of 
 the luxurious, passionate and pedantic Louise de 
 Chaulieu — the young lady who, on issuing from the 
 convent where she has got her education, writes to 
 her friend that she is the possessor of a "virginite 
 savante." 
 
 There are two writers in Balzac — the spontaneous 
 one and the reflective one — the former of which is 
 much the more delightful, while the latter is the more 
 extraordinary. It was the reflective observer that 
 aimed at colossal completeness and equipped himself 
 with a universal philosophy : and it was of this one we 
 spoke when we said just now that Balzac had little 
 belief in virtue. Balzac's beliefs, it must be confessed, 
 are delicate ground; from certain points of view, per- 
 haps, the less said about them the better. His sincere, 
 personal beliefs may be reduced to a very compact 
 formula; he beliei^ed that it was possible to write 
 magnificent novels, and that he was the man to do it. 
 He believed, otherwise stated, that human life was in- 
 
86 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Unitely dramatic and picturesque, and that he possessed 
 an incomparable analytic perception of the fact. His 
 other convictions were all derived from this and humbly 
 danced attendance upon it; for if being a man of 
 genius means being identical with one's productive 
 faculty, never was there such a genius as Balzac's. A 
 monarchical society is unquestionably more picturesque, 
 more available for the novelist than any other, as the 
 others have as yet exhibited themselves; and therefore 
 Balzac was with glee, with gusto, with imagin^-tion, a 
 monarchist. Of what is to be properly called religious 
 feeling we do not remember a suggestion in all his 
 many pages; on the other hand, the reader constantly 
 encounters the handsomest compliments to the Catholic 
 Church as a social rlgime. A hierarchy is as much 
 more picturesque than a "congregational society" as a 
 mountain is than a plain. Bishops, abbes, priests, 
 Jesuits, are invaluable figures in fiction, and the 
 morality of the Catholic Church allows of an infinite 
 chiaroscuro. In "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" there is a 
 portrait of a priest who becomes preceptor to the 
 youthful hero. "This priest, vicious but politic, scepti- 
 cal but learned, perfidious but amiable, feeble in 
 aspect, but as strong in body as in head, was so truly 
 useful to his pupil, so complaisant to his vices, so good 
 a calculator of every sort of force, so deep when it 
 was necessary to play some human trick, so young at 
 table, at the gaming house, at — I don't know where — 
 that the only thing the grateful Henry de Marsay could 
 feel soft-hearted over in 1814 was the portrait of his 
 dear bishop — the single object of personal property he 
 was able to inherit from this prelate, an admirable 
 type of the men whose genius will save the Catholic 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 87 
 
 Apostolic and Roman Church.'' It is hardly an exag- 
 geration to say that we here come as near as we do at 
 any point to Balzac's religious feeling. The reader 
 will see that it is simply a lively assent to that great 
 worldly force of the Catholic Church, the art of using 
 all sorts of servants and all sorts of means. Balzac 
 was willing to accept any morality that was curious 
 and unexpected, and he found himself as a matter of 
 course more in sympathy with a theory of conduct 
 which takes account of circumstances and recognises 
 the merits of duplicity, than with the comparatively 
 colourless idea that virtue is nothing if not uncom- 
 promising. Like all persons who have looked a great 
 deal at human life, he had been greatly struck with, 
 -most people's selfishness, and this quality seemed to 
 him the most general in mankind. Selfishness may go 
 to dangerous lengths, but Balzac believed that it may 
 somehow be regulated and even chastened by a strong 
 throne and a br-iffiant court, with MM. de Rastignac 
 and de Trailles as supports of the one and Mesdames 
 de Maufrigneuse and d'Espard as ornaments of the 
 other, and by a clever and impressive Church, with 
 plenty of bishops of the pattern of the one from whose 
 history a leaf has just been given. If we add to this 
 that he had a great fancy for "electricity" and animal 
 'magnetism, we have touched upon the most salient 
 points of Balzac's philosophy. This makes, it is true, 
 rather a bald statement of a matter which at times 
 seems much more considerable; but it may be main- 
 tained that an exact analysis of his heterogeneous 
 opinions will leave no more palpable deposit. His 
 imagination was so fertile, the movement of his mind 
 so constant, his curiosity and ingenuity so unlimited. 
 
88 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the energy of his phrase so striking, he raises such a 
 cloud of dust about him as he goes, that the reader to 
 whom he is new has a sense of his opening up gulfs 
 and vistas of thought and pouring forth flashes and 
 volleys of wisdom. But from the moment he ceases 
 'to be a simple dramatist Balzac is an arrant charlatan. 
 It is probable that no equally vigorous mind was ever 
 at pains to concoct such elaborate messes of folly. ~ 
 They spread themselves over page after page, in a 
 close, dense verbal tissue, which the reader scans in 
 vain for some little flower of available truth. It all 
 rings false — it is all mere flatulent pretension. It may 
 be said that from the moment he attempts to deal with 
 an abstraction the presumption is always dead against 
 him. About that which the discriminating reader thus 
 brutally dubs his charlatanism, as about everything else 
 in Balzac, there would be very much more to say than 
 this small compass admits of. (Let not the discrimi- 
 nating reader, by the way, repent of his brutality; 
 Balzac himself was brutal, and must be handled with^ 
 his own weapons. It would be absurd to write of him 
 in semi-tones and innuendoes; he never used them 
 himself.) The chief point is that he himself was his 
 most perfect dupe; he believed in his own manificent _ 
 rubbish, and if he made it up, as the phrase is, as he 
 went along, his credulity kept pace widi his invention. 
 This was, briefly speaking, because he was morally- 
 and intellectually so superficial. He paid himself, as 
 the French say, with shallower conceits than ever be- 
 fore passed muster with a strong man. The moral, 
 the intellectual atmosphere of his genius is extra- 
 ordinarily gross and turbid; it is no wonder that the 
 flower of truth does not bloom in it, nor any natural 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 89 
 
 flower whatever. The difference in this respect be- 
 tween Balzac and the other great novelists is extremely 
 striking. When_ffie.jpproadt-3Ffeftekeray and George 
 Eliot, GeorgeSand and Turg6nieff, it is into the con- 
 science and the mind that we enter, and we think of 
 these writer^priinaii^£--a&--g¥eat--conscieinces and great 
 mlndsT" When we approach Balzac we seem to enter ' 
 into a great- temperaTneirt^^^a -prodigious nature. He 
 strikes us half the time as an extraordinary physical 
 phenomenon. His robust imagination seems a sort 
 of physical faculty, and impresses us more with its 
 sensible mass and quantity than with its lightness or 
 fineness. ,— 
 
 This brings us back to what was said just now 
 touching his disbelief in virtue and his homage to the 
 selfish passions. He ly^d, no. -natural Sfeflse of morality, 
 and this we cannot help thinking a serious fault in a 
 novelist. (Be the morality false or true, the writer's 
 deference to it greets us as a kind of essential per- 
 fume. ^ We find such a perfume in Shakespeare; we 
 find it/ in spite of his so-called cynicism, in Thackeray; 
 we find it, potently, in George Eliot, in George Sand, 
 in Turgdnieff. They care for moral questions; they 
 are haunted by a moral ideal. This southern slope 
 of the mind, as we may call it, was very barren in 
 Balzac, and it is partly possible to account for its 
 barrenness. Large as Balzac is, he is all of one piece 
 and he hangs perfectly together. He pays for his 
 merits and he makes us accept his defects. He had a^ 
 sense of this present terrestrial life which has never" 
 been surpassed, and which in his genius overshadowed 
 everything else. There are many men who are not 
 especially occupied with the idea of another world, 
 
go FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 but we believe there has never been a man so com- 
 pletely detached from it as Balzac. This world of 
 our senses, of our purse, of our name, of our blason 
 (or the absence of it) — this palpable world of houses 
 and clothes, of seven per cents and multiform human 
 faces, pressed upon his imagination with an unpre- 
 cedented urgency. It certainly is real enough to most 
 of us, but to Balzac it was ideally real — charmingly, 
 absorbingly, absolutely real. There is nothing in. all 
 imaginative literature that in the least resembles his 
 mighty passion for things — for material objects, for 
 furniture, upholstery, bricks and mortar. The world 
 that contained these things filled his consciousness, 
 and leing, at its intensest, meant simply being thoroughly 
 at home among them. Balzac possessed indeed a 
 
 ^lively interest in the supernatural: "La Peau de 
 Chagrin," "Louis Lambert," "S^raphita,'' are a power- 
 ful expression of it. But it was a matter of adven- 
 turous fancy, like the same quality in Edgar Poe: it 
 was perfectly cold, and had nothing to do with his 
 moral life. To get on in this world, to succeed, to 
 live greatly in all one's senses, to have plenty of things 
 — this was Balzac's infinite; it was here that his heart 
 expanded. It was natural, therefore, that the life of 
 mankind should seem to him above all an eager striving 
 
 , in this direction — a multitudinous greed for personal en- 
 joyment. The master-passion among these passions — 
 the passion of the miser — he has depicted as no one 
 else has begun to do. Wherever we look, in the 
 "Comddie Humaine," we see a miser, and he — or she 
 — is sure to be a marvel of portraiture. In the struggle 
 and the scramble it is not the sweetest qualities that 
 come uppermost, and Balzac, watching the spectacle. 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 9 1 
 
 takes little account of these. It is strength and cunning 
 that are most visible — the power to climb the ladder, 
 to wriggle to the top of the heap, to clutch the money- 
 bag. In human nature, viewed in relation to this end, 
 it is force only that" is desirable, and a feeling is fine 
 only in so far as it is a profitable practical force. 
 Strength of purpose seems the supremely admirable 
 thing, and the spectator lingers over all eminent ex- 
 hibitions of it. It may show itself in two great ways 
 — in vehemence and in astuteness, in eagerness and 
 in patience. Balzac has a vast relish for both, but on 
 the whole he prefers the latter form as being the more 
 dramatic. It admits of duplicity, and there are few 
 human accomplishments that Balzac professes so ex- 
 plicit a respect for as this. He scatters it freely among 
 his dear "gens d'eglise," and his women are all made 
 up of it. If he had been asked what was, for human 
 purposes, the faculty he valued most highly, he would 
 have said the power of ^issnnulatioiu He regards it 
 as a sign of all superior people, and he says some- 
 where that nothing forms the character so finely as 
 having had to exercise it in one's youth, in the bosom 
 of one's family. In this attitude of Balzac's there is 
 an element of affectation and of pedantry; he praises 
 duplicity because it is original and audacious to do 
 so. But he praises it also because it has for him the 
 highest recommendation that anything can have — it 
 is picturesque. Duplicity is more picturesque than 
 honesty — ^just as the line of beauty is the curve and 
 not the straight line. In place of a moral judgment 
 of conduct, accordingly, Balzac usually gives us an 
 j aesthetic judgment. A magnificent action with him is 
 not an action which is remarkable for its high motive. 
 
92 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 but an action with a great force of will or of desire 
 behind it, which throws it into striking and monu- 
 mental relief. It may be a magnificent sacrifice, a 
 magnificent devotion, a magnificent act of faith; but 
 the presumption is that it will be a magnificent lie) a 
 magnificent murder or a magnificent adultery. 
 
 II. 
 
 -, This overmastering sense of the present world was 
 of course a superb foundation for the work of a 
 realistic romancer, and it did so much for Balzac that 
 one is puzzled to know where to begin to enumerate 
 the things he owed to it. It gave him in the first- 
 place his background — his mise-en-scine. This part of 
 his story had with Balzac an importance — his render- 
 ing of it a solidity — which it had never enjoyed be- 
 fore, and which the most vigorous talents in the school 
 of which Balzac was founder have never been able to 
 restore to it. The place in which an event occurred 
 was in his view of equal moment with the event itself; 
 it was part of the action; it was not a thing to take 
 or to leave, or to be vaguely and gracefully indicated; 
 it imposed itself; it had a part to play; it needed to 
 be made as definite as anything else.y There is accord- 
 ingly a very much greater amount of description in— 
 Balzac than in any other writer, and the description 
 is mainly of towns, houses and rooms. Descriptions 
 of scenery, properly so called, are rare, though when 
 they occur they are often admirable. Almost aU of 
 his tales "de la vie de province" are laid in different 
 towns, and a more or less minute portr,ait of the town 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 93 
 
 IS always attempted. How far in these cases Balzac's 
 general pretension to be exact and complete was sus- 
 tained we are unable to say; we know not what the 
 natives of Limoges, of Saumur, of AngoulSme, of 
 Alengon, of Issoudun, of Guerande, thought of his pre- 
 sentation of these localities; but if the picture is not 
 veracious, it is at least always definite and masterly. 
 And Balzac did what he could, we believe, to be ; 
 exact; he often made a romancer's pilgrimage to a 
 town that he wished to introduce into a story. Here 
 he picked out a certain number of houses to his pur- 
 pose, lodged the persons of his drima in them, and 
 reproduced them even to their local odours. Many 
 readers find all this very wearisome, and it is certain 
 that it oflFers one a liberal chance to be bored. We, 
 for our part, have always found Balzac's houses and ^ 
 rooms extremely interesting; we often prefer his places 
 to his people. He was a profound connoisseur in 
 these matters; he had a passion for bric-a-brac, and 
 his tables and chairs are always in character. It must 
 be admitted that in this matter as in every other he 
 has his right and his wrong, and that in his enumera- 
 tions of inanimate objects he often sins by extrava- 
 gance. He has his necessary houses and his super- 
 fluous houses: often when in a story the action is run- , 
 ning thin he stops up your mouth against complaint, 
 as it were, by a dose of brick and mortar. The power 
 of his memory, his representative vision, as regards 
 these things is something amazing; the reader never 
 ceases to wonder at the promptness with which he 
 can "get up" a furnished house — at the immense 
 supply of this material that he carries about in his 
 mind. He expends it with a royal liberality; where 
 
94 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 another writer makes an allusion Balzac gives you a 
 Dutch picture. In "Le Cabinet des Antiques," on 
 the verge of its close, Madame Camusot makes a 
 momentary appearance. She has only twenty lines 
 to speak, but immediately we are confronted with her 
 domicile. "Leaning against the next house, so as to 
 present its front to the court, it had on each floor but 
 one window on the street. The court, confined in its 
 width by two walls ornamented by rose-bushes and 
 privet, had at its bottom, opposite the house, a shed 
 supported upon two brick arches. A little half-door 
 admitted you into this dusky house, made duskier 
 still by a great walnut-tree planted in the middle 
 of the court." We are told furthermore about the 
 dining-room and the kitchen, about the staircase and 
 the rooms on the first floor. We learn that the second 
 floor was an attic, and that it had one room for the 
 cook and another for the femme de chambre, who 
 kept the children with her. We are informed that 
 the woodwork, painted a dirty grey, was of the most 
 melancholy aspect, and that Madame Camusot's bed- 
 room had a carpet and blue and white ornaments. 
 All this is entirely out of the current of the story, 
 which pretends to be short and simple, and which is 
 ostensibly hurrying towards its d^noftment. Some 
 readers will always remember the two brick arches of 
 Madame Camusot's shed, the dirty grey of her walls 
 and the blue and white upholstery of her room; others 
 will say that they care nothing about them, and these 
 are not to be gainsaid. 
 
 Three or four descriptions of this kind stand out 
 in the reader's memory. One is the picture of the 
 dark and chill abode in which poor Eugenie Grandet 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 95 
 
 blooms and fades j another is the elaborate and ele- 
 gant portrait of the beautiful old house at Douai, half 
 Flemish, half Spanish, in which the delusions of 
 Balthazar Clags bring his family to ruin; the best of 
 all is the magnificent account of the "pension bourgeoise 
 des deux sexes et autres," kept by Madame Vauquer, 
 nie de Conflans, preceded by a glass door armed with 
 a shrill alarm-bell, through which you see an arcade in 
 green marble painted on a wall and a statue of Cupid 
 with the varnish coming off in scales. In this musty 
 and mouldy little boarding-house the P&re Goriot is 
 the senior resident. Certain students in law and me- 
 dicine, from the Quartier Latin, hard by, subscribe 
 to the dinner, where Maman Vauquer glares at them 
 when she watches them cut their slice from the loaf 
 When the P^re Goriot dies horribly, at the end of the 
 tragedy, the kindest thing said of him, as the other 
 boarders unfold their much-crumpled napkins, is, 
 "Well, he won't sit and sniff his bread any more!" and 
 the speaker imitates the old man's favourite gesture. 
 The portrait of the Maison Vauquer and its inmates 
 is one of the most portentous settings of the scene in • 
 all the literature of fiction. In this case there is no- 
 thing superfluous; there is a profound correspondence 
 between the background and the action. It is a pity 
 not to be able to quote the whole description, or even 
 that of the greasy, dusky dining-room in which so 
 much of the story goes forward. "This apartment is 
 in all its lustre at the moment when, toward seven 
 o'clock in the morning, Madame Vauquer's cat pre- 
 cedes his mistress, jumping on the sideboards, smelling 
 at the milk contained in several basins covered with 
 plates, and giving forth his matutinal purr. Presently 
 
96 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS, 
 
 the widow appears, decked out in her tulle cap, under 
 which hangs a crooked band of false hair; as she 
 walks she drags along her wrinkled slippers. Her 
 little plump elderly face, from the middle of which 
 protrudes a nose like a parrot's beak; her little fat 
 dimpled hands, her whole person, rounded like a 
 church-rat, the waist of her gown, too tight for its 
 contents, whict flaps over it, are all in harmony with 
 this room, where misfortune seems to ooze, where 
 speculation lurks in comers, and of which Madame 
 Vauquer inhales the warm, fetid air without being 
 nauseated. Her countenance, fresh as a first autumn 
 frost, her wrinkled eyes, whose expression passes from 
 the smile prescribed to danseuses to the acrid scowl of 
 the discounter — her whole person, in short, is an ex- 
 planation of the boarding-house, as the boarding-house 
 is an implication of her person. . . . Her worsted petti- 
 coat, which falls below her outer skirt, made of an old 
 dress, and with the wadding coming out of the slits in 
 the stuff, which is full of them, resumes the parlour, 
 the dining-room, the yard, announces the kitchen, and 
 gives a presentiment of the boarders." But we must 
 pause, for we are passing from the portraiture of places 
 to that of people. 
 
 This latter is Balzac's strongest gift, and it is so 
 
 strong that it easily distances all competition. Two 
 other writers in this line have gone very far, but they 
 suffer by comparison with him. Dickens often sets a 
 figure before us with extraordinary vividness; but the 
 outline is fantastic and arbitrary; we but half believe 
 in it, and feel as if we were expected but half to be- 
 lieve in it. It is like a silhouette in cut paper, in 
 which the artist has allowed great license to his scissors. 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 97 
 
 If Balzac had a rival, the most dangerous rival would 
 be TurgdniefF. With the Russian novelist the person 
 represented is equally definite — or meant to be equally 
 definite; and the author's perception of idiosyncrasies 
 is sometimes even more subtle. With Turg^nieff as 
 with Balzac the whole person springs into being at 
 once; the character is never left shivering for its fleshly 
 envelope, its face, its figure, its gestures, its tone, its 
 costume, its naine, its bundle of antecedents. But 
 behind Balzac's figures we feel a certain heroic pressure 
 that drives them home to our credence — a contagious 
 illusion on the author's own part. The imagination 
 that produced them is working at a greater heat; they 
 seem to proceed from a sort of creative infinite 'and 
 they help each other to be believed in. It is pictorially 
 a larger, sturdier, more systematic style of portraiture " 
 than Turgenieff''s. This is altogether the most valuable 
 element in Balzac's novels; it is hard to see how the 
 power of physical evocation can go farther. In future 
 years, if people find his tales, as a whole, too rugged 
 and too charmless, let them take one up occasionally 
 and, turning the leaves, read simply the portraits. In 
 Balzac every one who is introduced is minutely de- 
 scribed; if lie individual is to say but three words he 
 has the honours of a complete enumeration. Portraits 
 shape themselves under his pen as if in obedience to 
 an irresistible force; while the effort with most writers 
 is to collect the material — to secure the model — the 
 effort with Balzac is to disintegrate his visions, to ac- 
 cept only one candidate in the dozen. And it is not 
 only that his figures are so definite, but that they are 
 so plausible, so real, so characteristic, so recognisable." 
 The fertility of his imagination in this respect was 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 7 
 
g8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 something marvellous. When we think of the many 
 hundred complete human creatures (he calls the number 
 at least two thousand) whom he set in motion, with 
 their sharp differences, their histories, their money- 
 matters, their allotted place in his great machine, we 
 give up the attempt to gauge such a lusty energy of 
 fancy. In reading over Balzac, we have marked a 
 great many portraits for quotation, but it is hard to 
 know what to choose or where to begin. The appreciative 
 reader may safely begin at hazard. He opens the little 
 tale of "L'Interdiction," and finds the physiognomy of 
 the excellent Judge Popinot thus depicted: "If nature, 
 therefore, had endowed M. Popinot with an exterior 
 but scantily agreeable, the magistracy had not embel- 
 lished him. His frame was full of angular lines. His 
 big knees, his large feet, his broad hands, contrasted 
 with a sacerdotal face, which resembled vaguely the 
 head of a calf, soft to insipidity, feebly lighted by two 
 lateral eyes, altogether bloodless, divided by a straight 
 flat nose, surmounted by a forehead without pro- 
 tuberance, decorated by two huge ears, which bent 
 awkwardly forward. His hair, thin in quantity and 
 quality, exposed his skill in several irregular furrows. 
 A single feature recommended this countenance to the 
 student of physiognomy. The man had a mouth on 
 whose lips a divine goodness hovered. These were 
 good big red lips, sinuous, moving, with a thousand 
 folds, through which nature had never expressed any 
 but high feelings — lips which spoke to the heart," &a 
 That is certainly admirable for energy and vividness 
 — closeness to the individual. But, after all, Popinot 
 plays a part; he appears in several tales; he is the type 
 of the upright judge, and there is a fitness in his figure 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. QQ^ 
 
 being strongly lighted. Here is Madame de Kergarouet, 
 who merely crosses the stage in "Beatrix," who rises in 
 answer to a momentary need, and yet who is as ripe 
 and complete, as thoroughly seen, felt and understood, 
 as if she had been soaked, as it were, for years in the 
 author's consciousness: "As for the Vicomtesse de 
 Kergarouet, she was the perfect provinciale. Tall, dry, 
 faded, full of hidden pretensions which showed them- 
 selves after they had been wounded; talking much 
 and, by dint of talking, catching a few ideas, as one 
 cannons at billiards, and which gave her a reputation 
 for cleverness; trying to humiliate the Parisians by the 
 pretended bonhomie of departmental wisdom, and by a 
 make-believe happiness which she was always putting 
 forward; stooping to get herself picked up and furious 
 at being left on her knees; fishing for compliments, 
 and not always taking them; dressing herself at once 
 strikingly and carelessly; taking the want of affability 
 for impertinence, and thinking to embarrass people 
 greatly by paying them no attention; refusing what she 
 wanted in 'order to have it offered to her twice, and 
 to seem to be urged beyond resistance; occupied with 
 the things that people have ceased to talk about and 
 greatly astonished at not being in the current of 
 fashion; finally, keeping quiet with difficulty an hour 
 without bringing up Nantes, and the tigers of Nantes, 
 and the affairs of the high society of Nantes, and com- 
 plaining of Nantes, and criticising Nantes, and making 
 a personal application of the phrases extracted from 
 the people whose attention wandered, and who agreed 
 with her to get rid of her. Her manners, her language, 
 her ideas, had all more or less rubbed off on her four 
 daughters." Here also, to prove that Balazac'a best 
 
 7* 
 
lOO FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 portraits are not always his harshest, is an admirably 
 friendly portrait of an old rustic gentlewoman, taken 
 from the same novel: "Mademoiselle Zephirine, de- 
 prived of her sight, was ignorant of the changes which 
 her eighty years had made in her physiognomy. Her 
 pale, hollow face, which the immobility of her white, 
 sightless eyes caused to look like that of a dead 
 person, which three or four protruding teeth rendered 
 almost threatening, in which the deep orbit of the eyes 
 was circled with red tones, in which a few signs of 
 virility, already white, cropped up about the mouth 
 and chin— this cold, calm face was framed in a little 
 nun-like cap of brown calico, pricked like a counter- 
 pane, garnished with a cambric frill, and tied under 
 the chin by two strings which were always a trifle 
 rusty. She wore a short gown of coarse cloth, over a 
 petticoat of piqui, a real mattress which contained 
 forty-francs pieces — as also a pair of pockets sewed to 
 a belt which she put on and took off morning and 
 night like a garment. Her body was fastened into the 
 common jacket of Brittany, in stuff matching with that 
 of her skirt, ornamented with a little collar of a thou- 
 sand folds, the washing of which was the subject of 
 the only dispute she ever had with her sister-in-law — 
 she herself wishing to change it but once a week. 
 From the great wadded sleeves of this jack^ issued 
 two desiccated but nervous arms, at the end of which 
 moved two hands of a ruddy hue, which made her 
 arms appear as white as the wood of the poplar. 
 Her hands, with the fingers hooked and contracted by 
 knitting, were like a stocking-loom for ever wound up; 
 the phenomenon would have been to see them stop. 
 From time to time she took a long knitting-needle that 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. lOI 
 
 was planted in her bosom, and thrust it in between 
 her cap and her head, while she rummaged in her 
 white hair. A stranger would have laughed at the 
 carelessness with which she stuck the needle back 
 again, without the least fear of wounding herself. She 
 was as straight as a belfry. This columnar rectitude 
 might have passed for one of those egotisms practised 
 by old people, which prove that pride is a passion 
 necessary to life. Her smile was gay." 
 
 One of the most striking examples of Balzac's 
 energy and facility of conception and execution in 
 this hne is the great gallery of portraits of the people 
 who come to the party given by Madame de Bargeton, 
 in "Les Illusions Perdues." These people are all mere 
 supernumeraries; they appear but on this occasion, 
 and having been marshalled forth in their living 
 grotesqueness, they stand there simply to deepen the 
 local colour about the central figure of Madame de 
 Bargeton. When it lets itself loose among the strange 
 social types that vegetate in silent corners of provincial 
 towns, and of which an old and complex civilization, 
 passing from phase to phase, leaves everywhere so 
 thick a deposit, Balzac's imagination expands and 
 revels and rejoices in its strength. In these cases it 
 is sometimes kindly and tender and sympathetic; but 
 as a general thing it is merciless in its irony and con- 
 tempt. There is almost always, to us English readers, 
 something cruel and wounding in French irony — some- 
 thing almost sanguinary in French caricature. To be 
 ridiculous is made to appear like a crime and to de- 
 prive the unhappy victim of any right that an acute 
 observer is bound to respect. The Dodson family, in 
 George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss" — the illustrious 
 
I02 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Stock from which Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Pullet issue — 
 are apparently a scantily mitigated mixture of the 
 ridiculous and the disagreeable; and yet every reader 
 of that admirable novel will remember how humanly, 
 how generously these ladies are exhibited, and how in 
 the author's treatment of them the highest sense of 
 their absurdities never leads her to grudge them a 
 particle of their freedom. In a single word, the picture 
 is not invidious. Balzac, on the other hand, in cor- 
 responding pictures — pictures of small middle-class 
 "ignorance, narrowness, penury, poverty, dreariness, 
 ugliness physical and mental — is always invidious. He 
 grudges and hates and despises. These sentiments 
 certainly often give a masterly force to his touch; but 
 they deepen that sense, which he can so ill afford to 
 •have deepened, of the meagreness of his philosophy. 
 It is very true that the "vie de province" of the 
 "Com^die Humaine" is a terribly dreary and sordid 
 affair; but, making every concession to the ignorant 
 and self-complacent stupidity of the small French 
 bourgeoisie during the Restoration and the reign of 
 Louis Philippe, it is impossible to believe that a 
 chronicler with a scent a little less rabidly suspicious 
 of Philistinism would not have shown us this field in 
 a somewhat rosier light. Like all French artists and 
 men of letters, Balzac hated the bourgeoisie with an 
 immitigable hatred, and more than most of his class 
 he hated the provincial. All the reasons for this 
 general attitude it would take us too far to seek; two 
 of them, we think, are near the surface. Balzac and 
 his comrades hate the bourgeois, in the first place be- 
 cause the bourgeois hates them, and in the second 
 place, because they are almost always fugitives from 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 103 
 
 the bourgeoisie. They have escaped with their lives, 
 and once in the opposite camp they turn and shake 
 their fists and hurl defiance. Provincial life, as Balzac 
 represents it, is a tissue of sordid economies and 
 ignoble jealousies and fatuous tittle-tattle, in cold, 
 musty, unlovely houses, in towns where the grass 
 grows in the streets, where the passage of a stranger 
 brings grotesquely eager faces to the window, where 
 one or two impotently pretentious salons, night after 
 night, exhibit a collection of human fossils. Here 
 and there a brighter thread runs through the dusky 
 web — we remember Veronique Tascheron, Eugdnie 
 Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Ursule Mirougt, David and 
 Eve Sdchard. White has a high picturesque value 
 when properly distributed, and Balzac's innocent 
 people, who are always more or less tragical dupes 
 and victims, serve admirably to deepen the general 
 effect of dreariness, stinginess and ferocious venality. 
 With what a grasp of the baser social realities, with 
 what energy and pathos and pictorial irony he has 
 moulded these miseries and vices into living figures, 
 it would be interesting to be able to exhibit in detail. 
 It is grim economy that is always in the foreground — 
 it is the clutch of the five-francs piece that is the 
 essence of every gesture. It is the miser Grandet, 
 doling out the sugar lump by lump for the coffee of 
 the household; it is that hideous she-wolf of thrift, 
 Silvie Rogron, pinching and persecuting and starving 
 little Pierrette Lofrainj it^s the heirs male and female 
 "'rfoi^fag 
 
 of Doctor Mirofts* flodJEihg to the reading of his will 
 like vultures and hyenas. 
 
 Balzac's figures, as a general thing, are better than 
 the use he makes of them; his touch, so unerring in 
 
I04 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 portraiture and description, often goes wofully astray 
 in narrative, in the conduct of a tale. Of all the 
 great novelists, he is the weakest in talk; his con- 
 versations, if they are at all prolonged, become un- 
 natural, impossible. One of his pupils, as they say 
 in French, Charles de Bernard (who had, however, 
 taken most justly the measure of his own talent, and 
 never indiscreetly challenged comparison with the 
 master) — this charming writer, with but a -tenth of 
 Balzac's weight and genius, very decidedly excels him 
 in making his figures converse. It is not meant by 
 this, however, that the story in Balzac is not generally 
 powerfully conceived and full of dramatic stuff. Afraid 
 of nothing as he was, he attacked all the deepest 
 things in life and laid his hand upon every human 
 passion. He has even — to be complete — described 
 one or two passions that are usually deemed im- 
 'mentionable. He always deals with a strong feeling 
 in preference to a superficial one, and his great glory 
 is that he pretended to take cognizance of man's 
 moral nature to its deepest, most unillumined and, as 
 the French say, most scabreux depths — that he main- 
 tained that for a writer who proposes seriously to 
 illustrate the human soul there is absolutely no for- 
 bidden ground. He has never, that we remember, 
 described what we call in English a flirtation, but he 
 has described ardent love in a thousand forms (some- 
 times very well, sometimes horribly ill), with jts 
 clustering attributes of sensuality and jealousy, exalta- 
 tion and despair, good and evil. It is hard to think 
 of a virtue or a vice of which he has not given some 
 eminent embodiment. The subject, in other words, is 
 always solid and interesting; through his innumerable 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. IO5 
 
 fallacies of form and style, of taste and art, that is 
 always valuable. Some of his novels rise much above 
 the others in this dignity and pregnancy of theme; 
 M. Taine, in his essay, enumerates the most striking 
 cases, and his sonorous echo of Balzac's tragic note 
 is a tribute to our author's power. Balzac's master- 
 piece, to our own sense, if we must choose, is "Le^ 
 P^re Goriot." In this tale there is most of his cha- 
 racteristic felicity and least of his characteristic in- 
 felicity. Shakespeare had been before him, but there . 
 is excellent reason to believe that beyond knowing 
 that "King Lear" was the history of a doting old 
 man, buffeted and betrayed by cruel daughters, Balzac 
 had not placed himself in a position to be accused 
 of plagiarism. He had certainly not read the play 
 in English, and nothing is more possible than that he 
 had not read it in such French translations as existed 
 in 1835. It would please him to have his reader be- 
 lieve that he has read everything in the world; but 
 there are limits to the reader's good nature. "Le 
 P^re Goriot" holds so much, and in proportion to 
 what it holds is, in comparison with its companions, , 
 so simple and compact, that it easily ranks among 
 the few greatest novels we possess. Nowhere else is 
 there such a picture of distracted paternal love, and 
 of the battle between the voice of nature and the 
 constant threat of society that you shall be left to rot 
 by the roadside if you drop out of the ranks, In 
 every novel of Balzac's, on the artistic line, there are 
 the great intentions that fructify and the great inten- 
 tions that fail. In "Le P6re Goriot" the latter 
 element, though perceptible, comes nearest to escap- 
 ing notice. Balzac has painted a great number of 
 
I06 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 "careers"; they begin in one story and are unfolded 
 in a dozen others. He has a host of young men 
 whom he takes up on the threshold of life, entangles 
 conspicuously in the events of their time, makes the 
 pivots of contemporaneous history. Some of them are 
 soldiers, some men of letters, some artists; those he 
 handles with most complacency are young men pre- 
 destined by high birth to politics. These latter are, 
 as a class, Balzac's most conspicuous failures, but they 
 are also his most heroic attempts. The reader will 
 remember De Marsay, De Trailles, Rastignac, the two 
 Vandenesses, D'Esgrignon, Baudenord, Des Lupeaulx, 
 Tillet, Blondet, Bridau, Nathan, Bixiou, Rubemprd, 
 Lousteau, D'Arthez. The man whose career is most 
 distinctly traced is perhaps Eugfefle de Rastignac, 
 whose first steps in life we witness in "Le Pere 
 Goriot." The picture is to some extent injured by 
 Balzac's incurable fatuity and snobbishness; but the 
 situation of the young man, well born, clever, and 
 proud, who comes up to Paris, equipped by his family's 
 savings, to seek his fortune and find it at any cost, 
 and who moves from the edge of one social abyss to 
 the edge of another (finding abysses in every shaded 
 place he looks into) until at last his nerves are steeled, 
 his head steadied, his conscience cased in cynicism 
 and his pockets filled — all this bears a deep imagina- 
 tive stamp. The donnle of "Le P6re Goriot" is typical; 
 the shabby Maison Vauquer, becoming the stage of 
 vast dramas, is a sort of concentrated focus of human 
 life, with sensitive nerves radiating out into the in- 
 finite. Then there is Madame d'Espard's attempt to 
 prove that her excellent husband is insane and to 
 have him sequestrated; and the Countess Ferraud, 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. I07 
 
 who repudiates her husband, when he reappears, 
 crippled and penniless, after having been counted 
 among the slain at the battle of Eylau; and Philippe 
 Bridau, who bullies, sponges, swindles, bleeds his 
 family to death to pay for his iniquities; Madame 
 Marneffe, who drags an honourable family into desola- 
 tion and ruin by the rapacity of her licentiousness, 
 and the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, who sees his wife and 
 children beggared and disgraced, and yet cannot give up 
 Madame Marneffe; Victurnien d'Esgrignon, who comes 
 up from Alengon to see the world, and sees it with a 
 vengeance, so that he has to forge a note to pay for 
 his curiosity, and his doting family have to beggar 
 themselves to pay for his note; Madame de La Bau- 
 draye, who leaves her husband, burns her ships, and 
 comes to live in Paris with an ignoble journalist, partly 
 for the love of letters and partly for the love of the 
 journalist himself; Lucien de Rubempr6, who tries to 
 be a great poet, and to give an airing, in the highest 
 places, to the poetic temperament, and who, after 
 irrecordable alternations of delight and of misery, 
 hangs himself in a debtors' prison; Marguerite Claes, 
 who finds her father turning monomaniac and melting 
 down her patrimony, and her motherless brother's and 
 sister's, in the crucible of alchemy, and who fights for 
 years a hand-to-hand duel with him, a great cost to 
 her natural tenderness and her reputation; Madame 
 de Mortsauf, who, after years of mysterious anguish, 
 dies broken-hearted, between a brutal husband and a 
 passionate lover, without ever having said a word to 
 offend the one or, as she regards it, to encourage the 
 other; poor Cousin Pons, the kindly virtuoso, who has 
 made with years of patient labour a precious coUec- 
 
I08 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tion of pictures, and who is plundered, bullied, and 
 morally murdered by rapacious relatives, and left with- 
 out a penny to bury him. 
 
 It is the opinion of many of Balzac's admirers, and 
 it was the general verdict of his day, that in all this 
 7the greatest triumphs are the characters of women. 
 Every French critic tells us that his immense success 
 came to him through women — that they constituted 
 his first, his last, his fondest public. "Who rendered 
 more deliciously than he," asks Sainte-Beuve, "the 
 duchesses and viscountesses of the end of the Restora- 
 tion — those women of thirty who, already on the stage, 
 awaited their painter with a vague anxiety, so that 
 when he and they stood face to face there was a sort 
 of electric movement of recognition?" Balzac is sup- 
 posed to have understood the feminine organism as no 
 one had done before him — to have had the feminine 
 heart, the feminine temperament, feminine nerves, at 
 his fingers' ends — to have turned the feminine puppet, 
 as it were, completely inside out. He has placed an 
 immense number of women on the stage, and even 
 those critics who are least satisfied with his most 
 elaborate female portraits must at least admit that he 
 has paid the originals the compliment to hold that 
 they play an immense part in the world. It may be 
 said, indeed, that women are the keystone of the 
 "Com^die Humaine." If the men were taken out, 
 there would be great gaps and fissures; if the women 
 were taken out, the whole fabric would collapse. 
 Balzac's superior handling of women seems to us to 
 be both a truth and a fallacy; but his strength and 
 weakness so intermingle and overlap that it is hard to 
 keep a separate account with each. 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. lOg 
 
 His reader very soon perceives, to begin with, that 
 he does not take that view of the sex that would 
 commend him to the "female sympathizers" of the 
 day. There is not a line in him that would not be 
 received with hisses at any convention for giving 
 women the suffrage, for introducing them into Harvard 
 College, or for trimming the exuberances of their 
 apparel. His restrictive remarks would be considered 
 odious; his flattering remarks would be considered in- 
 famous. He takes the old-fashioned view — he re- 
 cognises none but the old-fashioned categories. Woman 
 is the female of man and in all respects his subordinate; 
 she is pretty and ugly, virtuous and vicious, stupid and 
 cunning. There is the great mHier de femme — the 
 most difficult perhaps in the world, so that to see it 
 thoroughly mastered is peculiarly exhilarating. The 
 miiier de femme includes a great many branches, but 
 they may be all summed up in the art of titillating in 
 one way or another the senses of man. Woman has a 
 "mission" certainly, and this is it. Man's capacity for 
 entertainment fortunately is large, and he may be 
 gratified to an indefinite extent, so that woman in 
 this way has a very long rope and no reason to com- 
 plain of want of liberty. Balzac's conception of what 
 a woman may be and do is very comprehensive; there 
 is no limit to her cleverness, her energy, her courage, 
 her devotion; or, on the other hand, to her vices, her 
 falsity, her meanness, her cruelty, her rapacity. But 
 the great sign of Balzac's women is that in all these 
 things the sexual quality is inordinately emphasized 
 and the conscience on the whole inordinately sacrificed 
 to it. It is an idea familiar to all novelists — it is in- 
 deed half their stock in trade — that women in good 
 
no FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ^and in evil act almost exclusively from personal mo- 
 tives. Men do so often, the romancer says; women 
 do so always. Balzac carries this idea infinitely farther 
 than any other novelist, and imparts to the personal 
 motive a peculiar narrowness and tenacity. It suggests 
 the agility and the undulations, the claws and the 
 vemon, of the cat and the serpent. That perfectly 
 immoral view of what people do, which we spoke of 
 as one of his great characteristics, is supremely con- 
 spicuous in Balzac's dealings with his heroines. "Leur 
 gros libertin de p^re," M. Taine calls him in relation 
 to certain of them; and the phrase really applies to 
 him in relation to all, even the purest and most 
 elevated. It is their personal, physical quality that 
 he relishes — their attitudes, their picturesqueness, the 
 sense that they give him of playing always, sooner or 
 later, into the hands of man — gros libertin that he 
 naturally and inevitably is. He has drawn a great 
 many women's figures that are nobly pure in inten- 
 tion; he has even attempted three or four absolute 
 saints. But purity in Balzac's hands is apt to play 
 us the strangest tricks Madame Graslin is a saint 
 who has been privy to the murder of her lover and 
 who allows an innocent man to suffer the penalty of 
 the law; Madame Hulot is a saint who at fifty (being 
 very well preserved) offers herself to a man she loathes 
 in order to procure money for her daughter's marriage- 
 portion; Madame de Mortsauf is a saint familiar with 
 the most cynical views of life {vide her letter of advice 
 to Felix de Vandenesse on his entering upon his career, 
 in which the tone is that of a politician and shrewd 
 man of the world) who drives about with her lover 
 late at night, kissing his head and otherwise fondling 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. I I I 
 
 him. Balzac's women — and indeed his characters in 
 general — are best divided into the rich and the poor, 
 the Parisians and the rustics. His most ambitious 
 female portraits are in the former class — his most 
 agreeable, and on the whole his most successful, in the 
 latter. Here the women, young and old, are more or 
 less grotesque, but the absence of the desire to assimilate 
 them to the type of the indescribable monster whom 
 Balzac enshrines in the most sacred altitudes of his 
 imagination as the Parisienne, has allowed them to be 
 more human and more consonant to what we, at least, 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race, consider the comfortable 
 social qualities in the gentler sex. Madame Bridau, 
 Madame Grandet, Mademoiselle Cormon, Madame Sd- 
 chard — these, in Balzac, are the most natural figures 
 of good women. His imagination has easily com- 
 prehended them; they are homely and pious and na'ives, 
 and their horizon is bounded by the walls of their 
 quiet houses. It is when Balzac enters the iield of the 
 great ladies and the courtesans that he is supposed to 
 have won his greatest triumphs, the triumphs that 
 placed all the women on his side and made them con- 
 fess that they had found their prophet and their master. 
 To this view of the matter the writer of these lines is 
 far from assenting. He finds it impossible to under- 
 stand that the painter of Louise de Chaulieu and Ma- 
 dame d'Espard, of Madame de La Baudraye and Ma- 
 dame de Bargeton, of Lady Dudley and Madame de 
 Maufrigneuse, should not have made all the clever 
 women of his time his enemies. 
 
 It is not however, certainly, that here his energy, 
 his force of colour, his unapproached power of what 
 the French call in analytic portrayal "rummaging" 
 
I I 2 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 — to /outlier — are not at their highest. Never is he 
 more himself than among his coquettes and courtesans, 
 among Madame Schontz and Jos6pha, Madame Mar- 
 neffe and Madame de Rochefide. "Balzac loves his 
 
 ^ Valdrie," says M. Taine, speaking of his attitude toward 
 the horrible Madame Marneffe, the depths of whose 
 depravity he is so actively sounding; and paradoxical 
 as it sounds it is perfectly true. She is, according to 
 Balzac's theory of the matter, a consummate Parisienne, 
 and the depravity of a Parisienne is to his sense a 
 more remunerative spectacle than the virtue of any 
 
 ^ provinciale, whether her province be Normandy or 
 Gascony, England or Germany. Never does he so let 
 himself go as in these cases — never does his imagina- 
 tion work so at a heat. Feminine nerves, feminine 
 furbelows, feminine luxury and subtlety, intoxicate 
 and inspire him; he revels among his innumerable 
 heroines like Mahomet in his paradise of houris. In 
 saying just now that women could not complain of 
 Balzac's restrictions upon their liberty, we had in mind 
 especially the liberty of telling lies. This exquisite 
 and elaborate mendacity he considers the great cha- 
 racteristic of the finished woman of the world, of Mes- 
 dames d'Espard, de S6risy, de Langeais, de Mau- 
 frigneuse. The ladies just enumerated have all a great 
 many lovers, a great many intrigues, a great many 
 jealousies, a terrible entanglement of life behind the 
 scenes. They are described as irresistibly charming, 
 as grandes dames in the supreme sense of the word; 
 clever, cold, self-possessed, ineffably elegant, holding 
 salons, influencing politics and letting nothing interfere 
 with their ambition, their coquetry, their need for 
 money. Above all they are at swords' points with 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. I 1 3 
 
 each other: society for them is a deadly battle for 
 lovers, disguised in a tissue of caresses. To our own 
 sense this whole series of figures is fit only to have a 
 line drawn through it as a laborious and extravagant 
 failure — a failure on which treasures of ingenuity have 
 been expended, but which is perhaps on that account 
 only the more provocative of smiles. These ladies 
 altogether miss the mark; they are vitiated by that 
 familiar foible which Thackeray commemorated in so 
 many inimitable pages. Allusion was made in the 
 earlier part of these remarks to Balzac's strong plebeian 
 strain. It is no reproach to him; if he was of the 
 "people," he was magnificently so; and if the people 
 never produced anything less solid and sturdy it would 
 need to fear no invidious comparisons. But there is 
 something ineffably snobbish in his tone when he deals - 
 with the aristocracy, and in the tone which those 
 members of it who circulate through his pages take 
 from him. They are so conscious, so fatuous, so po- 
 seurs, so perpetually alluding to their grandeurs and 
 their quarterings, so determined to be impertinent, so 
 afraid they shall not be impertinent enough, so ad- 
 dicted to reminding you that they are not bourgeois, 
 that they do not pay their debts or practise the vulgar 
 virtues, that they really seem at times to be the crea- 
 tures of the dreams of an ambitious hairdresser who 
 should have been plying his curling-irons all day and 
 reading fashionable novels all the evening. The refine- 
 ment of purpose in Balzac, in everything that relates 
 to the emphasis of the aristocratic tone, is often extra- 
 ordinary; and to see such heroic ingenuity so squandered 
 and dissipated gives us an alarming sense of what a 
 man of genius may sometimes do in the way of not 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. o 
 
114 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 seeing himself as others see him. Madame d'Espard, 
 when she has decided to "take up" her provincial 
 cousine, Madame de Bargeton, conveys her one night 
 to the opera. Lucien de Rubempre comes into the 
 box and, by his provincial dandyism and ingenuous 
 indiscretions, attracts some attention. A rival who is 
 acquainted with the skeleton in his closet goes and 
 tells Madame d'Espard's friends and enemies that he 
 is not properly a De Rubempre (this being only his 
 mother's name), and that his father was M. Chardon, 
 a country apothecary. Then the traitor comes and 
 announces this fact to Madame d'Espard and intimates 
 that her neighbours know it. This great lady here- 
 upon finds the situation intolerable, and informs her 
 companion that it will never do to be seen at the 
 opera with the son of an apothecary. The ladies, ac- 
 cordingly, beat a precipitate retreat, leaving Lucien 
 the master of the field. The caste of Vere de Vere 
 in this case certainly quite forgot its repose. But its 
 conduct is quite of a piece with that of the young 
 men of high fashion who, after Madame de Bargeton 
 has been a fortnight in Paris (having come very ill- 
 dressed from AngouMme) are seen to compliment her 
 on the "metamorphosis of her appearance." What is 
 one to say about Madame de Rochefide, a person of 
 the highest condition, who has by way of decoration 
 of her drawing-room a series of ten water-colour pictures 
 representing the different bedrooms she has successively 
 slept in? What Balzac says is that this performance 
 "gave the measure of a superior impertinence "j and 
 he evidently thinks that he has bestowed the crowning 
 touch upon a very crushing physiognomy. What is 
 here indicated of Balzac's great ladies is equally true 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. 1 1 5 
 
 of his young dandies and lions — his De Marsays and 
 DeTrailles. The truly initiated reader of the "Comddie 
 Humaine" will always feel that he can afford to skip 
 the page when he sees the name of De Marsay. Balzac's 
 dandies are tremendous fellows from a picturesque 
 point of view; the account of De Marsay in "La Fille 
 aux Yeux d'Or" is an example of the "sumptuous" 
 gone mad. Balzac leaves nothing vague in the destinies 
 he shapes for these transcendant fops. Rastignac is 
 prime minister of France, and yet Rastignac in his 
 impecunious youth has been on those terms with Ma- 
 dame de Nucingen which characterized the relations 
 of Tom Jones with Lady Bellaston. Fielding was care- 
 ful not to make his hero a rival of Sir Robert Walpole. 
 Balzac's young gentihhommes , as possible historical 
 figures, are completely out of the question. They re- 
 present, perhaps, more than anything else, the author's 
 extraordinary union of vigour and shallowness. In 
 this, however, they have much in common with several 
 other classes of characters that we lack space to con- 
 sider. There are the young girls (chiefly of the upper 
 class) like Modeste Mignon and Louise de Chaulieu; 
 there are the women of literary talent, like Made- 
 moiselle des Touches and Madame de La Baudraye; 
 there are the journalists, like Lousteau and Emile 
 Blondet. In alidiese cases Balzac "rummages" with 
 extraordinary ardour; but his faults of taste reach 
 their maximum and offer us an incredible imbroglio 
 of the superb and the ignoble. Mademoiselle de Chau- 
 lieu talks about her arms, her bosom, her hips, in a 
 way to make a trooper blush. Lousteau, when a lady 
 says a clever thing, tells her he will steal it from her 
 for his newspaper and get two dollars. As regards 
 
Il6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Rubempre and Canalis, we have specimens of their 
 poetry, but we have on the whole more information 
 about their coats and trousers, their gloves and shirts 
 and cosmetics. 
 
 In all this it may seem that there has been more 
 talk about faults than about merits, and that if it is 
 claimed that Balzac did a great work we should have 
 plucked more flowers and fewer thistles. But the 
 greatest thing in Balzac cannot be exhibited by speci- 
 mens. It is Balzac himself — it is the whole attempt 
 — it is the method. This last is his unsurpassed, his 
 incomparable merit. That huge, all-compassing, all- 
 desiring, all-devouring love of reality which was the 
 
 ■ source of so many of his fallacies and stains, of so 
 much dead-weight in his work, was also the foundation 
 of his extraordinary power. The real, for his imagi- 
 nation, had an authority that it has never had for any 
 other. When he looks for it in the things in which we 
 
 'all feel it, he finds it with a marvellous certainty of 
 eye, and proves himself the great novelist that he pre- 
 tends to be. When he tries to make it prevail every- 
 where, explain everything and serve as a full measure 
 of our imagination — then he becomes simply the 
 greatest of dupes. He is an extraordinary tissue of 
 contradictions. He is at once one of the most corrupt 
 of writers and one of the most naif; the most mechan- 
 ical and pedantic, and the fullest of honhomie and 
 natural impulse. He is one of the finest of artists and 
 one of the coarsest. Viewed in one way, his novels 
 are ponderous, shapeless, overloaded; his touch is 
 graceless, violent, barbarous. Viewed in another, his 
 tales have more colour, more composition, more grasp 
 of the reader's attention than any others. ' Balzac's 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC. I I 7 
 
 Style would demand a chapter apart. It is the least 
 simple style, probably, that ever was written; it bristles, 
 it cracks, it swells and swaggers; but it is a perfect 
 expression of the man's genius. Like his genius, it 
 contains a certain quantity of everything, from im- 
 maculate gold to flagrant dross. He was a very bad 
 writer, and yet unquestionably he was a very great 
 writer. We may say briefly, that in so far as his me- 
 thod was an instinct it was successful, and that in so 
 far as it was a theory it was a failure. But both in 
 instinct and in theory he had the aid of an immense 
 force of conviction. His imagination warmed to its 
 work so intensely that there was nothing his volition 
 could not impose upon it. Hallucination settled upon 
 him, and he believed anything that was necessary in 
 the circumstances. This accounts for all his grotesque 
 philosophies, his heroic attempts to furnish specimens 
 of things of which he was profoundly ignorant. He 
 beheved that he was about as creative as the Deity, 
 and that if mankind and human history were swept 
 away the "Comedie Humaine" would be a perfectly 
 adequate substitute for them. M. Taine says of him 
 very happily that, after Shakespeare, he is our great 
 magazine of documents on human nature. When 
 Shakespeare is suggested we feel rather his differences 
 from Shakespeare — feel how Shakespeare's characters 
 stand out in the open air of the universe, while Bal- 
 zac's are enclosed in a peculiar artificial atmosphere, 
 musty in quality and limited in amount, which per- 
 suades itself with a sublime sincerity that it is a very 
 sufficient infinite. But it is very true that Balzac, may, 
 like Shakespeare, be treated as a final authority upon 
 human nature; and it is very probable that as time 
 
1 1 8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 goes on he will be resorted to much less for entertain- 
 ment, and more for instruction. He has against him 
 that he lacks that slight but needful thing — charm. 
 To feel how much he lacked it, you must read his 
 prefaces, with their vanity, avidity, and garrulity, their 
 gross revelation of his processes, of his squabbles with 
 his publishers, their culinary atmosphere. But our last 
 word about him is that he had incomparable power. 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. II9 
 
 BALZAC'S LETTERS. 
 
 The first feeling of the reader of the two volumes 
 which have lately been published under the foregoing 
 title is that he has almost done wrong to read them. 
 He reproaches himself with having taken a shabby 
 advantage of a person who is unable to defend him- 
 self. He feels as one who has broken open a cabinet 
 or rummaged an old desk. The contents of Balzac's 
 letters are so private, so personal, so exclusively his 
 own affairs and those of no one else, that the generous 
 critic constantly lays them down with a sort of dismay 
 and asks himself in virtue of what peculiar privilege 
 or what newly discovered principle it is that he is 
 thus burying his nose in them. Of course he presently 
 reflects that he has not broken open a cabinet nor 
 violated a desk, but that these repositories have been 
 very freely and confidently emptied into his lap. The 
 two stout volumes of the . " Correspondance de H. de 
 Balzac, 1819 — 1850,"* lately put forth, are remarkable, 
 like many other French books of the same sort, for the 
 almost complete absence of editorial explanation or 
 introduction. They have no visible sponsor, only a 
 few insignificant lines of preface and the scantiest pos- 
 sible supply of notes. Such as the book is, in spite 
 
 * Paris: Calmann Levy. 1876. 
 
I20 FRENCH POETS AKD NOVELISTS. 
 
 of its abruptness, we are thankful for it; in spite, too, 
 of our bad conscience. What we mean by our bad 
 conscience is the feeling with which we see the last 
 remnant of charm, of the graceful and the agreeable, 
 removed from Balzac's literary physiognomy. His 
 works had not left much of this favouring shadow, but 
 ^ the present publication has let in the garish light of 
 I full publicity. The grossly, inveterately professional 
 character of all his activity, the absence of leisure, of 
 contemplation, of disinterested experience, the urgency 
 of his consuming money-hunger — aU this is rudely ex- 
 posed. It is always a question whether we have a 
 right to investigate a man's life for the sake of any- 
 thing but his official utterances — his results. The pJD^ 
 ture of Balzac's career which is given in theseTetters 
 is a record of little else but painful processes, unre- 
 lieved by reflections or speculations, by any moral or 
 intellectual emanation. To prevent misconception, how- 
 ever, we hasten to add that they tell no disagreeable 
 secrets; they contain nothing for the lovers of scandal. 
 Balzac was a very honest man, but he was a man al- 
 most tragically uncomfortable, and the unsightly under- 
 side of his discomfort stares us full in the face. Still, 
 if his personal portrait is without ideal beauty, it is by 
 no means without a certain brightness, or at least a 
 certain richness, of colouring. Huge literary ogre as 
 he was, he was morally nothing of a monster. His 
 heart was capacious, and his affections were vigorous; 
 he was powerful, coarse and kind. 
 
 The first letter in the series is addressed to his 
 elder sister, Laure, who afterward became Madame de 
 Surville, and who, after her illustrious brother's death, 
 published in a small volume some agreeable reinini- 
 
BALZAC S LETTERS. 121 
 
 scences of him. For this lady he had, especially in his 
 early years, a passionate affection. He had in 1819 
 come up to Paris from Touraine, in which province 
 his family lived, to seek his fortune as a man of letters. 
 The episode is a strange and gloomy one. His voca- 
 tion for literature had not been favourably viewed at 
 home, where money was scanty; but the parental con- 
 sent, or rather the parental tolerance, was at last ob- 
 tained for his experiment. The future author of "Le 
 P^re Goriot" was at this time but twenty years of age, 
 and in the way of symptoms of genius had nothing 
 but a very robust self-confidence to show. His family, 
 who had to contribute to his support while his master- 
 pieces were a-making, appear to have regretted the 
 absence of farther guarantees. He came to Paris, how- 
 ever, and lodged in a garret, where the allowance 
 made him by his father kept him neither from shiver- 
 ing nor from nearly starving. The situation had been 
 arranged in a way very characteristic of French man- 
 ners. The fact that Honore had gone to Paris was 
 kept a secret from the friends of the family, who were 
 told that he was on a visit to a cousin in the South. 
 He was on probation, and if he failed to acquire 
 literary renown his excursion should be hushed up. 
 This pious fraud did not contribute to the comfort of 
 the young scribbler, who was afraid to venture abroad 
 by day lest he should be seen by an acquaintance of 
 the family. Balzac must have been at this time miser- 
 ably poor. If he goes to the theatre, he has to pay 
 for the pleasure by fasting. He wishes to see Talma 
 (having, to go to the play, to keep up the fiction of 
 his being in the South, in a latticed box). "I shall 
 end by giving in. . . . My stomach already trembles." 
 
122 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Meanwhile he was planning a tragedy of " Cromwell," 
 which came to nothing, and writing the "Heriti^re de 
 Birague," his first novel, which he sold for one hundred 
 and sixty dollars. Through these early letters, in spite 
 of his chilly circumstances, there flows a current of 
 youthful ardour, gaiety and assurance. Some passages 
 in his letters to his sister are a sort of explosion of 
 animal spirits. "Ah, my sister, what torments it gives 
 us — the love of glory ! Long live grocers ! they sell aU 
 day, count their gains in the evening, take their plea- 
 sure from time to time at some frightful melodrama — 
 and behold them happy! Yes, but they pass their time 
 between cheese and soap. Long live rather men of 
 letters! Yes, but these are all beggars in pocket, and 
 rich only in conceit. Well, let us leave them all alone, 
 and long live every one!" 
 
 Elsewhere he scribbles: "Farewell, soror! I hope 
 to have a letter s or oris , to answer sorori, then to see 
 sororem," &c. Later, after his sister is married, he ad- 
 dresses her as "the box that contains everything pleas- 
 ing; the elixir of virtue, grace, and beauty; the jewel, 
 the phenomenon of Normandy; the pearl of Bayeux, the 
 fairy of St. Lawrence, the virgin of the Rue Teinture, 
 the guardian angel of Caen, the goddess of enchantments, 
 the treasure of friendship." 
 
 We shall continue to quote, without the fear of our 
 examples exceeding, in the long run, our commentary. 
 "Find me some widow, a rich heiress," he writes to 
 his sister at Bayeux, whither her husband had taken 
 her to live. "You know what I mean. Only brag 
 about me. Twenty-two years old, a good fellow, good 
 manners, a bright eye, fire, the best dough for a hus- 
 band that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you 
 
Balzac's letters. 123 
 
 five per cent, on the dowry." "Since yesterday,'' he 
 writes in another letter, "I have given up dowagers 
 and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all 
 you find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisa- 
 tion was one of his early noms de plume\ ; that's enough 
 — he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They 
 are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and 
 they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't re- 
 quired. The varnish goes and the bottom of the pot 
 remains ! " 
 
 Like many other young man of ability, Balzac felt 
 the little rubs — or the great ones — of family life. His 
 mother figures largely in these volumes (she survived 
 her glorious son), and from the scattered reflection of 
 her idiosyncrasies the attentive reader constructs a suf- 
 ficiently vivid portrait. She was the old middle-class 
 Frenchwoman whom he has so often seen — devoted, 
 active, meddlesome, parsimonious, exacting veneration 
 and expending zeal. Honor6 tells his sister that "the 
 other day, coming back from Paris much bothered, it 
 never occurred to me to thank maman for a black coat 
 which she had had made for me; at my age one isn't 
 particularly sensitive to such a present. Nevertheless, 
 it would not have cost me much to seem touched by 
 the attention, especially as it was a sacrifice. But I 
 forgot it. Maman began to pout, and you know what 
 her aspect and her face amount to at those moments. 
 I fell from the clouds, and racked my brain to know 
 what I had done. Happily Laurence [his younger 
 sister] came and notified me, and two or three words 
 as fine as amber mended maman's countenance. The 
 tiring is nothing — a mere drop of water; but it's to 
 give you an example of our manners. Ah, we are a 
 
124 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 jolly set of originals in our holy family. What a pity 
 I can't put us into novels!" 
 
 His father wished to find him an opening in some 
 profession, and the thought of being made a notary 
 was a bugbear to the young man. "Think of me as 
 dead if they cap me with that extinguisher." And 
 yet, in the next sentence he breaks out into a cry of 
 desolate disgust at the aridity of his actual circum- 
 stances: "They call this mechanical rotation living — 
 this perpetual return of the same things. If there were 
 only something to throw some charm or other over my 
 cold existence ! I have none of the flowers of life, and 
 yet I am in the season in which they bloom. What 
 will be the use of fortune and pleasures when my 
 youth has departed? What need of the garments of an 
 actor if one no longer plays a part? An old man is a 
 man who has dined and who watches others eat; and 
 I, young as I am — my plate is empty, and I am hungry. 
 Laure, Laure, my two only and immense desires, to he 
 famous and to he loved — will they ever be satisfied?" | 
 
 These occasional bursts of confidence in his early 
 letteirs to his sister are (with the exception of certain 
 excellent pages addressed in the last years of his life 
 to the lady he eventually married) Balzac's most deli- 
 cate, most emotional utterances. There is a touch of 
 the ideal in them. Later one wonders where he keeps 
 his ideal. He has one of course, artistically, but it 
 never peeps out. He gives up talking sentiment and 
 he never discusses "subjects"; he only talks business. 
 Meanwhile, however, at this period business was in- 
 creasing with him. He agrees to write three novels 
 for eight hundred and twenty dollars. Here begins 
 the inextricable mystery of Balzac's literary promises. 
 
Balzac's letters. 125 
 
 pledges, projects, contracts. His letters form a swarm- 
 ing register of schemes and bargains through which 
 he passes like a hero of the circus, riding half a dozen 
 piebald coursers at once. We confess that in this 
 matter we have been able to keep no sort of account; 
 the wonder is that Balzac should have accomplished 
 the feat himself. After the first year or two of his 
 career we never see him working upon a single tale; 
 his productions dovetail and overlap, dance attendance 
 upon each other in the most bewildering fashion. As 
 soon as one novel is fairly on the stocks he plunges 
 into another, and while he is rummaging in this with 
 one hand he stretches out an heroic arm and breaks 
 ground in a third. His plans are always vastly in ad- 
 vance of his performance; his pages swarm with titles 
 of books that were never to be written. The title cir- 
 culates with such an assurance that we are amazed to 
 find, fifty pages later, that there is no more of it than 
 of the cherubic heads. With this, Balzac was con- 
 stantly paid in advance by his publishers — paid for 
 works not begun, or barely begun; and the money was 
 as constantly spent before the equivalent had been de- 
 livered. Meanwhile more money was needed, and new 
 novels were laid out to obtain it; but prior promises 
 had first to be kept. Keeping them, under these cir- 
 cumstances, was not an exhilarating process; and 
 readers familiar with Balzac will reflect with wonder 
 that these were yet the circumstances in which some 
 of his best tales were written. They were written, as 
 it were, in the fading light, by a man who saw night 
 coming on and yet could not afford to buy candles. 
 He could only hurry. But Balzac's way of hurrying 
 was all his own; it was a sternly methodical haste and 
 
126 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 might have been mistaken, in a more lightly-weighted 
 genius, for elaborate trifling. The close texture of his 
 work never relaxed; he went on doggedly and in- 
 sistently, pressing it down and packing it together, 
 multiplying erasures, alterations, repetitions, transform- 
 ing proof-sheets, quarrelling with editors, enclosing 
 subject within subject, accumulating notes upon notes. 
 The letters make a jump from 1822 to 1827, dur- 
 ing which interval he had established, with borrowed 
 capital, a printing-house, and seen his enterprise com- 
 pletely fail. This failure saddled him with a mountain 
 of debt which pressed upon him crushingly for years, 
 and of which he rid himself only toward the close of 
 his life. Balzac's debts are another labyrinth in which 
 we do not profess to hold a clue. There is scarcely a 
 page of these volumes in which they are not alluded 
 to, but the reader never quite understands why they 
 should bloom so perennially. The liabilities incurred 
 by the collapse of the -printing-scheme can hardly have 
 been so vast as not to have been for the most part 
 cancelled by ten years of heroic work. Balzac appears 
 not to have been extravagant; he had neither wife nor 
 children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no 
 known illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us 
 to a glimpse of his domestic economy we usually find 
 it to be of a very meagre pattern. He writes to his 
 sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay 
 the postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he 
 goes out as little as possible, so as not to wear out his 
 clothes. In 1829, however, we find him in correspond- 
 ence with a duchess, Madame d'Abrant^s, the widow 
 of Junot, Napoleon's rough marshal, and author of those 
 garrulous memoirs upon the imperial court which it 
 
BALZAC S LETTERS. I 27 
 
 was the fashion to read forty years ago. The Duchesse 
 d'Abrantfes wrote bad novels, like Balzac himself at 
 this period, and the two became good friends. 
 
 The year 1830 was the turning-point in Balzac's 
 career. Renown, to which he had begun to lay siege 
 in Paris in 1820, now at last began to show symptoms 
 of self-surrender. Yet one of the strongest expressions 
 of discontent and despair in the pages before us be- 
 longs to this brighter moment. It is also one of the 
 finest passages. "Sacredieu, my good friend, I believe 
 that literature, in the day we live in, is no better than 
 the trade of a woman of the town, who prostitutes her- 
 self for a dollar. It leads to no thing. I have an itch 
 to go off and wander and explore, make of my life a 
 drama, risk my life; for, as for a few miserable years 
 more or less! . . ."Oh, when one looks at these great 
 
 skies of a beautiful night, one is ready to unbutton ." 
 
 But the modesty of the English tongue forbids us to 
 translate the rest of the phrase. - Jonathan Swift might 
 have related how Balzac aspired to express his con- 
 tempt for all the royalties of the earth. Now that he 
 is in the country, he goes on, "I have been seeing real 
 splendours, such as fine sound fruit and gilded insects; 
 I have been quite turning philosopher, and if I happen 
 to tread upon an anthill I say, like that immortal Bo- 
 naparte, "These creatures or men: what is it to Saturn, 
 or Venus, or the North Star?" And then my philo- 
 sopher comes down to scribble 'items' for a news- 
 paper, Proh pudorl And so it seems to me that the 
 ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to sink, if you 
 must sink yourself to do it, are rather better than a 
 writing-desk, a pen, and the Rue St. Denis." 
 
 But Balzac was fastened to the writing-desk. In 
 
128 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 1813 he tells one of his correspondents that he is 
 working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Later, in 1837, 
 he describes himself repeatedly as working eighteen 
 hours out of the twenty-four. In the midst of all this 
 (it seems singular) he found time for visions of public 
 life, of political distinction. In a letter written in 1830 
 he gives a succinct statement of his political views, 
 from which we learn that he approved of the French 
 monarchy possessing a constitution, and of instruction 
 being diffused among the lower orders. But he de- 
 sired that the people should be kept "under the most 
 powerful yoke possible," so that in spite of their in- 
 struction they should not become disorderly. It is for- 
 tunate, probably, both for Balzac and for France, that 
 his political r61e was limited to the production of a 
 certain number of forgotten editorials in newspapers; 
 but we may be sure that his dreams of statesmanship 
 were brilliant and audacious. Balzac indulged in no 
 dreams that were not. 
 
 Some of his best letters are addressed to Madame 
 Zulma Carraud, a lady whose acquaintance he had 
 made through his sister Laure, of whom she was an 
 intimate friend, and whose friendship (exerted almost 
 wholly through letters, as she always lived in the 
 country) appears to have been one of the brightest 
 and most salutary influences of his life. He writes to 
 her thus in 1832: — "There are vocations which we 
 must obey, and something irresistible draws me on to 
 glory and power. It is not a happy life. There is 
 within me the worship of woman {le culte de la femme) 
 and a need of love which has never been fully satis- 
 fied. Despairing of ever being loved and understood 
 by such a woman as I have dreamed of, having met 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. I Zg 
 
 her only under one form, that of the heart, I throw 
 myself into the tempestuous sphere of political pas- 
 sions and into the stormy and desiccating atmosphere 
 of literary glory. I shall fail perhaps on both sides; 
 but, believe me, if I have wished to live the life of the 
 age itself, instead of running my course in happy ob- 
 scurity, it is just because the pure happiness of medio- • 
 crity has failed me. When one has a fortune to make, 
 it is better to make it great and illustrious; because, 
 pain for pain, it is better to suffer in a high sphere 
 than in a low one, and I prefer dagger-blows to pin- 
 pricks." All this, though written at thirty years of 
 age, is rather juvenile; there was to be much less of 
 the "tempest" in Balzac's life than is here foresha- 
 dowed. He was tossed and shaken a great deal, as 
 we all are , by the waves of the time , but he was too 
 stoutly anchored at his work to feel the winds. 
 
 In 1832 "Louis Lambert" followed the "Peau de 
 Chagrin," the first in the long list of his masterpieces. 
 He describes "Louis Lambert" as "a work in which I 
 have striven to rival Goethe and Byron, Faust and Man- 
 fred. I don't know whether I shall succeed, but the 
 fourth volume of the 'Philosophical Tales' must be a 
 last reply to my enemies and give the presentiment of 
 an incontestable superiority. You must therefore for- 
 give the poor artist his fatigue [he is writing to his 
 sister], his discouragements, and especially his momen- 
 tary detachment from any sort of interest that does 
 not belong to his subject. 'Louis Lambert' has cost 
 me so much work! To write this book I have had to' 
 read so many books! Some day or other, perhaps, it 
 will throw science into new paths. If I had made it a 
 purely learned work, it would have attracted the at- 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 9 
 
130 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tention of thinkers, who now will not drop their eyes 
 upon it. But if chance puts it into their hands, per- 
 haps they will speak of it!" In this passage there is 
 an immense deal of Balzac — of the great artist who 
 was so capable at times of self-deceptive charlatanism. 
 "Louis Lambert," as a whole, is now quite unreadable; 
 it contains some admirable descriptions, but the 
 "scientific" portion is mere fantastic verbiage. There 
 is something extremely characteristic in the way Balzac 
 speaks of its having been optional with him to make 
 it a "purely learned" work. His pretentiousness was 
 simply colossal, and there is nothing surprising in his 
 wearing even the mask en famille (the letter we have 
 just quoted from is, as we have said, to his sister); he 
 wore it during his solitary fifteen-hours sessions in his 
 study. But the same letter contains another passage, 
 of a very different sort, which is in its way as charac- 
 teristic. "Yes, you are right. My progress is real, 
 and my infernal courage will be rewarded. Persuade 
 my mother of this too, dear sister; tell her to give me 
 her patience in charity; her devotion will be laid up 
 in her favour. One day, I hope, a little glory will pay 
 her for everything. Poor mother, that imagination of 
 hers which she has given me throws her for ever from 
 north to south and from south to north. Such journeys 
 tire us; I know it myself! Tell my mother that I love 
 her as when I was a child. As I write you these lines 
 my tears start — tears of tenderness and despair; for I 
 feel the future and I need this devoted mother on the 
 day of triumph! When shall I reach it? Take good 
 care of our mother, Laure, for the present and the fu- 
 ture. . . . Some day, when my works are unfolded, you 
 will see that it must have taken many hours to think 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. I3I 
 
 and write so many things; and then you will absolve 
 me of everything that has displeased you, and you will 
 excuse, not the selfishness of the man (the man has 
 none), but the selfishness of the worker." 
 
 Nothing can be more touching than that; Balzac's 
 natural affections were as robust as his genius and his 
 physical nature. The impression of the reader of his 
 letters quite confirms his assurance that the man proper 
 had no selfishness. Only we are constantly reminded 
 that the man had almost wholly resolved himself into 
 the worker, and we remember a statement of Sainte- 
 Beuve's, in one of his malignant foot-notes, to the effect 
 that Balzac was "the grossest, greediest example of 
 literary vanity that he had ever known" — I' amour- 
 propre liitlraire le plus avide et le plus grassier que 
 j'aie connu. When we think of what Sainte-Beuve must 
 have known in this line these few words acquire a 
 portentous weight. 
 
 By this time (1832) Balzac was, in French phrase, 
 thoroughly land. He was doing, among other things, 
 some of his most brUliant work, certain of the " Contes 
 Dr61atiques." These were written, as he tells his 
 mother, for relaxation, as a rest from harder labour. 
 One would have said that no work could have been 
 much harder than composing the marvellously success- 
 ful imitation of mediseval French in which these tales 
 are written. He had, however, other diversions as 
 well. In the autumn of 1832 he was at Aix-les-Bains 
 with the Duchesse de Castries, a great lady and one 
 of his kindest friends. He has been accused of draw- 
 ing portraits of great ladies without knowledge of 
 originals; but Madame de Castries was an inexhaustible 
 fund of instruction upon this subject. Three or four 
 
132 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 years later, speaking of the story of the "Duchesse de 
 Langeais" to one of his correspondents, another /emme 
 du monde, he tells her that as a. femme du monde she 
 is not to pretend to find flaws in the picture, a high 
 authority having read the proofs for the express pur- 
 pose of removing them. The authority is evidently 
 the Duchesse de Castries. 
 
 Balzac writes to Madame Carraud from Aix: "At 
 Lyons I corrected 'Lambert' again. I licked my cub, 
 like a she-bear. . . . On the whole, I am satisfied; it 
 is a work of profound melancholy and of science. Truly, 
 I deserve to have a mistress, and my sorrow at not 
 having one increases daUy; for love is my life and my 
 essence. ... I have a simple little room," he goes on, 
 "from which I see the whole valley. I rise pitilessly 
 at five o'clock in the morning and work before my 
 window until half-past five in the evening. My break- 
 fast comes from the club — an egg. Madame de Castries 
 has good coffee made for me. At six o'clock we dine 
 together and I pass the evening with her. She is the 
 finest type (le type le plus fin) of woman; Madame de 
 Beauseant [from "Le P6re Goriot"] improved; only, 
 are not all these pretty manners acquired at the ex- 
 pense of the soul?" 
 
 During his stay at Aix he met an excellent oppor- 
 tunity to go to Italy; the Due de Fitz-James, who was 
 travelling southward, invited him to become a member 
 of his party. He discusses the economical problem (in 
 writing to his mother) with his usual intensity, and 
 throws what will seem to the modern traveller the light 
 of enchantment upon that golden age of cheapness. 
 Occupying the fourth place in the carriage of the 
 Duchesse de Castries, his quarter of the total travel- 
 
BALZAC S LETTERS. 1 33 
 
 ling expenses from Geneva to Rome (carriage, beds, 
 food, &c.) was to be fifty dollars! But he was ulti- 
 mately prevented from joining the party. He went to 
 Italy some years later. 
 
 He mentions, in 1833, that the chapter entitled 
 "Juana," in the superb tale of "Les Marana," as also 
 the story of "La Grenadifere," was written in a single 
 night. He gives at the same period this account of 
 his habits of work: "I must tell you that I am up to 
 my neck in excessive work. My life is mechanically 
 arranged. I go to bed at six or seven in the evening, 
 with the chickens; I wake up at one in the morning 
 and work tUl eight; then I take something light, a cup 
 of pure coffee, and get into the shafts of my cab until 
 four; I receive, I take a bath, or I go out, and after 
 dinner I go to bed. I must lead this life for some 
 months longer, in order not to be overwhelmed by my 
 obligations. The profit comes slowly; my debts are 
 inexorable and fixed. Now, it is certain that I will 
 make a great fortune; but I must wait for it, and work 
 for three years. I must go over things, correct them 
 again, put everything d. I'itat monumental; thankless 
 work not counted, without immediate profit." He 
 speaks of working at this amazing rate for three years 
 longer; in reality he worked for fifteen. But two years 
 after the declaration we have just quoted it seemed to 
 him that he should break down. "My poor sister, I 
 am draining the cup to the dregs. It is in vain that 
 I work my fourteen hours a day; I cannot do enough. 
 While I write this to you I find myself so weary that 
 I have just sent Auguste to take back my word from 
 certain engagements that I had formed. I am so weak 
 that I have advanced my dinner-hour in order to go 
 
134 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 to bed earlier; and I go nowhere." The next year he 
 writes to his mother, who had apparently complained 
 of his silence: "My good mother, do me the charity 
 to let me carry my burden without suspecting my heart. 
 A letter, for me, you see, is not only money, but an 
 hour of sleep and a drop of blood." 
 
 We spoke just now of Balzac's sentimental consola- 
 tions; but it appears that at times he was more acutely 
 conscious of what he missed than of what he enjoyed. 
 "As for the soul," he writes to Madame Carraud in 
 1833, "I am profoundly sad. My work alone sustains 
 me in life. Is there then to be no woman for me in 
 this world? My physical melancholy and ennui last 
 longer and grow more frequent. To fall from this 
 crushing labour to nothing — not to have near me that 
 soft, caressing mind of woman, for whom I have done 
 so much!" He had, however, a devoted feminine 
 friend, to whom none of the letters in these volumes 
 are addressed, but who is several times alluded to. 
 This lady, Madame de Berny, died in 1836, and 
 Balzac speaks of her ever afterward with extraordinary 
 tenderness and veneration. But if there had been a 
 passion between them it was only a passionate friend- 
 ship. "Ah, my dear mother," he writes on New Year's 
 day, 1836, "I am harrowed with grief. Madame de 
 Berny is dying; it is impossible to doubt it. No one 
 but God and myself knows what my despair is. And 
 I must work — work while I weep!" He writes of Ma- 
 dame de Berny at the time of her death as follows. 
 The letter is addressed to a lady with whom he was 
 in correspondence more or less sentimental, but whom 
 he never saw. "The person whom I have lost was 
 more than a mother, more than a friend, more than 
 
BALZAC S LETTERS. I 35 
 
 any creature can be for another. The term divinity 
 only can explain her. She had sustained me by word, 
 by act, by devotion, during my worst weather. If I 
 live, it is by her; she was everything for me. Although 
 for two years illness and time had separated us, we 
 were visible at a distance for each other. She reacted 
 upon me; she was a moral sun. Madame de Mortsauf, 
 in the 'Lys dans la Valine,' is a pale expression of 
 this person's slightest qualities." Three years after- 
 ward he writes to his sister: "I am alone against all 
 my troubles, and formerly, to help me to resist them, 
 I had with me the sweetest and bravest person in the 
 world; a woman who every day is born again in my 
 heart, and whose divine qualities make the friendships 
 that are compared with hers seem pale. I have now 
 no adviser in my literary difficulties; I have no guide 
 but the fatal thought, 'What would she say if she were 
 Hving?' " And he goes on to enumerate some of his 
 actual and potential friends. He tells his sister that 
 she herself might have been for him a close intellectual 
 comrade if her duties of wife and mother had not 
 given her too many other things to think about. The 
 same is true of Madame Carraud: "Never has a more 
 extraordinary mind been more smothered: she will die 
 in her corner unknown! George Sand," he continues, 
 "would speedily be my friend; she has no pettiness 
 whatever in her soul — none of the low jealousies that 
 obscure so many contemporary talents. Dumas re- 
 sembles her in this; but she has not the critical sense. 
 Madame Hanska is all this; but I cannot weigh upon 
 her destiny." Madame Hanska was the Polish lady 
 whom he ultimately married and of whom we shall 
 speak. Meanwhile, for a couple of years (1836 and 
 
136 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 1837), he carried on an exchange of opinions, of the 
 order that the French call intimes, with the unseen 
 correspondent to whom we have alluded, and who 
 figures in these volumes as "Louise." The letters, 
 however, are not love-letters^ Balzac, indeed, seems 
 chiefly occupied in calming the ardour of the lady, 
 who was evidently a woman of social distinction. 
 "Don't have any friendship for me," he writes; "I need 
 too much. Like all people who struggle, suffer, and 
 work, I am exacting, mistrustful, wilful, capricious. . . . 
 If I had been a woman, I should have loved nothing 
 so much as some soul buried like a well in the desert 
 — discovered only when you place yourself directly 
 under the star which indicates it to the thirsty Arab." 
 His first letter to Madame Hanska here given bears 
 the date of 1835; ^i^^ ^^ ^^e informed in a note that 
 he had at that moment been for some time in corre- 
 spondence with her. The correspondence had begun, 
 if we are not mistaken, on Madame Hanska's side, be- 
 fore they met; she had written to him as a literary 
 admirer. She was a Polish lady of large fortune, with 
 an invalid husband. After her husband's death, pro- 
 jects of marriage defined themselves more vividly, but 
 practical considerations kept them for a long time in 
 the background. Balzac had first to pay off his debts, 
 and Madame Hanska, as a Polish subject of the Czar 
 Nicholas, was not in a position to marry from one day 
 to another. The growth of their intimacy is, however, 
 amply reflected in these volumes, and the denoument 
 presents itself with a certain dramatic force. Balzac's 
 letters to his future wife, as to every one else, deal al- 
 most exclusively with his financial situation. He dis- 
 cusses the details of this matter with all his corre- 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. I 37 
 
 spondents, who apparently have — or are expected to 
 have — his monetary entanglements at their fingers' 
 ends. It is a constant enumeration of novels and tales 
 begun or delivered, revised or bargained for. The 
 tone is always profoundly sombre and bitter. The 
 reader's general impression is that of lugubrious 
 egotism. It is the rarest thing in the world that there 
 is an illusion to anything but Balzac's own affairs, and 
 the most sordid details of his own affairs. Hardly an 
 echo of the life of his time, of the world he lived in, 
 finds its way into his letters; that there are no anec- 
 dotes, no impressions, no opinions, no descriptions, no 
 allusions to things heard, people seen, emotions felt — 
 other emotions, at least, than those of the exhausted 
 or the exultant worker. The reason of all this is of 
 course very obvious. A man could not be such a 
 worker as Balzac and be much else besides. The note 
 of animal spirits which we observed in his early letters 
 is sounded much less frequently as time goes on; al- 
 though the extraordinary robustness and exuberance of 
 his temperament plays richly into his books. The 
 "Contes Drolatiques" are full of it and his conversa- 
 tion was also full of it. But the letters constantly show 
 us a man with the edge of his spontaneity gone — a 
 man groaning and sighing as from Promethean lungs, 
 complaining of his tasks, denouncing his enemies, in 
 complete ill-humour, generally, with life. Of any ex- 
 pression of enjoyment of the world, of the beauties of 
 nature, art, literature, history, human character, these 
 pages are singularly destitute. And yet we know that 
 such enjoyment — instinctive, unreasoning, essential — is 
 half the inspiration of the poet. The truth is that 
 Balzac was as little as possible of a poet; he often 
 
138 FRENCH POKTS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 speaks of himself as one, but he deserved the name 
 as Httle as his own Canalis or his own Rubempre. He 
 was neither a poet nor a moralist, though the latter 
 title in France is often bestowed upon him — a fact 
 which strikingly helps to illustrate the Gallic lightness 
 of soil in the moral region. Balzac was the hardest 
 and deepest of prosateurs; the earth-scented facts of 
 life, which the poet puts under his feet, he had put 
 above his head. Obviously there went on within him 
 a large and constant intellectual unfolding. His mind 
 must have had a history of its own — a history of 
 which it would be very interesting to have an oc- 
 casional glimpse. But the history is not related here, 
 even in glimpses. His books are full of ideas; his 
 letters have almost none. It is probably not unfair 
 to argue from this fact there were few ideas that he 
 greatly cared for. Making all allowance for the pres- 
 sure and tyranny of circumstances, we may believe 
 that if he had greatly cared to se recueillir, as the 
 French say — greatly cared, in the Miltonic phrase, "to 
 interpose a little ease" — he would sometimes have 
 found an opportunity for it. Perpetual work, when it 
 is joyous and salubrious, is a very fine thing; but per- 
 petual work, when it is executed with the temper 
 which more than half the time appears to have been 
 Balzac's, has in it something almost debasing. We 
 constantly feel that his work would have been greatly 
 better if the Muse of "business" had been elbowed 
 away by her larger-browed sister. Balzac himself, 
 doubtless, often felt in the same way; but, on the 
 whole, "business" was what he most cared for. The 
 "Com^die Humaine" represents an immense amount 
 of joy, of spontaneity, of irrepressible artistic life. 
 
Balzac's letters. 139 
 
 Here and there in the letters this occasionally breaks 
 out in accents of mingled exultation and despair. 
 "Never," he writes in 1836, "has the torrent which 
 bears me along been more rapid; never has a work 
 more majestically terrible imposed itself upon the 
 human brain. I go to my work as the gamester to the 
 gaming-table; I am sleeping now only five hours and 
 working eighteen; I shall arrive dead. . . . Write to 
 me; be generous; take nothing in bad part, for you 
 don't know how, at moments, I deplore this life of fire. 
 But how can I jump out of the chariot?" We have al- 
 ready had occasion in these pages to say that his 
 great characteristic, far from being a passion for ideas, 
 was a passion for things. We said just now that his 
 books are full of ideas; but we must add that his 
 letters make us feel that these ideas are themselves in 
 a certain sense "things." They are pigments, pro- 
 perties, frippery; they are always concrete and avail- 
 able. Balzac cared for them only if they would fit 
 into his inkstand. 
 
 He never jumped out of his chariot; but as the 
 years went on he was able at times to let the reins 
 hang more loosely. There is no evidence that he 
 made the great fortune he had looked forward to; but 
 he must have made a great deal of money. In the 
 beginning his work was very poorly paid, but after his 
 reputation was solidly established he received large 
 sums. It is true that they were swallowed up in great 
 part by his "debts" — that dusky, vaguely outlined, in- 
 satiable maw which we see grimacing for ever behind 
 him, like the face on a fountain which should find it- 
 self receiving a stream instead of giving it out. But 
 he travelled (working all the while en route). He 
 
140 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 went to Italy, to Germany, to Russia; he built houses, 
 he bought pictures and pottery. One of his journeys 
 illustrates his singular mixture of economic and 
 romantic impulses. He made a breathless pilgrimage 
 to the island of Sardinia to examine the scoriae of 
 certain silver mines, anciently worked by the Romans, 
 in which he had heard that the metal was still to be 
 found. The enterprise was fantastic and impractic- 
 able; but he pushed his excursion through night and 
 day, as he had written "Le Pfere Goriot." In his re- 
 lative prosperity, when once it was established, there 
 are strange lapses and stumbling-places. After he had 
 built and was living in his somewhat fantastical villa 
 of Les Jardies at Sfevres, close to Paris, he invites a 
 friend to stay with him on these terms: "I can take 
 you to board at forty sous a day, and for thirty-five 
 francs you will have fire-wood enough for a month." 
 In his jokes he is apt to betray the same preoccupation. 
 Inviting Charles de Bernard and his wife to come to 
 Les .Jardies to help him to arrange his books, he adds 
 that they will have fifty sous a day and their wine. 
 He is constantly talking of his expenses, of what he 
 spends in cab-hire and postage. His letters to the 
 Countess Hanska are filled with these details. "Yester- 
 day I was running about all day; twenty-five francs for 
 carriages!" The man of business is never absent. 
 For the first representations of his plays he arranges 
 his audiences with an eye to effect, like an impresario 
 or an agent. In the boxes, for "Vautrin," "I insist 
 upon there being handsome women." Presenting a 
 copy of the "Comedie Humaine" to the Austrian am- 
 bassador, he accompanies it with a letter calling atten- 
 tion, in the most elaborate manner, to the typo- 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. 
 
 141 
 
 graphical beauty and the cheapness of the work; the 
 letter reads like a prospectus or an advertisement. 
 
 In 1840 (he was forty years old) he thought 
 seriously of marriage — with this remark as the preface 
 to the announcement: "_/« ne veux plus avoir de cceur! 
 ... If you meet a young girl of twenty-two," he goes 
 on, "with a fortune of 200,000 francs, or even of 
 100,000, provided it can be used in business, you will 
 think of me. I want a woman who shall be able to 
 be what the events of my life may demand of her — 
 the wife of an ambassador or a housewife at Les 
 Jardies. But don't speak of this; it's a secret. She 
 must be an ambitious, clever girl." This project, how- 
 ever, was not carried out; Balzac had no time to marry. 
 But his friendship with Madame Hanska became more 
 and more absorbing, and though their project of mar- 
 riage, which was executed in 1850, was kept a pro- 
 found secret untU after the ceremony, it is apparent 
 that they had had it a long time in their thoughts. 
 
 For this lady Balzac's esteem and admiration seem 
 to have been unbounded; and his letters to her, which 
 in the second volume are very numerous, contain many 
 noble and delicate passages. "You know too well," 
 he says to her somewhere, with a happy choice of 
 words — for his diction was here and there as felicitous 
 as it was generally intolerable — " Vous savez trap Men 
 que tout ce qui n'est pas vous n'est que surface, sottise et 
 vains palliatifs de V absence." "You must be proud of 
 your children," he writes to his sister from Poland: 
 "such daughters are the recompense of your life. 
 You must not be unjust to destiny; you may now ac- 
 cept many misfortunes. It is like myself with Madame 
 Hanska. The gift of her affection explains all my 
 
142 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 troubles, my weariness and my toil; I was pa)Tng to 
 evil, in advance, the price of such a treasure. As 
 Napoleon said, we pay for everything here below; no- 
 thing is stolen. It seems to me. that I have paid very 
 little. Twenty-five years of toil and struggle are 
 nothing as the purchase-money of an attachment so 
 splendid, so radiant, so complete." 
 
 Madame Hanska appears to have come rarely to 
 Paris, and, when she came, to have shrouded her visits 
 in mystery; but Balzac arranged several meetings with 
 her abroad and visited her at St Petersburg and on 
 her Polish estates. He was devotedly fond of her 
 children, and the tranquil, opulent family life to which 
 she introduced him appears to have been one of the 
 greatest pleasures he had known. In several passages 
 which, for Balzac, may be called graceful and playful, 
 he expresses his homesickness for her chairs and 
 tables, her books, the sight of her dresses. Here is 
 something, in one of his letters to her, that is worth 
 quoting: "In short, this is the game that I play; four 
 men will have had, in this century, an immense in- 
 fluence — Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell. I should like 
 to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of 
 Europe; il s'esi inocuU des armies; the second es- 
 poused the globe; the third became the incarnation of 
 a people; I — I shall have carried a whole society in my 
 head. But there will have been in me a much greater 
 and much happier being than the writer — and that is 
 your slave. My feeling is finer, grander, more com- 
 plete, than all the satisfactions of vanity or of glory. 
 Without this plenitude of the heart I should never 
 have accomplished the tenth part of my work; I should 
 not have had this ferocious courage." During a few 
 
BALZAC S LETTERS. 143 
 
 days spent at Berlin, on his way back from St. Peters- 
 burg, he gives his impressions of the "capital of 
 Brandenburg" in a tone which almost seems to denote 
 a prevision of the style of allusion to this locality and 
 its inhabitants which was to become fashionable among 
 his countrymen thirty years later. Balzac detested 
 Prussia and the Prussians. "It is owing to this char- 
 latanism [the spacious distribution of the streets, &c.] 
 that Berlin has a more populous look than Petersburg; 
 I should have said 'more animated' look if I had 
 been speaking of another people; but the Prussian, 
 with his brutal heaviness, will never be able to do any- 
 thing but crush. To produce the movement of a great 
 European capital you must have less beer and bad 
 tobacco and more of the French or Italian spirit; or 
 else you must have the great industrial and com- 
 mercial ideas which have produced the gigantic 
 development of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants 
 will never be anything but an ugly little city, inhabited 
 by an ugly big people." 
 
 "I have seen Tieck en famille" he says in another 
 letter. "He seemed pleased with my homage. He 
 had an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, 
 almost an octogenarian — a mummy with a green eye- 
 shade, whom I supposed to be a domestic divinity. . . . 
 I am at home again; it is half-past six in the evening, 
 and I have eaten nothing since this morning. Berlin 
 is the city of ennui; I should die here in a week. Pooi 
 Humboldt is dying of it; he drags with him every- 
 where his nostalgia for Paris." 
 
 Balzac passed the winter of 1848 — '49 and several 
 months more at Vierzschovnia, the Polish estate of 
 Madame Hanska and her children. His health had 
 
144 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 been gravely impaired, and the doctors had absolutely 
 forbidden him to work. His inexhaustible and inde- 
 fatigable brain had at last succumbed to fatigue. But 
 the prize was gained; his debts were paid; he was 
 looking forward to owning at last the money that he 
 made. He could afford — relatively speaking at least 
 — to rest. His fame had been solidly built up; the 
 public recognised his greatness. Already, in 1846, he 
 had written:— "You will learn with pleasure, I am sure, 
 that there is an immense reaction in my favour. At 
 last I have conquered! Once more my protecting star 
 has watched over me. ... At this moment the public 
 and the papers turn toward me favourably; more than 
 that, there is a sort of acclamation, a general con- 
 secration. ... It is a great year for me, dear Coun- 
 tess." 
 
 To be ill and kept from work was, for Balzac, to 
 be a chained Prometheus; but there was much during 
 these last months to alleviate his impatience. His letters 
 at this period are easier, less painfully preoccupied 
 than at any other; and he found in Poland better 
 medical advice than he deemed obtainable in Paris. 
 He was preparing a house in Paris to receive him as 
 a married man — preparing it apparently with great 
 splendour. At Les Jardies the pictures and divans and 
 tapestries had mostly been nominal — had been present 
 only in grand names, chalked grotesquely upon the 
 empty walls. But during the last years of his life 
 Balzac appears to have been a great collector. He 
 bought many pictures and other objects of value; in 
 particular there figures in these letters a certain set of 
 Florentine furniture which he was willing to sell again, 
 but to sell only to a royal purchaser. The King of 
 
Balzac's letters. 145 
 
 Holland appears to have been in treaty for it. Readers 
 of the "Comedie Humaine" have no need to be re- 
 minded of the author's passion for furniture; nowhere 
 else are there such loving or such invidious descrip- 
 tions of it. "Decidedly," he writes once to Madame 
 Hanska, "I will send to Tours for the Louis XVI. se- 
 cretary and bureau; the room will then be complete. 
 It's a matter of a thousand francs; but for a thousand 
 francs what can one get in modern furniture? Des 
 platitudes bourgeoises, des misires sans valeur et sans 
 gout:' 
 
 Old Madame de Balzac was her son's factotum and 
 universal agent. His letters from Vierzschovnia are 
 filled with prescriptions of activity for his mother, ac- 
 companied always with the urgent reminder that she 
 is to use cabs ad libitum. He goes into the minutest 
 details (she was overlooking the preparation of his 
 house in the Rue Fortimee, which must have been con- 
 verted into a very picturesque residence): — "The carpet 
 in the dining-room must certainly be readjusted. Try 
 and make M. Henry send his carpet-layer. I owe that 
 man a good pour-boire; he laid all the carpets, and I 
 once was rough with him. You must tell him that 
 in September he can come and get his present. I want 
 particularly to give it to him myself." 
 
 His mother occasionally annoyed him by unreason- 
 able exactions and untimely interferences. There is 
 an episode of a letter which she writes to him at Ver- 
 zschovnia, and which, coming to Madame Hanska's 
 knowledge, endangers his prospect of marriage. He 
 complains bitterly to his sister that his mother cannot 
 get it out of her head that he is still fifteen years old. 
 But there is something very touching in his constant 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 'O 
 
146 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tenderness toward her — as well as something very 
 characteristically French — very characteristic of the 
 French sentiment of family consistency and solidarity 
 — in the way in which, by constantly counting upon 
 her practical aptitude and zeal, he makes her a fellow- 
 worker toward the great total of his fame and fortune. 
 At fifty years of age, at the climax of his distinction, 
 announcing to her his brilliant marriage, he signs him- 
 self Ton fils soumis. To his old friend Madame Car- 
 raud he. speaks thus of this same event: "The denoii- 
 ment of that great and beautiful drama of the ' heart 
 which has lasted these sixteen years. . . . Three days 
 ago I married the only woman I have loved, whom I 
 love more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. 
 I believe that this union is the recompense that God 
 has held in reserve for me through so many adver- 
 sities, years of work, difficulties suffered and surmounted. 
 I had neither a happy youth nor a flowering spring; I 
 shall have the most brilliant summer, the sweetest of 
 all autumns." It had been, as Balzac says, a drama of 
 the heart, and the ddnoiiment was of the heart alone. 
 Madame Hanska, on her marriage, made over her for- 
 tune to her children. 
 
 Balzac had at last found rest and happiness, but 
 his enjoyment of these blessings was brief The energy 
 that he had expended to gain them left nothing be- 
 hind it. His terrible industry had blasted the soil it 
 passed over; he had sacrificed to his work the very 
 things he worked for. One cannot do what Balzac did 
 and live. He was enfeebled, exhausted, broken. He 
 died in Paris three months after his marriage. The 
 reader feels that premature death is the logical, the 
 harmonious, completion of such a career. The strongest 
 
BALZAC'S LETTERS. 1 47 
 
 man has but a certain fixed quantity of life to expend, 
 and we may expect that if he works habitually fifteen 
 hours a day, he will spend it while, arithmetically speak- 
 ing, he is yet young. 
 
 We have been struck in reading these letters with 
 the strong analogy between Balzac's career and that of 
 the great English writer whose history was some time 
 since so expansively written by Mr. Forster. Dickens 
 and Balzac have much in common; as individuals they 
 strongly resemble each other; their differences are 
 chiefly differences of race. Each was a man of affairs, 
 an active, practical man, with a temperament of extra- 
 ordinary vigour and a prodigious quantity of life to 
 expend. Each had a character and a will — what is 
 nowadays called a personality — that imposed them- 
 selves irresistibly; each had a boundless self-confidence 
 and a magnificent egotism. Each had always a hundred 
 irons on the fire; each was resolutely determined to 
 make money, and made it in large quantities. In in- 
 tensity of imaginative power, the power of evoking 
 visible objects and figures, seeing them themselves with 
 the force of hallucination and making others see them 
 all but just as vividly, they were almost equal. Here 
 there is little to choose between them; they have had 
 no rivals but each other and Shakespeare. But they 
 most of all resemble each other in the fact that they 
 treated their extraordinary imaginative force as a 
 matter of business; that they worked it as a gold-mine, 
 violently and brutally; overworked and ravaged it. 
 They succumbed to the task that they had laid upon 
 themselves and they are as similar in their deaths as 
 in their lives. Of course, if Dickens is an English 
 Balzac, he is a very English Balzac. His fortune was 
 
 lO' 
 
148 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the easier of the two and his prizes were greater than 
 the other's. His brilliant, opulent English prosperity, 
 centered in a home and diffused through a progeny, 
 is in strong contrast with the almost scholastic penury 
 and obscurity of much of Balzac's career. But the 
 analogy is sfill very striking. 
 
 In speaking of Balzac elsewhere in these pages we 
 insisted upon the fact that he lacked charm; but we 
 said that our last word upon him should be that he 
 had incomparable power. His letters only confirm these 
 impressions, and above all they deepen our sense of 
 his strength. They contain little that is delicate and 
 not a great deal that is positively agreeable; but they 
 express an energy before which we stand lost in wonder, 
 in an admiration that almost amounts to awe. The 
 fact that his omnivorous observation of the great human 
 spectacle has no echo in his letters only makes us feel 
 how concentrated and how intense was the labour that 
 went on in his closet. Certainly no solider intellectual 
 work has ever been ■ achieved by man. And in spite 
 of the massive egotism, the personal absoluteness, to 
 which these pages testify, they leave us with a down- 
 right kindness for the author. He was coarse, but he 
 was tender; he was corrupt, in a way, but he was im- 
 mensely natural. If he was ungracefully eager and 
 voracious, awkwardly blind to all things that did not 
 contribute to his personal plan, at least his egotism 
 was exerted in a great cause. The "Comedie Humaine" 
 has a thousand faults, but it is a monumental excuse. 
 
GEORGE SAND. 
 
 149 
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 Among the eulogies and dissertations called forth 
 by the death of the great writer who shared with 
 Victor Hugo the honour of literary pre-eminence in 
 France, quite the most valuable was the short notice 
 published in the "Journal des Debats," by M. Taine. 
 In this notice the apostle of the "milieu" and the 
 "moment" very justly remarked that George Sand is 
 an exceptionally good case for the study of the pedigree 
 of a genius-^for ascertaining the part of prior genera- 
 tions in forming one of those minds which' shed back 
 upon them the light of glory. What renders Madame 
 Sand so available an example of the operation of 
 heredity is the fact that the process went on very 
 publicly, as one may say; that her ancestors were people 
 of qualities at once very strongly marked and very 
 abundantly recorded. The record has been kept in a 
 measure by George Sand herself When she was fifty 
 years old she wrote her memoirs, and in this prolix 
 and imperfect but extremely entertaining work a large 
 space is devoted to the heroine's parents and grand- 
 parents. 
 
 It was a very picturesque pedigree — quite an ideal 
 pedigree for a romancer. Madame Sand's great-grand- 
 father was the Marechal Maurice de Saxe, one of the 
 very few generals in the service of Louis XV. who 
 
150 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tasted frequently of victory. Maurice de Saxe was a 
 royal bastard, the son of Augustus II., surnamed the 
 Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and 
 of a brilliant mistress, Aurore de Konigsmark. The 
 victories of the Mardchal de Saxe were not confined to 
 the battlefield; one of his conquests was an agreeable 
 actress, much before the Parisian public. This lady 
 became the mother of Madame Sand's grandmother, 
 who was honourably brought up and married at a very 
 early age to the Comte de Horn. The Comte de Horn 
 shortly died, and his widow, after an interval, accepted 
 the hand of Mr. Dupin de Francueil, a celebrity and a 
 very old man. M. Dupin the son of a rich farmer 
 general who had purchased the historic chateau of 
 Chenonceaux, was one of the brilliant figures in Paris 
 society during the period immediately preceding the 
 Revolution. He had a large fortune, and he too was 
 a conqueror. A sufficiently elaborate portrait of him 
 may be found in that interesting, if disagreeable, book, 
 the "Memoires" of Madame d'Epinay. This clever 
 lady had been one of his spoils of victory. Old enough 
 to be his wife's grandfather, he survived his marriage 
 but a few years, and died with all his illusions intact, 
 on the eve of the Revolution, leaving to Madame 
 Dupin an only son. His wife outweathered the tempest, 
 which, however, swept away her fortune; though she 
 was able to buy a small property in the country — the 
 rustic Chiteau de Nohant, which George Sand has so 
 often introduced into her writings. Here she settled 
 herself with her son, a boy of charming promise, who 
 was in due time drawn into the ranks of Napoleon's 
 conquering legions. Young Dupin became an ardent 
 Bonapartist and an accomplished soldier. He won 
 
GEORGE SAND. 151 
 
 rapid promotion. In one of the so-called "glorious" 
 Italian campaigns he met a young girl who had followed 
 the army from Paris, from a personal interest in one 
 of its officers; and falling very honestly in love with 
 her he presently married her, to the extreme chagrin 
 of his mother. This young girl, the daughter of a 
 bird-catcher, and, as George Sand calls her, an "enfant 
 du vieux pav6 de Paris," became the mother of the 
 great writer. She was a child of the people and a 
 passionate democrat, and in the person of her daughter 
 we see the confluence of a plebeian stream with a strain 
 no less (in spite of its irregularity) than royal. On the 
 paternal side Madame Sand was cousin (in we know 
 not what degree) to the present Bourbon claimant of 
 the French crown; on the other she was affiliated to 
 the stock which, out of the "vieux pave," makes the 
 barricades before which Bourbons go down. 
 
 This may very properly be called a "picturesque" 
 descent; it is in a high degree what the French term 
 accidents. Its striking feature is that each conjunction 
 through which it proceeds is a violent or irregular one. 
 Two are illegitimate — those of the King of Poland and 
 his son with their respective mistresses; the other two, 
 though they had the sanction of law, may be called 
 in a manner irregular. It was irregular for the fresh 
 young Comtesse de Horn to be married to a man of 
 seventy; it was irregular in her son, young Dupin, to 
 make a wife of another man's mistress, often as this 
 proceeding has been reversed. If it is a fair descrip- 
 tion of Madame Sand to say that she was, during that 
 portion of her career which established her reputation, 
 an apostle of the rights of love quand mime, a glance 
 at her pedigree shows that this was a logical disposi- 
 
152 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tidn. She was herself more sensibly the result of a 
 series of love-affairs than most of us. In each of these 
 cases the woman had been loved with a force that as- 
 serted itself in contradiction to propriety or to usage. 
 We may observe moreover, in this course of trans- 
 mission, the opposition of the element of insubordina- 
 tion and disorder (which sufficiently translated itself in 
 outward acts in Madame Sand's younger years) and 
 the "official" element, the respectable, conservative, 
 exclusive strain. Three of our author's ancestresses 
 were light women — women who had forfeited the sup- 
 posedly indispensable measure of social consideration. 
 The great grand-daughter of the Comtesse de Konigs- 
 mark and of Mademoiselle Verri^res, the daughter of 
 Madame Dupin the younger, could hardly have been 
 expected not to take up this hereditary quarrel. It is 
 striking that on the feminine side of the house what is 
 called respectability was a very relative quality. 
 Madame Dupin the elder took it very hard when her 
 only and passionately loved son married a femme 
 galante. She did not herself belong to this category, 
 and her opposition is easily conceivable; but the reader 
 of "L'Histoire de ma Vie" cannot help smiling a little 
 when he reflects that this irreconcilable mother-in-law 
 was the offspring of two illegitimate unions, and that 
 her mother and grandmother had each enjoyed a plura- 
 lity of lovers. At the same time, if there is anything 
 more striking in George Sand, as a literary figure, than 
 a certain traditional Bohemianism, it is that other very 
 different quality which we just now called official, and 
 which is constantly interrupting and complicating her 
 Bohemianism. "George Sand immoral?" I once heard 
 one of her more conditional admirers exclaim. "The 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 53 
 
 only fault I find with her is that she is so insufferably 
 virtuous." The military and aristocratic side of her 
 lineage is attested by this "virtuous" property — by her 
 constant tendency to edification and didacticism, her 
 love of philosophizing and preaching, of smoothing. and 
 harmonizing things, and by her great literary gift, her 
 noble and imperturbable style, the style which, if she 
 had been a man, would have seated her in that temple 
 of all the proprieties, the French Academy. 
 
 It is not the purpose of these few pages to recapi- 
 tulate the various items of George Sand's biography. 
 Many of these are to be found in "L'Histoire de ma 
 Vie," a work which, although it was thought disappoint- 
 ing at the time of its appearance, is very well worth 
 reading. It was given to the world day by day, as the 
 feuilleton of a newspaper, and, like all the author's 
 compositions, it has the stamp of being written to meet 
 a current engagengient. It lacks plan and proportion; 
 the book is extremely iU made. But it has a great 
 charm, and it contains three or four of the best 
 portraits, — the only portraits, we were on the point of 
 saying — that the author has painted. The story was 
 begun, but was never really finished; this was the dis- 
 appointment of the public. It contained a great deal 
 about Madame Sand's grandmother and her father^a 
 large part of two volumes are given to a transcript of 
 her father's letters (and very charming letters they are). 
 It abounded in anecdotes of the writer's childhood, her 
 playmates, her pet animals, her school-adventures, the 
 nuns at the Convent des Anglaises by whom she was 
 educated; it related the juvenile unfolding of her mind, 
 her fits of early piety, and her first acquaintance with 
 Montaigne and Rousseau; it contained a superabund- 
 
154 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ance of philosophy, psychology, morality and harmless 
 gossip about people unknown to the public; but it was 
 destitute of just that which the public desired — an 
 explicit account of the more momentous incidents of 
 the author's maturity. When she reaches the point at 
 which her story becomes peculiarly interesting (up to 
 that time it has simply been agreeable and entertain- 
 ing) she throws up the game and drops the curtain. 
 In other words, she talks no scandal — a consummation 
 devoutly to be rejoiced in. 
 
 The reader nevertheless deems himself unfairly 
 used, and takes his revenge in seeing something very 
 typical of the author in the shortcomings of the work. 
 He declares it to be a nondescript performance, which 
 has neither the value of truth nor the illusion of fic- 
 tion; and he inquires why the writer should preface 
 her task with such solemn remarks upon the edifying 
 properties of autobiography, and adorn it with so 
 pompous an epigraph, if she meant simply to tell what 
 she might tell without trouble. It may be remembered, 
 however, that George Sand has sometimes been com- 
 pared to Goethe, and that there is this ground for the 
 comparison — that in form "L'Histoire de ma Vie" 
 greatly resembles the "Dichtung und Wahrheit" There 
 is the same charming, complacent expatiation upon 
 youthful memories, the same arbitrary confidences and 
 silences, the same digressions and general judgments, 
 the same fading away of the narrative on the thres- 
 hold of maturity. We should never look for analogies 
 between George Sand and Goethe; but we should say 
 that the lady's long autobiographic fragment is in fact 
 extremely typical — the most so indeed of all her works. 
 It shows in the highest degree her great strength and 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 55 
 
 her great weakness — her unequalled faculty of impro- 
 visation, as it may be called, and her peculiar want of 
 veracity. Every one will recognise what we mean by 
 the first of these items. People may like George Sand 
 or not, but they can hardly deny that she is the great 
 improvisatrice of literature — the writer who best answers 
 to Shelley's description of the sky-lark singing "in pro- 
 fuse strains of unpremeditated art.'"' No writer has 
 produced such great effects with an equal absence of 
 premeditation. 
 
 On the other hand, what we have called briefly 
 and crudely her want of veracity requires some ex- 
 planation. It is doubtless a condition of her serene 
 volubility; but if this latter is a great literary gift, its 
 value is impaired by our sense that it rests to a certain 
 extent upon a weakness. There is something very 
 liberal and universal in George Sand's genius, as well 
 as very masculine; but our final impression of her al- 
 ways is that she is a woman and a Frenchwoman. 
 Women, we are told, do not value the truth for its own 
 sake, but only for some personal use they make of it. 
 My present criticism involves an assent to this some- 
 what cynical dogma. Add to this that woman, if she 
 happens to be French, has an extraordinary taste for 
 investing objects with a graceful drapery of her own 
 contrivance, and it will be found that George Sand's 
 cast of mind includes both the generic and the specific 
 idiosyncrasy. We have more than once heard her 
 readers say (whether it was professed fact or admitted 
 fiction that they had in hand), "It is all very well, but 
 I can't believe a word of it!" There is something very 
 peculiar in this inability to believe George Sand even 
 in that relative sense in which we apply the term to 
 
156 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 novelists at large. We believe Balzac, we believe 
 Gustave Flaubert, we believe Dickens and Thackeray 
 and Miss Austen. Dickens is far more incredible than 
 George Sand, and yet he produces much more illusion. 
 In spite of her plausibility, the author of "Consuelo" 
 always appears to be telling a fairy-tale. We say in 
 spite of her plausibility, but we might rather say that 
 her excessive plausibility is the reason of our want of 
 faith. The narrative is too smooth, too fluent; the 
 narrator has a virtuous independence that the Muse of 
 history herself might envy her. The effect it produces 
 is that of a witness who is eager to tdl more than is 
 asked him, the worth of whose testimony is impaired 
 by its importunity. The thing is beautifully done, but 
 you feel that rigid truth has come off as it could; 
 the author has not a high standard of exactitude; 
 she never allows facts to make her uncomfortable. 
 "L'Histoire de ma Vie" is full of charming recollec- 
 tions and impressions of Madame Sand's early years, 
 of delightful narrative, of generous and elevated senti- 
 ment; but we have constantly the feeling that it is 
 what children call "made up." If the fictitious quality 
 in our writer's reminiscences is very sensible, of course 
 the fictitious quality in her fictions is still more so; 
 and it must be said that in spite of its odd mixture 
 of the didactic and the irresponsible, "L'Histoire de 
 ma Vie" sails nearer to the shore than its professedly 
 romantic companions. 
 
 The usual objection to the novels, and a very just 
 one, is that they contain no living figures, no people 
 who stand on their feet, and who, like so many of the 
 creations of the other great novelists, have become 
 part of the public fund of allusion and quotation. As 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 57 
 
 portraits George Sand's figures are vague in outline, 
 deficient in detail. Several of those, however, which 
 occupy the foreground of her memoirs have a remark- 
 able vividness. In the four persons associated chiefly 
 with her childhood and youth she really makes us 
 believe. The first of these is the great figure which 
 appears quite to have filled up the background of her 
 childhood — almost to the exclusion of the child her- 
 self — that of her grandmother, Madame Dupin, the 
 daughter of the great soldier. The second is that of 
 her father, who was killed at Nohant by a fall from 
 his horse, while she was still a young girl. The third 
 is that of her mother — a particularly remarkable por- 
 trait. The fourth is the grotesque but softly-hghted 
 image of Deschartres, the old pedagogue who served 
 as tutor to Madame Sand and her half-brother; the 
 latter youth being the fruit of an "amourette" be- 
 tween the Commandant Dupin and one of his mother's 
 maids. Madame Dupin philosophically adopted the 
 child; she dated from the philosophers of the preced- 
 ing century. It is worth noting that George Sand's 
 other playmate — the "Caroline" of the memoirs — was 
 a half-sister on her mother's side, a little girl whose 
 paternity antedated the Commandant Dupin's acquaint- 
 ance with his wife. 
 
 In George Sand's account of her father there is 
 something extremely delightful; full of filial passion 
 as it is, and yet of tender discrimination. She makes 
 him a charming figure — the ideal "gallant" French- 
 man of the old t5rpe; a passionate soldier and a 
 delightful talker, leaving fragments of his heart on 
 every bush; clever, tender, full of artistic feeling and 
 of Gallic gaiety — having in fair weather and foul al- 
 
158 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ways the mot pour rire. His daughter's publication 
 of his letters has been called a rather inexpensive 
 mode of writing her own biography; but these letters 
 — charming, natural notes to his mother during his 
 boyish campaigns — were well worth bringing to the 
 light. All George Sand is in the author's portrait of 
 her mother; all her great merit and all her strange 
 defects. We should recommend the perusal of the 
 scattered passages of "L'Histoire de ma Vie" which 
 treat of this lady to a person ignorant of Madame 
 Sand and desiring to make her acquaintance; they are 
 an excellent measure of her power. On one side an 
 extraordinary familiarity with the things of the mind, 
 the play of character, the psychological mystery, and 
 a beautiful clearness and quietness, a beautiful instinct 
 of justice in dealing with them; on the other side a 
 startling absence of delicacy, of reticence, of the sense 
 of certain spiritual sanctities and reservations. That 
 a woman should deal in so free-handed a fashion with 
 a female parent upon whom nature and time have 
 enabled her to look down from an eminence, seems 
 at first a considerable anomaly; and the woman who 
 does it must to no slight extent have shaken herself 
 free from the bonds of custom. We do not mean 
 that George Sand talks scandal and tittle-tattle about 
 her mother; but that Madame Dupin having been a 
 light woman and an essentially irregular character, 
 her daughter holds her up in the sunshine of her own 
 luminous contemplation with all her imperfections on 
 her head. At the same time it is very finely done — 
 very intelligently and appreciatively; it is at the worst 
 a remarkable exhibition of the disinterestedness of a 
 great imagination. 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 59 
 
 It must be remembered also that the young Aurore 
 Dupin "belonged" much more to her grandmother 
 than to her mother, to whom in hej: childhood she 
 was only lent, as it were, on certain occasions. There 
 is nothing in all George Sand better than her history 
 of the relations of these two women, united at once 
 and divided (after the death of the son and husband) 
 by a common grief and a common interest; full of 
 mutual jealousies and defiances, and alternately quar- 
 relling and "making up" over their little girl. Jealousy 
 carried the day. One was a patrician and the other 
 a jealous democrat, and no common ground was attain- 
 able. Among the reproaches addressed by her critics 
 to the author of "Valentine" and "Velvfedre" is the 
 charge of a very imperfect knowledge of family life 
 and a tendency to strike false notes in the portrayal 
 of it. It is apparent that both before and after her 
 marriage her observation of family life was peculiarly 
 restricted and perverted. Of what it must have been 
 in the former case this figure of her mother may give 
 us an impression; of what it was in the latter we may 
 get an idea from the somewhat idealized minage in 
 "Lucrezia Floriani." 
 
 George Sand's literary fame came to her very 
 abruptly. The history of her marriage, which is briefly 
 related in her memoirs, is sufficiently well known. 
 The thing was done, on her behalf, by her relatives 
 (she had a small property) and the husband of their 
 choice, M. Dudevant, was neither appreciative nor 
 sympathetic. His tastes were vulgar and his manners 
 frequently brutal; and after a short period of violent 
 dissension and the birth of two children, the young 
 couple separated. It is safe to say, however, that even 
 
l60 FRENCH PCEXS AJJD NOVELISTS. 
 
 with an "appreciative" husband Madame Sand would 
 not have accepted matrimony once for all. She repre- 
 sents herself a| an essentially dormant, passive and 
 shrinking nature, upon which celebrity and produc- 
 tiveness were forced by circumstances, and whose un- 
 consciousness of its own powers was dissipated only 
 by the violent breaking of a spell. There is evidently 
 much truth in these assertions; for of all great literary 
 people few strike us as having had a smaller measure 
 of the more vulgar avidities and ambitions. But for 
 all that, it is tolerably plain that even by this pro- 
 foundly slumbering genius the most brilliant matri- 
 monial associate would have been utterly overmatched. 
 Madame Sand, even before she had written "In- 
 diana," was too imperious a force, too powerful a 
 machine, to make the limits of her activity coincide 
 with those of wifely submissiveness. It is very possible 
 that for her to write "Indiana" and become a woman 
 of letters a spell had to be broken; only, the real 
 breaking of the spell lay not in the vulgarity of a hus- 
 band, but in the deepening sense, quickened by the 
 initiations of marriage, that outside of the quiet mea- 
 dows of Nohant there was a vast affair called life, 
 with which she had a capacity for making acquaint- 
 ance at first hand. This making acquaintance with 
 life at first hand is, roughly speaking, the great thing 
 that, as a woman, Madame Sand achieved; and she 
 was predestined to achieve it. She was more mas- 
 culine than any man she might have married; and 
 what powerfully masculine person — even leaving genius 
 apart — is content at five-and-twenty with submissive- 
 ness and renunciation? "It was a mere accident that 
 George Sand was a woman," a person who had known 
 
GEORGE SAND. l6l 
 
 her well said to the writer of these pages; and though 
 the statement needs an ultimate corrective, it repre- 
 sents a great deal of truth. What was feminine in 
 her was the quality of her genius; the quantity of it — 
 its force, and mass, and energy — was masculine, and 
 masculine were her temperament and character. All 
 this masculinity needed to set itself free; which it pro- 
 ceeded to do according to its temporary light. Her 
 separation from her husband was judicial, and assured 
 her the custody of her children; but as in return for 
 this privilege she made financial concessions, it left 
 her without income (though in possession of her pro- 
 perty of Nohant) and dependent upon her labours for 
 support. She had betaken herself to Paris in quest of 
 labour, and it was with this that her career began. 
 
 This determination to address herself to life at first 
 hand — this personal, moral impulse, which was not at 
 all a literary impulse — was her great inspiration, the 
 great pivot on which her history wheeled round into 
 the bright light of experience and fame. It is, strictly, 
 as we said just now, the most interesting thing about 
 her. Such a disposition was not customary, was not 
 what is usually called womanly, was not modest nor 
 delicate, nor, for many other persons, in any way com- 
 fortable. But it had one great merit: it was in a 
 high degree original and active; and because it was 
 this it constitutes the great service which George Sand 
 rendered her sex — a service in which, we hasten to 
 add, there was as much of fortune as of virtue. (The 
 disposition to cultivate an "acquaintance with life at 
 first hand" might pass for an elegant way of describ- 
 ing the attitude of many young women who are never 
 far to seek, and who render no service to their own 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. ^ ^ 
 
l62 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 sex — whatever they may render to the other.j George 
 Sand's superiority was that she looked at life from a 
 high point of view and that she had an extraordinary 
 talent. She painted fans and glove-boxes to get 
 money, and got very little. "Indiana," however — a 
 mere experiment — put her on her feet, and her re- 
 putation dawned. She found that she could write, 
 and she took up her pen never to lay it down. Her 
 early novels, all of them brilliant, and each one at 
 that day a literary event, followed each other with 
 extraordinary rapidity. About this sudden entrance 
 into literature, into philosophy, into rebellion, and into 
 a great many other matters, there are various different 
 things to be said. Very remarkable, indeed, was the 
 immediate development of the literary faculty in this 
 needy young woman who lived in cheap lodgings and 
 looked for "employment." She wrote as a bird sings; 
 but unlike most birds, she found it unnecessary to 
 indulge, by way of prelude, in twitterings and vocal 
 exercises; she broke out at once with her full volume 
 of expression. From the beginning she had a great 
 style. "Indiana," perhaps, is rather in falsetto, as 
 the first attempts of young, sentimental writers are apt 
 to be; but in "Valentine," which immediately followed, 
 there is proof of the highest literary instinct — an art 
 of composition, a propriety and harmony of diction, 
 such as belong only to the masters. 
 
 One might certainly have asked Madame Sand, as 
 Lord Jeffrey asked Macaulay on the appearance of his 
 first contribution to the "Edinburgh Review," where 
 in the world she had picked up that style. She had 
 picked it up apparently at Nohant, among the meadows 
 and the iratnes — the deeply-sunken byroads among 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 63 
 
 the thick, high hedges. Her language had to the end 
 an odour of the hawthorn and the wild honeysuckle — 
 the mark of the "climat souple et chaud," as she some- 
 where calls it, from which she had received "I'initia- 
 tion premiere." How completely her great literary 
 faculty was a matter of intuition is indicated by the 
 fact that "L'Histoire de ma Vie" contains no allusion 
 to it, no account of how she learned to write, no re- 
 cord of effort or apprenticeship. She appears to have 
 begun at a stage of the journey at which most talents 
 arrive only when their time is up. During the five- 
 and-forty years of her literary career, she had some- 
 thing to say about most things in the universe; but 
 the thing about which she had least to say was the 
 writer's, the inventor's, the romancer's art. She pos- 
 sessed it by the gift of God, but she seems never to 
 have felt the temptation to examine the pulse of the 
 machine. 
 
 To the cheap edition of her novels, published in 
 1852-53, she prefixed a series of short prefaces, in 
 which she relates the origin of each tale — the state of 
 mind and the circumstances in which it was written. 
 These prefaces are charming; they almost justify the 
 publisher's declaration that they form the "most Iseau- 
 tiful examination that a great mind has ever made of 
 itself." But they all commemorate the writer's extra- 
 ordinary facility and spontaneity. One of them says 
 that on her way home from Spain she was shut up for 
 some days at an inn, where she had her children at 
 play in the same room with her. She found that the 
 sight of their play quickened her imagination, and 
 while they tumbled about the floor near her table, she 
 produced "Gabriel" — a work which, though inspired 
 
 II* 
 
164 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 by the presence of infancy, cannot be said to be ad- 
 dressed to infants. Of another story she relates that 
 she wrote it at Fontainebleau, where she spent all her 
 days wandering about the forest, making entomological 
 collections, with her son. At night she came home 
 and took up the thread of "La Derni^re Aldini," on 
 which she had never bestowed a thought all day. 
 Being at Venice, much depressed, in a vast dusky 
 room in an old palace that had been turned into an 
 inn, while the sea wind roared about her windows, and 
 brought up the sound of the carnival as a kind of 
 melancholy wail, she began a novel by simply looking 
 round her and describing the room and the whistling 
 of the mingled tumult without. She finished it in a 
 week, and, hardly reading it over, sent it to Paris as 
 "Ldone Leoni" — a master-piece. 
 
 In the few prefatory lines to "Isidora" I remember 
 she says something of this kind: "It was a beautiful 
 young woman who used to come and see me, and profess 
 to relate her sorrows. I saw that she was attitudinizing 
 before me, and not believing herself a word of what 
 she said. So it is not her I described in 'Isidora.' " 
 This is a happy way of saying how a hint — a mere 
 starting point — was enough for her. Particularly 
 charming is the preface to the beautiful tale of 
 "Andr6"; it is a capital proof of what one may call 
 the author's limpidity of reminiscence, and want of 
 space alone prevents me from quoting it. She was at 
 Venice, and she used to hear her maid-servant and 
 her sempstress, as they sat at work together, chatter- 
 ing in the next room. She listened to their talk in 
 order to accustom her ear to the Venetian dialect, 
 and in so doing she came into possession of a large 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 65 
 
 amount of local gossip. The effect of it was to re- 
 mind her of the small social life of the little country 
 town near Nohant. The women told each other just 
 such stories as might have been told there, and in- 
 dulged in just such reflections and "appreciations" as 
 would have been there begotten. She was reminded 
 that men and women are everywhere the same, and at 
 the same time she felt homesick. "I recalled the 
 dirty, dusky streets, the tumble-down houses, the poor 
 moss-grown roofs, the shrill concerts of cocks, children 
 and cats, of my own little town. I dreamed too of 
 our beautiful meadows, of our perfumed hay, of our 
 little running streams, and of the botany beloved of 
 old which I could follow now only on the muddy 
 mosses and the floating weeds that adhered to the 
 sides of the gondolas. I don't know amid what vague 
 memories of various types I set in motion the least 
 complex and the laziest of fictions. These types be- 
 longed quite as much to Venice as to Berry. Change 
 dress and language, sky, landscape and architecture, 
 the outside aspect of people and things, and you will 
 find that at the bottom of all this man is always the 
 same, and woman still more, because of the tenacity 
 of her instincts." 
 
 George Sand says that she found she could write 
 for an extraordinary length of time without weariness, 
 and this is as far as she goes in the way of analysis 
 of her inspiration. From the time she made the dis- 
 covery to the day of her death her life was an ex- 
 tremely laborious one. She had evidently an extra- 
 ordinary physical robustness. It was her constant 
 practice to write at night, beginning after the rest of 
 the world had gone to sleep. Alexandre Dumas the 
 
l66 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 younger described her somewhere, during her latter 
 years, as an old lady who came out into the garden at 
 midday in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a 
 bench or wandered slowly about. So she remained 
 for hours, looking about her, musing, contemplating. 
 She was gathering impressions, says M. Dumas, absorb- 
 ing the universe, steeping herself in nature; and at 
 night she would give all this forth as a sort of emana- 
 tion. Without using epithets that are too vague, one 
 may accept this term "emanation" as a good account 
 of her manner. 
 
 If it is needless to go into biographical detail, this 
 is because George Sand's real history, the more in- 
 teresting one, is the history of her mind. The history 
 of her mind is of course closely connected with her 
 personal history; she is indeed a writer whose personal 
 situation, at a particular moment, is supposed to be 
 reflected with peculiar vividness in her work. But to 
 speak of her consistently we must regard the events 
 of her life as intellectual events, and its landmarks as 
 opinions, convictions, theories. The only difficulty is 
 that such landmarks are nearly as numerous as the 
 trees in a forest. Some, however, are more salient 
 than others. Madame Sand's account of herself is that 
 her ideal of life was repose, obscurity and idleness — 
 long days in the country spent in botany and entomo- 
 logy. She affirms that her natural indolence was 
 extreme, and that the need of money alone induced 
 her to take her pen into her hand. As this need was 
 constant, her activity was constant; but it was a per- 
 version of the genius of a kind, simple, friendly, 
 motherly, profoundly unambitious woman, who would 
 have been amply content to take care of her family. 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 67 
 
 live in slippers, gossip with peasants, walk in the 
 garden and listen to the piano. All this is certainly so 
 far true as that no person of equal celebrity ever 
 made fewer explicit pretensions. She philosophized 
 upon a great many things that she did not understand, 
 and toward the close of her life, in especial, was apt 
 to talk metaphysics, in writing, with a mingled 
 volubility and vagueness which might have, been taken 
 to denote an undue self-confidence. But in such things 
 as these, as they come from George Sand's pen, there 
 is an air as of not expecting any one in particular to 
 read them. She never took herself too much au 
 sirieux — she never postured at all as a woman of 
 letters. She scribbled, she might have said — scribbled 
 as well as she could; but when she was not scribbling 
 she never thought of it; though she liked to think of 
 all the great things that were worth scribbling about — 
 love and religion and science and art, and man's political 
 destiny. Her reader feels that she has no vanity, and 
 all her contemporaries agree that her generosity was 
 extreme. 
 
 She calls herself a sphinx hon enfant, or says at least 
 that she looked like one. Judgments may differ as to 
 how far she was a sphinx ; but her good nature is 
 all-pervading. Some of her books are redolent of it 
 — some of the more "objective" ones: "Consuelo," 
 "Les Maitres Sonneurs," "L'Homme de Neige," "Les 
 beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore." She is often pas- 
 sionnate, but she is never rancorous; even her violent 
 attacks upon the Church give us no impression of 
 small acrimony. She has all a woman's loquacity, but 
 she has never a woman's shrillness; and perhaps we 
 can hardly indicate better the difference between great 
 
1 68 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 passion and small than by saying that she never is 
 hysterical. During the last half of her career, her 
 books went out of fashion among the new literary 
 generation. "Realism" had been invented, or rather 
 propagated; and in the light of "Madame Bovary" her 
 own facile fictions began to be regarded as the work 
 of a sort of superior Mrs. Radcliffe. She was anti- 
 quated; she belonged to the infancy of art. She ac- 
 cepted this destiny with a cheerfulness which it would 
 have savoured of vanity even to make explicit. The 
 Realists were her personal friends; she knew that 
 they did not, and could not, read her books; for what 
 could Gustave Flaubert make of "Monsieur Sylvestre," 
 what could Ivan TurgdniefF make of "Cesarine 
 Dietrich"? It made no difference; she contented her- 
 self with reading their productions, never mentioned 
 her own, and continued to write charming, impro- 
 bable romances for initiated persons of the optimistic 
 class. 
 
 After the first few years she fell into this more and 
 more; she wrote stories for the story's sake. Among 
 the novels produced during a long period before her 
 death I can think of but one, "Mademoiselle La 
 Quintinie," that is of a controversial cast. All her 
 early novels, on the other hand, were controversial — 
 if this is not too mild a description of the passionate 
 contempt for the institution of marriage expressed in 
 "Indiana," "Valentine," "L61ia," and "Jacques." Her 
 own acquaintance with matrimony had been of a pain- 
 ful kind, and the burden of three at least of these 
 remarkable tales ("L61ia" stands rather apart) is the 
 misery produced by an indissoluble matrimonial knot. 
 "Jacques" is the story of an unhappy marriage from 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 69 
 
 which there is no issue but by the suicide of one of 
 the partners; the husband throws himself into an 
 Alpine crevasse in order to leave his wife to an un- 
 disturbed enjoyment of her lover. 
 
 It very soon became apparent that these matters 
 were handled in a new and superior fashion. There 
 had been plenty of tales about husbands , wives , and 
 "third parties," but since the "Nouvelle Heloise" 
 there had been none of a high value or of a phi- 
 losophic tone. Madame Sand, from the first, was no- 
 thing if not philosophic; the iniquity of marriage- 
 arrangements was to her mind but one of a hundred 
 abominations in a society which needed a complete 
 overhauling and to which she proceeded to propose a 
 loftier line of conduct. The passionate eloquence of 
 the writer in all this was only equalled by her extra- 
 ordinary self-confidence. "Valentine" seems to us even 
 now a very eloquent book, and "Jacques" is hardly 
 less so; it is easy to imagine their having made an 
 immense impression. The intellectual freshness, the 
 sentimental force of "Valentine," must have had an 
 irresistible charm; and we say this with a full sense of 
 what there is false and hollow in the substan,ce of 
 both books. Hold them up against the light of a cer- 
 tain sort of ripe reason, and they seem as porous as 
 a pair of sieves; but subject them simply to the literary 
 test, and they answer most requirements. 
 
 The author's philosophic predilections were at once 
 her merit and her weakness. On the one side it was 
 a great mind, curious about all things, open to all 
 things, nobly accessible to experience, asking only to 
 live, expand, respond; on the other side stood a great 
 personal volition, making large exactions of life and 
 
170 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 society and needing constantly to justify itself — stir- 
 ring up rebellion and calling down revolution in order 
 to cover up and legitimate its own agitation. George 
 Sand's was a French mind, and as a French mind it 
 had to theorize; but if the positive side of its criticism 
 of most human institutions was precipitate and ill- 
 balanced the error was in a great measure atoned for 
 in later years. The last half of Madame Sand's career 
 was a period of assent and acceptance; she had de- 
 cided to make the best of those social arrangements 
 which surrounded her — remembering as it were the 
 homely native proverb which declares that when one 
 has not got what one likes one must like what one has 
 got. Into the phase of acceptance and serenity, the 
 disposition to admit that even as it is society pays, 
 according to the vulgar locution, our author passed at 
 about the time that the Second Empire settled down 
 upon France. We suspect the fact we speak of 
 was rather a coincidence than an effect. It is very 
 true that the Second Empire may have seemed the 
 death-knell of "philosophy"; it may very well have 
 appeared profitless to ask questions of a world which 
 anticipated you with such answers as that. But we 
 take it rather that Madame Sand was simply weary 
 of criticism; the pendulum had swung into the op- 
 posite quarter — as it is needless to remark that it al- 
 ways does. 
 
 We have delayed too long to say how far it had 
 swung in the first direction; and we have delayed from 
 the feeling that it is difficult to say it We have seen 
 that George Sand was by the force of heredity pro- 
 jected into this field with a certain violence; she took 
 possession of a portion of it as a conqueror, and she 
 
GEORGE SAND. 171 
 
 was never compelled to retreat. The reproach brought 
 against her by her critics is that, as regards her par- 
 ticular advocacy of the claims of the heart, she has for 
 the most part portrayed vicious love, not virtuous love. 
 But the reply to this, from her own side, would be 
 that she has at all events portrayed something which 
 those who disparage her activity have not portrayed. 
 She may claim that although she has the critics 
 against her, the writers of her own class who represent 
 virtuous love have not pushed her out of the field. 
 She has the advantage that she has portrayed a pas- 
 sion , and those of the other group have the disadvan- 
 tage that they have not. / In English literature , which, 
 we suppose, is more espfecially the region of virtuous 
 love, we do not "go into" the matter, as the phrase 
 is (we speak of course of English prose). We have 
 agreed among our own confines that there is a certain 
 point at which elucidation of it should stop short; 
 that among the things which it is possible to say 
 about it, the greater number had on the whole better 
 not be said. It would be easy to make an ironical 
 statement of the English attitude, and it would be, if 
 not easy, at least very possible, to make a sound de- 
 fence of it. The thing with us, however, is not a 
 matter of theory; it is above all a matter of practice, 
 and the practice has been that of the leading English 
 novelists. Miss Austen and Sir Walter Scott, Dickens 
 and Thackeray, Hawthorne and George Eliot, have all 
 represented young people in love with each other; 
 but no one of them has, to the best of our recollec- 
 tion, described anything that can be called a passion 
 — put it into motion before us and shown us its various 
 paces. \ To say this is to say at the same time that 
 
172 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 these writers have spared us much that we consider 
 "objectionable," and that George Sand has not spared 
 us; but it is to say furthermore that few persons 
 would resort to English prose fiction for any informa- 
 tion concerning the ardent forces of the heart — for 
 any ideas upon them. It is George Sand's merit that 
 she has given us ideas upon them — that she has en- 
 larged the novel-reader's conception of them and proved 
 herself in all that relates to them an authority. This 
 is a great deal. From this standpoint Miss Austen, 
 Walter Scott and Dickens will appear to have omitted 
 the erotic sentiment altogether, and George Eliot 
 will seem to have treated it with singular austerity. 
 Strangely loveless, seen in this light, are those large, 
 comprehensive fictions "Middlemarch" and "Daniel 
 Deronda." They seem to foreign readers, probably, 
 like vast, cold, commodious, respectable rooms, through 
 whose window-panes one sees a snow-covered land-] 
 scape, and across whose acres of sober-hued carpet 
 one looks in vain for a fireplace or a fire. 
 
 The distinction between virtuous and vicious love 
 is not particularly insisted upon by George Sand. In 
 her view love is always love, is always divine in its 
 essence and ennobling in its operation. The largest 
 life possible is to hold one's self open to an unlimited 
 experience of this improving passion. This, I believe, 
 was Madame Sand's practice, as it was certainly her 
 theory — a theory to the exposition of which one of 
 her novels, at least, is expressly dedicated. "Lucrezia 
 Floriani" is the history of a lady who, in the way of 
 love, takes everything that comes along, and who sets 
 forth her philosophy of the matter with infinite grace 
 and felicity. It is probably fortunate for the world 
 
GEORGE SAND. 
 
 173 
 
 that ladies of Lucrezia Floriani's disposition have not 
 as a general thing her argumentative brilliancy. About 
 all this there would be much more to say than these 
 few pages afford space for. Madame Sand's plan was 
 to be open to alt experience, all emotions, all convic- 
 tions; only to keep the welfare of the human race, and 
 especially of its humbler members, well in mind, and 
 to trust that one's moral and intellectual life would 
 take a form profitable to the same. One was therefore 
 not only to extend a great hospitality to love, but to 
 interest one's self in religion and politics. This Ma- 
 dame Sand did with great activity during the whole 
 of the reign of Louis Philippe. She had broken utterl^^ 
 with the Church of course, but her disposition was the 
 reverse of sceptical. Her religious feeling, like all her 
 feelings, was powerful and voluminous, and she had 
 an ideal of a sort of etherealized and liberated Chris- 
 tianity, in which unmarried but affectionate couples 
 might find an element friendly to their "expansion." 
 Like all her feelings, too, her religious sentiment was 
 militant; her ideas about love were an attack upon 
 marriage; her faith was an attack upon the Church 
 and the clergy; her socialistic sympathies were an at- 
 tack upon all present political arrangements. These 
 things all took hold of her by turn — shook her hard, 
 as it were, and dropped her, leaving her to be played 
 upon by some new inspiration; then, in some cases, 
 returned to her, took possession of her afresh and 
 sounded another tune. M. Renan, in writing of her at 
 the time of her death, used a fine phrase about her; 
 he said that she was ."the .^Eolian harp of our time;" 
 he spoke of her "sonorous soul." This is very just; 
 there is nothing that belonged to her time that she 
 
174 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 had not a personal emotion about — an emotion intense 
 enough to produce a brilliant work of art — a novel 
 that had bloomed as rapidly and perfectly as the flower 
 that the morning sun sees open on its stem. In her 
 care about many things during all these years, in hei 
 expenditure of passion, reflection, and curiosity, there 
 is something quite unprecedented. Never had phi- 
 losophy and art gone so closely hand in hand. Each 
 of them suffered a good deal; but it had appeared up 
 to that time that their mutual concessions must be even 
 greater. Balzac was a far superior artist; but he was 
 incapable of a lucid reflection. 
 
 We have already said that mention has been made 
 of George Sand's analogy with Goethe, who claimed for 
 his lyrical poems the merit of being each the result of 
 a particular incident in his life. It was incident too 
 that prompted Madame Sand to write; but what it 
 produced in her case was not a short copy of verses, 
 but an elaborate drama, with a plot and a dozen cha- 
 racters. It will help us to understand this extraordinary 
 responsiveness of mind and fertility of imagination to 
 remember that inspiration was often embodied in a 
 concrete form; that Madame Sand's "incidents" were 
 usually clever, eloquent, suggestive men. "Le style 
 c'est I'homme" — of her, it has been epigramatically 
 said, that is particularly true. Be this as it may, these 
 influences were strikingly various, and they are reflected 
 in works which may be as variously labelled: amatory 
 tales, religious tales, political, aesthetic, pictorial, musical, 
 theatrical, historical tales. And it is to be noticed that 
 in whatever the author attempted, whether or no she 
 succeeded, she appeared to lose herself. The "Lettres 
 d'un Voyageur" read like a writer's single book. This 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 75 
 
 melancholy, this desolation and weariness, might pass 
 as the complete distillation of a soul. In the same 
 way "Spiridion" is exclusively religious and theologi- 
 cal. The author might, in relation to this book, have 
 replied to such of her critics as reproach her with 
 being too erotic, that she had performed the very rare 
 feat of writing a novel not only containing no love 
 save divine love, but containing not one woman's figure. 
 We can recall but one rival to "Spiridion" in this 
 respect — Godwin's "Caleb Williams." 
 
 But if other things come and go with George Sand, / 
 amatory disquisition is always there. It is of all kinds,! 
 sometimes very noble and sometimes very disagreeable. 1 
 Numerous specimens of the two extremes might be j 
 cited. There is to our taste a great deal too much of f 
 it; the total effect is displeasing. The author illuminates 
 and glorifies the divine passion, but she does some- 
 thing which may be best expressed by saying that she 
 cheapens it. She handles it too much; she lets it too 
 little alone. Above all she is too positive, too explicit, 
 too business-like; she takes too technical a view of it. 
 Its various signs and tokens and stages, its ineffable 
 mysteries, are all catalogued and tabulated in her 
 mind, and she whisks out her references with the 
 nimbleness with which the doorkeeper at an exhibition 
 hands you back your umbrella in return for a check. 
 In this relation, to the English mind, discretion is a 
 great point — a virtue so absolute and indispensable 
 that it speaks for itself and cannot be analysed away; 
 and George Sand is judged from our point of view by 
 one's saying that, for her, discretion is simply non- 
 existent. Its place is occupied by a sort of benevolent, 
 an almost conscientious disposition to sit down, as it 
 
1^6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 were, and "talk over" the whole matter. The subject 
 fills her with a motherly loquacity; it stimulates all her 
 wonderful and beautiful self-sufficiency of expression 
 — the quality that we have heard a hostile critic call 
 her "glibness." 
 
 We can hardly open a volume of George Sand with- 
 out finding an example of what we mean. We glance 
 at a venture into "Teverino," and we find Lady G., 
 who has left her husband at the inn and gone out to 
 spend a day with the more fascinating L^once, "passing 
 her beautiful hands over the eyes of Ldonce, ptut-Stre 
 par tendresse naive, perhaps to convince herself that it 
 was really tears she saw shining in them." The peut- 
 Itre here, the tendresse name, the alternatives, the im- 
 partial way in which you are given your choice, are 
 extremely characteristic of Madame Sand. They remind 
 us of the heroine of "Isidora," who alludes in conversa- 
 tion to "une de mes premieres fautes." In the list of 
 Madame Sand's more technically amatory novels, how- 
 ever, there is a distinction to be made; the earlier strike 
 us as superior to the later. The fault of the earlier — 
 the fact that passion is too intellectual, too pedantic, 
 too sophistical, too much bent upon proving itself ab- 
 negation and humility, maternity, fraternity, humanity, 
 or some fine thing that it really is not and that it is 
 much simpler and better for not pretending to be — 
 this fault is infinitely exaggerated in the tales written 
 after "Lucrezia Floriani." "Indiana," "Valentine," 
 "Jacques," and "Mauprat" are, comparatively speak- 
 ing, frankly and honestly passionate; they do not 
 represent the love that declines to compromise with 
 circumstances as a sort of eating of one's cake and 
 having it too — an eating it as a pleasure and a having it 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 77 
 
 as virtue. But the stories of the type of "Lucrezia 
 Floriani," which indeed is the most argumentative,* 
 have an indefinable falsity of tone. Madame Sand had 
 here begun to play with her topic intellectually; the 
 first freshness of her interest in it had gone, and in- 
 vention had taken the place of conviction. To acquit 
 one's self happily of such experiments, one must cer- 
 tainly have all the gifts that George Sand possessed. 
 But one must also have two or three that she lacked. 
 Her sense of delicacy was certainly defective. This is 
 a brief statement, but it means a great deal, and of 
 what it means there are few of her novels that do not 
 contain a number of illustrations. 
 
 There is something very fine, for instance, about 
 "Yalentine," in spite of its contemptible hero; there 
 is something very sweet and generous in the figure of 
 the young girl. But why, desiring to give us an im- 
 pression of great purity in her heroine, should the 
 author provide her with a half-sister who is at once an 
 illegitimate daughter and the mother of a child born 
 out of wedlock, and who, in addition, is half in love 
 with Valentine's lover? though George Sand thinks to 
 better the matter by representing this love as partly 
 maternal. After Valentine's marriage, a compulsory 
 and most unhappy one, this half-sister plots with the 
 doctor to place the young wife and the lover whom she 
 has had to dismiss once more en rapport. She hesitates, 
 it is true, and inquires of the physician if their scheme 
 will not appear unlawful in the eyes of the world. 
 But the old man reassures her, and asks, with a 
 "sourire malin et affectueux," why she should care 
 
 * "Constance Verrier," "Isidora," "Pauline," "Le dernier 
 Amour," "La Daniella," "Francia," "Mademoiselle Merquem." 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. ' 2 
 
178 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 for the judgment of a world which has viewed so 
 harshly her own irregularity of conduct. Madame 
 Sand constantly strikes these false notes; we meet in 
 her pages the most startling confusions. In "Jacques" 
 there is the oddest table of relations between the 
 characters. Jacques is possibly the brother of Silvia, 
 who is probably, on another side, sister of his wife, 
 who is the mistress of Octave, Silvia's dismissed amanti 
 Add to this that if Jacques be not the brother of 
 Silvia, who is an illegitimate chUd, he is convertible 
 into her lover. On s'y perd. Silvia, a clever woman, 
 is the guide, philosopher, and friend of this melancholy 
 Jacques; and when his wife, who desires to become 
 the mistress of Octave {her discarded lover), and yet, 
 not finding it quite plain sailing to do so, weeps over 
 the crookedness of her situation, she writes to the 
 injured husband that she has been obliged to urge 
 Fernande not to take things so hard: "je suis forcee 
 de la consoler et de la relever \ ses propres yeux." 
 Very characteristic of Madame Sand is this fear lest 
 the unfaithful wife should take too low a view of her- 
 self One wonders what had become of her sense of 
 humour. Fernande is to be "relevde"' before her fall, 
 and the operation is somehow to cover her fall pro- 
 spectively. 
 
 Take another example from "Ldone Leoni." The 
 subject of the story is the sufferings of an infatuated 
 young girl, who follows over Europe the most faithless, 
 unscrupulous and ignoble, but also the most irresistible 
 of charmers. It is "Manon Lescaut," with the incur- 
 able fickleness of Manon attributed to a man; and as 
 in the Abbe Prevost's story the touching element is the 
 devotion and constancy of the injured and deluded 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 79 
 
 Desgrieux, so in "L^one Ldoni" we are invited to feel 
 for the too closely-clinging Juliette, who is dragged 
 through the mire of a passion which she curses and 
 yet which survives unnameable outrage. She tells the 
 tale herself and yet it might have been expected that, 
 to deepen its effect, the author would have represented 
 her as withdrawn from the world and cured of her 
 excessive susceptibility. But we find her living with 
 another charmer, jewelled and perfumed; in her own 
 words, she is a fille entrenue, and it is to her new 
 lover that she relates the story of the stormy life she 
 led with the old. The situation requires no comment 
 beyond our saying that the author had morally no 
 taste. Of this want of moral taste we remember an- 
 other striking instance. Mademoiselle Merquem, who 
 gives her name to one of the later novels, is a young 
 girl of the most elevated character, beloved by a young 
 man, the intensity of whose affection she desires to 
 test To do this she contrives the graceful plan of in- 
 troducing into her house a mysterious infant, of whose 
 parentage she offers an explanation so obtrusively 
 vague, that the young man is driven regretfully to the 
 induction that its female parent is none other than 
 herself. We forget to what extent he is staggered, 
 but,- if we rightly remember, he withstands the test. 
 We do not judge him, but it is permitted to judge the 
 young lady. 
 
 We have called George Sand an imprmisatrice, and 
 in this character, where she deals with matters of a 
 more "objective" cast, she is always delightful; nothing 
 could be more charming than her tales of mystery, 
 intrigue and adventure. "Consuelo," "L'Homme de 
 Neige," "Le Piccinino," "Teverino," "Le Beau Lau- 
 
 12* 
 
l8o FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 rence" and its sequel, "Pierre qui Roule," "Antonia," 
 "Taraaris," "La Famille de Germandre," "La Filleule," 
 "La derni^re Aldini," "Cadio," "Flamarande"— these 
 things have all the spontaneous inventiveness of the 
 romances of Alexandre Dumas, his open-air quality, 
 his pleasure in a story for a story's sake, together with 
 an intellectual refinement, a philosophic savour, a re- 
 ference to spiritual things, in which he was grotesquely 
 deficient. 
 
 We have given, however, no full enumeration of the 
 author's romances, and it seems needless to do so. 
 We have lately been trying to read them over, and we 
 frankly confess that we have found it impossible. They 
 are excellent reading for once, but they lack that 
 quality which makes things classical — makes them im- 
 pose themselves. It has been said that what makes a 
 book a classic is its style. We should modify this, and 
 instead of style sa.y form. Madame Sand's novels have 
 plenty of style, but they have no form. Balzac's have 
 not a shred of style, but they have a great deal of 
 form. Posterity doubtless will make a selection from 
 each list, but the few volumes of Balzac it preserves 
 will remain with it much longer, we suspect, than those 
 which it borrows from his great contemporary. We 
 cannot easily imagine posterity travelling with "Valen- 
 tine" or "Mauprat," "Consuelo" or the "Marquis de 
 Villemer" in its trunk. At the • same time we can 
 imagine that if these admirable tales fall out of fashion, 
 such of our descendants as stray upon them in the 
 dusty corners of old libraries will sit down on the 
 bookcase ladder with the open volume and turn it 
 over with surprise and enchantment. What a beauti- 
 ful mind! they will say; what an extraordinary style! 
 
GEORGE SAND. l8l 
 
 Why have we not known more about these things? 
 And as, when that time comes, we suppose the world 
 will be given over to a "realism" that we have not as 
 yet begun faintly to foreshadow, George Sand's novels 
 will have, for the children of the twenty-first century, 
 something of the same charm which Spenser's "Fairy 
 Queen" has for those of the nineteenth. For a critic 
 of to-day to pick and choose among them seems almost 
 pedantic; they all belong quite to the same intellectual 
 family. They are the easy writing which makes hard 
 reading. 
 
 In saying this we must immediately limit our mean- 
 ing. All the world can read George Sand once and 
 not find it in the least hard. But it is not easy to 
 return to her; putting aside a number of fine descrip- 
 tive pages, the reader will not be likely to resort to 
 any volume that he has once laid down for a parti- 
 cular chapter, a brilliant passage, an entertaining con- 
 versation. George Sand invites reperusal less than 
 any mind of equal eminence. Is this because after all 
 she was a wOman, and the laxity of the feminine in- 
 tellect could not fail to claim its part in her? We will 
 not attempt to say; especially as, though it may be 
 pedantic to pick and choose among her works, we im- 
 mediately think of two or three that have as little as 
 possible of intellectual laxity. "Mauprat" is a solid, 
 masterly, manly book; "Andre" and "La Mare au 
 Diable" have an extreme perfection of form. M. Taine, 
 whom we quoted at the beginning of these remarks, 
 speaks of our author's rustic tales (the group to which 
 "La Mare au Diable" belongs*) as a signal proof of 
 
 * "Fran9ois leChampi," "La Petite Fadette " 
 
l82 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 her activity and versatility of mind. Besides being 
 charming stories, they are in fact a real study in 
 philology — such a study as Balzac made in the "Con- 
 tes Drolatiques," and as Thackeray made in "Henry 
 Esmond." George Sand's attempt to return to a more 
 artless and archaic stage of the language which she 
 usually handled in so modern and voluminous a fashion 
 was quite as successful as that of her fellows. In "Les 
 Maltres Sonneurs" it is extremely felicitous, and the 
 success could only have been achieved by an extra- 
 ordinarily sympathetic and flexible talent. This is one 
 of the impressions George Sand's reader — even if he 
 have read her but once — ^brings away with him. His 
 other prevailing impression will bear upon that quality 
 which, if it must be expressed in a single word, may 
 best be called the generosity of her genius. It is true 
 that there are one or two things which limit this 
 generosity. We think, for example, of Madame Sand's 
 peculiar power of self-defence, her constant need to 
 justify, to glorify, to place in a becoming light, to 
 "arrange," as we said at the outset, those errors and 
 weaknesses in which her own personal credit may be 
 at stake. She never accepts a weakness as a weak- 
 ness; she always dresses it out as a virtue; and if her 
 heroines abandon their lovers and lie to their hus- 
 bands, you may be sure it is from motives of the 
 highest morality. Such productions as "Lucrezia 
 Floriani" and "Elle et Lui" may be attributed to an 
 ungenerous disposition — both of them being stories in 
 which Madame Sand is supposed to have described 
 her relations with persons who, for her, were dead, 
 and whose state enabled her without contradiction to 
 portray them as monsters of selfishness, while the 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 83 
 
 female protagonist appeared as the noblest of her sex. 
 But without taking up the discussion provoked by 
 these works, we may say that, on the face of the 
 matter, there is a good deal of justification for their 
 author. She poured her material into the crucible of 
 art, and the artist's material is of necessity in a large 
 measure his experience. Madame Sand never described 
 the actual; this was often her artistic weakness, and as 
 she has the reproach she should also have the credit. 
 "Lucrezia Floriani" and "Elle et Lui" were doubt- 
 less to her imagination simply tales of what might 
 have been. 
 
 It is hard not to feel that there is a certain high 
 good conscience and passionate sincerity in the words 
 in which, in one of her prefaces, she alludes to the 
 poor novel which Alfred de Musset's brother put forth 
 as an incriminative retort to "Elle et Lui." Some of 
 her friends had advised her not to notice the book; 
 "but after reflection she judged it to be her duty to 
 attend to it at the proper time and place. She was, 
 however, by no means in haste. She was in Auvergne 
 following the imaginary traces of the figures of her 
 new novel along the scented byways, among the 
 sweetest scenes of spring. She had brought the 
 pamphlet with her to read it; but she did not read it. 
 She had forgotten her herbarium, and the pages of the 
 infamous book, used as a substitute, were purified by 
 the contact of the wild flowers of Puy-de-D6me and 
 Sancy. Sweet perfumes of the things of God, who 
 to you could prefer the memory of the foulnesses of 
 civilization?" 
 
 It must, however, to be just all round, be farther 
 remembered that those persons and causes which Ma- 
 
184 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 dame Sand has been charged first and last with mis- 
 representing belonged to the silent, inarticulate, even 
 defunct class. She was always the talker, the survivor, 
 the adversary armed with a gift of expression so magi- 
 cal as almost to place a premium upon sophistry. To 
 weigh everything, we imagine she really outlived ex- 
 perience, morally, to a degree which made her feel, in 
 retrospect, as if she were dealing with the history of 
 another person. "Oil sont-ils, oil sont-ils, nos amours 
 passes?" she exclaims in one of her later novels. 
 (What has become of the passions we have shufHed 
 off? — into what dusky limbo are they flung away?) 
 And she goes on to say that it is a great mistake to 
 suppose that we die only once and at last. We die 
 piecemeal; some part of us is always dying; it is only 
 what is left that dies at last. As for our "amours 
 passes," where are they indeed? Jacques Laurent 
 and the Prince Karol may be fancied, in echo, to 
 exclaim. 
 
 In saying that George Sand lacks truth the critic 
 more particularly means that she lacks exactitude — 
 lacks the method of truth. Of a certain general truth- 
 fulness she is full to overflowing; we feel that to her 
 mind nothing human is alien. We should say of her, 
 not that she knew human nature, but that she felt it. 
 At all events she loved it and enjoyed it. She was 
 contemplative; but she was not, in the deepest sense, 
 observant. She was a sentimentalist of a very high order, 
 but she was not a moralist. She perceived a thousand 
 things, but she rarely in strictness judged ; so that al- 
 though her books have a great deal of wisdom, they 
 have not what is called weight. With the physical 
 world she was as familiar as with the human, and she 
 
GEORGE SAND. 1 85 
 
 knew it perhaps better. She would probably at any 
 time have said that she cared much more for botany, 
 mineralogy and astronomy, than for sociology. "Na- 
 ture," as we call it — landscape, trees and flowers, rocks 
 and streams and clouds — plays a larger part in her 
 novels than in any others, and in none are they de- 
 scribed with such a grand general felicity. If Turner 
 had written his landscapes rather than painted them 
 he might have written as George Sand has done. If 
 she was less truthful in dealing with men and women, 
 says M. Taine, it is because she had too high an ideal 
 for them; she could not bear not to represent them as 
 better than they are. She delights in the represen- 
 tation of virtue, and if we sometimes feel that she has 
 not really measured the heights on which she places 
 her characters, that so to place them has cost little to 
 her understanding, we are nevertheless struck with the 
 nobleness of her imagination. M. Taine calls her an 
 idealist; we should say, somewhat more narrowly, that 
 she was an optimist. An optimist "lined," as the 
 French say, with a romancer, is not the making of a 
 moralist. George Sand's optimism, her idealism, are 
 very beautiful, and the source of that impression of 
 largeness, luminosity and liberality which she makes 
 upon us. But we suspect that something even better 
 in a novelist is that tender appreciation of actuality 
 which makes even the application of a single coat of 
 rose-colour seem an act of violence. 
 
1 86 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 CHARLES DE BERNARD AND GUSTAVE 
 FLAUBERT. 
 
 I. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, whose literary judgments are always 
 worth noting, whether they strike us as correct or not, 
 has somewhere a happy sentence about Charles de 
 Bernard — about "that ease and irresponsible grace 
 which was the gift of this first of Balzac's pupils — of 
 him who might have been superior to the master if a 
 pupil ever were so, and especially if he had done more 
 —if, in short, he had lived." We call these wor(Js 
 happy in spite of their slight fundamental unsoundness. 
 Charles de Bernard was only in a very imperfect sense 
 a pupil of Balzac. His style has as little as possible 
 in common with that of his great contemporary, and 
 he is guilty of no visible attempt to tread in the latter's 
 footsteps. The two writers belong to two very distinct 
 categories — Balzac to the type of mind that takes 
 things hard, and Charles de Bernard to the type of 
 mind that takes things easily. The author of "Ger- 
 faut" was Balzac's protege rather than his pupil, and 
 though we have Sainte-Beuve's affirmation that Balzac's 
 literary vanity was the "most gross and rapacious" he 
 had ever known, it does not appear that he took 
 umbrage at his "pupil's" ripening talent. How many 
 budding reputations Balzac may have endeavoured to 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. 1 87 
 
 drive to the wall, we are of course unable to say; but 
 there are at least two recorded cases of his extending 
 to unfriended genius an open hand. When Stendhal, 
 who for a long time was at once the most powerful 
 and the most obscure of romancers, published his 
 "Chartreuse de Parme," Balzac greeted the book in a 
 long, florid, redundant review, with a series of the 
 handsomest compliments that one literary man ever 
 paid to another. And his admiration was perfectly 
 sincere; the artist was captivated by the artist. In like 
 manner, in 1834, when Charles de Bernard, after com- 
 ing up to Paris from his native Besangon to seek his 
 literary fortune and quite failing to find it, had re- 
 turned to his provincial nest in some discouragement, 
 Balzac, struck with the promise of a volume of verse 
 which had been the principal result of the excursion, 
 sought him out, urged him to try again, and gave him 
 some fraternal literary advice. He "started" him, as 
 the phrase is. It is true that he started him left foot 
 foremost, and his advice has a singular sound. He 
 recommended him to try his hand at historical novels 
 — something in the line of Walter Scott. FoTtunately 
 Charles de Bernard had taken his own measure. He 
 began to write tales, but they were anything but 
 historical. They were short stories of the day, in the 
 lightest style of improvisation. "Gerfaut," his first 
 regular novel, and on the whole his best, alone reveals 
 some traces of Balzac's advice. There is an old castle, 
 and a good deal of killing, a secret closet in the wall, and 
 a very good portrait of a feudal nobleman born too late. 
 Charles de Bernard has at the present day hardly 
 more than an historical value, and his novels are not 
 to be recommended to people who have anything of 
 
1 88 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 especial importance at hand to read. But in speaking 
 of the secondary French novelists it is but fair to allow 
 him a comfortable niche, for if he be not especially 
 'vorth studying he at least leaves you a very friendly 
 feeling for him if he comes in your way. He is old- 
 fashioned, faded, ineffectively realistic; his cleverness 
 is not the cleverness of the present hour; his art and 
 his artifice seem a trifle primitive and meagre; and 
 yet for all that he is more enjoyable than many of his 
 highly perfected modern successors. If the prime pur- 
 pose of a novel is to give us pleasure, Charles de 
 Bernard is a better novelist than Gustave Flaubert. 
 "Gerfaut" and "Les AUes d'Icare" proceed doubtless 
 from a very much less powerful and original mind than 
 "Madame Bovary"; but they are at any rate works of 
 entertainment, of amenity. "Realism," as we under- 
 stand it now, has been invented since this writer's day, 
 and however much we may admire and applaud it, 
 we cannot but feel that it was a good fortune for a 
 charming story-teller to have come a little before it. 
 And since Balzac has been mentioned, it may really 
 be said that when it comes to being agreeable Charles 
 de Bernard need not shrink from comparison with 
 even so imposing a name. He is slight and loose in 
 tissue, pale in colouring; in a word, a second-rate 
 genius. Balzac is a genius of all time; he towers and 
 overshadows; and yet if half a dozen volumes of each 
 writer were standing on your shelf, and you should 
 feel an impulse to taste of the sweets of fiction, you 
 were wiser to take down Charles de Bernard than 
 Balzac. The writer of these lines feels for the author 
 of "Gerfaut" that particular kindness which many 
 people who relish the beautiful qualities of the French 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. 1 89 
 
 mind in their purity entertain for the talents that 
 flourished and fell before the second Empire set its 
 seal upon things. It is not taking the matter too 
 tragically to say that Charles de Bernard just escaped. 
 Certainly, many of the brilliant writers of the same 
 generation have lived through the Empire and held 
 their own against it. To George Sand and Victor 
 Hugo the Empire could give nothing, and it could take 
 nothing away from them. But Charles de Bernard was 
 not of their calibre; he ranks, in the degree of his 
 talent, with the Feydeaus, the Octave Feuillets, the 
 Edraond Abouts of literature. Readers who appreciate 
 shades of difference, and who, while they admire the 
 extreme cleverness of these writers, find something in 
 their tone that fails to attract personal sympathy, will 
 discover a great deal to relish in Charles de Bernard. 
 Whether he too would have been corrupted, whether 
 his easy, natural manner would have learned the per- 
 versities and sophistries of the Decadence, is more 
 than I can say. At any rate, fortune was kind to him; 
 she never gave him a chance. She broke him smoothly 
 oif, and in compensation for the brevity of his career 
 she made him a type of some of the agreeable things 
 that were about to pass away. He may represent, to 
 an imaginative critic, the old French cleverness as dis- 
 tinguished from the new. Of the lightness, the ease, 
 the gaiety, the urbanity, the good taste, the good 
 spirits, the discretion — of all those charming things 
 that have traditionally marked the cultivated French 
 character at its best Charles de Bernard is an excel- 
 lent illustration. He seems to me the last of the light 
 writers in whom these gifts are fresh and free. In 
 the later generation the quality of wit undergoes an 
 
I go FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 indefinable transformation. The cleverness is greater 
 than ever, but the charm is gone; the music is elaborate, 
 but the instrument is cracked. The gaiety becomes 
 forced and hard and the urbanity ironical; the light- 
 ness turns to levity. Charles de Bernard answers to 
 our notion of the Frenchman of an earlier date, who 
 was before all things good company — who had in a 
 supreme degree the sociable virtues. Thackeray, in 
 his "Paris Sketch-Book," devotes a chapter to him (he 
 was then a contemporary) and gives an abstract of one 
 of his novels. He evidently relished this urbane quality 
 in him, and we remember even to have seen it some- 
 where affirmed that he had taken him for his model 
 and declared that it was the height of his own ambi- 
 tion to do for English society what Charles de Bernard 
 had done for French. This last strikes us as a rather 
 apocryphal tale; Charles de Bernard was a satirist, but 
 his satire is to that of "Vanity Fair" what lemonade 
 is to prime Burgundy. In Thackeray there are, morally, 
 many Charles de Bernards. It is as against Eugene 
 Sue and George Sand (whom he seems rather un- 
 philosophically tb lump together) that he praises the 
 author of "Les Ailes d'lcare," and he especially com- 
 mends his gentlemanly tone. The "gentlemanly tone," 
 with its merits and limitations, is an incontestable 
 characteristic of our author. It may be said that in a 
 thoroughly agreeable style good-breeding is never an 
 aggressive quality, and that a gentleman who keeps re- 
 minding you that he is a gentleman is a very ambigu- 
 ous personage. But Charles de Bernard is gentlemanly 
 by juxtaposition, as it were. He quietly goes his way, 
 and it is only when you compare his gait with that of 
 his neighbours that you see how very well he holds 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. IQI 
 
 himself. The truth is, that many of his companions 
 in this matter swagger deplorably; and here again, 
 curiously (to return to Balzac) is another point at which 
 the small man is superior to the great. The tone of 
 good-breeding Balzac never in any degree possessed; 
 the greatest genius in his line conceivable, he was ab- 
 solutely and positively not a gentleman. He sweats 
 blood and water to appear one, but his efforts only 
 serve to betray more vividly his magnificently middle- 
 class temperament. M. Armand de Pontmartin, the 
 author of the biographical sketch prefixed to the col- 
 lected edition of Charles de Bernard's novels, has some 
 rather felicitous remarks upon the difference, in this 
 respect, between his hero and the latter's rivals. 
 "Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas, who have had 
 their phase of rubbing shoulders (or of trying to) with 
 the aristocracy, their repeated attempts at flattery and 
 advances to what the hairdressers and the milliners 
 call the monde iUgant, have never been able to pro- 
 duce anything but caricatures when they endeavoured 
 to represent it. Its doors were open to them; they 
 found a passport in the irresistible although imprudent 
 curiosity of its members; the models were there in 
 position, before their eyes; they were dying with the 
 desire to persuade their readers that they lived the 
 same life and breathed the same air; that they were 
 not naturalized, but indigenous. No expenditure of 
 dazzling description, bespangled with armorial mottoes 
 and shields; no female portraits h la Lawrence, smoth- 
 ered in silk, and lace, and velvet; no inventories of 
 coachmakers and architects, tailors and jewellers — no- 
 thing of all this was spared. But, alas, it might have 
 been; the struggle was vain! The false note sounded 
 
192 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 in the finest place— the long ear peeped out of the 
 thickest of the lion's skin." This is very well — though 
 it is painful to have to record that M. de Pontmartin 
 too, who understands the matter so well, has been ac- 
 cused of snobbery by a literary detective no less acute 
 than Sainte-Beuve. But Charles de Bernard, though he 
 often wrote of the monde iUgant, was emphatically not 
 a snob. The point of view of the man who is con- 
 scious of good blood in his veins was the one he in- 
 stinctively took; but in dealing with the people and 
 things that usually excite the snobbish passion, he is 
 always perfectly simple. He is never pretentious; he 
 is easy, natural, impartially civil. 
 
 His literary career was very short; his novels were 
 all published between 1838 and 1847 — a period of 
 nine years. His life was uneventful; it was altogether 
 in his works. The author of the short memoir I have 
 mentioned notes the singular fact that although his 
 novels are essentially what are called novels of man- 
 ners, he led a secluded life and went very little into 
 the world. Gaiety and hilarity abound in his tales, 
 and yet M. de Pontmartin intimates that the man him- 
 self was rather sombre. "He had long had the good 
 taste to prefer domestic life to the vie de salon, and in 
 the evening he liked much better to remain with his 
 wife and children than to go into the world in pursuit 
 of models and originals. And nevertheless, muffled in 
 from the outer world, inaccessible or deaf to its sounds, 
 solitary, almost misanthropic, he seems to have listened 
 at doors, to have painted from nature. He guessed 
 what he did not see; he heard what he did not listen 
 to." He had this mark of a man of genius — he divined. 
 His literary personality was apparently quite distinct 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. 1 93 
 
 from his private one, and this, taken in connection 
 with the extreme facility and neatness of his style, 
 entitles him in a measure to be called a man of genius. 
 His inspiration was his own, and he was an excellent 
 writer. If his inspiration was his own, however, it 
 must be added that it was never of a very high order. 
 The most general praise we can give his novels is that 
 they are extremely diverting. The humolir is neither 
 broad nor coarse; it is always discriminating, and it is 
 often delicate; but it is humour of the second-rate 
 sort. It is not rich nor suggestive; your entertainment 
 begins and ends with your laugh. Many of his tales 
 are very short, so that half a dozen go into a volume. 
 These are always highly readable, and if you begin 
 one you will be sure to finish it. The best of his 
 novels, "Les Ailes d'Icare," "Un Homme Serieux," 
 "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," are no less clever; 
 and yet it may be that here and there even a well- 
 disposed reader will lay the book down at the end of 
 a hundred pages. For a serious writer, he will say, 
 you are really too light; it is all too smooth and 
 shallow, too artificial. Once at least, however, in 
 "Gerfaut," Charles de Bernard seems to have felt the 
 impulse to grasp a subject nearer its roots. In spite 
 of a number of signs of immaturity, this is his solidest 
 and most effective work. His tales are usually come- 
 dies; this is a tragedy. The reader cares little for his 
 hero, who is a gentleman of a type excessively familiar 
 in French literature — a distinguished man of letters, 
 of restless imagination, who comes down to the Chiteau 
 de Bergenheim for the express purpose of seducing its 
 pretty mistress, and who, when installed among its 
 comforts, and smothered in hospitality by the husband, 
 
 French Poeis and Novelists. ^ 3 
 
194 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 proceeds in the most scientific manner to bombard the 
 affections of the wife. Nor are we much more inter- 
 ested in Madame de Bergenheim herself, who surrenders 
 after a barely nominal siege and without having at all 
 convinced us that her affections are worth possessing. 
 But the book, in spite of a diffuseness of which after- 
 ward the author was rarely guilty, is written with in- 
 finite spirit and point, and some of the subordinate 
 figures are forcibly and wittily sketched. Nothing 
 could be lighter and more picturesquely humorous than 
 the portrait of Marillac, the irrepressible Bohemian and 
 the fidus Achates of the hero. "Talent apart, Marillac 
 was an artist tooth and nail — an artist from the point, 
 or rather from the plateau, of his great crop of hair to 
 the tips of his boots, which he would have liked to 
 pull out to the mediaeval longitude; for he excelled 
 especially in dressing for his profession, and possessed 
 the longest moustaches in literature. If he had no 
 great amount of art in his brain, he had at least its 
 name perpetually in his mouth. Art! — to pronounce 
 the word he rounded his lips like M. Jourdain saying 
 O! Farces or pictures, poetry or music, he did a bit 
 of everything, like a horse who is warranted good 
 either for the shafts or the saddle. When he came 
 out of the musical shafts he bravely got into the 
 literary harness, which he considered his veritable 
 vocation and his principal glory. He signed his name 
 'Marillac, man of letters.' Nevertheless, in spite of a 
 profound disdain for the bourgeois, whom he spoke of 
 as a grocer, and for the French Academy, to which he 
 had taken an oath never to belong, one could accuse 
 him of no serious defects. One could forgive him 
 being an artist before everything, in spite of every- 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. 1 95 
 
 thing, an artist — damnation!" A still better image is 
 that of Christian de Bergenheim, the husband of the 
 decidedly inexpensive heroine. It reads, for definite- 
 ness and vigour, like a page torn from Balzac. "He 
 was one of those men whom Napoleon had in some 
 sort brought to life again — the type which had been 
 gradually dying out since the feudal ages; a man of 
 action exclusively, spending nothing superfluous in 
 imagination or sensibility, and, on momentous occasions, 
 never letting his soul travel farther than the swing of 
 his sabre. The complete absence of that sense which 
 most people call morbid irritability and others poetry 
 had caused the springs of his character to retain their 
 native hardness and stiffness. His soul lacked wings 
 to leave the world of the real; but this incapacity had 
 its compensation. It was impossible to apply a more 
 vigorous arm than his to anything that came under the 
 head of material resistance. He lived neither yester- 
 day nor to-morrow; he lived to-day. Of small account 
 before or after, he displayed at the critical moment an 
 energy the more powerful that no waste, no leakage of 
 untimely emotion, had diminished its force. The few 
 ideas contained in his brain had become clear, hard, 
 and impenetrable, like diamonds. By the inner light 
 of these fixed stars he walked in all things, as one 
 walks in the sunshine, his head erect, straight before 
 him, ready to crush with his foot all obstacles and 
 interruptions." A few passages of that sort, scattered 
 through his novels, mark Charles de Bernard's maxi- 
 mum as an analyst. But if this is the maximum, the 
 average is very high. He has described all sorts of 
 social types, narrated all kinds of intrigues, always 
 ingeniously, vividly, and with a natural, epicurean irony. 
 
 13* 
 
ig6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Considering that we do not recommend the reader 
 who is unacquainted with him to make any great point 
 of retracing his steps along the crowded highway of 
 what we nowadays call culture, to bend over our author 
 where his own march stopped and left him, it may 
 seem that we are lingering too long upon Charles de 
 Bernard. But there is another word to say, and it is 
 an interesting one. Charles de Bernard's talent is great 
 ■ — very great, greater than the impression it leaves; and 
 the reason why this clever man remains so persistently 
 second-rate is, to our sense, because he had no morality. 
 By this we of course do not mean that he did not 
 choose to write didactic tales, winding up with a goody 
 lecture and a distribution of prizes and punishments. 
 We mean that he had no moral emotion, no preferences, 
 no instincts — no moral imagination, in a word. His 
 morality was altogether traditional, and, such as it was, 
 it seems to have held him in a very loose grasp. It 
 was not the current social notion of right and wrong, 
 of honour and dishonour, that he represented, but 
 something even less consistent. What we find in him 
 is not the average morality, but a morality decidedly 
 below the average. He does not care, he does not 
 feel, and yet his indifference is not philosophic. He 
 has no heat of his own, save that of the raconteur; 
 his laugh is always good-natured, but always cold. He 
 describes all sorts of mean and ignoble things without 
 in the least gauging their quality. He belongs to the 
 intellectual family — and very large it is in France — 
 of the amusing author of " Gil Bias." All its members 
 know how to write, and how, up to a certain point, to 
 observe; but their observation has no reflex action, as 
 it were, and they remain as dry as they are brilliant. 
 
CHARLES DE BERNARD. 1 97 
 
 Yet for all this the author of these lines is conscious 
 of a tender regard for Charles de Bernard, which he 
 would be sorry not to confess to in conclusion. He 
 remembers turning over, as a child, an old back-parlour 
 volume of the "keepsake" genus, bound in tarnished 
 watered silk, as such volumes are apt to be. It was 
 called, if memory serves him, the "Idler in France," 
 and it was written — if written is the word — by the 
 Countess of Blessington. With the text he was too 
 timorous to grapple; but the volume was embellished 
 with beautiful steel plates, depicting the delights of 
 the French capital. There was the good old crooked, 
 dirty, picturesque Paris of Charles X. and Louis Philippe 
 — the Paris ignorant of Louis Napoleon and Baron 
 Haussmann, the new Boulevards and the "American 
 quarter." There were pictures of the old Boulevards 
 and the Palais Royal, the staircase at the Opera, the 
 table d'hdte at the Hotel des Princes, a salon in the 
 Chaussee d'Antin. The gentlemen all wore high 
 rolling coat-coUars and straps to their trousers; the 
 ladies wore large-brimmed bonnets and cross-laced 
 slippers. The Paris of these antediluvian Parisians 
 seemed to his fancy a paradise; and he supposes that 
 a part of his lurking tenderness for Charles de Bernard 
 rests upon the fact that it appears to live again in his 
 pages. 
 
 II. 
 
 Since those days the novel has flourished more and 
 more, and if all that is needful to make us like a cer- 
 tain order of things is to see it vividly and picturesquely 
 portrayed, we should assuredly long since have been 
 
igS FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 won over to an aesthetic tendresse for the Empire. The 
 Empire has had its novelists by the dozen; emulation, 
 competition, and the extraordinary favour which this 
 branch of literature has come to enjoy, have rendered 
 them remarkably skilful and audacious. For entertain- 
 ment of a high flavour we have only to choose at hazard. 
 If at the same time, however, we are modestly inclined 
 to edification, there must be a certain logic in our choice. 
 The array is somewhat embarrassing; to the roll-call 
 of novelists of the second Empire a formidable host 
 responds. Octave Feuillet, Gustave Flaubert, Ernest 
 Feydeau, Edmond About, the brothers De Goncourt, 
 Gustave Droz, the younger Dumas, Victor Cherbuliez, 
 Erckmann-Chatrian — these are some of the names that 
 immediately present themselves. All these names, with 
 one exception (that of Alexandre Dumas), represent a 
 constellation of romances more or less brilliant; and in 
 their intervals glitters here and there a single star — a 
 very clever tale by an author who has tried, or suc- 
 ceeded, but once. A couple of examples of this latter 
 class are the exquisite "Dominique" of Eugfene Fromentin, 
 and the crude and vulgar, but powerful and touching 
 story, "Un Divorce" of Mme. Andre Leo. When we 
 cannot look at everything, we must look at what is 
 most characteristic. The most characteristic work in 
 this line, in France, of the last five-and-twenty years, 
 is the realistic, descriptive novel which sprang out of 
 Balzac, began in its effort at intensity of illusion where 
 Balzac stopped, and which, whether or no it has sur- 
 passed him, has at least exceeded him. Everything 
 in France, proceeds by "schools," and there is no artist 
 so bungling that he will not find another to call him 
 "dear master." Gustave Flaubert is of the school of 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. igg 
 
 Balzac; the brothers De Goncourt and Emile Zola are 
 of the school of Flaubert. This last writer is alto- 
 gether the most characteristic and powerful repre- 
 sentative of what has lately been most original in the 
 evolution of the French imagination, and he has for 
 ourselves the farther merit that he must always be 
 strange and curious. English literature has certainly 
 been doing some very odd things of late, and striving 
 hard to prove she is able to be anything that individual 
 writers choose to make her. But at the best we are 
 all flies in amber, and however furiously we may buzz 
 and rattle, the amber sticks to our wings. It is not in 
 the temper of English vision to see things as M. Flau- 
 bert sees them, and it is not in the genius of the 
 English language to present them as he presents them. 
 With all respect to "Madame Bovary," "Madame Bo- 
 vary" is fortunately an inimitable work. 
 
 "Madame Bovary" wasM. Flaubert's first novel, and 
 it has remained altogether his best. He has produced 
 little and his works bear the marks of the most care- 
 ful preparation. His second work of fiction was 
 "Salammbd," an archsological novel of the highest 
 pretensions. Salammbo is a Carthaginian princess, the 
 elder sister of Hannibal. After this came, at a long 
 interval, "L'Education Sentimentale," a tale of the 
 present day, and lastly appeared "La Tentation de St. 
 Antoine" — archaeology, but in the shape of something 
 that was neither novel nor drama; a sort of free imi- 
 tation of the mediaeval "mystery." "Madame Bovary" 
 was a great success — a success of merit, and, as they 
 say in France, a success of scandal; but the public 
 verdict has not been flattering to its companions. The 
 mass of the public finds them dull, and wonders how 
 
200 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 a writer can expend such an immensity of talent ic 
 making himself unreadable. To a discriminating taste, 
 however, M. Flaubert can write nothing that does not 
 repay attention. 
 
 The "scandal" in relation to "Madame Bovary" 
 was that the book was judicially impeached and pro- 
 secuted for immorality. The defence was eloquent, 
 and the writer was acquitted; the later editions of the 
 book contain, in an appendix, a full report of the trial. 
 It is a work upon which it is possible to be very para- 
 doxical, or rather in relation to which sincere opinion 
 may easily have the air of paradox. It is a book 
 adapted for the reverse of what is called family read- 
 ing, and yet we remember thinking, the first time we 
 read it, in the heat of our admiration for its power, 
 that it would make the most useful of Sunday-school 
 tracts. In M. Taine's elaborate satire, "The Opinions 
 of M. Graindorge," there is a report of a conversation 
 at a dinner party between an English spinster of didac- 
 tic habits and a decidedly audacious Frenchman. He 
 begs to recommend to her a work which he has lately 
 been reading and which cannot fail to win the approval 
 
 •_,of all persons interested in the propagation of virtue. 
 
 tThe lady lends a sympathetic ear, and he gives a rapid 
 sketch of the tale — the history of a wicked woman 
 who goes from one abomination to another, until at 
 last the judgment of Heaven descends upon her, and, 
 blighted and blasted, she perishes miserably. The 
 lady grasps her pencil and note-book and begs for the 
 name of the edifying volume, and the gentleman leans 
 across the dinner table and answers with a smile — 
 " 'Madame Bovary; or. The Consequences of Miscon- 
 duct.' " This is a very pretty epigram and it is more 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. 20l 
 
 than an epigram. It may be very seriously maintained 
 that M. Flaubert's masterpiece is the pearl of "Sun- 
 day reading." Practically M. Flaubert is a potent 
 moralist; whether, when he wrote his, book, he was so 
 theoretically is a matter best known to himself. Every 
 out-and-out realist who provokes serious meditation 
 may claim that he is a moralist; for that, after all, is 
 the most that the moralists can do for us. They sow 
 the seeds of virtue; they can hardly pretend to raise 
 the crop. Excellence in this matter consists in the 
 tale and the moral hanging well together, and this 
 they are certainly more likely to do when there has 
 been a definite intention — that intention of which 
 artists who cultivate "art for art" are usually so ex- 
 tremely mistrustful; exhibiting thereby, surely, a most 
 injurious disbelief in the illimitable alchemy of art. 
 We may say on the whole, doubtless, that the highly 
 didactic character of "Madame Bovary" is an accident, 
 inasmuch as the works that have followed it, both from 
 its author's and from other hands, have been things to 
 read much less for meditation's than for sensation's 
 sake. M. Flaubert's theory as a novelist, briefly ex- 
 pressed, is to begin on the outside. Human life, wei 
 may imagine his sayfngrisT)efore all things a spectacle,! 
 an occupation and entertainment for the eyes. Whatf 
 our eyes show us is all that we are sure of; so with 
 this we will at any rate begin. As this is infinitely 
 curious and entertaining, if we know how to look at it, 
 and as such looking consumes a great deal of time and 
 space, it is very possible that with this also we may 
 end. We admit nevertheless that there is something 
 else, beneath and behind, that belongs to the realm 
 of vagueness and uncertainty, and into this we must 
 
202 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 occasionally dip. It crops up sometimes irrepressibly, 
 and of course we do not positively count it out. On 
 the whole we will leave it to take care of itself and 
 let it come off as it may. If we propose to represent 
 the pictorial side of life, of course we must do it 
 thoroughly well — we must be complete. There must 
 be no botching, no bungling, no scamping; it must be 
 a very serious matter. We will "render" things — any- 
 thing, everything, from a chimney-pot to the shoulders 
 of a duchess — as painters render them. We believe 
 there is a certain particular phrase, better than any 
 other, for everything in the world, and the thoroughly 
 accomplished writer ends by finding it. We care only 
 for what is — we know nothing about what ought to be. 
 Human life is interesting, because we are in it and of 
 it; all kinds of curious things are taking place in it 
 (we do not analyse the curious — for artists it is an 
 ultimate fact); we select as many of them as possible. 
 Some of the most curious are the most disagreeable, 
 but the chance for "rendering" in the disagreeable is 
 as great as anywhere else (some people think even 
 greater), and moreover the disagreeable is extremely 
 characteristic. The real is the most satisfactory thing 
 in the world, and if we once fairly advance in this 
 direction nothing shall frighten us back. 
 
 Some such words as those may stand as a rough 
 sketch of the sort of intellectual conviction under which 
 "Madame Bovary" was written. The theory in this 
 case at least was applied with brilliant success; it 
 produced a masterpiece. Realism seems to us with 
 "Madame Bovary" to have said its last word. We 
 doubt whether the same process will ever produce 
 anything better. In M. Flaubert's own hands it has 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. 2O3 
 
 distinctly failed to do so. "L'Education Sentimentale " 
 is in comparison mechanical and inanimate. The great 
 good fortune of "Madame Bovary" is that here the 
 theory seems to have been invented after the fact. The 
 author began to describe because he had laid up a 
 great fund of disinterested observations; he had been 
 looking at things for years, for his own edification, in 
 that particular way. The imitative talents in the same 
 line, those whose highest ambition is to "do" their 
 Balzac or their Flaubert, give us the sense of looking 
 at the world only with the most mercenary motives — 
 of going about to stare at things only for the sake of 
 their forthcoming novel. M. Flaubert knew what he 
 was describing — knew it extraordinarily well. One 
 can hardly congratulate him on his knowledge; any- 
 thing drearier, more sordid, more vulgar and desolate 
 than the greater part of the subject-matter of this 
 romance it would be impossible to conceive. "Mceurs 
 de Province," the sub-title runs, and the work is the 
 most striking possible example of the singular passion, 
 so common among Frenchmen of talent, for disparaging 
 their provincial life. Emma Bovary is the daughter of 
 a small farmer, who has been able to send her to 
 boarding-school, and to give her something of an 
 "elegant" education. She is pretty and graceful, and 
 she marries a small country doctor — the kindest, 
 simplest, stupidest of husbands. He takes her to live 
 in a squalid little country town, called Yonville-l'Abbaye, 
 near Rouen; she is luxurious and sentimental; she 
 wastes away with ennui, loneliness, and hatred of her 
 narrow lot and absent opportunities, and on the very 
 first chance she takes a lover. With him she is happy 
 for a few months, and then he deserts her, brutally 
 
204 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and cynically. She falls violently ill and comes near 
 dying; then she gets well and takes another lover, of 
 a different kind. All the world — the very little world 
 of Yonville-l'Abbaye — sees and knows and gossips; her 
 husband alone neither sees nor suspects. Meanwhile 
 she has been spending money remorselessly and in- 
 sanely; she has made promissory notes and she is 
 smothered in debt. She has undermined the ground 
 beneath her husband's feet; her second lover leaves 
 her; she is ruined, dishonoured, utterly at bay. She 
 goes back as a beggar to her first lover, and he re- 
 fuses to give her a sou. She tries to sell herself and 
 fails; then, in impotence and desperation, she collapses. 
 She takes poison and dies horribly, and the bailiffs 
 come down on her husband, who is still heroically 
 ignorant. At last he "learns the truth, and it is too 
 much for him; he loses all courage, and dies one day 
 on his garden-bench, leaving twelve francs fifty cen- 
 times to his little girl, who is sent to get her living in 
 a cotton-mill. The tale is a tragedy, unillumined and 
 unredeemed, and it might seem, on this rapid and im- 
 perfect showing, to be rather a vulgar tragedy. Women 
 who get into trouble with the extreme facility of 
 Emma Bovary, and by the same method, are un- 
 fortunately not rare, and the better opinion seems to 
 be that they deserve but a limited degree of sympathy. 
 The history of M. Flaubert's heroine is nevertheless 
 full of substance and meaning. In spite of the ela- 
 borate system of portraiture to which she is subjected, 
 in spite of being minutely described, in all her attitudes 
 and all her moods, from the hem of her garment to 
 the texture of her finger-nails, she remains a living 
 creature, and as a living creature she interests us. 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. 2O5 
 
 The only thing that poor Charles Bovary, after her 
 death, can find to say to her lovers is, "It's the fault of 
 fatality." And in fact, as we enter into the situation, 
 it is. M. Flaubert gives his readers the impression of 
 having known few kinds of women, but he has evidently 
 known intimately this particular kind. We see the 
 process of her history; we see how it marches from 
 step to step to its horrible termination, and we see that 
 it could not have been otherwise. It is a case of the 
 passion for luxury, for elegance, for the world's most 
 agreeable and comfortable things, of an intense and 
 complex imagination, corrupt almost in the germ, and 
 finding corruption, and feeding on it, in the most un- 
 likely and unfavouring places — it is a case of all this 
 being pressed back upon itself with a force which 
 makes an explosion inevitable. Madame Bovary has 
 an insatiable hunger for pleasure, and she lives in the 
 midst of dreariness; she is ignorant, vain, naturally 
 depraved; of the things she dreams about not an in- 
 timation ever reaches her; so she makes her trouie, as 
 the French say, bores her opening, scrapes and scratches 
 her way out into the light, where she can. The reader 
 may protest against a heroine who is "naturally de- 
 praved." You are welcome, he may say, to make of 
 a heroine what you please, to carry her where you 
 please; but in mercy do not set us down to a young 
 lady of whom, on the first page, there is nothing better 
 to be said than that. But all this is a question of de- 
 gree. Madame Bovary is typical, like all powerfully- 
 conceived figures in fiction. There are a great many 
 potential Madame Bovarys, a great many young women, 
 vain, ignorant, leading ugly, vulgar, intolerable lives, 
 and possessed of irritable nerves and of a high natural 
 
206 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 appreciation of luxury, of admiration, of agreeable 
 sensations, of what they consider the natural rights of 
 pretty women; who are more or less launched upon 
 the rapid slope which she descended to the bottom. 
 The gentleman who recommended her history to the 
 English lady at M. Taine's dinner-party would say that 
 her history was in intention a solemn warning to such 
 young women not to allow themselves to think too 
 much about the things they cannot have. Does M. 
 Flaubert in this case complete his intention? does he 
 suggest an alternative — a remedy? plenty of plain sew- 
 ing, serious reading, general house-work? M. Flaubert 
 keeps well out of the province of remedies; he simply 
 relates his facts, in all their elaborate horror. The 
 (''accumulation of detail is so immense, the vividness of 
 ^portraiture of people, of places, of times and hours, is 
 so poignant and convincing, that one is dragged into 
 the very current and tissue of the story; the reader 
 himself seems to have lived in it all, more than in any 
 novel we can recall. At the end the intensity of illu- 
 sion becomes horrible; overwhelmed with disgust and 
 pity he closes the book. 
 
 Besides being the history of the most miserable of 
 women, "Madame Bovary" is also an elaborate picture 
 of small bourgeois rural life. Anything in this direc- 
 tion more remorseless and complete it would be hard 
 to conceive. Into all that makes life ignoble and 
 vulgar and sterile M. Flaubert has entered with an 
 extraordinary penetration. The dullness and flatness 
 of it all suffocate us; the pettiness and ugliness sicken 
 us. Every one in the book is either stupid or mean, 
 but against the shabby-coloured background two figures 
 stand out in salient relief. One is Charles Bovary, the 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. ZO"] 
 
 husband of the heroine j the other is M. Homais, the 
 village apothecary. Bovary is introduced to us in his 
 childhood, at school, and we see him afterwards at 
 college and during his first marriage — a union with a 
 widow of meagre charms, twenty years older than 
 himself He is the only good person of the book, but 
 he is stupidly, helplessly good. At school "he had for 
 correspondent a wholesale hardware-merchant of the 
 Rue Ganterie, who used to fetch him away once a 
 month, on a Sunday, send him to walk in the harbour 
 and look at the boats, and then bring him back to 
 college, by seven o'clock, before supper. Every Thurs- 
 day evening he wrote a long letter to his mother, with 
 red ink and three wafers; then he went over his copy 
 books, or else read an old volume of 'Anacharsis' 
 which was knocking about the class-room. In our 
 walks he used to talk with the servant, who was from 
 the country like himself." In Homais, the apothecary, 
 M. Flaubert has really added to our knowledge of 
 human nature — at least as human nature is modified 
 by French social conditions. To American readers, for- 
 tunately, this figure represents nothing familiar; we do 
 not as yet possess any such mellow perfection of char- 
 latanism. The apothecary is that unwholesome com- 
 pound, a Philistine radical — a plre de famille, a free- 
 thinker, a rapacious shopkeeper, a stern moralist, an 
 ardent democrat and an abject snob. He is a complete 
 creation; he is taken, as the French say, sur le vif, and 
 his talk, his accent, his pompous vocabulary, his atti- 
 tudes, his vanities, his windy vacuity, are superbly 
 rendered. Except her two lovers, M. Homais is Ma- 
 dame Bovary's sole male acquaintance, and her only 
 social relaxation is to spend the evening with his wife 
 
208 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and her own husband in his back shop. Her life has 
 known, in the way of recreation, but two other events. 
 Once she has been at a ball at the house of a neigh- 
 bouring nobleman, for whom her husband had lanced 
 an abscess in the cheek, and who sends the invitation 
 as part payment — a fatal ball, which has opened her 
 eyes to her own deprivations and intolerably quickened 
 her desires; and once she has been to the theatre at 
 Rouen. Both of these episodes are admirably put be- 
 fore us, and they play a substantial part in the tale. 
 The book is full of expressive episodes; the most suc- 
 cessful, in its hideous relief and reality, is the long 
 account of the operation performed by Charles Bovary 
 upon the club-foot of the ostler at the inn — an opera- 
 tion superfluous, ridiculous, abjectly unskilful and clumsy, 
 and which results in the amputation of the poor fel- 
 low's whole leg after he has lain groaning under the 
 reader's eyes and nose for a dozen pages, amid the 
 flies and dirt, the brooms and pails, the comings and 
 goings of his squalid corner of the tavern. The reader 
 asks himself the meaning of this elaborate presentation 
 of the most repulsive of incidents, and feels inclined 
 at first to charge it to a sort of artistic bravado on the 
 author's part — a desire to complete his theory of realism 
 by applying his resources to that which is simply dis- 
 gusting. But he presently sees that the whole episode 
 has a kind of metaphysical value. It completes the 
 general picture; it characterizes the daily life of a 
 community in which such incidents assume the im- 
 portance of leading events, and it gives the final touch 
 to our sense of poor Charles Bovar3r's bungling medio- 
 crity. Everything in the book is ugly; turning over its*^ 
 pages, our eyes fall upon only this one little passage 
 
GUST AVE FLAUBERT. 2O9 
 
 in which an agreeable "effect" is rendered. It treats 
 of Bovary's visits to Emma, at her father's farm, be- 
 fore their marriage, and it is a happy instance of the 
 way in which this author's style arrests itself at every 
 step in a picture. "Once, when it was thawing, the 
 bark of the trees was reeking in the yard, the snow 
 was melting on the roofs of the outbuildings. She was 
 upon the threshold; she went in and fetched her um- 
 brella and opened it. The umbrella, of iridescent silk, 
 with the sun coming through it, lighted up her white 
 complexion with changing reflertions. Beneath it she 
 smiled in the soft warmth, and he heard the water- 
 drops fall one by one upon the tense silk."*- To many 
 people "Madame Bovary" will always be a hard book 
 to read and an impossible one to enjoy. They will 
 complain of the abuse of description, of the want of 
 spontaneity, of the hideousness of the subject, of the 
 dryness and coldness and cynicism of the tone. Others 
 will continue to think it a great performance. They 
 will admit that it is not a sentimental novel, but they 
 will claim that it may be regarded as a philosophical 
 one; they will insist that the descriptions are extra- 
 ordinary, and that beneath them there is always ah 
 idea that holds them up and carries them along. We 
 cannot but think, however, that he is a very resolute 
 partisan who would venture to make this same plea on 
 behalf of "L'Education Sentimentale." Here the form 
 and method are the same as in "Madame Bovary"; the 
 studied skill, the science, the accumulation of material, 
 are even more striking; but the book is in a single 
 word a dead one. "Madame Bovary" was spontaneous 
 and sincere; but to read its successor is, to the finer 
 sense, like masticating ashes and sawdust. "L'Educa- 
 
 Frenck Poets and Novelists. ^4 
 
2IO FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tion Sentimentale'' is elaborately and massively dreary. 
 That a novel should have a certain charm seems to us 
 the most rudimentary of principles, and there is no 
 more charm in this laborious monument to a treacherous 
 ideal than there is interest in a heap of gravel. To 
 nothing that such a writer as Gustave Flaubert ac- 
 complishes — a writer so armed at all points, so in- 
 formed, so ingenious, so serious — can we be positively 
 indifferent; but to think of the talent, the knowledge, 
 the experience, the observation that lie buried, without 
 hope of resurrection, in the pages of "L'Education 
 Sentimentale," is to pass a comfortless half-hour. That 
 imagination, invention, taste and science should con- 
 centrate themselves, for human entertainment, upon 
 such a result, strikes us as the most unfathomable of 
 anomalies. The reader feels behind all M. Flaubert's 
 writing a large intellectual machinery. He is a scholar, 
 a man of erudition. Of all this "Salammbo" is a most 
 accomplished example. "Salammbd" is not easy read- 
 ing, nor is the book in the least agreeable; but it 
 displays in the highest degree what is called the his- 
 torical imagination. There are passages in it in which 
 the literary expression of that refined, subtilized and 
 erudite sense of the picturesque which recent years 
 have brought to so high a development, seems to have 
 reached its highest level. The "Tentation de Saint 
 Antoine" is, to our sense, to "Salammbd" what 
 "L'Education Sentimentale" is to "Madame Bovary" 
 — what the shadow is to the substance. M. Flaubert 
 seems to have had in him the material of but two 
 spontaneous works. The successor, in each case, has 
 been an echo, a reverberation. 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 2 1 1 
 
 IVAN TURGENIEFF. 
 
 We know of several excellent critics who to the 
 question, Who is the first novelist of the day? would 
 reply, without hesitation, Ivan Turgenieff. Comparisons 
 are odious, and we propose to make none that shall 
 seem merely invidious. We quote our friends' verdict 
 as a motive for this brief record of our own impressions. 
 These, too, are in the highest degree favourable; and 
 yet we wish not to impose a conclusion, but to help 
 well-disposed readers to a larger enjoyment. To many 
 such Turgenieff is already vaguely known as an eminent 
 Russian novelist. Twelve years ago he was little more 
 than a name, even in France, where he perhaps now 
 finds his most sympathetic readers. But all his tales, 
 we believe without exception, have now been translated 
 into French — several by the author himself; an excellent 
 German version of the best is being published under 
 his own supervision, and several very fair English 
 versions have appeared in England and America. He 
 enjoys what is called a European reputation, and it is 
 constantly spreading. The Russians, among whom 
 fiction flourishes vigorously, deem him their greatest 
 artist. His tales are not numerous, and many of them 
 are very short. He gives us the impression of writing 
 much more for love than for lucre. He is particularly 
 a favourite with people of cultivated taste; and no- 
 
 14* 
 
212 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 thing, in our opinion, cultivates the taste more than to 
 read him. 
 
 He belongs to the limited class of very careful 
 writers. It is to be admitted at the outset that he is a 
 zealous genius, rather than an abundant one. His line 
 is narrow observation. He has not the faculty of rapid, 
 passionate, almost reckless improvisation — that of Walter 
 Scott, of Dickens, of George Sand. This is an im- 
 mense charm in a story-teller; on the whole, to our 
 sense, the greatest. TurgeniefF lacks it; he charms us 
 in other ways. To describe him in the fewest terms, 
 he is a story-teller who has taken notes. This must 
 have been a life-long habit. His tales are a magazine 
 of small facts, of anecdotes, of descriptive traits, taken, 
 as the phrase is, from the life. If we are not mistaken, he 
 notes down an idiosyncracy of character, a fragment of 
 talk, an attitude, a feature, a gesture, and keeps it, if 
 need be, for twenty years, till just the moment for using 
 it comes, just the spot for placing it. "Stachoff spoke 
 French tolerably, and as he led a quiet sort of life, 
 passed for a philosopher. Even as an ensign, he was 
 fond of disputing warmly whether, for instance, a man 
 in his life might visit every point of the globe, or 
 whether he might learn what goes on at the bottom of 
 the sea, and was always of the opinion that it was 
 impossible." The writer of this description may some- 
 times be erratic, but he is never vague. He has a 
 passion for distinctness, for bringing his characteriza- 
 tion to a point, for giving you an example of his mean- 
 ing. He often, indeed, strikes us as loving details for 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 2I3 
 
 their own sake, as a bibliomaniac loves the books he 
 never reads. His figures are all portraits; they have 
 each something special, something peculiar, something 
 that none of their neighbours have, and that rescues 
 them from the limbo of the gracefully general. We 
 remember, in one of his stories, a gentleman who 
 makes a momentary appearance as host at a dinner- 
 party, and after being described as having such and 
 such a face, clothes, and manners, has our impression 
 of his personality completed by the statement that the 
 soup at his table was filled with little paste figures, 
 representing hearts, triangles, and trumpets. In the 
 author's conception, there is a secret affinity between 
 the character of this worthy man and the contortions 
 of his vermicelli. This habit of specializing people by 
 vivid oddities was the gulf over which Dickens danced 
 the tight-rope with such agility. But Dickens, as we 
 say, was an improvisatore; the practice, for him, was a 
 lawless revel of the imagination. Turg6nieff, on the 
 other hand, always proceeds by book. What could be 
 more minutely appreciative, and at the same time less 
 like Dickens, than the following portrait? 
 
 "People in St. Petersburg still remember the Princess R . 
 
 She appeared there from time to time at the period of which we 
 speak. Her husband was a well-bred man, but rather stupid, and 
 she had no children. The Princess used to start suddenly on long 
 journeys, and then return suddenly to Russia. Her conduct in all 
 things was very strange. She was called light, and a coquette. 
 She used to give herself up with ardour to all the pleasures of 
 society: dance till she dropped with exhaustion, joke and laugh 
 with the young men she received before dinner in her darkening 
 drawing-room, and pass her nights praying and weeping, without 
 finding a moment's rest. She often remained till morning in her 
 room stretching her arms in anguish; or else she remained bowed, 
 pale and cold, oyer the leaves of a hymn-book. Day came, and 
 
214 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 she was transformed again into an elegant creature, paid visits, 
 laughed, chattered, rushed to meet everything that could give her 
 the smallest diversion. She was admirably shaped. Her hair, the 
 colour of gold, and as heavy as gold, formed a tress that fell below 
 her knees. And yet she was not spoken of as a beauty : she had 
 nothing fine in her face except her eyes. This even, perhaps, is 
 saying too much, for her eyes were grey and rather small; but their 
 deep keen gaze, careless to audacity, and dreamy to desolation, 
 was equally enigmatical and charming. Something extraordinary 
 was reflected in them, even when the most fiitile speeches were 
 passing from her lips. Her toilets were always too striking. " 
 
 These lines seem to carry a kind of historical weight. 
 
 It is the Princess R and no one else. We feel as 
 
 if the author could show us documents and relics; as 
 if he had her portrait, a dozen letters, some of her old 
 trinkets. Or take the following few lines from the ad- 
 mirable tale called "The Wayside Inn". "He be- 
 longed to the burgher class, and his name was Nahum 
 Ivanoff. He had a thick short body, broad shoulders, 
 a big round head, long waving hair already grizzled, 
 though he was not yet forty. His face was full and 
 fresh-coloured; his forehead low and white. His little 
 eyes, of a clear blue, had a strange look, at once ob- 
 lique and impudent. He kept his head always bent, 
 his neck being too short; he walked fast, and never 
 let his hands swing, keeping them always closed. When 
 he smiled, and he smiled often, but without laughing 
 and as if by stealth, his red lips parted disagreeably, 
 showing a row of very white, very close teeth. He 
 spoke quickly, with a snarling tone." A\Tien fiction is 
 written in this fashion, we believe as we read. The 
 same vividly definite element is found in the author's 
 treatment of landscape. "The weather continued to 
 stand at set-fair; little rounded white clouds moved 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 215 
 
 through the air at a great height, and looked at them- 
 selves in the water; the reeds were stirred by move- 
 ments and murmurs produced by no wind; the pond, 
 looking in certain places like polished' steel, absorbed 
 the splendid sunshine." There is an even greater 
 reality, because it is touched with the fantastic, with- 
 out being perverted by it, in this brief sketch of the 
 Pontine Marshes, from the beautiful little storry of 
 "Visions". 
 
 "The cloud before my eyes divided itself. 1 became aware of 
 a limitless plain beneath, me. Already, from the warm soft air 
 which fanned my cheeks, I had obsei-ved that I was no longer in 
 Russia. This plain, moreover, was not like our Russian plains. 
 It was an immense dusky level, overgrown, apparently, with no 
 grass, and perfectly desolate. Here and there, over the whole ex- 
 panse, glittered pools of standing water, like little fragments of 
 looking-glass. In the distance, the silent, motionless sea was 
 vaguely visible. In the intervals of the broad beautiful clouds glit- 
 tered great stars. A murmur, thousand-voiced, unceasing, and 
 yet not loud, resounded from every spot; and strangely rang this 
 penetrating, drowsy murmur, this nightly voice of the desert. . . . 
 'The Pontine Marshes,' said Ellis. 'Do you hear the frogs? Do 
 you recognise the sulphur?' " 
 
 This is a cold manner, many readers will say, and 
 certainly it has a cold side; but when the character 
 is one over which the author's imagination really kindles, 
 it is an admirable vehicle for touching effects. Few 
 stories leave on the mind a more richly poetic impres- 
 sion than "Hel^ne"; all the tenderness of our credulity 
 goes forth to the heroine. Yet this exquisite image of 
 idealized devotion swims before the author's vision in 
 no misty moonlight of romance; she is as solidly fair 
 as a Greek statue; his dominant desire has been to 
 understand her, and he retails small facts about her . 
 
2l6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 appearance and habits with the impartiality of a judicial, 
 or even a medical, summing-up. The same may be 
 said of his treatment of all his heroines, and said in 
 evidence of the refinement of his art; for if there are 
 no heroines we see more distinctly, there are none we 
 love more ardently. It would be difficult to point, in 
 the blooming fields of fiction, to a group of young girls 
 more radiant with maidenly charm than M. TurgeniefFs 
 Hel^ne, his Lisa, his Katia, his Tatiana and his Gemma. 
 For the truth is that, taken as a whole, he regains on 
 another side what he loses by his apparent want of 
 joyous invention. If his manner is that of a searching 
 realist, his temper is that of an earnestly attentive ob- 
 server, and the result of this temper is to make him 
 take a view of the great spectacle of human life more 
 general, more impartial, more unreservedly intelligent, 
 than that of any novelist we know. Even in this 
 direction he proceeds with his characteristic precision 
 of method; one thinks of him as having divided his 
 subject-matter into categories, and as moving from one 
 to the other — with none of the magniloquent preten- 
 sions of Balzac, indeed, to be the great showman of 
 the human comedy — but with a deeply intellectual im- 
 pulse toward universal appreciation. He seems to us 
 to care for more things in life, to be solicited on more 
 sides, than any novelist save George Eliot. Walter Scott 
 cares for adventure and bravery and honour and ballad- 
 figures and the humour of Scotch peasants; Dickens 
 cares, in a very large and various way, for the incon- 
 gruous, comic and pathetic; George Sand cares for love 
 and mineralogy. But these writers care also, greatly, 
 and indeed almost supremely, for their fable, for its 
 twists and turns and surprises, for the work they have 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 217 
 
 in hand of amusing the reader. Even George Eliot, 
 who cares for so many other things besides, has a 
 weakness for making a rounded plot, and often swells 
 out her tales with mechanical episodes, in the midst 
 of which their moral unity quite evaporates. The 
 Bulstrode-Raffles episode in "Middlemarch," and the 
 whole fable of "Felix Holt," are striking cases in point. 
 M. Turgenieff lacks, as regards form, as we have said, 
 this immense charm of absorbed inventiveness; but in 
 the way of substance there is literally almost nothing 
 he does not care for. Every class of society, every 
 type of character, every degree of fortune, every phase 
 of manners, passes through his hands; his imagination 
 claims its property equally, in town and country, among 
 rich and poor, among wise people and idiots, diletianti 
 and peasants, the tragic and the joyous, the probable 
 and the grotesque. He has an eye for all our passions, 
 and a deeply sympathetic sense of the wonderful com- 
 plexity of our souls. He relates in "Mumu" the his- 
 tory of a deaf-and-dumb serf and a lap-dog, and he 
 portrays in "A Strange Story" an extraordinary case of 
 religious fanaticism. He has a passion for shifting his 
 point of view, but his object is constantly the same — 
 that of finding an incident, a person, a situation, morally 
 interesting. This is his great merit, and the underly- 
 ing harmony of his apparently excessive attention to 
 detail. He believes the intrinsic value of "subject" in 
 art; he holds that there are trivial subjects and serious 
 ones, that the latter are much the best, and that their 
 superiority resides in their giving us absolutely a greater 
 amount of information about the human mind. Deep 
 into the mind he is always attempting to look, though 
 he often applies his eye to very dusky apertures. There 
 
2l8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 is perhaps no better evidence of his minutely psycho- 
 logical attitude than the considerable part played in 
 his tales by sin;ipletons and weak-minded persons. 
 There are few novelists who have not been charmed 
 by the quaintness and picturesqueness of mental in- 
 valids; but M. TurgeniefF is attracted by something 
 more — by the ' opportunity of watching the machinery 
 of character, as it were, through a broken window- 
 pane. One might collect from his various tales a per- 
 fect regiment of incapables, of the stragglers on life's 
 march. Almost always, in the background of his groups 
 of well-to-do persons there lurks some grotesque, under- 
 witted poor relation, who seems to hover about as a 
 vague memento, in his scheme, of the instability both 
 of fortune and of human cleverness. Such, for instance, 
 is Uvar Ivanovitsch, who figures as a kind of inarticu- 
 late chorus in the tragedy of "Helfene." He sits about, 
 looking very wise and opening and closing his fingers, 
 and in his person, in this attitude, the drama capri- 
 ciously takes leave of us. Perhaps the most moving of 
 aU the author's tales — moving, not in the sense that it 
 makes us shed easy tears, but as reminding us vividly 
 of the solidarity, as we may say, of all human weak- 
 ness — has for its hero a person made imbecile by 
 suffering. The admirable little story of "The Brigadier" 
 can only be spoilt by an attempt to retail it; we warmly 
 recommend it to the reader, in the French version. 
 Never did Romance stoop over a lowlier case of moral 
 decomposition, but never did she gather more of the 
 perfume of human truth. To a person able to read 
 but one of M. Turg6nieff's tales, we should perhaps 
 offer this one as a supreme example of his peculiar 
 power; for here the artist, as well as the analyst, is at 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. ZIQ 
 
 his best. All rigid critical formulas are more or less 
 unjust, and it is not a complete description of our authoi 
 — it would be a complete description of no real master 
 of fiction — to say that he is simply a searching ob- 
 server. M. TurgeniefF's imagination is always lending 
 a hand and doing work on its own account. Some of 
 this work is exquisite; nothing could have more of the 
 simple magic of picturesqueness than such tales as "The 
 Dog," "The Jew," "Visions," "The Adventure of Lieute- 
 nant Jergounoff," "Three Meetings," a dozen episodes 
 in the "Memoirs of a Sportsman." Imagination guides 
 his hand and modulates his touch, and makes the 
 artist worthy of the observer. In a word, he is uni- 
 versally sensitive. In susceptibility to the sensuous 
 impressions of life — to colours and odours and forms, 
 and the myriad ineffable refinements and enticements 
 of beauty — he equals, and even surpasses, the most 
 accomplished representatives of the French school of 
 story-telling; and yet he has, on the other hand, an 
 apprehension of man's religious impulses, of the ascetic 
 passion, the capacity of becoming dead to colours and 
 odours and beauty, never dreamed of in the philosophy 
 of Balzac and Flaubert, Octave Feuillet and Gustave 
 Droz. He gives us Lisa in "A Nest of Noblemen," 
 and Madame Polosoff in "Spring-Torrents." This marks 
 his range. Let us add, in conclusion, that his merit of 
 form is of the first order. He is remarkable for con- 
 cision; few of his novels occupy the whole of a mo- 
 derate volume, and some of his best performances are 
 tales of thirty pages. 
 
2 20 FRENCH POETS XWi NOVELISTS. 
 
 II. 
 
 M. Turg6niefFs themes are all Russian; here and 
 there the scene of a tale is laid in another country, 
 but the actors are genuine Muscovites. It is the Russian 
 type of human nature that he depicts; this perplexes, 
 fascinates, inspires him. His works savour strongly of 
 his native soil, like those of all great novelists, and 
 give one who has read them all a strange sense of 
 having had a prolonged experience of Russia. We 
 seem to have travelled there in dreams, to have dwelt 
 there in another state of being. M. Turgenieff gives 
 us a peculiar sense of being out of harmony with his 
 native land — of his having what one may call a poet's 
 quarrel with it. He loves the old, and he is unable to 
 see where the new is drifting. American readers will 
 peculiarly appreciate this state of mind; if they had a 
 native novelist of a large pattern, it would probably 
 be, in a degree, his own. Our author /ee/s the Russian 
 character intensely, and cherishes, in fancy, all its old 
 manifestations — ^the unemancipated peasants, the igno- 
 rant, absolute, half-barbarous proprietors, the quaint 
 provincial society, the local types and customs of every 
 kind. But Russian society, like our own, is in process 
 of formation, the Russian character is in solution, in a 
 sea of change, and the modified, modernized Russian, 
 with his old limitations and his new pretensions, is not, 
 to an imagination fond of caressing the old, fixed con- 
 tours, an especially grateful phenomen. A satirist at 
 all points, as we shall have occasion to say, M. Tur- 
 genieff is particularly unsparing of the new intellectual 
 fashions prevailing among his countrymen. The express 
 purpose of one of his novels, "Fathers and Sons," is to 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 221 
 
 contrast them with the old; and in most of his recent 
 works, notably "Smoke," they have been embodied in 
 various grotesque figures. 
 
 It was not, however, in satire, but in thoroughly 
 genial, poetical portraiture, that our author first made 
 his mark. "The Memoirs of a Sportsman" were pub- 
 lished in 1852, and were regarded, says one of the 
 two French translators of the work, as much the same 
 sort of contribution to the question of Russian serf- 
 dom as Mrs. Stowe's famous novel to that of American 
 slavery. This, perhaps, is forcing a point, for M. Tur- 
 genieff's group of tales strikes us much less as a pas- 
 sionate piice de circonstance than as a disinterested 
 work of art But circumstances helped it, of course, 
 and it made a great impression — an impression that 
 testifies to no small culture on the part of Russian 
 readers. For never, surely, was a work with a polemic 
 bearing more consistently low in tone, as painters say. 
 The author treats us to such a scanty dose of flagrant 
 horrors that the moral of the book is obvious only to 
 attentive readers. No single episode pleads conclu- 
 sively against the "peculiar institution" of Russia; the 
 lesson is in the cumulative testimony of a multitude of 
 fine touches — in an after-sense of sadness that sets 
 wise readers thinking. It would be difficult to name 
 a work that contains better instruction for those heated 
 spirits who are fond of taking sides on the question of 
 "art for art." It offers a capital example of moral 
 meaning giving a sense to form and form giving relief 
 to moral meaning. Indeed, all the author's character- 
 istic merits are to be found in the "Memoirs," with a 
 certain amateurish looseness of texture which will charm 
 many persons who find his later works too frugal, as it 
 
222 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 were, in shape. Of all his productions, this is indeed 
 the most purely delightful. We especially recommend 
 the little history of Foma, the forest-keeper, who, one 
 rainy night, when the narrator has taken refuge in his 
 hut, hears a peasant stealing faggots in the dark, drip- 
 ping woods; rushes forth and falls upon him, drags the 
 poor wretch home, flings him into a corner, and sits 
 on in the smoky hovel (with the author, whom we per- 
 ceive there, noting, feeling, measuring it all), while the 
 rain batters the roof and the drenched starveling howls 
 and whines and imprecates. Anything more dismally 
 real in a narrower compass we have never read — any- 
 thing more pathetic, with less of the machinery of pa- 
 thos. In this case, as at every turn with M. Turgenieff, 
 "It is life itself," we murmur as we read, "and not 
 this or that or the other story-teller's more or less 
 clever 'Arrangement' of life." M. Turgenieff deserves 
 this praise in its largest application; for "life" in his 
 pages is very far from meaning a dreary liability to 
 sordid accidents, as it seems to mean with those writers 
 of the grimly pathetic school who cultivate s)rmpathy 
 to the detriment of comprehension. He does equal 
 justice — ^joyous justice — to all brighter accidents — to 
 everything in experience that helps to keep it within 
 the pale of legend. Two of the Sportsman's reminis- 
 cences are inexpressibly charming — the chapter in 
 which he spends a warm summer-night lying on the 
 grass listening to the small boys who are sent out to 
 watch the horses at pasture, as they sit chattering to 
 each other of hobgoblins and fairies; and the truly 
 beautiful description of a singing-match in a village 
 ale-house, between two ragged serfs. The latter is 
 simply a perfect poem. Very different, but in its way 
 
IVAN TURGKNIEFF. 223 
 
 as characteristic, is the story of "A Russian Hamlet" 
 — a poor gentleman whom the Sportsman, staying over- 
 night at a fine house where he has been dining, finds 
 assigned to him as room-mate, and who, lying in bed 
 and staring at him grotesquely over the sheets, relates 
 his lugubrious history. This sketch, more than its 
 companions, strikes lie deep moral note that was to 
 reverberate through the author's novels. 
 
 The story of "Rudin," which followed soon after, 
 is perhaps the most striking example of his preference 
 for a theme which takes its starting-point in character 
 — if need be, in morbid character. We have had no 
 recent opportunity to refresh our memory of the tale, 
 but we have not forgotten the fine quality of its interest 
 — its air of psychological truth, unencumbered with 
 the usual psychological apparatus. The theme is one 
 which would mean little enough to a coarse imagina- 
 tion — ^the exhibition of a character peculiarly unrounded, 
 unmoulded, unfinished, inapt for the regular romantic 
 attitudes. Dmitri Rudin is a moral failure, like many 
 of the author's heroes — one of those fatally complex 
 natures who cost their friends so many pleasures and 
 pains; who might, and yet, evidently, might not, do 
 great things; natures strong in impulse, in talk, in re- 
 sponsive emotion, but weak in will, in action, in the 
 power to feel and do singly. Madame Sand's "Horace" 
 is a broad, free study of this type of person, always so 
 interesting to imaginative and so intolerable to rational 
 people; M. Turgenieff's hero is an elaborate miniature- 
 portrait. Without reading Rudin we should not know 
 just how fine a point he can give to his pencil. But 
 M. Turg^nieff, with his incisive psychology, like Ma- 
 dame Sand, with her expansive synthesis, might often 
 
224 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 be a vain demonstrator and a very dull novelist if he 
 were not so constantly careful to be a dramatist. Every- 
 thing, with him, takes the dramatic form; he is ap- 
 parently unable to conceive anything independently of 
 it, he has no recognition of unembodied ideas; an 
 idea, with him, is such and such an individual, with 
 such and such a nose and chin, such and such a hat 
 and waistcoat, bearing the same relation to it as the 
 look of a printed word does to its meaning. Abstract 
 possibilities immediately become, to his vision, concrete 
 situations, as elaborately defined and localized as an 
 interior by Meissonier. In this way, as we read, we 
 are always looking and listening; and we seem, indeed, 
 at moments, for want of a running thread of explana- 
 tion, to see rather more than we understand. 
 
 It is, however, in "Hel^ne" that the author's closely 
 commingled realism and idealism have obtained their 
 greatest triumph. The tale is at once a homely chro- 
 nicle and a miniature epic. The scene, the figures, are 
 as present to us as if we saw them ordered and mov- 
 ing on a lamp-lit stage; and yet, as we recall it, the 
 drama seems all pervaded and coloured by the light 
 of the moral world. There are many things in "He- 
 l^ne," and it is difficult to speak of them in order. It 
 is both so simple and so various, it proceeds with such 
 an earnest tread to its dark termination, and yet it 
 entertains and beguiles us so unceasingly as it goes, 
 that we lose sight of its simple beauty in its confound- 
 ing, entrancing reality. But we prize it, as we prize 
 all the very best things, according to our meditative 
 after-sense of it. Then we see its lovely unity melting 
 its brilliant parts into a single harmonious tone. The 
 story is all in the portrait of the heroine, who is a he- 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 225 
 
 roine in the literal sense of the wordj a young girl of 
 a will so calmly ardent and intense that she needs no- 
 thing but opportunity to become one of the figures 
 about whom admiring legend clusters. She is really 
 an elevated conception; and if, as we shall complain, 
 there is bitterness in M. Turgdnieif's imagination, there 
 is certainly sweetness as well. It is striking that most 
 of his flights of fancy are in his conceptions of women. 
 With them only, occasionally, does he wholly forswear 
 his irony and become frankly sympathetic. We hope 
 it is not false ethnology to suppose that this is a sign 
 of something, potentially at least, very fine in the cha- 
 racter of his country-women. As fine a poet as you 
 will would hardly have devised a Maria Alexandrovna 
 (in "A Correspondence,") an Hel^ne, a Lisa, a Tatiana, 
 an Irene even, without having known some very ad- 
 mirable women. These ladies have a marked family 
 likeness, an exquisite something in common which we 
 may perhaps best designate as an absence of frivolous 
 passion. They are addicted to none of those chatteries 
 which French romancers consider the " adorable " thing 
 in women. The baleful beauty, in "Smoke," who robs 
 Tatiana of her lover, acts in obedience to an impulse 
 deeper than vulgar coquetry. And yet these fair Mus- 
 covites have a spontaneity, an independence, quite 
 akin to the Enghsh ideal of maiden loveliness. Di- 
 rectly, superficially, they only half please. They puzzle 
 us almost too much to charm, and we fully measure 
 their beauty only when they are called upon to act. 
 Then the author imagines them doing the most touch- 
 ing, the most inspiring things. 
 
 Hel^ne's loveliness is all in unswerving action. 
 She passes before us toward her mysterious end with 
 
 French Poeis and Novelisfs ' 5 
 
226 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the swift, keen movement of a feathered arrow. She 
 finds her opportunity, as we have called it, in her 
 sympathy with a young Bulgarian patriot who dreams 
 of rescuing his country from Turkish tyranny; and she 
 surrenders herself to his love and his project with a 
 tranquil passion which loses none of its poetry in M. 
 Turgdnieff's treatment. She is a supreme example of 
 his taste for "original" young ladies. She would 
 certainly be pronounced queer in most quiet circles. 
 She has, indeed, a fascinating oddity of outline; and 
 we never lose a vague sense that the author is pre- 
 senting her to us with a charmed expectancy of his 
 own, as a travelled friend would show us some 
 quaintly-feathered bird brought from beyond the seas, 
 but whose note he had not yet heard. To appreciate 
 Helena's oddity, you must read of the orthodoxy of 
 the people who surround her. All about the central 
 episode the story fades away into illimitable irony, as 
 if the author wished to prove that, compared with the 
 deadly seriousness of Hel^ne and Inssaroff, everything 
 else is indeed a mere playing at life. We move 
 among the minor episodes in a kind of atmosphere of 
 sarcasm: now kindly, as where Bersenieff and Schubin 
 are dealt with; now unsparingly comical, as in the 
 case of her foolish parents and their tardy bewilder- 
 ment — that of loquacious domestic fowls who find 
 themselves responsible for the hatching of an eagle. 
 The whole story is charged with lurking meanings, and 
 to retail them would be as elaborate a task as picking 
 threads out of a piece of fine tapestry. What is Made- 
 moiselle Zoe, for instance, the little German dame de 
 compagnie, but a humorous sidelight upon Hel^ne's in- 
 tensity — Mademoiselle Zoe, with the pretty shoulders 
 
IVAN TXniGENIEFF. 227 
 
 and her presence in the universe a sort of mere 
 general rustle of muslin, accompanied, perhaps, by a 
 faint toilet-perfume? There is nothing finer in all 
 Turgenieff than the whole matter of Bersenieff's and 
 Schubin's relation to H616ne. They, too, in their vivid 
 reality, have a symbolic value, as they stand watching 
 the woman they equally love whirled away from them 
 in a current swifter than any force of their own. 
 Schubin, the young sculptor, with his moods and his 
 theories, his exaltations and depressions, his endless 
 talk and his disjointed action, is a deeply ingenious 
 image of the artistic temperament. Yet, after all, he 
 strikes the practical middle key, and solves the 
 problem of life by the definite application of what he 
 can. Bersenieff, though a less fanciful, is perhaps, at 
 bottom, a still more poetical figure. He is condemned 
 to inaction, not by his intellectual fastidiousness, but 
 by a conscious, intelligent, intellectual mediocrity, by 
 the dogged loyalty of his judgment. There is some- 
 thing in his history more touching than even in that of 
 Helfene and Inssaroff. These two, and Schubin as 
 well, have their consolations. If they are born to 
 suffering, they are born also to rapture. They stand 
 at the open door of passion, and they can sometimes 
 forget. But poor Bersenieff, wherever he turns, meets 
 conscience with uplifted finger, saying to him that 
 though Homer may sometimes nod, the sane man 
 never misreasons and the wise man assents to no mood 
 that is not a working mood. He has not even the 
 satisfaction of lodging a complaint against fate. He is 
 by no means sure that he has one; and when he finds 
 that his love is vain he translates it into friendship 
 with a patient zeal capable almost of convincing his 
 
 IS' 
 
228 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 own soul that it is not a renunciation, but a con- 
 summation. Bersenieff, Schubin, Zoe, Uvar Ivano- 
 vitsch, the indigent house-friend, with his placid 
 depths of unuttered commentary, the pompous egotist 
 of a father, the feeble egotist of a mother — these 
 people thoroughly animate the little world that sur- 
 rounds the central couple; and if we wonder how it is 
 that from half a dozen figures we get such a sense of 
 the world's presence and complexity, we perceive the 
 great sagacity of the choice of the types. 
 
 We should premise, in speaking of "A Nest of 
 Noblemen" (the English translation bears, we believe, 
 the simple title of "Lisa"), that of the two novels it 
 was the earlier published. It dates from 1858; 
 "Hdltee" from 1859. The theme is an unhappy 
 marriage and an unhappy love. Fedor Ivanovitsch 
 Lavretzky marries a pretty young woman, and after 
 three years of confident bliss finds himself grossly de- 
 ceived. He separates from his wife, returns from 
 Paris, where his eyes have been unsealed, to Russia, 
 and, in the course of time, retires to his patrimonial 
 estates. Here, after the pain of his wound has ached 
 itself away and the health and strength of life's prime 
 have reaffirmed themselves, he encounters a young girl 
 whom he comes at last to love with the double force 
 of a tender heart that longs to redeem itself from 
 bitterness. He receives news of his wife's death, and 
 immediately presumes upon his freedom to express his 
 passion. The young girl listens, responds, and for a 
 few brief days they are happy. But the report of 
 Madame Lavretzky's death has been, as the news- 
 papers say, premature; she suddenly reappears, to 
 remind her husband of his bondage and to convict 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 2 29 
 
 Lisa almost of guilt. The pathetic force of the story 
 lies, naturally, in its taking place in a country un- 
 furnished with the modern facilities for divorce. Lisa 
 and Lavretzky of course must part. Madame Lavretzky 
 lives and blooms. Lisa goes into a convent, and her 
 lover, defrauded of happiness, determines at least to 
 try and be useful. He ploughs his fields and instructs 
 his serfs. After the lapse of years he obtains entrance 
 into her convent and catches a glimpse of her as she 
 passes behind a grating, on her way across the chapel. 
 She knows of his presence, but she does not even look 
 at him; the trembling of her downcast lids alone be- 
 trays her sense of it. "What must they both have 
 thought, have felt?" asks the author. "Who can 
 know? who can say? There are moments in life, 
 there are feelings, on which we can only cast a glance 
 without stopping." With an unanswered question his 
 story characteristically closes. The husband, the wife, 
 and the lover — the wife, the husband, and the woman 
 loved — these are combinations in which modern fiction 
 has been prolific; but M. Turgenieff's treatment renews 
 the youth of the well-worn fable. He has fpund its 
 moral interest, if we may take the distinction, deeper 
 than its sentimental one; a pair of lovers accepting 
 adversity seem to him more eloquent than a pair of 
 lovers grasping at happiness. The moral of his tale, 
 as we are free to gather it, is that there is no effective 
 plotting for happiness, that we must take what we can 
 get, that adversity is a capable mill-stream, and that 
 our ingenuity must go toward making it grind our 
 corn. Certain it is that there is something very ex- 
 quisite in Lavretzky's history, and that M. Turg6nieff 
 has drawn from a theme associated with all manner of 
 
230 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 uncleanness a story embalmed in an aroma of purity 
 This purity, indeed, is but a pervasive emanation from 
 the character of Lisaveta Michailovna. American 
 readers of Turgenieff have been struck with certain 
 points of resemblance between American and Russian 
 life. The resemblance is generally superficial; but it 
 does not seem to us altogether fanciful to say that 
 Russian young girls, as represented by Lisa, Tatiana, 
 Maria Alexandrovna, have to our sense a touch of the 
 faintly acrid perfume of the New England tempera- 
 ment — a hint of Puritan angularity. It is the women 
 and young girls in our author's tales who mainly re- 
 present strength of will — the power to resist, to wait, 
 to attain. Lisa represents it in all that heroic inten- 
 sity which says so much more to M. Turg6nieff's 
 imagination than feline grace. The character con- 
 spicuous in the same tale for feline grace — Varvara 
 Pavlovna, Lavretzky's heartless wife — is conspicuous 
 also for her moral flimsiness. In the integrity of Lisa, 
 of H614ne, even of the more dimly shadowed Maria 
 Alexandrovna — a sort of finer distillation, as it seems, 
 of masculine honour — there is something almost formid- 
 able : the strongest men are less positive in their strength. 
 In the keenly pathetic scene in which Marfa Timofievna 
 (the most delightful of the elderly maiden aunts of 
 fiction) comes to Lisa in her room and implores her to 
 renounce her project of entering a convent, we feel 
 that there are depths of purpose in the young girl's 
 deferential sweetness that nothing in the world can 
 overcome. She is intensely religious, as she ought to 
 be for psychological truth, and nothing could more 
 effectually disconnect her from the usual inginue of 
 romance than our sense of the naturalness of her re- 
 
IVAN TURG^NIEFF. 2^1 
 
 ligious life. Her love for Lavretzky is a passion in its 
 essence half renunciation. The first use she makes of 
 the influence with him which his own love gives her 
 is to try and reconcile him with his wife; and her 
 foremost feeling, on learning that the latter is not 
 dead, as they had believed, is an irremissible sense of 
 pollution. The dusky, antique consciousness of sin in 
 this tender, virginal soul is a combination which we 
 seem somehow to praise amiss in calling it picturesque, 
 but which it would be still more inexact to call 
 didactic. Lisa is altogether a most remarkable por- 
 trait, and one that readers of the heroine's own sex 
 ought to contemplate with some complacency. They 
 have been known to complain on the one hand that 
 romancers abuse them, and on the other that they in- 
 sufferably patronise them. Here is a picture drawn 
 with all the tenderness of a lover, and yet with an in- 
 definable — an almost unprecedented — respect. In this 
 tale, as always with our author, the drama is quite 
 uncommented; the poet never plays chorus; situations 
 speak for themselves. When Lavretzky reads in the 
 chronique of a French newspaper that his wife is dead, 
 there is no description of his feelings, no portrayal of 
 his mental attitude. The living, moving narrative has 
 so effectually put us in the way of feeling with him 
 that we can be depended upon. He had been read- 
 ing in bed before going to sleep, had taken up the 
 paper and discovered the momentous paragraph. He 
 "threw himself into his clothes," the author simply 
 says, "went out into the garden, and walked up and 
 down till morning in the same alley." We close the 
 book for a moment and pause, with a sense of 
 personal excitement. But of M. Turgenieff's genius for 
 
232 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 infusing a rich suggestiveness into common forms, the 
 character of Gottlieb Lemm, the melancholy German 
 music-master, is a perhaps surpassing example. Never 
 was homely truth more poetical; never was poetry 
 more minutely veracious. 
 
 Lavretzky, sorely tried as he is, is perhaps the hap- 
 piest of our author's heroes. He suffers great pain, 
 but he has not the intolerable sense of having inflicted 
 it on others. This is the lot, both of the hero of 
 "Smoke" and of the fatally passive youth whose ad- 
 ventures we follow in the author's latest work. On 
 "Smoke" we are unable to linger, as its theme is 
 almost identical with that of "Spring-Torrents," and 
 the latter will be a novelty to a greater number of our 
 readers. "Smoke," with its powerful and painful 
 interest, lacks, to our mind, the underlying sweetness 
 of most of its companions. It has aU their talent, but 
 it has less of their spirit. It treats of a dangerous 
 beauty who robs the loveliest girl in Russia of her 
 plighted lover, and the story duly absorbs us; but we 
 find that, for our own part, there is always a certain 
 langour in our intellectual acceptance of the grand 
 coquettes of fiction. It is obviously a hard picture to 
 paint; we always seem to see the lady pushing about 
 her train before the foot-lights, or glancing at the 
 orchestra-stalls during her victim's agony. In the 
 portrait of Irene, however, there are very fine intentions, 
 .and the reader is charmed forward very much as poor 
 Litvinof was. The figure of Tatiana, however, is fuU 
 of the wholesome fragrance of nature. "Smoke" was 
 preceded by "Fathers and Sons," which dates from ten 
 years ago, and was the first of M. Turgenieff''s tales to 
 be translated in America. In none of them is the sub- 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 233 
 
 ject of wider scope or capable of having more of the 
 author's insidious melancholy expressed from it; for 
 the figures with which he has filled his foreground are, 
 with their personal interests and adventures, but the 
 symbols of the shadowy forces that are fighting for 
 ever a larger battle — the battle of the old and the 
 new, the past and the future, of the ideas that arrive 
 with the ideas that linger. Half the tragedies in human 
 history are born of this conflict; and in all that poets 
 and philosophers tell us of it the clearest fact is still 
 its perpetu^ necessity. The opposing forces in M. 
 Turgenieff's novel are an elder and a younger genera- 
 tion; the drama can indeed never have a more poig- 
 nant interest than when we see the young world, as it 
 grows to a sense of its strength and its desires, turning 
 to smite the old world which has brought it forth with 
 a mother's tears and a mother's hopes. The young 
 world, in "Fathers and Sons," is the fiercer combatant; 
 and the old world in fact is simply for ever the vida 
 causa that even stoics pity. And yet with M. Turg6nieff, 
 characteristically, the gaining cause itself is purely re- 
 lative, and victors and vanquished are commingled in 
 a common assent to fate. Here, as always, his rare 
 discretion serves him, and rescues him from the danger 
 of exaggerating his representative types. Few figures 
 in his pages are more intelligibly human than Pavel 
 Petrovitsch and Eugene Bazaroff — human each of them 
 in his indefeasible weakness; the one in spite of his 
 small allowances, the other in spite of his brutal claims. 
 In the elder Kirsanoff the author has imaged certain 
 things he instinctively values — the hundred fading 
 traditions of which the now vulgarized idea of the 
 "gentleman" is the epitome. He loves him, of course. 
 
234 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 as a romancer must, but he has done the most im- 
 partial justice to the ridiculous aspect of his position. 
 Bazaroff is a so-called "nihilist" — a red-handed radical, 
 fresh from the shambles of criticism, with BUchner's 
 Staff und Kraft as a text-book, and everything in 
 nature and history for his prey. He is young, strong, 
 and clever, and strides about, rejoicing in his scepticism, 
 sparing nothing, human or divine, and proposing to 
 have demolished the universe before he runs his course. 
 But he finds there is something stronger, cleverer, 
 longer-lived than himself, and that death is a fiercer 
 nihilist than even Dr. BUchner. The tale traces the 
 course of the summer vacation that he comes to spend 
 in the country with a college-friend, and is chiefly oc- 
 cupied with the record of the various trials to which, 
 in this short period, experience subjects his philosophy. 
 They all foreshadow, of course, the supreme dramatic 
 test. He falls in love, and tries to deny his love as he 
 denies everything else, but the best he can do is only 
 to express it in a coarse formula. Mr. Turg^nieif is 
 always fond of contrasts, and he has not failed to give 
 Bazaroff a foil in his young comrade, Arcadi Kirsanoff, 
 who represents the merely impermanent and imitative 
 element that clings to the skirts of every great move- 
 ment. Bazaroff is silenced by death, but it takes a 
 very small dose of life to silence Arcadi. The latter 
 belongs to the nobility, and Bazaroff's exploits in his 
 tranquil, conventional home are those of a lusty young 
 bull in a cabinet of rococo china. Exquisitely imagined 
 is the whole attitude and demeanour of Pavel Petro- 
 vitsch, Arcadi's uncle, and a peculiarly happy invention 
 the duel which this perfumed conservative considers it 
 his manifest duty to fight in behalf of gentlemanly 
 
■ IVAN TURGENIEFF. 235 
 
 opinions. The deeper interest of the tale, however, 
 begins when the young Bllchnerite repairs to his own 
 provincial home and turns to a pinch of dust the tender 
 superstitions of the poor old parental couple who live 
 only in their pride in their great learned son and have 
 not even a genteel prejudice, of any consequence, to 
 oppose to his terrible positivism. M. Turg6niefif has 
 written nothing finer than this last half of his story; 
 every touch is masterly, every detail is eloquent. In 
 Vassili Ivanovitsch and Arina Vlassievna he has shown 
 us the sentient heart that still may throb in disused 
 forms and not be too proud to subsist a while yet by 
 the charity of science. Their timid devotion to their 
 son, their roundabout caresses, their longings and hopes 
 and fears, and their deeply pathetic stupefaction when 
 it begins to be plain that the world can spare him, all 
 form a picture which, in spite of its dealing with small 
 things in a small style, carries us to the uttermost 
 limits of the tragical. A very noticeable stroke of art, 
 also, is Bazaroff's ever-growing discontentment — a 
 chronic moral irritation, provoked not by the pangs 
 of an old-fashioned conscience, but, naturally enough, 
 by the absence of the agreeable in a world that he 
 has subjected to such exhaustive disintegration. We 
 especially recommend to the reader his long talk with 
 Arcadi as they lie on the grass in the midsummer 
 shade, and Bazaroff kicks out viciously at everything 
 suggested by his ingenuous companion. Toward him 
 too he feels vicious, and we quite understand the im- 
 pulse, identical with that which in a nervous woman 
 would find expression in a fit of hysterics, through 
 which the overwrought young rationalist, turning to 
 Arcadi with an alarming appearance of real gusto, pro- 
 
236 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 poses to fight with him, "to the extinction of animal 
 heat." We must find room for the portrait of Arina 
 Vlassievna. 
 
 She "was a real type of the smaE Russian gentry of the old 
 rigime; she ought to have come into the world two hundred years 
 sooner, in the time of the grand-dukes of Moscow. Easily im- 
 pressed, deeply pious, she believed in all signs and tokens, divina- 
 tions, sorceries, dreams; she believed in the lourodrvi [half-witted 
 persons, popularly held sacred], in familiar spirits, in those of the 
 woods, in evil meetings, in the evil eye , in popular cures, in the 
 virtue of salt placed upon the altar on Good Friday, in the impend- 
 ing end of the world; she believed that if the tapers at the midnight 
 mass in Lent do not go out , the crop of buckwheat will be good, 
 and that mushrooms cease to grow as soon as human eye has rested 
 on them; she believed that the Devil likes places where there is 
 water, and that all Jews have a blood-spot on their chests; she was 
 afraid of mice, snakes, toads, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold 
 water, draughts of air, horses, goats, red-haired men and black 
 cats, and considered crickets and dogs as impure creatures; she ate 
 neither veal, nor pigeons, nor lobsters, nor cheese, nor asparagus, 
 nor hare , nor watermelon (because a melon opened resembled the 
 dissevered head of John the Baptist), and the mere idea of oysters, 
 which she did not know even by sight, caused her to shudder; she 
 liked to eat well, and fasled rigorously; she slept ten hours a day, 
 and never went to bed at all if Vassili Ivanovitsch complained of a 
 headache. The only book that she had read was called 'Alexis, 
 or The Cottage in the Forest'; she wrote at most one or two letters 
 a year, and was an excellent judge of sweetmeats and preserves, 
 though she put her own hand to nothing, and, as a general thing, 
 preferred not to move. . . . She was anxious, was perpetually ex- 
 pecting some great misfortune, and began to cry as soon as she re- 
 membered anything sad. Women of this kind are beginning to be 
 rare; God knows whether we should be glad of it." 
 
 The ribvel which we have chosen as the text of 
 these remarks was published some six years since. It 
 strikes us at first as a reproduction of old material, 
 the subject being identical with that of "Smoke" and 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 237 
 
 very similar to that of the short masterpiece called "A 
 Correspondence." The subject is one of the saddest 
 in the world, and we shall have to reproach M. Tur- 
 g&iieff with delighting in sadness. But "Spring-Tor- 
 rents" has a narrative charm that sweetens its bitter 
 waters, and we may add that, from the writer's point 
 of view, the theme does differ by several shades from 
 that of the tales we have mentioned. These treat of 
 the fatal weakness of will that M. Turgenieff apparently 
 considers the peculiar vice of the new generation in 
 Russia; "Spring-Torrents" illustrates, more generally, 
 the element of folly which mingles, in a certain mea- 
 sure, in all youthful spontaneity, and makes us grow 
 to wisdom by the infliction of suffering. The youthful 
 folly of Dmitri Sanin has been great; the memory of it 
 haunts him for years and lays on him at last such an 
 icy grip that his heart will break unless he can repair it. 
 The opening sentences of the story indicate the key 
 in which it is pitched. We may quote them as an 
 example of the way in which M. Turgenieff almost in- 
 variably appeals at the outset to our distinctively 
 moral curiosity, our sympathy with character. Some- 
 thing tells us, in this opening strain, that we are not 
 invited to lend ear to the mere dead rattle that rises 
 for ever from the surface of life. 
 
 "... Towards two o'clock at night, he came back into his 
 sitting-room. The servant who had lighted the candles he sent 
 away, threw himself into a chair by the chimney-piece, and covered 
 his face with his hands. Never had he felt such a weariness of 
 body and soul. He had been spending the whole evening with 
 graceful women, with cultivated men; some of the women were 
 pretty, almost all the men were distinguished for wit and talent; he 
 himself had talked with good effect , even brilliantly; and yet with 
 all this, never had that tcBdium vita, of which the Romans already 
 
238 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 speak, that sense of disgust with life, pressed upon him and taken 
 possession of him in such an irresistible fashion. Had he been 
 somewhat younger, he would have wept for sadness, for ennui and 
 overwrought nerves: a corroding, burning bitterness, like the bitter- 
 ness of wormwood, filled his whole soul. Something inexpugnable 
 — cold, sickening, oppressive — crowded in upon him from all sides 
 like autumn dusk, and he knew not how he could free himself from 
 this duskiness and bitterness. He could not count upon sleep; he 
 
 knew he should not sleep He began to muse — slowly, sadly, 
 
 bitterly He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the com- 
 mon falsity of the whole human race. . . . He shook his head, 
 sprang up from his seat, walked several times up and down the 
 room, sat down at his writing-table, pulled out one drawer after 
 the other, and began to fumble among old papers, mostly letters in 
 a woman's hand. He knew not why he did it — he was looking 
 for nothing, he simply wished to seek refuge in an outward occu- 
 pation from the thoughts that tormented him He got up, 
 
 went back to the fireplace, sank into his chair again, and covered 
 
 his face with his hands 'Why to-day, just to-day?' he 
 
 thought; and many a memory firom the long- vanished past rose up 
 in him. He remembered — this is what he remembered." 
 
 On his way back to Russia from a foreign tour he 
 meets, at Frankfort, a young girl of modest origin but 
 extraordinary beauty — the daughter of an Italian con- 
 fectioner. Accident brings them together, he falls in 
 love with her, holds himself ardently ready to many 
 her, obtains her mother's consent, and has only, to 
 make the marriage possible, to raise money on his 
 Russian property, which is of moderate value. While 
 he is revolving schemes he encounters an old school- 
 fellow, an odd personage, now married to an heiress 
 who, as fortune has it, possesses an estate in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Sanin's own. It occurs to the latter that 
 Madame Polosoff may be induced to buy his land, and, 
 as she understands "business" and manages her own 
 affairs, he repairs to Wiesbaden, with leave obtained 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 239 
 
 from his betrothed, to make his proposal. The reader 
 of course foresees the sequel — the reader, especially, 
 who is versed in Turgenieff. Madame Polosoff under- 
 stands business and much else besides. She is young, 
 lovely, unscrupulous, dangerous, fatal. Sanin suc- 
 cumbs to the spell, forgets honour, duty, tenderness, 
 prudence, everything, and after three days of bewil- 
 dered resistance finds himself packed into the lady's 
 travelling-carriage with her other belongings and roll- 
 ing toward Paris. But we foresee that he comes 
 speedily to his senses; the spring -torrent is spent. 
 The years that follow are as arid as brooding peni- 
 tence can make them. Penitence, after that night of 
 bitter memories, takes an active shape. He makes a 
 pilgrimage to Frankfort and seeks out some trace of 
 the poor girl he had deserted. With much trouble he 
 obtains tidings, and learns that she is married in 
 America, that she is happy, and that she serenely for- 
 gives him. He returns to St. Petersburg, spends there 
 a short, restless interval, and suddenly disappears. 
 People say he has gone to America. The spring-tor- 
 rents exhale themselves in autumn mists. Sanin, in 
 the Frankfort episode, is not only very young, but very 
 Russian; how young, how Russian, this charming de- 
 scription tells. 
 
 "He was, to begin with, a really very good-looking fellow. He 
 had a tall, slender figure, agreeable, rather vague features, kindly 
 blue eyes, a fair complexion suffused with a fresh red, and, above 
 all that genial, joyous, confiding, upright expression, which at the 
 first glance, perhaps, seems to give an air of limitation, but by 
 which, in former times, you recognised the son of a tranquil aristo- 
 cratic family — a son of the ' fathers , ' a good country gentleman, 
 born and grown up, stoutly, in those fruitful provinces of ours 
 which border on the steppe; then a somewhat shuffling gait, a 
 
240 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 slightly lisping way of speaking, a childlike laugh as soon as any 
 one looked at him, .... health, in short, freshness and a softness, 
 — a softness! .... there you have all Sauin. Along with this he 
 was by no means dull, and had learnt a good many things. He 
 had remained fresh in spite of his journey abroad; those tumultuous 
 impulses that imposed themselves upon the best part of the young 
 men of that day were Uttle known to him." 
 
 If we place beside this vivid portrait the sketch, 
 hardly less expressive, of Madame Polosoff', we find in 
 the mere apposition the germ of a novel. 
 
 "Not that she was a perfect beauty; the traces of her plebeian 
 origin were perceptible enough. Her forehead was low, her nose 
 rather thick and inclining to an upward inflection; she could boast 
 neither of a fine skin nor of pretty hands and feet. But what did 
 all this signify ? Not before the ' sanctity of beauty '—to use Pusch- 
 kin's words — would he who met her have stood lingering, but be- 
 fore the charm of the powerful half- Russian, half-Bohemian, bloom- 
 ing, womanly body — and he would not have lingered without a 
 purpose. " 
 
 Madame Polosoff, though her exploits are related 
 in a short sixty-five pages, is unfolded in the large 
 dramatic manner. We seem to be in her presence, 
 to listen to her provoking, bewildering talk, to feel the 
 danger of her audacious, conscious frankness. Her 
 quite peculiar cruelty and depravity make a large 
 demand on our credulity; she is perhaps a trifle too 
 extravagantly vicious. But she is strangely, vividly 
 natural, and our imagination goes with her in the same 
 charmed mood as with M. Turgenieff's other evil-doers. 
 Not without an effort, too, do we accept the possibility 
 of Sanin's immediate infidelity to the object of the 
 pure still passion with which his heart even yet over- 
 flows. But these are wonderful mysteries; its im- 
 
IVAN TITRGENIEFF. 24 1 
 
 mediacy, perhaps, best accounts for it; spring-torrents, 
 the author would seem to intimate, must flow, and 
 ravage their blooming channels. To give a picture of 
 the immeasurable blindness of youth, of its eagerness 
 of desire, its freshness of impression, its mingled raw- 
 ness and ripeness, the swarming, shifting possibilities 
 of its springtime, and to interfuse his picture with some- 
 thing of the softening poetizing harmony of retrospect 
 — this has been but half the author's purpose. He 
 has designed beside to paint the natural conflict be- 
 tween soul and sense, and to make the struggle less 
 complex than the one he has described in "Smoke," 
 and less brutal, as it were, than the fatal victory of 
 sense in "A Correspondence." "When will it all come 
 to an end?" Sanin asks, as he stares helpless at Maria 
 Nikolaievna, feeling himself ignobly paralysed. "Weak 
 men," says the author, "never themselves make an 
 end — they always wait for the end." Sanin's history 
 is weighted with the moral that salvation lies in being 
 able, at a given moment, to turn on one's will like a 
 screw. If M. Turgenieff pays his tribute to the magic 
 of sense he leaves us also eloquently reminded that 
 soul in the long run claims her own. He has given 
 us no sweeter image of uncorrupting passion than this 
 figure of Gemma, the frank young Italian nature 
 blooming in northern air from its own mere wealth of 
 joyousness. Yet, charming as Gemma is, she is but a 
 half-sister to Lisa and Tatiana. Neither Lisa or 
 Tatiana, we suspect, would have read popular comedy 
 with her enchanting mimicry; but, on the other hand, 
 they would have been withheld by a delicate, indefin- 
 able conscientiousness from caricaturing the dismissed 
 lover of the day before for the entertainment of the 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. *" 
 
242 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 accepted lover of the present. But Gemma is a charm- 
 ing piece of colouring, and all this only proves how 
 many different ways there are of being the loveliest 
 girl in the world. The accessories of her portrait are 
 as happily rendered; the whole picture of the little 
 Italian household, with its narrow backshop life, in the 
 German town, has a mellow enclosed light in which 
 the reader gratefully lingers. It touches the figure of 
 the usual half- fantastic house-friend, the poor old ex- 
 barytone Pantaleone Cippatola, into the most vivacious 
 relief. 
 
 III. 
 
 We always desire more information about the writers 
 who greatly interest us than we find in their works, 
 and many American readers have probably a friendly 
 curiosity as to the private personality of M. Turgenieff. 
 We are reduced, however, to regretting our own meagre 
 knowledge. We gather from his writings that our 
 author is much of a cosmopolitan, a dweller in many 
 cities and a frequenter of many societies, and, along 
 with this, an indefinable sense of his being of a so- 
 called "aristocratic" temperament; so that if a man's 
 genius were visible to the eye, like his fleshly integu- 
 ment, that of M. Turgenieff would be observed to have, 
 say, very shapely hands and feet, and a nose expressive 
 of the patrician graces. A friend of ours, indeed, who 
 has rather an irresponsible fancy, assures us that the 
 author of "Smoke" (which he deems his masterpiece) 
 is, personally, simply his own Pavel KirsanoflF. Twenty 
 to one our friend is quite wrong; but we may neverthe- 
 less say that, to readers disposed now and then to risk 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 243 
 
 a conjecture, much of the charm of M. Turg^nieff's 
 manner resides in this impalpable union of an aristo- 
 cratic temperament with a democratic intellect. To 
 his inquisitive intellect we owe the various, abundant, 
 human substance of his tales, and to his fastidious 
 temperament their exquisite form. But we must not 
 meddle too freely with causes when results themselves 
 are so suggestive. The great question as to a poet or 
 a novelist is. How does he feel about life? what, in 
 the last analysis, is his philosophy? When vigorous 
 writers have reached maturity we are at liberty to look 
 in their works for some expression of a total view of 
 the world they have been so actively observing. This 
 is the most interesting thing their works offer us. 
 Details are interesting in proportion as they contribute 
 to make it clear. 
 
 The foremost impression of M. Turgdniefif's reader is 
 that he is morbidly serious, that he takes life terribly 
 hard. We move in an atmosphere of unrelieved sad- 
 ness. We go from one tale to the other in the hope 
 of finding something cheerful, but we only wander into 
 fresh agglomerations of gloom. We try the shorter 
 stories with a hope of chancing upon something pitched 
 in the traditional key of "light reading," but they 
 strike us alike as so many ingenious condensations of 
 melancholy. "A Village Lear" is worse than "The 
 Antchar"; "The Forsaken" is hardly an improvement 
 on "A Correspondence"; "The Journal of a Super- 
 fluous Man" does little to lay the haunting ghost of 
 "Three Portraits." The author has written several 
 short dramas. Appealing to them to beguile us of our 
 dusky vapours, we find the concentrated tragedy of 
 "The Bread of Charity," and, by way of an after-piece, 
 
244 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the lugubrious humour of "The Division." Sad be- 
 ginnings, worse endings, good people ineffably wretched, 
 happy ones hugely ridiculous; disappointment, despair, 
 madness, suicide, degrading passions, and blighted 
 hopes — these seem, on first acquaintance, the chief in- 
 gredients of M. Turgenieff's version of the human 
 drama; and to deepen our sense of its bitterness we 
 discover the author in the background winding up his 
 dismal demonstration with a chuckle. We set him 
 down forthwith as a cold-blooded pessimist, caring for 
 nothing in life but its misery and for nothing in misery 
 but its pictorial effects — its capacity for furnishing 
 cynical epigrams. What is each of the short tales we 
 have mentioned, we ask, but a ruthless epigram, in 
 the dramatic form, upon human happiness? Evlampia 
 Charloff, in "A Village Lear," drives her father to 
 madness and death by her stony depravity, and then 
 joins a set of religious fanatics, among whom she plays 
 a great part as the "Holy Mother of God." In "The 
 Bread of Charity," a young heiress brings home to her 
 estates her newly-wedded husband, and introduces him 
 to' her old neighbours. They dine with him, and one 
 of them, an officious coxcomb, conceives the brilliant 
 idea of entertaining him by an exhibition of a poor 
 old gentleman who has long been hanging about the 
 place as a pensioner of the late parents of the young 
 wife, and is remarkable for a dumb canine attachment 
 to herself. The heartless guest plies the modest old 
 man with wine, winds him up and makes him play the 
 fool. But suddenly Kusofkin, through the fumes of 
 his potations, perceives that he is being laughed at, and 
 breaks out into a passionate assurance that, baited and 
 buffeted as he is, he is nothing less than the father of 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 245 
 
 the mistress of the house. Sh* overhears his cry, and 
 though he, horrified at his indiscretion, attempts to 
 retract it, she wins from him a confession of the fact 
 that he had been her mother's lover. The husband, 
 however, makes him swallow his words, and do public 
 penance. He turns him out of the house with a small 
 pension, and the curtain falls on the compliment of- 
 fered this fine fellow by the meddlesome neighbour on 
 his generosity: "You are a true Russian gentleman!" 
 The most perfectly epigrammatic of our author's stories, 
 however, is perhaps that polished little piece of misery, 
 "A Correspondence." A young man, idle, discontented, 
 and longing for better things, writes, for a pastime, to 
 a young girl whom he has formerly slightly known and 
 greatly esteemed, who has entertained an unsuspected 
 and unrequited passion for him, and who lives ob- 
 scurely in the country, among very common people. A 
 correspondence comes of it, in the course of which they 
 exchange confidences and unburden their hearts. The 
 young girl is most pitiable, most amiable, in her sad- 
 ness, and her friend begins to suspect that she, at last, 
 may give a meaning to his aimless life. She, on her 
 side, is compassionately interested, and we see curiosity 
 and hope throbbing timidly beneath the austere re- 
 signation to which she had schooled herself, and the 
 expression of which, mingled with our sense of her 
 blooming beauty of character, makes of Maria Alexan- 
 drovna the most nobly fascinating, perhaps, of our 
 author's heroines. Alexis Petrovitsch writes at last that 
 he must see her, that he will come to her, that she is 
 to expect him at such a date, and we imagine tenderly, 
 in the unhastening current of her days, the gentle eddy 
 of her expectation. Her next letter, after an interval, 
 
246 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 expresses surprise at his non-appearance; her next, 
 several months later, is a last attempt to obtain news 
 of him. The correspondence closes with his confession, 
 written as he lies dying at Dresden. Just as he was 
 starting to join her, he had encountered another woman, 
 a dancing-girl at the opera, with whom he had fallen 
 madly in love. She was low, stupid, heartless; she 
 had nothing to recommend her to anphing but his 
 senses. It was ignoble, but so it was. His passion 
 has led him such a life that his health is gone. He 
 has brought on disease of the lungs, by waiting for 
 the young lady at the opera-door in the winter nights. 
 Now his hours are numbered, and this is the end of 
 all! And on this lugubrious note the story closes. We 
 read with intent curiosity, for the tale is a master- 
 piece of narration; but we wonder, in some vexation, 
 what it all means. Is it a piece of irony for irony's 
 sake, or is it a disinterested picture of the struggle 
 between base passion and pure passion? Why, in that 
 case, should it seem a matter of course for the author 
 that base passion should carry the day? Why, as for 
 Rudin, for Sanin, for the distracted hero of "Smoke," 
 should circumstances also have been too many, as the 
 phrase is, for poor Alexis Petrovitsch? If we pursue 
 our researches, in the hope of finding some method in 
 this promiscuous misery, examples continue to seem 
 more numerous than principles. The author continues 
 everywhere to imply that there is something essentially 
 ridiculous in human nature, something indefeasibly 
 vain in human effort. We are amazed, as we go, at 
 the portentous number of his patent fools; no novelist 
 has drawn a tenth as many. The large majority of 
 his people are the people we laugh at, and a large 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 247 
 
 fraction of the remainder the people we half disgustedly 
 pity. There is little room left, therefore, for the people 
 we esteem, and yet room enough perhaps, considering 
 that our very benevolence is tempered with scepticism. 
 What with the vicious fools and the well-meaning 
 fools, the prosperous charlatans and the grotesque 
 nonentities, the dead failures and the sadder failures 
 that regret and protest and rebel, the demoralized 
 lovers and the jilted maidens, the dusky pall of fatality, 
 in a word, suspended over all human things, it may be 
 inferred that we are not invited to a particularly ex- 
 hilarating spectacle. Not a single person in the novel 
 of "Fathers and Sons" but has, in some degree, a 
 lurking ironical meaning. Every one is a more or less 
 ludicrous parody on what he ought to have been, or 
 an ineffectual regret at what he might have been. The 
 only person who compasses a reasonable share of 
 happiness is Arcadi, and even his happiness is a thing 
 for strenuous minds to smile at — a happiness based on 
 the pot au feu, the prospect of innumerable babies and 
 the sacrifice of "views." Arcadi's father is a vulgar 
 failure; Pavel Petrovitsch is a poetic failure; Bazaroff 
 is a tragic failure; Anna Sergheievna misses happiness 
 from an ungenerous fear of sacrificing her luxurious 
 quietude; the elder Bazaroff and his wife seem a 
 couple of ingeniously grotesque manikins, prepared by 
 a melancholy fantoccinista to illustrate the mocking 
 vanity of parental hopes. We lay down the book, and 
 we repeat that, with all the charity in the world, it is 
 impossible to pronounce M. Turgenieff anything better 
 than a pessimist. 
 
 The judgment is just, but it needs qualifications, 
 and it finds them in a larger look at the author's posi- 
 
248 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tion. M. Turgenieff strikes us, as we have said, as a 
 man disappointed, for good reasons or for poor ones, 
 in the land that is dear to him. Harsh critics will say 
 for poor ones, reflecting that a fastidious imagination 
 has not been unconcerned in his discontentment. To 
 the old Muscovite virtues, and especially the old Mus- 
 covite na'iveU, his imagination filially clings, but he 
 finds these things, especially in the fact that his country 
 turns to the outer world, melting more and more every 
 day into the dimness of tradition. The Russians are 
 clever, and clever people are ambitious. Those with 
 whom M. Turgenieff has seen himself surrounded are 
 consumed with the desire to pass for intellectual cos- 
 mopolites, to know, or seem to know, everything that 
 can be known, to be astoundingly modern and pro- 
 gressive and European. Madame Kukshin, the poor 
 little literary lady with a red nose, in "Fathers and 
 Sons," gives up George Sand as "nowhere" for her 
 want of knowledge of embryology, and, when asked 
 why she proposes to remove to Heidelberg, replies 
 with "Bunsen, you know." The fermentation of social 
 change has thrown to the surface in Russia a deluge 
 of hollow pretensions and vicious presumptions, amid 
 which the love either of old virtues or of new achieve- 
 ments finds very little gratification. It is not simply 
 that people flounder laughably in deeper waters than 
 they can breast, but that in this discord of crude am- 
 bitions the integrity of character itself is compromised 
 and men and women make, morally, a very ugly ap- 
 pearance. The Russian colony at Baden-Baden, de- 
 picted in "Smoke," is a collection of more or less 
 inflated profligates. Panschin, in "A Nest of Noblemen," 
 is another example; Sitnikoff, in "Fathers and Sons," 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 249 
 
 a Still more contemptible one. Driven back, depressed 
 and embittered, into his imagination for the edification 
 which the social spectacle immediately before him 
 refuses him, and shaped by nature to take life hard 
 and linger among its shadows, our observer surrenders 
 himself with a certain reactionary, irresponsible gusto 
 to a sombre portrayal of things. An imaginative pre- 
 ference for dusky subjects is a perfectly legitimate 
 element of the artistic temperament; our own Haw- 
 thorne is a signal case of its being innocently exercised; 
 innocently, because with that delightfully unconscious 
 genius it remained imaginative, sportive, inconclusive, 
 to the end. When external circumstances, however, 
 contribute to confirm it, and reality lays her groaning 
 stores of misery at its feet, it will take a rarely elastic 
 genius altogether to elude the charge of being morbid. 
 M. Turgenieff's pessimism seems to us of two sorts — 
 a spontaneous melancholy and a wanton melancholy. 
 Sometimes in a sad story it is the problem, the ques- 
 tion, the idea, that strikes him; sometimes it is simply 
 the picture. Under the former influence he has pro- 
 duced his masterpieces; we admit that they are in- 
 tensely sad, but we consent to be moved, as we consent 
 to sit silent in a death-chamber. In the other case he 
 has done but his second best; we strike a bargain over 
 our tears, and insist that when it comes to being simply 
 entertained, wooing and wedding are better than death 
 and burial. "The Antchar," "The Forsaken," "A Super- 
 fluous Man," "A Village Lear," "Toe . . . toe . . . toe," 
 all seem to us to be gloomier by several shades than 
 they need have been; for we hold to the good old 
 belief that the presumption, in life, is in favour of the 
 brighter side, and we deem it, in art, an indispensable 
 
250 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 condition of our interest in a depressed observer that 
 he should have at least tried his best to be cheerful. 
 The truth, we take it, lies for the pathetic in poetry 
 and romance very much where it lies for the "immoral." 
 Morbid pathos is reflective pathos; ingenious pathos, 
 pathos not freshly born of the occasion; noxious im- 
 morality is superficial immorality, immorality without 
 natural roots in the subject. We value most the 
 "realists" who have an ideal of delicacy and the 
 elegiasts who have an ideal of joy. 
 
 "Pictorial gloom, possibly," a thick and thin ad- 
 mirer of M. Turg^nieff's may say to us, "at least you 
 will admit that it is pictorial." This we heartily con- 
 cede, and, recalled to a sense of our author's brilliant 
 diversity and ingenuity, we bring our restrictions to a 
 close. To the broadly generous side of his imagina- 
 tion it is impossible to pay exaggerated homage, or, 
 indeed, for that matter, to its simple intensity and 
 fecundity. No romancer has created a greater number 
 of the figures that breathe and move and speak, in 
 their habits as they might have lived; none, on the 
 
 ! whole, seems to us to have had such a masterly touch 
 in portraiture, none has mingled so much ideal beauty 
 with so much unsparing reality. His sadness has its 
 element of error, but it has also its larger element of 
 
 r wisdom. Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point op- 
 timists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and 
 strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt 
 to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness 
 to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people 
 of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. 
 But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, 
 no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again for 
 
IVAN TURGENIEFF. 25 I 
 
 ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it 
 nor dispense with it. We can welcome experience as 
 it comes, and give it what it demands, in exchange 
 for something which it is idle to pause to call much 
 or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume 
 of consciousness. In this there is mingled pain and 
 delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers 
 a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to 
 understand. So much as this we seem to decipher 
 between the lines of M. Turg^nieif's minutely written 
 chronicle. He himself has sought to understand as 
 zealously as his most eminent competitors. He gives, 
 at least, no meagre account of life, and he has done 
 liberal justice to its infinite variety. This is his great 
 merit; his great defect, roughly stated, is a tendency 
 to the abuse of irony. He remains, nevertheless, to 
 our sense, a very welcome mediator between the world 
 and our curiosity. If we had space, we should like to 
 set forth that he is by no means our ideal story-teller 
 — this honourable genius possessing, attributively, a 
 rarer skill than the finest required for producing an 
 artful richauffl of the actual. But even for better 
 romancers we must wait for a better world. Whether 
 the world in its higher state of perfection will oc- 
 casionally ofier colour to scandal, we hesitate to pro- 
 nounce; but we are prone to conceive of the ultimate 
 novelist as a personage altogether purged of sarcasm. 
 The imaginative force now expended in this direction 
 he will devote to describing cities of gold and heavens 
 of sapphire. But, for the present, we gratefully accept 
 M. Turgenieff", and reflect that his manner suits the 
 most frequent mood of the greater number of readers. 
 If he were a dogmatic optimist we suspect that, as 
 
2^2 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 things go, we should long ago have ceased to miss 
 him from our library. The personal optimism of most 
 of us no romancer can confirm or dissipate and our 
 personal troubles, generally, place fictions of all kinds 
 in an impertinent light. To our usual working mood 
 the world is apt to seem M. Turgenieff's hard world, 
 and when, at moments, the strain and the pressure 
 deepen, the ironical element figures not a little in our 
 form of address to those short-sighted friends who 
 have whispered that it is an easy one. 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 253 
 
 THE TWO AMPERES. 
 
 We have before us three volumes* which we have 
 read with extraordinary pleasure. They are the records 
 of the lives of a father and a son; they contain a com- 
 plete family-history. In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville 
 made in this country that tour which was to be the 
 prelude to the publication of his "Democracy," the 
 most serious book written on America up to that mo- 
 ment by a foreigner. De Tocqueville and Jean- Jacques 
 Ampere were united by a passionate friendship (an 
 amilU-passion Sainte-Beuve calls it), and the latter, 
 twenty years afterward, in 1851, followed in the foot- 
 steps of the author of the "Democracy," and made a 
 rapid journey from Canada to Mexico. He, too, of 
 course wrote a book, and his "Promenade en Amerique" 
 is a very genial and kindly composition. We bestow 
 at present a very much less irritable attention upon 
 the impressions of the foreign promenader than at the 
 very distant date of M. Ampere's tour. We ourselves 
 should say, indeed, that the European optimist on our 
 shores would at present find it convenient, as a general 
 
 • "Journal et Correspondance de Andre-Marie Ampere." 
 Publies par Mme. H. C. Paris, Hetzel, 1873. 
 
 "Andre-Marie Ampere et Jean-Jacques Ampere. Souvenirs 
 et Correspondance." Receuillis par Mme. H. C. Paris, Hetzel, 
 1875. 
 
254 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 thing, to keep watch upon his enthusiasm. But M. Am- 
 pere's amiable book was certainly disinterested; it was 
 the expression of an eminently appreciative and so- 
 ciable mind, and we make no exaggerated claim for 
 it in saying that it introduces the author agreeably to 
 American readers. They may be advised, after a 
 glance at it, to pass on to the volumes whose titles are 
 here transcribed and which embody a mass of literary 
 matter now more entertaining to people in general than 
 the author's formal compositions. Jean- Jacques Ampere 
 was an accomplished scholar and a very clever man; 
 but he seems to us a rather striking illustration of the 
 common axiom that between two stools one falls to 
 the ground. He was at once a man of books and a 
 man of the world; an ardent savant and an indefatig- 
 able traveller. "He could read," says Sainte-Beuve, 
 "a hieroglyphic phrase on the sarcophagus of a Pharaoh; 
 it befell him one evening before going to sleep to read 
 a Chinese book among the ruins of Ephesus. We must 
 agree that these are high dilettantisms of the mind, 
 such as are within the reach of a very select few." 
 He wrote so much, on questions of learning, that you 
 wonder he should ever have found a moment to leave 
 his study; and he travelled so much, moved so much 
 in the world, formed so many personal and social ties, 
 had such a genius for conversation, for society, and 
 for friendship, that you wonder he found time to open 
 a book or mend his pen. The verdict of competent 
 criticism has been that Jean- Jacques Ampere sacrificed 
 erudition to obsei-vation and observation to erudition; 
 that he lacked exactness as a savant and that he lacked 
 vividness as a tourist. Scholars find his "Histoire 
 Romaine iRome" superficial, and, for what it attempts 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 255 
 
 to be, the profane find it dry. "In the middle of 
 June," he writes in 1862, "I went with Hubert to 
 Subiaco, a wild spot to which the artist-poet loved to 
 go in search of models. It was during this little jour- 
 ney, on the road to Tivoli, while the horses were rest- 
 ing, that I read to Hubert the first lines of 'L'Histoire 
 Romaine a Rome,' and he then told me frankly that 
 my picture of the Roman Campagna left him cold." 
 Ampere endeavoured to infuse a little more colour into 
 his sketch; but the opinion of the artist-poet Hebert 
 has, we imagine, remained that of the general reader, 
 while it is probable, on the other hand, that the 
 author's lighter touches have done little to mitigate the 
 severity of such an authority as Professor Mommsen 
 when, for instance, he finds his confrire exclaiming 
 with emotion, "I believe in Romulus!" Saint-Beuve 
 applies to Ampere's style a judgment which he had 
 heard passed upon another writer whose literary man- 
 ner was too undemonstrative. "He is like a man who 
 has made a drawing in black-lead. When he has done 
 he thinks it still too sharp, and he passes his coat-cuff 
 over it." But if Ampere as an historian falls short of 
 being a first-rate authority (as a philologist we believe 
 he is considered much sounder), and if, as a describer, 
 he is less brilliant and incisive than some men of 
 greater genius and (possibly) scantier conscience, he 
 recovers his advantages in his letters, in the things that 
 reveal the man himself. Then we see how intelligent, 
 how accomplished, how sympathetic, how indefatigable 
 he was. His letters are always entertaining and in 
 the highest degree natural. But what completes their 
 charm here is their graceful and harmonious setting — 
 the fact that they are offered us in alternation with a 
 
256 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 hundred other memorials of a singularly pleasing and 
 interesting circle. We gather from the whole collection 
 the complete picture of a society — a society which by 
 this time has pretty well passed away and can know 
 no more changes. It is motionless in its place; it is 
 sitting for its likeness. Best of all, the picture has one 
 episode as charming as any that was ever imagined 
 by an idyllic poet. Andr6-Marie Ampere, the father 
 of Jean- Jacques, was an eminent man of science; he 
 was the first French mathematician of his time and the 
 inventor of the electric telegraph in so far as the fol- 
 lowing statement, made in the presence of the French 
 Academy of Sciences, entitled him to the name. "As 
 many magnetized needles as letters of the alphabet, 
 put into movement by conductors communicating with 
 the electric battery by means of a key-board which 
 might be lowered at will, would make possible a tele- 
 graphic correspondence that would traverse all distances 
 and be more prompt to transmit thought than either 
 writing or speech." Why this idea was merely enun- 
 ciated, and never applied, we are unable to say; if it 
 had been at that early day put into practice, Andre- 
 Marie Ampere would now enjoy a renown that would 
 render these few words of introduction quite superfluous. 
 Invented in time to be used at the battle of Waterloo, 
 the electric telegraph might have given a very different 
 turn to the affairs of mankind. But this contingency 
 having failed, we are reduced to considering the elder 
 Ampere in the comparatively humble light of die ex- 
 tremely diffident lover of Mademoiselle Julie Carron. 
 He was the most candid and artless of men, and the 
 history of his courtship is one of the prettiest love- 
 stories we know. 
 
TITE TWO AMPERES. 
 
 257 
 
 Jean -Jacques Ampere, as has been said, had a 
 genius for friendship. He never married, but in the 
 course of his life he had two extremely characteristic 
 affections for women. The object of one was Madame 
 Recamier, whose acquaintance he made in his twentieth 
 year (in 1820) and to whom he remained devoted until 
 her death, in 1849. The object of the second was a 
 
 certain Madame G- , with whom he became intimate 
 
 in 1853, in Rome. This lady was a young mariee, in 
 feeble health, obliged to spend her winters in the South, 
 where she was accompanied by her parents and her 
 little girl. Ampere had spent much of his life in Rome, 
 and it was about this time that he entered upon that 
 long sojourn of which the principal aim was the com- 
 position of a history of the Latin State in relation to 
 the present local aspects, and which terminated only 
 
 with his death. Madame G died in Rome in 1859, 
 
 in a temper of mind which, as Ampere said, made him 
 "touch with his finger the immortality of the soul." 
 His friendship with her parents was intimate, and his 
 affection for her little girl almost paternal. Ampere 
 died at Pau, in March, 1864, leaving a will by which 
 he bequeathed all his literary remains to M. and Ma- 
 dame Cheuvreux, and his private papers (those especially 
 relating to his father) to their young granddaughter. 
 It is in this way that the volumes before us have come 
 to be put forth by Madame Cheuvreux, for the benefit 
 
 at once of Mademoiselle G and of the public at 
 
 large. We do not know what this young lady has 
 thought of this mass of literature, but the public has 
 given it a very cordial welcome. Madame Cheuvreux 
 is a most graceful and intelligent commentator, and her 
 publication has rapidly passed through several editions. 
 
 French Poets and Novelists, ^ 7 
 
258 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 It is unjust to say that we have here simply the 
 history of a father and a son. The Ampere stock was 
 apparently an excellent one, and the reader is interested 
 in taking it a degree farther back. The father of 
 Andr^-Marie Ampfere was a retired merchant at Lyons 
 when the French revolution broke out. Lyons in 1793 
 revolted from its Terrorist government and was be- 
 sieged by the National Convention. The victory of the 
 Convention was of course a harvest for the guillotine, 
 and Jean-Jacques Ampere the elder was one of the 
 most admirable of its victims. In prison, before his 
 death, he wrote his wife a letter, which we regret not 
 having space to quote; it gives one a better opinion of 
 human nature. "Do not speak to Josephine," he says 
 at the end, "of her father's misfortune; take good 
 care that she does not know it; as for my son, there is 
 nothing I do not expect from him. So long as you 
 possess them and they possess you, embrace each other 
 in memory of me. I leave my heart to all of you." 
 For so pure an old stoic as this to say on the edge of 
 the scaffold that there was nothing he did not expect 
 from his only son, left the sole support of two desolate 
 women — this was a great deal. Andr6 was at first 
 stupefied with sorrow, but in time he justified his 
 father's confidence. It seems most singular that in this 
 blood-drenched soil an episode so tender, so redolent 
 of youthful freshness, as the story embodied in the 
 earliest of these letters should so speedily have bloomed 
 — that, with the hideous shadow of the scaffold still 
 upon him, Andr6 Ampere should make so artless, so 
 ingenuous, so innocently awkward a figure. His 
 "adorable bonhomie" — that is the quality the editor 
 chiefly insists upon, and it certainly must have been 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 259 
 
 of the purest strain not to have been embittered by 
 the cruelty of circumstance. It was indeed most 
 genuine, and the young man's notes and letters are 
 full of it. The story is a very simple one: he en- 
 countered Julie Carron, he fell in love with her, he 
 was put upon probation, he married her, she bore 
 him a child, she died. The charm is in the way the 
 tale is told — by himself, by the young girl, and by 
 her sister (the latter an admirably graphic letter- 
 writer). 
 
 At twenty-three Andr^ Ampere, stuffed with algebra 
 and trigonometry, felt in his own small way the lassi- 
 tude, the nameless yearnings of Faust. He had given 
 the measure of his scientific genius and his universal 
 curiosity. We have his own word for it that by the 
 time he was eighteen he knew as much mathematics 
 as he ever knew; he had also pushed far into 
 chemistry and he had cultivated the muse. He had 
 begun various tragedies and he had placed upon the 
 stocks an epic poem with Columbus for hero and the 
 "Americid" for title. Many years afterwards his son 
 found among his papers an ancient yellow scrap, on 
 which the following lines were written; "Having 
 reached the age at which the laws rendered me my 
 own master, my heart sighed in secret at my still 
 being so. Free and insensible up to that time, it 
 wearied of its idleness. Brought up in almost com- 
 plete solitude, study and reading, which had long been 
 my dearest delights, suffered me to fall into an apathy 
 that I had never felt, and the cry of nature diffused 
 through my soul a vague, insupportable unrest. One 
 day as I was walking after sunset beside a lonely 
 
 brook " And here the fragment ends. What 
 
 17* 
 
26o FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 did he see beside the brook? Julie Carron, perhaps. 
 If this is so, it was on a Sunday in April, 1796, that 
 he took that momentous stroll. He kept a record of 
 his meetings with the young girl, and either then or 
 later he superscribed it in large letters — Amorum. 
 It is filled with small entries like this, which mean 
 little to us now, but which meant much to the poor 
 trembling, hoping, fearing young mathematician: — 
 "26/A September. I found her in the garden, without 
 daring to speak to her. — 3^ October. I went there. I 
 slipped in a few words more to the mother. — bth 
 October. I found myself alone with her, without daring 
 to speak to her; they gave me the first bouts-rimis. — 
 \oth October. I filled them out, and slipped them 
 adroitly into her hand. — 13M October. I had carried 
 back the seventh volume of S6vign6; I forgot the eighth 
 and my umbrella. — 2d November. I went to get my 
 umbrella. — 7/A November. I didn't speak that day, on 
 account of the death of M. Montpetit. — <^th November. 
 I spoke again; Julie told me not to come so often. — 
 \2th November. Mme. Carron was out; I said a few 
 words to Julie, who regularly blew me up and went 
 off. Elise told me to spend the winter without speak- 
 ing again. — \(ith November. . . . Julie brought me with 
 grace the 'Lettres Provinciales.' — g/A December. She 
 opened the door for me in her night-cap and spoke to 
 me a moment, tete-d.-tite, in the kitchen." He stands 
 there before us like an effigy of bashfulness, tongue- 
 tied, with his heart in his throat, a book under his 
 arm and the simple good faith of unspotted youth 
 upon his brow. Mademoiselle Julie was a trifle dif- 
 ficult, as the phrase is; she had already had an ex- 
 cellent offer of marriage, but she had declined it be- 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 26 I 
 
 cause she thought nothing could make up to her for 
 leaving her parents and her sister. These were plain 
 people, with little money, but what one may call an ex- 
 cellent family-tone. They lived in the country, close to 
 Lyons. They thought well of Andrd, but they thought 
 also that there was no hurry, especially as he had as 
 yet no avocation, and it was their idea to keep him 
 at arm's length, though certainly not to let him go. 
 Elise Carron was Julie's elder, and a girl who seems 
 to have combined an excellent heart with the keenest, 
 frankest wit, and with a singular homely felicity of 
 style. She is shrewd, impulsive, positive, humorous, 
 and we should like to quote all her letters. During a 
 part of the winter which followed the entries we have 
 just transcribed Julie Carron was absent from home, 
 and Elise makes it her duty to entertain poor Ampere 
 and to report his condition to his mistress. She has 
 a great kindness for him and, though she wishes to 
 amuse her sister, she stops short of tempting her to 
 
 laugh cruelly. "Poor A is certainly frozen in some 
 
 comer, or else he is thawing near you, for I have seen 
 him neither through hole nor through window. . . . 
 Will he come to-morrow? I look always from my 
 place and I see nothing. If he comes and mamma 
 goes out, he will call me to an account; I have pre- 
 pared a thousand little answers — always the same; I 
 wish I knew some that would content him without 
 bringing things on too fast, for he interests me by his 
 frankness and his softness, and especially by his tears, 
 which come out without his meaning it. Not the 
 slightest affectation, none of those high-strung phrases 
 which are the language of so many others. Arrange 
 it as you will, but let me love him a little before you 
 
262 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 love him; he is so good! . . . Mamma insists that 
 Providence will arrange everything; but I say that we 
 must help Providence." Elise's next letter is in its 
 natural vividness almost a little genre picture. "At 
 last he came yesterday, trembling with cold, and stUl 
 more with the fear that mamma would be displeased 
 at his having been to see you, or rather to get letters 
 for us. But this is how the thing happened: I see 
 that you want details. You must know that mamma 
 now sits in your place, because she has closed up the 
 door, which used to freeze the room, and in con- 
 sequence we don't see a bit too well, especially when 
 the snow has been piled up. In short, he comes in 
 and doesn't see the little Pelagot who was behind the 
 nose of the stove. As soon as Claudine went out he 
 said: 'Madame, I saw mademoiselle your daughter.' 
 I stopped him short off, making more and more signs; 
 and he, thinking to plaster it up, replied, 'Claudine is 
 gone out; no one can hear us, I will speak lower.' 
 The child opened her eyes as wide as she was able; 
 when I saw that signs didn't help me I spoke to the 
 wench about her work, about her stocking that was 
 not coming on. He was petrified and wanted to patch 
 it up again, but the piece wouldn't fit the hole." At 
 last the little Pelagot goes out with her dilatory stock- 
 ing, and Elise has a long talk with Ampere, which 
 she relates, verbatim, to her sister: — "He perceived 
 the first that it was beginning to be late — which he 
 forgets so easily when you are here. He went off 
 and left me quite amazed at his hat in lacquered 
 cloth, at his fashionable breeches and his little air, 
 which, I assure you, will change again." "Guess, dear 
 Julie," she writes later, "at what we pass our time. 
 
lUE TWO AMPERES. 263 
 
 We make verses, we scratch them out, and then begin 
 again." And she goes on to narrate that M. Ampere 
 has been with them and has filled them with the 
 sacred fire. She must close, for she has to help her 
 mamma to begin a play, a drama, perhaps a tragedy! 
 It sounds very odd, hearing of those two little rustic 
 bourgeoises sitting down among their pots and pans, 
 at their snow-darkened windows, to literary composi- 
 tions of this heroic magnitude, and there certainly can 
 be no better illustration of the literary passion of the 
 last century, or of the universal culture of what was 
 called sensibility. 
 
 But the spring came, Julie was at home again, and 
 in Andrd's diary the idyllic strain is more emphasized: 
 — "24/A March. Mile. Boeuf came while I was reading 
 the tragedy of Louis XVI.; we went into the orchard. 
 Elise sat upon the bench; Julie upon a chair which I 
 brought to her, and I at her feet; she chose my purse 
 to her own taste. — zbth April. I went to carry back 
 La Rochefoucauld; I found no one but Mme. Carron, 
 and asked her leave to bring mamma. I received only 
 a vague answer, but it was satisfactory enough. Julie, 
 Elise, my aunt, and my cousin came to lunch; I served 
 the white wine and drank in a glass which she had 
 rinsed." A couple of months later he prefixes to an 
 entry a date in large capitals. The record deserved the 
 honour, for it has a charming quaintness. — "Monday, 
 3D Jtjly. They came at last to see us, at three quarters 
 past three. [His poor mother had called, and the 
 Carron ladies were returning her visit.] We went 
 into the alley, where I climbed into the great cherry- 
 trees and threw cherries to Julie. Elise, my sister, 
 all of them, came afterward. I gave up my place 
 
264 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 to Franfois, who lowered branches to us, from which 
 we picked ourselves, to Julie's great entertainment. 
 She sat on a plank on the ground with my sister and 
 Elise, and I sat on the grass beside her. I ate some 
 cherries which had been on her knees. We all four 
 went into the great garden, where she accepted a lily 
 from my hand, and then we went to see the brook. I 
 gave her my hand to climb the little wall, and both 
 hands to get over it again; I remained by her side on 
 the edge of the brook, far from Elise and my sister. 
 We went with them in the evening as far as the 
 windmill, where I sat down near her again, while we 
 all four observed the sunset, which gilded her clothes 
 with a charming light. She carried away a second lily 
 which I gave her in passing." Andre Ampere was a 
 man of genius and destined to be recognised as one; 
 but he was a profoundly simple soul, and his natveti 
 seems to have been unfathomable. It would be im- 
 possible to enumerate with a homelier verity the 
 enormous trifles on which young love feeds. Andr6 
 wrote verses; we know not what they were; certainly 
 there is as little attempt here as possible at elegance of 
 form; the poetry is all in the spirit. There, however, 
 it is deep. The little narrative we have just quoted 
 might have been scratched with a clasp-knife on the 
 windmill tower; but the passion it commemorates is of 
 classic purity. Extremes meet; the whole man is in 
 it; it is the passion of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for 
 Beatrice, of Romeo for Juliet. Extremes meet, we say; 
 and so it seems to us that this artless fragment is, by 
 a happy chance, as graphic, as pictorial, as if a con- 
 summate artist had retouched it. 
 
 By the time the autumn had come round again 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 265 
 
 Julie knew her mind. When a certain M. Vial comes 
 in and urges Andr6, if his family does nothing for 
 him, to go and seek his fortune in Paris, she pushes 
 him out by the shoulders, and tells him they have no 
 need of his advice. The day apparently has come 
 for Julie to feel the flutters of the heart; we have had 
 no intimation until now that her pretty person (the 
 editor is happily able to establish that it was pretty) 
 was not even a trifle impertinently self-possessed. — 
 "26/A October. I carried there a little basket of chest- 
 nuts. . . . Mme. Carron told me to go into the orchard 
 where they were. I found only Julie, who seemed as 
 much embarrassed as I; she called Perisse, but I 
 slipped in some words which had relation to my senti- 
 ments. ... I wanted to go back a moment to the 
 orchard, where she had gone to dry some linen, but 
 she avoided me with even more earnestness than the 
 first time. In the evening she told me to read 'Ad^e,' 
 and this led to our talking again upon the passions." 
 He adds a few days later: "We went into the orchard, 
 where I helped to take up the washing; in sport, after 
 some jest of Elise, Julie gave me a charming blow, 
 with her iist, on the arm. We supped on chestnuts 
 and we came home very late." Upon this the editor 
 comments very happily: "The orchard, the linen-dry- 
 ing, the reading of 'Ad^le,' which provokes a conversa- 
 tion on the passions, Andre's basket of chestnuts, the 
 charming blow with the fist that he gets in play, the 
 frugal supper — is not the picture quite of another age? 
 Only sixty-and-something years separate us from the 
 moment when Andr6 wrote his journal, and yet we are 
 far from that innocent idyll. Ah, messieurs the realists, 
 you have made us grow old fasti" 
 
266 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 At last, in the spring of 1799, poor Andre's proba- 
 tion terminates and Julie bestows her hand upon him. 
 We have some of his letters after the betrothal, in 
 which he addresses his afiSanced ceremoniously as 
 "Mademoiselle." There is something very agreeable 
 in this observance of high courtesy in circumstances 
 amid which it might have been expected to be a trifle 
 relaxed. Mademoiselle Carron was a poor girl; she 
 helped in the family-washing. But she conversed upon 
 the passions and she was familiar with a superior 
 standard of manners. The young couple were married 
 in the month of August of the same year, and Andre's 
 friend M. Ballanche read a long prose rhapsody, by 
 way of an epithalamium, at the simple wedding-feast. 
 Andre Ampfere obtained some pupils in mathematics 
 at Lyons, and his wife spent much of the first year of 
 her marriage with her mother in the country. She 
 was at times, however, with her mother-in-law Madame 
 Ampere, at the latter's modest dwelling at Polemieux, 
 near Lyons. While she is away her sister Elise writes 
 to her with inimitable vigour. Elise really makes the 
 dead things of the past live again. The Carron ladies 
 were hesitating as to where they should spend the 
 winter. In their actual quarters, the elder daughter 
 writes, "Mamma finds a great many diversions, and 
 her health is better. Our good neighbours tell us that 
 if we were to remain they wouldn't think of carting 
 themselves over to Charelet, where nevertheless they 
 have already hired lodgings and laid in a stock of 
 wood, which they would quickly sell again. In short, 
 they press us, offer us so heartily all the little distrac- 
 tions that they might share with us. Mme. Darsay 
 makes much of her books and newspapers; her 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 267 
 
 daughter puts forward all the people whom she would 
 catch up in one way or another. She says to me: 
 'We will amuse our mothers, we will both make little 
 caps for the poor, and fritters and tarts; we will pray 
 God, we will write, and then time passes so fast, so fast' 
 She makes a hotch-potch of all this, and then kisses me 
 with such friendliness, and shows as much enthusiasm 
 as if I were a being capable of inspiring it. Formerly 
 I shouldn't have been surprised at such greetings; I 
 used with these ladies to put in my little word in the 
 talk; I was gay; we were something for them, because 
 they didn't see many people. But at present it is the 
 reverse." I continue to quote Elise Carron for her 
 extreme reality: "There are moments when we must 
 not think of calculating — very true. But there is a 
 time for everything. A propos of calculations, I have 
 reason to thank myself for the one which made me 
 decide not to buy a grey dress. What should I have 
 done with it? I should have spoiled it nicely if I had 
 wished to put it on on Sundays on our pretty roads 
 and among the peasant-women at mass, who mount 
 atop of you and surround you with goloshes and muddy 
 sabots. Mme. Mayeuvre herself wouldn't have been so 
 fine as I, and yet she always comes to church in a 
 carriage, but in such simple gowns that I shouldn't 
 have dared to wear mine. I never saw her so much 
 dressed as last evening at the Darsay ladies'. She had 
 been making visits in the afternoon, and had exchanged 
 her little dyed morning dress for a very pretty blue 
 calico, with white sleeves and a hood like ours. Mme. 
 Courageau is also very simple, and if on Sundays I 
 only put on a muslin apron over my old petticoat in 
 green cloth (I wear it with my black spencer) they 
 
268 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 already cry out that I am dressed up. Yet, since the 
 cold weather, it is only what I wear every day. All 
 this, my sister, may very well not interest you. So 
 much the worse ! I must write to you and talk to you 
 as if you were here. Haven't I told you that my 
 scribblings don't oblige you to write a line? I send 
 them to you for nothing, and out of it all you can 
 take your choice; you can fish out some things you 
 may be glad to know, as, for example, about our 
 health." In December, 1801, Andre Ampfere obtained 
 the post of Professor of Mathematics at the central 
 school of the department of the Ain, the seat of which 
 was at Bourg. Julie, who had a baby several months • 
 old and whose health had begun visibly to decline, 
 remained, for economy and comfort, with her mother. 
 The most charming part of this volume is perhaps the 
 series of letters that passed, during this separation, be- 
 tween the ailing, caressing, chiding, solicitous, practical 
 young wife, and the tender, adoring young husband, 
 whose inadvertences and small extravagances and want 
 of worldly wisdom are the themes of many a conjugal 
 admonition. Poor Ampere was for ever staining his 
 clothes with chemicals; he had his coats and breeches 
 doled out to him like a boy at school. He begins his 
 career at Bourg by deciding not to lodge at the inn, 
 on account of the bad company that frequents it, and 
 then makes himself the joke of the town by going to 
 live with a certain M. Beauregard, whose wife was 
 notoriously disreputable. "I think you very pastoral," 
 Julie writes, "to go reading my letters in the fields; 
 I'm afraid that you scatter them along the road, and 
 that the first people who pass pick them up. If I 
 knew you were more careful, how many pretty things 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 269 
 
 I would confide to you! You would know that I love 
 you, that I have a great desire to see you again, that 
 every evening I have a thousand things to say to you 
 that don't come out, save in sighs; you would know, 
 in short, that when one has gone so far as to take a 
 husband one loves him too much to be separated from 
 him, and that your absence vexes me." Her injunc- 
 tions about his taking care of her letters seem to have 
 little effect; for shortly after this Andre writes to her 
 gleefully of another "pastoral" day: "How sweet your 
 letters are to read! One must have your soul to write 
 things which go so straight to the heart — without 
 trying to, it would seem. I remained till two o'clock 
 sitting under a tree, a pretty meadow on the right, the 
 river, with some amiable ducks floating on it, on the 
 left and in front of me; behind was the hospital build- 
 ing. You will understand that I had taken the pre- 
 caution of saying to Mme. Beauregard, when I left my 
 letter to go on this tramp, that I shouldn't dine at 
 home. She thinks I am dining in town; but as I had 
 made a good breakfast, I only feel the better for 
 dining upon love. At two o'clock I felt so calm, and 
 my mind so at ease, in place of the weariness that 
 oppressed me this morning, that I wanted to walk 
 about and botanize. I went up along the river in the 
 meadows, and arrived within twenty steps of a charm- 
 ing wood that I had seen in the distance at a half 
 hour from the town, and had desired to go through. 
 When I reached it the river, by suddenly coming be- 
 tween us, destroyed every hope of going further, so I 
 had to give it up, and I came home by the road from 
 Bourg to Cezeyriat — a superb avenue of Lombardy 
 poplars." 
 
270 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 This gentle strain is intermingled with sadder notes 
 — allusions to the extreme scarcity of money with the 
 young couple and to Julie's constantly failing health. 
 She had an incurable malady and her days were 
 numbered. But in the midst of her troubles she is 
 tenderly vigilant and practical. "Be careful to close 
 your bureau, your room, and my letters, or I shall not 
 dare to write to you. I know nothing of M. Roux. 
 Don't you open yourself too much to M. Clerc? He's 
 a very new acquaintance; suppose he were to take your 
 ideas for himself Send me your cloth trousers, so 
 that the rats don't eat them." "I don't bum my 
 things," he answers, "and do my chemistry only in my 
 breeches, my grey coat, and my green velvet waist- 
 coat I beg you to send my new trousers, so 
 
 that I may appear before MM. Delambre and Villars. 
 I don't know what I shall do; my nice breeches smell 
 still of turpentine. . . . You'll be afraid of my spoiling 
 my nice trousers, but I promise you to return them as 
 clean as I get them." Julie too visibly declines, and 
 the downright Elise, writing to Andrd, breaks out into 
 an almost passionate appeal. "What a happiness if 
 among all the plants whose properties you know there 
 were one that could put all in order again in her 
 nature! What is the use of science if there is none 
 that can restore health to Julie? Make inquiries, talk 
 to the learned, to the ignorant! Simple people often 
 have remedies as simple as themselves — light which 
 
 God gives them for their preservation Ah, why, 
 
 why did I push self-sacrifice so far as to advise 
 Julie to marry? I admired myself then as I shed 
 my tears; they were for me the triumph of reason; 
 whereas it was to feeling alone that I ought to have 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 27 I 
 
 listened!" Julie sank rapidly, and died in the summer 
 of 1803. 
 
 We have many of Andr^ Ampere's letters after the 
 death of his wife, but as he grows older, they natur- 
 ally lose much of their quaintness and freshness. He 
 becomes absorbed in scientific research and embarks 
 upon metaphysics, and it is with a certain sadness we 
 learn that the image of Julie Carron fades from his 
 mind sufficiently to enable him, in 1807, to marry a 
 second time. There is a note from his sister-in-law 
 Elise upon this occasion, in which, beneath the ex- 
 pression of an affectionate sympathy with his desire to 
 make himself happy again, we detect a certain proud 
 disappointment in his not finding the memory of her 
 sister a sufficient source of happiness. There is some 
 poetic justice in his second marriage proving a miser- 
 able delusion; he was obliged to separate from his wife 
 after a few months. He had gone up to Paris after 
 Julie's death and become instructor in the Polytechnic 
 School, and from this time opportunity, prosperity, and 
 fame began to wait upon him. He was a signal ex- 
 ample of the almost infantile simplicity, the incorruptible 
 moral purity, that so often are associated with great at- 
 tainments in science, and the history of his courtship 
 was worth sketching because it shows this temperament 
 in its flower. 
 
 After the death of Jean- Jacques Ampere's young 
 mother, the interest of these volumes is transferred 
 to her son. The boy grew up among all-favouring in- 
 fluences, surrounded by doting grandmothers and aunts, 
 in an atmosphere of learning and morality. As he is 
 revealed in his own early letters and those of his friends 
 (there are many of these) he is quite the type of the 
 
272 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ingenuous and intelligent youth who feels, in an easy, 
 general way, that he is heir of all the ages. More than 
 anything else Jean-Jacques Ampere is sympathetic; 
 he is versatile, spontaneous, emotional; in 1820 the 
 days of "sensibility" were hardly yet over and the 
 accomplished young man possessed this treasure. The 
 world was all before him where to choose. His father, 
 when he had resigned himself to his not being a 
 mathematician, wished him of all things to write a 
 tragedy; for, next after algebra and chemistry, verses 
 were what the elder Ampere most prized. Jean-Jacques, 
 nothing loth, looked about for a subject, and mean- 
 while he fell in love with Madame Rdcamier. His 
 devotion to this illustrious lady was the great fact of 
 thirty years of his life, and it is possible, in the letters 
 before us and in those of the lady herself, published with 
 a commentary by her niece, who was so many years at 
 her side, to trace even in detail the history of the affair. 
 It is difficult at this time of day to know just how 
 to speak of Madame Rdcamier, and it is a tolerably 
 plausible view of the case to say that there is no need 
 of speaking at all. History has rendered her enthu- 
 siastic justice, and in her present reputation there is 
 perhaps something a trifle forced and factitious. She 
 was very beautiful, very charming, and very much at 
 the service of her friends — these are her claims to 
 renown. To people of taste and fancy at the present 
 day, however much they may regret not having known 
 her, she can be little more than a rose-coloured shadow. 
 To hear her surviving friends say to each other with 
 a glance of intelligence, "Ah, there was a woman!" 
 simply makes us uncomfortably jealous; we feel like 
 exclaiming, with a certain asperity, that there are as 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 273 
 
 good fish in the sea as ever were caught. To know her 
 by literature is, moreover, not really to know her. We 
 cannot see her beauty, we cannot hear the gracious 
 inflections of her voice, we cannot appeal to her for 
 sympathy; we can only read her letters, and her letters 
 are not remarkable. They have no especial wit or 
 grace; they have only great good sense and, in cer- 
 tain express directions, an immense friendliness. Her 
 history certainly is a remarkable one. Born in the 
 middle class, she married into the middle class and 
 lost early in life the wealth that her marriage conferred 
 upon her. She was never perceived to push or strive; 
 no effort, no eagerness, were ever observable in her 
 career, and yet for fifty years she was literally a social 
 sovereign. She distributed bliss and bale; she made 
 and unmade felicity. She might have unmade it, that 
 is, but fortunately she was incorruptibly kind; her in- 
 stincts were constructive, not destructive. In 1829, for 
 instance, Prosper Merimee, then a young man upon 
 the threshold of life, had a fancy to adopt a diplomatic 
 career, and, as a first step, to be appointed secretary 
 of legation in London. The simplest way to compass 
 his desire seems to him to be to apply through a friend 
 to Madame Recamier. Madame Recamier can apply 
 to the ambassador with the certainty of not meeting a 
 refusal. The striking thing is that it is a question not 
 at all of her doing what she can and taking what 
 comes, but of her being gently imperative. Of course 
 her remarkable influence was not simply an accident; 
 she had exquisite gifts, and circumstances favoured 
 her; but it seems rather a mistake to attempt to make 
 a woman whose action in the world was altogether 
 personal and destined to expire with her person an 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. ^° 
 
274 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 object of lasting interest. None of the various ministers 
 of her renown — not even the possessor of the infallible 
 memory of Sainte-Beuve — has to our knowledge re- 
 peated any definite utterance of the "incomparable 
 Juliette" which seems at all noticeable. To write 
 about her is like attempting to describe a perfume, 
 and her clever niece, Madame Lenormant, in the 
 volumes she has devoted to her memory, has perhaps 
 run the risk of making her the least bit of a bore. 
 
 But of course she appeals to our imagination, and if 
 we are well-disposed that way she may live yet a while 
 by her picturesqueness. Seated every evening in her 
 little economical secular cell at the convent of the 
 Abbaye-au-Bois, or, of a summer morning, under the 
 trees at the Vallee-aux-Loups, the natural accessories in 
 her portrait are the figures of the people who formed 
 the best society in continental Europe. In her relations 
 with Jean-Jacques Ampere she is perhaps especially 
 eifective, for they contain just that element of potential 
 oddity which is considered essential to the picturesque. 
 Madame R^camier was forty-three years of age when 
 young Ampere was presented to her, he himself being 
 just twenty; she was exactly of the age which, had 
 she lived, his mother would have reached. Jean- 
 Jacques then and there fell in love with her. It was 
 one evening in her little drawing-room, which was full 
 of great people. She was, as Madame Cheuvreux says 
 (seeming in feminine fashion to have exactly divined 
 it) "sitting, almost reclining, half hidden in a cloud of 
 muslin, on a sofa of sky-blue damask of the old 'Em- 
 pire' form, with the neck of a gilt swan for its arm." 
 It is not necessary to accuse Madame Recamier of in- 
 ordinate coquetry — a charge which, although we are 
 
THE TWO AMPiRES. 275 
 
 bound to believe that she enjoyed her sway there is no 
 other evidence to support — ^to explain the fact that t\yo 
 years later, when she was forty-five, his passion was still 
 burning. Might she have quenched it? These are of 
 course mysteries; but it is our duty to suppose that 
 what she did was wisely done. The event, in fact, 
 proved it. She was an expert in these matters and she 
 had learned the prudence of sacrificing a part to save 
 the whole. Ampere's flame flickered down in time to 
 the steady glow of friendship; and if Madame R^ca- 
 mier knew when the golden age ended and the silver 
 began it is very likely that, under her exquisite direc- 
 tion, the young man himself never did. But there was 
 certainly a prepossessing boldness in a young fellow of 
 two-and-twenty writing in this fashion to an extremely 
 distinguished woman of middle age : " Oh, tell me with 
 truth that there are moments in which it seems that 
 your soul is touched by my fate and takes an interest 
 in my future? sometimes I have even thought that 
 the sentiment so pure and tender with which you in- 
 spire me was not without a certain charm for yourself. 
 But I am so afraid of being in error ! Day by day my 
 life centres itself in this affection. How cruel would it 
 be to take the expression of your compassion for that 
 of your interest! It is now especially, while I am 
 away from you, that I am agitated by these fears. A 
 few words, I entreat you, by way of consolation; but 
 in heaven's name take care that in order to calm me 
 you don't let yourself go beyond that which you really 
 feel. What have I done, indeed, that you should love 
 me? Ah, I have loved you with all my soul, without 
 deceiving myself about our situation, without entertain- 
 ing for an instant the thought of disturbing the tran- 
 
 18* 
 
276 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 quillity of your existence. I have given myself up to 
 a hopeless sentiment, which has filled all my heart. I 
 cannot live either without you or for you; I see all that 
 is impossible in my fate, and yet how can I renounce 
 that which is my only joy?" Madame Recamier quietly 
 devised a modus vivendi for her ardent young friend, and 
 he adopted it so successfully that three years later, she 
 being at Rome and in the first glow of a friendship 
 with Madame Swetchine, the famous ultramontane 
 pietist, he found it natural to write to her, in allusion 
 to this lady: "In good faith, madame, is it not true 
 that my place is taken in your heart? I have no right 
 to complain of it; it is not your fault if I have not 
 that sort of religious and romantic imagination which 
 it would be so natural to have. But I have it less than 
 ever; the desire to please you made me force my nature; 
 solitude and the law that punishes sacrilege have sent 
 me back to it. . . . Madame Swetchine is worth much 
 more to your imagination than I. Bring me back some 
 friendship; it is all that I deserve and all that I exact 
 of you." It seems an anomaly that five months after 
 this Ampere, taking fire at a few words uttered on 
 a certain evening by Madame Rdcamier, should be 
 writing to her to ask almost passionately whether their 
 union is after all impossible. M. Recamier is still 
 living, but there had apparently been some allusion 
 to a divorce. Ampere demands an assurance that if, on 
 being at liberty, she should decide to marry, she will 
 bear him in mind. He wishes to feel that there is no 
 one else between them. The thing seems to be less a 
 serious proposal than a sudden, rather fantastic desire 
 on his part to fill out a certain intellectual ideal of the 
 situation. In the way of ideals that of the reader, at 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 277 
 
 this point, is that there should be a record that Madame 
 R6camier, forty-eight years old, and with a husband in 
 excellent health, was annoyed at having this marrying 
 mood attributed to her. 
 
 In the autumn of 1823 she had gone to Italy with 
 a little retinue of friends, of whom Ampere was not 
 the least assiduous. She passed the winter in Rome, 
 and the young man, remaining near her, formed, with 
 the stimulus of her sympathy, that attachment for the 
 Eternal City which was to increase from year to year 
 and be the motive of his principal literary work. To 
 be with Madame Recamier was to be socially on a very 
 agreeable footing, for wherever she established herself 
 she was speedily surrounded by brilliant people. This 
 winter and the following summer, which the party 
 spent at Naples, must have been for young Ampere a 
 supremely happy season. To enjoy in Rome the society 
 of the woman whom one considers the embodiment of 
 everything admirable, to have that delightful city offer 
 at every turn its happy opportunities and suggestions — 
 this is to an appreciative spirit a particular refinement 
 of bliss. Madame Recamier remained a second winter 
 in Italy, and Ampere came home at the summons of 
 his father, who appears at this time to have "worried" 
 greatly, in vulgar phrase, about the young man's future, 
 and who was especially impatient to see his tragedies 
 coming forward at the Theitre Franjais. During his 
 son's absence in Rome the elder Ampere constantly 
 writes to him on this question, and reports upon the 
 MS. readings that have been given in his own circle 
 — one, for instance, of all places in the world, at the 
 Veterinary School — and upon the corrections and altera- 
 tions that have been proposed. Andr6 Ampfere, as he 
 
278 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 grew older, developed some rather uncomfortable ec- 
 centricities; he was in his private life and conversation 
 the most unpractical and ill-regulated of men; and this 
 persistent desire to make a third-rate playwright of a 
 young man really gifted in other directions seems to 
 indicate no little inconsequence of mind. Jean- Jacques's 
 pieces were accepted, or half accepted, at the great 
 theatre, but they were never played, and they are 
 sleeping at this day in its dustiest pigeon-holes. He 
 had indeed a passion for writing verses, and produced, 
 first and last, a prodigious quantity of indifferent rhyme. 
 Often, after having hammered all day at recondite phi- 
 lology, he would sit up half the night scribbling at 
 the dictation of a rather drowsy muse. He wrote in 
 general, thanks to his roving habits, which made odd 
 scraps and snatches of time of value, at all sorts of 
 hours and in all sorts of places. He would begin a 
 chapter of his "Histoire Romaine" on the edge of a 
 table at a caf6 in the Corso; in one of his later letters 
 he speaks of having written a comedy in a railway 
 carriage. 
 
 The editor of these volumes gives a great number 
 of his letters to Madame R6camier, both during the 
 year that followed his separation from her at Naples 
 and at later periods. "It rains," he writes to her from 
 Rome on his way northward; "I am writing this in a 
 dark room, looking out on a dismal little street. At 
 Naples, at least, when it rains, you have before your 
 eyes a great expanse. Instead of the sea and the island 
 of Capri I see an ugly white wall, four feet off. I 
 should have found a certain consolation in going to sit 
 in the Villa Pamfili, on that rock on the edge of the 
 lake where we read about the gardens of Armida and 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 279 
 
 found them again, or on the grass, near Santa Croce 
 in Gerusalemme, where we went on Easter day, or in 
 wandering in Saint Peter's, in the Coliseum, or on the 
 edge of the Tiber." There is Httle we could quote 
 from these letters, however, even if we had space; they 
 are charming, they speak equally well for the writer 
 and for the sweet sagacity of the woman who inspired 
 them, they denote a delightful relation, but they lack 
 salient points, and in their quality of love-letters they 
 are liable sometimes to weary the cold-hearted third 
 person. Here, nevertheless, is a noteworthy paragraph: 
 "You like me to tell you of my work — to describe my 
 studies as a schoolboy does to his mamma. Well, then, 
 this is what seems to me at this moment the most de- 
 lightful thing in the world, and an infallible means of 
 arriving at almost universal knowledge. It's very simple. 
 It is to note in every book I read the very important 
 points, to concentrate all my attention upon these and 
 to try to completely forget all the rest — and to join 
 to this another observance, namely, that of reading on 
 every subject and in every language only the best that 
 there is. In this way, it seems to me, without uselessly 
 overloading one's mind, one can acquire a deal of very 
 positive and very various knowledge." This was written 
 in 1825, and it may at that moment have been true; 
 it doubtless, indeed, will always have a certain measure 
 of truth. But the march of mind has been so rapid 
 these last fifty years that it is to be feared that no 
 particular method of study, however ingenious, will 
 carry one very far on the way to "universal know- 
 ledge." To read even the best only, nowadays, is a 
 task beyond the compass of individuals. But in one 
 way or another Ampere was bent upon superior science, 
 
28o FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and in pursuit of it he went in the autumn of 1826 to 
 Germany, and spent the winter at Bonn, under the 
 inspiration of Niebuhr and Wilhelm von Schlegel. 
 Madame de Stael had discovered Germany, earlier in 
 the century, for the French at large— Ampere discovered 
 it afresh for the younger generation. Schlegel was an 
 old adorer of Madame Recamier, and a word from her 
 ensured her young friend a prompt and impressive 
 greeting. "At our first interview," Ampere writes, "I 
 admit I was rather disconcerted by his aflfectation of 
 fine manners and of the French tone; he seemed to 
 avoid speaking of literature, as if it were pedantry. 
 This was not in my account, but I was not discouraged; 
 I let him play the fine gentleman, and now that he 
 has fairly set himself up before me as a man of the 
 world, that I have seen his yellow livery and his order 
 of Sweden, he begins to talk of Sanscrit and the Middle 
 Ages. By a happy chance he is going to begin a course 
 on the German language and literature. What a master 
 of German! This attraction, and that of a magnificent 
 country, will keep me here some time. The mountains 
 which edge the Rhine before reaching this place," he 
 adds — and the writer of these lines has -made the 
 same observation — "recall in a striking manner the 
 horizon of Rome." From Niebuhr he got what he 
 could. "I have done very well," he says, "to take no 
 great trouble to learn the old history of Rome; I should 
 have to begin it afresh." For the rest of Ampere's life, 
 it was always a feather in his cap that on leaving Bonn 
 he paid a visit to Weimar and spent three weeks with 
 Goethe. He must himself have recalled this episode 
 complacently, for the great man had made much of 
 him and of the intelligent articles which Ampere had 
 
THE TWO AMPERES. 28 1 
 
 written about his works in the "Globe" newspaper, the 
 organ of serious young France at that time. Wherever 
 he went Madame R&amier's recommendation was of 
 service to him; she had ci-devant admirers stationed 
 here and there on purpose, as it were. In Berlin it 
 was the Prince Augustus of Prussia — he who in 1811 
 had very seriously wished to marry her. Here, in 
 conclusion, are Ampere's impressions of the German 
 mind: "Up to this time Germany inspires me with the 
 greatest respect for its superior men, but with little 
 interest in the common life. Their true superiority 
 resides in imagination and learning; the men who are 
 without these two gifts, who make neither systems nor 
 poems, appear to me plain good people, with little 
 cleverness or sensibility; you need to make an effort 
 of will to talk with them. But a German in whom 
 learning has not extinguished imagination, in whom 
 imagination does not lead learning astray, if good 
 luck wills it that he have lived in Italy to thaw out 
 his senses, and that he have gained experience of 
 practical life by afifairs — that man is a man such as 
 one can find only in Germany. There is such a one 
 here — Niebuhr, of whom you must not speak in your 
 letter to Schlegel." 
 
 On leaving Germany Amp&-e went to Sweden and 
 Norway, and for the rest of his life he usually spent 
 half the year in foreign lands. To travel was a passion 
 with him, and though he had little money and was 
 famous for his awkward management of his personal 
 affairs, he appears to have been able to satisfy every 
 impulse of his restlessness. His father's house was not 
 a comfortable home, not because Andre Ampere was 
 not an extremely affectionate parent, but because ex- 
 
282 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 treme naivete, when the character has taken a melan- 
 choly turn, is not always identical with geniality. Jean- 
 Jacques once posted back to Paris from a distance in 
 response to an urgent summons from his sire. The 
 two sat down to dinner, and in a moment — "It's very 
 odd," cried the elder, "but I should have thought that 
 it would give me more pleasure to see you!" This 
 was the lover of Julie Carron at fifty. From the third 
 of these volumes we have left ourselves space to quote 
 nothing. We can only recommend the whole work to 
 curious readers. The letters contained in the third 
 volume are more and more the record of a busy life. 
 Ampere was professor at the College de France, member 
 of the Academy of Inscriptions and the Academic 
 Frangaise, and a frequent contributor to the "Revue 
 des Deux Mondes." He was no politician, but he 
 was a consistent anti-imperialist. The letters which 
 Madame Cheuvreux has gathered together throw light 
 here and there on many agreeable and interesting 
 figures — the most pleasing, perhaps, being that very 
 superior man and , in temperament and turn of mind, 
 half Anglican Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. But 
 the whole society represented here — the cultivated 
 liberal France of before the Empire — of outside the 
 Empire — makes, intellectually and morally, a very 
 honourable show. We said just now that it seemed 
 to be sitting for its likeness; we only meant that the 
 portrait was not blurred. We see it at all its hours 
 and in all its moods, and we may believe that, taken by 
 surprise, observed unawares, no group of people could 
 on the whole have supported publicity more gracefully 
 than the two Amperes and theif many friends. 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 283 
 
 MADAME DE SABRAN. 
 
 The present century in France has been the golden 
 age of editors. It might have been supposed that the 
 mine of literary wealth bequeathed to that country by 
 the eighteenth century had been exhausted, and that 
 the occupation of the exhibitory fraternity was gone. 
 The mine has been worked with extraordinary industry 
 and with the most perfect appliances of erudition and 
 criticism, and its contents have been brought to light 
 in particles of. all dimensions — in massive boulders, 
 such as only the more skilled engineers might safely 
 transport, in fragments convenient for immediate use, 
 and in barely ponderable powder and dust. More 
 even than our own time the eighteenth century was an 
 age of scribbling. This indeed is untrue if taken in 
 the sense that the amount of published writing, in pro- 
 portion to the size of society, was larger than in our 
 own day; but it is true if we speak with an eye to the 
 quality of production. In proportion to the size of 
 society, we suspect that there were more things written 
 in private between 1720 and 1790 which might go to 
 press without professional revision (save in the matter 
 of orthography) than between 1800 and 1875. There 
 was in other words, so far as form was concerned, less 
 merely wasted and squandered literary effort than we 
 witness nowadays. The distinction between padding 
 and substance had not then been invented; and it is 
 
284 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 not only more charitable but more accurate to say that 
 all the writing (so far as it went) was substance rather 
 than padding. There are vast quantities of it that we 
 cannot read — that we should not be able to read even 
 if our own age made no appeal to us; but this is in a 
 great measure because the whole body of civilisation 
 has taken a jump , and we are wofully out of relation 
 with our ancestors. We are a thousand times more 
 clever; but it may be questioned whether, just as the 
 Venetians in the sixteenth century knew something 
 about the art of painting that all our cleverness will 
 not put us into possession of, the ladies and gentlemen 
 who sowed the ultimate seeds of the French Revolu- 
 tion had not a natural sense of agreeable literary ex- 
 pression which is quite irrecoverable by our straining 
 modern wit. Comparisons, however, are odious, and 
 it is certain that our ancestors had their bores and 
 that we have our charmers. What we may say is that 
 people of the eighteenth century wrote much and wrote 
 well — so much that some lost or unsuspected yellow 
 manuscript is still constantly drawn from hiding, and 
 so well that the presumption is always in favour of its 
 being very readable. 
 
 The best society at least wrote in those days more 
 than it does now, and the obvious reason is that it had 
 much more time on its hands. It had nothing to do 
 with trade; the men who composed it had no daily 
 duties in "stores'' and counting rooms. The gentlemen 
 of the eighteenth century were either in the Army, the 
 Church, the diplomatic service, or the civil service; 
 and these are all eminently sociable professions. The 
 occupations of women were proportionately less exact- 
 ing, for women's lives have always been fashioned in 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 285 
 
 that portion of the piece, as one may say, which re- 
 mains after men's have been cut out. Ladies, there- 
 fore, wrote a great deal, and at a first glance at the 
 field it seems as if every woman of good fashion had 
 produced certain volumes of letters, of reminiscences, 
 of memoirs, of maxims, or of madrigals. Since Ma- 
 dame de S6vign6 French gentlewomen have been ex- 
 cellent letter writers, and those lessons in easy style 
 to which allusion was made above may often be culled 
 from their ill-spelled gossip with their absent friends. 
 (They all spelled very much at random. Even Ma- 
 dame du Chatelet, the learned coquette with whom 
 Voltaire lived so many years, and who edited Newton 
 and competed for the prizes of the Academy of 
 Sciences, gained appreciably as a correspondent by 
 being charitably read aloud.) French society in the 
 eighteenth century was indeed very small, and we 
 know it nowadays with surprising minuteness; we know 
 it almost as well as if a brilliant Balzac of that age 
 had laboriously constructed it and, with all the pains 
 in the world, had not been able to make his people 
 seem really more multitudinous than a pre-Raphaelite 
 painter does the leaves of his trees. It is a multitude, 
 but it is a multitude that we can count. For an historic 
 group its outlying edges have very little nebulosity or 
 mystery — very little of the ' look of continuity with the 
 invisible. The fierce light that beats upon the subject- 
 matter of French itudes critiques has illumined every 
 corner and crevice of it. The people who are fond of 
 remarking that, after all, the world is very small, must 
 make their assertion with emphasis after a course of 
 French memoirs, with an eye to the notes, or simply 
 after reading Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries." The same 
 
286 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 names, the same figures, the same anecdotes, the same 
 allusions, constantly recur; it is a dense cross-web of 
 relations, distinctly circumscribed. It is hardly too 
 much to say that for all purposes save those of spe- 
 cialists the time is all contained in Sainte-Beuve's 
 forty volumes. A collection of articles from newspapers 
 fairly comprehends it, even to many of its smallest 
 items. 
 
 The situation has a certain resemblance to those 
 portions of modern Rome and Athens in which there 
 are still chances of disinterring Greek statues. Ex- 
 cavation has been so systematically pursued that we 
 may reasonably suppose there are now many more 
 maimed divinities above ground than beneath it; and 
 yet the explorer's spade still rings against a master- 
 piece often enough to maintain us in hopeful attention. 
 It was but the other day — compared to the duration 
 of its mouldy concealment — that the beautiful mailed 
 Augustus of the Vatican was restored to the light, and 
 it was but yesterday that MM. de Magnieu and Prat 
 put forward, in a beautiful and substantial volume, the 
 letters of Madame de Sabran.* This excellent publi- 
 cation belongs to a class to which there is good reason 
 for expecting more recruits. Madame de Sabran's 
 letters are love-letters, and in such missives the female 
 hand has at all times been prolific. The author was 
 not in her day a woman of eminent distinction; she 
 moved in the best society, she was known to be clever, 
 and those who corresponded with her had a high appre- 
 ciation of her epistolary talent. But she never published 
 anything (although she alludes to a work on the Con- 
 
 ' "Correspondance Inedite de la Comtesse de Sabran et du 
 Chevalier de Boufflers. " Paris, Flon. 1875. 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 287 
 
 duct of Life which she has in hand), and you will not 
 find her name in the "Biographie Universelle." She 
 was one of the multitudinous minor satellites of the 
 French court; she represents the average clever woman 
 of quality of her time. Many other women were pre- 
 sumably esteemed equally clever, and many others 
 must have left letters as voluminous and, on some 
 grounds, as valuable as hers. Many such, as we know, 
 have already seen the light. This is not said to de- 
 preciate the merit of Madame de Sabran's epistles, but 
 simply to note the fact that, charming as they are, they 
 belong to a numerous family. Madame de Sabran's 
 letters were piously preserved by her son, recently 
 deceased (of whose childhood they contain much men- 
 tion), and are published in execution of his testa- 
 mentary injunctions. For him at least his mother had 
 claims to renown. Few readers of the volume before 
 us will fail to agree with him. In France it has been 
 highly relished, and the relations of Madame de Sabran 
 and the Chevalier de Bouflflers have taken their place 
 as one of the most touching episodes in the history of 
 the old French society. The writer of these lines has 
 read the book with extreme pleasure, and he cannot 
 resist the temptation to prolong his pleasure and 
 share it with such readers as have a taste for delicate 
 things. 
 
 Madame de Sabran, who was born in 1750, married 
 with the usual docility of the young women of her 
 country. M. de Sabran was an officer in the navy, 
 fifty years his wife's senior, and possessed of a meagre 
 fortune, though also of what we call nowadays a hand- 
 some "record." She speaks of her marriage in the 
 very charming account which she gives, in 1787, of 
 
288 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 her daughter's wedding: "My heart has never beaten 
 so hard as at the moment I placed her on the prie- 
 dieu where she was going to utter that famous yes that 
 one can never unsay when once it is said, much as 
 one may sometimes wish it. My own did not produce 
 such an effect upon me; and yet what a difference! I 
 was about to marry an infirm old man, of whom I was 
 to be rather the sick-nurse than the wife, and she a 
 young man full of grace and merit. But it is that 
 then I felt the consequences so little; everything seemed 
 to me equally well, equally good; as I loved nothing, 
 everything seemed to me worthy of being loved, and 
 I felt toward my bonhomme de mari very much as to- 
 ward my father and my grandfather — a feeling very 
 sweet at that time, and that my heart found sufficient. 
 Time has undeceived me; I have lost my faith in hap- 
 piness; so in spite of myself, during the whole service, 
 I wept a flood of tears." Her married life lasted but 
 a short time; M. de Sabran died of apoplexy, leaving 
 his wife among social ties that might have beguiled an 
 even less consolable widowhood. The Abb6 Delille, 
 the horticultural poet, taught her Latin, and the great 
 Turgot prized her conversation. Several years later 
 she made the acquaintance of the Chevalier de Bouflflers, 
 and her first letter, in the volume before us, is of the 
 date of 1778. Madame de Sabran was a woman of 
 culture and M. de Boufflers was a patron of arts and 
 letters; he also passed for one of the most agreeable 
 men of his time, and he figures not infrequently in its 
 chronicles. They became intimate, and Madame de 
 Sabran's friendship ripened into a passion of which 
 the present letters are the flickering but always ardent 
 utterance. At a certain moment (apparently in 1781) 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 289 
 
 she begins to address her correspondent with the thou 
 and to call him "my child." Up to this moment it 
 had been "my brother." M. de Boufflers was alto- 
 gether a man of the world, and of the gayest world, 
 and his roving disposition was a constant interruption 
 to his attentions to his friend. In 1785 he was ap- 
 pointed governor of the colony of Senegal, and during 
 his sojourn in Africa Madame de Sabran continued 
 her letters in the form of a journal. He was absent 
 but eighteen months, but after a short visit to France 
 .he returned to his post and remained there two years. 
 Madame de Sabran resumed her diary, and M. de 
 Boufflers also kept, for her entertainment, a journal 
 which is hardly less charming than that of his mistress. 
 He married Madame de Sabran in 1797, when he was 
 sixty years old and his bride was forty-seven. This 
 long delay is but insufficiently accounted for by his 
 desire to be able to offer his wife a fortune and a great 
 position. M. de Boufflers enjoyed many of the ad- 
 vantages of matrimony without its encumbrances. The 
 division was not equal, for Madame de Sabran seems 
 to have had all the anxieties of a wife and none of 
 the guarantees. The couple emigrated during the 
 Revolution and their marriage took place in Germany. 
 The Chevalier de Boufflers died in Paris in 1815, 
 and his widow survived him twelve years. A certain 
 reticence on the part of the editors prompts the ad- 
 venturous reader to wonder whether, in its later stages, 
 this intimacy was not touched by the ravages of time; 
 but the conjecture is almost impertinent, decidedly 
 cynical and, inasmuch as there is no visible answer to 
 the question, utterly vain. 
 
 What have we here, then, is something very light — 
 
 Fyench Poeis and Novelist s< 19 
 
290 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the passionate, unstudied jottings of an amiable and 
 intelligent woman who loves a man whose affection she 
 is conscious of possessing, but whose absences and 
 delays and preoccupations and admirations and social 
 dissipations, and duties of all kinds, are a constant 
 irritant to the impatience, the jealousies, the melan- 
 choly, of which her own affection, in its singularly 
 delicate texture, is all indivisibly composed. It is hard 
 to say why we should be interested in these very per- 
 sonal affairs of an obscure French lady of a hundred 
 years ago, and if a stern logician should accuse us of 
 frivolous tastes we should find it difficult to justify our 
 enthusiasm. Madame de Sabran's letters have in the 
 direct way but a slender historical value, for they 
 allude to but few of the important events of the time. 
 They throw no very vivid light on contemporary 
 manners; for there is little in them to refer them to 
 their actual date. Their psychological and dramatic 
 interest cannot be said to be profound; they have none 
 of the dignity of tragedy. Their compass of feeling is 
 not wide, and the persons concerned in them are not, 
 in any very striking way, at the mercy of events. They 
 portray no terrible suffering, no changes of fortune; the 
 most important event related is that Madame de Sabran 
 marries her daughter. If they are passionate, it is 
 passion in the minor key, without any great volume or 
 resonance. Yet for all that they are charming, simply 
 because so far as they go they are perfect. Madame 
 de Sabran had an exquisite talent for the expression 
 of feminine tenderness, and a gift like this has an 
 absolute value. Two appreciable causes throw it here 
 into a sort of picturesque relief. One is the fascination 
 of the background — our sense of the peculiar atmo- 
 sphere of the eighteenth century; the other is the 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 2gi 
 
 extremely dramatic form in which, in this case, the 
 usual contrast between the man's life and the woman's 
 is presented to us — the opposition between the heart 
 for which any particular passion was but one of many 
 and the heart for which all passion resolved itself into 
 a single unquenchable flame. As regards the eighteenth 
 century, it is rather late in the day, perhaps, to talk 
 about that; but so long as we read the books of the 
 time, so long will our sense of its perplexing confusion 
 of qualities retain a certain freshness. No other age 
 appeals at once so much and so little to our sympathies, 
 or provokes such alternations of curiosity and re- 
 pugnance. It is near enough to us to seem to partake 
 of many of our current feelings, and yet it is divided 
 from us by an impassable gulf For many persons it 
 will always have in some ways an indefinable charm — 
 a charm that they will entertain themselves in looking 
 for even in the faded and mouldering traces of its 
 material envelope — its costumes, its habits, its scenic 
 properties. There are few imaginations possessed of a 
 desultory culture that are not able to summon at will 
 the dim vision of a high saloon, panelled in some pale 
 colour, with oval medallions over the doors, with a 
 polished, uncarpeted floor, with thin-legged chairs and 
 tables, with Chinese screens, with a great glass door 
 looking out upon a terrace where clipped shrubs are 
 standing in square green boxes. It is peopled with 
 men and women whose style of dress inspires both 
 admiration and mistrust. There is a sort of noble 
 amplitude in the cut of their garments and a richness 
 of texture in the stuff; breeches and stockings set off 
 the manly figure, and the stiffly-pointed waists of the 
 women serve as a stem to the flower-like exuberance 
 of dazzling bosoms. As we glance from face to face 
 
 19* 
 
292 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the human creature seems to be in an expansive 
 mood; we receive a lively impression of vigour of 
 temperament, of sentimental fermentation, of moral 
 curiosity. The men are full of natural gallantry and 
 the women of natural charm , and of forms and tradi- 
 tions they seem to take and leave very much what 
 they choose. It is very true that they by no means 
 always gain by minute inspection. An acute sense of 
 untidiness is brought home to us as we move from 
 group to group. Their velvets and brocades are ad- 
 mirable, but they are worn with rather too bold a con- 
 fidence in their intrinsic merit, and we arrive at the 
 conviction that powder and pomatum are not a happy 
 combination in a lady's tresses, and that there are few 
 things less attractive than soiled satin and tarnished 
 embroidery. In the same way we gather an uneasy 
 impression of moral cynicism; we overhear various 
 phrases which make us wonder whither our steps have 
 strayed. And yet, as we retreat, we cast over the 
 threshold a look that is on the whole a friendly one; 
 we say to ourselves that after all these people are 
 singularly human. They care intensely for the things 
 of the mind and the heart, and though they often 
 make a very foolish use of them they strike here and 
 there a light by whose aid we are now reading certain 
 psychological mysteries. They have the psychological 
 passion, and if they expose themselves in morbid 
 researches it is because they wish to learn by example 
 as well as precept and are not afraid to pay for their 
 knowledge. "The French age par excellence" an acute 
 French critic has said, "it has both our defects and 
 our qualities. Better in its intelligence than in its 
 behaviour, more reasoning than philosophical, more 
 moralistic than moral, it has offered the world lessons 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 293 
 
 rather than examples, and examples rather than 
 models. It will be ever a bad sign in France when 
 we make too much of it or too little; but it would be 
 in especial a fatal day were we to borrow its frivolity 
 and its corruption and leave aside its noble instincts 
 and its faculty of enthusiasm." A part of our kind- 
 ness for the eighteenth century rests on the fact that 
 it paid so completely the price of both corruptions 
 and enthusiasms. As we move to and fro in it we see 
 something that our companions do not see — we see 
 the sequel, the consummation, the last act of the 
 drama. The French Revolution rounds off the spectacle 
 and renders it a picturesque service which has also 
 something besides picturesqueness. It casts backward 
 a sort of supernatural light, in the midst of which, at 
 times, we seem to see a stage full of actors performing 
 fantastic antics for our entertainment. But retroactively, 
 too, it seems to exonerate the generations that pre- 
 ceded it, to make them irresponsible and give them 
 the right to say that, since the penalty was to be ex- 
 orbitant, a little pleasure more or less would not 
 signify. There is nothing in all history which, to 
 borrow a term from the painters, "composes" better 
 than the opposition, from 1600 to 1800, of the audacity 
 of the game and the certainty of the reckoning. We 
 all know the idiom which speaks of such reckonings as 
 "paying the piper." The piper here is the People. 
 We see the great body of society executing its many- 
 iigured dance on its vast polished parquet; and in a 
 dusky corner, behind the door, we see the lean, gaunt, 
 ragged Orpheus filling his hollow reed with tunes in 
 which every breath is an agony. 
 
 The opening lines of the first of Madame deSabran's 
 letters are characteristic both of the time and of the 
 
294 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 woman. The time was sceptical and priests were out 
 of fashion, except for such assistance as they might 
 render at a lady's toilet; but Madame de Sabran's 
 most amiable quality is a certain instinctive moderation. 
 "I really need to talk with you to-day, my brother, 
 to cheer myself up and divert myself from a certain 
 visit I have been making. And what a visit! A visit 
 that one makes only at certain times, to the knees of 
 a certain man, to confess certain things which I won't 
 tell you. I am still very weary and ashamed with it. 
 I don't at all like that ceremony. They tell us it is 
 very salutary, and I submit, like a respectable woman." 
 It is not in our power to say what sins Madame de 
 Sabran had to confess; she gives an account of her 
 life at Anisy, the residence of her uncle the Bishop 
 of Loan, where she regularly spent her summers, 
 which seems to allow a margin for none but venial 
 aberrations: "I get up every morning at eight, and 
 read and write till eleven; then I set myself at paint- 
 ing till dinner time. I am doing a superb oil picture 
 which I have composed for myself and which I will 
 show you. ... I read in Latin the original letters of 
 H^loise and Abdlard, and I have a good mind to 
 translate some of the most coherent ones — not those of 
 Ab^lard, for they are most tiresomely dry and pedantic, 
 but those of poor H61oise." In everything that Madame 
 de Sabran says there is a certain closely personal 
 accent, and at last we have a complete portrait, formed 
 by a multitude of desultory touches. The total is 
 something we like so much that we do not feel dis- 
 posed to call the weak spots by their specific names. 
 Is it vanity when she frankly pronounces her oil paint- 
 ing "superb?" "A propos, I have not yet spoken to you 
 of the portrait of the Countess Auguste that I made 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 295 
 
 while she was staying here; it is a little masterpiece. 
 It is a perfect likeness. It is full length, a table be- 
 side her, with books and papers. It is a charming 
 picture, and it will be a pleasure to me to show it to 
 you." Is this vanity, or is it the unaffected frankness 
 of a person who is conscious of genuine talent? We 
 have no means of taking the measure of Madame de 
 Sabran's talent; but she was a very clever woman, and 
 it is not hard to believe that her pictures were charm- 
 ing and that the musical airs which she is constantly 
 composing and sending to M. de Boufflers were in- 
 finitely sweet. But in dealing with people of this race 
 and society, especially at that time, we Anglo-Saxons 
 are constantly reminded of the necessity of weighing 
 virtues and vices in an adjusted scale. Words and 
 things, ideas and feelings, have a different value. 
 There are French vanities that are very innocent and 
 English humilities that are not at all so; French cor- 
 ruptions that, mutatis mutandis, are by no means 
 damning. For instance, M. de BoufBers, writing from 
 Africa, tells Madame de Sabran of the condition of 
 her portrait, which she has given him. "As by a special 
 grace, I have been left alone a moment. I have just 
 left my letter to go and kiss you. You are behind 
 certain cross-pieces of wood, intended to fix the picture 
 in its case, and you look like your pretty Delphine in 
 her convent parlour — though if there is a difference, I 
 know very well to whose advantage it is." Here is a 
 gallant gentleman trying to be agreeable to a superior 
 woman by telling her that she is prettier than her 
 own daughter. The inference is, that M. de BoufHers 
 thought he was saying something very charming and 
 that Madame de Sabran received his compliment in 
 a sympathetic spirit. And yet Madame de Sabran 
 
296 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 was a devoted mother. M. de Boufflers in the next 
 sentence speaks with the tenderest solicitude of Made- 
 moiselle de Sabran, and in the following letter he sends 
 a most graceful message to his friend's children. "Kiss 
 your charming children for me. My heart bleeds when 
 I think that I cannot press them against my breast 
 and prove to them what it is in my eyes to be bom 
 of you." The portrait mentioned by M. de BouiBers 
 is apparently not the charming picture by Mme. Vigee 
 le Brun of which a capital reproduction in aqua-fortis 
 is prefixed to the Correspondence. Madame de Sabran 
 was called a beauty, but we should say that, if this 
 picture is to be trusted, this was just what she was 
 not. It is an intensely French physiognomy and quite 
 the one that shapes itself in our mind's eye out of the 
 perusal of the letters. But half its interest is in the 
 way it pleases in spite of its irregularity. It is extra- 
 ordinarily sympathetic, and offers a singular combination 
 of wit and amiability. 
 
 In the letter but one preceding that one which has 
 been mentioned as indicating the moment of expansion, 
 as it were, in Madame de Sabran's friendship, she 
 evidently defends herself against such contingencies. 
 She has been scolding her friend for delay in writing. 
 "You can have no idea what I have suffered, and I 
 am so frightened at it myself that there is nothing I 
 wouldn't do to recover my reason, even to going to the 
 moon in search of it on the back of a hippogriff. But 
 meanwhile I take the firm resolution to trouble myself 
 no more about your silence, your absence, and even 
 your indifference; to live a little for you, a great deal 
 for myself, and to be always gay and contented what- 
 ever befalls me. In the midst of all this fine philosophy, 
 however," she adds, "I rejoice in your return;" and 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 2g7 
 
 her philosophy henceforth was destined to play a very 
 secondary part. There are times when she summons 
 it to her aid — for as regards all things in which M. 
 de BoufHers was not concerned it was very alert and 
 competent; but when she plays at resignation or in- 
 difference, stoicism or epicureanism, she hardly even 
 pretends that she deceives herself. She had indeed a 
 strain of melancholy in her disposition which is con- 
 stantly cropping up; she was afraid of the deeper 
 currents of life, and she thought that when one felt 
 one's feet touching bottom it was the part of wisdom 
 to stand still. "I don't rejoice as you do in the 
 discovery of truth. I am afraid it will hurt me. All 
 those people will turn your head and, in conducting 
 you to happiness, they will spoil this happiness of ours. 
 We are comfortable; let us rest upon that; what do 
 we need more? I don't care for a science which is of 
 no use to our love and which may on the contrary be 
 injurious to it." M. de Boufflers had sent home a little 
 blackamoor as a present to a friend who had taken 
 the interesting stranger to see the aunt of the donor. 
 Shortly afterward Madame de Sabran called upon this 
 lady, who denounced the little negro as an ill-bred 
 monster. "As soon as he saw her he uttered horrible 
 cries and threw himself upon the ground with signs of 
 the greatest fright, while he had been caressing every 
 one else. On his being asked why, he replied that 
 she made up a face at him. The Marechale never 
 suspected that he had reasons for finding her different 
 from other people, and she has given him no thanks 
 for his frankness. It makes one shudder to see how 
 little we know ourselves. Is it a good? — is it an evil? 
 I can't decide. But I believe that illusion is useful in 
 all things, and for myself all that I fear in this world 
 
298 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 is the truth. The truth is almost always sad and she 
 leaves almost no consolation behind her. Happily 
 every individual has a common interest in being cheated, 
 and the human race in this respect doesn't spare itself. 
 What is most to be desired is to be well cheated, till 
 one's last day." In one place, however, she relates 
 how her mind had taken a flight into the very empy- 
 rean of philosophy. "At the degree of elevation at 
 which my spirit travelled, objects grew so small to my 
 imagination that you also seemed no more to me than 
 a worm, and I was indignant that so little an animal 
 could do me so much harm and make me see things 
 so crookedly." 
 
 One feature of this correspondence — and I suppose 
 we may dignify it with the name of historical, for it is 
 probable that in love-letters exchanged in aristocratic 
 circles at the present day such allusions are rare — is 
 the manner in which both Madame de Sabran and M. 
 de Boufflers expatiate on the state of their health and 
 upon their drugs and doses. "Meanwhile," the former 
 writes, "I will take no more pills, since they make you 
 so sick at your stomach"; and she adduces this con- 
 cession as a proof of her lover's empire over her mind. 
 Could there be a more touching illustration of intimate 
 union than this phenomenon of a lover being acted 
 upon by his mistress's medicine? Madame de Sabran's 
 health was delicate and she paid frequent visits to 
 various healing springs. "These two days," she writes 
 from Spa, "I have been in my bed with fever. I shall 
 get off with a bad cold, which I owe to the Princess of 
 Orange, who did me the honour — I don't know by what 
 fantasy — to choose me out of a thousand to accompany 
 her in a ride on horseback, which she performed 
 throughout at a great gallop, beneath a fearful sun, 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 299 
 
 and with an abominable wind. I came back tired half 
 to death, coughing, with my ribs and thighs broken, 
 cursing all the princesses on earth, who never do any- 
 thing like other people." On leaving Spa on this oc- 
 casion Madame de Sabran made an excursion into the 
 Low Countries, of which she gives a most humorous 
 and entertaining account. "We are making this jour- 
 ney like plain goodwives, by the public vehicles, under 
 assumed names; whereby it will cost us almost nothing, 
 we shall be much better, and be restored to Spa within 
 a week. But don't go and speak to any one of this 
 project; I wish to tell it to you alone for a thousand 
 thousand reasons. You must know that I am called 
 Mme. de Jobert, and Mrae. d'Andlau Mme. Bertin. We 
 came hither from Brussels in a barge which was quite 
 like Noah's ark, as regards all that it contained. I 
 amused myself all day with sketching the queer people 
 who were with us, and among others two Capuchins, 
 whom I painted so like life that every one admired 
 them; which gave me a great reputation and success 
 in the assembly. I effected immediately the conquest 
 of a young English merchant, who never left us during 
 the voyage, and who, from time to time, treated my 
 companion and me to beer, to refresh us, almost mak- 
 ing us tipsy, for in politeness we were afraid to refuse 
 it." "The journey to Holland," she writes later, "was 
 not a success [as regards her health], but it vastly 
 amused us. No one knew who we were; we were taken 
 now for saleswomen on their way to the Haarlem fair, 
 now for ladies from Friesland, now for singing-women. 
 We were treated sometimes very well and sometimes 
 very ill; we often dined at the public table. We tra- 
 velled sometimes on foot, sometimes in a phaeton,* 
 sometimes in a sail-boat. We passed one night on the 
 
300 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 highway and another at the city-gate. It would be 
 impossible to see and do more things in a week. We 
 went as far as Amsterdam, where the sight of the port 
 amazed us; for neither of us had ever seen a ship. 
 They are superb contrivances, but I should be very 
 sorry to be shut up in one, unless it were with you." 
 
 Madame de Sabran's letters are so vaguely dated 
 that we are often in ignorance of her whereabouts; but 
 considering that in theory she led a very quiet life she 
 seems to have spent a good deal of time on the road. 
 She made excursions if not journeys. To meet M. de 
 BoufHers away from home was often the purpose of 
 her wanderings. It would be part of the entertainment 
 afforded by these letters to understand the logic of 
 Madame de Sabran's goings and comings; to know to 
 what extent it was part of her scheme to conceal from 
 the world the extent of her intimacy with her friend. 
 Such intimacies may in those days have been conceal- 
 able, but they certainly were not generally concealed. 
 Madame de Sabran lived half the year, however, with 
 a great clerical dignitary. She was a bishop's niece, 
 and this doubtless put her somewhat in the position 
 of Caesar's wife. It is not unfair to M. de Boufflers, 
 however, to imagine that his society was often to be 
 enjoyed only on his own terms, and that there were 
 moments when he would rather go ten miles to meet 
 his friend than thirty. Was it not in his character to 
 commingle a due appreciation of the bird in the hand 
 with a lively attention to the bird in the bush? Ma- 
 dame de Sabran, who professed in general a high re- 
 lish for illusions, appears to have judged her friend in 
 some points without them. We cannot say whether she 
 was jealous of the past: if she was, she gave a very 
 amiable turn to her jealousy. Writing in 1787 from 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 3OI 
 
 Nancy, where M. de Boufflers had formerly been in 
 garrison, "I have not stopped thinking of you all day," 
 she says, " and I am tired to death with it. It must be 
 that the air of this place is impregnated with certain 
 little atoms that come and fasten themselves to me by 
 sympathy. I don't pass through a street without think- 
 ing how often you have walked there. I don't see a 
 house without imagining it is inhabited by one of the 
 Dulcineas who formerly vied with each other for the 
 happiness of pleasing you. I was present at the session 
 of the Academy on the day of Saint Louis, where I 
 saw all kinds of these same Dulcineas and was greatly 
 entertained. I tried to read in their faces and their 
 eyes some traces of love for you; for at present, con- 
 trary to old times, I want every one to love you. But 
 I saw in them the traces of time much more than of 
 love; they were all frightfully old and ugly." Madame 
 de Sabran is generous, and this little scratch at the 
 end is the least possible tribute to human weakness. 
 She saw another indubitable Dulcinea at the theatre at 
 Valenciennes. "Looking at her with other eyes than 
 mine, she has really very few charms. . . . She amused 
 me a thousand times more than the play. She was 
 extremely occupied with two officers, who kept her in 
 continual motion from right to left, to make neither 
 jealous; she laughed and talked louder than the actors. 
 This time I was jealous, not of her successes, but of 
 her happiness, and I said to myself, 'She knew that 
 poor African; she loved him; she did more, and yet 
 she has been able to forget him and love others. How 
 can she do it?' I should like to have her receipt — 
 pauvre bite that I am, consuming myself in vain regrets 
 and, a thousand leagues away from him, seeing only 
 with his eyes, hearing him only, able to think of him 
 
302 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 only, making the past the present for the love of him, 
 and giving up the present to sadness and despair. My 
 life will not be longer than hers; yet she turns hers to 
 profit and I throw mine out of the window." 
 
 The reader, as he goes, marks certain passages as 
 signs of the times; the first thunder-growls of the 
 French Revolution affect one as the strokes of the bell 
 that rings up the curtain at a tragedy. "People talk 
 of nothing but taxes and cutting down pensions: it is 
 the paying the piper — le quart d'heure de Rabelais. 
 People live with the edge of their teeth." And else- 
 where: "The poor Marshal [de Soubise] died this 
 morning. His sister the divot e is in despair — all the 
 more that he died without confession and without con- 
 sciousness to ask pardon of God for his millions of 
 mortal sins. He was the Solomon of our age, minus 
 the wisdom. His whole seraglio is at present in tears 
 and misery, even to the sultana Valid6. The King 
 inherits five hundred thousand livres of income; it 
 comes in the nick of time, for in spite of the notables 
 and their sage counsels, he doesn't know where to 
 thrust his head." Madame de Sabran was in the tree 
 that the tempest had begun to shake; she was on an 
 honourable footing of familiarity at court. Her little 
 son Elzear was at Versailles witii his uncle. "He has 
 already,'' she writes, "great success at court. The 
 Queen found him on her passage and kissed him on 
 his two little pink cheeks. This morning she said to 
 me, 'Do you know that I kissed a gentleman yester- 
 day?' 'I know it, madame, for he boasts of it.' " 
 
 The journal kept by M. de Boufflers during his 
 second sojourn in Senegal is appended to these letters 
 of his friend. M. de Boufflers is known on other 
 evidence, but this charming record of homeward 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 3O3 
 
 thoughts in exile completes his portrait — completes it 
 very favourably. He is not positively an edifying 
 figure, but he is, in his way, a decidedly interesting 
 one. He was an eminent specimen of the "charming 
 man,'' as this fortunate mortal flourished in favourable 
 social conditions.' Those of the last century in France 
 placed him much more in relief, and enabled hjm to 
 develop on a more imposing scale, than the pre- 
 occupied, democratic, commercial society of our own 
 day. M. de Boufflers was a gentleman in the large 
 picturesque sense; it is striking at what a cost his 
 gentility was kept up — on what a copious diet it had to 
 be fed. He had an admirable vigour of temperament 
 and he was thoroughly at home in the world. He was 
 the son of a king's mistress and the incumbent of an 
 ecclesiastical living of forty thousand livres, by the 
 bounty of the king himself (the deposed Stanislaus I. 
 of Poland, to whom as a comfort for his old age 
 Louis XV. — his son-in-law — made over the duchy of 
 Lorraine, where the little court of Luneville was a vastly 
 less splendid, but an easier and cosier, Versailles). 
 Boufflers had signalized his period of probation at the 
 seminary of Saint Sulpice by the production of certain 
 conies galants, which, though abbes in those days could 
 go far, transgressed even the ecclesiastical licence. So 
 he turned from priest to knight of Malta, went to the 
 German wars, amused himself on a great scale, 
 squandered his money, and at middle age, to repair 
 his wasted substance, had to solicit a colonial governor- 
 ship. In Africa, characteristically, his vigour and vivacity 
 did him service; he took his duties in hand and really 
 administered his government. All this time he dabbled 
 in letters and made love a I'envi. There are several 
 anecdotes about him in Grimm's " Correspondance," 
 
304 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 but all that I know of his literature is a short tale in 
 verse, in two alternating rhymes, quoted by Grimm, 
 and chiefly remarkable for its frank indecency. On 
 his return from Africa he went as deputy to the 
 States-General and, after the Revolution, entered the 
 French Academy and completed the circle of his activity 
 by composing a very dull book on Free Will. The Bouf- 
 flers of these letters is the full-blown Boufflers of middle 
 life, largely versed in men, women and things, and 
 possessed of a great acquired flexibility of sentiment 
 and wit. He strikes one as a shrewd epicurean, with 
 a decided mind to eat his cake and have it. It is 
 nothing new to observe that when men and women 
 spin the web of sentiment together the finest threads 
 are generally the woman's, and it doubtless cannot be 
 said, in this particular case, that M. de Boufilers abused 
 the lover's usual right to be less exquisite than his 
 mistress. Certain however it is that the reader cannot 
 rid himself of the feeling that not a little of what is 
 exquisite in Madame de Sabran is wasted, given simply 
 to the air, exhaled into the elements. M. de Boufflers 
 balanced his account in the gross, and of a certain 
 proportion of this amiable woman's articulate heart- 
 beats no note was ever made. But probably we make 
 these reflections simply because we are jealous of the 
 extravagant Chevalier. The reader is himself in love 
 with Madame de Sabran and he judges M. de Boufflers 
 but grudgingly. Speaking impartially, these two hun- 
 dred pages of his journal are delightful reading. His 
 gaiety, his wit, his ardour, his tenderness, his mingled 
 impatience and resignation, his marital invocations and 
 ejaculations, his delicate natural compliments, make 
 the tone of this fragmentary diary a real model of 
 manly grace. 
 
MADAME DE SABRAN. 3O5 
 
 There is a sketch of M. de Boufflers in one of Madame 
 de Sabran's letters which should already have been 
 quoted: "No, my child, I have no use for illusion on 
 your part; our love has no need of it; it was born 
 without it and it will subsist without it; for it was 
 surely not my charms, which had ceased to exist when 
 you knew me, that fixed you near me; neither is it 
 your maniires de Huron, your absent, surly air, your 
 stinging, truthful sallies, your great appetite, and your 
 profound sleep when one wishes to talk with you, that 
 have made me love you to distraction; it is a certain 
 nameless something that puts our souls into unison, a 
 certain sympathy that makes me feel and think like you. 
 For beneath this rude envelope you conceal the spirit 
 of au angel and the heart of a woman. You unite all 
 contrasts and there is no being in heaven or on earth 
 more lovable and more loved than you. Come and see 
 me, d. cause de cela, as soon as you can." It implies no 
 want of sagacity to imagine that the unflattering lines 
 in this picture are only finer and subtler caresses. M. 
 de Boufflers could at times express himself with an 
 implicit tenderness of which an angel, since Madame 
 de Sabran would have it so, need hardly have been 
 ashamed. "A thing that no one suspects, not even you, 
 is that I am forty-eight years old to-day. Here is a . 
 vast amount of time lost; for there have been nothing 
 but minutes well spent. I leave you to guess them. 
 But, ma fille, this number of forty-eight — doesn't it 
 impress you with respect ? I let you off from the respect 
 in advance, for it seems to me that I leave half of my 
 years here, as I leave half of my luggage, not wanting 
 it all on my voyage. Besides, I have grown so used to 
 the idea of being loved by you, in spite of youth, in spite 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 20 
 
306 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of old age, that I think much less of my age as it goes 
 on. You remember, perhaps, that portrait that I loved 
 so before I dared to speak to the original; that widow's 
 dress which I wished you to retain in my honour. My 
 age makes me think of it, but it doesn't make me think 
 of your change; it is only matter that changes in us, 
 and there is so little in you that it seems to me that 
 I have nothing to fear. Farewell, my daughter. I have 
 struck out two or three lines which would have sad- 
 dened you. Let us love life and not fear death, for 
 souls don't die, but love for ever." This was written 
 on his ship, as he was approaching the shores of 
 France, and he adds the next day: "I see France 
 drawing near, and I am like the little girl of a fairy 
 story when they told her. There is a kingdom; in the 
 kingdom there is a town; in the town there is a house; 
 in the house there is a room. . . . Here are forty days 
 thrown overboard," he says later, recording adverse 
 winds. "Forty days! that is almost the life of a man, 
 if one counts in life only the moments worth counting." 
 It is to be hoped that he found reason to reckon 
 time less wastefully after his reunion with his friend. 
 These few extracts from Madame de Sabran's letters 
 can have given but an imperfect idea of those things 
 by which she irresistibly pleases. Her grace, her 
 tempered vivacity, her softened intensity, her admir- 
 able mixture of passion and reason, her happy, natural, 
 flexible style, are all forcible appeals to our sympathy. 
 It seemed in place just now to say that some of these 
 charming qualities had been squandered; but I must 
 hasten to unsay it when I reflect that, in this foreign land 
 and in this alien age, we restlessly appreciative moderns 
 are almost reverently inhaling their faint, sweet fragrance. 
 
merimee's letters. 307 
 
 MERIMEE'S LETTERS. 
 
 The many readers who take pleasure in clever 
 French books have found themselves of late deploring 
 the sadly diminished supply of this commodity. The past 
 few years have brought forth no new literary names 
 of the first rank in France and have witnessed the 
 decline and extinction of most of the elder talents. 
 It is a long time now* since a French book has made 
 a noise on unassailable grounds. Here, at last, how- 
 ever, is a publication which, in six weeks, has reached a 
 fourth edition and which most people of taste are talking 
 about. But, though new in subject, the two volumes 
 to which we allude belong to the literature of thirty 
 years ago. They are the last contribution to literature 
 of a writer whose reputation was made in the early 
 part of the century. We recently heard it declared 
 by a competent critic that they contain the best 
 writing (as simple writing) that has appeared in France 
 since Voltaire. This is strong language; but the 
 reader of the easy, full-flavoured, flexible prose to 
 which Merimee treats his correspondent will certainly 
 feel the charm that prompted it. Prosper Merimee's 
 title to fame has hitherto consisted in a couple of 
 dozen little tales, varying from ten to a hundred pages 
 in length. They have gradually come to be considered 
 perfect models of the narrative art; and we confess our 
 own admiration for them is such that we feel like de- 
 claring it a capital offence in a young story-teller to 
 put pen to paper without having read them and di- 
 
 * 1874. 
 
 20* 
 
308 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 gested them. It was a very handsome compUment to 
 pure quality (to the sovereignty of form) when Merimee, 
 with his handful of little stories, was elected to the 
 French Academy. The moral element in his tales is 
 such as was to be expected in works remarkable for 
 their pregnant concision and for a firmness of contour 
 suggesting hammered metal. In a single word they 
 are not sympathetic. Sympathy is prolix, sentiment is 
 diffuse, and our author, by inexorably suppressing emo- 
 tion, presents his facts in the most salient relief. These 
 facts are, as a general thing, extremely disagreeable — 
 murder and adultery being the most frequent and the 
 catastrophe being always ingeniously tragical. Where 
 sentiment never appears, one gradually concludes that 
 it does not exist; and we had mentally qualified this 
 frigid artist as a natural cynic. A romancer with whom 
 bloodshed and tears were so abundant and subjective 
 compassion so rare had presumably a poor opinion of 
 the stock from which heroes and heroines spring. Many 
 years ago M. Mdrim6e ceased to publish stories and 
 devoted himself to archaeology and linguistics. We 
 have often wondered how during all these years he 
 employed his incisive imagination. The "Lettres k 
 une Inconnue" inform us. 
 
 They consist of a series of familiar — often singu- 
 larly familiar — epistles, addressed during more than 
 thirty years to a lady of whom nothing is generally 
 known. The letters begin apparently about 1838; the 
 last is written in September 1870, two hours before 
 the author's death, in the prime of his country's recent 
 disasters. Love-letters we suppose they are properly 
 to be called; but the reader may judge from a few 
 extracts whether they seem superficially to belong to 
 this category. In his private as well as his public 
 
meeimee's letters. 309 
 
 compositions Merimde was an enemy to fine phrases; 
 and here, instead of burning incense at the feet of his 
 beloved, he treats her to such homely truths as these: 
 "The cakes you eat with such appetite to cure you of 
 the backache you got at the opera surprised me still 
 more. But it isn't that among your defects I don't 
 place coquetry and gluttony in the first rank." "The , 
 affection that you have for me is only a sort of jeu 
 d'esprit. You are all esprit. You are one of those 
 'chilly women of the North.' You only live by your 
 head." He is forever accusing her of coquetry, heart- 
 lessness, duplicity, mendacity. "Why, after we have 
 been what we are to each other so long, do you take 
 several days to answer the simplest question?" After 
 her marriage he tells her it is all nonsense for her to 
 say that she is a better person than she was before. 
 "You seem to me prettier; but you have acquired, on 
 the other hand, a pretty dose of selfishness and hypo- 
 crisy." It is true that in the beginning of their ac- 
 quaintance he disclaims the ambition of being her 
 lover. "Perhaps you'll gain a real friend; and I, per- 
 haps, shall find in you what I have been looking for 
 so long — a woman with whom I am not in love and 
 in whom I can have confidence." One doubts whether 
 he was gratified. "You grow every day more imperious 
 and you have scandalous refinements of coquetry." 
 And yet one wonders, too, whether to attribute to 
 friendship or love this vigorous allusion to a walk with 
 his correspondent: "For myself, contrary to my habit, 
 I have no distinct recollections. I am like a cat who 
 licks his whiskers a long time after drinking milk." 
 We owe our knowledge of these letters to the lady 
 herself, who has published them with a frankness more 
 common in France than in societies of English race. 
 
310 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 She has, however, taken every pains to draw the veil 
 about her identity, and it may be said on her behalf 
 that it is none of our business who she was or what 
 she was. But only a very unimaginative reader will 
 spare his conjectures. There is something extremely 
 provoking to curiosity in the image, however shadowy, 
 of a woman clever enough to have all this cleverness 
 addressed to her. The author tells her early in the 
 book that she has "a nature so raffinie" — something 
 more than our "refined" — "as to be for him the sum- 
 ming-up of a civilization." It is not, apparently, with- 
 out reason that he writes to her: "Between your head 
 and your heart I never know which is to carry the 
 day. You don't know yourself; but you always give 
 the victory to your head." She had a head worth 
 favouring. Constantly busy himself with philological 
 studies, he recommends her to learn Greek as a pastime, 
 and tells her how to set to work. It soon appears that 
 she has taken his advice, and in the course of time 
 we find her enjoying Homer and the tragedians. Later, 
 when, with the privilege of a twenty years' friendship, 
 he utters all the crudities that come into his head — 
 and they grow very numerous as he grows older — he 
 scolds her for being alarmed at what she finds in Ari- 
 stophanes. The burden of his complaint from the first 
 is her reserve, her calculations, her never obeying the 
 first impulse. She had carried so far refusing to see 
 him, for fear of getting tired of him, that he estimates 
 that they have spent but three or four hours together 
 in the course of six or seven years. This is Platonism 
 with a vengeance and Merimde makes an odd figure 
 in it. He constantly protests, and begs for a walk in 
 the Champs Elysees or a talk in the gallery of the 
 Louvre. The critic to whom we just alluded and whose 
 
merimee's letters. 3 I I 
 
 impression differs from ovir own in that these vokimes 
 have made him like the writer more than before, rather 
 than less, maintains that we have a right to be very 
 severe toward the heroine. She was cold, he affirms; 
 she was old-maidish and conventional; she had no 
 spontaneous perceptions. When M6rimde is not at 
 hand to give her a cue her opinions are evidently 
 shallow. When she travels he exhorts her almost 
 fiercely to observe and inquire, to make a note of 
 everything curious in manners and morals, and he in- 
 variably scolds her for the inefficiency of her compte- 
 rendu. This is probably true enough. She had not 
 the unshrinking glance of her guide, philosopher and 
 friend. But we confess that our own sentiment with 
 regard to her partakes of vague compassion. Merimee's 
 tone and general view of things, judged in a vivid 
 moral light, were such as very effectually to corrupt a 
 pliable and dependent nature; and what we perceive 
 in his correspondent's reserve — her reluctance, in com- 
 mon phrase, to make herself cheap — is the natural 
 effort to preserve a certain ideal dignity in her own 
 eyes. "Each time we meet," he declares, in 1843, "it 
 seems as if there were a new formation of ice to break 
 through. Why don't I find you the same as I left you? 
 If we met oftener, this wouldn't happen. I am like an 
 old opera for you, which you need to forget to hear it 
 again with any pleasure." He numbers this annoying 
 self-possession, apparently, among the machinations of 
 what he calls her "infernal coquetry." His conception 
 of the feminine charater, though it had sunk a deep 
 shaft in a single direction, was strikingly narrow. In 
 the later letters, where he appears altogether in his 
 dressing-gown and slippers, he is for ever berating his 
 old friend for her "prudery." He can think of no 
 
312 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Other name for the supei-ficiality of her investigation of 
 certain points of harem-life, during a sojourn in Algiers; 
 and he showers the same accusation upon her when, 
 on his having lent her books unfamiliar to most women, 
 she alludes to their peculiar character in returning them. 
 One is anxious to know where he drew the line between 
 "prudery" and modesty, or whether he really thought 
 the distinction not worth making. And yet it was not 
 that his friendship had not a masculine delicacy of its 
 own. He says innumerable tender things, in which his 
 ardour is anything but cynical. Here is an allusion to 
 a Spanish greeting with which she had begun a letter; 
 "I wish I had seen you when you were writing amigo 
 de mi alma. When you have your portrait taken for 
 me, say that to yourself, instead of 'petite pomme d!api' 
 as the ladies say who wish to make their mouths look 
 pretty." The nearest approach in the book to the stuff 
 that love-letters are generally made of is an allusion to 
 the pains of the tender passion. "Several times it has 
 come into my head not to answer you and to see you 
 no more. This is very reasonable and a great deal 
 can be said for it. The execution is more difficult." 
 
 Gradually, however, sentiment of the tenderer sort 
 disappears — but by absorption, as one may say, and 
 not by evanescence. After a correspondence of ten 
 years the writer's devotion may be taken for granted. 
 His letters become an irremissible habit, an intellectual 
 need, a receptacle for his running commentary on life. 
 The second volume of the "Lettres i une Inconnue" 
 contains less that is personal to the lady, and more 
 allusions to other people and things, more anecdotes 
 and promiscuous reflections. Merimee became more 
 and more a man of the world. He was member of 
 two Academies, inspector and conservator of national 
 
MERIMEE'S LETTERS. 3I3 
 
 monuments (a very active post, apparently), a senatoi 
 of the Empire and an intimate friend of his sovereigns. 
 He travels constantly from Moscow to Madrid, makes 
 regular archaeological surveys through the length and 
 breadth of France, and pays frequent visits to England. 
 He meets every one and knows most people — most 
 great people, at least. In the midst of these things he 
 despatches constant notes to his correspondent, flashing 
 his lantern fitfully over his momentary associates and 
 over events of the hour. There is a multitude of 
 entertaining opinions, characterizations and anecdotes; 
 but we lack space for quotations. Everything he says 
 is admirably said; his phrase, in its mingled brevity 
 and laxity, is an excellent "fit" for his thought. He 
 tells anecdotes as vividly as Madame de S6vign6 and 
 in much fewer words. His judgments are rarely flat- 
 tering and his impressions rarely genial; and, as proper 
 names have been retained throughout, with unpreced- 
 ented audacity, many of his opinions must have aroused 
 a sufficiently inharmonious echo. He goes again and 
 again to England; but familiarity seems to breed some- 
 thing very much akin to contempt. "I am beginning 
 to have enough of ce pays-ci. I am satiated with per- 
 pendicular architecture and the equally perpendicular 
 manners of the natives. I passed two days at Cam- 
 bridge and at Oxford in the houses of 'reverends,' 
 and, the matter well considered, I prefer the Capuchins. 
 I gave (at Salisbury) half-a-crown to a person in black 
 who showed me the cathedral, and then I asked him 
 the address of a gentleman to whom I had a letter 
 from the Dean. It turned out that it was to him the 
 letter was addressed. He looked like a fool, and I too; 
 but he kept the money." The most interesting thing 
 throughout the later letters is not, however, the witty 
 
314 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 anecdotes and the raps at the writer's confrires, but 
 the development of his scepticism and cynicism. He 
 took his stand early in life on his aversion to florid 
 phrases (one must remember, in palliation, that he was 
 a Frenchman of the so-called generation of 1830), and 
 he fell a victim ultimately to what we may call a 
 dogmatization of his temperament. His dislike for fine 
 names led him at last to a total disbelief in fine things. 
 He had found a great many pretty puppets stuffed 
 with sawdust or nothing at all; so he concluded that 
 all sentiment was hollow and flattered himself that he 
 had pricked the bubble. We have noted but a single 
 instance of his speaking of a case of moral ardour 
 without raillery more or less explicit; and even here 
 it is a question to what extent the ardour is in fact 
 moral. " Since there have been so many romances and 
 poems of the passionate or would-be passionate sort 
 every woman pretends to have a heart. Wait a little 
 yet. When you have a heart in good earnest, you wUl 
 let me know. You will regret the good time when you 
 lived only by your head, and you will see that the evils 
 you suffer from now are but pin-pricks compared to 
 the dagger-blows that will rain down on you when the 
 time of passions comes." M. Taine, in a masterly pre- 
 face to these volumes, has laid his finger on the weak 
 spot in Merimee's character. "For fear of being dupe, 
 he mistrusted in life, in love, in science, in art; and he 
 was dupe of his mistrust. One is always dupe of 
 something." This latter sentence may be true; but 
 M6rim6e's fallacy was, of all needful illusions, the least 
 remunerative while it lasted, for it eventually weakened 
 an intellect which had every reason for being strong. 
 The letters of his latter years are sad reading. His 
 wit loses none of its edge; but what the French call 
 
merimee's letters. 315 
 
 sicheresse had utterly invaded his soul. His health 
 breaks down, and his short notes are hardly more 
 than a record of reiterated ailments and contemptuous 
 judgments. Most forms of contempt are unwise; but 
 one of them seems to us peculiarly ridiculous — contempt 
 for the age one lives in. Men with but a tithe of 
 Merimee's ingenuity have been able, and have not 
 failed, in every age, to make out a deplorable case for 
 mankind. 
 
 Poor Merimee, apparently, long before his death, 
 ceased to enjoy anything but the sunshine and a good 
 dinner. His imagination faded early, and it is certainly 
 a question whether this generous spirit, half-sister, at 
 least, to charity, will remain under a roof in which the 
 ideal is treated as uncivilly as Merimde treated it. He 
 was constantly in the imperial train at Fontainebleau, 
 Compifegne and Saint Cloud; but he does little save 
 complain of the discomforts of grandeur in general 
 and of silk tights in especial. He was, however, as 
 the event proved, a sincere friend of the Emperor 
 and Empress, and not a mere mercenary courtier. He 
 always speaks kindly of them and sharply of every one 
 else except Prince Bismarck, whom he meets at Biarritz 
 and who takes his fancy greatly. The literature of the 
 day he considers mere rubbish. Half a dozen of his 
 illustrious contemporaries come in for hard knocks; but 
 M. Renan and his paysages are his pet aversion. The 
 manners of the day are in his opinion still worse and 
 the universal world is making a prodigious fool of itself. 
 The collapse of the Empire, in which he believed as 
 much as he believed in anything, set the seal to his 
 pessimism, and he died, most consentingly, as one may 
 suppose, as the Germans were marching upon Paris. 
 His effort had been to put as little as possible of his 
 
3l6 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 personal self into his published writings; but fortune 
 and his correspondent have betrayed him, and after 
 reading these letters we feel that we know him. This 
 fact, added to their vigour, their vivacity and racinesS; 
 accounts for their great success. There had been lately 
 a great many poems and novels, philosophies and 
 biographies, abounding in more or less fantastic simu- 
 lacra of human creatures; but here is a genuine, visible, 
 palpable man, with a dozen limitations but with a most 
 distinct and curious individuality. 
 
 THE THEATRE FRANgAIS. 
 
 M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the 
 Paris "Temps," and the gentleman who, of the whole 
 journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune of a play in 
 the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during 
 the last year a series of biographical notices of the 
 chief actors and actresses of the first theatre in the 
 world. "Comddiens et Comediennes: la Comedie 
 Franjaise" — such is the title of this publication, which 
 appears in monthly numbers of the "Librairie des 
 Bibliophiles," and is ornamented on each occasion with 
 a very prettily etched portrait, by M. Gaucherel, of the 
 artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of 
 the stage in general and of the Theitre Franjais in 
 particular the series will be found most interesting; 
 and I welcome the pretext for saying a few words 
 about an institution which — if such language be not 
 hyperbolical — I passionately admire. I must add that 
 the portrait is incomplete, though for the present oc- 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 317 
 
 casion it is more than sufficient. The list of M. Sarcey's 
 biographies is not yet filled up; three or four, those of 
 Madame Favart and of MM. F^bvre and Delaunay are 
 still wanting. Nine numbers, however, have appeared 
 — the first being entitled "La Maison de Moli^re," and 
 devoted to a general account of the great theatre; 
 and the others treating of its principal socUtaires and 
 pensionnaires in the following order: 
 
 Regnier, 
 
 Got, 
 
 Sophie Croizette, 
 
 Sarah Bernhardt, 
 
 Coquelin, 
 
 Madeleine Brohan, 
 
 Bressant, 
 
 Madame Plessy. 
 (This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not 
 that of age or of merit.) It is always entertaining to 
 encounter M. Francisque Sarcey, and the reader who, 
 during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a 
 Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately 
 after unfolding his napkin, and glancing down first of 
 all to see what this sturdy feuilletoniste has found to 
 his hand — such a reader will find him in great force 
 in the pages before us. It is true that, though I my- 
 self confess to being such a reader, there are moments 
 when I grow rather weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an 
 eminent degree both the virtues and the defects which 
 attach to the great French characteristic — the habit of 
 taking terribly au sirieux anything that you may set 
 about doing. Of this habit of abounding in one's own 
 sense, of expatiating, elaborating, reiterating, refining, 
 as if for the hour the fate of mankind were bound up 
 with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a capital and 
 
3l8 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 at times an almost comical representative. He talks 
 about the theatre once a week as if — honestly, between 
 himself and his reader — the theatre were the only 
 thing in this frivolous world that is worth seriously 
 talking about. He has a religious respect for his theme 
 and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all it 
 must be done in detail as well as in the gross. 
 
 It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to 
 his thoroughly businesslike and professional attitude, 
 to his unwearying attention to detail, that the critic of 
 the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and the weight 
 of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incor- 
 ruptible. He has his admirations, but they are honest 
 and discriminating; and whom he loveth he very often 
 chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend Mile. X., 
 who has only had a curtsy to make, if her curtsy has 
 been the ideal curtsy of the situation; and he is not 
 afraid to overhaul Mr. A., who has delivered the tirade 
 of the play, if Mr. A., has failed to hit the mark. Of 
 course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion 
 to measure it I have usually found it excellent. He 
 has the scenic sense — the theatrical eye. He knows 
 at a glance what will do, and what will not do. He 
 is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in 
 earnest, and this is his principal brilliancy. He is 
 homely, familiar and colloquial; he leans his elbows 
 on his desk and does up his weekly budget into a 
 parcel the reverse of compact. You can fancy him a 
 grocer retailing tapioca and hominy — full weight for 
 the price; his style seems a sort of integument of brown 
 paper. But the fact remains that if M. Sarcey praises 
 a play the play has a run; and that if M. Sarcey says 
 it will not do it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey de- 
 votes an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 3I9 
 
 mademoiselle is immediately lancle; she has a career. 
 If he bestows a quiet "bravo" on an obscure comedian, 
 the gentleman may forthwith renew his engagement. 
 When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, 
 what matters it whether you have a little elegance the 
 more or the less? Elegance is for M. Paul de St. Victor, 
 who does the theatres in the "Moniteur," and who, 
 though he writes a style only a trifle less pictorial 
 than that of Theophile Gautier himself, has never, to 
 the best of my belief, brought clouds or sunshine to 
 any playhouse. I may add, to finish with M. Sarcey, 
 that he contributes a daily political article — generally 
 devoted to watching and showing up the "game" 
 of the clerical party — to Edmond About's journal, the 
 "XIX'^°"= Si^cle"; that he gives a weekly conference on 
 current literature; that he "confers" also on those ex- 
 cellent Sunday morning performances now so common 
 in the French theatres, during which examples of the 
 classic repertory are presented, accompanied by a light 
 lecture upon the history and character of the play. 
 As the commentator on these occasions M. Sarcey is 
 in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in small 
 provincial towns. Lastly, frequent playgoers in Paris 
 observe that the very slenderest novelty is sufficient to 
 insure at a theatre the (very considerable) physical 
 presence of the conscientious critic of the "Temps." 
 If he were remarkable for nothing else he would be 
 remarkable for the fortitude with which he exposes 
 himself to the pestiferous climate of the Parisian temples 
 of the drama. 
 
 For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears 
 to have mended his pen and to have given a fillip to 
 his fancy. They are gracefully and often lightly turned; 
 occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic. 
 
320 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with 
 the private physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen 
 whom they commemorate; and though they occasion- 
 ally allude to what the French call "intimate" matters, 
 they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. 
 The TheHtre Franjais, in the face it presents to the 
 world, is an austere and venerable establishment, and 
 a frivolous tone about its affairs would be almost as 
 much out of keeping as if applied to the Academie 
 herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of 
 the theatre, and gives some account of the different 
 phases through which it has passed during these latter 
 years. Its chief functionary is a general administrator, 
 or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this 
 right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it 
 pays to the house; a subsidy amounting, if I am not 
 mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention the sum) to 
 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an ab- 
 solute but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his 
 powers with the society itself, which has always had a 
 large deliberative voice. 
 
 Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive 
 its light and its inspiration? From the past, from pre- 
 cedent, from tradition — from the great unwritten body 
 of laws which no one has in his keeping but many 
 have in their memory, and all in their respect. The 
 principles on which the Theitre Fran9ais rests are a 
 good deal like the Common Law of England — a 
 vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regula- 
 tions which time and occasion have welded together 
 and from which the recurring occasion can usually 
 manage to extract the rightful precedent. Napoleon I., 
 who had a finger in every pie in his dominion, found 
 time during his brief and disastrous occupation of 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN9AIS. 32 I 
 
 Moscow to send down a decree remodelling and 
 regulating the constitution of the theatre. This docu- 
 ment has long been a dead letter, and the society- 
 abides by its older traditions. The traditions of 
 the Comedie Frangaise — that is the sovereign word, 
 and that is the charm of the place — the charm that 
 one never ceases to feel, however often one may sit 
 beneath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm 
 with peculiar intensity as a foreigner newly arrived. 
 The Theitre Franjais has had the good fortune to be 
 able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They have 
 been preserved, transmitted, respected, cherished, until 
 at last they form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of 
 the establishment. A stranger feels their superior in- 
 fluence the first time he sees the great curtain go up; 
 he feels that he is in a theatre that is not as other 
 theatres are. It is not only better, it is different. It 
 has a peculiar perfection — something consecrated, his- 
 torical, academic. This impression is delicious, and 
 he watches the performance in a sort of tranquil ec- 
 stasy. 
 
 Never has he seen anything so smooth and harmo- 
 nious, so artistic and completed. He has heard all his 
 life of attention to detail, and now, for the first time, 
 he sees something that deserves that name. He sees 
 dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English 
 stage is unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits 
 to possible "finish," and that so trivial an act as taking 
 a letter from a servant or placing one's hat on a chair 
 may be made a suggestive and interesting incident. 
 He sees these things and a great many more besides, 
 but at first he does not analyse them, he gives himself 
 up to sympathetic contemplation. He is in an ideal 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 2' 
 
322 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and exemplary world — a world that has managed to 
 attain all the felicities that the world we live in misses. 
 The people do the things that we should like to do; 
 they are gifted as we should like to be; they have 
 mastered the accomplishments that we have had to 
 give up. The women are not all beautiful — decidedly 
 not, indeed — but they are graceful, agreeable, sym- 
 pathetic, ladylike; they have the best manners possible 
 and they are perfectly well dressed. They have charm- 
 ing musical voices and they speak with irreproachable 
 purity and sweetness; they walk with the most elegant 
 grace and when they sit it is a pleasure to see their 
 attitudes. They go out and come in, they pass across 
 the stage, they talk, and laugh, and cry, they deliver 
 long tirades or remain statuesquely mute; they are 
 tender or tragic, they are comic or conventional; and 
 through it all you never observe an awkwardness, a 
 roughness, an accident, a crude spot, a false note. 
 
 As for the men, they are not handsome either; it 
 must be confessed, indeed, that at the present horn- 
 manly beauty is but scantily represented at the Theitre 
 Frangais. Bressant, I believe, used to be thought 
 handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the 
 gentlemen of the troupe I can think of no one but 
 M. Mounet-Sully who may be positively commended 
 for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from the 
 scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. 
 To be handsome, however, is for an actor one of the 
 last necessities; and these gentlemen are mostly hand- 
 some enough. They look perfectly what they are 
 intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that 
 they shall seem handsome, they usually succeed. They 
 are as well mannered and as well dressed as their 
 fairer comrades and their voices are no less agreeable 
 
THE THEATRE FRANgAIS. 323 
 
 and efTective. They represent gentlemen and they 
 produce the illusion. In this endeavour they deserve 
 even greater credit than the actresses, for in modern 
 comedy, of which the repertory of the Theatre Frangais 
 is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of 
 costume to help to carry it oflF. Half-a-dozen ugly 
 men, in the periodic coat and trousers and stove-pipe 
 hat, with blue chins and false moustaches, strutting 
 before the foot-lights, and pretending to be interest- 
 ing, romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous 
 game. At every turn they suggest prosaic things and 
 the usual liability to awkwardness is meantime in- 
 creased a thousand fold. But the comedians of the 
 Th^itre Frangais are never awkward, and when it is 
 necessary they solve triumphantly the problem of 
 being at once realistic to the eye and romantic to the 
 imagination. 
 
 I am speaking always of one's first impression of 
 them. There are spots on the sun, and you discover 
 after a while that liere are little irregularities at the 
 Theatre Fran§ais. But the acting is so incomparably 
 better than any that you have seen that criticism for a 
 long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never 
 forget how at first I was under the charm. I liked the 
 very incommodities of the place; I am not sure that I 
 did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the pestilent 
 air. The Theatre Frangais, it is known, gives you a 
 good deal for your money. The performance, which 
 rarely ends before midnight, and sometimes trans- 
 gresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The 
 first hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; 
 but not for the world at this time would I have missed 
 the first rising of the curtain. No dinner could be too 
 hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for instance, 
 
 21* 
 
324 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Madame Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little 
 comedy of "Le Village." Madame Nathalie was a 
 plain, stout old woman, who did the mothers and aunts 
 and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she 
 retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most 
 conspicuous vacancy. She was an admirable actress 
 and a perfect mistress of laughter and tears. In "Le 
 Village" she played an old provincial bourgeoise whose 
 husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to 
 start on the tour of Europe with a roving bachelor 
 friend, who has dropped down on him at supper-time, 
 after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into 
 momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My 
 pleasure was in Madame Nathalie's figure when she 
 came in dressed to go out to vespers across the place. 
 The two foolish old cronies are over their wine, talking 
 of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you 
 hear the church-bell in the distance. It was the quiet 
 felicity of the old lady's dress that used to charm me; 
 the Com^die Frangaise was in every fold of it. She 
 wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut, 
 which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out 
 of some old wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, 
 and a large dark bonnet, adorned with handsome black 
 silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had a softly 
 frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly 
 kept breviary. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet 
 the taste and temperance of this costume, seemed to 
 me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its handsome, 
 decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It 
 expressed all the rest, and you saw the excellent, pious 
 woman go pick her steps churchward among the puddles, 
 while Jeannette, the cook, in a high white cap, marched 
 before her in sabots with a lantern. 
 
THE THeAtRE FRANQAIS. 325 
 
 Such matters are trifles, but they are representative 
 trifles, and they are not the only ones that I remember. 
 It used to please me, when I had squeezed into my 
 stall — the stalls at the Frangais are extremely uncom- 
 fortable — to remember of how great a history the large, 
 dim salle around me could boast; how many great 
 things had happened there; how the air was thick 
 with associations. Even if I had never seen Rachel, 
 it was something of a consolation to think that those 
 very footlights had illumined her finest moments and 
 that the echoes of her mighty voice were sleeping 
 in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon the 
 "traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, 
 was of course but a step. How were they kept? by 
 whom, and where? Who trims the undying lamp and 
 guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out 
 — by sitting in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to 
 care to know. One may be very fond of the stage 
 and yet care little for the green-room; just as one 
 may be very fond of pictures and books and yet be 
 no frequenter of studios and authors' dens. They 
 might pass on the torch as they would behind the 
 scenes; so long as during my time they did not let it 
 drop I made up my mind to be satisfied. And that 
 one could depend upon their not letting it drop be- 
 came a part of the customary comfort of Parisian life. 
 It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere 
 catchwords, but a most beneficient reality. 
 
 Going to the other Parisian theatres helps you to 
 believe in , them. Unless you are a voracious theatre- 
 goer you give the others up; you find they do not 
 "pay"; the Fran9ais does for you all that they do 
 and so much more besides. There are two possible 
 exceptions — the Gymnase and the Palais Royal. The 
 
326 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Gymnase, since the death of Mademoiselle Descl6e, 
 has been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when 
 a month's sunshine rests upon it, there is a savour of 
 excellence in the performance. But you feel that you 
 are still within the realm of accident; the delightful 
 security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The 
 young lover is liable to be common and the beautifully 
 dressed heroine to have an unpleasant voice. The 
 Palais Royal has always been in its way very perfect; 
 but its way admits of great imperfection. The ac- 
 tresses are classically bad, though usually pretty, and 
 the actors are much addicted to taking liberties. In 
 broad comedy, nevertheless, two or three of the latter 
 are not to be surpassed, and (counting- out the women) 
 there is usually something masterly in a Palais Royal 
 performance. In its own line it has what is called 
 style, and it therefore walks, at a distance, in the foot- 
 steps of the Franjais. The Odeon has never seemed 
 to me in any degree a rival of the Theatre Franpais, 
 though it is a smaller copy of that establishment It 
 receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged by 
 its contract to play the classic repertory one night in 
 the week. It is on these nights, listening to Moliire 
 or Marivaux, that you may best measure the superiority 
 of the greater theatre. I have seen actors at the 
 Od6on, in the classic repertory, imperfect in their 
 texts; a monstrously insupposable case at the Comedie 
 Franjaise. The function of the Odeon is to operate 
 as a pipiniire or nursery for its elder — to try young 
 talents, shape them, make them flexible and then hand 
 them over to the upper house. The more especial 
 nursery of the Franjais, however, is the Conservatoire 
 Dramatique, an institution dependent upon tlie State, 
 through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 327 
 
 is charged with the remuneration of its professors. 
 Pupils graduating from the Conservatoire with a prize 
 have ipso facto the right to dihuter at the Theatre 
 Fran9ais, which retains them or lets them go, according 
 to its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the 
 Franjais have done their two years' work at the Con- 
 servatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an actor who has 
 not had that fundamental training which is only to be 
 acquired there never obtains a complete mastery of 
 his resources. Nevertheless some of the best actors 
 of the day have owed nothing to the Conservatoire — 
 Bressant, for instance, and Aim6e Desclee, the latter of 
 whom, indeed, never arrived at the Frangais. (Moli^re 
 and Balzac were not of the Academy, and so Mile. 
 Desclee, the first actress after Rachel, died without 
 acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says is the 
 day-dream of all young theatrical women — that of 
 printing on their visiting-cards, after their name, de la 
 Comidie Franqaise.) 
 
 The Theitre Frangais has, moreover, the right to 
 do as Moli^re did — ^to claim its property wherever it 
 finds it. It may stretch out its long arm and break 
 the engagement of a promising actor at any of the 
 other theatres; of course after a certain amoimt of 
 notice given. So, last winter, it notified to the Gymnase 
 its design of appropriating Worms, the admirable jeune 
 premier, who, returning from a long sojourn in Russia 
 and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve 
 the shrunken fortunes of that establishment. 
 
 On the whole, it may be said that the great talents 
 find their way, sooner or later, to the Thditre Frangais. 
 This is of course not a rule that works unvaryingly, 
 for there are a great many influences to interfere with 
 it. Interest as well as merit — especially in the case 
 
328 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of the actresses — weighs in the scale; and the ire that 
 may exist in celestial minds has been known to mani- 
 fest itself in the councils of the Comedie. Moreover, 
 a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme at one 
 of the smaller theatres; at the Frangais, inevitably, she 
 shares her dominion. The honour is less, but the 
 comfort is greater. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the Frangais, in a general way, 
 there is in each case a tolerably obvious artistic reason 
 for membership; and if you, see a clever actor remain 
 outside for years, you may be pretty sure that, though 
 private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as 
 well. The first half dozen times I saw Mademoiselle 
 Fargueil, who for years ruled the roost, as the vulgar 
 saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that so con- 
 summate and accomplished an actress should not have 
 a place on the first French stage. But I presently grew 
 wiser, and perceived that, clever as Mademoiselle 
 Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu, but 
 for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian in- 
 tonation would sound out of place in the Maison de 
 Moli&re. (Of course if Mademoiselle Fargueil has ever 
 received overtures from the Frangais, my sagacity is at 
 fault — I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect 
 she has not.) Fr6ddric Lemaitre, who died last winter, 
 and who was a very great actor, had been tried at the 
 Frangais and found wanting — for those particular con- 
 ditions. But it may probably be said that if Fr6d^ric 
 was wanting, the theatre was too, in this case. Fr^d6ric's 
 great force was his extravagance, his fantasticality; and 
 the stage of the Rue de Richelieu was a trifle too 
 academic. I have even wondered whether Desclee, if 
 she had lived, would have trod that stage by right, 
 and whether it would have seemed her proper element 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN9AIS. 329 
 
 The negative is not impossible. It is very possible 
 that in that classic atmosphere her great charm — ^her 
 intensely modern quality, her super-subtle realism — 
 would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even 
 that her strange, touching, nervous voice would not 
 have seemed the voice of the house. At the Frangais 
 you must know how to acquit yourself of a tirade; that 
 has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would 
 probably have proved Desclde's stumbling-block, though 
 she could utter speeches of six words as no one else 
 surely has ever done. It is true that Mademoiselle 
 Croizette, and in a certain sense Mademoiselle Sarah 
 Bernhardt, are rather weak at their tirades; but then 
 old theatre-goers will teU you that these young ladies, 
 in spite of a hundred attractions have no business at 
 the Franjais. 
 
 In the course of time the susceptible foreigner 
 passes from that superstitious state of attention which 
 I just now sketched to that greater enlightenment 
 which enables him to understand such a judgment 
 as this of the old theatre-goers. It is borne in upon 
 him that, as the good Homer sometimes nods, the 
 Theitre Frangais sometimes lapses from its high 
 standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks 
 that Mademoiselle Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet- 
 SuUy, in spite of his delicious voice, insupportable. 
 He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy, "Rome 
 Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present 
 winter, was better done certainly than it would have 
 been done upon any English stage, but by no means 
 so much better done as might have been expected. 
 (Here, if I had space, I would open a long parenthesis,' 
 in which I should aspire to demonstrate that the in- 
 contestable superiority of average French acting to 
 
330 FRENCH POKTS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 English is by no means so strongly marked in tragedy 
 as in comedy — is indeed sometimes not strongly marked 
 at all. The reason of this is in a great measure, I 
 think, that we have had Shakespeare to exercise our- 
 selves upon, and that an inferior dramatic instinct 
 exercised upon Shakespeare may become more flexible 
 than a superior one exercised upon Comeille and 
 Racine. When it comes to ranting — ranting even in a 
 modified and comparatively reasonable sense — we do, 
 I suspect, quite as well as the French, if not rather 
 better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his entertaining little 
 book upon "Actors and the Art of Acting," mentions 
 M. Talbot, of the Fran9ais, as a surprisingly incom- 
 petent performer. My memory assents to his judgment 
 at the same time that it proposes an amendment. This 
 actor's special line is the buffeted, bemuddled, besotted 
 old fathers, uncles and guardians of classic comedy, 
 and he plays them with his face much more than with 
 his tongue. Nature has endowed him with a visage so 
 admirably adapted, once for all, to his r61e, that he 
 has only to sit in a chair, with his hands folded on 
 his stomach, to look like a monument of bewildered 
 senility. After that it does not matter what he says 
 or how he says it. 
 
 The Comedie Franjaise sometimes does weaker 
 things than in keeping M. Talbot. Last autumn,*) for 
 instance, it was really depressing to see Mademoiselle 
 Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with 
 not a little flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal 
 in "Rome Vaincue.'' As far as the interests of art are 
 concerned. Mademoiselle Dudley had much better have 
 remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language 
 she is apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to 
 • 1876. 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 33 I 
 
 forgive M. Perrin (M. Perrin is the present director of 
 the Theatre Franjais) for bringing out "L'Ami Fritz" 
 of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen who 
 write under this name have a double claim to kind- 
 ness. In the first place, they have produced some de- 
 lightful little novels; every one knows and admires 
 "Le Conscrit de 1813"; every one admires, indeed, 
 the charming tale on which the play in question is 
 founded. In the second place, they were, before the 
 production of their piece, the objects of a scurrilous 
 attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the 
 authors up to reprobation for having "insulted the 
 army," and did its best to lay the train for a hostile 
 manifestation on the first night. (It may be added that 
 the good sense of the public out-balanced the im- 
 pudence of the newspaper, and the play was simply 
 advertised into success.) But neither the novels nor 
 the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail to 
 render "L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, 
 worthy of the first French stage. It is played as well 
 as possible, and upholstered even better; but it is, ac- 
 cording to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for the locality. 
 Upholstery has never played such a part at the Theatre 
 Franjais as during the reign of M. Perrin, who came 
 into power, if I mistake not, after the late war. He 
 proved very early that he was a radical, and he has 
 introduced a hundred novelties. His administration, 
 however, has been brilliant, and in his hands the 
 Theatre Franjais has made money. This it had rarely 
 done before, and this, in the conservative view, is quite 
 beneath its dignity. To the conservative view I should 
 humbly incline. An institution so closely protected by 
 a rich and powerful State ought to be able to cultivate 
 art for art. 
 
332 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I 
 have been too long in coming, is devoted to Regnier, 
 a veteran actor, who left the stage four or five years 
 since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his 
 younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says 
 M. Sarcey, for a young aspirant to be able to say that 
 he has had lessons of M. Regnier, or that M. Regnier 
 had advised him, or that he has talked such and such 
 a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always 
 speak of him as M. Regnier — never as simple Regnier.) 
 I have had the fortune to see him but once; it was the 
 first time I ever went to the Theatre Frangais. He 
 played Don Annibal in Emile Augier's romantic comedy 
 of "L'Aventuri^re," and I have not forgotten the ex- 
 quisite humoiu: of the performance. The part is that 
 of a sort of seventeenth century Captain Costigan, only 
 the Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's 
 sister and not his daughter. This lady is moreover an 
 ambitious and designing person, who leads her thread- 
 bare braggart of a brother quite by the nose. She has 
 entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature 
 years, and he is on the eve of making her his wife, 
 when his son, a clever young soldier, beguiles Don 
 Annibal into supping with him, and makes him drink 
 so deep that the prating adventurer at last lets the cat 
 out of the bag and confides to his companion that the 
 fair Clorinde is not the virtuous gentlewoman she ap- 
 pears, but a poor strolling actress wha has had a lover 
 at every stage of her journey. The scene was played 
 by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always remained 
 in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have 
 seen on the stage. The gradual action of the wine 
 upon Don Annibal, the delicacy with which his deepen- 
 ing tipsiness was indicated, its intellectual rather than 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN9AIS. 333 
 
 physical manifestation, and, in the midst of it, the fan- 
 tastic conceit which made him think that he was wind- 
 ing his fellow drinker round his fingers — all this was 
 exquisitely rendered. Drunkenness on the stage is 
 usually both dreary and disgusting; and I can remem- 
 ber besides this but two really interesting pictures of 
 intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal 
 tipsiness of Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor 
 can always make touching). One is the beautiful be- 
 fuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph Jefferson 
 renders it, and the other (a memory of the Th^ltre 
 Frangais) the scene in the "Due Job,'' in which Got 
 succumbs to mild inebriation, and dozes in his chair 
 just boosily enough for the young girl who loves him 
 to make it out. 
 
 It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's 
 second notice is devoted. Got is at the present hour 
 unquestionably the first actor at the Theatre Frangais, 
 and I have personally no hesitation in accepting him 
 as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, 
 Coquelin, has, I think, as much talent and as much 
 art; as the older man Got has the longer and fuller 
 record and may therefore be spoken of as the master. 
 If I were obliged to rank the half-dozen premiers sujets 
 of the last few years at the Theatre Franjais in their 
 absolute order of talent (thank Heaven, I am not so 
 obliged!) I think I should make up some such little 
 list as this: Got, Coquelin, Madame Plessy, Sarah Bern- 
 hardt, Mademoiselle Favart, Delaunay. I confess that 
 I have no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to 
 amend it, and wonder whether it is not a great folly 
 to put Delaunay after Mademoiselle Favart. But this 
 is idle. 
 
 As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. 
 
334 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 I have often wondered whether the best definition of 
 him would not be to say that he is really a philosophic 
 actor. He is an immense humorist and his comicality 
 is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is 
 the one on which M. Sarcey dwells — his sobriety and 
 profundity, his underlying element of manliness and 
 melancholy, the impression he gives you of having a 
 general conception of human life and of seeing the 
 relativity, as one may say, of the character he repre- 
 sents. Of all the comic actors I have seen he is the 
 least trivial — at the same time that for richness of 
 detail his comic manner is unsurpassed. His repertory 
 is very large and various, but it may be divided into 
 two equal halves — the parts that belong to reality and 
 the parts that belong to fantasy. There is of course 
 a great deal of fantasy in his realistic parts and a 
 great deal of reality in his fantastic ones, but the 
 general division is just; and at times, indeed, the two 
 faces of his talent seem to have little in common. The 
 Due Job, to which I just now alluded, is one of the 
 things he does most perfectly. The part, which is 
 that of a young man, is a serious and tender one. It 
 is amazing that the actor who plays it should also be 
 able to carry off triumphantly the frantic buffoonery of 
 Maltre Pathelin, or should represent the Sganarelle of 
 the "M^decin Malgrd Lui" with such an unctuous 
 breadth of humour. The two characters, perhaps, 
 which have given me the liveliest idea of Got's power 
 and fertility are the Maitre Pathelin and the M. Poirier 
 who figures in the title to the comedy which Enule 
 Augier and Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier, 
 the retired shopkeeper who marries his daughter to a 
 marquis and makes acquaintance with the incommo- 
 dities incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 335 
 
 the actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to 
 see how the portrayal of a type and an individual can 
 have a larger sweep and a more minute completeness. 
 The bonhomme Poirier, in Got's hands, is really great; 
 and half-a-dozen of the actor's modern parts that I 
 could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I 
 think of him I instinctively think first of some rdle in 
 which he wears the cap and gown of a period as re- 
 gards which humorous invention may fairly take the 
 bit in its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Mattre 
 Pathelin, and he leads the spectator's exhilarated fancy 
 a dance to which the latter's aching sides on the mor- 
 row sufficiently testify. 
 
 The piece is a rlchauffi of a mediaeval farce which 
 has the credit of being the first play not a "mystery" 
 or a miracle-piece in the records of the French drama. 
 The plot is extremely bald and primitive. It sets forth 
 how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen 
 ells of cloth for nothing. In the first scene we see 
 him in the market-place, bargaining and haggling with 
 the draper, and then marching off with the roll of 
 cloth, with the understanding that the shopman shall 
 call at his house in the course of an hour for the 
 money. In the next act we have Maltre Pathelin at 
 his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates his trick 
 and its projected sequel, and who greets them with 
 Homeric laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent 
 draper arrives. Then follows a scene of which the 
 liveliest description must be ineffective. Pathelin pre- 
 tends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a 
 mysterious malady which has made him delirious, not 
 to know the draper from Adam, never to have heard 
 of the dozen ells of cloth and to be altogether an im- 
 possible person to collect a debt from. To carry out 
 
336 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 this character he indulges in a series of indescribable 
 antics, out-Bedlams Bedlam, frolics over the room 
 dressed out in the bed-clothes and chanting the 
 wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor draper to within 
 an inch of his own sanity and finally puts him utterly 
 to rout. The spectacle could only be portentously flat 
 or heroically successful, and in Got's hands this latter 
 was its fortune. His Sganarelle, in the "Medecin 
 Malgrd Lui," and half-a-dozen of his characters from 
 Moli^re besides — such a part, too, as his Tibia, in 
 Alfred de Musset's charming bit of romanticism, the 
 "Caprices de Marianne" — have a certain generic re- 
 semblance with his treatment of the figure I have 
 sketched. In all these things the comicality is of the 
 exuberant and tremendous order, and yet in spite of 
 its richness and flexibility it suggests little connection 
 with high animal spirits. It seems a matter of inven- 
 tion, of reflection and irony. You cannot imagine Got 
 representing a fool pure and simple — or at least a 
 passive and unsuspecting fool. There must always be 
 an element of shrewdness and even of contempt; he 
 must be the man who knows and judges — or at least 
 who pretends. It is a compliment, I take it, to an 
 actor, to say that he prompts you to wonder about his 
 private personality; and an observant spectator of M. 
 Got is at liberty to guess that he is both obstinate and 
 proud. 
 
 In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, 
 and there is a not inferior mastery of his art. He is 
 a wonderfully brilliant, elastic actor. He is but thirty- 
 five years old, and yet his record is most glorious. He 
 too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and 
 here also it is hard to choose. As the young valet de 
 comidie in Moli^re and Regnard and Marivaux he is 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN5AIS. 337 
 
 incomparable. I shall never forget the really infernal 
 brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Etourdi." His volu- 
 bility, his rapidity, his impudence and gaiety, his ring- 
 ing, penetrating voice and the shrill trumpet-note of 
 his laughter, make him the ideal of the classic serving- 
 man of the classic young lover — half rascal and half 
 good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or three 
 immense successes in the comedies of the day. His 
 Due de Sept-Monts, in the famous "Etrang^re" of 
 Alexandre Dumas, last winter, was the capital creation 
 of the piece; and in the revival, this winter, of Augier's 
 "Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young 
 man about town, consciously tainted with commonness, 
 and trying to shake off the incubus, seemed while one 
 watched it and listened to it the last word of delicately 
 humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old 
 comedies M. Sarcey speaks with a certain pictorial 
 force: "No one is better cut out to represent those 
 bold and magnificent rascals of the old repertory, with 
 their boisterous gaiety, their brilliant fancy and their 
 superb extravagance, who give to their buffoonery je 
 ne sais quoi d^ipique. In these parts one may say of 
 Coquelin that he is incomparable. I prefer him to 
 Got in such cases, and even to Regnier, his master. I 
 never saw Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But 
 good judges have assured me that there was much 
 that was factitious in the manner of this eminent 
 comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle mechani- 
 cal. There is nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's 
 manner. The eye, the nose, and the voice — the voice 
 above all — are his most powerful means of action. He 
 launches his tirades all in one breath, with full lungs, 
 without troubling himself too much over the shading 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. 22 
 
338 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of details, in large masses, and he possesses himself 
 only the more strongly of the public, which has a 
 great sense of ensemble. The words that must be 
 detached, the words that must decisively 'tell,' glitter 
 in this delivery with the sonorous ring of a brand- 
 new louis d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille 
 have never found a more valiant and joyous inter- 
 preter." 
 
 I should say that this was enough about the men 
 at the Theitre Frangais, if I did not remember that 
 I have not spoken of Delaunay. But Delaunay has 
 plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial, 
 the more eloquent half of humanity — the ladies. I 
 suppose that of all the actors of the Comedie Frangaise 
 he is the most universally appreciated and admired; 
 he is the popular favourite. And he has certainly 
 earned this distinction, for there was never a more 
 amiable and sympathetic genius. He plays the young 
 lovers of the past and the present, and he acquits 
 himself of his difficult and delicate task with extra- 
 ordinary grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of 
 a while since — the danger, for the actor of a romantic 
 and sentimental part, of being compromised by the 
 coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the current 
 year — are reduced by Delaunay to their minimum. 
 He reconciles in a marvellous fashion the love-sick 
 gallant of the ideal world with the "gentlemanly man" 
 of to-day; and his passion is as far removed from rant 
 as his propriety is from stiffness. He has been accused 
 of late years of falling into a mannerism, and I think 
 there is some truth in the charge. But the fault in 
 Delaunay's situation is certainly venial. How can a 
 man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure, 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 339 
 
 Nature has been stingy, play an amorous swain of 
 twenty without taking refuge in a mannerism? His 
 mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the 
 spectator's attention from certain incongruities. De- 
 launay's juvenility, his ardour, his passion, his good 
 taste and sense of fitness, have always an irresistible 
 charm. As he has grown older he has increased his 
 repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety — he 
 has played the husbands as well as the lovers. One 
 of his most recent and brUliant "creations" of this 
 kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le Gendre de 
 M. Poirier" — a piece of acting superb for its lightness 
 and dSsinvolture. It cannot be better praised than by 
 saying it was worthy of Got's inimitable rendering of 
 the part opposed to it. But I think I shall remember 
 Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic comedies 
 — as the Due de Richelieu in "Mademoiselle de Belle- 
 Isle"; as the joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, his 
 plumes and love knots fluttering in the breath of his 
 gushing improvisation, of CorneiUe's "Menteur"; or, 
 most of all, as the melodious swains of those charm- 
 ingly poetic, faintly, naturally Shakespearian little 
 comedies of Alfred de Musset. 
 
 To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly 
 to Mademoiselle Favart, who for so many years in- 
 variably represented the object of his tender invoca- 
 tions. Mademoiselle Favart at the present time rather 
 lacks what the French call "actuality." She has re- 
 cently made an attempt to recover something of that 
 large measure of it which she once possessed; but I 
 doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. 
 Sarcey has not yet put forth his notice of her; and 
 when he does so it will be interesting to see how he 
 
 22* 
 
340 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. 
 She is a great talent that has passed into eclipse. I 
 call her a great talent, although I remember the words 
 in which M. Sarcey somewhere speaks of her: "Made- 
 moiselle Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, soutenus 
 par un travail acharni, owed a distinguished place," 
 etc. Her talent is great, but the impression that she 
 gives of a travail acharni and of an insatiable ambi- 
 tion is perhaps even greater. For many years she 
 reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not 
 having always reigned generously. However that may 
 be, there came a day when Mesdemoiselles Croizette 
 and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front and the 
 elder actress receded, if not into the background, at 
 least into what painters call the middle distance. The 
 private history of these events has, I believe, been rich 
 in heart-burnings; but it is only with the public 
 history that we are concerned. Mademoiselle Favart 
 has always seemed to me a powerful rather than an 
 interesting actress; there is usually something mechanical 
 and overdone in her manner. In some of her parts 
 there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. 
 If Delaunay is open to the reproach of having let a 
 mannerism get the better of him, this accusation is 
 much more fatally true of Mademoiselle Favart. On 
 the other hand, she knows her trade as no one does — 
 no one, at least, save Madame Plessy. When she is 
 bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she is inter- 
 ruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of 
 Scribe's clever comedy of "Une Chatne," this winter 
 (which, by the way, though the cast included both Got 
 and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to mediocrity 
 I have ever seen at the Th6S.tre Frangais), Made- 
 
THE THEATRE FRAN^AIS. 34 1 
 
 moiselle Favart was, to my sense, startlingly bad. The 
 part had originally been played by Madame Plessy; 
 and I remember how M. Sarcey in his feuilleton 
 treated its actual representative. "Mademoiselle Favart 
 does Louise. Who does not recall the exquisite de- 
 licacy and temperance with which Madame Plessy 
 rendered that difficult scene in the second act?" etc. 
 And nothing more. When, however, Mademoiselle 
 Favart is at her best, she is remarkably strong. She 
 rises to great occasions. I doubt whether such parts 
 as the desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une 
 Femme," or as Julie in Octave Feuillet's lugubrious 
 drama of that name, could be more effectively played 
 than she plays them. She can carry a great weight 
 without flinching; she has what the French call 
 "authority"; and in declamation she sometimes unrolls 
 her fine voice, as it were, in long harmonious waves 
 and cadences the sustained power of which her younger 
 rivals must often envy her. 
 
 I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory 
 observations without having spoken of the four ladies 
 commemorated by M. Sarcey in the publication which 
 lies before me; and I do not know that I can justify 
 my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing 
 and reading about artists of so extreme a personal 
 brilliancy is poor work, and that the best the critic 
 can do is to wish his reader may see them, from a 
 quiet fauteuil, as speedily and as often as possible. 
 Of Madeleine Brohan, indeed, there is little to say. 
 She is a delightful person to listen to, and she is still 
 delightful to look at, in spite of that redundancy of 
 contour which time has contributed to her charms. But 
 she has never been ambitious and her talent has had 
 
342 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 no particularly original quality. It is a long time since 
 she created an important part; but in the old repertory 
 her rich, dense voice, her charming smile, her mellow, 
 tranquil gaiety, always give extreme pleasure. To hear 
 her sit and talk, simply, and laugh and play with her 
 fan, along with Madame Plessy, in Moli^re's "Critique 
 de I'lfecole des Femmes," is an entertainment to be re- 
 membered. For Madame Plessy I should have to mend 
 my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mademoi- 
 selle Sarah Bernhardt no less a ceremony would suffice. 
 I saw Madame Plessy for the first time in Emile Angler's 
 "Aventuri^re," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier. 
 This is considered by many persons her best part, and 
 she certainly carries it off with a high hand; but I like 
 her better in characters which afibrd more scope to 
 her talents for comedy. These characters are very 
 numerous, for her activity and versatility have been 
 extraordinary. Her comedy of course is "high"; it is 
 of the highest conceivable kind, and she has often 
 been accused of being too mincing and too artificial. 
 I should never make this charge, for, to me, Madame 
 Plessy's minauderies, her grand airs and her arch-refine- 
 ments, have never been anything but the odorous sway- 
 ings and queenly tossings of some splendid garden 
 flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When 
 Madame Plessy represents a duchess you have no 
 allowances to make. Her limitations are on the side 
 of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and I 
 cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But 
 she is in the highest degree accomplished; she gives 
 an impression of intelligence and intellect which is 
 produced by none of her companions — excepting 
 always the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt, 
 
THE THEAtRE FRAN9AIS. 343 
 
 Madame Plessy's intellect has sometimes misled her — 
 as, for instance, when it whispered to her, a few years 
 since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's 
 "Britannicus," on that tragedy being presented for the 
 dibuts of Mounet-SuUy. I was verdant enough to think 
 her Agrippine very fine. But M. Sarcey reminds his 
 readers of what he said of it the Monday after the 
 first performance. "I will not say" — he quotes him- 
 self — "that Madame Plessy is indifferent. With her 
 intelligence, her natural gifts, her great situation, her 
 immense authority over the public, one cannot be in- 
 different in an)rthing. She is therefore not indifferently 
 bad. She is bad to a point that cannot be expressed 
 and that would be distressing for dramatic art if it 
 were not that in this great shipwreck there rise to the 
 surface a few floating fragments of the finest qualities 
 that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist." 
 
 Madame Plessy retired from the stage six months 
 ago and it may be said that the void produced by this 
 event is irreparable. There is not only no prospect, 
 but there is no hope of filling it up. The present con- 
 ditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the 
 formation of actresses as consummate and as complete 
 as Madame Plessy. One may not expect to see her 
 like, any more than one may expect to see a new 
 manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried 
 off with her something that the younger generation of 
 actresses will consistently lack — a certain largeness of 
 style and robustness of art. (These qualities are in a 
 modified degree those of Mademoiselle Favart.) But 
 if the younger actresses have the success of Mesdemoi- 
 selles Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt, will they greatly 
 care whether they are not "robust"? These young 
 
344 FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ladies are children of a later and eminently contem- 
 porary type, according to which an actress undertakes 
 not to interest but to fascinate. They are charming — 
 "awfully" charming; Strange, eccentric, imaginative. 
 It would be needless to speak specifically of Mademoi- 
 selle Croizette; for although she has very great attrac- 
 tions I think she may (by the cold impartiality of 
 science) be classified as a secondary, a less inspired, 
 and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal" 
 Sarah Bernhardt. (Mademoiselle Croizette's "brutality" 
 is her great card.) As for Mademoiselle Sarah Bern- 
 hardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of the 
 great figures of the day. It would be hard to imagine 
 a more brilliant embodiment of feminine success; she 
 deserves a chapter for herself 
 
 December 1876. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinhuygh.