A History of the French Novel Volume I Part 25

[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phrases like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking "self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more elegantly and less cryptically calls it.

[267] Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious purposes.

[268] He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can be called a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or as Furetiere himself has it, _debiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps, to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that the novelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness of bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in this also.

[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself de Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of his legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon; but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and there appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.

[270] There is nothing in the least astonis.h.i.+ng in his having been this--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called "free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar infidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or Saint-Ibar, as members of it--to all readers of Saint-evremond, Tallemant, the _Ana_, etc.

[271] Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the Demon of Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere plat.i.tudes, sometimes tame paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher, or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present day.--Of the attempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little: but among predecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his _News from the New World discovered in the Moon_, may at least be mentioned.

[272] The key-mongers, of course, identify the three with the author, her own husband, and La Rochefoucauld.

[273] He has ensconced himself in one of the smaller rooms of a garden pavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their suite at some distance.

[274] _Maitresse de sa conduite_, a curious but not difficult text as to French ideas of marriage.

[275] I have been obliged to insert "trials" to bring out the meaning of "_exposee au milieu_." "_Exposee_" has a fuller sense than the simple English verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for sale."

[276] Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and, possibly from her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well acquainted with English as well as French history. But our proper names, as usual, vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane _Seimer_ and Catherine _Havart_.

[277] This does not apply to the _main_ love story but to the atmosphere generally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is represented as in love with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines, with whom he is not quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom he is; (4) a lady unnamed, with whom he has _trompe_ them all. This may be true enough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter of fiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the same.

[278] It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc., altered not a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration was much less than in most other histories at most other periods. It would be easy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience covered the whole time.

[279] You _had_ to call it so when I first saw it; when I last did so it was "Oiron." No doubt it is something else now.

[280] For that, see Chapter XII.

[281] See below on the version Introduction to the _Quatre Facardins_.

[282] Including miscellaneous imbecility and unsuitableness as well as moral indecorum.

[283] Written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882, but by a chapter of accidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in _Essays on French Novelists_ (London, 1891).

[284] Miss Ruth Clark.

[285] The conclusion of _Vathek_ is of course undoubtedly more "admirable" than anything of Hamilton's; but it is in a quite different genus.

[286] The piece _Celle que j'adore_ is the best of the casual verses, though there are other good songs, etc. Those which alternate with the prose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the _Cabinet_ insets, _v. sup._) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellanies the so-called _Relations_ "of different places in Europe," and "of a voyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almost uniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "The Nature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written--the last man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off--a contrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.

[287] As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of the n.o.blest families of Great Britain and Ireland.

[288] As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite exile in France.

[289] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of mine on him in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London, 1892). It contains a full account, and some translation, of the _Conversation du marechal d'Hocquincourt avec le Pere Canaye_, which is at once the author's masterpiece of quiet irony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and his clearest evidence of influence on Hamilton.

[290] There are some who hold that _the_ "English" differentia, whether shown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed, east or west of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.

[291] The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's position to Rosamond's is interesting.

[292] It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which still concealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further literary interest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's admirable _Jacobite's Epitaph_. The account would be rather out of place here, but may be found translated at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of _Essays on French Novelists_ more than once referred to.

[293] The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is of course intentional, and is Hamilton all over.

[294] The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has been recalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.

[295] This is as impudent as the other pa.s.sages below are imbecile--of course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence and imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come out of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was never good for an a.s.signation when he was wet!

[296] If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age."

It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very pretty!

[297] "Completions" of both _Zeneyde_ and _Les Quatre Facardins_, by the Duke de Levis, are included in some editions, but they are, after the fas.h.i.+ons of such things, very little good.

[298] The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but it suggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and others including, perhaps, even _faquin_.

[299] The Sultaness is almost _persona muta_--and indeed her tongue must have required a rest.

[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor Princess Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incident recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could not get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households and Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.

[301] _I.e._ colour-printed cotton from India--a novelty "fas.h.i.+onable"

and, therefore, satirisable in France.

[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?

[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, the latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.

[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originally intended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.

[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, _La Galerie du Palais_.

[306] For note on _Telemaque_ see end of chapter.

[307] Who is here herself an improved Doralise.

[308] To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a little _grivoiserie_ in him, but absolutely no _polissonnerie_, still less any _cochonnerie_. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words when, in a short French-Greek dialogue, called _La Volupte_, he makes Aspasia say to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire debauche."

CHAPTER X

LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PReVOST, CReBILLON

The words which closed the last chapter should make it unnecessary to prefix much of the same kind to this, though at the end we may have again to summarise rather more fully.

[Sidenote: The subjects of the chapter.]