A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 8

[55] The most interesting thing in it is a longish account by Jacques of his a.s.sociation with a travelling quack and fortune-teller, which at once reminds one of _j.a.phet in Search of a Father_. The resemblances and the differences are almost equally characteristic.

[56] Of course I am not comparing him with Paul on any other point.

[57] Except in regard to the historical and other matters noticed above, hardly at all.

[58] For a picture of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in company!) who ever lived, see that _Britannia_ article of Thackeray's before referred to--an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown.

This and its companion articles from the _Britannia_ and the _Corsair_, all of 1840-41, but summarising ten or twelve years' knowledge of Paris, form, with the same author's _Paris Sketch Book_ (but as representing a more mature state of his genius), the best commentary on Paul de k.o.c.k.

They may be found together in the third volume of the Oxford Thackeray edited by the present writer.

[59] Unless they start from the position that an English writer on the French novel is bound to follow--or at least to pay express attention to--French criticism of it. This position I respectfully but unalterably decline to accept. A critical tub that has no bottom of its own is the very worst Danaid's vessel in all the household gear of literature.

[60] The scene and society are German, but the author knows the name to have been originally English.

[61] Such, perhaps, as Gibbon himself may have used while he "sighed as a lover" and before he "obeyed as a son." It should perhaps be said that Mme. de Montolieu produced many other books, mostly translations--among the latter a French version of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.

[62] In dealing with "Sensibility" earlier, it was pointed out how extensively things were dealt with by _letter_. In such cases as these the fas.h.i.+on came in rather usefully.

[63] The treatment of the authors here mentioned, _infra_, will, I hope, show that the introduction of their names is not merely "promiscuous."

[64] I am quite prepared to be told that this was somebody else or n.o.body at all. "Moi, je dis Madame de Genlis."

[65] P. 436.

[66] The kind endeavours of the Librarian of the London Library to obtain some in Paris itself were fruitless, but the old saying about neglecting things at your own door came true. My friend Mr. Kipling urged me to try Mr. George Gregory of Bath, and Mr. Gregory procured me almost all the books I am noticing in this division.

[67] The British Museum (see Preface) being inaccessible to me.

[68] Readers will doubtless remember that the too wild career of this kind of vehicle, charioteered by wicked aristocrats, has been among the thousand-and-three causes a.s.signed for the French Revolution.

[69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actual surname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory.

[70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minor novels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone the process, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised.

[71] That is to say, in the text: the second t.i.tle of the whole book, "_ou Les Enfants de Maitre Jacques_," does in some sort give a warning, though it is with Maitre Jacques rather than with his children that the fresh start is made.

[72] He has, though unknown and supposed to be an intruder, carried her off from an English adorer--a sort of Lovelace-Byron, whose name is Lord Gousberycharipay (an advance on Paul de k.o.c.k and even Parny in the nomenclature of the English peerage), and who inserts h's before French words!

[73] If novels do not exaggerate the unpopularity of these persons (strictly the lay members of the S.J., but often used for the whole body of religious orders and their lay partisans), the success of "July"

needs little further explanation.

[74] That is to say, not a bogey, but a buggy.

[75] Here is another instance. Ludovica's father and a bad Russo-Prussian colonel have to be finished off at Waterloo. One might suppose that Waterloo itself would suffice. But no: they must engage in single combat, and even then not kill each other, the Russian's head being carried off by some kind of a cannon-ball and the Frenchman's breast pierced by half a dozen Prussian lances. This is really "good measure."

[76] Ousting others which deserved the place better? It may be so, but one may perhaps "find the whole" without particularising everything. Of short books especially, from Fievee's _Dot de Suzette_ (1798), which charmed society in its day, to Eugenie Foa's _Pet.i.t Robinson de Paris_ (1840), which amused _me_ when I was about ten years old, there were no end if one talked.

[77] _V. inf._ on M. Ohnet's books.

[78] Many people have probably noticed the frequency of this name--not a very pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or other attraction--in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. It was certainly due to _Le Solitaire_.

[79] If any proper moral reader is disturbed at this conjunction of _amante_ and _mere_, he will be glad to know that M. d'Arlincourt elsewhere regularises the situation and calls Night "_l'epouse_ d'erebe."

[80] In the Radcliffian-literary not the Robespierrean-political sense.

For the Wertherism, _v. sup._ on Chateaubriand, p. 24 note.

[81] He was four years older than Nodier, but did not begin to write fiction nearly so early. The _Phantasiestucke_ are of 1814, while Nodier had been writing stories, under German influence, as early as 1803. It is, however, also fair to say that all those now to be noticed are later than 1814, and even than Hoffmann's later collections, the _Elixiere des Teufels_ and _Nachtstucke_.

[82] The prudent as well as judicious poet who wrote these lines provided a variant to suit those who, basing their position on "Ramillies _c.o.c.k_," maintain that it was a hat, not a wig, that was named after Villeroy's defeat. For "grave--big" read "where Gallic hopes fell flat," and for "wig" "hat" _simpliciter_, and the thing is done.

But Thackeray has "Ramillies _wig_" and Scott implies it.

[83] Nodier, who had been in Scotland and, as has been said, was a philologist of the better cla.s.s, is scrupulously exact in spelling proper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau"

(I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) he makes no blunder, and he actually knows all about "Argyle's Bowling Green."

[84] If phonetics had never done anything worse than this they would not be as loathsome to literature as they sometimes are.

[85] On the other hand, compared with its slightly elder contemporary, _Le Solitaire_ (_v. sup._), it is a masterpiece.

[86] Two little pa.s.sages towards the end are very precious. A certain bridegroom (I abridge a little) is "perfectly healthy, perfectly self-possessed, a great talker, a successful man of business, with some knowledge of physics, chemistry, jurisprudence, politics, statistics, and phrenology; enjoying all the requirements of a deputy; and for the rest, a liberal, an anti-romantic, a philanthropist, a very good fellow--and absolutely intolerable." This person later changes the humble home of tragedy into a "school of mutual instruction, where the children learn to hate and envy each other and to read and write, which was all they needed to become detestable creatures." These words "please the soul well."

[87] The description is worth comparing with that of Gautier's _Chateau de la Misere_--the difference between all but complete ruin and mere, though extreme, disrepair being admirably, and by the later master in all probability designedly, worked out.

[88] _Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri._

[89] Note, too, a hint at a never filled in romance of the captain's own.

[90] I must ask for special emphasis on "beauty." Nothing can be _finer_ or _fitter_ than the style of Steenie's ghostly experiences. And the famous Claverhouse pa.s.sage _is_ beautiful.

[91] As Rossetti saw it in "Sibylla Palmifera":

"Under the arch of Life, where Love and Death, _Terror_ and Mystery guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned."

[92] Perhaps there are few writers mentioned in this book to whose lovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in the case of Nodier. "Where," I hear reproaching voices crying, "is _Jean Sbogar_? Where is _Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires_ in novel-plural or _Le Vampire_ in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred other books, pieces, pages, paragraphs, pa.s.sages from five to fifty words long?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "But you found more room for Paul de k.o.c.k?" Yes: and I have tried to show why.

CHAPTER III

VICTOR HUGO

[Sidenote: Limitations.]

At the present day, and perhaps in all days. .h.i.therto, the greatest writer of the nineteenth century in France for length of practice, diversity of administration of genius, height of intention, and (for a long time at least) magnitude and alt.i.tude of fame, enjoys, and has enjoyed, more popular repute in England for his work in prose fiction than for any other part of it. With the comparative side of this estimate the present writer can indeed nowise agree; and the reasons of his disagreement should be made good in the present chapter. But this is the first opportunity he has had of considering, with fair room and verge, the justice of the latter part of Tennyson's compliment "Victor _in Romance_"; and it will pretty certainly be the last. As for a general judgment of the positive and relative value and qualities of the wonderful procession of work--certainly deserving that adjective whatever other or others may be added--which covers the s.p.a.ce of a full half-century from _Han d'Islande_ to _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, it would, according to the notions of criticism here followed, be improper to attempt that till after the procession itself has been carefully surveyed.

Nor will it be necessary to preface, to follow, or, except very rarely and slightly, to accompany this survey with remarks on the non-literary characteristics of this French t.i.tan of literature. The object often of frantic political and bitter personal abuse; for a long time of almost equally frantic and much sillier political and personal idolatry; himself the victim--in consequence partly of his own faults, partly of ign.o.ble jealousy of greatness, but perhaps most of all of the inevitable reaction from this foolish cult--of the most unsparing rummage into those faults, and the weaknesses which accompany them, that any poet or prose writer, even Pope, has experienced--Victor Hugo still, though he has had many a _vates_ in both senses of _sacer_, may almost be allowed _carere_ critico _sacro_,[93] in the best sense, on the whole of his life and work. I have no pretensions to fill or bridge the whole of the gap here. It will be quite task enough for the present, leaving the life almost alone, to attempt the part of the work which contains prose fiction. Nothing said of this will in the least affect what I have often said elsewhere, and shall hold to as long as I hold anything, in regard to the poetry--that its author is the greatest poet of France, and one of the great poets of the world.

[Sidenote: _Han d'Islande._]