A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 14

[133] See note above.

[134] Both would have declined to meddle with her, I think, but for different reasons.

[135] Beyle, who had himself no good looks, is particularly lavish of them to his heroes.

[136] Perhaps one of the rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the _consigne_" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame de Merteuil.

[137] This bad bloodedness, or [Greek: kakoetheia], of Beyle's heroes is really curious. It would have qualified them later to be Temperance fanatics or Trade Union demagogues. The special difference of all three is an intense dislike of somebody else "having something."

[138] In that merry and wise book _Clarissa Furiosa_.

[139] She keeps the anniversary of his execution, and imitates Marguerite in procuring and treasuring, at the end of the story, Julien's severed head. (It may be well to note that Dumas had not yet written _La Reine Margot_.)

[140] In proper duel, of course; not as he shot his mistress.

[141] Its great defect is the utter absence of any poetical element.

But, as Merimee (than whom there could hardly be, in this case, a critic more competent or more friendly) said, poetry was, to Beyle, _lettre close_.

[142] It seems curiously enough, that Beyle did mean to make the book _gai_. It is a a very odd kind of gaiety!

[143] This attraction of the _forcat_ is one of the most curious features in all French Romanticism. It was perhaps partly one of the general results of the Revolutionary insanity earlier, partly a symptom or sequel of Byronism. But the way it raged not only among folks like Eugene Sue, but among men and women of great talent and sometimes genius--George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo--the last and greatest carrying it on for nearly two generations--is a real curiousity of literature. (The later and different crime-novel of Gaboriau & Co. will be dealt with in its place.)

[144] _V. sup._ vol. i. p. 39.

[145] A pseudonymous person has "reconst.i.tuted" the story under the t.i.tle of _Lucien Leeuwen_ (the hero's name). But some not inconsiderable experience of reconst.i.tutions of this kind determined me to waste no further portion of my waning life on any one of them.

[146] It may be desirable to glance at Beyle's avowed or obvious "intentions" in most if not all his novels--in the _Chartreuse_ to differentiate Italian from French character, in _Le Rouge et le Noir_ to embody the Macchiavellian-Napoleonic principle which has been of late so tediously phrased (after the Germans) as "will to" something and the like. These intentions may interest some: for me, I must confess, they definitely get in the way of the interest. For essays, "good": for novels, "no."

[147] Vide _Guy Mannering_ as to the "macers."

[148] _Les Chouans._

[149] Forty vols. London: 1895-8.

[150] _Quarterly Review_ for January 1907.

[151] I believe I may say, without fatuity, that the general Introduction and the _Quarterly_ article, above referred to, contain most things that anybody but a special student will need.

[152] It is, however, important to remember that almost the whole of the first of these three decades was taken up with the tentatives, while the concluding _l.u.s.trum_ was comparatively infertile. The _Comedie_ was, in the main, the crop of fifteen years only.

[153] It ought always to be, but has not always been, put as a round sum to his credit in this part of the account that he heartily recognised the value of Scott as a novelist. A hasty thinker might be surprised at this; not so the wiser mind.

[154] This remarkable person deserves at least a note here "for one thing that he did"--the novel of _Fragoletta_ (1829), which many should know _of_--though they may not know _it_--from Mr. Swinburne's poem, and some perhaps from Balzac's own review. It is one of the followings of _La Religieuse_, and is a disappointing book, not from being too immoral nor from being not immoral enough, but because it does not "come off."

There is a certain promise, suggestion, "atmosphere," but the actual characterisation is vague and obscure, and the story is told with no grasp. This habit of "flas.h.i.+ng in the pan" is said to have been characteristic of all Latouche's work, which was fairly voluminous and of many different kinds, from journalism to poetry; and it may have been partly due to, partly the cause of, a cross-grained disposition. He had, however, a high repute for spoken if not written criticism, had a great influence as a trainer or mentor on George Sand, and perhaps not a little on Balzac himself. During the later years of his fairly long life he lived in retirement and produced nothing.

[155] One of the friends who have read my proofs takes a more Alexandrian way with this objection and says "But there _are_." I do not know that I disagree with him: but as he does not disagree with what follows in itself, both answers shall stand.

[156] Cf. Maupa.s.sant's just protest against this, to which we shall come.

[157] An actual reduction of Balzac's books to smaller but still narrative scale is very seldom possible and would be still more rarely satisfactory. The best subst.i.tute for it is the already glanced at _Repertoire_ of MM. Christophe and Cerfbeer, a curious but very satisfactory Biographical Dictionary of the Comedy's _personae_.

[158] "Sans genie je suis flambe," as he wrote early to his sister.

[159] This is about the best of the batch, and I agree with those who think that it would not have disfigured the _Comedie_. Indeed the exclusion of these _juvenilia_ from the _edition Definitive_ was a critical blunder. Even if Balzac did once wish it, the "dead hand" is not to be too implicitly given way to, and he was so constantly changing his views that he probably would have altered this also had he lived.

[160] A certain kind of commentator would probably argue from Mr.

Browning's well-known words "_fifty_ volumes long" that he _had_, and another that he had _not_ read the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_.

[161] He would not have liked the name "patriot" because of its corruption, but he was one.

[162] Not a few things, some of them very good, came between--the pleasant _Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote_, several of the wonderful short stories, and the beginning of the _Contes Drolatiques_. But none of them had the "importance"--in the artistic sense of combined merit and scale--of the _Peau_.

[163] I mean, of course, as far as books go. We have positive testimony that there was a live Becky, and I would I had known her!

[164] Originally and perhaps preferably called _La Rabouilleuse_ from the early occupation of its heroine, Flore Brazier, one of Balzac's most notable figures.

[165] It is one of the strangest instances of the limitations of some of the best critics that M. Brunetiere declined even to speak of this great book.

[166] The immense influence of Maturin in France, and especially on Balzac, is an old story now, though it was not always so.

[167] It is possible that some readers may miss a more extended survey, or at least sample, of these characters. But the plea made above as to abstract of the stories is valid here. There is simply not room to do justice to say, Lucien de Rubempre, who pervades a whole block of novels and stories, or to others from Rastignac to Corentin.

[168] It has sometimes occurred to me that perhaps the skin _was_ that of Job's onager.

[169] He does try a sort of pseudo-poetical style sometimes; but it is seldom successful, and sometimes mere "fine-writing" of no very fine kind. The close of _Peau de Chagrin_ and _Seraphita_ contain about the best pa.s.sages.

[170] The two next paragraphs are, by the kind permission of the Editor and Publisher of the _Quarterly Review_, reprinted, with some slight alterations, from the article above referred to.

[171] I have known this denied by persons of authority, who would exalt the gift of conversation even above the pure narrative faculty. I should admit the latter was commoner, but hardly that it was inferior.

[172] I believe I may speak without rashness thus, for a copy of the sixteen-volume (was it not?) edition was a cherished possession of mine for years, and I even translated a certain amount for my own amus.e.m.e.nt--especially _Die unsichtbare Loge_.

[173] I have said nothing here on a point of considerable interest to myself--the question whether Balzac can be said ever (or at least often) to have drawn a gentleman or a lady. It would require too much "justification" by a.n.a.lysis of particular characters. And this would pa.s.s into a more general enquiry whether these two species exist in the Balzacium Sidus itself. Which things open long vistas. (_V. inf._ on Charles de Bernard.)

CHAPTER V

GEORGE SAND

[Sidenote: George Sand--generalities about her.]

There is a Scotch proverb (not, I think, among those most generally known), "Never tell your foe when your foot sleeps"; and some have held that this applies specially to the revelation, by an author, of his own weak points. I do not agree with them, having always had a fancy for playing and seeing cards on table--except at cards themselves, where a dummy seems to me only to spoil the game. Therefore I admit, in coming to George Sand, that this famous novelist has not, _as_ a novelist, ever been a favourite of mine--that I have generally experienced some, and occasionally great, difficulty in reading her. Even the "purged considerate mind" (without, I venture to hope, much dulling of the literary palate) which I have brought to the last readings necessary for this book, has but partially removed this difficulty. The causes of it, and their soundness or unsoundness as reasons, must be postponed for a little--till, as usual, sufficient survey and a.n.a.lysis of at least specimens (for here as elsewhere the immense bulk of the total work defies anything more than "sampling") have supplied due evidence. But it may be said at once that no kind of prejudice or dislike, arising from the pretty notorious history and character of Amantine (Amandine?

Armandine?) Lucile Aurore Dupin or Dudevant, commonly called George Sand, has anything to do with my want of affection or admiration for her work. I do not recommend her conduct in her earlier days for imitation, and I am bound to say that I do not think it was ever excused by what one may call real love. But she seems to have been an extremely good fellow in her age, and not by any means a very bad fellow in her youth.

She was at one time pretty, or at least good-looking;[174] she was at all times clever; and if she did not quite deserve that almost superhuman eulogy awarded in the Devons.h.i.+re epitaph to