A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 30

Few things could be more different from each other than _Tristan le Roux_--another early book of Dumas _fils_--is from _La Dame aux Camelias_. Indeed it is a good, if not an absolutely certain, sign that so young a man should have tried styles in novel-writing so far apart from each other. _Tristan_ is a fifteenth-century story of the later part of the Hundred Years' War, and of Gilles de Retz, and of Joan of Arc, and of _diablerie_, and so forth. I first heard approval of it from a person whose name may be unexpected by some readers--the late Professor Robertson Smith. But the sometime editor of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ was exceptionally well qualified for the literary side of his office, and could talk about French quite as knowledgeably as he could about Arabic and Hebrew.[361] He was rather enthusiastic about the book, an enthusiasm which, when I myself came to read it, for a considerable time puzzled me a little. It opens pretty well, but already with a good deal of the "possible-improbable" about it; for when some twenty wolves have once pulled a horse down and a man off it, his chance of escaping (especially without revolvers) seems small, even though two rescuers come up, one of whom has a knack of shooting these creatures[362] and the other of throttling them. It is on these rescuers that the central interest of the story turns. Olivier de Karnak and Tristan le Roux are, though they do not at the time know it, brothers by the same mother, the guiltless Countess of Karnak having been drugged, violated, and made a mother by Gilles de Retz's father. They are also rivals for the love of their cousin Alix, and as she prefers Olivier, this sends Tristan literally "to the Devil." The compact is effected by means of a Breton sorceress, who has been concerned in the earlier crime, and is an accomplice of Gilles himself. That eminent patriot performs,[363] for Tristan's benefit or ruin, one of his black ma.s.ses, with a murdered child's blood for wine. Further _diablerie_ opens a great tomb near Poitiers, where, seven hundred years earlier, in Charles Martel's victory, an ancestor of the Karnaks has been buried alive, with the Saracen Emir he had just slain, by the latter's followers; and where the two have beguiled the time by continuous ghostly fighting. The Saracen, when the tomb is opened, evades, seen by no one but Tristan, and becomes the apostate's by no means guardian devil. Then we have the introduction of the Maid (whom Tristan is specially set by his master to catch), the siege of Orleans and the rest of it, to the tragedy of Rouen.

Up to this point--that is to say, for some seven-eighths of the book--I confess that I did not, and do not, think much of it. I am very fond of fighting in novels; and of _diablerie_ even "more than reason"; and of the Middle Ages; and of many other things connected with the work. But it does not seem to me well managed or well told. One never can make out whether the "Sarrazin" is, as he is actually sometimes called, Satan himself, or not. If he is not, why call him so? If he is, why was there so little evidence of his being constantly employed in fighting with M.

de Karnak between the Battle of Poitiers (not ours, but the other) and the Siege of Orleans? I love my Dark and Middle Ages; but I should say that there was considerable diabolic activity in them, outside tombs. Or was the Princedom of the Air "in commission" all that time? Minor improbabilities constantly jar, and there are numerous small blunders of fact[364] of the unintentional kind, which irritate more than intentional ones of some importance.

But at the end the book improves quite astonis.h.i.+ngly. Tristan, as has been said, has been specially commissioned by the fiend to effect the ruin of Joan. He has induced his half-brother, Gilles de Retz--not, indeed, to take the English side, for patriotism, as is well known, was the one redeeming point of that extremely loathsome person, but--to join the seigneurs who were malcontent with her, and if possible drug her and violate her, a process, as we have seen, quite congenial, hereditarily as well as otherwise, to M. de Laval. He is foiled, of course, and pardoned. But Tristan himself openly takes the English side, inflicts great damage on his countrymen, and after our defeat at the bastilles or bastides round Orleans, resumes his machinations against Joan, helps to effect her capture, and does his utmost to torment and insult her, and if possible resume Gilles's attempt, in her imprisonment; while, on the contrary, his brother Olivier (they are both disguised as monks) works on her side, nearly saves her,[365] and attends her on the scaffold. It is somewhat earlier than this that the author, as has been said, "wakes up" and wakes _us_ up. When Tristan, admitted to Joan's cell, designs the same outrage to which he had counselled his brother, it is the Maid's a.s.sumption of her armour to protect herself from him that (in this point for once historically) seals her fate. But at the very last his hatred is changed, _not_ at all impossibly or improbably, to violent love as she smiles on him from the fire; and he sees the legendary dove mount to heaven, after he himself has flung to her, at her dying cry, an improvised crucifix, or at least cross. And then a choice miracle happens, told with almost all the vigour of the "Vin de Porto" itself.

Tristan seeks absolution, but is, though not harshly, refused, before penitence and penance. He begs his brother Olivier's pardon, and is again refused--this time with vituperation--but bears it calmly. He takes, meekly, more insult from the very executioner. At last he makes the sign of the compact and summons the "Saracen" fiend. And then, after a very good conversation, in which the Devil uses all his powers of sarcasm to show his victim that, as usual, he has sold his soul for naught, Tristan draws his sword, calls on the Trinity, Our Lady, and Joan, and one of the strangest though not of the worst fights in fiction begins.

The Red b.a.s.t.a.r.d is himself almost a giant; but the Saracen is a fiend, and though it seems that in this case the Devil _can_ be dead, he can, it seems also, only be killed at Poitiers in his original tomb. So

They wrestle up, they wrestle down, They wrestle still and sore,

for two whole years, the Demon constantly giving ground and misleading his enemy as much as he can. But Tristan, in the strength of repentance and with Joan's unseen help, lives, fights, and forces the fiend back over half France and half the world. By a good touch, after long combat, the Devil tries to tempt his adversary on the side of chivalry, asking to be allowed to drink at a stream on a burning day, to warm himself at a fire they pa.s.s in a snow-storm, to rest a moment. But Tristan has the single word "Non!" for any further pact with or concession to the Evil One; the two years' battle wears away his sin; and at last he finds himself pressing his fainting foe towards the very tomb in the fields of Poitou. It opens, and the combatants entering, find themselves by the actual graves. They drop their swords and now literally wrestle. Tristan wins, throws the Saracen into his own tomb, and runs him through the body, once more inflicting on him such death as he may undergo.[366]

There is a grandiose extravagance about it which is really Oriental;[367] and perhaps it was this which conciliated Robertson Smith, as it certainly reconciled me.

[Sidenote: _Antonine._]

A third "book of the beginning," _Antonine_, is far inferior to these.

It is, in fact, little more than a decentish Paul-de-k.o.c.kery, with a would-be philosophical conclusion. Two young men, Gustave Daunont and Edmond de Pereux, saunter after breakfast looking for young ladies'

ankles, and Edmond sees a pair so beautiful that he follows the possessor and her un.o.bservant father home. Having then ascertained that the father is a doctor, he adopts the surprisingly brilliant expedient of going to consult him, and so engineering an entry. _He_ thinks there is nothing the matter with him; but the doctor (it was apparently "at temp. of tale"--1834, while the port was getting ready,--the practice of French physicians, to receive their patients in dressing-gowns) discovers that he is in an advanced stage of Dumas _fils'_ favourite _poitrine_. He says, however, nothing about it (which seems odd) to his patient, merely prescribing roast-meat and Bordeaux; but (which seems odder) he _does_ mention it to his daughter Antonine, the Lady with the Ankles. For the moment nothing happens. But Gustave the friend has for mistress an adorable _grisette_--amiability, in the widest sense, _nez retrousse_, garret, and millinery all complete--whom Madame de Pereux, Edmond's mother--a _sainte_, but without prejudices--tolerates, and in fact patronises. It is arranged that Nichette shall call on Antonine to ask, as a milliner, for her custom. Quite unexpected explanations follow in a not uningenious manner, and the explosion is completed by Edmond's opening (not at all treacherously) a letter addressed to Gustave and containing the news of his own danger. The rest of the story need not be told at length. A miraculous cure effected by M. Devaux, Antonine's father; marriage of the pair; pensioning off of Nichette, and marriage of Gustave to another adorable girl (ankles not here specified); establishment of Nichette at Tours in partners.h.i.+p with a respectable friend, etc., etc., can easily be supplied by any novel-reader.

But here the young author's nascent seriousness, and his still existing Buskbody superst.i.tion, combine to spoil the book, not merely, as in the _Tristan_ case, to top-hamper it. Having given us eight pages of rather cheap sermonising about the poetry of youth not lasting; having requested us to imagine Manon and Des Grieux "decrepit and catarrhous,"

Paul and Virginie shrivelled and toothless, Werther and Charlotte united but wrinkled,[368] he proceeds to tell us how, though Gustave and his Laurence are as happy as they can be, though Nichette has forgotten her woes but kept her income and is married to a book-seller, things are not well with the other pair. Antonine loves her husband frantically, but he has become quite indifferent to her--says, indeed, that he really does not know whether he ever _did_ love her. Later still we take leave of him, his "poetry" having ended in a prefecture, and his pa.s.sion in a _liaison_, commonplace to the _n_th, with a provincial lawyer's wife.

_La moralite de cette comedie_ (to quote, probably not for the first time, or I hope the last, words of Musset which I particularly like) would appear to be--first, that to secure lasting happiness in matrimony it is desirable, if not necessary, to have lived for eighteen months antenuptially with a charming _grisette_--amiability, _nez retrousse_, garret, and millinery all complete--_or_ to have yourself been this grisette; while, on the other hand, it is an extremely dangerous thing to recover a man of his consumption. Which last result the folklorists would doubtless a.s.similate to the well-known superst.i.tion of the sh.o.r.e as to the rescue of the drowning.

[Sidenote: _La Vie a Vingt Ans._]

Two other early books of this author promise the Pauline influence in their t.i.tles and do not belie it in their contents, though in varying way and degree. Indeed, the first story of _La Vie a Vingt Ans_--that of a schoolboy who breaks his bounds and "sells his dictionaries" to go to the Bal de l'Opera; receives, half in joy, half in terror, an a.s.signation from a masked _debardeur_, and discovers her to be an aged married woman with a drunken husband (the pair knowing from his card that his uncle is a Deputy, and having determined to get a _debit de tabac_ out of him)--made me laugh as heartily as the great Paul himself can ever have made Major Pendennis. The rest--they are all stories of the various amatory experiences of a certain Emmanuel de Trois etoiles, and have a virtuous epilogue extolling pure affection and honest matrimony--are inferior, the least so being that of the caprice-love of a certain Augustine, Emmanuel's neighbour on his staircase, who admits only one other lover and finally marries _him_, but conceives a frantic though pa.s.sing affection for her _voisin_. Unluckily there is in this book a sort of duplicate but, I think, earlier sketch of the atrocious conduct of Duval to the Dame aux Camelias; and there are some of the author's curious "holes where you can put your hand" (as a Jacobean poet says of the prosodic licences in nomenclature and construction of his fellows).

[Sidenote: _Aventures de Quatre Femmes._]

The other, much longer, and much more ambitious and elaborate book, _Aventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un Perroquet_, seems to me on the whole worse than any just mentioned, though it at least attempts to fly higher than _Antonine_. It begins by one of those _goguenardises_ which 1830 itself had loved, but it is not a good specimen. Two men who have determined on suicide--one by shooting, one by hanging--meet at the same tree in the Bois de Boulogne and wrangle about possession of the spot, till the aspirant to suspension _per coll._ recounts his history from the branch on which he is perched. After which an unlucky thirdsman, interfering, gets shot, and buried _as_ one of the others--"which is witty, let us 'ope," as the poetical historian of the quarrel between Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Buchanan observes of something else.[369] As the book begins with two attempted and disappointed suicides, so it ends with two accomplished ones. A great part, and not the least readable, is occupied by a certain English Countess of Lindsay (for Dumas the younger, like Crebillon the younger, commits these _scandala magnatum_ with actual t.i.tles). The hero is rather a fool, and not much less of a knave than he should be. His somewhat better wife is an innocent bigamist, thinking him dead; and one of the end-suicides is that of her second husband, who, finding himself _de trop_, benevolently makes way.

As for the parrot, he nearly spoils the story at the beginning by "_singing_" (which I never heard a parrot do), and atones at the end by getting poisoned without deserving it. I am afraid I must call it a rather silly book.

It does not, however, lack the cleverness with which silliness, especially in the young _and_ the old, is often a.s.sociated, and so does not break the a.s.signment of that quality to its author. All these five books were produced (with others) in a very few years, by a man who was scarcely over twenty when he began and was not thirty when he wrote the last of them. Now people sometimes write wonderful poetry when they are very young, because, after all, a poet is not much more than a mouthpiece of the Divine, whose spirit bloweth where it listeth. But it is not often that they write thoroughly good novels till, like other personages who have to wait for their "overseers.h.i.+p" up to thirty, they have had time and opportunity roughly to scan and sample life. There is, in this work of Alexander the younger, plenty of imitation, of convention, of that would-be knowingness which is the most amusing form of ignorance, etc., etc. But there is a good deal more: and especially there is plenty of the famous _diable au corps_, of _verve_, of "go," of refusal to be content with one rut and one model. And all this came once, even at this period, in _La Dame aux Camelias_, to something which I shall not call a masterpiece, but which certainly is a powerful thesis for the attainment of the master's degree.

[Sidenote: _Trois Hommes Forts._]

Perhaps there is no better example of the curious mixture of _verve_, variety, and vigorous. .h.i.tting-off which characterised the youth of Dumas _fils_ than _Trois Hommes Forts_--a book of the exact middle of the century, which begins with an idyll, pa.s.sing into a tragedy; continues with a lively s.h.i.+p-and-yellow-fever scene; plunges into a villainous conspiracy against virtue and innocence diversified with a bull-throwing; and winds up with another killing, which, this time, _is_ no murder; a trial, after which and an acquittal the accused and the Crown Prosecutor embrace before (and amidst the chalorous applause of) the whole Court; not forgetting a final _panache_ of happy marriage between innocence, a very little damaged, and the bull-thrower-avenger-_ouvrier_, Robert. It is of course pure melodrama--_Minnigrey_ and the Porte-Saint-Martin pleasantly accommodated. But it is not too long; it never drags; and it knocks about in the cheerfullest "pit-box-and-gallery" fas.h.i.+on from first to last. When the wicked "Joseph le Mendiant," _alias_ M. Valery, _alias_ Frederic Comte de La Marche[370]--who has stabbed a priest with one hand and throttled an old woman with the other; then made a fortune in Madagascar; then nearly died of yellow-fever on board s.h.i.+p, but recovered (something after the fas.h.i.+on of one of Marryat's heroes) by drinking a bottle of Madeira; then gone home and bought an estate and given himself the above t.i.tle; then seduced the innocent sister of the person who heard his confession; then tried to marry a high-born maiden;[371] then threatened to betray the sister's shame if her brother "tells"--when this villain has his skull broken by Robert, all right-minded persons will clap their hands sore. But remembrance of one pa.s.sage at the beginning may "leave a savour of sorrow." Could you, even in Meridional France, to-day procure a breakfast consisting of truffled pigs' feet, truffled thrush, tomato omelette (I should bar the tomatoes), and strawberries in summer, or "quatre-mendiants" (figs, nuts, and almonds and raisins) in winter, _with_ a bottle of sound Roussillon or something like it, for three francs? Alas! one fears not.

[Sidenote: _Diane de Lys._]

_Diane de Lys_, a little later than most of the books just mentioned, and one, I think, of the first to be dramatised, so announcing the author's change of "kind," acquired a certain fame by being made (in which form I am not certain, but probably as a play) the subject of one of those odd "condemnations" by which the Second Empire occasionally endeavoured to show itself the defender of morality and the prop of family and social life. I do not think that Flaubert and Baudelaire had much reason to pride themselves on their predecessor in this particular pillory. Alexander the younger is not here even a coppersmith; his metal is, to me, not attractive at all. The Marquise de Lys is one of those beauties, half Greek, half Madonnish, and wholly regular-scholastic, to whom it has been the habit of modern novelists and poets to a.s.sign what our Elizabethan ancestors would have called "cold hearts and hot livers." Dumas _fils'_ theory--for he must, Heaven help him! always have one[372]--is that it all depends on ennui. I know not. At any rate, Diane is not a heroine that I should recommend, for personal acquaintance, to myself or my friends. With one of those rather silly excuses which chequer his cleverness equally, whether they are made honestly or with tongue in cheek, our author says: "On va sans doute nous dire que nous presentons un caractere impossible, que nous faisons de l'immoralite" (which the compositors of the stereotyped edition pleasantly misprint "immor_t_alite"), etc. Far be it from me to say that any woman is impossible. I would only observe that when Diane, neglected by and neglecting her husband for some two years, determines to take a lover, being vexed at the idea of reaching the age of thirty without having one; when she takes him without any particular preference, as one might call a cab from a longish rank, and then has a fancy to make a scientific comparison of forgotten joys with her husband, deciding finally that there is nothing like alternation--when, I say, she does this, I think she is not quite nice.[373] Nor does her school-friend Marceline Delaunay--who, being herself a married woman irreproachably faithful to her own husband, makes herself a go-between, at least of letters, for Diane--seem very nice either. It is fair to say that Mme.

Delaunay gets punished in the latter part of the story, which any one may read who likes. It is, if not white, a sort of--what shall we say?--French grey, compared with the opening.

[Sidenote: Shorter stories--_Une Loge a Camille_.]

That standard edition of _Diane de Lys_ which has enabled us to pick up such a pleasant _coquille d'imprimerie_ contains three shorter stories (_Diane_ itself is not very long). Two or them are not worth much: _Ce qu'on ne sait pas_ is a pathetic _grisetterie_, something of the cla.s.s of Musset's _Frederic et Bernerette_; _Grangette_ deals with the very true but very common admonition that in being "on with" two loves at once there is always danger, particularly when, as M. le Baron Francis de Maucroix does here, you write them letters (to save time) in exactly the same phraseology. Neither love, Adeline the countess or the Gris-Grang-ette, is disagreeable; indeed Francis himself is a not detestable idiot, and there is a comfortable conversation as he sits at Adeline's feet in proper morning-call costume, with his hat and stick on a chair. (Even kneeling would surely be less dangerous, from the point of view of recovering a more usual att.i.tude when another caller comes.) But the whole thing is slight. The third and last, however, _Une Loge a Camille_, is the only thing in the whole volume that is thoroughly recommendable. It begins with an obviously "felt" and "lived"

complaint of the woes which dramatic authors perhaps most of all, but others more or less, experience from that extraordinary inconsecutiveness (to put it mildly) of their acquaintances which makes people--who, to do them justice, would hardly ask for five, ten, or fifty s.h.i.+llings except as a loan, with at least pretence of repayment--demand almost, or quite, as a right, a box at the theatre or a copy of a book. This finished, an example is given in which the hapless playwright, having rashly obliged a friend, becomes (very much in the same way in which Mr. Nicodemus Easy killed several persons on the coast of Sicily) responsible for the breach, not merely of a left-handed yet comparatively harmless _liaison_, but of a formal marriage, the knitting of a costly and disreputable amour, a duel, an imprisonment for debt, and--for himself--the abiding reputation of having corrupted, half ruined, and driven into enlistment for Africa a guileless scientific student. It is good and clean fun throughout.[374]

[Sidenote: _Le Docteur Servans._]

[Sidenote: _Le Roman d'une Femme_.]

Some others must have shorter shrift. One volume of the standard edition contains two stories, _Le Docteur Servans_ and _Un Cas de Rupture_. The latter is short and not very happy, beginning with a rather feeble following of Xavier de Maistre,[375] continuing with stock _liaison_-matter, and ending rather vulgarly. Let us, however, give thanks to Alexander the younger in that he n.o.bly defends the sacred persons of our English ladies against the venerable Gallic calumny of large feet, though he unhappily shows imperfect knowledge of the idioms of our language by using "Lady" as if it were like "Milady": "Reprit Lady," "Lady vit," etc. _Le Docteur Servans_ is more substantial, though itself not very long. It is a rather well-engineered story (ill.u.s.trative of a fact to be noticed presently in regard to much of its author's work) about a benevolent doctor who, at first as a method of kindness and then as a method of testing character, "makes believe," and makes others believe, that he has the secret of Resurrection.[376] On the other hand, I have only read _Le Roman d'une Femme_ in the beloved little old Belgian edition which gave one one's first knowledge of so many pleasant things, and the light-weighting and large print of which are specially suitable to fiction. Putting one thing aside, it is not one of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal of that rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young persons which, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe"

will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long--as duly happens here.

There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing the departure of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecot with that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. And I must admit that, after a middle of commonplace grime, the author works up an end of complicated and by no means unreal tragedy.

[Sidenote: The habit of quickening up at the end.]

The point referred to about the two princ.i.p.al books just noticed, and indeed about Alexander the Younger's books generally, is the remarkable faculty--and not merely faculty but actual habit--which he displays, of turning an uninteresting beginning into an interesting end. I cannot remember any other novelist, in any of the literatures with which I am acquainted, who possesses, or at least uses, this odd gift to anything like the same degree. On the contrary, some of the greatest--far greater than he is--give results exactly contrary. Lady Louisa Stuart's reproach to Scott for "huddling up" his conclusions is well known and by no means ill-justified, while Sir Walter is far from being a solitary sinner. I must leave it to those who have given more study than I have to drama, especially modern drama, to decide whether this had anything to do with the fact that Dumas turned to the other kind. The main fact itself admits, as far as my experience and opinion go, of absolutely no dispute. Again and again, not merely in _Le Docteur Servans_ and _Le Roman d'une Femme_, but in _La Dame aux Camelias_ itself, in _Tristan le Roux_, in _Les Aventures de Quatre Femmes_, and in others still, I have been, at first reading, on the point of dropping the book. But, owing to the mere "triarian" habit of never giving up an appointed post, I have been able to turn my defeat (and his, as it seemed to me) into a victory, which no doubt I owe to him, but which has something of my own in it too. His heroes very frequently disgust and his heroines do not often delight me; I have "seen many others" than his baits of voluptuousness; he does not amuse me like Crebillon; nor thrill me like Prevost in the unique moment; nor interest me like his closest successor, Feuillet. I cannot place his work, despite the excellence of his mere writing, high as great literature. He is altogether on a lower level than Flaubert or Maupa.s.sant; and one could not think of evening him with Hugo in one way, with Balzac in another, with his own father in a third, with Gautier or Merimee in a fourth. But he does, somehow or other, manage that, in the evening time, there shall be such light as he can give; and I am bound to acknowledge this as a triumph of craft, if not of actual art. That while a gift and a remarkable one, it is rather a dangerous gift for a novelist to rely on, needs little argument.

[Sidenote: _Contes et Nouvelles._]

The formally t.i.tled _Contes et Nouvelles_ do not contain very much of the first interest. In the opening one there is a lady who, not perhaps in the context quite tastefully, remarks that "Nous avons toutes notre calvaire," her own Golgotha consisting of the duty of adjusting "the extremist devotion" to her husband with "remembrance" (there was a good deal to remember) of her lover "to her last heart-beat." To help her to perform this self-immolation, she bids the lover leave her, refuses him, and that repeatedly, permission to return, till, believing himself utterly cast off, he makes up his mind to love a very nice girl whom his parents want him to marry. _Then_ the self-Calvarised lady promptly discovers that she wants him again; and as he, acknowledging her claim, does not disguise his actual state of feeling, she, though going off in a huff, tells him that she had never meant him either to leave her at first or to accept her command not to return. All this, no doubt, is not unfeminine in the abstract; but the concrete telling of it required more interesting personages. _Le Prix de Pigeons_ is a good-humoured absurdity about an English scientific society, which offers a prize of 2000 to anybody who can eat a pigeon every day for a month; _Le Pendu de la Piroche_, a fifteenth-century anecdote, which may be a sort of _brouillon_ for _Tristan_; _Cesarine_, a fortune-telling tale. But _La Boite d'Argent_, the story of a man who got rid of his heart and found himself none the better for getting it back again (the circ.u.mstances in each case being quite different from those of _Das kalte Herz_), and _Ce que l'on voit tous les jours_, a sketch of "scenes" between keeper and mistress, but of much wider application, go far above the rest of the book. The first (which is of considerable length and very cleverly managed in the change from ordinary to extraordinary) only wants "that"

to be first-rate. The second shows in the novelist the command of dialogue-situation and of dialogue itself which was afterwards to stand the playwright in such good stead.

[Sidenote: _Ilka._]

Some forty years afterwards--indeed I think posthumously--another collection appeared, with, for main t.i.tle, that of its first story, _Ilka_. Subject to the caution, several times already given, of the inadequacy of a foreigner's judgment, I should say that it shows a great improvement in mere style, but somewhat of a falling off in originality and _verve_. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is an anecdote of the author's youth, when, having in the midst of a revolution extracted the mighty sum of two hundred francs in one bank-note from a publisher for a bad novel (he does not tell us which), he gives it to a porter to change, and the messenger being delayed, entertains the direst suspicions (which turn out to be quite unjust) of the poor fellow's honesty. The sketch of mood is capitally done, and is set off by a most pleasant introduction of Dumas _pere_. More ambitious but less successful, except as mere descriptive _ecphrases_,[378] are the t.i.tle-story of a beautiful model posing, and _Le Songe d'une Nuit d'ete_, with a companion picture of two lovers bathing at night; _Pile ou Face_ (a girl who is so divided between two lovers that a friend advises her to toss up, with the pessimist-satiric addition that no doubt, between tossing and marriage, she will be sorry she did not take the other, but afterwards will forget all about him) is slighter; and _Au Docteur J. P._ looks like a kind of study for a longer novel or at least a more elaborate novel-hero.[379]

[Sidenote: _Affaire Clemenceau._]

And so, at last, we may come to the book which curiously carries out, with a slight deflection, but an almost equivalent intensification, of meaning, what has been observed before of others--the singular habit which Dumas _fils_ has of quickening up for the run-in. This book was, I believe, in all important respects actually his run-in for the novel-prize; and what he had hitherto shown in the conduct of individual books he now showed in regard to his whole novel-list, betaking himself thenceforward, though he had nearly a third of a century to live, to the theatre, to pamphlets, etc. Against _Affaire Clemenceau_[380] there are some things to be said, and in criticism, not necessarily hostile, a great many about it. But n.o.body who knows strength when he sees it can deny that this is a strong book from start to finish. I can very well remember the hubbub it caused when it first appeared, and the debates about "Tue-la!" but I did not then read it, having, as I have confessed, a sort of prejudice--not then or at any time common with me--against the author--a prejudice strengthened rather than weakened by reviews of the book. What did I care (I am bound to say that I might add, "What _do_ I care?") about discussions whether if somebody breaks the Seventh Commandment to your discomfort you may break the Sixth to theirs? Did I want diatribes on the non-moral character of women, or anything of that sort? I wanted an interesting story; an attractive (no matter in what fas.h.i.+on) heroine; a hero who is a gentleman, if possible, a man anyhow; and I did not think I should find them here. _Now_, I can "dichotomise"

to some extent; and I can get an interesting story, striking moments, if not exactly an attractive heroine or hero, at any rate such as take their part in the interest, though I may have crows to pluck with them.

It is, once more, a strong book: it is nearly--though I do not think quite--a great book. And to all sportsmanlike lovers of letters it is, despite its discomfortable matter, a comfortable book, because it shows us a considerable man of letters who has never yet, save perhaps in _La Dame aux Camelias_, quite "come off," coming off beyond all fair doubt or reasonable question.

[Sidenote: Story of it.]

Probably a good many people know the story of it, but certainly some do not. It can be told pretty shortly. Pierre Clemenceau, the _fils naturel_ (for this _vulnus_ is _eternum_) of a linen-draperess, is made, partly on account of his birth, unhappy at school, being especially tormented by an American-Italian boy, Andre Minati, whom, however, he thrashes, and who dies--but not of the thras.h.i.+ng. The father of another and _not_ hostile school-fellow, Constantin Ritz, is a sculptor, and accident helps him to discover the same vocation in young Clemenceau, who is taken into his protector's household as well as his studio, and makes great progress in his art--the one thing he cares for. He goes, however, a very little into society, and one evening meets a remarkable Russian-Polish Countess, whose train (for it is a kind of fancy ball) is borne by her thirteen-year-old daughter Iza, dressed as a page. The girl is extraordinarily beautiful, and Clemenceau, whose heart is practically virgin, falls in love with her, child as she is; improving the acquaintance by making a drawing of her when asleep, as well as later a bust from actual sittings, _gratis_. After a time, however, the Countess, who has some actual and more sham "claims" in Poland and Russia, returns thither. Years pa.s.s, during which, however, Pierre hears now and then from Iza in a mixed strain of love and friends.h.i.+p, till at last he is stung doubly, by news that she is to marry a young Russian n.o.ble named Serge, and by a commission for the trousseau to be supplied by his mother,[381] who has retired from business. The correspondence changes to sharp reproach on his part and apparently surprised resentment on hers. But before long she appears in person (the Serge marriage having fallen through), and, to speak vernacularly, throws herself straight at Pierre's head, even offering to be his mistress if she cannot be his wife.[382] They are married, however, and spend not merely a honeymoon, but nearly a honey-year in what is, in _Hereward the Wake_, graciously called "sweet madness," the madness, however, being purely physical, though so far genuine, on her side, spiritual as well as physical on his. The central scene of the book (very well done) gives a picture of Iza insisting on bathing in a stream running through the park (private, but practically open to the public) of the house lent to them. When her husband has brought her warm milk in a chased-silver cup of their host's, she casts it, empty, on the ground, and on the husband's exclamation, "Take care!" replies coolly, "What does it matter? It isn't _mine_."

This may be said to be the third warning-bell; but though it shocks even the "ensorceressed" Pierre for the moment, his infatuation continues. At last he begins to have an idea that people look askance at him; trains of suspicion are laid; after one or two clever evasions of Iza's, the usual "epistolary communication" forces the matter, and Constantin Ritz at last tells the unhappy husband that not merely has "Serge"

reappeared, but there are nearly half-a-dozen "others," and that doubts have even been suggested as to connivance on Pierre's part--doubts strengthened by Iza's treacherous complaints as to her husband having employed her as a model. A violent scene follows, Iza brazening it out, and calmly demanding separation. Clemenceau goes to Rome after forcing a duel on Serge and wounding him; but the blow has weakened, if not destroyed, his powers in art. Fresh scandals follow, and the irresistible Iza seduces Constantin himself, characteristically communicating the fact in an anonymous letter to her miserable husband.

He returns (for the second time), takes no vengeance on his friend, but sees his wife. The interview provides an audaciously devised but finely executed curtain. She calmly proposes--how shall we say it?--to "put herself in commission." She loves n.o.body but him, she says, and knows he has loved, loves, and will love n.o.body but her. He ought, originally, to have taken her offer of being his mistress, and then no harm would have happened. She would really like to go back with him to Saint-a.s.sise (the honeymoon place). Suppose they do? As for _living_ with him and being "faithful" to him--that is impossible. But she will come to him, at his whistle, whenever he likes, and be absolutely his for a day and a night and a morrow. In fact he may begin at once if he likes: and she puts her arms round his neck and her mouth to his. He takes her at her word; but when the night is half pa.s.sed and she is asleep, he gently rises, goes into the next room, fetches a stiletto paper-knife with which he has seen her playing, half wakes her, asks her if she loves him, to which, still barely conscious, she answers "Yes!" with a half-formed kiss on her lips. Then he stabs her dead with a single blow, leaving the house quietly, and giving himself up to the police at dawn.

[Sidenote: Criticism of it and of its author's work generally.]

If anybody asks me, "Is this well done?" expecting me to enter on the discussion of the _lex non scripta_, I shall reply that this is not my trade. But if the question refers to the merits of the handling, I can reply as confidently as the dying Charmian, "It is well done, and fitting for a novelist." In no book, as it seems to me, has the author obtained such a complete command of his subject or reeled out his story with such steady confidence and fluency. No doubt he sometimes preaches too much.[383] The elder Ritz's advice against suicide, for instance, if sound is superfluous. But this is not a very serious evil, and the steady _crescendo_ of interest which prevails throughout the story carries it off. There are also numerous separate pa.s.sages of real distinction, the fateful bathing-scene being, as it should be, the best, except the finale; but others, such as the history of Pierre's first modelling from the life, being excellent. The satire on the literary coteries of the Restoration is about the best thing of the kind that the author has done; and many of the "interiors"--always a strong point with him--are admirable. It is on the point of character that the chief questions may arise; but here also there seems to me to be only one of these--it is true it is the most important of all--on which there should be much debate. The succ.u.mbing of Constantin seems perhaps a little more justifiable by its importance to the story than by its intrinsic probability.[384] Clemenceau seems to me "constant to himself," or in the "good childlikeness" of his character, throughout; and to ask whether it was necessary to make him smash the bust that he finds in Serge's possession seems to be equivalent to asking whether it was necessary to put the Vice-Consul of Tetuan in petticoats.[385] It is only about Iza herself that there can be much dispute. Has that process synthetic which is spoken of elsewhere been carried too far with her?

Have doses of childlikeness, beauty, charm, ill-nature, sensual appet.i.te, etc., been taken too "boldly" (in technical doctors' sense) and mixed too crudely to measure? A word or two may be permissible on this.

I do not think that Iza is an impossible personage; nor do I think that she is even an improbable one to such an extent as to bar her out, possible or impossible. But I am not sure that she is not rather arbitrarily synthetised instead of being re-created, or that she, though possible and not quite improbable, is not singly abnormal[386] to the verge of monstrosity. It must be evident to any reader of tolerable acuteness that the obsession of _Manon Lescaut_ has not left Dumas _fils_. Although the total effect of Manon and of Iza is very different, and although they are differently "staged," their resemblances in detail are very great; and, to speak paradoxically, the differences are almost more resembling still. Iza offers herself as mistress if there are any difficulties in the way of her being a wife; would, in fact, as she admits long afterwards, have preferred the less honourable, but also less fettering, estate. On the other hand, be it remembered, it was something of an accident that Manon and Des Grieux were _not_ actually married. The two women are alike in their absolute insistence on luxury and pleasure before anything else; but they differ in that Iza does--as we said Manon did _not_, or did not specially--want "what Messalina wanted." On the other hand, Iza is ill-natured and Manon is not. In these respects we may say that the Manon-formula has pa.s.sed through that of Madame de Merteuil, and bears unpleasant signs of the pa.s.sage. Manon repents, which Iza never could do. But they agree in the courtesan essence--the readiness to exchange for other things that commodity of theirs which should be given only for love. I never wish to supply my readers with problem-tabloids; but I think that in this paragraph I have supplied them with materials for working out the double question, "Is Iza less human than Manon? and if so, why?" for themselves, as well as, if by any chance they should care to do so, of guessing my own answers to it.[387]

[Sidenote: Reflections.]

It is more germane to custom and purpose here to add a few general remarks on the story, and more, but still few, on its author's general position. _Affaire Clemenceau_ is certainly, as has been said before, his strongest book, and, especially if taken together with _La Dame aux Camelias_ (which, if less free from faults, contains some different merits), it const.i.tutes a strong thesis or diploma-piece for all but the highest degree as a novelist. Taking in the others which have been surveyed, we must also acknowledge in the author an unusually wide range and a great display of faculty--even of faculties--almost all over that range, though perhaps in no other case than the two selected has he thoroughly mastered and firmly held the ground which he has attempted to win. If he has not--if _Tristan le Roux_ is, on the whole, only a second- or third-rate historical romance; _Trois Hommes Forts_ a fair and competent, but not thrilling melodrama, and so on, and so on--it is no doubt partly, to speak with the sometimes useful as well as engaging irrationality of childhood, "because he couldn't." But I think it is also because of something that can be explained. It was because he was far too p.r.o.ne to theorise about men and women and to make his books attempted demonstrations, or at least ill.u.s.trations, of his theories.

Now, to theorise about men is seldom very satisfactory; but to theorise about women is to weigh gossamer and measure moonbeams. The very wisest thing ever said about them is said in the old English couplet:

Some be lewd, and some be shrewd, _But all they be not so_,