CHAPTER IX
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II
_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cleves"_--_Anthony Hamilton_[247]
[Sidenote: The material of the chapter.]
Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitiouswork which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not verynumerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out fromthe wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it isnot as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when itdoes so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenantedelement or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost theGreek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its fewspecimens, such as Apollonius Rhodius earlier and Nonnus later, to warnus that, if we had more, we should find Homer not merely better, butdifferent, and this though probably every practitioner was at leasttrying to imitate or surpass Homer. Dante stands in no class at all, nordoes Milton, nor does Shelley; and though Shakespeare indulgentlypermits himself to be classed as an "Elizabethan dramatist," whatstrikes true critics most is again hardly more his "betterness" thanhis difference. The very astonishment with which we sometimes say ofWebster, Dekker, Middleton, that they come near Shakespeare, is not due,as foolish people say, to any only less foolish idolatry, but to a truecritical surprise at the approximation of things usually so verydistinct.
The examples in higher forms of literature just chosen for comparison donot, of course, show any wish in the chooser to even any Frenchseventeenth-century novelist with Homer or Shakespeare, with Dante orMilton or Shelley. But the work noticed in the last chapter certainlyincludes nothing of strong idiosyncrasy. In other books scattered, inpoint of time of production, over great part of the period, suchidiosyncrasy is to be found, though in very various measure. Now,idiosyncrasy is, if not the only difference or property, the inseparableaccident of all great literature, and it may exist where literature isnot exactly great. Moreover, like other abysses, it calls to, and callsinto existence, yet more abysses of its own kind or not-kind; whileschool- and class-work, however good, can never produce anything butmore class- and school-work, except by exciting the always dubious andsometimes very dangerous desire "to be different." The instances of thisidiosyncrasy with which we shall now deal are the _Francion_ of CharlesSorel; the _Roman Comique_ of Paul Scarron; the _Roman Bourgeois_ ofAntoine Furetiere; the _Voyages_, as they are commonly called (thoughthe proper title is different[248]), _a la Lune et au Soleil_, of Cyranode Bergerac, and the _Princesse de Cleves_ of Mme. de La Fayette; whilelast of all will come the remarkable figure of Anthony Hamilton, less"single-speech"[249] than the others and than his namesake later, butpossessor of greater genius than any.
[Sidenote: Sorel and _Francion_.]
The present writer has long ago been found fault with for paying toomuch attention to _Francion_, and he may possibly (if any one thinks itworth while) be found fault with again for placing it here. But he doesso from no mere childish desire to persist in some rebuked naughtiness,but from a sincere belief in the possession by the book of somehistorical importance. Any one who, on Arnoldian principles, declines totake the historic estimate into account at all, is, on those principles,justified in neglecting it altogether; whether, on the other hand, suchneglect does not justify a suspicion of the soundness of the principlesthemselves, is another question. Charles Sorel, historiographer ofFrance, was a very voluminous and usually a very dull writer. Hisvoluminousness, though beside the enormous compositions of the lastchapter it is but a small thing, is not absent from _Francion_, nor ishis dulness. Probably few people have read the book through, and I amnot going to recommend anybody to do so. But the author does to someextent deserve the cruel praise of being "dull in a new way" (or atleast of being evidently in quest of a new way to be dull in), asJohnson wrongfully said of Gray. His book is not a direct imitation ofany one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque styleto French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewisein Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of otheradumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest oforiginality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book toanalyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France,and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not withouttouches of Rabelais, of the _Moyen de Parvenir_, perhaps of the risingfancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astralspirits" and the rest of it--a whole farrago, in short, of mattersdecent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is notlike Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic;while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so withinthe limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance, though not very muchof one, to the rather later work of Cyrano. But it is most like twoEnglish novels of far higher merit which were not to appear for acentury or a century and a half--Amory's _John Buncle_ and Graves's_Spiritual Quixote_. As it is well to mention things together withoutthe danger of misleading those who run as they read, and mind therunning rather than the reading, let me observe that the liveliest partof _Francion_ is duller than the dullest of _Buncle_, and duller stillthan the least lively thing in Graves. The points of resemblance are inpillar-to-postness, in the endeavour (here almost entirely a failure,but still an endeavour) to combine fancy with realism, and above all infreedom from following the rules of any "school." Realism in the goodsense and originality were the two things that the novel had to achieve.Sorel missed the first and only achieved a sort of "distanced" positionin the second. But he tried--or groped--for both.
[Sidenote: The _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_.]
I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_, I find the same curious mixture ofqualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to_Francion_. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also inclineme still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the _Pereantqui ante nos_ feeling in Furetiere's attack (_v. inf._ p. 288). Neithercould possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both displaythe uncritical character,[250] the "pillar-to-postness," themarine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famousbook. Like it, they are much too big.[251] But the _Berger Extravagant_,in applying (very early) the _Don Quixote_ method, as far as Sorel couldmanage it, to the _Astree_, is sometimes amusing and by no means alwaysunjust. _Polyandre_ is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward firstdraft of a _Roman Bourgeois_. The scene in the former, where Lysis--theExtravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,--making anall-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charite (theDulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond--a sort of "bachelor," thesensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis--by constantdemands for a rhyme[252] or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revengeshimself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysisduly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he isquickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I'vefound it. The finest _reprise_ [= refrain] ever made!" And in_Polyandre_ there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which notonly gives a _point de repere_ of an interesting kind in itself, butmarks the beginning of the "_farrago libelli_ moderni": "Ils ont desmets qu'ils nomment des _bisques_; je doute si c'est potage oufricassee."
Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and tookan interest in really interesting things.
(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of animportant dish.
(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more thanconventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues ordescriptions on the other.
(4) An interesting literary parallel; for here is the libelled"Charroselles" (_v. inf._ p. 288) two centuries beforehand, feeling adoubt, exactly similar to Thackeray's, as to whether a _bouillabaisse_should be called soup or broth, brew o
r stew. Those who understand theart and pastime of "book-fishing" will not go away with empty basketsfrom either of these neglected ponds.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Scarron and the _Roman Comique_.]
Almost as different a person as can possibly be conceived from Sorel wasPaul Scarron, Abbe, "Invalid to the Queen," husband of the future Mme.de Maintenon, author of burlesques which did him no particular honour,of plays which, if not bad, were never first rate, of witticismsinnumerable, most of which have perished, and of other things, besidesbeing a hero of some facts and more legends; but author also of one bookin our own subject of much intrinsic and more historical interest, andoriginal also of passages in later books more interesting still to allgood wits. Not a lucky man in life (except for the possession of alively wit and an imperturbable temper), he was never rich, and hesuffered long and terribly from disease--one of the main subjects of hislegend, but, after all discussions and carpings, looking most likerheumatoid arthritis, one of the most painful and incurable of ailments.But Scarron was, and has been since, by no means unlucky in literature.He had, though of course not an unvaried, a great popularity in atroubled and unscrupulous time: and long after his death two of theforemost novelists of his country selected him for honourable treatmentof curiously different kinds. Somehow or other the introduction of menof letters of old time into modern books has not been usually veryfortunate, except in the hands of Thackeray and a very few more. Amongthese latter instances may certainly be ranked the pleasant picture ofScarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yetunmarried Francoise d'Aubigne, in Dumas's _Vingt Ans Apres_. Nor is iteasy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its modelas does Gautier's _Capitaine Fracasse_.
It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is agood deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, andespecially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings tothat scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of whichto the novel is, in fact, the subject of this whole chapter. Notunkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and anuncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The oldernovel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture ofthis latter. _Le Chateau de la Misere_ is one of the finest things ofthe kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel inliterature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicatepastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longestand most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough"rhyparography"[253] of the seventeenth century. But in itself the_Roman Comique_ is no small performance, and historically it is almostgreat. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; butwe have also got out of the _fatrasie_--the mingle-mangle of story,jargon, nonsense, and what not,--out of the mere tale of adventure, outof the mere tale of _grivoiserie_. We have borrowed the comicdramatist's mirror--the "Muses' Looking-glass"--and are holding it up tonature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhatartificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, asmany live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of theirtrade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely_personae_, they are persons.
To re-read the _Roman Comique_ just after reading the _Grand Cyrus_ cameinto the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I hadnot fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of thetwo, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;but an interval of a great many years since the last reading ofScarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulness of thedeliberate and minute manner in which he himself points that contrast,and even now and then satirises the _Cyrus_ by name. The system of inset_Histoires_,[254] beginning with the well-told if borrowed story of DonCarlos of Aragon and his "Invisible Mistress," is, indeed, hardly acontrast except in point of the respective lengths of the digressions,nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this"inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients ordescended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, isvery old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But thedifference between the opening of the two books can hardly have beenother than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a verymemorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romanceand novel, between academic generalities and "realist" particularism,and between not a few other pairs of opposites. It has been fullyallowed that the overture of the _Grand Cyrus_ is by no means devoid ofaction, even of bustle, and that it is well done of its kind. But thatkind is strongly marked in the very fact that there is a sort offaintness in it. The burning of Sinope, the distant vessel, thestreet-fighting that follows, are what may be called "cartoonish"--largewashes of pale colour. The talk, such as there is, is stage-talk of thepseudo-grand style. It is curious that Scarron himself speaks of the_Cyrus_ as being the most "furnitured" romance, _le roman le plusmeuble_, that he knows. To a modern eye the interiors are anything butdistinct, despite the elaborate _ecphrases_, some of which have beenquoted.[255]
Now turn to the opening passage of the _Roman Comique_, which strikesthe new note most sharply. It is rather well known, probably even tosome who have not read the original or Tom Brown's congenial translationof it; for it has been largely laid under contribution by theinnumerable writers about a much greater person than Scarron, Moliere.The experiences of the _Illustre Theatre_ were a little later, andapparently not so sordid as those of the company of which Scarronconstituted himself historiographer; but they cannot have been verydissimilar in general kind, and many of the characteristics, such as theassumption now of fantastic names, "Le Destin," "La Rancune," etc., nowof rococo-romantic ones, such as "Mademoiselle de l'Etoile," remainedlong unaltered. But perhaps a fresh translation may be attempted, andthe attempt permitted. For though the piece, of course, has recentSpanish and even older Italian examples of a kind, still the change inwhat may be called "particular universality" is remarkable.
[Sidenote: The opening scene of this.]
The sun had finished more than half his course, and his chariot, having reached the slope of the world, was running quicker than he wished. If his horses had chosen to avail themselves of the drop of the road, they would have got through what remained of the day in less than half or quarter of an hour; but instead of pulling at full strength, they merely amused themselves by curvetting, as they drew in a salt air, which told them the sea, wherein men say their master goes to bed every night, was close at hand. To speak more like a man of this world, and more intelligibly, it was between five and six o'clock, when a cart came into the market-place of Le Mans. This cart was drawn by four very lean oxen, with, for leader, a brood-mare, whose foal scampered about round the cart, like a silly little thing as it was. The cart was full of boxes and trunks, and of great bundles of painted canvas, which made a sort of pyramid, on the top of which appeared a damsel, dressed partly as for town, partly for country. By the side of the cart walked a young man, as ill-dressed as he was good-looking. He had on his face a great patch, which covered one eye and half his cheek, and he carried a large fowling-piece on his shoulder. With this he had slain divers magpies, jays, and crows; and they made a sort of bandoleer round him, from the bottom whereof hung a pullet and a gosling, looking very like the result of a plundering expedition. Instead of a hat he had only a night-cap, with garters of divers colours twisted round it, which headgear looked like a very unfinished sketch of a turban. His coat was a jacket of grey stuff, girt with a strap, which served also as a sword-belt, the sword being so long that it wanted a fork to draw it neatly for use. He wore breeches trussed, with
stockings attached to them, as actors do when they play an ancient hero; and he had, instead of shoes, buskins of a classical pattern, muddied up to the ankle. An old man, more ordinarily but still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it at my own risk. Let us return to our caravan.
It passed in front of the tennis-court called the Doe, at the door of which were gathered a number of the topping citizens of the town. The novel appearance of the conveyance and team, and the noise of the mob who had gathered round the cart, induced these honourable burgomasters to cast an eye upon the strangers; and among others a Deputy-Provost named La Rappiniere came up, accosted them, and, with the authority of a magistrate, asked who they were. The young man of whom I have just spoken replied, and without touching his turban (inasmuch as with one of his hands he held his gun and with the other the hilt of his sword, lest it should get between his legs) told the Provost that they were French by birth, actors by profession, that his stage-name was Le Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage, La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh; whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem stranger to men with their wits about them than "La Montagne," "La Vallee," "La Rose," or "L'Epine." The talk was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which were heard from the front of the cart. It was the tennis-court attendant, who had struck the carter without warning, because the oxen and the mare were making too free with a heap of hay which lay before the door. The row was stopped, and the mistress of the court, who was fonder of plays than of sermons or vespers, gave leave, with a generosity unheard of in her kind, to the carter to bait his beasts to their fill. He accepted her offer, and, while the beasts ate, the author rested for a time, and set to work to think what he should say in the next chapter.
The sally in the last sentence, with the other about the tortoise, andthe mock solemnity of the opening, illustrate two specialcharacteristics, which will be noticed below, and which may be taken ineach case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways ofthe regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the"_Phebus_" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" inthese repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pertflings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious anddirect Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almosttrivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentationand _faire_ of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjectsof the last chapter.
It may require a little, but it should not require much, knowledge ofliterary history to see how modern this is; it should surely requirenone to see how vivid it is--how the sharpness of an etching and thecolour of a bold picture take the place of the shadowy "academies" ofprevious French writers.[256] There may be a very little exaggerationeven here--in other parts of the book there is certainly some--andScarron never could forget his tendency to that form of exaggerationwhich is called burlesque. But the stuff and substance of the piece isreality.
An important item of the same change is to be found in the management ofthe insets, or some of them. One of the longest and most important isthe autobiographical history of Le Destin or Destin (the article isoften dropped), the tall young man with the patch on his face. But thisis not thrust bodily into the other body of the story, _Cyrus_-fashion;it is alternated with the passages of that story itself, and that in acomparatively natural manner--night or some startling accidentinterrupting it; while how even courtiers could find breath to tell, orpatience and time to hear, some of the interludes of the _Cyrus_ and itsfellows is altogether past comprehension. There is some coarseness inScarron--he would not be a comic writer of the seventeenth century ifthere were none. Not very long after the beginning the tale isinterrupted by a long account of an unseemly practical joke which surelycould amuse no mortal after a certain stage of schoolboyhood. But thereis little or no positive indecency: the book contrasts not moreremarkably with the Aristophanic indulgence of the sixteenth centurythan with the sniggering suggestiveness of the eighteenth. Some remnantsof the Heroic convention (which, after all, did to a great extentreflect the actual manners of the time) remain, such as the obligatory"compliment." Le Destin is ready to hang himself because, at his firstmeeting with the beautiful Leonore, his shyness prevents his getting aproper "compliment" out. On the other hand, the demand for _esprit_,which was confined in the Heroics to a few privileged characters, nowbecomes almost universal. There are tricks, but fairly noveltricks--affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and theothers noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chaptersappear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the secondvolume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"--things which acentury later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not disdainto imitate.
Scarron did not live to finish the book, and the third part or volume,which was tinkered--still more the _Suite_, which was added--by somebodyelse, are very inferior. The somewhat unfavourable opinions referred toabove may be partly based on the undoubted fact that the story is ratherformless; that its most important machinery is dependent, after all, onthe old _rapt_ or abduction, the heroines of which are Mademoiselle del'Etoile (nominally Le Destin's sister, really his love, and at the endhis wife) and Angelique, daughter of La Caverne, who is provided with alover and husband of 12,000 (_livres_) a year in the person of Leandre,one of the stock theatrical names, professedly "valet" to Le Destin, butreally a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, againin the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may befound in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind,inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of thetroupe. But again these "_low_ jinks" were an obvious reaction from(just as the ceremonies were followings of) the solemnity of theHeroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly two hundred years,as English readers full well do know. Nevertheless these defects merelyaccompany--they do not mar or still less destroy--the strikingcharacteristics of progress which appear with them, and which, withoutany elaborate abstract of the book, have been set forth somewhatcarefully in the preceding pages. Above all, there is a real andconsiderable attempt at character, a trifle _typy_ and stagy perhaps,but still aiming at something better; and the older _nouvelle_-fashionis not merely drawn upon, but improved upon, for curious anecdotes,striking situations, effective names. Under the latter heads it isnoteworthy that Gautier simply "lifted" the name Sigognac from Scarron,though he attached it to a very different personage; and that Dumas got,from the same source, the startling incident of Aramis suddenlydescending on the crupper of D'Artagnan's horse. The jokes may, ofcourse, amuse or not different persons, and even different moods of thesame person; the practical ones, as has been hinted, may pall, even whenthey are not merely vulgar. Practical joking had a long hold ofliterature, as of life; and it would be sanguine to think that it isdead. Izaak Walton, a curious contemporary--"disparate," as the Frenchsay, of Scarron, would not quite have liked the quarrel between thedying inn-keeper, who insists on being buried in his oldest sheet, fullof holes and stains, and his wife, who asks him, from a sense rather ofdecency than of affection, how he can possibly think of appearing thusclad in the Valley of Jehoshaphat? But there is something in the bookfor many tastes, and a good deal more for the student of the history ofthe novel.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Furetiere and the _Roman Bourgeois_.]
The couplet-contrast of the Comic Romance of Scarron and the "Bourgeois"Romance of Furetiere[257] is one of the m
ost curious among the minorphenomena of literary history; but it repeats itself in that history sooften that it becomes, by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vastdifference between Furetiere and Miss Austen, and a still vaster onebetween Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other,on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as _Waverley_stands to _Pride and Prejudice_, and they carry on a common revulsionagainst their forerunners and a common quest for newer and betterdevelopments. The _Roman Bourgeois_, indeed, is more definitely, moreexplicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjectsand treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It istrue that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romancesthe conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot tosomething that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and takean interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of herelopement, without apparently any prospect of marriage, but with anaccomplished gentleman who has helped her to _esprit_ by introducing herto those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at hispredecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandaneherself. Moreover his inset tale _L'Amour Egare_ (itself something of aparody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satiricalaccount (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so toher physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining togive a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting hisreaders, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant complimentsaddressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having acomplexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and theDawn in having a red tip to her nose!
But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, andin its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in theproper sense a story--that is to say, _one_ story,--it certainly isnot: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, andhis title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The twoparts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that asingle personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This secondis wholly occupied by legal matters (Furetiere had been "bred to thelaw"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unluckyauthor "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who hasbeen pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by hisutter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even moreknowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do ofspecially commercial and financial lingo.
This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance thaninterest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, wherethere is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positivecharacter-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal oflively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to whichprofession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentifulcompensations.
As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,both of the legal _bourgeoisie_ by rank. The prettier, Javotte, has beenbriefly described above. She is the daughter of a rich attorney, andhas, before her emancipation and elopement, two suitors, bothadvocates; the one, Nicodeme, young, handsome, well dressed, and a greatflirt, but feather-headed; the other, Bedout, a middle-aged sloven,collector, and at the same time miser, but very well off. The secondheroine, Lucrece, is also handsome, though rather less so than Javotte:but she has plenty of wits. She is, however, in an unfortunate position,being an orphan with no fortune, and living with an uncle and aunt, thelatter of whom has a passion for gaming, and keeps open house for it, sothat Lucrece sees rather undesirable society. Despite her wits, shefalls a victim to a rascally marquis, who first gives her a writtenpromise of marriage, and afterwards, by one of the dirtiest tricks everimagined by a novelist--a trick which, strange to say, the presentwriter does not remember to have seen in any other book, obvious thoughit is--steals it.[260] Fortunately for her, Nicodeme, who is of heracquaintance, and a general lover, has also given her, though not inearnest and for no serious "consideration," a similar promise: and bythe help of a busybody legal friend she gets 2000 crowns out of him toprevent an action for breach. And, finally, Bedout, after displacing theunlucky Nicodeme (thus left doubly in the cold), and being himselfthrown over by Javotte's elopement, takes to wife, being induced to doso by a cousin, Lucrece herself, in blissful ignorance (which is neverremoved) of her past. The cousin, Laurence, has also been the link ofthese parts of the tale with an episode of _precieuse_ society in whichthe above-mentioned inset is told; a fourth feminine character,Hyppolyte (_vice_ Philipote), of some individuality, is introduced;Javotte makes a greater fool of herself than ever; and her futureseducer, Pancrace, makes his appearance.
Thus reduced to "argument" form, the story may seem even more modernthan it really is, and the censures, apologies, etc., put forward abovemay appear rather unjust. But few people will continue to think soafter reading the book. The materials, especially with the "trimmings"to be mentioned presently, would have made a very good novel of thecompletest kind. But, once more, the time had not come, though Furetierewas, however unconsciously, doing his best to bring it on. One fault,not quite so easy to define as to feel, is prominent, and continued tobe so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middleof the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere _narration_--thethings being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as _being_ done,and to the mind's ear as _being_ said, but recounted, sometimes not evenas present things, but as things that _have been_ said or done already.This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of notbreaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, butrunning the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,[261]the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scenebetween Javotte and Lucrece, to give one instance only, would enliventhe book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spareone of the few passages in which Nicodeme is allowed to be more than thesubject of a _recit_, and which partakes of the knock-about character solong popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheadsby an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece ofporcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promisingsituations of the two promises to Lucrece, and the stealing by theMarquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But itwas very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and aslate as Hope's famous _Anastasius_ the fault is present, apparently tothe author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.
To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,the history of the matter, the opening of the _Roman Bourgeois_ may seemto promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than isactually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generallytook some care of their openings, and Furetiere availed himself of acustom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the RomanChurch, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, whichit certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curiousfashion of _quete_ or collection at church--not by a commonplace verger,or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girlwhom the _cure_ could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishingsmiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and toenable her to make a "record" amount.
The original meeting of Nicodeme and the fair Javotte takes place inthis wise, and enables the author to enlighten us further as to mattersquite proper for novel treatment.[262] The device of keeping gold andlarge silver pieces uppermost in the open "plate"; the counter-balancingmischief of covering them with a handful of copper; the licensed habit,a rather dangerous one surely, of taking "change" out of that plate,which enables the aspirant for the girl's favour to clear
away theobnoxious _sous_ as change for a whole pistole--all this has a kind ofattraction for which you may search the more than myriad pages of_Artamene_ without finding it. The daughter of a citizen's family, inthe French seventeenth century, was kept with a strictness which perhapsexplains a good deal in the conduct of an Agnes or an Isabelle incomedy. She was almost always tied to her mother's apron-strings, andeven an accepted lover had to carry on his courtship under the verysuperfluous number of _six_ eyes at least. But the Church wasmisericordious. The custom of giving and receiving holy water could beimproved by the resources of amatory science; but this of the _quete_was, it would seem, still more full of opportunity. Apparently (perhapsbecause in these city parishes the church was always close by, and thewhole proceedings public) the fair _queteuse_ was allowed to walk homealone; and in this instance Nicodeme, having ground-baited with hispistole, is permitted to accompany Javotte Vollichon to her father'sdoor--her extreme beauty making up for the equally extreme silliness ofher replies to his observations.
The possible objection that these things, fresh and interesting to us,were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. Thepoint is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude ofthis kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident ofNicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, butreally from the market--a joke not peculiar to Paris, but speciallyfavoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and onthe strength of each inviting himself to dinner; the fresh girds at theextraordinary and still not quite accountable plenty of marquises(Scarron, if I remember rightly, has the verb _se marquiser_); and thecontributory (or, as the ancients would have said, symbolic) dinners--asit were, picnics at home--of _bourgeois_ society at each other's houses,with not a few other things. A curious plan of a fashion-review, withpatterns for the benefit of ladies, is specially noticeable at a periodso early in the history of periodicals generally, and is one of the notfew points in which there is a certain resemblance between Furetiere andDefoe.
It is in this daring to be quotidian and contemporary that his claim toa position in the history of the novel mainly consists. Some might add athird audacity, that of being "middle-class." Scarron had dealt withbarn-mummers and innkeepers and some mere riff-raff; but he had includednot a few nobles, and had indulged in fighting and other "noble"subjects. There is no fighting in Furetiere, and his chief "noble"figure--the rascal who robbed Lucrece of her virtue and her keys--isthe sole figure of his class, except Pancrace and the _precieuse_Angelique. This is at once a practical protest against the commoninterpretation and extension of Aristotle's prescription of"distinguished" subjects, and an unmistakable relinquishment of merepicaresque squalor. Above all, it points the way in practice, indirectlyperhaps but inevitably, to the selection of subjects that the authorreally _knows_, and that he can treat with the small vivifying detailsgiven by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is anadvance in character, an advance in "interior" description--theVollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrece's home,the humour of a _precieuse_ meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be thedefects[263] in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round.A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not be superfluous;it is the first conversation, after the collection, between Nicodeme andJavotte.
[Sidenote: Nicodeme takes Javotte home from church.]
This new kind of gallantry [_his removing the offensive copper coins as pretended "change" for his pistole_] was noticed by Javotte, who was privately pleased with it, and really thought herself under an obligation to him. Wherefore, on their leaving the church, she allowed him to accost her with a compliment which he had been meditating all the time he was waiting for her. This chance favoured him much, for Javotte never went out without her mother, who kept her in such a strait fashion of living that she never allowed her to speak to a man either abroad or at home. Had it not been so, he would have had easy access to her; for as she was a solicitor's daughter and he was an advocate, they were in relations of close affinity and sympathy--such as allow as prompt acquaintance as that of a servant-maid with a _valet-de-chambre_.[264]
As soon as the service was over and he could join her, he said, as though with the most delicate attention, "Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90 livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all through the forty hours'[265] service, and in a place where there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke," said Nicodeme, "of the luck of your collection, I was not only speaking of the charity you got for the poor and the church; I meant as well what you gained for yourself." "Oh, Sir!" replied Javotte, "I assure you I gained nothing. There was not a farthing more than I told you; and besides, can you think I would butter my own bread[266] on such an occasion? 'Twould be a great sin even to think of it." "I was not speaking," said Nicodeme, "of gold or silver. I only meant that nobody can have given you his alms without at the same time giving you his heart." "I don't know," quoth Javotte, "what you mean by hearts; I didn't see one in the plate." "I meant," added Nicodeme, "that everybody before whom you stopped must, when he saw such beauty, have vowed to love and serve you, and have given you his heart. For my own part I could not possibly refuse you mine." Javotte answered him naively, "Well! Sir, if you gave it me I must have replied at once, 'God give it back to you.'"[267] "What!" cried Nicodeme rather angrily, "can you jest with me when I am so much in earnest, and treat in such a way the most passionate of all your lovers?" Whereat Javotte blushed as she answered, "Sir, pray be careful how you speak. I am an honest girl. I have no lovers. Mamma has expressly forbidden me to have any." "I have said nothing to shock you," replied Nicodeme. "My passion for you is perfectly honest and pure, and its end is only a lawful suit." "Then, Sir," answered Javotte, "you want to marry me? You must ask my papa and mamma for that; for indeed I do not know what they are going to give me when I marry." "We have not got quite so far yet," said Nicodeme. "I must be assured beforehand of your esteem, and know that you have admitted me to the honour of being your servant." "Sir," said Javotte, "I am quite satisfied with being my own servant, and I know how to do everything I want."
Now this, of course, is not extraordinarily brilliant; but itis an early--a _very_ early--beginning of the right sort ofthing--conversation of a natural kind transferred from the boards to thebook, sketches of character, touches of manners and of life generally,individual, national, local. The cross-purposes of the almost idiotic_ingenue_ and the philandering gallant are already very well done; andif Javotte had been as clever as she was stupid she could hardly haveset forth the inwardness of French marriages more neatly than by theblunt reference to her _dot_, or have at the same moment more thoroughlydisconcerted Nicodeme's regularly laid-out approaches for a flirtationin form, with only a possible, but in any case distant, termination inanything so prosaic as marriage.[268] The thing as a whole is, infamiliar phrase, "all right" in kind and in scheme. It requires someperfecting in detail; but it is in every reasonable sense perfectible.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_.]
It has been possible to speak of one of the pioneer books mentioned inthis chapter with more allowance than most of the few critics andhistorians who have discussed or mentioned it have given it, and torecommend the others, not uncritically but quite cheerfully. Thissatisfactory state of things hardly persists when we reach what seemsperhaps, to those who have never read it, not the least considerable ofthe batch--the _Voyage a
la Lune_ of Cyrano de Bergerac, as his name isin literary history, though he never called himself so.[269] Cyrano,though he does not seem to have had a very fortunate life, and diedyoung, yet was not all unblest, and has since been rather blessed thanbanned. Even in his own day Boileau spoke of him with what, in the"Bollevian" fashion, was comparative compliment--that is to say, he saidthat he did not think Cyrano so bad as somebody else. But longafterwards, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gautier took him upamong his _Grotesques_ and embalmed him in the caressing andimmortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at theend of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights ofFrance made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His_Pedant Joue_ is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishingMoliere with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in thehabit of commandeering wherever he found it. _La Mort d'Agrippine_ is byno means the worst of that curious school of tragedy, so like and sounlike to that of our own "University wits," which was partlyexemplified and then transcended by Corneille, and which some of us areabandoned enough to enjoy more as readers, though as critics we may findmore faults with it, than we find it possible to do with Racine. But the_Voyage a la Lune_, as well as, though rather less than, itscomplementary dealing with the Sun, has been praised with none of theseallowances. On the contrary, it has had ascribed to it the credit ofhaving furnished, not scraps of dialogue or incident, but a solidsuggestion to an even greater than Moliere--to Swift; remarkableintellectual and scientific anticipations have been discovered in it,and in comparatively recent times versions of it have been published toserve as proofs that Cyrano was actually a father[270] of Frencheighteenth-century _philosophie_--a different thing, once more, fromphilosophy.
Let us, however, use the utmost possible combination of criticalmagnanimity with critical justice: and allow these precious additions,which did not form part of the "classical" or "received" text of theauthor, not to count against him. _For_ him they can only count withthose who still think the puerile and now hopelessly stale jests aboutEnoch and Elijah and that sort of thing clever. But they can be eitherdisregarded or at least left out of the judgment, and it will yet remaintrue that the so-called _Voyage_ is a very disappointing book indeed. Asthis is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is notimpertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, whenfresh from reading about it and its author in "Theo's" prose; that Itherefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and stroveto like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly,about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's _Cyrano_, and likedit less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, Iliked it least of all. There is, of course, a certain fancifulness aboutthe main idea of a man fastening bottles of dew round him in theexpectation (which is justified) that the sun's heat will convert thedew into steam and raise him from the ground. But the reader (it is notnecessary to pay him the bad compliment of explaining the reasons) willsoon see that the scheme is aesthetically awkward, if not positivelyludicrous, and scientifically absurd. Throwing off bottles to lower yourlevel has a superficial resemblance to the actual principles andpractice of ballooning; but in the same way it will not here "work" atall.
This, however, would be a matter of no consequence whatever if theactual results of the experiment were amusing. Unfortunately they arenot. That the aeronaut's first miss of the Moon drops him into the newFrench colony of Canada may have given Cyrano some means of interestingpeople then; but, reversing the process noticed in the cases of Scarronand Furetiere, it does not in the least do so now. We get nothing out ofit except some very uninteresting gibes at the Jesuits, and, connectedwith these, some equally uninteresting discussions whether the flight tothe Moon is possible or not.
Still one hopes, like the child or fool of popular saying, for the Moonitself to atone for Canada, and tolerates disappointment till oneactually gets there. Alas! of all Utopias that have ever been Utopiated,Cyrano's is the most uninteresting, even when its negative want ofinterest does not change into something positively disagreeable. TheLunarians, though probably intended to be, are hardly at all a satire onus Earth-dwellers. They are bigger, and, as far as the male sex isconcerned, apparently more awkward and uglier; and their ideas inreligion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of ourorthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all"naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make agood "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but stillnasty; much of it is silly; all of it is dull.[271]
Nevertheless it is not quite omissible in such a history as this, or inany history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of thecoming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which hadhitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, notunimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of theeccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelaishad in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners ofnew commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as arule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the wayitself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usuallyreserved.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mme. de la Fayette and _La Princesse de Cleves_.]
But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of thewhole. This is _La Princesse de Cleves_, by Marie Madeleine Pioche deLavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de Sevigne and ofHuet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of LaRochefoucauld; a woman evidently of great charm as well as of greatability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. Shewrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historicalinterest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special noticehere, being _Zaide_, _La Comtesse de Tende_, and (her opening piece)_Madame de Montpensier_. Their motives and methods are much the same asthose of the _Princesse de Cleves_, but this is much more effectivelytreated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at thebeginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappointcandid and not merely studious readers.
It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen,Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),"Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so cleveras her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especiallyRonsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things weresaid of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), withmany others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there areMademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cleves, whom she marries, andthe Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."[272] As is alsousual--in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangularsequences--the Princess has more _amitie_ and _estime_ than _amour_ forher husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her.So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almostirresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful"order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorianideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is beingshown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in themost atrocious manner; chatters about his love affairs in a way almostworse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in amanner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearlycertain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not anAmadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a gooddeal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in lovewith him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not knowthis and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Courtand other affairs conduct this concealed _amourette_ (for she preventsall "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told,to a point wh
en, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels thatshe is in danger of losing self-control.
[Sidenote: Its central scene.]
Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be wellto give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper toM. and Mme. de Cleves, and overhears the conversation which, with equalwant of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names)retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Cleves herself,and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatalconsequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" willbe necessary.
He[273] heard M. de Cleves say to his wife, "But why do you wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the country? For some time past you have shown a taste for solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so much company at home, that both body and mind must needs grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he, "is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with me." "You would do me a great injustice if you thought so," said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be delighted--if you would stay here alone and be good enough to do without the endless number of people who never leave you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Cleves, "your looks and your words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He pressed her a long time to do so without being able to induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I have several times intended to do so. Think only that prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own mistress,[274] to remain exposed to the trials[275] of a Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Cleves. "I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court, or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me. However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never displease you. Think how--to do as I am doing--I must have more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you can, love me still." M. de Cleves had remained, all the time she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears, and so admirably lovely that he was ready to die of grief. But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:
[_The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression ofdespairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is ratherlong, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally,though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is thatthus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time theeavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) ishardly less on thorns than M. de Cleves himself. At last a reference tothe portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if notan immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband._]
It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we havehad before--a much further importation of the methods and subjects ofpoetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.
We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, asone looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be verydifficult to "_pro_ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews andgossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well asthe dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete_eclaircissement_ nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and morein love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to directtemptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover,and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night whenthe Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelityis removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, tillthe "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only tooanxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few yearsof "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.
It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the bookmay appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterlydeprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history--of whichthere is a good deal, very well told in itself,[276] and the appearanceof which at all is interesting--is introduced in too great proportions,so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremelyartificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was alsoreal, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for theartifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, orbridge--amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tediousto hear or read about.[277] Another point, again true to the facts ofthe time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almostentire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to eachother as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I donot think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Cleves's name. Nowthere is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowingher Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, isthe fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as tothe too _solid_ character of the narrative. There is, indeed, morepositive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. Buteven there the writer has not had the courage to break it up intoactual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's,""replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in theway of smooth reading.
So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fullercollection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admittedthat the historical element[278] is perhaps, in the circumstances andfor the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But itspresence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of thedetails--the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may_not_ connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful_faience_ once called "Henri Deux" ware,[279] with his wife and hismistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the historyof Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughterby a French prince (if not _this_ French prince)--are historical enoughto present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas ofthe Scudery romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any criticalBrown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though itwas not for more than another century that the true historical novel gotitself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the otherside--the purely sentimental--let us not say psychological--side, is offar more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration orchance-medley, we have
attainment.
There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments,especially of novels, and more especially against what are calledcondensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without anyartful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of _LaPrincesse de Cleves_, as it stands, a much shorter but fullyintelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slightwant of _individual_ character may still be desiderated; it is hardlytill _Manon Lescaut_ that we get that, but it was not to be expected.Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is thattruth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had beenhitherto attempted by--we may almost say permitted to--the poet, thedramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancershad aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set"with the halls and _ruelles_ of the Court, the gardens and woods ofCoulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if itseems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed forworking out the simple plot--as, for instance, in the case of thedropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with anyof the chief characters, becomes an important instrument--is sometimesfar from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.
It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things--things ofunequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, itstarted the School of "Sensibility"[280] in the novel, and so provided alarge and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In thesecond--small as it is--it almost started the novel proper, the class ofprose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms andcolours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet inthe main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of allsubjective--by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character,motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had hadfew if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangledfrom the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief newdevelopment of modern literature.
* * * * *
There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from theother fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the samequalification for the present chapter as that which has installed in itthe novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, orrather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-talesonly "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to anatural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in hissupernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fictiongenerally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he isin turn himself the head of two considerable though widely differentsub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largelycultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale_improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummatelyexcellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fullydiscussed, hereafter.
The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; butuntil comparatively recently, his history and family relations were verylittle understood. Since the present writer discussed him in apaper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older incomposition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundingsin the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monographby a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later bepublished. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held backat his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing ofimportance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so longand so securely rested, on the _Memoires de Grammont_, the few butsometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generallyenough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set afashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire andBeckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these thingsthe verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the_Memoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, andone of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative ofwhich the century is so full, and which have so close a connection withthe novel itself. But the _Tales_ are, of course, ours of most obviousright; and they form one of the most important _points de repere_ in ourstory.
To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditionsand circumstances of birth[287] and life[288] influenced his literaryproduction would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. Toattempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influenceswhich produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, butwould, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the bookenormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may becalled, though both were of very recent date and one actuallycontemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy forfairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the nowingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais,as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others,had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from nota few writers, especially Saint-Evremond. There is indeed no doubt thatthis last remarkable and now far too little read writer,[289] who, letit be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimatefriend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton'sdirect and immediate model so far as he had any such--his "master" inthe general tone of _persiflage_. But master and pupil chose, as a rule,different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must beremembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of theHamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality,while Saint-Evremond was actually born in Normandy. The Norman (that isto say, the English, with a special intention of difference[290]) ineach could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business.But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation tothe development of the novel, that we have to deal with.
It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, thatall the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" applicationin them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in suchthings, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that itprobably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, fromthe big as well as "great" _Cyrus_ to the little, but certainly not muchless great, _Princesse de Cleves_. But our subject is what Hamiltonwrites about these people, not the people about whom he may or may notbe writing.
What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed(and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of fivestories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the fiveunfinished. One of the finished pieces, _Fleur d'Epine_, and one of theunfinished--although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but,unluckily in a way, by far the best of all--_Les Quatre Facardins_, are"framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverentsort of attachment, to the _Arabian Nights_; the others, _Le Belier_,_Zeneyde_ (unfinished), and _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, are independent, andwritten in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popularby various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to bevery acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of justover 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but theirindividual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary_Quatre Facardins_ and the finished _Le Belier_, run each of them to 142pages; the shortest, _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, has just five-and-twenty;while _Fleur d'Epine_, in its completeness, has 114, and _Zeneyde_, inits incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one cantell--in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which theauthor (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scudery's classicalchronicling) has chosen to plunge it--to 780 or 7800, which latterfigure would, after all, have been little more than half the length ofthe _Grand Cyrus_ itself.
We may take _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ first, as it requires the shortestnotice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly requirean
y. Written to a "charmante Daphne" (evidently one of the EnglishJacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of herswho was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it isoccupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with themixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal"(about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains.The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to,Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra,and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,[291]whom she insists on summoning _twice_, despite Faustus's warning, andwith disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that onedoes not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him notonly introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth,but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of toQueen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger;but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen'sdepreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, arerather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen likeit for that _Second_ (but not necessarily _Last_) _Part_ of the_Facardins_, which Crebillon the younger is said to have actually seenand had the opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till toolate.
As _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ is the shortest of the completed tales, so _LeBelier_ is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the samelength as what we have of _Les Quatre Facardins_. It is also--in thatunsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literatureoften has to content itself--much the best known, because of thecelebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "Belier, monami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me feraisplaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on thewhole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attendsthese "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame deGrammont, who had established herself in a country-house, nearVersailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau,into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There wereapparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wovethe whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of courseenchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men(or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant'senemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and otherpersonages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable andinteresting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are notspecially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes andpiquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's.But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found itthe least interesting (next to _L'Enchanteur Faustus_) of all.
On the other hand, _Zeneyde_--though unfinished, and though containing,in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince deNoisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation--has points ofremarkable interest about it. One of these--a prefatory sketch of themelancholy court of exiles at St. Germains--is like nothing else inHamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sensefiction--it is, in fact, a historical document of the most strikingkind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and itgives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballinglittle crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not makesmall. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also astronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet_persiflage_ of the _Contes_ themselves. This, however, though easily"cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with itkey-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formedpart of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.
The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much morestrikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwovenso intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them,though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more differentfrom each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given bythe Nymph of the Seine to the author--a history of which more presently.But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more thanonce, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctlyunwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous characterto be found even in Hamilton himself.
The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narratoris extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It isenough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardentnympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, whichare of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only tomake fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exerther supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreantinto her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situatedon land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said,mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode.But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even ofthe writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion ofwig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise theirperiwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:
[Sidenote: Hamilton and the Nymph.]
At these words [_her own_] raising her eyes to heaven, she sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her example.[293] But she soon recovered herself; and having shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible to my sympathetic emotion ... [_she enjoins discretion, and then_:--] After having looked at me attentively for some time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean over her in a rather familiar manner.[294] Her face touched mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very different from the insensibility which I had accused[295] her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig. "'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was addressed to me, so I was just rising....
This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an exampleas could be found of the curious mixture of French and English inHamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitiouseidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen,though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly,and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story,as admitted above, is _assommant_, though, just before the breach, asubstitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promisessomething better.
This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and mostcharacteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more"serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need todistress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The wholething was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; andthe rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dullfools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.
We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitiousattempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, oneneed not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had anaim at something like a whole--even if the legends[296] about furtherparts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity,are not taken as wholly gospel.
The completed
_Fleur d'Epine_ and the uncompleted _QuatreFacardins_[297] are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearanceincomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of anuntitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the _Arabian Nights_themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived anaffection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar'snotion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain, but I thinkpossible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that theunmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembranceof the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing atdawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense ofhonest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (orrather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequelin a way revenges her.
I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamiltonwhen he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in _Bluebeard's Ghost_. Likeher, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainlyhave observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her,she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning,"takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; andit is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epicof the Facardins,[298] of whom he is himself one. But as there are onlytwo stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much lessof the "resurrected" Dinarzade[299] than we could wish from what we dosee and hear.
_Fleur d'Epine_, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhatcloser to the usual norm of the _Nights_ than is usual with Hamilton. Itbases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with theliterally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really theheroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she isfinally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, andhas everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for"Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumedname), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has toliberate a still more attractive damsel--the title-heroine--putativedaughter of a good fairy and actual victim of a bad one, quite in theorthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare,who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when herears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plentyof the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plentyalso of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quiteconsummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton'sstyle, may be given.
[Sidenote: The opening of _Fleur d'Epine_.]
Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter, and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies of Cashmere--a thousand times whiter than ours--were discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke point of hair blacker and more shining than jet--whence she took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt everything.
No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this was nothing but--in the literal sense, and the other--child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full strength that they became no joking matter.
[_The fatal effects--killing men in twenty-four hours, and blindingwomen--are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sonshave fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evilmade at a committee, which is presided over by the Seneschal of thekingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office--so muchso that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one lesssilly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and sothe story starts._]
[Sidenote: _Les Quatre Facardins._]
But--and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already beenindicated--Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is _Les QuatreFacardins_. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another,the most finished of all. Beside it the completed _Faustus_ is a meretrifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like_Zeneyde_ and even _Le Belier_. It has much greater complication ofinterest and variety of treatment than _Fleur d'Epine_, in which, afterthe opening, Hamilton's peculiar _persiflage_, though not absent, ismuch less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as thesuggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up allhis threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weavethem into a new and definite pattern. Moreover--this may not be arecommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the presenthistorian,--it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. Itis, indeed, not at all unlikely that there _is_ one, for the trick wasingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, itis a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it aloneit will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.
To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones ofa very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the_Arabian Nights_ is brought closer still in the fact that it is not onlytold (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade'sservant-cavalier, but is linked--to an important extent, and not at allto Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction--with one of the earliest incidentsof the _Nights_ themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from theSea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion andalarm--not to mention the value of the rings themselves--to the Sultanand his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie and herglass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"--one of the twoheroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only thebeginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline laSerieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by theloss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormouscrocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under amysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made forher, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-fourdozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared[300]after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of theRobes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of thecapital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat mildervarieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of allappetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible forher to sleep.
This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end ofwhat we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesqueembassy, amply provided with painted cloth[301] and monkeys, to thegreat enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), andthe announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result--a newadventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or killthe crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltoniansentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess."Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom ofAstrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaimsbeing an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner)that as he lives on the top of a moun
tain close to the stars, theyprobably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collectthree spinning-wheels[302] which are scattered over the universe, butof some of which we have heard earlier in the story.
One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of thegiant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning notmerely in the middle but at the end--an end, alas! due, if we believeall the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a _devote_--avariety of person for whom her brother[303] certainly had smallaffection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite socruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin atthe beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read witheyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historicalcondemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular forhalf a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, likealmost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show thepoetic power which the author of _Celle que j'adore_[304] undoubtedlypossessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favourromances, celebrated for their sentiments, from _Cyrus_ to _Zaide_,_i.e._ from Mlle. de Scudery to Mme. de la Fayette. _Telemaque_ had nobetter fate
On courut au Palais[305] le rendre, Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.[306]
Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, thesincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then hehimself took up the running, of course obliged by request ofirresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be readwith grains of salt--the salt-merchant of which everybody is at libertyto choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, inall modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.
But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins"themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, muchafter the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of theinnumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the_Cyrus_. He begins, like Dinarzade,[307] by "cheeking" the Sultan on hisviews of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominionsin quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable namewhich his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurerhappened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparentlyall made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are tothe effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the mostextravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardinof the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which heproposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) ofMousseline la Serieuse. For the present he contents himself with two orthree more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reducethe wildest of the _Nights_ to simple village tales--of an island wherelions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and smalldeer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts,witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After aninterruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and _Sir Thopas_,from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of theMountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebratedscratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel")recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and atlast, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizondcomes to his own affairs.
Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has aminim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whosefeatures were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhapsonly here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortableelsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundyneed not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's littleways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, andby a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirelydispleased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and areonly to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. Butthis process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours,and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnappedor cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad asOmphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is tobe flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary,enters--beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that alady wants help--the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene.But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to partwith his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the helpof Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more sensesthan one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant--a watchmaker whosets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and akind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying andburning,--cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat,regaining _terra firma_ and (relatively speaking) _terra_ not too muchenchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile riverhe again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured inCristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories weshall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale"join our ends" as far as is permitted.
It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay ofHamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected soconvincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it wouldbe unjust to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a _matrix_ ofcontext, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to thiscurious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to someextent--in Thackeray to more--among Englishmen. There is, in French,something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; andof course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, whocertainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slightindebtedness to Saint-Evremond noticed above, essentially new andoriginal. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say,Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that dayexcept by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixedadvantages and disadvantages of his exile position.
Frenchmen at the time--there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but ofsolid evidence to prove it--knew practically nothing of Englishliterature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated andtranslated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not asyet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenthcentury to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear,not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on theeccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought tobe compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne--withboth, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection--after him. He is a smallerman, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but thephrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might beused without any absurdity in reference to him. He _is_ a "Rabelais debonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he mightbe called a Voltaire or a Sterne _de bonne compagnie_ likewise. That isto say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, whichRabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but didnot choose to be, and which neither Francois Arouet nor Laurence Sternecould have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosisis not quite so utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in theother's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; buthis naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,[308] and he dependsupon it so little--a very important point--that he is sometimes mostamusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need ofit, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of humancomedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.
* * * * *
It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprisefelt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books--no oneof them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimatesrun--has been here handled. Bu
t the truth is that the actual birth ofthe French novel took a much longer time than that of the English--aphenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact thatit came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyedin this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next--atleast Scarron, Furetiere, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage,Marivaux, and Prevost--whatever objections or limitations may be broughtagainst them, form the central group of the originators of the modernnovel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that offactitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties ofincident and character; the manners and interiors and fantasticadjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine thedevelopments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement tothose immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in theraising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetiere in painting ofmanners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws_La Princesse de Cleves_ into the shade as regards the greatest andmost novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_,the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." Andperhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius tosome who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made littleprogress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after theyceased to write.
NOTE ON _TELEMAQUE_
It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that criticism of Hamilton's on _Telemaque_, the conclusion of which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Telemaque_ contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness, and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded, men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.
Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fenelon's book were directly at variance with Court standards was recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise to which no exception could be taken, with what might be taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's, crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this envelope. _Telemaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's "thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments might have, much more pure romance interest than its centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more intelligence than the average member of the clan, have hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fenelon, who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic. Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics, morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things, is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge majority--of novel readers would not care to take the trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species. Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof; and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom--perhaps never--really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.
FOOTNOTES:
[247] It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that theprinciple of separation in these chapters is quite different from that(between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by Koerting and others, andreprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Brunetiere.
[248] _L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de laLune_, etc.
[249] It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many morespeeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed herewrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself inhardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is inall his.
[250] It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about the_Berger_, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls onhimself to curse the _Astree_, but he, sometimes at least, blesses it.
[251] The _Berger_ fills two volumes of some nine hundred pages;_Polyandre_, two of six hundred each! But it must be admitted that theprint is very large and widely spaced.
[252] One remembers the story of the greater Corneille calling to thelesser down a trap between their two houses, "Sans-Souci!--une rime!"
[253] I have known this word more than once objected to as pedantic. Butpedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way terms when commonones are ready to hand. There is no single word in English to expressthe lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word does. And Greek isa recognised and standing source of words for English. If geography, whynot rhyparography?--or, if any one prefers it, "rhypography," which,however, is not, I think, so good a form.
[254] There is, no doubt, significance in the fact that they aredefinitely called _nouvelles_.
[255] _V. sup._ p. 204. The habit of these continues in all the books._L'Illustre Bassa_ opens with a most elaborate, but still not very much"alive," procession and sham fight.
[256] Of course Cervantes is not shadowy.
[257] As far as mere chronology goes, Cyrano, _v. inf._, should comebetween; but it would split the parallel.
[258] Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a distinctionbetween the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old" romances, meaningthereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the _Amadis_ cycle.Furetiere definitely classes all of them together.
[259] The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for oncethere is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, ifreally meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhapsexplain the expulsion and persecution of Furetiere, by his colleagues ofthe Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof--hiscompiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a FrenchDictionary, and a
very good one, which was not printed till after hisdeath, and ultimately became the famous _Dictionnaire de Trevoux_. Notthat Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows theirritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.Furetiere had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuetdownwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems tohave disapproved the Academy's action. But the _Roman_ was heavily"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlierpart of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the firstpart of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.
[260] She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which they visittogether, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she will use itfor her most precious things, he privately gets a second set of keysfrom the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the promise.
[261] Any one who has, as the present writer has had, opportunities ofactually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting operation, and onewhich "amply repays the expense" of time and trouble.
[262] This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like characterare most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material" in thetransferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly learnt thislesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_,where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for conveying informationabout sports and pastimes and costumes and such-like "antiqu_ar_ities."
[263] To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.
[264] Not a bad instance of the subacid touches which make the booklively, and which probably supply some explanation of its author'sunpopularity. The "furred law-cats" of all kinds were always aprevailing party in Old France, and required stout gloves to touch themwith.
[265] This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore) is a"Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in memoryof the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of OurLord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made _atintervals_. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time straightthrough. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."
[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phraseslike "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge moreelegantly 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 calleda loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or asFuretiere himself has it, _debiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps,to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that thenovelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness ofbourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in thisalso.
[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself deCyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of hislegendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon;but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and thereappears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.
[270] There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having beenthis--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called"free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in theseventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgarinfidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal orSaint-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 ofSocrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes, sometimes tameparadoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher,or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present day.--Of theattempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little: but amongpredecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his _News from the NewWorld 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 gardenpavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their suite atsome distance.
[274] _Maitresse de sa conduite_, a curious but not difficult text as toFrench 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 simpleEnglish verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for sale."
[276] Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and, possiblyfrom her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well acquainted withEnglish as well as French history. But our proper names, as usual,vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane _Seimer_ andCatherine _Havart_.
[277] This does not apply to the _main_ love story but to the atmospheregenerally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is represented as inlove with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines, with whom he isnot quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom he is; (4) alady unnamed, with whom he has _trompe_ them all. This may be trueenough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter offiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the same.
[278] It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc., alterednot a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration was muchless than in most other histories at most other periods. It would beeasy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience coveredthe whole time.
[279] You _had_ to call it so when I first saw it; when I last did so itwas "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 asmoral indecorum.
[283] Written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882, but by a chapter ofaccidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in _Essays onFrench 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 differentgenus.
[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 theprose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the_Cabinet_ insets, _v. sup._) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellaniesthe so-called _Relations_ "of different places in Europe," and "of avoyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almostuniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "TheNature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written--thelast man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off--acontrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.
[287] As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of thenoblest families of Great Britain and Ireland.
[288] As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite exile inFrance.
[289] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of mine on himin _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London, 1892). It contains a full account,and some translation, of the _Conversation du marechal d'Hocquincourtavec le Pere Canaye_, which is at once the author's masterpiece of quietirony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and his clearest evidenceof influence on Hamilton.
[290] There are some who hold that _the_ "English" differentia, whethershown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed, east orwest of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.
[291] The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's position toRosamond's is interesting.
[292] It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which stillconcealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further literaryinterest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's admirable_Jacobite's Epitaph_. The account would be rather out of place here, butmay be found translate
d at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of _Essayson French Novelists_ more than once referred to.
[293] The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is of courseintentional, and is Hamilton all over.
[294] The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has beenrecalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.
[295] This is as impudent as the other passages below are imbecile--ofcourse in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence andimbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come outof the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he wasnever good for an assignation when he was wet!
[296] If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it isa sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age."It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was notskittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into somethingworse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very pretty!
[297] "Completions" of both _Zeneyde_ and _Les Quatre Facardins_, by theDuke de Levis, are included in some editions, but they are, after thefashions of such things, very little good.
[298] The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but itsuggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and othersincluding, perhaps, even _faquin_.
[299] The Sultaness is almost _persona muta_--and indeed her tongue musthave required a rest.
[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor PrincessMousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incidentrecorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could notget a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households andStationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.
[301] _I.e._ colour-printed cotton from India--a novelty "fashionable"and, therefore, satirisable in France.
[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?
[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, thelatter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.
[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originallyintended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.
[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, _LaGalerie 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, ina short French-Greek dialogue, called _La Volupte_, he makes Aspasia sayto Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire debauche."