A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2
CONCLUSION
The remaining pages of this book should be occupied partly with acontinuation of a former chapter,[558] partly with a summary of thewhole volume, the combination, almost necessary in all cases, beingspecially motived in this by the overlappings referred to above, and aword added on the whole _History_. Not only did Victor Hugo hold, toFrench literature as well as to French poetry, something very like theposition[559] occupied by Tennyson and Browning in English poetry only,by covering every quarter of the century in whole or part with his work;but there was, even in France, nothing like the "general post" ofdisappearances and accessions which marked the period from 1820 to 1860in English--a consequence necessarily of the later revival of French. Noone except Chateaubriand corresponded to the crowd of distinguishedwriters who thus made their appearance, at the actual meeting ofeighteenth and nineteenth, with us; and though, of course, there wereexceptions, the general body of the French reinforcement did not dwindlemuch till 1870 onwards.
We noted that the first great development of the nineteenth-centurynovel was in the historical department, though many others made notablefresh starts: and we said something about the second development of the"ordinary" one which followed. It is this latter, of course, which hassupplied the main material of the last third of the present volume,though (of course again) there have been many noteworthy and some greatexamples of the historical itself, of the supernatural, of theeccentric, and of many other kinds. But practically all who tried theselater tried the ordinary, and a great many who tried the ordinary didnot try the others. It is therefore on the development of the novel ofcommon modern life that we must, at any rate for a little time, spendmost of our attention here.
The fact of the change is indeed so certain and so obvious, that thereis not much need to enforce or illustrate it, though it must beremembered that, on any true conception of history, the most obviousthings are not those least worthy of being chronicled. Even Hugo, likelyto be, and actually being, the most recalcitrant to the movement, comesclose to modern times, and to such ordinary life as was possible to him,in _Les Miserables_ and _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_. George Sand hadbegun as a sort of modernist; but by any one who can perform the (it istrue not very easy) task of equating relative modernity, it will not befound that _Mlle. la Quintinie_, or even _Flamarande_, are more modernthan _Lelia_ or _Valentine_ in the mere ratio of the dates. The ordinarylife of the 'thirties and that of the 'sixties and 'seventies was nodoubt different, but there is more than that difference in the booksreferred to. The artist is, consciously or unconsciously, trying to getnearer to her model or sitter. And this though George Sand was reallyalmost as self-centred as Hugo, though in another way.
But it is, of course, in less idiosyncratic writers than these, whocontinued, and in others who began, to write at this time, that we mustlook for our real documents. Among the elder of this second class, JulesSandeau's work is worth recurring to. He had sometimes gone a littleearlier than his own time, and he had sometimes employed what iscalled--perhaps inconsiderately and certainly to some extentmisleadingly--"romantic" incident in addition to purely novel-characterand presentation. But his general manner of dealing reproduces itself,almost more than that of any of his contemporaries, in those novelistsof the last quarter of the century who do not bow the knee toNaturalism: and one finds some actual recognition of the fact indedications to him by younger novelists such as M. Andre Theuriet.[560]
But, look where you will, the lesson is unmistakable. Take AlexandreDumas _fils_, beginning with a _Tristan le Roux_ and ending with an_Affaire Clemenceau_. Take Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_ and _L'EducationSentimentale_, in comparison with which _Salammbo_ and two of the _TroisContes_ (the other is quite in the general drift) are obviousvariations, excursions, reliefs.[561] Feuillet is practically (whatevermay have been his early practice as a "devil"), when he takes to his ownline, modern, and in a sense ordinary or nothing: Daudet the same.Naturalism _en bloc_ would lose almost all pretence of justifying itselfif it did not stick to the ordinary, or at least actual, though it maysometimes be a sort of transformed "ordinariness in abnormality." Sogreat and so fertile a writer as Maupassant leaves us--except in hissupernaturalisms--nothing at all that goes out of the actual probable oreasily possible experience of a Frenchman of 1880-90. The four novelistswho supply the bulk of the last chapter never outstep this. But sincesuch indulgence in particulars may be thought mere driving at an opendoor, let us take the fact for granted, and turn to some considerationof its causes, results, conditions, features, and the like.
One of the causes is of such certainty and importance that a person, notindolent or prejudiced, might ask for no other. It is that sempiternaldesire for change[562]--that principle of revolution, which is so muchmore certain than any evolution, and which governs human life, though itis always bringing that life back to the old places, "camouflaged," asthey say nowadays, in a fashion that disguises them to the simple. Theromance of incident, historical and other, had had a long innings, andpeople were tired of it. But though this was undoubtedly the maininfluence, there were some others which it would be hardly judicious toneglect. It is true that the greatest of these were, in a fashion, onlypartial actions or reactions of the larger one already mentioned.[563]Beyle and Balzac, the latter of course with important "colours" of hisown, and even the former with some modifications, had, as men of geniusgenerally do, felt or found the spirit of change early, and theiraudiences helped to spread it. And yet minor impulsions might beindicated. It is a commonplace that from the days of the Napoleonic Warto the middle 'fifties there were few great European events; commercialprogress, developments of colonisation, machinery, literature, and thearts, somewhat peddling politics,[564] and the like taking the place ofthe big wars and the grandiose revolutions that ushered in thenineteenth century. But these mostly meaner things themselves claimedattention; they filled the life of men if they did not glorify it;classes and occupations which had been almost altogether non-vocal beganto talk and be talked about, and so the change again held on.
Lastly, of course, there was the increase of education: with which thedemand for fiction, plentiful in quantity and easily comprehended, wassure to grow.
On the whole, however, the results concern us more than the causes. Whatis the general character of this large province, or, looking at it inanother way, of these accumulated crops, which the fifty years morespecially in question saw added to the prose fiction of France?
The answer is pretty much what any wide student of history--political,social, literary, or other--would expect, supposing, which is of coursein fact an impossibility, that he could come to the particular study"fresh and fasting." Novel-writing in France, as elsewhere, became moreand more a business; and so, while the level of craftsmanship might beto some extent raised, the level of artistic excellence wascorrespondingly lowered. It has been before observed more than oncethat, to the present critic, only Flaubert and Maupassant of the writerswe have been discussing in these later chapters can be credited withpositive genius, unless the too often smoky and malodorous torch of Zolabe admitted to qualify for the Procession of the Chosen. But when wetake in the whole century the retrospect is very different; and whilethe later period may suffer slightly in the respect just indicated, theearlier affords it some compensation in the other noted point.
There is, indeed, no exact parallel, in any literature or any branch ofliterature within my knowledge, to the manifold development of theFrench novel during these hundred years. Our own experience in the samedepartment cannot be set in any proper comparison with it, for the fourgreat novelists of the mid-eighteenth century, and their followers fromMiss Burney downwards, with the Terror and the Political schools of theextreme close, had advanced our starting-point so far that Scott andMiss Austen possessed advantages not open to any French writer. On theother hand, the Sensibility School, which was far more numerouslyattended in France than in England, gave other openings, which _were_taken advantage of in a special direction by Benjamin Const
ant, and muchearlier and less brilliantly, but still with important results, byMadame de Montolieu. The age-long competence of the French in _conte_and _nouvelle_ was always ready for fresh adaptation; and at the verybeginning of the new century, and even earlier, two reinforcements ofthe most diverse character came to the French novel. Pigault-Lebrun andDucray-Duminil (the earliest of whose novels appeared just before theRevolution as Pigault's debut was made just after it) may be said tohave democratised the novel to nearly[565] the full meaning of that muchabused word. They lowered its value aesthetically, ethically (at leastin Pigault's case, while Ducray's morality does not go much above the"Be amiable and honest" standard), logically, rhetorically, and in agood many other ways. But they did not merely increase the number of itsreaders; in so doing they multiplied correspondingly the number of itspractitioners, and so they helped to make novel-writing a businessand--through many failures and half-successes--to give it a sort ofregularised practice, if not a theory.
Yet if this democratisation of the novel thus went partly but, as doesall democratisation inevitably, to the degradation of it in quality,though to its increase in quantity, there were fortunately otherinfluences at work to provide new reinforcements, themselves in somecases of quality invaluable. It has been admitted that neitherChateaubriand nor Madame de Stael can be said to have written afirst-class novel--even _Corinne_ can hardly be called that. But it isnearer thereto than anything that had been written since the first partof _La Nouvelle Heloise_: while _Rene_ and _Atala_ recover, and morethan recover in tragic material, the narrative power of the best comictales. And these isolated examples were of less importance for theactual history--being results of individual genius, which are notimitable--than certain more general characteristics of the two writers.Between them--a little perhaps owing to their social position, but muchmore by their pure literary quality--they reinstated the novel in theUpper House of literature itself. In Madame de Stael there was more thanadequacy--in Chateaubriand there was sometimes consummateness--of style;in both, with whatever varnish of contemporary affectation, there wasgenuine nobility of thought. They both chose subjects worthy of theirpowers, and Madame de Stael at least contented herself with ordinary, ornot very extraordinary, modern life. But the greatest things they did,from the historian's point of view, were introductions of the novel tonew fields of exercise and endeavour. Art and religion were brought intoits sphere, and if _Les Natchez_ and _Les Martyrs_ cannot exactly becalled modern historical novels, they are considerable advances, bothupon the model of _Telemaque_ and upon that of _Belisaire_. And evenputting this aside, the whole body of Chateaubriand's work, as well asnot a little in Madame de Stael's, tended to introduce and to encouragethe spirit of Romance.
Now the proposition which--though never, I trust, pushed to theunliterary extent of warping the judgment, and never yet, I hope, undulyflaunted or flourished in the reader's face--dominates this volume, isthat Romanticism, or, to use the shorter and more glorious name,Romance, itself dominates the whole of the French nineteenth-centurynovel. If any one considers that this proposition is at variance withthe other, that the main function of the novel during the period hasbeen to bring the novel closer to ordinary life, he has failed to graspwhat it might be presumptuous plumply to call the true meaning ofRomance, but what is certainly that meaning as it has always appeared tome.
To attempt discussion, or even enumeration, of all the definitions ordescriptions of Romance in general which have been given by others wouldnot only be impossible in the space at command, but would be reallyirrelevant. As it happens, the matter can be cut short, withoutinadequacy and without disingenuousness, by quoting a single pair ofepithets, affixed by a critic, for whom I have great respect, a day ortwo before I wrote these words. This critic held that Romantictreatment--in stage matters more particularly, but we can extend thephrase to fiction without unfairness--was "generous but false." _I_should call it "generous" certainly, but before all things "true." Noris this a mere play upon the words of the original. It so happens thatour friend the enemy has supplied a most admirable help. Legally, as weknow, veracity requires "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but thetruth." I admit that the last clause will not fit Romance. She does giveus something more than the truth, and that is her generosity, but it isa generosity which is necessitated by the fact that Romance is a qualityor function not so much of nature essentially--though happily it issometimes so by accident--as of Art, the essence of which is to require,whether it be art classic or art romantic, art of literature or art ofdesign, art of sight or art of sound, something _added_ to the truth--asthat truth exists in reality.
Of what this addition is presently. But Romance, as I see it, insistsupon and gives the truth and the whole truth of nature itself. Who isthe greatest of Romantics? By agreement of all but the purblind and theparadoxer, Shakespeare. Who is the truest and the most universal of allwriters? By consent of classic and romantic, at least of those of eitherkind who "count"--again Shakespeare. Let me say at once that, havingearly sworn allegiance to Logic, I am perfectly aware that a coincidenceof two things in one person does not prove the identity of the things.But it proves their compossibility, and when it is found _in excelsis_,it surely goes near to prove a good deal more. Nor is one in the leastconfined to this argument from example, strong as it is. When youexamine Classicism, which, whatever we may say or not say of it, willalways stand as the opposite of Romance, you find that it always leavessomething out. It may--it does in its best examples--give you truth; itmay--it does in its best examples--add something which is its own"generosity"--its castigation, its order, its reason, its this and thatand the other. To be very liberal, it may be admitted that the perpetualand meticulous presence in it of "Thou shalt not" do or say this orthat, is most conspicuous--let us go to the extreme of generosityourselves and say, is only conspicuous--in its feebler examples. Butthere is always something that it does not give, and some of us thinkthat there are not a few things which it cannot give. There is nothing,not even ugliness itself, which Romance cannot give, though there itsform of generosity comes in, and the ugly in simple essence becomesbeautiful by treatment.
I could bestow any amount of tediousness in these generalities on myreaders if I thought it necessary: but having developed my propositionand its meaning, I think it better to pass to the applications thereofin the present subject.
Of the wide extension of aim and object effected by Romantic influencein the novel, as in other departments of literature, there can be littledenial, though of course it may be contended that this extension tookplace not as it ought and as it ought not. But of the fact of it and ofthe corresponding variety introduced with it, the very pioneers of theso-called Romantic movement give ample proof. We have seen this even inthe extremely inchoate stage of the first two decades; when the greatdefinitely Romantic leaders made their appearance it was more remarkablestill. The four chief writers who gave the Romantic lead before 1830itself may be taken to be Nodier, Hugo, Merimee, and Vigny. They standin choice of subjects, as in treatment of them, wide apart; and just asit has been noted of Vigny's poetry, that its three chief pieces,"Eloa," "Dolorida," and "Le Cor" point the way to three quite differentkinds of Romantic verse, so, confining ourselves to the same example, itmay be repeated that _Cinq-Mars_ and the smaller stories exemplify, andin a way pattern, kinds of Romantic prose fiction even further apartfrom each other. Always, through the work of these and that of Gautier,and of all the others who immediately or subsequently follow them, thisbroadening and branching out of the Romantic influence--this opening offresh channels, historical and fanciful, supernatural andordinary--shows itself. The contention, common in books, that thissomehow ceased about the middle of the century, or at least died offwith the death of those who had carried it out, appears to me, Iconfess, to be wildly unhistorical and uncritical. At no time--theproofs fill this volume--do we find any restriction, of choice ofsubject or conduct of treatment, to anything like the older limits. Butthe most unhistorical and the most unc
ritical form of this contention isthe astonishing endeavour to vindicate a "classical" character forNaturalism. Most certainly there is "impropriety" in some of theclassics and "impropriety" in all the Naturalists, but other resemblanceI can see none. As for the argument that as Naturalism is opposed toRomance and Classicalism is opposed to Romance, _therefore_ Naturalismis Classical--this is undoubtedly a very common form of bastardsyllogism, but to labour at proving its bastardy would be somewhatridiculous.
The fact is, as should have been sufficiently made good above, thatNaturalism is not opposed to Romance in anything like the sense thatClassicism is: it is nothing but a degradation and exaggeration at onceof certain things in Romance itself. Nor do I think that there is theslightest difficulty in showing that every form of novel-writing whichwe have been surveying in this book--that the work of every one of thosedistinguished or undistinguished writers who have been, with or withoutregret, declined--is still essentially Romantic. It is Romantic in itsinflexible resolution to choose subjects for itself and not according torule; Romantic in its wise or unwise individuality of treatment;Romantic in its preferential appeal to emotion rather than to pureintelligence; above all, Romantic in its quest--often no doubtill-guided and unsuccessful, but always more or less present--for thatelement of strangeness which, though invisible to many who live, is apervading character of Life itself, and the presence of which it is theglory of Romance itself, from its earliest to its latest manifestations,to have recognised and to some extent fixed, in artistic representation.And so, I hope, that what has been discovered in this volume--in the wayof pageant and procession even more than that of examination, thoughwith something of that also--may have shown further progresstowards--nay, actual attainment of, the goal which I ventured to markout in the earlier volume as that of the novelist by the words, "Here isthe whole of human life before you. Copy it or, better, re-createit--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as faithfully, but asfully, as you can."
Thesis-writing, however, is but dismal reading, unless (as Mrs. Scotttold Jeffrey she hoped he was for the _Marmion_ review) "you are verywell paid for it." Nor do I, as I have previously explained, consider ita necessary part of history, though common honesty may require that thepresence of a doctrine, behind the delivery of an account, should beconfessed. I think the account itself should be sufficient to make goodmy point; others may differ. But even if they do, some of them at leastwill, I hope, have found in that account some modicum of the amazingsupply of rest and refreshment contained in the mass of literature wehave been surveying.
On the two volumes together there may be a little more to say. I havetouched, I hope not too frequently, on the curious pleasure which Imyself have felt in reading again books sometimes unopened for more thanhalf a century, sometimes read at different times during that period,sometimes positively familiar; and on the contrasted enjoyment ofreading others written long ago in all but a few cases, but not, as ithappened, read at the time of their appearance. I am indeed inclined tolay much stress on the quality of re-readableness in a novel. Perhaps,as indeed is pretty generally the fact in such cases, a capacity ofreading again is required in the person as well as one of being readagain in the book. The late Mr. Mark Pattison was not a friend of mine,and we once had a pitched battle; nor was he in any case given to borrowother people's expressions. But he was a critic, if he was anything, andhe once did me the honour to repeat _verbatim_--whether consciously ornot I cannot say, but in the very periodical where it had originallyappeared--a sentence of mine about "people who would rather read anycirculating-library trash, for the first time, than _Pendennis_ or_Pride and Prejudice_ for the second." I think this difference betweenthe two classes is as worthy to rank, among the criteria of opposedraces of mankind and womankind, as those between borrowers and lenders,Platonists and Aristotelians, or Big- and Little-Endians.
But the vast library through which I have had the privilege ofconducting my readers does not exercise any invidious separation betweenthe two. I have read a good many French novels--hundreds certainly, I donot know that it would be preposterous to say thousands--that I have noteven mentioned in this book.[566] But I have been a very busy man, andhave had to read and to do a great many other things. If I had hadnothing else to do and had devoted my entire life to the occupationwhich Gray thought not undesirable as regards Marivaux and Crebillon, Idoubt whether I could have "overtaken," as the Scotch say, the entireprose fiction of 1800-1900 in French. On the back of one of the volumesof fiction--itself pretty obscure--which I have noticed in Chapter II.of this volume, I find advertised the works of a certain Dinocourt, ofwhom I never heard before, and who is not to be found in at least sometolerably full French dictionaries of literature. They have quiteappetising titles (one or two given in the passage referred to), andthere are in all sixty-two volumes of them, distributed in fours, fives,and sixes among the several works. Ought I to have read these sixty oddvolumes of Dinocourt? That is a moral question. That there _are_ sixtyodd volumes of him, probably not now very easily obtainable, butsomewhere for some one to read if he likes, is a simple fact. And thereare no doubt many more than sixty such batches waiting likewise,[567]and quite likely to prove as readable as I found M. Ricard.
I have by no means always felt inclined to acquiesce in the endlesslyrepeated complaints that the hackwork of literature is worse done inEngland than it is in France. But having had a very large experience ofthe novels of both languages, having reviewed hundreds of English novelsside by side with hundreds of French as they came from the press, andhaving also read, for pleasure or duty, hundreds of older ones in eachliterature, I think that the mysterious quality of readableness pure andsimple _has_ more generally belonged to the French novel than to theEnglish. This, as I have endeavoured to point out, is not a question ofnaughtiness or niceness, of candour or convention. I have indeedadmitted that the conventions of the French novel bore me quite as muchas anything in ours. It _may_ be partly a question of length, for, aseverybody knows, the French took to the average single volume, of somethree hundred not very closely printed pages, much sooner than we tookto anything of the kind. It is perhaps partly also due to what one ofthe reviewers of my former volume well called the greater "spaciousness"of the English novel, that is to say, its inclusion of more diverseaims, and episodic subjects, and minor interests generally. For this,while it makes for superior greatness when there is strength enough tocarry it off, undoubtedly requires _more_ strength, and so gives moreopenings for weakness to show itself. There are many average Englishnovels which I should not mind reading, and not a few that I should liketo read, again, while there are but few French novels that I should careto read so often as I have cared to read the great English ones. But Icould read, for a second time, a very much larger proportion of averageFrench fiction.
Of those books which are "above average" I have tried to say what Ithought ought to be said in the volume itself, and there is no need of a"peroration with _much_ circumstance" about them. It is a long way--aperfect maze of long ways leading through the most different countriesof thought and feeling--from Atala dying in the wilderness to Chiffondoing exquisitely balanced justice to herself and the Jesuit, byallowing that while he and she were both _bien eleves_, he was _un peutrop_ and she was not. It is not so far, except in time, nor separatedby such a difference of intervening country, from the song of theMandragore in Nodier to those muffled shrieks of a better-known varietyof the same mystic plant, that tell us of Maupassant's growing progressto his fate. As you explore the time and the space of the interval youcome across wonderful things. There are the micro- macrocosms of Hugo,where, as in Baudelaire's line on the albatross quoted above, he ispartly hampered because he has come down from the air of poetry to theearth of prose; of Balzac, where there is no such difficulty, but wherethe cosmos itself is something other than yours; of Dumas, where halfthe actual history of France is _dis_realised for your delectation. On alesser scale you have the manners of town and country, of high life andlow life, of Paris mo
st of all, given you through all sorts ofperspectives and in all sorts of settings by Paul de Kock and GeorgeSand, by Sandeau and Bernard, by Alexandre Dumas _fils_ and Feuillet, byTheuriet and Fabre. Gautier and Merimee make for you that marriage ofstory and style which, before them, so few had attempted at all, yetwhich, since them, so many have tried with such doubtful success. Oncemore in Flaubert and then for the last time, as far as our survey goes,in Maupassant, you come to that touch of genius which exalts the novel,as it exalts all kinds, indefinably, unmistakably, finally.
And this journey is not like the one great journey, and more than one ofthe lesser journeys, of our life, irremeable; there is no denial, nocurse, no fiend with outstretched claw, to prevent your going back asoften as you like, wandering in any direction you please, passing orstaying as and where you wish. It has been perhaps unconscionable of meto inflict so big a book on my readers as a cover for giving myself thepleasure of making and remaking such journeys. But if I have persuadedany one of them to explore the country for himself, by him at least Ishall not remain unforgiven.
FOOTNOTES:
[558] _V. sup._ "The French Novel in 1850."
[559] Called by some a "deadening" one. There was some very cheerfulLife in that Death.
[560] The better part even of M. Ohnet is a sort of vulgarised Sandeau.
[561] _La Tentation_, like others of the very greatest novels, isindependent of its time, save in mere unimportant "colour."
[562] How little this change was one back to classicism--as some wouldhave it--we may see presently.
[563] The greatest of all--the direction and maintenance of therevolution under the inspiration of what is called Romance--must beagain postponed for a little while.
[564] Of course the convulsions of '48 were ominous enough, but theyseemed to be everywhere repressed or placated for a considerable time;and if there had been a single statesman of genius besides Herr vonBismarck (I anticipate but decline the suggestion of Cavour) in theEurope of the next two decades, they might not have broken out again fora much longer time than was actually the case.
[565] Nearly--but fortunately for literature--not quite. The jobbery andthe tyranny which are inseparable from democracy in politics find roomwith difficulty in _our_ "Republic."
[566] I am prepared for blame on account of some of the absences ofmention. Perhaps the most provoking, to some readers, will be thoseaffecting two industrious members of the aristocracy: Mme. la ComtesseDash--more beautifully and properly though less exaltedly, Gabrelli AnnaCisterne de Courtiras, _Vi_comtesse de Saint-Mars--and M. le ComteXavier de Montepin. They overlapped each other in pouring forth, fromthe 'forties to the 'nineties, torrents of mostly sensational fiction.But I had rather read them than write about them.
[567] In the same place another novelist, M. Amedee de Bast, of whom Iagain acknowledge ignorance, advertises no less than _four_ novels of_four_ volumes each, as being actually all at press, _pour paraitre adiverses epoques_. Dryden says somewhere "in epoches mistakes." Let ushope there were none here.